saying that his present condition is due to the fact that the State
and Federal courts have not sustained the laws passed for the
protection of the rights of his people, but I think we shall have to
go deeper than this, because I believe that all agree that court
decisions, as a rule, represent the public opinion of the community or
nation creating and sustaining the court.
At the beginning of his freedom, it was unfortunate that those of the
white race who won the political confidence of the negro were not,
with few exceptions, men of such high character as would lead them to
assist him in laying a firm foundation for his development. Their main
purpose appears to have been, for selfish ends in too many instances,
merely to control his vote. The history of the reconstruction era will
show that this was unfortunate for all the parties in interest.
It would have been better, from any point of view, if the native
Southern white man had taken the negro, at the beginning of his
freedom, into his political confidence, and exercised an influence and
control over him before his political affections were alienated. In
the light of present experience, I think all will now agree that the
ballot would have meant more to the negro and would have been more
lasting in its results, would have caused less opposition, if it had
been given to him gradually, as he came into possession of education.
The average Southern white man has the idea to-day that if the negro
were permitted to get any political power all the mistakes of the
reconstruction period would be repeated. He forgets or ignores the
fact that thirty years of acquiring education and property and
character have produced a higher type of black man than existed thirty
years ago.
But to be more specific for all practical purposes, there are two
political parties in the South--a black man's party and a white man's
party. In saying this, I do not mean that all white men are Democrats,
for there are some white men in the South of the highest character who
are Republicans, and there are a few negroes in the South of the
highest character who are Democrats. It is the general understanding
that all white men are Democrats, or the equivalent, and that all
black men are Republicans. So long as the color line is the dividing
line in politics, so long will there be trouble.
The white man feels that he owns most of the property, furnishes the
negro most of his employment, that he pays most of the taxes, and,
besides, has had years of experience in government. There is no
mistaking the fact that the feeling which, in some way, has heretofore
taken possession of the negro--that to be manly and stand by his race
he must oppose the Southern white man with his vote--has had much to
do with intensifying the opposition to him.
The Southern white man says that it is unreasonable for the negro to
come to him, in a large measure, for his clothes, board, shelter, and
education, and for his politics to go to men a thousand miles away.
The Southern white man argues that when the negro votes he should in a
larger measure try to consult the interests of his employer, just as
the Pennsylvania employee tries to vote for the interests of his
employer.
The Southern white man argues, further, that much of the education
which has been given the negro has been defective in not preparing him
to love labor and to earn his living at some special industry, and
has, in too many cases, resulted in tempting him to live by his wits
as a political creature, or by trusting to his "influence" as a
political timeserver.
Then there is no mistaking the fact that much opposition to the negro
in politics is due to the circumstance that the Southern white man has
not got accustomed to seeing the negro exercise political power,
either as a voter or as an officeholder. Again, we want to bear it in
mind that the South has not yet reached the point where there is that
strict regard for the enforcement of the law against either black or
white men that there is in many of our Northern and Western States.
This laxity in the enforcement of the laws in general, and especially
of criminal laws, makes such outbreaks as those in North Carolina and
South Carolina of easy occurrence.
Then there is one other consideration which must not be overlooked: it
is the common opinion of almost every black man and almost every white
man that nearly everybody who has had anything to do with the making
of laws bearing upon the protection of the negro's vote has proceeded
on the theory that all the black men for all time are going to vote
the Republican ticket, and that all the white men in the South are
going to vote the Democratic ticket; in a word, all seemed to have
taken it for granted that the two races are always going to oppose
each other in their voting.
In all the foregoing statements I have not attempted to define my own
views or position, but simply to describe conditions as I have
observed them, that might throw light upon the cause of our political
troubles.
As to my own position in all these matters I do not favor the negro's
giving up anything which is fundamental and which has been guaranteed
to him by the Constitution of the United States. It is not best for
him to relinquish any of his rights; nor would his doing so be best
for the Southern white man. Every law placed in the Constitution of
the United States was placed there to encourage and stimulate the
highest citizenship. If the negro is not stimulated and encouraged by
just State and national laws to become the highest type of citizen,
the result will be worse for the Southern white man than for the
negro. Take the State of South Carolina, for example, where nearly two
thirds of the population are negroes. Unless these negroes are
encouraged by just election laws to become taxpayers and intelligent
producers, the white people of South Carolina will have an eternal
millstone about their necks.
In addressing the Southern white people at the opening of the Atlanta
Exposition, in 1895, I said:
"There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable:
"'The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed;
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.'
"Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load
upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall
constitute one third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South,
or one third of its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one
third to the business and industrial property of the South, or we
shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing,
retarding every effort to advance the body politic."
Subsequently, in an open letter to the State Constitutional Convention
of Louisiana, I wrote:
"I am no politician; on the other hand, I have always advised my race
to give attention to acquiring property, intelligence, and character,
as the necessary basis of good citizenship, rather than to mere
political agitation. But the question upon which I write is out of
the region of ordinary politics: it affects the civilization of two
races, not for to-day alone, but for a very long time to come; it is
up in the region of duty of man to man, of Christian to Christian.
"Since the war no State has had such an opportunity to settle for all
time the race question, so far as it concerns politics, as is now
given to Louisiana. Will your convention set an example to the world
in this respect? Will Louisiana take such high and just grounds in
respect to the negro that no one can doubt that the South is as good a
friend to the negro as he possesses elsewhere? In all this, gentlemen
of the convention, I am not pleading for the negro alone, but for the
morals, the higher life of the white man as well; for the more I study
this question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much a
question as to what the white man will do with the negro as to what
the negro will do with the white man's civilization.
"The negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of
the South that restriction be put upon the ballot. I know that you
have two serious problems before you: ignorant and corrupt government
on the one hand, and on the other a way to restrict the ballot, so
that control will be in the hands of the intelligent, without regard
to race. With the sincerest sympathy with you in your efforts to find
a good way out of the difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in
the South can make a law that will provide an opportunity or
temptation for an ignorant white man to vote and withhold the
opportunity or temptation for an ignorant colored man without injuring
both men. No State can make a law that can thus be executed without
dwarfing for all time the morals of the white man in the South. Any
law controlling the ballot that is not absolutely just and fair to
both races will work more permanent injury to the whites than to the
blacks.
"The negro does not object to an educational and property test, but
let the law be so clear that no one clothed with State authority will
be tempted to perjure and degrade himself by putting one
interpretation upon it for the white man and another for the black
man. Study the history of the South, and you will find that where
there has been the most dishonesty in the matter of voting, there you
will find to-day the lowest moral condition of both races. First,
there was the temptation to act wrongly with the negro's ballot. From
this it was an easy step to act dishonestly with the white man's
ballot, to the carrying of concealed weapons, to the murder of a
negro, and then to the murder of a white man, and then to lynching. I
entreat you not to pass a law that will prove an eternal millstone
about the necks of your children.
"No man can have respect for the Government and officers of the law
when he knows, deep down in his heart, that the exercise of the
franchise is tainted with fraud.
"The road that the South has been compelled to travel during the last
thirty years has been strewn with thorns and thistles. It has been as
one groping through the long darkness into the light. The time is not
far distant when the world will begin to appreciate the real character
of the burden that was imposed upon the South when four million
ex-slaves, ignorant and impoverished, were given the franchise. No
people has ever been given such a problem to solve. History has blazed
no path through the wilderness that could be followed. For thirty
years we have wandered in the wilderness. We are now beginning to get
out. But there is only one road out, and all makeshifts, expedients,
profit-and-loss calculations, but lead into swamps, quicksands,
quagmires, and jungles. There is a highway that will lead both races
out into the pure, beautiful sunshine, where there will be nothing to
hide and nothing to explain, where both races can grow strong and true
and useful in every fiber of their being. I believe that your
convention will find this highway; that it will enact a fundamental
law that will be absolutely just and fair to white and black alike.
"I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the ballot
box against the ignorant you open the schoolhouse. More than one half
of the population of your State are negroes. No State can long prosper
when a large part of its citizenship is in ignorance and poverty, and
has no interest in government. I beg of you that you do not treat us
as an alien people. We are not aliens. You know us; you know that we
have cleared your forests, tilled your fields, nursed your children,
and protected your families. There is an attachment between us that
few understand. While I do not presume to be able to advise you, yet
it is in my heart to say that if your convention would do something
that would prevent for all time strained relations between the two
races, and would permanently settle the matter of political relations
in one Southern State, at least, let the very best educational
opportunities be provided for both races; and add to this an election
law that shall be incapable of unjust discrimination, at the same time
providing that in proportion as the ignorant secure education,
property, and character, they will be given the right of citizenship.
Any other course will take from one half your citizens interest in the
State, and hope and ambition to become intelligent producers and
taxpayers, to become useful and virtuous citizens. Any other course
will tie the white citizens of Louisiana to a body of death.
"The negroes are not unmindful of the fact that the white people of
your State pay the greater portion of the school taxes, and that the
poverty of the State prevents it from doing all that it desires for
public education; yet I believe that you will agree with me that
ignorance is more costly to the State than education; that it will
cost Louisiana more not to educate the negroes than it will to educate
them. In connection with a generous provision for public schools, I
believe that nothing will so help my own people in your State as
provision at some institution for the highest academic and normal
training in connection with thorough training in agriculture,
mechanics, and domestic economy. The fact is that ninety per cent of
our people depend upon the common occupations for their living, and
outside of the cities eighty-five per cent rely upon agriculture for
support. Notwithstanding this, our people have been educated for the
most part since the war in everything else but the very thing most of
them live by. First-class training in agriculture, horticulture,
dairying, stock raising, the mechanical arts, and domestic economy
would make us intelligent producers, and not only help us to
contribute our proportion as taxpayers, but would result in retaining
much money in the State that now goes outside for that which can be as
well produced at home. An institution which will give this training of
the hand, along with the highest mental culture, would soon convince
our people that their salvation is largely in the ownership of
property and in industrial and business development, rather than in
mere political agitation.
"The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its
willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate. A race,
like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up. Surely no
people ever had a greater chance to exhibit the highest Christian
fortitude and magnanimity than is now presented to the people of
Louisiana. It requires little wisdom or statesmanship to repress, to
crush out, to retard the hopes and aspirations of a people, but the
highest and most profound statesmanship is shown in guiding and
stimulating a people, so that every fiber in the body and soul shall
be made to contribute in the highest degree to the usefulness and
ability of the State. It is along this line that I pray God the
thoughts and activities of your convention be guided."
As to the cure for such outbreaks as have recently hurt North Carolina
and South Carolina, I would say that the remedy will not come by the
Southern white man's being merely cursed by the Northern white man or
by the negro. Again, it will not come by the Southern white man merely
depriving the negro of his rights and privileges. Both of these
methods are but superficial, irritating, and must in the nature of
things be short-lived. The statesman, to cure an evil, resorts to
enlightenment, to stimulation; the politician to repression. I have
just remarked that I favor the giving up of nothing that is guaranteed
to us by the Constitution of the United States, or that is fundamental
to our citizenship. While I hold to these views as strongly as any
one, I differ with some as to the method of securing the permanent and
peaceful enjoyment of all the privileges guaranteed to us by our
fundamental law.
In finding a remedy, we must recognize the world-wide fact that the
negro must be led to see and feel that he must make every effort
possible in every way possible to secure the friendship, the
confidence, the co-operation of his white neighbor in the South. To do
this, it is not necessary for the negro to become a truckler or a
trimmer. The Southern white man has no respect for a negro who does
not act from principle. In some way the Southern white man must be led
to see that it is to his interest to turn his attention more and more
to the making of laws that will in the truest sense elevate the negro.
At the present moment, in many cases, when one attempts to get the
negro to co-operate with the Southern white man, he asks the question,
"Can the people who force me to ride in a Jim Crow car, and pay
first-class fare, be my best friends?" In answering such questions,
the Southern white man as well as the negro has a duty to perform.
In the exercise of his political rights I should advise the negro to
be temperate and modest, and more and more to do his own thinking,
rather than to be led or driven by a political "boss" or by political
demagogues.
I believe the permanent cure for our present evils will come though a
property and educational test for voting that shall apply honestly and
fairly to both races. This will cut off the large mass of ignorant
voters of both races that is now proving so demoralizing a factor in
the politics of the Southern States.
But most of all it will come through industrial development of the
negro! It is for this reason that I have believed in General
Armstrong's theory of industrial education. In the first place,
industrial education makes an intelligent producer of the negro, who
becomes of immediate value to the community rather than one who yields
to the temptation to live merely by politics or other parasitical
employments. In the next place, industrial development will make the
negro soon become a property-holder, and when a citizen becomes a
holder of property he becomes a conservative and thoughtful voter. He
is going to think about the measures and individuals to be voted for.
In proportion as the negro increases his property interests he becomes
important as a taxpayer. When the negro becomes a large taxpayer, he
will see that it is to his interest to consult with his white neighbor
about the measures to be voted for. There is little trouble between
the negro and the white man as to matters of education, and when it
comes to the negro's business development the black man has implicit
faith in the advice of the Southern white man. When the negro gets
into trouble in the courts, which require a bond to be given, in nine
cases out of ten he goes to a Southern white man for advice and
assistance. Every one who has lived in the South knows that in many of
the church troubles among the colored people the ministers and other
church officers apply to the nearest white minister for assistance and
instruction. As soon as we have grown to the point where we shall
consult the Southern white man about our politics as we now consult
him about our business, legal, and religious matters, there will be a
change for the better in the situation.
The object lesson of a thousand negroes in every county in the South
owning neat and comfortable homes, possessing skill, industry, and
thrift, with money in the bank, who are large taxpayers and co-operate
with the white men in the South in every manly way for the development
of their own communities and counties, will go a long way in a few
years toward changing the present status of the negro as a citizen as
well as the attitude of the whites toward the blacks.
In proportion as the negro grows along industrial and business lines
he will divide in his politics on economic issues, just as the white
man in other parts of the country now divides his vote.
In proportion as the South grows in business prosperity the whole
South will divide its vote on economic issues, just as other portions
of the country divide their vote. When we can enact laws that result
in honestly cutting off the large ignorant and nontaxpaying vote, and
when we can bring both races to the point where they will co-operate
with each other in politics in matters of business, religion, and
education, the problem will be in a large measure solved, and
political outbreaks will cease.
* * * * *
COLONEL GEORGE EARL CHURCH, speaking of the Indians of the
country of the Amazons, relates of the chief of a horde of Yocaré
savages whom he met among the falls of the Madeira, a young
fellow twenty-five years old, that "he appeared to know
everything that was going on around him. He seemed to have eyes
in the back of his head, so acute were his senses. His hearing
appeared to indicate, and his mind to define, the thousand things
which were occurring in the tropical forest around us.
Instinctively, he classified and estimated them at their true
value as if they were under close and accurate analysis. As he
sat dining with me at my camp table, in the simplicity of his
nature and modesty of his nakedness, I could not help thinking
that, in the evolution of man, many magnificent qualities have
been sacrificed upon the altar of civilization."
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN NORTH AMERICA.
BY DR. CHARLES C. ABBOTT.
The claim of satisfactory evidence of the extreme antiquity of man in
the valley of the Delaware River has been soberly discussed and
intemperately ridiculed until the public, both scientific and general,
have become tired of hearing the subject mentioned; but this is no
valid reason why the truth should not be ascertained. If man in a
paleolithic stage of culture did exist on the Atlantic seaboard of
North America, then we have a basis upon which to build--a tangible
starting point from which to date a history of human activities on
this continent. As it is, we have but an immense array of facts,
largely unrelated, and the greater portion sadly distorted and
misleading because of the reckless theories set forth with them by
their discoverers, and undoubtedly there never has been, in the whole
range of scientific agitation of a simple question, as great a volume
of reckless assertion, illogical deduction, and disregard of exact
statement. The main question was often wholly lost sight of, and the
author's sole purpose that of demonstrating some one else in error.
Predetermination on the part of many has been fatal to the value of
their field work. Convinced on theoretical grounds, such are
necessarily blinded when on the spot where positive evidence occurs.
He who does not desire the object searched for seldom finds it; and,
later in the day, pride declines to accede to the just demands of
candor--the admission of having reached a wrong conclusion.
There probably would not have been as much attention paid to the
subject of man's growth in culture on this continent had not the
proposition of a sequence from paleolithic to Indian, with an
intervening period, seemed to necessitate a dating back to the Glacial
epoch, which naturally brought geological erudition to bear upon the
question, and since then, most surprisingly, there has been confusion
worse confounded, rather than a flood of light. Much has been written,
but we can not yet be confident which author is most nearly correct;
and the latest report, showing sad evidences of haste, is vitiated by
evident determination to modernize every trace of man, whether the
facts warranted such procedure or not.