My sojourn on the island was not without its vicissitudes and dangers,
and one of the latter I shall ever remember--one mingled, as it was,
with antics of Neptune, that capricious god of the ocean, and
resignation to what seemed to promise my end with all sublime things.
The stock of oil brought for lubricating cars and machinery having been
exhausted, I started a beautiful morning in a canoe with three Indians
for their settlement at the mouth of Skidegate River for a temporary
supply. After a few hours' paddling, gliding down the river serenely,
the wind suddenly arose, increasing in force as we approached the mouth
in the gulf. The high walls of the river sides afforded no opportunity
to land. The storm continued to increase in violence, bringing billows
of rough sea from the ocean, our canoe dancing like a feather, one
moment on a high crest by its skyward leap, and in the next to an abyss
deep, with walls of sea on either side, shutting out a view of the
horizon, while I, breathless with anxious hope, waited for the
succeeding wave to again lift the frail bark. The better to preserve
the equilibrium of the canoe--a conveyance treacherous at the
best--wrapped in a blanket in the bottom of the canoe I laid, looking
into the faces of the Indians, contorted by fright, and listened to
their peculiar and mournful death wail, "while the gale whistled aloft
his tempest tune."
I afterward learned that they had a superstition based upon the loss of
many of their tribe under like conditions, that escape was impossible.
The alarm and distrust in men, aquatic from birth, in their own waters
was to me appalling. I seemed to have "looked death in the face"--and
what a rush of recollections that had been long forgotten, of actions
good and bad, the latter seeming the most, hurried, serried, but
distinct through my excited brain; then a thought, bringing a calm
content, that "To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late;"
and with a fervent resignation of myself to God and to what I believed
to be inevitable; then a lull in the wind, and, after many attempts, we
were able to cross the mouth of the river to the other side--the place
of destination.
In 1869 I left Queen Charlotte Island and returned to Victoria; settled
my business preparatory to joining my family, then at Oberlin, Ohio. It
was not without a measure of regret that I anticipated my departure.
There I had lived more than a decade; where the geniality of the climate
was excelled only by the graciousness of the people; there unreservedly
the fraternal grasp of brotherhood; there I had received social and
political recognition; there my domestic ties had been intensified by
the birth of my children, a warp and woof of consciousness that time
cannot obliterate. Then regret modified, as love of home and country
asserted itself.
"Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said:
'This is my native land'--
Whose heart has not within him burned
As homeward footsteps he has turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?"
En route my feelings were peculiar. A decade had passed, fraught with
momentous results in the history of the nation. I had left California
disfranchised and my oath denied in a "court of justice" (?); left my
country to all appearances enveloped in a moral gloom so dense as to
shut out the light of promise for a better civil and political status.
The star of hope glimmered but feebly above the horizon of contumely and
oppression, prophetic of the destruction of slavery and the
enfranchisement of the freedman. I was returning, and on touch of my
country's soil to have a new baptism through the all-pervading genius of
universal liberty. I had left politically ignoble; I was returning
panoplied with the nobility of an American citizen. Hitherto regarded as
a pariah, I had neither rejoiced at its achievement nor sorrowed for
its adversity; now every patriotic pulse beat quicker and heart throb
warmer, on realization that my country gave constitutional guarantee for
the common enjoyment of political and civil liberty, equality before the
law--inspiring a dignity of manhood, of self-reliance and opportunity
for elevation hitherto unknown.
Then doubt, alternating, would present the immense problems awaiting
popular solution. Born in the seething cauldron of civil war, they had
been met in the arena of fervid Congressional debate and political
conflict. The amendments to the Constitution had been passed, but was
their inscription a record of the crystallization of public sentiment?
Subsequent events have fully shown that only to the magnanimity and
justice of the American people and the fruition of time can they be
commended. Not to believe that these problems will be rightfully solved
is to doubt not only the efficacy of the basic principles of our
Government, but the divinity of truth and justice. To these rounds of
hope's ladder, while eager in obtaining wisdom, the Negro should cling
with tenacity, with faith "a higher faculty than reason" unconquerable.
Having resolved to locate in some part of the South for the purpose of
practicing law, I had while in Victoria read the English Common Law, the
basis of our country's jurisprudence, under Mr. Ring, an English
barrister. Soon after my arrival in Oberlin, Ohio, where my family,
four years before, had preceded me, I entered the law department of an
Oberlin business college, and after graduation proceeded South, the
first time since emancipation. In an early chapter I described my first
contact with and impressions of slavery, when a lad; then the
hopelessness of abject servitude and consciousness of unrequited toil
had its impress on the brow of the laborer. Now cheerfulness, a spirit
of industry, enterprise, and fraternal feeling replaced the stagnant
humdrum of slavery. Nor was progress observable only among the freedmen.
Many evidences of kindness and sympathy were shown and expressed by
former owners for the moral and mental advancement of their former
bondsmen, which, to a great degree, unfortunately, was counterbalanced
by violence and persecution.
My brother, Jonathan C. Gibbs, was then Secretary of State of Florida,
with Governor Hart as executive. He had had the benefit of a collegiate
education, having graduated at Dartmouth, New Haven, and had for some
years filled the pulpit as a Presbyterian minister. The stress of
reconstruction and obvious necessity for ability in secular matters
induced him to enter official life. Naturally indomitable, he more than
fulfilled the expectations of his friends and supporters by rare ability
as a thinker and speaker, with unflinching fidelity to his party
principles. I found him at Tallahassee, the capital, in a
well-appointed residence, but his sleeping place in the attic
contracted, and, as I perceived, considerable of an arsenal. He said
that for better vantage it had been his resting place for several
months, as his life had been threatened by the "Ku Klux," that band of
midnight assassins whose deeds of blood and carnage darken so many pages
of our national history, and was the constant terror of white and black
adherents to the national Government's policy of enfranchisement. He was
hopeful of better conditions in Florida, and introduced me to Governor
Hart. Both urged me to locate in the State, promising me their support.
I highly appreciated the affection of the one and the proffered
friendship of the other. But the feeling paramount was that my brother
had "won his spurs" by assiduity and fidelity through the scathing and
fiery ordeal of those troublesome times; that it would ill become me to
profit or serenely rest beneath the laurels he had won. It was the last
interview or sight of my brother. Subsequently after a three hours'
speech, he went to his office and suddenly died of apoplexy.
I continued my tour of observation, and, having been appointed a
delegate from Ohio to a national convention to be held in Charleston,
South Carolina, I attended. It was the first assembly of the kind at
which I had been present since emancipation. I had hitherto met many
conventions of colored men having for their object the amelioration of
oppressive conditions. This gathering was unlike any similar meeting.
The deliberations of the convention presented a combination of a strong
intellectual grasp of present needs and their solution, with much
uninformed groping and strife for prominence, features of procedure I
have observed not confined to Negro assemblies.
The majority were unlettered, but earnest in their mental toiling for
protection to life and equality before the law. Hitherto the purpose had
been to make earnest appeals to the law-making power for such
legislation as would abolish slavery and award equal justice--the first
supported by the national conscience, but mainly as a military
necessity, was a "fait accompli;" the other had been legislatively
awarded, but for its realization much more was necessary than its simple
identification on the statute books of a nation, when public sentiment
is law. More than a third of a century has now passed, enabling a view
more dispassionate and accurate of the conditions surrounding the
freedmen directly after emancipation and the instrumentalities designed
for fitting him for citizenship.
It is not surprising, neither is he blameworthy, if in the incipiency of
joy for freedom bestowed he could not properly estimate the factors
necessary to form an homogenous citizenship. The ways for two centuries
had been divergent paths. The dominant claiming and exercising, as an
heirloom, every civil and political right; the subordinate, with
knowledge the most meager of their application or limits, by compulsion
was made to concede the claim. Neither is it singular that participation
in the exercise of these rights by the freedman should have created a
determined opposition in a majority of the former, who claimed their
fitness to rule as the embodiment of the wealth and intelligence (which
are generally the ruling factors world-wide), and would have at an early
date derived a just "power from the consent of the governed," did not
history record the unnecessary and inhuman means resorted to to extort
it, the obliquity of which can be erased only by according him the
rights of an American citizen. Mutual hostility, opposition on the one
hand to the assumption and exercise of these rights, and consequent
distrust by the freedman, often fostered by unscrupulous leaders, have
been alike detrimental to both classes, but especially so to the Negro,
for his constant need in the Southland is the cordial friendship and
helping hand of "his brother in white." He deserves it for his century
of unrequited labor in peace and in war for fidelity to the tender ties
committed to his care. Anti-revolutionist in his nature, he will
continue to merit it and possibly save the industrial life in the South
in the coming conflict of capital and labor.
That, as a class, they are in antagonism to the prevailing political
sentiment is the legitimate result of the manner of their emancipation
and a commendable gratitude and kinship for the party through which they
obtained their freedom. But Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall of Rome,"
has said that "gratitude is expensive," and so the Negro has found it,
and is beginning to echo the sentiment and would gladly hail conditions
and opportunity where he could, after thirty-five years of blood and
fidelity, be less partisan and more fraternal politically, conscious his
united affiliation with his early alliance, and consequent ostracism of
the opposition has given him a "hard road to travel." Commendable as has
been his devotion, he finds commendation a limited currency and not
negotiable for the protection and benefits that should accompany the
paladium of citizenship. While his treatment by the Democratic party has
made a continuous political relation compulsory, it is unfortunate; for
the political affinity of no other class of American citizens is judged
by the accident of birth. It is detrimental to the voter whose
proclivity is thereby determined. Wherever the Negro vote, in the
estimation of any party, is an uncertain quantity, its value as a factor
will have increased, consolidated, and in numbers controlling, it has
been considered a menace and vigorously eliminated.
This view has to an extent an auxiliary in certain Republican circles,
where it is avowed that the party could get in the South a large
accession of hitherto Democratic voters, giving it a commanding
influence, but for its colored contingent, which is averred to be
repellant. There may be difference of opinion as to the merit of such
conclusions and the fitness of their rehearsal "to the marines;" but
none as to the measure of welcome of those that hold them. However,
given that they are correct. Self-respect and a desire to help the old
party can go hand in hand, and when possible in a manly way, room should
be made for such anticipated accession.
There is another phase of present conditions that deserves, and I have
no doubt has claimed, attention. It is the emphatic trend of the
national leaders of the party to conciliate the hitherto discordant
elements in the South in the interest of national harmony, an object
lesson of which was presented by the late President on his Southern
tour. But few years have elapsed since no man seeking a renomination on
the Republican ticket would have put on and worn a Confederate badge.
This President McKinley did, receiving the indiscriminate applause and
the concurrence of his own party. Such an act, which is not only
allowable, but commendable, would formerly have been political suicide.
This being a movement in the house of his political alliance, it is up
to the Negro to consider which is his best interest, should the olive
branch of political friendship be extended by those from whom he
receives his chief support. Under like conditions, his white brother
would have no hesitancy.
There is yet another phase which indicates the Negro in jeopardy on
industrial lines. A few years hence the South will have ceased to be
chiefly agricultural. Mills for cotton, iron, and other factories will
have dotted hilltop and valley, and with them will come the Northern
operative with his exclusive "unions" and trade prejudice, shutting the
doors of mills and foundries against him. To meet this scramble for
favor from the wealth and intelligence of the Southland--the ruling
factors--he should avail himself of every appliance for fostering
harmony and co-operation along all the lines of contact. In slavery and
in his subsequent journey in freedom he has suffered much. But what
nation or people have escaped that ordeal who have made mark in the
world's history? There is now prospective unfriendly legislation in
several Southern States; also the lowest of the whites, as they deem
occasion may require, go, often undisturbed, on shooting and lynching
expeditions.
The problem that continues to force itself for solution is, How the
innocent are to receive immunity from these outrages or a fair trial,
when accused of crime. These being under the purview of State
sovereignty, the Federal arm is not only powerless, but there exists no
Northern sentiment favoring drastic means for their correction. Hence it
is evident that relief can only come from those who fashion the
sentiment that crystallizes into law. But with the bitter is mingled the
sweet; much of his advancement along educational and material lines is
due to the liberality of the white people of the South, who, it has been
computed, have contributed one hundred millions of dollars since
emancipation by taxes and donations for his education, and there are
many evidences that the best thought of the South is in line with Negro
employment and his educational advancement in the belief that the more
general the intelligence the greater the State's progress, morally and
materially. This conviction was emphatically expressed by an
overwhelming negative vote in the Arkansas Legislature recently, where a
measure was introduced to abandon him to his own taxable resources for
education. The ratio of his moral and material product will be the
measure of his gratitude for this great boon. For, after all, many of
"our great dangers are not from without."
[Illustration: EDWARD E. COOPER.
Editor and Publisher of "Colored American," Washington, D. C.
Founder of "Colored World" and "Indianapolis Freeman" Conspicuous as a
Leader and Enterprising as a Journalist.]
General ----, a leading Democrat of this State, and an unmistakable
friend of the negro, referring to the above evidence of good feeling,
said he did not see why I, and other reputed leaders, in view of such
evidences of friendship, did not induce our people to be fraternal
politically. I replied that the effort had once been made, but that the
Democratic party, intrenched as it was in large majorities in the South,
"by ways that are dark and tricks that are vain," its leaders say they
"do not need, neither do they solicit, the colored vote; but if they
choose, they may so vote." He said that certainly had a ringing sound of
independence and was uninviting as an announcement--an independence,
however, that will not forever outlive the vagaries of sound, for it is
not unlikely that he will not only vote the ticket, but be earnestly
solicited to do so. "For it will happen, during the whirligig of time
and action, in my party as well as others, that there will be a change
of policies, new issues, local dissatisfaction, friction, contemplated
antagonism and the political arithmetic sounded. But I cannot but
believe that the clannishness of the Negro has been the boomerang that
has knocked him out of much sympathy, being impractical as a political
factor and out of harmony with the material policies of the Southern
people."
I replied I had thought the highest ideal of patriotism was adherence to
measures materially as well as politically that were for the benefit of
the whole people.
He said: "I know your party preach that they have a monopoly of wisdom;
but the fact is the wisest statesmen of the world are divided in opinion
as to the benefits claimed for the leading policies of your party. But
how do they benefit you, as a dependent class? Your immediate need is
employment and good educational facilities. You should be less
sentimental and more practical. You may honestly believe in a protective
tariff, having for its object the protection of the American
working-man, but does it help you when you know that the doors of mills,
foundries, and manufactories are shut against you? As to the currency,
you are at a disadvantage when you attempt to antagonize the financial
views of your employers.
"It reminds me of an incident," he continued, "in my native town in
Virginia, not long after reconstruction. There had been a drought and
short crop, succeeded by a pretty hard winter. My father, whose
politics, you may well judge, I being 'a chip of the old block,' without
soliciting money or favor, threw open his cellar, wherein was stowed
many bushels of sweet potatoes; invited all the destitute to come. It is
needless to say they came. In the spring Tobey, the Negro minister of
the Baptist Church--a man illiterate, but with much native sense--after
morning service, said: 'Brethren, there's gwine to be a 'lection here
next week, and I wants you all to vote in de light dat God has gin you
to see de light, but I spects to vote wid de taters.' Now, this may seem
ludicrous, but Tobey, in that act, was a fit representative of the white
man in politics--for every class of American citizens except the Negro
divide their vote and put it where to them personally it will do the
most good."
"Much," I replied, "that you have said is undoubtedly true. But can you
wonder at the Negro's cohesion? Is it not a fact that his is the only
class of citizens that your party deny equal participation in the
franchise, and unjustly discriminate against in the application of the
laws? Where better could a change of conduct which you would admire and
he so happily embrace, be inaugurated than within your own political
household; where could nobility of character be more grandly displayed
than by the abolition of these vicious hindrances to the uplifting of
the weak and lowly?"
"Be that as it may," he replied, "your race is not in a condition to
make friends by opposing the prevailing local policies of their
environments."
I have narrated this interview for the reason that it is a fitting type
of the views of friends of the Negro of the South who somehow fail to
see the difficulty in his fraternizing with them in the midst of so much
political persecution and bodily outrage. I referred in the above
interview to an effort of colored leaders to assimilate with Southern
politics.