that it represent a positive force so as to preserve a proper equipoise
in the conflict. No shirking, no skulking, no masquerading in another’s
uniform. Stand by your guns. And be ready for the charge. The day is
coming, and now is, when America must ask each citizen not “who was your
grandfather and what the color of his cuticle,” but “_What can you do?_”
Be ready each individual element,—each race, each class, each family,
each man to reply “_I engage to undertake an honest man’s share_.”
God and time will work the problem. You and I are only to stand for the
quantities _at their best_, which he means us to represent.
Above all, for the love of humanity stop the mouth of those learned
theorizers, the expedient mongers, who come out annually with their new
and improved method of getting the answer and clearing the slate:
amalgamation, deportation, colonization and all the other ations that
were ever devised or dreamt of. If Alexander wants to be a god, let him;
but don’t have Alexander hawking his patent plan for universal
deification. If all could or would follow Alexander’s plan, just the
niche in the divine cosmos meant for man would be vacant. And we think
that men have a part to play in this great drama no less than gods, and
so if a few are determined to be white—amen, so be it; but don’t let
them argue as if there were no part to be played in life by black men
and black women, and as if to become white were the sole specific and
panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to—the universal solvent for
all America’s irritations. And again, if an American family of whatever
condition or hue takes a notion to reside in Africa or in Mexico, or in
the isles of the sea, it is most un-American for any power on this
continent to seek to gainsay or obstruct their departure; but on the
other hand, no power or element of power on this continent, least of all
a self-constituted tribunal of “recent arrivals,” possesses the right to
begin figuring beforehand to calculate what it would require _to send_
ten millions of citizens, whose ancestors have wrought here from the
planting of the nation, to the same places at so much per head—at least
till some one has consulted those heads.
We would not deprecate the fact, then, that America has a Race Problem.
It is guaranty of the perpetuity and progress of her institutions, and
insures the breadth of her culture and the symmetry of her development.
More than all, let us not disparage the factor which the Negro is
appointed to contribute to that problem. America needs the Negro for
ballast if for nothing else. His tropical warmth and spontaneous
emotionalism may form no unseemly counterpart to the cold and
calculating Anglo-Saxon. And then his instinct for law and order, his
inborn respect for authority, his inaptitude for rioting and anarchy,
his gentleness and cheerfulness as a laborer, and his deep-rooted faith
in God will prove indispensable and invaluable elements in a nation
menaced as America is by anarchy, socialism, communism, and skepticism
poured in with all the jail birds from the continents of Europe and
Asia. I believe with our own Dr. Crummell that “the Almighty does not
preserve, rescue, and build up a lowly people merely for ignoble ends.”
And the historian of American civilization will yet congratulate this
country that she has had a Race Problem and that descendants of the
black race furnished one of its largest factors.
ONE PHASE OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.
For nations as for individuals, a product, to be worthy the term
literature, must contain something characteristic and _sui generis_.
So long as America remained a mere English colony, drawing all her life
and inspiration from the mother country, it may well be questioned
whether there was such a thing as American literature. “Who ever reads
an American book?” it was scornfully asked in the eighteenth century.
Imitation is the worst of suicides; it cuts the nerve of originality and
condemns to mediocrity: and ’twas not till the pen of our writers was
dipped in the life-blood of their own nation and pictured out its own
peculiar heart throbs and agonies that the world cared to listen. The
nightingale and the skylark had to give place to the mocking bird, the
bobolink and the whippoorwill, the heather and the blue bells of
Britain, to our own golden-rod and daisy; the insular and monarchic
customs and habits of thought of old England must develop into the
broader, looser, freer swing of democratic America, before her
contributions to the world of thought could claim the distinction of
individuality and gain an appreciative hearing.
And so our writers have succeeded in becoming national and
representative in proportion as they have from year to year entered more
and more fully, and more and more sympathetically, into the distinctive
life of their nation, and endeavored to reflect and picture its
homeliest pulsations and its elemental components. And so in all the
arts, as men have gradually come to realize that
Nothing useless is or low
Each thing in its place is best,
and have wrought into their products, lovingly and impartially and
reverently, every type, every tint, every tone that they felt or saw or
heard, just to that degree have their expressions, whether by pen or
brush or rhythmic cadence, adequately and simply given voice to the
thought of Nature around them. No man can prophesy with another’s
parable. For each of us truth means merely the re-presentation of the
sensations and experiences of our personal environment, colored and
vivified—fused into consistency and crytallized into individuality in
the crucible of our own feelings and imaginations. The mind of genius is
merely the brook, picturing back its own tree and bush and bit of sky
and cloud ensparkled by individual salts and sands and rippling motion.
And paradoxical as it may seem, instead of making us narrow and
provincial, this trueness to one’s habitat, this appreciative eye and
ear for the tints and voices of one’s own little wood serves but to
usher us into the eternal galleries and choruses of God. It is only
through the unclouded perception of our tiny “part” that we can come to
harmonize with the “stupendous whole,” and in order to do this our
sympathies must be finely attuned and quick to vibrate under the touch
of the commonplace and vulgar no less than at the hand of the elegant
and refined. Nothing natural can be wholly unworthy; and we do so at our
peril, if, what God has cleansed we presume to call common or unclean.
Nature’s language is not writ in cipher. Her notes are always simple and
sensuous, and the very meanest recesses and commonest byways are fairly
deafening with her sermons and songs. It is only when we ourselves are
out of tune through our pretentiousness and self-sufficiency, or are
blinded and rendered insensate by reason of our foreign and unnatural
“cultivation” that we miss her meanings and inadequately construe her
multiform lessons.
For two hundred and fifty years there was in the American commonwealth a
great _silent_ factor. Though in themselves simple and unique their
offices were those of the barest utility. Imported merely to be hewers
of wood and drawers of water, no artist for many a generation thought
them worthy the sympathetic study of a model. No Shakespeare arose to
distil from their unmatched personality and unparalleled situations the
exalted poesy and crude grandeur of an immortal Caliban. Distinct in
color, original in temperament, simple and unconventionalized in thought
and action their spiritual development and impressionability under their
novel environment would have furnished, it might seem, as interesting a
study in psychology for the poetic pen, as would the gorges of the
Yosemite to the inspired pencil. Full of vitality and natural
elasticity, the severest persecution and oppression could not kill them
out or even sour their temper. With massive brawn and indefatigable
endurance they wrought under burning suns and chilling blasts, in swamps
and marshes,—they cleared the forests, tunneled mountains, threaded the
land with railroads, planted, picked and ginned the cotton, produced the
rice and the sugar for the markets of the world. Without money and
without price they poured their hearts’ best blood into the enriching
and developing of this country. _They wrought but were silent._
The most talked about of all the forces in this diversified
civilization, they seemed the great American fact, the one objective
reality, on which scholars sharpened their wits, at which orators and
statesmen fired their eloquence, and from which, after so long a time,
authors, with varied success and truthfulness have begun at last to draw
subjects and models. Full of imagination and emotion, their sensuous
pictures of the “New Jerusalem,” “the golden slippers,” “the long white
robe,” “the pearly gates,” etc., etc., seem fairly to steam with
tropical luxuriance and naive abandon. The paroxysms of religious fervor
into which this simple-minded, childlike race were thrown by the
contemplation of Heaven and rest and freedom, would have melted into
sympathy and tender pity if not into love, a race less cold and
unresponsive than the one with which they were thrown in closest
contact. There was something truly poetic in their weird moanings, their
fitful gleams of hope and trust, flickering amidst the darkness of their
wailing helplessness, their strange sad songs, the half coherent
ebullitions of souls in pain, which become, the more they are studied,
at once the wonder and the despair of musical critics and imitators. And
if one had the insight and the simplicity to gather together, to digest
and assimilate these original lispings of an unsophisticated people
while they were yet close—so close—to nature and to nature’s God, there
is material here, one might almost believe, as rich, as unhackneyed, as
original and distinctive as ever inspired a Homer, or a Cædmon or other
simple genius of a people’s infancy and lisping childhood.
In the days of their bitterest persecution, their patient endurance and
Christian manliness inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which revolutionized the
thought of the world on the subject of slavery and at once placed its
author in the front rank of the writers of her country and age. Here at
last was a work which England could not parallel. Here was a work
indigenous to American soil and characteristic of the country—a work
which American forces alone could have produced. The subject was at once
seen to be fresh and interesting to the world as well as national and
peculiar to America; and so it has since been eagerly cultivated by
later writers with widely varying degrees of fitness and success.
By a rough classification, authors may be separated into two groups:
first, those in whom the artistic or poetic instinct is uppermost—those
who write to please—or rather who write because _they_ please; who
simply paint what they see, as naturally, as instinctively, and as
irresistibly as the bird sings—with no thought of an audience—singing
because it loves to sing,—singing because God, nature, truth sings
through it. For such writers, to be true to themselves and true to
Nature is the only canon. They cannot warp a character or distort a fact
in order to prove a point. They have nothing to prove. All who care to,
may listen while they make the woods resound with their glad sweet
carolling; and the listeners may draw their own conclusions as to the
meaning of the cadences of this minor strain, or that hushed and almost
awful note of rage or despair. And the myriad-minded multitude attribute
their myriad-fold impressions to the myriad-minded soul by which they
have severally been enchanted, each in his own way according to what he
brings to the witching auditorium. But the singer sings on with his hat
before his face, unmindful, it may be unconscious, of the varied strains
reproduced from him in the multitudinous echoes of the crowd. Such was
Shakespeare, such was George Eliot, such was Robert Browning. Such, in
America, was Poe, was Bryant, was Longfellow; and such, in his own
degree perhaps, is Mr. Howells.
In the second group belong the preachers,—whether of righteousness or
unrighteousness,—all who have an idea to propagate, no matter in what
form their talent enables them to clothe it, whether poem, novel, or
sermon,—all those writers with a purpose or a lesson, who catch you by
the buttonhole and pommel you over the shoulder till you are forced to
give assent in order to escape their vociferations; or they may lure you
into listening with the soft music of the siren’s tongue—no matter what
the expedient to catch and hold your attention, they mean to fetter you
with their one idea, whatever it is, and make you, if possible, ride
their hobby. In this group I would place Milton in much of his writing,
Carlyle in all of his, often our own Whittier, the great reformer-poet,
and Lowell; together with such novelists as E. P. Roe, Bellamy, Tourgee
and some others.
Now in my judgment writings of the first class will be the ones to
withstand the ravages of time. ‘Isms’ have their day and pass away. New
necessities arise with new conditions and the emphasis has to be shifted
to suit the times. No finite mind can grasp and give out the whole
circle of truth. We do well if we can illuminate just the tiny arc which
we occupy and should be glad that the next generation will not need the
lessons we try so assiduously to hammer into this. In the evolution of
society, as the great soul of humanity builds it “more lofty chambers,”
the old shell and slough of didactic teaching must be left behind and
forgotten. The world for instance has outgrown, I suspect, those
passages of Paradise Lost in which Milton makes the Almighty Father
propound the theology of a seventeenth century Presbyterian. But a
passage like the one in which Eve with guileless innocence describes her
first sensations on awaking into the world is as perennial as man.
“That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked and found myself reposed
Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where
And what I was, whence thither brought and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved
Pure as the expanse of Heaven;
I thither went
With unexperienced thought and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake that to me seemed another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the watery gleam appeared,
Bending to look on me; I started back,
It started back; but pleased I soon returned,
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love; there I had fixed
Mine eyes till now,—and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me.
‘What thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself;
With thee it came and goes; but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays
Thy coming and thy soft embraces.’
What could I do but follow straight
Invisibly thus led?
Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall,
Under a plantain; yet methought less fair,
Less winning soft, less amiably mild
Than that smooth watery image; back I turned
Thou following criedst aloud, ‘Return, fair Eve,
Whom fliest thou? whom thou fliest, of him thou art.
Part of my soul, I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half.’”
This will never cease to throb and thrill as long as man is man and
woman is woman.
Now owing to the problematical position at present occupied by
descendants of Africans in the American social polity,—growing, I
presume, out of the continued indecision in the mind of the more
powerful descendants of the Saxons as to whether it is expedient to
apply the maxims of their religion to their civil and political
relationships,—most of the writers who have hitherto attempted a
portrayal of life and customs among the darker race have belonged to our
class II: they have all, more or less, had a point to prove or a mission
to accomplish, and thus their art has been almost uniformly perverted to
serve their ends; and, to add to their disadvantage, most, if not all
the writers on this line have been but partially acquainted with the
life they wished to delineate and through sheer ignorance ofttimes, as
well as from design occasionally, have not been able to put themselves
in the darker man’s place. The art of “thinking one’s self imaginatively
into the experiences of others” is not given to all, and it is
impossible to acquire it without a background and a substratum of
sympathetic knowledge. Without this power our portraits are but death’s
heads or caricatures and no amount of cudgeling can put into them the
movement and reality of life. Not many have had Mrs. Stowe’s power
because not many have studied with Mrs. Stowe’s humility and love. They
forget that underneath the black man’s form and behavior there is the
great bed-rock of humanity, the key to which is the same that unlocks
every tribe and kindred of the nations of earth. Some have taken up the
subject with a view to establishing evidences of ready formulated
theories and preconceptions; and, blinded by their prejudices and
antipathies, have altogether abjured all candid and careful study.
Others with flippant indifference have performed a few psychological
experiments on their cooks and coachmen, and with astounding egotism,
and powers of generalization positively bewildering, forthwith aspire to
enlighten the world with dissertations on racial traits of the Negro. A
few with really kind intentions and a sincere desire for information
have approached the subject as a clumsy microscopist, not quite at home
with his instrument, might study a new order of beetle or bug. Not
having focused closely enough to obtain a clear-cut view, they begin by
telling you that all colored people look exactly alike and end by noting
down every chance contortion or idiosyncrasy as a race characteristic.
Some of their conclusions remind one of the enterprising German on a
tour of research and self-improvement through Great Britain, who
recommended his favorite sauer kraut both to an Irishman, whom he found
sick with fever, and to a Scotchman, who had a cold. On going that way
subsequently and finding the Scotchman well and the Irishman dead, he
writes: _Mem.—Sauer kraut good for the Scotch but death to the Irish_.
This criticism is not altered by our grateful remembrance of those who
have heroically taken their pens to champion the black man’s cause. But
even here we may remark that a painter may be irreproachable in motive
and as benevolent as an angel in intention, nevertheless we have a right
to compare his copy with the original and point out in what respects it
falls short or is overdrawn; and he should thank us for doing so.
It is in no captious spirit, therefore, that we note a few contributions
to this phase of American literature which have been made during the
present decade; we shall try to estimate their weight, their tendency,
their truthfulness and their lessons, if any, for ourselves.
Foremost among the champions of the black man’s cause through the medium
of fiction must be mentioned Albion W. Tourgee. No man deserves more the
esteem and appreciation of the colored people of this country for his
brave words. For ten years he has stood almost alone as the enthusiastic
advocate, not of charity and dole to the Negro, but of justice. The
volumes he has written upon the subject have probably been read by from
five to ten millions of the American people. Look over his list
consecrated to one phase or another of the subject: “A Fool’s Errand,”
“A Royal Gentleman,” “Bricks without Straw,” “An Appeal to Cæsar,” “Hot
Ploughshares,” “Pactolus Prime,”—over three thousand pages—enough almost
for a life work, besides an almost interminable quantity published in
periodicals.
Mr. Tourgee essays to paint life with the coloring of fiction, and yet,
we must say, we do not think him a novelist primarily; that is, novel
making with him seems to be a mere incident, a convenient vehicle
through which to convey those burning thoughts which he is constantly
trying to impress upon the people of America, whether in lecture, stump
speech, newspaper column or magazine article. His power is not that
already referred to of thinking himself imaginatively into the
experiences of others. He does not create many men of many minds. All
his offspring are little Tourgees—they preach his sermons and pray his
prayers.
In “Pactolus Prime,” for example, one of his latest, his hero, a colored
bootblack in a large hotel, is none other than the powerful,
impassioned, convinced and convincing lecturer, Judge Tourgee himself,
done over in ebony. His caustic wit, his sledge hammer logic, his
incisive criticism, his righteous indignation, all reflect the
irresistible arguments of the great pleader for the Negro; and all the
incidents are arranged to enable this bootblack to impress on senators
and judges, lawyers, and divines, his plea for justice to the Negro,
along with the blacking and shine which he skillfully puts on their
aristocratic toes. And so with all the types which Mr. Tourgee
presents—worthy or pitiful ones always—they uniformly preach or teach,
convict or convert. Artistic criticism aside, it is mainly as a
contribution to polemic literature in favor of the colored man that most
of Tourgee’s works will be judged; and we know of no one who can more
nearly put himself in the Negro’s place in resenting his wrongs and
pleading for his rights. In presenting truth from the colored American’s
standpoint Mr. Tourgee excels, we think, in fervency and frequency of
utterance any living writer, white or colored. Mr. Cable is brave and
just. He wishes to see justice done in the Freedman’s case in equity,
and we honor and revere him for his earnest manly efforts towards that
end. But Mr. Cable does not forget (I see no reason why he should, of
course,) that he is a white man, a Southerner and an ex-soldier in the
Confederate army. To use his own words, he writes, “with an admiration
and affection for the South, that for justice and sincerity yield to
none; in a spirit of faithful sonship to a Southern state.” Of course
this but proves his sincerity, illustrates his candor, and adds weight
to the axiomatic justice of a cause which demands such support from a
thoroughly disinterested party, or rather a party whose interest and
sympathy and affection must be all on the side he criticises and
condemns. The passion of the partisan and the bias of the aggrieved can
never be charged against him. Mr. Cable’s is the impartiality of the
judge who condemns his own son or cuts off his own arm. His attitude is
judicial, convincing, irreproachable throughout.