OUR FEDERAL FRIENDS AND THE COLORED BROTHER.
The bewilderment of the negroes in the great social upheaval that came
with peace was outdone by that of the white people. The conditions of the
war times had been peaceable and simple compared with the perplexities of
existence now precipitated upon us. The Confederacy’s 175,000 surrendered
soldiers--and these included the last fifteen-year-old boy--were scattered
through the South, thousands of them disabled for work by wounds, and
thousands more by ill-health and ignorance of any other profession than
that of arms. The Federal soldiers garrisoned all important places. A
travesty of justice was meted out by a semi-civil military authority.
Every community maintained an active skirmish-line against the daily
aggressions of the freedmen and the oppressions of the military arm. Large
sums were paid by citizens to recover property held by the enemy; and, for
a time, the people paid a per cent. out of every dollar to the revenue
office for a permit to spend that dollar at stores opened by Yankees--our
only source of supply.
Few persons had property readily convertible into greenbacks, and
Confederate money was being burned or used by the bale to paper rooms in
the home of its possessor. No man knew how to invest money that had
escaped the absorption of war, and when he did invest it he usually lost
it. For the next ten years what the sword had not devoured the “canker
worm” (cotton worm, with us) ate up.
The people were in favor of reorganizing the States in accord with the
Union. But the iniquities of carpet-bag governments and the diabolisms of
“black and tan” conventions for a long time kept respectable men out of
politics. It was indeed too “filthy a pool” to be entered. At a longer
perspective this seems to have been a mistake. If the best men of the
country had gone into the people’s service--as did General Longstreet with
most patriotic but futile purpose--they might have arrested incessant
lootings of the people’s hard-wrested tax-money and the nefarious
legislation that enriched the despised carpet-bagger and
scalawag--present, like the vultures, only for the prey after the battle.
So many men, however, had been disfranchised by reason of Confederate
service that it is doubtful if enough respectability was eligible for
office, to have had any purifying effect on public affairs.
In this crisis our Northern friends advised us after the following
fashion. Major A. L. Brewer, Mr. Merrick’s uncle, who had belonged to
Sherman’s army, sent me, in 1865, a letter from New Lisbon, Ohio:
“MY DEAR CARRIE,--Your devotion to Edwin makes you very dear to me.
You know my attachment to him and that I regard him as a son. He was
always my favorite nephew. Since the war is over I trust that he will
now take the oath of allegiance, and should he need any aid I can
render it. The Secretary of War, Postmaster-General, Senators Nolle
and Sherman of Ohio, and many others, are my staunch friends.
“As far as suffering is concerned you have had your share; but I would
gladly have endured it for you if I could have saved my dear boy
Charlie, who fell in battle. He was noble and brave, and my heart is
chilled with grief for his loss.
“This was a foolish, unnatural war, and after four years of bloodshed
and destruction I rejoice that it is over, and that discord will never
again disturb the peace in our country. But the authors of the
rebellion have paid dearly for their folly and wickedness. When I
reflect upon the misery brought about by a few arch villains, I find
it hard to control my feelings;--I should feel differently had they
been the only sufferers. When I look upon the distress which has
fallen upon the masses in the South, I have no sympathy for the
instigators of the war.
“But, my dear, you have fared better than many who came within my
observation; as I followed Sherman, I have seen whole plantations
utterly destroyed, houses burnt and women and children driven into the
woods without warning. The torch was applied to everything. Sometimes
the women would save a few things, but in most cases they went forth
bareheaded to make the ground their bed and the sky their roof. The
next day when the hungry children came prowling around our camps in
search of something to eat, the Federal soldiers who left wives and
children at home, and who had the hearts of men, were sorry for them.
But such is the cruelty of war and military discipline.”
Captain Charles B. White, a West Point officer in the United States
service in New Orleans, wrote my daughter Clara, after his return to New
York, in this manner: “I find your experiences in the kitchen very
amusing. Our Northern ladies have an idea that you of the South know
nothing practically of housekeeping. Quite erroneous is it not? I have
been for some time in Boston and find the girls here prettier as a class,
than those of any other city I have visited, not excepting Baltimore. They
are so sensible and self-assisting. You see that army people look at the
practical side of life. As our salaries are not large it is essential that
our domestic establishments should be as good as possible with the least
outlay of cash. We are therefore compelled to think of our future life
companions in the light of these considerations.
“It is very agreeable to be here with those in full accord on social and
political subjects,--not that I am a politician; but since we are the
victors, I hold that we cannot ignore the principles for which we fought.
I think that it behooves Wade Hampton, Toombs, Cobb and Robert Ould to
hold their tongues, and to be thankful that they are not punished for
their evil deeds, rather than be so blatant of their own shame. I am sorry
to find you in favor of Mr. Seymour. He is from my own State, but he is a
blot upon it; personally he is a gentleman,--as far as a dough-face and a
copper-head can be one. A few Northern politicians may, for
self-interest, humble themselves and praise traitors, but the masses are
as much disposed as ever to make treason odious. The South ought not again
to fall into the error of 1860, and estrange their real friends, and
irritate the Northern masses. We have undisguised admiration for General
Longstreet and his class who became reconstructed and attend to business.
“I do not admire Mr. S. W. Conway nor other adventurers in Louisiana, but
their opponents are still more unreasonable and unprincipled. It will take
me some time to become convinced that plantation negroes will make good
legislators. I have not been in favor of negro suffrage, but now it seems
the only expedient left us for the reconstruction of the turbulent South.
All sorts of lies are trumped up by the Democrats about Grant and Colfax.
I always object to personal abuse in a political controversy.
“I see my services will be no longer required in Louisiana, and my leave
expires next month. I see with equal clearness that beyond my immediate
circle of friends I shall scarcely be missed. How humbling to a conceited
man, who thinks himself essential, to return and find the household going
on just as well without him!”
With such amenities of intercourse between the conquered and the
conquerors it may not seem to some observers extraordinary that
reconstruction progressed so slowly. Mr. Richard Grant White said in the
_North American Review_ respecting the great struggle of the Sections:
“The South had fought to maintain an inequality of personal rights and an
aristocratic form of society. The North had fought, not in a crusade for
equality and against aristocracy, but for _money_--after the first flush
of enthusiasm caused by ‘firing on the flag’ had subsided. The Federal
Government was victorious simply because it had the most men and the most
money. The Confederate cause failed simply because its men and its money
were exhausted; for no other reason. Inequality came to an end in the
South; equality was established throughout the Union; but the real victors
were the money-makers, merchants, bankers, manufacturers, railwaymen,
monopolists and speculators. It was their cause that had triumphed under
the banners of freedom.”
Words cannot give so strong a confirmation of the above as the fact of the
South’s pitiful 175,000 men against the 1,000,000 men of the North
mustered out of service after the surrender. But it is not my purpose to
enter upon the history of the civil war farther than it touched my own
life.
“Write our story as you may,
----------------but even you,
With your pen, could never write
Half the story of our land----
--------------
“Warrior words--but even they
Fail as failed our men in gray;----
Fail to tell the story grand
Of our cause and of our land.”
A pretty young creature said to her aged relative: “Why, money can never
make people happy!”
“No, my child,” replied the old lady, “but it can make them very
comfortable.” The South learned in the direst way--through the want of
it--the comfort of money. It has learned also through the aggressions of
trusts and monopolies how comfortable and dangerous a thing money may
prove to be to the liberties of a people. It was during the war and soon
after it that vast fortunes were made at the North.
The South has long ago accepted its destiny as an integral element of the
United States and the great American people. It has set its face
resolutely forward with historic purpose. It clings to its past only as
its traditions and practices safe-guarded constitutional rights and the
integrity of a true republic. Its simpler social structure has enabled it
to keep a clearer vision of the purposes of our forefathers in government
than the North, with its tremendous infiltration of foreigners ingrained
with monarchical antecedents, and with the complex interests of many
classes. Never, perhaps, so much as now has a “solid South” been needed to
help to keep alive the principles of true democracy. But “old, sore
cankering wounds that pierced and stung,--throb no longer.”
Money is comfort, but love is happiness. The love of one God and a common
country “has welded fast the links which war had broken.”
The negro question of the South has become the problem of the nation. This
is retributive justice; for the North introduced slavery into the colonial
provinces, and sold the slaves to the South when they had ceased to be
profitable in Massachusetts. The South found them renumerative and kept
them. This branch of the subject may be dismissed with the reflection that
it is a disposition common to humanity to use any sort of sophistry to
excuse or palliate bias of feeling and departures in conduct from the
right way. Everybody--North and South--is equally glad that slavery is now
abolished, notwithstanding differences of opinion as to the methods by
which it was accomplished.
Judge Tourgee, in his “Fool’s Errand,” said: “The negroes were brought
here against their will. They have learned in two hundred years the
rudiments of civilization, the alphabet of religion, law, mechanic arts,
husbandry. Freed without any great exertion upon their part, enfranchised
without any intelligent or independent cooperation--no wonder they deem
themselves the special pets of Providence.” Seven years ago when cotton
was selling for four cents a pound and starvation was staring in the face
alike the planter and the negro tenant, the owner of a large plantation
said to one of her old slaves: “Oh, these are dreadful times, Maria! How
are we to live through them! I’m distressed for the people on the place. I
fear they will suffer this winter!” “Lor, Miss Annie,” Maria replied, “I
ain’t ’sturbin’ my mine ’bout it. White folks dun tuk keer me all my life
an’ I spec’s they gwine ter keep on ter the eend!” The negro Providence is
“white folks.” If they seem a bit slow in doling out to their desire they
know how to help themselves, and it is well they do.
The sudden freedom of the black man as a war measure and his
enfranchisement as a political necessity of the Republican party was a
social earthquake for the South and a sort of moral cataclysm for the
North. The one was too stunned by the shock, the other too delirious with
success to be able to grasp the portent of such an event in the national
life. The North approached it with abolition, fanaticism, and expected the
liberated slave to be an ally of freedom of which he had no true
conception. The South was an instinctive and hereditary ruler, and the
freedman was overrunning its daily life and traditions. It is not
wonderful that the negro has suffered in this conflict of antagonistic
ideas.
The enfranchisement of the old slave has set back the development of the
South for a generation, because it has been compelled to gauge all its
movements on the race line. It has hindered the North for an equal time
because the political value of the colored brother to the Republican party
has seemed to overshadow every other phase of his development. But
schooling and training can remodel even the prejudices of intelligent
minds and sincere natures. Thirty-five years of mistakes have convinced
both North and South that the negro has been long enough sacrificed to
political interests.
Those only who have long lived where the negro equals or outnumbers the
white population can understand his character, and the grave problem now
confronting this nation.
The danger of enfranchising a large class uninstructed in the duties of
citizenship and totally ignorant of any principles of government, will
prove an experiment not in vain if it enforces on the people of the
United States the necessity to restrict suffrage to those who are trained
in the knowledge and spirit of American institutions. It should serve to
emphasize the unwisdom and injustice of denying the ballot because of sex
to one half of its American born citizens who, by education and
patriotism, are qualified for the highest citizenship. Our government will
never become truly democratic until it lives up to its own principles, “No
taxation without representation, no government without the consent of the
governed.” Suffrage should be the privilege of those only who have
acquired a right to it by educating themselves for its responsibilities. A
proper educational qualification for the ballot, without sex or color
lines, would actualize our vision of “a government for the people, of the
people and by the people,” and would eliminate the ignorant foreigner of
all nationalities and colors, as well as the white American who is too
indolent or unintelligent to fit himself for the duties of citizenship.
Happily the true friend of the Afro-Americans, North and South, begins to
distinguish between their accidental and their permanent well-being. The
negro himself is coming to realize that he must make the people with whom
he lives his best friends; that the conditions which are for the good of
the whites of his community are good for him; that his development must be
economic instead of political; that only as he learns to cope with the
Anglo-Saxon as a breadwinner will he become truly a freed man.
The African in the South is better off than any laboring class on earth.
His industrial conditions have less stress in them. He is seldom out of
work unless by his own choice or inefficiency. The climate is in his
favor. In the agricultural districts land is cheap for purchase or rent.
Gardens, stock, poultry and fruit are easily at his command. For little
effort he is well clothed and well fed. Fuel costs him only the gathering.
The soil responds freely to his careless cultivation. In the trades no
distinctions are made between the white and the colored mechanic as to
wages or opportunity. There is no economic prejudice against him; he is
freely employed by the whites even as a contractor. But the Southern white
will “ride alone”--even in a hearse--rather than ride with the negro
socially outside the electric cars. Otherwise his old master is the
negro’s best friend. A study of the State Report of Education will
convince the most skeptical that the public school fund is divided
proportionally with the colored schools, though the whites pay nearly the
whole tax. Besides, while Ohio, and perhaps other Northern States,
prohibit negro teachers in the public schools, the South, with a view to
rewarding as well as stimulating the ambition of the student, gives the
preference to colored teachers for their own schools.
Removed from the arena of politics the black man has no real enemy but
himself. It will not do to judge the masses by the few who have been able
to lift themselves above their fellows. Their religion is emotional, often
without moral standards. Some of them are indolent, improvident and
shiftless to a degree that largely affects white prosperity. But though
they have faults which do not even “lean to virtue’s side,” they are
good-natured, teachable, forgiving, loving and lovable.
[Illustration: BECKY COLEMAN]
The nation should look with encouragement and gratitude to Booker T.
Washington as the real Moses who, by industrial education, proposes to
lead his people out of their real bondage. Only by making themselves
worthy will they be able to exist on kindly terms with the white race. The
same slow process of the ages which has wrought out Anglo Saxon
civilization will elevate this race. Nature’s law of growth for them, as
for white people, is struggle. The fittest will survive.