_A Northern Journalist's Impressions of the Palmetto State_
The following extracts from a letter of Mr. John Russell Young,
published in the New York Herald, are well worthy of attentive
consideration; but we need hardly say that in our opinion Mr.
Young is wholly mistaken in holding the white responsible, during
the last five years at least, for the solidity and infrangibility
of the negro in the South:
_The Letter_
Why is it that the Southerners, the whites who masters before the
war, have not devided the negro vote, and uniting with those who
were intelligent, gained control of the State so as to secure it
an efficient government? It would seem to the ordinary political
thinker that even three-sevenths whites could control the
four-sevenths blacks. One thinks of the Saxon in India with the
Hindoo, in Canada with the French, in Jamaica with the Negro, in
Ireland, after a turbulent fashion, with the mailed hand, and
yet his rule is now absolute. Why is it that in South Carolina it
is otherwise? My gifted and honored colleague, Mr. Nordhoff, in
his series of letters from the South, says it is because he has
been corrupted by the carpet-bagger. With all deference to that
distinguished authority, his answer is an imperfect solution.
Surely the Negro who knows his old master, who has lived with him
during his life, who in most cases looks with affection upon him
and all who belong to him--surely in the new relation he will
look to the master as a friend, and take his guidance in so
solemn a duty as entering upon citizenship. This too because as
we learn from all authorities, and from none more clearly than
Mr. Nordhoff, that the master, "accepts the new relation" and has
no purpose of renewing the war, and, so far as from wishing to
return the negro to slavery, feels that the old system was an
error, even from an economical point of view, and that in time
its abolition will prove to be a blessing to the white, whatever
it may be to the black. Why, then this being the case, has the
carpet-bagger been able to strangle a commonwealth like South
Carolina, and with the aid of the Negro, plunder his old master?
The only answer that I can see is that the whites have not taken
any pains to cultivate the blacks, who would naturally go with
them, or the intelligent and honest Northern men who came here,
meaning in good faith to make the South a home and to grow up
with the Southern people. In nearly every case with scarcely an
exception, the whites have drawn a line, just as Jefferson Davis
drew when he embarked upon the Confederacy. They alone have a
right here. Whoever opposes him is a "scalawag," a
"carpet-bagger," or a "nigger." A "scalawag" if as a Southern
born man he votes with the Republicans; a "carpet-bagger" if he
comes from the North, no matter how he votes. This line is drawn
with severity and with scarcely an exception. A worthy citizen of
Charleston, who came from the North in the beginning of the war,
from motives of philanthropy, to educate the blacks, who has
lived in the state ever since, and holds a high reputation from
all classes because of his integrity and ability, told me that he
had never been asked to the home of a Southern man since he came
into the State. "They do business with me, meet me in public
places and show me all respect, but never open the latch key". A
reverend and highly esteemed prelate of the Methodist Church in
the North came here to attend a gathering of African churches. He
was in an official position, for these churches were under the
control of his denomination. He remained here several days
presiding over the gathering. He was known to be an honored
prelate, whose life was given solely to his religious duties. He
told me that during his stay in South Carolina he had not
received a single attention from his Southern fellow Methodists.
The clergy had not noticed his presence nor asked him into their
pulpit. He saw only fellow Christians who had come from the North
or Negroes, I cannot imagine how the line can be more closely
drawn, and now speak of what happened only a few days since.
_The Negro and His Northern Ally_
The negro, then has been thrown back upon his Northern ally.
Every memory, every name, every anniversary of the war, is
cherished as sacred. All the rest is an abomination. You may well
ask: "Why should not this be so, for are not these memories dear
to them by the blood slain brothers and children?" Truly so, and
far be it from me to profane so holy a thought as that which
would honor them. But I am answering the question propounded some
time since as to how it is that the Southern whites have never
succeeded in dividing the colored vote, so as to give the states
a good government. They have driven the Negro away. In Georgia
when they gained power they have practically disfranchised him.
But for the interference of the Federal Congress they would have
forbidden his appearance in their legislatures. I do not think
that any frank Georgian will deny that this result was largely
due to intimidation and force. In a State with 545,142 negroes in
1870, to 638,926 whites, they have virtually stamped out a
Republican party. The negro is afraid to vote, is not in many
places allowed on the jury, is punished severely for crimes, and
Mr. Nordhoff has told you that at least 25,000 of them have left
the State in the last five years; and yet in Georgia they pay
taxes on a large property. The negro in South Carolina sees what
has been done across the line, and he knows, or naturally fears,
that should the white man rule here the same results will follow.
As a consequence, therefore, the negro is in the hands of the
adventurer. He fears that his master will make him a slave, or
reduce him to a condition akin to slavery. The result is,
therefore, that not one of them will vote the Democratic ticket.
I have heard of Democratic negroes, but I have seen none. I have
spoken on this subject with Southern men in Florida, Georgia,
North and South Carolina, and there is only one story. "I have
negroes here," said one eminent gentleman, "who were my slaves in
the old time. They hang around my house. They will fight for me,
work for me and bring me their money to keep. They take my advice
in all things, and are trustworthy and devoted. They will not
vote for me. My coachman there will vote against me and in favor
of the meanest Republican in the county." The negro thus far sees
nothing in politics but his own freedom. He votes for Grant all
the time. His political education embraces a sentiment and a
fact. The sentiment is Lincoln, the fact is Grant. I was talking
to a woolly headed vagabond the other day, who had learned that I
was a Northern man, and wanted to go home with me as an
attendant. He was a worthless, ragged, shining darky, as black as
night, and earned his living, he told me, by dancing the juba for
gentlemen on the sidewalk when the police were not looking.
During the war he was a slave lad. "Did you know you were free,"
I said, "before the war was over?" He told me that the news came
very quickly; that they all kept "mighty shady," never pretending
to know until "Massa Sherman came with the soldiers." But they
knew it all the time, and there was never a night that his "old
mammie didn't pray to Massa Lincoln." This is the thought that
has burned deep into the negro mind. You cannot erase it. You
cannot take it from him. He has heard the slaves' horn. He has
worn the yoke and carried the scar into furrow and swamp. He has
seen father and mother perhaps, taken to the block and sold into
slavery. That memory ever lives as it would live with you and I,
if such a career darkened our lives. So Moses may steal and
Whipper may "administer justice," to him they mean freedom.
Coming out of the night they find no hand to grasp but the hand
of the adventurer. Is it any wonder then, that they follow him as
blind men or those who see darkly?
_Better Signs_
I cannot resist the conclusion, and it grows upon me every day,
in the South, that for much of the wrong, that has been done in
these States the old Southerners are to blame. I say this in
sorrow and with no harshness of feeling to them, and not without
making allowance for a feeling which, after all, is one of human
nature, a feeling of hatred of the men who defeated their hopes
of empire and of contempt for the negro, who is today a senator,
but who yesterday could have been sent to the whipping post. It
is not easy for a planter who has not enough to eat to rejoice
over the fact that the servant who once washed his beard is now
his ruler of the State. But, whatever the motive of the feeling,
the negro in South Carolina is at the feet of Moses and Whipper,
because he was driven there. The old master has as yet made no
sign of sympathy or friendship. I am profoundly convinced that
if, instead of mourning over the lost cause, as in the past they
were wont to bluster about the Yankees and slavery, these people
had dealt wisely with the negro and generously with the Northern
immigrant, these States, and South Carolina especially, would be
free and powerful. I hail the Chamberlain movement in one of its
aspects as the opening of a new era. The support which that
officer receives from the leading journal in the State, and one
of the leading journals in the South--_The News and
Courier_--shows the awakening of a new spirit. This paper
thoroughly Democratic, its editors gentlemen who were in the
Confederacy through the whole war and firm in their devotion to
the lost cause, sees that the only hope for South Carolina is
supporting the honest, intelligent New England Governor, who says
he is Republican from conviction and never ... a Democrat; that
he has no sympathy for Democracy or desire to be in its councils
... that as Governor he means to give ... honest government. The
news ... takes the Governor at his word and ... him on, while
newspapers over the border in Georgia mock and deride. If
Chamberlain succeeds he will divide the colored vote, and for the
first time array parties upon some other dividing line than that
laid down by Jefferson Davis when he founded his Confederacy.
_Hope for Carolina_
But whether he succeeds or not the movement which he began a year
ago, and which is now almost national in its extent, must go on.
There is no way for South Carolina to win a good government
except on this basis. Here the negroes are and in a large
majority. They cannot be driven away, they cannot be slain, they
cannot be disfranchised. They must be asked to take part in
government, to unite with honest men in punishing crime.
Education makes this more and more easy, and amid all this sorrow
and strife and tumult the work of education goes on. The negro
pants for the primer and the speller as the hart for the water of
the brook. I have taken pains, in some bookstore loungings, to
inquire about this. I learned in nearly every case that the
negroes were constant purchasers, and almost invariably of
school-books--elementary and advanced. I am told that the negro
is as anxious to read and write as he used to be to own a yellow
cravat. I do not suppose this education goes far, but it is
something. It is there I see day--there, and nowhere else. This
old feeling must die out. These memories of the Southern
Confederacy must be put away with the family laces and
grandmother' samplers. Leaders like Toombs and Hill must be
superseded. These negroes must be taught that freedom means
responsibility, and that honesty is safety and peace. These lands
and ports, these watercourses, these widely stretching and vast
acres, must respond to capital and energy, the money and the
skill of the North. Here is room in South Carolina alone for all
of New England, and in no State could the spirit of New England
work such marvels. But so long as the fogs of slavery and
misgovernment and ostracism and social hatred hang over them like
the malaria of their own rice lowlands, so long South Carolina
will be a prostrate State, crying for sympathy and help. Let us
trust that the time has come for the people to help themselves,
and in doing so, raise their Commonwealth to a pinacle of
grandeur and prosperity such as even its proud history has never
known.
"REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLE" AND THE INDEPENDENT REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT
The burden of the song of the Chamberlain Ring and their organs
is that the integrity of "the party" is of more consequence than
honest government, and that any Republican who votes for Green
and Delaney is a traitor to the Republican party and false to
Republican principles. In all humility we beg leave to suggest
that the persons who are candidates for office in the interest of
a corrupt Ring, and the few newspapers which live and move and
have their being by and in that Ring, are hardly the
disinterested and unselfish counsellors that they claim to be. It
is safer to go outside of the charmed circle, and ascertain what
is advised by Republicans whose honesty is as great as their
integrity, who were Republicans when Democracy was in the
ascendant, and who are as true now to Republicanism as they were
while slavery existed and most of the South Carolina white
Republicans were red-hot Democrats in the South or obscure
demagogues in the North. Their opinions are entitled to weight,
and for that reason they are carefully excluded from the columns
of the organs of the Chamberlain Ring. It is in our power,
however, to lay these opinions before the public, and we mean to
do it.
1. _The New York Times_ is known everywhere as a powerful
Republican newspaper; it advocates Republican principles in
season and out of season. This paper heartily approves of the
Independent Republican movement, and says that, whatever may be
the immediate result, "The final effect cannot be good." It says,
further, that, in the organization of the Independent Republican
movement, the colored people have made "a long step forward."
2. _The New York Evening Post_, a Republican newspaper which
circulates among the upper-ten, declares that "the political
signs from South Carolina are favorable"; and that it has very
gratifying assurances that "the colored voters are beginning to
perceive that they have been used too long by unscrupulous
politicians" (of the Chamberlain-Bowen school) "who have employed
partisan prejudices to promote their own private fortunes." And
_The New York Tribune_, an unfaltering friend of the colored
Republicans, talks in the same strain, and gives the Independent
Republican movement its warm approval.
3. One of the strongest Republican newspapers in New England is
_The Springfield Republican_ (Mass.) which sees in the new
movement an evidence of good faith on the part of the
Conservatives, and of sagacity and honesty on the part of the
Independent Republicans.
The newspapers whose opinions we have quoted represent, in large
part, the sentiments and opinions of the people who pushed the
war against the South, and insisted on the abolition of slavery.
They say, without a dissenting voice, that the Independent
Republican movement is right and wise and just. On the other
side, a marked man, stands C. C. Bowen, who, in printed
handbills, speaks of Judge Green as "the Democratic candidate for
Governor." Colored Republicans! whom will you believe, the men
and newspapers who fought your battles when you were powerless to
help yourselves, or the men and the newspapers whose love for you
only began when you had office and public plunder to bestow upon
them?