THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE GIFT OF FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY C /' SECT1 ON A LI SM UNM ASivED Compiled by HENRY EDWIN TREMA1N NEW YORK BONNELL, SILVER & CO. 48 WEST TWENTY-SECOND STREET 1907 JK, 325 COPYRIGHT, 1907 BY BONNELL, SILVER & Co. Sectionalism Unmasked CONTENTS Lincoln and the Slavery Question in the South. Current Propa- ganda. Sectionalism and Class Feeling. Extollation of the Confederate Cause. The Confederacy stripped of Sentimental- ism. Its Tyranny. Individual Political Independence Im- possible. Comparisons and Contrasts. The Danger to the Republic from the Present-day Trend of Sectionalism II Extreme Fanatical Race Prejudice. The Slogans of the Extremists. The Georgia State Convention. The Gubernatorial Rivals and their "Tweedledum" Politics. The Aim of All the Po- litical Leaders to make the Colored People Subservient Dis- franchised Servitors. Colorphobia in Extreme Forms. Political Serfdom or Political Manhood. The Parting of the Ways. The Better Element. Henry Watterson Talks. Dis- crimination in Education. The School Question. China and the South a Study in Contrasts. Training Citizens and Voters and Teachers III The Labor Question. Farm Laborers. A Realistic Picture of Agricultural Conditions. Peonage and Congressman Clark, of Florida. Convict Labor. Inhumanities and Barbarities of Present-day Peonage. Farming in Belgium and the Southern States. Contrasts and Conclusions . 23 vi CONTENTS IV PAGF, The Uplifting Vote of the Negro. The Power of the Oligarchy. The Bogy of Negro Supremacy. Electoral Inequalities Ex- posed. Plutocracy Dominant. The Alliances of the Oligarchy and Plutocracy. Actual Conditions . . . . .44 The "Problems of the South" and the Cry of "Hands Off." A Noxious Sectionalism. In Elections no Party Platform Issues Voted Upon. The Georgia Disfranchisement. The Political South of Ante-bellum Days. Speech of Hon. Alexander H. Stephens. Disregard of Law and Consequent Tendencies. How the Oligarchy Maintains Control. Inferior Races. Secretary Taft's Speech at Greensboro, N. C., Reviewed and Criticised .......... 61 The President's Lincoln Day Speech in 1905. Diplomatic Avoid- ance of a Useful Agitation! Comments on the Speech. Its Influence ..... 76 VI Northern Men with Southern Principles. An Executive Ally of the Oligarchy. Elevating Influence of the Suffrage. The Presi- dent on Good Citizenship. Discrimination. The New York Tribune Deprecates Agitation on Fundamental Lines. The Conditions of Suffrage in the South. The President on States' Rights and Citizenship ....... 79 VII Reduction of Representation. The Party Pledge. Presidential Suggestions. First Presidential Message. Unofficial Action on the Plank of the National Republican Party. Congressional Action. Mass Meeting at Philadelphia. The Case Succinctly Stated. Arguments and Facts about Southern Electoral Affairs CONTENTS vii VIII PAGE 1. Some Reasons for Equalizing Representation. Electoral Condi- tions. What an Equitable Reduction of Representation would Effect. Value of Citizenship ...... 98 2. How Disfranchisement Works and Reacts. What Representa- tive Crumpacker said . . . . . . . .115 IX The Imperialism of the Southern Oligarchy. Conditions Political and Electoral in Alabama. Milholland on an Uplifting Race. Sir Erskine May on English Suffrage and the Bribery and Cor- ruption under Oligarchy Rule. Parallels and Suggestions . 128 President Harrison Quoted. Nullification. Senate Valedictory of a Wisconsin Senator. The Florida Legislature. Press Declara- tions and Comments. Calhoun and the Nullifiers. Secretary Taft on the Colored Race and on the War Amendments. Henry Watterson Quoted 137 XI Mr. Taft at Tuskegee. Some Comments. The Color Line. The Two Races and Their Future. "Jim Crow" Legislation. Economic Progress of the Negro. The President and the Oligarchy. Hoke Smith's Pronunciamento. The Press There- on ... 149 XII The Mississippi Senatorial Competitors , 16Q viii CONTENTS XIII PAGE Practical Nullification. Conflict between the Democratic Spirit and the Aristocratic Spirit. Caste. The "Old Civilization. "- Its Fallacies. The Philosophy of the War. Present-day Ex- pressions Reviving Ante-bellum Sentiments. Erroneous Teach- ings Condemned . . . . . . . . .164 XIV Distortions of History. Reconstruction Period. The Revolu- tions in Arkansas and Mississippi and other States. General Sheridan's Report on Conditions. President Grant's Special Message to Congress on Affairs in Louisiana . . .172 Black Codes. Vagrancy Laws ....... 181 XV The Extollation of the Confederacy. Sherman on the War. Presi- dent Roosevelt's Speeches and Letters Regarding it. Con- federate Barbarities and their Purpose. Striking War Pictures from History ......... 187 XVI Congress and Confederate Claims. Appropriations . . . 199 XVII Brownsville Affray. Mass Meeting at Cooper Union. An Analysis of the President's Initial Report and its Accompanying Evi- dence. Proceedings of the Senate Committee. The Creed of "Cut-the-heart-out-of-the-political-life-of-the-Negro." - Con- clusion 208 CONTENTS ix APPENDIX A PAGE Press Expressions Disapproving of the Laissez-faire Policy . 221 The Republican Plank of 1904. The Suffrage Question a Political Issue, Vitally Concerning the Interests of all the People, and it "must be met and settled" ...... 222 APPENDIX B Planks Relating to Southern Conditions Adopted by Republican and Democratic State Conventions ..... 223 Public Sentiment Favored the National Republican Platform of 1904. A "Live" Issue 223-228 APPENDIX C Copy of Republican Club's Observations that were made Public upon the Introduction of the First Reduction Bill in the Fifty- eighth Congress. Explanation of its Basis and Table giving Figures Respecting same. Memorandum Respecting same . 229 Brief Submitted to the Fifty-ninth Congress in Support of Reduc- tion Bill Introduced in it by Representative Bennet, of New York. Copy of Bill . . 233 APPENDIX D Historical Comparisons. The Policy of Pericles and of the Modern South. A Study with a Moral 243 Speech of John E. Milholland, Cited in the Text at Chapter IX, p. 133 244 APPENDIX E Origin and Necessity for the Fifteenth Amendment. Its Con- gressional Discussion and History. Views of Distinguished Statesmen. Present-day Revival of Post-bellum Conditions. President Grant's Official Announcement of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution . 246 x CONTENTS APPENDIX P PAGE An Episode Following a Lynching ...... 251 APPENDIX G A Concise History of Reconstruction, as stated in a Speech of Hon. Joseph B. Foraker before the Chautauqua Association at Bellefontaine, Ohio, July 27, 1907 253 APPENDIX H Historical and Legal Errors, Suppressions and Distortions. One of Many Instances. An Academic Address by Dr. J. M. Dickinson Reviewed and Criticised. Four Statements Analyzed and Lessons Drawn Therefrom ....... 2o ( J APPENDIX I A Contract Law and a Vagrancy Law. Statutes Cited in the Text at Chapter XIV, p. 185 26.5 APPENDIX K Explanations, Historical and Legal, Relating to the ' ' Captured and Abandoned Property Act" of Congress. Cotemporaneous Con- ditions Stated. The Benevolent Liberality of the Act Itself. Its Proposed Revival Unjust ...... 267 APPENDIX L A Remarkable Claim Referred to in Chapter XVI, p. 204 . . 273 Its Origin and Progress. Project to Distribute Assets of the Con- federacy to the Shareholders of a State Bank. Alleged Viola- tion of Laws of War Discussed. Action of General Butler Defended. Extracts from Press Articles. Letter to New York Tribune, June 27, 1906. Editorial from Washington Times, Wednesday Evening, June 27, 1906 . . . > .277 CONTENTS xi APPENDIX M PAGE Alleged Violations of the Terms of Confederate Surrenders. Details of Appropriations Referred to in Chapter XVI, p. 204. Operations under Same. Curious Awards. Reflections . . 279 APPENDIX N The Valedictory of a Northern Senator. The South Condemned and Warned. Denunciation of an Avowed Sectionalism. Issue a National One. A Democratic View 283 ' ' Whoever carries a mental kodak with him (as I suspect I was in the habit of doing long before I knew it), must be aware of the uncertain value of different exposures. This can only be determined by the process of develop- ment, which requires a dark room and other apparatus not always at hand; and so much depends upon the process that it might be well if it always be left to someone who makes a specialty of it, as in the case of the real amateur photog- rapher. Then once faulty impressions might be so treated as to yield a pictorial result of interest, or frankly thrown away if it showed hopeless to the instructed eye. Otherwise, one must do one's own developing, and trust the result, whatever it is, to the imaginative kindness of the reader, who will surely, if he is the right sort of reader, be able to sharpen the blurred details, to soften the harsh lines and to blend the shadows in a subordination giving due relief to the best meaning of the print. This is what I fancy myself to be doing now, and if anyone shall say that my little pictures are superficial, I shall not be able to gainsay him. I can only say that most pictures represent the surface of things; but at the same time I can fully share the disappoint- ment of those who would prefer some such result as the employment of the Roentgen rays would have given if applied to certain aspects of the world." William Dean Howells, ' 'London Films." Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet amid the market's din List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within " They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin." James Russell Lowell. . . . that we here highly resolve .... that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom." Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg. " The cause that triumphed in our Civil War was not a sectional ad- vantage. It was the triumph of the American principle of republican liberty over its enemies everywhere. . . ."George W . Curtis. Abraham Lincoln at Cooper Institute, concluding his his- toric speech on the evening of February 27, 1860, cogently exclaimed, "What will satisfy the South?" Then, answering his own question, he said, "This and this only. Cease to call slavery wrong and join with them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly done in acts as well as words. Silence will not be tolerated we must place ourselves avowedly with them." To-day the same question is at hand, "What will satisfy the South?" Everybody knows the answer: This and this only. Cease to believe caste government wrong and join the South in calling it right; and not in silence, but by acts as well as in words must the North range itself avowedly with the South in the annihilation of the political citizenship of ten millions of its people. Truth is radical. Sometimes it is not easily exposed. Error is subtle and diverting. Mr. Lincoln tersely stated a disagree- able truth. History has justified his sagacious perception. He knew the futility of acquiescence in error. He knew that acquiescence in a wrong would engender a self-assertion of it as a right. 2 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED It is as true to-day as it was in I860, that the extinction of right-doing awakens the justification of wrong-doing. The South to-day demands, and is confidently expecting, that the nation shall acquiesce in the South 's sectionalized political life, its practical abrogation of the fundamental law of the nation, in its avowal of the law's fundamental error, and in its insistence upon an absolute annihilation of the law's fundamental principle. The South to-day, as a whole and by States and by localities and by individuals, is employed, by direct and indirect methods, propelled in part by the sinister influences of plutocracy, in a ceaseless propaganda to develop this issue, in season and out of season. Nothing seems to be left undone or unattempted to offer it. If the issue could be presented in some concrete form it would be less dangerous than the subtle undermining influences now being brought to bear by the South and its allies. The North good-naturedly pretends not to perceive this. Innocent, confiding, and designing sympathizers, both North and South, obscure and veneer the issue with benevo- lence and commercialism. The real sectionalism is deeply rooted and abiding and is promoted by daily cultivation. For there is no longer any middle ground. The political conditions so the South claims in a dozen States must cease to be the subject of discussion by the other thirty-four States. The challenge is a standing one. The dozen Southern States must not be disturbed in their potentiality at home, or in their power in the national councils, but must be left to their own devices and sweet will in- perpetuating their abrogation of national guarantees. In this the entire American people are challenged to acquiesce. It has become and while unsettled it will remain not a local but a national question, that is quietly but supremely asserting itself, viz.: shall the colored people in a dozen States constitute a peasantry of disfranchised servitors? Shall a SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 3 class become a caste? Shall white men lose their independ- ence? Shall menials be without political citizenship, while counting more for their masters to-day than they did when they were owned as slaves? Shall there be but one exclusive answer to all inquiries of this character? When, where and how, if ever, were these questions settled so as to exclude any national attention to them? It is common sense to observe that sectionalism, no matter how rampant, can never settle this issue without the acquies- cence and adherence of the whole country. Thus is revived a fundamental question like that asked by Abraham Lincoln, Shall what is wrong be deemed right? Are the demands of sectionalism wrong, or are they really right? The constituency to ponder the answer is the American People; the whole people of the United States, and not only of a part thereof. It is, however, unfortunately the fashion in high places to befog this issue and to divert the people from the results of the War of the Rebellion, by a species of idealism and Confederate laudation. Why should the Confederacy be canonized? It is true, a soldier may be a good soldier as a soldier in any cause. He may be dutiful, obedient, valorous and efficient. As a man he may be esteemed for manly qualities. But when all this has been said, it is not necessary, nor indeed does it effect any use- ful purpose either of benevolence or of historic truth, to extol the monarch or the government the soldier serves. The War of the Rebellion, so far as the Confederacy was concerned, was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.* It was in behalf of * Carl Schurz gives this apt description of the poor whites: "They had but a very dim conception, if any conception at all, of what all this fight- ing and bloodshed was about. They had been induced or forced to join the army by those to whom they had been accustomed to look up as their superiors. They had only an indistinct feeling that the war had not been undertaken and was not carried on by 4 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED the elements in control, and of the government of the States composing the so-called "Confederate States of America." These elements constituted the most relentless tyranny that ever masqueraded under the name of Democracy! It was not a genuine, but a spurious, Democracy. Brushing aside the methods that brought it into being, in its supremacy and within the range of its military power it was despotic beyond all description. Individual liberty was dependent upon official caprice. No family, no estate, no factory was exempt from military surveillance. Personal property was insecure. Every farm was made tributary to military power; for every bale of cotton was covered by a Confederate Government option or lien that gave pledge to the bonds which were to mature, and which by their terms were made payable six months, after a Treaty of Peace should have been concluded with the United States! The pretentious Democracy of the Confederacy was in fact only the power of local Bosses representing the slave- holding oligarchy. The slaves formed more than one-third (34 \ per cent.) of the entire population of the South in 1860, while the owners of slaves formed only 2>\ per cent, of the total population and only 5-^ per cent, of the white population; the proportion of slave owners to the white population being less in 1860 than it was in 1850 (5$ per cent, in 1850).* the South for their benefit. There was a ' winged word" current among the poor people of the South which strikingly portrayed the situation, as they conceived it to be, in a single sentence: 'It is the rich man's war and the poor man's fight.' This was so true that the poor whites of the South could hardly be expected to be sentimentally loyal to the 'Southern cause.' Hence, whenever a good opportunity offered and special hard- ships were being suffered by rebel soldiers there were many deserters to the Federal lines from this class of soliders, who were nevertheless excellent -soldiers while in the ranks. . . . Such poor whites lived and died and knew nothing better than to be the abject followers of 'the slave-holding aristocracy, oppressors and misleaders of the common people, who had resolved to destroy the Republic if they were not permitted to rule it.' " * Twelfth Census Bulletin 8, p. 79. The slave population of those States in 1860 was 3,521,110 The number of owners of these slaves was 271,623 The white population in 1860 of the eleven slave States was 5,588,220 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 5 Non-slave-holding whites * were pressed into the fighting ranks, from which men owning a dozen slaves f had no difficulty in securing exemption. "The ordinary white, without slaves, was practically a mere political camp follower of the slave- holding lord of immense agricultural possessions." It was a fight for the slave-property of another who was himself exempt from fighting. The most arrogant and offensive soldiers, who had shirked field duty by influence, became local officials exercising the power of military rule. To every male in- habitant was assigned some task, whether of contribution or of service. To-day in many parts of the South the sons of men who were in the Confederate ranks are without position and influence in the dominant political party. Their honorable aspirations in political life are suppressed in many quarters, but they are counted upon to uphold the same dominant Oligarchy that has, in its turn, now become the willing servant of a new Plutocracy masquerading as Democracy. If honest elections and an independent political party were possible, as at present they are not in many States of the South, there are thousands of men, white and black, who could be suc- cessfully appealed to, with some prospect of overcoming this Oligarchy. But that is not permitted. Who shall control the dominant political party furnishes the only "live" political questions, the agitation of which thrives on misrepresentation, greed, and corruption; while one-sided Primaries furnish the chief incitement to concrete political action. It is apparently only a question of individual preference. There is no conflict * "Yet it was the poor whites of the South who were forced to the front in the war of secession and did the principal battling ; thr Confederate State of Alabama, with other States South, having passed an act exempting from conscription for service in the war the large holder of chattel slaves!" J . C. Manning. t The Confederate Congress exempted such of them as owned from ten to twenty slaves from conscription when the conscripting officers were raking the South from the "cradle to the grave." The conscription -was of course drastic (see Confederate acts of Congress of October 11, 1863, May 1. 1363, aud February 17, 1864). 6 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED about principles or platforms, as they are stated by a national party. Contests of that nature do not form an issue before the general electorate. An appreciation of these conditions is concealed under a false and pretentious cry of Negro domination; which is, indeed, as unlikely as the domination of visible angels ! The white men of the South are not such political cowards as to fear the colored people, as is pretended by some demagogues. The truth is that there prevails, especially at the South, a worship of visions, of ideas, of imaginary ideals representing an idealized and not a real "lost cause." There is always the halo of romance about a "lost cause," and human nature habitually indulges in much unwholesome sentimentality in the contemplation of a "lost cause." Such uninstructivc and misleading exhibitions, for instance, as arranging a chorus of children at Richmond in the design and color of the "Stars and Bars," or in the draping with the Confederate colors of a por- trait of the President of the United States and other foolish illustrations currently reported in the press, tend to impress young and plastic minds with an improper veneration. So it actually and often happens that any uplifting towards true progress is made only when the romance and illusion are de- stroyed by the discovery of historical fact. Hence it is valueless to conceal the truth that the so-called "Confederate States of America" were typical of all that pro- ceeds from tyranny, from wrong, from lust of power, from a spurious Democracy, and from the supremacy of those whose rule of action was " rule or ruin! " Such a political tyranny as was that of the Slave Oligarchy, the South is to-day seeking to maintain over the descendants of the freed slaves, and over the objectionable white element; and the caste feeling, colorphobia and race prejudice of the new South finds vent in denunciation, misrepresentation and mis- statements regarding the colored people and the attempts, SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 7 largely successful, to keep them in subjection politically and socially; and to maintain a privileged class. Out of the mouths of the Southern leaders themselves, and of their Northern allies in high places, is it abundantly proven that there exists to-day a greater sectionalism, if not also a more intense class feeling and obnoxious discrimination than really existed in ante bellum days; that the tendencies to main- tain this sectionalism are wide-spread and ever-increasing; and that this condition constitutes a menace to the peace and happiness of the Republic and to the nation at large. This is, in truth, the most momentous national question of the day. But the issues are so beclouded or evaded by Party leaders, and by the men whose policy is one of laissez-faire, that the public at large is really not aware of the extent and potentiality of this sectionalism, and remains ignorant of the way in which it is sapping the roots of the Constitutional fabric which the War of the Rebellion was fought to broaden and to strengthen so that it shall endure forever. II ". . . persistent effort to revive old system under new forms." Stewart L. Woodford. "Does any seek this day for any cause to revive the old prejudice of class and caste and race? He is no friend of the Union. Does any seek this day, for self or partisan success, to set white against black, or black against white? He is no friend of the Union". Stewart L. Woodford. "Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity." Gibbon. The extreme and fanatical Southern leaders openly proclaim their political platform under the slogans, "America for the Americans" and "This is a white man's country, and white men must govern it." A notorious Southern Senator * recently said in the Senate: " They (the North) went to war to destroy slavery and to restore the Union. If they had stopped there, we would have none of this trouble on our hands now. This question would have been allowed to evolute naturally, and we would have been permitted to give to those negroes who may have shown themselves qualified and proper to hold the ballot the right to vote. But we have made this mistake, of enfranchising a race, slaves last week, barbarians three generations ago. If it was a mis- take, why not say so? And why not retrace our steps?" If the negro should depend upon an acknowledgment by the South of his worthiness for the ballot, the time would be long in coming, if indeed it ever came, for his enfranchisement. The same Senator,* in and out of season, on every possible occasion, loses no opportunity of stirring up this caste relation, and saying unfair things regarding the colored race, * Tillman, SECTIONALISM UNMASKED <) We find the New York Herald reporting one of his speeches thus: "Senator Tillman has predicted 'bloody race riots/ and has asserted that 'if all vagrant negroes were shot like wild beasts, the country would be better off,' adding that the white men of the South should go ahead and do what they believed right in this matter ' regardless of all the Yankees between Cape Cod and hell!! '" The speaker went on to say: "Here I will say a thing which is necessary, but which I regret to say. I believe it was and is the purpose of the politician in the North to so amalgamate the two races in the South as to make us all part negro." (How absurd and unproven!) "The Southern women are standing guard at the door of the temple of race purity, and the men are aiding in the amalgamation. There can be no dual standard of home life in this country. "We demand, and rightly, too, that our women be pure. They are with us, and, by the living gods, a white man who will not stand with us should be made to live forever with the wretches with whom he delights to associate. "I would like to have all the negroes move to the North. In fact, I have a scheme by which I believe it is possible to compel many of them to go there, where they appear to be loved so dearly, where the President of the United States has sat down and eaten with one. "This association of white men with negroes oftentimes starts the demon in the negro which ends in an assault upon a white woman. The negro is led to believe that if he is as good as a white man, why not as good as a white woman, and then he soon dangles from the end of a rope if there are men with grit enough to do their duty. "Now for the remedy. In Europe, where everyone is white, all persons must show their papers. I believe the passport system in America would abolish ravishings. I know the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments would have to be done away with. When a man leaves home he would have to present his papers. In addition, he would have to give good and sufficient reason for his being absent from his home and where he was going and why. It would result in putting loafers in the chain gang, where they would be made to work. . . ." Concerning such sentiments the New York Age* editorially observed: "It is, however, timely to utter a word of kindly warning as to such * Oct. 11. 1906. 10 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED desperate agitation as Mr. Tillman's speech tends to excite. If it is allowed to go far enough seriously to imperil the order of any considerable section of the country, it will encounter, it will compel Federal intervention, and no one knows better than Senator Tillman that if that is once under- taken it will be thorough and conclusive. All reasonable Northern men regard such a possibility with the utmost concern, and would avoid it in every way and to the last moment. But there is in the Federal Govern- ment a reserve of power, intended for the protection of citizens of the United States, which has never yet been exercised, has never been clearly defined, but exists and will be used if the plain need arises. The nation has been very patient and considerate in this matter. It has seen such men as Mr. Tillman seated in the United States Senate when a free and fair vote would have kept them at home. It has seen like incongruities in the political life of a number of the Southern States, and it has ignored them because it recognized that the situation was one of great difficulty, and accepted the promise that the processes resorted to would lead to order and justice. But if the whites of any of the Southern States in which they now have absolute control deliberately withhold from a whole class of citizens 'the equal protection of the laws,' if they fail to curb the lawlessness and violence of their rowdies, and if they stir up or permit to be stirred up a race war in which 'the color of the skin is a death warrant,' the nation will cease to be patient. It will act deliberately, by legal means, and fairly, but it will undoubtedly act." It is the fashion in some quarters to observe that this Senator * is not representative of the so-called better element among the Southern leaders. This may be true if antecedents, rearing, methods, subtlety of conduct and style of expression be con- sidered ; but if opinions that are commonly expressed and acted upon at home, even if suppressed in public, be considered, then this gentleman long the accredited representative of his State perhaps a little more outspoken or abusive than other speakers along similar lines, nevertheless voices the sentiments held by his constituents and their allies. What is said these days by the adherents of the laissez-faire policy about Tillman and his class being extremists to whom no serious attention need be given was said before the war * Tillman. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 11 about such leaders as Yulee, Yancey, Slidell, Mason, Toombs, and other extremists of their day. But time proved that the views and expressions of these men were really representative, and reflected the sentiments of their less noisy but skilful allies, of whom Jefferson Davis was typical. Evidence is altogether wanting that the so-called extremists of to-day are not truly representative of all that they profess. The unreasonable and bitter attitude of Southern political leaders towards the colored race, to which the above-quoted Senator gives such forcible expression, is shown by the speech of Mr. Hoke Smith on accepting the nomination for governor- ship by the Georgia Democratic State Convention. He said: ". . . The issues which have been involved are of the utmost im- portance to all of us, and to our children. They carry us back to the days of 1868, when white civilization was at stake ! . . ." The significance of this remark was emphasized by the Con- vention speeches. In the speech of Mr. James L. Anderson, presenting Mr. Hoke Smith's name to the Convention, he said: " I insist that the crime committed against us by the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment is responsible for the stench of negro insolence. . . . The Fifteenth Amendment will ultimately be repealed, and we shall realize the glorious noonday of a united white people, in absolute control of the white man's country. Yes, Mr. Chairman, our Northern brothers will undo and nullify the horrible crime they perpetrated against us. ... " The white man has snatched this beautiful land from the savage. . . . It is his heritage. In its government and control does he need the aid of a semi-barbarian, only recently emerged from the jungles of Africa? . . . Mr. Smith's victory does indeed mean a united, and not a divided, white people. ... A glorious and greater democracy. . . . " I glory in the fact that his noble fight for the white people of Georgia and for the South has reunited the white people of Georgia, and probably of the South. . . . "Let us establish in Georgia and in the South, yes, in America, the doctrine of everlasting white supremacy. " LET COLOR BE THE LINE OF DEMARCATION. PUT IT SQUARELY HERE. The most illiterate white man has enough inheritance, noble conceptions, 12 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED and hears heavenly music, which neither education nor association can make perceptible to the negro, in whose soul the darkness of savagery is just beginning to fade into twilight. No, the negro for ages -perhaps always must be the servant of the white man; he has no other place in a white man's country. . . . We MUST nullify yes, repeal this odious Fifteenth Amendment, else, my friends miserable thought! the educated negro is justified in his claim of social equality with the white man, and in his attentions to the white man's daughter." * That the sentiments expressed at the Georgia Democratic State Convention represent not only the majority but the minority of the Democratic party in that State is obvious from the reported remarks of the minority leader f who was defeated for the gubernatorial nomination secured by Mr. Hoke Smith. Mr. Ho well is reported to have said: ' ' I am in favor of negro disf ranchisement, but I contend that the negro is now disfranchised by the only legal and effective method by which he can be eliminated as a factor in our State elections." Mr. Smith had advocated that Georgia should follow the same course as some other Southern States in enacting legisla- tion to shut out the negroes. Under such enactment the registrars would arrange to take in all illiterate whites and exclude even literate negroes. "Not a white man," he said, " would lose his vote!" The Independent (New York) describes Mr. Clark Ho well's attitude as "a bit more honest, but just as venomous, because, as he insisted, ' under the present laws and established by means of the poll-tax to be paid months before election, and in other ways, the negroes have been successfully kept from the polls.' " The Independent goes on to say editorially: " It was a tweedle- dum t matter between the two, which should do the most to silence the negro vote, by what sort of vote or what sort of chicanery." * From Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 6, 1906. f Clark Howell. J " Strange that all this difference should be 'Twixt TWEEDLEDUM and TWEEDLEDEE." John Byron, SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 13 The platform adopted by that Georgia Convention was for "providing by constitutional amendment, as far as it can be done, against the ignorant and purchasable negro vote." The Chairman * of the Convention, in answering ex-Congress- man Fleming's Richmond speech arguing that negroes might be entitled to vote for their own protection, declared : " 1 SAY THEY ARE ENTITLED TO VOTE FOR NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER. . . . They do not need to vote for their own protection." The temporary chairman f of the Convention (who proposed in Congress a resolution to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment), frequently during the course of his Convention speech repeated the phrase, "Down with the nigger! " Each time the Conven- tion responded with great applause, according to the report of the proceedings in the Atlanta Constitution. In a letter to Mr. Estes about the speech of ex-Congressman Fleming, above referred to, President Roosevelt wrote: "The problem of any one part of our great common country should be held to be the problem of all our country." Yet the South to-day claims through its leaders that it, and it alone, can successfully deal with the problems confronting it, and cries to the North, "Hands off!" And what is the spirit in which they are attempting to deal with a "negro problem," so-called? Here are a few instances of outspokenness on this subject. A recently elected Congressman J from Georgia wrote to the President asking for the removal of the negro Collector of Customs at Savannah. To a Committee who had asked for an interview he addressed a letter in which he said that he would not give an audience to negroes! He wound up his letter with the phrase, "This is a white man's country." One effect of this kind of extreme colorphobia in the South is a concerted endeavor to consign the colored race to political helotry. That no reaction or resentment should follow is not * Judge A. L. Miller. f Congressman H-.irJwirk . f Charles G. Edwards. 14 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED in accordance with what is known of human nature. Already the under-murmurings are being heard. It is truly "sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind." A writer * who gets into a frenzied condition of mind and loses his balance, except for style, whenever he approaches this race bogy, as well as when he writes pretended history that is as much romance as his novels themselves, asked recently: "Are you ready to make of the American people a negroid nation ? " That he affirms to be " the aspiration of the negro." As a matter of fact, the "aspiration of the negro" is for "true independence and the reign of the law, founded upon equal and exact justice to all men." His aspiration is not towards "negroidism," as this biassed romancist declares, but towards the enjoyment of the suffrage, so that the colored race may take their part, as citizens not only in name, but in verity and truth, in the future course and growth of this great Republic. There is a tendency in the South to construe every appeal of the colored man for just treatment unless it be on limited lines denoted by the Southern political leaders themselves or their benevolent allies as an attempt to stir up strife between the races. Any other organized movement aiming to ameliorate the condition of the colored race is met with a propaganda of suppression, if not with open hostility. It is a misfortune, if not indeed a wrong, to the race of which he is a member, that any colored leader should also be engaged in that suppression and hostility. Nevertheless it is quite true that there are exactly such persons, some indeed of exalted character and of national reputation. The personal and indi- vidual motives for hostility should in such instances be care- fully scanned, to arrive at the why and the wherefore. * Thomas Nelson Page. McClure's, March, 1907. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 15 The indubitable attempt to keep the colored people in a con- dition of subserviency and without opportunity was recently well expressed by a speaker * at the William Lloyd Garrison Centenary in these words: "In many states American citizens are denied the right to vote on account of their color. There and elsewhere they are exposed to lawless violence, are subjected to cruel punishments without trial, are visited with social indignities, are denied the equal opportunity which is the birthright of every man, are taunted with inferiority, while many insist that they are and of right must be forced to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water, incapable of higher things." This language expresses the policy of the South. The colored race is abused as a "worthless class of citizens," with a "hopeless difference" between it and the dominant white race. The South refuses to accept the negro as a man and a citizen, treating him and wishing to keep him always as a dis- franchised servitor. The real crux of what is ostentatiously styled the "race problem" is right here whether there is to be political serfdom or political manhood, or, to use the accepted language of the sectional sentimentalists, "a servile popula- tion." "Here is the crucial point: There will be a movement either in the direc- tion of reducing the negroes to a permanent condition of serfdom the condition of the mere plantation hand, 'alongside of the mule, 7 practically without any rights of citizenship or a movement in the direction of recognizing him as a citizen in the full sense of the term. One or the other will prevail." These weighty words were uttered by the late Hon. Carl Schurz. Which of these two courses is the American nation going to pursue and to perpetuate as against the sectionalism cultivated by a narrow Oligarchy swayed by inherited prejudice? That prejudice is shown in a great variety of ways, affecting the colored people in all the relations of life. Wrongs are being done to them of which the nation at large is but little aware. * Moorfield Storey, report in The Anti-Slavery Cause of To-day. 16 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED A Confederate veteran expresses the real sentiments of the Southern leaders when, speaking at Grant's Tomb on Memorial Day, 1907, he naively declared: " There will never be another rebellion but there will be war and blood- shed. The negro question has yet to be settled, and every man who knows the undercurrent of race hatred and prejudice looks forward to it with dread. We do not hate the negro, mind you, but he must keep his place and must remember that this is a white man's country. The time will come here in the North when you will realize this. . . . You will have to come to it here." The impulse in humanity to rise is one that is implanted in the breast of everyone, and in the case of the ten million (more or less) colored free men will undoubtedly succeed in the long run, when the country appreciates the ignorant and un-Christian prejudice that is at the bottom of the race's wrongs to-day, in defiance of the Constitution and the laws of God and man. Public opinion has to be aroused and will be aroused to a point where it will make itself felt. "The occasional word of many men creates public opinion which is irresistible." One of the ways in which the colored race in the South is discriminated against and wronged is in the matter of schools. Efforts aiming to educate the negroes are often frustrated by the temper and disposition of those in control. How venomously the negro is written about may be instanced by a communication from the South that appeared in the New York Times. It says: " The educated negro has only three ambitions to teach, to preach, or to get into the penitentiary for forgery." Again, a letter was written a few months since by a prominent business man and educator in New Orleans to the British Am- bassador at Washington, advising against the appointment of negroes to Cecil Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University! Can color prejudice go further than this to bar from benefiting SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 17 by what the late Mr. Rhodes intended for all, irrespective of race or color; and thus to defeat his object of opening educa- tional advantages to those who showed the necessary uplift? But there are others than this gentleman from New Orleans. One declares "that the association of whites, negroes and Indians in schools was not only impossible in the South, but that North Carolina would decline any gift or endowment which suggested such a combination." The minority leader * in the House of Representatives is recently reported as having uttered these words: " I do not believe in raised schools. The future welfare of the South is wrapped up in the question of separate schools and the separation of the two races there, in order to maintain racial peace and to prevent the out- break of racial hostility. . . . Every great woe and check to progress that this country has suffered is dated from the landing of the first slave- ship at Jamestown. The very Iliad of all our woes was that." By way of further illustration of this prejudice and dis- crimination, instances without number might be cited. It is only occasionally that the voice of the more far-seeing and better element in the South is heard on behalf of the colored people. One of thesef recently said : "We cannot afford to sacrifice our ideas of justice, of law and of religion for the purpose of preventing the negro from elevating himself. If we wish to preserve the wide gap between our race and his in the onward progress of civilization, let us do it by lifting ourselves up, not by holding him down." One way by which the South is trying to hold the negro down is by discriminating against negro schools in appropriations. The schools, too, for the colored people are in many cases not worthy of the name of schools, whereas those devoted to the whites are well-built and properly ventilated. An illustration of this is to be found in a press communica- tion from Shreveport, Richmond, in which it is stated that * John Sharp Williams. t Hon. W. H. Fleming. 18 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED although colored children are about as numerous there as white children, according to the 1900 Census returns, not quite $160,000 was given for their education as against $2,000,000 for white schools. The whites have several large brick school- houses, but the buildings for the colored children are so poor that on one occasion, in order to listen to an address, the principal took his entire school to a church for that purpose. There are whole counties in Louisiana with only one negro school, some, indeed, with none at all. In some localities public deficiences have been ameliorated by the creditable action of the colored people themselves. Thus in "seventeen Virginia counties negro residents have during the past year contributed $3,000 and collected additional funds enabling them to improve many school- houses and to add six weeks to the school term in those counties." * It is unfortunate that men holding the liberal views of the writer above quoted, who deprecates the holding down of the negro, should be excluded as such men usually are from public life; because genuine humanity and affectionate regard for the colored people animate the broad-minded, thinking men among the Southern leaders. This is well illustrated in the language of the distinguished Louisville editor, Henry Watter- son, who in a recent public address said: "During the century of agitation and contention among the whites about the blacks, starting with the suppression of the African slave trade to culminate with the Proclamation of Emancipation, it was the black people, not the white people, who behaved themselves like Christian men and women; and if Gabriel should suddenly blow his horn and the world should come to an end this blessed instant, many a white man might be found holding up a black man to plead his case before the Recording Angel. You ought to be very proud of this. It should constitute your point of departure in that soul-journey from grace to grace toward per- fection which is the goal of those that accept for their rule of life and death the religion of Christ and Him crucified! . . . * New York Evening Post. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 19 ". . . Reasonable white people and reasonable black people find it easy to get along much as if there existed no color line. Each is inspired by a sense of duty to the other which, under the benign influence of religion and humanity, may yet blossom into the old domestic relations of confidence and affection, the ownership clause succeeded by a manhood clause, at once self-respecting and reciprocally respected ". . . The interest of one race is the interest of the other race, that neither can prosper if either suffers. ' ' I must tell you, after forty years of experience and observation and reflection, that I think we began wrong. We put the cart before the horse. Three millions of poor black people, with some centuries of abject slavery and many ages of barbaric night behind them were not equal to using the freedom that came to them so suddenly, and especially the ballot, with prudence or intelligence. How could they? I don't blame them in the least. On the contrary, I sometimes wonder at their self-restraint. As, during the Sectional war, they were faithful servants, remaining at home and tilling the fields and taking care of the women and children, so since the war, according to their rights, they have tried to be good citizens. I glory in every step of progress they have made and they have made many strides from that day to this. Temperamentally ever for the under dog a crank about personal liberty, if I am a crank about anything my heart goes out to the black man wherever I see him honestly struggling to raise his children to a condition better than his own. . . . ". . . I stand here to-night to declare that the world has never witnessed any such progress from darkness to light as that which we see in those districts of the South where the Negro has had a decent oppor- tunity for self-development. . . ." Notwithstanding occasional liberal utterances like these, there exists not only in the South a feeling about caste schools and separate education for the two races, but there are also numerous similar instances among men in the North sup- posed to be desirous of uplifting the colored people. Ex- President Cleveland, President Eliot, of Harvard, Bishop Lawrence and others are quoted as being in favor of caste schools and segregation. The Northern friends of the negro have in many instances adopted or assimilated the prejudices of the South, so as to obscure a more benevolent and intellectual vision. Segregation, sequestration, deportation, annihilation 20 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED all have their advocates in the North as well as in the South. Much has been written and said along these lines; comparatively little regarding efforts to arouse the intellectual progress of the colored race. That race is, by these colorphobiacs, regarded as unassimilable and hopelessly inferior to the Caucasian. With- out pausing to discuss this presumption, the fact is recognized that determined attempts are made to hinder educational pro- gress and intellectual development among the colored people. The former Minister from China to this country (Sir Chentung Liang-Cheng), on taking leave of his post at Washington, is reported to have said that his government felt that "no reform would be successfully accomplished without educating the younger generation thoroughly." He proceeded to call attention to the fact that in one province of China alone (Chi-li) 3,286 schools had been established within the last three years. If any State in the South of this country can to-day show the establishment of schools, at the rate of 1,000 a year, where the younger generation shall be instructed to avoid, and not to cultivate, the prejudice current among white children against the blacks, the evidence of such institutions might be wisely forthcoming; for the existence of such an educational spirit would evince a progress sadly needed in the South, and estab- lish an influence that would be most potential and beneficial in localities, States and in the nation at large. The educational conditions in Alabama, for example, are well stated in the following editorial of a leading New York daily newspaper * : " In its advancement along educational lines no less than in its material development, the South is showing the effects of the new impulse which has pushed it forward so rapidly in the last quarter of a century. Although local pride, as recently expressed in the protest of some ill-advised citizens against bringing Northern money into the South for the prosecution of educational work, may to some extent prevent a hearty co-operation by the people in some of the less progressive sections of it with the philan- * New York Tribune, June 2, 1907. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 21 thropic efforts of various Northern organizations to raise the standards of education there, a healthy growth of public sentiment in all the Southern States toward an improvement in the general educational system is ap- parent. "Alabama has been one of the greatest sufferers, in many respects, among the Southern States. During the reconstruction period its government, like that of its sister states, was largely taken out of the hands of its own citizens, and the repudiation of its state debt shortly after the Civil War was so great a shock to the credit of Alabama that at times it has been difficult to borrow even the comparatively small sums necessary to carry on its work. Naturally, under these circumstances, the educational system of the state was not remodelled as it should have been, and up to the present time has not received the attention that the new times and conditions demand. " That an awakening is at hand is evident. One of Alabama's leading papers, the Birmingham Age-Herald, says editorially: 'Alabama is per- haps the only state in the Union that permits any county to elect any one, no matter how unfit, to the office of County Superintendent. Alabama has had county school superintendents who could not read and write, and, so far as the law is concerned, she may have more of that sort.' A bill now pending in the Legislature provides that the county Board of Education shall elect an annual teacher-superintendent, and that teachers must hold a first-grade or a life certificate. According to the same paper, about sixty-seven county rings will be lined up against the bill, and about sixty-seven superintendents will oppose it. If the general public is as thoroughly in earnest as the Age-Herald is, there can be little doubt as to the result, and it is to be hoped that public sentiment will be strong enough to overcome the opposition of the superintendents and county rings. If conditions are as the Birmingham paper affirms, it is entirely correct in its statement that they need the new bill worse than a boy ever 'needed a whipping.' It is up to the intelligent people of Alabama to see that we get it, despite the efforts of the county politicians." Not more than a fifth of the school income of the South goes to the support of the negro schools. In Georgia the white and black school population are nearly equal, yet out of every dollar of State school money eighty cents goes for a white child and twenty cents for a negro child for each white child $5.92 a year, while for the negro child $2.27 a year. White teach- ers receive over a million dollars, while the negro teachers 22 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED receive less than three hundred thousand dollars. Less than half the colored children are furnished school facilities, and not a cent is given by the State to the higher training of negro teachers and professional men. Of the more than the million- dollar fund provided by the United States for agricultural training the blacks being the chief agriculturists of the State and especially in need of such training the division of this fund was in 1906 parceled out in the proportion of thirty-four thousand to the whites for eight thousand to the negroes. * Public training schools for negro teachers are needed in the South. These teachers have been and for some time must continue to be turned out chiefly from schools supported by Northern contributions. One member of Congress from Alabama opposed Federal aid to education upon the ground that education caused the white farmer boy to get too proud to work in the sun and turned him from the plantation! Deep down behind this sophistry the real reason lay. It has always been the spirit of Bourbonism to suppress the possibilities arising before the poorer whites of the South and to beat them backward instead of aiding them onward. f A benevolent publicist has truly said, ' ' that all the negro schools and colleges of the Southern States have never been able to prevent the enact- ment of one disfranchisement statute, nor prevented the steady curtail- ment of the Afro- Americans' rights and privileges. 'Jim Crow' legisla- tion has kept pace with the beneficent results of the Slater and Peabody funds." J * For this statement see the Address issued by the First Annual Meeting of the Georgia Equal Rights Association, t J. C. Manning, t John E. Milholland at Cooper Union, Feb. 1, 1906. Ill "The man who, for party, forsakes righteousness goes down." Wendell Phillips. "Years pass away, but Freedom does not pass; Thrones crumble, but man's birthright crumbles not." Maurice Thompson. Not only in educational matters is there marked prejudice and discrimination shown, but the South deals with the labor question in an equally biassed and high-handed way. The industrial problem in the South is, indeed, in its last analysis the labor question in ebony. How is its colored labor treated? The actual conditions in some sections respecting farm labor its greatest source of wealth are truly deplorable. The com- pensation and the home life of the farm laborers are most discouraging. Differences between employers and the employed are im- mediately and invariably styled "Race Questions," and no possible chance exists of circulating any report of their true aspect except as narrated and permitted by the oligarchy and the news channels under its sway. Every merchant, every bank, every railroad office, every business agency, every news- paper office and its dependents, receives and conveys informa- tion and opinions promoted, if not inspired, by the dominant oligarchy that devotes itself to politics, and whose adherents subsist on politics although not always styled by that name, for how can there be real "politics" when there exists in a community concededly ONLY ONE PARTY, the party of so-called "democracy," and where there is, as President Roosevelt 24 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED aptly expresses it, no " frank and manly opposition of party man to party man." Labor from outside does not come to the South as it should, as it otherwise would, as it comes to other sections of the Union. The most ignorant Italian or Scandinavian immigrant knows, even before he lands here, enough of the real labor con- ditions in the South to give a wide berth to that part of the country. If at all possible he settles elsewhere. In some sections the actual labor conditions are appalling. An active educator in Alabama makes, in a letter to the com- piler of these pages, a terrible arraignment. He describes the conditions of the poor negroes on the farms in that State, show- ing a servitude without any of the safeguards of a legalized slave condition. Such a picture as he draws is one to make a nation skeptical when it is told that "All's well in the South! " It appears to be, in truth, an extensive field for missionary work of all kinds. He says: "Having been born and brought up in the rural sections of Alabama and attended school and taught for several years in what is known as the blackest of the Black Belt, I have had an excellent opportunity of studying the condition of the negro and becoming thoroughly familiar with the poverty and in- dustrial conditions that exist upon the farm. I have studied in detail every phase of the farm and home life of the negro, and know that there is much suffering and poverty among the wage-earners especially. The masses of the American people have no conception of the real conditions in that section. "Of the many southwestern counties that are densely popu- lated with negroes, I shall speak categorically of a few only, beginning with Hale, in which I spent four years as principal of the city school of Greensboro'. The total population of Hale County is about twenty-nine thousand, of which about twenty-four thousand are colored people. About ninety-nine per cent, of these people live upon the farm; about three per SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 25 cent, own farms (or, rather, are buying farms). I think it would be safe to say that at least sixty per cent, of these people work under what is known as the contract or wage system. It is mainly regarding this class of laborers that I wish to speak. "The system by which these people work is a mild form of slavery, that is, if there is such a thing as * a mild form of slavery'! The little shanties in which they are housed are in most cases small, seldom consisting of more than two rooms (no matter how large the family may be). The people who work on contract are, as a rule, in debt to the landlord from the time the contract is made until they move away. In some very rare cases I have found a thrifty and industrious fellow working on contract, who wants something and is saving his earnings; but for the most part the contract hand wants noth- ing that cannot be eaten or worn. In almost every case he taxes himself by buying as much in one year as he can afford to pay for in two! This is because everything is sold at a very high price and an exorbitant rate of interest charged; but, so far as he is concerned, there is no limit to his credit. There are many who would buy a steamboat if they could get it on credit, no matter if there was no water within a hundred miles! "When these people get their provisions they prepare luxurious tables. I have visited homes where a ten-dollar table would be set on Sunday, and in consequence the family would half starve throughout the week. Notwithstanding the fact that they are working and cultivating a soil that will grow or produce almost anything needed to eat, they usually buy all that goes into the kitchen. Sometimes you will see as many as forty or fifty of the little contract shanties, or quarters as they are called, standing on ten or fifteen acres of land. You will not see a barn, smoke-house, garden, pigpen, chicken or even a flower, to make light or lessen the burden of these people! " A few weeks ago I visited a friend who is superintendent of 26 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED one of these farms. He gave out the week's provisions while I was there, and to my surprise each man received a quarter of a bushel of corn-meal, four pounds of side bacon and two pounds of flour. This supply was for the following week. Nothing was said about the provisions for the family. My friend, when asked about it, said that the landlord had nothing to do with that, and would not have anything to do with it until May, at which time the wife and other members of the family would be needed to work on the farm! "The men are paid very small wages. The price paid to laborers ranges from six dollars to fifteen dollars per month. These men in order to support their families often resort to stealing. Most of them are laboring under the impression that the only care the landlord has for them is their labor, so they make up their minds that for their part all they care for their employer is to beat him out of work all they can. "Because of their ignorance, poverty and environment, they are for the most part grossly immoral. I have seen quite a number of these people (both men and women) who have absolutely no conception of moral duty. They live, in many instances, in small one-room huts. A family of from two to ten persons often cook, eat, sleep, bathe, get sick and die in the same little dirty, filthy hut! One cannot think of these peo- ple as being otherwise than immoral. "Not only are they poor and immoral, but very ignorant. In some settlements you find grown up young men and young women who cannot read or write a single word. The public schools in such sections are poorly kept and by persons who in many cases are incompetent and care very little for the intellectual or moral growth of the community. The school terms are short and occur in not a few cases at a time when the larger boys and girls are needed upon the farm. As long as there is work upon the farm to be done the boys and girls are not seen in the schoolroom! SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 27 "The majority of these children never go to Sunday school. In these sections the schoolhouses are not fit to herd cattle in, but in many cases the church houses are well constructed. They are, however, often presided over by incompetent preachers whose lives are not an embodiment of the true principles of true and noble manhood. "The census of 1900 showed that in Hale County there were ten thousand three hundred and twenty-nine negroes over ten years of age who can neither read nor write. In Hale and the five adjoining counties, including Berry, Bibb, Greene, Marengo, and Tuscaloosa counties, there are about fifty-four thousand colored people over ten years of age who can neither read nor write. " What is needed is a general awakening. I find them anxious to follow the right kind of leadership when they are shown the right way. "THE GREAT NEED is GOOD SCHOOLS. When one of these girls or boys by chance gets into such institutions as Tuskegee, Snow Hill or Atlanta University, they get a spirit of discontent, and when they return home they go right to work to change conditions. "I have here put down the actual conditions of these people on the farm. I do not say that every negro is in such condition, but the majority of them are. Although this is a dark and sordid future, I still have the brightest hopes for the race and am daily preaching that, "Though beaten back in many a fray, New strength we will borrow; Where the vanguards came to-day We shall rest to-morrow." Arthur W. Mitchell. A distinguished professor in Atlanta University has said that "throughout the country districts of the South we see this system of organization which looks upon the laborer just as 28 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED it looks upon the land. He is to be exploited. The laws are arranged for his exploitation. If he does not work well, then laws must be made to make him work better. The whole talk of the rural South to-day is of controlling labor and com- pelling the idle to work. There is almost no talk of inducing labor to control itself and putting such incentives before the laborer that he will want to work. Such a conception of labor ; has not yet entered the thought of the agricultural South."* The existence of peonage is a disgrace to the South. Peonage defies the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitu- tion, which provides that: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the person shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The peonage system of the South to-day, an eating cancer on the bosom of the republic, exists in defiance of the amend- ment, and such defiance is the breaking of the organic law of the land. Peonage is a state of slavery described by the Attorney- General (Bonaparte) in these words: "The crime in question amounts substantially to selling into or retaining in involuntary servitude persons who fail to pay alleged debts, which pre- tended debts are often fictitious, extortionate, or fraudulent." . . . "The treatment of these captives is often brutal and revolting to every instinct of humanity." f Replying to a magazine article on peonage conditions (Cosmo- politan, March, 1907, by Richard Barry), Congressman Clark of Florida took occasion in the House of Representatives to print with his speech a number of extracts from Florida news- papers purporting to take issue with the facts stated in that magazine article; and, on the strength of those newspaper articles and of his personal acquaintance with an individual * W. E. Du Bois, "Sociology and Industry in Southern Education." t Cong. Rec., p. 4772, March 4, 1907. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 29 whom he eulogized, denounced the writer of the article in the Cosmopolitan as a falsifier. The servitude and character of the treatment of the persons held in a barbarous servility was apparent to the mind of any impartial reader of the article, notwithstanding the pretentious reply on the floor of Con- gress, for which, under the Constitution, a Representative cannot elsewhere be held responsible. The unsatisfactory character of this Congressional assault upon an independent investigator will appear from reading the speech and the article so hotly denounced.* The veneer of legality which as a poisonous pseudo-salve to the public conscience is spread over peonage as it is prac- tised in the South is one of its most demoralizing features. Notwithstanding the fact that this "veneer" might readily be brushed aside by legal proceedings in behalf of any of the suffering victims, yet their ignorant, friendless and destitute condition renders such a course impracticable. Indeed if any philanthropic, industrial or benevolent association should undertake a crusade of that character it would be crushed, if not by the magnitude of its task, certainly by the public and financial interests which are to-day sustaining this system of peonage. The isolated instances where prosecutions have successfully terminated have resulted in little, if any, moral effect, in view of the circumstances that in most cases the affected individual, by bail or in some way, remains at large. As the result of a most painstaking investigation of the con- vict lease camps of Georgia made recently by a Southern man (Colonel Byrd), the specific charges against their practice were summed up: "(1) Robbing convicts of their time allowances for good behavior. According to Colonel Byrd, there were not five camps in 'the State that had complied with the law requiring them to keep a book in which the good or bad conduct of each convict shall be entered daily. In the event of * Cong. Rec., p. 4836. 30 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED good conduct the law provides that a prisoner's term of confinement shall be shortened four days during each month of service. In fifteen out of twenty-four private camps the contractors did not give the convicts a single day off for good service, nor did they even make pretence of doing so. (2) Forcing convicts to work from fourteen to twenty hours a day. (3) Providing them no clothes, no shoes, no beds, no heat in winter, and no ventilation whatever in single rooms in summer in which sixty convicts slept in chairs. (4) Giving them rotten food. (5) Allowing them to die, when sick, for lack of medical attention. (6) Outraging the women. (7) Beating to death old men too feeble to work. (8) Killing young men for the mere sake of killing. (9) Suborning jurors and county officers, whose sworn duty it is to avenge the wrongdoing of guards." It is no exaggeration to say that in many respects the con- vict lease system as it is operated in the Southern States is less human than was the bondage of slavery times. For under the latter it was to the master's interest to feed, clothe and shelter the slaves properly. The death of a slave meant actual pecuniary loss, whereas the death of a convict to-day involves no money loss either to the lessee or to the States or county that permits the lease. "The plan of hiring out short term convicts to an indi- vidual or a company of individuals who needed laborers was adopted by the Southern States shortly after the war, not from choice, it is claimed, but because there was neither a sufficient number of jails nor money enough to build them. Those who need laborers for their farms, saw-mills, brick yards, turpentine distilleries, coal or phosphate mines, or who have large contracts of various kinds, lease the misdemeanants from the county or State, which sells them to the highest bidder with merciless disregard of the fact that they are human beings, and practically gives the lessee the power of life and death over the unfortunate man or woman thus raffled off. The more work the lessee gets out of the convict, the more money goes into his gaping purse. Doctors cannot be em- ployed without the expenditure of money, while fresh victims may be secured by the outlay of little cash when convicts SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 31 succumb to disease and neglect. From a purely business standpoint, therefore, it is more profitable to get as much work out of a convict as can be wrung from him at the smallest possible expense, and then lay in a fresh supply when necessary, than it is to clothe and shelter and feed him properly and spend money trying to preserve his health." In some parts of the country there is a well-known practice of discovering and caphiring able-bodied negroes whose labor is needed on the farms. In many cases these captured men are worked only during the essential season. They are then released with empty pockets to go where they can and risk capture when they are again needed. "From renting or buying colored men, women and children, who had already fallen under the ban of the law, to actually trapping and stealing them, was a very short step indeed, when labor was scarce and the need of additional hands pressed sore. Very recently, incredible as it may appear to many, colored men have been captured by white men, torn from their homes and forced to work on plantations or in camps of various kinds, just as truly as their fathers before them were snatched violently by slave catchers from their native African shores. Only in February, 1906, two cotton planters of Houston, Texas, were arrested for a kind of peonage which is by no means un- common in the South to-day. The planters needed extra help, so they captured two strong able-bodied negroes, whom they charged with being indebted to them, and with having violated their contracts. Without resort to law they manacled the negroes and removed them to their plantation, where they forced them to work from twelve to sixteen hours a day without paying them a cent." The atrocities are inconceivable that are daily being perpe- trated in almost every State of the South, with the knowledge if not the actual connivance of those charged with the ad- ministering of the law. A very hazy idea prevails all over 32 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED the country as to what the convict lease system either of State or county really signifies. There are chain gangs too, whereby men, women and even children are forced into involuntary servitude under a pretended sentence, when they are not even charged with crime, but with some petty offence such as in- truding upon a park lawn, expectorating upon the sidewalk, going to sleep in a depot, or loitering on the streets, although it has been judicially declared by a United States judge that the magistrates sentencing these helpless people to the chain gangs are themselves liable to punishment for it, despite municipal ordinance or State law sanctioning it. The power of Congress is ample to punish such magistrates. When colored men are convicted in the magistrates' courts of trivial offences which, as has been made apparent in this volume, may under the State laws include alleged violation of contract they are often given heavy sentences, with alternative fines. "Plantation owners and others in search of labor, who have already given their orders to the officers of the law, are promptly notified that some available laborers are theirs to command, and immediately appear to pay the fine and release the convict from jail, only to make him a slave. If the negro dares to leave the premises of his employer, the same magistrate who convicted him originally is ready to pounce down upon him and send him back to jail. Invariably poor and ignorant, he is unable to employ counsel or to assert his rights (it is treason to presume he.has any) , and he finds all the machinery of the law, so far as he can understand, against him. There is no doubt whatever that there are scores, hundreds perhaps, of colored men in the South to-day who are vainly trying to repay fines and sentences imposed upon them five, six, or even ten years ago. The horror of ball and chain is ever before them, and their future is bright with no hope." Well has it been said by a penologist that "over certain SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 33 places where convicts of Alabama are employed should be written the words, ' All hope abandon ye who enter here! ' ' The barbarities that are practised in these convict lease camps and chain gangs would be incredible except for the proofs of their existence that have been testified to in judicial and other proceedings. Witnesses have "told pitiable tales of their suffering and maltreatment, and related stories of seeing men killed, dragged to the river in blankets, weighted and then sunk into the water, which are too horrible to believe. As a result of this trial one of the largest railroad contractors of Knoxville, Tenn., was indicted by the grand jury on the charge of peonage, the indictment containing twenty-five counts." A colored man who had been a soldier was held in bondage in Missouri, but escaped by cutting a hole in the floor of the shack in which he was confined; and the man who held him was convicted and sentenced to three and a half years in the penitentiary and a fine of five thousand dollars. In that par- ticular case the son of the offender was also convicted. In another case a complaint was made setting forth inhuman treatment in Arkansas, imprisonment in various places, but the victims were bound like beasts and paraded through the public streets and compelled to do severe labor on plantations without receiving a cent. In another case the chairman of the board of commissioners was arrested in July, 1907, at Bradford, Florida, charged with holding in peonage a young white girl who declared that she was brutally treated. She started to walk to Jacksonville, but after going six miles was overtaken, forced to go back, wading knee-deep in some places, and on her return was beaten with a hickory stick. In another case in Arkansas a farmer had native girls come from Missouri and then promptly reduced them to slavery. In another reported instance a number of white girls making 3 34 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED claims to valuable timber lands in the wilds of Florida were compelled to wear men's clothing and work side by side with colored men who were held in slavery as well as the girls. "Stories of the treatment accorded these w r hite slave girls of Florida, which reached the ears of the Washington officials, equal in cruelty some of the tales related in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. In the black depths of pine woods, living in huts never seen by civilized white men other than the bosses of the turpentine camps, girls are said to have grown old in servitude. These girls are said to be the daughters of crackers who, like fathers in prehistoric times, little value the birth of a girl and sell the best years of their daughters' lives to the turpentine or sulphur miners and to the lumber men for a mere song. To be discharged from one of these camps means death to an employe. Since they receive nothing for their services their dismissal is no revenge for an angered foreman or boss. The slaves are too numerous to be beaten, and it is said to be a part of the system never to whip an employe, but invariably to shoot the doomed man or woman upon the slightest provocation, so that the others might be kept in constant subjection." In another instance men from Indiana seeking work had been lured to Mississippi where they were arrested and fined by the magistrate $45 and costs. They were then taken twenty- three miles to the county seat where they were for three days given only one meal a day and then taken to Essex, Mississippi, "turned over to the owner of a plantation, placed in a stockade at night and forced to work under an armed guard. They were ordered to work out their fine at fifteen cents a day, such a contract being made by the court officers themselves." According to this Indiana man there were workers on that plantation who for ten years had been trying in vain to work out their fines! "Before one fine could be worked out a new charge would be trumped-up to hold them." SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 35 Of a State convict camp in North Carolina the following narration was made by one who escaped from there, that there were twenty other New York youths who were unable to return to their homes and enduring great torture every day. He reported that for refusing to work because of lack of nourish- ment a young negro was shot by the foreman through the leg and left for dead. The victim "lay for days without medical aid, and was finally taken away " to an unknown destination! The official report of the Georgia State Prison Commission (1905-6), explaining the decrease in the number of misde- meanants on the county chain gangs in Georgia, notwithstand- ing an increase among the felony convicts, said: "Owing to the scarcity of labor, farmers who are able to do so pay the fines of able-bodied prisoners and put them on their plantations to work them (the fines) out." A special commissioner was appointed to investigate the convict lease camps in Georgia. In order the better to arrive at the truth he visited these camps without prior announce- ment. Of fifty-one chain gangs visited he discovered that "at least half were operated exclusively by private individuals who had practically the power of life and death over the con- victs." "Seldom was provision made for the separation of the sexes, either during work by day or sleep by night. Little or no attention was given to the comfort or sanitary condition of the sleeping quarters, and women were forced to do men's work in men's attire. The murder of the men and the outrage of the women in these camps, the political pulls by which men occupying lofty positions in the State were shielded and saved from indictment by grand juries, formed the subjects of many indignant editorials in the Atlanta Constitution." In some of these private camps he found children only eight years old, with convicts committed for trivial offences, many of them without shoes and clothes able to protect them, and without proper food. 36 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED In one instance he "found eleven men sleeping in a room ten feet square and but seven feet from floor to ceiling, with no window at all, but one door which opened into another room. In another camp the convicts slept in tents which had no bunks, no mattresses, and not even a floor. Fully thirteen of the camps out of twenty-four contained neither bunks nor mattresess, and the convicts were compelled to sleep in filthy, vermin- ridden blankets on the ground. And the men were obliged to sleep chained together." Of course, under such conditions there was no proper sanita- tion. This commissioner's report of the horrors of these camps is in many cases unprintable. In one camp one out of every four convicts died during their incarceration. In another camp one out of every six never left the place alive. "In twenty-one out of twenty-four private camps there were neither hospitable buildings nor arrangements of any kind for the sick." There were numerous instances of sudden deaths. In one of the camps he (Col. Byrd) visited he reported that shortly before his arrival one of the convicts had been beaten to death and his remains burned. "A reputable citizen," said Col. Byrd, "told me that he had seen the guards beating this convict, and that in their anger they had caught him by the shackles and run through the woods, dragging him along feet foremost." According to this citizen he had gone before the grand jury and testified to the facts, but the man who ran the camp had many friends and it was thought best to hush the affair up, "so as to keep it out of the newspapers and courts." The superintendent of the camp claimed that the negro "had died of dropsy and was buried in his stripes and shackles to save time." Some of these camps are worked for and often by individuals contrary to law, "who hire them directly from the authorities having them in charge after conviction, with no legal warrant from the county authorities " where they are worked. Thus the convicts are "entirely in the custody and control of private individuals." SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 37 Efforts made by humane persons to correct these abuses have been frustrated by men high in authority. Colonel Byrd called attention to the fact " that the whole political machinery of the State and county stood in with the lessees, because the first money earned by the poor victims paid the cost of trial and conviction. Not a dollar of the rental for the convicts reached the county treasury, he declared, till sheriff, deputy sheriff, county solicitor, bailiffs, court clerks, justice of the peace, constables and other officials who aided to put the convict in the chain gang were paid their fees in full. 'It is not to be supposed/ said Colonel Byrd, 'that these people would be in favor of destroying a system profitable to them- selves.' . " There are in Georgia 1,500 men who were sold to the highest bidder the 1st of April, 1904, for a period of five years. The Durham Coal and Coke Company leased 150 convicts, paying for them from 228 to 252 dollars apiece per annum. The Flower Brothers Lumber Co. leased 100 and paid 240 dollars apiece for them for a year. Hamby and Toomer leased 500, paying 221 dollars a head. The Lookout Mountain Coal and Coke Co. took 100 at 223.75 dollars a head. "The Chattahoochee Brick Co. secured 175 men at 223.7 dollars apiece per annum. E. J. McRee took 100 men and paid 220.75 dollars for each. In its report the Prison Com- mission points with great pride to the fact that for five years, from the 1st of April, 1904, to the 1st of April, 1909, this batch of prisoners alone will pour annually into the State coffers the gross sum of 340,000 dollars with a net of 225,000 dollars, which will be distributed proportionately among the various counties for school purposes." In the prosecution of cases in Alabama it was shown that trumped-up charges would frequently be made against negroes on such trivial complaints as letting one man's mule bite another man's corn. "Each man would be taken down before 38 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED a Justice of the Peace without the knowledge of the other and persuaded to make an affidavit against the other for an affray. ... An affidavit would be sworn out, but never entered upon the docket, and after a mock trial the man would be sentenced for three months or six and the judgment never entered up." At certain seasons in Mississippi the farmers secure a contract to work all prisoners sent up by the magistrates or other courts. "As spring comes on, officers of the law become exceedingly busy looking up cases of vagrancy or misdemeanor, so as to supply their regular patrons." "Every county official who leases or permits to be leased a misdeameanor convict for other than public work transgresses one of the plainest statutes on the law books of some of the States in which the offence is committed, and violates an amend- ment to the Constitution of the United States besides. There is no lack of law by which to punish the guilty, but they are permitted to perpetrate fearful atrocities upon the unfortunate and helpless, because there are thousands of just and humane people in this country who know little or nothing about the methods pursued in the chain gangs, the convict lease system and the contract labor system, which are all children of one wicked and hideous mother, peonage." It may not be conducive to the perpetuity of a condition of dis- franchised servitors that this condition of peonage should con- tinue, but that is a question with which these pages do not deal. In a report for the two years ending August 31, 1906, of the President of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts to the Governor of Alabama, he says: "The County Convict System, if anything, is worse than ever before in its history. The demand for labor and fees has become so great that most of them now go to the mines, where many of them are unfit for such labor, consequently it is not long before they pass from this earth, for as a superintendent of SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 39 one of the mines once said that the company had only two places for a convict, one in the mines and the other in the hospital. This system should be wiped out of existence, and it cannot be done too soon. If the State wishes to kill its con- victs, it should do it directly and not indirectly. ... As it is, this board has no authority or power to transfer a county convict. If he develops tuberculosis or any other disease, he has to take his chances at the camp at which he is located, and in a large proportion of cases this means death. I am well aware of the fact that this would add additional cost to the State, but conceding this, is it not the duty of the State to see that proper treatment is accorded these poor defenceless creatures, many of whom ought never to have been arrested and tried at all. . . ." "I have not changed my opinion in reference to the jails of the State; in fact, if anything, I am more convinced that the ideas of humanity and civilization would be better carried out if the torch were applied to every jail hi Alabama. It would be more humane and far better to stake the prisoner out with a ring around his neck like a wild animal than to con- fine him in places that we call jails, that are reeking with filth and disease, and alive with vermin of all kinds. They are not only harbingers of disease, but they are unquestionably nurseries of death. To see a man strong and healthy go into a jail in Alabama and in a few months come out a physical and mental wreck with death staring him in the face is not an overdrawn picture, and one seen more often than the general public would believe. The State appropriates thirty cents a day for the feeding of prisoners, and yet we receive prisoners from these same jails who are on the verge of collapse for the want of nourishment. Surely there must be some way of reaching those in authority. . . ." This is not the language of a biased Northern investigator, but of a Southern official. 40 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED A cultivated writer,* speaking of these conditions and their lessons, says: "The negro was armed with the suffrage by just and humane men because soon after the War of the Rebellion the legisla- tures of the Southern States began to enact vagrant or peonage laws, the intent of which was to reduce the newly emancipated slaves to a bondage almost as cruel, if not quite as cruel, as that from which they had just been delivered. After the vote had been given the negro, so that he might use it in self -defence, the peonage laws became a dead letter for a time and lay dor- mant, so to speak, until disfranchisement laws were enacted in nearly every State of the South. The connection between disfranchisement and peonage is intimate and close. The planter sees the negro robbed of his suffrage with impunity, with the silent consent of the whole country, and he knows that political preferment and great power are the fruits of this outrage upon a handicapped and persecuted race. He is encouraged, therefore, to apply the same principle for profit's sake to his business affairs. The politician declares that the negro is unfit for citizenship and violently snatches from him his rights. The planter declares the negro is lazy and forces him into involuntary servitude contrary to the law. Each tyrant employs the same process of reasoning to justify his course." Notwithstanding occasional prosecutions in isolated instances, there is, either on the part of those conducting or resisting such prosecutions or elsewhere, no confidence abroad that the great powers of the United States are to be, as they have not been, extensively exerted and energized in the persistent dis- covery and annihilation of practices that amount to peonage, and which have become weapons by 'which public authorities *Mary Church Terrell, "Peonage in the United States," in the August number of The Nineteenth Century and After, to whom the thanks of the compiler of this vol- ume are also due for information furnished. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 41 execute the avowed policy of communities to regulate and "control" labor. Indeed, the freedom of labor is yet to be adequately recog- nized and established; and for this the power of United States authority will alone meet the case. There are in Alabama twelve Black Counties which together are nearly as large in area as the entire kingdom of Belgium. The population of these twelve counties was in 1890 440,000, of whom 350,000 were colored. The soil of Belgium supports eight millions of people, of whom one and a half million are small farmers. More than half the farm holdings are less than one and a quarter acres in size. The average size of a farm in Macon County, Alabama, is sixty acres, the average yield of cotton per acre is about a quarter of a bale. If land were cultivated in the South as it is in Belgium, such a farm should yield two, perhaps three or even four, bales of cotton to the acre. An intelligent treatment of the labor conditions, re- garding them not as a mysterious and hopeless "race problem " but purely as a matter of public economics, might bring about an increase in the wealth of the Southern States and the general prosperity of the people therein. But so long as a matter of this sort is regarded exclusively as a racial issue, and while the political manhood and political influence of the colored population is assiduously suppressed to the point of discour- agement and family poverty, how are conditions to be indi- vidually, socially and politically improved? M. de Lavelaye, the well-known political economist and authority on the land question, speaking some years since of the thrift of the Belgian farmers and the wonderful results obtained by scientific and industrious culture, expressed the opinion that the soil of that country was not by nature par- ticularly fertile, but had been rendered so by what is probably the most hard-working farming community in the world the Belgian small-holders. If the Cotton States would learn 42 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED a lesson from Belgium they would reap from the soil what it ought rightly to produce, and the labor question would cease to be a race problem. Indeed, this whole cry about race problem is a bogy. Nobody more surely than the men in either the Union or the Confederate armies would have denied, if appealed to, that the war in which they were engaged was prosecuted by either side "to settle the race question"; yet a United States Senator* claims. forty years after the war, that it was waged to settle the race question. "We find," he says, "things more threatening in some of their aspects than ever before." If this be so, sound statesmanship demands an analysis of the situation and the projection of remedies, if any be possible. If, on the other hand, that statement be not true, then the conditions in the time of slavery must present an envious contrast with the de- plorable conditions of to-day. In either view, the attention of the whole nation, rather than of a special community, is emphatically demanded. The Southern people "are resolved to prevent social and political equality. . . ." "We settled slavery" again we are quoting the above referred to Senator, speaking in the Senatef "and we settled the question of nationality. We destroyed one, and we settled forever the question whether we were a confederation or a nation. We are a nation with a big 'N/ but the Southern half of this coun- try has no conception of the word 'Nation/ except that it is connected with the word 'nigger.' The more's the pity!" The last three Amendments to the Federal Constitution have been the subject of much abuse in certain quarters, and they are the chief political capital in several States. The following colloquy between Senator Tillman and Senator Pritchard took place in the Senate in 1900, when Senator Pritchard was denouncing the efforts to nullify these Amendments: TILLMAN: "When in a Southern State Negro postmasters are forced on the people, and at the North there are no Negro postmasters, how can we separate the Negro from the Republican party? " * Tillmau. t Cong. Rec., 59th Congress p 1044 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 43 PRITCHARD: "There it is again, Mr. President. You might read the Ten Commandments to my distinguished friend from South Carolina and he would yell 'Negro' back at you." TILLMAN: "If you read the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amend- ments at me, I certainly should yell 'nigger' back at you, because they are chock-full of 'nigger' and nothing else."* Such inflammatory talk stirs up race passions and is emi- nently unfair. Such speeches are on a par with plays like "The Clansman. "f Both do incalculable harm. Hon. Joseph B. Fleming, of Augusta, Ga., has characterized that play as "fiendish and, worse still, cowardly." He referred to its ex- preacher-author as one "who in our own day has turned playwright and, calling to his aid all of the accessories of the stage and all of the realisms of the living drama, seeks to fan into flame the fiercest passions of the whites and blacks. His chief purpose seems to be to force into immediate conflagration combustible materials, which his heated imagination tells him must burn some time in the future. Apparently he chafes under the delay of Providence in bringing on the ghastly spectacle, and yearns to witness with his own eyes in the flesh that reign of hell on earth before his own redeemed soul is ushered into the calm, serene and gentle presence of Him whose gospel of love and light he once preached to erring men." Whenever one of the colored people protests against "jim- crowism," the cry is raised that he is clamoring for "social equality," whereas he is simply asking to have an equal chance in the affairs of the social fabric of the nation of which he is a citizen. Again, if he cry out against " lily-whiteism " favorit- ism and discrimination in public office it is said that he is trying to disrupt the Republican party, whereas he is only asking "for participation in his party councils at a ratio pro- portionate to his true voting power in the general elections." * Cong. Rec., 59th Congress, p. 1044. t Its author is quoted as saying: "It is impossible that the negro should remain in the South. When he becomes educated he becomes all the more impossible. I do not think the white man in America will eventually give" (i.e. have not done so now?) "the negro equal rights either North or South or anywhere, , , ," IV " If we are men we will pass by with contemptuous disdain alike the advisers who would seek to lead us into the paths of ignoble ease and those who would teach us to admire successful wrongdoing. Theodore Roosevelt. Here is what an observant student of Southern conditions has to say: "Colored children are not being fitted as are white for their responsibilities. A real intellectual awakening is going on among the whites of the South more and better school- houses, better teachers and longer school terms and the white children are learning with avidity. The colored children are getting poor school-houses, poorer teachers, more poorly paid teachers and shorter school terms, and we cannot change this disparity by begging the State and City. Unless we force better things for ourselves by the ballot, or go into our own pockets, the next generation of colored voters will be relatively less prepared for the educational qualification, in comparison to the white voter, than the colored voters of to-day. ... I know the white school-house and the colored country school- house. There is a tremendous difference. Now, I believe in education, but I also believe in manhood ; and any educa- tion bought at the price of manhood is worthless and a millstone about the neck. I believe in the ballot as a developer of manhood and, as it procures the rights of men, I believe in the ballot in spite of threats of disfranchisement if we use this ballot. I see no difference in purpose between the States that have directly disfranchised and those that do it stealthily and by indirection." * * John Hope, The Negro and the Elective Franchise, p. 60; Occasional Papers, No. 11. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 45 That this is a true analysis no one will deny who Is ac- quainted with the way in which the oligarchy, aided by their Northern allies and by Northern apathy, is to-day ordering things in the South according to their sweet will, on lines looking to the subjection of the negro there to a state of sub- serviency and political helotry. A rece'ht writer has justly observed: "The North has grown silent and has held hands off in matters pertaining to our (colored people's) welfare. . . . It is afraid of hurting the feelings of the white South. . . Sectionally it has become hypnotized by the assiduous efforts of these men who, with others, have succeeded in muzzling the press, muzzling the pulpit, muzzling the platform, muzzling the mouths of nearly all who in the past saw any good in the negro people." He says that even the clergy have been subsidized, and that the negro "gets more consideration in the saloons, in the brothels, in the dives, in the prize-ring, than in the churches. . . . For this the white clergy are largely to blame. . . ."* The North is particeps criminis with the South through sanctioning by pen or by silence the determination of the South to force the negro to the wall, and make him a disfranchised servitor. Repression of free men, as a rule of political conduct, is and always has been a failure. "It leads nowhere. It raises no man." It upholds ignorance. It discourages intelligence, and breeds discontent. Laws to that end lead not to good government, but to build up an office-holding oligarchy by keeping the races at strife. Repression, and not expansion of individual uplifting, will never promote the welfare of a true democracy. A Congressman | said in the House of Representatives, in a speech on the Reduction Bill of 1905: * W. S- Scarborough + Hon. E. D. Crumpacker. 46 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED "The policy of holding the negro in complete and perpetual subordination would be absolutely destructive of republican government, and it cannot be thought of with complacency. If the colored race advances it must be possessed of ambitions and hopes for higher things, and it will insist upon the funda- mental rights of citizenship." All this academic talk about the dangers to society or good government of the so-called ignorant vote North or South, colored or white, in densely populated cities, or in the black belts of the cotton States is nothing more or less than a screen to conceal the designs of the dominant school of politicians and their plutocratic allies to take the ballot away from the working classes, lest those who labor with their hands in the fields or in the mill use their lawful power of political manhood to quench the schemes of plutocratic rule. The colored vote whenever it has been cast has been uplifting, on the side of good government, and for the best interests of the people at large. Reference by the negro alarmists to the passions of the Re- constructive period are unfortunate, for when first enfranchised the negro vote accorded with good sense, the dictates of hu- manity, and the highest welfare of the Republic. The ascend- ency it reared, however much it has been falsified and vilified by fiction writers or pretentious historians, was demanded by national exigency, and was preferable to the Black Codes that sought to nullify emancipation and the Thirteenth Amendment, and practically to reestablish an industrial slavery. "There was no middle ground"; it was a choice between the Black Codes* and all they meant and the evils in such temporary free government as could then be organized. "And the negro voted for free government. In so doing he rendered an inestimable service to the nation. Let every serious American reflect on this that it was the negro vote * For further observations on Black Codes, see Chap. XIV f SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 47 which elected General Grant as President of the United States in 1868. That is to say, if the negro vote had been suppressed in 1868 as it is to-day, the votes of the solid South, added to the eighty scattering votes which Mr. Seymour received in the North, would have elected him President over General Grant, the hero of Appomattox. So that, in the very first Presidential election following the war, it was the negro vote which saved from humiliating defeat the greatest military genius of the age the man above all others then living to whom the nation owes its life. If Mr. Seymour had been elected and the South had come back into the Union, and by its solidity had gained the ascendency in the government in 1868, the gravity of the complications which would have ensued cannot be exaggerated. In 1876 the negro vote again decided the Presidential election, giving the electoral vote of South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana to Mr. Hayes, whom a single vote would have defeated. . . . An examina- tion of the election returns in 1880 in Connecticut, Colorado, Indiana, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island will also show that it was the negro vote in these States that elected General Garfield to the Presidency. The returns of the election of 1888 also disclose the fact that the negro vote in Illinois, Indiana, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island determined the election of General Benjamin Harrison as President. " The credit is given to the negro vote because it is the only vote that is contested, and gigantic efforts have been and are being made to destroy it. If it had been fully suppressed throughout the country, then, as we have seen, the solid South would have defeated Grant in 1868, Hayes in 1876, Garfield in 1880, Harrison in 1888, and McKinley in 1896.* Besides, * Statistics have been compiled by Mr. George Crawford, of New Haven, Connecticut, showing that negro voters now hold the balance of power in several Northern States, and that there are negro voters as follows in the States named, viz.: Massachusetts, 10,456; Rhode Island, 2,765; New York, 51 425; New Jersey, 21,474; Pennsylvania, 51,668; Delaware, 8,374; Ohio, 31,235; Indiana, 46,418; West Virginia, 14,786. The electoral vote of those States is 171; necessary for a choice in the Elec- 48 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED neither the McKinley nor the Dingley tariff measures would have been possible if the negro vote had been suppressed throughout the country as it is in South Carolina and Mis- sissippi to-day. It has so happened that in each instance the majority in the House of Representatives which has enacted the great national policies of the government from the time of reconstruction in 1868 . . . has been due to the ballot in the hands of the colored man. It thus becomes evident that if by defamation and persecution of the colored man his ballot can be destroyed, the autocrats of the solid South would have a clear chance to gain control of the government, shape its destiny and entrench the barbarous traditions of slavery."* That oligarchy in control has fastened itself to the com- mercial lines of the nation's harness, and strives to pull the industrialism of the country within its vicious circle. It is puerile to insist that this pernicious situation is only a matter of local concern. It is a poison in the national life. It is a cancer in the body politic. It is more vital than all the other problems together. To this oligarchy the Democracy of the North is so much attached, and upon it so relies, that no considerations of merit, or of patriotism, could persuade Democratic partisans to assist in overthrowing present conditions. In all these ten states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia), having 88 members in the House of Representatives, only one Republican member was returned to the Fifty-eighth or the Fifty-ninth Congress. He is from the Ninth District of Virginia, and were the Democrats in the majority in the National House of Representatives a successful contest might be expected over his seat. toral College, 242. The electoral vote of States where the negro vote counts at par, namely, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and West Virginia, 64. Probable number of Congressional districts in which negroes hold balance of power, 26. * Sinclair's Aftermath of Slavery. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 49 Thus 87 of the 135 Democrats in the House of Representa- tives of the Fifty-ninth Congress represented districts where there is either no expressed Republican opposition whatever, or only a nominal opposition to their candidacy and what they stand for. Allied as the oligarchy is with partisan adherents in the Border States, and with organized support of tongue, and pen, and press, and money, and of all the interlaced influences of trade, commerce and finance, the free and untrammelled com- munities of the North and West are, in many a close State and district, at the mercy of the oligarchy's intrigues, devices and ef- forts, almost impossible to be seasonably discovered and averted. The Republicans of the country thus enter upon every Presidential election with over one hundred electoral votes solidly against them. Eighty odd votes in the House of Representatives, twenty votes in the United States Senate, 108 votes in the Electoral College, are, regardless of men or of measures, irretrievably bal- anced against the aims and purposes of the Republican party. In no civilized country in the world, pretending to be based on suffrage, would such a condition of affairs be tolerated. It would be revolution to create it. Acquiescence in it is really revolution. Is anything to be learned that is not known to every intelligent citizen respecting this condition of affairs? The first natural step by way of remedy should be taken at once. Pass a bill reducing the representation not a reappor- tionment bill, but a simple reduction bill. To Congress, and to Congress only, belongs this initiatory remedy. It must come from political action and in no other way. By the action of Congress only can a new public life and wholesome spirit be awakened in States where a large fraction of voters, white as well as black, are without voice in political affairs. It will help at once to offset such gross unfairness and in- 50 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED equality as gives to those ten States, casting a Presidential vote in 1904 of only 1,132,888 votes, 88 members of the House of Representatives and 108 votes in the Electoral College; while New York State, with half a million more votes viz., 1,617,770 for Presidential electors in 1904 enjoys only thirty-seven (37) Representatives in the House and 39 votes in the Electoral College! More than two to one is the inequality in this instance. Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Texas counted in 1904 for Presidential Electors an aggregate vote of 608,552. They returned in all 39 members in the National House of Representa- tives and 47 votes in the Electoral College. Connecticut and New Jersey cast in 1904 for President 623,663 votes, yet have only 15 members of the House and 19 votes in the Electoral College. More than two to one is the inequality here. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi aggregated in 1904 for President 413,516 votes and possess 35 members of the House and 43 votes in the Electoral College; while Massa- chusetts alone cast in 1904 for President 445,098 votes and possesses only 14 Representatives in the House and 16 votes in the Electoral College. More than two to one again in this instance. Oregon and Idaho aggregated in the 1904 election for President 162,754 votes, and possess only three members of the House and 7 votes in the Electoral College; while Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana, recording in 1904 for President only 150,127 votes, enjoy the representation of 17 members of the National House, and 23 votes in the Electoral College. An inequality in this instance of 17 to 3! Nearly six to one. In Ohio alone 1,004,393 votes were cast in 1904 for President and about the same aggregate (1,016,467) is recorded for all the nine Coast States from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. Yet those nine States, from Virginia to Texas inclusive, possess 81 members of the House of Representatives and 99 votes in the Electoral College, while Ohio suffers with only 23 electoral SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 51 votes and 21 members in the National House of Representa- tives. About four to one in this instance. In ten States (namely, Alabama 181,471, Arkansas 87,157, Florida 61,417, Georgia 223,073, Louisiana 147,348, Mis- sissippi 197,936, North Carolina 127,114, South Carolina 152,860, Texas 136,835, Virginia 146,122) there are 1,461,373 colored male citizens of voting age who in practice are not allowed the suffrage. Out of the above named 147,348 colored votables in Louisiana there were registered only 1,342. A cry comes up from little Delaware saying if Georgia with 40,847 votes in 1902 gets eleven Congressmen, Delaware with 41,872 votes is in equity entitled to more than one Representa- tive in Congress! General Grosvenor was elected to the 58th Congress from the XI Ohio District upon an aggregate vote in the District of 42,611, which is 24,553 more votes than the total vote in Mississippi at the same election that sent eight Representatives to the same Congress. Mr. Crumpacker, in the same Congress, represented a District, X Indiana, where 46,158 votes were cast at the same election, being 13,973 more than were polled for all the districts in South Carolina for seven members of the same House. At that election the largest vote cast in a South Carolina Congressional District was 5,140. Measured by it, one vote in South Carolina was equivalent for national purposes to nine votes in Indiana. An inequality in this instance of nine to one! "... The ' Democracy ' of the State of B. R. Tillman sent to the Congress in the election of 1902 its entire delegation of seven members upon a combined 'Democratic' vote of 29,343. The total vote returned for all candidates was 32,185. The white voting population is 130,374. The total voting popula- tion of the State is 283,325. The fact is evident from this 52 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED showing that the white vote of South Carolina is not in evidence as supporting the oligarchy in this State. ". . . The total number of males of voting age in Ala- bama is 232,294 whites and 181,471 blacks, making in all 413,765. Alabama's oligarchy polled, in the gubernatorial election of 1902, 67,649 'Democratic' ballots for governor, and there is a vote of 24,190 accredited to the Republican candidate. There were 2,980 colored citizens permitted to register and participate in this election. . . ". . . The entire delegation from the State of Mississippi was elected to the Fifty-eighth Congress upon a combined vote of 18,058. This State has a white voting population of 150,922, the total voting population being 349,177."* In the Presidential election of 1904, the aggregate popular vote in all the States is stated at 13,507,249, while in the ten States where the suffrage is confessedly discriminating only 1,122,838 votes are recorded as the aggregate less than one- twelfth of the total vote. Yet for this less than one-twelfth fraction of all the votes in all the States there are seated nearly one-quarter of the total membership of the House of Representa- tives (88 out of 386) and 108 votes out of the 476 Electoral votes for President. In other words, less than a twelfth of the recorded voters, and in reality a smaller number of the actual votables, have succeeded in organizing a faction for purposes of its own, and in cementing to itself the Democratic party, in order to capture the reins of national power, and thus to dominate in the ad- ministration of laws and in the legislation of the country. Can this be tolerated? Shall it be tolerated? Shall the Republican party become responsible for this toleration? The patience of the American people is marvelous. In any other country, pretending to rest its affairs upon the suffrage, such a condition and such a prospect would breed revolution. * J. C. Manning. SECTIONALISM UN At ASKED 53 Archbishop Ireland in a speech (1906) is reported to have sapiently observed: "To every-day patriotism I convoke you, citizens of America. The Republic is in danger from evil citizenship no less than from armed foe. "Evil citizenship it lies in the violation of law. He who despises in word or act an enactment of the country's authorities despises the country; he who rebels against its will in every- day life aims a mortal blow to its sovereignty and its safety no less than if he sought its life in open warfare." The oligarchy now in control of the Southern "system" finds powerful allies, if not masters, in the great combinations of capital that revel in its favors. The little groups of its little men that sit in Congress for it, and by its leave, join with other groups to log-roll extravagance in appropriations, and to legislate for the favored schemes selected for that pur- pose. It is to be regretted that Republican allied groups are not uniformly innocent. Some of the most vicious legislation proposed by favorites of the "system" has been acquiesced in and enacted by the passive aid of Republicans. Is this from indifference, for considerations, or why? No matter. Groups exist in every legislative body, and eighty-eight members of the House, and twenty senators, form a tremendous nucleus around which to build "combinations." It is rare that votes in Congress divide on party lines. Does a railroad wish a subsidy under the guise of a special contract for " fast mail " service? There stand several members of the "system" anxious to promote its cause. Always be- longing, as the men from the South do, to one and the same political party, no movement to expose the subtle influence, for instance, of the Southern Railway in the Coast States can ever there incite or attach itself to independent political action. 54 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED PLUTOCRACY in its most powerful and offensive phases absorbs the life and energies of every political action in those States. Notwithstanding the passage of an occasional bill for low fares on railroads, plutocracy reigns supreme in each Legisla- ture. Thus speaks a Democrat: "The party machinery of the Democratic party is prostituted to the vile uses of the corporation lobbyists, and the negro vote is held in reserve to be used as a club to beat down any organized opposition. ... A Republican Wall Street outlaw uses the machinery of the Democratic party in Georgia to trample upon the Constitution and plunder the people. . . . What is the secret of this astonishing situation? Bribery, direct and indirect bribery. Daily and weekly news- papers subsidized; rebates given to certain shippers; favors granted where they will do most good; campaign funds supplied to needy candidates; free passes dealt out by the bushel; princely salaries paid to plausible lobbyists. Bribery. "So vast is the power of corporations to reward or punish, enrich or impoverish, that individuals sink into nothingness by comparison. No man is beyond their reach. . . . Some- where within the little world in which he lives they will find some one who will yield to their temptation or surrender to their power to hurt. . . . Then, again, the newspapers those busy bees can be so trained by corporation cunning that they will give us their sting instead of their honey." Regarding $142,000 voted by the 58th Congress to the Southern Railway, the same statesman declares it "a shame- less, impudent, vulgar, common steal, nothing else. Pre- tense of ' fast mail for the South ' without truth. Under an ordinary contract for mail carriage, the government can secure precisely the same service as the railroad gives in return for the subsidy. . . . The plea that this is done for the benefit SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 55 of the South merits the scorn and contempt of every decent Southern man. . . . Those who excuse their votes upon that pretense are hypocrites or dupes. . . . This is quoting the language of an eminent ''independent/' whose chief opposition to the Democracy seems to arise from his factious failure to control that party. He elsewhere says that the "plutocracy" issue "their orders to the lobbyist, to the politician, to the editor, and the covert threat always goes with the order: ' Do this, or off goes your head! " "It (the oligarchy) has been shrewd enough to take into co-partnership a sufficient number of Southern men eager to make money. It has taken in Southern editors whose news- papers need financial support, leading lawyers hungry for good fees, ambitious politicians who need campaign funds, and thus a fictitious public sentiment has been created" . . . under which ... it is almost impossible "to throw off the yoke." "Even our public highways, the soil of which belongs to the private owners on either side of the road, subject only to the easement of travel, have been given, free of charge, by the State Legislature to the telegraph and telephone companies, financed from Wall Street and run without the slightest re- gard for the people, whose lands have been stolen under the forms of law." . . . The Southern States are, "in every sense of the word," " provinces political and financial prov- inces." . . . "The Southern Democrats will accept and vote for any platform whatsoever, any candidate whatso- ever, which the Wall Street millionaires who finance the party have decided upon." . . . "The editor knows that he must knock the life out 'of any objectionable bill/ or the subsidy which keeps his paper going will be withdrawn." . . . "With the present management the question is one of policy, not principle." "No MATTER WHAT DIRECTION PROGRESS WOULD LIKE TO 56 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED TAKE IN THE SOUTH SHE IS HELD BACK BY THE NEVER FAILING CRY OF ' NIGGER.' ... No matter what reforms we need and approve, no matter what abuses afflict us politically or indus- trially, we must submit because of the ' nigger.' We may want this, that or the other in the way of good things, such as other communities are enjoying, but we are denied them because of the ever present and ever fertile ' Regro Question.' * ... THERE is ABSOLUTELY NO END TO THE VARIETY OF WAYS IN WHICH DEMOCRATIC COOKS CAN SERVE UP THIS TOOTHSOME POLITICAL VIAND." This is the testimony of an able Southern statesman who just now is "outside the breastworks" of the Democratic party. Unjustly bewailing his own futile leadership for he has ability, fairness and hosts of troops to follow if he would gallantly assault the citadel he makes faces at this useful publicist exclaims that " What the Southern Democracy will NOT endorse is precisely the thing which remains to be discovered." Yet the courage of this truthful witness quails, and his noisy assault falters, and then deplorably fails, under the very cry he derides of the "Negro Question"; lest, as he says, some cir- cumstance might " revive Reconstruction passions and conflicts." Curious phenomenon, that an American leader of political thought and action should bow down before such a phantom fear, and yet expect to inaugurate a "revolt of Southern man- hood to shake off the intolerable bonds, and to reassert true manliness, true independence and the reign of the law, founded upon equal and exact justice to all men."f * By the last Census (1900) in two States only, viz., Mississippi and South Carolina, are the colored people in the majority. In a group of States disfranchising the colored voters, viz., N. C., S. C., Vs., Ala., Miss, and La., the white population is 5,396,649 55 per cent. The colored population is 4,453,253 45 per cent. Total 9,849,902 100 per cent. tThe quotations as indicated in the foregoing extracts may be found in " Editorials by Thomas E. Watson " in his April and July, 1905, magazines. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 57 There is nothing Democratic in the Southern democracy.* It is all partisanship, and partisanship that revolves around the question as to what is most expedient for the oligarchy. The power of the latter subsists on deception. At the slightest symptom of revolt the cry is announced and re-echoed by the sycophants and the ignorant, "Race" issue; "Race" ques- tion. The favors and privileges of corporate combinations, the seizure and occupation of the public highways and streets for tramway, telephone, telegraph, express, railroad and electric power companies, cannot be made an issue in politics; because the creation of an independent opposition party is practically forbidden by the oligarchy. Every newspaper, bank, business association, trade-board, and all industrial agencies are alarmed and silenced by the factitious cry of inciting race-disturbances. In a speech in April, 1906, Representative Moon of Tennessee urged his colleagues to stand for the people instead of the "rings" that control the South. Referring to that speech a Chicago periodical says: "It was high time for someone to speak for the people of the South, when Representative Moonf of Tennessee did so last week in Congress. He appealed to his associates from the South to stand for the Southern people instead of the rings that control the railways of the South. It is not generally known, but it is none the less a fact which Mr. Moon deserves credit for emphasizing, that much of what is called Southern opinion, and much of what is called Southern representation, are nothing but railroad opinion and railroad representation. This is true not only of the Southern delegations in Congress, but also of the Southern delegations in Democratic conventions, and of the newspapers of the Southern States. With a few honorable exceptions they are all mere creatures of railroad rings." Knowing that the rightful exercise of United States au- thority by virtue of the Constitution and the powers of Congress * "Cure for the failures of Democracy is more Democracy." Frederic C. Howe. fCong. Rec.. p. 4879. 58 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED would put an end to the discriminations now in vogue, as well as give practical support to such anti-discrimination cam- paigns as the intelligent Southern people chose to conduct in their several localities and thus threaten the downfall of leaders now imperiously dominating their own party, the latter hail with delight any minor issue that will apparently bring the United States Courts and officials into more or less collision with State officials, State practices or State laws. The people have gradually become accustomed to the evasion or defiance of United States authority respecting the practical disfranchisements already accomplished, and it would be useful to divert attention from those disfranchise- ments to a collision between State and Federal jurisdictions on some popular topic foreign to personal violations of civic rights. In this way the people will get used to the pretentious and unfounded demagogism of "trumped up" collisions between State and Federal authority. The Southern political leaders are amenable to the caprices of popularity; and to main- tain their position in their party and that party's popularity they are quite willing that the party shall indulge in any anti- corporation campaign that may serve as a ruse and at the same time gratify the popular heart, more particularly if by so doing attention can be diverted from the imperialism at elections, any inquiry into which by impartial judges the leaders fear and cordially denounce. The recent anti-railroad performances, therefore, of high officials and partisan conventions in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and other States where these conditions prevail should not mislead the investigator seeking truth. When the populists were trying to assail the real evils and corruptions emanating from corporate power and the multi- farious ramifications of the plutocratic oligarchy in the South, they received no encouragement from the latter; not because there were not many Democrats who sympathized with their SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 59 cause, but for the reason that the Populists aimed at organizing and maintaining an independent political organization. Such a movement as that, no matter how meritorious the principles or platform upon which it may be conducted, threatens the dismemberment of the oligarchy constituting itself as the Democratic party. So the movement is always suppressed and its adherents and leaders are persuaded to attain their aims solely through Democratic sources. This suppression caused the independent element, in the absence of an organized party devoted to fundamental prin- ciples, to be absorbed by the party in power. It is an organized party of independent and honest opposition that is feared by the party of the oligarchy. All such elements must be shorn of power. In some States they have been annihilated, in others absorbed. Hence, circumstances and issues of any character that obscure or misrepresent the real conditions are welcomed by a party that secures and maintains its grip upon the State and its people by a cultivated, successful, and avowed con- tinuance of electoral fraud. Meanwhile the people are to become more and more accus- tomed to disrespect the authorities of the United States in all matters applicable to their domestic concerns, except as such authority furnishes appropriations and their equivalents. If, through the Democratic party or otherwise, the oligarchy now in control of Southern affairs should ever dominate Con- gress, the Executive and the Courts, as far as the true interests of the nation are concerned, it were better that the Confederacy should have been established, and the life and treasure wasted in the great war preserved for some worthier conflict! There would then have arisen an individual independence among the white men in the States composing the Confederacy, and some hope of an independent party movement to unseat an oligarchy now largely despised by its constituencies, and only 60 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED kept in power by force and chicanery. A row of Custom-houses along the border from the Potomac to the Rio Grande would be a small price to pay for an interior political independence now apparently impossible. There would be occasion and work therein for an independent party. The American spirit, and not, as now, the spirit of caste, would control it; and sooner or later there would be attracted into the ranks of such an independent party the best thought, charity, benevolence, in- tellectual accomplishment and statesmanship that a new South would afford. Indeed, such a Confederacy containing an inde- pendent party would be more elevating not only to the States concerned, but also to the people of the North, than are the intolerable conditions of repression that underlie the social and political structure of society in the South to-day. If individual political independence and an opposition party shall ever be possible in those communities it will be when the worship of the dollar and a trailing in the competing columns of commerce and trade and plutocracy shall not, as now, efface individuality of opinion and dominate party men and party action. ". . . how do the great States come to an end? By their own injustice." Theodore Parker. What are the political conditions in the South to-day? The propagation and cultivation of actual sectionalism is manifested in the agreement of all the representative men in certain sections of the South upon two propositions, viz.: (a) the exclusion of colored people from participation in voting and from all political life; and (6) the insistence that States and localities shall not be interfered with while ordering the the affairs of the colored population according to local prejudice and an assumed commercial expediency. Public life is not possible in those sections to a statesman or politician who runs counter to these two propositions. The first proposition implies the practical nullification of the guarantees of the United States Constitution; but that is not deemed of consequence by these sectional adherents so long as there is no exercise of authority against such nullification, nor any great demand and aroused public sentiment calling for the exercise of that authority, and no Andrew Jackson to destroy the nullification itself. In the meanwhile, the practical nullifi- cation extant is quite adequate to meet the case, because this sectional domination is established and made superior to the fundamental law of the land. Besides, in regard to both the foregoing propositions, the national guarantee would only be made practical through the action of judges, Federal and State, depending for their offices upon the favor of public men representative of the sections where they hold court. These judges, in very few instances, 62 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED have wavered against the tendencies of their localities. Even were it otherwise, inasmuch as the underlying questions are fundamentally political, and the wrongs claimed merely inci- dents in the development of political life of the State in which they occur, no ulterior achievement towards righting alleged wrongs of this character can be expected from individual litiga- tion or from judicial performances. Political wrongs are not apt to be righted by the actions of courts. Great reforms are never accomplished by litigation. Technical evasions of con- stitutional obligations, even if successfully defended in the courts, are more demoralizing than defiant open violations. In all matters of discrimination on account of race, or of poverty, or, it may be, on account of wealth, the general senti- ment of the population where such discrimination occurs, as evidenced by its political action, will sooner or later assuredly dominate all concrete authority. It may accomplish its results honestly, or by force, or by fraud; but in a genuine Democracy it will manifest itself in some way in the action of constables, of justices, of juries, of sheriffs, of legislators and of governors. No study of politics is therefore comprehensive that does not take into account the general sentiment and conduct that is sufficiently stable to manifest itself in the performances of local officials. A generation saturated with inbred prejudices, more or less cultivated by disingenious leaders and practicing discrimina- tion in various ways, especially political ways, against colored people, cannot be expected to square their actions on the plane of equal rights. At any rate, the public man in the Atlantic and Gulf States who pretends so to do will, as has often hap- pened, be eliminated from public life there. While this statement by no means fully describes actual conditions, it denotes indubitable tendencies. These tendencies have already resulted in practical nullification of the Constitu- tional guarantees against discrimination in respect to the SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 63 suffrage, and have also demonstrated the promotion of a well- defined policy of race discrimination in all matters of public relation. This is historical fact. As against this condition it has sometimes been urged that the liberal thought of the better element of the Southern people, if left to its development, will manifest itself in improved con- ditions and a higher standard of justice and political morality.* Judged by the past, this is a Utopian dream; judged by the present, it is absolutely impossible. One must measure the tendencies and results of political action by the expressions and performances of political leaders. This is a world-wide canon in politics. A Democratic Senator from the North declared (Jan. 12, 1907) in the Senate that "there is rapidly being organized in the South a movement to demand that the North unite with the South in the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the practical return of the negroes of the country to a condition of peonage."! Much inane philosophy is being talked by Southern fanatical negro race-haters about inferior races. In the cycles of time races that are inferior, intellectually morally and in a military sense, to-day, become the superiors and the conquerors to- morrow; sometimes by war, sometimes by assimilation. Em- pire after empire of the old world civilizations reached the zenith and then fell before a civilization destined to supplant it. Macau- lay's New Zealander on the ruins of London is no fanciful picture. No nation, any more than an individual, should arrogate to itself a lasting and compelling superiority. "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" as Knox, in his immortal poem asks, applies to nations as to men. In the sight of God all men are equal, irrespective of race and color. But the deai good Southern leaders, some of whom in their bitterness and * The nation's Executive apparently indulges in this phantasy, as also the Secretary of War in his speech on August 22, 1907, at Lexington, Kentucky, t Cong. Rec., 59th Congress, p. 1060. 64 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED abhorrence of a dark-skinned race question the wisdom of the Almighty, speak sneeringly of the inferior negro race. It is inferior,* and the dominant white race should therefore all the more, if not for that very reason, be up and doing to lend a helping hand to uplift that inferiority toward its real su- periority. That would be right and proper in the sight of God and far more Christian, chivalrous and characteristic of a superior race than a venomous and unreasoning abuse. Political leaders have always shaped and conducted the legislation and administration of public affairs in the Southern States. Partisan leaders in politics before the war in some States overcame the liberal thought of their opponents, and in some cases by force or by trickery brought the unwilling people of a State into the columns of Secession. In some instances the leaders did not dare to submit the State's ordi- nance of Secession to the people for ratification. Similarly to-day political leaders holding high office and supported by a rigid partisanship, are established and maintained in some States by force and trickery, and have outlined the conduct to be followed by themselves and their constituents; all of whose conduct is, in turn, moulded upon the lines the partisan leaders themselves lay down. Whatever differences of opinion may be ostensibly declared on other topics, there is no differ- ence whatever in the line of conduct respecting discrimination except as to the expediency of an unrestricted avowal of it. Some men are more outspoken in public than others; but in ordinary conversation there is absolutely no disagreement on this score. When the refined distinctions that are built upon the disin- genious claims of State rights and the current successful Consti- * "Honor and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honor lies. Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow The rest is all but leather and prunella." Pope. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 65 tutional evasions shall have been, as they deserve to be and surely will be brushed aside, the existence of a noxious section- alism will be exposed by many cotemporaneous illustrations. Take, for example, the Georgia (1906) State election and the so-called campaign preceding it, a campaign not between political parties, but conducted exclusively within the lines of the one party by factions striving to control it. There was a strife within the Democratic party for the gubernatorial nomi- nation. In that struggle the factions disagreed about methods, but there was no disagreement as to the results to be accom- plished by those methods. One faction declared that there was no need to change the Constitution or the laws for the elimination of the colored race from political life, because that is already an accomplished fact; while the other faction de- clared that it would be better to settle it in some way, as other States had settled it, by incorporating something in the State Constitution that would make the present system of discrimi- nation part of the fundamental law. The Southern States are seeking to regain through the action of the oligarchy, supported by corporate agencies of all kinds and by subtle alliances with capitalists ostensibly antagonized, the position which those States held before the war. Prior to the war, the South, in the boasted language of one of its elected leaders who was afterwards made vice-president of the Confederacy, had had a majority of the presidents of the United States, "as well as control and management of those from the North." The speaker went on to declare: "We have had sixty years of Southern presidents to their twenty-four, thus controlling the executive department. So with the judges of the Supreme Court. We have had eighteen from the South, and but eleven from the North. Although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the free States, yet the majority of the court has always been from the South. This we have required, so as to guard against any 66 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED interpretation unfavorable to us. ... In choosing the presiding officer pro tern of the Senate we have had twenty- three, they twelve. While the majority of the representatives, from their greater population, have always been from the North, yet we have generally secured the Speaker because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in several other departments of the general government. Of Attorney-Generals we have had fourteen, while the North has had but five. Of foreign ministers we have had eighty-six, they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business that demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the free States because of their greater commercial interests, we have nevertheless had the principal embassies, so as to secure the world's markets for our cotton, tobacco and sugar on the best possible terms. We have had a vast majority of the higher offices of both Army and Navy, while the larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North ; equally so, of clerks, auditors and comptrollers filling executive departments. The records show for the last fifty years that of the three thou- sand thus employed we have had more than two-thirds, while we have only one-third of the white population of the Republic. . . . From official documents we learn that more than three-fourths of the revenue collected has been raised from the North. . . . The expense of transportation of mails in the free States was in 1860 a little over thirteen millions of dollars, while the income was nineteen millions of dollars; but in the slave States the transportation of mail was four- teen million, seven hundred and sixteen dollars, and the revenue from the mail only eight million, two hundred and sixty-five dollars, leaving a deficit of six millions, seven hundred and fifteen thousand, seven hundred and thirty-five dollars to be applied by the North for our accommodation." * * Speech of Alexander H. Stephens before the Georgia Secession Convention. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 67 Here is a description, from an unquestionable authority, of conditions that must have had their influence upon Southern political leaders when they realized that, as a result of the elec- tions of 1860, the power thus described was about to pass from them. In the opinion of many sagacious men of that period, the prospective loss of that power was more potential in the creation by political leaders of the organization known as the "Confederate States of America" than the ostentatious claim of danger to slave property and to State rights. While by the growth of the country it cannot be expected that the relative power of the old slave States will ever be comparatively re- established, except by their successful alliance with factions in the Northern States specially devoted to such re-establish- ment, it is nevertheless true that absolute power over State action, untrammeled by the assaults of a local political organi- zation, is essential to Southern State leaders for their success- ful relations to national questions, as well as for a continuance of the advantages derived from national appropriations. When the representatives of eleven States are united, as well by the ties of party organization as by a uniform purpose so far as it respects each State and each representative, not only is the number of representatives highly important, but the fact of the existence of such a partisanship, based as it is upon an alliance for the practical nullification of the War Amendments and upon a discrimination against the letter and the spirit of the Constitution itself, becomes a matter of anxiety, if not of absolute danger, in all matters of national concern. It is, indeed, a sectionalism that constitutes a continual menace to the national interests. The individual representatives may be honest; but as long as they and their constituents insist that there shall be no agitation over State conditions and local practices opposed to law and order, anxiety cannot be allayed. It is an axiom that disregard of law breeds contempt of law; contempt of law breeds lawlessness; and lawlessness is anarchy! 68 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED Anarchy may be promoted as well by partisan tyranny and the suppression of Democracy as by the murder of a ruler. If those who rule murder those who are ruled it may justly be expected to be only a question of time when the tables shall be turned by the rebellion and wanton crime of those who are ruled. Offences react against the offender. If localities and States, or even a combination of States, offend against fundamental law, either in letter or spirit, it would seem to be the part of wisdom to search out the underlying causes. Whether some of those causes may or may not be grounded in the cam- paign of discrimination, political and otherwise, now entered upon by the leaders of a section and vigorously prosecuted for sectional purposes, is a national question that should receive more regard at the present time than corresponding causes did when Mr. Stephens made his notable speech, already referred to, before the Georgia Secession Convention. There was no such unlawful discrimination then pursued as there is now. Slavery was a fact not disturbed in any of the States by national action. Whatever may have been the opinions of individuals as to the fundamental immorality of slavery, and whatever may have been the sentiment as to its extension into free territory, there was no disturbance threatened by the national government of the actual discrimination necessarily attendant upon a con- dition of lawful slavery in those States.* Notwithstanding that situation, the political leaders of that time successfully persuaded and led their people to an organized resistance to the national power which they saw slipping away from their continued control. * Mr. Lincoln wrote (Dec. 22, 1860) to Mr. Stephens that as to interference with the South about their slaves, there was no cause to fear a Republican administration. He said: "The South may be in no more danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington. I suppose, however, that does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we think it is wrong and ought to be abolished. That I suppose is the rub. . . ." Likewise to-day the people of the North think the War Amendments are right and ought to be enforced. The Southern politicians pretend to think they are wrong, and ought to be extinguished. Hence the crisis I SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 69 But in some instances the managers of the Secession cause dared not refer the Ordinance of Secession back to the people of the State for ratification. Agitation on fundamental prin- ciples was deprecated at that time. Sagacious men even among the Southern statesmen argued against it at home, and Northern statesmen and politicians were almost united on the same lines. Even the great Georgia statesman ex- claimed, "What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? Can any of you name to-day one governmental act of wrong deliberately and purposely done by the Government at Wash- ington, of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge an answer. On the other hand. ... I will state facts which are clear and undeniable and which now stand in the authentic records in this history of our country. When we of the South demanded the slave trade, did they not yield the right for twenty years? When we asked three-fifths representa- tion in Congress for our section, was it not granted? When we demanded the return of any fugitive from justice or the recovery of those persons owing labor or allegiance, was it not incorporated in the Constitution and again ratified and strengthened in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850? When we asked that more territory should be added that we might spread the institution of slavery, did they not yield to our terms in giving us Louisiana, Florida and Tennessee . . . ?" etc., etc.* To-day the white South wants the North to hold "hands off" and have nothing to do with the question which the South maintains to be a local and not a national one, demanding that the Southern States should be left alone to deal with what are styled their own home "problems," according to their own sweet will. It is universally assumed in the South * A. H. Stephens. 70 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED that everything relating directly or indirectly to the negro is a local affair, not to be meddled with, because it is claimed not to concern the nation at large! That is the underlying assumption, expressed or implied, as a fundamental principle of political action; and the conditions recently in this respect, instead of having been improved, have retrograded and are worse to-day than ever before. The South has signally failed to carry out, even in an initiatory way, any part of the pro- gramme that the solution of such a "problem" would call for. It has persistently ignored fundamental questions and sub- stituted a "system" foreign to American institutions. President Harrison, in his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1889, gave utterance to words of warning that are needed to-day more than ever. He said: "The evil example of per- mitting corporations or communities to nullify the laws because they cross some selfish or local interest or prejudice, is full of danger, not only to the nation at large, but much more to those who use this pernicious expedient to escape their just obliga- tions or to obtain an unjust advantage over others. They will presently themselves be compelled to appeal to the law for protection. Those who would use the law as a defence must not deny the use of it to others." What is happening to-day in the South under the oligarchy? This has been well described by a forceful Southern writer: * "The race issue in national campaigns is brought into play by the Southern "Democracy" for purely partisan usage, and this usage is a cowardly sham to turn the voter North from clear insight into the real suffrage condition South, as it really and vitally affects not only the liberties of whites South, but also the suffrage rights of whites North. . . ." " In a State election where Captain Kolb, an ex-Confederate soldier, was an independent candidate, the 'Democracy' was 'saved' by immensely padded returns from the sixteen Black * J. C. Manning. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 71 Belt counties in Alabama populated largely by blacks, and enormous fictitious majorities from these counties were em- ployed to overcome and to annul the majorities honestly polled by the whites in the forty-five white counties of the State counties populated almost exclusively by whites. Returns were recorded for the 'Democracy' from black belt precincts where the polls were not in reality opened, and where the formality of an election was dispensed with. Upon the day of the 'official' count the majority of votes for Kolb were scaled down in the white counties, where the ' Democracy ' controlled the returning boards, by the throwing out of the vote of many precincts voting Kolb majorities; and this was necessary to overcome the revolt against the machine, even though the black belt had already 'done its duty.' There is not an informed man in Alabama who will not, perhaps, confess to the election of Kolb in 1892 by a tremendous majority. The supporters of the Kolb ticket were mocked at and defied. The Bourbon leaders boastingly asserted: 'Yes, we counted you out and we will do it again, if necessary, and what are you going to do about it? ' . . ." "No wonder in a State (South Carolina) where under similar conditions the total voting population was (in 1902) 283,325, of which the white voting population was 130,374, the total vote returned for all candidates for Congress in its seven Con- gressional districts was only 32,185. So also in Mississippi, with a total voting population of 349,177, and a white voting population of 150,922, the votes returned for all Congressional candidates in the State were only 10,858. So also in Alabama, with a total voting population of 413,862, and a white voting population of 223,294, only 91,839 votes were returned at a State election. . . . "This deplorable condition of the electorate constitutes a national menace. . . . "To protest now against the methods of this regime is to 72 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED invite a torrent of wrathful censure and to turn loose the flood- gates of terrific assault from prostituted papers. The motive is to crush out and to annihilate any formidable opposition of zealous leadership that rises up to 'a source of annoyance to the peace and harmony of the State!' . . . "From Mississippi, where the negro is without any voice whatever in government, most is heard about the jeopardy of 'white supremacy.' . . . "In the South candidates for Congress who oppose the oligarchy are counted out and denied the certificate of election and forced, if seated, to inaugurate an expensive contest and frequently the taking of the testimony is attendant with the risk of one's life. The price is too great. The experiences of Hon. William F. Aldrich, of the Fourth Alabama district, the facts being upon records of Congress, bear out this conclusion. Three times elected, three times counted out, three times seated upon contests, once to accommodate his opponent, held up at the point of drawn weapons, they taking this occasion to inflict bodily punishment upon him these are not at all pleasant enough experiences to inspire many men to espouse the cause of good government in the South. Yet, there are those who advocate 'letting the South alone,' and leaving to the oligarchists of the South 'the adjustment of these local conditions!' There is but one peaceful recourse for rightful settlement of this suffrage situation in the States of the South. That recourse is for the nation to protect to every citizen his national rights when infringed upon by the powers dominating the State." "The liberties of the masses South are crushed beneath the feet of these tyrants, whose prating hypocrisy does not voice the will of the oppressed of this section."* The ability to control in all respects State action, local SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 73 legislation, and the preservation of local conditions, is at the foundation of united sectional action. In those States there is not a politician who is looking forward to party action to preserve the existing conditions of discrimination, who would have the audacity to raise his voice against those conditions as they now exist. At the North every interest that seeks an alliance, commercial or political, with Southern leaders, discountenances any agitation for the disturbance of those conditions. This is in accordance with the undisguised pro- gramme of statesmen in the South, where Democracy is out- spoken. It is unfortunate that there is not a similar exhibition of candor elsewhere. It is as true now as it was in 1860, that every commercial interest discouraged an agitation along lines of fundamental principle, because such agitation might disturb established business channels. It is likewise regrettable that the real sentiment of large sections of our country's population dis- approving of the existing discriminations remains without any organized or official expression. That which is actually out- spoken by individuals and by constituencies, here and there, in public meetings and conventions, receives slight encourage- ment from men in public office. Sometimes, indeed, such utterances are directly discountenanced. At any rate, ex- pressions in high quarters have been construed, both South and North, as an actual acquiescence in existing conditions. This is especially true regarding such a notable speech as that of Secretary Taft at Greensboro', North Carolina, on July 9, 1906. In that speech he showed plainly that he himself did not believe in, nor did the present Administration intend to take action upon, the suffrage plank in the platform of the national Republican party in 1904. He demonstrated that he was not in favor of any action to undo the violation, which he admits is practised, of the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Amendments. 74 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED His characterization of the colored race in the South was a "damning with faint praise." He premised, without reason, that the educated colored men who will be allowed to vote by their "common sense and judgment and position in the community will add weight to the vote they cast, and will secure more real influence for the benefit of their race than when the right of suffrage of the negroes was wholly unre- restricted." [?] As a matter of fact, the educated colored men are the very men whose votes are not wanted by the Southern whites. The registrars can and do exclude whom they please, even college graduates, men who have been educated at the great universities of the North! What the speaker called a man's "common sense and judgment and position in the community" does not count in balloting, because race rivalry and prejudice exist and are rampant. It is by a numerical vote that an election can be turned, not by the intellectuality or possessions or the distinguished individuality of the voter. Mr. Taft represented the present administration when he spoke before the North Carolinians. The following are extracts from a letter written shortly after that speech and which appeared in a periodical published in Boston: ". . . The right of a ' class of persons ' so ignorant and so accustomed to oppression as to be a species of ' political (?) children not having the mental stature of manhood' can never be secured by the occasional and privileged ballot of an accom- plished colored man, or by the occasional and improbable judgment yet to be wrung from an unwilling Court. "Courts are inadequate to remedy political wrongs. "I would cordially discourage law suits as affording redress for wide-spread conditions. "Men who connive at defrauding colored people's suffrage- rights easily resort to depriving white people of their votes. "That is what is done when necessary. A miscount is SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 75 robbery. When votes are a prey it little matters to the oligarchy whether they are stolen from white or black. "Neither law suits nor gingerbread will restore a suffrage in fact denied or abridged. "The fortunate, not, unfortunate (as the Secretary opines) reconstruction guarantees imbedded in the U. S. Constitution will be enforced only by political action. That political action must be sought for through the adherents of the Republican party, and not from its enemies. The colored people owe it to themselves to give that party no peace until it undertakes and honestly pursues such political action as may be within its power. No matter what may be said by officials, by candi- dates, or by prospective judges, the fact that it is through political action, and political action only, that the colored people can progress towards enjoying the rights the Constitution intended they should have, justifies the colored people in adopting the Garrisonian principle: ' Agitate, Agitate, AGITATE! ' Especially is this to be done when the deliverance of an assumed friend, ostentatiously and truly announced as an official spokesman for the Chief of the Nation, and presum- ably the campaign orator for his party, is characterized, as it has been by his political adversaries, for example (N. Y. Herald), as an official * Message of acquiescence in the exist- ing state of affairs.' "Unfortunately this, if not the intent, is no unjust deduction from the speaker's language. "If not so intended, proper correction by the orator himself can yet be made. " But doubtless being so intended the colored people should arouse their friends, look to their allies, appeal to the fair judgment of their countrymen, and advance to political power their courageous and loyal friends, and not their enemies, nor the unreliable traders and sycophants of their own race. "In these times, as well as before the War, the allies of the 76 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED oligarchy seek to divide their political enemies by all the subtle arts of commerce, benevolence, literature, patronage and fraud. The Republican party is just now suffering from this affliction, and will indeed be fortunate if it escapes punish- ment for its neglect of traditional obligations." * That the Executive favors acquiescence in the electoral conditions at the South will be apparent to anyone who shall turn to his Lincoln Day speech before the Republican Club of the City of New York in February, 1905. As that day was near the inauguration of an administration elected upon the Republican platform of 1904, the Republican press of the country was naturally chary about expressing opinions that might not preserve the harmony of the party; and this speech was unfortunately regarded as an avoidance of what other- wise some might consider an unwise agitation. Whether the newly elected President would have aided or embarrassed his new administration by a discussion of the conditions of actual discrimination, so far as they affect the interests of the nation at large, need not here be discussed. The pertinent consideration is, that the parties political and party adversaries have exhibited lines of agreement against reformatory propositions. This indeed is nothing new in the philosophy of politics. The consideration and discussion of fundamental questions may sometimes be suspended by political conduct, but are seldom inaugurated by those in political stations. If the present conditions are right and just and deserve the encourage- ment of the country at large, we may be sure that they will not be disturbed. But if fundamentally they are based on human wrong, manifest injustice and an aim to perpetuate un-re- publican conditions conditions not in harmony with a demo- cratic form of government it may be unhesitatingly foretold that agitation and discussion will undoubtedly arise. It * H. E. T. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 77 has indeed already arisen. In any analysis, therefore, the investigator will arrive at the question of right or wrong ; and if wrong, how far the wrongs extend, and the causes and remedies, if any; and who are affected by the wrongs. Is not the nation at large responsible for them? Are not the people of the whole country necessarily concerned, and are they the victims of the wrong-doing? The New Orleans Times-Democrat commented on that speech thus : "Its tone is friendly, and the good wishes he expresses for the South, the sympathy for it in the difficult problems it has to solve, and his strong protest against any interference that would tend to render these problems more difficult, should be and will be appreciated by the Southern people. If he can persuade the party whose Head he is to follow the line he lays down, the race problem, FREED FROM SECTIONAL OR POLITICAL COMPLICATIONS, can be brought to a satisfactory settlement far sooner than we had hoped for and with less friction." What does the writer mean except to say that the wrongs being done by the South towards the disfranchised colored race are right, and the South will applaud you. The South will never be satisfied unless you give it this laissez-faire liberty, because that is necessary to the continuance in power of the oligarchy and its preponderance in all things social and political in the South. In that speech of the President his utterances anent the colored race were of the "pat and prick type" of the nursery story, praise and dispraise being meted out in about equal measure and proportion. This attitude had its expected results. It gave the cue of non-action and the cue was followed. In the 59th Congress, as it had been in the prior Congress, the belief continued on the part of the recognized representa- tives of the Southern oligarchy that a sympathetic, if not a 78 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED pliant, ally at the White House stood ready by acts, if not in words, to accede to their sectional behests; and this belief was apparently a powerful incentive to line up support for mis- cellaneous Presidential recommendations and for policies improperly claimed to be of Democratic origin. VI "The scientific method is nothing but a patient, careful, persistent pursuit of truth that is all. . . The man who is content with anything but the truth, the man who will be desirous of obtaining anything that does not square with the verities of the situation, is not a scientist; he has not the noble ambition of the scientist. "We cannot, as human beings, dealing with the affairs and interests of human beings, have things done with exact regard to scientific form; but what citizens want more than anything else in connection with their government is the ascertainment of the truth, the dealings of things in a true and honorable way, the standing for the truth and the readiness to account to the people according to the truth." Charles E. Hughes. In his "Reminiscences of a Long Life,"* General Carl Schurz said that President Buchanan was the very impersonification of the political species (referring to 1859-60) then known as the "Northern man with Southern principles" that is, a Northern politician always ready to do the bidding of the slave-holding interests and coquetting with the South, while posing as repre- sentative of the North. This description is unfortunately not inapplicable to the "political species" represented by the White House incumbent to-day, relied upon to do the bidding of the dominant political oligarchy of the old slave States. It is because the political potency of the latter is unified along fixed lines, that its influence and cooperation, individually and collectively, is assiduously solicited and sometimes upon liberal terms in matters of Congressional legislation, as well as in Democratic Conventions. * McClure's Magazine, March, 1907. 80 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED Probably no incentive was more pregnant with support (in the Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Congresses) of Presidential recommendations than the belief that a sympathetic Executive stood ready and willing to accede by acts, if not perhaps in words, to the sectional behests of the recognized leaders of this oligarchy. Subservient as such representatives have hitherto shown themselves to be to this oligarchy, they were ready, under the guise of non-partisanship or of fealty to the Demo- cratic party, to support an administration (elected by the Republican party), and thereby conceal this subserviency upon matters of State and local concern, and yet leave with the local Bosses at the South that home power to which they have been accustomed, and without which the present suppression of political independence there in County, State or City could not survive a single fair election. It is a convenient and popular theory among representative Southerners, as well as among the average Southern population, that the exercise of the suffrage among colored people has no relation to their so-called elevation, or the cultivation of high ideals. This localism is against all philosophy. How can there be high ideals before the immense non-voting population of Mississippi and Georgia? It was well said recently by the New York Governor (Hughes) that "the other problem which is being presented to the American people is being successfully solved because of their devotion to high ideals. . . . There is nothing in the world that is worth having which is not gained through the respect of the people at large. There is no use to make men good by mere law . . . every organi- zation which makes men desire to be just and fair and square is a security to the perpetuity of our institutions. . . ." * At the base of all progress towards the attainment of high ideals is the assurance of protection at every stage in that * Speech of Governor Hughes at Troy, before the Y. M. C. A., reported in the New York Tribune, March 20, 1907. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 81 progress. In the absence of the right to vote, that protection is impossible. It cannot be secured by dependence upon others; much less by dependence upon a class inimical to that progress. The suffrage is essentially for the protection of classes and for the protection of individuals. It has been well said that "the elective franchise in a Republican or Democratic form of govern- ment is based upon the instinct of self-protection. It is the instrument by which it executes its mandates. "Self-protection in government embodies protection from all forms of wrong and injustice in all departments of life's duties life's responsi- bilities life's activities. "A just and righteous government, therefore, secures each and every individual within its domains, in the exercise of self-protection, secures them the opportunities for the free and full development of all mental attributes." * Yet organizations among colored men for the purpose of enforcing these views by practical application through voting and the establishment of civic equality are discountenanced, where not disrupted and their operations disturbed, if at- tempted in the Atlantic and Gulf States! The oligarchy opposes. "In no free government, in name, has a distinct class so entrenched its hold upon governing authority, and no oligarchy ever came into exist- ence in, as alleged, a land of the free and home of the brave, that held tighter grip upon the weal and woe of the whole people and their des- tinies. . . . "A condition by which whites of the South have come to endure a yoke of political serfdom and of political outrage is beyond the power of language to portray. Popular government has become prostrate, the voice of the people in representative government has been silenced, and force, fraud and strategy have been enthroned." f It is one thing to philosophize. It is quite another thing for one charged with a duty to practice and to act in the line * Extract from an address by Dr. Margaret Organ at the Prohibition Party Mass- meeting in White Plains, New York, Nov. 1, 1906, published in the Public, April 6, 1907. t J. C. Manning. 82 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED of his philosophy. In urging upon others a high standard, our esteemed President in a letter declared: "... There must be that training on the moral side which means that production in the average citizen of a high type of character the character which sturdily insists upon rights and no less whole-heartedly and in fullest fashion recog- nizes that the performance of duty to others stands even ahead of the insistence upon one's own rights." * How about a character that neglects any insistence "upon rights" the observance of which is a natural part of and em- bodies "the performance of duty to others"? No encourage- ment whatever has been given by this speaker, notwithstanding his most abundant opportunities, to any combined effort for insistence upon rights expressly guaranteed as War results; and avowedly denied in extensive localities, as well by evasion as by studied effort. Again, in the President's official speech at the Jamestown exercises (April 27, 1907), he boasted that there were " equal opportunities for all." Surely this is an idle boast as long as native Americans, no matter what their quality, know that they can never achieve civic equality and equal participation with other men in the power and activities of government, local or general. The men among ten million colored native Americans are made aware as soon as they are able to learn the fact, that they are a class and are the subjects of discrimination in every respect. Does or does not the observation of the speaker apply to them when, on that same occasion, he declared, "Other republics have fallen because the citizens gradually grew to consider the interests of a class before the interests of the whole. . . . Where the poor plundered the rich or the rich exploited the poor, the end of the republic was at hand." * From a letter of Theodore Roosevelt to S. H. Church, Pittsburgh. Pa., April 11, 1907, upon Dedication Ceremonies at the Carnegie Institute. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 83 If the speaker's reasoning be correct, the end of Democracy in certain States and localities has already arrived. But so marked is the policy of laissez-faire that the New York Tribune, in deprecating any agitation on fundamental lines, descended into the groove marked out by Southern demagogues, when it outlined the plea of the colored man as meaning in the South "the domination of many communities by its most ignorant elements; . . . prosperity and character are the foundations on which free people rise. The underdog is always put upon; . . . the poor Irish of our early history were kicked about till they worked themselves up to be property owners with a stake in the community." Yes; but meanwhile they were recognized as individual units, owning or about to own votes; and this fact gave them a protection and a stand- ing which could not be disregarded. This is not a parallel case, although in the same article the writer goes on to say: "It is the same with the negroes, allowance being made for the exaggeration of race prejudice, of difference in color and the bitterness growing out of the condition of their enfranchise- ment. No man whatever his color, who is a good citizen, a landowner with money to pay his way and to contribute to the common welfare, will in the long run be oppressed." The answer is that in a republican form of government he will always be oppressed unless given the power of a political unit. O shades of Horace Greeley! For his great paper to dis- courage a protest against wrong by declaring as it does: "An inch of progress is worth a yard of protest." Are those who bring such protests to the calm consideration of the American people taking the risk of diverting the most thought- ful of the colored people from the path of discipline and in- dustrial progress? That is precisely the aim of this Tribune editorial, arguing against a wholesome agitation. "The protection of Americans in America" may sound strange to many ears, but it has become a necessity to whites 84 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED as well as blacks in the South owing to the suffrage conditions controlled and manipulated by the oligarchy in power, allied with Northern capital. The so-called "negro problem" is always being put forward, whereas the question of a "square deal" in government in the South is not a "negro problem" at all. It is only made so by the Democratic leaders who have usurped the governing prerogatives and trampled on the people's rights. To quote again from the President: "States' rights should be preserved when they mean the people's rights, but not when they mean the people's wrongs; not, for instance, when they are invoked to prevent the abolition of child labor, or to break the force of the laws which prohibit the importation of contract labor to this coun- try; in short, not when they stand for wrong or oppression of any kind or for national weakness or impotence at home or abroad." There is not, nor has there been for many years, real Republi- can government except in idle form in many of the Southern States. The disfranchised whites and the re-enslaved blacks in Alabama, for example, are politically manacled and fettered as helplessly as though they were in a condition of actual serf- dom. With 235,000 whites in that State and 180,000 blacks of voting age, only 90,000 in all actually voted. At a recent election, out of 300,000 entitled to vote, only 60,000 voted! For this condition of the electorate the Bourbon oligarchy is directly responsible. It is not, in the words quoted above, "national weakness or impotence at home," but it is inviting revolution at home for the nation to remain silent before such a condition. A mockery of the people's rights like this and, by political subterfuge and chicanery, a submerging like this of the rights of thousands of whites, as well as an extinguishing of the citizen rights of all the blacks, cannot much longer be sus- tained. It is an ever present menace to the Republic. Recently, again, the Executive, in accepting membership in the Christian Endeavor Patriots' League, wrote: 85 " I believe that they can do much that is of the very greatest value to the cause of good citizenship; for in the last analysis the fundamental requisite of good citizenship from the standpoint of the country is that a man should have the very qualities which make him of real value to the home, in the church, in all the higher relationships of life." President Harrison in his Inaugural of March 4, 1899, said: "As a citizen may not elect what laws he will obey, neither may an Executive elect what he will enforce. The duty to obey and to execute embraces the Constitution in its entirety." How about the enforcement of the War Amendments, the Reduction of Representation in the South and the enfranchising of thousands of citizens of the type that would be likely to be made by that Patriots' League above referred to? VII "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil Society. It has been and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit." James Madison in the Federalist. Republican clubs and organizations have been, and still are, urging Congressional action on the suffrage conditions in the South. The Union League Club in December, 1903, followed the lead of the Republican Club of the City of New York in June of that year. The movement thus started was continued in more than a score of States where at party conventions resolutions were adopted demanding the enforcement of the Constitution.* But the aim of the Executive being apparently to win the affection and good-will of the South, Southern members of Congress have displayed more or less assurance that questions involving the franchise would not be brought to the front. One Southern editor went so far as to refer to the proposal to cut down the representation in the South, in the following language: "I do not believe it ever will be done. The Southern people are for the most part indifferent about the matter, although many would wel- come it. But it will not be done. Mr. Roosevelt is against it, as are many other Northern people." And yet the President came into office, when elected in his own right in 1904, upon a party platform pledge promising a Congressional enquiry into Southern suffrage conditions, with * The action referred to in the text is one of the most significant illustrations of the underlying sentiment of the times, and the results therefore have been collated, and appear in extenso in Appendix B to these pages. See also Appendix A. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 87 a view to ascertaining just what they were and to remedying the defects, and declaring that a reduction in Southern repre- sentation should be made such as the facts justified, under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. There can be no doubt that the President has been a potential factor in causing that suffrage plank to be ignored and prac- tically shelved. While referring to this plank and the disregard of the obliga- tion it imposed upon the Party representatives, it is part of the history of the times that the Republican press was not a unit in adhering to this ignoring policy.* It was appreciated that the Session of Congress immediately ensuing the election of 1904 was the last and the short session of the Fifty-eighth Congress, continuing only three months from the first Monday in December, 1904; and in that short session a multitude of appropriation bills and miscellaneous legislation awaited con- sideration and action. Still, if the leaders had been so disposed there might have been some indication of action along the lines of the national Republican platform. Obviously the leaders were not so disposed, and, except in the forceful speech of Representative Crumpacker, no serious attention was given to the bill that was introduced and to the special efforts outside of Congress that were made to carry out the platform. Another consideration that had its weight was that the Fifty-eighth Con- gress was not elected upon that platform, but was elected two years before it was adopted; and that the Congress that was elected upon that platform, and that was to convene in December, 1905, was the proper body to enact measures obligated by that national platform. Nevertheless, it is a circumstance beyond dispute that before December, 1905, the Southern men in Congress, in some mysterious way, became satisfied that the leaders of the Republican party were for a time, at least, dis- posed to ignore that plank in the Republican platform. Visitors * See Appendix A. 88 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED to the White House were abundantly quoted in this strain, and the Southern press amused itself by declaring that the Republican plank was meaningless and was adopted only as a bait for colored voters in doubtful States. Indeed, some influential Northern journals took the same view. While the question was thus being lulled to sleep some independent news- papers, both of Republican and Democratic proclivities, were outspoken in declaring, "both locally and nationally, morally as well as politically, the evils of the existing situation are too patent to be ignored. They must be discussed fearlessly and the remedy sought with all diligence." Another paper declared that the Congress which was chosen on the 1904 Chicago platform, was pledged to remedial suffrage action, and must "face the music" and demonstrate "whether the promise of a square deal for the country at the ballot box was no more than a campaign dodge." It was suggested to the President while preparing his Annual Message, that he might at least invite attention to the fact that in certain States suffrage has been practically abridged in some way beyond the limitations specified in Amendments Fourteen and Fifteen of the Constitution. In relation to the States where in the judgment of Congress such conditions exist and that they do exist in some instances seems to be a circumstance beyond dispute obedience to the mandate of the Constitution would appear to call for appropriate legislation towards reducing the representation of such offending States in Congress and in the Electoral College on the basis of the pro- portion which the excluded male citizens of these States over twenty-one years of age bear to the whole number of male citizens over twenty-one years of age. The President was urged to say: "While the lawful regulation of the suffrage by the States has always been jealously guarded, limitations upon the re- strictions of the suffrage as declared by the Constitution of the SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 89 United States are paramount and constitute the supreme law of the land, and are to be obeyed by practical observance, any local law, usage or State constitution to the contrary not- withstanding. What cannot lawfully be done directly cannot lawfully be done by indirection. "That in some States, as exhibited by their published election returns, less than one-half, and in one instance less than one- eighth of the white male citizens over twenty-one years of age, and substantially all of the colored citizens abstained from voting, evidences a condition of the electorate dangerous to democratic institutions. "The Constitution confides to the Congress the duty of enacting such legislation as the conditions in these respects shall be found to warrant." The President, nominated by the National Republican Party and elected upon the National Republican platform adopted at Chicago in June, 1904, failed to present in his Message any of these suggestions, or indeed any suggestions whatsoever, arising out of that plank or the conditions that gave rise to it. That the heart of the Republican party is true and loyal to Republican traditions and principles is evidenced by the action of its representative conventions in the States already referred to, all harmoniously urging such action by Congress as the conditions called for such action as is summed up in the short five lines in the national Republican platform of 1904, which says: "We favor such Congressional action as shall determine whether by special discriminations the elective franchise in any State has been uncon- stitutionally limited; and if such is the case, we demand that representa- tion in Congress and in the Electoral College shall be proportionately reduced as directed by the Constitution of the United States." That this declaration had not been lost sight of by the general sentiment of the party is evident from the resolutions 90 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED adopted at Philadelphia at the Convention of the National League of Republican Clubs in June, 1906, at the celebration of the Jubilee of the Republican Party. "We reiterate the demand of our last National Platform that our Re- publican majority in Congress should courageously carry out the principles and pledges of the party and enact such legislation as will make all the Amendments to the United States Constitution absolutely and finally effective. We are opposed to that inequality which permits one-twelfth of the voters of the country to wield one-quarter of the national legisla- tive power. "The suppression and denial of suffrage demands the reduction of the power so usurped, and the denial of suffrage should never be rewarded with political premiums. The Democracy of at least eleven States should be deprived of its unfair preponderance of power, and the full measure of political rights secured to every qualified citizen, white or black, who is capable and willing to assert his political manhood. The political party that profits by the suppression of the ballot is not to be trusted with the making and administration of the nation's laws." The New York State Convention at Saratoga, held September 25, 1906, shortly after the Atlanta riots, declared itself in this form: "Realizing the national dangers arising from the alarming growth of mob barbarities engendered by race hatred, we demand the prompt and adequate punishment of mob instigators and leaders; and we insist upon the just and equal protection of the civil and political rights of all citizens without regard to race, creed or color; and we sympathize with all the innocent victims of such violence, whether at home or abroad." The foregoing by unanimous consent was adopted imme- diately on being read, without the usual reference to any Com- mittee. When the Committee on Resolutions the next day reported the platform for the Convention this was article fourteen in the platform, which contained another resolution passed, number thirteen, as follows : "We are opposed to that inequality that permits one-twelfth of the voters in the United States to hold one-quarter of the legislative power, 91 through the suppression of the right of franchise; and we favor the enact- ment of laws which will reduce in just proportion the representation in Congress and the Electoral College wherever the ballot is suppressed." In accordance with the plank in the Republican National platform of 1904, there was introduced at the session of Congress then next ensuing (December, 1904), the first bill to reduce Southern representation. This bill provided for a reduction of nineteen representatives in Congress, and specified the reduc- tion for each of the States designated. This reduction was based exclusively upon the figures of the Census of 1900, some of which had not become available when the Apportionment Act of 1901 was passed, which Act it was proposed to amend by this bill introduced for that purpose. The basis of such an amending bill was the indubitable fact that at least the colored male citizens over twenty-one who were illiterate were practically excluded from the suffrage. Calculated upon the Census returns and pursuing the usual methods of figuring the Congressional apportionment, the reduction on this basis amounted only to an aggregate of nineteen representatives. Had it been figured upon the basis of exclusion from suffrage of all illiterates, white and black, the reduction would have been much greater, as will appear by an inspection of the bill that was introduced in the following Congress. It was deemed best, however, by those in charge of the measure to propose it in the first instance upon the most conservative lines possible, in the hope that thereby such a course might prove acceptable to all parties, and possibly be enacted without opposition. The bill was introduced into the Senate by Senator Platt, of New York, and into the House by Representative James S. Sherman, of New York. The bill was not received in the spirit anticipated and hoped for, and its proponents were either abused or derided. The financial and educational interests in the South were especially antagonistic, and exhibited their temper partly in the press and partly in personal commumca- 92 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED tions, as well as through pretentious discussions in educational circles and high-class allied publications. Here, by the way, was another marked illustration of the determined purpose in Southern leadership to divert and to question, if not to resist, the legitimate exercise of United States authority. Other legislative business that was urgent at that session of Congress precluded the serious consideration of the measure by the Fifty-eighth Congress, which expired on March 4, 1905. When the Fifty-ninth Congress convened in December, 1905, a new Reduction Bill framed upon a more just basis was introduced. This bill proposed to reduce the representation by an aggregate of thirty-five Southern representatives from the States designated. This reduction was also figured from the Census returns of 1900, and likewise upon the assumption that illiterate male citizens of voting age, whether whites or blacks, were being excluded from the suffrage. The bill was introduced by Representative William S. Bennet, of New York, and was followed shortly afterwards by another one for the same purpose and reaching substantially the same result. The latter bill was introduced by Representative J. Warren Keifer, of Ohio. The text and purpose of the two measures corresponded so harmoniously that for practical purposes they may be considered as substantially the same. Neither measure, however, received any serious attention, and their proponents were given no opportunity to bring them to a vote before the House. General Keifer's bill formed the subject of an able and comprehensive speech which he took occasion to make in its behalf. This veteran member, an ex-speaker of the House of Representatives, was accorded the honor of the floor to make this speech. No heed, however, was given to it, able though it was. The measure was regarded as a perfunctory display of party fealty, in part occasioned by the unusual majority by which General Keifer had been elected after a spirited canvass in his Congressional district, in which the SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 93 questions represented by the bill had been made special features. Representative E. D. Crumpacker, of Indiana, on February 24, 1905, had also made a powerful speech in support of the Republican plank. It is not the object of these pages to enter into a discussion of the details of any of these three bills, nor of the form by or in which reduction of representation should be accomplished, or of the legal technicalities adversely suggested concerning them. For this branch of discussion of the general topic, reference may be had to the Brief laid before the Fifty-ninth Congress, a copy of which will be found in Appendix C to this volume. The short session of the Fifty-eighth Congress had come to an end, with no other action in this respect than the intro- duction, and speech by Mr. Crumpacker in behalf of, the Platt- Sherman bill above mentioned. In the first and long session of the Fifty-ninth Congress, the Bennet and Keifer bills that were then introduced were silently put to sleep by the party leaders, with the apparent knowledge on the part of the Southern representatives that no action was to be taken upon these bills. The Southern representatives, as already stated, studiously ignored them, having no desire to enter upon a discussion of their merits, and regarding their introduction as a perfunctory performance of party duty. There was no action taken in the last session of the Fifty-ninth Congress. When it became apparent that Congress hesitated to act upon these bills, public agitation was again renewed. There were some meagre press discussions regarding the subject, and also public meetings were held in various parts of the country. One of the earliest and most notable of these gather- ings was a mass meeting at the Academy of Music at Phila- delphia on March 1, 1906, which urged the majority in Congress 94 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED to take appropriate action at that session. Since the meeting at Philadelphia, associations and committees have been formed in different centres, and have been engaged in directing more general attention to the conditions described in these pages. The remarks of the chairman * at the Philadelphia meeting are immediately pertinent here. He said, in part: "Ten Southern States send 88 members to the House of Representatives. They report 1,132,888 votes in the Presi- dential election of 1904. "New York, with nearly half a million more votes, enjoys only 37 votes in the House of Representatives. "Pennsylvania cast, in 1904, 1,105,238 votes for Congressmen, and for it gets only 32 seats in the House of Representatives. "Nine coast States from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, having 81 seats in the House of Representatives, cast 1,016,467 votes for President in 1904. Ohio cast 1,004,393, about same number. Yet, instead of 81 members of the House of Repre- sentatives, Ohio has only 21. " Georgia cast about 40,847 votes at the Congressional election (1902) and gets 11 Congressmen, while Delaware cast 41,872, about the same number, and gets one Congressman. "It takes nine votes in Indiana to reach the equivalent of one vote in South Carolina. "Less than one-twelfth of the total vote in all the States is cast in the ten Southern States; yet they furnish nearly one-quarter of all the votes in the House of Representatives 88 out of 386. "As the ratio of representation is throughout the Union based on population, this inequality of result indicates the practical disfranchisement and abstinence from the polls of large classes of voters. Whites who do not participate in politics, except by training with the dominant party, and even many of them, cease to take an interest in voting; and * H. E. Tremain. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 95 the colored voters are by divers and devious ways practically disfranchised. The notorious political discrimination against the colored man exhibits deplorable conditions that are fatal to the progress of a genuine democracy conditions that are fruitful for the growth of a genuine oligarchy. "A dispute almost up to the point of a personal collision has been progressing between two competing Democrats in Georgia. One urges a revised constitution for the State in order the more effectually to disfranchise the colored man. The other says he is in favor of negro disfranchisement, but declares that no revision is needed because the negro is already effectually and permanently disfranchised. So both Clark Howell and Hoke Smith, in their contest to control their own white primaries, help testify before the country that the United States Constitution does not 'cut any ice' in Georgia politics! Nor need it, while its politicians can seat five extra Georgia Representatives to represent the disfranchised colored people. "Yet there is nothing on the face of the Georgia statute books to prove the notorious fact that the colored voters are practically excluded. Let Congress make the representation only six Congressmen from Georgia, as proposed in the Bennet Bill, instead of eleven as at present, and Georgia white men will soon learn the road to impartial suffrage. If they do not, Congress can pass another act that will show them the way, and how to travel it. "American citizenship lives and moves and has its being in the ballot. Without the ballot, the individual citizen in a republic is abject and powerless to protect or to defend his life, liberty or property. He may not sometimes value his vote enough to use it; but divest him of it and he falls from American manhood to political slavehood. "Shall there exist only a single party in the ten Southern States? Out of their 88 Representatives now sitting to make our laws, 87 represent districts where there was either no ex- 96 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED pressed Republican opposition whatever, or only a nomina* opposition to their candidacy and what it stood for. Republican votes were so few as to indicate the absence of any effort whatever on behalf of the Republican party, not even for the seats that in many districts on a fair vote would really belong to them. There were no Republican candidates at all in thirty of these 87 districts. There was not, and could not have been, in the canvass a discussion before the voters of the principles and policies that mark the line of division between the two great national parties. Why? Because a vitalized Republican organization cannot do business in all those States. Could you and I reside there and summon our neighbors for political campaigns on the lines we are accustomed to in New York and Pennsylvania? When our capital had been absorbed by the community we would be advised to remove! "This is not a local question. When only a single political party is vitalized throughout a State, laws may be broken with impunity and no one called to account for it. Disregard of law breeds contempt of law. Irksome laws thus incite anarchy and disorder. "The existence and activity of only a single political party creates and sustains AN OLIGARCHY. "The oligarchy now in control of political life in the Southern system finds powerful allies, if not masters, in the great com- binations of capital that revel in its favors. There is nothing democratic in the Southern Democracy at home. "PLUTOCRACY in its most powerful and offensive phases absorbs the life and energies of every political action in those States. It is all partisanship, and partisanship that revolves around the question of what is most expedient for the oligarchy. The power of the oligarchy subsists on deception. "At the slightest symptom of revolt, before an independent party can be developed into any vitalized organization, the cry is raised and re-echoed by the sycophants and the ignorant SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 97 'Race' issue 'Race' question; and the new party is shattered with fear and despair, even if composed exclusively of white men. "The favors and privileges of corporate combinations, the seizure and occupation of the public highways and streets for tramway, telephone, telegraph, express, railroad or electric power companies, whether against law or under the forms of law, cannot be made issues in party politics because an independent opposition party is forbidden or is at Once ex- tinguished by the oligarchy. Newspapers, banks, business establishments of all kinds, Boards of Trade and all local industrial agencies are alarmed and silenced by the false cry of inciting race disturbances. "Give the individual voter, white or black, the honest ballot, with its associated right to appeal to his fellow-voters for combined action upon any lawful platform, and the political atmosphere of State and County will become salubrious. "A reduction of representation enacted by the Fifty-ninth Congress will cause an immediate re-alignment of Congressional Districts in the ten States, and furnish citizens who are opposed to the oligarchy a motive for joining a party of progress. It will afford these States a profitable reason to discontinue dis- crimination. It will create an anti-discrimination party. It will call into activity a now suppressed Republican constituency to struggle on its own account for the rights nominally guar- anteed by the United States Constitution but now disregarded amid threats of wilful and permanent disobedience. It will restore faith in Republican traditions and assurances. It will at least stamp with disapprobation the extensive usages in defiance of the rights and privileges of freemen. It will faintly reduce the ascendency and power of the ruling oligarchy that holds in subjugation the industries and the population of at least ten beautiful States. It will give new courage to the aspirations of a downtrodden race, and uplift the colored man into that genuine citizenship which is his constitutional heritage." VIII " If that government be not careful to keep within its own proper sphere and prudent to square its policy by rules of national welfare, sectional lines must and will be known." Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Govern- ment, Ch. VI. "And by the worth and honor of himself, . . . To beg enfranchisement immediate on his knees." King Richard II, Act III, sc. 3. 1. A faithful analysis of the situation reverts to the national Republican platform of 1904, what it is for, what it signifies, and the necessity for its enforcement. If it has no merit, if it has not the sanction of justice and right, it will fall to the ground. If, on the other hand, it be grounded on truth and justice and right, the light that shines from it may be obscured or ignored for a time, and even for three years, but not indefinitely. It may or may not again be made an issue in party politics; but the conditions that caused its adoption still continuing without amelioration and even becoming more pronounced than ever before, and furthermore, the remedy, if any, not yet having been outlined by definite political measures, the necessity is accentuated for a consideration of fundamental principles. Thus it is not out of place to refer to some of the considera- tions that were put forward during the Presidential campaign of 1904 in support of the plank on reduction of representation. In one of the documents * extensively circulated at that time, it was argued that: There is no "race question" involved in the determina- .* "The Representation Plank in the National Platform, "by H. E. Tremam. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 99 tion by the law-making power of the United States of a political fact that, under the Constitution, calls for a legislative enact- ment reducing representation in accordance with that fact. There is nothing in this simple declaration touching the scarecrow of "social equality." There is no appeal to the rights of labor or of race. It is only saying, in a specific form, that we favor action that shall determine how far the Constitu- tion has been trespassed upon, and that its particular provisions shall be enforced. It is like adopting a resolution that we ap- prove of the Constitution of the United States; and that we favor the enforcement of its directions to the law-making power. In this form are Republican adversaries challenged to object that the party has adopted the United States Constitution as a political asset, and proposes its enforcement by political action; and that, too, by the political action of the law-making power of the whole country; instead of depending upon the peculiar views of some special, and it may be partisan, court that may chance to handle a made-up case. It is as idle to imagine that an electoral representation grossly unfair can be remedied, or saved, by the legerdemain of lawsuits, as it was for the contestants of fifty years ago to guess that a Dred Scott case could establish, or defeat, freedom in the Territories. A political question does not belong to the Courts. So the law-making power of the nation, the platform declares, should determine for itself where, and to what extent, if at all, there exists in fact a Constitution-violation in the respect mentioned; and then should itself apply the penalty "as directed by the Constitution of the United States." Because a penalty is imposed for larceny it does not follow that the judge delivering the sentence approves of the larceny. He acts because it is his duty. So, it is declared by the Republican plank, Congress should act. Who is objecting? Are there offenders? Perhaps the objection comes from their 100 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED friends. Possibly offences have been, or should be, or are always to be, condoned. Why this "hue and cry" against the simple propositions? The St. Louis Democratic Convention furnishes some an- swers. Its platform declares: "The race question (?) has brought countless woes to this country. . . . To revive (?) the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed. . . . We therefore deprecate and condemn the Bourbon-like, selfish and narrow spirit of the recent Republican convention at Chicago, which sought to kindle anew the embers of racial and sectional strife; and we appeal from it to the sober common sense and patriotic spirit of the American people." This declaration was in line with the speech of the Tem- porary Chairman, who, after quoting from the Republican plank, said its real object was "to reduce Southern representa- tion"; and then he added: "If the Republican party were sincere in its proposition to reduce Southern representation on the ground of disfranchisement or pretended unconstitu- tional limitation itself, it would accompany that proposition with another, to wit, the proposition to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment " ! ! ! * Why? Unless it be that its violation should be condoned. Truth is invulnerable. Could there be a more persuasive confession that the violation exists; and that the remedy is either to condone the offence, or else to change the Constitution? The alternative is thus presented as an ultimatum. Mean- while, it is audaciously insisted that the Constitutional penalty be not imposed. The Republican platform, on the other hand, says: Impose the penalty; reduce the representation " as directed by the Constitution." The propositions to repeal the Constitu- tion, and to condone its violation, are distinctly separate ques- tions, quite apart from the present issue. * A Democrat has proposed a resolution in the House of Representatives for this purpose. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 101 Until such questions shall be encountered there can be no "race issue," no "negro question." There exists only the WHITE MAN'S QUESTION, for the North and West: Shall less than 5,000 votes in South Carolina, or 1,500 votes in Mississippi, remain the electoral equivalent of more than 35,000 votes in Ohio or New York? Shall it take six votes in New York to equal the representation in Congress and in the Electoral College enjoyed by a single voter from South Carolina? There is no "race question" about that! In 1902 "in Georgia 40,847 votes elected eleven Congress- men." In New York that number of voters could not elect more than one Representative. "In Mississippi 18,108 voters elected eight Congressmen"; while in New York that number of voters would not suffice for a single member. In Tennessee 152,081 voters elected ten Congressmen; while so many voters in New York would not secure more than four members of the House of Representatives. In Arkansas 39,423 voters elected seven Congressmen; while so many voters again in New York would secure only a single member. In these four instances, taken at random, the votes and voices of thirty-six members of the House of Representatives are thus reckoned the equiva- lent of seven Congressmen from New York ! However exalted may be the individual Congressman from New York in the estimation of the latter's constituency, it is not comfortable to realize that the same numerical constituency in another latitude furnishes five times as many votes in Con- gress, with a proportionate increase of power in the election of a President. In Mississippi 59,103 votes were cast for Presidential electors in 1900; in a contested election for Secretary of State in 1901 five candidates (all Democrats) polled the whole vote of only 32,757; and in the Congressional election of 1902 only 18,058 votes were cast for Congressmen. Yet Mississippi gets eight representatives and ten electoral votes, where for that many 102 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED votes New York, or Minnesota, or Michigan, gets only one representative. In Connecticut the total vote for Presidential electors in 1900 was 179,210, and in the Congressional election of 1902 159,358 votes were cast for Congressmen; and Connecticut gets but four representatives. Thus, in round figures, for less than 160,000 votes, Connecticut has only four members of the House of Representatives, six votes in the Electoral College; while Mississippi, with less than 60,000 votes, keeps eight members in the House of Representa- tives and ten votes in the Electoral College. To submit to such unfair inequality is to acquiesce in a most objectionable domination exclusively "sectional" in its char- acter. To defend it is a species of the most pronounced "sectionalism." While to object to it, through the Chicago Resolution, is, in the reported language of a Representative from Tennessee, "a revival of the worst days of the 'bloody shirt/ as an assault on Southern manhood (?), and, for that matter, upon American decency and intelligence everywhere." The Montgomery Advertiser says: "Rather than be subject to the control, or the dominant influence even, of the negro, these Southern States could well afford to surrender not only a part, but all representation in Congress and in the Electoral College. . . . There is absolutely no way whatever to determine how many men, white and black, are disfranchised by our laws (a confession that some are disfranchised). . . ." Yet in Alabama,in November, 1902, with a citizenship of 413,862 persons of voting age, there was a total vote only of 91,490 out of about 181,000 registered voters. Thus 232,862 persons of voting age were omitted from the ballot; and there were not 3,000 registered colored voters. But in the State by the Census of 1900 (Special Bulletin, July, 1904) there were 14,110 colored citizens owning farms, not including tenantry of various sorts; over 1,000 colored male teachers, besides colored merchants, SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 103 bankers, doctors, lawyers, editors, ministers and well informed colored persons, not less than 5,000. "We are not registering negroes to-day," replied the Registration Officer to the male principal of a colored school. It is easy enough for Congress to determine how many in Alabama "are disfranchised." So is it in respect to other States. The New Orleans Democrat appeals to Northern Democrats that the South would be "reduced one-third in electoral votes," and so "it would take a political tidal wave to restore the Demo- crats to office." Here is thus exhibited the real and only ob- jection either South or North to the meritorious reduction, which otherwise would not be seriously opposed in the South; because, with the reduction effected, they could appeal to the nation upon the merits of the confessed disfranchisement, and so possibly establish the latter permanently, and upon an amended Constitutional basis. The cupidity of partisanship interferes with this course already outlined by sagacious Southern leaders. So, between confession and threats, there is nothing left for argument against the fairness and stability of the assailed Republican plank. Another expression quoted from the South declares: "The best fight possible must be made against the scheme, but its defeat failing, the representation must go; . . . but no sacrifice of present suffrage conditions will be made to retain representation." For any "attempt to dragoon the South again would result in the total loss of the investments made in this section by Northern capital!" An amiable romance writer of sectional fiction, emerging from the fields of fancy into the apparently less familiar realm of politics, freely concedes that the object of his section is "frankly to disfranchise a large element among that (the colored) race, while the corresponding element among the whites is left the ballot." Whereupon the novelist naively explains that the 104 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED "disfranchisement of the main body of the negro race in the Southern States was a measure of high necessity"; because it was for the "permanent welfare of both races,V and because those (colored) people were of a special class to "be legislated for"; and besides, as he generously and menacingly adds, to enforce the Constitutional penalty for the existing discriminations would be to sweep away the $5,500,000 annually contributed by the whites for the education of the negro! Though exactly what that has to do with the true representation in the Electoral College is by no means clear. This much, however, is clear, namely, that there exists a discrimination, and that the Fifteenth Amendment is not now observed in practice. In fact, in some districts it is intentionally and circumspectly nullified; and, among public men from the South, its abrogation is generally advocated and hoped for. Upon the merits, or demerits, of such a repeal, or nullifica- tion, there is at present no issue. No question of that sort is before the country. But, upon the application of the Constitu- tional penalty of reduced representation, where the prohibited discrimination exists, the two political parties are squarely at issue. Nor is the issue about the existence of the fact; because, however it may be clouded by specious statements, the fact of a practical discrimination is usually conceded. It is always conceded in private conversation; and is generally openly avowed by persons hailing from the offending localities. Every Southern statesman pleads for a species of "local option" as the wisest method of purging the diseased localities; while every Northern politician in political alliance with him obediently sings the time-worn refrain "race question," "sec- tionalism," "leave us alone"; praying not to "penalize" the South by equalizing with the other States its proportionate electoral power; whereas the refrain ought to be, "Do not penalize six voters of the North by requiring only one Southern SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 105 voter to offset the whole six on all matters of national concern." The attitude of the St. Louis Convention, its spokesmen and adherents, is one of acquiescence in the prohibited discrimina- tion, one of confession of its existence, and a far cry to condone the offence or to scare away its obvious consequences prescribed by the Constitution of the United States. To one who believes in the Republican party it is against the interest of the whole country that the partisan Democracy should enjoy a representative vote in Congress and in the Electoral College that is grossly disproportionate to the con- stituency that furnishes the undue preponderance. That preponderance, figured before the Civil War at three-fifths of the slaves, has now grown in many States to five-fifths of the entire colored population. One result is, for instance, that it takes about one million and a quarter of Illinois or Ohio folks to balance the electoral power of half a million white population of South Carolina; there being in the latter State about 700,000 of colored and 500,000 of white population. . . . At least one hundred and twelve electoral votes (and more if the border States be counted) are assured to the Democracy from the solid South in every Presidential election " by methods abhorrent to fair dealing." These the Republicans must offset before the chances are balanced. In the election of 1900 the five States of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina, with forty-two Congressmen, cast 460,120 votes; while the five States of Minne- sota, Wisconsin, California, Kansas and Maryland, with forty- two Congressmen, cast 1,681,265 votes! In New York the highest vote for Congressman in 1902 was 53,274, and the average per district 37,324.* The average per district in South Carolina was 4,584! The Temporary Chairman of the St. Louis Convention held his seat in the House of Representa- * N. Y. figures from N. Y. Legislative Manual, 1904. 106 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED tives upon a total vote in his district of 1,433! In the district of Speaker Cannon, the Chairman of the Republican Conven- tion, there were polled at his election 39,361 votes. If the broad-minded Southern statesmen, conceding as they do the practical annihilation of the colored vote, are really satisfied to discuss its permanent exclusion on the merits, with a view to amend the United States Constitution, they will candidly acquiesce in an equitable reduced representation as directed by the Fourteenth Amendment, and help to arrange it, before proceeding to convince the nation, if they can, that the Fifteenth Amendment should be repealed. The real obstacle is only that the Northern Democracy will not will- ingly relinquish the partisan advantage of the solid electoral votes of the South, however willing the latter may be to forego representation in consideration of the main issue, which they imagine to be exclusion of the colored vote. First reduce the representation. Then proceed to the issue of reversing the determinations of the last generation that are now alleged to be unwise. In another pamphlet,* entitled "Parker's Question An- swered," referring to a speech by the candidate of the Demo- cratic National Convention, in which that candidate asked: "Shall the wrongdoer be brought to bay by the people or must justice wait upon political oligarchy?" the following answer was made : "Political" Oligarchy!" (1) What is it? (2) Where is it? (3) Does it dominate the Democratic party? What is it? Consult your Century Dictionary, and there read the distinction between a " democracy " and an " oligarchy." In a democracy political rights are enjoyed by all who possess civil rights; while in an " oligarchy " political rights are con- fined to a part only of those who possess civil rights. * Same author. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 107 Investigate facts and their significance. Take States ex- clusively Democratic. Begin with the State of the chosen leader of the Democratic party in the House of Representatives. Summon the record of Mississippi. Mississippi is not instanced because a majority of the voters in that State are colored voters who do not vote. Leave that out. But because of the rigid Democracy of the white voters there. No stress is laid on the facts that out of 348,466 voters only 18,058 votes were cast at the last election for Congress- men, and that not one-sixth of the voters voted at the last Presidential election; because those statements would not eliminate the colored vote. Good-natured men, for the sake of peace, must recognize that the colored vote is now absolutely eliminated. So wipe out that feature of the inquiry, and consider, if you please, as the Mississippians do, the white votables only, of whom there are 150,030. A very large majority of the white voters fail to vote. They cast 11,000 less votes at the Presidential election in 1900 than they did in 1896. In 1902 in one Congressional district the aggregate vote cast for Congressman was only 1,146; the high- est in any district 3,245, and the average for all the eight Con- gressional districts only 2,257 per district! Thus, in shaping national policies, not only do not any of the colored people, but not one-eighth of the white voters, express a voting interest! But what about primaries! Of one party only are they, and not for the purpose of dividing the voters upon party lines or policies. They are not party conventions assembled to ratify or to outline party action. They say they have caucuses one party does. So do caucuses occur in all parts of the country. What of that? The fact remains that "such profound and increasing indiffer- 108 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED ence of an electorate is a state of things never contemplated in the Republic." In one town where a mayor, a marshal, a treasurer and four aldermen were elected, only eight votes were cast, and out of the eight votes seven are said to have been candidates for office. "The same men were voters, candidates for office and judges of election to pass as judges on their own votes for themselves; and in spite of all their efforts they could get only one outsider to come to the polls and cast his ballot! " Such political stagnation is due to the " oligarchy " that debases the electorate that it dominates. The very existence of such an "oligarchy" depends on its domination over ignorance. "Political oligarchy" first soothes its opponents into indiffer- ence; then cajoles them by misrepresentations ; and finally silences them by threats. That "political oligarchy" in Mississippi sends to Congress, besides two Senators, eight Representatives to vote and to speak on all questions of national legislation and administra- tion, for an electorate that in New York can send to the House of Representatives only a single voice and a single vote. In this way, too, the "oligarchy" gets ten votes in the electoral college. Take another illustration from a Democratic State, where the white voters are in the majority. Out of a voting population in Louisiana exceeding 300,000 voters, a majority of whom were white, only 67,905 votes were polled for Presidential electors in 1900 less than half the white voters voting ; while at the Congressional election in 1902 there were polled for representatives in Congress in all the seven districts of the State only 26,625 votes; not one-tenth of the white voters voting, and an average to a district of only 3,752 votes. The "political oligarchy" that accomplishes this result sends to Congress, besides two Senators, seven Representatives to vote and to speak on all matters of national legislation and administration for an electorate that in New York can send SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 109 to the House of Representatives but a single voice and a single vote. In this way, too, the "oligarchy" gets nine votes in the electoral college. Take another Democratic State. In Florida, out of over 139,379 votables, of whom a majority (77,962) are white, there were polled for President in 1900 only 39,411 votes; while for all the Congressional candidates in all three districts of the State there were polled in 1902 only 16,340 votes scarcely one out of four of the white men voting; an average of only 5,443 votes cast in a Congressional district. The "political oligarchy" that controls this State and keeps three-quarters of the white men away from the polls (besides all the colored voters) sends to Congress, besides two Senators, three members of the House of Representatives to represent an electorate that in New York State can secure but a single member. In this way, too, the "oligarchy" gets five votes in the Electoral College. Take another Democratic State. In South Carolina, out of aggregate votables of 283,235, of whom 130,375 are white, only 50,815 votes were polled for Presidential electors in 1900; and in 1902 for all Congressional candidates in all the seven districts of the State only 32,085 votes were polled, an average of 4,583 to a district. Thus in shaping national policies a voting interest has been last expressed by only about one- quarter of the white voters, and not at all by the colored people. The "political oligarchy" that controls this State and represses nearly three-quarters of the white voters sends to Congress, besides two Senators, seven members of the House of Representatives to represent an electorate that in New York State can secure only a single member. In this way, too, the "oligarchy" gets nine votes in the Electoral College for President and Vice-President. This State and the State of Mississippi are the only two 110 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED States where the colored votables outnumber the white votables,* and what is said here about elections relates exclusively to white voters; and, therefore, as completely eliminates the bugaboo of "race question" as should satisfy the most strenu- ous Democrat. In Georgia, vainly imagined by the uninformed to be replete with generous political differences and free discussions and votings, there was a voting population of 177,878 white and 147,348 colored voters; in all 325,226 voters. Thus it appears that only a trifle over one-third of the voters [122,715] actually participated in the exceptional Presidential election of 1900; while about one-quarter of the voters [81,538 out of a total' vote cast of 87,104] elected the Governor in 1902. More significant still in illustrating the forces dominating the people of Georgia are the election returns for their Repre- sentatives in Congress. In the eleven districts allowed to this State there were no voters in 1902 opposing the Democratic candidate, except in two districts (Seventh and Ninth), where a Populist candidate was accredited in the Seventh District with 860 and in the Ninth with 20 votes. The total vote in all the eleven districts was only 40,447, not one-quarter of the white voters voting; to represent whom Georgia sends eleven members to the House of Representatives. Such a constituency in Ohio or New York gets only a single Representative. In the Georgia State Legislature the Republicans were allowed one Senator out of a total of 44, and three out of 175 members of the lower house. The average vote for a member of Congress was 3,677, instead of ten times that number required for one Ohio or one New York member. Thus it takes TEN votes in New York to constitute the elec- toral equivalent of one voter in Georgia. * See footnote, p. 56. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 111 Where the Empire State has one voice in the House of Representatives and one vote to appeal for its own great interests, and for the national welfare, Georgia raises its united eleven voices and eleven votes to howl for and to hold for a vicious "political oligarchy." "Shall the wrongdoer be brought to bay by the people or must justice wait upon political oligarchy?" That is one of the questions asked by Judge Parker in reliance upon that "political oligarchy" furnishing him with thirteen votes from the State of Georgia in the electoral college; in reliance also upon that same "oligarchy" furnishing him in all 151 votes in the electoral college. The national policy of a party, its tendencies and possi- bilities are measured by the actions of its chosen leaders in Congress its Senators and Representatives. Twenty-six out of thirty-three Democratic Senators, and 120 out of 178 Democratic members of the House of Repre- sentatives, were elected by this "political oligarchy," and in Congress constitute a "political oligarchy" that indisputably dominates the Democratic party in both houses of Congress, and therefore in the nation. Yet the constituency thus repre- sented by 120 votes in the House and 26 Senators cast less votes by 189,817 for this "political oligarchy" than were cast by the constituencies represented by the remaining 7 Demo- cratic Senators and the remaining 58 Democratic Representa- tives in the House.* . . . Not a single one of those 26 out of 33 Democratic Senators, or of those 120 out of 178 Democratic Representatives, repre- sents a constituency where national policies have been con- sidered, much less put in issue, discussed and voted upon. They are all chosen upon a single imaginary issue, namely, that the colored man as such shall not vote. Even upon that * Referring to the 58th Congress. 112 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED issue there is no discussion and no opposing candidate. The Republicans were without candidates. If, with occasional exceptions in the border States, there was a Republican candi- date here and there, this artificial issue and none other was specially assigned. No reliance at the polls was placed upon party measures affecting the currency, the nation's industries, the tariff, treaties with foreign countries, the condition of the Treasury, the ex- pediency of this or that expenditure or tax, or any of the essential features of legislation or administration. The single unopposed issue is to retain "our party" in power at home, with as much United States power annexed for our home use in defying the Constitutional amendments as favor- able alliances with our partisan allies in New York and other States can secure. That "political oligarchy" has no convictions, no purposes other than by some expedient to capture for itself the allied power of the so-called "doubtful" States. If their allies in New York, Connecticut or Illinois can satisfy this "political oligarchy" that a specified candidate, a specified platform, or a specified scheme of campaign, will accomplish their pur- pose and win a campaign, they are eager to adopt it.* If the votes of the least informed, of the most vicious, of the irresponsible adventurers, of the unintelligent foreign masses, thronging the great cities, can be secured, let it be by device, by caprice, by misrepresentation, by delusion or snares, or by some method still worse, the vitality of this "political oligarchy" is invigorated, its purposes strengthened, and its lease of life enlarged. Say that such an alliance can be obtained, and all principles and policies, for which party is the legitimate exponent, are extinguished in the flame of partisan expediency. Silver, or paper, or gold is nothing to this" political oligarchy," except as a wherewithal to purchase power. * This remains true for 1008. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 113 Party virtues, or party vices, or party errors, of friend or foe, may flow as copiously as a political Niagara, yet they are uninstructive and valueless to that oligarchy, except to furnish the power to run its political dynamo. What only is sought is power to supply the whole country with the oligarchy's destructive political current a current that will bring stagna- tion to the electorate as well as to the industries of the nation. . . . In another pamphlet* were the following statements and statistics: It has been asserted that the Republican platform, in de- manding that representation in Congress and in the Electoral Colleges be reduced in States where the elective franchise has been limited by special discrimination, is raising the race ques- tion. This is not true. The platform does not touch the race question. The clause in question has to do with a more vital and important matter, the equality of voters. . . . One voter in South Carolina equals seven in Pennsylvania. . . . One South Carolina voter equals seven in Massa- chusetts. . . . One voter in South Carolina equals eight in New York, and doesn't have to work so hard to elect his man. . . . One white man in Alabama is worth four in Minnesota. . . . Kansas has eight Congressmen and Louisi- ana has seven, but in Kansas a total of 542,328 votes is re- quired to elect the Congressmen, whereas in Louisiana but 26,065 are needed. Let us see how this is done. . . . Mr. Ransdell, of the Fifth Louisiana District, was elected by 2,645 votes out of 2,677 cast, in a district whose popula- tion is 207,430. One in seventy-two of the population voted. Mr. Meyer, of the First District, received 3,910 votes out of 4,776, in a district whose population is 178,670, and which takes in part of the city of New Orleans; 866 Republican votes * Equality of Voters, issued by Republican National Committee. 114 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED were cast in opposition. One in thirty-seven of the population was educated up to the voting point. The other New Orleans representative, Mr. Davey, received 5,014 votes to 868 for his Republican opponent. One in thirty-one voted in his district. It will be observed that illiteracy in New Orleans is only about half as common as in the country districts. But what about Kansas, that new State which was scarcely settled forty years ago? In all the Kansas districts but one, 20 per cent, of the population votes. In the Sixth District Mr. Reeder received 18,300 votes to 15,832 for the Democratic candidate and 306 for the Socialist. (There are as many Socialists in this district as there are Republicans in some of the Southern States according to the votes). Mr. Reeder had 2,162 majority over the combined opposition more than the entire vote, 2,124, which elected a Democrat in the Sixth Louisiana District. One in five of the population of Kansas votes. One in seventy- two of the population of three Louisiana districts votes. One Democratic voter in Louisiana is worth fourteen or fifteen Kansas Republicans. How about that? There is not one district in Georgia where more than four per cent, of the population votes. In the Seventh District the proportion is 1 to 32; in the Sixth, 1 to 42; in the First, 1 to 50; in the Second, 1 to 59; in the Third and Eleventh, 1 to 63; in the Fourth, 1 to 64; in the Tenth, 1 to 67; in the Eighth, 1 to 60, and in the Fifth, as has been said, 1 to 85. In the Second and Sixth districts of Iowa between one- fourth and one-fifth of the population votes, while the average throughout the State is about one in five. One Georgia Demo- crat equal to seventeen Iowa Republicans! It sounds like the old days when one planter and his two or three hundred slaves equaled some scores of free Northern workmen. . . . In Mississippi, in several districts, the total vote in the elec- tion of the 58th Congress varied from 1,146 to 3,245 in popula- SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 115 tions of 162,340 to 232,174, the proportion of voters in these districts being from 1 to 57 to 1 to 202! In New Jersey, with nearly similar population according to districts, the total vote was from 29,530 to 45,951 and the proportion of voters from one-fourth to one-seventh. The electoral inequalities thus manifested show a discrimina- tion that calls for drastic treatment. 2. At the Philadelphia meeting on March 1, 1906, to which reference has been made, one of the speakers, Mr. A. H. Grimke, called attention to the wrongs of the colored people electorally in the South, under the rule of the oligarchy in control there. He said in part : ". . . At the last Presidential election (1904) the com- bined vote of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina for 39 electors, to be exact, was just 186,253, while the vote of Massachusetts for 16 electors was 442,732. Once more: is it not immensely ominous and significant the marked shrinkage in 1904 of the popular vote for electors in Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia, States which had but recently revised their constitutions, as compared with the popular vote of the same States for electors in 1900? There was, for example, a shrinkage of the popular vote in Alabama of nearly 50,000 polls; in North Carolina the shrinkage amounted to nearly 85,000 ; and in Virginia it ran up to more than 135,000. These figures are eloquent of great wrongs done to the negro. They are not less eloquent of great dangers which now threaten to subvert free institutions in the Republic." The cause of the disfranchisement practised by the oligarchy is the existence of class, of the spirit of caste. Frederick Douglass said: "The spirit of caste is malignant and dangerous everywhere." There was a class and there was a caste in the 116 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED days of slavery. There is a class and there is a caste in a greater degree to-day than there was then. An aristocracy in a Republic is a paradox, and especially so when it is representative of a plutocracy, pure and simple, claiming control over the affairs of the rest of the people, many, if not most, of whom are more entitled by their brains, their character and their good citizenship, to be aristocratic in its true etymological sense. Indeed, the pluto-aristocracy to which one refers, and which has during the last few decades been insidiously creeping into our national life, is the opposite of aristo crated, particularly in the South, where the men who control and direct, through plutocracy, electoral frauds and abuse of power, have acquired that plutocratic influence in ways that are "dark" and "peculiar," in some cases fraudful and illegal. Yet, owing to the practical nullification there of the United States Constitution; the manipulation of the ballot box; and the seeming inability of the courts to reach and penalize the acts of these plutocrats, the astounding and sadden- ing fact remains that here in America, that has produced states- men, warriors, poets, artists, musicians and captains of industry in almost a prodigality of numbers, the control of public affairs, particularly in the South, should be in the hands of men who neither by merit nor character, but sheerly through wealth or chicanery, dominate the people and arrogate to themselves a class distinction utterly undeserved and wholly out of place in a country of free institutions. Class cannot exist, caste cannot be allowed in a "republic" without undermining its very foundations. In a republic classes are influenced by, if not dependent upon, the political power of the individuals comprising the class. That power is at the basis of all unity of action. Subjugate it, and the safety of modern society is intruded upon. The slave when a chattel added three-fifths to his master's political strength as a voter. For every five slaves owned the master practically cast three votes in addition SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 117 to his own. That is the way it worked. Now the master virtually casts five votes; and notwithstanding the increase of population and the consequent increase of male citizens of voting age, the fact is that there is a steadily decreasing vote where the latter conditions exist. Such a diminution of and indifference to the suffrage evinces a non-participation in public affairs which is destructive of representative govern- ment. In a State, for example, containing counties the popula- tion and voters of which are predominantly colored, the latter, although disfranchised, furnish the pretext by which the few white men who do vote in those counties outweigh represen- tatively in conventions and State bodies the white men who vote in counties where the population and voters are chiefly whites. Where such conditions exist heavy representation is given to this small minority. The whites in the black counties numerically get a larger proportion of power in the legislature, in Democratic conventions and in other representative assem- blies than do the whites in the white counties. Illustrations of this were furnished to the compiler of these pages in a note from a prominent Republican who served in the Confederate army and who wrote in 1905 respecting a pretended State election in 1901 in the State of Alabama. He thus describes the legislation which brought about the Constitutional Convention that framed what is now acted upon as the State Constitution: Prior to the act under which this Convention was held, an act providing for it had already been passed, in such terms as would have made it difficult for its promoters to carry with them a majority of the State; so this act was repealed and another enactment substituted, adjusting the membership of the proposed convention in such a way that the Black Belt counties could really count in 66 members from the State at large and accomplish this in 4, 5 or 6 of the Black Belt counties, no matter what the vote was in other counties of the State. It is a singular circumstance that the 118 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED vote in the Black Belt counties, where negroes largely pre- dominate, was practically all for the convention. For example, Dallas County, with some 5,000 more negroes than whites, was counted for the convention, and then, by more than 2,000 majority, for its ratification. Thus it will be seen that 4,000 to 5,000 negroes apparently voted to disfranchise themselves! A corresponding showing was made for other Black Belt counties. In the State Constitution the representation is fixed and cannot be changed by amendments. One result of this is that in a Black Belt county a disfranchised negro has from six to ten times as much power in representatives and State Senatorships as a white man who can vote has in a white county. The writer of the letter then went on to say that there are many like himself who wish the question settled as to represen- tation in Congress under the Fourteenth Amendment, and as to the enforcement or suppression of the Fifteenth Amend- ment. In other words, they want the Constitution either obeyed and respected and enforced, or else repealed in these War Amendments, declaring that if Congress lets the matter stand as it is they will be in a poor fix to fight the inequalities of representation in their own State. With the question of representation fought out and voted on in the State of Ala- bama in good faith, many Republicans believe that the State would go against the Democrats in the near future. If, therefore, there be any way in which the silent South, white and black, shall be given a chance to be heard, either upon local matters or upon matters of national concern, it is in the interest of representative government that that voice should be heard and heeded. The re-casting of the lines of representa- tion on a fair and honest basis, by counties and States or Con- gressional districts, would give the ''silent South" a chance to be heard. It would give it "a chance to appeal from those States drunk on the race question to their sober second thought; SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 119 a chance to show them the folly and madness of the disfranchise- ment and consequent degradation of their negro labor as an economic factor in their development and civilization." The liberal sentiment that would thus be awakened in the South would be contagious upward and downward, and exert a leavening influence towards the promotion of remedial meas- ures there, and re-act upon Northern apathy. It might not immediately change the present status of the colored people, either in law or in fact, but it could not hurt them, for they are already disfranchised; nor would such a step interfere with the power that Congress has to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by appropriate legislation a power that might then be readily exercised whenever the majority in Congress can "screw its courage to the sticking point." It has been well said: "The reduction of Southern representation will certainly break up the present apathetic state of the country in respect to the negro." With that breaking up a reaction would follow in favor of freedom and in due time a public sentiment would arise that would promote legislation, State and Federal, toward enforc- ing the rights of the colored people of the South. If the South, after such a reduction, should persist but it would not long persist in its present purpose to nullify the spirit and letter of the Fifteenth Amendment, and to reduce the colored people to the condition of a permanently subordinate and servile class, without rights as men and citizens which the South is bound to respect, the sooner that Southern representation is reduced "the better it will be for the negro and for the nation." It will be one step, but one step only, towards destroying the pernicious sectionalism now threatening the welfare of the nation at large. Abuses of all kinds, alleged to affect trade and commerce, currency, labor, health and family conditions, combinations 120 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED and monopolies, food and medicine, have been and are made matters of national investigation and legislation. Hence history will record it as one of the singular omissions of these times, that the most flagrant of all discriminations affecting republican life, viz., the wholesale disfranchisement of native Americans, has been abandoned by national authority and left to flourish under sectionalism as a noxious weed in a fertile soil. The politicians and the representatives of that sectionalism are exacting and aggressive, not to say insolent, to-day on the voting question, because as a peculiar and unduly favored section it has its extra numerical strength in Congress and in the Electoral College by reason of the very disfranchisement which it has accomplished. Reduce that strength by 25 to 35 Congressmen, and there would follow in due time a corres- ponding diminution in the arrogance and aggressiveness and the unjustifiable sectionalism that now prevails. As the power of this combination declines in numerical strength in Congress and in the Electoral College, it would decline also in its relative importance concerning the management and choice of leaders in the Democratic party. Even the Democratic party itself would then pay less heed than it does now to the claims of this sectional faction, to its demands, to its threats, to its intrigues and pretences, and to its un-Republican tendencies. One writer has shown how necessary the franchise is for political manhood and uplift. He writes: " ... the loss of the franchise has changed our (colored) status to such a degree that we no longer demand, but beg and supplicate even for those fundamental needs without which education and general improvement would be very doubtful." Political manhood is cultivated by the franchise; political manhood is discouraged by disfranchisement. " When you have effaced a man, civilly and politically, in a government like our own," asks one writer, " what is he? What does he amount to? SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 121 Who cares for him? What rights has he which any other class is bound to respect? He is a mere nonentity, entitled to no consideration, and with no refuge to which he can fly in the hour of his need. To be civilly and politically effaced is to be civilly and politically dead; and to be civilly and politically dead is to be at the mercy of any and every political party and organization, and to be under the heel of the worst elements in the community without any means of redress." In a republic citizenship means much ; the right to the ballot means representative government by the democratic expression of the will of the people at the polls. It is the symbol of the people's sovereignty. The attempt to keep the colored people as a race of dis- franchised servitors is doomed to failure, just as in Russia to-day where the voice of the peasantry is making itself felt in spite of despotism and suppression. This was well set forth in a recent interview with Gregory Spirodonovitch that appeared in the New York Times: "You can tear a few leaves off a tree, but you cannot stop the foliage of spring; and I tell you that our long, long winter is past, and spring has come to Russia. . . . "A people which in one short generation has produced a Tolstoi, a Tschaikowsky, Gorky, a peasant's son, Mendeleeff, the great chemist, and Mechnikow, whom France has honored with the succession of Pasteur, has no reason to despair of its sons. We can and will produce legislators and leaders of men as soon as the old policy of suppression is entirely done away with." "And will there be followers, too ? " "Most assuredly. I am the son of a peasant and I have grown up with the peasants, and yet I am daily amazed at the shrewdness and political sagacity which our people are exhibiting. I tell you the Russian peasant will amaze the world when his living chance is given him. So far as I have seen them, the arguments which are advanced to show our unfitness for liberal institutions or for self-government are absurd. They are the same cunning lies that have been used from time immemorial by those who have sought their own advantage by keeping the people in leading- strings when not in chains. " 'You must not go near the water,' they say, 'until you have learned to swim.' " 122 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED The trivial technicalities by which the accomplishment of disfranchising is here and there in law defended, or sought to be sustained, have no relevancy to a discussion purely political; and they are as foreign to its purpose and to its issues, except to befog them, as were the technicalities of the slave oligarchy in 1854r-60, by which it sought to convince the nation that a slave was property which the free States should recognize, even within their own dominion, and that slavery was a divine institution whose extension and perpetuity should not be forbidden throughout the land. The ingenious casuistry afforded by legal technicalities as, for instance, whether the United States Constitution has been successfully evaded has no place in the discussion of fundamental principles. The Fugitive Slave Law, compelling the return by the United States Marshal of slaves found in the free States, was one of the unfortunate results of the propaganda for slavery. Another was in the collisions that actually occurred in Territories * because the settlers sent there from the South *"John Brown in Kansas settled, like a steadfast Yankee farmer, Brave and godly, with four sons, all stalwart men of might. There he spoke aloud for freedom, and the border-strife grew warmer, Till the Rangers fired his dwelling, in his absence, in the night; And Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, Came homeward in the morning to find his house burnt down. Then he grasped his trusty rifle and boldly fought for freedom; Smote from border unto border the fierce invading band; And he and his brave boys vowed, so might Heaven help and speed 'em! They would save those grand old prairies from the curse that blights the land; And Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, Said, 'Boys, the Lord will aid us!' and he shoved his ramrod down. And the Lord did aid these men, and they labored day and even, Saving Kansas from its peril, and their very lives seemed charmed. Till the ruffians killed one son, in the blessed light of Heaven, In cold blood the fellows slew him, as he journeyed all unarmed; Then Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, Shed not a tear, but shut his teeth, and frowned a terrible frown! SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 123 demanded that slavery be recognized in the Territories; while the North claimed that these Territories should remain free. A sanguinary civil war in the Territories was waged on these lines before the collisions of great armies subsequently occurred. As a result of those collisions of great armies, the Constitu- tion of the United States was_amended by the adoption of the three War Amendments. The Fourteenth Amendment declares, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdic- tion thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits race discrimination in respect to the suffrage. What the South to-day through its white leaders is trying to do, is to fix the status of the colored people as one of civil and political inferiority, and practically to ignore and to nullify the letter and spirit of the foregoing Amendments to the United States Constitution. How this affects the South will be understood by the follow- ing from the pen of a thoughtful observer belonging to the disfranchised race: " Disfranchisement of the negro is bad for the South. It is bad for her, in the first place, on account of the harmful effect produced by it on the Then they seized another brave boy not amid the heat of battle, But in peace, behind his plowshare and they loaded him with chains, And with pikes, before their horses, even as they goad their cattle, Drove him cruelly, for their sport, and at last blew out his brains; Then Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, Raised his right hand up to Heaven, calling Heaven's vengeance down. And he swore a fearful oath, by the name of the Almighty, He would hunt this ravening evil that had scathed and torn him so; He would seize it by the vitals, he would crush it day and night; he Would so pursue its footsteps, so return it blow for blow, That Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, Should be a name to swear by, in backwoods or in town!" E. C. Stedman, 124 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED black labor. It makes a large proportion of her black laboring popu- pulation restless and discontented with their civil and social condition, and it will keep them so. It makes it well-nigh impossible for this restless and discontented labor class to make the most and the best of themselves with the limited opportunities afforded them, with the social and political restrictions imposed by law upon them. It hinders employers of this labor from producing the largest and the best results with it, for the same cause. For to obtain by means of this labor the largest and best results, employers of it ought to do the things, ought to have the State do the things which will tend to reduce the natural friction between labor and capital to its lowest terms, to make labor contented and happy, surely not the things which will have the opposite effect on that labor. Otherwise the energy which ought to go into production will be scattered, consumed in contests with capital, in active and passive resistance to bad social and economic conditions, in effective or ineffective striving to improve those conditions. . . The grand source of wealth of any community is its labor. . . A labor class deprived of freedom, of a voice in govern- ment, cannot maintain the advantage which mere intelligence and skill may have gained for it in the struggle for existence. As it loses freedom, a voice in the government, it will lose ultimately its skill, its intelligence as an industrial factor. For it will become, in effect, subject to, if not exactly the slave of, the capitalistic and labor classes which are free, which make the laws. And these classes will invariably act on the assumption that the more ignorant such a subject labor class is, the less trouble it will cause. . . Instead of establishing schools for the education of a labor class deprived of the right to vote, the class which possesses the right to vote will not establish new ones, and will in addition endeavor to lower the standard of those already established, and then to do away with them entirely. The chief end and purpose of the classes having the right to vote will be, not to raise the average of literacy, of intelligence, of the class without that right, but to lower the same in order the better to keep it in a state of permanent industrial subordination and inferiority to them- selves. And so the negro labor of the South, deprived of the right to vote, will see its schools diminish in numbers and quality, will get, in one State and then in another, fewer schools and shorter terms, until they reach the vanishing point, where, in large portions of the South, negro schools will disappear altogether. Under such circumstances, negro labor, instead of advancing in intelligence and skill, will steadily lose the ground gained by it in these respects since the war. . . Ignorant negro labor must weigh the South down heavily, therefore, in that industrial struggle in which it 125 is now engaged, not alone with the rest of the nation, but with the world. The undue political influence of the South has arisen from 'the right in the South under the Constitution to count in the apportionment of repre- sentatives among the States five of her slaves for three freemen.' This feature of the Constitution was distinctly aristocratic. It certainly was not Democratic. For it gave a Southern white man who owned five negro slaves an electoral value in the Republic four times greater than that of a Northern white man. This un-republican, this disproportionate political importance of a Southern slave owner over a Northern freeman produced no end of trouble between the two classes of men. And when it is remem- bered that the ideas and interests of these two classes of men were far from being identical, that there was on the contrary no way of bringing about an identity of ideas and interests between them, for while one of these groups was born and bred under the aristocratic idea, with a corresponding labor system which rooted itself in that idea, persons living to-day may get some notion of the fierceness and depth of the ante-bellum rivalry which waxed and waned and waned and waxed for a half century, between the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding States for possession of the general government, as a coign of vantage in the struggle between them for domi- nation in the Republic. "The strife, with alternation of reverses and triumphs, first for one side and then for the other, went on until 1861, when the rivals resorted to force to settle their differences. The war for the Union decided the momentous conflict in favor of the democratic idea and its system of free labor. The Thirteenth Amendment destroyed slavery and the slave power ; or such, at least, was its purpose. The Fourteenth Amendment provided forever against a revival of the aristocratic idea of inequality of civil conditions between the races in the South the real ground of difference between the sections by declaring all persons born or naturalized in the United States to be citizens of the United States. There was not again to exist in the Southern States any system of labor to take the place of the old slave labor except that of free labor, and there was not again to appear any corresponding political power in the South to take the place of the defunct slave power; or such, at least, was the plain purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in order to make assurance doubly sure on this vital point, a supplementary provision was incorporated into the Amendment, to reduce the representation of any State which shall deny to any portion of its voting population the right to vote, in the proportion which the number of such disfranchised citizens 'shall bear to the whole number of citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.' The rest of the nation 126 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED intended by these two great acts to destroy, root and branch, the old con- stitutional provision which entitled the South to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representation among the States. It was determined to rid the country for all time of any future trouble from that cause. The Reconstruction measures attempted to introduce into the old Slave States the democratic idea and a labor system corresponding to that idea. But in the event of failure in these regards, and the ultimate revival on the part of those States of the aristocratic idea and a labor system corresponding to that idea, it was carefully provided that such revival of the old artistocratic idea and labor system should be accom- panied by an equivalent loss of political power on the part of those States. . . . The political power which the South manages to retain in spite of her disfranchisement of the negro does not, therefore, belong to her. . . . The democratic idea of government has been put to rout in every Southern State by the old aristocratic idea founded on race prejudice and race distinctions. A labor system is fast growing up about this idea, a labor system as much opposed to the labor system of the rest of the nation as was the old slave system to the free labor of the North. There can be no lasting peace between them now, any more than such peace was possible between them in the period before the war. The political and industrial interests of the sections are not the same and cannot be made the same so long as differences so fundamental in respect to government and labor exist between them. The conflict of the two contrary ideas of govern- ment, of the two contrary labor systems, for survivorship in the Union, may be postponed, as it is to-day, but it cannot be extinguished except by the extinction of one or the other of the old rivals. For they are doomed, in one form or another, by economic and social laws, to ceaseless rivalry and strife. " In this strife the disfranchisement of the negro by the South is a distinct victory for the Southern idea over the Northern idea, the Southern rival over the Northern rival. The Southern idea has taken on new life, is re-sowing itself, striking powerful roots into Southern soil. And while it is steadily strengthening its ascendency over those States, its pollen dust is slowly spreading in many devious ways, blown by winds of destiny beyond the limits of those States and attacking with subtle, far-reaching and deep-reaching influences the democratic idea of the rest of the nation, giving aid and form to all those feelings, thoughts, purposes, hidden or open, but active in the Republic, hostile to popular government, to the democratic principle of equality and universal suffrage. The South has thrown down its gauge of battle for the aristocratic idea, for the labor system that grew out of that idea. This gauge of battle is the disfranchisement of SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 127 the negro because he is negro and the consequent degradation of him as a laborer. Will the North accept the challenge of its old rival? Will it pick up the gauge of battle thus thrown down? . . . When the time comes, as come it must, the negro will mark again, as he did formerly, the dead line between the combatants, between the aristocratic idea of the South and the democratic idea of the rest of the nation ; between the labor system of the South and the labor system of the rest of the nation." * * Why Disfranchisement is Bad, Archibald H. Grimke. A writer said recently: "It is too easily assumed that the ballot is a mere permit con- ferred by superiors upon inferiors as a reward of merit. But the truth is that the ballot is a defensive weapon. . . ." "The ballot, though it fall as still As snowflakes on the frozen sod, Yet executes a freeman's will, As lightning does the will of God." Pierpont. IX "Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim." MacauLay. "Majorities proceed upon the principle that rights to life and liberty are natural and equal; oligarchies proceed upon the theory that these rights are neither equal nor natural, but are gifts from superiors. " Louis F. Post. Entrenched in the South to-day is an aristocracy based pri- marily on race. The whole tendency of things there is to de- citizenize the blacks to reduce them to a state of permanent political and industrial subordination to the whites. This is aristocratizing the Republic with a vengeance. A handful of ruling whites, and that not of the best class as in ante-bellum days, casts to-day the entire vote of sections and thus claims to represent all their black, and a large majority of their white, citizens at National and State elections. " You Americans had a new and beautiful land out of which your fathers sought to realize a heaven upon earth, and how has it ended? In no part of the world is class so arrayed against class. . . . You have tried popular development en masse, why not try the development of the individual? The State cannot be stronger than its weaker link. You must build up the individual before you build up the State." Tolstoi. A reduction in representation in the South would lead to a reduction in the arrogant and aggressive way in which to-day it handles its politics as well as the "race question" so-called. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 129 The apathetic attitude of the national government has been previously animadverted upon in regard to this greatest of all discriminations in the Republic. The wholesale dis- franchisement of negroes in the South because they are negroes has become not only an intolerable wrong, but an imminent peril to the Republic. Equality and fairness of political representation are as essential to-day to the preservation of representative govern- ment as was the maintenance of the great issues over which the American Revolution was fought. The plank in the National Republican platform of 1904 was one Anglo-Saxon protest against an inferior political relation which Democracy would perpetuate upon the white men of the North. There was no purpose in that plank to injure or degrade the South, but simply to restore some equality of representation between the sections. It has been cunningly characterized by the Democracy as a "nigger plank," that it may have an odious name. Campaigning by epithet is not a new feature in politics. Years ago the Democracy dubbed as a "Force Bill" a national election law which had served for a score of years to help the cause of honest elections, and which had rescued New York City from its corrupt and dominant "ring." The Democracy called it a "Force Bill," that it might by such an epithet become odious. Similarly to-day every reference to the unfair elections habitual in the South is characterized as, and erroneously taken by the mass of the people to be, a reference to the so-called "nigger problem." When a county, for instance, containing not more than 2,500 white voters and less than 500 colored voters, makes an election return of 6,500 majority for the "Democratic" ticket, it is no "race question" that creates justifiable indigna- tion against the offenders responsible for, or the faction that profits by, such a fraud. Yet this is no hypothetical case. An effort was recently made in one State Democratic Con- 130 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED vention to reduce the representation of Black Belt Counties in the State and District Conventions of the party, and to ask that this also be done in the State Legislature. This proposition received the support of about a fifth of the Con- vention, which goes to show that one set of white men at least would not have the party they belong to always submit to be held in a condition of political inferiority by another set of white men. As one man puts it, "the white people of the forty- five counties of the State (Alabama) will not much longer submit to the excessive electoral strength of the twenty-five Black Belt counties, nor endure the Bossism which this im- poses upon the whole people. . . ." "The method by which the Democratic oligarchy fastens its hold upon the Democratic machine in Alabama and the condition is the same in other Southern States is the basing of the representation in the conventions of the party and in the Legislature upon an apportionment embracing the disfranchised blacks in the Black Belt counties and thereby prohibiting the control of the party or the Legislature by the white counties of the States. Tallapoosa County, in Alabama, with a white registered vote of 4,006, has only two members of the House and half a senator, it requiring a district of this and one other white county to name a senator; while the Black Belt county of Lowndes, in the same congressional district, with a white registred vote of 1,061, has two members in the House and one state senator! There are not more than twenty -five registered colored voters in Tallapoosa County and only about fifty colored registered voters in Lowndes. In Democratic conventions in Alabama, Tallapoosa County has seven votes and Lowndes has eleven. Thus it is apparent how and why the strength and the supremacy of the Black Belt oligarchy, even within the lines of the boasted party of 'white supremacy/ is maintained." * "Lowndes County, with less than 5,000 whites and more than 30,000 negroes, has one senator and two representatives in the legislature of Alabama; while Blount County, with 21,338 whites and only 1,780 negroes, with a registered vote of 3,219, has only ONE representative and no senator, and * J. C. Manning. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 131 only 7 votes in a Democratic convention." . . . "The three white counties of Blount, Cullman and Winston, with nearly 50,000 whites and less than 2,000 negroes, with a regis- tered vote of 8,756, have the same representation in the State Senate, to wit, one senator, as the Black Belt county of Lowndes, which has only 4,762 whites and 30,889 negroes, with only 1,080 registered voters. So here in Alabama, it takes about eight white men in a white county to equal in political conven- tions and in State legislatures one white man in a Black Belt county. "Inequality of representation obtains in other counties of Alabama than those named above. It is not quite so excessive as in the case of the counties named. It stands about one white man in the black belt to five white men in the white counties." Men of independent thought in the South, as well as in the North, are beginning to realize that "in effect and in practice Democracy in the South so uses the race issue as to place all political power in the hands of the few." The Black Belt leaders of the Democracy dominate it. The result is that the southern section of the country is for all practical purposes governed by an oligarchy of the most aristocratic character, posing as a Democracy, and practically evading or defying the national power affecting civic rights. Is not this condition of affairs partly attributable to the neglect of the Republican party leaders to take steps towards remedying electoral in- equalities and enforcing the Constitutional amendments? A prominent Republican * in a speech at Faneuil Hall, Boston, in May, 1907, declared that the present administration, consciously or unconsciously, "has done more to strengthen the Bourbon Democracy in the South than any other adminis- tration since the days of Buchanan, not excepting even Andrew Johnson." The extollation of leaders of the Confederacy by * John E. Millholland. 132 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED high dignitaries means the laudation of those "who strove to keep their fellow-men in subjection and unspeakable degrada- tion." Silence about the practical nullification in many sec- tions of the South, of the "irreversible guarantees of the War Amendments, particularly of the Fifteenth," signifies that the oligarchy is to be allowed a free hand to make those amend- ments a dead letter there. And this is done under the specious argument that the colored man is not educated, is not literate. What is the truth? One editor thus answers the question: "Let his instructors answer. His vote was that of a pupil. He was wholly ignorant in this respect and had to be instructed. His instructors and those who sullenly refused to instruct him are equally responsible for his failings. But if he himself is to answer, he challenges comparison in his shortcomings, as well as his advancement in public functions, with any other political class or race in the same interval and under like conditions. . . ." Reverting to the address at Faneuil Hall, the speaker pro- ceeded to say: "More than fifty per cent, of the negro voters can read and write. When they started on their career as a free people forty years ago, scarcely one per cent, was literate. As a record the race's progress has not been surpassed in history. Yet the overwhelming majority of them cannot vote. And why? "Well, the great academic argument against allowing the negro to exercise his constitutional right is alleged incapacity for self-government, the common basis for this belief being, as you know, found in that era of the South known as the carpet-bag government, a period that has been more misrepre- sented than any other in the history of American suffrage. The accepted version of it is that in consequence of their numerical strength and under Northern white leadership, the black voters obtained control of the Southern State govern- SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 133 merits and inaugurated such an era of misgovernment as stunned the nation and led to the revolutionary results involved in the reassertion of the white man's supremacy. " Alfred Tennyson wrote: "That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies; That a lie which is all a lie may be met with and fought outright; But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight." The speaker proceeded to say: "This is the case before us. It is true that there was during this regime some stealing; there were also some scandalous proceedings: the newly eman- cipated slaves, tasting for the first time the sweets of power, ran riot and forgot the obligations of conscience and duty. But when all has been said that can be said against their rule, when every count in the indictment has been fairly examined, it will be found that the offences committed under the black man's government as compared with those confessedly true under the rule of his more enlightened white brother, are marvellously mild. I go further and assert that when the facts, have been correctly stated and impartial history recorded, the best governments the Southern States had up to that time; yes, or since, were those given by the black man and his de- spised allies, the carpet-baggers of the North, many of whom were as brave, as patriotic, as honest and as loyal as any body of men who have ever performed the rough work of the world." * It is claimed that a free ballot signifies unlimited corruption. Read the answer in England's purification of her politics. To quote from Sir Thomas Erskine May : "Political morality may be elevated by extending liberties: but bribery has everywhere been the vice of growing wealth. . ." "The first election of George the Third's reign was signalized by unusual excesses:" A seat in Parliament was for sale, like an estate, and they bought it without hesitation or misgiving. ' ' Nor were they regarded with much favor by * See Appendix D, for more of this forcible speech. 134 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED the leaders of parties; for men who had bought their seats and paid dearly for them owed no allegiance to political patrons." "They sought admission to Parliament, not so much with a view to a political career as to serve mere personal ends, to forward commercial speculations, to extend their connections and to gratify their social aspirations. But their independence and ambition well fitted them for the service of the court. . . . They soon ranged themselves among the king's friends: and thus the court policy which was otherwise subversive of freedom became associated with parliamentary corruption." "When the return of members was left to a small but independent body of electors, their individual votes were secured by bribery; and where it rested with pro- prietors or corporations, the seat was purchased outright." Gatton, e.g., was sold for 75,000. Of the 658 members of the House of Commons, 487 were returned by nomination . . . not more than one-third of the House were the free choice of the limited bodies of electors then intrusted with the franchise. Representatives holding their seats by a general system of corruption could scarcely fail to be themselves corrupt. What they had bought, they were but too ready to sell. And how glittering the prizes offered as the price of their services! Peerages, baronetcies, patronage and court favor for the rich places, pensions and bribes for the needy. All that the government had to bestow they could command. . . . Another instrument of corruption was found in the raising of money for the public service. In March, 1763, Lord Bute contracted a loan of three millions and a half; and having distributed shares among his friends, the scrip immediately rose to a premium of 11 per cent. . . . Here the country sustained a loss of 385,000. . . . Stock jobbing became the fashion; and many members of Parliament were notoriously concerned in it. Again, in 1781, . . . a loan of 12,000,000 was con- tracted to defray the cost of the disastrous American war. . . Its terms were so favorable that suddenly the scrip rose nearly 11 per cent. It was computed by Mr. Fox that a profit of 900,000 would be derived from the loan; and by others that half of the loan was subscribed for by members of the House of Commons. Lord Rockingham eaid, "The loan was made merely for the purpose of corrupting the Parliament to support a wicked, impolitic and ruinous war." Now as to the electorate. In Scotland in 1831, the total number of county voters did not exceed 2,500; and the constituencies of the 66 boroughs amounted to 1,440. . . . The county of Argyll, with a popu- lation of 100,000, had but 115 electors; Caithness, with 36,000, contained 47 freeholders. Edinburgh and Glasgow, the two first cities of Scotland, SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 135 had each a constituency of 33 persons. ... A great kingdom, with more than two millions of people intelligent, industrious and peaceable was virtually disfranchised. . . . According to a statement made by the Duke of Richmond in 1780, not more than 6,000 men returned a clear majority of the British House of Commons. ... It was alleged in the petition of the Society of the Friends of the People (presented in 1793) that 84 individuals absolutely returned 157 members to parliament. . . . and that a majority of the House were returned by 154 patrons. . . . The glaring defects and vices of the representative system which have now been exposed the restricted and unequal franchise, the bribery of a limited electoral body, and the corruption of the representatives themselves formed the strongest arguments for Parliamentary reform. . . . The theory of an equal representation had, in the course of ages, been entirely subverted. . . . The Reform bill of 1832 supplied the cure. "It was," says May, "a measure, at once bold, comprehensive, moderate and constitutional. Popular: but not democratic: it extended liberty, without hazarding revolution. In 1850 the representation of the country was reconstructed on a wider basis. Large classes had been admitted to the franchise: and the House of Commons represented more freely the interests and political sentiments of the people. The reformed Parliament, accordingly, has been more liberal and progressive in its policy than the Parliament of old, more vigorous and active; more susceptible to the influence of public opinion' and more secure in the confidence of the people." The Corrupt Practices Prevention Act of 1854 (17 and 18 Vic., c. 102), Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, and the legislation that brought about the assimilation of the borough and county franchise, have done away with many of the disabilities and inequalities of the electorate and produced a greater purity in elections, so that the old bribery and corruption has been almost entirely eliminated. Here let us leave the history of English political corruption and the remedy which was found in a fairer representation of the people. In truth, we might well have left it sooner if not altogether; for it is likely to be said that all of this is noth- ing to the purpose. But it is instructive. The South has before her the practical problem of dealing with some millions 136 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED of negroes, to the solution of which it will be said that the experience of the English people furnishes no aid. But the alarming numerical diminution of the white electorate, as exhibited by the election returns, indicate a possible parallel of absence of interest or participation in public affairs. There is in Great Britain a class known as the landed class or the landed gentry. Many of the nobility and titled people belong to it, although in many cases the landed families, par- ticularly in some counties, are older in ancestry and richer and more powerful than the hereditary peerage. The landed class has always been strongly represented in the House of Commons, and has largely dominated and controlled legisla- tion, fiscal, railway and municipal. The large estates have parted with rights of way to the railroad companies, without which rights of way Parliament would not have granted the necessary charters. The actual value to-day of land the rights of which were so acquired by the railroads from members of Parliament represents at least one-fifteenth of the paid up capital of the railroads. In this way, and by other secured interests, the landowners control the English railroads, and so can obtain or cause to be thrown out, as it suits their interests, legislation introduced into the House of Commons. This passing or "killing" of measures goes on usually without the public knowing much about it. Occasionally there are cases where public opinion prevents the landed class from carrying matters with too high a hand; but for the most part the domi- nance they wield is supreme and unopposed. Once more we must consider, then, the actual situation in this country to-day. X "The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing civilization come to a halt and recede." Henry George. As was well said by President Harrison in 1890, "equality or representation and the parity of electors should be main- tained, or everything that is valuable in our system of govern- ment is lost. The qualifications of an elector must be sought in the law, not in the opinions, prejudices or fears of any class, however powerful. The path of the elector to the ballot-box must be free from the ambush of fear and the enticements of fraud, and the count so true and open that none shall gainsay it." In the same President's Annual Message, 1980, he said: "Nothing just now is more important than to provide every guaranty for an absolutely fair and free choice, by an equal suffrage within the respective States, of all the officers of the national government, whether that suffrage is exercised directly, as in the choice of members of the House of Representatives, or indirectly, as in the choice of Senators and Electors for President. ... If I were called upon to declare wherein our chief national danger lies, I should say, without hesitation, in the overthrow of majority control by the suppression or perversion of the popular suffrage. That there is a real danger here all men agree. . . ." There never was a time when morally, politically and law- fully such processes of making the constitutional guarantees 138 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED effective would have progressed and would have been more certainly and effectually accomplished, than after the over- whelming electoral victory in 1904 on a national platform pledging the Republican party to that purpose. Never in political history has there been a more ignoble and abject abandonment of duty than the Republican failure in this respect to redeem the party pledge. It is not strange that a moral effect of such conduct should be a sectional and local paralysis of national supremacy and national power in all matters protecting the civic equality of individuals as guaran- teed by the United States Government. Nor is it strange that the political leaders who have assisted materially in this deg- radation should have succeeded in suppressing or extinguishing NUP from Southern political life the more liberal and progressive thinkers, speakers and writers who among them are occasionally heard from. Probably a fair though deplorable statement of the attitude of some present leaders in the Republican party, or, to speak more exactly, of the followers among the remnant that once claimed to lead and are leaving dubious tones for their suc- cessors is found in a sort of valedictory speech delivered by ex- Senator John M. Spooner, in the Senate on January 15, 1907. The mournful feature of that speech is the speaker's announce- ment that he is glad that a measure he had urged years ago, to enforce the Constitutional Amendments had not passed; and in that he assumes, but produces no evidence in support of his assumption, that the true interests of the country have thereby been promoted! Indeed, on the contrary, he himself portrays a distortion of the just equilibrium between the sections; and after stating an impregnable case of national importance, unjustifiably seems to surrender its disposition to the vicious issues of local determination. This is what he says: " I realize as well as any man in the North the complicated and trouble- some and, perhaps, in some ways dangerous situation as to both races SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 139 in the South. I am not able to say that in dealing with the Southern States at the end of the war measures were not adopted which, from the standpoint of to-day, might not better, in some aspects of it, have been pretermitted. In the situation as it presented itself to the Congress of Northern men, fresh from the struggle to suppress the Union, it was, of course, inevitable. "It is always dangerous to confer the suffrage upon a mass of people unfitted by education for its exercise. I do not intend to advert, except by a word, to the fact that, as I understood it then, and as I understand it now, the suffrage was not secured to the colored man in a party interest, but to protect him, by giving the ballot as a weapon of defense, against codes, which you will find collated to some extent only in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan in the Slaughterhouses cases (109 U. S., 36), codes which were thought in the North practically to repudiate the pledge contained in Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, afterwards written by the people into the Constitution of the United States. " I am far from forgetting the difficulties which then beset the Southern people. "It was difficult for Southern men to realize, when the Confederate flags were furled and laid away and they returned to their homes, that the black people whom they had left at home as slaves, had become when they next looked upon their faces free men. It was a sudden dislocation of a long-continued status, and of course it took time to adjust their relations to it. "We once attempted I did my part of it, for which I have never apologized, nor will I to safeguard, in the interest of the people at large, the right of the colored man to vote in accordance with the constitutional amendments. That bill did not pass. I have been glad it did not pass, although I did honestly all that I could to secure its passage. That it did not pass has been better, I think, for the white men of the South and infinitely better for the colored men of the South, where the Anglo-Saxon and the negro race live side by side and will continue so to live, doubtless, as long as this government lasts. "They can live in peace, I hope and pray and believe. It will require the utmost of patience and calmness and justice on the part of the white people of the South. The colored men are not cowards ; they are ambitious. They are human beings; they were born in this country; they were made by the Fourteenth Amendment citizens of the United States. "In respect of the suffrage, which the Southern States have adjusted to suit themselves, their administration of it has been left without Con- 140 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED gressional interference, even without recent agitation. Of course, our people feel that the just constitutional equilibrium between the States has been distorted and disarranged because of the situation. The South has a large representation in the Electoral College and in the House of Representatives because of the colored vote. The vote has been decreased in one way and another, but the representation has remained. "Senators will bear me witness that it is a good many years since this subject has been discussed at all on this side of the Chamber. When I first came to the Senate is was often debated with a violence which is almost always inseparable from it. Silence upon it has not been a surrender except in this way, that it has come to be felt by our people at large that the delicate and difficult problem down there CAN BE BEST SETTLED WITHOUT AGITATION FROM WITHOUT. ' ' Now, Mr. President, I think the Fourteenth Amendement of the Con- stitution, which makes the colored man and all persons born in this country citizens of the United States, which guarantees to them equality before the law, the equal protection of the laws, and those rights of liberty, conscience, property, to which all men are entitled in any decent government, must live. I have no notion that the great body of the people of any section of this country think otherwise. The law must be equally a shield for all entitled to its protection; and I feel sometimes when I recall the con- versations I had years ago with some splendid and chivalrous ex-Confeder- ate soldiers who have gone from this Chamber, and some still here, upon this difficult and sensitive subject in the South, that it requires more than any other problem in history patience, considerateness, and justice on the part of the leaders of Southern thought, instead of vehemence and vituperation." Senator Spooner said further: "If my recollection serves me aright, I have heard great denunciation at times against the legislation of Congress in the reconstruction acts and in various acts which affected sections, and in the light of to-day we can all see action by the Congress which was unwise." * Now these views, while purporting to represent the average sentiments of the experienced legislative expert in compromises for the sake of securing projected enactments, would probably not, if put to the test, represent the fundamental beliefs of the great body of thoughtful Republicans reared in the history, the traditions, the principles, the high ideals and patriotic * Senator Spooner's Speech, Cong. Rec., Jan. 19, 1907, p. 1399, p. 1390. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 141 accomplishments of the Republican party. That party at heart still believes, as was expressed by Mr. Elaine, that the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Constitutional Amend- ments will be "vindicated and enforced in letter and in spirit."* That prediction thus far fails of fulfilment because of the alliances like those in the declining days of slavery of Northern capital with the Southern oligarchy, and because of the nullifica- tion in many sections of the Constitutional Amendments which are results of the war. This nullification exists, and is a fact, however it may be suppressed or obscured by specious technicalities. Ever since the second Cleveland Administration when the Democracy had control of both houses of Congress, a national election law having already failed of enactment, a vigorous movement has been conducted to abridge, deny or destroy the civil and political rights of the colored people in the South, f The full force of this insidious and aggressive propaganda is being felt by the present generation, who see at first hand, without stopping to enquire how it came about, a practical nullification of the War Amendments. That this is so may be abundantly proved. A leading Southern Senator, already quoted in these pages, in August, 1906, at a Spiritualist-camp-Sunday-afternoon meeting de- clared that "the people of the South considered the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as mere pieces of paper and a bit wasted ink." The New York World recently called attention to the action of the Florida Legislature in which it was proposed to nullify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by a joint resolu- tion! The World article ran, in part, like this: * Vol. II, p. 421, "Twenty Years in Congress." t A Senator (Patterson of Colorado) said: ". . . There is rapidly being organized in the South a movement to demand that the North unite with the South in the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment and practical return of the negroes of the country to a condition of peonage." Cong. Rec. 1060 (Jan. 12, 1907). See Appendix N. 142 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED "The Florida Legislature disapproves of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and proposes to nullify them by the convenient device of a joint resolution. The wonder is that in all these forty years nobody ever before thought of this simple ex- pedient for disfranchising the negro. It seems so much easier than pass- ing roundabout laws with grandfather clauses and educational tests. "South Carolina attempted merely to nullify certain acts of Congress. The Florida method is more thorough-going. An unconstitutional Con- stitution has very great advantages. Every State from time to time can select such parts of it as it may choose to obey and discard the rest as offen- sive to local prejudices. . . . "One of the difficulties in the way of the disfranchisement of the negro by Southern States has been the threatened reduction of their representa- tion in Congress. But these loose constructionists in Florida have guarded against that danger. They abolish the whole of the Fourteenth Amend- ment. While they were at it they might have made their position im- pregnable by abolishing the United States Supreme Court as created by the United States Constitution!" In the debate in the Florida Legislature on this question it was contended that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend- ments were not part of the Constitution of the United States, and it was proposed to bring a test case before the United States Supreme Court. Now, the Constitution is the foundation upon which our government rests; and to build on the Constitution is to have a basis of rock. Building otherwise is to erect a structure on sand! The protection of the Constitution (or law) is what is wanted in the South, where in many localities it is a dead letter because not supported and backed up by public sentiment. A vigorous propaganda is being carried on to-day for "our system," corresponding to the propaganda of Calhoun's allies for "our doctrine." It required a concerted and well-directed movement extend- ing over several years to lead up to a declaration of nullifica- tion of Federal authority by the political adherents of Calhoun, SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 143 It was no easy task to persuade those attached to the Union of the United States to become willing to sunder those valued bonds for a theory that offered in exchange no concrete ad- vantage. There was a vague idea also that party loyalty did not necessitate national disloyalty. Indeed, in various public assemblies the ordinance of nullification, which provided for forcible resistance to Federal authority, was formally denounced and the nullification party notified that "whilst the powers of resistance are left to us we will never submit" to be forced into defending nullification. The professions and pledged declarations of almost every public man engaged in the nullification movement were those of deep devotion and loyalty to the Union. In no other way could the leaders have persuaded their constituents to create the ordinance of nullification which was the culmination of their successful propaganda, of which Mr. Calhoun exultingly said: "In the short space of four years our doctrine has overspread our own State, and is already rapidly taking root beyond our limits." As the result of the propaganda against the War Amend- ments now actively continued for several years, Southern statesmen are making to-day corresponding vauntings. The clarion tones and virile Proclamation of President Jackson reformed public opinion and set it upon right lines. But without that Proclamation the subtle propaganda of "our doctrine" that had insidiously brought about "in the short (?) space of four years" attempts by force to execute the ordinance of nullification, might then have produced a crisis, instead of the momentous crisis that developed twenty-eight years later. The poisonous propaganda of to-day should likewise be inundated by a similar ocean of public opinion, that shall be in consonance with the progress of the age in the true spirit 144 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED of democracy regardless of either official apathy or assistance and irrespective of adequate Federal legislation or control. It has been well said by one interested in the problems of to-day : "We must create a public sentiment, strong enough to enforce the law. My opinion is, the most effective way to accomplish this is through wise but ceaseless agitation. Agitate, agitate, agitate, until the great American conscience is aroused to the terrible injustice being perpetrated upon 10,- 000,000 of its citizens. All reforms are brought about through agitation. Meanwhile there is, of course, no objection to a man making himself as comfortable materially as he can. No sane man opposes making honest progress along all lines of endeavor. The objection is to making 'material independence ' a god ; viz. : the thing to be desired above all else ; giving it the emphasis in our attempt at race-building. Deep in our hearts be it implanted, that nothing on earth is equal to freedom. Liberty or death! " An illustration of the prevailing adverse temper, however, is exhibited by an article in the Charleston News and Courier, when it had occasion to refer to the National Convention of the Afro-American Council about to be held in New York in October, 1906. It had been provided that one of the special subjects which would receive attention would be to arrange for a test case before the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the disfranchisement laws of the Southern States. This representative newspaper commented upon the proposal by saying that if it be determined in favor of the Convention and its advisers the result in the Supreme Court "will not be accepted by the white people of the South as a final settlement of the question. . . . The white people have made up their minds that they will not submit to negro domination. That is the conclusion of the whole matter." What "negro domination" has to do with the matter is not explained. " The question of the constitutionality of the recent constitutions of the South, and especially in the State of Alabama, is hardly open to discussion. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 145 It was boldly asserted by the f ramers of the recent Constitution of Alabama, in convention assembled, that they were enacting legislation at the time for the purpose of evading and annulling the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. They denounced that amendment as an outrage upon the rights of Southern white men, and proceeded to defy its provisions and trample them under their feet. "The convention being composed entirely of white men, elected upon a party pledge that no white man should be disfranchised, no matter how ignorant or poor, or what his character, which leaves nobody to be dis- franchised except the negroes, how can there be any question raised as to the purpose and outcome of such a convention? "The convention, however, was composed mostly of lawyers of learning and ability, and they spent a great deal of time shaping up the matter of nullification and disfranchisement to make it appear fair on its face, and surrounding it with sufficient technicalities to furnish loop holes for the courts. "The new Constitution of Alabama, and I think the same is true of all the other Southern States, is so framed that the disfranchisement of the negro is actually accomplished by the work of the registrars or other officers charged with the duty of registering the electors of the State. The registrars are mere puppets of the party in power, and if directed so to do by the political bosses, could and would accomplish the utter disfranchisement of all or any set of negroes they de- sired, regardless of, and without any provision of, the State Constitution authorizing it, and would not heed in the slightest degree the rights of the black men, asserted under the Federal Constitution. To the registrars the Southern States are sovereign, and the white man in the South still more sovereign, the Federal Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding. "So that the real kernel of this whole question is how to find a way to compel the South to respect and observe the provisions of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Con- stitution." * * From Report of Speech by Mr. Wilford H. Smith. 10 146 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED Those who practice nullification in the South to-day while posing as statesmen belong to the class spoken of in Calhoun's time as "nullifiers," who avowed and defended nullification. President Jackson is reputed to have said of them: "These men are not honest. Their true purpose is the downfall of the Union. Their present pretext is the tariff. Next time it will be slavery." Referring to their motives and propositions President Jackson was unconsciously prophetic. He further might have alluded to the more subtle and deceptive nullifiers of the present day, when he said: "I consider the power to annul a law of the United States assumed by one State incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the Constitution, unauthorized by either its letter or its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was founded." Respect for the law until it is repealed is the highest duty of every self-governing people. And yet what is the attitude regarding this practical nullifica- tion of the Constitution, by some leaders of the Republican party who are competing for its highest honors? The present Secretary of War is reported to have said in an address, delivered at the Twenty-fifth anniversary of Tuskegee, on The Three War Amendments, that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments should be enforced; and then pro- ceeded to deal with the colored race as follows: "The only hope of the negro race was economic independ- ence"; that it was " a people not fit to enjoy or maintain a higher education. . . . Primary and industrial education was the chief need of the colored race." With regard to the Fifteenth Amendment the speaker ad- mitted that it had probably been violated, but thought that we ought to acquiesce in the discriminatory laws and look forward to the day when the colored race would be able to SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 147 return to the polls because of educational and property qualifica- tions.* He took the position that " the very desire to avoid fraudulent methods which was wont to overcome the colored vote in the South, itself indicates a turn for the better!" Here is a double delusion. In the first place, time will destroy the dream and expose the fallacy that prejudice against the negro will abate as he rises. The ballot is the most powerful weapon against race prejudice. There was not nearly as much of it when the negro had the ballot. Nothing will compel respect from Southern officials but the possession of the ballot. This, and not industrial combination, will save^the colored men of the South from the negligence of governors, the cowardice of sheriffs and policemen, the knavery of school-boards, the unfairness of juries and the subserviency of courts. The ballot alone will bring the white men of the South to respect the colored men, as happened forty years ago. The conditions then and now find contrast in a considerate appeal by the Democratic convention in 1867 addressed "to the colored people of South Carolina," in the course of which it says: "Your present power must sureiy and soon will pass from you. It is therefore a dangerous tool that you are handling. Your leaders, both white and black, are using your votes for nothing but their individual gain. . . We therefore urge you, by all the ties of our former relations, still strong and binding in thousands of cases, by a common Christianity and by the mutual welfare of our two races, whom Providence has thrown together, to beware of the course on which your leaders are urging you in a blind folly which will surely ruin both you and them. . . . Re- member that your race has nothing to gain and everything to lose if you invite that prejudice of race which since the world was made has ever driven the weaker tribe to the wall." * These views were reiterated and amplified by the same speaker at Lexington, Ky., on August 22, 1907, and his language is taken by Southern men as an approval of the South's attitude toward the negroes, and of the Southern disfranchisement provisions for being "both wise and proper." 148 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED To-day how are the colored people spoken of by those in high places? Before the Republicans of North Carolina at Greensboro, Secretary Taft recently referred to the colored citizens as "a class of persons so ignorant and so subject to oppression and misleading that they are merely political children, not having the mental stature of manhood." He glossed over disfranchisement by saying: "CONCEDING THAT THE LAWS now in force in this State and other parts of the South were intended, either by their terms or by their MODE OF EXECUTION, TO EXCLUDE THE IGNORANT COLORED VOTER FROM THE FRANCHISES WITH RIGOR, AND TO ALLOW THE IGNORANT WHITE VOTER, THOUGH EQUALLY UNFITTED FOR THE FRANCHISE, TO EXERCISE IT, I do not think that this makes a hopeless situation for the colored man or the political power that he may in the FUTURE exercise." A leading Southern Democratic Editor recently said: "The three last Amendments to the Constitution I declared to be the actual and final Treaty of Peace between the North and the South." * This "Treaty of Peace" is either to be respected or abrogated. The aim of the oligarchy still is, as it always has been, to keep the negro down socially and politically. Political dislike is really a potent factor, as the colored vote, when cast, has usually been cast for the Republican party. Writing in 1905 a prominent colored business man in the city of Mobile expressed his views that a reduction of the Southern representation would help the political independence of the colored men, and that the crime of disfranchisement was committed more to hurt the Republican party than to hurt the negro who, politically speaking, is persecuted more because he is usually a Republican than because he is a negro. * Henry Watterson, at Louisville, June 14, 1907. XI "It is certain that democracy annoys one part of the community and that aristocracy oppresses another part." De Tocqueville. *. In declaring, as Mr. Taft did at Tuskegee recently, that the only hope of the colored race was in "economic independence," he overlooked the most insistent warning of all history, that any people that grow materially rich while remaining intel- lectually and spiritually poor, sow the seeds of their own decay and dissolution. In all the empires throughout the world's history this lesson of prosperity in things material and starva- tion in things spiritual and uplifting has preceded the downfall of rulers and ruled. An age of gold in which intellect is starved is a sure and certain forerunner of decadence of men and of nations. Does the South in dealing with the colored race believe that it can with impunity ignore the teachings of history, or that exceptions in its case will be made? Human experience belies this, for nature's laws are inexorable. Occasionally an independent newspaper at the North speaks out with a better and truer philosophy in a tone like that, for example, in which the Chicago Chronicle comments on some of these Tuskegee speeches: "The distinguished white men who delivered addresses last week at the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Tuskegee Institute said some wise things and gave the negroes plenty of good though trite advice, along with some that was not altogether judi- cious. "They all told the young negroes whom they were addressing that they must first become educated, and educated chiefly up to economic inde- 150 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED pendence, that they must make themselves indispensable as workers in the fields and shops and become good, humble, toiling citizens, suppressing higher aspirations, before they would become fairly entitled to the ballot. And they gave scant encouragement to look for anything political beyond the ballot, though they assured the negroes that they were in the country to stay. . . . This teaching . . . calmly assumes that the ballot is something to be given only to those who know how, and are dis- posed, to use it wisely for the benefit of less enlightened and moral people, and is not given to everybody because he needs it himself. The fact is that men want and need the ballot for their protection against wrong and oppression. The right to a vote in choosing those who make and administer the laws which is what is meant by the "ballot " in this discussion was demanded before this Republic existed, first by a select and powerful class for its own better protection, then by a larger and less select class for the same purpose, and so on to universal manhood suffrage. As a means of defense it was needed as much nay, more by the lowest and most oppressed class as by the highest which had been divested of political rights. This is historically true, irrespective of our own political experi- ence. It was in recognition of this truth that the right to vote was guaran- teed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to our national Con- stitution. The right to vote was given to the negro, not because he was educated or wise, for he was neither, but because he needed it for his pro- tection against those who denied him civil rights and the protection of the laws and sought to reduce him to slavery more cruel and barbarous than that which the Thirteenth Amendment sought to abolish forever." As Mr. Ray Stannard Baker * has pointed out, the color line is avowedly drawn in the South in every relation in the street cars, the elevators, office buildings, public libraries and railway cars. He found everywhere as all find who come in actual contact with Southern conditions evidences of a dwarfing and benumbing environment, of short-sightedness, and often an inhuman hatred staring him in the face. This is the situation that is causing the iron to enter into the soul of the colored race in the South, who, whether white men will or not, one of these days will throw off their badge of servitude to an oligarchy and call a halt. The conditions that actually exist in the South are not ap- * American Magazine. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 151 predated or are lightly regarded by the generation since the war; and it will only be by an aroused public conscience de- manding that the questions at issue be fairly and squarely met and settled, that a possible disaster may be averted, should, as may happen, the worm, trodden on too often, turn and refuse to be trampled on longer! Mean while the patience of the unfortunate race is praiseworthy. At the Jamestown Exposition (1907) the colored visitors were made to feel how slightingly they are treated by being obliged to seek refreshment even a drink of water at a special pavilion for colored folks, refreshment being refused to them in all the other pavilions. An ex-Governor of Georgia * is reported to have said in a public speech that: "All history shows that no two races, approaching in any degree equality in numbers, can live peaceably together unless intermarriage takes place, or the one becomes dependent on the other!" The reasoning intended obviously is, that to prevent inter- marriage such dependence must be actually enforced. In a thoughtful article in the American Magazine for January, 1907, the distinguished New York preacher, Dr. Washington Gladden, sought to answer the question, "Is the Separation of the Two Races to Become Necessary?" He comes to the con- clusion that the two races are destined to live in the South together, and that schemes of deportation, emigration, or ex- patriation, such as are advocated by the extremists, are not necessary and will not be carried out. "Whether the two races," he says, "shall live together there is the only possible question. They cannot live together unless both races have full opportunity to live a complete human life." A newspaper comment on this was as follows: "But the reactionists who think that they can have the benefit of the Afro-American population as an economic force and basis of political * Gov. Northern. 152 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED apportionment on the slave basis, and with the slave treatment, are as great enemies of the South and of the Republic as those hot-heads who believed that slavery was a divine institution, and that there was not enough will and power in the American people to root it out and crush the life out of it. They found out their error in time, but at a cost which staggered humanity. Are they preparing for a struggle of worse tragedy and horror and cost? . "The white South, the wise and thoughtful and decent part of it, should open its eyes to the great gulf which the political demagogues have been digging for it, for their selfish purposes, during the past forty years, one gang of diggers taking the place of another as the years come and go, but digging always as their slave fathers did, toward the culmination of light- ning and thunder and hail of fire which remorselessly follow in the wake of human error and stiff -neckedness." It has been said that "the enthronement of the desire of the moment, whatever that desire may be, is neither consti- tutional government nor popular government in any true sense." * Recently a Mississippi representative offered a bill in Con- gress, and a Republican committee reported favorably upon it, by the provisions of which it was made a felony for a white person to marry a colored person in the District of Columbia. Is it to be wondered at that the colored people in the South feel that there is no chance for them if such race prejudice is allowed the full scope that the Southern leaders are demand- ing? The President of the United States, sworn to enforce the laws, and Congress ordered by the Constitution to provide the legal and executive machinery necessary to the enforce- ment of the three War Amendments to the Constitution, alike remain supine and idle, while the South flagrantly violates them. A Republican President, eagerly regardful of the law- breaking, law-defying South, welcoming accused lynching parti- cipants to the nation's Executive mansion,f in a republic like ours, presents a suggestive spectacle. Such episodes * J. C. Manning. f See Appendix F. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 153 denote a growing official inclination to sacrifice principle for sentimental exhibitions.* It also discloses the strength of an oligarchy that is thus able to get the imprimatur from the highest office-holder in the country upon parties accused of conduct toward disregard of the fundamental law. The way in which that oligarchy rules was well illustrated by the recent election for Governor of Georgia. Previous pages have called attention to the nominating convention. At the time of the inauguration of the newly elected Governor (Hoke Smith), the Atlanta Constitution editorially stated the issues of the campaign for the nomination, issues which being settled by that nomination have in reality no public interest now that the election has resulted in the Governorship being given to the more reactionary of the rival candidates. The editor said: "Of the issues involved in the gubernatorial campaign of last year, it may be said that more attention was directed to the disfranchisement question and to the necessity of securing redress from railroad abuses than all other issues combined. . . . Indeed, the two issues were the beginning and the ending of the whole campaign. . . . That of disfran- chisement was the most conspicuous issue of the campaign . . .; one candidate advocated direct disfranchisement legislation, following the lines of action of other Southern States, while the other candidate took the position that Georgia had solved the question of the franchise more * A little over seventy years ago, Mr. Lincoln, then a young lawyer of Springfield, 111., delivered before the Young Men's Lyceum of that town an address upon "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions," in which he said: "Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should under- take, may ever be found whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a Gubernatorial or a Presidential chair. . . . Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. ... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinc- tion. . . . Is it reasonable, then, to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? . . . Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet, that opportunity being past and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down." 154 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED satisfactorily than any other Southern State; that the negro now was already legally disfranchised in Georgia by a system which was the out- growth of the necessities of Reconstruction days, and which while eliminat- ing the negro as a factor in politics did not deprive a single white man of the right of the ballot. Along this line the issue was fought, the successful candidate contending that disfranchisement legislation could be enacted that would not be in conflict with the Federal Constitution, and which would shut out the negro from the ballot box without denying the fran- chise to a single white man. . . . With the voice of the people em- phatically expressed the general assembly has no other alternative. The people have rendered their verdict on the subject, and it is their will and should be law. . . . Such legislation as has been demanded by the people at the ballot box will have our hearty support." In his inaugural address Governor Smith outlined an elabo- rate proposed Constitutional amendment,* which classifies the eligibility of voters in such a way (according to his claim) as not to deny or abridge the right of anyone to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and yet will successfully evade the inhibition of the United States Con- stitution. "By a vote of 37 to 6 the Georgia Senate on July 31, 1907, adopted a negro disfranchisement bill, which makes it a con- dition of voting that the citizen shall own or pay tax on $500 worth of property, or be able to read and write a paragraph of the Constitution of the State or the nation, or be descended from a man who fought in a war in which the United States or the Confederate States participated, or have a proper con- ception of his duty to his State and the nation." The recent turning of the political leaders of the South "from the manip- ulation of election returns and outrages at the ballot box to domination * The amendment suggested by Governor Smith would divide the voters into six classes, viz.: First All persons who served in any war of the United States, the Confederate States or the State of Georgia. Second Their lawful descendants. Third All persons of good character who understand the duties and obligations of citizenship, or, Fourth, can read and write correctly in English any paragraph of the Federal or State Constitution. Fifth Owners of forty acres of land on which they live, or, Sixth, owners of $500 worth of taxable property in the State. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 155 by the shrewdness of Constitutional trickery, and the divers other 'legal- ized' methods known only to, and characteristic only of, the Southern alleged 'democracy,' is an intended salve to ease strickened consciences, and also a cloak by which the hope is had that the real political depravity of this re'gime of now may be to some extent disguised and the wrath of a righteous national public sentiment thereby avoided." The Governor of Georgia in his Inaugural said: "Any plan for the negroes which fails to recognize the differ- ence between the white and the black races will fail. The honest student of history knows that the negro had full op- portunity (?) for generations to develop before the days of slavery; that the negro race was improved by slavery and that the majority of the negroes in this State have ceased to improve since slavery. Pew have been helped by learning from books. All have been helped who have been taught or made to work. "The negro child should be taught manual labor and how to live. The negro teacher should be selected less by book than by character examination. The negro school should help the negro, not injure him. Racial differences cannot be overcome by misguided philanthropists. Superiority does not justify cruelty. The man who breaks the law to punish a criminal is himself a criminal. There is no place in Georgia for riots and mobs. It is the duty of the Governor to exhaust the power of his office to enforce the law and to prevent lynch- ing, and I shall perform this duty. I recognize the duty of the white man to be absolutely just to the negro." * * Since the above was written a news dispatch to the New York Sun of July 31, 1907, rans as follows: "By 37 to 6 the Georgia Senate this afternoon adopted a drastic negro disfranchise- ment bill. The measure now goes to the House, where it will also receive an over- whelming majority. "In order to vote under the proposed law a man must own or pay tax on $500 worth of property or be able to read and write a paragraph of the Constitution of the State or of the United States. "If he cannot comply with these provisions, and few negroes can, he is entitled to 156 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED There is thus no concealment, but an open avowal of purpose. Whatever question, therefore, is to be discussed regarding it should be based upon its merits and not upon its technical features as to whether the* United States Constitution had or had not been successfully evaded. The merits or demerits of the proposal are more fundamental than such a superficial question. They relate back to the political manhood of the colored man; shall it be or shall it not be extinguished? This newly elected champion of such a policy of extinguishment obviously thinks he is very liberal as well as just when he de- clares, as he did in his Inaugural, that it is "the duty of the white man to be absolutely just yes, he should be kind to the negro. The white man should exercise a controlling direc- tion, tempered with kindness, over the negro." Indeed, the speaker's benevolence would go further and practically re- instate the negro as a slave; for in the same speech he said, "The white men of the various localities of the State should know and apprehend any idle unidentified negro who appears in any locality!" * Thus is urged the right of a white man to arrest a negro if he thinks that that negro is "idle." There may not be many millionaire negroes journeying as tourists; but in such a case the tourist of coloi had better eliminate Georgia from his itinerary. A fair specimen of civic liberty and the rights of citizenship, as those terms are understood by some political leaders, is aptly illustrated by this gubernatorial proposition. The Governor's declarations are thus commented upon in the press: register and vote if he is descended from any man who fought in any of the wars in which the United States or Confederate States participated. "Lastly, he is entitled to register and vote if he has a proper conception of his duty to his State and to the nation! "Under the last-named provision every white man in Georgia will register, and once registered he will have a life certificate and will then have only to pay his taxes to enjoy the right of suffrage." * See Appendix I. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 157 " White men, particularly Southern men, should condemn the policy of Governor Smith. The negro must be educated, not only in the manual arts, but intellectually. The two things cannot be separated head and hand must develop together as they always have. As to the suffrage the same bars put up against the ignorant black man must be put up against the ignorant white man. The Alabama plan, suggested for Georgia, is in plain violation of the spirit and the letter of the Constitution, and followed, is sure to sow the seeds of future trouble as surely now as did slavery, although slavery for generations seemed unmenaced. But of injustice good, neither material nor moral, can come. Not even Governor Smith will deny the fundamental injustice of one law for the man of color and another law for the man without color." * Reverting to the fallacious proposition that economic prog- ress must precede the performance of civic rights, one may glance instructively at the facts that, according to the Twelfth Census Bulletin, No. 8, the value of farm property held by negroes in the United States aggregated $230,000,000, and there are more than 200,000 farms owned by negroes. In ten Southern States there are more negroes farm owners than negroes allowed to vote. Thus there are negro farm owners in Alabama, 14,110; in Arkansas, 11,941; Florida, 6,552; Georgia, 11,375; Louisiana, 9,378; Mississippi, 21,973; North Carolina, 17,520; South Carolina, 18,970; Texas, 20,139; and Virginia, 26,566. "Forty years after emancipation 25.2 per cent, or about one-fourth of all negro farmers had become landlords." f Since the war the colored people have made considerable economic progress. The story in Alexander's Magazine (Boston) for July, of Mound Bayou, the negro town in Mississippi, directs attention to circumstances that go further to show the capabilities of the negro than ten thousand tales of white men who "know the negro thoroughly," but only as a slave or menial. This town was founded by Isaiah Montgomery, a negro of pure blood, * New York Globe, July 1, 1907. t Twelfth Census Bulletin, No. 8. 158 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED who was once a slave of Jefferson Davis. He was its first mayor. Although a white population has drifted in, it is comparatively small and the town is negro in its government and negro in its business. It is like any other thriving country town at the South except, said Alexander's naively, "that the streets may be cleaner, the houses and fences in better condition, and the buildings perhaps more modern." In regard also to negro crime as compared with white, Southern detractors would do well to heed the following state- ment: Speaking on "The Standing Indictment Against the Negro," the Rev. Beverdy C. Ransom, pastor of the Bethel A. M. E. Church, in Twenty-fifth Street, New York City, said in his sermon on August 11, 1907: "For more than twenty years the nation has been ringing with charges against negroes. At this very time Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, is preaching a crusade against the negroes from the platforms of the Chautauqua assemblies throughout the North, East and West, and South- ern politicians and writers industriously use the negro as a scarecrow to rally their countrymen. "Now, what have we here in New York, the metropolis and financial capital of America, with her Carnegie institutes, libraries, museums, art galleries, Columbia University and the home of the President of the United States? Inside of six weeks there have been more than a hundred and fifty alleged attacks upon women and children. It is a fact that the present wave of crime in this city has not, so far as definite information goes, produced a single instance in which a negro was implicated in any of these alleged attacks. There have been more crimes committed against women and children in Greater New York by whites in the last sixty days than have been charged against the whole 10,000,000 negroes of the United States in the last six months! " If one will read the names of the men who have been charged with or arraigned for attacks upon women, it will be discovered that the majority of them are names not familiar to the English-speaking tongue. We are informed that President Roosevelt dishonorably discharged a battalion of the Twenty-fifth Infantry, U. S. A., because it was alleged that the men stood together as negroes by not telling the authorities the names of those SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 159 who 'shot up' Brownsville. In this city, as elsewhere, a trivial cause may produce a race riot. If one-tenth of the crimes committed by white men in the last thirty days had been committed by negroes, the Southern press would be pointing out to the world an example of how the Southern home is menaced, and North and South alike be pointing to these crimes as the outcropping of the savage instincts of an inferior race. "The North acquiesces in the South's nullification of the Fifteenth Amendment and the elimination of the negro from politics, lest our free institutions be imperiled; while in the city of New York five-sixths of the voters are foreign born or the sons of foreign born. To reach the voters of this city in the last municipal election, speeches had to be delivered in nineteen different languages and fifteen additional different dialects. . . . "Despite the injustice, hatred, outrage and violence between the races in the South, the Southern negro and the white man who, after all, are thoroughly American in language, custom, aspiration and patriotism may yet be compelled to join hands to rescue our ship of state when some foreign crew would ground her on the rocks of Socialism and Anarchy." XII "Some men there are, love not a gaping pig, Some that are mad, if they behold a cat ; Masterless passion sways it to the mood, Of what it likes or loathes." Merchant of Venice. The same purpose manifested by Governor Smith's speech animated two campaigners in competition for the Senatorship from Mississippi. One of them, who is the minority leader in the House of Representatives, is reported as having said in a public debate with his competitor: " If such a thing as the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment could be brought about without reinstating the negro in politics, I would work for it, vote for it, and do anything in my power possible to get it." He ad- vised his competitor, however, not to make that attempt, for the attempt itself would lead to "a drastic enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment." Moreover, he asked, what would the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment have to do with the case. Would it abolish the negro? Would not the negro with the same nature still be here? . . . "Now, my friends, I will ask you do you want the Yankee to take charge of the negro question?" (Loud answers of "No, no, no, no! ") "Now, this agitation would simply mean the enforcement of the Fourteenth and not the repeal of the Fifteenth Amend- ment. As far as I can see, the door of hope is already closed on the nigger politically. It is not the negro franchise that is SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 161 now a menace to Mississippi; it is the negro himself. HE is CUT OUT OF THE FRANCHISE NOW, BUT IT IS HIM WE FEAR AND NOT HIS VOTE." * Such utterances are by no means unique among Southern political leaders, and under the circumstances it is not strange that his competitor, the present Governor of Mississippi, should give voice to his feelings by declaring, "I am not one of those who are glad that the Confederacy failed in its purpose. I would rather live under the stars and bars under Jefferson Davis than under the stars and stripes with Theodore Roose- velt as President of the United States." f Thus is again illustrated the fact that the philosophy and tactics of the Southern politicians of ante-bellum days find corresponding recurrence in the sentiment and desires of the men charged to-day with the responsibilities of leadership. The Governor of Mississippi is the same statesman (?) who earlier in his career declared, "I am just as much opposed to Booker Washington with all his Anglo-Saxon reinforcement voting as I am to the voting by the cocoanut-headed, chocolate- colored typical coon who blacks my boots . . ." "Who can doubt," says a Southern writer, "that the expressions of Vardaman, uncloaked with any evasive sophistry and hy- pocrisy, are but the undisguised sentiment of the more discreet of the political type honoring him and of which he is a member in high rank?" This is the same Governor who in a speech on August 26, 1906, at Brookhaven, Miss., urged his hearers to see to it, in selecting legislators next year, "that they choose men who would vote to stop granting appropriations for the education of negro children. Three years ago he stood alone in such an advocacy. Now six candidates for Governor had come to his platform. . . . He would rather be instrumental in ob- * Report of Fourth of July Debate, New York Sun, July 5, 1907. ( Vardaman. 162 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED taming the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment than to wield the scepter of Edward VII." His competitor * in the Mississippi campaign is reported as having said: "He (the negro) may have a soul to be saved, and so may other animals. I know the darkey is another animal, but I do not hate him. I do not hate the rattlesnake because of his rattlesnake nature, nor the nigger for his nigger nature. God made them both, so let it go at that. Though why He made either the nigger or the rattlesnake I do not know! " In the veritable sectional spirit prevalent in his constituency the Senatorial candidate-elect in his speech following his success at the Primaries is reported to have said that he con- secrated himself and dedicated his energies anew "to the service of the South, the State, the Party and the Race." It will be noted that he omits, indeed does not even imply, the consecration of his personality to the service of the Nation. Had a Senator- elect of a Northern State publicly declared that he consecrated himself to the service of the North (as this one, to the South), he would have been denounced as raising sectional issues; but apparently geographical lines promote a different species of patriotism! The nation and its legitimate concerns are given second place. National interests are made subordinate to what may be deemed best for the South as a section and its one party. This pretentious consecration typically embodies the view of the South that its seats in Congress are to represent a section,' and a State of that section, and to see how far the United States, its power and affluence, may be made useful to that section and to and for a State that helps to form that section. In other words, narrow, sectional interests predominate over the entity of the nation. The speech further illustrates the obsession of Southern thought and expression, on all * John Sharp Williams. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 163 occasions whether appropriate or inappropriate, of the ever- lasting bogy yclept "race "I As the speaker is the recognized leader of his party, and in his personality accustomed more or less to receive encomiums from his adversaries, his declarations in this regard are note- worthy. XIII " . . Whether partisan or independent, strive to be just, and to see things as they are. . . ." Henry Cabot Lodge. ". . . Marathon, Yorktown and Gettysburg were glorious triumphs of arms. True, but were they not also glorious triumphs of opinion? " Luther A. Ostrander. Since the second Cleveland Administration, and practically since 1877, the South has had a free hand to enact a body of proscribing laws in many respects as odious and repressive as the Black Codes. The political and civil rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have been denied and abridged by State and local usage. Under pre- tence of convictions for crime, involuntary servitude, in spite of the Thirteenth Amendment, has been legalized and contract labor erected into an involuntary servitude. The right to be exempt from discrimination in voting, on account of race, was made, under the Fifteenth Amendment, an attribute of national citizenship. Can the nation permit the violation of all these basic prin- ciples of the Constitution? Can disfranchisement and labor through involuntary servitude, by hook or by crook, be con- tinued and tolerated in a nation founded upon the liberty and franchise of its citizens? Speaking on this question a few years ago the then Governor of Tennessee said: "This problem must be settled by the South, but the aid and sympathy of the North are essential. If they will not help us, if they will not repeal SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 165 the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, then let us here resolve that we will write in the fundamental law of every Southern State a guarantee to the negro for protection of life, property and the pursuit of happiness, but forever denying to the vicious and ignorant all political rights." It is wiser and better to say, as a prominent negro * teacher expressed it, that "If this country is to continue to be a republic its task will never be completed as long as seven or eight millions of its people are in a large degree regarded as aliens, and are without voice or interest in the welfare of the Government. Such a course will not merely inflict great injustice upon these millions of people, but the nation will pay the price of finding the genius and form of its government changed, not perhaps in name, but certainly in reality; and because of this the world will say that free govern- ment is a failure." Those who to-day promote and acquiesce in the present con- ditions are cultivating a vicious sectionalism that is a national sore and a menace to republican nationalism. It is to Congress, and not to the Judiciary, that appeals must be made for the amelioration of these unconstitutional discriminations. The first step is to reduce representation, figuring the reduc- tion according to existing usages. That being done, the good sense of the people in the affected States would operate to restore an impartial suffrage. Had the Fifty-ninth Congress authorized an investigation, or projected remedial legislation under bills introduced for that purpose, to meet the electoral conditions in the South, it would have become apparent that the political oligarchy there has no more respect for free institutions and the national Republic itself, than had the slave oligarchy in 1859. The resistance to any species of equality is the natural out- come of caste. As long as a community, or its leading inter- * Booker T. Washington. 166 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED ests, believe that there is no true democracy except that which recognizes this caste, or recognizes distinctions that are in no philosophic sense representative of the democratic spirit, there will continue to remain in evidence an undemocratic condition. Equality in the public sense, that is, in a truly democratic sense, does not of course mean equality in physical attain- ments, equality in intellect, or equality in worldly possessions. It means equal consideration in the sight of men and of man's law, as well as in the sight of God and God's law. "The demo- cratic mind puts all men on an equality in their common humanity." The aristocratic mind loves to be greeted with those very distinctions which customarily separate dignitaries from other men. The New Testament teaches that "God is no respecter of persons"; yet that is a species of equality absolutely foreign to the aristocratic mind. Man-made law does respect persons, as may be conceded to be right touching material things; but man-made law has pretentiously so fash- ioned itself after the higher law as to declare in a democracy that, with regard at least to civic relations, there shall be absolute equality established and maintained: not a physical or social equality; nevertheless an equality in those relations which it is agreed constitute society when its individual units are grouped and governed as an organized democracy. Granted that some of those units are physically or mentally inferior to others, that inferiority does not destroy equality in the civic relations, even if there appears to exist a social caste. The civic rights of the lowest caste are theoretically before the law, and in the making of the law, equal to the rights of those with the most distinguished standing. If this were really the spirit animating the state, or all of its local communities, as unhappily it is not, there would be harmony in its constituent units. Life in this spirit knows no bugaboo of negro supremacy! SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 167 But it goes without saying that this is not the spirit in which the colored people, as a factor in the Southern States, are re- garded. It is incontestable that by all those in authority and by all those who seek authority or who appeal to the public suffrages for authority, the colored population, while treated kindly and hopefully, are regarded as factors in the State which are and for ever must remain politically subordinate and never co-equal with those who now dominate all State affairs. Whatever of protection to person or to property may be needed for those thus subordinate is to be arrived at without their participation, through laws in the making of which they have no voice; through lawmakers in the selection of whom they have no choice; through administrators of those laws concerning whom they have nothing to say; and by forms of a government exercising all the varied powers vested in the chiefs of organ- ized society under which its dark-hued members exist as a passive factor. If this government of society depended for its preservation and peace and happiness upon the maintenance and protection of caste and of a cultivated opinion as to the necessity of caste, such a situation might be without peril; but as long as society itself pretends to be democratic and ostentatiously declares that it is nothing else, and that there are always and ever shall be equal participation for equal citizens, then by the subjection of any one class to another class, no matter under what pretence such subjection occurs and is maintained, it can only be a question of time when an explosion of such fulminating material will destroy such an artificial structure of society. When novel writers and publicists extol what they call "the old civilization" of the Southern States, they do so in recognition of caste, and of such a spirit of state organization as was necessary to maintain a condition of slavery. Such a condition organized, established and maintained, offers a security to society more stable and less dangerous than the 168 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED attempt to arrive at a corresponding result without the safe- guards that are deemed essential to a peaceful slavery. The War of the Rebellion may be philosophized as a conflict of civilizations similar to the conflict between the Persian and Greek civilizations on the plain of Marathon and at the pass of Thermopylae. Just as Persia, effete and decadent, en- countered the virility and patriotic ardor of Greece, so it may not improperly be said that from 1861 to 1866 two civiliza- tions, whose thoughts, ideas, aspirations, interests and desires, utterly antipodal in peace, irrepressibly collided at the first shock of war. The "old civilization" of the Southern States, sentimentally and thoughtlessly alluded to, was not a civiliza- tion conducive to the perpetuity and free citizenship of the Republic, nor was it so esteemed by the Founders. It was a purely local civilization, founded on caste, and not nationally representative. Between such a civilization and the civilization of the North there was a natural conflict that sooner or later was bound to materialize. The casus belli might have been a much more trivial and unimportant one than it actually was. The im- mediate dispute that caused the gauntlet of war to be flung down was but the incident of an incident, so to speak; the important fact being that the one civilization based on class and privilege was destined to go down before the broader civilization grounded upon elements that make for a true and uplifting civilization, and comprising elements that were lack- ing from the boasted "old civilization " of the South. Whether one civilization was genuine and the other spurious is im- material at this point, if indeed it admits of argument. The underlying conditions eventually materialized in armed com- bats and sanguinary collisions of great armies. The people of the United States deliberately determined that the con- ditions represented by this so-called "old civilization" should SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 169 be annihilated. As a result of that war it was irrevocably declared by this nation that those conditions should never be resumed; a conclusion that was expressed and established by the three War Amendments which became part of the funda- mental law of the country. He who evades, avoids or defies them, or acquiesces in such evasion, avoidance or defiance, is inimical to the Republic's true interests. But such individuals are unhappily to be found in both the great political parties. Despite the forty-one years that have elapsed since the war, that "old civilization" is not yet sufficiently moribund to relinquish political power a power that is maintained by obscuring facts of history, as well as by ignoring or evading constitutional guarantees. An illustration of the distortions to which history is subjected is found in the recent remarks of a Southern Senator in a public address at Anderson, Indiana, when, referring to the Civil War, he is reported to have said: "There was no revolution. It was simply a mean, bloody war between brethren got up in the North, and ought to have been prevented!" The Chicago Chronicle thereupon commented: "If the words 'got up in the North' refer to Northern opposition to the extension of slavery on which the Southern slave-holding oligarchy was bent, he is much mistaken in saying there was no rebellion in the case. Northern opposition to slavery extension was merely an expression of the opinion and the fiat of the civilized world. When the Southern States took up arms to found an empire with slavery as its corner-stone they engaged in rebellion, not only against the rightful authority of the United States, but against civilization. Their armies were disbanded forty-one years ago, but those who dictate solid-South poh'tics have been arrayed in resistance of the fiat of civilization ever since and their resistance has not been altogether passive by any means." It was said by Lieutenant-Go vernor Sherman at Gales- burg, Illinois, at the annual banquet of the Illinois State Bar 170 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED Association, that "since the close of the Civil War a reaction against the claims of the revolutionary States is constantly advanced. THESE CLAIMS RIGHTFULLY PERISHED ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE." Yet certain political leaders and publicists of the South, and indeed of the North too, speak of the war as if it had been a mutual mistake, something that should have been averted, and that actually accomplished nothing beyond foreclosing secession, leaving fundamental issues still unsettled. The fact is ignored that the war was an inevitable conflict of a true as against a false civilization, and that among the results of the war, bought by the sacrifice of much blood and treasure, were that this nation in its entirety and on every foot of its domain from that time forth stood for the reiterated principles of equality, justice and liberty laid down in its Constitution. It was not a question, as has been suggested, of an avoidable conflict resulting from opposite premises; it was a destined collision and a going down of a civilization that lacked the true key-note before one that embodied right, truth, justice and fair dealing. To-day the instructors of a generation that know the war only as history and by hearsay, and who com- prehend (as is not unnatural) little of the underlying issues really at stake, are giving to those who are to come after us false notions and view-points that will help lodge untruths as American history. How mischievous, e.g., are words like the following from an eminent Southern editor: "It (party government) has cost us a gigantic war which public opinion might have averted and would have averted if it could have o'erleaped party lines and sectional lines; for in 1861 an overwhelming majority of the people North and South were opposed to war! They did not believe war possible until it was upon them. A minority of self-confiding ex- tremists, proceeding hotly from opposite premises, were able to make that an irrepressible conflict which the wisdom of both sides now knows to have been a world-problem waiting still to be solved and hardly touched SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 171 by the forces of the Confederacy and the Union, depleting us by an ocean of blood and treasure." At the Lee birthday celebration, the speech of Governor Swanson was a welcome of all veterans to Richmond and Virginia. In the course of his remarks the Governor spoke feelingly of the "lost cause," saying: "In this war the South contended for the sovereignty of States against Federal aggression and power. She fought for the great principle of home rule against outside, illegal interference. This great doctrine of home rule is the most precious of all rights possessed by mankind. "The recent action of the Federal authorities in Washington in sus- taining and aiding the secession of Panama from the Republic of Colombia, in South America, was a complete and thorough indorsement of the justice of the Southern secession movement. We are glad to receive in the course of time, from this high source, a thorough approval of the righteousness of our course, though it may come a little belated." It is in such strain that the conclusions of the irrepressible conflict are innocently, ignorantly or wantonly sought to be minimized. XIV " I would rather err with Plato than hold the truth with the philosophers." Cicero. " Nor be my service long delayed, But quickened by a song, Forever glad and unafraid To seize and smite the wrong." George E. Bowen. "In spite of laws made to oppress The weaker brother in distress; Laws to help the Ghouls of Greed Profit by another's need; Laws which give the fruit of toil Of many men, to few a spoil." R. E. Chadwick. 1. The attempts to resume the equivalents of ante-bellum conditions were supposed to have been extinguished by the action taken under the authority of the Constitution during the years immediately following the cessation of military hos- tilities. What those measures were and what were the con- ditions they were intended to ameliorate have been perverted in history, and are to-day being assiduously suppressed, if not falsified, by so many writers, speakers and public men, that even students and academic philosophers and professors have contributed to mislead, if not to debauch, the public mind respecting them. One notable instance is in a speech recently made in Ohio, wherein a South Carolina Senator said: " If after the war the North had not, in its passion and sectional hatred, gone far beyond the bounds of reason, decency and righteousness, there SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 173 would to-day be no race problem. We resent and resist the doctrine of equality under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. . . . You have done wrong. The North has done wrong. It can remedy the feeling by repealing the Fifteenth Amendment and letting the States control the franchise." To this asseveration the senior Ohio Senator replied at Belle- fontaine at some length, exhibiting the historical errors. For that speech see Appendix G. Another illustration of the discoloration of historic fact, if not of actual misstatements, by men claiming to be jurists and posing as public instructors, while receiving the honors of public office as well as of collegiate institutions, is furnished by the comments in a speech, where accuracy might have been expected, made in New York City at the 1905 Columbia Uni- versity Commencement. See its discolorations* denoted in Appendix H. During the period of years immediately following the sur- render of the defeated armies, a most benign and benevolent government was in truth conducted by the United States military authorities, with an honest endeavor to bring about and install such local government as would correspondingly meet the necessarily changed conditions in the States concerned and at the same time maintain order, industrial peace and harmony with the institutions of the Republic. What the actual conditions were and how mild, conservative and safe for all concerned were the measures taken by the United States could be easily shown by their mere recital; and any conscientious student of history, absorbing his information from original sources, from public documents, statutes and \official instructions and from contemporaneous records of in- contestable facts, can arrive at no other conclusion than that there was not harshness or injustice imposed upon any indi- vidual or community whose heart and soul were animated by * Ii sumus, qui omnibus veria falsa qucedam adjuncta esse dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in ii nulla inni* certa judicandi et adsentiendi nota. CJCERQ. 174 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED the true spirit of democracy, although there is a school of writers to-day garbling facts and portraying false pictures. The admirable poise, wisdom and sagacity with which the situation was met, and the changed conditions faced and dealt with are abundantly evidenced by Committee reports to Congress on the Reconstruction bills and the provisions of Statutes themselves, both proposed and enacted, which though some provisions were thwarted by an adverse Presi- dent remain a record showing consummate statesmanship and far-sightedness.* While the effort to harmonize the changed circumstances was progressing towards success, the onward work was in- terrupted by the machinations of politicians formerly allied to the "old civilization" so-called, the members of which hoped for renewed power. This period was that which nowa- days is styled the Reconstruction period; and it has been an- athematized so that "Reconstruction" itself has become a noxious noun in the mouths of those who have not studied what in truth is the history it represents. The interruptions materialized in the shape of localized armed resistance to the representatives of the United States government, extending in some instances to the murder of soldiers. The disorders of that period came from intrigues aided by force and fraud. In some States there occurred what to-day, if happening in South America republics, for instance, would be called armed revolutions. Because the President who was elected in 1868, having been a man of war, was still a veritable man of peace, he placed before Congress the facts from time to time as they were reported to him, not himself exercising a power that perhaps he might justly have wielded. Instead, he left it to Congress to take such action as in its judgment the reported facts seemed to warrant. Unhappily this encouraged, rather than allayed, partisan strife. * See Appendices E and G- SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 175 If the student of history, instead of taking the perverted statements regarding that period from current literature, would gather his history from original sources, he would discover such conditions, for example, as those by which the capital of South Carolina was invaded by armed bodies, some of them eagerly transported by the railroad corporations in that State. These military bodies, under various technical pre- tences advanced by their leaders, seized the entire govern- mental machinery of the State, its banks, its offices, its moneys, and by intrigue and bravado finally persuaded the Washing- ton authorities to withdraw the little handful of United States soldiers who meanwhile had idly rested in the State capitol as the symbol of United States authority. It was nothing short of a State revolution that thus forcibly seized the State authority and installed Hampton as Governor. That was in the year 1877, under the pretext of a State vote for Governor at the preceding autumn election when the State voted for the Hayes electoral ticket.* Another illustration of conditions may be found in the history of Louisiana in 1873-4-5, where also they culminated in armed revolution. In respect to that State the conditions are re- corded in official documents sent to Congress. Other illustra- tions may be found in corresponding occurrences and revolu- tions by force and intrigue that occurred in Arkansas and in Mississippi. An official report, May, 1865, came from the authorities in Arkansas that destitute freedmen were coming there almost daily from Texas and reported that anarchy and despotism reigned there. "Many are driven from their homes and * It is common tradition that the imbecility of the national authorities at that time resulted from an intriguing bargain that the electoral vote of that State should be counted for the Republican candidate, in return for allowing the State government to be deposed at local pleasure, a bargain which, if made, was violated by the contest instituted over the electoral vote of the State after having been really cast for Hayes, the Republican candidate. 176 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED families, and many have been shot and hung for expressing a desire to enjoy their rights as freemen." New York Times despatch from Washington of May 26, 1865. In 1875, General Sheridan sent dispatches from New Orleans to the Secretary of War, in which he said: " January 4, 1875. " It is with deep regret that I have to announce to you the existence in this State of a spirit of defiance to all lawful authority, and an insecurity of life which is hardly realized by the General Government or the country at large. The lives of citizens have become so jeopardized that unless something is done to give protection to the people, all security usually afforded by law will be overridden. Defiance to the laws and the murder of individuals seem to be looked upon by the community here from a stand- point which gives impunity to all who choose to indulge in either, and the civil government appears powerless to punish or even arrest. I have to-night assumed control over the Department of the Gulf. . . ." "Januarys, 1875. ". . . Please say to the President that he need give himself no un- easiness about the condition of affairs here. I will preserve the peace, which it is not hard to do with the naval and military forces in and about the city, and if Congress will declare the White Leagues and other similar organizations, white or black, banditti, I will relieve it from the necessity of any special legislation for the preservation of peace and equality of rights in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and the Execu- tive from much of the trouble heretofore had in this section of the coun- try. . . . Again he wrote: (t . "Januarys, 1875. "I think that the terrorism now existing in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas could be entirely removed and confidence and fair-dealing established by the arrest and trial of the ringleaders of the armed White Leagues. If Congress would pass a bill declaring them banditti they could be tried by a military commission. The ringleaders of these ban- ditti, who murdered men here on the 14th of last September, and also more recently at Vicksburg, Miss., should, in justice to law and order and the peace and prosperity of this Southern part of the country, be punished. It is possible that if the President would issue a proclamation declaring them banditti, no further action need be taken, except that which would devolve upon me. . . ." SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 177 This was followed by a letter on January 6, 1875, in which he wrote: ". . . Some of the banditti made idle threats last night that they would assassinate me because I dared to tell the truth. I am not afraid, and will not be stopped from informing the Government that there are localities in this department where the very air has been impregnated with assassination for several years. . . ." The next day he reported that ". . . Bishop Wilmer protests against my telegram of the 4th instant, forgetting that on Saturday last he testified under oath before the Congressional Committee that the condition of affairs here was sub- stantially as bad as reported by me. I will soon send you a statement of the number of murders committed in this State during the last three or four years, the perpetrators of which are still unpunished. I think that the number will startle you; it will be up in the thousands. The city is perfectly quiet. No trouble is apprehended. . . ." This was followed on January 8 by a dispatch saying: " I shall send you this evening a report of affairs as they actually occurred here on the 4th instant. My telegram to you of that date, and those of the 5th and 6th inst., are so truthful of the condition of affairs in this section, and strike so near the water-line, that the ministers of the Gospel and others are appealed to to keep the ship from sinking. Human life has been held too cheaply in this State for many years." Then officially he reported : ". . . During the few days in which I was in the city prior to the 4th of January, the general topic of conversation was the scenes of blood- shed that were liable to occur on that day, and I repeatedly heard threats of assassinating the Governor, and regrets expressed that he was not killed on the 14th of September last; and also threats of the assassination of Republican members of the House, in order to secure the election of a Democratic Speaker. I also knew of the kidnapping by the banditti of Mr. Cousinier, one of the members-elect of the Legislature." On January 10, 1875, he wrote: "Since the year 1866 nearly thirty-five hundred persons, a great ma- jority of whom were colored men, have been killed and wounded in this 178 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED State. In 1868 the official record shows that eighteen hundred and eighty- four were killed and wounded. From 1868 to the present time no official investigation has been made, and the civil authorities in all but a few cases have been unable to arrest, convict and punish perpetrators. Conse- quently, there are no correct records to be consulted for information. There is ample evidence, however, to show that more than twelve hundred persons have been killed and wounded during this time, on account of their political sentiments. . . ." In President Grant's Special Message to the Senate on Affairs in the State of Louisiana, which he sent on January 13, 1875, occur the following startling disclosures: "To say that lawlessness, turbulence and bloodshed have characterized the political affairs of that State (Louisiana) since its reorganization under the Reconstruction Acts, is only to repeat what has become well known as a part of its unhappy history; but it may be proper here to refer to the election of 1868, by which the Republican vote of the State, through fraud and violence, was reduced to a few thousands, and the bloody riots of 1866 and 1868, to show that the disorders there are not due to any recent causes, or to any late action of the Federal authorities. "Preparatory to the election of 1872, a shameful and undisguised con- spiracy was formed to carry that election against the Republicans without regard to law or right, and to that end the most glaring frauds and forgeries were committed in the returns after many colored citizens had been denied registration, and others deterred by fear from casting their ballots. " To hold the people of Louisiana generally responsible for these atrocities would not be just; but it is a lamentable fact that insuperable obstructions were thrown in the way of punishing these murderers, and the so-called conservative papers of the State not only justified the massacre, but denounce as Federal tyranny and despotism the attempt of the United States officers to bring them to justice. Fierce denunciations ring through the country about office-holding and election matters in Louisiana, while every one of the Coif ax miscreants goes unwhipped of justice, and no way can be found in this boasted land of civilization and Christianity to punish the perpetrators of this bloody and monstrous crime. " Not unlike this was the massacre in August last. Several Northern SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 179 young men of capital and enterprise had started the little and flourishing town of Coushatta. . . . Some of them were Republicans and office- holders under Kellogg. They were therefore doomed to death. Six of them were seized and carried away from their homes and murdered in cold blood. No one has been punished; and the CONSERVATIVE PRESS OF THE STATE DENOUNCED ALL EFFORTS to the end, and boldly justified the crime. "To say that the murder of a negro or a white Republican is not con- sidered a crime in Louisiana would probably be unjust to a great part of the people ; but it is true that a great number of such murders have been committed, and no one has been punished therefor, and manifestly, as to them, the spirit of hatred and violence is stronger than the law. "Representations were made to me that the presence of troops in Louisiana was unnecessary and irritating to the people, and that there was no danger of public disturbance if they were taken away. Consequently early in last summer the troops were all withdrawn from the State, with the exception of a small garrison at New Orleans Barracks. It was claimed that a comparative state of quiet had supervened. Political excitement as to Louisiana affairs seemed to be dying out. But the November elec- tion was approaching, and it was necessary for party purposes that the flame should be rekindled. ". . . Prior to and with a view to the late election in Louisiana, white men associated themselves together in armed bodies called 'White Leagues,' and at the same time threats were made in the Democratic journals of the State that the elections should be carried against the Republicans at all hazards, which very naturally greatly alarmed the colored voters. By Section 8 of the act of February 28, 1871, it is made the duty of United States marshals and their deputies, at polls where votes are cast for.Representatives in Congress, to keep the peace and prevent any violations of the so-called enforcement acts, and other offences against the laws of the United States; and upon a requisition of the marshal of Louisiana, and in view of said armed organizations and other portentous circumstances, I caused detachments of troops to be stationed in various localities in the State to aid him in the performance of his official duties. That there was intimidation of Republican voters at the election, notwith- standing these precautions, admits of no doubt. The following are speci- mens of the means used: 180 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED "On the 14th of October eighty persons signed and published the follow- ing at Shreveport: " 'We, the undersigned, merchants of the city of Shreveport, in obedience to a request of the Shreveport campaign club, agree to use every endeavor to get our employes to vote the people's ticket at the ensuing election; and in the event of their refusal so to do, or in case they vote the radical ticket, to refuse to employ them at the expiration of their present con- tracts.' "On the same day another large body of persons published in the same place a paper, in which they used the following language: "'We, the undersigned, merchants of the city of Shreveport, alive to the great importance of securing good and honest government to the State, do agree and pledge ourselves not to advance any supplies or money to any planter the coming year who will give employment or rent lands to laborers who vote the radical ticket in the coming election.' " I have deplored the necessity which seemed to make it my duty under the Constitution and laws to direct such interference. I have always refused except where it seemed to be my imperative duty to act in such manner under the Constitution and laws of the United States. I have repeatedly and earnestly entreated the people of the South to live together in peace, and obey the laws; and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see reconciliation and tranquillity prevail, and thereby remove all necessity for the presence of troops among them. I regret, however, to say that this state of tilings does not exist, nor does its existence seem to be desired in some localities; and as to those it may be proper for me to say that, to the extent that Congress has conferred power upon me to prevent it, neither Ku-Klux-Klans, White Leagues, nor any other associa- tion using arms and violence to execute their unlawful purposes, can be permitted in that way to govern any part of this country; nor can I see with indifference Union men or Republicans ostracized, persecuted and mur- dered on account of their opinions, as they now are in some localities. "I have heretofore urged the case of Louisiana upon the attention of Congress, and I cannot but think that its inaction has produced great evil. "To summarize: In September last an armed, organized body of men, in the support of candidates who had been put up in nomination for the offices of Governor and Lieutenant-Governor at the November election, in 1872, and who had been declared not elected by the board of canvassers recognized by all the courts to which the question had been submitted, undertook to subvert and overthrow the State government that had been SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 181 recognized by me, in accordance with previous precedents. The recognized Governor was driven from the State House, and but for his finding shelter in the United States Custom House, in the capital of the State of which he was Governor, it is scarcely to be doubted that he would have been killed." Even as early as 1871 Southern conditions were (correspond- ing to those of to-day) as described by one of our great states- men: "The old re'gime is reinstated and everything, save legal chattelhood, is to be restored. Race distinction, class legislation, the dogmas, that this is a white man's government, that the negro belongs to an inferior race, that capital shall control, if it does not own, labor, are now again in the ascendant, and CASTE, if slavery may not be, is to be the cornerstone of Southern civilization. At least, this is the avowed purpose. 'Labor,' says recently the governor of one of the reconstructed States, 'must be controlled by law. We may hold inviolate every law of the United States and still so legislate upon our labor system as to retain our own plantation system, or in lieu of that, a baronial system.* Clothe these statements with power and wonder ceases that education languishes, that the number of schools diminishes, that school laws are repealed and rendered useless, and that Northern philanthropy is discouraged." The Rise and Fatt of the Slave Power, Henry Wilson. Referring to the conditions in 1877 which are paralleled to-day, a former Vice-President of the United States wrote: ". . . the South. . . still bemoans and defends the 'lost cause ' though accepting the destruction of slavery, still believes it to be the proper position of an inferior race and the cornerstone of a most desirable civiliza- tion; though accepting negro enfranchisement because imposed by a superior force, still contends that this is a white man's government in which the freedman have no legitimate part, and from which they shall be excluded, even if violence and fraud be needful therefor." The Rise and Fatt of the Slave Power, Henry Wilson. As still further illustrating conditions existing in the South at that period, we know that colored people were, by legal enactments, at the mercy of the planters. The remedy 182 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED for such abuses was only possible by the action of the United States. Under local laws enacted by the old regime laborers could be arrested and punished for vagrancy or alleged crime, even to the extent of punishment for breach of a civil contract. It had been made penal for a laborer to leave his employer before the expiration of the term specified in his labor contract. This obtained in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. In some of those States it was an offence to entice away any laborer under contract, or to harbor or to feed and clothe him. Civil officers were by statute required to proceed by force and without process to return to his employer any such deserting laborer whom they might arrest. To-day in certain localities this condition practically has its parallel in the administration of local law. "When the terms of re-entrance to the Union were accepted, even then these party conspirators against popular government, no sooner had they attained positions in the grand old Union, than they commenced to exe- cute designs by which the hands of the power of the oligarchies of the South might again be placed to the throat of popular and representative government in the South; and soon again other forms of revolution, and riot and reign of terror, were employed to hoist the political pillage of this regime upon the liberties and national rights of the masses in the States south of the Ohio." * An illustration of these old so-called "black codes" which are as difficult of access to the present student of historical data from original sources as advertisements of slave marts, and which codes, but for the benign interposition of the United States might still be in force was that in Mississippi a freedman might be declared a vagrant for "insulting gestures " or "exercising the function of a minister of the Gospel without a license from some regular church"; or for freedmen unlaw- * J. C. Manning, SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 183 fully assembling together, either by day or night; or for white persons usually associating themselves with freedmen, mulattoes, etc., meaning thereby to hold in tribulation the white teachers in colored schools. On failure to pay the fine and costs, the guilty person was to be hired out by the sheriff to any person who would pay them for him. This has its counterpart to-day. As late as June, 1907, ac- cording to an associated press dispatch from Nashville, Tenn.: "A tacit conclusion was reached by the Board of Education that only negroes born, bred and educated in the South need apply for election as teachers in the colored schools of this city. This action was taken, the Board says, for the reason that negroes from north of Mason and Dixon's have 'notions' and 'are not familiar with Southern conditions and senti- ment'!"* Under the old "black codes" it was a penal offense in Louisi- ana to enter upon a plantation as a visitor without permission. It was a penal offense in Florida for a negro to "intrude him- self into any religious or other public assembly of white persons, or into a railroad car or other public vehicle set apart for the exclusive accommodation of white people." For such an offense the punishment was the pillory for one hour or thirty- nine stripes, or both, "at the discretion of the jury." "Loitering statutes were common. They provided heavy fines of $50 to $100 to be imposed upon any one who was found loitering without work. The freedmen, who had just been emancipated, had neither work nor money. No matter how zealously he might seek employment, he was helpless if em- ployment should be refused him. Under these statutes if * A white teacher applying for a position in the South was recently asked whether she minded teaching negroes and what her views as to negro education were. Upon her replying that she believed the colored children should have equal educational advantages with white children, she was not given the appointment she sought. This incident was related, in the course of a competition regarding school questions by teachers, in a prominent weekly published in New York. 184 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED found idle he was a loiterer, and if he had no money, as he did not have, with which to pay his fines, he was hired to the highest bidder, thus becoming bound to labor for those who had no interest whatever in either his health or his life beyond the term for which he was hired. This brought about a con- dition of things worse than slavery. By another bill it was provided that every adult freedman should provide himself with a comfortable home and visible means of support within twenty days after the passage of the act, and failing to do so should be hired at public outcry to the highest bidder for the period of one year. By another law it was provided that all agricultural laborers should be compelled to make contracts for labor during the first ten days of January for the entire year! All failing to do so were liable to heavy fines and severe penalties. Scores of like statutes, some of them worse even than these, were enacted. "It is no exaggeration to say that the spirit of this legislation was not justice, but injustice, and that of the most malicious and revengeful character."* Such illustrations indicate a type of civilization adapted to a condition of slavery, but imposed after the extinction of slavery, without its safeguards and in a harsher and less re- sponsible form. The people of the United States would have been cowardly, unworthy of their heritage, and recreant to the honest obligations of their successful war, had they not acted to extinguish the revival of such dangerous conditions. The reproduction in some quarters to-day of the equivalent of such conditions as were common in slave days is a summons to the performance of similar obligations. The ease and facility with which in certain sections of the South to-day the labor, health and life of colored men may be * Speech of Hon. J. B. Foraker at Bellefontaine, Ohio, July, 1907. See Appendix G. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 185 controlled under the guise of law is without parallel in any Christian country claiming to enjoy a stable government. When incidents of that character are described in cold type they are denied on the floors of Congress and in the local press, no matter what evidence may be produced in authentication of individual statements. But the student of history, consult- ing original sources, may reasonably be satisfied concerning the exploits of human nature under favorable conditions. He may read the local statutes and there ascertain the harsh and deadening methods of procedure claimed to be justified through them. He will, of course, not find in these statutes all the details by which, for example, any white man on a highway may require a negro to show his pass (as some of the Road Laws did in the time of slavery), but he can learn from the statutes themselves that a laborer under a contract to a farmer may be held in durance vile, and under the pretext of a judgment by a justice on an alleged debt be "bound out" to a legal slavery from which anybody seeking to release him may, in turn, be likewise prosecuted for a legal offence! The present Contract Law and the Vagrancy Law of the State of Alabama show actual equivalent conditions. By the Contract Law of Alabama (1900-1)* a person who has contracted in writing for labor for a certain time and who fails to carry out his con- tract, finding other work, is "guilty of a misdemeanor " and may be fined or sentenced to six months' hard labor, or both, "at discretion of the court." By the Vagrancy Law of Alabama f (1903) any person able to work and without property to support him and who does not work is liable to be imprisoned or fined $500, or both. The Vagrancy Act of 1896 imposed a fine of $10 to $50 for the first offence. The present act is therefore much more severe, and shows the determination of the plutocracy to rule with a rod of iron, * See Appendix I. t See Appendix I. 186 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED and to "use its power to carry out its mission keep the negro down, keep him an inferior, make him a criminal." * * "A Subsidized North," by W. S. Scarborough. As illustrating the discriminating treatment from which white men would be im- mune, it is shocking to read, in a recent press dispatch, that nine colored convicts in Louisiana are to be physically experimented with, in the alleged interests of science. They are to be fed with molasses three times a day for many days, and with molasses mixed with sulphuric acid, after the Federal pure food authorities have declared such molasses to be poisonous, and for the purpose of seeing whether it will poison these colored convicts. Even more shocking is it to read that the Federal Government is an interested spectator. Thus we have medical tests made upon colored human beings after they have been inflicted with penalties prescribed by law in a country where there is a strong movement against vivisection when practised upon frogs. "It ia nurturing accumulating wrongs for the nation to avoid intercession when and where only national interference can restore and uplift the beaten down nationality of the Southern citizen." XV "Do you want shining mementoes of your victories? They are written upon the dusky brow of every freedman who was once a slave." Carl Schurz. "Out from that fiery baptism they came . . . ; and American song and story will carry their heroic triumph down the highway of time for- ever." Anon. The way in which the oligarchy rules is by carrying out at every step of its supremacy a policy of invoking a pseudo- racial question. The Congressional delegations standing for the South unfairly represent their great constituencies of colored people. Such unfair representation goes hand and hand with abuse of that race and an extollation of the lost cause and its unfounded co-relation to States' rights, as well as with a distortion of historical facts and the happenings and results of the war, one of which was the actual abolition of slavery. Those who voluntarily participated in the War of the Re- bellion, under the flag of the "Confederate States of America," were by both sides commonly styled "rebels." It may be a surprise to those who take their information from less authentic sources to read what General Sherman said nearly thirty years ago: "There are such things as abstract right and abstract wrong, and when history is written, human actions must take their place in one or the other category. " We claim that in the great Civil War, we of the national Union army were right and our adversaries wrong; and no special pleading, no excuse, 188 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED no personal motives, however pure and specious, can change the verdict of the war." * To this just claim, founded on axiomatic truth, there un- fortunately runs a sad contrast. The Executive and members of his Cabinet are to-day continually extolling, lauding and "canonizing" the Confederate conductors of the Rebellion. Recently at Jamestown the President said: "Two generations passed before the second crisis of our history had to be faced. Then came the Civil War. ... As time clears away the mists that once shrouded brother from brother, and made each look 'as through a glass darkly ' at the other, we can all feel the same pride in the valor, the devotion and the fealty toward the right as it was given to sach to see the right, shown alike by the men who wore the blue and by tlie men who wore the gray. Rich and prosperous though we are as a people, the proudest heritage that each of us has, no matter where he may dwell, North or South, East or West, is the immaterial heritage of feeling, the right to claim as his own all the valor and all the steadfast devotion to duty shown by the men of both the great armies, of the sol- diers whose leader was Grant and the soldiers whose leader was Lee. The men and the women of the Civil War did their duty bravely and well in the days that were dark and terrible and splendid." In a letter from President Roosevelt at the centenary of the birth of General Lee he commended that Confederate leader as a "high-minded citizen" of "that serene greatness of soul characteristic of those who most readily recognize the obliga- tions of civic duty." On a Lee birthday celebration (1905) the Governor of Georgia (Terrell) had said that he could not respect him (Roose- velt) "until he says to the American people he has done wrong to the memory of President Davis." Were the words in the above letter two years afterwards by way of a throw in that direction; and how are such sentiments to be reconciled with the President's encomiums on Lincoln and Grant? * Extract from a speech delivered by General W. T. Sherman, then in command of the Army, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1878, in the City of New York. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 189 Such thoughts, indeed, when uttered by men in high, re- sponsible positions, incite others with lesser mental calibre and historical purview to such newspaper requests as one asking that "the coming session of Congress enact a law making the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee national holidays!" * Does the celebration of Lee's birthday, and the President's participation in it, encourage the spirit of patriotism? It has become the fashion in certain quarters to depreciate, in a spirit of melodrama, the statement of the right, and to paint the wrong in the colors of the right. The burial of ani- mosities that arose out of the war's conflicts is beneficent and laudable. The burial of principle is inexcusable. There are in all things true and false teachers. The true teachers portray principles in bright colors and do not mislead by displaying error in imaginative colors for dramatic effect, for rhetorical pleasure or for popular applause. In President Roosevelt's speech at the dedication of the McClellan statue he said: "As Americans, when we glory in what was done under Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, McClellan, Farragut, we can no less glory in the valor and the devotion to duty, as it was given to them to see the duty, of the men who fought under ' Stonewall ' Jackson and the Johnsons and Stewart and Morgan." f The placing by the President of conscripts of the Confed- eracy on a par with Union Army volunteers, and the undue laudation of leaders who defied the authority of the United States by sectional wrong-doing that eventually led to war and left the graves of brave men on both sides scattered all over the land, can be explained only by an ignorance of the history of that momentous period, or a lack of courage to express truth, or, unhappily, a misconception, all too common, of historical fact. * Washington Post, Nov. 6, 1905. t New York Tribune, May 8, 1907. 190 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED In 1905, in speeches at Richmond, Virginia and Roswell, Georgia, the President extolled the Confederate leaders and gloried in his own rebel kinship. At Roswell, after referring to his uncles, one of whom was the youngest officer on the " Alabama," and helped to fire the last shot when she was destroyed, the President said that he had "the ancestral right to claim a proud kinship with those who showed their devotion to duty as they saw the duty, whether they wore the gray or whether they wore the blue. All Americans who are worthy of the name feel an equal pride in the valor of those who fought on one side or the other, provided only that each did with all his strength and soul and mind his duty as it was given to him to see his duty " ! The Washington Evening Star thus commented upon the foregoing utterance: "This from the President of the United States! . . . This is queer talk to instil into the minds of the rising generation, to tell them that it was as glorious to fire the last shot against their country's flag as to fire against those who wanted to tear it down; that both were right in the Rebellion, that the rebels did 'their duty as they saw it'; and that one must excuse the Northerners for doing their duty as they saw it !" * The philosophy of the Roswell speech puts Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln on the same plane! History does not justify such a parallel. The following was published in the Atlanta Constitution: "Theodore Roosevelt's mother was a daughter of the South and her sympathies were with that section in its struggle for existence. It was just previous to the firing of the first gun at Sumter that Theodore Roose- velt, the elder, decided to give a great social function at his New York home. The Roosevelt mansion was accordingly decked in bunting and with the United States flags. From every window, save one, flew the Stars and * One journalist has stated that "there is no man in the country whose mere opinion on any subject sways the popular mind as does Roosevelt's. He defended his action (for he is psychologically incapable of recognizing error on his own part). . . ." SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 191 Stripes. That exception was Mrs. Roosevelt's boudoir window. Her husband had not desired to omit it from the decorative scheme, but she had a decoration plan of her own. Stopping not to consider the peril in which it might place her and her husband, she drew from among her cherished treasures the Stars and Cross of the Confederacy, and going to the window, firmly fixed its staff and allowed its folds to flutter to the breeze. On the instant almost the hostile ensign was noted. In hot indig- nation one observer pointed it out to another, and a crowd speedily grew, as crowds will. Soon the street was choked with angry people who shook, threateningly, fists at the Confederate flag and inveighed most bitterly. Alarmed at the gathering, Mr. Roosevelt sought the cause that had stirred the people to anger. He was not long in finding out. Fierce acclaim directed his gaze which rested upon the fluttering emblem of the South. With a word to the crowd he entered the house to find his wife. He told her what she already knew that the anger of the crowd had been excited by her indiscreet display of the Southern colors, and said that it would be well for her to take in the flag. " ' I shall not do so/ said the mother of the President. ' The flag is mine ; the boudoir is mine ; I love the flag, for it represents my native land. Ex- plain to them that I am a Southern woman; that I love the South. Do anything you like except touch the flag. It shall not come down.' And it did not. Theodore Roosevelt went again to face the crowd. He dwelt with finesse upon his wife's love for her native land, and moulded the gathering to his will and to an indulgence of Mrs. Roosevelt in her desire to fly the flag of her beloved South. The crowd dispersed. The story remains to show an emotional quality that has made a President. ..." President Roosevelt speaks with equal pride of his Southern and Northern ancestors.* In response to an invitation to be a guest of Albert Sidney Johnston, camp Confederate Veterans, Paris, Texas, the President wrote, in part: "Personally I had kinsmen on both sides. Two of my mother's brothers fought in the Confederate service ; one, by the way, served on the ' Alabama ' under Admiral Semmes, the father of the wife of that gallant ex-Confederate Luke Wright, whom I made Governor of the Philippines. It was but the other day that I designated the only living grandson of Stonewall Jackson as a cadet at West Point, and have just made Jeb Stuart U. S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Virginia." * From Harrison, "Stars and Stripes and other American Flags." 192 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED How did General Sherman regard the leaders in the Con- federate cause? Did he honor the memory of "traitors against the government of the United States," to quote the words of President Johnson in his Proclamation of May 2, 1865, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Secretary of State Seward? In that proclamation (13 Stat. 756) the following statements occur: It appeared from evidence in the bureau of military justice that the atrocious murder of the late President Abraham Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Honorable William H. Seward, Secretary of State, were incited, concerted and procured by and between Jefferson Davis, late of Richmond, Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, George N. Saunders and William C. Cleary (late clerk of Clement C. Clay), " and other rebels and traitors against the government of the United States harbored in Canada." President Johnson offered one hundred thousand dollars in the case of Jefferson Davis, twenty-five thousand dollars each in the case of Thomp- son, Clay, Tucker and Saunders, and ten thousand dollars in the case of Cleary, "for the arrest of such persons, or either of them, within the limits of the United States, so that they can be brought to trial." The President directed the Provost Marshal-General of the United States to cause a description of said persons, with notice of the above reward, to be published widely. At that time Jefferson Davis and his co-conspirators were fugitives from justice, trying to escape to Mexico. In truth, there is altogether too much "canonization" of the Confederate cause, a forgetting of the barbarities that were perpetrated at that period. The restoration of the spirit and animus that gave birth to the Confederacy, with a present fixed purpose to dominate United States action and authority in a section of United States territory, may, in some respects, be SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 193 deemed a greater achievement of the Confederate sentiment than would have been the actual establishment of a separate Confederacy. But it does not seem to be the business of any- body to foreclose such an achievement! The mighty govern- ment of the United States is too large and generous and be- neficent to permit its agencies to give heed to the growth of such noxious weeds. No other government in the world would permit statues to be erected within its boundaries to com- memorate the leaders of a cause, inspired as that one was, and conducted as it was, to overthrow the whole structure of the United States and its society. It certainly does not promote the perpetuity or prosperity of the whole country to exalt into a virtue the aims behind that destructive attempt, and to extol the men who devised and conducted it through rivers of blood. To sentimentalize such a cause and its vicious purposes and practices, and to assign imaginary vir- tues to the political and military leaders who pursued their career of selfishness though at the risk, as they well knew, of their heads is to permit and solidify a permanent sectionalism aimed now, as once before, to achieve the dominance of its localisms, in abrogation of national conceptions and established purposes. No one has ever objected to a recognition of soldierly qualities in the armies of the Confederacy; neither has there been denied the meed that is always accorded to true valor; but it ought not to be lost sight of, that treachery and deceit likewise existed as a not unusual Confederate weapon, even on the field of battle! In an official report on one of the early great engagements of the war, Major-General Heintzelman, commanding the Third Army Corps, officially speaking of the Battle of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862, quotes a report of one of his regimental commanders, who, referring to one of the incidents in the crisis of that battle, says: "The rebel barbarian in command extended a white flag, and cried out to him (Captain Drown), 'Don't fire, don't fire, we are friends I' at 194 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED the same time directing his men to trail their arms. Captain Drown, believing they were about to surrender, directed his men not to fire, where- upon the whole body of the enemy suddenly fired upon him, killing him instantly and also several of his men." . . . General Heintzelman then goes on to say: "Another instance of cowardice and treachery is related in Colonel Blaisdell's report of the Eleventh Massachusetts as having occurred in front of his regiment: "'While the regiment was engaged on the left of the road, at not more than fifty yards, a rebel officer displayed a white flag, crying out, 'Don't fire on your friends.' When I ordered 'Cease firing,' and Private Michael Doherty, of Company A, stepped forward to get the flag, and when near it, the officer said to his men, 'Now, give it to them.' The men obeyed, firing and severely wounding Private Doherty, who immediately returned the fire, shooting the officer through the heart, thus rewarding him for his mean treachery. "Some of our wounded men were bayoneted by the rebels, and a New Jersey captain was found bayoneted and his ears cut off. There are other cases. . . ." * There were many corresponding cases, one, for instance, found in the report of the distinguished Cavalry Commander, Brigadier-General Alfred Pleasanton, concerning an occurrence in a crisis at the battle of Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863: "It was now near the dusk of the evening, and in rear of the Eleventh Corps the rebels came on rapidly, but in silence, with that skill and adroit- ness they often display to gain their object. The only color visible was a Union flag, with the centre battalion. To clear up the doubt created by this flag, my aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Clifford Thomson, of the First New York Cavalry, rode to within a hundred yards of them, when they called out to him, 'We are friends; come on'; and he was induced to go fifty yards nearer, when their whole line opened with musketry, dropped the Union color, displayed eight or ten rebel battle-flags, and commenced advancing."f Men in military authority in the Confederate army, as well as private soldiers, were often chivalrous t and brave; * From "Official Records of the War of the Rebellion," Series I., Vol. XI., Part I. Reports, p. 459. t From "Official Records of the War of the Rebellion," Vol. XXV., Part I., p. 775. $ Such a line officer once spared the writer from the cruel bayonet. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 195 but this did not prevent or remedy barbarous cruelties, which one commanding word from those in supreme authority would have caused immediately to cease. Those cruelties were indefensible. It was not necessary, as an incident of war, neither did it serve any legitimate military purpose whatsoever, for example, that 31,678 men should be cooped up in a stockade on thirteen acres of ground, less than a farmer gives as playground for half-a-dozen colts or a small flock of sheep and where there was scarcely room for all to sleep at night, to say nothing of what would have happened to a man attempting to walk a few hundred feet in any direction among prone and prostrate men.* Yet it was upon beings thus helpless that the Brigadier-General charged with their custody ordered the battery of Florida Artillery stationed there, "upon receiving notice that the enemy has approached within seven miles of this post," to open upon this stockade with grape-shot, "without reference to the situation beyond the lines of defence."! At one time at this Andersonville stockade as many as three thousand horrible deaths were occurring per month, under a commander selected from among the confidential friends of Mr. Jefferson Davis, who himself could not have been ignorant of the practices which enabled this subordinate to boast, "lam killing off more Yankees than twenty regiments in these (the Yankee) armies. "J And this, notwithstanding the suggestion of the horror- struck visiting inspector, " that the prisoners be given at least more room", the general in charge replied nonchalantly that "he intended to leave matters just where they were; the operations of death would soon thin out the crowd, so that the survivors would have sufficient room." * McElroy, Andersonville, p. 260. t Order of Brigadier-General John H. Winder, commanding Andersonville, Ga., July 27. 1864. t McElroy. p. 651 $ Ibid. 196 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED The policy and conditions thus shown seem to have been the fulfilment of a declaration made and rendered prophetic when Mr. Robert Quid, the Confederate Commissioner of Exchange, officially wrote, March 17, 1863, respecting the conclusion of his negotiations with the United States authorities for the exchange of prisoners: "The arrangement I had made works largely in our favor. We get rid of a set of miserable wretches, and receive some of the best material I ever saw!" * It was obviously a continuous policy to get rid of such "miserable wretches" as United States soliders became when prisoners of war. It accorded with such policy that resort was had to barbarities innumerable, as, for example, when it was ordered f that twenty-five guns should be opened, J with grape and canister at two hundred yards' range, upon a mass of 30,000 prisoners, mostly sick and dying, rather than run a possible chance of rescue at the approach of a Northern army advancing in force. The same arrogant commander turned back a domestic train of provisions contributed by neighboring residents, whose hearts full of sympathy went out to the starving wretches whom in their humanity they wished thus to succor.^f * Ibid, p. 653. t July 27, 1864. J Ibid, p. 651. If "The probability is that neither Winder nor his direct superiors, Howell Cobb and Jefferson Davis, conceived in all its proportions the gigantic engine of torture and death they were organizing, nor did they comprehend the enormity of the crime they were committing. But they were willing to do much wrong to gain their end; and the smaller crimes of to-day prepared them for greater ones to-morrow and still greater ones the day following. Killing ten men a day at Belle Isle in January by starvation and hardship led very easily to killing one hundred men a day in Andersonville in July, August and September. Probably at the beginning of the war they would have felt uneasy at slaying one man per day by such means, but as retribution came not, and as their appetite for slaughter grew with feeding, and as their sympathy with human misery atrophied from long suppression, they ventured upon ever-widening ranges of destructiveness." McElrcy, p. 565. Aa Alexander Pope puts it: "Vice is a monster of such frightful mien. As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 197 History records not, it is believed, in the annals of civilized warfare any parallel to the malign cruelties of the Con- federate powers. The "unwritten law" of chivalrous mag- nanimity and the amenities that even in war are shown were, except by honorable soldiers in the field, often utterly disre- garded, and horrors were consequently allowed and cruelties perpetrated that might have been avoided, if it was desired to avoid them. That it was not so desired is perfectly estab- lished by one fact, that the Commanding Officer at Anderson- ville, apparently solely responsible, was indeed the appointed representative of central authority to whom he reported di- rectly without the intervention of superior officers, who were fully informed of his acts through other sources than himself. Of course, there is no question under such circumstances where the actual responsibility lay. It was a representative per- formance the not unnatural outcome of the conditions of one of the civilizations engaged in the irrepressible collisions of war. Perhaps it will yet be admitted as historically true, as one observant writer suggests, that "men capable of doing all that the Secession leaders were guilty of, both before and during the war, were quite capable of revengefully destroying thousands of their enemies by the most hideous means at their command." * Ignoring historical truth does not obliterate its lessons. Well, therefore, may this same writer exclaim: "The crowning blemish of Southern society has ever been the dumb acquies- cence of the many respectable, well-disposed, right-thinking people, in the acts of a turbulent and unscrupulous few. From this direful spring has flowed an Iliad of unnumbered woes, not only to that section but to our common country, "f * Ibid. p. 648. t McElroy, "Fifteen Months in the Confederacy," p. 647. This author goes on to say, "It was this that kept the South vibrating between patriot- ism and treason during the Revolution, so that it cost more lives and treasure to main- tain the struggle there than in all the rest of the country. It was this that threatened 198 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED Notwithstanding the record of the action of the South before and during the time of the war, and in spite of the Southern defects that permitted such wrongs to be perpetrated, the compiler of these pages still adheres to what he wrote as far back as 1865 respecting the conduct of the Confederate army as soldiers in the field. At that time, writing one of the corps of the "Army of Northern Virginia," he said: "Its history is one of valor, hardships, suffering, victory, tenacity and final defeat. Its military discipline was most vigorous and exemplary, its confidence and self-reliance a pride and boast among its members, its bravery never ques- tioned, its fortitude, endurance and heroism worthy of the nation to which its men belonged, and against whose justice, beneficence and righteous power they most wickedly rebelled."* the dismemberment of the Union in 1832. It was this that aggravated and envenomed every wrong growing out of slavery; that outraged liberty, debauched citizenship, plundered the mints, gagged the press, stifled speech, made opinion a crime, polluted the free soil of God with the unwilling step of the bondman, and at last crowned three- quarters of a century of this unparalleled iniquity by dragging eleven millions of people into a war from which their souls revolted, and against which they had declared, by overwhelming majorities in every State except South Carolina, where the people had no voice. It may puzzle some to understand how a relatively small band of political desperadoes in each State could accomplish such a momentous wrong; that they did doit, no one conversant with our history will deny, and that they insignificant as they were in numbers, in abilities, in character, in everything save capacity and indomitable energy in mischief could achieve such gigantic wrongs in direct opposition to the better sense of their communities, is a fearful demonstration of the defects of the constitution of Southern society." * H. E. Tremain, "Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry," p. 157; quoted from the Nashville American, Feb. 1, 1905, and Charleston News and Courier, Dec. 18, 1905. This is simply a narration of history; for, as Junius Henri Browne expresses it: "All history, public and private, recounts the courage, fortitude and sufferings of soldiers on the field." XVI "Facts are chiels that winna gang And daurna be disputed." Burns. "Any measure which the safety of the conqueror dictates is not cruel. Any measure which guarantees a peace bought with such a price, common sense dictates that." Wendell Phillips. The yielding to claims made in behalf of parties sup- posed to have suffered loss during the war, by acts of Congress, passed and proposed since the present Chief Execu- tive came into power, is another of many indications of a partisan timidity that contradicts General Sherman's defini- tion of courage,* and betokens a condition of sentiment that does not make for the best interests of the nation. One incidental effect upon Congress of the unfortunate influences of the concentration of power for good or for evil in the potential group of Southern representatives, acquiesced in by a sympathetic Executive, is to be found in the Con- gressional appropriations, and in the variety and extent of the demands for such appropriations. Both in the Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Congresses, as well as in previous Congresses, striking illustrations of the growth of such demands occurred. No individual instance, how- ever, of generosity, or of gift, can parallel the appropriation of $3,950, directed to be paid to John S. Mosby, without official * "I would define true courage to be a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to incur it, rather than that insensibility of danger of which I have heard far more than I have seen. The most courageous men are generally unconscious of possessing the quality; therefore, when one professes it too openly, by words or bearing, there is reason to mistrust it." (Memoirs, Vol. 2, chap. XXIV, p. 395.) 200 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED investigation, or the determination of any court of law or of any commission. According to the bill reported by the Claims Committee of the Senate, this appropriation was for tobacco in the hands of the United States military forces, which tobacco was marked in the name of "John S. Mosby." Under general orders of the War Department affecting captured and abandoned property, that tobacco was transferred by the United States military Quartermaster to a special agent of the Treasury authorized to deal with such matters, who, in turn, mentioned the item in a certain official paper purporting to give a "List of captured tobacco marked in the name of Colonel John S. Mosby, transferred to Colonel J. S. Loornis, Treasury Agent, June 7, 1865." That paper, discovered upon the files of the Treasury Depart- ment, was ingeniously made the basis of an application to Congress; and, forty years after the war, in a bill known as the Omnibus Claims Bill, reported by the Committee on Claims to the United States Senate on January 4, 1905, there was a paragraph providing that this "claim" might be referred to the Court of Claims "with full jurisdiction to try and adjudicate said claim and render judgment against the United States in such sum as may be found just by said Court, without the interposition on behalf of the Government of any bar arising from the existing Statutes of Limitations"! Instead of enact- ing this clause without regard to the Statutes of Limitations, the following clause was enacted, as will be seen by reference to Vol. 35, United States Statutes at Large, in an appropriation act approved February 24, 1905: "To John S. Mosby, of Vir- ginia, the sum of $3,950, being value of 7,900 Ibs., more or less, of tobacco taken and used (?) by the United States military forces in the year 1865!" That it was not so used is clear, it having been relinquished by the military, and " transferred " to the civil, authorities. When it is remembered that the recipient of this gracious SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 201 favor achieved his eminence as a partisan leader in guerilla warfare, but who was nevertheless treated, after the surrenders, as an ordinary prisoner of war, and offered and received his parole as such, and who has since, with remarkable continuity, profited by lucrative Federal offices, the astonishment becomes all the greater. What public purpose, if any, can be served by liberal gifts of this sort from a victorious foe, and by the described departure from established usage and procedure? Instead of allaying sectional spirit, such successful demands upon the Treasury, without regard to the usages of war, pro- mote, foster and encourage such a spirit. Other illustrations of the same intent and of a more or less concerted character can be discovered in Congressional history. For instance, there remains still in the Treasury of the United States $4,690,774.79, according to analysis of the official report* of Treasury Department by Mr. H. A. Taylor, Assistant Secre- tary of Treasury, dated January 9, 1900 but $10,000,000 *This circular further shows that by the Treasury records the claimants for this balance of cotton proceeds, whatever it is, "had sold the cotton to the Confederate government, and therefore it was not 'individual cotton' when seized after June 30, 1865," as most of it was, " but was the property of the Confederate government." As to cotton being the "sinews of war" for the South, it could only have been so regarded in Europe by the uninformed investors in Confederate bonds or those who accepted them in payment of cargoes for blockade-runners. On this side of the Atlantic our publicists should have been better informed as to the Southern "sinews of war." The system of Confederate financiering left the cotton sold by the planters to the prod- uce agents of the Confederate authorities in the hands of the planters themselves as bailees. It was stored in their gin-houses for the Confederate government and kept there under contract to deliver it to the order of the Confederate secretary of the treasury, when so called upon, or to his indorsees, upon presentation of the "Produce Certificates." There are enough of these produce certificates now in the files of the Miscellaneous Division of the Treasury Department to convince any disinterested person of ordinary good judgment that at the time of the surrender of General Lee's army to General Grant, at Appomattox, the Confederate government must have been the owner of every bale of cotton in the South, and most probably also of all the surplus tobacco, rice, sugar, molasses, sirup and naval stores in the rebellious States; and also that it owned all such products that had been captured by our armies and navy. It would therefore follow that the claims for every pound of cotton, sugar, etc., the proceeds of which were restored to alleged "loyal" owners, as well as the claims for the net proceeds of such property, for which judgments have been obtained by claimants in the Court of Claims under the abandoned and captured property act of March 12, 1863, were prob- ably frauds upon the United States, 202 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED according to a recent statement of a Congressional Committee the proceeds of property in part claimed to be Confederate Government assets, as nearly all of the cotton virtually was, the proceeds of sales of "captured and abandoned property" taken over by the United States military forces from its enemies in war. Even during hostilities it was enacted by Congress that, under certain circumstances and within prescribed limi- tations of time, innocent individuals who deemed themselves to have suffered might submit their claims to the Court of Claims, whose judgments were to be reported for Congressional action. The object of this enactment was to compensate those who had suffered undeserved injury and could prove their continuous loyalty to the United States. Millions of dollars have been appropriated by Congress * in response to such reports. The limit of time for filing and prosecuting such claims has long since expired. Claimants have made briefs to the contrary. Congress after Congress has been besought to repeal this statute of limitation. Technical reasons have been submitted; and private ownership of property concern- ing which there is no reasonable doubt that it was used in aid of rebellion against the United States for all the cotton was so circumstanced has been advanced as the basis of such appropriation. Personal appeals have been made to the President in behalf of legislation to repeal the Statute of Limita- tions. A few days before the close of the last Congress, such a bill f was introduced by the minority leader in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate by way of amendment to a pending appropriation bill by the Senator (Bacon) from Georgia. At last, as a result of continued and persistent agitation in Congressional circles, it is definitely urged in influential quarters that all claims against this captured and abandoned property fund in the Treasury may at this late day be referred to the Court of Claims irrespective of the Statute of Limitations, * See Appendix K. t Cong. Rec., p. 2345. [H. R. 25,400 ] SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 203 and that upon the Court of Claims' reports there should be an appropriation distributing to the claimants pro rata all the remnant of that fund now lying in the United States Treasury, where in justice and propriety it permanently belongs. Of course, in the reception and consideration of any such appropriation by legislators, or by an Executive who is ex- pected to sign such a measure, it must be seriously contended that under the laws of war and of international usages, and treating our enemies as belligerents, property captured from the enemy, or the proceeds of it, should as a matter of right be returned to private owners! That proposition is repugnant to accepted usages under the laws of war. It is true that as a matter of generosity the United States established a system under which, for a reasonable time only, cases of inno- cent hardship might be officially investigated and provided for, at the discretion of the United States; but why more than forty years afterwards this should be done is incomprehensible, except upon the theory that there is a just and a sound political reason for the United States to pursue such an extravagant favoritism. Is there such a reason? Another unfortunate illustration of this general trend is found in the attempt begun about twenty years after the war to wring from the United States Treasury moneys that were turned into it because they were taken possession of by a Commanding General who rightly demanded that all holders of Confederate moneys should pay them over to the United States. Specious technical pleas have been made from time to time that the Commanding General was in error when he insisted that the Citizens' Bank of Louisiana should pay over to him in current funds deposits that the bank held belong- ing to the Confederacy which deposits were in no sense private funds but property belonging to the Confederate Government and had been officially made in current funds. These deposits had been made in currency that repre- 204 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED sented value, including the bank's own notes of issue. Strange to say, the agents of this claim went so far as recently to petition the President of the United States as Commander-in-Chief of the Army to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to pay out the amount which that Commanding General (Butler) had turned into the Treasury from those deposits. The President (Roosevelt) asked his Attorney-General for an opinion. The Attorney-General, of course, replied that the Executive had no such power over the Treasury. In his reply, however, the Attorney-General extended his opinion so far as to assert that the collection of this money by the United States Commanding General in current funds "was entirely unwarranted and un- authorized, and through said act the United States had no claim or title thereto." If this assertion has any significance which it has not, because it is what lawyers call obiter dicta it means that the United States had no right to the assets of the Confederate Government, of which those deposits were a part a proposition utterly foreign to any established usage and to international law. The effect of such a careless expres- sion for it can scarcely be deemed other than careless, coming from a man since rewarded by a seat upon the bench of the highest court in the world has been (on the allegation that the Confederate funds were deposited in Confederate money (?), which was then the currency of the place and did represent true value) an attempt to defend this view, and to enable a still more careless Senate Committee on Claims to put through a careless Senate a bill directing the Treasury to pay to the Citizens' Bank of Louisiana the sum of $215,820.89.* One more illustration of sectional favoritism f with Treasury money is exhibited by a special bill J by which $50,000 was at first appropriated to pay for horses and equipments alleged * For further particulars, if the reader wishes to pursue the subject, see Appendix L. t See Note at end of this chapter. % Chapter XXXIV of the Act of Congress approved by President Roosevelt, Feb. 27. 1902. See also Appendix M. 205 to have been taken by the United States military forces from Confederate soldiers, "in violation" of the terms of surrender and under the orders of United States officers! This bill appears to be grounded upon an allegation that the terms of the Confederate surrender had been violated by the United States, an allegation yet unproven, if not untenable. It may well be doubted whether any such cases ever actually occurred, and the files of the War Department do not clear up this doubt. On the face of the statute the text would seem to apply only to the soldiers of Lee's army; but the language is pretty broad and in operation it has been construed to extend to the soldiers of all he Confederate armies. That orders from competent military authority to commit acts "in violation of the terms of -urrender" were ever given is difficult to believe without clear evid nceofsu ha fact, and this is not forthcoming. But even if such orders had been given, the proof of them would not be difficult to unearth. The War Department files are full of affidavits claiming that such violations did occur and that seizures were made "presumably" under orders. Payment of such claims has been and is being continually made, and at successive sessions of Congress there have been appropriations of this kind, to cover such claims. The follow- ing appropriations have been made: March 1, 1903, an additional $50,000; April 27, 1904, an additional $125,000; March 3, 1905, an additional $100,000;* and in the Deficiency Bill (Public Act No. 54), f approved March 4, 1907, $40,000 a total of $365,000 appropriated by Appropriation and De- ficiency Bills and paid out by the United States Treasurer. Judging by the average of allowances upon these claims there is represented by this amount of $365,000, about three thousand individual instances of maraudings alleged to have been com- mitted under orders of a competent officer of the United States! No one having knowledge of the splendid morale and character * 32 U. S, S. at L., pp. 43, 1048. t 33 U. S. S. at L., pp. 401, 1225, 206 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED of the soldiers of the United States then in service can believe this to be a fact. A perusal of the affidavits on file in the War Department in behalf of the claimants and alleging such presumptive in- stances will fail to convince the impartial reader that the marauding acts they describe were committed "under orders" of any identified United States officer. It will be noted that the special statute initiating these appropriations was signed on February 27, 1902, less than six months after the present incumbent was installed as Chief Executive. It is current knowledge that this enactment was passed at the instance of the late Senator Bates of Tennessee, upon a claim that a body of Tennessee Confederate soliders, returning home, had been deprived of their horses and equip- ments. If they were, it was competent for the Commander of the particular district to have decided whether, in order to preserve peace and order, it was not necessary that an armed body should be excluded as an organization from appearing in a peaceful community with horses and equipments. It can readily be understood that these Confederate soldiers, fresh from the field of battle, could not, with any regard for local order, be permitted, as an associated body, while they themselves were paroled prisoners of war, to return to their home towns where their foes and neighbors were then or recently had been serving or enrolled in the military forces of the United States. Although at that time hostilities between the great armies had ceased, the appearance of such a body in the unrest of that border region might have created disturbances. Every Confederate soldier was paroled under orders that he should obey the laws of his home district which was then under martial law. If any such incident as the wholesale dismount- ing and disarming claimed to have taken place in Tennessee actually did occur, there must have been adequate reasons for it on the part of the Commanding General SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 207 The Special Bill of 1902 was promptly and quietly passed and signed during the closing hours of the session, without the knowledge of, or investigation before, the American people, and with little or no consideration of the alleged departure from the right by the United States Army, which is exhibited in the explicit language of the statute itself. This statute, and how the payments under it have been made, constitute another curiosity of the aftermath of the war, and testify to an ignom- inious and unjustifiable magnanimity of victor to vanquished that is without parallel in the military history of the world. (Note referred to on p. 204.) Southern States, for a score of years or more, have been the object of special Congressional favors. In the last session of the Fifty-ninth Congress there was appropriated for public buildings in the States of Alabama, $129,000; Arkansas, $85,000; Florida, $40,000; Georgia, $332,500; Louisiana, $230,000; Mississippi, $130,000; North Carolina, $130,500; South Carolina, $120,000; Tennessee, $105,000; Texas, $377,000; Virginia, $199,000; or $1,878,000 for these eleven States. For river and harbor improvements, in addition to the preliminary work also authorized, there was also appropriated relating to the same States, viz.: Alabama, $1,047,000; Alabama and Mississippi, $14,000; Arkansas, $170,500; Florida, $1,428,331 ; Florida and Alabama, $25,000; Georgia, $709,650; Georgia and Florida, $30,000; Georgia and Alabama, $200,000; Louisiana, $1,465,792; Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, $250,000 ; Louisiana and Arkansas, $217,780; Mississippi, $744,500; North Carolina, $455,563; South Carolina, $302,290; South Carolina and North Carolina, $20,000; Tennessee, $317,595; Tennessee and Alabama, $205,000; Texas, $1,853,829; Texas and Louisiana, $170,000; Texas and Arkansas, $36,000; and Virginia $752,062; or $10,014,892 for these eleven States. There has been $7,574,983 appropriated (most of it during the last seven- teen years) for improvement of one Southern river (the Savannah), and special credit has been given to the Representative who was instrumental in securing these liberal favors for his constituents. (See Cong. Rec., p. 3805.) A Southern ex-Governor recently announced himself as a candidate for Congress, with the avowed single purpose of securing the refund of the old cotton tax. Pecuniary favors from "Uncle Sam " are readily projected and used as "issues" in personal campaigns for Congressional honors, and not infre- quently made the basis of candidacy. XVII "It often falls in course of common life That right long time is overborne of wrong Through avarice or power, or guile or strife, That weakens her, and makes her party strong: But justice, though her doom she do prolong Yet at the last she will her own cause right." Spenser's Faerie Queene. "Thou too, sail on, O ship of State! Sail on O Union strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! ) In spite of rock and tempests war, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea, Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee! Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee are all with thee!" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Public attention has recently been called to the sectional spirit that is prevalent to-day. The Brownsville affray and its aftermath brought into prominent relief the race prejudice, caste, discrimination and policy of those in high places, North as well as South. Colorphobia is not limited by latitude. It is easily and often most unexpectedly displayed. The Senate inquiry on the Brownsville affray will resume in the autumn of 1907, but it may not be out of place here to SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 209 call attention to an expression of public feeling in New York City, and to refer to some of the initial testimony received from the President by the Senate. On the evening of January 3, 1907, a mass-meeting was held at Cooper Institute, convened in celebration of the Emancipa- tion Proclamation. At this meeting there was presented,* and unanimously adopted, a memorial to Congress, which was subsequently presented in the Senate by Senator Depew on January 7, 1907 (Congressional Record, page 690), and in the House by Mr. Bennet, of New York, who on January 15, 1907, caused the memorial to be printed in the Congressional Record at page 1176, as follows: To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress assembled: Your memorialists respectfully represent that: This mass-meeting of citizens convened at Cooper Union, New York City, January 3, 1907, in the annual celebration of the Emancipation Procla- mation, believes with the author of that proclamation that mastership and servitude should be supplanted by true manhood, regardless of race or color. We therefore call upon Congress and upon all Americans to accord to the colored people of this country not only the rights, but the respect due to worthy American citizens, to the end that United States soldiers shall neither be insulted nor discriminated against because of their color; and that, because of color, the right to vote shall not in practice be any- where denied. We appeal to the American people for justice and fair play and for pro- tection from the ignorant and malicious writers and speakers who stimulate race hatred or seek to force the colored people into a peasantry of dis- franchised servitors. We further respectfully memorialize the Congress to cause an impartial tribunal to hear and determine the assertions in the President's Message based upon ex parte proceedings, made against soldiers of the Twenty- fifth Infantry, who thereupon have been subjected to a life-long penalty. And your memorialists will ever pray. Attested by the officers of the meeting. Charles S. Morris, Chairman, A. G. Miller, Secretary. * By H. E. Tremain. 210 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED At this meeting one of the speakers * followed the adoption of this memorial by a few remarks. He said, in part: "A most remarkable message concerning the unfortunate affair at Brownsville, Texas, has been transmitted to Congress from the President of the United States, defending and em- phasizing the justice and wisdom of his discharge without honor of a battalion of three companies of the Twenty-fifth United States Infantry; and imposing upon the men so discharged certain penalties or disqualifications, without the formality of charges, of trials, or of any judicial procedure, military or civil. "This message says: "'THE EVIDENCE PROVES conclusively THAT A NUMBER OF SOLDIERS ENGAGED IN A DELIBERATE AND CONCERTED ATTACK'; AND THAT THE ESSENTIAL FACTS ARE 'ESTABLISHED BEYOND CHANCE OF SUCCESSFUL CONTRADICTION.'" Turning to the audience, the speaker said: " Do you believe that?" (Cries of "No, No!") "If you do believe it, it must be because it has been so ad- judged by some court or jury; for otherwise such a charge would not be lightly accepted. It has not been so adjudged. You will seek in vain for any verdict or even for any proceedings before any tribunal, civil or military. In the absence of any such judgment what man has the right to adjudge, much less to condemn? One would naturally suppose that such language would not be used by any dignitary, much less by the President of the United States especially in a formal message to Con- gress unless it were based upon the proceedings of some tribunal, civil or military. But the message says, ' the evidence proves.' Now, why talk of 'evidence' when no court entitled to weigh ' evidence ' has ever been convened? "What else says this message? 'The soldiers were the aggressors from start to finish.' Is THAT TRUE?" (Cries of "No, No!") "It has not been so adjudged by any tribunal. * H. E. Tremain. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 211 'They' (the soldiers) 'stand as MURDERERS, who did murder one man, who tried to murder others and who tried to murder women and children.' Is THAT TRUE?" (Cries of "No, No!") "It has not been so adjudged by any tribunal. "'They' (the soldiers) 'shot into a saloon, killing the bar- tender.' Is THAT TRUE? It has not been so adjudged by any tribunal. " ' THE CRIME THEY COMMITTED OR CONNIVED AT WAS MURDER. . . . THERE is NO QUESTION OF THE MURDER AND THE ATTEMPTED MURDERS; THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT SOME OF THE SOLDIERS WERE GUILTY THEREOF.' " Is that true? Is it true that there is no question about it?" (Cries of "No, No!") "Don't you question it?" (Cries of "Yes, Yes!") "Again, in this message the innocent soliders are described as 'comrades of the murderers'; and, being innocent, they are summarily disgraced by a life-long penalty. Is not that a fact? "We may remain indifferent, if we choose, touching the legality or illegality of this ex parte Presidential judgment, but we cannot be blind or indifferent to its justice. "The rigor of military life must sometimes of necessity produce hardships, but never is it the legitimate product of injustice. "Again, this message declares: 'As punishment it' (this penalty) ' is utterly inadequate. Punishment meet for mutineers and murderers such as these guilty of the Browns- ville assault is death; and a punishment only less severe ought to be meted out to those who have aided and abetted by refusing to help in their detection.' This is the natural language of an official inoculated with color preju- dice. As if, indeed, conscious that the reader of the message must necessarily so conclude, its author 'doth protest too much' by a disavowal; for he says: 'Any assertion that these 212 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED men were dealt with harshly because they were colored men is truly without foundation.' Is THAT TRUE?" (Cries of "No, No!") "Read the record. The papers transmitted with the message constitute the only record. Search it, as the speaker has, from cover to cover, and you will search in vain for any proofs justifying such language. "As between the word of a colored man and the word of a white man, whose word is taken at Brownsville? As between the word of a colored man and a Texan 'tough,' whose word is taken at Washington? As between the oaths of 167 colored soldiers, in conflict with the word of white Texans, who can see in the dark and whose vision is unobstructed by trees and houses, whose word is preferred in this marvellous message? * * Since the meeting at which this language was used, officers of the dismissed battalion have discredited such "testimony," and have answered before the Senate Military Com- mittee directly in point, as appears in the printed proceedings of that committee, e.g., see as follows: Second Lieut. Robert Pattison Harbold, U. S. Army, testified (p. 1989) in answer to question by Senator Overman. Q. If as many as ten men of good character and respectability should come to you and tell you that they had recognized colored soldiers that night in the streets of Browns- ville, with their guns, under the conditions which have been related . . . owing to the experiments you made . . . and tell you that they had recognized these men that night and that they knew they were colored men, would you still believe that they were mistaken, judging by your experience? Senator Scott. On a dark night? The witness answered, "Yes, sir. . . ." Second Lieut. James Blyth, U. S. Army, testified: The witness had made several experiments with a number of men and officers in the night and having described the experiments, he was asked on cross-examination: Q. If you had been told of your in- ability to recognize these parties at the distance they were, on that character of night, before your experiments you would not have believed it? A. No, sir. . . ." (p. 2002). Q. Do you want the committee to understand that in the Cowan alley, on a bright starlight night, coming within two or three feet of a man that you knew, you could not tell whether he was a negro or a white man? A. Yet, sir. . . . Q. You are satisfied, then, from what you have seen and know, that if ten respectable people should come before this committee and swear that they recognized these men that night, still you would not believe they were telling the truth about it, would you? A. I know now that they could not (2007 Senate Record). . . . Q. Now, if any one were to say that looking out of a window of a dark night he or she saw a gun fired, and recognized by the flash of that gun, it being a high-power rifle such as you have in use, the face of a man as that of a negro, and was able to detect that he had freckles on his face, what would you think of that kind of a statement, from your observation and SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 213 " Senate Document 155 (President's Message and documents) is full of proofs of race prejudice. The military inspector, upon whose prejudiced report the Presidential Message is largely founded, admits his own prejudice. " In one aspect of the case, this entire Brownsville affair, historically and philosophically considered, is in a way a most fortunate incident. It has helped to rivet the serious attention of the country to the subtle and violent development of a race prejudice that unfortunately is not purely local. It may have a local origin, but it is extensive and present in many features of the national life. "Well might Lincoln in 1860 exclaim at Cooper Institute: ' What will satisfy the South? ' If you wish to know, consult the Southern press and the speeches of Southern men in public life as well as their conversational expressions. These voice the demand. What is the real demand? It is thus expressed by the Atlanta News, Dec. 21, 1906: "'Cut the heart out of the political citizenship of the negroes by taking away from them their privileges of voting and hold- ing public office, and the raging sea of racial issues in this nation will be as quickly calmed as the waves of Galilee when Christ commanded them to be still.' "Although expressed irreverently, this is the real demand. Southern men who mildly pretend to think otherwise are not political leaders. They are sent to the rear. They are put out of public life. They have no power. The oligarchy experience? A. / would not believe it. Q. You would not believe it? A. No, sir. Q. And what would you believe of a statement of similar character, to the effect that by the flashes of rifles it could be determined whether the hats worn by the men were black hats or gray hats, or whether they had cords around them or not? A. With our rifles the experiments showed that the flash of a riflle was not sufficient to show you anything. Q. You could not tell what kind of a rifle even? No, sir; you could not even see the rifle that fired the shots. Q. So that if any one who was looking out could see such things as I have indicated it was because they had better powers of observation than you had, or else they were mistaken in what they saw or observed? A. Yes, sir; that is it (1993, Senate Committee Record). 214 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED dominates. ' Down with the negro ' was the recurring phrase, repeatedly applauded in the speech of the chairman of the last Georgia Democratic Convention. Other speakers were vocifer- ously cheered when they denied that the negro needed the protection colored votes would admittedly secure. These are men in control of party and of State. They help constitute an oligarchy. Their demand is that the colored people shall become a peasantry of disfranchised servitors. "No independent political party associated to resist the Democratic organization is practicable. It is not permitted to be maintained. The nation has the remedy in its own hands. Reduce (by lawful Congressional enactments) the power wielded by this oligarchy. Compel the recasting of political lines and reorganization in all political life within the States it subjugates. Expose to the apathetic North the deplorable conditions under which blacks as well as whites are suffering in the South. Let the North shake off the hypnotic influence of Southern frenzy and lead for peace, ' follow light and do the right.' "'Nothing is worse than sectionalism within a nation/ was once remarked by Hon. John Sherman. Is the whole United States to be sectionalized? Are the prejudices and provincial- isms that dominate the politics and affairs of eleven States to extend their domination over the people of thirty-five other States? If these localisms represent the most uplifting civil aspirations, they might prove as perennial showers more refreshing than objectionable. But created and thriving in the vicious atmosphere of caste prejudice, electoral fraud and ' ring ' rule, their restriction rather than extension is demanded in the true interests of the nation. "But as the case now stands no proposal objected to by this organized system of partisan imperialism can be entertained or carried forward as a policy of the Democratic party. Shall this austere and nocuous sectionalism prevail to sectionalize SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 215 the whole United States? That is not an academic inquiry. 'A condition and not a theory confronts us.' "The enemies of equality and the adherents of caste rule are zealous, active and agitating. Their propaganda is skilfully progressive. Ministers and college professors are enlisted on their side. A new anti-negro magazine has been established at Atlanta, in aid of their cause. But, as sure as there is One above Who intends that there shall be good-will to men with 'peace on earth/ the great conscience of the American people will assuredly be aroused, so that the blessings of JUSTICE may come alike to black and white." In glancing over the forty years that have intervened since the great war, and contemplating the conditions to-day North and South as they have evolved from that momentous crisis, it will appear that there is more intense and artificial discrimina- tion, more class-caste-and-privilege sentiment among the people than existed in ante-bellum days. Reviewing the successive steps from the Reconstruction period to the most recent discussions and action in Congress, and the latest speeches of public men high in authority, this fact is brought home forcibly to those who participated actively in the war and have engaged in public affairs since the war. The same feeling that Lincoln intelligently encountered in reference to slavery is, under another guise and with equal subtlety, rampant to-day. The political tyranny of the old slave oligarchy is duplicated by the Bourbon oligarchy, masquerading under the name of Democracy, that dominates the South to-day! Extreme fanatical prejudice on account of race shows itself in violent diatribes as well as in political disfranchisement through State enactments framed for the avowed purpose of depriving the colored people of their suffrage rights under the War Amendments; and is further exhibited by a species of mobocracy easily aroused after the passions of the violent 216 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED and vicious whites shall have been excited to a pitch of frenzy by careless or skilful appeals of demagogues. This same prejudice also manifests itself in divers ways by a discrimina- tion in education, by the treatment of farm labor and of con- vict labor, and in the successful efforts to keep the colored race in an inferior and subservient condition where publicists are now openly maintaining that it must ever remain. There pervades the acts and expressions of all people of in- fluence in the Southern States, as well as of many at the North, a feeling that there is and must be of reason a condition of perpetual servility a servile population which out of necessity must always and forever be treated upon that basis and no other, and be and forever remain a class peculiarly distinct from all other elements of the country's population, and in all respects be treated accordingly. What the South calls "our system" must be dealt with, too, not by the nation at large, but by the interests and prejudices of locality. This was correspondingly the case in 1860. In advising against secession, the representa- tive who afterwards became Vice-President of the Confederacy, in an open letter to his constituents (May, 1860), counselled the South saying that he had "no fears for the institution of slavery either in the Union or out of it, if our people are all true to themselves. . . . There is in my judgment nothing to fear from the 'irrepressible conflict' of which we hear so much. Slavery rests upon greath truths, which can never be successfully assailed by reason or argument. . . . Our system rests upon an impregnable basis that can and will defy all assaults from without. My greatest ap- prehension is from causes within. . . . We have grown luxurious in the exuberance of our well-being and unparalleled prosperity. There is a tendency everywhere, not only at the North, but at the South, to strife, dissension, disorder and anarchy. It is against this tendency that the sober-minded, reflecting men everywhere should now be called upon to guard." Thus it appears that it was believed then, as it is now sec- tionally avowed, that "our system" of discrimination rests SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 217 upon impregnable truth, and only is in danger from a growth of luxury and inattention on the part of those who are in im- mediate control of it. In taking this attitude the South is running counter to the teachings of history and philosophy. Every nation that has differentiated its component units in that way has fallen into decay. The reaction upon our white population and the apathy fostered in the general electorate bring weakness to the body politic, already apparent in the exclusion of the blacks from, and the inattention of the whites of the South to, the duties of citizenship. Notwithstanding that the franchise is theoretically and noisily appraised and lauded as the elevating factor of good citizenship, it is in practice so managed, in at least eleven States, as not to be utilized by other than white people. The South claimed the right to settle for itself and for the country all questions about slavery. To-day it claims to be left alone to deal with its so-called "problems," and to have them regarded as of purely local, not of national concern. Instead of the national party in power taking in hand the matter of an equitable electoral representation and dealing with the subject in such a way that the real voice of the people may be heard, that party to its own jeopardy, if not for its own downfall has temporized, and encouraged the Southern oligarchy in its unjustifiable claims and action. A corrupting plutocracy and a pseudo-aristocracy altogether out of place in a republic have sprung up. Successful attempts are daily made to extol what is vaingloriously styled the "old civiliza- tion," and to re-inject the aristocratic spirit into communities professing democracy. Caste is encouraged; the philosophy of the war is ignored; history is distorted; false conclusions are disseminated; sentimental imaginings are held up as historical facts; and the Confederacy, that was itself a veritable tyranny, 218 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED is heroized as a beneficent albeit unlucky experiment! The lessons of the war are so stated, and in an ex parte and partial way, that the present generation is in danger of misreading and misunderstanding the underlying principles and real issues and results of that stupendous conflict of civilizations that took place from 1861 to 1866. All this presents a situation that promotes a rule by dema- gogues who profit by popular prejudices and arouse the masses towards some wrecking result that would impair the stability, if not destroy the structure, represented by the present Con- stitution of the United States. Herbert Spencer, after one of his visits to America, wrote of "the easy-going readiness to permit trespasses because it would be troublesome or unprofitable to oppose them"; he added the admonition, that this condition "leads to the habit of acquiescence in wrong and the decay of free institutions." It cannot be denied that this "habit of acquiescence" has be- come so strong that public men who oppose wrongs to-day are styled "troublesome." * These pages but faintly exhibit the noxious spirit of section- alism that has grown until its proportions have become a national menace and call for drastic treatment. This is emphasized whether the viewpoint be towards the electorate, its inequalities, its inertia and apathy; or its re- lation to educational progress in communities and States; to enlightened and useful citizenship therein; the protection of property, great or small; or the safety of the earnings of wage workers, and the protection of laborers of all kinds, and their life and health, against iniquitous tyranny; or to the promotion of industrial thrift and social order, and the inculca- tion of fundamental principles upon which the States of the Union and the nation itself are founded. * This epithet was recently applied in Ohio politics to a distinguished Senator there, engaged in discussing national topics. SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 219 The reader who has approached these pages exhibiting, as it is believed they do, the intentions, designs, avowals, purposes and conduct of those in charge of public affairs with an open mind, not prejudiced by association or training, will surely conclude that the conditions demand national grappling, so that it shall be settled once and for all time, whether the Con- stitution, in letter or in spirit, may with impunity be nullified by evasion, avoidance or defiance ; or whether there is not power and authority in the nation to punish and to extirpate such abuses. Shall the court of last resort be the people of the whole United States, or shall it be the people of a section only? This presents an issue immediate and irrepressible that cannot be concealed, evaded, avoided, distorted or escaped! The preceding pages have had for their purpose the throwing of light on this question, and of asking profound consideration of issues shown to have been already much obscured. If the facts and statements in this volume shall lead any impartial reader towards an appreciation of the danger of regarding this issue exclusively from an academic or technical viewpoint, instead of treating it on fundamental principles and by the practical measures the situation demands, the compiler's object will have been fully attained. A mighty nation can afford to condone and to relent, never to relapse. "The Flag of America floats o'er the free, And proud is our country, as well it may be; Ideal the Republic! From mountain to main Fraternity, Justice, Equality reign! "How pleasing this picture to patriot's view; How galling the thought, 'tis but partially true: For Freedom is halted, Fraternity stayed, Equality mocked at, and Justice delayed! 220 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED "The sectional spirit is spread o'er the land, And privilege and wealth hold Labor in hand: The deeds of our Fathers, ideals of the past, Are menaced by Class, endangered by Caste, ''O, let us Americans never forget The blood-purchased patterns our fathers have set; And let not the Nation forget or ignore The lessons and truths that were taught through our War! " For shall we allow the cold cynic to note A man is deemed free although filched of his vote? Shall sectional allies have power, alas! With Party and Country to govern by Class ? " D. H. F. Let the Nation answer! APPENDIX A (CHAPTER VII) PRESS EXPRESSIONS DISAPPROVING OF THE laissez-faire POLICY.* The Republican Plank of 1904. The Suffrage Question a Political Issue, Vitally Concerning the Interests of all the People, and it "must be met and settled." "It is already certain that the present Congress will pass no law relating to the conditions of suffrage in the Southern States. It is highly probable that the next will not either. President Roosevelt is against action of the kind; that is an open secret. It is obvious that he is about to woo the South. Whether it be intolerable to him that his popularity should suffer for righteousness' sake in any part of the country, or whether some other motive dictate his present policy, it is tolerably clear that he intends to do everything in his power to win back the lost and longed-for huzzas of the Southern people. 'Let the South give me two years/ Mr. Thomas Nelson Page reports him as saying, 'and it will see that it has entirely misunderstood me.' This can only argue that he now regards the plank in the Republican platform calling for the enforcement of the constitu- tional amendments merely as so much waste paper. "At the same time, the question is too grave and pressing to be put by at any man's behest. Both locally and nationally, morally as well as politically, the evils of the existing situation are too patent to be ignored. They must be discussed fearlessly, and a remedy sought with all diligence. The debate is, in fact, going on and will go on. Notable contributions are made to it from day to day. " This suffrage question very properly belongs to the next Congress. That body was chosen on the Chicago platform, and it was that platform that pledged the Republican party to remedial suffrage action. The present Congress at this short session will have its hands full of other matters, and could not spare the time for such discussion as the suffrage question is certain to provoke. But the next Congress must face the mudc, and we shall see then whether the promise of a square deal for the country at the ballot box was no more than a campaign dodge. * See page 87. 222 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED " The Evening Post puts the President in opposition, and says that his attitude is an open secret. Is it sure of that ? There is no such open secret here. The President is not authoritatively quoted here on the sub- ject one way or the other. It is expected here that he will meet that question, as he will the tariff question, when he reaches it, or when it reaches him. Should the President remain silent about it in his first message to the next Congress the friends of suffrage reform might feel a trifle discouraged, but they would by no means despair. They are bent on obtaining an answer of some kind from the representatives of the people on what so vitally concerns the interests of all the people. "The President's remark to Thomas Nelson Page may not admit of the Evening Post's interpretation. The South's fury was created and fostered by the politicians for campaign purposes, and was founded on the silly charge that the President desired and was trying to establish social equality between whites and blacks. Already the South is beginning to see through that, and in two years she should have shaken off the whole nonsense of the proposition. But why should the President purchase the admiring regard of any section by consenting to the nullification of any portion of the Constitution of the United States ? " The Evening Post puts too high an appraisement on the suffrage question when it declares that it cannot be side-tracked, but must be met and settled. The debate will go on until that end in some form is attained." * * Washington Evening Star, Jan. 7, 1905. APPENDIX B (CHAPTER VII) PLANKS RELATING TO SOUTHERN CONDITIONS ADOPTED BY REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTIONS. Public Sentiment Favored the National Republican Platform of 1904. A "live" issue. CONSTITUTIONAL SUFFRAGE PLANKS ADOPTED BY RBPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTIONS OHIO, Ohio was the first State with soil forever free from the stain of June, 1903. slavery. Pledged by the great creative ordinance of 1787 "to the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty," and bound thereby to "forever remain a part of the United States of America." Ohio was the foremost in the war to preserve "the indestructible union of indestructible States," and adheres firmly to every amend- ment which that war wrote into our country's Constitution as bind- ing in honor upon every American citizen. Therefore, we hold fast to the doctrine of equity everywhere in the exercise of elective franchise, maintaining that justice requires any State excluding any of its citizens from the ballot to be proportionately reduced in its representation in the electoral college and lower house of the national Congress. IOWA, "We are earnestly opposed to all legislation designed to accom- July, 1903. plish the disfranchisement of citizens upon lines of race, color, or station in life, and condemn the measures adopted by the Demo- cratic party in certain States of the Union to accomplish that end." MARYLAND, "We favor impartial protection to all citizens in the exercise of 1903. their just rights and we denounce all attempts to inflame sectional or race prejudice as a cloak for dishonest government and further outrages upon the elective franchise." VIRGINIA, "We condemn the Democratic party of Virginia for making a Mar. 3, 1904. constitution and forcing it upon the people of Virginia without their consent, in violation of the promises and pledges of said party. And we further condemn the Democratic party in refusing to give to the people of Virginia an honest election law, as they promised to do." MISSOURI, "As citizens of Missouri, we indignantly stamp unfair election Mar. 22, 1904. laws, false counting of votes, brutality of thugs and bruisers and 224 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED police domination at the polls as demanding the strongest con- demnation of all citizens of whatever political opinion, and we demand in the name of representative government that it shall cease, and we call on all patriotic lovers of their country to join the Republicans of this State in putting it down forever, establish- ing in the large cities of our State local self-government. This is not merely a question of party, but of perpetuity of the republic, in which all citizens are equally interested." GEORGIA, "Whereas many States have amended their constitutions for March 23, 1904. the purpose of disfranchising voters, on account of race, color and previous conditions of servitude, in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and, WHEREAS, by the terms of that Amendment, Congress is instructed and authoiized to enforce it, by 'appropriate legislation,' Now there- fore, We, the Republicans of Georgia, in State Convention assembled, DEMAND that a Republican Congress enter at once upon the per- formance of its duty, to the end that the colored man's rights of franchise, under the Constitution of the United States, be main- tained and enforced. " WE FURTHER DEMAND that the electoral vote of States whose amended constitutions nullify the Fifteenth Amendment be not recognized or counted in the election for the President and Vice- President." TENNESSEE, "As citizens of the State of Tennessee, we indignantly stamp April 7, 1904. unfair election laws, false counting of votes, suppressing of the popular will at the polls as demanding the strongest condemnation of all citizens of whatever political faith, and we demand in the name of representative government, that fraud and corruption shall cease; and we call upon all patriotic lovers of their country to join the Republicans of this State in demanding a modification of the present election laws, so that each party, either in a regular or primary election, may have a fair and equal representation of its own choosing in holding elections; and we further demand a modification of the election laws so that all violations of the laws may be made felonies." NEW YORK, "The permanency of the Republican Government is based upon April 12, 1904. a pure and free ballot. We are opposed to either its corruption by money or its limitation by depriving any citizen of the United States, anywhere, of the right to deposit his vote, except for causes permitted by the Constitution. To this end, we demand the pro- tection and permanency of all civil and political rights of our citizens without discrimination as to race or color." MASSACHUSETTS, "No popular government is safe that does not rest upon a free April 15, 1904. and fair ballot. We believe it to be the duty of the Federal Govern- ment to safeguard the rights and immunities of all our citizens, so that no discrimination shall be made against anyone on account of his race, creed or color." SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 225 ARKANSAS, "We emphatically denounce any and all discriminations at the April 17, 1904. polls founded upon race or color, and deplore all attempts for political purposes to excite and foment prejudice against the colored race; and pointing to the fact that in Congressional Elections the average vote for Congressmen in the eleven Southern States in only one-fourth of that in the other thirty-four States of the Union, we call upon the Congress to exercise its undoubted con- stitutional power to reduce the representation in Congress and in the electoral college proportionately." VERMONT, "The Republicans of Vermont stand for the preservation in- April 20, 1904. violate of the equal rights of suffrage guaranteed by our national Constitution, and of the purity of the ballot." OKLAHOMA, "We reaffirm the declaration of the Republican party for the April 20, 1904. right of every citizen to cast one free and untrammeled vote, and to have that vote honestly counted." LOUISIANA, Louisiana Republican State Convention, New Orleans, May May 3, 1904. 3. 1904. Mr. Suthon, of Orleans, then reported the resolutions of the Com- mittee as follows: The Republican Party of Louisiana, assembled to convention for the purpose of nominating delegates at large to the National Convention and Presidential electors, adopts the following resolu- tions: Resolved, That the Republican Party in all its aims, policies and traditions has proven itself the only reliable instrument for the preservation of good government, stable institutions, fair elections, honest laws, national unity and the enjoyment of life, liberty and property according to the Constitution and the laws of the land. Resolved, That the Democratic party, as we know it in this State, is the open and avowed enemy of popular government. It has seized upon the State, and distorted the government into an engine of tyranny and oppression to rob the citizens of the right to partici- pate in the government. The Democratic Party of Louisiana scoffs at the Federal Constitution, openly declaring its determination not to submit, nor to live under the same. To continue the mockery, it adopts a State Constitution, through a so-called Constitutional Convention, composed exclusively of Democrats, and without sub- mitting the same to the people for ratification, imposes it and a perpetual Democratic oligarchy upon the State of Louisiana. The express purpose of this Constitution was to disfranchise as many Republicans and as few Democrats as possible. In their boldness, the Democratic leaders invented the "Grandfather" Clause, an open violation of the Federal Constitution, to carry out their conspiracy against popular government. They refuse to live even by their own Constitution, and by the aid of trick election laws, and partisan and dishonest election officials, their own Constitution is as putty in their hands, to be respected only when it is useful to the Democratic party. Thousands of Republicans throughout the State of Louisi- 226 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED ana, who are entitled to vote under the State Constitution, are disfranchised by the tricks of the registration official", and by the vexatious obstacles to registration and voting imposed by the Democratic officials, while the way to vote is made easy to any one who will vote the Democratic ticket. All of this is done under the false cry of white supremacy. Resolved, That under such conditions the people have lost heart and show no interest in elections. The suffrage and election con- ditions in Louisiana are chaotic, and they will continue so long as Congressmen, United States Senators and Presidential electors can be delivered to the National Democratic Party by such revolu- tionary methods. Resolved, That the crusade of hate and bitterness against every- thing Republican, preached by Democratic orators and some of the Democratic Press, finds no response in the hearts of the Southern people, the most conservative of whom are hopeful for a change. NEW JERSEY, "We are earnestly opposed to all legislation designed to accom- May 11, 1904. plish the disfranchisement of citizens upon lines of race, color or station of life, and condemn the measures adopted by the Demo- cratic Party in certain States of the Union to accomplish that end." MARYLAND, "By the first Republican triumph in Maryland under Lincoln, May 11, 1904. our State was the first to free the slave by law. The last Democratic triumph in Maryland was followed by a semi-barbarous 'Jimcrow' car law, already rebuked by Christian sentiment of citizens of all religious faiths. "We denounce the illegal and criminal election laws of the last legislature, which continue and intensify the trick ballot frauds of the extra session legislation. Maryland Democracy is an organi- zation-conspiracy for disfranchisement of whites, as well as blacks. We protest that our white State cannot be permanently classed with the black belt without injury to our commerce, to our trade and our State prestige and credit. Every section and amendment of our country's Constitution is binding in honor upon every American citizen. We denounce the Democratic State legislation designed to disfranchise citizens on account of race or color. In our white State all attempts to inflame race prejudice are a cloak for dis- honest government and further outrages upon the elective franchise. The plan to cheat the blacks in a white State will ultimately cheat the whites. The permanence of Republican government rests upon a pure and free ballot. We oppose its corruption by money or its . restriction by depriving any citizen of his right to vote, except for causes permitted by the Federal Constitution. It is the duty of the Federal and State government to safeguard all the rights and immunities of all our citizens. Nullification of our Federal Con- stitution by State evasions are immoral and unpatriotic, and will be resisted by the Republican party, inspired by Christian senti- ment, until finally overcome." SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 227 NEW HAMPSHIRE, " We denounce as revolutionary and unconstitutional the method May 17 1904. adopted in certain States to abridge the right of suffrage, which is guaranteed by the amended Constitution to all qualified citizens irrespective of race or color, and in States where such unlawful discrimination is practised we favor the enforcement by appropriate legislation of the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, with a view to reducing their representation in the electoral college and the House of Representatives." NEBRASKA, "In the language of President Roosevelt, we believe that the May 18, 1904. door of hope and opportunity should be open to every worthy and deserving American citizen without distinction of race, color or religion." CALIFORNIA, "The Republicans of the State of California, in convention May 18, 1904. assembled, declare their allegiance to the principles and policies of the National Republican Party, and 'declare in favor of the com- plete protection of every American citizen in his constitutional rights everywhere.'" DELAWARE, "We oppose the disfranchisement of the negro on the plain Mar. 16, 1904. grounds of morality and of public policy, as tending to increase and foster the very evils complained of, and to still further degrade and hold in subjection in the midst of our body politic a race that needs every assistance. Moreover, wherever the race is disfran- chised, we demand that this grave question be resolutely and bravely confronted, and the representation in the lower House of Congress shall be exactly abridged in any State in proportion to its disfranchised population , as a matter of justice to those States that preserve and maintain a free ballot and free suffrage." COLORADO, "The permanency of Republican government is based upon a May 6, 1904. pure and free ballot. We are opposed to either its corruption or its limitation by depriving any citizen of the United States any- where of the right to deposit his vote, except for causes designated by the Constitution. To this end we demand the protection and permanency of all civil and political rights of our citizens, without discrimination as to race or color." ALABAMA, "The permanency of Republican government is based on a May 10, 1904. pure and free ballot. We are opposed to either its corruption or its limitation by depriving any citizen of the United States any- where of the right to deposit his vote, except for causes permitted by the Constitution. "To this end we demand the protection and permanency of all civil and political rights of our citizens, without discrimination as to race or color." 228 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED THE NEGRO AND THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE, DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS, 1903 MARYLAND, " We believe that the political destinies of Maryland should be 1903. shaped and controlled by the white people of the State, and while we disclaim any purpose to do any injustice whatever to our colored population, we declare without reserve our resolute purpose to preserve in every conservative and constitutional way the political ascendency of our race." MASSACHUSETTS, "We should condemn the lynchings in the South or in the North 1903. as we condemn massacres in Russia or murders in the Philippines. Hence we favor an early declaration of our purpose in the Philip- pines, and oppose the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment." SOUTH CAROLINA, "We make generous provision for the education of their (colored 1904. people's) children. In their efforts to acquire property, to secure homes, to enjoy liberty and to elevate their race, we accord them the full protection of the law. " But we believe it to be indispensable to the permanency of peace in the State and essential to the welfare of our people, white and colored alike, that in matters political the will of the white people should be supreme, and we avow our purpose to maintain white supremacy." APPENDIX C (CHAPTER VII)* COPY OF REPUBLICAN CLUB'S OBSERVATIONS THAT WERE MADE PUBLIC UPON THE INTRODUCTION OF THE FIRST REDUCTION BILL IN THE FIFTY- EIGHTH CONGRESS. EXPLANATION OF .ITS BASIS AND TABLE GIVING FIGURES RESPECTING SAME. MEMORANDUM RESPECTING SAME. BRIEF SUBMITTED TO THE FIFTY-NINTH CONGRESS IN SUPPORT OF REDUCTION BILL INTRODUCED IN IT BY REPRESENTATIVE BENNET, OF NEW YORK. Conceding that a reduction is to be made, the practical question is, to what extent, in each of the eleven affected States, shall the representa- tion be reduced? If it is to be made on very conservative lines the figures can be easily arrived at from the Twelfth Census Tables published since the Apportion- ment Act of January, 1901. Notorious and indisputable facts establish one class, at least, as included among the male citizens of twenty-one years of age, whose right to vote (to use the language of the United States Constitution) has been denied or in some way has been abridged. That indubitable class consists of the illiterate colored male citizens over twenty-one years of age. If the reduction of representation be limited exclusively to this class, the eleven States of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Texas, now having ninety-eight (98) members of the House of Representa- tives, would lose nineteen representatives. This result is so easily established from the official tables of the Twelfth Census that no further testimony is needed to warrant a reduction of at least that number of Congressmen, based on the conditions existing in the year 1900: conditions that for all practical purposes in this respect have not materially changed so as to affect the result of the calculations. It is a mild statement of the truth, that in the eleven States named the illiterate negro is practically excluded from participation in the ballot. This unassailable truth exists quite independently of any provisions in State laws or Constitutions. The Election Laws of any of these eleven States need not be examined to determine why this class is excluded, * See p. 93. 230 SECTIONALISM UNMASKED because the fact of such exclusion is everywhere conceded. That which is unlawful if directly aimed at cannot lawfully be accomplished by indi- rection. In some places the exclusion consists of a much greater number of negroes (practically all of them) who on a variety of grounds are treated as disqualified. In no State, however, can it be said that the excluded class is less than the illiterate negro votables. On the contrary, in every State the class actually excluded is numerically largely in excess of the illiterate negro male citizens over twenty-one years of age. Thus in some of the States white male citizens over twenty-one years of age who have not paid specified taxes, within particular periods of time, or who have not the prescribed property qualifications, or who are more or less illiterate, are nominally, but rarely actually, excluded from participa- tion in the ballot. This element, however, is not considered in arriving at the number nineteen (19), nor is consideration given to the fact that in all of the States mentioned a large number of negro male citizens over twenty-one years of age, who are not illiterate, although nominally voters, yet in fact are by various devices unconstitutionally excluded from par- ticipation in the ballot. If the calculations were based on the reasonable assumption that sub- stantially all the negroes are excluded from voting, the reduction in the several States mentioned would aggregate about thirty-five (35) instead of nineteen (19). The reduction by nineteen represents solely and exclusively a reduction that, in the States mentioned, is based upon the assumption that only the illiterate male negro over twenty-one years of age is excluded from the suffrage, while in truth many more are excluded. A proposed reduction, therefore, by only nineteen banishes all preliminary questions involving uncertainty about the true extent of the reduction, when ultimately the true reduction should be arrived at on the merits; and only presents immediately the single issue of reduction or no reduction. The figures are based upon the lowest practical limit; upon a limitation incapable of dispute. Conceding for arithmetical purposes such to be the limitation, the usual methods afforded by the Census Tables (not available when the apportion- ment bill was passed in 1901) are employed to arrive at the reductions stated in the proposed Bill. Unadulterated arithmetic only and the Census of 1900 are employed to figure the result. (See Table.) SECTIONALISM UNMASKED 231 .2.5 si 10 co 10 co CM CO CO IL S;|g O^ ^ .O 03 l* 00 00 c w 00 CO Tf CO CO O3 O CO CD CO CO CM (M to CO CO CO CO CO O T-H i-H O CO CM I 1 CO CO O3 CO CO T-H CO CO 03 CO 41 CD 03 > CO CM 10 CM O 03 10 o CO CO 00 CO 1C T-H CO CO G o go co ^-^Ss co o O 00 o 1 1 CO CM CO CO co 00 T-H 00 10 o o iO CO 9 CO CD (M 00 CO 00 CO CD co CM CO 00 CO i & d g ^ ! 1 ^ C5 T 1 a ^ouisiana lississippi . . . L Carolina . . . i. Carolina. . . . 1 s fS X