_Political Independence of the Negro_
The following chapter is, in the main, a reproduction of an address
delivered by me before the Colored Press Association, in the city of
Washington, June 27, 1882:--
* * * * *
In addressing myself to a consideration of the subject: "The colored
man as an Independent Force in our Politics," I come at once to one of
the vital principles underlying American citizenship of the colored
man in a peculiar manner. Upon this question hang all the conditions
of man as a free moral agent, as an intelligent reasoning being; as a
man thoughtful for the best interests of his country, of his
individual interests, and of the interests of those who must take up
the work of republican government when the present generation has
passed away. When I say that this question is of a most complex and
perplexing nature, I only assert what is known of all men.
I would not forget that the arguments for and against independent
action on our part are based upon two parties or sets of principles.
Principles are inherent in government by the people, and parties are
engines created by the people through which to voice the principles
they espouse. Parties have divided on one line in this country from
the beginning of our national existence to the present time. All other
issues merge into two distinct ones--the question of a strong Federal
Government, as enunciated by Alexander Hamilton, and maintained by the
present Republican party, and the question of the rights and powers of
the States, as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, and as maintained by
the present Democratic party,--called the "party of the people," but
in fact the party of oligarchy, bloodshed, violence and oppression.
The Republican party won its first great victory on the inherent
weakness of the Democratic party on the question of Human Rights and
the right of the Federal Government to protect itself from the
assumption, the aggression, the attempted usurpation, of the States,
and it has maintained its supremacy for so long a time as to lead to
the supposition that it will rule until such time as it shall fall to
pieces of itself because of internal decay and exterior cancers. There
does not appear to exist sufficient vitality outside of the
Republican party to keep its members loyal to the people or honest to
the government. The loyal legislation which would be occasioned by
dread of loss of power, and the administration of the government in
the most economical form, are wanting, because of the absence of an
honest, healthy opposing party.
But it is not my purpose to dwell upon the mechanism of parties, but
rather to show why colored Americans should be independent voters,
independent citizens, independent men. To this end I am led to lay it
down: (1.) That an independent voter must be intelligent, must
comprehend the science of government, and be versed in the history of
governments and of men; (2.) That an independent voter must be not
only a citizen versed in government, but one loyal to his country, and
generous and forbearing with his fellow-citizens, not looking always
to the word and the act, but looking sometimes to the undercurrent
which actuates these--to the presence of immediate interest, which is
always strong in human nature, to the love of race, and to the love of
section, which comes next to the love of country.
Our country is great not only in mineral and cereal resources, in
numbers, and in accumulated wealth, but great in extent of territory,
and in multiplicity of interests, out-growing from peculiarities of
locality, race, and the education of the people. Thus the people of
the North and East and West are given to farming, manufacturing, and
speculation, making politics a subordinate, not a leading interest;
they are consequently wealthy, thrifty and contented: while the people
of the South, still in the shadow of defeat in the bloodiest and most
tremendous conflict since the Napoleonic wars, are divided sharply
into two classes, and given almost exclusively to the pursuits of
agriculture and hatred of one another. The existence of this state of
things is most disastrous in its nature, and deplorable in its
results. It is a barrier against the progress of that section and
alien to the spirit and subversive of the principles of our free
institutions.
It is in the South that the largest number of our people live; it is
there that they encounter the greatest hardships; it is there the
problem of their future usefulness as American citizens must have full
and satisfactory, or disastrous and disheartening demonstration.
Consequently, the colored statesman and the colored editor must turn
their attention to the South and make that field the center of
speculation, deduction and practical application. We all understand
the conditions of society in that section and the causes which have
produced them, and, while not forgetting the causes, it is a common
purpose to alter the existing conditions, so that they may conform to
the logic of the great Rebellion and the spirit and letter of the
Federal Constitution. It is not surprising, therefore, that, as an
humble worker in the interest of my race and the common good, I have
decided views as to the course best to be pursued by our people in
that section, and the fruits likely to spring from a consistent
advocacy of such views.
I may stand alone in the opinion that the best interests of the race
and the best interests of the country will be conserved by building up
a bond of union between the white people and the negroes of the
South--advocating the doctrine that the interests of the white and the
interests of the colored people are one and the same; that the
legislation which affects the one will affect the other; that the good
which comes to the one should come to the other, and that, as one
people, the evils which blight the hopes of the one blight the hopes
of the other; I say, I may stand alone among colored men in the belief
that harmony of sentiment between the blacks and whites of the
country, in so far forth as it tends to honest division and healthy
opposition, is natural and necessary, but I speak that which is a
conviction as strong as the Stalwart idea of diversity between Black
and White, which has so crystallized the opinion of the race.
It is not safe in a republican form of government that clannishness
should exist, either by compulsory or voluntary reason; it is not good
for the government, it is not good for the individual. A government
like ours is like unto a household. Difference of opinion on
non-essentials is wholesome and natural, but upon the fundamental idea
incorporated in the Declaration of Independence and re-affirmed in the
Federal Constitution the utmost unanimity should prevail. That all men
are born equal, so far as the benefits of government extend; that each
and every man is justly entitled to the enjoyment of life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness, so long as these benign benefits be not
forfeited by infraction upon the rights of others; that freedom of
thought and unmolested expression of honest conviction and the right
to make these effective through the sacred medium of a fair vote and
an honest count, are God-given and not to be curtailed--these are the
foundations of republican government; these are the foundations of our
institutions; these are the birthright of every American citizen;
these are the guarantees which make men free and independent and
great.
The colored man must rise to a full conception of his citizenship
before he can make his citizenship effective. It is a fatality to
create or foster clannishness in a government like ours. Assimilation
of sentiment must be the property of the German, the Irish, the
English, the Anglo-African, and all other racial elements that
contribute to the formation of the American type of citizen. The
moment you create a caste standard, the moment you recognize the
existence of such, that moment republican government stands beneath
the sword of Damocles, the vitality of its being becomes vitiated and
endangered. If this be true, the American people have grave cause for
apprehension. The Anglo-African element of our population is classed
off by popular sentiment, and kept so. It is for the thoughtful, the
honest, the calm but resolute men of the race to mould the sentiment
of the masses, lift them up into the broad sunlight of freedom.
Ignorance, superstition, prejudice, and intolerance are elements in
our nature born of the malign institution of servitude. No fiat of
government can eradicate these. As they were the slow growth, the
gradual development of long years of inhuman conditions, so they must
be eliminated by the slow growth of years of favorable conditions. Let
us recognize these facts as facts, and labor honestly to supplant them
with more wholesome, more cheering realities. The Independent colored
man, like the Independent white man, is an American citizen who does
his own thinking. When some one else thinks for him he ceases to be an
intelligent citizen and becomes a dangerous dupe--dangerous to
himself, dangerous to the State.
It is not to be expected now that the colored voters will continue to
maintain that unanimity of idea and action characteristic of them when
the legislative halls of States resounded with the clamor of
law-makers of their creation, and when their breath flooded or
depleted State treasuries. The conditions are different now. They find
themselves citizens without a voice in the shapement of legislation;
tax-payers without representation; men without leadership masterful
enough to force respect from inferior numbers in some States, or to
hold the balance of power in others. They find themselves at the mercy
of a relentless public opinion which tolerates but does not respect
their existence as a voting force; but which, on the contrary, while
recognizing their right to the free exercise of the suffrage, forbids
such exercise at the point of the shotgun of the assassin, whom it not
only nerves but shields in the perpetration of his lawless and
infamous crimes. And why is this? Why is it that the one hundred and
twenty thousand black voters of South Carolina allow the eighty
thousand white voters of that State to grind the life out of them by
laws more odious, more infamous, more tyrannical and subversive of
manhood than any which depopulate the governments of the old world? Is
it because the white man is the created viceregent of government? The
Scriptures affirm that all are sprung from one parental stem. Is it
because he is the constitutionally invested oligarch of government?
The magna charta of our liberties affirms that "all men are created
equal." Is it because the law of the land reserves unto him the
dominance of power? The preamble of the Federal Constitution declares
that "We" and not "I," constitute "the people of the United States."
If the law of God and the law of man agree in the equality of right of
man, explain to me the cause which keeps a superior force in
subjection to a minority. Look to the misgovernment of the
Reconstruction period for the answer--misgovernment by white men and
black men who were lifted into a "little brief authority" by a mighty
but unwieldy voting force. That black man who connived at and shared
in the corruption in the South which resulted in the subversion of the
majority rule, is a traitor to his race and his country, wherever he
may now be eking out a precarious and inglorious existence, and I have
nothing to heap upon his head but the curses, the execrations of an
injured people. Like Benedict Arnold he should seek a garret in the
desert of population, living unnoticed and without respect, where he
might die without arousing the contempt of his people.
The love of Liberty carries with it the courage to preserve it from
encroachments from without and from contempt from within. A people in
whom the love of liberty is in-born cannot be enslaved, though they
may be exterminated by superior force and intelligence, as in the case
of the poor Indian of our own land--a people who, two hundred years
ago, spread their untamed hordes from the icebergs of Maine to the
balmy sunland of Florida. But to-day where are they? Their love of
freedom and valorous defense of priority of ownership of our domain
have caused them to be swept from the face of the earth. Had they
possessed intelligence with their more than Spartan courage, the wave
of extermination could never have rolled over them forever. As a man I
admire the unconquerable heroism and fortitude of the Indian. So brave
a race of people were worthy a nobler and a happier destiny. As an
American citizen, I feel it born in my nature to share in fullest
measure all that is American. I sympathize in all the hopes,
aspirations and fruitions of my country. There is no pulsation in the
animated frame of my native land which does not thrill my nature.
There is no height of glory we may reach as a government in which I
should not feel myself individually lifted; and there is no depth of
degradation to which we may fall to which I should not feel myself
individually dragged. In a word, I am an American citizen. I have a
heritage in each and every provision incorporated in the Constitution
of my country, and should this heritage be attempted to be filched
from me by any man or body of men, I should deem the provocation
sufficiently grievous to stake even life in defense of it. I would
plant every colored man in this country on a platform of this
nature--to think for himself, to speak for himself, to act for
himself. This is the ideal citizen of an ideal government such as ours
is modelled to become. This is my conception of the colored man as an
independent force in our politics. To aid in lifting our people to
this standard, is one of the missions which I have mapped out for my
life-work. I may be sowing the seed that will ripen into disastrous
results, but I don't think so. My conception of republican government
does not lead me to a conclusion so inconsistent with my hopes, my
love of my country and of my race.
I look upon my race in the South and I see that they are helplessly at
the mercy of a popular prejudice outgrowing from a previous condition
of servitude; I find them clothed in the garments of citizenship by
the Federal Government and opposed in the enjoyment of it by their
equals, not their superiors, in the benefits of government; I find
that the government which conferred the right of citizenship is
powerless, or indisposed, to force respect for its own enactments; I
find that these people, left to the mercy of their enemies, alone and
defenseless, and without judicious leadership, are urged to preserve
themselves loyal to the men and to the party which have shown
themselves unable to extend to them substantial protection; I find
that these people, alone in their struggles of doubt and of prejudice,
are surrounded by a public opinion powerful to create and powerful to
destroy; I find them poor in culture and poor in worldly substance,
and dependent for the bread they eat upon those they antagonize
politically. As a consequence, though having magnificent majorities,
they have no voice in shaping the legislation which is too often made
an engine to oppress them; though performing the greatest amount of
labor, they suffer from overwork and insufficient remuneration; though
having the greater number of children, the facilities of education are
not as ample or as good as those provided for the whites out of the
common fund, nor have they means to supply from private avenues the
benefits of education denied them by the State. Now, what is the
solution of this manifold and grievous state of things? Will it come
by standing solidly opposed to the sentiment, the culture, the
statesmanship, and the possession of the soil and wealth of the South?
Let the history of the past be spread before the eyes of a candid and
thoughtful people; let the bulky roll of misgovernment, incompetence,
and blind folly be enrolled on the one hand, and then turn to the
terrors of the midnight assassin and the lawless deeds which desecrate
the sunlight of noontide, walking abroad as a phantom armed with the
desperation of the damned!
I maintain the idea that the preservation of our liberties, the
consummation of our citizenship, must be conserved and matured, not by
standing alone and apart, sullen as the melancholy Dane, but by
imbibing all that is American, entering into the life and spirit of
our institutions, spreading abroad in sentiment, feeling the full
force of the fact that while we are classed as Africans, just as the
Germans are classed as Germans we are in all things American citizens,
American freemen. Since we have tried the idea of political unanimity
let us now try other ideas, ideas more in consonance with the spirit
of our institution. There is no strength in a union that enfeebles.
Assimilation, a melting into the corporate body, having no distinction
from others, equally the recipients of government--this is to be the
independent man, be his skin tanned by the torrid heat of Africa, or
bleached by the eternal snows of the Caucasus. To preach the
independence of the colored man is to preach his Americanization. The
shackles of slavery have been torn from his limbs by the stern
arbitrament of arms; the shackles of political enslavement, of
ignorance, and of popular prejudice must be broken on the wheels of
ceaseless study and the facility with which he becomes absorbed into
the body of the people. To aid himself is his first duty if he
believes that he is here to stay, and not a probationer for the land
of his forefathers--a land upon which he has no other claim than one
of sentiment.
What vital principle affecting our citizenship is championed by the
National Republican party of to-day? Is it a fair vote and an honest
count? Measure our strength in the South and gaze upon the solitary
expression of our citizenship in the halls of the National
Legislature. The fair vote which we cast for Rutherford B. Hayes
seemed to have incurred the enmity of that chief Executive, and he and
his advisers turned the colored voters of the South over to the
bloodthirsty minority of that section.
The Republican party has degenerated into an ignoble scramble for
place and power. It has forgotten the principles for which Sumner
contended, and for which Lincoln died. It betrayed the cause for which
Douglass, Garrison and others labored, in the blind policy it pursued
in reconstructing the rebellious States. It made slaves freemen and
freemen slaves in the same breath by conferring the franchise and
withholding the guarantees to insure its exercise; it betrayed its
trust in permitting thousands of innocent men to be slaughtered
without declaring the South in rebellion, and in pardoning murders,
whom tardy justice had consigned to a felon's dungeon. It is even now
powerless to insure an honest expression of the vote of the colored
citizen. For these things, I do not deem it binding upon colored men
further to support the Republican party when other more advantageous
affiliations can be formed. And what of the Bourbon Democratic party?
There has not been, there is not now, nor will there ever be, any good
thing in it for the colored man. Bourbon Democracy is a curse to our
land. Any party is a curse which arrays itself in opposition to human
freedom, to the universal brotherhood of man. No colored man can ever
claim truthfully to be a Bourbon Democrat. It is a fundamental
impossibility. But he can be an independent, a progressive Democrat.
The hour has arrived when thoughtful colored men should cease to put
their faith upon broken straws; when they should cease to be the
willing tools of a treacherous and corrupt party; when they should
cease to support men and measures which do not benefit them or the
race; when they should cease to be duped by one faction and shot by
the other. The time has fully arrived when they should have their
position in parties more fully defined, and when, by the ballot which
they hold, they should force more respect for the rights of life and
property.
To do this, they must adjust themselves to the altered condition which
surrounds them. They must make for themselves a place to stand. In the
politics of the country the colored vote must be made as uncertain a
quantity as the German and Irish vote. The color of their skin must
cease to be an index to their political creed. They must think less of
"the party" and more of themselves; give less heed to a name and more
heed to principles.
The black men and white men of the South have a common destiny.
Circumstances have brought them together and so interwoven their
interests that nothing but a miracle can dissolve the link that binds
them. It is, therefore, to their mutual disadvantage that anything but
sympathy and good will should prevail. A reign of terror means a
stagnation of all the energies of the people and a corruption of the
fountains of law and justice.
The colored men of the South must cultivate more cordial relations
with the white men of the South. They must, by a wise policy, hasten
the day when politics shall cease to be the shibboleth that creates
perpetual warfare. The citizen of a State is far more sovereign than
the citizen of the United States. The State is a real, tangible
reality; a thing of life and power; while the United States is,
purely, an abstraction--a thing that no man has successfully defined,
although many, wise in their way and in their own conceit, have
philosophized upon it to their own satisfaction. The metaphysical
polemics of men learned in the science of republican government,
covering volume upon volume of "debates," the legislation of
ignoramuses, styled statesmen, and the "strict" and "liberal"
construction placed upon their work by the judicial _magi_, together
with a long and disastrous rebellion, to the cruel arbitrament of
which the question had been, as was finally hoped, in the last resort,
submitted, have failed, all and each, to define that visionary thing
the so-called Federal government, and its just rights and powers. As
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson left it, so it is to-day, a
bone of contention, a red flag in the hands of the political matadors
of one party to infuriate those of the other parties.
No: it is time that the colored voter learned to leave his powerless
"protectors" and take care of himself. Let every one read, listen,
think, reform his own ideas of affairs in his own locality; let him be
less interested in the continual wars of national politics than in the
interests of his own town and county and state; let him make friends
of the mammon of unrighteousness of his own neighborhood, so far as to
take an intelligent part among his neighbors, white and black, and
vote for the men and for the party that will do the best for him and
his race, and best conserve the interest of his vicinity. Let there be
no aim of _solidifying_ the colored vote; the massing of black means
the massing of white by contrast. Individual colored men--and many of
them--have done wonders in self-elevation; but there can be no general
elevation of the colored men of the South until they use their voting
power in independent local affairs with some discrimination more
reasonable than an obstinate clinging to a party name. When the
colored voters differ among themselves and are to be found on _both
sides_ of local political contests, they will begin to find themselves
of some political importance; their votes will be sought, cast, _and
counted_.
And this is the key to the whole situation; let them make themselves a
part of the people. It will take time, patience, intelligence,
courage; but it can be done: and until it is done their path will lie
in darkness and perhaps in blood.