THE BLACK MAN'S SILENT POWER
HOW THE DOMINANCE OF THE IDEA OF THE NEGRO STIFLES FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND
SPEECH IN SOUTHERN POLITICS
At present the point of view of a large proportion of Southern white
people on the Negro question is adequately expressed by such men as
Tillman, Jeff Davis, and Hoke Smith. They are the political leaders. Their
policies are, in general, the policies adopted; they are the men elected
to office. Even in the border states, where the coloured population is not
so dense as in the black belt, the attitude of the politicians is much the
same as it is in the black belt. So far as the Negro question is
concerned, Governor Swanson of Virginia stands on practically the same
platform as Tillman and Hoke Smith--though he has not found it necessary
to express his views as vigorously. And the position of the black-belt
states in regard to the disfranchisement of the Negro and the extension of
"Jim Crow" laws is being accepted by the border state of Maryland and the
Western state of Oklahoma.
But there also exists, and particularly in Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, and Georgia, a vigorous minority point of view, which I have
referred to in a former chapter as the "broadest and freest thought of the
South." Although it has not yet attained political position, it is a party
of ideas, force, convictions, with a definite constructive programme. To
this constructive point of view I have been able, thus far, to refer only
incidentally.
In the present chapter I wish to consider some of the effects upon
Southern life of the domination of the Negro as a political issue, and the
result of the continued supremacy of leaders like Tillman.
[Illustration: J. POPE BROWN of Pulaski County, Georgia]
[Illustration: EX-GOVERNOR JAMES K. VARDAMAN of Mississippi]
[Illustration: SENATOR JEFF DAVIS of Arkansas
Photograph by Harris-Ewing]
[Illustration: GOVERNOR HOKE SMITH of Georgia
Copyright, 1906, by Hallen Studios]
[Illustration: SENATOR B. R. TILLMAN of South Carolina
Photograph by F. B. Johnston]
[Illustration: EX-GOVERNOR W. J. NORTHEN of Georgia]
In the next chapter, under the title "The New Southern Statesmanship," I
shall outline the programme and recount the activities of the new Southern
leaders.
_The Most Sinister Form of Negro Domination_
Travelling in the South one hears much of the "threat of Negro
domination," by which is generally meant political control by Negro voters
or the election of Negro officeholders. But there already exists a far
more real and sinister form of Negro domination. For the Negro still
dominates the _thought_ of the South. For over eighty years, until quite
recently, few great or serious issues have occupied the attention of the
South save those growing out of slavery and the Negro problem. Though the
very existence of our nation is due largely to the courage, wisdom, and
political genius of Southern statesmanship--to Washington, Jefferson,
Marshall, Patrick Henry, and their compatriots--the South, since the
enunciation of the Monroe doctrine in 1823, has played practically no
constructive part in national affairs. As Professor Mitchell of Richmond
well points out, the great, vitalising influences which swept over the
entire civilised world during the first half of the nineteenth century,
the liberalising, nationalising, industrialising influences, left the
South untouched. For it was chained in common slavery with the Negro.
Instead of expanding with the new thought, it clung to slavery in
opposition to the liberal tendency of the age, it insisted upon states'
rights in opposition to nationality, it contented itself with agriculture
alone, instead of embracing the rising industrialism. "It was an
instance," as Professor Mitchell says, "of arrested development."
Dr. John E. White of Atlanta has ably expressed the ethical result upon a
people of confining their thought to a single selfish interest:
"As long as we struggled for that which was good for everybody
everywhere," he says, "we moved with Providence and the South led the van.
There were great human concerns in the building up of the Republic. The
whole world was interested in it. It was a work ennobling to a people--the
inspiration of a great national usefulness. The disaster began when the
South began to think only for and of itself--began to have only one
problem."
Thus the South, owing to the presence of the Negro, dropped behind in the
progress of the world. And while the new and vitalising world influences
are now spreading abroad throughout the South, manifesting themselves in
factories, mines, mills, better schools, and more railroads, the old, ugly
Negro problem still shackles political thought and cripples freedom of
action. In other words, the South is being rapidly industrialised, but not
so rapidly liberalised and nationalised, though these developments are
certainly following.
_Exploiting Negro Prejudice_
The cause of this dominance of thought by the Negro lies chiefly with a
certain group of politicians whose interest it is to maintain their party
control and to keep the South solid. And they do this by harping
perpetually on the Negro problem. I observed, wherever I went in the South
and found busy and prosperous industries, that the Negro problem was
little discussed. One manufacturer in New Orleans said to me, when I asked
him about the Negro question:
"Why, I'm so busy I never think about it."
And that is the attitude of the progressive, constructive Southerner: he
is impatient with the talk about the Negro and the Negro problem. He wants
to forget it.
But there remains a body of men in the South who, not prosperous in other
industries, still make the Negro a sort of industry: they live by
exploiting Negro prejudice. They prevent the expression of new ideas and
force a great people to confine its political genius to a worn-out issue.
_Roosevelt Democrats Down South_
Talking with all classes of white men in the South, I was amazed to
discover how many of them had ceased to be Democrats (in the party sense)
at all, and were followers in their beliefs of Roosevelt and the
Republican party. Many of them told me that they wished they could break
away and express themselves openly and freely, but they did not dare. A
considerable number have ventured to vote the Republican ticket in
national elections (especially on the free-silver issue), but few indeed
have had the courage to declare their independence in state or local
affairs. For the instant a rift appears in the harmony of the white party
(and that is a better name for it than Democratic) the leaders talk Negro,
and the would-be independents are driven back into the fold. Over and over
again leaders with new issues have endeavoured to get a hearing. A number
of years ago the Populist movement spread widely throughout the South. Tom
Watson of Georgia, Kolb of Alabama, Butler of North Carolina, led revolts
against the old Democratic party. By fusion with the Republicans the
Populists carried North Carolina. But the old political leaders
immediately raised the Negro issue, declared that the Populists were
encouraging the Negro vote, and defeated the insurgents, driving most of
their leaders into political obscurity. Now, I am not arguing that
Populism was an ideal movement, nor that its leaders were ideal men; I am
merely trying to show the cost of independence in the South. A number of
years ago Emory Speer, of Georgia, now Federal Judge, ran for Congress on
an independent ticket. His platform was "The Union and the Constitution, a
free ballot and a fair count." The inevitable Negro issue was raised
against him, it was insisted that there must be no division among white
people lest the Negro secure the balance of political power, and Speer was
finally defeated. He became a Republican and has since had no influence in
state politics.
Upon this point an able Southern writer, Professor Edwin Mims of Trinity
College, N. C., has said:
"The independents in the South have to face the same state of affairs that
the independents of the North did in the '80's--all the better traditions
connected with one party, and most of the respectable people belonging to
the same party. Just as George William Curtis and his followers were
accused of being Democrats in disguise and of being traitors to the 'grand
old party' that had saved the Union and freed the slaves, and deserters to
a party of Copperheads, so the Southern independent is said to be a
Republican in disguise, and is told of the awful crimes of the
Reconstruction era. When all other arguments have failed, there is the
inevitable appeal to the threatened domination of an inferior race which
is not now even a remote possibility."
As a result of this domination of a worn-out issue, political contests in
the South have ordinarily concerned themselves not with stimulating public
questions, but with the personal qualifications of the candidates. The
South has not dared to face real problems lest the white party be split
and the Negro voter somehow slip into influence. A campaign was fought
last year in Mississippi. Of course the candidates all belonged to the
white party; all therefore subscribed to identically the same
platform--which had been prepared by the party leaders--so that the only
issue was the personality of the candidates. Let me quote from the
Mississippi correspondent of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, April 29,
1907:
The only "issue" ... is the personality of the candidate himself. The
voter may take the speeches of each candidate and analyse them from
start to finish, and he will fail to find where there is any
difference of opinion between the candidates on any of the live
questions of the day which are likely to affect Mississippi. He must,
therefore, turn from the speeches to the candidate himself for an
"issue" and must take his choice of the several candidates as men,
and decide which of them will do most good to the state and be the
safest man to entrust with the helm.
_Negro Holds Democratic Party Together_
I am speaking here, of course, of the Negro as a dominant issue, the
essential element which holds the Democratic party together and without
which other policies could not be carried or candidates elected. Vigorous
divisions on other issues have taken place locally within the lines of the
Democratic party, especially during the last two or three years. The
railroad and trust questions have been prominently before the people in
most of the Southern states. During his long campaign for governor Hoke
Smith talked railroads and railroad influence in politics constantly, but
in order to be elected he raised the Negro question and talked it
vigorously, especially in all of his country addresses. It is also highly
significant that the South should have taken so strong a lead in the
prohibition movement, although even this question has been more or less
connected with the Negro problem, the argument being that the South must
forbid the liquor traffic because of its influence on the Negro. No states
in the Union, indeed, have been more radical in dealing with the trust
question than Texas and Arkansas; and Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina
have been the scenes of some of the hottest fights in the country on the
railroad question. All this goes to show that, once freed from the incubus
of the Negro on Southern thought, the South would instantly become a great
factor in national questions. And being almost exclusively American in its
population, with few rich men and ideals of life not yet so subservient to
the dollar as those of the North, it would become a powerful factor in the
progressive and constructive movements of the country. The influence of a
single bold man like Tillman in the Senate has been notable. In the future
the country has much to look for from the idealism of Southern
statesmanship.
_Stifling Free Speech_
But the unfortunate result of the dominance of the single idea of the
Negro upon politics has been to benumb the South intellectually; to stifle
free thought and free speech. Let a man advance a new issue and if the
party leaders do not favour it they have only to cry out "Negro," twisting
the issue so as to emphasise its Negro side (and every question in the
South has a Negro side), and the independent thinker is crushed. I once
talked with the editor of a newspaper in the South who said to me, "such
and such is my belief."
"But," I said, "you take just the opposite position in your paper."
"Yes--but I can't talk out; it would kill my business."
This timorousness has touched not only politics, but has reached the
schools and the churches--and still shackles the freest speech. George W.
Cable, the novelist, was practically forced to leave the South because he
advocated the "continual and diligent elevation of that lower man which
human society is constantly precipitating," because he advocated justice
for the Negro.
Professor Andrew Slade was compelled to resign from Emory College in
Georgia because he published an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ taking a
point of view not supported by the majority in Southern sentiment!
Professor John Spencer Bassett was saved from a forced resignation from
Trinity College in North Carolina for a similar offence after a lively
fight in the Board of Trustees which left Trinity with the reputation of
being one of the freest institutions in the South.
The situation in the South has made people afraid of the truth. Political
oratory, particularly, often gets away entirely from the wholesome and
regenerative world of actual facts. I quoted in the last chapter from a
speech of Governor Swanson of Virginia, in which he said: "The business
houses and financial institutions are in the hands of intelligent
Anglo-Saxons, and with God's help and our own good right hand we will hold
him (the Negro) where he is."
_Negro's Progress in Richmond_
What a curious thing oratory is! Right in Governor Swanson's own city of
Richmond there are four banks owned and operated by Negroes; one of the
Negro bankers sat in the convention to which Governor Swanson was at that
moment speaking. There is a Negro insurance company, "The True Reformers,"
in which I saw eighty Negro clerks and stenographers at work. It has a
surplus of $300,000, with a business in thirty states. Negroes also own
and operate in Richmond four clothing stores, five drug stores, many
grocery stores (some very small, of course), two hotels, four livery
stables, five printing establishments, eight fraternal insurance
companies, seven meat markets, fifty eating-places, and many other sorts
of business enterprises, small, of course, but growing rapidly. In
Richmond also, there are ten Negro lawyers, fifteen physicians, three
dentists, two photographers, eighty-five school teachers, forty-six Negro
churches.
_Southerners Who See the Danger_
When I make the assertion regarding "free speech" and the fear of truth in
the South, I am making no statement which has not been far more forcibly
put by thoughtful and fearless Southerners who see and dread this sinister
tendency.
The late Chancellor Hill, of the University of Georgia, spoke of the
"deadly paralysis of intellect caused by the enforced uniformity of
thought within the lines of one party." He said:
"Before the war the South was in opposition to the rest of civilisation
on the question of slavery. It defended itself: its thinking, its
political science, even its religion was not directed toward a search for
truth, but it was concentrated on the defence of a civil and political
order of things. These conditions made impossible a vigorous intellectual
life."
William Preston Few, dean of Trinity College, North Carolina, writes
(_South Atlantic Quarterly_, January, 1905):
"This prevalent lack of first hand thinking and of courage to speak out
has brought about an unfortunate scarcity of intellectual honesty."
An excellent illustration of this condition grew out of the statement of
Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, president of the University of Virginia, at a
dinner a year or so ago, in which he compared the recent political
leadership of the South somewhat unfavourably with the statesmanship of
the Old South. Upon hearing of this remark Senator Bailey of Texas angrily
resigned from the alumni committee of the University. Chancellor Hill
said, concerning the incident:
"The question whether Dr. Alderman was right or wrong becomes
insignificant beside the larger question whether Senator Bailey was right
or wrong in his method of dealing with a difference of opinion. And this
leads to the question: Have we freedom of opinion in the South? Must every
man who thinks above a whisper do so at the peril of his reputation and
his influence, or at the deadlier risk of having an injury inflicted upon
the institution which he represents?"
In giving so much space to the words and position of Vardaman, Tillman,
Hoke Smith, and others, I have not yet sufficiently emphasised the work
and influence of the thoughtful and constructive men of the South. But it
must be borne in mind that I am writing of politics, of majorities: and
politicians of the Tillman type are still the political forces in the
South. They are in control: they are elected. Yet there is the growing
class of new statesmen whose work I shall recount in the next chapter.
_Whites Disfranchised as Well as Blacks_
But the limitation of intellectual freedom has not been the only result of
the political dominance of the Negro issue. It is curious to observe that
when one class of men in any society is forced downward politically,
another is forced up: for so mankind keeps its balances and averages. A
significant phase of the movement in the South to eliminate the Negro is
the sure return to government by a white aristocracy. For disfranchisement
of the Negro has also served to disfranchise a very large proportion of
the white people as well. In every Southern state where Negro
disfranchisement has been forced, the white vote also has been steadily
dwindling. To-day in Alabama not half the white males of voting age are
qualified voters. In Mississippi the proportion is still lower.
In the last Presidential election the state of Mississippi was carried by
Parker with a total vote of only 58,383, out of a total of 349,177
citizens (both white and coloured) of voting age. Only one-third of the
white men voted. It has been found, indeed, in several counties in
Mississippi, that while the number of white eligibles has been decreasing,
the number of Negroes on the registration lists has been increasing. In
the city of Jackson, Miss., last year, 1,200 voters were registered out of
a population of 32,000 people.
To show the dwindling process, take the single country of Tallapoosa in
Alabama. The last census shows 4,203 whites and 2,036 blacks of voting
age, 6,259 in all. After the adoption of the new constitution
disfranchising the Negro in 1901, the total registration was 4,008. Last
fall, although the important question of prohibition had arisen and an
especial effort was made to get voters out, an investigation showed there
were only 1,700 qualified voters in the country.
This astonishing condition is due primarily to the fact that there is no
vital party division on new issues in the South; but it is also due to the
franchise tests, which, having been made severe to keep the Negro out,
operate also to disfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and ignorant
white men. I spent much time talking with white workingmen, both in the
cities and in the country. I asked them why so many workingmen and farmers
did not vote. Here is one comprehensive reply of a labour leader:
"What's the use? We have to pay two dollars a year poll-tax, and pay it
nearly a year before election. And why vote? There are no real issues at
stake. An election is merely a personal quarrel in the clique of men who
control the Democratic party. Why should we pay two dollars a year and go
to the bother of satisfying the personal ambition of some man we are not
interested in?"
_A White Oligarchy_
So the white vote is dwindling; the political power is being gathered into
the hands of fewer and fewer men. And there is actually springing up a
large class of non-voting white men not unlike the powerless "poor whites"
of ante-bellum times. The white politicians, indeed, in some places do not
encourage the poorer white men to qualify, for the fewer voters, the more
certain their control.
Of course the chief fights in Mississippi and elsewhere are not at the
elections, but in the Democratic (white) primaries; but this fact only
accentuates the point I wish to make: the limitation of political
independence of action. Such conditions are deeply concerning the
thoughtful men of the South; but while they think, few dare to brave
political extinction by speaking out. One would think that the Republican
party, which ostensibly stands for the opposition in the South, would cry
out about conditions. But it does not. The fact is, the Republican party,
as now constituted in the South, is even a more restricted white oligarchy
than the Democratic party. In nearly all parts of the South, indeed, it is
a close corporation which controls or seeks to control all the federal
offices. Speak out? Of course not. It, too, is attempting to eliminate the
Negro (in some places it calls itself "lily white"), and it works not
inharmoniously with the Democratic politicians. For the Republican machine
in the South really has no quarrel with the Democratic machine; it takes
the federal offices which the Democrats cannot get, and the Democrats take
local offices which the Republicans know they cannot get.
_The South a Weapon in National Conventions_
The Republican Presidents at Washington have, unfortunately, played into
the hands of the Southern office-holding machine. Why? Partly because
Republicans are few in the South and partly because a solid Republican
delegation from the South, easily handled and controlled and favouring
the administration, is a powerful weapon in national conventions. McKinley
played almost absolutely into the hands of this Southern Republican
machine, and Hanna operated it. Indeed, McKinley's nomination was probably
due to the skill with which Hanna marshaled this solid phalanx of Southern
delegates. Roosevelt has made a number of first-class appointments outside
of the machine, even appointing a few Democrats of the high type of Judge
Jones of Alabama.
Over and over in this book I have spoken of the Negro as a national, not a
Southern issue; and in politics this is peculiarly true. Though having few
Republicans, the South, through its office-holding Republican delegations,
has largely influenced the choice of more than one Republican president.
The "Solid South" is as useful to the Republican party as to the
Democratic party. Why the certainty expressed by Republican politicians of
the nomination of Taft? Because the national organisation felt sure it
could control the Southern delegations. It counted on the "Solid South."
Thus in a very real sense the government of this entire nation turns upon
the despised black man--whether he votes or not!
_The Negro's Political Power in the North_
In another way the Southern attitude toward the Negro affects the nation.
Owing to disfranchisement and "Jim Crow" laws, thousands of Negroes have
moved northward and settled in the great cities, until to-day Negro
voters, though they may not (as has been claimed) hold the balance of
power, yet wield a great influence in the politics of at least four
states--Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, and Rhode Island--and are also
considerable factors in the political destiny of Illinois, Pennsylvania,
New York, and Delaware. The potential influence of the Negro voter in the
North is excellently illustrated in the recent campaign for the Republican
nomination to the Presidency, especially in the fight in Ohio between
Foraker and Taft and in the eagerness displayed by Taft to placate the
Negro vote.
In still another way the Negro affects the entire nation. Through its
attitude of exclusion the South exercises an influence on national
legislation out of all proportion to its voting population. Though nearly
all Negroes are disfranchised, as well as a large number of white voters,
all these disfranchised voters are counted in the allotment of Congressmen
to Southern states.
Out of this has grown a curious condition. In 1904 Alabama, Arkansas,
Georgia, and Mississippi, which have thirty-five members in Congress, cast
413,516 votes, while Massachusetts alone, with only fourteen Congressmen,
cast 445,098 votes.
Here, for example, is the record of South Carolina:
Total population of voting age, both white and coloured (1900) 283,325
Total white voting population 130,375
Total actual vote in 1902 for Congressmen 32,185
Total Democratic vote which elected seven Congressmen 29,343
Thus in South Carolina in 1902 an average of about 4,600 voters voted at
the election for each Congressman (in 1904, a Presidential year, the
average was about 8,100) while in New York State over 40,000 votes are
cast in each Congressional district and in Pennsylvania about 38,000.
Now, I am not here criticising this condition; I am merely endeavouring to
set down the facts as I find them. My purpose is to illustrate the
profound and far-reaching effects of the Negro issue upon the nation. And
is it not curious, when all is said, to observe how this rejected black
man, whom the South has attempted to eliminate utterly from politics, has
been for years changing and warping the entire government of this nation
in the most fundamental ways! Did he not cause a civil war, the results of
which still curse the country? And though excluded in large measure from
the polls, does he not in reality cast his mighty vote for Presidents,
Congressmen, Governors?
Often, looking out across the South, it appears to the observer that the
Negro has a more far-reaching and real influence on our national life for
being excluded from the polls than he would have if he were frankly and
justly admitted to the franchise on the same basis as white men.
All the real thinkers and statesmen of the South have looked and longed
for the hour when the South, free of this dominance of an ugly issue,
should again take its great place in national affairs. In 1875, at the
close of Reconstruction, Senator Lamar of Mississippi predicted in a
speech at Jackson that the South, having eliminated the Negro from
politics, would now divide on new economic issues and become politically
healthy. But that has not happened; less division on real issues probably
exists in Mississippi to-day than in 1875. Why? Is it not possible that
the manner of the elimination of the Negro from politics is wrong? Has it
occurred to leaders and statesmen that Negroes who are qualified can be
eliminated _into_ politics; that the present method in reality makes the
Negro a more dangerous political factor than he would be if he were
allowed to vote regularly and quietly?
_Southerners Who Are Speaking Out_
In spite of the domination of both parties in the South by narrowing
groups of leaders there are not wanting men to fight for a new alignment.
On the Republican side one of these men is Joseph C. Manning, of Alexander
City, Ala., who publishes a paper called the _Southern American_. He has
shown how white men are being disfranchised as well as Negroes, how the
South is controlled by a "Bourbon oligarchy" in the Democratic party and a
"federal-for-revenue" Republican party--as he calls them. His paper
appears every week with his denunciations in big letters, urging the
Republican party to reform and become a party of truth and progress.
He says:
THE RALLYING CRY
The great body of the people of the white South, the masses of the
white people of Alabama, are to-day suppressed by the strategy of a
political autocracy dominating under the guise and pretence of a
democracy.
Why not throw off the yoke and get in the fight?
Rise up above this petty delegate getting, patronage manipulating,
state chairman squabbling, until this small politics shall become
lost in the great and the supreme issue.
Stop this "lily-white" nonsense. Quit being sidetracked by this
Bourbon wail of Negro. Recognise this vital force of the immovable
truth that an injustice to one American citizen will react upon all.
You can't have one law for the white man and another for the Negro in
our form of government. You know that those who have the most talked
of suppressing blacks have really suppressed you, white Republicans,
and the most of the Southern whites.
The outcry of Negro and social equality and the like is the very
essence of political moonshine.
A number of men inside the Democratic party are not afraid to speak out.
Ex-Congressman Fleming of Georgia said in a notable address at Athens,
Ga.:
"Those whose stock in trade is 'hating the nigger' may easily gain some
temporary advantage for themselves in our white primaries, where it
requires no courage, either physical or moral, to strike those who have no
power to strike back--not even with a paper ballot. But these men will
achieve nothing permanent for the good of the state or of the nation by
stirring up race passion and prejudice. Injustice and persecution will not
solve any of the problems of the ages. God did not so ordain his universe.
"Justly proud of our race, we refuse to amalgamate with the Negro, but the
Negro is an American citizen, and is protected as such by guarantees of
the Constitution that are as irrepealable almost as the Bill of Rights
itself. Nor, if such a thing as repealing these guarantees were possible,
would it be wise for the South. Suppose we admit the oft-reiterated
proposition that no two races so distinct as the Caucasian and the Negro
can live together on terms of perfect equality; yet it is equally true
that without some access to the ballot, present or prospective, some
participation in the government, no inferior race in an elective republic
could long protect itself against reduction to slavery in many of its
substantial forms--and God knows the South wants no more of that curse."
Men of the type of Mr. Fleming are far in the minority in the South; they
are so few as yet as to count, politically speaking, for little or
nothing. But the fact that they are there, that they are not afraid to
speak out, even though it ruins them politically, is significant and
hopeful.
_Ante-bellum Aggression_
Now it is this way with a party having only one issue: when attacked, it
can only become more and more violent and vociferous upon that issue. And
this is what we discover in the South: an increasing bitterness of leaders
like Tillman and Vardaman, for they know that their own existence and that
of the party which they represent depends upon keeping the Negro issue
prominent. The very fact that they are violent is significant: it shows
that they recognise powerful and growing new elements in the South, which,
though not yet apparent politically, are getting hold of the people.
In other words, the present group of autocratic leaders is seeking at any
length to defend itself. And its work is not only defensive, it is also
offensive. It must be. The institution of slavery might have lasted many
years longer if the Southern leaders had been content with the slave
territory they already held. But they were not so content. They tried to
extend slavery to the new territories of the Union, and it was this
aggression that was the chief immediate cause of the Civil War. It was the
struggle over Missouri and Kansas, and the policy of the country regarding
the new West, whether it should be admitted slave or free, which
precipitated hostilities.
"Continual aggression," John Hay once said, "is the necessity of a false
position." The ante-bellum Southern leaders saw that they must either
extend their institution or else face its ultimate extinction.
At the present time we have a repetition of the ante-bellum aggression. As
it happened then, we have speakers like Tillman and others coming North
urging the validity of the Southern treatment of the Negro. Writers like
Thomas Dixon rekindle old fires of hatred. At the same moment that Tillman
is abusing the North for its interest in Southern education, he himself is
speaking from Northern platforms to make sentiment for the Southern
position. So we have the extension of disfranchisement and "Jim Crow" laws
to the new Western state of Oklahoma and the agitation for
disfranchisement in Maryland. So we have the advancing demand by
Southerners in Congress for the repeal of the XV Amendment. And just
recently Congressman Heflin of Alabama has introduced a bill seeking to
provide for "Jim Crow" distinctions upon the street-cars of Washington.
How all this recalls the efforts of the ante-bellum Southern Congressmen
to force the United States Government to take the Southern position on the
slavery question!
_Fighting to Put the Negro Down_
I have recently read some of the voluminous discussions upon the subject
of slavery which took place before the Civil War, and I have been
astonished to find the arguments of the Southern political leaders of
to-day almost identical in substance (though changed somewhat in form)
with the reasoning of the old slave-owning class. One hears the same
arguments regarding the physiological and ethnological inferiority of all
coloured men to all white men: the argument that "one drop of Negro blood
makes a Negro," and even that the Negro is not a human being at all, but a
beast.
I have before me a book recently published by a Bible house (of all
places!) in St. Louis and widely circulated in the South. It is entitled
"Is the Negro a Beast?" and it goes on to prove by Biblical quotation that
he has no soul! Being a beast, it becomes a small matter to kill him.
One also hears the argument now, as in slavery times, of the divine right
of the white man to rule the Negro. "God intended the white man to rule,"
says Vardaman, "and the Negro to be a humble servant." And finally there
is the frank argument of physical force; that the white man, being strong,
will and must rule the Negro.
Hoke Smith to-day is supporting much the same position that Robert Toombs
held before the war. Of course Hoke Smith has receded from the belief in
the chattel slavery of the Negro for which Toombs contended; but in many
other respects he evidently believes that the Negro should be reduced (as
Ex-Congressman Fleming of Georgia says in the quotation given above) "to
slavery in many of its substantial forms." In order to validate its
position and keep its place (and make the Negro keep his) the white
aristocracy has been forced to defend the doctrine of all monarchies and
aristocracies--the inequality of men in all respects. Hoke Smith states
the fundamental assumption thus plainly in his address (June 9, 1906):
"I believe the wise course is to plant ourselves squarely upon the
proposition in Georgia that the Negro is in no respect the equal of the
white man, and that he cannot in the future in this state occupy a
position of equality."
_Both the South and the North Undemocratic_
Thus I have attempted to present the political situation in the South and
the reasoning which underlies it. It possesses a large significance for
the entire country.
Here is the fact: the war and the emancipation proclamation did not make
the South completely democratic; it merely cut away one bulwark of
aristocracy--slavery. The South is still dominated by the aristocratic
idea, and more or less frankly so. The South has admitted only grudgingly,
and not yet fully, the "poor white" man to democratic political
fellowship. There are, as I have shown, hundreds of thousands of
disfranchised white Americans in the South. Moreover many white leaders
look askance on the new Italian immigrants, though they, too, are white
men. The extreme point of view in regard to the foreigner was expressed in
a speech by the Hon. Jeff Truly, candidate for governor of Mississippi, at
Magnolia in that state on March 18, 1907:
"I am opposed to any inferior race. The Italian immigration scheme does
not settle the labour question; Italians are a threat and a danger to our
racial, industrial, and commercial supremacy. Mississippi needs no such
immigration. Leave your lands to your own children. As governor of the
state, I promise that not one dollar of the state shall be spent for the
immigration of any such."
As for the Negro, of course, the South has never believed in a democracy
which really includes him.
But neither does the North. When we get right down to it, the controlling
white men in the North do not believe in an inclusive democracy much more
than the South. I have talked with many Northerners who go South, and it
is astonishing to see how quickly most of them adopt the Southern point of
view. For it is the doctrine which many of them, down in their hearts,
really believe.
In reality the North also has an aristocratic government, an oligarchy
based upon wealth and property, which dominates politics and governs the
country more or less completely. Roosevelt has been fighting some of the
more boisterous aspects of the rule of this oligarchy--and has showed the
country how powerful it is!
_The Underman Fighting All Over the World_
It is curious, indeed, when one's attention is awakened to the facts, how
strong the parallel is between the South and the North. I mean here a
parallel not in laws or even in customs, but in spirit, in the living
reality which lies down deep under institutions, which is, after all, the
only thing that really counts.
The cause of all the trouble in the North is similar to what it is in the
South: the underman will not keep his place. He is restless, ambitious, he
wants civil, political, and industrial equality. Thus we see the growth of
labour organisations, and the spread of populists and socialists, who
demand new rights and a greater share in the products of labour. They will
not, as Hoke Smith says of the Negroes, "content themselves with the place
of inferiority." The essential feature of the history of the last five
years in this country, and it will go down in history as the beginning of
great things, has been the vague, crudely powerful effort of the underman
(half his strength wasted because he is blind) to limit in some degree the
power of this moneyed aristocracy. Such is the meaning of the demand for
trust and railroad legislation, such the significance of the insurance
investigation, such the effort to curb the power of men like Rockefeller,
Harriman, Morgan.
So the North, in spirit, also disfranchises its lower class. It does it by
the purchase at elections in one form or another of its "poor whites" and
its Negroes. What else is the meaning of Tammany Hall and the boss and
machine system in other cities? Tammany Hall is our method of
disfranchisement: it is our cunning machine for nullifying the fourteenth
and fifteenth amendments. While the South is disfranchising by
legislation, the North is doing it by cash.
_The Question We Are Coming To_
I have spoken of the lack of free speech in the South; but that is not
peculiar to the South. Though there is undoubtedly a far greater
intellectual freedom to-day in the North than in the South, yet the North
has disciplined more than one professor for his utterances on the trust or
railroad questions. South or North, it is dangerous to attack the
entrenched privilege of those in control.
We criticise the frankness of Vardaman in advocating different standards
of justice for white men and Negroes, but do we not have the same custom
in the North? How extremely difficult it is sometimes to get a rich
criminal into jail in the North!
In short, we are coming again face to face in this country with the same
tremendous (even revolutionary) question which presents itself in every
crisis of the world's history:
"What is democracy? What does democracy include? Does democracy really
include Negroes as well as white men? Does it include Russian Jews,
Italians, Japanese? Does it include Rockefeller and the Slavonian
street-sweeper? And Tillman and the Negro farmhand?"