Equally futile is the reply, so often made by our opponents,

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THE COLOR LINE

A Brief

IN BEHALF OF THE UNBORN

BY

WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH

_Consider the End_

SOLON

NEW YORK

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

MCMV

_Copyright, 1905, by_

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

_Published February, 1905, N_

_To_

John Henry Neville

_in_

_Admiration and Gratitude_

Transcriber's Note: Superscripted characters are indicated by being

preceded by a carat, such as z^r.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER ONE 3

THE INDIVIDUAL? OR THE RACE?

CHAPTER TWO 29

IS THE NEGRO INFERIOR?

CHAPTER THREE 75

NURTURE? OR NATURE?

CHAPTER FOUR 111

PLEA AND COUNTERPLEA

CHAPTER FIVE 158

A DIP INTO THE FUTURE

CHAPTER SIX 193

THE ARGUMENT FROM NUMBERS

FOREWORD

The following pages attempt a discussion of the most important question

that is likely to engage the attention of the American People for many

years and even generations to come. Compared with the vital matter of

pure Blood, all other matters, as of tariff, of currency, of subsidies,

of civil service, of labour and capital, of education, of forestry, of

science and art, and even of religion, sink into insignificance. For,

to judge by the past, there is scarcely any conceivable educational or

scientific or governmental or social or religious polity under which

the pure strain of Caucasian blood might not live and thrive and

achieve great things for History and Humanity; on the other hand, there

is no reason to believe that any kind or degree of institutional

excellence could permanently stay the race decadence that would follow

surely in the wake of any considerable contamination of that blood by

the blood of Africa.

It is this supreme and all-overshadowing importance of the interests at

stake that must justify the earnestness and the minuteness with which

the matter has been treated. The writer does not deny that he feels

profoundly and intensely on the subject; otherwise, he would certainly

never thus have turned aside from studies far more congenial and

fascinating. But he has not allowed his feelings or any sentimental

considerations whatever to warp his judgment. It has been his effort to

make the whole discussion purely scientific, an ethnological inquiry,

undisturbed by any partisan or political influence. He has had to guard

himself especially against the emotion of sympathy, of pity for the

unfortunate race, "the man of yesterday," which the unfeeling process

of Nature demands in sacrifice on the altar of the evolution of

Humanity.

It may be well to indicate at the outset the general movement of

thought through this volume:

Chapter One in its title strikes the keynote. In the following pages

the main issue is stated, the position of the South is defined, and her

lines of defence are indicated. But there is no attempt to justify the

fundamental assumption in the Southern argument.

In Chapter Two this shortcoming is made good. The assumed inferiority

of both the Negro and the Negroid is argued at length, and proved by a

great variety of considerations.

In Chapter Three the notion that this inferiority, now demonstrated, is

after all merely cultural and removable by Education or other

extra-organic means, is considered minutely and refuted in every detail

and under all disguises.

In Chapter Four the powerful and authoritative plea of Dr. Boas, for

the "primitives," is subjected to a searching analysis, with the

decisive result that, in spite of himself, this eminent anthropologist,

while denying everything as a whole, affirms everything in detail that

is maintained in the preceding chapters. Inasmuch as the Address of

this savant may be regarded as the _ne plus ultra_ of pro-African

pleading, both in earnestness and in learning, it has seemed that no

treatment of the subject would be complete that did not refute it

thoroughly--"so fight I as one not beating the air." To do this was not

possible without quoting extensively, which is the less to be regretted

as the Address has been too little read.

In Chapter Five the obvious and instant question is met. What then is

to become of the Black Man? The answer is rendered in general terms and

is supported by the remarkable testimony of the distinguished

statistician, Professor Willcox. But only general sociologic moments

are regarded, and the statistical argument in detail is held in

reserve.

In Chapter Six this omission is fully supplied. The Growth rate, the

Birth rate, the Death rate, the Crime rate, and the Anthropometry of

the Negro are discussed minutely from every point of view, and the

positions of the preceding chapters are bulwarked and buttressed

unassailably.

It has been the one aim of the writer, who is perfectly convinced in

his own mind, to convince the reader. To this end no pains have been

spared and no drudgery avoided. Since it appeared necessary to regard

the matter from various nearly related points of view, under only

slightly divergent angles, it has happened that the same argumentative

materials have come to hand more than once in almost equivalent forms.

But in this there is no disadvantage; factors of such sovereign potence

do not suffer from repetition. The whole discussion is biological in

its bearing and turns about a few pivotal points; and these deserve to

be stressed by every device of emphasis. "For twice indeed, yea thrice,

they say, it is good to repeat and review the good."

There remain yet certain important political and economical and even

juridical aspects of the subject, concerning which the writer has not

neglected to gather relevant material of evidence; but any adequate

discussion would carry the reader too far afield and would mar the

unity of the work as it now stands. Accordingly these aspects are left

unregarded.

The writer fancies one may forecast the only reply likely to be brought

forward under even a thin guise of plausibility. It will be said, as it

is said, that the much-dreaded contamination of blood is the merest

bugaboo. But nay! it is a tremendous and instant peril, against which

eternal vigilance is the only safeguard, in whose presence it is vain

and fatuous to cry "peace, peace" when there is no peace, a peril whose

menace is sharpened by well-meant efforts at humanity and generosity,

by seemingly just demands for social equality masquerading as "equal

opportunity." The one adequate definition of this "equal opportunity"

has been bravely given by that most able and eloquent Negroid, Prof.

William H. Councill: "Will the White man permit the Negro to have an

equal part in the industrial, political, social and civil advantages of

the United States? This, as I understand it, is the problem." All this

is quite beyond question to the mind that cherishes no illusions and

insistently beholds things as they are. Neither is it less sure that

even the Southern conscience needs quickening at this vital point. The

writer has been appalled at the cool indifference with which

amalgamation is contemplated as necessary and inevitable by certain

highly intelligent philanthropists in the Southland. The matter is

delicate and difficult to argue, and in the body of the book it has

perhaps been stressed too lightly; but the danger signals are clearly

discernible, even as they were to Prof. E. D. Cope, and it is madness

not to heed them. If the race barrier be removed, and the individual

standard of personal excellence be established, the twilight of this

century will gather upon a nation hopelessly sinking in the mire of

Mongrelism.

It can hardly be hoped that any reader will be satisfied with the

glimpse here disclosed of the future. Certainly not the Negro, nor his

apologists; nor even such as sympathize most fully with the writer. The

solemn secular processes, to which the solution of the problem is

relegated, are so very leisurely in their working, closing down upon

their final result with the deliberation of a glacier, or like some

slowly convergent infinite series. But Nature is once for all thus

leaden-footed, and it is extremely difficult to quicken her pace.

We have bestowed merely a glance upon the scheme of Deportation, which

is alas! not now a question of practical statesmanship, though it may

indeed become one sooner than we think.

However, the outlook is not hopeless to him who has a sense of the

world to come, who lives in his race, who feels the solidarity of its

present with its future as well as with its past. "Of men that are

just, the true saviour is Time." Besides, it seems not at all strange

that a disease, chronic through centuries, should require centuries for

its cure, that the multiplied echoes of the curse of African slavery

should go sounding on, even to the years of many generations.

W. B. S.

_Tulane University,

25th October, 1904._

THE COLOR LINE

CHAPTER ONE

THE INDIVIDUAL? OR THE RACE?

_Let not man join together

What God hath put asunder._

In the controversy precipitated by the luncheon at the White House, and

embittered by more recent procedures, the attitude of the South

presents an element of the pathetic. The great world is apparently

hopelessly against her. Three-fourths of the virtue, culture, and

intelligence of the United States seems to view her with pitying scorn;

the old mother, England, has no word of sympathy, but applauds the

conduct that her daughter reprehends; the continent of Europe looks on

with amused perplexity, as unable even to comprehend her position, so

childish and absurd. Worst of all, she herself appears to have no

far-reaching voice. However ably or earnestly her daily journals may

plead her cause, their circle of readers rarely extends far beyond her

own borders: she seems to be talking to herself or raving in a dream.

Under such conditions, why not appeal to her generous foes, to the

Northern Press, to lend the mighty resonance of their own voice to the

proclamation of the Southern plea? "_Their_ tone has gone out through

all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." But the

demands on their space are overwhelming; they hesitate before an

article of more than fifteen pages, and they would not needlessly wound

the sensibilities of their readers. No! The Southern plea, if it is to

be made effective, must be presented in a book.

The present writer professes neither authority nor special fitness to

speak for the South. No one but himself knows that he is framing or

intends to frame this defense; but the situation appeals to him

powerfully, and it is so transparent and so easily understood of any

one here in the midst that he cannot believe he commits any sensible

error in his statement of the case.

To begin, then, it is essential to any proper conduct of the discussion

that the point at issue be clearly defined, and that all false issues

be excluded rigorously and in terms. Unless we widely err, much current

argumentation, especially at the North, is perverted by the fatal

fallacy of mistaken aim. On the other hand, we shall not be at any

pains to defend or excuse intemperance in the language of Southern

writers or speakers; on this head we have no dispute with any one but

are willing to admit, whether true or false, whatever may be charged.

What, then, is the real point at issue, and what does the South stand

for in this contention--stand alone, friendless, despised, with the

head and heart, the brain and brawn, the wealth and culture of the

civilized world arrayed almost solidly against her? The answer is

simple: She stands for _blood_, for the "_continuous germ-plasma_" _of

the Caucasian Race_.

The South cares nothing, in themselves, for the personal friendships or

appreciations of high-placed dignitaries and men of light and leading.

She must concede to such and to all Northerners' and to all Europeans

the abstract right to choose their associates and table company as they

please. What she does maintain is, that _in the South_ the colour line

must be drawn firmly, unflinchingly--without deviation or interruption

of any kind whatever.

It may be too much to affirm that in all extra-social matters--in

politics, in business, in literature, in science, in art, everywhere

but in society--even the best sentiment or practice of the South is

eager to give the Negro strict justice, or ample scope, or free

opportunity. Southerners are merely human; and there is, perhaps, no

great historical example of an inferior race or class treated with all

proper consideration by the superior. Certainly our Northern friends

will hardly maintain that recent disclosures clearly show that their

ruling corporate powers are humane, or generous, or even barely just

towards the poor and humble, in their administration of the important

industrial trusts which God has so wisely placed in their hands. They

are giants, and it is the nature of giants to press hard. At this

point, then, the South is or should be open to conviction. It is the

part of statesmanship, as well as of humanity, continuously to adjust

the relations of classes--much more so of races--so that the largest

interests involved may be sacredly conserved and at the least possible

sacrifice of any smaller interest that may conflict. More can hardly be

expected in a world whose law is strife. Tried by this standard, it is

very doubtful whether the South falls even one notch below the average

set everywhere by the example of the ruling class. If she does, then

let her bear the blame, with neither excuse nor extenuation for her

shortcomings. But in the matter of social separation we can and we will

make no concessions whatever. Neither dare we tolerate any violations

of our fundamental principle among ourselves; nor dare we sit calmly by

and behold its violation by others, when that violation imperils our

own supreme interests and renders more difficult the maintenance of our

own position. Here, then, is laid bare the nerve of the whole matter:

_Is the South justified in this absolute denial of social equality to

the Negro, no matter what his virtues or abilities or accomplishments?_

We affirm, then, that the South is entirely right in thus keeping open

at all times, at all hazards, and at all sacrifices an impassable

social chasm between Black and White. This she _must_ do in behalf of

her blood, her essence, of the stock of her Caucasian Race. To the

writer the correctness of this thesis seems as clear as the sun--so

evident as almost to forestall argument; nor can he quite comprehend

the frame of mind that can seriously dispute it. But let us look at it

closely. Is there any doubt whatever as to the alternative? If we sit

with Negroes at our tables, if we entertain them as our guests and

social equals, if we disregard the colour line in all other relations,

is it possible to maintain it fixedly in the sexual relation, in the

marriage of our sons and daughters, in the propagation of our species?

Unquestionably, No! It is certain as the rising of tomorrow's sun,

that, once the middle wall of social partition broken down, the

mingling of the tides of life would begin instantly and proceed

steadily. Of course, it would be gradual, but none the less sure, none

the less irresistible. It would make itself felt at first most strongly

in the lower strata of the white population; but it would soon invade

the middle and menace insidiously the very uppermost. Many bright

Mulattoes would ambitiously woo, and not a few would win, well-bred

women disappointed in love or goaded by impulse or weary of the stern

struggle for existence. _As a race, the Southern Caucasian would be

irreversibly doomed._ For no possible check could be given to this

process once established. Remove the barrier between two streams

flowing side by side--immediately they begin to mingle their molecules;

in vain you attempt to replace it. Not even ten legions of Clerk

Maxwell's demons could ever sift them out and restore the streams to

their original purity. The moment the bar of absolute separation is

thrown down in the South, that moment the bloom of her spirit is

blighted forever, the promise of her destiny is annulled, the proud

fabric of her future slips into dust and ashes. No other conceivable

disaster that might befall the South could, for an instant, compare

with such miscegenation within her borders. Flood and fire, fever and

famine and the sword--even ignorance, indolence, and carpet-baggery--she

may endure and conquer while her blood remains pure; but once taint the

well-spring of her life, and all is lost--even honour itself. It is

this immediate jewel of her soul that the South watches with such a

dragon eye, that she guards with more than vestal vigilance, with a

circle of perpetual fire. The blood thereof is the life thereof; he who

would defile it would stab her in her heart of heart, and she springs

to repulse him with the fiercest instinct of self-preservation. It may

not be that she is distinctly conscious of the immeasurable interests

at stake or of the real grounds of her roused antagonism; but the

instinct itself is none the less just and true and the natural bulwark

of her life.

To set forth great things by small, we may take the instinct of the

family, with its imperious and uncompromising demand for absolute

female chastity. It is not here, in any controlling measure, a question

of individual morality. We make no such absolute demand upon men. We

regret, we condemn, we may infinitely deplore sexual irregularity in

son, or brother, or husband, or father, or friend, but we do not

ostracize;--we may forgive, we may honour, we may even glorify the

offender in spite of his offense. But for the female dissolute there is

no forgiveness, however we may extra-socially pity or even admire. A

double standard--an abomination! But while none may approve, yet every

one admits and applies it--for reasons deeper than our conscious logic,

and irresistible. For the offense of the man is individual and limited,

while that of the woman is general, and strikes mortally at the

existence of the family itself.

Now the idea of the race is far more sacred than that of the family. It

is, in fact, _the most sacred thing_ on earth; and he who offends

against it is an apostate from his kind and mounts the apex of

sacrilege.

At this point we hear some one exclaim, "Not so fast! To sit at table,

to mingle freely in society with certain persons, does not imply you

would marry them." Certainly not, in every case. We may recognize

socially those whom we personally abhor. This matters not, however; for

wherever social commingling is admitted, there _the possibility of

intermarriage must be also admitted_. It becomes a mere question of

personal preference, of like and dislike. Now, there is no accounting

for tastes. It is ridiculous to suppose that no Negroes would prove

attractive to any whites. The _possible_ would become actual--as

certainly as you will throw double-double sixes, if only you keep on

throwing. To be sure, where the number of Negroes is almost vanishingly

small, as in the North and in Europe, there the chances of such

mesalliances are proportionally divided; some may even count them

negligible. But in the South, where in many districts the Black

outnumbers the White, they would be multiplied immensely, and crosses

would follow with increasing frequency.

It is only the sense of blood superiority, the pride of race, that has

hitherto protected the white labourer. Break this down or abate it, and

he sinks swiftly to the level of the mongrel. Laugh as you will at the

haughtiness of the ignorant Southerner, at his scorn of the Negro,

perhaps his superior, it is this very race self-respect that is the

rock of his salvation. As Bernhard Moses points out, it was _because_

the Anglo-Saxon so cherished this feeling that he refused to amalgamate

with the Indians--a proud and in some ways superior race--but drove

them relentlessly, and often, it may be, unrighteously before him into

the sea. It was just _because_ the Spaniard, though otherwise proud

enough, did not cherish this feeling, that he did amalgamate with the

victims of his greed and descend into hopeless depths of hybridization.

So far, then, from doing aught to weaken this sentiment, we should do

our utmost to strengthen it; we should studiously avoid offending it.

But social equality must deadly wound it and hence drag miscegenation

and all South America in its train.

But some may deny that the mongrelization of the Southern people would

offend the race notion--would corrupt or degrade the Southern stock of

humanity. If so, then such a one has yet to learn the largest-writ

lessons of history and the most impressive doctrines of biological

science. That the Negro is markedly inferior to the Caucasian is proved

both craniologically and by six thousand years of planet-wide

experimentation; and that the commingling of inferior with superior

must lower the higher is just as certain as that the half-sum of two

and six is only four.[1]

[1] For detailed proof of these propositions, see the following

chapters.

If accepted science teaches anything at all, it teaches that the

heights of being in civilized man have been reached along one path and

one only--the path of _Selection_, of the preservation of favoured

individuals and of favoured races. The deadly enemy of the whole

process of uplifting, of the _Drang nach oben_, of the course of

history itself, is _pammixia_. Only give it play, and it would

inevitably level all life into one undistinguished heap. Now,

amalgamation of Black and White is only a special case of _pammixia_.

The hope of the human lies in the superhuman; and the possibility of

the superhuman is given in selection, in natural and rational

selection, among the children that are to be, of the parents of the men

to come. The notion of social racial equality is thus seen to be

abhorrent alike to instinct and to reason; for it flies in the face of

the process of the suns, it runs counter to the methods of the mind of

God.

It is idle to talk of education and civilization and the like as

corrective or compensative agencies.[2] All are weak and beggarly as

over against the almightiness of heredity, the omniprepotence of the

transmitted germ-plasma. Let this be amerced of its ancient rights, let

it be shorn in some measure of its exceeding weight of ancestral glory,

let it be soiled in its millennial purity and integrity, and nothing

shall ever restore it; neither wealth, nor culture, nor science, nor

art, nor morality, nor religion--not even Christianity itself. Here and

there these may redeem some happy spontaneous variation, some lucky

freak of nature; but nothing more--they can never redeem the race. If

this be not true, then history and biology are alike false; then Darwin

and Spencer, Haeckel and Weismann, Mendel and Pearson, have lived and

laboured in vain.

[2] For minuter treatment of this point, see the following

chapters.

Equally futile is the reply, so often made by our opponents, that

miscegenation has already progressed far in the Southland, as witness

millions of Mulattoes. Certainly; but do not such objectors know in

their hearts that their reply is no answer, but is utterly irrelevant?

We admit and deplore the fact that unchastity has poured a broad stream

of white blood into black veins; but we deny, and perhaps no one will

affirm, that it has poured even the slenderest appreciable rill of

Negro blood into the veins of the Whites. We have no excuse whatever to

make for these masculine incontinences; we abhor them as disgraceful

and almost bestial. But, however degrading and even unnatural, they in

nowise, not even in the slightest conceivable degree, defile the

Southern Caucasian blood. That blood to-day is absolutely pure; and it

is the inflexible resolution of the South to preserve that purity, no

matter how dear the cost. We repeat, then, it is not a question of

individual morality, nor even of self-respect. He who commerces with a

negress debases himself and dishonours his body, the temple of the

Spirit; but he does not impair, in anywise, the dignity or integrity of

his race; he may sin against himself and others, and even against his

God, but not against the germ-plasma of his kind.

Does some one reply that some Negroes are better than some Whites,

physically, mentally, morally? We do not deny it; but this fact, again,

is without pertinence. It may very well be that some dogs are superior

to some men. It is absurd to suppose that only the elect of the Blacks

would unite with only the non-elect of the Whites. Once started, the

_pammixia_ would spread through all classes of society and contaminate

possibly or actually all. Even a little leaven may leaven the whole

lump.

Far more than this, however, even if only very superior Negroes formed

unions with non-superior Whites, the case would not be altered; for it

is a grievous error to suppose that the child is born of its proximate

parents only; it is born of all its ancestry; it is the child of its

race. The eternal past lays hand upon it and upon all its descendants.

However weak the White, behind him stands Europe; however strong the

Black, behind him lies Africa.

Preposterous, indeed, is this doctrine that _personal excellence is

the true standard_, and that only such Negroes as attain a certain

grade of merit should or would be admitted to social equality. A

favourite evasion! _The Independent_, _The Nation_, _The

Outlook_, the whole North--all point admiringly to Mr. Washington,

and exclaim: "But only see what a noble man he is--so much better than

his would-be superiors!" So, too, a distinguished clergyman, when asked

whether he would let his daughter marry a Negro, replied: "We wish our

daughters to marry Christian gentlemen." Let, then, the major premise

be, "All Christian gentlemen are to be admitted to social equality;"

and add, if you will, any desired degree of refinement or education or

intellectual prowess as a condition. Does not every one see that any

such test would be wholly impracticable and nugatory? If Mr. Washington

be the social equal of Roosevelt and Eliot and Hadley, how many others

will be the social equals of the next circle, and the next, and the

next, in the long descent from the White House and Harvard to the miner

and the rag-picker? And shall we trust the hot, unreasoning blood of

youth to lay virtues and qualities so evenly in the balance and decide

just when some "olive-coloured suitor" is enough a "Christian

gentleman" to claim the hand of some simple-hearted milk-maid or some

school-ma'am "past her bloom"? The notion is too ridiculous for

refutation. If the best Negro in the land is the social equal of the

best Caucasian, then it will be hard to prove that the lowest White is

higher than the lowest Black; the principle of division is lost, and

complete social equality is established. We seem to have read somewhere

that, when the two ends of one straight segment coincide with the two

ends of another, the segments coincide throughout their whole extent.

But even suppose that only the lower strata of Whites mingle with the

upper strata of Negroes, the result would be more slowly, but not the

less surely, fatal. The interpenetration in our democratic society is

too thorough. Here and there the Four Hundred may isolate themselves,

but only for a time and imperfectly. Who knows when the scion of a

millionaire may turn into a motorman, or the son of a peasant hew his

way to the Capitol? Let the mongrel poison assail the humbler walks of

life, and it will spread like a bubonic plague through the higher. The

standing of the South would be lost irretrievably. Though her blood

might still flow pure in myriad veins, yet who could prove it? The

world would turn away from her, and point back the finger of suspicion,

and whisper "Unclean!"

Just here we must insist that the South, in this tremendous battle for

the race, is fighting not for herself only, but for her sister North as

well. It is a great mistake to imagine that one can be smutched and the

other remain immaculate. Up from the Gulf regions the foul contagion

would let fly its germs beyond the lakes and mountains. The floods of

life mingle their waters over all our land. Generations might pass

before the darkening tinge could be seen distinctly above the Ohio, but

it would be only a question of time. The South alone would suffer total

eclipse, but the dread penumbra would deepen insensibly over all the

continent.

Well, then, the determination and attitude of the South are just and

holy and good, and we may now advance to another question. Granted the

completest social separation in the South, where the danger is instant

and fearful, is it also right or demanded in the North, where the

danger is distant or wholly unreal? Why not social separation and the

race standard in the South, but social equality and the standard of

personal merit in the North? We apprehend that such will be the

position of many fair-minded men at the North, and perhaps we may hope

for no greater concession. Such a compromise, if carried out to the

letter and its purpose and spirit everywhere boldly proclaimed and

distinctly understood, might indeed be accepted as a _modus vivendi_.

If the Northern Press and Pulpit should speak on this wise: "You

Southerners mistake us entirely. We recoil with your own horror from

the idea of a hybridized Dixie; God forbid that you should 'herd with

narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains'! We too eschew the

notion of race equality. We do not practise, we do not preach it. We

applaud your inflexible resolution to keep the Caucasian blood

uncorrupt and consecrated to the highest ideals of humanity. Only, we

would generously remember high achievements and reward exceptional

merit with recognition, but always without will or desire to disturb

your social order or to debase the coin of your White civilization. We

hold out no false hopes, we encourage no vain ambitions, we flatter no

absurd conceits, we sow no seeds of discontent or discord." If such

notes rang out from the moulders and wielders of the Northern mind, the

South would rejoice with joy unspeakable. She might then pass by

unnoticed what now excites her protest. But alas! such notes are

rarely, if ever, heard. Instead, it is constantly reiterated that the

South is the victim of "unreasoning prejudice," that she is old-fogy,

antiquated, ignorant, and without liberalizing experience of the larger

world. Her plea for race integrity is thrust aside as not worth hearing

or is answered at best with fine scorn and lofty contempt. From such

Northern utterances it seems impossible to draw any conclusion but that

very many would be quite willing to see perfect equality of the races

established _in the South_, even with its inevitable corollary of

mongrelization.[3] It is this painful consciousness, that the central

dogma of her civilization finds apparently so little favour beyond the

Potomac, that so alarms the South and makes her so supersensitive as to

Northern practice. Examples, otherwise trifling, acquire deep interest

when set to illustrate some vital principle.

[3] For documentary proof that the utmost extreme of

miscegenation has been zealously preached, and on

quasi-scientific grounds, see _infra_, pp. 71, 72, 126-9.

To the North, so superior in all the tokens of development, the world

looks for the pattern. Her conduct counts as the model. The Negroes

themselves cannot be expected to distinguish between the Northerner

North and the Northerner South, nor to reflect that the wise man howls

with the wolves, and very naturally feel themselves the victims of

gross injustice.

And herein lies the profound and disastrous significance of the

Washington incident and its fellows. They are open proclamations from

the housetops of society that the South is radically wrong, that no

racial distinctions are valid in social life, that only personal

qualities are to be regarded. The necessary inference is the perfect

social equality of the races, _as races_, the abolition of the colour

line in society, in the family, in the home. The unescapable result

would be the mongrelization of the South and her reduction below the

level of Mexico and Central America.[4]

[4] As to the natural effect of such propaganda on the Negroes

themselves, let the present epidemic of crime and lynching bear

witness.

Our opponents, however, are not yet left without rejoinder. They will

and do affirm that all such incidents are only trivial, that the noisy

protest of the South is a mere "tempest in a teapot." In a certain

sense this is true. The precedent at the White House has found and will

find no acceptance in the Southland. Not one door of equality will be

loosened in its closure, but the bolts will be fastened firmer, the

gates will be guarded more narrowly. However, it is equally true that

the South could not overlook such an incident in such a quarter. The

treasure she has to keep is beyond rubies; the watchmen on her towers

must neither slumber nor sleep. She is safe, but only because of, and

not in default of, unresting vigilance.

We congratulate our friends in the North that they can play with fire

without fear of burns; that they can wine and dine amiable and

interesting Negroes as rare birds of passage, with no thought of

ulterior consequences--at least, to themselves. Their wealth, their

power, their culture, their grandeur, but more than all else, their

excessive preponderance in numbers, preclude the thought that in many

generations their blood could be perceptibly tinged with tides from

Africa. With us of the South, alas! the whole situation is quite

another. They may safely smile at such an incident as an empty

scabbard; but to us it is a drawn dagger.

But the question still remains: Why does the South, if she be right in

this matter, find the virtue and intelligence of the world arrayed

against her? We answer, the overmass of adverse authority is indeed

immense, but it is weightless. The testimony of the North and of Europe

is hardly more relevant than would be that of the Martians. For in

neither has the race question yet presented itself as a serious

practical matter; for them the Black Peril has no existence. Hence

their treatment of the subject is merely academic and sentimental. They

have generous ethical ideas, respectable but well-worn and overworked

maxims, high humanitarian principles; and these they ride horseback.

For them the Negro is a black swan, a curious and interesting specimen

in natural history; and they have no hesitance in extending their

sympathy, their hospitality, and their cooeperation. They remember that

God "hath made of one (blood) all nations of men for to dwell on the

face of the earth," but forget that the author of this noble sentiment

was not an ethnologist; they pity "the nation's ward" as the victim of

centuries of oppression, and to the eyes of their faith the mount of

his transfiguration gleams close at hand. But the practical problem

never confronts them in its unrelieved difficulties and dangers. The

possibility of blood contamination is not suggested to them, or at

least it never comes home to them; and they yield freely to their

philanthropic impulses, not thinking whither these would lead them, not

seeing the end from the beginning. Southern hearts are not less

benevolent than Northern, but Southern eyes are of necessity in this

matter wide open, while most others are shut.

But once let Northern and European eyes catch a clear glimpse of the

actual peril of the situation; once let the problem step forth before

them in a definite concrete form and call for immediate solution; once

let the sharp question pierce the national heart, "Shall I or shall I

not blend my Caucasian, world-ruling, world-conquering blood with the

servile strain of Africa?" and can there be any doubt of the answer?

The race instinct is now slumbering in the North and Europe, and not

strangely, for there is nothing to keep it awake; but it is not

extinct, it exists and is ready to spring up on occasion into fierce

and resistless activity. Of this fact our treatment of the Chinese has

already furnished a striking illustration. We tolerated and even petted

these industrious Orientals--certainly greatly the Negro's superior--so

long as they were few in number and in no way embarrassing. But at the

first suggestion that they might come in droves and derange our labour

system or alter the type of our civilization, there burst forth all

over the North a vehement protest, "in might as a flame of fire," that

swept everything before it and hurled back the Chinaman into the ocean

and barred our ports unyieldingly against him. The case against Chinese

immigration was not one-hundredth so strong as against the social

equality of the Negro; in fact, there was much to be said against our

restrictive legislation, and much was said both ably and eloquently.

But the strongest arguments could not make themselves heard; the race

instinct, that instinct preservative of all instincts, was infinitely

stronger, and easily triumphed. Let us not forget, either, the recent

incidents at Northwestern University and elsewhere, which show clearly

that the "prejudice," if you please so to call it, against the Negro is

hardly less strong, when aroused, even now in Chicago than in New

Orleans.

But some one may say, if all this be true, if the race instinct of the

Anglo-Saxon is really so mighty and imperious, then there is no danger

that it will not assert itself, if need be; and why all this pother

about it? We answer, there is really no danger while the instinct is

aroused, and therefore, but only therefore, the South is safe. What we

deprecate is the systematic warfare that is waged in some quarters

against this instinct as a mere unenlightened "prejudice" whereof we

should be ashamed--the attempt to battle it down or else to drug it to

sleep in the name of morality or religion or higher humanity. When our

Northern brothers, by precept and by example, throw the whole weight of

their immense authority in favour of a practice that would be ruinous

to the South, are they walking according to love?

We do not deny that there may be cases that move our sympathy; that

appeal strongly to our sense of fair play, of right between man and

man. In and of itself, it may sound strange and unjust and even foolish

to deny to Booker Washington a seat at the table of a white man, even

should he be distinctly Mr. Washington's inferior. But the matter must

not be decided in and of itself--no man either lives for himself or

dies for himself. It must be judged in its larger bearings, by its

universal interests, where it lays hold upon the ages, under the aspect

of eternity. We refuse to let the case rest in the low and narrow

category of _Duty to the Individual_; we range it where it belongs, in

the higher and broader category of _Obligation to the Race_.

And this conducts us to a final remark. Even at the risk of a _sus

Minervam_ we venture to correct a great journal, _The Outlook_, in

one of its statements. It assures its readers that the recent criticism

does not represent the real South of intelligence, generosity, and true

breeding, but is a survival in a few persons, who have not had

opportunities of large contact with the world--of an antiquated and

incomprehensible prejudice. Such words are doubtless well-meant; but

they are ill-meaning, and if we understand them at all, they invert the

facts of the case. We have some acquaintance with some of the best

elements of the Southern society, some of the best representatives in

nearly all the walks of Southern life. We believe the virtue and

intelligence of "the real South" are eminently conservative, earnestly

deprecate intemperance in language, and are sworn enemies to sectional

animosity. Perhaps, in their zeal to cultivate the friendliest

relations with their Northern brethren, they may guard their

expressions too carefully and repress their true feelings. But he who

supposes that the South will ever waver a hair's breadth from her

position of uncompromising hostility to any and every form of social

equality between the races, deceives himself only less than that other

who mistakes her race instinct, the palladium of her future, for an

ignorant prejudice and who fails to perceive that her resolution to

maintain White racial supremacy within her borders is deepest-rooted

and most immutable precisely where her civic virtue, her intelligence,

and her refinement are at their highest and best.

CHAPTER TWO

IS THE NEGRO INFERIOR?

_All flesh is not the same flesh;_

* * * *

_Star differeth from star in glory._

I. Cor. XV. 39, 41

In the foregoing discussion, it did not seem well to interrupt the

current of thought by any proof of the assumed inferiority of the

Negro, or of the degeneracy induced by the intermixture of types too

widely diverse.

Yet these assumptions are, indeed, the two hinges of the whole

controversy. Once conceded the racial inferiority of the Black and the

half-way nature of the half-breed, and the general contention of the

South is proved, her general attitude justified. It is not strange,

then, that the doughtiest champions of equality, in their very latest

deliverances, find no choice left them but to deny that the Negro is an

inferior or a backward race.

Such, by way of high example, are two world-renowned metropolitan

journals, whose general excellence and powerful influence for good in

our civic life cannot be disputed, but whose intense straining for

Justice and Equity in the present has utterly blinded them no less to

obvious facts and principles of science than to the highest and holiest

rights of humanity in the future. The one, in speaking of racial

"inferiors," incloses the word in contemptuous guillemets and declares

that when Mr. Darwin says: "Some of them--for instance, the negro and

the European--are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a

naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have

been considered by him as good and true species," he "raises no

question of superior or inferior;" and it adds, "Nature knows no

forward or backward races, fauna or flora"--an oracle whose real

meaning can only be guessed at.

The other is more specific. It maintains: "Physically, the negro is

equal to the Caucasian. He is as tall and as strong. He has all the

physical basis and all the brain capacity necessary for the development

of intellectual power.... No evidence has yet been adduced which proves

that the Negro is physically, intellectually, essentially, necessarily

an inferior race." ... "The assumption that the Caucasian is an

essentially superior race ... is provincial, unintelligent and

unchristian."

When we first meet with such denials, we are almost dumbfounded; we rub

our eyes and exclaim with Truthful James:

_Do I sleep? Do I dream?

Do I wonder and doubt?

Are things what they seem?

Or is visions about?

Is our civilization a failure?

Or is the Caucasian played out?_

But on recovery from the shock, the shining pageant of all the ages

begins to file interminably before the imagination. The triumphs of the

Indo-European and Semitic races, the stories of Babylon and Nineveh, of

Thebes and Memphis, of Rome and Athens and Jerusalem, of Delhi and of

Bagdad, of the Pyramids and of the Parthenon--the radiant names of

Hammurabi and Zarathustra and Moses and the Buddha and Mohammed, of

Homer and Plato and Phidias and Socrates and Pindar and Pythagoras, and

the mightiest Julius, and the imperial philosophers, and their peers

without number, the endless creations of art and science and religion

and law and literature and every other form of activity, the

full-voiced choir of all the Muses, the majestic morality, the

hundred-handed philosophy, the manifold wisdom of civilization--all of

this infinite cloud of witnesses gather swarming upon us from the whole

firmanent of the past and proclaim with pentecostal tongue the glory

and supremacy of Caucasian man. It seems impossible to represent in

human speech, or by any symbols intelligible to the human mind, the

variety and immensity of this consentient testimony of all historic

time and place. Not to be overwhelmed and overawed, much more

convinced, by such a prodigious spectacle of evidence, is to gaze at

midnoon into the heavens and cry out, "Where is the sun?" For over

against all these transcendent achievements, what has the West African

to set? What art? What science? What religion? What morality? What

philosophy? What history? What even one single aspect of civilization

or culture or higher humanity? It would seem to be an insult to the

reader's intelligence, if we should prolong the comparison.

Now can all this be accidental? Has it just happened that, in all

quarters of the world and under all climatic and topographic

conditions, East and West, North and South, beneath the tropics and

within the frozen circles, by the sea and amid the mountains, in snow,

in sand, in forest--that everywhere and everywhen the Caucasian has

manifested the same all-conquering, overmastering qualities--not always

good or kind or just, but always strong, always striving, always

victorious? And that never, and nowhere, and under no circumstances,

has the Black man displayed any such capacities as could bring him for

a moment into consideration as the White man's equal? We answer, there

can be no possibility of mistake. The achievement of the race, its

total history both in time and in space, is the best possible index to

its powers and potencies. Against this witness of history, even if

other indications did plead, they would plead in vain. Even were the

brain of the Negro as large as an elephant's, it would matter not. Says

Hegel, "Nations are what their deeds are;" and with greater justice we

may affirm that _the race is what its life is and has been_.

It is noteworthy that while the one knight-errant boldly declares that,

"Nature knows no forward or backward races," the other more cautiously

avoids the term "backward" and denies only inferiority for the Negro.

Perhaps one might admit that he is backward and demand for him time and

opportunity. However, the distinction is not really pertinent to the

issue. As well say the monkey is not inferior, but only backward. It is

only a difference of degree--a very great difference, to be sure, but

it is idle to say, "Give the Negro time." He has already had time, as

much time as the Europeans--thousands and ten thousands of years. And

what opportunity has failed him? The power that uplifted Aryan and

Semite did not come from without, but from within. No mortal civilized

him; he civilized himself. It was the wing of his own spirit that bore

him aloft. If the African has equal native might of mind, why has he

not wrought out his own civilization and peopled his continent with the

monuments of his genius? Or if the material was all there, ready to be

ignited, needing only the incensive spark, why has it never, in

hundreds of years, caught fire from the blazing torch of Europe? Why

has century-long contact with other civilizations never enkindled the

feeblest flame? For it is well known that intercourse with foreigners

has in no degree elevated or improved the West African, but on the

contrary has proved his curse and his doom. (See Ratzel, _The History

of Mankind_, III., pp. 99-100, 102-103, 120, 134.) Moreover, it

seems doubtful whether nearly forty[5] years of persistent and

consecrated efforts at education, with the expenditure of hundreds of

millions, have revealed yet in ten millions of Afro-Americans a single

example of originative ability of notably high order. (Bright

Mulattoes, like familiar instances, count little in this argument. It

is well known (Mendel's Law) that offspring[6] do not exactly divide

the qualities of parents, but often veer in this respect or in that far

over to one side or to the other. Besides, the abilities of such men

are apt to loom up unduly large in the popular imagination. We all

wonder at a dancing bear, not because he dances well, but because he

dances at all.)