HOW THE FALLOW WAS SEEDED.
The time had come when the influences so long at work, the seed
which the past had sown in the minds and hearts of races, must at
length bear fruit. The period of actual reconstruction had passed,
and independent, self-regulating States had taken the place
of Military Districts and Provisional Governments. The people of
the South began, little by little, to realize that they held their
future in their own hands--that the supervising and restraining
power of the General Government had been withdrawn. The colored
race, yet dazed with the new light of liberty, were divided between
exultation and fear. They were like a child taking his first
steps--full of joy at the last accomplished, full of terror at the
one which was before.
The state of mind of the Southern white man, with reference to the
freedman and his exaltation to the privilege of citizenship is
one which cannot be too frequently analyzed or too closely kept in
mind by one who desires fully to apprehend the events which have
since occurred, and the social and political structure of the South
at this time.
As a rule, the Southern man had been a kind master to his slaves.
Conscious cruelty was the exception. The real evils of the system
were those which arose from its _un_-conscious barbarism--the
natural and inevitable results of holding human beings as chattels,
without right, the power of self-defence or protestation--dumb
driven brutes, deprived of all volition or hope, subservient to
another's will, and bereft of every motive for self-improvement
as well as every opportunity to rise. The effect of this upon the
dominant race was to fix in their minds, with the strength of an
absorbing passion, the idea of their own innate and unimpeachable
superiority, of the unalterable inferiority of the slave-race, of the
infinite distance between the two, and of the depth of debasement
implied by placing the two races, in any respect, on the same
level. The Southern mind had no antipathy to the negro in a menial
or servile relation. On the contrary, it was generally kind and
considerate of him, as such. It regarded him almost precisely as
other people look upon other species of animate property, except
that it conceded to him the possession of human passions, appetites,
and motives. As a farmer likes to turn a favorite horse into a
fine pasture, watch his antics, and see him roll and feed and run;
as he pats and caresses him when he takes him out, and delights
himself in the enjoyment of the faithful beast--just so the slave-owner
took pleasure in the slave's comfort, looked with approval upon his
enjoyment of the domestic relation, and desired to see him sleek
and hearty, and physically well content.
It was only _as a man_ that the white regarded the black with
aversion; and, in that point of view, the antipathy was all the
more intensely bitter since he considered the claim to manhood an
intrusion upon the sacred and exclusive rights of his own race. This
feeling was greatly strengthened by the course of legislation and
legal construction, both national and State. Many of the subtlest
exertions of American intellect were those which traced and defined
the line of demarcation, until there was built up between the races,
_considered as men_, a wall of separation as high as heaven
and as deep as hell.
It may not be amiss to cite some few examples of this, which will
serve at once to illustrate the feeling itself, and to show the
steps in its progress.
1. It was held by our highest judicial tribunal that the phrase "we
the people," in the Declaration of Independence, did not include
slaves, who were excluded from the inherent rights recited therein
and accounted divine and inalienable, embracing, of course, the
right of self-government, which rested on the others as substantial
premises.
2. The right or privilege, whichever it may be, of intermarriage
with the dominant race was prohibited to the African in all the
States, both free and slave, and, for all legal purposes, that man
was accounted "colored" who had one-sixteenth of African blood.
3. The common-law right of self-defence was gradually reduced by
legal subtlety, in the slave States, until only the merest shred
remained to the African, while the lightest word of disobedience or
gesture of disrespect from him, justified an assault on the part
of the white man.
4. Early in the present century it was made a crime in all the
States of the South to teach a slave to read, the free blacks were
disfranchised, and the most stringent restraining statutes extended
over them, including the prohibition of public assembly, even for
divine worship, unless a white man were present.
5. Emancipation was not allowed except by decree of a court
of record after tedious formality and the assumption of onerous
responsibilities on the part of the master; and it was absolutely
forbidden to be done by testament.
6. As indicative of the fact that this antipathy was directed against
the colored man as a free agent, a man, solely, may be cited the
well-known fact of the enormous admixture of the races by illicit
commerce at the South, and the further fact that this was, in very
large measure, consequent upon the conduct of the most refined
and cultivated elements of Southern life. As a thing, an animal, a
mere existence, or as the servant of his desire and instrument of
his advancement, the Southern Caucasian had no antipathy to the
colored race. As one to serve, to nurse, to minister to his will
and pleasure, he appreciated and approved of the African to the
utmost extent.
7. Every exercise of manly right, sentiment, or inclination, on the
part of the negro, was rigorously repressed. To attempt to escape
was a capital crime if repeated once or twice; to urge others to
escape was also capitally punishable; to learn to read, to claim
the rights of property, to speak insolently, to meet for prayer
without the sanction of the white man's presence, were all offences
against the law; and in this case, as in most others, the law was
an index as well as the source of a public sentiment, which grew
step by step with its progress in unconscious barbarity.
8. Perhaps the best possible indication of the force of this
sentiment, in its ripened and intensest state, is afforded by the
course of the Confederate Government in regard to the proposal that
it should arm the slaves. In the very crisis of the struggle, when
the passions of the combatants were at fever heat, this proposition
was made. There was no serious question as to the efficiency or
faithfulness of the slaves. The masters did not doubt that, if
armed, with the promise of freedom extended to them, they would
prove most effective allies, and would secure to the Confederacy
that autonomy which few thoughtful men at that time believed it
possible to achieve by any other means. Such was the intensity of
this sentiment, however, that it was admitted to be impossible to
hold the Southern soldiery in the field should this measure be
adopted. So that the Confederacy, rather than surrender a tithe
of its prejudice against the negro _as a man_, rather than
owe its life to him, serving in the capacity of a soldier, chose
to suffer defeat and overthrow. The African might raise the food,
build the breastworks, and do aught of menial service or mere
manual labor required for the support of the Confederacy, without
objection or demurrer on the part of any; but they would rather
surrender all that they had fought so long and so bravely to secure,
rather than admit, even by inference, his equal manhood or his
fitness for the duty and the danger of a soldier's life. It was a
grand stubborness, a magnificent adherence to an adopted and declared
principle, which loses nothing of its grandeur from the fact that
we may believe the principle to have been erroneous.
9. Another very striking and peculiar illustration of this sentiment
is the fact that one of the most earnest advocates of the abolition of
slavery, and a type of its Southern opponents, the author of "The
Impending Crisis"--a book which did more than any other to crystallize
and confirm the sentiment awakened at the North by "Uncle Tom's
Cabin"--was perhaps more bitterly averse to the freedom, citizenship,
and coexistence of the African with the Caucasian than any man that
has ever written on the subject. He differed from his slaveholding
neighbors only in this: _they_ approved the African as a menial,
but abominated him as a self-controlling man; _he_ abhorred
him in both relations. With _them,_ the prejudice of race
made the negro hateful only when he trenched on the sacred domain
of their superior and self-controlling manhood; with _him,_
hatred of the race overleaped the conventional relation and included
the African wherever found, however employed, or in whatsoever
relation considered. His horror of the black far overtopped his
ancient antipathy to the slave. The fact that he is an exception,
and that the extravagant rhodomontades of "Nojoque" are neither
indorsed nor believed by any considerable number of the Southern
people, confirms most powerfully this analysis of their temper
toward the African.
10. Still another signal instance of its accuracy is the striking
fact that one of the hottest political struggles since the war
arose out of the proposition to give the colored man the right to
testify, in courts of justice, against a white man. The objection
was not bottomed on any desire to deprive the colored man of
his legal rights, but had its root in the idea that it would be a
degradation of the white man to allow the colored man to take the
witness-stand and traverse the oath of a Caucasian.
Now, as it relates to our story:--That this most intense and vital
sentiment should find expression whenever the repressive power of
the conquering people was removed was most natural; that it would
be fanned into a white heat by the freedman's enfranchisement was
beyond cavil; and that Red Wing should escape such manifestations
of the general abhorrence of the work of development there going
on was not to be expected, even by its most sanguine friend.
Although the conduct of the teachers at Red Wing had been such as
to awaken the respect of all, yet there were two things which made
the place peculiarly odious. One was the influence of Eliab Hill
with his people in all parts of the county, which had very greatly
increased since he had ceased to be a pupil, in appearance, and
had betaken himself more than ever to solitude and study. The other
was the continued prosperity and rugged independence of Nimbus,
who was regarded as a peculiarly "sassy nigger." To the malign
influence of these two was attributed every difference of opinion
between employer and employee, and every impropriety of conduct on
the part of the freedmen of Horsford. Eliab was regarded as a wicked
spirit who devised evil continually, and Nimbus as his willing
familiar, who executed his purpose with ceaseless diligence. So Red
Wing was looked upon with distrust, and its two leading characters,
unconsciously to themselves, became marked men, upon whom rested
the suspicion and aversion of a whole community.