I believe them incapable, for many reasons, of properly controlling 
 public affairs, bat I do believe the mi capab e of making valuable 
 citizens under the wiser control of the whites. My solution of the 
 problem is simply, “Hands off.” Let no man be afraid that if the 
 Northern people cease their interference the negroes will be driven 
 to the wall. On the contrary, it is your interference that causes or 
 aggravates whatever of trouble is inflicted upon them. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 SENATOR Z. B. VANCE, 
 
 OF NORTH CAROLINA, 
 
 ON 
 
 THE NEGRO QUESTION, 
 
 r 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE \ 
 
 SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 % 
 
 ON 
 
 Thursday, January 30, 1890. 
 

 ! 
 
 
 / 
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 
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p 3. ^7 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OP 
 
 SENATOR Z. B. VANCE. 
 
 Mr. VANCE. Mr. President, in accordance with the notice which I 
 have heretofore given, I ask leave to make a few remarks on the bill 
 introduced by the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler]. 
 
 The VICE-PRESIDENT. If there be no further morning business 
 that order is closed, and the Chair lays before the Senate the bill (S. 
 1121) to provide for the emigration of persons of color from the South¬ 
 ern States. 
 
 Mr. VANCE. Mr. President, one of the earliest recorded utter¬ 
 ances of inspiration is, that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the 
 children. This is another way of saying that the mistakes of one 
 generation endure to plague another. 
 
 Several hundred years ago this fair land of ours, which it would seem 
 God had specially intended for the chosen seat of liberty and the noblest 
 development of man, was desecrated by the introduction of human 
 slavery. The serpent thus entered into our pc litical Eden. The great 
 forests which covered the face of the earth called for labor to remove 
 them, for more labor than the slowly coming immigration of the free 
 races afforded. The morals of the age j ustified the holding of barbarous 
 races in bondage. The favorite place for obtaining bondsmen was the 
 African coast. So desirable did the supplying of the newly discovered 
 islands and continents of the West with cheap labor appear, that old 
 John Hawkins was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, as much for his suc¬ 
 cessful introduction of a cargo of slaves into the West Indies, as for his 
 exploits against the Spaniards. Even so great aud good a man as Las 
 Casas, the Spanish apostle to the Indians, once advocated the introduc¬ 
 tion African slavery. 
 
 First and foremost in this calamitous and iniquitous traffic was New 
 England. In fact, so anxious were the good people of those colonies 
 for slaves that they reduced to bondage the native Indians whom they 
 captured in war, and, not unfrequently, those wicked people of their 
 own race and blood who were guilty of differing from them in relig¬ 
 ious opinions. 
 
 The tobacco-growing colonies of the South soon followed suit in the 
 importation of African slaves,and early found how profitable this cheap 
 and involuntary labor was in the raising of their great staple. The in¬ 
 troduction of the cultivation and uses of cotton soon gave a further im¬ 
 petus to slaveholding, and made the chief prosperity of all the South¬ 
 ern regions to depend mainly upon this enforced labor. Whilst the 
 want of profitable returns gradually lessened the hold of the North 
 upon slavery, its great profits constantly increased that hold upon the 
 South. 
 
 The stony and sterile fields of New England called for manufactures 
 
 X r 
 
 XV i 
 
4 
 
 and commerce. That commerce consisted very largely in purchasing 
 slaves on the African coast, and selling them to Southern planters. 
 Thus their interests constantly drifted the Northern and Southern 
 people apart in regard to African slavery. After a time it ceased to exist 
 altogether in the North, by reason of emancipation laws made to take 
 eff ct at fixed periods, and by their sales to their Southern neighbors. 
 By this time the wrongfulness of holding slaves fully dawned upon the 
 conscience of the Northern people. Its prickings became so active that 
 they not only deemed it a sin to hold a slave themselves, but to permit 
 anybody else to hold one, even though there was no responsibility what¬ 
 ever upon them for the transgression. 
 
 They even went so far in obeying the dictates of conscience, that they 
 did not hesitate to stand up boldly in the sight of God, with the pur¬ 
 chase money in their pockets, and denounce the vengeance of heaven 
 against their Southern neighbors for holding on to the negro which they 
 themselves had sold them. 
 
 Every requisite to the effectual working of a good conscience was 
 present. Slaveholding was not only unprofitable, as has been said, 
 upon their soil and in their climate, but the lucrative trade of supply¬ 
 ing the Southern planters was abolished by the Constitution. In ad¬ 
 dition to this their sense of rectitude was uupardonably offended by 
 the contemplation of the well-doing of their neighbors. Of course, men 
 who burnt witches, banished or enslaved Quakers, and had made for¬ 
 tunes by the horrors of “the middle passage, 7 ’ could not be expected 
 to tolerate any longer the ungodly thing which brought fortunes to Vir¬ 
 ginia and Carolina planters. With ever increasin ; bitterness this con¬ 
 scientious crusade was kept up with an extravagance of language which 
 scrupled not to denounce the Constitution itself; which respected the 
 slaveholders’ rights under State laws, as “a league with death and a 
 covenant with hell.” The inevitable result is fresh in our recollection. 
 It ultimately led to civil war in which more than a million lives were 
 lost and more than three billions of property destroyed, and as much 
 of indebtedness incurred. The slaves were set free. 
 
 Those of us in the South who had deprecated the war and deplored 
 the agitation which led to it, as we sat in the ashes of our own homes and 
 scraped ourselves with the potsherds of desolation, yet consoled our¬ 
 selves for the slaughter of our kindred and the devastation of our fields 
 by the reflection that this, at least, was the end; that the great original 
 wrong committed by our fathers had at last been atoned for; that the 
 Union having been declared indissoluble, and slavery forever abolished, 
 the one great stumbling block and stone of offense was removed, and 
 the people of these American States, henceforth homogeneous, could 
 pursue their great destiny harmoniously and fraternally. 
 
 How little we knew the temper of the victors in that great struggle. 
 We made no calculation for the fact that the necessities of party su¬ 
 premacy would lead men as far as even the prickings of conscience for 
 an unprofitable sin had done. No sooner had we fairly witnessed the 
 end of hostilities before acts of Congress were passed directing the sub¬ 
 version of all law and civil government in the States of the South, under 
 cover of which they were divided into military districts, over each of 
 which was placed a general of the Army, supported by sufficient troops. 
 To these generals and their bayonets was committed the task of form¬ 
 ing governments for the people of ihese overthrown States. This they 
 did by holding elections under military coutrol, by suppressing the vote 
 of every free white man in those States, who, having at any time taken 
 an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, had aiterwards 
 
o 
 
 done any act in aid of the rebellion, and by thrusting with military force 
 upon the ballot-box the entire mass of emancipated slaves, to whom the 
 right to vote had been given by no law, human or divine, known to our 
 federative system. By the constitution thus forced upon the Southern 
 people the negroes were made voters and invested with the like privi¬ 
 leges in all respects as the white people. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States had in like manner been so 
 amended as to forbid the States from making any discrimination against 
 the negro race, or in any manner impairing the rights which had thus 
 been conferred upon them. Again, we in the South thought we had 
 arrived at the end of our troubles connected with the negro question. 
 Surely, we reasoned, as the colored man is now free, as he is made by 
 law, State and Federal, equal with the white man in all respects, and 
 has been given the ballot to protect himself in these rights, surely the 
 matter will now be at rest. We can close the chasm which the agita¬ 
 tion about him has created between us and our Northern neighbors. 
 Again, were we sadly mistaken. Alter forty years of bitter agitation, 
 four years of bloody war, and near a quarter of a century more of trial 
 under the new order of things, the negro again ‘‘bobs up serenely,’’ 
 and for his sake we are to-day threatened not only with a political agi¬ 
 tation sufficiently disastrous witliiu itself, but with a servile war whose 
 weapons shall be the midnight torch and the assassin’s dagger, and 
 whose victims shall be sleeping women and children. 
 
 This agitation and this threatened war is to arise from one of two 
 facts: Either the friends of the negro in the North are disappointed be¬ 
 cause their, well-laid schemes of reconstruction failed to secure the Re¬ 
 publican party any aid from the Southern States, or because their rea¬ 
 sonable expectations and hopes as to the colored man’s capacity tor 
 helping himself and forgoverning others have been grievously wrecked. 
 
 The Senator from Kansas, in his speech a few days ago, indignantly 
 denied the former assertion, and put the action of his friends altogether 
 upon the high ground of benevolent patriotism. He was so candid in 
 admitting the fault of his people for the introduction of slavery into 
 this country, and for its retention in the North until it ceased to be 
 profitable, that I was in hopes to hear him admit with equal candor 
 that the whole scheme of reconstruction was intended for partisan Re¬ 
 publican purposes. I concede this to him, however, and candidly ad¬ 
 mit that he does so believe and that, perhaps, he is the only saue man 
 in Europe or America who is of this opinion. Taking it, then, upon 
 his ground, is it any wonder that the truth compelled him to say: 
 
 But it can no longer be denied that suffrage and citizenship have hitherto not 
 justified the anticipations of those by whom they were conferred. They have 
 not been effective in the hands of the freedman, either for attack or defense. 
 
 In other words, here is a frank admission that twenty-five years of 
 freedom and nearly as much of citizenship has proven a lamentable 
 failure. It is true that he says the whites in the South are to blame 
 for it; that they have employed force, violence, and fraud, of which I 
 will say more hereafter. I will only now make this suggestion: If it 
 be true that in States where they largely outnumber the whites they 
 are either intimidated from voting or are defrauded in the counting of 
 their votes, is not that a strong argument against their supposed ca¬ 
 pacity lor self-government? Are a people fit to govern themselves and 
 others who would suffer themselves thus to be treated? Is any man 
 worthy of freedom who requires constantly to be tutored and protected 
 in its exercise? Is a man fitted to run a race who has to be held up 
 in order that he may walk? I have, indeed, heard of a beef which had 
 
6 
 
 to be held up in order to be knocked down to fill an army contract, 
 but I have not known men fit for freedom who would be deterred from 
 its exercise in the face of inferior numbers. Is there anything in the 
 sentiment of the poet who says: 
 
 Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not 
 Who would be free, themselves 
 Must strike the blow? 
 
 The Senator says— 
 
 That no other people on the face of this earth have ever submitted to the 
 wrongs, the injustice which have been for twenty-five years heaped upon the 
 colored men of the South, without revolution and blood. 
 
 More than once this is repeated. It constitutes the burden of his 
 speech, around which is clustered the brightest display of rhetorical 
 pyrotechnics ever employed to conceal a paucity of ideas by the gor¬ 
 geousness of phraseology. This rhetorical display across the forensic 
 heavens reminded me forcibly of an astronomer’s description of the re¬ 
 markable tenuity of the tail of a certain comet. He said that its 
 length was a hundred million miles as it stretched athwart the skies— 
 that its breadth was 50,000 miles—and yet the solid matter which 
 it contained could be condensed and transported in a one-horse 
 cart. I listened and listened with the greatest entertainment to that 
 speech, and searched and wondered where the remedy for the evil was 
 and when it would be announced, and when I should see the solid 
 matter of the illumination. Suddenly, before the light expired and 
 we were left in darkness, he announced that the solution was justice, 
 which, however sententious it might be, was about as definite and real 
 as the twinklings which remain under the closed eyelids after the with¬ 
 drawal of a fierce light. 
 
 Justice, as he explains it, means our submission to negro rule. Hav¬ 
 ing submitted to this for so long a time as he thinks would be fair, 
 should it prove a fa lure he graciously promises that he will then con¬ 
 sult with us about some other solution of the problem ! 
 
 What are the facts which support this grandiose slander of an entire 
 people? What wrongs and injustice have been done by the Southern 
 people to these negroes that call for the “use of the torch and the dag¬ 
 ger? ” They have been given the right of suffrage, not by the free 
 action of the Southern whites, I admit, but at least by their reluctant 
 assent. Since their admission to citizenship they have been elected to 
 both branches of Congress and have occupied almost every position un¬ 
 der State authority. They have controlled entire States, counties, and 
 municipalities, and in every instance their rule was marked oy failure 
 and ruin. It was a war against property, intelligence, and respecta¬ 
 bility. The few years of their misrule in the South will be forever 
 remembered in our history for their corruption and retrogression, and 
 will constitute a damnable blot on the memory of those who authorized 
 it, and who looked on with complacency so long as the thieves were 
 Republicans and the victims were Democrats. 
 
 Whilst ever they.could hold the throttled State in the Republican 
 ranks, and send mongrels to the Senate and House of Representatives 
 to strengthen Republican hands against “ the cowardly and degraded 
 element in the North that sympathized with treason,” not a word of 
 protest was heard from that entire party of justice and modest right¬ 
 eousness. But as soon as this corrupt and incompetent rule had wrought 
 its inevitable results and had been overthrown by the union of all the 
 best elements in the South, aided by the superior knowledge of the 
 
7 
 
 superior race, then began the complaints of Southern outrages and in¬ 
 justice. It is all very well to deny now that the whole object of recon¬ 
 struction was partisan advantage, and to claim that the motive was 
 patriotic. It is but the natural verification of the saying of old Samuel 
 Johnston, that ” patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” All the 
 world knows why citizenship was given to the negro and the reason of 
 the bitter disappointment which is everywhere confessed at its results. 
 
 There is surely here no outrage against the negro that calls for revo¬ 
 lution and blood. The wrong was against the white man, and was re¬ 
 dressed by him without revolution. In obedience to the Constitution 
 the Southern States admitted the colored citizens to a full participation 
 in all the legal rights enjoyed by white citizens. They were placed in 
 the jury-box, commissioned as magistrates, permitted to form companies 
 in the volunteer militia, duly commissioned and armed. School-houses 
 were built for them and normal schools established for the education 
 of their teachers, whilst the school fund of the States was apportioned 
 to their schools, in proportion to their numbers, with all possible fair¬ 
 ness. Asylums were built for the care of their insane, deaf, dumb, 
 and blind, wherein they receive the same treatment as the whites. The 
 taxes for all this were levied by white legislators on their white con¬ 
 stituents, who paid at least 95 per cent, of the total out of the little 
 which the negroes and carpet-baggers had leit them. If there be any 
 wrong, injustice, in all this, it can surely be seen only by that intel¬ 
 lectual vision which, “reaching far as angels ken,” beholds no motives 
 for the preservation of Kepublican supremacy in reconstruction, but 
 only patriotic benevolence. 
 
 Since the restoration of the South to the control of its own people 
 the progress and prosperity of the negroes have been as great as, if not 
 greater than, in any other country where his race exists. His increase 
 in numbers has been phenomenal, and furnishes ample proof that he 
 is fed, clothed, and sheltered. The decrease of the death rate, of crimi¬ 
 nal convictions, and of illiteracy, taken with the gradual and unfailing 
 increase of his wealth, which is abundantly proven by the statistics, all 
 give the lie flatly to the oft-repeated story of oppression and wrong un¬ 
 der which he suffered or is said to suffer. The truth is, he began to 
 prosper when the whites took control. Progress for him would have 
 been as impossible under his own rule as it was for the whites. Ten 
 years more of such government as reconstruction fixed upon the South 
 would have made that fairest portion of the American continent a howl¬ 
 ing wilderness. In short, it would have been Africanized, a fate which 
 even the Senator from Kansas says is “not desirable;” which, taken 
 in connection with his opening remarks on the danger of “blood-poi¬ 
 soning” by the adulteration of races, means much more than appears 
 on the surface. The best thing, then, that could have been done for 
 the negro was that which was done when the management of public 
 affairs was taken from inexperienced and incapable hands and placed 
 w ith the natural and competent rulers of the land. 
 
 Where, then, I ask again, does the outrage on the colored man come in? 
 
 The Senator makes no complaint of the causes w T hich led to the over¬ 
 throw of reconstruction. He says: 
 
 Until 1877 the unstable fabric erected by the architects of reconstruction was 
 upheld by the military of the United States, and when this was withdrawn the 
 incongruous edifice toppled headlong and vanished away as the baseless fabric 
 of a vision. It disappeared in cruel and ferocious convulsions which form 
 one of the most shameful and shocking of all the bloody tragedies of history. 
 The attempt to reorganize society upon the basis of numbers failed. 
 
8 
 
 Perhaps the Senator alludes to the stealing of the Presidency by his 
 party, which happened in that year and which, though both shame¬ 
 ful and shocking, and in which the attempt to reorganize society on 
 the basis of numbers did to a certain extent fail, I did not know was 
 properly characterized as a bloody tragedy. 
 
 It is, however, an unequivocal admission that the reconstruction edi¬ 
 fice was unstable and incongruous—mild terms indeed for this most 
 infernal episode in our history; that it was upheld alone by military 
 power, and disappeared when that power was withdrawn. No wrong 
 upon the negro appears there. It seems that these intolerable outrages, 
 to which no other people on earth have submitted so long, are supposed 
 somehovv to exist in the fact that the overthrow of this incongruous 
 structure—the creature of military force—has been followed by the 
 maintaining on the part of the whites of the advantage which they 
 gained by its downfall. ‘ 4 In that struggle he says that ed ucation, wealth, 
 political experience, land-ownership in the South, all conspired against 
 the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that they emerged 
 from that dreadful conflict in full possession of all the powers of the 
 States, and no serious effort has been made to deprive them of their 
 guilty acquisition. ” I beg to remind the Senator, however, that many 
 guilty efforts have been made to deprive them of their serious acquisi¬ 
 tion. 
 
 But, inasmuch as the powers of the States are recognized by the Con¬ 
 stitution, it is strange that the possession of them by their citizens 
 should be held to be a violation of the Constitution. 
 
 But the taking and keeping possession cf the powers of the States 
 seems -to be the wrong inflicted upon the colored man. The gravamen 
 of that wrong is that the negro can no longer send here Republican 
 Senators and Representatives from the South and the votes of Repub¬ 
 lican electoral colleges to aid in the manufacture of Republican Presi¬ 
 dents. There are many errors of assumption required to make up this 
 supposed wrong. In the first place, it is assumed that the vote is sup¬ 
 pressed on the ground that every colored man is a Republican. Next, 
 it is assumed that every colored Republican is necessarily incapable of 
 being influenced or beguiled by the arts of the electioneerer, and will 
 always cast his ballot for the Republican nominees. They who reason 
 thus go to the census tables and ascertain the number of negro voters 
 of qualified age, the number of white voters likewise, and then estimate 
 what their majorities ought to be. 
 
 The discovery of a colored Democratic vote in the ballot-box is ac¬ 
 cepted as priraa facie evidence of fraud. If those majorities are not 
 forthcoming, they conclude that the vote of their friends has been sup¬ 
 pressed. They forget what influences even one portion of our own peo¬ 
 ple can exert over another; much less do they remember how much 
 more easily the united, superior race, with all its intelligence, wealth, 
 and power, can influence the action of a race so far inferior and still in 
 the shadow of the bondage from which they have been withdrawn. 
 
 Neither has it entered into the consideration of the people of the North 
 to place any stress upon the fact that there did exist, and still exists, 
 between the former owner and the present freedman many of those 
 kindly and controlling relations which existed between master and 
 slave. It must be remembered that, in addition to his ignorance and 
 inexperience of affairs, the colored man still leans upon and looks to 
 his former master for direction and advice—universally so in all matters 
 except politics; that he is almost always either the tenant or the em- 
 
9 
 
 ploye of the white man, and that white man belongs to a race which 
 the Senator from Kansas says is the— 
 
 Most arrogant and rapacious, the most exclusive and indomitable in history. 
 It is the conquering and unconquerable race, through which alone man has 
 taken possession of the physical and moral world. To our race humanity is in¬ 
 debted for religion, for literature, for civilization. It has a genius for conquest, 
 for politics, for jurisprudence, and for administration. r * * All other races 
 
 have been its enemies or its victims. 
 
 Is it possible that such a race of men as this can not without brutal 
 violence or detestable fraud maintain its supremacy over such a race 
 as the negro? Is it statesmanlike to assume that it can legitimately 
 have no influence, exert no force over the weaker and more ignorant? 
 Are there not undisputed facts sufficient to justify reasoning men every¬ 
 where in doubting the truth of these stories of outrage and wrong? 
 For example, I am glad to say that North Carolina is one of the States 
 in the South where there, is least complaint of infringements of the col¬ 
 ored man’s rights, either at the ballot-box or in the courts of justice. 
 
 The State of Mississippi is one of the States of the South where the 
 complaints on behalf of the colored man are loudest and most vehement; 
 yet for six months past the negroes in eastern North Carolina have been 
 voluntarily moving at the rate perhaps of three or four thousand per 
 month to this very State of Mississippi. They are not going to Kan¬ 
 sas or to any other Northern State, but to Mississippi, presumably for 
 the purpose of having their votes suppressed and of being slaughtered— 
 to Arkansas and to Texas. The fact is, they are influenced like other 
 •people, by the great economic law of supply and demand. For two or 
 three years past eastern North Carolina has suffered from a failure ol 
 the crops, and the planters of Mississippi are offering the negroes better 
 wages than the Carolina planters can afford to pay, and the chief agents 
 employed by the Mississippians for effecting their contracts are intelli¬ 
 gent educated negro men. many of them preachers. 
 
 Evidently they do not believe these stories that are served up for cam¬ 
 paign, political purposes here. I do not wish to be misunderstood in 
 this matter. That there are instances of mistreatment and occasionally 
 of cruelty to the negroes now and then occurring in the South I can¬ 
 didly admit and regret. The millennium has not yet arrived in the land 
 of reconstruction; the reign of perfect righteousness, of absolute jus¬ 
 tice, has not yet been established south of Mason and Dixon’s line, 
 though of course it is iu full operation just north of that imaginary 
 division. There there is no suppression of the popular vote by gerry¬ 
 mander or otherwise; there there is no purchase of the floating vote in 
 blocks of five, no ejectment of colored children from white schools or 
 colored men from theaters and barber-chairs, and where we may hope 
 that, in the process of time and in the spread of intelligence and in¬ 
 creased appreciation of the virtues of the negroes, one black man may 
 soon be sent to Congress from the North; that some railroad attorney 
 or millionaire will make room in the Senate of the United States lor the 
 colored brother; that one colored postmaster for a white town may be 
 appointed in the North; that in the State of Kansas, the soil so prolific 
 in friendships for the colored man, a respectable negro, duly nominated 
 on the Kepublican ticket, may receive the full vote of his party, and not 
 be scratched almost to the point of defeat by those who love him, as he 
 was in Topeka; that one accomplished colored man may be sent abroad 
 to represent his country in some other land than Hayti or Liberia. 
 
 Let us hope even that the great Kepublican party of the North may 
 find the colored man fit to serve his country in some other region than 
 
1 
 
 10 
 
 the South and this great dumping-ground of political dead-beats, the 
 District oi Columbia, upon whose helpless people has heretofore been 
 billeted, in all the offices from the judiciary down, every worn-out 
 partisan (or whom his people at home had no more use. Nay, under 
 the appeals against the injustice of suppressing the colored vote which 
 we daily hear, ir would be a rapture of hope to express the belief that 
 these great aposws of justice would re-tore the right of suffrage to the 
 225,000 people of this District, from whom it was taken on the well 
 known ground that the negro vote was about to prove here an incon¬ 
 venience. It might be replied, technically, that the injustice of sup¬ 
 pressing votes depended upon the color of the voter, and that it was not 
 an outrage to suppress white votes; or, again, that it was no injustice 
 to the franchise to suppress the vote by law on account of ignorance, 
 nativity, or poverty, as so long prevailed in Rhode Island and Massa¬ 
 chusetts. But I positively deny that there is any systematic, authorized, 
 or official interference with the guarantied rights'of the colored man in 
 the South! 
 
 I positively aver that these constitutional obligations concerning the 
 colored people are observed in good faith and that all individual in¬ 
 fringements upon them are as much deprecated by the majority of our 
 people as similar violations of law are deprecated in the North, and 
 their perpetrators are punished by our courts with much more good 
 faith and promptitude than the violators of the fugitive-slave laws 
 weie punished in the North, or than election bribery is punished to¬ 
 day. It was but yesterday that we were told in this Senate Chamber 
 the story of how a great criminal in behalf of the Republican party had 
 been shielded Irom justice by the connivance of his party friends, (or 
 the ollense of debauching and attempting to debauch the purity of the 
 ballot-box. He is yet at large and dehant. The condition of the South¬ 
 ern people with regard to crime is ample proof of this. In criminal sta¬ 
 tistics we do not fear to compare records with any people. In the cat- 
 e S 01 T personal violence I admit that some of our communities are 
 open to severe criticism; but I contend that the records will show that 
 m the more odious, baser, and less manly crimes many of the Northern 
 States are tar ahead of anything known in the South. 
 
 Be that as it may, however, the negro question has again come for¬ 
 ward to vex the people of the South, and has to be met. Whether or 
 not they are treated with injustice and oppression, it does not matter 
 to those men or that party who expect to profit by the agitation; nor 
 does it matter whether the weal of the negro or the public generally 
 is to be advanced thereby; that is not their object. 
 
 The ieal motive is that some men may have a horse to ride who 
 would otliei wise perhaps have to walk. The negro and his wrongs or 
 rights will never be quiet so long as there is a white man to ride him. 
 it has oiten been asserted that a superior and an inferior race which 
 wi not amalgamate can not live together under the same government 
 with equal rights and laws. This may or may not be true. 
 
 It is natural to suppose, if they can not agree, that the Stronger will 
 have its way and dominate the weaker; but there is one proposition, 
 Mr I resident, of which you may rest assured, there is no kind of 
 doubt: the stronger will never submit to the domination of the weaker. 
 Inis might as well be set down as res ad judicata. 
 
 there is another fact that may be noted now in connection with it. 
 lne k enator irom Kansas let fall an expression which I regretted ex¬ 
 ceedingly to hear. Prelacing his utterance that he had never known 
 
11 
 
 a people to endure such wrongs without revolution and blood, he 
 said: 
 
 The South, Mr. President, is standing upon a volcano, the South is sitting 
 upon a safety-valve. They are breeding innumerable John Browns and Nat 
 Turners. Already mutterings of discontent by hostile organizations are heard. 
 The use of the torch and the dagger is advised. 
 
 This is reasonably construed as an iuci tation to the work of murder and 
 arson, and although he says that he “deplores it, ” yet, as the excuse and 
 justification for such a course immediately iollows, it is open to the con¬ 
 struction that it is an indirect invitation to these people to lay our 
 homes in ashes while we sleep, and murder unsuspecting people. 
 
 The supposition that they are capable of such atrocities, it seems to 
 me, is proof positive of their incapacity for civilized government and the 
 extraordinary idea of justice and humanity of him who suggests it. 
 He surely does not know anything of the inflammable nature of the 
 negro in the South or he would not have ventured on the expression of 
 such a threat. He furthermore told us in this connection that in case 
 such a calamity came upon the southern people as a servile war, attended 
 with whatever horrors it might be waged, we need look for no help from 
 the people of our blood in the North; that we must “ tread the ’wine 
 press alone. ’ ’ 
 
 If he speaks truly in this, he passes the blackest and vilest judgment 
 upon his own people that ever politician dared utter. 
 
 But, Mr. President, I do not believe one word of it. As the negro 
 race that was born and reared among us did not rise up to do us harm 
 in the hour of our extremest adversity, even for the great boon of free¬ 
 dom and amidst the most tempting incitements, but continued faith¬ 
 ful to their masters and their families even within hearing of the guns 
 that were roaring to set them free, so I do not believe that they can be 
 thus incited to attempt it now. 
 
 They have more of State and sectional pride and of neighborly affec¬ 
 tion for the people among whom they live than the Senator is willing 
 to give them credit for. Nor do I believe that what he has said about 
 the feeling of the North is true; on the contrary, I believe as firmly as 
 I believe in the gallantry, the courage, and all of the noble qualities of 
 the great race to which I belong, that hundreds of thousands of stout 
 hearts would come to our assistance on the wings of steam preceded by 
 the messenger of lightning, should we unhappily ever need such help. 
 
 It might be that they would mostly be composed of what he calls the 
 “cowardly and degraded elements,” the same elements that filled 
 your armies for the defense of the Union and which filled the ranks of 
 thp defenders of the Constitution after the Union was saved; but, for 
 the sake of our common kindred and common glory, I believe that 
 there would be no such feeling and no party division in such a crisis. 
 But, Mr. President, we shall not need to call for help; we could manage 
 such a war without assistance. Had the Senator been a participant in 
 or a critical observer even of the last one, he would know that the 
 eleven Southern States, which, though much divided among themselves, 
 unaided and alone kept the whole power of the Union, with its un¬ 
 limited forces and untold treasure, at bay for four long years, could 
 easily, with the aid of the great border States, overcome seven millions 
 of negroes. Then there would be a solution of the negro problem that 
 would stay solved. 
 
 But a great mistake is made by those who assume that the whites 
 exercise no influence over the negroes except by force or fraud. The 
 black man is attached to the South and to the great body of its people. 
 
12 
 
 The behavior of the blacks since their freedom has in the main been 
 good and gentle. All things considered, it has been wonderful. I be¬ 
 lieve I can say with truth that I have no personal knowledge of the 
 occurrence of any riot or public disturbance anywhere in the South be¬ 
 tween the races that was not at the instigation of some white scoundrel; 
 and in every case the blacks have got the worst of the fray, being 
 deserted invariably by their cowardly white allies when the bullets 
 began to fly. 
 
 The negroes know this, aud are well aware that the interference of 
 outside friends has always inured to their disadvantage. They know, 
 too, that however arbitrary and determined to rule his own country the 
 white man has been to them, that he has yet never deceived them by 
 lying to them and making promises which he neither could perform 
 nor intended to perform, whilst from the days of reconstruction they 
 have been the victims alike of Northern scoundrels for their personal 
 profit, and of political demagogues for their own aggrandizement; from 
 the selling of Yankee unguents to make their hair straight, or painted 
 pegs with which to secure land, as was said they did in our Peedee country, 
 where some of the finest bottom lands were staked off at a dollar a 
 peg, guarantied by the United States Government to hold forty acres 
 for every f ur pegs against any rebel in the South; to the passage of 
 civil-rights bills tor the purpose of hoisting them into positions of so¬ 
 cial equality with the whites. They know, too, that when they are in 
 any kind of trouble they do not send North to a professional friend or 
 philanthropist for help, but they search at once for old master aud mis¬ 
 tress, or some one of old master’s children. There, I thank God, in 
 nineteen cases out of twenty, they find the help they ask. 
 
 As among the white people there are good and bad, it is so among 
 the colored. Naturally the proportion of bad among the latter is 
 greater than in the former, but still there is a very large percentage in¬ 
 deed who would scorn to wage a barbarous warfare against their white 
 friends, even should the white man get off the safety-valve. I venture 
 the prophecy that should the South ever be engaged in another war her 
 colored citizens would crowd into the ranks of her armies in numbers 
 fully proportioned to the black population. I think our Northern 
 friends who so glibly undertake to set tle the negro question have yet to 
 make the acquaintance of the negro himself. Their judgment of him 
 is formed manifestly by the class that swarm around this capital city, 
 and whose inconvenient presence caused the suppression of the suffrage 
 of this District. You listen to the few who come here to make traffic of 
 their wrongs, and in turn you endeavor to make profit for your party 
 by legislation directed towards those supposed wrongs. 
 
 You acknowledge yourselves mistaken as to the results of reconstruc¬ 
 tion. Many of your people now lavor the withdrawal of the repre¬ 
 sentation in Congress which their numbers have given the South. Is 
 it not possible that you are again mistaken as to the nature of the evils 
 which affect them and what would be best for them? When you as¬ 
 sume that because they mostly profess your polities and vote your 
 tickets that, therefore, they are in a state of discontent that threatens 
 at any moment to break forth in a bloody uprising, may you not be mis¬ 
 taken in the extent of your influence over them? Are you not aware 
 of the difficulty, the constant tutelage, and the vast amount of money 
 you are compelled to enmloy to keep them in subjection to a party 
 whose active aud respectable corporation is as far distant from them 
 as its promises are from its performance; whilst the Democratic party, 
 
« 
 
 13 
 
 composed of the white men of the South, are their neighbors, landlords, 
 and employers? 
 
 Mr. President, what is the so-called negro problem ? As I understand 
 it, it is one that can not be solved by speculation or legislation; but 
 it is a question that will be settled by nature herself, if her laws are not 
 interfered with by the folly and passion of men. Nature will solve it 
 as she does waste, destruction, and all incongruities. It may be thus 
 stated: Given a high-spirited, liberty loving, cultivated, and dominat¬ 
 ing race, occupying a free state of their own establishment, under in¬ 
 stitutions of their own creation, full of activity, energy, and progress; 
 with them, under the same laws, possessed of absolute legal equality, 
 dwells an inferior race, manumitted slaves of recently barbaric origin, 
 with no race traditions, with no history of progress, but lately invested 
 with these unaccustomed and unearned franchises—how shall the two 
 be made to dwell together in fraternity and progress? 
 
 This is the question. It is a principle of our law, fundamental in its 
 nature, that the majority of those to whom the franchise is committed 
 shall rule within limits. Is it a principle of natural law, as old as 
 man himself, that the stronger shall rule without limit. What is 
 strength in a state? Other things being equal numbers give strength; 
 but in the States of the South, whose conduct is complained of, other 
 things are far from equal. The whites where not actually in superior 
 numbers are yet possessed of far superior knowledge, courage, skill in 
 the use of weapons and tools, race pride, traditions, experience of affairs, 
 and self-control. Placing these two side by side, is it not as sure as 
 certainty can be made that one will outstrip the other and control it? 
 Nature would reverse all her own decisions if it were not so. 
 
 If the weaker be in the way of the stronger the former will be re¬ 
 moved. If two men start on a journey, the pace is regulated by the 
 slower, if they be compelled to keep together; and, however great the 
 powers of the swifter, if compelled to wait for his feebler brother, his 
 powers are of no more use than if he had them not. Naturally, he will 
 drop his brother behind and stride forward, The attempt to restrain 
 him by legislation is unnatural and he will resent it. To say that the 
 superior race shall not by its superior knowledge and virtue rule the 
 inferior, is to say that weakness shall control strength, that ignorance 
 and vice shall control knowledge and virtue. To attempt by legisla¬ 
 tion to place ignorance and vice in control of knowledge and virtue be¬ 
 cause of the superior numbers of the ignorant, would be to enact that the 
 civilization of great races shall not enjoy the power and influence with 
 which God has endowed them; that three weak men, however ignorant 
 and debased, shall forever control tw T o white men, however wise and 
 virtuous. 
 
 The mere statement of the proposition shows that it is hostile to the 
 highest natural and moral laws which have been impressed upon man 
 and constitute the basis of his civilization. 
 
 Mr. President, I know the negro well. I was born and reared among 
 them, and have all my life lived in close association with them. I 
 affirm to .you, not that he is incapable of civilization, but that he is in¬ 
 capable of attaining to and keeping up with the civilization of the race 
 to which w r e belong. At the very best, his reflnement must be of a low 
 order compared to ours. Any attempt, therefore, to force him into 
 equality with us in the race of progress can result in nothing else but 
 the retarding of the advancement of the Southern whites. Those who 
 have determined to subject, at all hazards, to negro rule those States 
 of the South where they are in superior numbers, have simply deter- 
 
14 
 
 mined that the white man’s progress shall be measured by the negro’s, 
 if, indeed, it does not result in explosion and mutual destruction. Fair- 
 minded men everywhere may accept this as truth. The sons of Ham 
 have had the same opportunities that the sons of Shem and Japheth 
 have had. No where have they improved them. 
 
 I know not whether I should give credence to the oft-repeated alle¬ 
 gation that they are forever feeling the effect of their ancestor’s ?surse, 
 but this I do know, that they have been in close contact with every civ¬ 
 ilization of which we have any knowledge; with the oldest Egyptian, 
 the Assvro-Babylonian, the Grecian, the Roman, and the modern; in 
 each of them we read of his presence and in every instance he was a 
 slave. 
 
 He learned nothing for the benefit of his race from his civilized mas¬ 
 ters in all these ages. He has made more progress in one hundred years 
 as a Southern slave than he made in all the five thousand years inter¬ 
 vening from his creation until his landing on these shores. 
 
 He has no type now living on this earth equal to those of the present 
 generation who were born and raised in the slave States of America. 
 All of which should be considered by those who have philosophy and 
 fairness enough to look at the matter in some other light than the ne¬ 
 cessities of the Republican party in the next campaign. 
 
 The fact dwelt upon by the Senator from Kansas concerning their 
 behavior towards their masters during the war is fully admitted. It 
 is a strong argument to prove either that they were unfitted for the 
 great boon of liberty or that the horrid stories of inhuman treatment 
 by their masters were lies. I am not only willing but anxious to have 
 justice done them in everything, and to do all that may be required of 
 me to aid them in the difficulties of their position; but I am not will¬ 
 ing that they should rule me or my people. It is my pride that my 
 State has been just to them and generous, and that in the adjusting of 
 the new order of things after their enfranchisement I had no inconsid¬ 
 erable hand in providing those laws and institutions which have made 
 them comparatively well content in North Carolina. 
 
 I believe them incapable, tor many reasons, of properly controlling 
 public affairs, but I do believe them capable of making valuable citi¬ 
 zens under the wiser control of the whites. My solution of the prob¬ 
 lem is simply, “Hands off.” Let no man be afraid that if the North¬ 
 ern people cease their interference the negroes will be driven to the 
 wall. On the contrary, it is your interference that causes or aggravates 
 whatever of trouble is inflicted upon them. 
 
 Such is the nature of man. We prefer to do things of our own voli¬ 
 tion that we would refuse to do at the dictation of those who have no 
 right to order. Within my memory as a child there was a strong and 
 growing anti-slavery party in North Carolina, headed by many of our 
 greatest and most honored citizens, some of whom sat in these seats 
 before me. Orations against slavery and its consequences were freely 
 delivered, and with applause, before the classes of our university. This 
 cause, under the influence of its greatadvocates, would soon haveclaimed 
 a majority of the voters of North Carolina, but those fiery zealots of the 
 North, who, as Carlyle says, were so anxious to serve God that they took 
 the devil into partnership with them, began their interference. A cru¬ 
 sade against slavery and slave-holding, in defiance of legal rights, was 
 begun and kept up uas&il so far was the cause of emancipation over¬ 
 thrown that twenty-five years after these same great and honored North 
 Carolinians would have suffered insult and violence for repeating their 
 orations. Men will not be bullied eveu into doing right. Know, there- 
 
15 
 
 fore, that every speech you make, every law von enact denunciatory of 
 or punitive against the Southern people, with a view to subject them 
 to the rule of their emancipated slaves, defers indelinitely that state 
 of cordial harmony between whites and blacks which is so necessary 
 to both. 
 
 There is another way by which, in my opinion, you also do the ne¬ 
 groes a great damage by your constant interference. You do nothing 
 to increase the cordiality between them and their white neighbors. 
 \ ou know that their well-being depends upon their being on good terms 
 with their landlords and employers more than upon anything else; yet 
 you are constantly endeavoring to drive a wedge between them and to 
 push them further apart. You endeavor to make them look altogether 
 to you tor help. You have coddled them so long and made them so 
 many promises that they have ceased to rely upon their own exertions 
 and have come to believe that it is the duty of others to provide for 
 them. No greater injury could be done to any people. 
 
 The historian of the Spanish conquests in America, Arthur Helps, 
 remarks that the considerate and gentle regulations provided lor the 
 Indians of the Pearl coast by the benevolent Las Casas ‘ ‘ proved a sad re¬ 
 straint upon the energies of the race, as no man leans long on any per¬ 
 son or thing without losing some of his original power and energy.” 
 You have legislated and amended constitutions for him, denounced your 
 neighbors, and glorified the negro and officially wept over his condition 
 until you have to a very great extent made him a “dodder, ” a parasitic 
 animal without support in self-respect or self-reliance, a class of men 
 which of all others is least desirable in a progressive community. 
 
 Any new set of conditions— 
 
 Says the philosopher, Ray Lankester— 
 
 occurring to an animal which render its food and safety very easily attained 
 seem to lead, as a rule, to degeneration. 
 
 Applying this principle in nature to the moral world, Henry Drum¬ 
 mond says: 
 
 Any principle which secures the safety of the individual without personal 
 effort or the vital exercise of faculty is disastrous to moral character. 
 
 Suppose you trust the Southern people forawhile ? You can not be¬ 
 lieve that any considerable number of them desire to do wrong or to 
 treat the negroes unjustly? If you say you trust them and withhold 
 your interference, public sentiment, with a power that can not be re¬ 
 sisted, will soon enforce State laws and constitutional amendments in 
 a manner that will satisfy all honest men; not perfunctorily, but with 
 cheerful zeal. 
 
 I regret exceedingly that I can not support the bill of the Senator 
 from South Carolina. My objection to it is on the ground of imprac¬ 
 ticability. It would result in no relief; few negroes would go from 
 the country under its provisions and those would probably be the best. 
 
 1 can not say that I have any desire to attempt in any way so great 
 and unbistorical a task as removing a whole people, amounting prob¬ 
 ably to 7,000,000. Their presence among ns, of course, I regret. I 
 should be happy to know that there was notone of them in the United 
 States to be the unwilling cause of everlasting contention between our 
 people. But they are here, and I for one am willing to do my best to 
 live with them in harmony. I can well see, however, and appreciate 
 the motive of the honorable Senator in taking this action. I know how 
 his State has been weighed down in the past by this incubus and how 
 dark the future of his people must appear under the ever-threatening 
 
10 
 
 danger of a recurrence to the carnival of corruption and misruxe of 
 1868-’69 and 1-70. 
 
 So far as the evil may be capable of remedy by removal of any kind, 
 I would suggest that it is perfectly practicable to induce these people 
 to settle in the various States of this Union which now have few or no 
 colored people. There is ample room for them throughout the Northern 
 and Northwestern States, each one of which could receive enough to re¬ 
 lieve the pressure entirely upon those States in the South whose progress 
 is about to be destroyed, and yet not inconveniently interfere with the 
 well-being of any Northern State. Besides, if the presence of negroes 
 in superior numbers does amount to a positive evil in the South, I sub¬ 
 mit that it is the duty of the other States to assist them in removing or 
 so distributing the evil that it shall be harmless. If the negro is a good 
 thing we are willing to divide him up. [Laughter.] There is plenty 
 of him to go round. 
 
 Nothing is wanting to the execution of this suggestion except the con¬ 
 sent of these Northern States. One-half of the inducements and the solici¬ 
 tations which they hold out to foreigners, if extended to the negroes of 
 the South, would within ten years draw such numbers of them as to 
 leave all the Southern States with decided white majorities; and it is 
 well-known that there is little or no complaint of the mistreatment of 
 negroes where there are white majorities. This would equalize the con¬ 
 ditions of all the States. The introduction of large numbers of the 
 colored race into every Northern State would be equivalent to an amend¬ 
 ment to the Constitution and would restrain you effectually from the 
 passage of any laws or the attempting of any kind of interference that 
 would discriminate between the States of the American Union on ac¬ 
 count of their locality or previous condition of slavery. It would fa¬ 
 miliarize the masses of your people with the negro, his capacities, his 
 habits, and his needs, and you neither would nor could then strike any 
 rindictive blows at the Southern people without its immediately re¬ 
 acting upon yourselves. 
 
 As it is impossible for us to become homogeneous by all being white, 
 this plan would make it quite possible for us to become homogeneous 
 by ali being partly white and partly co ored, retaining white majorities 
 in each State. North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, 
 and Texas would need not to surrender any of their colored people, 
 and it would only require the removal of about 500,000 blacks from the 
 States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina 
 to give every State in the Union such a decided preponderance of whites 
 as to remove all danger of negro supremacy, and all fear of trouble 
 from this source. 
 
 What say the Republican Senators to this? Of course you will say 
 that your doors are open now to all who may see proper to come, but 
 that is not sufficient to induce them to remove. Are you willing to 
 offer them some special inducement? Are you willing to vote money 
 out of the United States Treasury to pay their expenses and to support 
 them for a short time until they can get a start in their new homes? 
 Surely, you will-demonstrate your sincerity in some practical, helpful 
 way, and not confine your benevolent statesmanship to cheap words. 
 If you will help neither black nor white, you should, in common de¬ 
 cency, hold your peace. 
 
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 S0L1NET/ASERL PROJECT