I now come to the so-called, but mis-called “Negro Problem,” as a
characterization of the relations existing in the Southern States.
I say at once, I do not admit the justice or propriety of this formula,
as applied to the question before us. Words are things. They are
certainly such in this case, since they give us a misnomer that is
misleading and hence mischievous. It is a formula of Southern origin
and has a strong bias against the Negro. It handicaps his cause with
all the prejudice known to exist and anything to which he is a party.
It has been accepted by the good people of the North, as I think,
without proper thought and investigation. It is a crafty invention and
is in every way worthy of its inventors.
It springs out of a desire to throw off just responsibility and
to evade the performance of disagreeable but manifest duty. Its
natural effect and purpose is to divert attention from the true
issue now before the American people. It does this by holding up and
pre-occupying the public mind with an issue entirely different from the
real one in question. That which is really a great national problem and
which ought to be so considered by the whole American people, dwarfs
into a “Negro Problem.” The device is not new. It is an old trick. It
has been oft repeated and with a similar purpose and effect. For truth,
it gives us falsehood. For innocence, it gives us guilt. It removes
the burden of proof from the old master class and imposes it upon the
Negro. It puts upon the race a work which belongs to the nation. It
belongs to that craftiness often displayed by disputants who aim to
make the worse appear the better reason. It gives bad names to good
things and good names to bad things.
The Negro has often been the victim to this kind of low cunning. You
may remember that during the late war, when the South fought for
the perpetuity of slavery, it usually called the slaves “domestic
servants,” and slavery a “domestic institution.” Harmless names,
indeed, but the things they stood for were far from harmless.
The South has always known how to have a dog hanged by giving him a bad
name. When it prefixed “Negro” to the national problem, it knew that
the device would awaken and increase a deep-seated prejudice at once
and that it would repel fair and candid investigation. As it stands, it
implies that the Negro is the cause of whatever trouble there is in the
South. In old slave times, when a little white child lost his temper,
he was given a little whip and told to go and whip “Jim” or “Sal,” and
he thus regained his temper. The same is true to-day on a large scale.
I repeat, and my contention is that this Negro problem formula lays
the fault at the door of the Negro and removes it from the door of the
white man, shields the guilty and blames the innocent, makes the Negro
responsible, when it should so make the nation.
Now what the real problem is, we all ought to know. It is not a Negro
problem, but in every sense a great national problem. It involves the
question, whether after all our boasted civilization, our Declaration
of Independence, our matchless Constitution, our sublime Christianity,
our wise statesmanship, we as a people, possess virtue enough to
solve this problem in accordance with wisdom and justice, and to the
advantage of both races.
The marvel is that this old trick of misnaming things, so often
displayed by Southern politicians, should have worked so well for the
bad cause in which it is now employed; for the American people have
fallen in with the bad idea that this is a Negro problem, a question
of the character of the Negro and not a question of the nation. It is
still more surprising that the coloured press of the country, and some
of our coloured orators, have made the same mistake, and still insist
upon calling it a “Negro problem,” or a race problem, for by race they
mean the Negro race. Now, there is nothing the matter with the Negro,
whatever; he is all right. Learned or ignorant, he is all right. He is
neither a lyncher, a mobocrat or an anarchist. He is now what he has
ever been, a loyal, law-abiding, hard working and peaceable man; so
much so that men have thought him cowardly and spiritless. Had he been
a turbulent anarchist he might indeed have been a troublesome problem,
but he is not. To his reproach, it is sometimes said that any other
people in the world would have invented some violent way in which to
resent their wrongs. If this problem depended upon the character and
conduct of the Negro there would be no problem to solve; there would be
no menace to the peace and good order of Southern Society. He makes no
unlawful fight between labour and capital. That problem, which often
makes the American people thoughtful, is not of his bringing, though he
may some day be compelled to talk of this tremendous problem in common
with other labourers.
He has as little to do with the cause of the Southern trouble as he
has with its cure. There is no reason, therefore, in the world, why
his name should be given to this problem. It is false, misleading and
prejudicial, and, like all other falsehoods, must eventually come to
naught.
I well remember, as others may remember, that this same old falsehood
was employed and used against the Negro during the late war. He was
then charged and stigmatized with being the cause of the war, on the
principle that there would be no highway robbers if there were nobody
on the road to be robbed. But as absurd as this pretence was, the
colour prejudice of the country was stimulated by it and joined in the
accusation, and the Negro had to bear the brunt of it.
Even at the North he was hated and hunted on account of it. In the
great city of New York his houses were burned, his children were hunted
down like wild beasts, and his people were murdered in the streets, all
because “they were the cause of the war.” Even the good and noble Mr.
Lincoln, one of the best and most clear-sighted men that ever lived,
once told a committee of Negroes, who waited upon him at Washington,
that “they were the cause of the war.”
Many were the men who, in their wrath and hate, accepted this theory,
and wished the Negro in Africa, or in a hotter climate, as some do now.
There is nothing to which prejudice is not equal in the way of
perverting the truth and inflaming the passions of men.
But call this problem what you may or will, the all-important question
is: How can it be solved? How can the peace and tranquility of the
South and of the country be secured and established?
There is nothing occult or mysterious about the answer to this
question. Some things are to be kept in the mind when dealing with this
subject and should never be forgotten. It should be remembered that, in
the order of Divine Providence, the “man, who puts one end of a chain
around the ankle of his fellow man, will find the other end around his
own neck.” And it is the same with a nation. Confirmation of this truth
is as strong as proofs of holy writ. As we sow we shall reap, is a
lesson that will be learned here as elsewhere. We tolerated slavery and
it has cost us a million graves, and it may be that lawless murder now
raging, if permitted to go on, may yet bring the red hand of vengeance,
not only on the reverend head of age, and upon the heads of helpless
women, but upon even the innocent babes in the cradle.