[277] Ibid. p. 281.
[278] Stone, The American Race Problem, p. 217.
[279] Ibid. p. 53.
[280] W. E. & Cog. List Tax Payers, City of Charleston 1859, pp.
392-403.
[281] Press of the Southern Reporter, p. 1.
[282] Ibid. p. 5.
[283] Ibid. p. 8.
[284] Sir H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World, p. XI.
[285] Jervey, Lecture Chicago University; The Elder Brother, p. 446.
[286] Scruggs, Colombian and Venezuelan Republics, pp. 300, 301, 324,
325.
[287] Stone, American Race Problem, pp. 243, 245.
[288] Ibid. pp. 328, 329.
[289] Ibid. pp. 314, 315.
[290] Ibid. p. 350.
[291] Ibid. p. 328.
[292] Brawley, Short History American Negro, p. 185.
[293] Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. 2, p. 27.
[294] Ibid. p. 28.
CHAPTER XII
Despite the incidents related in the last chapter, which might be
claimed to be almost isolated or pertaining to a very small class
of the Negro population, to comprehend clearly all that is embraced
in the diffusion of the Negroes throughout the United States, and
the consequent dissolution of the mass in the Southern States, while
endeavoring to grasp what is so intelligently urged by Mr. Alfred
Stone, concerning “pressure”, the investigator should not fail to
realize that in the Southern States, if the Negro was willing to accept
unreservedly the position of an inferior and a menial, there was
formerly no distinct repugnance to him, per se. In fact, with a small
class, the descendants of slave holders, he obtained and still obtains
tolerance and not a little patronizing affection, being treated in
about the way in which a careless, amiable, hot tempered father might
treat an amusing child.
As long as the child remains a child, it might not be so bad for him;
but the question is what kind of a man does it make of him?
With regard to the views and practices of the whites of the Northern
States concerning the Negro question, they may be divided into three
classes.
The first class, corresponding to a similar class in Great Britain, may
be not unfairly described as a small, sentimental, somewhat hysterical
class, lacking in neither culture, character nor wealth. These
entertain a prejudice in favor of the Negro on account of his color and
previous condition of servitude. At one period in the history of the
United States, wielding power out of all proportion to the wealth,
culture or numbers of its members and representing the disintegrating
force of an idea to “sap the power of rank, of wealth and of numbers,”
it has left its mark on the history of the country in the great
almost incalculable good of Emancipation; and in the terrific injury,
injustice and folly of Reconstruction.
The second class is best described as having no color prejudice. While
considerably larger than the first, it is scarcely the largest in point
of numbers; yet, until very lately, it could have been declared with
accuracy, as the most influential class in the Northern States. It is
true that it must be borne in mind that it has not yet felt what the
most thorough white student of the Race question has described as:
“The vague, rather intangible, but wholly real feeling of the
‘pressure’ which comes to the white man in the presence of a mass of
people of a different race.”[295]
But, with this reservation, it may be styled as calm, tolerant, kindly
tempered and quite considerate of an opposing view; and, as its
possessors are singularly free from sentimentality, they wield just the
degree of power and influence which is the accompaniment of such great
qualities.
The third class is, in point of numbers, first, and although, today,
the power and influence this class wields is not proportionate to its
numerical strength, it is slowly but steadily increasing its influence.
The great majority of the members of this class entertain towards the
Negro an intense prejudice. Some members of it cannot bear the presence
of a Negro near them in any capacity; being utterly unable to accept
with any patience, from such, the most menial services. Undoubtedly
such a prejudice tends to prevent miscegenation and, without it, all
the laws which may be enacted will offer but a comparatively feeble bar.
On the other hand, wherever there are two races living side by side in
fairly kind feeling, as long as men and women remain creatures of such
an infinite variety of individual tastes, desires, powers of restraint,
passions and appetites, miscegenation, to some extent will prevail, and
such being the case, where the inferior exists in the greatest numbers
there will be the greatest result from it; while, on the other hand,
as the great numbers of the inferior race are lessened, the tendency
toward miscegenation must also be lessened.
This happens from various reasons. First, from the simple fact, that,
with the lesser numbers of the inferior race, there must be lesser
opportunity. Second, from the very important fact that the fewer the
number of the inferior race, the more its members must be brought
into contact with and under the influence of the standards of the
superior race, and absorbing their ideals, with a consequent increase
of personal dignity, and decency; from which will necessarily increase
the disposition to refuse solicitations provocative of miscegenation,
except on terms not readily granted.
From these deductions, it must be apparent, that, in a broadly national
conception of patriotism, as opposed to sectionalism, however
disguised, the natural and slow diffusion of the Negroes throughout
the United States must result in an elevation and improvement of the
condition of the population white and black, taken as a whole; although
it is quite possible, by some portions, which have been perfectly free
from any share whatever of the burden of an inferior race, a share
of the weight and responsibility could then be no longer avoided, or
discharged entirely by sermons to the portions less happily situated,
or the payment of something like a bounty.
Finally, to those Southerners who cherish the wild delusion, that,
with a retention of great numbers of the inferior race in their midst,
a sentiment, backed by laws against intermarriage, is sufficient
protection against miscegenation, the illustration afforded by East
Africa may be pointed to. East Africa lies just south of the oldest
civilization we know of, and has been invaded in the past by horde
after horde of whites.
The Biblical story of Cain and Abel may be taken in part as
illustrative of the two vocations by which mankind slowly arose from
the savage occupation of the hunter to the two higher divisions,
namely, those who tamed the beasts, and those who tilled the soil.
Modern medical opinion is to the effect that no occupation so develops
the physical perfection of humanity as the pastoral vocation; while
reflection would indicate that it must cultivate a stronger set of
characteristics than either hunting or tillage.
Bring into collision in a comparatively primitive state a pastoral
people and one engaged in agriculture and the shepherds and herdsmen
will rule.
But will their contempt for those they have brought under and subjected
to their rule suffice to prevent miscegenation? That is the serious
question for the Southern man.
It is apparent in East Africa, where this contact has existed for
many generations, despite the preservation of every racial prejudice
which marks the Southern white man, the superior race has not avoided
miscegenation, but, upon the contrary, it has steadily progressed,
until distinctions in color are almost gone, and even the more
stubbornly yielding distinctions of facial traits and hair texture are
gradually giving away, and this miscegenation seems to have checked
progress in civilization.
Writing of the two classes of Negroes found near the great African
lakes, the explorer Stanley says:
“We discovered that there were two different and distinctly differing
races living in this region in harmony with each other, one being
clearly of Indo-African origin, possessing exceedingly fine features,
aquiline noses, slender necks, small heads, with a grand and proud
carriage; an old, old race, possessing splendid traditions and ruled
by inflexible customs, which would admit of no deviation. Though the
majority have a nutty brown complexion, some even of a rich dark
brown, the purest of their kind resemble old ivory in color and their
skins have a beautiful soft feel, as of finest satin. These confine
themselves solely to the breeding of cattle and are imbued with a
supercilious contempt for the hoeman, the Bavira, who are strictly
agricultural. No proud dukeling in England could regard a pauper with
more pronounced contempt than the Wahuma profess for the Bavira. They
will live in the country of the Bavira, but not in their villages;
they will exchange their dairy produce for the grain and vegetables of
the hoeman, but they will never give their daughters in marriage but
to a Wahuma born. Their sons may possess children by Bavira women, but
that is the utmost concession.”[296]
All of which indicates great pride still in the superior race; but a
reduction to what is practically two classes of Negroes, as far as the
outside world is concerned. Note Livingston also in Southwest Africa.
But in addition to the reasons advanced why this matter of the
diffusion of the Negroes through the United States should be accepted
as best, there is the consideration that it is inevitable. That it is
in progress can no longer be doubted, although, as Robert Y. Hayne
declared in 1827, it would be, “a very gradual operation.”
The strong grip which the Republican party maintained in Federal
politics for the sixteen years, up to 1912, has in some measure to be
credited to the influx from the South of Negroes into the North and
West, where they most naturally and reasonably vote the Republican
ticket. Indeed it has been positively asserted by one whose devotion to
that party could scarcely, at the time, have been questioned, that they
may have been brought there for this purpose.
Says Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, in his very interesting and
instructive book, “The Southern South”:
“A systematic effort has been made to settle colored people in
Indiana, in order to hold that State in the Republican column; and
there are now probably nearly a hundred thousand there, a third of
whom settled in Indianapolis, where they furnish a race problem of
growing seriousness.”[297]
It is true that the Census for 1910 only disclosed in Indiana 60,280
Negroes; but Mr. Hart’s not unreasonable estimate was probably based
upon the preceding Censuses of 1880, 1890 and 1900, alone available in
1910, when he wrote, which did indicate a rising rate of that species
of population, from 15% to 27%, while that of 1910 indicated for that
State a drop of 4.8%. A similar falling off being recorded in Illionis,
where the rate of increase dropped from 49 percent to 28.2 percent, and
in Ohio alone of these three great States, the rate increased. There
it had risen from 11 to 15 percent. Proceeding East, a decline was
also recorded for Pennsylvania from 43 to 23.6; for New Jersey from 47
to 28.5; for New York from 40 to 35.2 percent. The total increase of
the Northern States east of the Mississippi from the year 1900 to 1910
being only 142,363 as against 188,347 from 1890 to 1900; but west of
the Mississippi from 1900 to 1910 the increase was 107,747, as against
51,194 from 1890 to 1900; a total increase in the whole area outside
of the South of about 250,000 against about 240,000 for the previous
decade. At the same time in the South for the decade 1900 to 1910 an
increase of Negroes of only 757,901 as against 1,079,054 from 1890 to
1900, with an actual decrease in the population of the three States,
Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee, amounting to 33,020.
This would seem to indicate a rate of increase in the South of about
ten percent and outside of the South, in the rest of the United States
about twenty-five percent, up to 1910.
But in connection with the above there is another fact which is of some
importance, and that is the increase of the entire Negro population
of the United States, in 1900 amounting to 8,849,789, as exhibited by
the Census of 1910 was 351,029 less than the increase of the 7,488,788
Negroes in the United States in 1890 to 1900.
What has caused the difference?
The not unnatural but wholly unsatisfactory suggestion of the Census
authorities, that the discrepancy is due to the errors of others
Censuses, should be received with politeness coming from such efficient
workers; but can hardly be taken at its face value. After all the
Censuses are our safest guides, and there is not much reason for
thinking one so very much better than another.
Again, there is a class of reasoners prone to take to themselves the
somewhat comforting conclusion that the Negroes may be moving into the
North and West from the South; but that they cannot live there and die
out; to clinch the argument, they point to Canada, where it is asserted
just about and after the war a great number of Negroes had settled in
Ontario, and certain it is that by the official Census of Canada for
1911, the Negro population had decreased from 17,437 in 1901 to 16,877
in 1911.[298] Yet there are other facts and circumstances leading to
speculations affording explanation of a part of the loss.
From 1900 to 1920, there passed over into Canada from the United States
some 1,318,834 citizens of the latter country, some of whom have been
Negroes, how many mulattoes, not designated.
It is true that, as Negroes, not more than 383 so classified entered
Canada up to 1911, and only 13 during the fiscal year 1910-1911;[299]
but many more under the classification “citizens of the United States;”
must have entered in the light of the following newspaper comments:
“Winnipeg, Man. February 24, 1911. The Dominion Government today
decided to stop the immigration of Negroes from the United States,
and stopped at the boundary a party which intended to go to Western
Canada.”
By subsequent and fuller accounts it appeared this party numbering 200
were finally permitted to go on and settle, the correspondent of the
London Times, writing to this paper as follows, from Toronto:
“There has been some discussion in Parliament and in the Press over
the arrival in Western Canada of 200 Negroes, who will settle in
the free homestead lands in the Athabasca Landing district, north
of Edmonton. It is said the movement threatens to become formidable
and within the year 5,000 Negroes may seek homes in the Peace River
Country. This, however, is probably an exaggeration, arising out
of the alarm which the invasion has excited. The 200 Negroes who
have just arrived entered the country of Emmerson in the Province
of Manitoba, and were subjected to rigorous examination by the
Immigration officials, but, under the law, none of them could be
refused admission. All had money, all were in good health and
apparently of good moral standing. The least that any head of a family
possessed in money was $300, and they brought also household effects
and farm implements. A similar party of 200 came from Oklahoma to
Canada over a year ago, and settled in the neighborhood of Athabasca
Landing, where they seem to have prospered, and to have proved
acceptable to the country.”[300]
The correspondent went on to observe that refusal of homesteads might
arouse “feeling in Washington” and also fail to meet “the approbation
of the Canadian people.” But he thought, if it was the beginning of a
formidable movement from the Southern States, there would certainly
be a demand for as vigorous regulations as could safely be devised to
prevent or limit Negro immigration. From Washington came the news item
that “if it appeared that the Canadian Government had decided to bar
American citizens because of their color, the State Department would
protest”, and later it was asserted that by representations to American
railways interested in the movement, it had been stopped.[301]
In the light of the actual decline in the very small number of Negroes
in Canada’s population, dropping from 17,437 in 1901, out of a total
of 5,371,315 inhabitants, to 16,877 out of a total of 7,206,643 in
1911, the alarm and excitement over this “invasion” is absolutely
incomprehensible. Yet there is a possible explanation in the following
speculation. The Indians in Canada in 1901 numbered, with the half
breeds, 127,914; presumably without, in 1911, they numbered only
105,492. At the same time two origins, “various” and “unspecified,”
increased from 32,999 to 165,655, and it is not at all impossible
that among these 165,655 we may find many mulatto “invaders,” as it
is scarcely possible, no matter how prolific the Indian half-breeds
may have proved themselves to be, that they could have supplied more
than twenty percent of the increase of 132,656, whose origin were not
disclosed in 1911.
Sir Harry Johnston’s estimate of the Negro and Negroid population for
Canada in 1910 was 30,000. It may well have been much more.
Now, of the 4,880,009 Negroes in the United States in 1870, not more
than 584,049 could be classed as mulattoes; while of the 9,827,763
colored of 1910, 2,050,686 are so classed;[302] it, therefore, appears
as if miscegenation is preceding at a pretty rapid rate, the mulattoes
increasing just about twice as fast as the entire colored population;
but while the proportion of mulattoes in the Northern colored
population is still much larger than it is in the Southern population,
the increase of the mulattoes of the South is about four times as great
as at the North. Under these conditions it would be amusing, if it were
not tragic to hear the average Southerner, who thinks he thinks about
the subject, placidly declare that his objection to the diffusion of
the Negro in the United States is that, outside of the South, they
amalgamate with the whites. Of course it is not pretended that this
tremendous difference in the increase of this class in the two sections
is due entirely to a greater amount of miscegenation between whites
and colored in the South than at the North, for there is no way of
ascertaining how many of the mulattoes of the North have in the last
ten years passed on into Canada as “Unspecified” or “Various” in the
“Origin”; but making every allowance which reasonably may be made, it
does not seem as if there is any greater degree of miscegenation at the
North than at the South, if there is as much; while the North possesses
in Canada a safety valve, which practically insures that region from
any serious injury from Negro immigration. How unfortunate, therefore,
it is, that it has not occurred sooner to the Negro leaders, to preach
the advantages to be derived from the members of their race in moving
out to some degree from the South into the West.
Seventeen years after his famous advice—“Cast down your bucket where
you are,” Booker T. Washington gave a glance Westward as follows:
“There are more than 270,000,000, acres of unused and unoccupied land
in the South and West. In fact one-half of the land of the South and
two thirds of the land of the West is still unused. Now is the time
for us to become the owners and users of our share of the land, before
it is too late.”[303]
Had Washington directed one-half of the phenomenal energy he exhibited
in the eighteen years of his prominence in endeavoring to keep the
Negroes in the South, towards assisting them in obtaining their share
of the land in the West, what progress might they not have made?
Eighteen years ago, before the great world problem of color had arisen,
there was nothing to chill the zeal of the British Negrophilist; but in
South Africa the British Negrophobe is increasing in numbers and his
influence is also being felt in Canada. Still there are opportunities
for the Negro yet, if the leaders of the race will only awaken to the
necessities of diffusion. But time and tide wait for no man.
As has been attempted to be shown, the idea, not unreasonably
entertained soon after the war between the States, that there was apt
to be with time, a greater and greater increase of Negro population in
the five Southern States, considered as the Black Belt, is no longer
tenable.
Immediately after the war the Negroes were in a majority of 19,808 in
this belt of contiguous States, which the processes and excesses of
Reconstruction did raise to 168,965, discernable four years after its
overthrow. But by 1890 this Negro majority had been reduced to 150,661
and by 1900 to 92,610. In the following decade this black majority
through white immigration and black emigration, was replaced by a white
majority in the so called Black Belt of 423,717; which now has risen to
over a million and a quarter. The increase of whites has been greatest
in the two States in the center of the belt. In the State of Alabama
from the conclusion of the war, the increase of the white majority
has been steady and continuous, rising from 45,874 in 1870 to 320,566
in 1910 and to 546,980 in 1920. The increase of the white majority in
Georgia was less rapid. Reconstruction had cut down the white majority
of 93,884 to 81,773 by 1870, but from the overthrow of Reconstruction
it rose to 254,849 in 1910, and has now reached 482,749. Louisiana’s
Negro majority of 2,114 in 1870, Reconstruction had raised to 28,701
by 1880, but in the forty years which have followed, it has now become
396,354 whites in excess of blacks.
In the other two States progress has been slower.
South Carolina, laden with Negroes to the very gunwales by the subjects
of “King Cotton,” emerged from the storm of war with a Negro majority
of 126,147, which Reconstruction speedily increased in “The Prostrate
State” to 213,229 by 1880, a number so far beyond her small white
population, that even with a decreasing rate of increase, the black
majority had increased by 1890 to 226,926, the decrease of which in
1900 was barely perceptible; but by 1910 had fallen to 156,681 and in
1920 was still further reduced to 45,941. And even Mississippi, whose
Negro majority rose steadily from 31,305 in 1870, to 266,430 in 1900,
dropped in 1910 to 223,338, which by 1920 had fallen to 81,222. This
is in all probability due to the migration which Carlyle McKinley
predicted in 1889, although Hoffman, who published a painstaking work
in 1896, thinking to establish that the Negro was dying out, as “in the
Northern States the colored race does not hold his own, for the deaths
out number the births,” yet concluded that the Negro was—
“in the South as a permanent factor, with neither the ability nor the
inclination to leave.”[304]
As in the North and West the numbers of the Negroes have since 1870 to
1920 risen from 250,000 to 1,550,000 and in the South during the same
time from 4,585,000 to 8,990,000, the two assertions above do not hang
together.
When we consider the view advanced by that great writer, the author
of “The American Commonwealth”, we find it very difficult for him to
shake himself loose from the impression that the Negro must remain in
the South, and that it is best that he should, although what he says,
himself, would seem to disprove the assertion. He finds first evidently
by consideration of the census figures up to 1900, that:
“It is thus clear that the Negro center of population is more
southward and that the African is leaving the colder, higher and
drier lands for regions more resembling his ancient seats in the Old
World.”[305]
Carlyle McKinley, with more prophetic ken, eleven years earlier foresaw
this, but also beyond what is shown above, that from this region the
Negro would move out, North and West.
Mr. Bryce finds:
“In these hot lowlands the Negro lives much as he lived on the
plantations in the old days, except that he works less, because a
moderate amount of labor produces enough for his bare subsistence ...
he is scarcely at all in contact with any one above his own condition.
Thus there are places, the cities especially, where the Negro is
improving industrially because he has to work hard and comes into
constant relation with the whites; and others where he need work very
little, and where being left to his own resources, he is in danger of
relapsing into barbarism.”
The writer lays it down specifically:
“Contact with the whites is the chief condition for the progress of
the Negro. Where he is isolated or where he greatly outnumbers the
whites, his advance will be retarded.... Yet he is often no better off
at the North where the white laborers may refuse to work with him and
where he has no more chance than in the South of receiving, except in
very exceptional cases, any sort of social recognition from any class
of whites, while in the cities everywhere he is met by the competition
of the generally more diligent and more intelligent whites. So the
Negro is after all better off in the South and on the land, than
anywhere else.”[306]
Contrasting the views of Booker Washington and DuBois, he finds a
cultured group which declare they do not seek social equality with
the whites, yet in spite of the fact, stressed, that where he is
isolated or where he greatly outnumbers the whites, his advance will be
retarded, a condition of the South, building upon such a foundation,
Mr. Bryce does not hesitate to declare, that because, at the North,
“the white laborers may refuse to work with him ... the Negro is after
all better at the South.”
Apparently in the view of this great Englishman, the risk of a relapse
into barbarism is not as serious a matter to the Negro, as exposure
to the cold shoulder or angry scowl of a white laborer; and so he
dismisses the Negro and his future with an attempt to epitomize the
philosophy of Dr. Washington into what is really Mr. Bryce’s imperious
conviction, viz, that there is:
“no use in resisting patent facts, that all that the Negro can do
at present, and the most effective thing, that, with a view to the
future, he could do, is to raise himself in intelligence, knowledge,
industry, thrift, whatever makes for self help and self respect.”
But even while this epitome was appearing in print for the first time,
the inability of the great author to fully plumb the depths of Dr.
Washington’s political philosophy was shown by the New York Age, the
leading colored paper of the United States, which, upon the nomination
of Mr. Taft for the presidency in 1908, published what was asserted to
be the facsimile of the telegram sent him by Dr. Washington, to the
effect that he expected to see him elected and by his (Washington’s)
people, as no doubt he was, to a very great degree, by their votes in
the Northern States.
If then—
“a systematic effort has been made to settle colored people in
Indiana, to hold that State in the Republican column”[307]—
surely a way had been found for the colored man to do more than Mr.
Bryce thought he could. He can move out of that section where in mass
his vote was destructive into that one, in which it is sought, and
there cast it for what he deems his interest.
If in 1908, the Negroes moved into the North for the purpose of
supporting Mr. Taft and defeating Mr. Bryan, they did what they had a
right to do, and under conditions which made it hardly possible that
it could inflict much damage, even if the vote was cast more as a
commodity of merchandise is disposed of, than as an exercise of a free
man’s franchise; for no matter for whom cast, it could hardly swamp
the opposition. When, as a mass of delegates from the South, however,
four years later in 1912, the Negroes assisted Mr. Taft’s friends in
party convention assembled, to secure for him the renomination for
the presidency, against the wish of one, deemed by many as the most
powerful cleansing factor of the Republican party, the evil effects
flowing from so great and determinative occupation with politics by the
Negroes of the South, became so apparent to many earnest Northern men,
that the reported view of Mr. Roosevelt, as to the distinction between
the exercise of the right by the Negro in the South and out of it, did
not seem so strange.
To extreme Negrophiles, of course, it is merely an indication of the
marvelous progress of what is called the Southern “color psychosis.”
It is in fact one of the many illustrations constantly appearing, of
the realization of the fact that, when invested too swiftly and fully
with power and privilege, backward people are apt to stumble; and
in this connection it might be well to consider the morality of the
Negroes of South Africa, thirteen years after the overthrow of the Boer
republics, under whose rule they had been protected from the oppression
of the more savage members of their race; but nevertheless kept in a
distinctly menial condition.
A report appearing in 1913 in that country is, in itself, some evidence
of the value of the suggestion made by the author of this work to the
great New York paper, which in 1890 had invited ideas to be suggested
to it.
An impartial study of the color psychosis of these two little white
republics in a sea of blacks, cut off to a great degree from the
influence of European and American ideas, as they were in 1890; but
evolving not only a people, stated by the London Lancet to be the
finest physical specimens in the world; but also a Botha and a Smuts,
surely must have been of great educational value to the United States.
Here is the report ten years after South African Reconstruction:
“Cape Town, June 9, 1913: The report of the committee appointed to
inquire into the assaults by natives on white women shows that the
misgivings on the subject were only too well founded. The figures
during the twelve years (from the period of the overthrow of the
republics to the date) rise from a total of eleven convictions in 1901
to seventy in 1912. The increase is most in Transvaal, next in Natal
and then in Cape Colony. Generally speaking the Commission attributes
the increase mainly to diminished respect on the part of the natives
for the whites, this in turn being due to a variety of causes, chiefly
to the contact of natives with degenerate or criminal whites. A potent
cause of this criminality and degeneracy on the Rand is the illicit
liquor traffic. The Commission also uses extremely plain language
regarding what is described as the almost criminal carelessness of
white women in the treatment of their native house-boys. It has been
the custom to allow them to bring the early coffee into the bedroom
of the mistress of the house and that of her daughters, where he has
an opportunity of seeing them in a state of undress they would not
dream of showing themselves in to a white man. The Commission states
that cases, though few, have undoubtedly occurred, in which the white
mistress or servants have played Potiphar’s wife to the house boy’s
Joseph. In other words charges have been trumped up. The chief legal
recommendation is the imposition of a penalty on the intercourse
of a male black with a female white or a male white with a female
black.”[308]
The Englishman, in 1921 is just commencing to see some virtue in the
Boer who, until very recently, has shared with the South Carolinian the
distinction of being the most vilified of all people. Like the South
Carolinian, the Boer believes that, between the races, “familiarity
breeds contempt.” Both peoples hold to their views very tenaciously.
No change has ever induced the white people of South Carolina to alter
their attitude against divorce. Perhaps this is one of the reasons
which has induced the advanced thinkers of the higher civilizations to
generalize most fiercely against the white inhabitants of this small
State of the Union.
In 1910, Sir Harry Johnston produced his book “The Negro in the New
World.” The author, a traveler and student, at the suggestion of
President Roosevelt, brought to the consideration of his subject much
knowledge and not a little temper. The aim of the book is popularity.
From a scroll below the map of the Western Hemisphere, the heads of Dr.
Burghardt DuBois and Booker T. Washington project, silent witnesses to
an entirely colored United States with the exception of the tips of
New England and Florida; but as all of England, France and Italy are
colored, no reflection is evidently intended. In his preface, with
amusing naivete, he confesses:
“Dealing with slavery under the British, I feel obliged to show with
what terrible cruelties this institution was connected in the greater
part of the British West Indies, and possibly also in British Guiana
before 1834. Nor did these cruelties cease entirely with the abolition
of the Slave Trade and Slavery. They were continued under various
disguises until they culminated in the Jamaica Revolt of Moratt Bay
in 1865. Since 1868 the history of the British West Indies, so far as
the treatment of the Negro and the colored man is concerned has been
wholly satisfactory, taking into consideration all the difficulties of
the situation.”[309]
When he reaches that part of his book which is to show:
“How bad was the treatment of the Negro in the Southeastern States of
the Union, between, let us say, 1790 and 1860”—he says—“This story
should be written over again, lest we forget.”[310]
Evidently there is no need to take into consideration any “of the
difficulties of the situation” in the Southeastern States of the Union.
Sir Harry Johnston has been called upon to curse the Southeastern
States of the Union, and being a firmer type of man than Balaam, he
does it thoroughly. But incidentally he exclaims impatiently:
“Haiti’ I have tried to show is not as black as she has been painted.”
To which he adds the following rich, dark, daub:
“For very shame she should cease to make the Negro race a laughing
stock.”[311]
The author has not proceeded a page in his chapter, “Slavery in the
United States” before he begins to inveigh against South Carolina and
Charleston. He tells his readers:
“In South Carolina the condition of the slaves was often one of great
hardship, and the slave laws were very cruel.”
He writes of slave insurrections in South Carolina in 1710, 1720, and
1740, and states that in 1760 there was a slave population of 400,000
in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia; but he fails to mention that
during this period these people were all under British control. He
actually makes it a complaint of South Carolina that: “these were the
people so admired by Gladstone, Kingsley, Huxley and Carlyle.”[312]
The more he writes the angrier he gets with South Carolina:
“The election of Abraham Lincoln was the last episode which decided
South Carolina—protagonist of the Slave Powers and rightly so called,
for it has been from first to last the wickedest of the Slave
States—to secede from the Union.”[313]
But he cannot keep away from 1740:
“It was in South Carolina in the first quarter of the eighteenth
century, that life was made unbearable and short for the unfortunate
African, and that being driven to mad despair, the Negroes broke out
in the Charleston revolt of 1740, and attempted (small blame to them)
to slay the pitiless devils who were their masters.”[314]
The truth about this insurrection is as follows. No insurrection
occurred in South Carolina in 1740; but in 1739, when as Sir Harry
Johnston failed to state, the province was under British control:
“An outbreak occurred, undoubtedly instigated by the Spaniards at St.
Augustine. Emissaries had been sent persuading the Negroes to fly
from their masters to Florida, where liberty and protection awaited
them.... At length on the 9th of September, a number of Negroes
assembled at Stono and began their movement by breaking open a store,
killing two young men who guarded the warehouse and plundering it for
guns and ammunition. Thus provided with arms they chose one of their
number captain and marched in the direction of Florida with colors
flying and drums beating. On their way they entered the house of
Mr. Godfrey, murdered him, his wife and children, took all the arms
in the house and setting fire to it proceeded to Jacksonborough. In
their march they plundered and burnt every house, killed the white
people, and compelled other Negroes to join them.... For fifteen miles
they had spread desolation through all the plantations on their way.
Fortunately having found rum in some houses and drinking freely of it,
they halted and began to sing and dance. During these rejoicings the
militia came up and took positions to prevent escape, then advancing
and killing some, the remainder of the Negroes dispersed and fled to
the woods. Many ran back to the plantations to which they belonged in
the hope of escaping suspicion of having joined in the rising; but the
greater part were taken and tried, some of them who had been compelled
to join were pardoned; the leaders suffered death. Twenty one whites
and forty-four Negroes lost their lives in this insurrection.”[315]
There was no Charleston revolt in 1740.
“In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances were those of
1712 and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the
frenzy of the public than for the formidableness of the menace....
The rebels to the number of twenty-three provided themselves with
guns, hatchets, knives and swords and chose the dark of the moon in
the small hours of an April night to set a house afire and slaughter
the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gun fire caused the
Governor to send soldiers from the battery with such speed that
only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when
the plotters were routed. Six of these killed themselves to escape
capture, but when the woods were beaten and the town searched next
day and an emergency court sat upon the cases, more captives were
capitally sentenced than the whole conspiracy had comprised.... Of
those convicted, one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in
chains, nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the stake,
one of these being sentenced ‘to be burned with a slow fire that he
may continue in torment for eight or ten hours and continue burning
until he be dead and consumed to ashes.’”[316]
“The commotion in 1741 was a panic among the whites of high and low
degree, prompted in sequel to a robbery and a series of fires by the
disclosures of Mary Burton, a young white servant concerning her
master John Hughson and the confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young
white woman of many aliases, but most commonly called Peggy, who was
an inmate of Hughson’s disreputable house and a prostitute to Negro
slaves ... Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly
hanged, and likewise John Ury, who was convicted of being a Catholic
priest as well as a conspirator; and twenty-nine Negroes were sent
with similar speed to the gallows or stake, while eighty others were
deported.... Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror stricken at the
stake made somewhat stereotyped revelations; but the desire of the
officials to stay the execution with a view to a definite reprieve
was thwarted by their fear of tumult by the throng of resentful
spectators.”[317]
In the more scholarly portions of this book, the author invites
comparison with the great work of Ripley, the American, which
unavoidably detracts from the confidence of the reader in the wealth
of expression of the Englishman. The book is a mass of information,
in which much prejudice is apparent. When he gets down to advice, the
writer informs the reader that what he regards as “a matter of crucial
importance to the civilized Christian Negro,”[318] Mr. Roosevelt
evidently thought non-sense, for that great American informed him, that
he would never—
“get the colored people of the United States to dress differently to
their white fellow citizens.”[319]
Sir Harry wished—
“the leaders of the Negro people to inveigh against these garments
(frock coats and silk hats) which only look well on two white men out
of ten, and never look other than ugly and inappropriate on a person
of dark complexion.”[320]
It is hardly necessary to make any great endeavor to discover the exact
meaning of the author’s mouth filling phrase:
“If the Imperial destiny of the English speaking peoples of North
America is to be achieved, they must expect to see their flag or flags
covering nationally many peoples of non-Caucasian race wearing the
shadowed livery of the burnished sun.”[321]
For while he tells us that:
“The eleven States of the Secession have remained to this day (1910)
apart from the rest of America in their domestic policy towards the
Negro and people of color with any drop of black blood in their
veins. Here alone—except perhaps in the Transvaal, Orange State and
Natal of British South Africa—does the racial composition of a citizen
(and not mere dirtiness, drunkenness, or inability to pay) exclude him
or her from municipal or national privilege and public conveniences
otherwise open to all and paid for by all.[322] Yet with all these
imperfections in the social acceptance of the colored people of the
United States—imperfections which with time and patience and according
to the merits of the Negro will disappear—the main fact was evident
to me after a tour through the Eastern and Southern States of North
America; that nowhere in the world—certainly not in Africa—has the
Negro been given such a chance of mental and physical development as
in the United States.”[323]
If Sir Harry Johnston, or for the matter of that, his patron, President
Roosevelt, had only been able to study that neglected and impoverished
Negro seer, the only one of the teachers of his people who gave his
blood for their freedom, proving his faith by his works and not by mere
lip service, the repudiation of whom by the Negroes and their leaders
is the severest indictment which could be drawn against the race, they
might have been wiser. But from time immemorial the call to the prophet
has always been: “Prophesy unto us smooth things.”—and W. Hannibal
Thomas having fought in the ranks of the Union army and lived in the
midst of Reconstruction, knew a little too much, despite his exaltation
of the civilization of New England, and his criticism of the South’s
attempt in 1865 to mould again its own, apart from slavery, to ever
be accepted by those who had participated in or were responsible for
Reconstruction.
FOOTNOTES:
[295] Stone, The American Race Problem.
[296] Stanley, In Darkest Africa, Vol. I, p. 384.
[297] Hart, The Southern South, p. 113.
[298] Bulletin XII Fifth Canadian Census, p. 12.
[299] Oliver, Immigration Facts and Figures, p. 9.
[300] _London Times_, April 3, 1911.
[301] Ibid.
[302] Bureau Census U. S. 1910 Bul. 129 p. 15.
[303] _News and Courier_, August 22, 1913.
[304] Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies, p. 3.
[305] Bryce, American Commonwealth Vol. II, Rev. Ed. p. 513.
[306] Bryce, American Commonwealth, Vol. II, pp. 515-537-552.
[307] Hart, Southern South, p. 113.
[308] _London Times_, June 27, 1913.
[309] Johnston, The Negro in the New World, p. VIII.
[310] Ibid. p. IX.
[311] Ibid. p. X.
[312] Ibid. p. 380.
[313] Ibid. p. 363.
[314] Ibid. p. 368.
[315] McCrady, S. C. Under Royal Govt. p. 185.
[316] Phillips, American Negro Slavery, p. 469.
[317] Ibid. p. 470.
[318] Johnston, The Negro in the New World, p. 413.
[319] Ibid. p. 415.
[320] Ibid. p. 413.
[321] Ibid. p. X.
[322] Ibid. p. 476.
[323] Ibid. p. 477.
CHAPTER XIII
The American Historical Association founded about 1889 has accomplished
a great work in purifying the sources from which history has been
drawn. It has stimulated the study of history and has afforded the
field and opportunity for effort. By the Act of Incorporation it shall
report annually its proceedings and the condition of historical study
in America, to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, who shall
communicate to Congress the whole of such reports or such portion
thereof as he shall see fit.
In the year 1909, the President of the Association, invited, from
certain selected individuals, papers on the Negro question limited to
1800 words, for one of the sessions of the Association. This was a
limitation which every white person accepting should have scrupulously
observed and no one should have accepted who was not willing to exert
himself seriously. Yet the tendency of not a few whites to allow
themselves always a little playfulness whenever discussing this subject
seems ineradicable. To the one colored scholar, who accepted the
invitation, the occasion afforded an opportunity not to be permitted to
slip by unimproved, and with admirable nerve, he selected the darkest
decade discernible in the consideration of the subject, as disclosed in
the history of the United States, and addressed himself to a discussion
of “Reconstruction and Its Benefits,” in a paper of about 10,000 words.
In the disregard which he thereby showed of the terms of his invitation
he was justified by his color and his brains and the merit of his
work won for him the widest dissemination of his view. Like Sir Harry
Johnston’s more elaborate book it is polemical; but superior in taste
and style, being free from the little querelous snarls with which the
Englishman garnished his treatise; for if there were sneers in DuBois’s
exposition they were couched in language which passes muster among well
bred people; while the fact that he was in reality an advocate, with a
brief to maintain, accorded him license for such.
The opening could hardly be improved upon by any special pleader.
Writing in 1909, he declares:
“There is danger today that between the intense feeling of the South
and the conciliatory spirit of the North grave injustice will be
done the Negro American in the history of Reconstruction. Those who
see in Negro suffrage the cause of the main evils of Reconstruction
must remember that if there had not been a single freedman left in
the South after war the problems of Reconstruction would still have
been grave. Property in slaves to the extent of perhaps two thousand
million dollars had suddenly disappeared. One thousand five hundred
more millions representing the Confederate war debt, had largely
disappeared. Large amounts of real estate and other property had
been destroyed, industry had been disorganized, 250,000 men had been
killed and many more maimed. With this went the moral effect of an
unsuccessful war with all its letting down of social standards and
quickening of hatred and discouragement—a situation which would make
it difficult under any circumstances to reconstruct a new government
and a new civilization. Add to all this the presence of four million
freedmen and the situation is further complicated.”[324]
That the training and the treatment of these ex-slaves became a central
problem of Reconstruction, he admits; yet claims that three agencies,
the Negro church; the Negro school and the Freedmen’s Bureau undertook
the solution, without which, he maintains, it would have been far
graver. But he absolutely disregards that product of ante-bellum
Southern civilization then in the South, 132,819[325] free persons of
color, many of whom were morally and mentally well fitted for what the
Black Codes designed to give them, the suffrage. This element of the
Southern population together with the majority of the House slaves
would have probably furnished a base of about ten per cent of the
total Negro population on which the new civilization would have been
reared, had the South been permitted to test its plan. Having declared
that the economic condition of the eleven States at the close of the
war was “pitiable, their fear of Negro freedom genuine,” Dr. DuBois
maintains, “yet it was reasonable to expect from them something less
than repression and utter reaction toward slavery.”
Admitting that:
“To some extent this expectation was fulfilled: the abolition of
slavery was recognized and the civil rights of owning property and
appearing as a witness in cases in which he was a party were generally
granted the Negro.”[326]—
he promptly contradicts his own admission, with the assertion:
“The Codes spoke for themselves. They have often been reprinted and
quoted. No open minded student can read them without being convinced
that they meant nothing more nor less than slavery in daily toil.”[327]
Is this true? Can any student be absolutely open minded? A seer is a
receiver and revealer of truths. Such a being can possibly approach
the consideration of a subject with an open mind. One may imagine
Socrates so approaching a subject; but by what process, by what mental
cathartic, does one, who studies, divest his mind of all preconceived
ideas of the subject every time he considers a theory concerning that
which has interested him sufficiently to lead him to seek to know more
of it?
No, the vast mass of us approach those subjects, when we are sincerely
desirous of truth in the spirit of that individual who exclaimed to
Christ—“Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” When the broken,
beaten South attempted to frame the Codes, which no Negro has ever
been able to consider judicially, the survivors could not possibly
approach the condition they were in with an open mind. The greatest
mind that has ever considered our great experiment in government, the
French student De Tocqueville and that strong but shallower mind, that
for so many years had with its resolutions overshadowed all others in
the South, united in the dictum. Abolition means Africanization for
the South. But the whites of the South were to a great extent British
and Northern Irish in stock. They were eminently conservative. A stock
greater in defeat than in victory, as history has shown the British to
be.
To obtain additional strength with which to withstand the flood of
ignorance and incompetence let loose or about to break loose, they
accepted the leadership of the poor white Andrew Johnson, despite the
repugnance they felt for him, as keen and lively as any Englishman
ever felt for Joe Chamberlain or Lloyd George or Ramsay McDonald.
They did more. As far as legislation could affect it, they extended
social equality to the least darkened of the dark race by which they
were surrounded. The political principle, upon which they sought to
adjust themselves to the changed condition, was based apparently upon
the thought that if all the Southern whites and that proportion of
the Colored population constituting about one-tenth, reasonably the
most elevated in the minds of the theorists, from the fact that they
closest approached the whites in physical texture, united, such union
must strengthen the rulers even as it weakened the ruled. Dr. DuBois
therefore is quite wrong when he intimates with some generosity, that
the Black Codes were framed under hasty excitement, in declaring:
“To be sure it was not a time to look for calm, cool, thoughtful
action on the part of the white South.”[328]
No, whatever may eventually be found to be the character of the Black
Codes of the beaten South, they bear upon their faces the imprint of
cool, calm, thoughtful action. Even the most cursory consideration of
them will disclose that they were framed more for the irresponsible
freedman than the freedmen in general; for instance, if the freedman
owned a farm or had a permit, the possession of gun, pistol or sword,
otherwise forbidden, was not denied. On the other hand the inhibition
of the right of sale or barter of domestic produce did not apply to
the Negro generally; but to the servant under contract with a master
engaged in husbandry, and not even then, if the servant had written
evidence from such master, or from a person authorized by him, or from
a District Judge, whose oath specifically required him to do what was
required by law “without prejudice for or against color.”[329] In
addition the servant was given the right to—
“Depart from the master’s service for an insufficient supply of
wholesome food; for an unauthorized battery upon his own person or
one of his family, not committed in defense of the person, family,
guests or agents of the master, nor to prevent a crime or aggravated
misdemeanor.”[330]
The law went further. It gave the servant the right of departure
coupled with the right to recover wages due for service rendered up to
the time of his departure, for any—
“invasion of the conjugal rights of the servant, or his (employer’s)
failure to pay wages when due.”[331]
And not even the death of the master terminated the contract, without
the assent of the servant, for the enforcement of which the servant had
a lien as high as rent. And when wrongfully discharged the servant was
entitled to recover wages for the whole period of service, according to
the contract.[332]
That the master was given the right to administer corporal punishment
to the servant under some conditions cannot be denied; but the
phraseology of the South Carolina Act is:
“The master may moderately correct servants who have made contracts
and are under eighteen years of age”—[333] but it also commanded:
“It shall also be his duty to protect his servant from violence by
others in his presence.”[334]
Yet it specifically provided that:
“Corporal punishment is intended to include only such modes of
punishment, not affecting life or limb, as are used in the army or
navy of the United States, adapted in kind and degree to the nature of
the offense.”[335]
Finally, not to prolong the discussion, when we note that the servant
was not liable civilly or criminally for any act done by the command
of the master, for any tort on the master’s premises[336] and that the
former slave holder was not permitted to dispossess the non paying
helpless former slave, for a year and a month from the occupancy of
dwellings belonging to the former master, but occupied without any
return by the former slave,[337] and what elaborate provisions in
detail were made for the care of such in his or her helpless condition,
we will find that we look in vain in England, old or New, for such
humanitarian legislation, at this date. Why then were the Codes
overthrown? Dr. DuBois is prejudiced and naturally so. He is not as
well informed as he deems himself to be; but he desires to be fair and
just; and so we have from this, the most cultured member of the colored
race in the United States, the real reason for “Reconstruction and its
Benefits.”
“The difficulties that stared Reconstruction politicians in the face
were these: (a) They must act quickly. (b) Emancipation had increased
the political power of the South by one sixth; could this increased
political power be put in the hands of those, who in defense of
slavery had disrupted the Union?”[338]
So, the terrific losses, which he himself itemizes were not enough. The
beaten South was to be manacled. And how does he picture the victors in
that dreadful hour?
“There might have been less stealing in the South during
Reconstruction without negro suffrage but it is certainly highly
instructive to remember that the mark of the thief which dragged its
slime across nearly every great Northern state and almost up to the
Presidential chair could not certainly in those cases be charged
against the vote of black men. This was the day when a national
secretary of war was caught stealing, a Vice President presumably took
bribes, a private Secretary of the President, a chief clerk of the
Treasury and eighty-six government officials stole millions in the
whisky frauds, while the Credit Mobilier filched fifty millions and
bribed the government to an extent never revealed; not to mention less
distinguished thieves like Tweed.”[339]
Remember this is not a Southerner, black or white; but the most
cultured of Northern colored men, who so describes the conquering East
from which he sprang.
It is scarcely possible to state more comprehensively in less space
than that in which Dr. DuBois describes the effects of Congressional
Reconstruction:
“When incompetency gains political power in an extravagant age the
result is widespread dishonesty.”[340]
But he palliates this with the following:
“The dishonesty in the Reconstruction of the South was helped on by
three circumstances:
1. The former dishonesty of the political South.
2. The presence of many dishonest Northern politicians.
3. The temptation to Southern politicians at once to profit by the
dishonesty and to discredit Negro government.
4. The poverty of the negro.”[341]
He fails to furnish any authorized evidence of the first; but the three
last should be accepted as in some degree exculpatory of the Negroes.
There is something almost pathetic in Dr. DuBois’s description of the
Negroes’ contribution to Reconstruction:
“Undoubtedly there were many ridiculous things connected with
Reconstruction governments: the placing of ignorant field hands who
could neither read nor write in the Legislature, the golden spitoons
of South Carolina, the enormous printing bill of Mississippi—all these
were extravagant and funny, and yet somehow to one who sees beneath
all that is bizarre, the real human tragedy of the upward striving of
down-trodden men, the groping for light among people born in darkness,
there is less tendency to laugh and gibe than among shallower minds
and easier consciences. All that is funny is not bad.”[342]
And this he follows with what he means to be an indictment:
“—the greatest stigma on the white South is not that it opposed
Negro suffrage and resented theft and incompetence, but that when it
saw the reform movement growing and even in some cases triumphing,
and a larger & a larger number of black voters learning to vote
for honesty and ability, it still preferred a Reign of Terror to a
campaign of education, and disfranchised Negroes instead of punishing
rascals.”[343]
When we reflect that the Confederate generals, Wade Hampton, Kershaw
and McGowan, as has been shown, all supported the revolt of Delany,
Cain and William Hannibal Thomas, against Chamberlain and R. B. Elliott
in 1874 in South Carolina, and that in the columns of “The Crisis,”
today, Elliott is eulogized as a great representative of the colored
race; while no mention has ever appeared of those two Northern Negroes
who most conspicuously opposed the evils of Reconstruction, Martin
Delany and William Hannibal Thomas, we can only acquit Dr. DuBois of
insincerity on the ground of rank carelessness and immovable prejudice.
The summing up of this very interesting defense of Reconstruction
and plea for the Negroes as lawmakers is unquestionably an able
presentation:
“Reconstruction constitutions practically unaltered were kept in:
Florida, 1868-1885 17 years
Virginia, 1870-1902 32 years
South Carolina, 1868-1895 27 years
Mississippi, 1868-1890 22 years
Even in the case of States like Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and
Louisiana, which adopted new constitutions to signify the overthrow
of Negro rule, the new constitutions are nearer the model of the
Reconstruction document than they are to the previous constitutions.
They differ from the Negro Constitution in minor details, but very
little in general conception. Besides this there stands on the statute
books of the South today law after law passed between 1868 and 1876
and which has been found wise effective and worthy of preservation.
Paint the carpet bag governments and Negro rule as black as may
be, the fact remains that the essence of the revolution which the
overturning of the Negro Governments made was to put these black men
and their friends out of power. Outside of the curtailing of expenses
and stopping of extravagance, not only did their successors make few
changes in the work which these Legislatures and Conventions had done,
but they largely carried out their plans, followed their suggestions,
and strengthened their institutions. Practically the whole new growth
of the South has been accomplished under laws which black men helped
to frame thirty years ago. I know of no greater compliment to Negro
suffrage.”[344]
It would be idle to deny that these Reconstruction constitutions were
other than most effective.
William Hannibal Thomas, who might be fitly described as in charge of
the rear guard when the Negro government fell in South Carolina and
who has criticised the Black Codes even more severely than Dr. DuBois,
states:
“The Constitutions of the Reconstructed States were framed by white
men under the direction and with the approval of the best legal
intelligence of America.”[345]
They were framed to complete the conquest of the overthrown States, Dr.
Dodd puts it thus:
“The cause of the planters had gone down in irretrievable disaster.
For forty years they had contended with their rivals of the North,
and having staked all on the wager of battle they had lost. Just four
years before they had entered with unsurpassed zeal and enthusiasm
upon the gigantic task of winning their independence. They had made
the greatest fight in history up to that time. Lost the flower of
their manhood and wealth untold. They now renewed once and for all
time their allegiance to the Union, which had up to that time been
an experiment, a government of uncertain powers. More than three
hundred thousand lives and not less than four billions of dollars
had been sacrificed in the fight of the South. The planter culture,
the semi-feudalism of the ‘Old South’ was annihilated, while the
industrial and financial system of the East was triumphant. The cost
to the North had been six hundred thousand lives and an expense to the
governments, State and National, of at least five billion dollars. But
the East was the mistress of the United States, and the social and
economic ideals of that section were to be stamped permanently upon
the country.”[346]
The war having ended in a complete conquest of the South and a
sentimental control of the vigorous West, expanded by the East as it
exploited the broken South; through the destruction of the codes and
the imposition of Congressional Reconstruction, the whites of the South
were welded into a new mass, cruder and tougher and not unnaturally
quite inimical to the Negro who had been made to rule over them, until
by revolutionary methods they had overthrown such. That they, the
Negroes, and the Western whites had all been subjected to the control
of the East as thoroughly as economic laws could subject them to it,
was not for decades appreciated in the South or West.
Had Lincoln not been assassinated and had he remained true to his
Western ideals, he would have been broken on the wheel of capitalism
as relentlessly as was his great Southern successor, who struck down
Germany in her hour of triumph. But Lincoln was spared that test
and died without realizing the entire measure of his service to the
Union and the whites who inhabited it; for to him the Negroes were a
negligible quantity, despite all the phrases with which he utilized
them, in his purpose of preserving the Union. Indeed it was not until
the fountains of the great deep were broken in the World War, that the
inevitable consequences of emancipation forced themselves upon public
opinion, and, in this connection, a small episode, of the above related
meeting of the American Historical Association in 1909, throws some
light upon the state of mind of the East at that date.
At the same meeting in which Dr. DuBois read his bold, elaborate and
interesting defense of Congressional Reconstruction, the author of
this study submitted, on request, a paper on the Negro question, in
accordance with the limitations, which, while accepted and edited for
publication by the Board, was not permitted publication in the Report
of the Historical Association, Mr. Charles D. Walcott having the power
to exclude it from such, and using the power. That the skeleton piece
of 1750 words was to some slight degree critical of the East is not to
be denied; but if the Eastern scholars rose above their prejudices when
presented with truth why could not the official? The gist of the little
paper when printed does not appear very inflammatory.
“Says a distinguished Northern writer—‘The North is learning every day
by valuable experiences that there are vast differences in political
capacity between the races.’ Certainly nothing has afforded such
an opportunity for the North to acquire these valuable experiences
day by day, as the diffusion of the Negroes throughout the Union.
Meanwhile as the masses in the South are reduced the Negroes will
not constitute, to the degree they now do, the criminal class; their
good qualities must become more noticeable and their bad ones excite
less that intense or contemptuous regard, which has, in the minds of
many Southern men, made Negro and criminal almost synonymous terms.
The war made the Negro question a national question, and it is too
late to say—‘the man of the South must be trusted to work out this
(the evolution of the Negro race to higher conditions) in his own
good time’ and that ‘he is charged with the burden and must bear
it.’ That is a sectional attitude just to neither the Negro nor the
white man of the South. In time and with greatly reduced numbers of
the Negroes about him, the Southern white man may change the view,
which inheritance of ideas almost forces him to hold, viz., that the
Negro is essentially servile; but that is his sentiment today; and
while, therefore, he may be best fitted to rule him as such, he is not
constituted to assist him in the evolution to a higher condition. As
they spread out, the Negroes must come more and more in contact with
all grades of our civilization and from such draw the lessons best
adapted to their own development. The sentiment therefore, which would
deny them this; which would seek to confine the masses to the South,
deciding for them that it is their natural home and having but little
sympathy for them beyond the pale, is in my opinion, the greatest
obstacle to their advancement and, to some degree, a cause of moral
deterioration of the higher race.”[347]
But while Dr. DuBois and the author of this study, in response to the
invitation of Dr. Hart, before the historians of the United States
were discussing, each in his own way, a subject they thought of some
importance, it is of interest to consider what was occupying the mind
of the wisest and most neglected Negro in the United States, at the
same time. About the same date William Hannibal Thomas wrote to the
author of this study:
“It has long been my dream to see all the railroads under one
management. Therefore had I the influence and cooperation of others,
I would procure a charter from the Congress of the United States
creating a National Railway Company capitalized at fifteen billion of
dollars and empowered to issue bonds for a like amount. Five great
subdivisions would be created. All south of the Potomac river and east
of the Mississippi would constitute the Southern division. New England
the Eastern division. New York and the states north and east of the
Mississippi, would form the central division. Westward of that great
river there would be a northern and southern Pacific division. Such
in brief is the scheme I have in mind and, as an economical factor
in National uplift, I know of but one other thing that would surpass
it.”[348]
We might measure the scope of this Negro’s dream in the autumn of 1909,
by the following news item of April 17, 1923, which apparently was only
another dream:
“Legislation to make affective the plans being worked out by the
interstate commerce commission for consolidation and regional
supervision of the railroad systems of the country will be undertaken
in the next Congress, Chairman Cummins of the Senate Interstate
Commerce Committee said today, after a discussion of the railroad
problem with President Harding—‘I think consolidation for the railway
system as initiated in the transportation act is the only means of
gaining the efficiency that the country requires of the railroads,’
said Senator Cummins. Moreover it seems to me to be the only method of
bringing down freight rates on commodities on which the rate must be
lowered.”[349]
Whatever difference of opinion may exist amongst railway experts as
to the merits of the legislation concerning railroads which the Iowa
senator has made his name synonymous with, few doubt his knowledge. Yet
he would seem to be just about fourteen years behind the neglected Ohio
Negro, whose opportunities were restricted to two sessions of the South
Carolina legislature in Reconstruction days. Is there anything that has
ever been resolved with regard to railroads better calculated to serve
the general public, than that introduced by Thomas, when opposing the
most brilliant of the Carpet Baggers, Daniel H. Chamberlain, in 1874?—
“VIII. We hold that all franchises granted by the State should be
subservient to the public good; that charges for travel and freight
should be equitable and uniform and no unjust discrimination be made
between through and local travel.”[350]
Both conventions had to subscribe to that; but if it represented the
views of Daniel H. Chamberlain, the Reformers under Thomas and others
must be credited with some influence in turning him from his earlier
views on railroads, when he was the legal guardian of the State.
Observe him, fresh from the East.
“Office of the Attorney General,
Columbia, S. C. January 5, 1870.
My dear Kimpton: Parker arrived last evening and spoke of the G. & C.
matter, etc. I told him I had just written you fully on that matter
and also about the old Bk. bills. Do you understand fully the plan of
the G. & C. enterprise? It is proposed to buy $350,000 worth of the G.
& C. Stock. This with $433,000 of stock held by the State, will give
entire control to us. The Laurens branch will be sold in February by
decree of court and will cost not more than $50,000 and probably not
more than $40,000. The Spartanburg and Union can also be got without
difficulty. We shall then have in G. & C. 168 miles, in Laurens, 31,
and in S. & U. 70 miles—in all 269 miles—equipped and running—put a
first mortgage of $20,000 a mile—sell the bonds at $85 or $90, and the
balance, after paying all outlays for cost and repairs, is immense,
over $2,000,000. There is a mint of money in this or I am a fool.
Then we will soon compel the S. C. R. R. to fall into our hands and
complete the connection to Asheville, N. C. There is an infinite verge
of expansion of power before us. Write me fully and tell me every
thing you want done. My last letter was very full. Harrison shall
be attended to at once. I don’t think Neagle will make any trouble.
Parker hates Neagle, and magnifies his intentions.
Yours truly,
D. H. Chamberlain”[351]
What a terrible indictment of the Negro intelligentsia is their utter
neglect of William Hannibal Thomas, the great Negro who could think of
something more than himself and his race, who wished to serve humanity
at large.
FOOTNOTES:
[324] DuBois, Reconstruction and Its Benefits Am. Hist. Rev. Vol. IV,
p. 781.
[325] Compendium Ninth Census U. S. p. 14.
[326] DuBois, Reconstruction and Its Benefits Am. Hist. Rev. Vol. IV,
p. 784.
[327] Ibid.
[328] Ibid.
[329] Statutes S. C. Vol. XIII, p. 279.
[330] Ibid. p. 298.
[331] Ibid.
[332] Ibid.
[333] Ibid. p. 296.
[334] Ibid. p. 297.
[335] Ibid. p. 277.
[336] Ibid. p. 299.
[337] Ibid.
[338] DuBois, Reconstruction and Its Benefits Am. Hist. Rev. Vol. XIV.
p. 782.
[339] Ibid. p. 790.
[340] Ibid.
[341] Ibid.
[342] Ibid. p. 791.
[343] Ibid. p. 793.
[344] Ibid. p. 799.
[345] Thomas, The American Negro, p. 307.
[346] Dodd, Expansion and Conflict p. 328.
[347] Paper, American Hist. Asso. 1909.
[348] Thomas, Letter to author, November 20, 1909.
[349] _Charleston Evening Post_, April 17, 1923.
[350] _News and Courier_, October 5, 1874.
[351] Allen, Gov. Chamberlain’s Administration, p. 143.
CHAPTER XIV
With the year 1914, the world entered a new era of thought, for the
effect upon civilization of that great convulsion which afflicted the
world in 1914 was felt far beyond the arenas upon which the World War
was fought. The conflict was on too gigantic a scale for it to be
grasped during its waging. It tested civilization to a supreme degree.
Loosely knit bonds, that in all reason should have parted under the
immense strain to which they were submitted, held all the tighter under
the tugs to which they were subjected. That portion of humanity which
had least to give, gave with a fullness beyond the imagination of man.
Nothing in all time has ever equalled the volunteer movement of the men
of Britain and her dominion states. Conscription might have produced a
more efficient army and less weakened the State; but the great soldier
and greater man, who in the main fashioned the armies of Britain to
the admiration of his country’s foes, knew that, in that great hour,
nothing could equal the moral effect of that wonderful volunteer
movement. Democracy was put to the test and rang absolutely true.
So much happened before the United States flung her immense force
into the scale, that an infinitude of fact has passed from the memory
of men. Never in the history of the world was it more thoroughly
demonstrated, that “Order is (not) heaven’s first law.” Democracy moved
up to the sacrifice unfalteringly. Autocracy broke under the strain
and, in his own appointed time and in spite of all that man proposed,
God disposed of the event, in a way no one could have dreamed of. But
before the great Republic of the West intervened, in many ways the
United States was affected, and in none more profoundly than by the
migration of the Negroes from the South and their diffusion throughout
the country. The war between the States and emancipation had made this
diffusion only a question of time and it had been progressing with a
quickened and then a retarded flow, during the decades previous to
the Great War; but the war’s great check on immigration from Europe
speeded up the movement. Lecturing at the University of Chicago in
June, 1916, the author of this study was struck with the nature of the
reception accorded the subject: “The Readjustment of the Negro to the
Social System of the Sixties,” in which the necessity for diffusion was
stressed.
Active from 1890 to 1900, later, the standard of living of the Northern
Negro had risen, and just as capital in the North and West had forced
out the English, German and Irish workmen and replaced them with
cheaper and inferior people; so too, the Northern Negro could not live
as cheaply as the Slav, Greek, Italian and Slovene.[352] These in their
turn, however, the World War had been sweeping away, since the middle
of 1914; and, while the sentimental regard for the Negro’s advancement,
which had been very broad and active a generation earlier, had
gradually become restricted to assisting in fitting him for a residence
in “his natural home, the South,” the need for the brawn and sinew
which he could supply, being felt in the North and West, in obedience
to its demand, the Negro, for a consideration, was moving out of “his
natural home”; for the philanthropy of the North, the greatest in the
world, as it draws its supplies from, is to some degree, subservient
to, the commercialism of its section.
Almost contemporaneously with the lectures in the great Western city,
which is destined to be the center of Northern Negro opinion, from the
metropolis of the Union came an utterance of immense importance from
the most aggressive, intelligent and humane publication, spreading out
its influence from the center of American and world finance.
As viewed by The New Republic, the situation in the summer of 1916 was
thus stated:
“To the Northern Negro the war in Europe has been of immense and
unexpected advantage. It has shut out the immigrant who is the Negro’s
most dangerous competitor, has doubled the demand for the Negro’s
labor, raised his wages, and given chances to him, which in the
ordinary course would have gone to white men. If immigration still
lags after the war or is held down by law, the Negro will secure the
great opportunity for which he has been waiting these fifty years....
In Southern cities, Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, Richmond, Nashville,
Savannah, Charleston, Mobile, Negroes constitute one-third to one-half
the population and more than that proportion of the wage earners and
are given a chance to earn their living, because, without them, the
work of these cities could not be done. In the city of Philadelphia,
on the other hand, Negroes form only 5½ per cent of the population,
in Chicago only 2 per cent, in New York a little less than 2 per
cent.... If white men will not work with them, if the employer is
forced to choose between a large supply of white labor and a small
supply of Negro labor, he will choose the former.... The Negro gets
a chance to work only when there is no one else.... The wronged are
always wrong and so we blame the Negro. If we are fair, however, we
must place the responsibility of a social effect for those responsible
for the cause. If the Northern Negroes have a higher death rate and
breed a larger proportion of criminals and prostitutes than do the
whites, it is in large part our own fault. We cannot understand the
problems of the Negro in the North unless we constantly bear in mind
the fact of industrial opportunity. The Northern Negro has the right
to vote, the right and duty to send his children to school, and
technically, at least, many civil and political rights. We do not
put him into Jim Crow cars or hold him in prison camps for private
exploitation. Nevertheless, the pressure upon him is almost as
painful, though not nearly so brutal or debasing, as that upon the
Southern Negro. The Northern Negro is urged to rise but held down
hard.... Immigration after the war seems likely to be kept down at
a low level during several years or possibly decades.... It is the
Negro’s chance, the first extensive widening of his industrial field
since emancipation.”[353]
The fact that this very able statement is not entirely exact in all
its details takes very little from the value of the presentation of
it. As has been disclosed by Mr. Warne, in his, “Immigrant Invasion,”
the Negro had quite a chance until the decade 1900-1910. That he
did not improve it as fully as he might have done was due; first,
to his ignorance; second, to his retention for quite a while of
servile instincts; third, to the determination, on the part of a very
considerable and influential portion of the Northern and Western
public, that the Negro must be kept out of the North and West; and
of the controlling portion of the Southern public, assisted by the
Republican Supreme Court of the United States, that he should be kept,
as near to the condition of a serf of the soil in the South, as he
could be by those so restraining him, keeping themselves, meanwhile,
on the windy side of the law; fourth, to an active, continuous, well
financed propaganda, led by the most influential member of the race,
that he should cling to the South.
Against such forces what could be affected by the few Southern white
men, Carlyle McKinley, Wade Hampton, and M. C. Butler, as early as
1889, preaching “Diffusion”?
North and South, in the main for purely selfish reasons, the force of
the country was against diffusion of the Negro and for banking him
in the South, where he had been so long a slave. For such a paper,
therefore, as _The New Republic_, to advocate diffusion was a matter of
the very first importance.
Continuing the discussion in its issue of July 1, 1916. _The New
Republic_ declared:
“For the nation as a whole, such a gradual dissemination of the Negro
among all the States would ultimately be of real advantage. If at the
end of half a century, only 50 per cent or 60 per cent instead of 89
per cent of the Negroes were congregated in the Southern States, it
would end the fear of race domination, and take from the South many
of its peculiar characteristics, which today hamper development. To
the Negro it would be of even more obvious benefit.... For if the
Southern Negro finding political and social conditions intolerable,
were to migrate to the North, he would have in his hand a weapon as
effective, as any he could find, in the ballot box.... Against the
opposition of the preponderant white population, the Southern Negro
has few defenses. He has no vote, he has no wealth; and as for the
protection of the law, that is a sword held by the white man with the
edge towards the Negro. He cannot better his condition by political
action or armed revolt. His one defense is to move away.”[354]
Weighing duly what is urged above, without necessarily accepting all
of it as accurate, is it not apparent, that, for a Southern white man
to argue that the Negroes should remain in the South, in the masses
in which they now exist there, is an indication that he refuses to
consider anything as beneficial, which affects industrial conditions
he has become accustomed to? For the Negro so to think is simply the
survival of the servile instinct, which the bulk of the Southern whites
claim is latent in all Negroes.
To stress the matter a little further, the view of a Southern and a
Northern Negro will be submitted and contrasted.
The first is the view of a colored man, Rev. Richard Carroll, who, in
1890, had attracted the attention of George William Curtis, as has been
before mentioned, by his bold and original utterance, that Tillman had
made the whites as well as the Negroes readers and thinkers. Some eight
years later this colored man had served as the chaplain of a colored
regiment in Cuba. Later he had occupied himself with a colored school
near Columbia, South Carolina, and, to some extent, had become, to the
press of the State of South Carolina, the type of the good Negro, who
agrees with the best of the whites. That is the distinct ear mark of
the “Good Negro.”
Describing the departure of the Negroes from South Carolina in 1916, he
states that:
“Hon. H. C. Tillman, son of Senator B. R. Tillman, told me that in the
crowd were one or two of the farm hands that had signed contracts to
work next year, but that he would not interfere with them.”
Next he describes the tearful, melodramatic appeal of a Georgia divine,
entreating the Negroes not to leave the South:
“We have not treated you right; we are going to do better. Let us,
white and colored unite to solve the race question on Southern soil.
We are in debt to you colored people. First of all we owe you the
Gospel; then we owe you protection before the law. There will be no
more outrages when we take up this problem, as we should, and solve it
by the Gospel.”
Having shown the patriotic unselfishness of Captain Tillman and quoted
the wail of the Georgia divine, the colored educator proceeds to state
his own view:
“This is the country for the black man; the white people of the South
should offer the proper inducements and protection before the law to
keep the colored people in the Southland.... It may be as many of our
colored people say: ‘God is in this movement.’ But I believe that if
the colored people of the South had worked together for the last fifty
years for the good of each race and at the same time each race in its
place, we would have had better conditions; in the South—no lynchings,
no cause for lynchings. If the best people in the South had kept it
in the hands of the Gen. Wade Hampton type, this would have been the
greatest country on earth.”
Just about fifty years before Carroll’s utterance, people in the
South, to some degree answering to Carroll’s description of the
Hampton type, framed the Black Codes, as they thought, “for the good
of each race, and at the same time each race in its place.” But, after
Reconstruction, Wade Hampton thought diffusion of the Negro was the
only remedy.
After detailing cases, where he claimed to know that Negro men of
property had been ordered out of the State simply because they owned
property and were prosperous, Carroll states that when they came to him
for advice, he advised them to—
“try to get to some other white men in the county or community, as
there are plenty of white men in South Carolina, who would give
justice and protection.”[355]
The Black Codes made this obligatory on all masters for their servants.
The framers of the codes were raised in the school of politics which
Rhett, in 1850, announced the basic principle of, as follows:
“Where there is but one race in a community there may be political
equality in rights—but this cannot give equality in mind, character
and condition. Servitude still prevails in one form or another, from
a necessity as stern as the laws. But when the races are different
and one race is inferior to the other, the inferior race must be
exterminated or fall into such a state of subjection as to present
motives for their preservation to the stronger race.”[356]
Residence in the South, a considerable time after maturity, had
therefore apparently lessened the independence of this colored man. He
had come, not unnaturally, to prefer security to independence.
But, in the same year and about the same time, there appeared in the
same paper a temperately worded article from the pen of another Negro,
also a minister, R. R. Wright, Jr., residing in Philadelphia, who had
been employed at various times by the United States Bureau of Labor and
the University of Pennsylvania.
He had also, at an earlier date, published an essay on the Negro
Problem, which treats the subject as a scientific investigation, in
which all temper and feeling is out of place. With regard to the
movement of the Negroes he declared there had been at least four
different migrations of the Negroes from the South to the North
since the war between the States, and estimating in 1916 that there
were then, in that section, usually called the North but embracing a
considerable portion of the West, he thought, of the 1,600,000 Negroes
there, three fourths had been born in the South. With regard to the
number of Negroes in the North at that date this estimate was above
what the Census of 1920 disclosed; for by it, the date 1910, there were
only 1,059,000 Negroes in the North and West and therefore, even if
they had increased by 1916 to 1,600,000, three fourths of these could
not have been from the South, even if the total addition of 541,000 had
come from that section, as of the 1,059,000 in 1910, only forty per
cent were from the South;[357] but whether 40%, 50% or 75% were from
the South, Wright believed 80% of those who had moved up would stay,
because he was confident, the most efficient could compete with the
Slavs and Italians in rough work. Indeed he claimed it was no uncommon
thing to see a Negro foreman over groups of Italians in Pennsylvania.
Having seen the same thing practically as to Negroes and Spaniards,
during the World War the writer can believe this. Higher wages and
better educational facilities also Wright claimed would draw the Negro,
North and West, and finally he cited what is in his opinion the most
powerful inducement, for the Negro to move in increasing numbers from
the South to the North:
“The opportunity to vote will also tend to hold them. Politicians are
encouraging Negroes to remain; as they are very generally Republican.
Northern Negroes are encouraging them to stay because it gives them
more power; and after the Negro casts his vote and takes part in
political meetings, he is just like the naturalized foreigner—he
likes it and stays. Of course the white people rule, because superior
intelligence and wealth always rule. But the black man enjoys being
a part of the Government and being called upon every year to have
his “say”.... While there is no more social equality in the North
than there is in the South, and practically no desire for the same,
the longer the Negro lives there, the opportunities to enjoy himself
according to his means appeal to him. He earns more money, can live
in a better house, buy better clothes, develops more accomplishments,
has more leisure and has more protection in his enjoyment. Personally,
I think it is good both for the Negroes and for the whites that a
million or two million Negroes leave the South. It will make room for
a large number of foreigners to come to the South and will tend to
divorce the South’s labor problem more widely from its race problem,
and will give it a new perspective. It will also rob the South of
the fear of ‘Negro domination’ and will give it a chance to give a
better expression to our democratic principles. On the other hand the
scattering the Negroes throughout the country will bring them in touch
with the forces of organized labor in a way to bring them better
protection, while it will also acquaint the North with the Negro in
such a way as to give it a more intelligent grasp of our general
problem of racial relations.”[358]
Meanwhile with views for and views against, shouted to them, from all
sides, the Negroes moved up from the South to the North and West and to
the great centers of industry, to supply the place of immigrants and
soldiers passed and passing to Europe for the great war.
To the reading Negro, wherever he was, North or South in this year just
before the entrance of the great Republic into the greatest war of all
time, came “The New Negro, His Political and Civil Status and Related
Essays,” by William Pickens, Lit. D. Easily comprehended, popularly
composed, they opened with the usual attack upon the black laws of the
South in the sixties, the author especially singling out the code of
South Carolina for criticism. Of them generally he says:
“From the standpoint of the Negro’s interests, however, these laws
were ‘black’, not only in name and aim, but in their very nature.
Instead of being the property of a personally interested master, the
Negro was to be converted into the slave of a much less sympathetic
society in general.”[359]
But strange to say this critic, in 1916, actually proclaims that—
“One of the greatest handicaps under which the New Negro lives is the
handicap of the lack of acquaintanceship between him and his white
neighbor. Under the former order, when practically all Negroes were
either slaves or servants, every Negro had the acquaintance of some
white man; as a race he was better known, better understood and was,
therefore, the object of less suspicion on the part of the white
community.”[360]