j3ir»orU.aKW- S 1 CLASS 0F!886;PH.D. THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY OF THE (LraVERSMY OF HdPMl CAHOUNA $ Q rjo.i I SECTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS BY ROBERT BINGHAM Reprinted by Permission from THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW of September, 1904 Reprinted, with brief additions, from The North American Review for September, 19W By permission of the North American Review Publishing Co. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/sectionalmisundeOObing PREFATORY REMARK. The crux of the following paper is the historic fact, often asserted and never officially denied, that, from 1825 (the year during which Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis entered the U. S. Military Academy) to as late as 1840, and probably later, the United States Government taught its cadets at West Point from Rawle's View of the Constitution that the Union was dis- soluble, and that, if it should be dissolved, allegiance reverted to the STATES. Some conclusive documentary proof of this historic fact is hereby offered, for the first time, as far as the writer knows or has been able to ascertain. In consideration of facts, which cannot be gainsaid or denied, the words rebel, rebellion, traitor and treason should disappear, and NATIONAL AMERICANS should no longer do injustice to each other's motives, as every one who took up arms on either side of the war between the sections did so in obedience to the call to arms by his STATE, to which his primary and ultimate allegiance was due according to the theory of the founders' of the govern- ment and of their successors till i860, and according to the official instruction given by the Government itself at West Point to those who were to command its armies. The extracts from Rawle's View of the Constitution, hereinafter given, speak for themselves. R. Bingham. The Bingham School, Asheville, N. C. [From the Superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy.] Headquarters United States Military Academy, West Point, N. Y., Nov. 18, 1904. * * * * In the forthcoming Memorial Volume of the Mil- itary Academy now being printed will appear the following note regarding the book: 342. 73 R. 20 RAWLE (WILLIAM): A View of the Constitu- tion of the United States of America. Phila. 1825, lv., O. The text book, of the law department, from (?) to (?) — -The copy of this book owned by Library, U. S. Military Academy makes it very probable that it was used as a text book. (Signed) A. L. Mills, Brig. Gen., U. S. A., Supt. [From the Librarian of the U. S. Military Academy.] Library United States Military Academy, West Point, N. Y., Nov. 23, 1904. * * * The copy of Rawle, (William) : "A View of the Consti- tution of the United States of America" . . . Philadelphia, 1825, W.,0., owned by the Library U. S. M. A., contains Ms. notes which make it very probable that this book was used as a text- book at the Military Academy, inasmuch as there is a list of sec- tions and lessons marked. The book contains no information as to just the period during which it was used as a text-book, nor have we been able to find this out up to the present time. (Signed) Edward S. Holden, Librarian. [From the Librarian of Congress.] Library of Congress, Washington, Dec. 3, 1904. * * * I find on examination of the Annual Catalogues of the West Point Military Academy that no text-books appear to be named until A. D., 1842. (Signed) A. R. Spofford. [From a Great Grandson of Wm. Rawle.] 211 S. Sixth St., Philadelphia, Dec. 13, 1904. * * * The book entitled " A View of the Constitution of the United States of America " was written by my great grandfather. * * * The book was, I think, the first treatise upon its subject in America. The author, after having studied law in New York under the Royal Attorney General and later in the Middle Tem- ple in London, was admitted to the Philadelphia bar September T 5> l 7^>3- He was therefore of an age to appreciate the doings of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which sat in this city where he resided. Doubtless he attended its sittings, although I do not find among his papers any statement to that effect. The work, I have always understood, was for many years used as a text book at the United States Military Academy at West Point. (Signed) Wm. Brooke Rawle. [From John Rawle, Grandson of Wm. Rawle.] Natchez, Miss., Jan. 27, 1905. * * * In re. Wm. Rawle, my grandfather, I am aware that his view on the " Constitution of the U. S." was used as a text-book at West Point, but I do not recollect in what years it was. Gen. R. E. Lee et als, said that they were taught by that book while at West Point. * * * Gen. Lee told Bishop Wilmer, of Louisiana, that if it had not been for the instruction he got from Rawle's text-book at West Point he would not have left the Old Army and joined the South at the breaking out of the late war be- tween the States. (Signed) John Rawle. [From Joseph Wilmer, a Son of Bishop Wilmer.] Rapidan, Va., Feb. 10, 1905. * * * I have a distinct recollection of my father's statement that Gen. Lee told him that " Rawle " was a Text Book during his cadetship at West Point. * * * [From Mrs. M. J. Leeds, Granddaughter of Wm. Rawle.] New Orleans, La., Jan. 19, 1905. * * * I am positive that the work of my grandfather, Wm. Rawle, was used as a text-book at West Point. I have heard this from my own father, Judge Edward Rawle, who died in 1880, a son of the author of the book. (Signed) Mrs. M. J. Leeds. [From Judge G. L. Christian.] Christian & Christian, Law Offices, Chamber of Commerce Building, Richmond, Va., Dec. 1904. * * * I have frequently heard Generals D. H. Maury and Fitz- hugh Lee state the fact that " Rawle on the Constitution " was one of the text-books used at West Point when they were stu- dents there. I have also heard the same statement iterated and reiterated time and again without any suggestion that there was any question about it. I saw General Lee last night, and he again told me there was no doubt about this being the fact. (Signed) Geo. L. Christian. [From Gen. Fitzhugh Lee.] Norfolk, Va., Dec. 5, 1904. * * * My recollection is that Rawle's View of the Constitution was the legal text-book at West Point when Generals Lee, Jos- eph E. Johnston and Stonewall Jackson were cadets there, and later on was a text-book when I was a cadet there. (Signed) Fitzhugh Lee. [From Gen. Dabney H. Maury.] In Vol. 6, p. 249, So. Historical Papers: * * * It (Rawle) remained as a text-book at West Point till ; and Mr. Davis and Sidney Johnston and General Joe Johnston and General Lee, and all the rest of us who retired with Virginia from the Federal Union, were not only obeying the plain instincts of our nature and dictates of duty, but we were obeying the very inculcations we had received in the National School. It is not probable that any of us ever read the Constitution or any exposition of it except this work of Rawle, which we studied in our graduating year at West Point. I know I did not. * * * (Signed) Dabney H. Maury. [From Charles Francis Adams.] Adams Building, 23 Court St., Boston, Dec. 8, 1904. * * * Herewith, under another cover, I send a copy of a publi- cation of mine (The Constitutional Ethics of Secession), which bears very directly upon the point made in your letter. On page 16, in Note I, may be found all I know on the subject of Rawle's View of the Constitution, and the use of it as a text-book at West Point. You will note I there state as a fact that his View was the text-book in use at West Point prior to 1840 * * * I remember that, at that time [two years ago] I looked the matter up with the utmost care, corresponding with the librarian and authori- ties at West Point, and also with at least one legal authority in New York. The result, and my conclusion, are set forth in the note. (Signed) Chas. F. Adams. From " The Constitutional Ethics of Secession," by Charles Francis Adams. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1903. Pages 16-17: "(1) Much has been written and said, and still more de- claimed, as to the peculiar and exceptional allegiance due, in case of attempted secession, to the national government on the part of the graduates of the Military Academy at West Point. It is, however, a noticeable fact that anterior to 1840 the doctrine of the right of secession seems to have been inculcated at West Point as an admitted principle of Constitutional Law. Story's Commentaries was first published in 1833. Prior to its appear- ance the standard text-book on the subject was Rawle's View of the Constitution. This was published in Philadelphia in 1825. William Rawle, its author, was an eminent Philadelphia lawyer. A man of twenty-nine at the time the Constitution was adopted, and already in active professional life, in 1792 he was offered a judicial position by Washington. Subsequently he was for many years Chancellor of the Law Association of Philadelphia, and principal author of the revised code of Pennsylvania. He stood in the foremost rank of the legal luminaries of the first third of the century. His instincts, sympathies and connections were all national. Prior to 1840, his View was the text-book in use at West Point." [From " The Republic of Republics."] Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 4th Edition, 1878, Preface, p. V.: " Another event of great historical interest in which Judge Clifford participated, was a solemn consultation of a small num- ber of the ablest lawyers of the North in Washington a few months after the war upon the momentous question as to whether the Federal government should commence a criminal prosecution against Jefferson Davis for his participation and leadership in the war of secession. In this council, which was surrounded at the time with the utmost secrecy, were Attorney General Speed, Judge Clifford, Wm. Evarts, and perhaps half a dozen others, who had been selected from the whole Northern profession for their legal ability and acumen, and the result of their deliberations was the sudden abandonment [of the idea of a prosecution] in view of the insurmountable difficulties in the way of getting a final conviction." Republic of Republics, page 44: "The above work (Rawle's View) was a text-book at West Point when Lee and Davis were cadets there." Foot note 1, p. 33: " They (Davis and Lee) were at West Point during the administration of John Quincy Adams, who, as late as 1839, essayed to teach the whole American people that 'the people of each state have a right to secede from the confederated union.' These are his very words." (" The Republic of Republics" is understood to have g.iven some of the lines of defence by Jefferson Davis's counsel if the case had been brought to trial, and to have had the approval of Mr. Davis himself. The book is very highly spoken of by Charles O'Conor, one of Mr. Davis's counsel, and one of the most distinguished lawyers in the U. S. in his day, who wrote to the author in 1865 [see page IV], * * * "with so admirably prepared and so overwhelmingly conclusive a brief [as his book] my task [of defending Mr. Davis] would be easy indeed.") The following letter explains itself: "41 17 Pine Street, Philadelphia, March 25, 1884. "Dear Col. Bingham: While the question of Jeff. Davis's trial for high treason was pending, Air. Wm. B. Reed, counsel for the defence, was a member of my brother's congregation at Orange Valley, N. J. He told my brother, after it had been decided that the trial was not to take place, that if the case had come to trial the defence would have offered in evidence the text-book on constitutional law [Rawle's 'View of the Con- stitution'] from which Davis had been instructed at West Point by the authority of the United States Government, and in which the right of secession is maintained as one of the con- stitutional rights of a State. You are quite at liberty to refer to me for this statement, which is given according to the best of my recollection. L. W. Bacon." (Rev. Dr. Bacon's present address is Assonet, Mass.) 4 The Misunderstandings Between the Sections of Our Common Country. i. It is obvious to those who have eyes to see that a better understanding between the sections of our common country is in progress, and it may hasten that progress to look some of the causes of this misunderstanding squarely in the face, not in a spirit of crimination or recrimination, but from an historical and philosophic rather than from a sectional point of view. Honest differences of opinion between individuals, between sections, between nations, are inevitable. These differences may be settled by agreeing to differ, by an appeal to the courts, by arbitration, and finally by an appeal to the sword. President Lincoln, in his famous Thanksgiving Proclamation of Novem- ber, 1863, which ranks with the greatest state papers among men, spoke of the War between the Sections, not as a rebellion, but as "THE LAMENTABLE CIVIL STRIFE IN WHICH WE ARE UNAVOIDABLY ENGAGED." An armed conflict between the reserved rights of the thir- teen independent republics acknowledged by Great Britain in 1783, and the rights, powers and necessities of the National Gov- ernment which these independent republics formed in 1789, was inevitable from the first. This conflict culminated in i860. The people of the South, deeming their constitutional and reserved rights of local self-government invaded, appealed to the sword and lost. Having appealed to the sword, they accepted the de- cision of the sword in good faith, and no part of the Union is more loyal to the flag than the South, or more ready to take up arms in its defence. All are agreed that slavery had lasted as long, probably, as it was beneficial to the black man, and as long as the white man could stand it without losing strength; that the white man was emancipated rather than the black man; and that the New South is already greater, richer and more powerful than the Old South could ever have been, and our wealth, great- ness and power, which are no longer subject to " inundation or conflagration," are as yet only in their infancy. Whatever the right of secession may have been theoreti- cally, the whole South sees as one man that it was a great mis- take to fight for a national unity on the basis of disunity at will afterwards. The dangerous and well nigh fatal disease with which a union of thirteen independent republics was born, has be^n cured by the sharp surgery of the sword. " Immedicabile vulnus ense rescidendum," and the great Republic of the West, like Hercules of old, has begun the labors which must extend through all the signs of the Zodiac. The Nation, composed of States, still " as distinct as the billows " and yet "as one as the sea," from the " E PLURIBUS unum " of our fathers, has crystallized into a UNUM e pluribus, a UNUM of strength, of power and of continuance. It has aroused itself, like a giant from his wine, has recognized its opportunity and its duty as one of the greatest of the great world powers, and has assumed its place as a world power with a grasp so mighty as to pro- duce enthusiasm at home and fear among the many and bitter enemies of Republics abroad. But if the secession theory had prevailed, the Anglo-Saxon man in America must have been divided into as many petty and warring republics as there were local and conflicting interests. While the United States were only the dis-united states of Lord Palmerston's famous toast in 1861, the occupation of American territory by the European Powers in contempt of the Monroe Doctrine was boldly inaugurated in Mexico by Maxi- milian, supported by French bayonets, and it ended summarily when we became the re-United States. If the secession theory had prevailed, this French occupation of American soil would probably have been only the beginning of European " spheres of influence " in North America, as our warring republics would have sought to strengthen themselves by European alliances; the latest and the greatest example of self-government would have been pointed at by autocratic Europe as the bloodiest fail- ure among men, and Anglo-Saxon civilization and power in the Western Continent would probably have gone backward at least a hundred years, or perhaps for all the years, instead of having been pushed forward a hundred years or more by our failure to establish a Southern Nationality. II. Such at the beginning of the twentieth century is the practi- cally unanimous opinion of the people of the South about slav- ery and secession, the honest differences of opinion about which in i860 brought on the Civil War and its sequences. But let us look calmly and dispassionately at the conditions which pre- vailed at the end of the eighteenth century and during the first half of the nineteenth, in order to get the true historical and philosophic perspective as to the differences of opinion which crystallized so sharply in i860. When the Union was formed, there was no difference of opinion about slavery. Every one of the original thirteen States was a slave State, and the Constitution put a premium on prop- erty in slaves by allowing a slaveholder five-fifths of a vote for himself and three-fifths of a vote for each of his adult slaves, not recognizing the seven hundred thousand slaves then in the Union, according to the census of 1790, as men at all, whose right to " life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness " Anglo- Saxon men were expected to respect. Nor were the remnant of the red men, numbering one hundred and fifty thousand, per- haps, regarded as men with any rights at all to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness, or even to the soil which had belonged to them and to their ancestors for unnumbered generations. Thus the Declaration of Independence of three million Anglo-Saxon men carried beneath it the unquestioned right to enslave seven hundred thousand black men, and to dispossess and slay the remnant of the red man. But by degrees the people of the North, who had sailed across the seas and enslaved the African man, who had bred him, bought him and sold him, found slavery unsuitable to their climate and conditions; and they sold their slaves to those whose climate and conditions were more favor- able. Thus slavery gravitated out of the North into the South, and became sectional, and about that time the invention of the cotton gin made slavery profitable; so that the cotton gin more than anything else is responsible for slavery as it existed in i860. Before 1830 or thereabouts, there seems to have been but little awakening of conscience among the late slave holders of New England and their children, prompting them to restore the African man to his old home from which their fathers had forc- ibly deported him, or to give him his freedom and the right of suffrage in his new home among themselves, or to repurchase him from those to whom they had sold him in order to free him at their own expense and thus to atone for the wrong which they and their fathers had done him. But before 1800 there had been a widespread repugnance in the South to the slave- trade; and, while New England was actively engaged in it, the Legislature of Virginia was actively protesting against it. In 1769, the Legislature of Virginia prohibited the further importation of slaves;* and, in the Federal Convention of 1787, New England voted with South Carolina and Georgia for the prolongation of the slave-trade for twenty years, that is, to 1807, against the sturdy opposition of Virginia.f In his " Genius of Universal Emancipation," Lundy says that there were in 1827 one hundred and thirty anti-slavery so- cieties in the United States, with six thousand six hundred and twenty-five members. Of these, one hundred and six, five-sixths of the whole, with fifty-one hundred and fifty members, five- sixths of the whole, were in the South. According to Birney's " Life of Birney," about 2,000 slaves were freed in North Caro- lina in 1824, 1825 and 1826. There was a colony of some three hundred free negroes within ten miles of where I was born. They had the right of suffrage till 1835, and, under the " Grand- father Clause " of our suffrage act of 1900, the descendants of the free negroes who voted before 1835, vote by inheritance, now, just as the descendants of white voters before 1865 vote by in- heritance, which fact makes the " Grandfather Clause " of our suffrage amendment impregnable. * John Fiske, Critical Period of American History p. 72. t Ibid p. 72. But the most notable example of anti-slavery feeling in the South in those days was the election of a Legislature in Vir- ginia in 1831 or 1832 after an able anti-slavery campaign. In this Legislature, the members " tied " on a bill for the gradual emancipation of all the slaves in Virginia, and the chairman, though he favored the bill, gave the casting vote against it, on the ground that a measure of such importance should not be undertaken unless a clear majority favored it. But about this time the abolition movement, inaugurated by Wm. Lloyd Gar- rison in Boston (the first fruits of which were the murder of sixty-one women and children in Southampton, Virginia, by Nat Turner and his associates), entirely changed the attitude of the South towards slavery, and of the one hundred and six anti- slavery societies which existed in the South in 1827, every one had disappeared by 1839. But for these unhappy events, a grad- ual emancipation policj', inaugurated by Southern people them- selves, would probabl}' have solved our black race problem. It thus appears that the people of the South were protesting against the slave-trade, while the people of New England were actively engaged in it, and it is equally true that Air. Garrison was, more than once, in imminent danger of his life at the hands of a Boston mob for his abolition sentiments about the time that Virginia was working out a scheme for gradual emancipation. It would help the progress of harmony between the sec- tions if the people of the North would study the Nation's black race problem in the light of these historic verities and would bear their share of the blame for conditions the origin of which their fathers and grandfathers had more hand in than ours. III. Nor was there any difference of opinion when the union was formed, about the abstract right of secession. The most distinctive characteristic of the man of Anglo- Saxon blood is his intense instinct of local self-government. It was this centrifugal instinct which divided the England of the Angles and Saxons into a heptarchy; and it took a hundred years of Norman domination to inject enough centripetency into the Anglo Saxon masses to give stability to a single ad- ministration south of the Tweed. It was this instinct of local autonomy which extorted the Magna Charta from the Planta- genets, which established the Church of England instead of the Church of Rome in the time of the Tudors, which established the principles of The Bill of Rights in the time of the Stuarts, and the principles of the Declaration of Independence in the time of the House of Brunswick. Nowhere among men had the tide of local autonomy risen so high as among the English col- onists after the War of the Revolution. It took more than six years from 1783 to 1789 for the thirteen independent republics 8 acknowledged by Great Britain to compromise their local rights and their local jealousies sufficiently to form a federal union on any conditions, and but for the fear of attack from without it is doubtful whether these thirteen independent re- publics would have united at all. As it was they went into the Union voluntarily, as an experiment. Virginia claimed the right, ipsissimis verbis, to come out at will, and by tacit agree- ment the abstract right of secession was accorded to the other States. The right of withdrawal from the Union had been form- ally claimed seven times before i860, once in 1832 by South Carolina, which claim was promptly suppress-ed by Andrew Jackson, a Southern Democrat, and six times in New England. In 1803, it was feared by New England that the Louisiana pur- chase would diminish the influence of their section of the Union; and Senator Pickering, of Massachusetts, strongly advocated the formation of a " Northern Confederacy." In 1807, Jefferson caused the repeal of the Embargo Act, because some of the New England States said that they would withdraw from the Union if the act was not repealed. In 1811, Josiah Quincy, of Massa- chusetts, protested against the admission of Louisiana, declaring that "the passage of the bill to admit Louisiana would be a dis- solution of the Union," and that " it would be the right of all and the duty of some to prepare for a separation, peaceably, if they could, forcibly, if they must." In 1814, the people of New England met in convention at Hartford and withdrew from the Union, on account of their dissatisfaction with the management of the war with England and with the admission of Louisiana. But the war with Old England ended, and the war of New Eng- land against the other States was not begun. In 1844, the Legis- lature of Massachusetts passed an ordinance of secession, de- claring that " the annexation of Texas tended to drive the States into a dissolution of the Union," and that " Massachusetts was determined to submit her undelegated powers to no body of men on earth;" and again in 1848 Massachusetts talked freely and boldly of nullifying the Constitution by refusing to send a single soldier to uphold the flag in what she considered an unjust war with Mexico, though afterwards she did send one regiment. To these repeated acts or threats of disunion by the people of New England before i860, we may add that William Lloyd Garrison's " Liberator," established in 1831 as the organ of the unconditional abolitionists, constantly took the ground that the Constitution was a " league with death and a covenant with hell," because it recognized the right to hold slaves; and the abolition of slavery was urged, although Mr. Garrison held that " slavery could be abolished only by the dissolution of the Union." Thus, the people of New England asserted the right of secession constantly on general principles and in six special cases, before i860. It was asserted constantly by the extreme abolitionists from 1831 to i860. And, while the Republican Party suppressed secession in the United States of North Amer- ica by armed intervention in i86r, the same Republican Party supported secession in the United States of South America by armed intervention in 1903. IV. Nor is it surprising that a belief in secession, as one of the reserved rights of the States, should have prevailed more gener- ally in the North than in the South before i860, when we con- sider that the right of secession was distinctly taught at West Point up to about 1840. I have before me " Rawle on the Con- stitution," the text-book in which Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis studied the Constitution at the Government's Military Academy. In this book, the following language occurs: If a faction should attempt to subvert the government of a State for the purpose of destroying its republican form, the national power of the Union could be called forth to subdue it. Yet it is not to be understood that its interposition would be justifiable if a State should determine to retire from the Union " (p. 289). " It depends on the State itself whether it will con- tinue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be in- consistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases the right to determine how they shall be governed." p. 289). "The States may then wholly withdraw from the Union." (p. 290). " If a majority of the people of a State deliberately and peace- ably resolve to relinquish the republican form of government, they cease to be members of the Union" (p. 292). "The seces- sion of a State from the Union depends on the will of the people of such State " (p. 295). " In any manner by which secession is to take place, nothing is more certain than that the act should be deliberate, clear and unequivocal" (p. 296). "The people of a State may have reason to complain in respect to acts of the general government; they may, in such cases, invest some of their own officers with the power of negotiation, and may declare an absolute secession in case of failure. The secession in such cases must be distinctly and peremptorily declared to take place, and in such case, as the case of unconditional secession, the pre- vious ligament with the Union would be legitimately and fairly destroyed" (p. 296). "It was foreseen that there would be a natural tendency to increase the number of the States. It was also known that a State might withdraw itself" (p. 297). "To withdraw from the Union is a solemn, serious act." "Whenever it may appear expedient to the people of a State to withdraw from the Union, it must be manifested in a direct and unequiv- ocal manner " (p. 298). And the instruction given at West Point, from 1825, to 1840, as to the nature of a personal allegiance, from " Rawle on the Constitution," is specially significant: " This right (of secession) must be considered an ingredient in the original composition of the general government, and the doctrine heretofore presented in regard to the indefeasible na- 10 ture of personal allegiance is so far qualified in respect to alleg- iance to the United States. It was observed that the reciprocal relations of protection and allegiance might cease in certain events, and it was further observed that allegiance would neces- sarily cease in case of the dissolution of the society (the Union, in that case) to which it was due" p. 289-200). It thus appears that Robert E. Lee was taught by the United States Government at West Point that the Union was dissoluble, and that, if it should be dissolved, allegiance to the Union ceased, reverting to the States by which the Union had been created. And when at the beginning of a great war Robert E. Lee subordinated his loyalty to the flag, under which he had served so long and with such distinction, to his sense of duty and to his native state; when he stopped his ears to the call of ambition from the strong and opened them to the cry for help from the weak; when he refused to accept the command of the Armies of the United States and took a subordinate position offered him by Virginia, he set an example of self-sacrifice and devo- tion to duty for duty's sake unequaled in the history of soldiers and of armies. It is an historic fact that Jefferson Davis was not tried for treason, because, under several States' rights decisions of Chief Justice Chase, before he became Chief Justice, and under the States' rights instruction received at West Point from " Rawle on the Constitution," which was to be put in evidence if the trial had occurred, he could not have been convicted. It would hasten the progress of harmony between the sec- tions if the people of the North would acquaint themselves with these historic verities; if they would cease to call a war a rebel- lion which President Lincoln called " this lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged;" if they would realize that the Confederates were neither rebels nor traitors and that there were good and solid, historical and constitutional grounds for our acting as a matter of duty in 1861 on the belief that our pa- triotism should centre around the STATES rather than around the UNION of States, around the PLURES which had created the Union rather than around the Union which the Plures had created in 1789 and had dissolved in 1861, justly and legally ac- cording to the conditions of the original compact. V. It would hasten a better understanding between the sections if the people of the North would realize that the black race prob- lem is not our only race problem. Let us look calmly at the way in which the people of the North have dealt with their local race problems. They have practically exterminated the red man; and the remnant of the Indians who have not been slain like the buffaloes have been set off in reservations like the rem- nant of the buffaloes, with entire disregard of their local and ter- ritorial rights; and even these reservations are being opened to white men. The yellow man, though inoffensive and industrious, has been slain by mobs on the Pacific Coast, and has been excluded from the soil of the United States by act of Congress at the dic- tation of white labor-unions of Northern people. The territory of the brown man in the Hawaiian Islands has been annexed in the financial and political interests of white men, and an educational test for suffrage has been introduced, disfranchising many of the brown men in their own island, and all the yellow men (Chinese and Japanese), some thirty thous- and in number, and about five thousand white Portuguese. Furthermore, it is believed that thousands of the brown men in the Philippines have perished under methods of " benevo- lent assimilation " practised there. With such sins against the red man, the yellow man and the brown man to be answered for wholly or chiefly by the people of the North, does it not seem strange for the people of the North to find so much fault with the Southern treatment of the black man, when, as a mat- ter of fact, he has not only been conserved, a thing which never occurred before in the history of the contact of our race with weaker races, but when under our tutelage he made such rapid progress from savagery, and in some cases at least from canni- balism, in about two centuries that the people of the North deemed him worthy to share with themselves in the citizenship of the Great Republic? VI. An historic study of the ballot by our Northern fellow citi- zens would tend to hasten the progress of a better understand- ing. By the Constitution of the United States, and of every State in the Union, the ballot is not a right, but a privilege to be ex- tended by those who have it to those whom they deem worthy of it. The people of the North, not deeming the Indian worthy of • the ballot, exclude all red men from it. Not deeming Chinese worthy of the ballot, they exclude all yellow men, not only from the ballot, but from the country. Not deeming the brown man worthy of manhood suffrage, in 1900 a Republican Congress passed a bill, which was signed by a Republican President, excluding a large number of brown men from the ballot in their own Island of Hawaii, and turning the island over to the white men. Not deeming all black men among themselves worthy of manhood suffrage, they excluded illiterate black men from the ballot. Not deeming all white men worthy of manhood suffrage, the people of the North have ex- eluded illiterate white men from the Dallot. In some of the Northern States, literacy and a certain amount of property are made the condition of manhood suffrage and under this limited suffrage the ballot is denied to about one-third of the white men in Rhode Island. We of the South think that this limited suf- frage, as enforced by the North, is just and right; and if it is nec- essary in the North, with comparatively so few illiterates, it is a hundredfold more necessary in the South. And yet the people of the North, who, in extending the ballot among themselves, have discriminated so sharply against all red men, all yellow men, all illiterate black men, many brown men in their own island and many white men, discriminated in favor of all black men in the South, though racially inferior in all the past to the other col- ored races and to the illiterate white men who remain disfran- chised among themselves. But by degrees the Anglo Saxon people of the South, who fought not for slavery, not for secession, but for the right of local self-government, have regained by legislation what they lost against overwhelming odds " in the deadly, imminent breach," and have confined the ballot to those whom they deem worthy of it, though less rigidly than it is confined in New Eng- land. Becoming convinced that the legislation of the reconstruc- tion period was hasty, ill-advised and partisan, Congress has repealed some of it; the Supreme Court has annulled some of it, as being unconstitutional; and the consensus of opinion at the North seems to be to relegate the whole matter of suffrage in the Southern, as in the Northern, States to the intelligent people of each State. It would hasten the removal of the misunder- standings between the sections, if the suffrage amendment should share the fate of most of the other reconstruction legisla- tion, and be removed from the statute books in form as it has already been removed in fact, with only an occasional threat of cutting down the representation of the South in Congress and the Electoral College, a threat which can hardly be carried out, as the discussion of it would bring out very clearly the discrimin- ation of the Northern people against the colored races among themselves; as it would put the negro question again into poli- tics against the consensus of opinion of the most reasonable men of both sections and against the best interests of the negro him- self; and as an act which would operate horizontally — and no other could operate at all — would cut down the representation of several of the Northern States in the name of their own dis- franchised, both colored and white, both literate and illiterate. VII. It would help to harmonize the sections, if the Northern people would reflect that what they call " race prejudice " is not 13 peculiar to the South. We discriminate against the negro politi- cally. We must preserve our political integrity. We discrimi- nate against him socially. We must preserve our own race in- tegrity. In the whole North about one-sixtieth of the population is of African blood. In the whole South nearly one-half of the population is of African blood. In some of the Southern States, three-fifths are negroes, and in localities in all or nearly all of the Southern States nine-tenths of the people are negroes. A weak solution and a saturated solution of a drug must be handled dif- ferently. But while we must exercise political control over the African man and must reject social relations with him, economi- cally the negro is not discriminated against anywhere in the South, as he is practically everywhere in the North. If a con- tractor anywhere in the North had twenty white carpenters and twenty white bricklayers employed, and were to add five negro carpenters and five negro bricklayers to his force, in nine cases out of ten, probably in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, his white workmen would stop working at once, nor would they al- low the black men to do the work. Some years ago I employed a contractor to do some building for me and he put about twen- ty-five white men and about twenty-five negroes on the work. White and black carpenters, bricklayers, painters and common laborers worked together in the greatest harmony at the same wages for the same sort of work. This could hardly have oc- curred in New England. Negroes got higher wages than white men for the same work if they were better workmen. This could hardly have occurred in Illinois or Ohio. And white men and black men, with wages graded by skill and not by race, worked in perfect harmony under my contractor's negro foreman or " boss carpenter." This could not have occurred in any North- ern State. In the South, white men and negroes may not eat to- gether; but not eating with a white man does not affect a black man's supply of food or his digestion. In the North white men and negroes may eat together in many public places at least, and some negroes may eat with some white people in private. But negroes and white men may not work together in the North; and this economic discrimination against the negro strikes, not at his political relations, not at his social relations, but at his chance to get food and clothing, except in such occupations as white men do not want. Our discrimination against the negro politically and socially is race instinct, which is minimized in the North on account of the very weak " solution," so to speak, of negroes in the North, and is maximized in the South because of our " saturated solution " of negroes. But the economic preju- dice against the negro in the North simply because he is black is race prejudice, and it strikes not only at his means of living, but at his life itself. Of the negro miners who went from Alabama to Illinois during Governor Tanner's administration, quite a number were slain, and the rest were driven from the State; and 14 the Governor of President Lincoln's own State, and a member of President Lincoln's own political party, said that, if any more negro laborers started to Illinois, he would meet them on the border with Gatling guns. And it is significant that not one of the murderers of these innnocent and industrious laborers has ever been brought to justice. VIII. Much has been said about lynching negroes in the South, and nothing too severe can be said about this crime against civil- ization. But it might be well for the people of the North to re- flect that mobbing negroes began in New York about 1750, when for a merely supposed plot against the whites, who outnumbered the blacks five to one, thirteen negroes were burned at the stake, eighteen were hanged and seventy-one were deported, as is chron- icled in Hildreth's History of the U. S., Vol. 2, Ch. 25, and in Lamb's History of New York City, Vol. 1, Ch. 26. Prof. BuBois, of Atlanta University, probably the most learned negro in America, in " The Philadelphia Negro," published by Ginn & Co., Ch. 4, pages 25-39, tells how in Philadelphia, between 1826 and 1870 negroes were deprived of the right of suffrage, how they were murdered by mobs, how their houses, churches and even an orphanage were burned down, and how their women and chil- dren were chased out of the city. With these historic examples of race prejudice in the very centres of wealth, population and intelligence among the people of the North, it need surprise no one that statistics show that more negroes have been put to death by mobs in the North, in proportion to the negro population, than in the South; and while the crime of burning the houses, churches and other property of negroes is of not infrequent occurrence in the Northeast and Northwest, this form of race prejudice is practically unknown in the South. When we anticipate the law and put a negro to death for the new negro crime against a white woman, or for murder or arson (just as Northern people do, only not so often in proportion to negro population), the violence, which never should have occurred, stops with the criminal. Innocent negroes are not molested. But in the North the violence only begins with the mobbing of the criminal, and it continues by slaying innocent and inoffensive negroes, by burning their houses, de- stroying their property, and by driving them from their homes and counties. This violence of race prejudice, which was first exhibited in New York City about 1750, as has been already stated, was again exhibited in the anti-negro riots in New York city recently, in the anti-negro riots in Wilmington, Delaware, in Akron and Urbana, Ohio, President McKinley's own State; in Danville and Springfield, Illinois, President Lincoln's own State; in Evansville and Rockport, Indiana, President Harri- 15 sou's own State (where in twenty-seven (27) counties a negro is not allowed to live at all), in many other Northern States, and in the harrowing and murder of the Chinese on the Pacific Coast and in excluding them from the country, although they wer-e accused of no crime at all except the crime of working better and more cheaply than their white competitors. If the better element in these communities were as anxious to suppress lynch- ing and punish lynchers at home as they are to suppress lynch- ing and punish lynchers in the South, some of their own law- breakers would have been brought to justice in the Northeast, in the Northwest and on the Pacific Coast. But grand juries in the North, with public sentiment ostensibly entirely in their favor, very rarely, if ever, find true bills against such murderers. An objector may say that this is only an " et tu quoque." But where one side cries " Tu," it is not unreasonable for the other, when backed by such historical and statistical facts, to say, " Et tu quoque," and perhaps to add the proverb, " Physi- cian, heal thyself " of race prejudice in treating a weak and harmless " solution " of the African man before finding too much fault with our race instinct in treating our " saturated " and therefore more or less dangerous " solution." All the best people of the South are entirely opposed to lynching. In practice it has failed as a remedy for crime, and it has not only brutalized those engaged in it, but it has most seri- ously discounted the majesty of the law. It ought to be stopped. It must be stopped. But it will not stop till both races, North and South, unite in stopping negroes from assaulting white wo- men and girl children, from murdering white people and from burning their houses, crimes which were unheard of in the South before 1865, and which are confined almost exclusively to the negroes who were born after 1865, when the negroes became the wards of the Nation. IX. It would help to harmonize the sections if the people of the North would realize how much we did for the industrial educa- tion of the negro before 1865 and how much we have done for his education in books since 1865. In 1867 the people of the North conferred unrestricted manhood suffrage on all the black men in the Southern States. The blacks in the South composed nearly half of our population, and the injection of such a mass of illiterates into our citizenship was a great menace to the civili- zation, not only of the South, but of the whole country. But the red men, the yellow men, the illiterate black men and the illiter- ate white men in the Northern States, composing their disfran- chised, aggregated all combined, so unappreciable a proportion of their population as to be not the slightest' menace to them; and yet they were disfranchised and the negro in the South was 16 enfranchised. Having made the great mistake against this child race of conferring the ballot on the negro with absolutely no training in self-government, they made no appropriation of funds to be used in preparing him for the intelligent use of the ballot. His training in citizenship was left to benevolent enthusiasts in the North and to the impoverished white people in the South. The benevolent enthusiasts seemed to act on the belief that the African man is an Anglo-Saxon in a black skin, and that mere book learning would soon relieve him of his African disabilities. And so, in direct opposition to the methods of Gen. Armstrong at Hampton and of Booker Washington at Tuskegee, they put as much as twenty-five million dollars into showy piles of brick and stone and mortar, in various parts of the South, in " col- leges " and " universities," where this infant of civilization might receive higher learning in the humanities, the sciences and theol- ogy, no provision being made for giving him the elementary training on which all higher education must be built. We of the South feel that the motives of the philanthropists were good, but that their methods were defective in the quality of the education offered; and that they were unfortunate in their discrimination against the whites of the South, the two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollar investment made by the North- ern Presbyterian Church on the Asheville Plateau for the up- lifting of our poor white boys and girls, being the only consider- able and well organized investment of the kind in the Southern States. The race feeling of the non-slaveholder and his children against the negro which in the nature of things has never been good, is held in abeyance as yet by the attitude of the slave-holding class, who have always controlled Southern senti- ment. But the feeling is deep and strong, though latent and mostly quiescent as yet; and this discrimination, educationally, against the whites and in favor of the negro, has tended to make the race feeling of our non-slave-holding class less latent and less quiescent; and unless the best, the most thoughtful and most intelligent people of both sections unite against this rising tide of race feeling in the non-slave-holding whites* against the blacks, the attitude of the white laborers in the South will soon be what it has already become in the North towards the negro. The small proportion of negro laborers in the North makes the feeling of the white laborers against them of minor impor- tance. But anything which stimulates race feeling in the South with our large proportion of negroes should be avoided by both races in both sections. As Northern philanthropists provided only for the higher ed- ucation of the negro, and as the Government made no provision whatever for him educationally, the Southern people in their poverty undertook the work as best they could. I believe it is safe to say that, at the close of the Civil War, we were the poor- est people in the civilized world. We staked everything on the decision of the sword and lost, and we had nothing on which to re-build our shattered fortunes but the ground we stood on. Nevertheless, we assumed the imperative duty of educating the negro, taxing ourselves to the constitutional limit for public schools, and dividing the proceeds of tax money pro rata among our own children and the children of the blacks, who have never up to this day paid more than five per cent, of the taxes, and who used the ballot against us with a steady and persistent hostility, which would not have been tolerated by employers in employees for a single year anywhere else in the world, and least of all in New England. When we reached the constitutional limit of tax- ation for public schools for whites and blacks alike, we intro- duced " local option " taxation in almost every county in the South, and divided the increased proceeds of taxation pro rata be- tween the children of both races. Bills were introduced into the Legislatures of several States, now controlled by white people, to appropriate to the schools for the negroes only what the taxes on their property produced; but in every case these bills were voted down by overwhelming majorities of white men. In this spirit, the South, in its impoverished condition, has paid One Hundred and Twenty Million Dollars of tax money for the edu- cation of negro children, though our own children were crying to us for educational bread, and we could give them little better than a stone. In addition to this, we established normal schools for their teachers, schools for their blind, schools for their mutes and asylums for their insane, all from the proceeds of taxes paid to the extent of from ninety-five per cent, to ninety-eight per cent, by white people; and, in addition, we have established sev- eral theological schools for the education of their preachers by private benevolence. In short, we have adopted these neglected wards of the Nation, and have made them the foster-brothers and sisters educationally of our own children. And yet, many North- ern papers and many Northern people can see nothing but op- pression and cruelty in our dealings with the black man since we delivered him over to the Nation in 1865, orderly, fairly indus- trious, practically without vices, disease or crime, and worthy, in the estimation of the people of the North to share with them in the citizenship of the Republic. But, in spite of our vast out- lay on him, in proportion to our resources, in the hands of the Nation he has become disorderly, idle, vicious and diseased; and, according to the Census, three times more criminal, hundred per hundred, than the native whites, one and one-half times more criminal than the foreign whites, three times more criminal in the Northeast, where he has not been a slave for a hundred years, and three and a half times more criminal in the Northwest where he was never a slave, than in the South. The most dis- couraging features of these revelations of the Census are: (1) that his maximum criminality and his minimum illiteracy concur in New England; and (2), according to the Census, that more 18 than seven-tenths of the negro criminals are under thirty years of age. This result of the Nation's dealing with the negro since 1865, as compared with our dealing with him before 1865, and in spite of our having divided our educational bread between his children and ours ever since the surrender, must convince rea- sonable people at the North that, in dealing with the negro, the Nation has made a mistake in some way; and that this mistake must be corrected somehow. X. And, lastly,it would help harmonize the sections if all Amer- icans would keep in mind that the war and its unhappy sequences belong to the history of sectional America, and that the peace, power and glory of our future can be attained, and can be main- tained, only by National America. Every man in both armies knows that the Americans who met on the field were to each other "the enemy" only in the technical, military sense, but they were never enemies. The thousands and thousands of kind- nesses between Confederate and Federal, even on the firing-line when the firing was suspended, on the picket-line and among the dead and dying, show that the men on both sides who were at the front were there from a sense of duty and not because they loved war, or because they did not love each other. And when Lee's thin, ragged skirmish-line stacked their arms for the last time at Appomattox Court-House, the solemnity of a funeral prevailed, and I saw tears of sympathy and pity streaming from the eyes of the Federal soldiers who stood in line on each side of us. They had pursued us and overwhelmed us, but they were touched with the feeling of our infirmity, and the victorious Americans mingled their tears with the tears of the vanquished Americans. This was the spirit of National America. When President Johnson and Secretary Stanton, in order to "punish traitors and make treason odious," issued the order to General Grant to arrest all the Confederate officers through the rank of Colonel, that they might be convicted by a drumhead court martial and put to death, General Grant looked into their faces and said: "You will have to whip me and my army before one hair of one head of the men whom we captured, and whom I promised protection to, shall perish." And the spirit of sec- tional America quailed before the spirit of National America. But in an evil day the politicians who had kept resolutely away from the firing line, and who had been peaceful in war, became warlike in peace; and the reconstruction period followed, that period of compression, of depression, of repression, of suppres- sion and of oppression, when for the first time since time began a white race undertook to put the feet of a colored race on the necks of men and women of their own blood and breed. It has taken the people of the North nearly forty years to get something like the true perspective on this period which was dominated by the most evil spirit of sectional America. But leading men of the North have now begun to discuss it clearly and strongly, and to recognize the mistakes made against us and against the black man. While waiting patiently and hopefully for the spirit of Na- tional America, the people of the South did not wait idly. We re- built our shattered fortunes as only men of Anglo-Saxon blood can rebuild, and we restored our political supremacy. We shall do all that we can to continue the education of the African man along the line of his capabilities. We shall restrain his suffrage, but only as New England restrains the suffrage of white men. After 1908, the same qualifications for suffrage shall be applied to his children and to ours; and these qualifica- tions are less rigid than those applied to white men in the North- ern States; but, having been dominated by him from 1867 to 1876, we shall not allow his political liberty to degenerate again into political license. The evil spirit of sectional America is being exorcised as the years of the new century come and go. And our Race Questions, and all other questions which may arise, may be safely com- mitted, by a combined New North, New South, New East, New West, to the NEW NATIONAL AMERICA, which has become so great and so strong in the present, and which will become still greater and still stronger in the degree in which we all become more and more unitedly animated by the spirit of National Americans. HACKNEY & MOALE CO., ASHEVILLE, Photomount Pamphlet Binder Gaylord Bros. Makers Syracuse, N. Y. PAT. M 21, 1908 UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 00032721715 FOR USE ONLY IN THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION .■.■S''^' 1 ^-^.'";^'''