UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CATOLUmT 
 
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 ENDOWED BY THE 
 
 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 E 185.92 
 1877 
 
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 ^ ^ a 00001 20775 9 
 
 THE NEGRO PRO 
 
 AN ESSAY ^ 
 
 INDUSTRIAL, POLITICAL AND 
 MORAL ASPECTS 
 
 The Negeo Eace 
 
 THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
 
 -ENTEJ) UNDER THE LATE AMENDMENTS TO TWI FEDERAL 
 CONSTITUTION. 
 
 JBIT vJ. lE^. K.^IjIjS. 
 
 ATLANTA. GA. : 
 
 Tas. p. Harrison & Co., Pbintebs and Binders 
 
 1877. 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 E 185.^2, 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 INDUSTRIAL, POLITICAL AND 
 MORAL ASPECTS 
 
 The Negko Eace 
 
 THE SOUTHERN STAT 
 
 AS PRESENTED UNDER THE LATE AMENDME 
 CONSTITUTION. 
 
 B-y J-. -U.. I?.^XjXj, 
 
 ATLANTA, GEORGIA: 
 JAJIE3 P. Habbisok & Co., Prikters and Bindeks. 
 1877. 
 
/■ 
 
 I 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM AT THE SOUTH 
 
 In viewing the complex relations of human society, we 
 oftimes see events unfold themselves, which in their incep- 
 tion appear trivial and unimportant, yet in their progress 
 and ultimate development may assume proportions that 
 challenge attention and become objects of profound solici- 
 tude. The introduction of African slavery into the British 
 Colonies of North America, was, in its early history, 
 divested of all sentiment. The moral and political ques- 
 tions which subsequently gave rise to the fiercest agita- 
 tion, and which has shaken the American Government to 
 its very foundations, was at this time held in abeyance ; 
 and the slave traffic was simply regarded as any q^her 
 species of merchandise, to be regulated and controlled as 
 the interest or caprice of those engaged might dictate. 
 
 In all the preceding ages of the past, history informs 
 us that slavery had existed in some form or other, and it 
 only appealed to the moral sense of mankind, when it was 
 brought about by the arbitrary exercise of the rights of 
 conquest, accompanied with acts of oppression and cruelty, 
 in the servitude imposed upon its hapless victims. In 
 the early patriarchal ages, we find the institution of sla- 
 very firmly rooted, and grounded, in their domestic econ- 
 omy, and the prophets and law-givers of that pure and 
 primitive age, who were honored by the Most High, as 
 the keepers of His oracles, inveighed not against it as "a 
 league with death aiid a covenant with hell," bi|t regarded 
 it as a beneficent institution, that promoted the wijlbeing 
 of society. Greece and Rome in their day reared the 
 o^proudest structures of national glory, and the light of thoir 
 ^civilization, beaming upon us through the mist of twenty 
 .^ centuries, reveals the fact, that slavery was an integral part 
 ^of their civil polity. The feudal system known in history 
 ^ 1 
 
4 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 as the great political institution of the middle ages, and in 
 which was planted the germ of modern civilization, was 
 actuated and supported by a military spirit, which was 
 ostensibly aimed at the oppression of kings ; yet was no 
 less instrumental in striking down the liberties of the peo- 
 ple, and making them vassals to the rule of the lordly 
 baron. Great Britain, the nation that led for centuries 
 the van of civilization, and gave to later generations the 
 great charter of human liberties, set mankind the"example 
 of abducting the negro from his native haunts, and rearing 
 the system of African slavery in her distant provinces. 
 
 While it is not within the purview of our purpose to de 
 fend the institution of slavery, as it existed in the South- 
 ern States, either upon moral or political grounds, yet we 
 would not vindicate the truth of history, in passing over in 
 silence the real authors of an institution that has been the 
 theme of such bitter invective at the hands of their intol- 
 erant and hypocritical descendants. Massachusetts and 
 Connecticut were among the first colonies to introduce 
 African slavery upon their soil, and conducted the new en- 
 terprise with more interest and zeal than any of their sister 
 colonies. Massachusetts in particular had an addition- 
 al incentive to stimulate her to engage in the slave 
 traffic; for, besides the demand for the African as a laborer 
 to till her soil, she enjoyed a monopoly of the shipping in- 
 terest among the colonies, and did not stop at that early 
 day to consider "the horrors of the middle passage," but 
 at once fitted out her ship for the coast of Africa, and con- 
 tinued this species of merchandise as long as she could find 
 a market for the so-called "human chattels." Virginia, 
 and other more Southern colonies, entered an earnest re- 
 monstrance against the slave trade, and raised an issue with 
 thfe New England colonies against its continuance, which 
 was not met in a spirit of compromise by those men, 
 whose descendants, eighty years later, began a sectional 
 war to overturn an institution their fathers had been mainly 
 instrumental in setting up. 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM, 
 
 The debates, upon the formation of the Federal Consti- 
 tution, show, •* as an indisputable fact, that the Northern 
 States had earnestly and zealously espoused the cause of 
 slavery, and manifested a determination to perpetuate the 
 African slave trade, so lucrative had it become, and so grat- 
 ifying to that spirit of mammon, which forms the distin- 
 guishing type of the Yankee race, and becomes "the rul- 
 ing passion " at all times, and under all circumstances. 
 The Southern delegates, in the Convention of all the States, 
 called in 1787, to form a Federal Constitution that was to 
 supplant the Articles of Confederation, and "form a more 
 perfect Union," demanded that a constitutional prohibition 
 be incorporated into her organic law they were called to 
 frame, against the further introduction of the African race 
 into the States of America, showing an earnest conviction 
 in the minds of the Southern people of the impoHcy of the 
 African slave trade, and an evident disposition to rid them- 
 selves of slavery as a domestic institution. This proposi- 
 tion, proceeding from the Southern delegates, met with 
 decided opposition from the North, and the conflicting 
 opinions were only reconciled and adjusted by incorporat- 
 ing a provision extending the slave trade until 1808, as we 
 find it inserted in the Federal Constitution at the present 
 time. 
 
 When this franchise expired by limitation, and the 
 shrewd calculating Yankee saw that the slave could not be 
 profitably employed, where the labor of summer was con- 
 sumed in feeding the negro through the winter, he began to 
 cast about for the means of getting rid of him, soon entered 
 the role of philanthropist, and began immediately a cru- 
 sade against the rights of his neighbor, and a war against 
 the settled institutions of his country. It is a well authen- 
 ticated fact that the North got rid of slavery upon well ma- 
 tured convictions of interest, based solely upon economic 
 grounds — a settled conviction after satisfactory experiment 
 that it was unprofitable, and that free labor, made to subsist 
 itself when unemployed, would better meet the demands of 
 
6 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 Northern industry. In short, the negro, as we say in com- 
 mon parlance, would eat off his head, bring the master to 
 poverty, and must be gotten rid of. Hence <-he North 
 adopted gradual emancipation — in the meantime sending a 
 large per cent, of her slaves to the South to find market 
 for a chattel that had proved burdensome and unprofitable 
 upon her bleak and barren soil. The Puritans of the North 
 have never exhibited a spark of genuine benevolence, nor 
 can lay any just claim to philanthropy in their dealings with 
 any race or people who controvened their interest, or in- 
 curred their displeasure. 
 
 These people, in the opening chapter of their colonial 
 history, began a course of exasperation against a neighbor- 
 ing tribe of Indians by a series of aggressions upon their 
 rights, and when culminated in a deadly feud, th^y gath- 
 ered their strength, fell upon the foe in an unguarded hour, 
 and signalized an easy victory by exterminating the war- 
 riors of the Pequod nation, and capturing and enslaving 
 their defenseless women and children. Judge Black, who 
 is good authority oa Puritan history, as well as constitu- 
 tional law, says in a late review of the practices of the early 
 Puritians, that " it became a settled rule of public and pri- 
 vate economy in Massachusetts to exchange the worthless 
 Indians they had enslaved for valuable negroes, cheating 
 their West India customers in every trade." 
 
 The Puritan fled from E-igland under the belief that he 
 was the victim of religious persecution by the established 
 church, and set up in the New World his own peculiar es- 
 tablishment, where he, in turn, became the author of a re- 
 ligious bigotry, and intolerance more bitter and relentless 
 than any he had suffered in the Old World. The Baptists, 
 Catholics and Quakers shared in the most frightful perse- 
 cu'ions at the hands of these bigots, and were driven from 
 home, abandoned property, and all the associations that en- 
 d -ared life to them, to find a safe retreat in the wilderness 
 f.om the fury of their assailants. 
 
 The arraignment of innocent aaJ lielpless women upon 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. / 
 
 charges of witch-craft, and the severity of punishment in- 
 flicted — oftentimes the hapless victim expiating the alleged 
 crime upon the gallows — stamps the Puritan character with 
 cowardice, superstition and cruelty that is unequaled in the. 
 last century by any people who lay claims to Christian civil- 
 ization. If the history of the anti-slavery movement at the _ 
 North could be resolved into its basic elements, there would 
 be doubtless found only here and there a trace of real phil- 
 anthropy for the negro — felt by sentimental women, or 
 reformers, and dreamy imbeciles, such as Theodore Parker, 
 Wendel Phillips and John Brown. 
 
 The pro-slavery sentiment had taken no firm hold or deep 
 rdot in the Southern mind, until the agitation of the subject 
 by Northern fanatics had aroused a feeling of righteous 
 indignation in ^he bosom of Southern men, whose charac- 
 ters were assailed upon all occasions, and rights of property 
 in slaves resisted by mob violence, in defiance of the Con- 
 stitution and laws of the country. And the opinion is not 
 simply conjecture, that emancipation would have begun and 
 been consumated a half century ago at the South if North- 
 ern fanaticism had not invoked the demon of discord, and 
 caused it to shed its baleful glare upon the scene. Such 
 statesmen as Jefferson, Randolph, Clay, Pinckney and 
 others, saw at an early day that slavery, both as a political 
 and econt)mic question, furnished a problem of difficult 
 solution to the Southern people, and were ready to coun- 
 sel their people to rid themselves by gradual emancipation 
 of an institution, the maintenance of which was fraught with 
 so much trouble and danger in the distant future. But, 
 unfortunately for the South, two events arose at this junc- 
 ture, which mark an epoch in the history of Southern 
 slavery. 
 
 The invention of the cotton gin, with the new and prof- 
 itable field of enterprise it opened for the employment of 
 slave labor, followed in the next decade by the bitter and 
 uncompromising spirit with which slavery was attacked by 
 the North, gave the institution strength and permanency 
 
8 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 that prolonged its existence for fifty years, and made its 
 extinction only possible by the stern arbitrament of war. 
 If slavery was wrong and an unmitigated evil — "the scene 
 of all villiany, " as abolitionists have pronounced it — then 
 other people than those of the South are responsible, and 
 impartial history will award to them whatever degree of 
 condemnation that attaches. The late slave States have 
 little or no agency in the first introduction of African slave- 
 ry into this country; this was achieved, as already shown, 
 by the commercial States of the North and by Great Britain. 
 Our fathers came in contact with slavery and in possession 
 of it at a time when there was no sentiment or prejudice 
 against it. It was taken under their patronage, controlled 
 in the interest of both master and slave, and transmitted as 
 a legacy to their children ; successive generations grew up 
 with it and inherited it, until it was incorporated with every 
 fibre of our social and political existence. 
 
 Whatever renown anti-slavery men may lay claim to for 
 the part they acted in the poHtical drama that ended in the 
 overthrow of slavery, they cannot escape the impartial ver- 
 dict of mankind, rendered against them, for not only im- 
 peding and preventing voluntary and peaceable emancipa- 
 tion by the South, but for the greater crime of subverting 
 the Constitution of their country, provoking sectional war, 
 and imperiHng the safety of our political institutions in the 
 future. Those questions and their proper answer, which 
 fix the measure of culpability upon the one side or the 
 other, rightfully belong to the domain of history. And 
 when a philosophical view of the laws of passion and of 
 thought, as they have moved upon our Southern people, 
 and incited them to action, shall be taken by the historian, 
 who may be prepared to judge them impartially, there may 
 be a measure of blame cast upon a class of Southern states- 
 men for the part they contributed in shaping the late mo- 
 mentous events of American history. There is, perhaps, 
 no people, in a review of their past history, who will fail to 
 see, in som.e important crisis in their natural life, that a failure 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 9 
 
 to comprehend the true nature of that crisis, caused a de- 
 parture from the path of true progress, and left them to 
 grapple with difficulties that time alone, with the exercise 
 of patience and fortitude, could overcome. Tlie convic- 
 tion is widening and deepening in the Southern mind, that 
 slavery, apart from the moral and political aspects of the 
 question, was a failure in an industrial and economic view — 
 under that system of labor the production of the great sta- 
 ple of the South was stimulated and developed to an extent 
 that left us an annual return, but a modicum of profit to the 
 Southern planter. It was made the instrument of felling 
 the virgin forest, and laying waste, and impoverishing one 
 of the finest countries, in climate, soil and diversity of pro- 
 ducts that the sun has ever shone upon. It is true that it 
 aided in the settlement and rapid development of the coun- 
 try, and created a temporary prosperity, but the intrinsic 
 value of slave property, which represented about two-thirds 
 of all values at the South, depended upon a wide era of new 
 country, constantly opening up before it for its necessary 
 expansion. Had it been confined to the limits it occupied 
 at the time of the manumission of the slave, its converti- 
 ble value would have been destroyed in a very few years, 
 the profits on its labor constantly diminishing, and the 
 Southern planter would have sustained that relation to it, 
 of which John C. Calhoun said : "If the slave did not run 
 away from the master, the master would from the slave." 
 It was instrumental in the training up of our young people 
 to habits of inaction, and encouraged a false pride that 
 caused them to look upon labor as something debasing and 
 ignoble. It checked the spirit of enterprise and intelligent 
 co-operation, that builds up diversified industries, aug- 
 ments the capital, and gives permanency to the wealth of 
 nations. It combined in the directions of its operations as 
 a natural sequence, both labor and capital, which, accord- 
 ing to well settled laws of poHtical economy^, should be 
 distinct, and each left to guard its own interest in fair and 
 honorable competition. It was the means of accumulat- 
 
10 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 ing three thousand milHons of property — the toil and thrift 
 ofacertury — of an unusual and unsubstantial value.that was 
 swept away by the stroke of a pen — leaving the South only 
 the soil it had robbed of its virgin freshness — a sad and con- 
 stant reminder of the impolicy of the past. And one other 
 sequence of slavery, more momentous to us in its present 
 and future bearing upon the peace and welfare of the Souths 
 than all others combined, is the planting upon the same 
 soil, under the forms of a free government, with equal 
 rights and privileges, two separate and distinct races, more 
 widely differing in all the human characteristics than any 
 races of men, would seem to place before the Southern 
 people a problem for solution as difficult as any people in 
 the past have h d to solve. 
 
 Two distinct races in such juxtaposition, with no possi- 
 bility of ever blending — barred by color and insuperable 
 caste, with pride and prejudice that revolts at an union so 
 unnatural, and repugnant — must, in the very nature of 
 things, place one of the two in a subordinate and inferior 
 position, or result in a struggle for race supremacy, the 
 resul' of which cannot be doubtful. To institute a com- 
 parison between the races at the South, where analogies 
 are so obviously wanting, and the parallels do not run far 
 enough for the purpose of illustration, would lead to 
 travesty upon a subject that we desire to treat in a more 
 serious view. 
 
 Brief sketches of th^ more marked characteristics of the 
 two races, as presented by history and present condition 
 and attainments, would better serve the purpose in view. 
 The Anglo-Saxon, from which the Southern whites have 
 mainly sprung and belong, presents, in those qualities that 
 give men and nations power, prestige and influence, the 
 highest type of the human race. Its civilization his been 
 the constant and uninterrupted growth of fifteen centuries, 
 in which every problem that presents itself to the human 
 mind, has been studied and analyzed with a patience, en- 
 ergy and accuracy that human reason, stimulated by the 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 11 
 
 best aspirations of man, could bring to the task. It re- 
 cords its triumphs in every department of science, in every 
 branch of art, and in every field of enterprise, that secures 
 wealth or conrributes to the elevation, comfort and well- 
 being of mankind. Honor, valor.ambition, and all the high- 
 er qualities that find their chosen lodgement in the breast of 
 men, "formed to rule," are possessed in a pre-eminent 
 degree by this race, and has given it the mastery upon 
 every field of conflict, where an enemy was encountered, 
 or a cause to be won. This race, secure "upon its sea- 
 girt isle," has not suffered a foreign enemy to touch her 
 soil in the last five centuries, while she has dealt her blows 
 in the great conflicts of Europe, and always left her foe a 
 suppliant at her feet. Can it be asserted, that the same 
 race upon Southern soil, with its traditional pride, with 
 its chivalrous bearing, its spirit of persistence and powers 
 of endurance, would yield the mastery of its own soil to 
 the slave of yesterday ? 
 
 There is no proposition more clearly established by his- 
 tory, than that the negro is incapable of any development 
 or advancement in the arts of civilization, when left to him- 
 self, away from the contact and patronage of the white 
 man. 
 
 In Africa, where his lot was cast after the great tribal 
 divisions of the human race, we find him to-day enveloped 
 in the same stolid ignorance and heathen bondage, that 
 he was forty centuries ao-o, with no powers of mind above 
 the animal instincts of his nature — subsisting without labor 
 upon the spontaneous products of the soil — worshipping 
 idols, at which human sacrifices are offered up, with rites 
 and orgies that wouid shock the sensibilities of any other 
 savage, save that of his own race. In their wars, which 
 are of almost constant occurance, they show no tact or 
 .strategy, either in aggressive or defensive warfare — are in- 
 capable of making combinations, or seeking those advan- 
 tages resulting from treaty and alliances with other tribes 
 or peoples, which all nations and races have done, who 
 
12 THE NEGRO PBOBLEM. 
 
 have arisen from primal or tribal weakness to occupy a 
 name and place in history. They have not utilized the 
 labor of the horse or other animal — have made no progress 
 in the mechanical arts, not even upon their rude imple- 
 ments of warfare. And travellers tell us that no monuments 
 or other relics, indicating at any period that art, in any of 
 its branches, had been brought into requisition by the 
 natives of Africa. This is not true in any other lineage or 
 type of the human race. 
 
 In the most interior sections of the great continent of 
 Asia, and the farthest removed from the contact of civiliz- 
 ing influences, are to be found crumbled arches and pros- 
 trate columns, indicating archictectural skill and some 
 degree of advance in civilization at remote periods in his- 
 tory. The aborigines of North and South America have 
 left unmistakable evidence, which remains to the present 
 time, that the spirit of invention had been exercised by 
 them, and left behind memorials of a rude but advancing 
 civilization. 
 
 It might be said that commerce and military expeditions, 
 that have often planted the germ of civilization in other 
 barbarous countries, had no incentive or occasion to con- 
 fer this boon upon Africa. The great nations of antiquity, 
 Egypt, Carthage, Persia and Greece, were situated upon, 
 or but httle removed from, the continent of Africa, and 
 Herodotus speaks of trading expeditions by the Greeks 
 along the coast of Africa ; while Egypt, under her warlike 
 kings, penetrated the contiguous parts of Africa, and left 
 the impress of its power upon a race too barren in mental 
 resources to catch the inspiration of progress. The negro 
 race has in no instance given evidence of its ability to 
 cope with a civilized race, in a contest for supremacy, 
 when anything like equal numbers were upon the odier 
 side. When once enslaved, he has submitted to the rule 
 of the master, until the restraints of slavery were hfted by 
 the power that imposed it, or some other that championed 
 his cause, and gave him his freedom. There is not a single 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 13 
 
 instance in the history of this race, where they ever con- 
 ceived a plan, or attempted its execution, for their libera- 
 tion from bondage, that had an element of success about 
 it. They were in a state of slavery for one hundred and 
 fifty years in Hayti and Jamaica, where the white race, in 
 the last fifty years of this period, were in proportion to 
 the blacks of one to ten, with a small number of troops 
 maintained by their respective governments (France and 
 England), yet there was no serious revolt against the rule 
 of the master, as long as the institution of slavery existed. 
 During the great social and political upheaval that 
 brought in the French revolution, the Jacobin faction, in 
 their mad carnival of " equality and fraternity," proclaimed 
 the freedom of the blacks in Hayti, and allowed the people 
 of that province to establish an independent government, 
 giving the negro race political rights under it. The negroes 
 here, seeing their vast preponderance in numbers, and the 
 power it gave them, asserted and maintained their su- 
 premacy, and wreaked a brutal and terrible vengeance, in 
 the butchery of many thousand whites — the remainder 
 fleeing from the island and seeking safety in foreign lands. 
 This war of races was followed by an uprising of the blacks 
 against the mulattoes, which resulted in an extermination 
 of the latter, leaving the negro master of himself, an "her- 
 itage of woe," and a blot and curse upon the most valua- 
 ble island in the broad Atlantic. England repeated the 
 experiment of France, by liberating her slaves in the 
 province of Jamaica, and conferred upon the mixed popu- 
 lation the right of local self-government, under a protecto- 
 rate of the British Crown. As soon as an equality of 
 rights and privileges were proclaimed and enforced, the 
 prejudice and antagonism of race was engendered, result- 
 ing in outbreaks and chroni^*' disorder, until the whites, 
 goaded to desparation, rose in arms, and with the aid of 
 the British soldiery, visited a swift and terrible punish- 
 ment upon the blacks, demonstrating to the world the 
 impracticability of the two races existing under the same 
 
14 THE NEGRO PRGBLEM. 
 
 government, with e'qual rights and privileges, with the 
 negro disputing the claims of the white man to supremacy. 
 
 A more rapid decline and general prostration of all in- 
 dustrial resources, has not been seen anywhere in raodern 
 times, than that which followed emancipation in the Brit- 
 ish and French provinces. In Jamai'ca a plan -.f gradual 
 emancipation was adopted by the English government, but 
 after two or three years the negro became so demoralized 
 that the planters became disgusted with the institution, 
 and totally abandoned it. The blacks then commenced a 
 career of vagrancy, wandering about in idleness, and living 
 upon the spontaneous products of the island — the upculti- 
 vated fields growing up into a jungle — the dismantled and 
 silent machinery, the crumbled wall and deserted mansion 
 — all making up a picture melancholy and appalling, and 
 naturally awakening the inquiry to those who have been 
 compelled to repeat the experiment of Exeter Hall, will 
 the same fate rest upon the South ? 
 
 Mr. Bigelow, formerly editor of the New York EvLming 
 Post, and during the late war United States Minister to 
 Spain, visited the West Indies in the winter of 1855, and re- 
 mained several months, watching with deep concern, as an 
 anti slavery man, the developments taking place among the 
 colored population. In speaking of the ruinous decline of 
 the material interest of the Island of Jamaica, and the enor- 
 mous quantity of land thrown out of cultivation, he says : 
 " Thi's decline has been going on from year to year, daily 
 becoming more alarming, until at length tjie island has 
 reached what would seem to be the last profound of dis- 
 tress and misery, when t?housands of people do not know, 
 when they rise in the morning, whence or in what manner 
 they are to procure bread for the day." 
 
 San DomingQ, before emancipation had taken place, was 
 dotted over with Siplendid estates, that yielded their pro- 
 prietors a princely income, the value of her products to 
 rtie extent of her territory, and numbjCr of operatives em- 
 ployed, exceeded that of any other country of the globe. 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 15 
 
 Emancipation there was productive of results fully as dis- 
 astrous to its prosperity as it had been to that of Jamaica. 
 There was an almost total abandonment of the export of 
 sugar, its great staple product, in less than twenty years 
 after freedom was declared. In 1790, three years before 
 the liberation of the slave, this island exported 163,318,810 
 pounds of sugar, but in 1801, its exports were reduced to 
 18,554,112 pounds, and in 1810 to 2,020 pounds, since 
 which time its export of sugar has entirely ceased. In 
 1790 this island exported more cotton than the United 
 States. Twenty years later, it ceased to export cotton as 
 an article of commerce, which was in great demand at 
 highly remunerative prices, while c'offee, growing sponta- 
 neously, requiring no cultivation or other attention than 
 that of gathering it, yet had fallen off as an export in 1810 
 more than 100 per cent, upon the amount exported at the 
 time of emancipation. 
 
 From this statistical view, we find that the negro race 
 in the West Indies, in a state of freedom, did not meet the 
 first conditions of eivilized life, by a failure to provide for 
 the prime necessaries to sustain physical existence, to say 
 nothing of their refusal to make those higher divisions of 
 labor necessary to any advance in civilization. The negro 
 there *^ d t>een in a state of slavery more than onehundieJ 
 and fifty years, and by it elevated in the scale of civilized 
 being far above the level of the savage, and brought into 
 constant intercourse with the white race, as master and 
 overseer, had been trained to labor, and taught the methods 
 of producing food supplies, as well as the valuable staples 
 that enter into the commerce of the world, and return a 
 money value; yet we see them, with many advantages and 
 facilities for a higher development, refusing to employ such 
 agencies for its attainment, but halting and retrograding 
 to their primitive conditions of savage life. 
 
 The proposition, we think, that the negro, left to him- 
 self tp work out the problems of civilized life, '^yithout the 
 superior intelligence of the white man to aid and direct 
 
16 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 him, is so clearly settled by the logic of actual results in 
 the English provinces and in Hayti, as never to present 
 itself again as a question for serious controversy. 
 
 MENTAL QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEGRO 
 RACE. 
 
 The fact that there are four and a half milHons of this 
 race among us, constituting nearly one-half of the popula- 
 tion of the Southern States, and in some localities a large 
 numerical majority, renders it of the highest importance 
 that his nature and peculiarities of constitution should be 
 studied and understood ; not only by those Vi^ho make and 
 administer laws for the common weal of both races, but by 
 all classes who are brought in daily contact with him in a 
 business or semi-social relation. 
 
 The negro, we find, in his mental organization, exhibits 
 but little or no originality. His faculty for invention and 
 contrivance, where a principle is to be studied and applied, 
 is rarely drawn upon or improved, and whatever proficien- 
 cy he may attain in any branch of art or science, is due 
 rather to the process of memory and his skill at imitation, 
 than any proper understanding of the rules of art or princi- 
 ples of science. His intellect, if susceptible of classifica- 
 tion, is on the mechanical order. He reasons, when that 
 faculty is called into requisition, by analogy — in comparing 
 the subject under consideration with something else that 
 has come under his observation, and forms his conclusions 
 without a resort to the more intricate process of induction. 
 Memory, and the faculty of imitation, forming the order of 
 his mind with insufficient power of abstract thought to ex- 
 amine principles, compare different methods, and originate 
 new plans, he seems designed by Providence for a subor- 
 dinate position under the direction of a superior intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 We have never heard of a colored person, even at the 
 North, in contact with the ingenious Yankee, applying for 
 a patent right to any implement, or other useful article of 
 his own invention. This defect in the mental constitution 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 17 
 
 of tlie negro is not confined to mechanical operations 
 merely, but operates against him in every field of enter- 
 prise that he might enter upon. In San Domingo, where 
 they have pursued an independent career for eighty- five 
 years, we find them introducing no element of progress, 
 either in social or political life. There was a considerable 
 capital left them hi the cultivated and highly improved 
 landed estates with the wealth of the cities and towns in- 
 cluded, yet they have never projected a railroad or tel- 
 egraph, and many of the public highways and costly 
 bridges, so necessary to meet the wants of the country 
 under the rule of the white man, are now abandoned as 
 of no utility to the present owners of the soil. 
 
 The negro, like all inferior races, is deficient in will 
 power — a defect that is palpably seen in him under any 
 degree of mental training, or in any condition of life he 
 may be placed. 
 
 This faculty, controlled by correct principle and sound 
 judgment, is indispensable in the execution of every lauda- 
 ble purpose, and without it nothing valuable, either in in- 
 dividual or collective enterprise, can be accomplished. The 
 negro, in his ignorant and unreasoning state, with perfect 
 freedom from all restraint upon his volition, we find to be 
 the mere creature of chance ; his calling and habitation fixed 
 and controlled by casual circumstance, without resolute 
 will, and persistent effort to change for the better, by sur- 
 mounting the difficulties that may environ him. We have 
 noticed many of them, since their late emancipation, set 
 out with fair prospects of gaining a competency, and with 
 all the advice and encouragement that was necessary to 
 keep them in the line of success, would, despite it, yield to 
 some vanity or weakness, and find themselves, in a short 
 time, at the foot of the hill, with no profitable lesson gained 
 by the experience. This is not so much attributable to their 
 ignorance and inexperience in the practical duties of life, 
 as it is to the fickle and unstable element that is inherent in 
 
 2 
 
18 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 their nature. Those that are educated, and have the best 
 opportunities for amehorating their condition in life, rarely 
 exhibit the study and inflexible purpose to achieve the best 
 results their capabilities would authorize. The negroes at 
 the North are generally educated under the free school sys- 
 tem that obtains there, and quite a number are graduated 
 in Northern colleges, which is supposed to prepare the re 
 cipients of such mental training for any vocation in life. 
 We have yet to hear of the first negro, even at the North, 
 where they certainly have the best opportunities for devel- 
 opments, who is really entitled to distinction, or has a 
 record that will compare favorably with that of a third rate 
 white man, in the same department of life. Fred Douglass 
 and Langston both possess clear abilities, but have received 
 their distinction rather by comparison with their own race, 
 and in this respect are, par eminence, entitled to some no- 
 toriety, but neither have evinced moral or intellectual quali- 
 ties to give them force and elevation of character sufficient to 
 assign them a place in history. While their race in the 
 United States have been passing through a transitive period 
 for the last fifteen years, and certainly needed the advice 
 and guidance of a master mind in sympathy with their pe- 
 cuhar state, yet the two mentioned, or any other that have 
 assumed the role of leader, have not exhibited any capacity 
 for leadership, but have proven blind and false guides, 
 whose councils, if followed, will likely sink the negro to 
 lower depths of degradation and misery than he has yet 
 reached. Both of the worthies, mentioned above, made 
 their advent before the public, some thirty years ago, 
 in hostile opposition to the Colonization Society — a project 
 which was, doubtless, conceived in a spirit of real philan- 
 thropy, and was thought by some of our wisest statesmen 
 (North and South) to be a beneficent and judicious move- 
 ment in the interest of the freed blacks. 
 
 These would-be leaders in their political course, we see, 
 are at times the subject of party intrigue, and are ready to 
 do the behest of any party or faction that may play upon 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 19 
 
 their credulity; at other times they are wrought upon by 
 race feeling, and advise their people to cut loose from all 
 political association with the whites, and rely upon their 
 advice and assistance in no emergency. At the National 
 Colored Convention, held at Washington City, on the 4th 
 of July, 1874, Fie J Douglass was the chief spokesman, and 
 was put forward ■> tlie special purpose of declaring the 
 sentiment of his people in regard to their relation to the 
 country. In this speech, in alluding to the attitude of the 
 colored race at the South, and the liability to collisions on 
 the race question, he advised his colored friends at the 
 South "to go armed at all times, and execute a bloody 
 vengeance upon the Southern whites as the best method of 
 settling any grievance that might arise in the future." 
 
 In the quality of courage ofthat order which springs from a 
 sense of honor and duty, and impels men to action in the 
 maintenance of principles, or defense of life and liberty, he is 
 manifestly wanting. There i^ in his nature a spirit of venture, 
 that subjects him to risk of person, without prudent calcu- 
 lation of the danger incurred, or the value of the object to 
 be gained by the risk. In personal combat it little matters 
 what may be the casus belli, he must be sa'isfied of his 
 superi6r muscle, and that the chance^ in the fight are in 
 h.s favor, before encounteriiiii; an antagonist. He may, at 
 times, exhibit a brute courage, su; . as the mad bull is 
 incited to by the red flag, or the spear of the matadore, 
 that rushes him into acts o* vide'ice an 1 desperation, 
 without any regari to the consequeiices lo himself or the 
 object upon which his ra-'e may be expenled. The code, 
 we believe, is never resorted to to settle any "points of 
 honor" that may arise to disturb the amicable relations 
 between gentlemen of color. Tnis treatment of the code 
 of honor may not be any reflection that will likely bring 
 it into disrepute in the future, but shows that the darkey, 
 though "sudden and quick in quarrel," has found out 
 other ways of seeking satisfaction, more in accordance with 
 his ideas or;'C"<« . • •• fety. 
 
20 THE NEGRO PROBLEM, 
 
 The negro's exhibition of prowess upon the field of 
 battle, in defense of country and hberty, is no less a sub- 
 ject for travesty, than that of his personal bravery. In the 
 late war, levied by England against the Ashantec nation, 
 for a redress of grievances, occasioned by King Coffee, a 
 single regiment ot British soldiers overran and conquered 
 the dominions of the African King, defended by an army 
 of tv/enty thousand men, armed with modern implernents, 
 in defense of their own country. 
 
 The negro in the Federal army during the Confederate 
 war, with full knowledge that he was enlisted in the cause 
 of his own liberation, and that the future status of his race 
 and kindred at the South depended upon the result of the 
 struggle, could not be induced to fight without a Federal 
 bayonet tn the rear, ready to impale him, shall he attempt 
 a retrograde movement. In the recent outbreaks at the 
 South, in which the two races have been brought into a 
 conflict with arms, the negro, though often outnumbering 
 ten to one, have always shown the most abject cowardice, 
 where their insolent attacks were met by the unyielding 
 courage of the white man. 
 
 To organize and carry on anything like an insurrection, 
 requiring for its success secrecy, tact and organization, is 
 out of the question, and should create no apprehension in 
 the minds of our people at any time. 
 
 Such movements, though doubtless often conceived by 
 the negro during the one hundred and twenty- five years of 
 slavery in our country, have never approximated, either in 
 the plan of operations or actual attempt, anything like a 
 .serious revolt against the rule of the master. During the 
 last two years of our late war, two-thirds of the white 
 male adults were in the army, leaving their homes and 
 families at the mercy of their slaves, so far as any hostile 
 feeling or power to harm them was concerned. The true 
 situation of things at home was well known to the negroes 
 generally, as the servants who attended their masters in 
 the army were frequently s^nt home on errands^ and could 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 21 
 
 give information as to the distance of our soldiers from 
 any given point, and the unprorected condition of the 
 people at home, against any attack or uprising of tuc 
 negro population. 
 
 The conduct of the slaves during the war, in this particu- 
 lar, commended itself to the favor, if not the gratitud ■■ of 
 our people, and its remembrance shouljj temper any feeling 
 of exasperation against the negro for the turbulent and 
 lawless spirit that he has at times manifested, under the 
 teachings of "the party of moral ideas," through its fit 
 representative — the carpetbagger. If left to himself, free 
 from all extraneous influence, the negro would no*- be 
 tempted by any social or political aspirations to rise above 
 his proper level, but would fall into, and be contented with, 
 his natural and subordinate relation to the white race. A 
 servile disposition, whether in his primitive barbarism, or 
 under the influences of civilized life, seems to be an inhe- 
 rent and firmly fixed trait in the negro character. He 
 cannot, in a true sense, enjoy anything like rational liber- 
 ty. When not in state of slavery, under the task-master, 
 who subdues his will and controls his physical man, he is 
 led by the stronger impulses of his nature in pursuit of 
 something that will exercise dominion over him. It mat- 
 ters but little with him what may be the form or character 
 of the servitude he renders, so long as he has something 
 that will accept the homage that instinct, the real propell- 
 ing force in his nature, pron">pts him to bestow. 
 
 A prominent trait in the character of the average negro, 
 is his vanity, which he is fond of displaying on suitable 
 occasions, with an assumed dignity and an air of compb.is- 
 ance and self-importance, that seem to rend:?r him supremely 
 satisfied with himself. His fondness for fine clothing, trinkets 
 and gaudy ornaments, is often gratified by a privation not 
 only of comforrs, but the real nece-siries of life. His 
 obsequious disposition and pliant nature, makes him sus- 
 ceptible of outward polish, and with an example of true 
 politeness before him, he soon acquires mannors that are 
 
22 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 easy, graceful and artistic, which render him highly ser- 
 viceable on occasions where the lackey is needed. Correct 
 taste and a sense of propriety rarely enters into his " make 
 up," and he feels more pride ir " cutting a dash," than 
 leaving a favorable impression by simplicity of manners 
 and an exhibition of good sense. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no better opportunity for udging cor- 
 rectly of the traits that make up the human character than 
 that which the domestic relation affords. The regard that 
 is paid to the marriage relation — the esteem and affection 
 that husband and wife exercise towards each other — the 
 love of offspring, and the degree of solicitude felt and man- 
 ifested in the maintenance and welfare in Hfe, forms one of 
 the main foundations of human society, and is never want- 
 ing among those people that make up well-ordered and 
 prosperous communities. It cannot be claimed for the ne- 
 gro that he cherishes any high regard for the institution of 
 marriage, though they nearly all marry at an early age, and 
 some are "given to marry" several times before reaching 
 their majority. While it may be fair to presume that they 
 exercise as much reason in this particular as they do in 
 other matters, it is evidently true that the motives and in- 
 centives that actuate the other race, in many respects, be- 
 fore and after marriage, are generally wanting in the case of 
 the negro. Their stolid nature is rarely, if ever, kindled 
 with that feeling of romance, which rises above the animal 
 instincts, and forms a pure and perfect ideal of the oppo- 
 site sex in bringing them together in the act of courtship, 
 or more serious re'ation of marriage. The gratification of 
 a sense of novelty in the new relation, seems, for the most 
 part, the motives that prompt them to marry. Marriage 
 among them has had but little effect in promoting virtue 
 and carrying out the design of tlu divine institution. 
 Many of them live in open adultery during the whole mar- 
 ried state, and they oftentimes cut loose "from bed and 
 board " from slight provocation, or upon mere caprice — 
 leaving- their offspring to the chances and odds of a preca- 
 rious existence. 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 23 
 
 In the management of their children, there is a general 
 neglect of the wholesome discipline that is necessary to 
 bring them up to habits of obedience, and train them to 
 proper line of conduct in life. The correction of tne child 
 is generally dependent upon the temper of the parent. 
 When moderate counsels v/ould suffice for neglect of duty, 
 or waywardness of the child, if noticed at all, it is most 
 frequently with threats and abuse, or if the rod is used, it 
 is generally under a rage of passion, that leaves the hapless 
 subject hardened, and desperate undei the severity of its 
 infliction. 
 
 It we go beyond the domestic circle into the more com- 
 plex duties that devolve upon the citizen, we find the ne- 
 gro, even in his best estate, educated, and with opoortuni- 
 ties for observation, and with extended experience, unfit 
 for the duties and responsibilities of civil life. While it 
 could not be expected of the ordinary negro to cherish 
 any degree of patriotism, on account of his inability to com- 
 prehend the theory and operation of government — the oro- 
 tection ii; affords to life, liberty and property, it is never- 
 theless true that he is incapable of cultivating and receiv- 
 ing that measure of attachment and love of country that 
 the average white man does. His local attachment is not 
 fixed by any love of the soil — the streams, the hills and 
 plains that form the germ of patriotism in other races, even 
 the lower types, as the Indian and Esquimaux, but depend 
 rather upon accidental circumstances — those that favor his 
 love of ease and sensual enjoyment. Hence he often changes 
 his place of abode when doing well, without any rational 
 motive, or remains in a situation that is unfavorable to his 
 interest, on account of some trivial advantage, or fancied 
 good, that forms, for the time, his local attachments. 
 
 To make, in any sense, citizens out of such people, such 
 as can be relied on, to promote the national interest of the 
 State, to foster and defend its institutions, and to exhibit, 
 at all times, the true spirit of patriotism, is utterly imprac- 
 
24 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 ticable, and as chimerical as any exploded humbug of the 
 past. 
 
 CRIMINAL ASPECTS OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 The opinion that the negro race, on account of his de- 
 praved nature and vicious habits, would become a burden 
 upon the country after his emancipation, and impose upon 
 the Legislature and courts, difficult and embarrassing 
 duties, had its origin in no mere misgivings, or spirit 
 of opposition to the late amendments to the Federal Con- 
 stitution, but in a thorough knowledge of the negro char- 
 acter, and the results that would follow. The North is 
 peculiarly sensitive upon any question affecting the "man 
 and brother" at the South, and there has been too much 
 deference paid to Northern sentiment about the negro in 
 Southern State legislation and in dealing generally with the 
 case the negro presents. Northern men, for the most 
 part, are entirely ignorant of the habits, peculiariiies 
 of constit\'tion, and mental and moral stamina of the negro, 
 and cannot tai<e any reasonable or common-sense view of 
 any measure affecting the two races at the South. Twenty- 
 five years of stormy agitation there, characterized by an 
 utter abandonment of all reason and candid argument, and 
 a resort to calumny, detraction and falsehood, as the 
 most effective weapons to assail the institution of slavery, 
 caused them to regard the negro at the South only in a 
 philanthropic sense, and would have us ignore the u.se of 
 wholesome restraints and severe discipline, that the negro 
 must undergo before he is prepared for a sphere in civil- 
 ized life. 
 
 The negro problem, in all its phases, must be promptly 
 and fearlessly met, as the exigencies arise, upon principles 
 of right and justice towards the negro, and in a way that 
 will protect the peace and interests of society, without any 
 regard for outside opinion. The suppression of crime, 
 the preser\$ation of social order, and a promotion of the 
 material interests of the State, are subjects falling within 
 the province of the State Governments exclusively, they 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 20 
 
 are responsible for a proper regulation of the^e subjects, 
 and for a failure to do so, are amenable- to the condemna- 
 tion of those directly interested, and to the censure and 
 reproach of the outside world. 
 
 It is a fact too obvious for controversy, that crime 
 amongst the Southern negro is increasing every year at ;m 
 alarming rate, and if not checked by some measures of 
 reform, will, apart from the direct evil resulting, so increase 
 the cost of admii;istering justice by the courts, as to make 
 it an intolerable burden upon the tax-payers of the State. 
 If we should direct an enquiry into the cause of this in- 
 crease of crime, we would doubtless find them inherent in 
 the nature of the negro, independent of any outward influ- 
 ences or peculiar circumstances that may surround him. 
 In a state of slavery, his physical wants were better pro- 
 vided for by the master than he is capable of by self-man- 
 agement. His time and energies were constantly em- 
 ployed in useful labor, and lor all classes of minor 
 offenses, was amenable to the domestic forum, that admin- 
 istered certain and adequate punishment for the offence 
 committed. Hence we find him, in that state, rarely 
 guilty of an infraction of public law, quietly fulfilling his 
 mission in the field of industry, and visiting upon himself 
 nothing of that odium and degradation that now attaches to 
 the free negro, as the author of mischief and disorder. 
 
 li we revert to the history of the negro in a state of 
 freedom at the North, where he has been the object upon 
 which efforts at reform have been liberally expended, es- 
 pecially to improve his morals and make him law-abiding, 
 we shall find but little amelioration in his moral status 
 there, and still furnishing an inviting field for missionary 
 labors, in that land of "steady habits and moral ideas." 
 We have no statistics of a recent date, but refer to the 
 reports of the American Colonization Society, made in 
 1850, from thiity to forty years after emancipation had 
 taken place in the several States referred to. The report, 
 after speaking of the degraded condition of the free blacks, 
 
26 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 the frequency and increase of crime among them, proceeds 
 to sustain its assertions by facts gathered from the peni- 
 tent'aries, to show how great a proportion of the convicts 
 are colored : " Tn Massachusetts, where the colored people 
 constituted one seventy-fourth part of the population, they 
 supplied one-sixth part of the convicts in her penitentiary ; 
 that in New York, where the free blacks constituted one 
 thirty-fifth of the population, they furnished more than one- 
 fourth part of the convicts ; that in Pennsylvania and Con- 
 necticut, where the free blacks constituted one thirty fourth 
 part of the population, they supplied more than one-third 
 of the convicts." "It is unnecessary " continues the re- 
 port, "to pursue these illustrations. It is sufficiently ap- 
 parent, that one great cause of the increase of crime is 
 neglecting to raise the character of the colored popula- 
 tion." If forty years of freedom, under the most favorable 
 conditions possible, at the North, has evinced no moral 
 improvement, and has not served " to raise the character 
 of the colored population." if it is worth anything as a 
 sociological fact, it clearly shows the imbecility, the de- 
 pravity and inferiority that is stamped upon every linea- 
 ment of the African race. 
 
 We need not go beyond our own vicinage to be con- 
 vinced that the negro is a constitutional lawbreaker, prone 
 to evil deeds, and will reap a harvest of crime if the fear 
 of tangible, corporal punishment does not deter him. The 
 average number of convicts in the Georgia penitentiary for 
 twenty years before it was opened to the negro, was about 
 one hundred. We fmd that there has been an annual in- 
 crease of convicts at the rate of about 50 percent., swelling 
 the number to about eight hundred at the present time — a 
 fearful record of crime — a fact pregnant with thought and 
 apprehension of the future. Ten years of freedom, with 
 personal liberty guaranteed, with the privileges as well as 
 the responsibilities that attach — with lessons that observa- 
 tion and experience teaches in the daily examples of how 
 the erring are dealt with, and how the good and exempla- 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 27 
 
 ry are rewarded, should certainly, it seems, point him to 
 the path of duty, and urge him to pursue it. 
 
 As the negro is free, and in the possession of equal guar- 
 antees by the Federal and State Constitutions, no criminal 
 code, even if desirable, could be framed that would dis- 
 criminate in the infliction of penalties between the two 
 races. And it may be seriously asked, if our present penal 
 code is not severe enough, without adding to its rigors, or 
 demanding a more rigid enforcement of its mandates than 
 is already done in our State courts ? And where there can 
 be no discrimination in the framing and enforcing penal laws 
 — one law for the white man and another for the negro — 
 can the white man, at this advanced stage of civilization, 
 place himself under a code of criminal law that might be 
 applicable and suited to an inferior race, without a feeling 
 of debasement, and invite adverse criticism upon the civil 
 institutions under which he lives? In view of the vast 
 amount of smaller crimes, coming under the head of mis- 
 demeanors in law, the vexation and loss of time, and ex- 
 pense of a prosecution in the courts, and the frequency 
 with which they are dropped, and the guilty parties go 
 unpunished, there is, in consequence, a growing disposi- 
 tion among the planting interest, who suffer most by i-he 
 class of offenses named, to legalize the whipping post and 
 bring it into practice. While this method of punishment 
 for misdemeanors might be wholesome and remedial in 
 effect in the case of the negro, and relieve the country of 
 the expense of jail fees and cost of prosecutions in the 
 courts, its liability to abuse, and danger of engendering a 
 bad feeling betwen the races, would be reasoiis suffici nt 
 to prevent its coming into practice. It would not be long, 
 if such a law was in force, before a white man would be 
 brought to the "post," and this would likely stir up " bad 
 blood," resulting in acts of revenge in some way, that 
 would at once demonstrate the impracticability of such 
 modes of legal punishment. 
 
 No punishment for the commission of crime, that merely 
 
28 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 confines the negro in prison, and deprives him of his hbcr- 
 ty will be remedial in effsct upon the offender himself, or 
 u on the race at large as a preventative against crime. The 
 peniteniiary system proper, confining the convict to work- 
 houses, where the service performed is entirely of the me- 
 chanical order, would be rather inviting to the ordinary ne- 
 gro, and have in it no element of either a punative or re- 
 formatory character. 
 
 The laws of Georgia, providing for farming out her con- 
 victs, and establishing chain-gangs, where the convict is 
 held to the performance of the severest physical labor, is 
 the best possible disposition that can be made of them, and 
 offers a ready solution to the once vexed question of work- 
 ing convict labor. The vast mineral resources of North 
 Georgia, in her inexhaustible mines of iron and coal, yet 
 undeveloped, and requiring, in their infancy, cheap and ac- 
 tive labor, find in the convict force, rapidly increasing every 
 year, just the class needed, and this field of industry itself 
 will, doubtless, relieve the State authorities of all anxit-ty in 
 the future as to the disposal of State convicts. The discre- 
 tion allowed by law to the Executive in the assignment of 
 convict labor to appropriate fields, according to the nature 
 of the offense and character of the criminal, is a wise pro- 
 vision in meting out justice in individual cases, and, by 
 properly guarding it, can be made to keep down race feel 
 ing amon^ the convicts, and in the public mind that doubt- 
 less would arise from an indiscriminate allotment. 
 
 There has been some strictures by the Northern press 
 upon the Georgia plan of working convicts in the chain- 
 gang — originating in that pragmatic spirit inherited from 
 " the Pilgrim fathers " that still prompts a considerable ele- 
 ment at the North to pry into and interfere with the con- 
 cerns of other people, especially when the prejudices of 
 their own people can be wrought upon, and political capi- 
 tal made by it. Some of our Georgia newspapers, who 
 watch with *' bated breath " every ripple upon the currents 
 of Northern sentiment, have caught up the refrain about 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 23 
 
 the relics of barbarism in Georgia, and have advocated the 
 abandonment of the chain gang as one of them. The vast 
 rate of increase of crime in our State, the necessity of on- 
 fining the penitentiary system to a limited number, and its 
 evident failure, as a corrective and preventative of crime 
 among the negro population, makes the continuance of the 
 chain-gang an imperative necessity in the future. 
 
 While our State courts have been vigilant and active in 
 enforcing penal law, and have, doubtless, inflicted adequate 
 punishment upon all classes of offenders arraigned before 
 them, yet there is an evident defect in our judiciary system 
 as at present constituted, in not providing a more summary 
 and expeditious process for the trial of the class of penal 
 offenders coming under the grade of felony. It is this class 
 of penal cases that lengthen the dockets, and prolong 
 the sessions of our Superior Courts, consuming the time of 
 our people in jury duty, and swelling the expense in the ad- 
 ministration of public justice, until it has become a grievous 
 burden to taxpayers. This class of cases are made up for 
 the most part of the crimes of petit larceny, breach of the 
 peace, malicious mischief, and trespass upon lands, and 
 come under the simplest forms of law, involving no com- 
 plex or abstruse principles, and their proper investigation 
 and decision resting upon a few simple facts, requires no le- 
 gal learning or judicial skill in the court exercising jurisdic- 
 tion. 
 
 In the present condition of the country, with a large ig- 
 norant and degraded population, under but Httle moral re- 
 straints, and law-abiding only to the extent that they dread 
 the penalty the law inflicts, it becomes highly necessary for 
 the protection of society that better police regulations 
 should be adopted. Criminal jurisdiction should be con- 
 ferred upon our Justice Courts for all penal offences be- 
 low the grade of felony, which would make them in fact po- 
 lice courts, so that every militia district in a community 
 could carry out its own police regulations, and not carry 
 those minor offenses into the Superior Courts, where the 
 
30 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 prosecution ol such cases are necessarily expensive — in the 
 cost of court, jail fees, and in the consumption of valuable 
 time of business men on jury duty. 
 
 It has been urged as an objection to giving ciiminal ju- 
 risdiction to Justice Courts, that it would not do to confer 
 upon men unlearned and unskilled in law judicial power to 
 decide upon the delicate and difficult question of personal 
 rights, involved in the trial of even minor criminal cases. 
 This objection has been partially and perhaps sufficiently 
 answered in the statement that such cases come under a 
 simple statute — the simplest form of law — defining in very 
 plain language the act declared to be penal by the Legisla- 
 ture, and prescribing the penalty for its commission. The 
 judicial officer has simply to examine the evidence submit- 
 ted, and determine whether it is of sufficient weight to 
 establish the guilt of the party arraigned. 
 
 If criminal jurisdiction were conferred upon Justice Courts, 
 it would raise somewhat the dignity and importance of the 
 office, and men of higher capacity would be selected to fill it. 
 In every community there are men of good natural ability, 
 intelligence and sound discriminating judgment, giving 
 them sufficient capacity to investigate a case and render a 
 correct decision, where no very difficult law points are 
 involved. Thomas Jefferson once remarked that the Jus- 
 tice Courts of Virginia were the best courts in the world, 
 because they decided every case upon the naked facts, and 
 upon its own merits, without complicating a correct view 
 of the case with a multipUcity of legal principles and 
 conflicting precedents, that often perplex and confuse the 
 best judicial acumen. 
 
 The idle and vagrant condition of a large number of col- 
 ored people in every section of the country, is a proUfic 
 source of evil, and should not be tolerated. It is a well 
 recognized fact, that a man at simple or unskilled labor, can- 
 not support himself (much less a family), on an average of 
 one or two days' work out of the week. There should be a 
 rigid and well-defined vagrant act, that will reach those 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 31 
 
 cases that make work the exception rather than the rule 
 of daily life. Superior Court Judges should be required to 
 urge the law of vagrancy with point and emphasis, in their 
 accustomed charges to grand juries. It has always been 
 difficult to enforce vagrant laws, and they have remained 
 almost a dead letter upon our statute books, but public 
 sentiment should be toned up to the point where it shall 
 demand their enforcement, as necessary to advance the 
 moral as well as material interests of the State. 
 
 Adultery and bigamy are pronounced crimes by our 
 penal statutes, yet they are practiced to an extent by the 
 colored race that precludes the idea of virtuous and cor- 
 rect life among them. Our courts rarely take cognizance 
 of such violations of law, owing doubtless to the general 
 prevalence of the crime, the time it would necessarily con- 
 sume in the trial of such cases, the heavy burden of cost, 
 without perhaps any compensating good in the end. As 
 the negro forms a part of our body politic, if not an ele- 
 ment of society, it seems that he should be brought to an 
 observance of the rules of law that are deemed necessary 
 to government of civilized communities. It might be said, 
 by way of extenuation of the laches on the part of the 
 courts in not punishing this class of offenses, that they 
 only affect the negro race, and that no direct injury can 
 result to society fro;n its toleration. If it was the interest 
 of society that he should remain in a state of semi-barbar- 
 ism, and was it not desirable to raise the degraded charac- 
 ter of the negro race to a higher standard of morality and 
 general worth, then we might with reason say, let him 
 follow the brutal instincts of his nature. As slaves, they 
 were not considered as an integral part of Southern society, 
 but in state of freedom, with equal rights and [privileges 
 accorded them, they, by force of circumstances, become 
 an element of society. The commission of crime on their 
 part is published in the daily press — enters into statistical 
 reports — becomes a part of the history of the State, and 
 reflects in the aggregate upon its civilization. 
 
32 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 Man's better nature may be appealed to, and incited to 
 virtuous and praiseworthy endeavors, yet we find in him 
 an element of weakness and depravity that must be ope- 
 rated upon by the fear of punishment, before he makes 
 any real advance towards the goal of a better life. This 
 proposition' is very probably true of the negro as well as 
 of the white man, although the mental and moral qualities 
 of the two exist in a marked disproportion. Education 
 and religious instruction may be auxiliaries in improving 
 the state of the negro, if there is an element of good in 
 him, but in his present condition there is no argument 
 more forcible and effective in checking his tendency to 
 evil, than that which appeals to the physical man in the 
 form of legal punis^ent for the wrong he may do. 
 
 EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 Upon the subject of educating the negro, in affording 
 him equal advantages and facilities w'th th it of the white 
 race, there is great diversity of opinion among intelligent 
 thinking men at the South. Their views are very probably 
 formed in the main by the supposed effect it would have 
 upon the negro character, the extent it would influence 
 him to change the occupations requiring physical labor to 
 others of less utility to society at large, and the means or 
 agency by which his education may be accompished. 
 The fact that so large an element of Southern population 
 are in a sta*-e of abject ignorance, incapable of exercising 
 intelligent thought upon any subject that may present it- 
 self, even in the daily practical concerns of life, to say 
 nothing of the more complex duties of citizenship, which 
 have been thrust upon them without any preparation, are 
 sutificient to direct earnest attention to the deplorable con- 
 dition of the negro, and to awaken apprehension of its ef- 
 fect upon the interest and well being of the white race. 
 
 These are perplexing questions connected with the edu- 
 cation of the negro that cannot be satisfactorily solved 
 without patient and gradual experiment. If there was any 
 thing like general education diffused among them, it 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM, 33 
 
 might bring a class of influences to bear upon them, that 
 would tend to mar the peace and become hurtful to the 
 interests of both races. It cannot yet be seen what effect 
 it would have in stimulating their pride and aspirations to 
 a recognition of perfect equality with the white race. No 
 claim of this kind will ever be accorded by the whites, no 
 matter what might be the culture and attainments ot the 
 negro. We already see the cheap, trashy, catch-pen ny 
 publications of the Northern newspaper press, such as 
 teach a grievous and leveling doctrine in general, are find- 
 ing their way to the reading class of negroes, and will very 
 probably furnish their literary pabulum in the future. If 
 the negro should not manifest a stronger identity with the 
 section in which he lives, and continues to follow the ad- 
 vice and teachings of those who are inimical to every in- 
 terest of the South, then the Southern people would be 
 absolved from obligations of any kind to aid in his en- 
 lightenment. 
 
 What has been accomplished by the negro in the North- 
 ern States since his emancipation there, running back in 
 some of the States that first adopted it (Massachusetts and 
 Pennsylvania) nearly a century, affords us, perhaps, the 
 best illustration of the progress that he is ca^:able of mak- 
 ing, under conditions more favorable than are to be found 
 elsewhere. There, am'ple provision is made un^^er the sys- 
 tem of free schools for the education of the negro as well 
 as the white race, and both occupy the same level, not 
 only in educational advantages, but every other means of 
 culture that may be necessary to their moral and intellr-ct- 
 ual elevation. If we are to form an estimate of the value 
 of education upon the negro race, by what thorough and 
 systematic efforts at the North have accomplished for him 
 there, we fear no very encouraging view can be taken in 
 the cause of education for the Southern negro. The slow 
 progress made by the free black? at the North, or rather 
 the absence of all improvement in industry, general intel- 
 ligence and morality, under the most favorable conditions 
 
 3 
 
34 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 possible, warrants the opinion that his aspirations and ca- 
 pabilities are of such order as to keep him on a very low- 
 plane of civiliz:ition. 
 
 It is reasonably certain that the negro population at the 
 South, taken as a whole, are likely to remain in a state of 
 poverty and dependence for an indefinite period in the fu- 
 ture. His want of thrift, foresight, and an intelligent ap- 
 preciation of the value of his labor, will cause him to ignore 
 the methods by which property is accumulated, and re- 
 mand him to a state of perpetual poverty. There will, no 
 doubt, be some exceptions, and it cannot be seen of indi- 
 viduals, but it is foreseen of the great mass of this race ; and 
 it is for the mass, not for the exception, that the institu- 
 tions of society are to provide. With this view, warranted 
 by ethnological law, and historical fact, in the case of the ne- 
 gro, is it not better that the character and intellect of the 
 individual should be suited to the staticn which he is to oc- 
 cupy? So far as the mere laborer has the pride, the knowl- 
 edge or the aspirations of an intelligent man, he is unfitted 
 for his situation, and must more keenly feel its infelicity. 
 If there are sordid services and laborious offices to be per- 
 formed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile 
 and laborious beings to perform them ? Would n; t the in- 
 terest of society be served, and would not some sort of fit- 
 ness seem to require that they should be selected for the 
 the inferior and servile offices ? And if this race be gene- 
 rally marked by such inferiority, is it not better that they 
 should fill them ? 
 
 Upon the other hand, we are confronted with the fact that 
 ignorance and crime " go hand in hand," and with the mind 
 and moral faculties uncultivated, the individual has no proper 
 conceptions of right, duty, and the obligations he owes to 
 society, and, following the bent of an evil nature and per- 
 verse will, is apt to inflict wrong and violence upon his fel- 
 low being. Hence, where the individual is not obedient to 
 law from moral convictions, the State must exercise guard- 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 3..) 
 
 ianship over him, in the strict enforcement of law, for the 
 protection of society. 
 
 The advocates of a free school system claim for it, as a 
 direct advantage, while it compensates for the money ex- 
 pended by the State in free tuition, the saving of the Cost 
 of criminal prosecutions, the additional protection extended 
 to life and property in the diminution of crime, to say noth- 
 ing of moral benefits resulting to society in a multipHed 
 form. 1 he Southern States, in their present impoverished 
 condition, with enormous public debt hanging over them, 
 are not in a condition to carry on a system of free schools 
 like the rich and prosperous States of the North, however 
 politic and desirable it may otherwise be. If our popula- 
 tion were of one race, entirely homogeneous, the common 
 school system would assert its claims with more plausibihty 
 and force than it can possibly do under the existing status 
 of things. The impracticability of teaching white and col- 
 ored children in the same school, and the necessity of pro- 
 viding separate schools for each, necessarily enhances the 
 cost of free schools in the Southern States, and, as a mere 
 question of tconomy, places the argument against them. 
 Though not germain to our subject, we cannot forego an 
 expression of opinion, that the plan of public schools, as at 
 present conducted in Georgia, hmited to three months in 
 the year, with an inadequate fund to maintain them even 
 that length of time, requiring patrons to supplement the 
 pay of teachers, is very unsatisfactory in its workings, and, 
 in its present shape, clearly contravenes the educational in- 
 terests of the State. 
 
 Upon the supposition that the negro is to remain 
 among us, and that he is permanently invested with the 
 right of suffrage by which he wields a power in shaping 
 the legislation of the State, and in the control of civil 
 affairs, it would seem, in that event, the policy of the 
 white race to aid, to some extent, the education of the 
 negro, so far as it may be compatible with the general in- 
 terests of the State. 
 
36 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 As we purpose to discuss briefly the question of coloni- 
 zation, and that of universal suffrage more at length, in 
 the subsequent pages of this paper, we shall not more than 
 incidently allude to it in this connection. We cannot an- 
 ticipate, with any degree of certainty, the revolutions of 
 public sentiment, or the political action that may control 
 any given subject in the future, but as to the negro re- 
 maining among us, undisturbed by a governmental scheme 
 of colonization, or that of voluntary emigration, we believe 
 to be among the very probable events of the future. 
 
 In view of ail the surroundings, it is the duty as well as 
 interest of the Southern people to make a fair and 
 thorough test of the negro's adaptability to the demands 
 of our industrial system, and in this experiment will be 
 tested his capability for any development and his fitness 
 for a sphere of civilization. There should certainly be no 
 obstacles interposed to prevent or hinder him m a couise 
 of self instruction and improvement. This would not only 
 be gross injustice, but opposed by every liberal and intelli- 
 gent sentiment that actuates a generous and humane peo- 
 ple. 
 
 The present adult negro population cannot be brought 
 under any system of mental improvement, from the fact 
 that they are dependent upon their daily labor for means 
 of subsistance, nor could they be spared from the various 
 fields of labor in which they are employed. It is doubt- 
 less the duty of the white people to encourage, to some 
 extent, the education of the negro children that are grow- 
 ing up in the country. If farmers or neighborhoods would 
 donate sites for colored school houses, and manifest an in- 
 terest in getting up schools for the freedmen, to be kept 
 up even for two or three months in the year, it would enable 
 their children to obtain the rudiments of an education, and 
 with any faculty for self improvement, would enable them 
 to make such further attainments as their ambition or ca- 
 pacity might lead to ; such action on the part of land 
 owners would inure to their own benefit in securing labor 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 37 
 
 for the cultivation of their farms, and render it more effi- 
 cient and permanent by attaching the freedman to locah'- 
 ties that afford such facilities. 
 
 THE NEGRO AS A LABORER. 
 
 Whatever may be said of the nature, habits of life and 
 order of intelligence that is presented in the history of the 
 negro race, in his native land, or in those countries where 
 he has existed in the tvvo conditions of slavery and free* 
 dom — the most practical and important question that can 
 present itself to the Southern people is : Can he be made ser- 
 viceable in his present relation, and an efficient co-worlcer 
 in promoting the material interests of the South ? While 
 the negro race, in all the British provinces where slavery 
 formerly existed have declined in an industrial and moral 
 point of view, and may be drifting slowly back to savage 
 life, it would not be z fair and just conclusion to say that 
 under more favorable circumstances he might not render 
 valuable service in promoting the industrial interests of the 
 country in which he exists as a freedman. The negroes of 
 the South present rather a favorable contrast, at the present 
 time, to the West India negroes at the time of their liber- 
 ation. The negroes in those islands were in a state of 
 semi barbarism when they were freed. The landed pro- 
 prietors there were generally men of vast wealth, owned 
 large estates and cou.ited their slaves by the hundred, 
 which were kept under military rule, never allowed the 
 privileges of Southern slaves in visiting among themselves 
 or commg in constant contact with white men. No mis- 
 sionary efforts for their religious instruction were directed 
 in their behalf, and being placed under such unfavorable 
 opportunities for any improvement, were not elevated so 
 much above their primitive state as the Southern negro. 
 
 In all those countries, with the exception of the United 
 States, where the negro has passed from a state of slavery 
 to that of freedom, we find them to be tropical countries — 
 furnishing to the inhabitants food without labor, iii the 
 abundant resources of vegetable and animal life, la hose 
 
38 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 countries he has been left to himself for the most part, 
 without the example and influence of the white man, and 
 without wise and wholesome laws to restrain his vicious 
 propensities, to compel him to work, and secure to him 
 the fruits of his labor. The climate of all tropical coun- 
 tries, too, has an enervating and depressing effect upon the 
 physical man — relaxing his energies of mind and body. 
 Hence we find all races of men there, whatever may be the 
 stimulus to industry and exertion, rebpsing into a state 
 of indolence and inaction, that confines labor and the field 
 of industrial enterprise to the bare acquisition of the prime 
 necessaries of life. 
 
 In a'l the South American States, with the exception of 
 Brazil, where slavery still exists with a monarchical gov- 
 ernment, there has been but little progress in the elements 
 of civilization since the overthrow of Spanish rule, fifty 
 years ago. These petty republics are a burlesque upon 
 free government, given over to a state of chronic revolu- 
 tion, and present no very favorable contrast in growth and 
 material development to their neighboring negro commu- 
 nities of the West India Islands. 
 
 But it may be asked: Why has the negro not done more 
 for himself, esta'^lished a better character as a laborer, and 
 arisen in the scale of private and public worth at the 
 North, where climate,educational advantages, public law rind 
 political institutions gave him a fair field for development? 
 It cannot be denied that there is a great discount upon the 
 negro as a laborer there, that he has long since been driv- 
 en out as a competitor in the field of active labor — is rarely 
 found in the agricultural, manufacturing or mining interest 
 of that busy section, but in the more m nial occupations, 
 as porter, stevedore, hotel waiter and boot- black, where the 
 labor performed is menial and low, and the compensation 
 does not invite active competition. While this is true,and 
 forms a strong argument against the worth of the negro as 
 a laborer, it should be viewed in its proper light, and the 
 necessary allowance made to the credit of the negro, There^ 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 39 
 
 more than at the South, the race feeling has operated to 
 the disadvantage of the negro. Men in need of labor 
 would give the white laborer preference, owing to the pre- 
 dilections of race, though the negro might perform the 
 task as well. The industrial system of the North is carried 
 on by day labor, or by contract for a short term of service. 
 The white man, in his physical organization, is endowed 
 with more activity and nervous energy, and performs his 
 allotted task quicker than the negro. Hence, as a day- 
 laborer, is preferable, and will aUvr.ys supercede the negro 
 in that kind of service. 
 
 The negro, too, has keenly felt the prejudice of race at 
 the North by the refusal of the white laborer to work side 
 by side with him in the field or workshop, and has often 
 t'een driven out by threats and violence, until, by force 
 of circumstances, he has been compelled to withdraw from 
 the field of competitive labor with the white man. 
 
 In the Southern States the four and a half millions of ne- 
 groes are scattered over an area of five hundred thousand 
 square miles, living upon the lands of an intelligent and en- 
 terprising white race, who will bring to bear every encour-' 
 agement to voluntary labor, and if need be, legislative ac- 
 tion will be invoked, to render him an active and profitable 
 worker in that department of labor where he is wanted, and 
 for which he is fitted by nature. The experiment with free 
 labor at the South since the emancipation of the slave.while 
 it has not been very satisfactory, yet, under the manage- 
 ment of those who have any capacity for controlling free 
 labor, has proven far more efficient and valuable than was to 
 be hoped for when the experiment was first essayed. Much 
 might be said by way of apology for remissness or failure 
 of the negro to meet the demands of Southern industry. 
 
 He was, by a stern and arbitrary edict that consulted 
 neither his interest or that of his master, forced from the 
 patriarchial institution of slavery that provided for his phys- 
 ical needs, and relieved him from all care, into a state of 
 freedom, without any appreciation of the value of labor, or 
 
40 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 any preparation for the duties and responsibilities that rest 
 upon free people. Northern ereiissaries, under the guise of 
 friendship for the negro, and in the interest of a corrupt po- 
 litical faction, sought him out, and filled his weak and cred- 
 ulous mind with agrarian stories that made the corn and 
 cotton field less attractive, in view of the more tempting and 
 ea>i'y won prizes just ahead. 
 
 If we should examine the question of free negro labor in 
 the light of actual results — ascertain to what extent he has 
 contributed, annually, for the last ten years to the sum of 
 production, and his direct agency in upholding the indus- 
 try of the South, we would, doubtless, see a more liberal 
 and just estimate placed upon his worth as a laborer, and 
 less talk of ridding the South of the negro and filling his 
 place with European and Northern labor. It is, doubtless, 
 the concurrent opinion of a large majority of Southern far- 
 mers that there has been a gradual and steady improve- 
 ment in the quality of colored labor each succeeding year 
 since emancipation. This improvement, too, in the char- 
 acter of his labor has been in the face of difficulties and dis- 
 • couragement that the proprietors of the soil have, in a large 
 measure, been responsible for. The impolitic course pur- 
 sued by a majority of planters, in neglecting provision 
 crops and stimulating the production of cotton beyond the 
 healthy and legitimate demands of the trade, so as to bring 
 the price of her raw material below the cost of production, 
 has made labor unremunerative, and taken away its strong- 
 est incentive. Under such discouragements we have 
 seen the white man become restive and unsettled — often- 
 times abandoning his vocation as a tiller of the soil, and 
 seeking other classes of business more promising of satis- 
 factory results— while the negro, sharing largely in the 
 losses occasioned by an unwise direction of his labor, re- 
 turning each successive year with steady and unflinching 
 purpose ot his task. The cotton product, taken in the ag- 
 gregate for the last five years, exceeds that of any five 
 years during the period of slavery. This large and in- 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. ' 41 
 
 creased yield of the great staple of the South has not only 
 gone beyond the calculations of the planting interest ten 
 years ago, but has greatly surprised the best economists of 
 the day, who carefully examine every factor that enters 
 into the present and future condition of trade and fi- 
 nance, or that has a bearing upon the general production 
 of all cIasse~of industries. While it is true that the increased 
 amount of cotton raised during the last five years is not to 
 be claimed as the sole product of negro labor, that better 
 systems of culture of the soil, and the use of fertilizers, has 
 contributed to it largely, yet it proves that we have labor 
 suiticient, both as to quality and amount, if more wisely 
 and properly directed, to buHd up the South, and, in the 
 course of time, make it rich and prosperous again. 
 
 The increase of production in cotton is accounted for by 
 many in depreciation of negro labor, in asserting that the 
 laboring force in the cotton field has been largely augmented 
 by the increased number of white people who labor in the 
 farm since the war. While we are free to admit that num- 
 bers of our people who were raised in wealth, and unused 
 to toil, have, with commendable spirit, joined the produc- 
 tive force of the country, we cannot but claim, in the light 
 of actual facts, that the negro constitutes the chief element 
 in the laboring force of the country. Our young men 
 rai .ed in the country have flocked to the t<)wns to engage 
 in pursuits more congenial to their taste, and more in ac- 
 cordance with the mistaken notions of gentility, and the 
 number of mercantile houses in almost every town has 
 doubled since the close of the war, while numbers of small 
 farmers, who owned no slaves before the war, are now 
 working the negro in their employ, and give their time 
 more in superintending than in actual work. One of the 
 chief causes of dissatisfaction with the labor of the Ireed- 
 men is attributable to the fact that our people were long 
 habituated to the control ot slave labor, and inexperienced 
 in that of free labor. In our mana ement of the negro, as 
 a slave, we were accustomed to exacting an implicit obedi- 
 
42 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 ence to our commands, and if the task assigned was not 
 performed, the master had the right to administer sucH cor- 
 rection as he thought proper. The force of habit in con- 
 trolling the negro, as a slave, made it difficult to adjust our 
 thought and feeling to the altered condition of things. 
 Hence we find that the older class of -outhern farmers have 
 found more trouble, and been less successful in con lucting 
 their farming operations, than younger men, who have 
 adapted themselves with more ease to a change in the labor 
 system of the South. 
 
 We doubt not that there exists a better understanding 
 and a more amicable relation between the white proprietor 
 and negro laborer at t\v: South than there is to be found in 
 the same relation of capital and labor at the North, or any 
 European country. The Northern farmer will tell you 
 that he experiences much anxiety and frequent loss on ac- 
 count of the unreliability of the white laborer that he has 
 to deal with. Farm laborers at the North, whi e they 
 have not organized themselves into labor unions as the 
 mechanics, miners and other trades, have, at the same 
 time, imbibed the spirit that pervades these organiz itions, 
 and are lestless, uncertain and exacting in their demands. 
 The poor man and laborer at the North receivnig a free 
 education in the public schools, is, to some extent, an in- 
 telligent thinking man, and reads the newspaper, by v^hich 
 his mind is brought in contact with a thousand exciting 
 influences, and these tend to distract him, and prevents 
 him from sticking to steady employment. The boundless 
 extent of new country and cheap lands opening to settle- 
 ment in the great West, holds out its attractions to him 
 that unsettles his local attachments, hence he is here to- 
 day and there to morrow, ever shifting and moving in the 
 direction of the great El Dorado of the West. 
 
 Repeated experiments have been made by Southern 
 planters with emigrant labor, within the last few years, 
 which have been almost uniformly unsatisfactory, and in 
 some instances attended with considerable loss, in money 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 43 
 
 advanced to pay the passage from Europe, and for clothing 
 and supplies, before the laborer had earned anything. The 
 European laborer that may be brought here is, from his 
 training and habits, unsuited to the requirements of South- 
 ern agriculture. He is willing to contract only for a short 
 term of service, and must have intervals of holiday, with 
 his accustomed diversions, before setting into work again. 
 This kind of labor may suit the North, or the grain and 
 hay producing States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennes- 
 see, but will be found almost worthless in the cotton region 
 — requiring steady and constant labor the year round. The 
 emigrant that may come as a laborer is not content to oc- 
 cupy the cheap houses and eat the plain food that satisfies 
 the negro, but more costly houses must be erected for his 
 precarious occupancy, and a variety of food cooked to his 
 liking, and served with sugar and coffee, before he is will- 
 ing to enter the field, and then kind words and some def- 
 erence to him are necessary to keep him there. 
 
 While the industrial interest of the South would not be 
 subserved by introducing foreign emigrant labor, there are 
 good reasons for the opinion, that the effect upon our so- 
 cial and political institutions would not be salutary or 
 beneficial. The class that has already corne, and would 
 likely come in the future, as to the moral status and gene- 
 ral worth of character, are of the lowest order, are gene- 
 rally infidels in religion, and partaking largely of the Com- 
 munistic spirit that pervades the lower classes in Europs, 
 would, in the course of time, form here an element of 
 turbulence and agitation, that would prove an unmitigated 
 curse to the countrj . 
 
 Many persons, in considering the causes that have ope- 
 rated against the material interest of the South since the 
 late war, have, from a superficial and somewhat prejudiced 
 view, attributed them to the character of our labor, whilst a 
 more careful examination would show that it has had but 
 a secondary and partial effect. It is a fact generally con- 
 ceded, that land owners have exercised a controlling in- 
 
44 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 fluence in the division, or as we say in farmers' parlance, 
 "pitching the crop," and for the most part have their 
 views carried out in the method of culture and in general 
 plantation economy. And we doubt not that most farmers, 
 from experience and observation, are convinced that all 
 field crops, where proper interest and attention are mani- 
 fested by the employer, are cultivated as well and gathered 
 as promptly as was done by slave labor. If this be the 
 case, we must look toother causes than that of inefficiency 
 of the present laboring force, for any failure on the part of 
 the farming interest, in contributing its due share towards 
 restoring the industrial prosperity of the South. 
 
 The question here involved is one of vital importance to 
 the Southern people, and though its discussion may appear 
 to involve a class of facts not germain to fhe subject of 
 negro labor, vet they have a connection and bearing that 
 must be considered in forming any intelligent and correct 
 opinion on the industrial situation of the South. 
 
 The subject of labor has been but little studied and but 
 partially understood by our people, as a question of politi- 
 cal economy. This, we think, has not been owing to ar.y 
 indisposition to investigate it as a practical or economic 
 question, but attributable rather lo the fact, that those who 
 formerly controlled the labor of the South had a proprie- 
 tary interest in it — were entitled to all the profits arising 
 from its employment, after furnishing the laborer with food 
 and clothing. Hence, there being no division of profits 
 arising from the employment of labor, the land-owner 
 looked to other causes for the increase or curtailment of 
 wealth, such as the state of the seasons, the degree of fer- 
 tility of his lands, the price of cotton, etc. But since a 
 system of free labor has obtained, and the margin of profits 
 narrowed down by a remuneration for the labor expended, 
 it behooves us to study the question of labor in its eco- 
 nomical aspects, if we expect to succeed in any department 
 we may employ it. The great blunder on the part of the 
 land-holder at the South in the past, was a failure to rec- 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 45 
 
 o^nhe his lands as capital. His aim and effort was 
 to increase his labor at the expense of his landed interest 
 — a plan that ignored all improvements of the soil, and 
 tended rapidly to waste and exhaustion. Hence we find a 
 large per cent, of the cultivated lands at the South in.pov- 
 erished to a degree that barely pays for the labor expended 
 — attributable solely to the injudicious direction of labor. 
 
 It was hoped that the great revolution that has swept 
 over our country, subverting our system of labor, and pro- 
 ducing such marked changes in our social and political re- 
 lations, would have brought about a corresponding change 
 in our industrial system, but we fear that a repetition of 
 the impolicy and errors of the past are likely to impede 
 our progress for years to come. 
 
 It has been said by an eminent writer on political econ- 
 omy, that labor is the only source of wealth. The more 
 carefully we examine the proposition, the more thoroughly 
 we are convinced of its force and soundness. Labor is the 
 agency .hat not only supplies the immediate and pressing 
 wants of mankind in food, clothing and the comforts of 
 life, but, when properly directed, is continually creating 
 new values in excess of consumption, that go to augment 
 the wealth of communities and nations. How important 
 that this great productive force we call labor, should not 
 only be active and ef^cient, but controlled by intelligence 
 and skill, that will enable us to achieve the highest and 
 best results. 
 
 In viewing the industrial history of the South, we find 
 that while she had an active and well organized system of 
 labor, she created by it but little permanent wealth, and 
 continued as a mere tributary and feeder to outside cap- 
 ital. It has been said that the kind and quality of labor- 
 that obtained under the old tegime was, per se, mainly 
 strumental in shaping the industrial policy of the past, and 
 that no better results could have been obtained by any 
 change in its application or direction. Had the Southern 
 people directed even a modicum of their surplus capital and 
 
46 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 labor to the manufacturing interest in its different branches 
 forthe last quarter of a century preceding the war, there 
 would have been a diffusion of capital, not of an ephem- 
 eral nature, to be swept away by emancipation proclama- 
 tions, but which would have remained as permanent and un- 
 failing sources of wealth to the South. At present, we 
 find in our towns and cities nearly all the capital and en- 
 terprise confined to mercantile pursuits — overcrowded in 
 every branch by a competition that produces a plethora of 
 stock, and a consequent diminution of profits that must 
 result unfortunately to this large class of our business men. 
 
 Mercantile pursuits, while they are highly advantageous 
 and indispensable in affecting an exchange of commodities, 
 yet contribute but little, in comparison with agricultural 
 and manufacturing interests, in building up and enric^iing a 
 people. 
 
 The profi's on the former are made up from the sur- 
 rounding country, and amount merely to an exchange, 
 while the latter create new and permanent values that add 
 to the wealth of a State. We will state, in this connection, 
 that we allude to manufactures incidentally, it not being 
 our purpose to present any facts or statistics to show iheir 
 utility in an industrial point of view, but to notice more es- 
 pecially the necessity for division of labor upon the farm. 
 
 It would be no difficult task to show that the South had 
 gained very little in material prosperity for the last twenty 
 years preceding the war. There was, it is true, a vast 
 amount of values created in the production of cotton, su- 
 gar, rice, etc., but the former (her chief staple) being pietty 
 much all exported in the raw state, the South thereby lost 
 a large per cent, upon the real value of its product, while 
 the annual returns from its sale went for supplies that were 
 manufactured, or furnished from beyond the limits of our 
 section. But the magnitude of the error consisted in stim- 
 ulating the production of cotton in excess of the legitimate 
 demands of the trade, paying no attention whatever to the 
 economic law of supply and demand, until her vast system 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 4< 
 
 of labor was employed in a way that brought but little 
 remuneration or profit to increase her capital. It is true 
 that the excessive supply of cotton was annually consumed 
 by converting a considerable portion into the coarser fab- 
 rics and articles, besides clothing, that should have been 
 manufactured of hemp (the cost of production being much 
 less); but cotton, on account of the liberal supply, became 
 cheaper than hemp, and substituted this material, while the 
 cost of production was at least thirty-three per cent, more 
 than the latter. Under such a system the South was fast 
 reaching a point where all progress would have been 
 checked, and began the retrograde movement. The pres- 
 ent impoverished condition of the soil, the absence of all 
 branches of manufiicturing interest, and capital generally, 
 are convincing proofs of its impolicy. 
 
 There is no greater error in political economy than to 
 concentrate all the labor of a country, in a measure upon a 
 single product, or upon a single branch of industry. This 
 has certainly been strongly exemplified before the Southern 
 people in the results of the last six years farming opera- 
 tions and is still more forcibly illustrated in the compara- 
 tive results of farm industry in the Northern and Southern 
 Slates. We will take for the illustration of the latter pro- 
 position the farm statistics presented by the census reports 
 of I860, as the Southern States did not have their indus- 
 tries and wealth disturbed and devastated at that date, as 
 has since been done by war. The cotton crop of Georgia, 
 for example, in 1860 was 701,840 bales, yielding little 
 more than $30,000,000, while the butter of New York, one 
 of the several products of the dairy, was estimated at ;^60,- 
 000,000; and yet the census gives to New York 370,914 
 farm laborers, and to Georgia, including white farm labor- 
 ers, and the males of the slave, 316,478 persons engaged 
 in agriculture. Besides the other dairy products, the prin- 
 cipal crops — corn, wheat, potatoes and oats — (not counting 
 the minor cereal products of gardens and orchards, or mis- 
 cellaneous products,) the currency value of the agricultural 
 
48 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 productions of the sins:Tle State of New York was eight 
 times greater than that of Georgia, with about the same 
 amouut of labor, and more than the money returns of any- 
 cotton crop ever produced in the Southern States, 
 
 And to carry the illustration farther, we will take another 
 Southern State, (instead of the State of New York,)' where 
 both States have suffered alike in the loss of capital, repre- 
 sented by slave property, and have had their labor system 
 subverted by the emancipation of the slave. We take the 
 last census report (1870.) and will premise the statement 
 cf the statistical data, by saying that Kentucky (the State 
 we have selected for comparison with that of Georgia) has 
 carried on a mixed husbandry, embracing as crops — corn, 
 the smaller cereals, hay, hemp, etc., the latter as a market 
 crop exclusively, and selling each year any surplus of the 
 other farm products mentioned. Her system of fanning 
 includes the rearing of horses, mules, Cc ttle and hogs, which 
 form the chief item of her exchangeable products, and con- 
 stitutes the main feature in her industrial system. For the 
 sake of brevity, we use the tabular form: 
 
 Tiie census for 1870 gives the number : 
 Fiirm lahor<ers in Gee gia 33o 487 
 
 '' " " Kentucky 2o',.588 
 
 No. o{ acres in farms in G<».-rgi,i ..... .23 (i47,941 
 
 " Kentucky IS.IJUO, 106 
 
 Value of farm products in Georgia $80 890,238 
 
 " Kentucky $87.477,:}74 
 
 Aggregate value of .farms in^ Georgia $9l,5-)9,403 
 
 " Keniucky |all,-2:^8,916 
 
 Live stock in money value in Gi^orgia $".0,1."»6,817 
 
 " " " " " Kentucky $0(3,287.343 
 
 A>'er:ige size of farms in Georjiia (acres) 338 
 
 " " Kentucky " 158 
 
 From this brief statistical view, we see the vast dispro- 
 portion between the employment of laborso as to diversify 
 the products of the farm, against the concentration of it upon 
 one grand division of productive industry. However profi- 
 tablethe rearing of any given product may be at a time, it can 
 only remain so as loner as the supply comes within the limits 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 49 
 
 of a healthy demand. Governed by this principle, the plar. 
 ter should study the cotton interest in its economic aspects ; 
 not only should he estimate the cost of production, but as- 
 certain from the best sources of information, the present 
 and prospective supply at home and abroad, and the 
 commercial and monetary situation in its bearing upon the 
 cotton trade, with the view of settling in his own mind 
 the amount of profits likely to accrue from the effort ex- 
 pended. Improved methods of culture and the judicious 
 use of fertilizers are objective points in the farmer's plans, 
 but should be made to subserve the important end of 
 limiting the cost rather than increasing the amount of pro- 
 duction. 
 
 There are those that figure in our agricultural conven- 
 tions, who tell us that increased production is the policy, 
 and by that means we shall break down the cotton interest 
 in other countries, and enjoy the monopoly we had before 
 the war. Such men are false guides, and show their ig- 
 norance of facts that are too obvious to be controverted. 
 The pressure of the cotton famine brought to bear upon 
 the manufacturing interest of England during our late war, 
 has aroused her to the importance of developing cotton 
 production in her East India provinces, so as not to jeopar- 
 dize her home interest by a like contingency again. We 
 have before us statistics prepared by the Secretary of the 
 Manchester Supply Association, showing the increased 
 production of India cotton in the last fifteen years. In 1860 
 the sum paid to India was ^17,500,000; in 1864, before 
 the close of the American war, it had increased to 
 ;^190,000,000,and though the average annual amount remit- 
 ted from England for cotton during the last ten years has 
 fallen off, it still amounts to ^150,000,000. We ascer- 
 tain from these figures, that England is now consum- 
 ing about three times as much India cotton as she did 
 in 1860, notwithstanding the South has, by neglecting 
 food crops, stimulated her cotton supply to her full ca- 
 pacity. Cotton culture is every year receiving increased 
 
 4 
 
50 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 attention in Egypt, Turkey, Brazil and other countries, 
 which a few years ago were scarcely thought of as sources 
 of supply. 
 
 These facts should be pondered by the Southern far- 
 mer, as they serve to show very clearly the changes 
 that have been produced within the last fifteen years, 
 and indicate no less clearly the course he should pur- 
 sue. The straitened condition of our people after the 
 sale of our four million bales of cotton, in an average 
 of the last four years, show us the folly of concentrat- 
 ing all labor and effort on this single product. The 
 climate, soil and products of Georgia give her people 
 advantages for mixed husbandry that no other section 
 or country surpasses. Let us not longer neglect or abuse 
 these advantages by continuing the errors of the past, 
 but appropriate them by a better system of agricultural 
 development — one that will not make other people the 
 beneficiaries of our toil, but secure to ourselves the fruits 
 of a well 'directed industry. 
 
 We are essentially an agricultural people, and we must 
 look to this great interest as the basis upon which to 
 build up the permanent welfare of our coimtry. To do 
 this we must use all the means which experience, aided 
 by science, has placed at our disposal. The sun, in his 
 d-ily circuit, shines upon no country that possesess greater 
 advantages than the belt included within the 30th and 
 35th parallels of latitude, embracing Georgia and the 
 States lying directly west, to the Rio Grande. Though 
 this country has been torn and blasted by war, and 
 sustained losses in property, in an amount unparalleled 
 in modern times, yet we have resources, if developed 
 by a wise policy, that would in a few years transform 
 our impoverished and depressed land into one blooming 
 with plenty, prosperity and gladness. If by concert of 
 action among the planting interest, the production of 
 cotton was limitted to two and a half millions of bales 
 per year, (England must have and will have that amount 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 51 
 
 of American cotton at any price,) and Southern farmers 
 would turn the surplus of labor and capital in excess of 
 what is necessary to produce that amount to the im- 
 provement of lands, and to the wise economy of a mixed 
 husbandry, they would become in the next quarter of a 
 century the richest agricultural people on the globe. 
 This desideratum is not likely to be obtained, and it 
 may be considered chimerical to expend thought upon 
 it, yet if our agricultural conventions, aided by the public 
 press, should continue to agitate this line of agricultural 
 policy, and impress it constantly upon the minds of the 
 people, much might be done towards its accomplishment. 
 Our labor system, though not properly organized, and 
 not as available and efficient as it might be, yet the negro 
 is undoubtedly better fitted by his long training, his men- 
 tal habitudes, his physical configuration and his adaptability 
 to all the diversities of our climate, to make a more effi- 
 cient laborer than any other. Our object should be to de- 
 velop to the utmost his capacity as a laborer. To do this, 
 time is requisite. He must be trained, adjusted and 
 adapted to the new order of things, as well as the former 
 master. We must exercise towards him great forbearance, 
 with firmness, kindness and candor; respect him for the 
 deference shown to us, and cultivate feelings of interest and 
 attachment, in all the proper relations that we may sus- 
 tain to him. But to create and maintain this desirable re- 
 lation, the white man must act towards them with strict 
 reference to their race peculiarities. He must treat them 
 as inferiors, not as equals, as they are not satisfied with 
 equahty, and will dispise the white man, and have a feeling 
 of contempt for him who attempts to raise one or more of 
 them to an equality with himself. There is no individual- 
 ity in the character of the negro, no inherent resources, 
 no power of self- direction and self-help- and consequent- 
 ly he needs government in everything. 
 
 He must be kindly taken under the patronage and pro- 
 tection of the white man, who can organize and plan, and 
 
52 THE NEGRO PROBLEM, 
 
 with the necessary, oversight, leave the task to the negro, 
 who is endowed by nature with the physical power for its 
 execution. We must identify him in thought, feeling and 
 interest with the white people of the South, by arguments 
 that appeal to his senses and give him convincing proof of 
 our concern in his behalf. We must make him feel that 
 his interest is indissolubly bound up with ours ; that high 
 prices for our produce insures him a high price for his 
 labor, and that any unfortuitous circumstances, whether 
 resulting from natural causes or the evils of bad govern- 
 ment, which rest upon the white people of the South, fall 
 with equal force upon him. We must disabuse the 
 mind of the negro of any belief that he will ever be in dan- 
 ger of re-enslavement, as this has been a source of painful 
 anxiety to many of them, and very probably has a great 
 deal to do in forming their party affiliations and in the di- 
 rection of their votes. We should convince them that we 
 have no animosity towards them, but, on the other hand, 
 have the kindest feeling, engendered by early associations, 
 and old memories. As rights of person and property are 
 guaranteed by organic law, and conceded by all our peo- 
 ple, we should respect them as sacredly as we do the rights 
 of our white friend and neighbor. We should be scruplu- 
 lously just in all our transactions with him, as it is our 
 interest as well as our duty to do so. To practice a fraud or 
 swindle upon them, creates a mistrust of the white race, 
 encourages them to acts of theft, and demoralizes their 
 labor by taking away the just reward for service rendered 
 — the strongest incentive to labor. In a word, convince 
 him that we are his best if not his only friends, and when 
 we shall have done this, we shall not only have placed our 
 labor on a sound footing, and have in the negro popula- 
 tion the most valuable peasantry in the world, but we have 
 gained in the laborer, an ally that may be relied on in the 
 sterner exigencies, as well as in the more peaceful pur- 
 suits of life. 
 
 THE NEGRO IN POLITICS. 
 The late amendments to the Federal Constitution, fixing 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 53 
 
 the political status of the negro in the Southern States, in 
 vesting him with the rights and privileges of an American 
 citizen, was brought about by no direct agency upon the 
 part of the negro, but grew out of the animosities engen- 
 dered by the war, and the settled purpose of the dominant 
 party to secure a permanent hold upon the administration 
 of public affairs in the United States. They saw that the 
 war feeling at the North would soon subside and give place 
 to more amicable relations between the people of the sec- 
 tions, and hence a two-fold purpose would be accompHshed 
 by placing the ballot in the hands of the negro at once, to- 
 wit : the humiliation of Southern pride, and the bringing in 
 of the negro as a political ally, whose support they might 
 safely depend on in the future in their efforts to maintain 
 political supremacy. 
 
 The political history of no enlightened government in 
 modern times has been marked with such utter disregard 
 of just and rational principle, and the prostitution of the 
 power and functions of government to the base purposes of 
 malignity and revenge, as was so clearly evinced in the at 
 tempt of the Radical party to adjust the disturbed rela- 
 tions of Ihe two parties in the late unfortunate conflict. To 
 dwell upon the scenes of the fraud, falsehood and political 
 knavery which conceived and brought forth the reconstruc- 
 tion measures, and the arbitrary and oppressive manner in 
 which they were carried out — by giving loose reign to mili- 
 tary satraps, are too familiar and painfully impressed upon 
 the Southern mind for rehearsal. 
 
 The giving of the ballot to the Southern negro resulted, 
 in less than three years after it was done, in the accumula. 
 tion of more than one hundred millions of Southern State 
 liability beyond what an honest administration of these 
 State governments should have cost in that time. This vast 
 sum of public liabilities, incurred mainly in schemes of 
 fraud and plunder — resting upon States already devastated 
 and ruined by war — if its payment was guaranteed, would 
 tax the energies and resources of their people for genera- 
 
54 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 tions to come. It is not our purpose to discuss the validity 
 of the pubHc debt imposed under Radical rule, the ability 
 of the Southern people to meet it, or the policy of repudi- 
 ating such obligations, but we simply refer to them as a 
 pregnant illustration of the evils of universal suffrage at the 
 South. 
 
 While the negro has been the instrument in the hands 
 of corrupt and unprincipled adventurers from the North of 
 inflicting an enormous load of pubHc debt upon the South- 
 ern State governments, he cannot, in any sense, be held 
 responsible for the evil he has wrought The carpet-bag- 
 ger, who has manipulated the negro in his own interest and 
 to his liking, brought the powerful incentives to bear upon 
 the weak and credulous mind of the colored voter — the one 
 an appeal to his fears in the false assertion that the for- 
 mer master would seek to re-enslave him, and that his only 
 way of escape from the clutches of slavery was in giving 
 political support to his new friend — the carpet-bagger — and 
 keeping him in permanent control of the State govern- 
 ments. The other incentive was brought to bear upon the 
 negroe's cupidity, in holding out to him, a division of 
 Southern property, and that the negroe's share for faith- 
 ful allegiance to the Radical party would be " forty acres 
 and a mule," to set him up in life, and place him in an in- 
 dependent relation to the Southern whites. Under such 
 appeals to his fears and cupidity, we saw the negro so per- 
 fectly drilled and so thoroughly organized as to become a 
 mere automaton in the hands of a few miscreants, who 
 sought, through such agency, political stations for the pelf 
 and plunder that might be secured in the corrupt adminis- 
 tration of public office. In the quiet submission to the 
 miserable carpet-bag rule, the Southern people have ex- 
 hibited a spirit of forbearance, and degree of fortitude un- 
 der its infliction, that becomes difficult to reconcile with 
 the proud, chivalric spirit that has always characterized 
 them. It was not the fear of Federal bayonets, or the 
 power that wielded them, but due to that spirit of conser- 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 55 
 
 vatism love of law and order — that has been a traditional 
 
 and firmly fixed trait in the Southern character. 
 
 The brief political history of the negro at the South has 
 brought out two important facts that may be useful in the 
 future in solving the political problem that presents itself 
 in connection with this race. One of these facts is, that he 
 has no affinity for the white race in politxs, as well as in 
 social life and religion, and as soon as all extraneous force 
 is removed, he will become isolated, and independent, as 
 far as he can, of the control and contact of the white man. 
 The other important fact disclosed by his brief political 
 career is, that he, though possessed of a clanish spirit in a 
 high degree, is incapable of organization, and if left to him- 
 self, without the leadership and drilling tact of the white 
 man, must, irrespective of numerical power, yield political 
 control to the superior race. 
 
 We are not of that number who believe that the evil 
 day had past, and our political troubles ended, upon an 
 overthrow of the Radical party in Georgia. Its hold upon 
 our State Government was seen at its accession to 
 power, to be temporary and short-lived, could only be 
 propped up by external force, such as given to it by Fed- 
 eral bayonets, and with the removal of the latter, their 
 bogus government, or rather, base usurpation of power, 
 would crumble to pieces of its own weakness and rotten- 
 ness, and that legitimate power would be remanded to 
 those who would rightfully rule in the interest of peace, 
 order and enlightened government. If universal suffrage 
 is to be permanently engrafted upon our political institu- 
 tions and become the settled policy of the country, we 
 would prefer seeing parties divide in the color line, as a 
 choice of evils between the negro as forming an organized 
 Radical party, and that of the negro as a great mass of 
 floating voters. There are those who believe that, with 
 the disruption of the Radical party, and its complete dis- 
 memberment, as has been the case in Georgia, Tennessee 
 and Virginia, that parties in the future in these States, and 
 
56 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 Others that may'establish complete Democratic ascendency, 
 will be divided on questions of public policy, solely, and 
 that political contests in the future will be between parties 
 equally honest and patriotic, and that it will be of little 
 consequence which party for the time may administer our 
 State governments. This assumption was applicable to 
 the status of parties as they existed previous to the adop- 
 tion of the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, 
 but in view of the fact that the voting privilege has been 
 conferred by this provision of the Constitution, upon an 
 ignorant and degraded class of our population, nearly 
 equaling in many States that of the whites, and in a few 
 States outnumbering it, dispels such an assumption as 
 unworthy of serious argument. 
 
 We cannot forecast political events that belong to the 
 future, nor anticipate with certainty the issues that may 
 divide the people of Georgia in the near future. [But 
 while it is reasonable to assume that the Democratic party 
 of Georgia will maintain its integrity, so far as Federal 
 politics may be concerned, at least as long as the Radical 
 party forms one of the great'national parties, yet as to State 
 politics and the issues that will come before the people 
 of Georgia, it is equally probable that they will divide, 
 and that opposing parties will exist in our State. It may 
 be that the rights of property in some form may be as- 
 sailed, the public school question become an issue, or any 
 other question upon which the people may divide with the 
 more conservative, patriotic and better class of citizens 
 forming one party, and a class wanting in private worth 
 and public virtue forming the opposing party. In such an 
 event it could not be foreseen which party would prevail 
 and what would be the result, where a great mass of float- 
 ing voters of a different race held the balance of power. 
 
 It has been asserted by some, who have endeavored to 
 forecast the probable drift of the negro in politics, that he 
 will soon settle] down into a state of indifference as to 
 voting, and remain as a mere cypher in the body poHtic. 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 57 
 
 This would be very probably true in the absence of all 
 incentive to vote, and if left entirely to his own volition in 
 the matter. Under a free government like ours, Adhere 
 t.hc avenues to office are opened to every citizen, and offi- 
 cial positions, high and low, are eagerly sought after, and 
 since the morale of politics has been greatly lowered by 
 various agences at work since the war, it cannot be but 
 reasonable to suppose that the negro will be drawn out at 
 future elections by opposing candidates, and that the col- 
 ored vote will be the balance of power between those who 
 desire honest, faithful administration of public law, and 
 the mere trading politician who seeKS office for selfish and 
 corrupt purposes. 
 
 The power and purposes of venal office-seekers for mis- 
 chief, have been curtailed and kept under by the severe 
 discipline of the Democratic party for the last four years — 
 a discipline rendered necessary by the existence of the 
 Radical party, and the fear, it not the danger, of its ob- 
 taining control again of county and State offices ; while 
 now, having ceased to excite the^fear of again acceeding to 
 power, will relax the force of organization in the Demo- 
 cratic party of Georgia, and make the civil offices of the 
 State an easy prey to the mere place-hunter. 
 
 While there can be no w<ill-grounded fear of the politi- 
 cal action of the negro as an organized party, in any 
 of those States where the Radical party has been dis- 
 placed, or that our political institutions will receive an 
 direct injury in controlling the floating negro vote, yet the 
 immediate danger lies in the temptations it presents to 
 white office-seekers, and the corrupting influences it will 
 inevitably wield upon our elections. There are to be 
 found at all times and places, unscrupulous men passing in 
 the guise of respectability, who are in quest of office, not 
 from the prompting of honor and patriotism, but from the 
 desire of place and greed of gain, who will rally the negro, 
 obtain his vote by appeals to his cupidity, and low-born 
 pride, and secure their election to places of public trust, 
 
58 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 in which the incumbent will be a degradation to the office, 
 and a counterfeit upon the authority that belongs to it* 
 Human nature is the same everywhere. It has too often 
 been the practice of men in political life under free gov- 
 ernments to avail themselves of every means to forward 
 schemes of interest and ambition, when favorable oppor- 
 tunities presented themselves. Certainly no age or country, 
 with free institutions, has presented a broader or more in- 
 viting field for the successful practice of the arts of political 
 trickery, an I official knavery, than is now offered in the 
 Southern States, with universal suffrage. In the State of 
 Georgia,' for instance, we have 80,000 negro voters — nearly 
 one-half the voting population of the State — who are not 
 only ignorant and degraded, but dependent upon their 
 daily exertions for the me uisof living. Is it reasonable to 
 suppose that a person, who would polish a gentleman's 
 boots, go on an errand, or any other menial service for a 
 dime, would not in like manner dispose of his vote for a 
 very trifling consideration? This element in our political 
 society must be regarded in the future as floating voters, 
 since their Radical drill-masters have abandoned their vo- 
 cation of marching them to the polls in the carpet-bag or 
 scalawag interest, and will hereafter be found at the po- 
 litical shambles, to be bought up by men who expect to 
 make tax-payers reimburse the bill of expenses. 
 
 It is a well known fact that a large per cent, of white 
 voters, who are not indifferent to filling the civil offices of 
 the State with honest and capable incumbents, yet cannot 
 be induced to take an active working interest in defeating 
 unworthy aspirants. 
 
 One of the greatest evils connected with American pol- 
 itics at the present time, is the enormous increase of 
 county and municipal indebtedness, occurring through the 
 political legerdemain of small-beer politicians. What will 
 it become, we might ask, when the ignorant negro, freed 
 from carpet-bag rule, becomes a great mass of flo-ting 
 voters — standing upon every street corner, waiting tor the 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 59 
 
 pabulum whi i -^ n in quest of office have in store for 
 him ? We have already seen outcroppings of this evil in 
 recent county and municipal elections in various sections 
 of the State, which give earnest of what it will become at 
 no distant day, despite the remonstrance and persistent 
 efforts of the more decent and patriotic portion of her cit- 
 izens. The disgusting scenes that would be enacted at 
 every recurring election around the negro in treating, 
 ''honey-fuggling" and elbuwin ; him to the polls, would be 
 demoralizing, and leveling in the extreme, and soon bring 
 us on a par with the mongrel, semi-civilized states of Mex- 
 ico and Sjuih America. 
 
 In the State of Georgia, before the late war, it is well 
 known to those familiar with the history of party politics, 
 that there was a very small per cent, (not exceeding a few 
 thousand) ot what is known as floating voters in the State. 
 Yet this class of voters held the balance of power between 
 the two great parties of the country. The one that 
 manifested the more zeal and active efforts, generally 
 succeeded in winning the victory at the polls. The dis- 
 tinction of property and general impoverishment of our 
 peop'e by the war, with the leveling influences consequent 
 upon it, has doubtless trebled the floating vote in the ranks 
 of the white voters of Georgia. If such estimate be cor- 
 rect, we are confronted to-day with the stubborn fact that 
 more than one-half of the present voting population of the 
 State are in a condition to be controlled uy sinister means, 
 and that honest, faithful administration of public law is by 
 no means assured i the future. 
 
 Ignorance and poverty, two conditions of life most un- 
 favorable to the existence or growth of patriotism, would, 
 in the case of the negro, work a greater disqualification for 
 the exercise of the act of suffrage than among the whites 
 in similar conditions. Among the latter there would exist, 
 to some extent, a community of feeing and purpose, if not 
 of direct interest, with that of the intelligent property-hold- 
 ing class, which would tend naturally to give their power 
 at the ballot-box a conservative direction. 
 
60 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 The ignorant white voter, if not utterly degraded and 
 devoid of patriotic feehng, will generally seek for light and 
 guidance from those who are competent to instruct him in 
 the matter of voting. The ignorant negro vote, on the other 
 hand, where he may have any convictions that will control 
 his vote, are generally made up of prejudice and race feel- 
 ing that negatives the ordinary influence that the better 
 class of white people have over him, when it comes to the 
 matter of voting. This feeling of mistrust and utter want 
 of confidence on the part of the negro, which shuts him out 
 from all correct sources of information, springs from the so- 
 cial distinctions that exist between the races, and will 
 rather increase than diminish in the future. The former 
 master, or present employer, whose judgment, integrity 
 and disinterested friendship he may confide in, and be in- 
 fluenced by, in all matters of ordinary interest, ceases to 
 operate at once when the domain of politics is reached. 
 The dirty scalawag, utterly bankrupt in character, whose 
 moral obliquities may be so apparent as to forfeit the re- 
 spect of the average negro, can, by intercourse, in which 
 social equality is recognized, get the entire confidence of 
 the negro, and command his following. 
 
 One serious hinderance to a proper control of the negro 
 vote, and directing it so as not to interfere with the inter- 
 est of good government, is the clanish spirit that prevails 
 among them. It has been, doubtless, noticed in every com- 
 munity where there is a large negro population, that a few 
 clever, well-meaning negroes have honestly sided with the 
 Democratic party, and, when voting, would support the 
 candidates of that part}:. For exercising this freedom of 
 opinion in voting, they have been uniformly prescribed — 
 placed under the ban of the colored race, and often become 
 the victims of infuriated and brutal vengeance. Having no 
 intelligence to guide them, and so easily leagued together 
 by 'the clanish spirit that pervades all the inferior races,they 
 yield at once to the leadership of one of their race, who 
 may possess the vanity or ambition to assume the role of 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM, 61 
 
 leader, and become, in his hands, mere puppets, to be 
 moved at his will. This fact of itself makes the ballot in 
 the hands of the negro an instrument far more potent for 
 evil than if he stood in an isolated and independent rela- 
 tion. Their would-be party leaders are almost invariably 
 of a low order of character, have but little regard for the 
 well-being even of their own race, and when not wanting 
 office themselves, are in the market for any price that may 
 be set upon the performance of dirty work. Hence the 
 task of controlling the negro vote of a county, or city by 
 cliques and independent candidates that are obnoxious to 
 its better class of citizens, becomes less expensive and far 
 more easily accomplished than it would be in manipulating 
 the negro vote in detail. This line of argument need not 
 be pursued at length, as the thoughtful reader must readily 
 perceive,that through the instrumentality of the negro vote 
 nearly one-half the county and municipal offices in the 
 State of Georgia is within the reach of designing men, who 
 know their opportunity, and will not be slow in turning it 
 to account. 
 
 The power wielded by the negro voter in our elections, 
 under the most favorable circumstances that could possible 
 surround him, would be only negative, as he is utterly in- 
 capable of exercising the right of suffrage intelligibly, as the 
 unreasoning animal, that he may ride along the high way, 
 or follow behind the plow. He cannot have the remotest 
 conception of any question of public policy, or the issues 
 between parties, and just as incapable of forming any cor- 
 rect opinion of the fitness and qualifications of opposing 
 candidates for office. Nine-tenths of them, in returning 
 from an election, cannot tell what office their candidate 
 was offering for, and may frequently not even know the 
 name of the man they supported. 
 
 Universal suffrage, viewed from any standpoint, can only 
 be regarded as a positive evil at the South, whether meas- 
 ured by its results in the past or the better fruits it will 
 bear in the future. Its existence awakens constant anxiety 
 
62 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 and apprehension in the public mind, weakening its faith 
 in the value of our poHtical institutions, anu repressing the 
 energies and activities of a people capable of the highest 
 attainments in human life. It will, most assuredly, prevent 
 the influx of immigration and capital, so necessary to build 
 up our section by withholding from these agents of pro- 
 gress the guarantees of peaceable, stable government, 
 which they demand as a condition precedent to their com- 
 ing. In the present condition of the great mass of South- 
 ern negroes, it cannot be of any benefit to them, but, on 
 the contrary, operate to their serious detriment. If the 
 negro, as well as the white race, '•• interested in whole- 
 some public law, and its honest, faithfu a ministration, 
 then, so far as he may hinder it, by wrong and misguided 
 exercise of the right to vote, he is to that extent wielding 
 a power to his own hurt. hile the ivegro, in his present 
 state of ignorance, cannot exercise suffrage so as to pro- 
 mote his own interest, or that of the State, he must, by 
 arraying himself in opposition to its intelligent opinion, 
 divest himself of the regard and sympathy of the white 
 race, and increase that spirit of antagonism that is so 
 easily aroused between races of such marked distinctions 
 It cannot be shown that universal suffrage in Georgia 
 where every department of the State Government is ex- 
 clusively in the hands of the ' emocratic party, is any 
 protection against an invasion of the rights and liberties of 
 the negro. The Democratic party in 1 .{ 1 i ; upon any 
 question affecting the peculiar rights of the negro, would 
 not be influenced by any motives of party policy, as no 
 action the negro could possibly take would effect a party 
 revolution, or impair its strength in the State. 
 
 It may be said that the adoption of a limited suffrage 
 by any of our Southern States, would, in effect, deny the 
 negro the right of representation under a government that 
 recognizes him as a citizen — imposes duties and burdens 
 upon him, and that he might become the subject of class 
 legislation, and be deprived of his civil as well as political 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 63 
 
 rights. Were it possible to adopt a course of legislation 
 by which he was denied any advantage or boon that the 
 white race enjoys, or that duties and burdens were imposed 
 that the whites were exempt from, then there might be 
 some truth in the allegation. Such legislation would con- 
 travene the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, 
 and be declared a nullity by our State courts. The 
 course of legislation, and the proceedings in our State 
 courts, will doubtless show as strict regard for the rights of 
 the negro in Georgia as that of any Northern State. The 
 white people of the South, and especially the former slave- 
 holders, are the negroes' best friends, and are more likely 
 to guard his interests and advance his welfare in the future 
 than authors and supporters of Civil Rights Bills, or the 
 blatant apostles of negro equality, wherever they are to 
 be found. The ruling motives that actuate the white 
 people of Georgia in the enactment and in the administra- 
 tion of law, where the negro may be interested, are those 
 which are prompted by a sense of right, justice and duty- 
 which will be quickened and strengthened, if possible, in 
 withholding from the ignorant negro the political power 
 to inflict an injury upon himself and the country. 
 
 A deep and thorough conviction rests upon the South- 
 ern mind that the ignorant negro vote cannot be con- 
 trolled and made to promote the interest of good govern- 
 ment, in a way that is consistent with the self-respect and 
 moral proprieties of an enlightened Christian people. To 
 acquiesce in universal suffrage, and allow the blind, un- 
 reasoning mass of voters to be controlled by the worst 
 element in society, would debauch the ballot-box, corrupt 
 the fountains of political power, and bring shame and re- 
 proach upon the civilization of the South. In view of the 
 present state of political society at the South, and the 
 influences that will center upon the ignorant voter in the 
 future, and control him in the exercise of suffrage, it is but 
 reasonable to suppose that he will be an obstacle in the 
 path of progress, and seriously complicate the problem of 
 
64 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 free, honest and enlightened government in the Southern 
 States. 
 
 The people of Georgia have acted wisely in postponing 
 the call of a Constitutional Convention until the time 
 should arrive when they could calmly consider the errors 
 and defects of the Constitution of '68, and embody into 
 their organic law such provisions as are necessary to pro- 
 tect the rights, guard the interests, and promote the gen- 
 eral welfare of all classes and conditions of her people. 
 The caUing of this Convention, the election of suitable rep- 
 resentative men, and the momentous questions that must 
 be considered and acted upon by this body, will awaken an 
 interest in the minds of the people that will invest the 
 assemblage with a gravity and importance rarely surpassed 
 in the history of our State. This body, representing the 
 intelligence, the true worth, and real manhood of Georgia, 
 would feel the grave responsibilities resting upon it, and 
 begin a ground work in excavating beneath the surface 
 and examining carefully the foundations upon which must 
 rest the solid framework of social order and good govern- 
 ment in the future. 
 
 In treating this divsion of the subject, we have brought 
 under review some of the more prominent evils of univer- 
 sal suffrage at the South on a line of argument that we 
 desired to be suggestive, rather than any effort at elabor- 
 ation. Nor would the prescribed hmits of this paper admit 
 of an extended discussion of the theories of representative 
 free government, but as the Federal Congress has estab- 
 lished universal suffrage, and declared it to be the policy 
 that shall govern the elective feature in the American 
 system of government, some examination of the principles 
 of repubhcau government in its representative form, as 
 well as the facts presented in the condition of Southern 
 population, becomes necessary in reaching correct con- 
 clusions upon the question of suffrage in the Southern 
 States. 
 
 The theory upon which democratic institutions rest, is that 
 the people are capable of self-government — that the masses 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 e§ 
 
 ^re not only sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the form 
 and nature of free government, to understand the principles 
 which must pervade it and are necessary to give life, 
 strength and harmonious action to all its operations, but 
 some degree of that higher order of intelligence which 
 comes not by merely instructing the intellect, but the 
 heart and moral nature of man, that will enable him to im- 
 pose proper restraints upon his willful nature, to respect 
 the rights of others, to obey law, and fulfill the measure 
 of a just and upright citizen. 
 
 In portraying this brief outline of the qualifications for 
 citizenship under a free government, we are drawing no 
 ideal picture, as some of those contained in " Plato's Re- 
 public," but simply stating the individual requirement 
 necessary to form that condition of society that wiU main- 
 tain and perpetuate free institutions, and not make them 
 the creature of chance and circumstance. 
 
 The elective principle, which gives expression at the 
 ballot-box to the popular will, in the method and direction 
 it may be desired, whether it is to form a constitution, to 
 enact laws, or for the purposes of civi administration, 
 constitutes the main and vital element in all free govern- 
 ments. The proper regulation of this principle — the safe- 
 guards and restraints thrown around it to secure upon the 
 one hand the free and untrammelled exercise of the right 
 to vote, and upon the other hand to so guard it that those 
 entrusted with the franchise shall not wield it to the det- 
 riment of the State, is a subject that has occupied much 
 of the attention of the law-giver, and the success attained 
 may, to a certain degree, be considered a standard to 
 measure the degree of rational liberty any people enjoy. 
 This elective principle is, as it were, the conduit along 
 which is conveyed the embodied will of the people to 
 every department of the government ; giving life and 
 vigor when wisely directed, but when from any cause it is 
 perverted from the true and legitimate objects of govern- 
 ment, it brings confusion, disorder, misrule, and, ultimately, 
 
 5 
 
66 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 the wreck of human Hberties. A principle so important, 
 and so essential in fixing the character, as well as maintain- 
 ing the very existence of free government itself, should be 
 well defined and wisely regulated by law, and sacredly re- 
 garded by a people as a muniment of their freedom. Under 
 the American system of government, from its inception 
 down to the date of the late constitutional amendments, the 
 question of suffrage was conceded to, and controlled by, the 
 States as one belonging exclusively to them. 
 
 The subversion of this right of the States to control the 
 question of suffrage, though it was done under semblance 
 of regular constitutional method, was a clear invasion of 
 the rights of the States — a bare usurpation — (or, call it by 
 what name we may) the results of which cannot at present 
 be seen, or properly estimated. In its ultimate consequen- 
 ces, if not in its present products, will be seen the realiza- 
 tion of the fond dream and fell purpose of those men at the 
 North, who, discarding the Constitution of the country, and 
 despising its institutions, its duties, its obligations and its 
 powers, devoted themselves to the radical overthrow of all, 
 without reference to consequences or crimes. 
 
 In the report of the Abolition Society of Boston for the 
 year 1852, it is said ; " The abolition of slavery presup- 
 poses a revolution. For it will radically overthrow and 
 reconstruct the institutions of the nation. It may be a 
 revolution fought out on Marston Moor or Bunker yHill, 
 or its victories may be won on logomachic fields of parlia- 
 mentary debate, and decided by aye and no, and not^by 
 bayonet and sword. ***** g^j. 
 
 come in what shape it may, it will be a revolution," (,, It 
 has not been twenty-five years since this utterance was 
 made. It was regarded at the time by the great ^mass of 
 the American people as the vagaries of distemperedj,minds 
 the dream of madmen, that had no soundness of reason 
 in it — as something beyond the range of probable.revents. 
 
 What interpretation can be given to-day to the state of 
 things that the people of this country find .themselves 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 67 
 
 brought face to face with ? What, we may ask, can be the 
 state of forty-five millions of people twenty days after a 
 Presidential election, (the present writing,) where the ac- 
 tual resuh was known to all the people in less than three 
 days after it occurred, that there should be such con- 
 fusion—limning to and fro of prominent men of both 
 parties to the scene of trouble— the hurrying of armed 
 soldiery into peaceful States, upon no ground that can be 
 justified by constitutional authority, or that of law, prece- 
 dent or reason ? If the public press expresses the popular 
 feehng, we are justified in saying that there is at this day, 
 throughout the United States, (excepting the authors of all 
 this mischief) a sentiment of public danger, a sen^e of in- 
 security, a dread of the future, a gloomy and sorrowful 
 retrospect of the past, a craving desire for the replacing of 
 ancient landmarks, that betoken something more than an 
 apprehension that their institutions have been radically 
 overthrown, and that reconstruction does not promise the 
 ancient order, tranquility and concord. It cannot be de- 
 nied by any candid, right-thinking man, who has read the 
 history of current events for the last ten years, and is 
 capable of analyzing them, that the reconstruction meas- 
 ures of the Republican Congress, and the constitutional 
 amendments as an inseperable adjunct, have brought about 
 a complete political revolution in our country— a revolu- 
 tion as manifest in effect, if not so marked in its consequen- 
 ces, as that which resulted in the overthrow of the Stuarts 
 in England, the French revolution of 1789, or that of the 
 English colonies in America in 1776. 
 
 The late war between the sections did not in itself ac- 
 complish it, nor did the overthrow of slavery at the South 
 necessarily produce it. If the policy of pacification brought 
 forward by President Johnson had been carried out, not- 
 withstanding it required a surrender of the institution of 
 slavery, which would have, in any event, produced a great 
 shock to the industrial system of the South, yet |the po- 
 litical institutions of the country would have remained 
 
88 trie NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 intact, and as soon as the former constitutional relations 
 could have been adjusted, there would have been, in fact, 
 and ,in theory, a constitutional restoration, without a 
 subversion and reconstruction of the American system of 
 government. The late constitutional amendments, ac- 
 cording to the construction and practice of the Radical 
 party, changed the relation of the citizen to the State and 
 the Union, in providing for an oversight of State legislation, 
 in all that concerns life, liberty, privilege and protection, 
 under the law. These amendments altered the basis of 
 Congressional representation, and made it dependent upon 
 suffrage, instead of population, for the exercise of choice 
 on the part of any State, between universal and restricted 
 suffrage. Under authority of the amendments, Congress 
 has passed force bills, civil rights bills, kuklux bills, elec- 
 tion supervising bills, (designed to debauch, instead of 
 protecting the purity of the ballot-box,) and under the 
 authority of " appropriate legislation," may do whatever 
 else the SociaHst,Red Republican, or Communist, or Infidel, 
 or politico-religionist may suggest. 
 
 A brief examination of some of the more prominent 
 features of the reconstruction measures of Congress, and 
 the circumstances that attended their execution — particu- 
 larly that of imposing negro suffrage upon the South, with 
 the view of showing the animus and purpose of the domi- 
 nant party of the North in bringing it forward, would not 
 be out of place at this time. The Southern States, by the 
 terms imposed in the reconstruction measures of Congress, 
 were placed in an attitude of forced acquiescence to a plan 
 of settlement that they saw was fraught with unmixed evil, 
 and which they must accept, as a dreaded alternative of 
 defiance and resistance to the Federal power. These 
 proposed amendments were not spurned. They were 
 treated with no contempt. There was no expression of 
 disdain. They were proposed, or ought to have been 
 proposed, to the States, for their free dehberation and for 
 the exercise of candid judgment. If they were States in 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 69 
 
 the Union, and had the right to pass upon the amend- 
 ments, they certainly were entitled to the choice of accept- 
 ing or rejecting them. Any menace or coercion on the 
 part of Congress was itself a violation of the Constitution. 
 The Southern State legislatures that acted upon these 
 amendments, were acting for themselves, for their poster- 
 ity, and also for the other States of the Union. They 
 would have dishonored themselves, and been recreant to 
 their trust, if they had consented to them otherwise than 
 upon the dictate of an honest and conscientious judge' 
 ment. 
 
 If we revert to the free-soil movement at the North, be- 
 fore the war, it can be clearly shown that it was not its 
 purpose to accomplish anything more than the liberation 
 of the slave from the rule of the master. The idea that 
 the negro was "a man and a brother," with any real 
 claims to equality and fraternity, had its lodgement only 
 in the brain of a few ranting fanatics of the sham-philan- 
 thropic class, while the great mass of those who favored 
 an emancipation policy regarded him as inferior, by nature. 
 to the white race, and unfitted, under favorable circum- 
 stances, for the grave responsibilities of citizenship. This 
 view was held by Lincoln, Greeley, Morton, Trumbull, 
 Fessenden, and nearly all the prominent leaders of the 
 Republican party, excepting Sumner, Seward, and, per- 
 haps, Chase. Just before, and at the close of the late war, 
 Mr. Lincoln, in his exposition at the Cooper Institute, 
 just before his inauguration, simply advocated the free-soil 
 doctrine excluding slavery from the territories, and if he 
 had any advanced ideas towards a recognition of the " man 
 and brother " theory, afterwards, it was not known down 
 South. 
 
 The New York Tribune, in the terse and emphatic lan- 
 guage of Greeley, in noticing the movements of the col- 
 ored people of New York to secure equal suffrage, a short 
 while before the war, thus gives utterance to his views of 
 
70 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 their claims and their condition: "One negro, on a farm 
 which he has cleared or bought, patiently hewing out a 
 modest, toilsome independence, is worth more to the cause 
 of equal suffrage than three in an Ethiopian (or any other) 
 Convention, clamoring against white oppression with all 
 the fire of a Spartacus. They will never win it as white 
 men's barbers, waiters, ostlers and bootblacks ; that is to 
 say, the tardy and ungracious concession of the right of 
 suffrage, which they may ultimately wrench from a reluct- 
 ant community, will leave them still the political as well 
 as social inferiors of the whites — excluded from all honor- 
 able office, and admitted to white men's tables only as 
 waiters, and plate-washers — unless they shall, meantime, 
 have wrought out, through toil, privation and suffering, 
 an intellectual and essential enfranchisement," 
 
 Senator Morton, the acknowledged leader of the Re- 
 publican party in Congress for the last eight years, and 
 during that time among the foremost in his advocacy of all 
 measures of resentment and oppression against the 
 white people of the South, made a speech at Indianapolis, 
 in 1865, just before entering upon his Senatorial term, in 
 which he opposed the policy of conferring the elective 
 franchise upon the colored race at the South, and favored 
 (to use his own language) "the postponement of their po- 
 litical rights for ten, fifteen or twenty years, at which 
 time," he argued, "the Southern States would have been 
 so completely filled with immigration from the North and 
 Europe, that the negroes would be in a permanent minor- 
 ity." He further argued in his speech, at great length, to 
 show the extreme hazard that the Southern States would 
 be subjected to, with the negro as a part of their voting 
 populatio|%^ 
 
 If Northern men, who had entered with earnestness 
 and zeal, into the fierce political contest that raged with un- 
 abated fury for ten years preceding emancipation, and had 
 their sympathy and regard for the negro, strengthened 
 by a quasi alliance during the war, should afterwards view 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 71 
 
 with misgivings and alarm, the expediency of confering po- 
 htical rights upon the colored race, what, we may ask, 
 would be the feelings of Southern men, who must bear 
 the shock and reap the bitter fruits of such a measure ? 
 
 We have already stated the unmistakable purpose of the 
 Radical party, in forcing negro suffrage upon the South, to 
 be two-fold — that of gratifying a spirit of revenge, and the 
 bringing in the negro as a political ally in the future. 
 
 The disagreement between President Johnson and the 
 Radical majority of the 39th Congress, upon the policy of 
 reconstruction, culminated in the impeachment of the 
 former, and is memorable for being the most insane and 
 bitter partisan attempt ever made by one department of 
 the Federal Government to destroy a co-ordinate branch. 
 This Radical Congress, foiled in its attempt to drag down 
 and degrade the Chief Magistrate of the Nation, whose 
 only crime was that of differing with it upon the proper 
 plan, and the authority for reconstruction, returned with 
 increased venom to the task of insulting and degrading a 
 prostrate and defenceless people. It was not seriously 
 claimed by Congress in bringing forward these measures, 
 with the odious suffrage feature, that the Southern negro 
 was, in any sense, fit for its exercise, or that it was needed 
 to protect and preserve his newly acquired freedom. The 
 main point made and urged in the advocacy of the Con- 
 gressional plan of reconstruction, was that the Southern 
 whites were disloyal to the Constitution, and still rebel- 
 lious against the Government of the United States, and 
 that Republican Governments in the late seceded States 
 could not be organized and guaranteed by Congress, with 
 their people in such an attitude to the National Govern- 
 ment. It could not be resonably asserted that the South- 
 ern negro had manifested any spirit of loyalty, much less 
 acts of loyalty to the United States Government, only in 
 a negative sense. Nine-tenths of the colored population 
 had remained true to their owners during the whole period 
 of the war — giving "aid and comfort" to the Confederate 
 
72 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 cause, by remaining faithfully at work, and producing food 
 supplies for its armies as well as the people. 
 
 The negroes that were enlisted in the Federal army 
 were generally decoyed from their masters, induced to 
 leave under misrepresentations, or, falling within the Fed- 
 eral lines, were taken up and forced into ranks, where they 
 exhibited but little stomach for the fight, especially when 
 their courage was not given additional tension by the 
 proximity of bayonets in the rear. The nearest approach to 
 loyalty that the colored race made, and which, doubtless, 
 convinced the Radical party of his superserviceable loyalty, 
 was in walking up to "de buro" and drawing suppHes, 
 after that beneficent institution had spread its pavilion over 
 the land, encouraging the negro to abandon the farm, 
 where he might earn an honest living, to take shelter under 
 its patronizing folds. 
 
 The Southern situation at this time, with the intelligent 
 ruHng classes disloyal, as the radicals alleged, and the ne- 
 groes known to be too ignorant and obtuse to have any' 
 ideas of government, would seem to place a dilemma be- 
 fore Congress in its work of guaranteeing republican State 
 governments at the South, that would vex state-craft of no 
 mean order. In such a case, with these facts clearly de- 
 veloped, English statesmen, if called to the task, would 
 hare doubtless managed it by keeping the late seceded 
 States under provisional governments, until time, social 
 intercourse, business relations, and other moral influences 
 brought to bear upon the alienated sections, could have 
 brought in an era of good feeling, which, in effect, would 
 have re-adjusted the disturbed relations (civil and political) 
 as by natural processes. But it was not in keeping with 
 Radical politics, which drew its inspirations, and received 
 its subsequent teachings, from sources that were poisoned 
 with sectional hate, to raise itself to the level of duty and 
 statesmanship, and deal with the question before it in a 
 spirit of libj^ral and enlightened patriotism. 
 
 Machiavelli, the famous Florentine Secretary, has ever 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 73 
 
 been regarded with detestation, as the author and teacher 
 of an infamous line of policy. ( called, from him, Machia- 
 velHsm,) intended to enable despotism to perpetuate its 
 existence by fraud and violence. His biographer says of 
 him: "He sought the cure of Italy ; yet her state ap- 
 peared to him so desperate that he was bold enough to 
 prescribe poison." If he had lived to witness that period 
 in American history in which the body politic took on that 
 foul disease — radicalism — he would doubtless have been 
 gratified at finding so many disciples of his school, ready 
 to administer the fatal draught that kills the State, in order 
 to cure her ills. To characterize their work in remodehng 
 Southern State governments as Machiavellian, would be 
 scarcely doing justice to the great master of political in- 
 trigue of the 15th century, for, where he advocated the use 
 of means the most despicable and unwarrantable, it was 
 supposed to serve, in the end, the good of the State, while 
 his imitators in America were no less scrupulous in the 
 employment of means to accomplish, not the good of the 
 State, but to preserve the rule of the most venal and 
 wicked party faction that has figured in the history of free 
 governments. The language of the 14th Amendment to 
 the Federal Constitution, conferring citizenship upon the 
 negro, and providing for a new apportionment of repre- 
 sentatives upon the basis of enlarged, or, more properly, 
 universal citizenship, and adopted but a short time before 
 that of the 15th Amendment, and in contemplation of the 
 latter following immediately upon it, provides: "That 
 when the right to vote at any election for the choice of 
 Electors for President and Vice-President of the United 
 States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Ju- 
 dicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legisla- 
 ture thereof, is denied to any of the male members of 
 such State, being twenty- one years, and citizens of the 
 United States, are in any way abridged, except for parti- 
 cipation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of represen- 
 tation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the 
 
74 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole num- 
 ber of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such 
 State." Taking the scope and meaning of the 14th and 
 15th Amendments together, it is no unwarrantable as- 
 sumption in saying that the framers of those amendments 
 had in contemplation the time when universal suffrage 
 would become such a grievance at the South, and its evils 
 so manifest, that its people would be compelled to elim- 
 inate it from their State Constitutions, as the only alterna- 
 tive of corrupt rule, social disorder, and utter ruin. It 
 was evidently the purpose of the Radical party, in its 
 policy of reconstruction, with bayonet ruie, and with the 
 odious feature of negro suffrage fastened upon the South 
 by constitutional rivet, to hold those States permanently 
 under their party rule. And in case any State should as 
 a matter of choice, and with a view of promoting the wel- 
 fare of her people, adopt limited suffrage, then her repre- 
 sentation in Congress should be curtailed, and in either 
 event the South would be shorn of its strenth in the 
 Union, and made to feel the humiliation that her enemies 
 had in store for her. 
 
 It was but little concern to these malignants, what 
 might be the resulting mischief in the future unfolding of 
 the race problem, (after compHcating it by introducing all 
 the devices that would antagonize and alienate the races,) 
 whether the negro, banded together in solid party phalanx 
 on the color line, would enter upon a contest for supre- 
 macy, incurring all the hazard that such a course would 
 bring upon him, or, abandoning race organization, would 
 become a great mass of floating voters to be controlled by 
 the worst elements in the white race. 
 
 The altered basis of representation in Congress, pro- 
 vided for in the 2nd clause of the 14th Amendment, in case 
 any State should adopt limited suffrage, is a piece of polit- 
 ical legerdemain, the maladroitness of which must be ap- 
 parent even to minds that are not trained to legal analysis. 
 This clause of the 14th Amendment, while it does not di- 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 75 
 
 rectly prohibit or deny to the States the right to limit or 
 regulate, in any way, the question of suffrage, yet it holds 
 over the States a menace for so doing — a kind of moral co- 
 ercion. And the very act of enforcing the provision con- 
 tained in the 2nd clause of this Amendment, by curtailing 
 the representation of any State, if not an actual penalty, is 
 certainly in the nature of a. penalty, and the whole thing 
 contrary to the genius that pervades, and the tradition and 
 practice that has obtained in all^^confederated systems of 
 free government. Constitutions and States are non-existent 
 under such conditions. A Congress composed of members, 
 where some of the States had a full representation, upon 
 the basis of population in such States, and others with a 
 curtailed representation, fixed upon a mixed basis of suf- 
 frage and population, would be gross inequality, and pre- 
 sent a rare anomaly in a legislative body, representing the 
 people in fact and in theory, requiring, as an essential fea- 
 ture, a uniform basis of representation. 
 
 We have not seen any exposition or enlarged discussion of 
 the clauses contained in the I4th amendment. We do not 
 think the legal mind of the country regards the question 
 of suffrage as settled by this amendment. Mr. Chas. A. 
 Dana, of the New York Sun, who is regarded as an inde- 
 pendent thinker, a profound logician, and one of the best 
 informed and most brilliant political writers of the age, has 
 very recently expressed the opinion* in an editorial, that 
 the right to control the question of suffrage still belongs 
 to the States. Several of the Northern States, we think, 
 still retain the provision for abridged suffrage in their 
 Constitutions. 
 
 We propose the query : Will the second clause of the 
 14th Amendment be enforced in Congress, in the event 
 any Southern State should adopt hmited suffrage? 
 
 But, conceding the point that this clause of the 14th 
 Amendment will be enforced, it remains to consider the 
 expediency of adopting restricted suffrage as the only 
 measure of relief from the evils of universal suffrage, that 
 
76 THE NEGBIO PROBLEM. 
 
 is practicable and within the reach of the people of Geor- 
 gia. The question of expediency, in the opinion of l^ie 
 writer, is governed by considerations of tlwee dis- 
 tinct classes : 1st. The manner it will be received at the 
 North, and the resulting influence it would have upon 
 Federal politics. 2d. The effect upon those excluded by it 
 from the elective privilege. 3d. The effect it would have 
 upon Georgia and other Southern States that might adopt 
 it, in diminishing their representation in Congress, "as pro- 
 vided in the 14th Amendment. 
 
 We shall not attempt to argue these several considera- 
 tions at length, but simply state propositions, the logical 
 sequence of which, we hope, can be readily drawn with- 
 out effort on the part of the reader. The first considera- 
 tion stated as bearing upon the question of expediency, 
 receives its significance, not from any intrinsic worth or 
 force, but from the rather delicate relations existing be- 
 tween the sections — a proneness to misconception at the 
 North of any action by the South upon measures con- 
 nected with the adjustment of our late pohtical troubles, 
 and a sensitiveness of our Southern people to being 
 charged with a want of fidelity to the terms acquiesced in 
 as a a basis of settlement. While we are free to admit it 
 to be the part of duty and patriotism, incumbent upon every 
 Southern man, to carefully avoid giving any occasion of 
 offense to what may be called Northern sentiment upon all 
 questions — especially those that do not involve a vital prin- 
 ciple — so that the issues of the late war, so far as the 
 Southern people may be concerned, may pass out of the 
 range of American politics, yet duty and manhood forbid 
 the tame acquiescence in policies where their practical re- 
 cognition must serve as a dead weight upon the energies 
 of the people, and an obstruction to their progress. 
 
 The Northern people can form no just conception of the 
 negro problem in the South, in any of its phases, from 
 what is presented in the case of the negro in their own 
 section as proper data and criterion to form opinion and 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. Il 
 
 Conclusions upon. In those States ai^ the North having 
 the largest negro population, tor instance, Pennsylvania 
 and Ohio, (numbering about 30,000 in each of these 
 States,) compared to the white population as to numbers, 
 would be in the ratio of about one to forty — scarcely re- 
 garded as forming one of the constituent elements that 
 make up the political society of a State. In these States 
 the small negro population is scattered over large areas, 
 and so isolated in relation as to render it difficult and im- 
 practicable to agitate any question among themselves, or 
 co-operate upon any measure having distinctly marked 
 race features. The negroes there are at least partially ed- 
 ucated, and being too isolated for race agitiation in any 
 respect, are brought under the more direct influence of the 
 white people, and are controlled in the matter of voting 
 just as any other class in a similar condition. The right 
 of representation in Northern States legislatures is never 
 claimed by the negro there, or if such was asserted, it 
 would be treated with contempt, even by those who have 
 so loudly proclaimed their interest in the cause of negro 
 equality at the South. 
 
 Outside of a few well-informed politicians and others 
 who have traveled South, and sought sources of correct 
 information, the Southern negro question is viewed at the 
 North as an abstraction, in which is detached from all 
 their conception those facts and circumstances that invest 
 it with peculiar hazard and interest to the Southern white 
 people. What they have seen and know of the negro 
 among them, is so widely differing in the most important re- 
 spects from the Southern negro, that it really unfits them 
 to reach sensible conclusions at all. Nor can we expect 
 the Northern mind to be any better informed upon South- 
 ern affairs, in the main, in the near future, however desir- 
 able it may be to us to have them view our poHtical and 
 S9cial life in the light of calm, dispassionate truth. Reason, 
 and the instincts of self-preservation, teach us that it will 
 not do to subordinate the peace and welfare of the State 
 
7S THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 to what might be considered the good will of disinterested 
 people, or to the fear of inviting adverse criticism, how- 
 ever bitter and relentless it may be. If we should allow the 
 basis of suffrage to remain unaltered for the next ten years, 
 and, in the meantime, it should work to the disadvantage 
 and hindrance of good government, as it doubtless will in 
 the way and manner already indicated, there will be no 
 source from whence we would receive more detraction for 
 the folly of tolerating it than that which would be poured 
 upon us through the Northern press. 
 
 The regulation of suffrage in any way that does not 
 contravene the provisions of the Federal Constitution, is 
 not only a clear question of State right and authority, but 
 one of peculiar policy and interest, that must be shaped 
 and controlled in accordance with proper conceptions of 
 the latter, irrespective of outside opinion. 
 
 It would certainly seem that the rational, considerate 
 mind of the North, viewing the subject of negro politics 
 at the South for the last ten years, in its ruinous acts, and 
 disgusting details, and especially in view of the present po- 
 litical embroglio growing out of the Presidential race, for 
 which universal suffrage must be regarded, by every candid 
 mind in the country, as the sole cause — the '-'■causa causus*' 
 — would now pause, reflect, and in the experience of 
 better reason, demand a removal of this dangerous, dis- 
 turbing element from the theatre of American politics, 
 that is hurryingf us down the broad and beaten road to 
 political perdition. 
 
 Dr. Redfield, the correspondent of the Cincinnati Com- 
 mercial, who was in South Carolina during the late cam- 
 paign, and saw the "true inwardness" of radical politics 
 there, and in his utter disgust, as an honest man, with the 
 ignorant, weak and lawless character of the negro, and 
 the manner in which he has been manipulated there, ex- 
 presses the opinion that Northern sentiment will demand 
 the removal of the ballot from the hands of the negro in ad- 
 vance of any such movement at the South. If the '*Com- 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 79 
 
 nterciaV correspondent had his mind's eye on the Radical 
 party, as the one Hkely to take the initiative in the move- 
 ment indicated, he is very probably mistaken. It is not 
 the party to reform abuses, to go back upon its own record 
 and correct the evils that it has been wholly instrumental 
 in inflicting upon the country. But, upon the theory 
 that evils sometimes work their own cure, we may reason- 
 ably expect, after the present troubles have passed, that 
 there will be a new awakening at the North to a sense of 
 the danger that environs their institutions, and that there 
 will be a re-action, deep, earnest and permanent, against 
 the disintegrating and destructive influences that are surely 
 undermining the foundations of the American govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The people of Georgia have earnestly desired a change 
 in the Administration of the Federal Government, from 
 the hands of a party which has pursued a course of insult 
 and oppression towirds them, to one more just and liberal, 
 and one that would allow them to pursue a career of self- 
 development, without arbitrary interference. And what- 
 ever the result may be in the pending contest, it should 
 not hold in abeyance any question of State policy that 
 needs revision and incorporation into our organic law. 
 
 The next consideration to be noticed as entering into 
 the question of expediency, in adopting abridged suffrage 
 in Georgia, is that of the rights of those persons who 
 would be excluded from the elective franchise, and the 
 manner in which it would be received by the disfranchised 
 class. A discussion here of the abstract right of every 
 citizen under a free government to be clothed with the 
 elective franchise — based, as such claims are, upon the 
 natural rights of man — would require greater compass 
 than the limits of this paper would admit. There is no 
 subject, perhaps, in the whole range of human inquiry 
 'that has engaged so much speculative thought, and is so 
 much obscured by metaphysical reasoning as that of the 
 natural rights of man. Blackstone defines civil liberty to 
 
80 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 be, "That of a member of society, and is no other thail 
 natural liberty, so far restrained by human laws, ( and no 
 farther), as is necessary and expedient for the general ad- 
 vantage of the public." Burke, in referring to this defini- 
 tion of the great expounder of the common law, suggested 
 the pertinent inquiry: "If we may be required to surren- 
 der a portion of our natural rights, why not all?" If we 
 sacrifice a portion of our rights, does not the amount so 
 sacrificed cease to be a question of principle, and the 
 whole argument in defense of natural rights, as a founda- 
 tion for any claim to the exercise of political power, is 
 surrendered — merged into the paramount interest of so- 
 ciety. However plausible political theories about the 
 natural rights of man may appear, and how well supported 
 by argument, which seems, by any logical test, to be ra- 
 tional and conclusive, yet the chief difificulty in giving 
 them practical application so as to recognize them as 
 great cardinal principles in government, lies in finding that 
 state of society to which they are adapted and will ope- 
 rate so as to promote liberty, law and order. 
 
 If the great body of political society is homogeneous, 
 identified in interests, feeling, and in every essential fact, 
 then the laws of unity and harmony will prevail, the 
 interests of all be promoted, and the great object and end 
 of government secured. 
 
 There can be no controversy about the proposition, in- 
 deed, it is a truism, that civil government is instituted to se- 
 cure the governed in the enjoyment of their rights. If we 
 assume, with the Red Republicans of France or the Amer- 
 ican Radicals, that all men have the same or equal rights, 
 it necessarily follows that it is impossible to organize so- 
 ciety, or to establish public order, without a surrender or 
 sacrifice of some of these rights. But, then, all men men 
 have not the same or equal rights. One man, for example, 
 who has the capacity to take care of his own interest, and 
 to govern himself in all the proper relations of Ufe, has the 
 right to do so. Hence it would be an act of oppression 
 
THE NEGI*0 PROBLEM. 81 
 
 to place him, or his interest, under the control of another. 
 On the other hand, the child, or the man who has not the 
 capacity to take care of himgelf, or his interest, has a high 
 claim, if not a sacred right, to the guidance and control of 
 those who are wiser, and better and stronger than himself. 
 If this proposition is sound and true, in its application to 
 the rights and interest of man, in the mere social or pri- 
 vate relations of life, a fortiori, it becomes applicable in his 
 political relations. There can be no agency or influence 
 more disorganizing and destructive of the vital principles 
 of government, than the introduction of the communistic 
 theory that "All men have equal rights," It is the pre- 
 cursor of strife, the synonym of disorder, the counterpart 
 of revolution, and tt;e very genius of anarchy. 
 
 In the State of Georgia there are two separate and dis- 
 tinct races of men — thjs very antipodes of each ether — dif- 
 fering in the marked characteristics of color, origin, in- 
 stinct, habit, education, and in diversity of wants and con- 
 dition. One of these races is the owner of the soil, the 
 descendants and heirs of the men who obtained the origi- 
 nal charter from the crown of England, and who fought 
 afterwards to secure the autonomy of local rule. They 
 have established government, and founded all the institu- 
 tions that an intelligent and progressive people need, in a 
 career of civilization. 
 
 The other race were brought here as slaves, in conform- 
 ity with the recognized sentiment of the time. They were 
 sunk in abject ignorance, and degraded to the very lowest 
 scale of human existence ; had to be trained to proper 
 modes of subsistence by a forced abstinence from the 
 loathsome and savage practice of eating reptiles, mush- 
 rooms, and the raw herbs of the forest. They were raised 
 by slavery from this primitive state, and made to fill a 
 sphere of usefulness in the industrial department of the 
 State. Though emancipated from the rule of the master, 
 they are still children, in mental attainment, and moral dis. 
 
82 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 cipline — the proper subjects for pupilage, control, guidance 
 support and instruction. 
 
 It would seem that a proper solution of the problem 
 before our people, is to continue these two populations 
 under the same repubhcan form of government, so that the 
 essential conditions of social order, obedience to law, the 
 security of person, respect for property, the remuneration 
 of labor, and the regularity of civil transactions, may be 
 reasonably assured. And we believe that the intelligent, 
 thinking mind of Georgia rests under the conviction that 
 this desirable end cannot be attained with universal suf- 
 frage. 
 
 In re-adjusting the basis of suffrage in Georgia (if the 
 Constitutional Convention to be holden in the near future 
 should deem such a measure politic), there is some diffi- 
 culty in determining the more preferable mode : whether 
 to fix it upon the basis of intelligence or property, or 
 quahfications embracing both of these features. In the 
 present condition of our voting population — with such a 
 large element of ignorance, it becomes essentially necessary 
 to require some degree of fitness for its exercise, evidenced 
 by the ability of the voter to " read and write the Consti - 
 tution of the State " (as the suffrage clause in the Constitu- 
 tion of Massachusetts has it, and we might adopt New 
 England ideas very safely in this direction, and to that 
 extent). This feature should be embraced, whether we go 
 beyond it or not. In the eighty five or ninety thousand 
 negro voters in the State, we perhaps would not be far 
 wrong (the opinion, however, is merely conjectural, in the 
 absence of any statement in the census reports, showing 
 the number of negro voters Avho cannot read and WTite) in 
 estimating the number that can read at 5,000. This rela- 
 tively small number exercising suffrage, would, in the 
 event they did not identify themselves with the great body 
 of patriotic white voters, by keeping on the color line, or 
 nearly all of them "floaters," be deprived of the power of 
 doing harm. The number of colored youths reaching 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. ^ S3 
 
 their majority, who have learned to read, would not prob- 
 ably exceed 2,500 year. This number, in addition to the 
 5,000 who are already supposed to meet the suffrage re- 
 quirement, would, we might say, in ten years,(counting the 
 increased number of youths reaching their majority annu- 
 ally, to make up the death rate and loss by emigration of 
 the original voters,) make the number of 30,000 voters. 
 By that time it would be probably ascertained what effect 
 negro voting to that extent would have upon public inter- 
 est — whether detrimental or otherwise — and the indications 
 could be met in the future with such remedies as the exi- 
 gencies demanded. 
 
 If a property quahfication was required, fixed at the sum 
 of ^200.00, in addition to that of an educational basis, it 
 would very probably reduce the number of colored voters 
 to one-half the number above stated, and would, in effect, 
 prevent the increase of the negro vote, by young negroes 
 reaching their majority, who could vote under an educa- 
 tional requirement. 
 
 The effect likely to be produced upon the negro popula- 
 tion disfranchised by one or both of these limitations upon 
 suffrage, would be passive and temporary. It was thrust 
 upon them unsohcited, and without the least effort upon 
 their part to gain it. They have not since cherished it as 
 a boon of any great value, in the sense of gratifying their 
 pride, stimulating their ambition, or elevating their man- 
 hood. The negro is only conscious of his sovereign right 
 when waked up from his usual lethargy by the news, to 
 him, of an impending election, with orders to be at the 
 polls on a certain day and hour, and if the necessary stim- 
 ulus has been brought to bear, he responds with alacrity — 
 enters the role of a suffrage slinger with all the abandon with 
 which he formerly went to a corn husking. The more in- 
 telligent and well-to-do class of negroes, who might be vo- 
 ters under either limitation, would view it with a feehng of 
 indifference, if not direct approval, as it would, in effect, 
 elevate their importance in comparison, and create a feeling 
 
S4 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 somewhat of caste, gratifying to their pride of character. 
 It remains to be seen what would be the effect of limited 
 suffrage upon the class of white voters who would be exclu- 
 ded from the ballot-box by it. And herein lies the main diffi- 
 culty in extracting the poisoned arrows sent by radical dia- 
 blery into the body politic of the South. A constitutional 
 provision, or principle of law, may, in certain conditions of 
 society, be judicious and wholesome in its operations, 
 when, under a change of conditions, by new elements in- 
 troduced, differing in kind and nature, it may become alto- 
 gether inapplicable and impolitic. In the absence of the 
 late Constitutional Amendments, with the question of 
 suffrage untouched, there would have been no element in 
 the voting population of Georgia, that would, per se, have 
 rendered limited suffrage an imperative necessity. The 
 people of 'Georgia were entirely homogeneous — as thor- 
 oughly identified in sentiment and interest, as the political 
 society of a State could, in the nature of things, be. The 
 ignorant and poorer population, usually denominated the 
 lower class, have in no country manifested such qualities 
 of virtue, self-respect and manhood, as has been exhibited 
 by this class at the South. The institution of slavery, 
 which our abolition friends endeavored to make us believe 
 to be "the sum of all villainy," formed the substratum of 
 our society, and was tributary, in a measure, to that supe- 
 rior type of the lower classes at the South, than was to be 
 elsewhere found. Here the man of ignorance and pen- 
 ury, however severe the struggle with adverse fortune, and 
 however low.it might sink him in the depths of wretched- 
 ness, still felt there was an element below him whose 
 level he must not reach, and from which he must recoil. 
 The very thought rekindled his pride, and nerved him for 
 the conflicts of life. There are not a few at the present 
 time among the illiterate class, who are men of real worth, 
 have, by persevering industry, accumulated property, and 
 are esteemed in the sphere of their acquaintance as public 
 spirited and valued citizens. To withhold from such men. 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 85 
 
 who are independent in thought and action, the ballot, 
 would be difficult to reconcile with a sense of justice, and 
 could only be done in discharge of a paramount duty to 
 the State. To impose a property qualification would in 
 like manner, withhold the ballot from another class equally 
 worthy, and very probably with higher claims to the exer- 
 cise of such right. 
 
 The constitutional act of limiting suffi-age in Georgia, 
 upon either basis stated, would doubtless meet with oppo- 
 sition from the disfranchised class. It could not be reason- 
 ably expected that men would readily surrender a long- 
 exercised privilege, which they had been taught to regard 
 as "the badge of freemen," without some feeling of hu- 
 miliation. Its deprivation under existing circumstances, 
 would carry with it no individual debasement ; no mark of 
 dishonor, to blur the name or compromise the true worth 
 of character. It would rather be in the nature of those 
 sacrifices which patriotism and high sense of duty call 
 men to make, and whether it be to do, to forbear, or to 
 suffer, it is in the same line of honorable action, and will 
 always claim the meed of praise due to him that makes 
 the offering. 
 
 If it should be the matured and solemnly declared opin- 
 ion of the people of Georgia — spoken in a Constitutional 
 Convention of fairly-chosen representative men — that 
 abridged suffrage is imperiously demanded as a shield and 
 safeguard in the future, it will doubtless be acquiesced in 
 by all classes and conditions of our people. 
 
 The third consideration that enters into the expediency 
 of incorporating Hmited suffrage into the Constitution of 
 Georgia, as stated in the previous classification, is the 
 effect produced in diminishing the representation of Geor- 
 gia in Congress, as provided by the Fourteenth Amend- 
 ment. 
 
 Arguments that enter into the discussion of this branch 
 of the question of expediency, are to be drawn, for the 
 most part, by contrasting the interest the people of Geor- 
 
86 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 gia have in, and the benefits that accrue to them from, the 
 State and Federal Governments respectively. Or the 
 argument might be put more appositely and pointedly, in 
 estimating or weighing any probable disadvantage or loss 
 to the people of Georgia from a diminished representation 
 in' Congress, against the direct and tangible evils of uni- 
 versal suffrage. We have already brought under review 
 some of the more prominent evils of universal suffrage, 
 which the reader, will keep in mind, will obviate the neces- 
 sity of any farther reference or discussion. It is proper, 
 in the first place, to ascertain to what extent Georgia's 
 representation in the lower branch of Congress would be 
 diminished, in case she restricted suffrage, and in the event 
 the Fourteenth Amendment was enforced. This amend- 
 ment provides, in case any State should abridge the right 
 of suffrage, that "the basis of representation therein 
 shall be reduced in the proportion v/hich the number 
 of such male citizens (disfranchised) shall bear to the whole 
 number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such 
 State. It cannot be definitely ascertained what would be 
 the representation of Georgia in Congress upon a basis of 
 limited suffrage in the State, owing to the absence of any 
 statement in the census reports, giving the whole number 
 of males over twenty-one years of age. We can on^y 
 approximate it by taking the highest vote polled since the 
 last census. The aggregate vote polled at the presidential 
 election in 1872, (we have not seen a statement of the 
 consolidated vote of Georgia in the late October and No- 
 vember election,) was (if our memory is not at fault) about 
 187,000. We find in the census reports that there are 
 21,899 ilhterate white males over twenty-one years of age, 
 and 100,551 colored, making, in the aggregate, 122,450, 
 to be deducted from the whole number of males over 
 twenty-one years of age in the State. Upon calculations 
 made, in which the vote of Georgia furnishes partial and 
 incomplete data, we find that the Congressional represen- 
 tation of the State would be reduced to four members, or 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLLM. 8^ 
 
 a loss of mora than one-half of her present delectation in 
 Congress. This would be a great reduction in the Con- 
 gressional representation of the State, and the gross ine- 
 quality with other States would be manifest. 
 
 If we consider the functional relations of the Federal 
 Government to the people of the States, and its constitu- 
 tional relation to the States as a political body, we shall 
 find that the duties of the Federal Government to the peo- 
 ple directly, and to the States, are few and simple, and that 
 the benefits which accrue, with the exception of protection 
 against foreign aggression and domestic violence, (the 
 latter of little significance and of doubtful utility,) and that 
 of carrying the mails, are of but little practical and intrinsic 
 value. We would be understood as speaking of the posi- 
 tive interest measured by actual results, that the people 
 have in, or receive from, the State and Federal Govern- 
 ments in the dual relation. We would not underrate the 
 value and importance of the National Government as an 
 integral part of our political system. In the sphere of its 
 constitutional duties, and wisely and justly administered as 
 it was for the most part, previous to the late conflict, it 
 was truly "the best government the sun has ever shone 
 upon." It was modeled after a careful and profound study 
 of the best systems of government in the past, with new 
 and striking features introduced, that marked a turning 
 point — formed an epoch in the history of constitutional 
 government. The American system of government is 
 complex and pecuh'ar — differing in many important re- 
 spects from those that have obtained in the past or have an 
 existence at the present time. The distinguishable fea- 
 tures from that of other systems of free confederate gov- 
 ernments is the wise provision by its framers In the distri- 
 bution of power and duties between the Federal and State 
 Governments, and the judicious adjustment of the co-ordi- 
 nate branches of the Federal head — each with its separate 
 and distinct functions, moving in harmony in forwarding 
 measures of public policy, and each in turn serving as a 
 
88 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 check upon the assumption of unauthorized power 'by the 
 other, in such way as to preserve the balance and maintain 
 the integrity of the whole. The checks and limitations 
 imposed upon majorities, in legislating upon public ques- 
 tions in which there may be conflicting interest, and in 
 which due regard should be shown to the rights of minor- 
 ities, have their foundation in the most just and enlightened 
 conceptions of political science. 
 
 The great cardinal principle that "all governments de- 
 rive their just powers from the consent of the governed," 
 is the gist and substance of democratic institutions, and its 
 discovery and incorporation into our political system sheds 
 imperishable renown on "the Fathers of the Republic." 
 De Toqueville, in his " Democracy of America," charac- 
 terizes it as "a wholly novel theory, which may be con- 
 sidered as a great discovery in modern political science.' 
 Mr. Stephens, in his " Constitutional View of the War Be- 
 tween the States," in speaking cf it, says : " From this 
 simple discovery did indeed follow the most momentous 
 consequences. From it sprang that unparalleled career of 
 prosperity and greatness which marked our history under 
 its beneficent operations for more than three-quarters of a 
 century." But, alas ! that " three-quarters of a century " 
 should have marked a period in " the beneficent opera- 
 tion " of this great principle of civil liberty, and that 
 another era should have been inaugurated, in which the 
 hated dogma that " might makes right" became the dom- 
 inant idea. 
 
 The lessons of history, corroborated by our own bitter 
 experience, teach us that the best systems of govern- 
 ment, based upon the sanctity of constitutional law, and 
 administered for a time with wisdom and justice, may be 
 perverted in the madness of an hour, and become the worst 
 instrument of oppression. We have introduced this brief 
 generalization of some of the leading features of the Fed- 
 eral Government, not for the special purpose of elucida- 
 tion, or so much as an argument germain to the subject 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. S9 
 
 under notice, but rather with the view of pointing a 
 moral. 
 
 The great error of the South previous to the late sec- 
 tional war, and one that contributed indirectly and without 
 design, to bringing it on, was the absorbing interest felt 
 and manifested in Federal politics. This was due in a 
 measure to the constitution of Southern society. The dif- 
 fusion of wealth, and the leisure it afforded, the liberal 
 education of the better classes, the absence of diversified 
 industries to engage the thought and direct the energies of 
 a people, chivalrous by nature, and taught to command in 
 the mastery of an inferior race, were circumstances that 
 naturally required a broad field of interest and excitement, 
 and this was readily found in that of Federal politics, un 
 der our free institutions, with the road to political prefer- 
 ment open alike to all ; our young men who aspired to 
 distinction, turned readily to politics as more likely to se- 
 cure to them the rewards of ambition. Hence, every 
 recurring election was looked to as an occasion of deep 
 interest, the issues involved were magnified by the politi- 
 cians, the people took political excitement as by contagion, 
 party spirit ran high, and often the real issues before the 
 people were lost sight of in the zeal for party success. 
 Notwithstanding the South had accorded to her the palm 
 for eloquence and statesmanship in the National Legisla- 
 ture, and furnished the larger number of Presidents, yet 
 the North gathered the fruits of substantial victory in her 
 protective tariffs, improvement of harbors and rivers, and in 
 the general disbursements from the Federal treasury that 
 went to develop and enrich her section. 
 
 While this all-absorbing intererst in National politics 
 brought no substantial good to the South, it proved a seri- 
 ous loss in the diversion of her best talents, and its most 
 valuable service from purely State interest, where it was 
 most needed, and could have been most profitably ex- 
 pended. 
 
 The South need not expect to share more liberally in 
 
90 THE NEGRO TROBLEM. 
 
 the favor and patronage of the General Government in 
 the future than in the past. Georgia, in particular, will 
 not be likely to receive any substantial aid in the direction 
 that it is needed, and in form that will benefit her people 
 at large. She has no rivers that are great channels of 
 commerce, that need the fostering aid of Congressional 
 appropriation. Her harbors upon the coast, where of any 
 commercial importance, become objects of national interest, 
 in the way of promoting the public revenue, and will re- 
 ceive the necessary aid from Congress whether our repre- 
 sentation is diminished or not. Any great measures of in- 
 terest to the States, like that of distributing the proceeds 
 from the sale of public lands, among the States, for school 
 purposes, as was begun a few years ago by donation of land 
 scrip — and again agitated in the last Congress respectively 
 for a like purpose — if adopted by that body as the policy that 
 shall govern that great interest in the future, will be dis- 
 tributed upon the basis of population or illiteracy in the 
 States, and Georgia, in such case, would receive her quota 
 irrespective of her numerical strength in Congress. As 
 slavery is out of the way, and there will probably be no 
 more constitutional tinkering on the negro question, we 
 may reasonably hope, so far as the South is concerned, 
 that sectional issues will be put to rest in the future. As the 
 war feeling dies out, considerations of interest will prompt 
 the North to be more just, if not generous. The intimate 
 commercial relations between the sections — the chief 
 market the South affords for Northern manufactures and 
 Western produce, and considerations growing out of the 
 public debt, will have a conservative influence in shaping 
 legislation in Congress, ard operate as moral advantages 
 to the South. 
 
 Georgia, in her impoverished condition, with her people 
 groaning under the weight of private and public indebted- 
 ness, with taxation necessarily high to meet her maturing 
 obhgations and current expenses, and with all her indus- 
 tries sharing their proportional part in the general financial 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 91 
 
 distress, certainly demands the highest endeavors and most 
 faithful Labor of every true son in her behalf. 
 
 The public press of Georgia, conducted, for the most 
 part, by men of ability, culture and public spirit, should 
 lend its potent aid in building up our languishing industries. 
 The best ability — combining practical thought with work- 
 ing capacity, and thorough identity with every interest in 
 the State — should be brought into our Legislature. Inter- 
 est in Federal politics should be subordinated to the para- 
 mount claims of Georgia's local interest. That class of 
 statesmanship which ignores local State interest, and 
 plumes itself for the arena of Federal politics, and seeks 
 a seat in the national legislature, as its chosen field of 
 duty and honor, should be placed at a discount in Georgia. 
 
 As unity, strength and internal peace are essential to 
 the prosperity and well-being of political communities, 
 our people should endeavor to make the political body 
 homogeneous, by removing from it that element that will 
 continue to be the author of confusion and discord. And 
 if a diminished representation in Congress, by which Geor- 
 gia will lose five of her members, be the price and penalty 
 for shielding her interest from the perils of universal suf- 
 frage, then let her pay the one and incur the other. 
 
 THE MORAL CONDITION OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO. 
 
 The moral and religious aspect of the negro race at the 
 South, is not merely a matter of concern to the Christian 
 mind of our section, but invites the thoughtful attention 
 of all, who properly estimate the value of moral agencies, 
 in upholding the integrity of law, in the promotion of 
 public order, and in promoting the well-being of society. 
 The consciousness cannot be divested of a measure of ap- 
 prehension to our people, in knowing that there are four 
 and one-half millions of people of another race, intermin- 
 gled with them in a civil, political and industrial relation, 
 who are ignorant and depraved — under but little moral 
 restraint in any sense — and held to legal obedience, for 
 
92 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 the most part, from the fear and dread of punishment the 
 law inflicts upon its violators. 
 
 Although the negro, by coming in contact with civilizing 
 influences, has been far removed from his primitive state of 
 barbarism, and made considerable advance towards the 
 goal of a better life, yet he has not reached that stage of 
 mental and moral development that would entitle him to 
 a place of equal rank among civilized communities. The 
 test which the enhghtened opinion of the present day im- 
 poses, when the claims of any people to civilization are 
 asserted, whether they form a separate political com- 
 munity, under a government of their own, or whether 
 they are segregated into a distinct class under an enlight- 
 ened government, are, for the most part, tests of a moral 
 character. There may be material development, evinced 
 in the acquisition of wealth and its proper use in securing 
 the conveniences, the comforts, and luxuries of life, and 
 farther evidenced by familiarity with art, literature, and 
 the refinements of social life ; yet, if the moral qualities 
 of truth, justice, and humanity — imparted by the teach- 
 ings of Christianity — are wanting, it falls far short of true 
 civiHzation. The acceptance of this proposition, as a pos- 
 tulate, at this day, obviates the necessity of its illustration 
 by instituting comparisons between the most enlightened 
 states of society in ancient times, with that of modern 
 European or American civiHzation. 
 
 If we separate the negro, by that wall of partition which 
 color and caste have made immovable, and insuperable, 
 and judge him as a distinct class, upon his attainments, 
 capabilities, and moral status, we will place him without 
 the pale of civilization. 
 
 In discussing the moral condition of the negro, it 
 is not our purpose to deal with that class of facts that 
 are simply conjectural, or of doubtful import, but those 
 which present themselves in clear and palpable outline, 
 whose force and significance are felt and seen by every 
 observant man at the South. The broad and unmistakable 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 93 
 
 facts that are presented in the statistics of crime in our 
 State, showing a steady increase every year — the daily 
 scenes that are enacted in our criminal courts, to say noth- 
 ing of the criminal practices in the way of petit larceny, 
 breach of the peace, adultery, and other evidences of de- 
 pravity, of which no legal cognizance is taken, go to make 
 up a record for the negro that is appalling to contemplate. 
 Those facts presenting themselves in the daily life of the 
 negro, and the main features that go to make up his his- 
 tory, are not merely phenomenal in their nature, or like the 
 outcropings of evil that is produced by disturbing the nor- 
 mal conditions of society, but have their origin in part in 
 the natural depravity of the negro, and are partly attribu- 
 table to the absence, or want, of proper moral and religious 
 instruction. The bread riots that sometimes occur in large 
 cities, the strikes among the labor class which often give 
 rise to a turbulent spirit, and at times accompanied with 
 violence and outrage, and the political and other disturb- 
 ances in society, in which reason is subordinate to passion, 
 and evil results follow, have an inciting cause that produce 
 them — are simply phenomenal in their character, and after 
 expending the energy it aroused, society again assumes its 
 normal condition. 
 
 The [case presented by the totally emancipated negro is 
 quite different. A large, per cent, of the wrong-doing and 
 evil which he inflicts upon society are attributable to motives 
 that are inherent in his nature — the bad impulses that flow 
 from a low state of morals. He may be quietly at work in 
 the field, or passing leisurely along the highway, free from 
 all mental or emotional excitement at the time, and yet, if 
 occasion presents itself, he may perpetrate (as the newspa- 
 per press is constantly testifying) the most revolting act in 
 the catalogue of crime. He may wake up from a quiet 
 sleep, with the demands of his nature satisfied, or ample 
 food at hand, and no immediate want pressing him, when 
 he will go out and commit a theft of something of trifling 
 value, and in many cases will prefer to pilfer a small article 
 
94 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 when he knows the owner would give it to him by simply 
 asking for it. It is thought by many who have constant 
 dealing with the negro in a business way, that he has less 
 regard for truth now than when a slave, when, in that state 
 an untruth would oftentimes shield him from correction, and 
 seemingly make the temptation to evade truth stronger then 
 than the ordinary motives that may now actuate him. 
 
 If the statistics of crime, which usually afford the most 
 reliable data for judging the moral status of a people, are 
 to enter into any estimate we may make of that of the 
 Southern blacks at the present time, we are forced to infer 
 that he is retrograding, in this particular, the farther he re- 
 cedes from a state of slavery. The United States census 
 report, as yet, furnish no complete data upon this point, as it 
 only embraced the five years of the negro's history since his 
 civil relations have been changed. The next census report 
 will be looked to with profound interest by all those who 
 are watching the tendency of the colored race at the South 
 in his present state of freedom. W^e have seen estimates, 
 based upon the number of annual convictions for crime by 
 our State courts, which fix the rate of increase in criminal 
 convictions at ten per cent, for the last ten years. 
 
 The inquiry has doubtless suggested itself to every 
 thoughtful mind, why has the negro exhibited a moral 
 retrogression, under circumstances seemingly more favor- 
 able to his elevation in this point of view than those that 
 environed him in a state of slavery? And if slavery was 
 " the sum of all villainy," as the abolitionists characterized 
 it, certainly the converse is true, and that a liberation from 
 the shackels of slavery would bring with it ameliorating in- 
 fluences that would at once begin to lift the negro from the 
 depths of degradation, and make his ascent to a higher 
 standard of morals an assured fact. If we should examine 
 into the causes which have operated to the disadvantage 
 and detriment of the negro in a moral point of view, and 
 especially those influences that have changed for the worse 
 his mere moral conduct, we would doubtless find them to be 
 
THE KEGRO PROBLEM. 95 
 
 such as should not go to the prejudice of the negro. The 
 change in his civil status, operating upon him in a way 
 that he could not understand, and bringing with it a new 
 order of discipline that was not remedial, and wholly v,i\- 
 suited to his nature, has, in effect, tended to give rein rather 
 than check his propensity to evil. Another cause of his 
 moral decline, and one that most probably has contributed 
 as much to it as the one just stated, is the great v/ant of 
 proper religious instruction to aid and direct him in pursuit 
 of a better life. 
 
 And we doubt not that a careful and proper examination 
 into the state of religion that obtains among the negroes 
 of the South, would open up to view the broadest field for 
 missionary effort that can be found under the canopy of 
 heaven. In the last twenty-five years of slavery there was 
 a deep interest manifested in the spiritual welfare of the 
 Southern slaves by the Christian people of the South, and 
 there were regular and systematic efforts expended in their 
 behalf by Southern churches, that not only absolved them 
 from any blame or reproach, (as was often the case in the 
 indiscriminate abuse of slavery by Northern fanatics,) for 
 not providing for the spiritual needs of the negro, but show 
 on the other hand (as we shall verify by statistics) schemes 
 of broadest philanthropy and religious enterprise which 
 have not been exceeded in the missionary labors of any 
 other people. 
 
 The following statement, made up from the annual re- 
 ports of the churches named, in the year 1859, shows the 
 extent to which the slave population of the South had been 
 brought under the influence of Christianity and led to em- 
 brace its truths : 
 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, South (colored members) 188,000 
 
 Missionary and Anti-Missionary Baptists (colored members) 175,000 
 
 Presbyterian Church (colored members) 38,000 
 
 Protestant Episcopal Church (colored members) 7,000 
 
 Christian Church (colored memcers) 10,000 
 
 All other denominations (estim'Ued) 35,000 
 
 Total 453.000 
 
96 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 The remark was made in one of the reports quoted, 
 that the number of slaves brought into the Christian 
 church, as a consequence of the introduction of the Afri- 
 can race into the United States, exceeds all the converts 
 made throughout the heathen world by the whole mission- 
 ary force employed by Protestant Christendom. Statistics 
 compiled from authentic data in 1859, gives the whole 
 number of converts in the Prptest=int Christian missions in 
 Asia, Africa, Pacific Islands, West Indies, and North 
 American Indians at 250,000; thus showing that the 
 number of African converts in the Southern States was al- 
 most double the whole number of heathen converts. These 
 great results, showing the achievements of combined 
 Christian effort at the South for the negro, necessitated 
 the use of systematic and far-reaching plans — engaging the 
 services of a considerable [number of Christian men, and 
 a large expenditure of money. Those of our people who 
 were not connected with the church, and who owned slave 
 property, were generally actuated by humane and consid- 
 erate views upon the subject of religious instruction for 
 the slave. The extensive missionaryj^work, embracing al. 
 most the whole area of slave population, was largely sup- 
 plemented by the labors of Southern ministers in the reg- 
 ular pastoral work of the whites, in preaching to the blacks 
 whenever opportunity presented itself. 
 
 The slave population of the South in 1860 numbered 
 3,953,760; by calculation we find that 11| per cent, of the 
 aggregate, and more than 50 per cent, of the adult negro 
 population were members of the church. Massachusetts, 
 or any other Northern State, will not show in their church 
 statistics results so favorable to the success of Christian 
 effort as was here exhibited among the slaves of the 
 South. 
 
 We do not present this as any argument in defense of 
 the institution of slavery, but simply to show what was 
 done for the moral improvement of the negro in slavery, 
 by way of vindicating our people from the malignant and 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 9/ 
 
 mendacious assaults of the fanatics of the North, who, now 
 merged into the Radical party, are still rehearsing the 
 stale slanders of injustice and inhumanity against the peo- 
 ple of the South. The extent to which the negro was 
 vindicated by the disinterested Christian efforts of the 
 Southern slaveholder, during his term of servitude, may 
 be inferred by contrasting the state of moral and religious 
 advancement attained at his manumission, with the be- 
 nighted condition of savage life in his native lands. 
 
 But when the Federal ukase was issued and put in force, 
 liberating the slave from the rule of the master, and con- 
 ferring shortly afterward, civil and political rights upon 
 the manumitted blacks, have begun at once an utter un- 
 doing and complete obliteration of all that had been ac- 
 complished for the spiritual good of the negro in the past, 
 and has, during his decade of freedom, been drifting back- 
 wards, and if not arrested and put under better influences, 
 will very probably have reached such a demoralized and 
 corrupt state in religion, within the next ten years, as to 
 make his entrance upon the practice of pagan rites no 
 improbable event. 
 
 It may be thought by some that this view is prejudicial 
 and even unjust, that there is really nothing in the present 
 religious state of the negro'to warrant the assumption that 
 he has deteriorated in the practice of Christian virtues, or 
 shown weakening of religious principle to such an extent as 
 to justify such conclusions. We are told that the negroes are 
 a church-going people, nearly all of them are members of 
 some religious society, and manifest a devotional spirit, 
 and seem, above all other people, to enter into the enjoy- 
 ment of religious worship. This very fact, coupled with 
 their bad system of morals, and the perversion of the true 
 spirit of Christianity in their worship, forms the worst 
 feature in the negroes' case. If there was an abatement 
 of religious fervor, and the falling back of individual mem- 
 bers into a state of spiritual coldness conesponding with 
 the state of morals, and always guaged by it, as honest 
 
 7 
 
98 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 people do who have an enlightened conscience, and follow 
 religion as a matter of principle, there would be far more 
 hope for the negro, and justify the belief that he could 
 work out the problem of his spiritual good, unaided by 
 the kind offices and oversight of the white people. 
 
 The race-feeling that manifests itself in the instinctive 
 desire to cut loose from all association with other people, 
 and form a homogeneous society of their own, as the infe- 
 rior races always do, when left to their natural bent, was 
 exhibited by the Southern negroes in their religion before 
 developing itself in any other form. The first year of their 
 emancipation was marked by an earnest purpose to sever 
 their church relations with those denominations at the 
 South, that had manifested the deepest interest in their reli- 
 gious welfare, without waiting for any manifestation on 
 the part of the whites, that a retention of their colored 
 membership was not desirable, but in many instances ab- 
 solved the connection against the counsels and entreaty of 
 the paternal church. It .was seen at once that any op- 
 position to the wisk of the negroes to sever their church 
 relations, would be futile and unavailing, and that he must, 
 for a time, be left to the fearful experiment of his own 
 spiritual guidance, with all his inherent depravity and un- 
 reason operating to increase the hazard he was undergo- 
 ing. 
 
 Immediately upon the close of the war, the Northern 
 Methodist Church entered upon the execution of plans 
 that had already been devised, and cherished with the 
 most ardent expectations — that of incorporating the whole 
 negro population of the South into its folds. With all the 
 zeal and unwisdom of the iconoclast, they entered upon 
 the appointed mission, self-assured that all obstacles to its 
 consummation would be removed — if necessary, by physi- 
 cal force — and that the most signal success would crown 
 the effort. The purpose was evidently two-fold — political 
 and ecclesiastical ; the first to strengthen and consolidate 
 the power of the Radical party and " secure the fruits of 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 99 
 
 the war," and the second was to swell the numerical 
 strength of their church by adding another million of 
 members, and make it the grandest and most glorious 
 epoch in its history. It selected men with especial fitness 
 and adaptation for the work in hand — men whose intellects, 
 education and training if it had made them gentlemen, had 
 not given them any very clear conceptions of the duties of 
 Christian gentlemen. They came with the idea that military 
 conquest of the South by the Federal forces implied a 
 complete surrender of every right, civil, political and re- 
 ligious, and, as their church was pre-eminently the one of 
 "moral ideas" and religious progress, it was its preroga- 
 tive to come in and take possession of the Southern Meth- 
 odist Church property, (the legal title to which had been 
 an controversy twenty years before, and settled" by the 
 highest judicial tribunal in the country,) with the purpose 
 and intent of appropriating it for the use of the negroes^ 
 and such whites as they might proselyte, and bring into 
 their organization. 
 
 They established church papers as one of the instru- 
 ments of their propaganda, which were designed to circulate 
 among the ignorant negroes and low classes of white peo- 
 ple, not for the purpose of imparting scriptural truth to 
 their benighted minds, but to inflame their prejudices and 
 passions by falsehood and defamation. Money, which 
 was recognized by them as the sinews of other contests 
 than that of war, was freely drawn from their ple- 
 thoric treasury, and offered as a subsidy to impecunious 
 ministers at the South, whose services might be available 
 in the plan of "disintegration and absorption." But the 
 Southern negro, with all his obtuseness and gullibility, was 
 not to be caught in the gospel net of Northern Methodists 
 that had been spread with such earnest expectation. In 
 the very overtures of the Northern Methodists, to the 
 Southern negro, there seems to be a repellant force 
 brought into play. The coldness, cant and hypocracy of 
 puritanical philanthropy was instinctively felt by the un- 
 
100 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 suspecting negro, and like the negative forces under the 
 laws of affinity, no effect was produced, leaving the matter 
 upon which they were acting undisturbed. 
 
 The cause of such a signal failure was, doubtless, partly 
 due to the organization of what is known as the African M. 
 E. Church, which possesed a peculiarly attractive feature 
 to the negro at this time, on account of its formation and 
 entire government, being independent of any dictation or 
 control of the white race. The springing up of this inde- 
 pendent negro church, just at this juncture, although it 
 possessed but little inherent soundness or element of good 
 for the negro, was, if not providential, at least, a stroke 
 of good fortune for the South. And though it was a 
 poh'tico-religious affair, it was purely in the interest of 
 the negro, and was not made, we think, the vehicle in 
 carrying forward Ihe dirty schemes of the carpet-bag class 
 of radical politicians. Conducted purely on the color- 
 line in religion and in pohtics, it doubtless had a good deal 
 to do in securing the political coalition between " Blifil 
 and Black George," a combination of the puritan and the 
 negro, making, in this compound, a political vampire that 
 was fast sapping the life-blood of the South. If the 
 Methodists of the North had met with any considerable 
 degree of success, in bringing the negroes of the South into 
 their church, it would, at that time, have been the cause 
 of unmixed evil to the peace and welfare of both races 
 at the South. The conditions of success, as they thought 
 and as their actions confirmed, were to play upon the pre- 
 judices of the negro, so as to alienate him from his then 
 existing church relations, and to have kept him perma- 
 nently in their society, which would have necessitated the 
 continuance of the iniquitous policy that had brought him in. 
 
 It would be no easy task to mark out the devious and 
 uncertain path the Southern negro has traveled during 
 the last ten years of his religious history, and equally 
 as diflicult to define his present state. With his severance 
 from the Southern churches, he no longer desired the 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 101 
 
 instructions and spiritual oversight of their ministers, 
 but sought out and obtained, without difficulty, spir- 
 itual guides among his own race, who have generally 
 " darkened counsel," and led him into error and untruth, 
 more hurtful and damaging than would have been the 
 absence of all privilege and religious effort. There seems 
 to be among them a penchant for preaching. Their 
 ambition and aspirations seem to lead them in that way. 
 It is not unfrequently the case, that the most ignorant 
 and immoral among them, whose total unfitness for the 
 sacred ofiice is manifest to all of them, are called to 
 ministerial functions, and enter upon them without any ap- 
 parent change in moral conduct, yet wholly acceptable 
 to the flock they may serve. Nearly all the colored 
 politicians, if not engaged in preaching before their ad- 
 vent into politics, soon become preachers, and are doubt- 
 less prompted to do so from seeing the influence wielded 
 by those who exercise the latter office, and thus com- 
 bine the two to increase their popularity and add to their 
 personal aggrandisement. Out of the number of an half 
 dozen within our acquaintance, we do not know more than 
 one who bears an unexceptional moral character. If the 
 sources of information that come to us through their own 
 people are trust-worthy, we are led by it to the belief that 
 their preachers are very often the worst men among them 
 — below the moral level of the average negro — to which 
 must be added the greater sin of sacrilege. The better 
 class of their preachers, who are no doubt sincere and 
 honest in their calling, rarely evince any ability or disposition 
 to inculcate a moral principle or fix a religious truth in the 
 minds and hearts of their hearers. Their preachers being 
 ignorant men, who know nothing of analyzing a principle 
 or illustrating a scriptural truth, address their people in pas- 
 sionate utterances, with vehemence of manner, until both 
 preacher and audience are wrought up to the highest pitch 
 of excitement, which, in cooling down, leaves no ingrafting 
 of the Word, to take hold upon the heart and moral nature, 
 
102 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 and strengthen them for the trials and temptations that 
 come afterwards. To attend or pass near one of their re- 
 ligious meetings, one cannot be otherwise than impressed, 
 when their feeUngs are fully wrought upon, with the deep 
 earnestness that characterizes their worship. The kind of 
 services that are quiet and undemonstrative, seem to impress 
 them but little, and they will remain listless and very fre- 
 quently go to sleep, if the order is not changed. Singing 
 in the loud stentorian tenor that they usually render it in, 
 seems to raise them to the pathetic and rapturous state 
 of feeling at once, and then, after napping over the 
 sermon, they will rise with the song and enjoy an ecstacy of 
 feeling, that is given vent to in the wildest and most 
 labored vociferatioon. 
 
 If we consider the character of their worship, the spirit 
 that pervades it, and the blind and incompetent leaders 
 who are called to their religious instruction and over- 
 sight, we are not surprised to find them retrograding, 
 and tending in a course that will lead them away from 
 the true worship into error and superstition of the grossest 
 kind. Those of our people who have taken any pains 
 to look into the present religious state of the negro, 
 cannot but see that the true spirit of worship is being 
 perverted and corrupted to an extent already, that is 
 really alarming to those who can feel any interest in 
 their well-being. With nearly the whole adult popula 
 tion in the church, with a punctuality in attendance upon 
 religious service exceeding that of the white members 
 of the church, and with seemingly the highest state of 
 religious enjoyment, yet we see no improvement in moral 
 conduct, no diminution of crime, no sense of the degra- 
 dation it should bring to the race, to give hope that 
 ameliorating agencies were at work to raise them to the 
 plane of a better life. We have already referred to the 
 depravity that led them to acts of wrong-doing when 
 free from any exciting cause, and it is no less true that 
 this uncontrollable tendency to evil deeds supervenes so 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 1C3 
 
 closely upon their religious excitement, as to divest the 
 latter of any moral effect whatever. It is said, and the 
 often repetition gives it claims to credulity, that these 
 people, in returning from church, with their feelings 
 scarcely cooled down from the fervor and glow of reli- 
 gious excitement, will descend to the low and debasing 
 practice of the sexual sin, which their incontinent nature 
 leads them to commit. The moral faculty we call con- 
 science, seems to be held in a state of abeyance, if not 
 one of utter extinction. There is, no doubt, in their 
 moral nature the germ of a conscience, but it has been so 
 little cultivated and improved upon, and so often abused, 
 in that class of vices particularly, that have an origin in 
 mere animal instincts, that it is rarely quickened into life 
 so as to offer any restraint upon the practice of their 
 besetting sins. And herein lies the difficulty of intro- 
 ducing any wholesome and permanent reformation upon 
 the moral and religious character of the negro race. 
 The instincts of his animal nature are so strong as to de- 
 stroy anything like an equilibrium between it and the 
 moral sense, and hence the will-power, which asserts itself 
 in the white race and gives them ability to determine and 
 act, whether right or wrong, is so weak in the negro's 
 nature, as to rarely assert itself in shaping and determining 
 a moral action. 
 
 It is evident that the negro is corrupting the form, as 
 well as perverting the true spirit, of worship, by introdu- 
 cing secular elem.ents that must soon weaken and destroy 
 his respect and regard for the church as a sacred institu- 
 tion. Soon after his investment with political rights, he 
 began to mingle politics and religion at the church — ma- 
 king a hobby of first one and then the other — often so 
 confounding the two as to be in doubt which had the 
 higher claim upon his homage. Their churches (particu- 
 larly in the country) have been, during political campaigns, 
 a sort of conclave, where they met for the purpose of party 
 drill, and arrange for carrying out the designs of their 
 
104 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 party leaders. If they are free from political excitement, 
 some other secular interest, or caprice, that engages their 
 attention collectively, takes its place, and is brought for- 
 ward as a matter belonging to the church, and considered 
 with the same gravity as if it was in reality a religious duty. 
 It appears that the disciphne which obtains in their churches, 
 amounts almost to a nullity, owing to their lax and imper- 
 fect ideas of moral principles, and total v/ant of adminis- 
 trative capacity. 
 
 The inconsistencies that are so glaring and palpable in 
 the profession and practice of religion, are, we think, not 
 so much a thing of design and purpose, as it is a want: of 
 moral perception, and the positive virtue of moral courage. 
 The whole race seems to view religion as something apart 
 from, and independent of, moral principle, and the Deca- 
 logue itself as an obsolete code or unmeaning something, 
 of no more efficacy or binding force than the ceremonial 
 law of the Mosaic period is to the people of the Christian 
 era. Hypocrisy, that very often seeks to veil the moral 
 obligations of religious people, in a sphere above the 
 negro, and where it may be practiced with so much art 
 and skill as to "deceive the very elect," is not the beset- 
 ting sin of the negro. In his religion, as in his vices, he 
 is true to nature and follows her promptings. The negro, 
 even of mature years, needs moral training and discipline 
 like the child, in a way that he can understand. Simple 
 moral truths, such as are taught in the child's catechism, 
 (though it need not be in that form,) should be presented 
 to him in the way of preaching, lecturing, or other form 
 that will impress them upon his understanding, and form 
 the basis of a moral character upon vviiich may be founded 
 a religion of substance and reality. 
 
 In portraying the state of morals, and that of religion, 
 that exists among the negroes at the South, we have en- 
 deavored to avoid anything like suppositions or exaggera- 
 ted statements, founding the views expressed upon facts 
 that came to us from what we deemed trustv/orthy sources, 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 105 
 
 and, for the most part, that class of facts that come within 
 the knowledge of every Southern man, who has give" 
 any thought to the subject, and has had opportunity for 
 observation. Christianity, we are taught, is a primary 
 element of progress, and if the state of religion that ob- 
 tains among our Southern negro population is likely to be- 
 come so perverted, and so utterly demoralized, as to deprive 
 it of its inherent force and vitality, it then becomes a seri- 
 ous question for the religious mind of the South, whether 
 missionary effort should not be directed in its behalf. 
 
 Laying aside the promptings of Christian philanthropy, 
 and viewing the condition of the negro in a cold, abstract 
 sense, we might say that we are not responsible for his 
 morals, or his condition, nor should have any concern for 
 his proper religious training, or his destiny beyond the 
 present life. The negro, it is true, desires those of his 
 own race to be his spiritual advisers, and has withdrawn 
 and stands aloof in religion, as well as in politics, from 
 the contact and teachings of the white man. But this 
 may be said of any race or people who have a religion of 
 their own, or who desire teachers and leaders of the kin- 
 dred race. To apply this argument in a general sense, 
 would, in effect, stop all missionary effort, and suspend 
 the aggressive forces of Christianity. If missionary labor 
 in behalf of the Southern blacks were needful and benefi- 
 cial before their m.anumission, (as we have already shown 
 that they were liberally expended, with the most encoura- 
 ging results,) certainly the demand is as great, and the 
 field as inviting, now as then. The chief difficulties that 
 seem to present themselves in the way of our Southern 
 churches, in resuming their former relation to the negro 
 race, and the work it involved, are: First, the indisposi- 
 tion, on 'the part of the negroes, to accept such gratuitous 
 labors in their behalf; and, secondly, the want of means 
 to carry on such enterprises. These obstacles, if properly 
 examined, will be found to be apparent rather than real. 
 The first, we suppose, is always encountered in missionary 
 
lOG THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 labors in foreign lands, where a new system of religion is 
 to be planted upon the uprooting and removal of an old 
 one. In the case of the Southern negro, the trouble does 
 not arise from any conflict of religious opinion, but merely 
 supposed prejudice against the source from which mission- 
 ary labors in his interest would come. The negro is docile 
 and submissive in disposition, is not very tenacious in his 
 opinion, and his race feeling will very probably yield, to 
 some extent, and far enough to accept the kind and un- 
 selfish offers of religious aid from Southern churches. 
 The second difficulty stated, is that of a want of means to 
 carry on anything like an organized and systematic reli- 
 gious work among the blacks of the South. It is true 
 that our Southern churches, as to monied resources, but 
 reflect the condition of our people, are straitened in cir- 
 cumstances, and not more than able to support their min- 
 istry, and carry on the missionary and other enterprises 
 they have in hand. While we do not deem it proper to 
 discuss, in this paper, the ways and means by which our 
 people may inaugurate and carry on schemes for the moral 
 and religious improvement of the colored race in their 
 midst, yet we can state, with some degree of assurance, 
 that if the Christian mind of the South is convinced of 
 the fact that these people, in their present isolated and 
 somewhat neglected condition, are drifting away from the 
 moorings of Christianity,^ that liberal and energetic plans 
 will be devised, commensurate with the task to be accom- 
 plished. Any other supposition upon the probable course 
 our people may take, in a matter of such deep concern, 
 would do violence to that liberal and enlightened Christian 
 sentiment that so thoroughly pervades them. These peo- 
 ple, though of a different race, and socially ostracised from 
 us, and though they have justly incurred our displeasure 
 in an alliance with our political foe in his efforts to impov- 
 erish, insult and degrade us, still they are endeared to us 
 by strong ties in the past ; for willing obedience, for faith- 
 ful service, for tender and loyal attachment as long as the 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 107 
 
 relation of master and servant existed. They have been 
 temporarily alienated from us, by appeal and argument 
 presented to them in such way that we could not reasona- 
 bly expect them to resist it. They are still — the great 
 mass of them — homeless and dependent, upon our lands, 
 at our doors, and around our firesides, as laborers and 
 household servants. They are not only near us, but as 
 entirely dependent upon us now as they were in a state of 
 slavery. As to all means of securing within themselves 
 proper religious instruction, and as to energy and self-di- 
 recting power, they are but children, and must find the 
 needed aid elsewhere, or suffer its deprivation. From our 
 relation to them in the present, as well as past, arises an 
 obligation at once imperative, and, to us, of solemn and 
 momentous significance, to make provision for their moral 
 advancement, to the extent that we are able, even if it 
 should require the abandonment of foreign missionary 
 fields. The question we are discussing in this connection, 
 is entirely new, not having been raised in the religious 
 press, or noticed elsewhere, as we have seen, but it will 
 very probably, at an early day, assume shape and propor- 
 tion that will bring it into prominence as one of real, if 
 not of vital importance. 
 
 If it should be found upon survey, and a careful exami- 
 nation of the field, that there are real and urgent grounds 
 for interposing religious effort by our Southern Christian 
 people, in behalf of the negro, then the work should begin 
 in earnest, else efforts by other people will be aimed in that 
 direction. The Methodist church, (North,) though foiled 
 and discomfitted in a measure, has not, we opine, aban- 
 doned its long-cherished object of absorbing the Southern 
 negro in its organization. The meagre success attained at 
 a few points, gives it encouragement to hold them, and 
 will doubtless in the future prosecute their work of evan- 
 gelizing the Southern blacks with more zealous efforts than 
 in the past. If the past and present animus of this church 
 was such as to give assurance that the Christian labors it 
 
108 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 might expend in the South in the future would be free from 
 the contaminating influence of pohtics, and the more odi- 
 ous doctrine of social equality, we could welcome them 
 in our midst, and bid them good speed ; but we can have 
 no guaranty whatever that such will be the case. If this 
 church should establish a permanent hold in the South, 
 v*ith extensive ramifications in its work of evangelizing the 
 colored race, though the effort might be attended witli but 
 little success, yet the opportunity for operating upon the 
 prejudice of the negro, and fermenting discord, would be 
 too inviting for that pragmatic and busy people to neglect. 
 It has been repeatedly stated within the last year or two, 
 in the newspaper press, that the Catholics have designs 
 upon the Southern negroes, and are maturing plans that 
 are not merely tentative, or experimental, but systematic 
 and far-reaching — leaving out of calculation for success no 
 factor that would be considered necessary to attain it. The 
 preparation for this special work at the South is said to em- 
 brace, as the first step, the education of fifty young colored 
 men in the Papal collegts at'Rome, with special training in 
 the Jesuitical orders, who, operating with their own color at 
 the South, having peculiar advantages of access, and 
 sympathy of race, as well as fitness for the task, wo'uld 
 constitute a working force that Avould seem to give, upon 
 the very threshold of the movement, the most favorable 
 augery of success. Whatever may be alleged against the 
 Roman church in the propagation of its doctrine and tenets 
 in the past, it cannot be denied that the same earnestness 
 and fixedness of purpose actuates it to-day that it did in 
 any period of its eventful history in the past. The fiery 
 zeal, the assertion and use of temporal power, the terrible 
 inquisition with its instruments of torture — the rack, the 
 thumb-screw, and the stake — as means to subserve its ends, 
 have, under the better influences of modern civilization, as 
 well as lessons of wisdom taught it by the logic of events, 
 been abandoned for more peaceful, but no less effective 
 agencies. It is establishing colleges and asylums, we see, 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 109 
 
 in almost every State in the Union, is carrying on a benefi- 
 cent and commendable work in educating orphan and pau- 
 per children wherever it can gather them up, and is, doubt- 
 less, doing as much, if not more, charitable and philanthropic 
 labor in the interest of suffering humanity in the United 
 States than the Protestant churches combined. The liberal 
 and enlightened policy pursued by this church in our own 
 country, with its constantly widening field of charitable 
 work, is fast removing the prejudices and the traditional 
 animosity that formerly existed in the minds of Protestants, 
 and we find to-day a feeling of tolerance, if not of appro- 
 bation, towards its seeming progressive course in the United 
 States. 
 
 If our Protestant churches in the South, upon a careful 
 survey of the field, shall not deem it expedient, or desira- 
 ble to enter upon the work of re-establishing thc'r former 
 relation to the Southern blacks, either partially, in an 
 advisory capacity, or wholly, by incorporating them into 
 their churches and furnishing them ministerial aid, then 
 the next best service that could be rendered to the negro 
 would be an acquiescence in, if not an encouragement of, 
 his absorption into the Catholic Church. 
 
 It may be asked what good would result from an incor- 
 poration of the Southern negro into the Catholic Church, 
 either to the negro himself or to society at large. We 
 would answer by saying that it is the form of worship best 
 suited to the negro, though it may be in the greatest de- 
 gree objectionable, as a religion suitable and adapted to a. 
 highly intelligent and reasoning people. The splendid ritual 
 of the Catholic Church, with its imposing ceremonies, its 
 pomp and pageantry, and the impressive devotional feature 
 in the worship, would strike the negro with force, inspire 
 him with awe, and awaken in his mind a reverence for sa- 
 cred things, that no other form of worship, in his present 
 mental and moral condition, could do. We have always felt 
 doubt about the capacity of the great mass of the negro race 
 to comprehend the plan of salvation, as it has been usually 
 
110 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 taught them. We never heard a negro preacher explain it in 
 such way as to lead us to believe that he had any proper 
 conceptions of it himself, much less the gift to impart cor- 
 rect ideas of it to others. The emotional part of the negro's 
 nature seems to be powerfully wrought up, in the act of 
 worship, while other faculties remain comparatively dor- 
 mant — but little acted upon in the worship itself, or as 
 evidenced by any marked effect afterwards. We can place 
 no high estimate upon that kind of religion that acts 
 merely upon the emotional part of man's nature, that does 
 not take hold upon the intellect in convincing reason, in 
 subduing the will, and bringing the whole man in captivity 
 to its rule. If the negro, either by his natural endowment 
 or state of ignorance, cannot receive the most profit by 
 forms of worship or systems of religion as usually taught 
 to more rational and intelligent people, as suited to their 
 nature and understanding, then would it not seem more 
 in accordance with the fitness of things that the great and 
 essential truths of divinity should be imparted to him in a 
 more simple form ? 
 
 It has been alleged as a ground of objection to the 
 Catholic Church, that it encourages in a measure, if it does 
 not directly practice, a species of idolatry in presenting 
 conspicuously in their churches pictures, statuary and 
 relics of sacred personages, which leads to object worship, 
 rather than the true spiritual worship that should alone 
 engage the thought and inspire the homage of Christian 
 people. We would not here be understood as attempting 
 any defense of the Catholic religion, or appear as an 
 apologist for the objectionable feature just stated, yet 
 when viewed under particular circumstances, as a question 
 of ecclesiastical policy, it is supported by reasons that 
 seem cogent and conclusive. There is, and always has 
 been, outside of the clergy, a large element of ignorance 
 in the Catholic Church, and doubtless the visible repre- 
 sentation by art of truth to be imparted, especially to the 
 ignorant and unreasoning class, would, if not greatly aided 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. Ill 
 
 by such associations, at least, tend to awaken a deeper 
 reverence for sacred things, and produce a feeling in har- 
 mony with devotional exercise. How the images in their 
 sacred books, the statues upon their altars, and other art 
 illustrations of the Divine idea are to represent it to the 
 senses of the worshipper, has, we believe, never been de- 
 clared, ex cathedra, or explained by Catholic writers, that 
 we have seen.' If any people who are the subjects of re- 
 ligious teachings cannot embrace truth in the abstract, 
 when it is necessary to be received by them as the foun- 
 dation of a belief in Christianity, and as a basis of moral 
 and religious character, and which is further necessary to 
 fit them for a reception into religious society, then the sim- 
 pler forms of imparting such truths, if they are to receive 
 it at all, must be resorted to. And again, if the great 
 truths of the gospel necessary for the negro to embrace, 
 as the initial point of all moral improvement, or any ad- 
 vance in religious life, cannot be grasped by reason, where 
 his reasoning /acuity, from any cause, cannot perform the 
 necessary office, then systematic representation of such 
 truths, if it will aid him in their acquisition, would seem, 
 to that extent, allowable, even by those who hold to anti- 
 Catholic views on this particular subject. 
 
 While the Papal system of religion, with its forms of 
 worship, is well adapted to the negro's nature and condition 
 in life, it would, in the second place, retain him more securely 
 within its organization, and more effectually control him, not 
 only in matters of religion, but in his civil relations, than 
 any other religious organization. There seems to be a con- 
 servative power inherent in the Catholic Church that is 
 alone peculiar to it, and has preserved it for fifteen centu- 
 ries from discord, schism and internal weakness, that has 
 so often been the bane of other systems of religion. This, 
 doubtless, springs from its peculiar organization as an eccle- 
 siastical body, the implicit obedience it exacts to its man- 
 dates, and the sublime faith which in some mysterious way 
 it inspires its members with in the truth and power of its 
 
112 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 mission as a church. Its temporal policy in the matter of 
 discipline does not^ recognize expulsion from the church 
 as a proper method of dealing with immoral members, as 
 long as they may be true to the CathoHc faith. It main- 
 tains that the communicant cannot be alienated from the 
 church only upon grounds of heresy, and that it is the 
 appropriate work of the church to carry on the process of 
 reformation in the life and character of its members, how- 
 ever^deeply stained with sin that of any offending member 
 may be. And by holding the negro securely in its folds, 
 it would not only begin a work of reformation upon him, 
 but one of charity, and not only philanthropy, in his behalf, 
 that is greatly needed at,times and places where he is often 
 neglected, even by his own race. If it did not impart a 
 growth in morals, and put him on a line of religious pro- 
 gression, it would arrest at least a farther decline, and pre- 
 vent his drifting back to pagan rites, as he is prone to do, 
 when left to his own spiritual guidance. 
 
 While we of the South have been correctly taught that 
 religion is something too sacred to be connected with the 
 policies of civil government, or to be controlled in any way 
 by secular considerations, yet, in endeavoring to work out 
 the problem that presents itself to the Southern people, in 
 connection with the negro race, no factor should be omitted 
 that could be considered necessary to its solution. Con- 
 temporaneous, or modern history, presents no parallel case, 
 with analogies that assimilate it in essential particulars, to 
 that which now exists at the South. The case of the Moors, 
 in Spain, where two distinct races, nearly equally divided 
 as to numbers, disputed for the supremacy of race for eight 
 centuries, resulting in the final overthrow and expulsion of 
 the Moors, approximates the situation in the South nearer 
 than any other, perhaps, in the whole range of history. 
 We state here, that we are very far from attempting to con- 
 tribute to anything like a sensational feeling upon this par- 
 ticular point, as the reader has, doubtless, observed that 
 we have dealt in a spirit of candor in our preceding remarks 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 113 
 
 upon every phase of the negro question that has presented 
 itself. It is by a statement of known facts, and a fair and 
 candid interpretation of them, following their necessary 
 logical sequence, that we can reach rational and satisfactory 
 conclusions upon any question that may be presented. 
 And every thoughtful man must see that the ten years of 
 freedom to the negroes in our midst, with the present gen- 
 eration- of them under the restraints of slavery, to the ex- 
 tent of yielding obedience and deference to the whites, by 
 force of habit, which will be completely obliterated in the 
 next fifteen or twenty years, serves but little now in indi- 
 cating the state of feeling and attitude that he may assume 
 towards the Southern whites at the close of that period. 
 
 It has been doubtless generally observed, that there ex- 
 ists between the boys of the two races a feeling of antag- 
 onism, growing more apparent every year, and which every 
 man now thirty years old recollects very distinctly as not 
 having existed in the intercourse between white and negro 
 boys fifteen or twenty years ago. This fact has been re- 
 marked to us by prudent, clever, colored men, who express- 
 ed the belief that such feeling was not instilled by colored 
 parents in the minds of their children, and were at a loss 
 to account for it. This thing is not dependent upon the 
 training and discipline of the boys, but is governed by an 
 ethnological law which asserts itself in this particular, and 
 produces results as clearly and unmistakeably as does the 
 race law develop any other class of facts. We quote here 
 an utterance of Fred Douglass, made before the National 
 Colored Convention at Washington, in 1875, not for any 
 truth that it contains, but to show the spirit that, no 
 doubt, does, to some extent, pervade "the rising genera- 
 tion." He says : "The rising generation are as brave and 
 daring as are the white men. Already this spirit is taking 
 deep root in the minds of thousands, who have nothing 
 to lose in the contest, and who would rejoice to sacrifice 
 their Hves for their liberty." (He doubtless meant equal- 
 ity.) 
 
114 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 There must be, in the nature of things, a degree of 
 social ostracism, that will keep the negro in his natural 
 and proper sphere. This separation, however, need not 
 obtain in matters of religion, to the same extent, or in the 
 same sense, that must necessarily occur in social and polit- 
 ical life. One of the chief dangers that we may appre- 
 hend in the future, arises from the continued segregation 
 of the negro race into religious society exclusively their 
 own, which would show to them their complete isolation^ 
 where all the evil influences of mere race-feeling would 
 operate upon them to the fullest extent. An insuperable 
 caste on account of their origin, color, and physical for- 
 mation, will always separate them, socially, from the whites. 
 They will be excluded from public office, its honors and 
 emoluments ; and if religion, whose mission and office arc 
 to purify the heart of man, and fill it with peace, love and 
 charity towards all mankind, should fail to show any con- 
 necting link between the two races, then, indeed, the 
 negro would feel that he was a veritable " Pariah, " and 
 every white man's hand against him. 
 
 While the great mass of this race will very probably re- 
 main in a state of ignorance for successive generations, num- 
 bers will be educated, which will stimulate their pride and 
 aAvaken new aspirations, and, finding a superior, and the 
 ruling race above them, whose sphere cannot be attained, 
 on account of caste, will cause them to agitate foolish and 
 impracticable questions, which will beget a restive, jealous, 
 and dissatisfied spirit among the masses, that must make 
 society, in the future, more disorderly and insecure than 
 at present. For obvious reasons, therefore, the white 
 people should pursue a just, kind, and conciliatory course 
 toward the negro in the private relations of life, and in 
 those connections in which the negro can feel a sense of 
 public justice towards him, and interest in his behalf, such 
 as grow out of legislation, the administration of public 
 law, and in matters of religion, a conservative influence 
 may be wielded that would tend to allay much of the 
 trouble that might arise in the future. 
 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 115 
 
 In this seeming digression from the subject that we were 
 discussing antecedently, we have enlarged upon the possi- 
 ble dangers that may arise in the future, in order to show 
 the necessity of putting into operation those moral in- 
 fluences that would redound to the well-being of the negro 
 race, and tend to a conservatism of peace, order, and the 
 best interest of Southern society. We have endeavored 
 to show that the Catholic Church, next to our Southern 
 Protestant Churches, was the best agency for the accom- 
 plishment of such desirable results. 
 
 There has been repeated attempts in the past, and are, 
 during the present year, to excite the fears and inflame 
 the prejudices of the American people against the Catho- 
 lic Church, upon the assumption that it would endeavor 
 to gain poh'tical power, and wield it, ultimately, to the 
 subversion of religious liberty in our country. We are 
 gratified in knowing that this spirit of intolerance has been 
 confined to Northern latitudes, and that our Southern peo- 
 ple, who take broad and catholic views of religious lib- 
 erty, have shared but to a very small extent in such spirit. 
 
 The course of the Catholic Church in the United States 
 has been eminently conservative, as every reading man 
 knows. It has not only abstained from all interference in 
 political affairs, but has seemed to be less agitated and 
 wrought upon by political excitement in the past, than 
 any other religious society in the country. Nearly all the 
 Protestant denominations at the North, at the beginning 
 of the late war, and we might say ten years preceding, 
 gave decided and emphatic expression upon the political is- 
 sues then dividing the country. Catholics,North and South, 
 engaged in the late war just as the people of other religious 
 denominations, and were no doubt just as loyal to their 
 respective governments as others, but we have yet to learn 
 that the Catholic Church was exercised by the bitter war 
 feeling that pervaded other churches to the close of hostilities. 
 The Catholics in the Southern States are fully identified 
 with the great body of Southern society, not only as to 
 
116 THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 national interest, but upon those questions that have a 
 peculiar social and political significance. There can be no 
 real ground of apprehension, that if this Church should 
 espouse the cause of the negro, and embrace a considera- 
 ble portion of them in its organization, it w^ould wield an 
 influence inimical to society, but on the other hand we can 
 be reasonably assured that the whole moral power of this 
 Church would be brought to bear in controlling the negro 
 in the interest of peace. It would not tolerate, much less 
 favor, any pretensions to an equality of races, but treat the 
 negro simply as an object of religious instruction and im- 
 provement, as it has done in its mission fields upon the 
 coast of Africa, the West Indies and other places where the 
 African race has been the subject of its religious enterprise. 
 We repeat: It our Southern Protestant Churches, for any 
 reasons, should not engage in the religious work that seems 
 necessary to meet the exigencies in the case of the South- 
 ern negro, and if the two great evils that threaten him in 
 the future, to wit : his proclivity to drift from Christianity 
 to Paganism, and the no less evil of his attempted absorp- 
 tion into the Methodist E. Church (North), can be averted 
 by his incorporation into the Catholic Church, then it be- 
 comes a desideratum, that is sanctioned by Christian regard 
 for the negro, as well as supported by considerations of 
 public policy. 
 
This book is due at the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY on the 
 last date stamped under "Date Due " If not on hold it may be 
 renewed by bringing it to the library 
 
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