SOCIAL CONDITION.
Suffering at the South among the Freedmen and Loyal
Whites.—Causes.—The Discharge of the Freedmen by their Employers
for Voting.—Good Conduct of the Freedmen.—Description of the
Scenes at the Polls in Montgomery, Ala.—Negro Suffrage, North and
South.—Reasons why it was indispensable that the Freedmen should
have the Ballot.—Testimony to the Good Conduct of the Negroes at
the South.—Southern White Loyalty.—The Competency of the Negro for
the Exercise of Suffrage equal to that of the Poor
Whites.—Eloquence of a Negro in Arkansas, a recent Slave.—The
Destitution at the South.—Wrongs Inflicted on the
Freedmen.—Laziness of the Rebel Whites.—The Advance in Education
at the South.—Benevolent Associations.—Freedmen’s Bureau.—Mr.
Peabody’s Munificent Gift.—Higher Education.—The Educational
Provisions in the New Constitutions.—The Results which must flow
from this in the Future.
While the desolated States were thus striving to get into line, and
henceforth keep step to the music of loyalty and Union, and, despite the
bitter and ingenious opposition of the disloyal and rebellious portion
of the population, and the hostility of President Johnson, were meeting
with remarkable success, their social condition had, as yet, improved
very little. The winter of 1867–68 was one of extensive suffering,
especially among the freedmen and the poor whites, from several causes:
The crops of the year 1867 had been, for the most part, poor; there had
not been a sufficiency of corn or other grain grown in the South for the
consumption of the population, and where cotton, sugar, and rice were
cultivated, in a majority of cases the crop had not been sufficient to
pay the expense incurred by the still thriftless managers, and, as
somebody must suffer, they preferred that it should be the freedmen,
whom they drove away, without pay, in the depth of winter, alleging that
the advances already made to them covered, or more than covered, their
entire earnings. In most of the States the freedmen were not, as yet,
permitted to either hire or buy land. Where they could do so, and could
in any way procure the means of cultivating it, they were industrious
and economical, and managed to live comfortably.
One of the measures to which the Rebel planters resorted, most
generally, to prevent, if possible, the calling of a constitutional
convention, or later, the adoption of a constitution, was to discharge,
at once, all in their employ who should dare to vote for either. Their
papers openly advocated this outrageous despotism, and their advice was
followed very widely.
Under these circumstances, it was certainly remarkable that no larger
number of the colored people fell into a condition of dependence and
pauperism, and that, ignorant as most of them were, and, as yet,
indisposed to extra exertion from the life-long enervating influence of
slavery, with the old fear of the lash still lingering in their minds,
they should have braved all the threats and persecution of their old
masters, and dared to contend so earnestly for their rights.
The polls, in these States, both at the time of voting for the
Convention and for the Constitution, presented scenes of mingled pathos
and humor, which could not fail to impress deeply every thoughtful mind.
The correspondent of the “Cincinnati Commercial,” himself somewhat
inclined to sympathize with the President’s policy, was at Montgomery,
Alabama, when the vote was taken on the adoption of the new
Constitution, and his account of what he witnessed is so graphic, and
tallies so exactly with what was observed in other States, that we
cannot do better than to reproduce a portion of it:—
“The influences brought to bear to induce them to coöperate with the
late master class have been ingenious and manifold. If
good-humoredly reasoned with, they would only nod in reply. Scolding
fell on their impassive heads as uselessly as a spitball.
Expostulation was of no avail. Threats of proscription have been
less fruitless, but many thousands disregarded every motive save the
one that spurred them to vote for the political elevation of their
race. It is universally asserted by the Conservatives, that the poor
negroes are the dupes of designing white ‘carpet-baggers,’ who
desire to be floated into office and emolument. That such designing
persons exist is not to be doubted, but the black man, at this
election, is trying to pull out of the fire the largest and most
succulent chestnuts for himself and his own people. Read the
proposed Constitution, and judge for yourself if he be snapping for
more shadow than substance. Though often credulous, and by nature
always confiding, he has a just apprehension of the stake played for
in this deal of the political cards.
“For four days the election has been quietly proceeding. To-day is
the last of the term allowed. If ratification fail, it will not be
because time enough was not given to muster all who desired to vote.
Originally but two days were named, then four. The voting commenced
in a raw rain-storm, the creeks became swollen, and it was feared
that many negroes would be kept at home by the wretched weather and
roads. So another day was added by General Meade, making five in
all. The first two days were exceedingly chilly, wet, and gloomy.
The second two were mild and sunny. To-day promises to be a lovely
one. But, rain or shine, the streets of Montgomery have been
thronged with negroes. The curbstone restaurants (ranging in size
from a hand-basket to a rickety table) have continued operations on
a scale adapted to the crisis. Ebony cobblers on back streets have
been pegging away, day and night, at the shocking bad foot-gear of
tramping voters from distant plantations. Wooden awnings have
sheltered a nightly bivouac. Every hospitable hut has lodged enough
darkies to give it a double claim to be called a black hole. The
warm sides of the avenues have had their ebony procession lengthened
and widened to the election standard; and philanthropic auctioneers
have about closed out their stock of goods and stock of conscience,
at a fearful sacrifice, of course.
“If the reader now will come with me, and watch for a while how the
voting proceeds, I promise him a novel experience. We will not take
the first day of the voting, for then it was painful to see the
crowd of ragged colored men standing for hours in the pitiless
storm, waiting to slip in their tickets, and so fearful of losing
their turns, that one who had deposited his vote found no avenue of
egress, save that paved with the heads of those behind. Let us
choose the third day, for the air is bland and the sky cloudless.
There stand the black pilgrims, you see, ranged (for better order
prevails to-day) in a double queue. At the side of the window, where
the vote is handed in, are two policemen—one to admit the voter, the
other to point the way out. In front of the window is the
Conservative challenging committee of four. One of the four keeps
tally of the vote; another scans the registration list as the name
of each voter is announced; the third writes down the names not
found registered, and the fourth makes himself generally watchful.
Behind the window three judges are seated around a table, bearing in
its centre a large pine ballot-box.
“The column of negroes waiting to vote is jammed together as if by
some uncontrollable muscular impulse, but it surges back whenever
the barrier of the first policeman threatens to give way. They do
not talk to each other, deeming silence, perhaps, to be due to the
sacred importance of the occasion. If their eye catches yours (you
are a Caucasian, remember), it falls with an expression of
embarrassment, as if they felt that you, being white, looked with
keen disfavor on the act they had drawn up to perform. Falstaff’s
recruits were not greater ragamuffins. Look at the garb of these
negroes, and I defy you to point out one unpatched garment in fifty.
Gray coats and blue coats, worn out three years ago, still are
forced to serve in a tattered sartorial invalid corps. One coat
(doubtless for Sunday and elections) is made of cheap ingrain
carpeting. The pantaloons are more shred-like than the coats; the
hats advanced to all degrees of organic decay. Not one in twenty
wears boots, and few shoes retain much of their original homely
integrity. In shape, they might inclose either a small ham, or the
foot of any human being deformed by toil among the clods of
cotton-fields. If you study the heads and the faces, you will find
more indications of a gentle, submissive, ease-loving heart, than of
active intelligence or ambitious disposition.
“Whatever the natural aptitudes of the African may be, a hundred
years of slavery in Alabama have not added anything attractive to
his phrenological development. That many of them are very ignorant
of the scope and meaning of citizenship, is as plain as their
determination to learn more about it. The hunger to have the same
chances as the white man, they feel and comprehend as clearly as
they understand a physical craving. That is what brings them here,
and not the expectation of getting free lands, free rations, and
free mules. Your Conservative friend may tell you that they look for
such windfalls; but talk to as many on the subject as I have, and
you will accumulate the strongest sort of rebutting evidence. The
last one I sounded looked at me with a shade of rebuke, and said:
‘No, sah. I spect to git nuffin but what I works hard for, and when
I’se sick I’ll get docked.’
“Enter the first voter. He takes off his hat, and nervously gives
his name to the judges. They run over the registration list. So do
the Conservative challengers, who, as you see, are afforded every
facility to contest and analyze. If the negro has a smooth face they
demand that he swear to his age, and he is accordingly sworn. If his
name be found, the judges announce the column in which it stands,
and the challengers check it off. In vain the voter, seeing his vote
glide into the box, and making his own way out, strives to choke
down the delight that fills him. If ever you saw an amateur gamester
win a heavy stake (which I trust you never have unless it was at
charming Baden-Baden, or some place in New York where they go with a
clergyman to study vice the better to preach against it—ahem), you
watched the same sort of a smile on his face, as on the homely
countenance of this happy freedman.
“Enter the second. This middle-aged negro deliberately takes off his
mittens, removes his hat, runs one hand under his vest, produces a
little package, unwraps the rag around it, and at last hands in the
paper treasure.
“’Oh, the devil! be quick,’ says the Judge, rapping irately on the
window. ‘Put on your hat, uncle—that humility’s played out,’ says
one of the challengers, with a laugh. But the voter has his own
views as to the hat. Perhaps he stands uncovered to the ballot and
not to men. His ticket drops into the box, and he stumps off,
irradiated. The third! ‘Another George Washington.’ Another vote,
too, and another chuckle. The fourth! The name of this one cannot be
found. ‘Go to head-quarters of registration,’ says the Judge; ‘if
your name is there, they will give you a certificate enabling you to
vote.’ ‘I’ve been thar,’ sorrowfully rejoins the applicant. ‘’Taint
thar.’ ‘Sorry,’ says the Judge; ‘make room, make room.’ Now I ask
you to watch this poor fellow. He comes out looking sick at heart. A
bright mulatto takes him aside, and inquires into his case. It is
hopeless—name not registered at all. The disappointed darkey wanders
around for ten minutes, then he quietly falls again into the rear of
the line, to be repulsed again and again when he reaches the window.
Hope that his name may have been overlooked dies out at last, and
not without the sharpest pang his simple, but emotional nature can
feel.
“Enter the fifth. ‘My name is Henry Clay.’ ‘All right, Henry, you
can vote; you’re registered. But, Henry, where were you born?’ ‘In
Kentucky, sir; Henry Clay, of Ashland, was my father.’ And the tall,
handsome mulatto, bows and makes his way out. The sixth! This is
another of the persevering kind. He gives his name. ‘Be off,’ says
the Judge. ‘You have been here already half a dozen times. You say
you are not registered.’ ‘Well, sah,’ replies the sorrowful negro,
‘I’se been hyah evah since Tuesday trying to vote at one place or
nuther, and I hasn’t had a bite to eat, and I can’t vote, and I’se
got to walk twelve miles to git home.’ The red-nosed, cross-looking
Judge takes a biscuit from his pocket and hands it to the negro,
with ‘Here, make room, now.’ One of the challengers says: ‘Boys, the
Conservatives have the name of being generous. Let’s give this
hungry nigger a dinner.’ The speaker draws his pocket-book and
transfers some currency to the object of this kindly impulse, who
takes it with a ‘tankee,’ but a vacant look. It is a vote he wants,
not a meal.
“So the strange procession moves slowly on. If you wish to determine
how much the negro’s heart is in this election, watch his face as he
comes away from that little window. His vote once in, every feature
blazes with joy; but his vote rejected, sorrow and dismay are
expressed even in his attitudes. Watch the anxious but resolute
sooty faces in those waiting their turns. Is all this emotion due to
the duplicity of Yankee adventurers? Can the ‘carpet-bagger’ thus
sway the very soul of the black man to reach his own selfish ends?
Is it for a possible mule and forty acres of land that the negro is
thus profoundly stirred; that he braves hardship, the ill-will of
his employers, and, may be, starvation itself? No, friend
Conservative. The slave you once owned, ignorant as he is still, and
lowly in social rank, feels, as he casts that ballot, the throes
that liberty awakened, and which, unchecked by renewed oppression,
will give his manhood a rapid and generous growth. I do not seek to
conceal his ignorance about the technical duties of citizenship. An
old black fellow came, as I stood near one of the polls, and
proffered me his vote, asking: ‘Are you de boss?’ The question is,
Does the lack of such technical knowledge unfit him for useful and
honest citizenship? There have been periods in the history of our
country when a loyal heart, an honest, incorruptible nature, were
worth more than ten thousand of the most choicely cultivated
intellects on the national roll of the rich, the powerful, and the
gifted.”
The question has been often asked, and sometimes in a tone of triumph,
as if it were unanswerable, Is it not tyrannical, on the part of the
majority in Congress, to insist on giving the ballot to the negro in the
desolated States, when the party which they represent refuses to permit
the negro to vote in the Northern States? Is it not a positive violation
of the golden rule—a placing of burdens upon the South which they
themselves will not bear?
We answer both inquiries with a decided negative. Without stopping to
discuss the question of negro suffrage at the North, farther than to
say, that a large majority of the Republican party throughout the North
are in favor of it, and have carried it in some of the States, and have
been defeated in others only by the coalition of Democrats and
weak-kneed Republicans, we take the ground that the condition of the two
sections is entirely different. At the North the negro citizens had no
special claims on us; they had manifested an interest in the war, and
some of them had volunteered to serve in the ranks against the South,
though hardly so many in proportion to their number as the whites. We
should prefer to have them vote, for we do not believe in taxation
without representation; but, at the South, the negroes had been our
friends throughout the war; they had been steadily and persistently
loyal, when very few of the whites were so, and many thousands of them
had laid down their lives for the national cause. We had emancipated
them, both as a military necessity, and as an act of justice to an
oppressed race. But the close of the war, and the reinstating of their
former disloyal masters in power, as was done often by the pardons of
the President, left them like sheep in the midst of wolves. Their old
masters hated them for their loyalty, and proceeded at once, under Mr.
Johnson’s provisional governments, to oppress them, to refuse them land,
education, or employment, except at wages which would not sustain life,
and to endeavor to reduce them back to slavery.
To obviate this gross injustice, and to protect these wards of the
nation, to whom its honor was solemnly pledged, it was necessary that
they should be permitted to share in the government, that loyalty might,
at least, have equal rights with disloyalty, the oppressed an equal
voice with the oppressor. This must be done, or the other alternative
adopted,—that of arming the negro and bringing on a war of races, which
would not have ceased till those States should have, indeed, become
desolate and without inhabitants.
Congress had no ambition to reënact the bloody scenes of St. Domingo,
and they felt that with the kindly and placable nature of the African,
peace, quiet, and good order would be sooner secured by giving him the
ballot than in any other way, and the event is even now demonstrating
the wisdom of their decision.
The same able writer from whom we have already quoted, after spending
some months in the South, says:—
“The freedmen have surprised me by their native shrewdness and good
sense, their cautious and submissive behavior, and the keen,
intelligent interest they take in their new political privileges. If
they were one tenth as vindictive and contemptuous in their manner
toward the whites as the whites toward them, a war of races would
have ensued long ago. From close observation, I believe them to be
humbler in deportment than before emancipation. As a class they are
anxious to work and get on in the world. They are more industrious
than their late masters. And though the word has been abused, they
are as loyal to the government as it is possible for men of their
capacities to be. They would respond to a national summons to arms
with alacrity and enthusiasm. By their votes in their conventions
they have shown that they feel no hatred toward their old
oppressors, and ask nothing beyond security for the future.
“Scratch a Southerner, and you find an intolerant. He is not willing
to have you vote as your conscience dictates. Defy his local
despotisms, and you will be socially ostracized; your name will be
published in a black-list; you will be sneered at and insulted. If
you are a Northern man, acquire citizenship by the legal period of
residence, and get nominated to office, you will be ridiculed as a
Yankee adventurer—a ‘carpet-bagger.’ Witness the Alabama election in
February: witness the Southern newspaper treatment of all the
constitutional conventions.
“How about Southern loyalty?
“_About three fourths of the Southern white people are passively
disloyal._ Could it be otherwise? For four years they rained death
on the National flag and the National uniform. They shot at and
cursed them. In every church in the Confederacy they prayed and
supplicated with fervor and with tears, to have them go down in
disgrace. Can it be that their gorge does not rise now at their
sight?
“On the boat coming up the Potomac from Aquia Creek, I heard a
Southerner confess that though he tried to subdue the emotion, he
still felt a hatred of the Stars and Stripes. He had fought under
Lee from first to last, and during that time had seen the flag so
often in battle when the army of the Potomac swept down upon him and
his companions in arms, that he feared he would never again be able
to look upon it as his flag.
“The dominant class in the South never was republican in traits,
tastes, or habits. The revolution now going on in its industries and
system of labor tend to make it so, but as long as this generation
lives the change cannot be complete. The Southern man and woman
still deem themselves a better order of beings than the Yankees.
They will die in that faith. The vanity is ingrain.
“I have been astonished to find how generally the Southerners
believe the North to be on the verge of civil convulsion. Reading
only their own newspapers and the most violent Copperhead journals
in the North, they are firmly convinced that nothing is more likely
to happen than the embroilment of the Western with the Middle and
New England States. This delusion is shared by thousands of the most
intelligent men in the South. That they would delight in such a
calamity is as certain as the fact that the next gale that sweeps
from the North will not take to them ‘the clash of resounding arms.’
They cannot understand the elastic temper and wholesome tolerance of
the North, where elections come and go, crises ripen and decline,
with no thought of bloodshed, nor black-lists, nor social disdain,
contempt, and persecution.
“The Southerner is generous in some things, and honorable in many;
but he is not yet a good citizen for a republic. That is the whole
trouble. He must be made so, or stand back for his children. He
needs a firm, resolute guidance—not unkindly unless he will have it
so—but firm, always firm. The moment we waver, he wavers. When he
fully and finally understands that his old undue political
importance is irrevocably a thing of the past, he will take the
first step on the road to valuable citizenship. But between Andrew
Johnson and the ‘Great Democratic Reaction,’ he has come to believe
in the speedy overthrow of the Republican party, and in the
restoration of the slave dynasty to reign over a dominant party,
composed of Southern extremists and Northern doughfaces.”
That among these freedmen till lately slaves, there are many who have
very inadequate notions of the value and importance of the ballot, and
whose knowledge of our political institutions, is very limited, is
undoubtedly true; but they hardly suffer even in these respects by
comparison with the ignorant poor whites of the South; a class much
slower to learn on these subjects than the most stupid of the negroes,
and among the latter there are men who in intellect and eloquence are
the peers of any of the white legislators of the South, brilliant as
some of them have been. In the report of the debates of the
Constitutional Convention in Arkansas, which adjourned in March last, we
find a speech of W. H. Gray, a full-blooded negro, and till recently a
slave, but at that time a member of the Convention, on this very
subject, which may safely be placed by the side of any speech of any
white Senator or Representative from that State in either House of
Congress. We have read carefully the debates of the fathers of the
American Republic on the Declaration of Independence, and we can find in
them nothing more manly or statesmanlike in tone, or more logical in
argument, than the speech of this negro orator. It is a defense of the
right of his people to suffrage which it would be very difficult for any
white man to gainsay or refute. The question of Impartial Suffrage was
before the Convention, and Mr. Gray said:—
“Now, sir, having stood by the government and the old flag in times
of trouble, when the Republic trembled with the throes of civil war,
from centre to circumference, from base to cope, for this and other
considerations we are here not to ask charity at the hands of the
honorable body, but to receive, at the hands of the people of
Arkansas in convention assembled, the apportionment of our rights,
as assigned by the Reconstruction Acts of Congress. I am here, sir,
to see those rights of citizenship engrafted in the organic law of
this State. The gentleman from White County does not seem to
recognize the fact that the present constitution is not in
accordance with the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing
to each State a republican form of government. The gentleman from
White says the negro cannot become a citizen. The fact is patent
that we have exercised those rights under the constitution in all
the States except South Carolina, and voted for that time-honored
instrument—the Federal Constitution—by voting for the men that
ratified it. As free men, we were not denied the right of suffrage
under the State laws on account of color. It seems as though the
gentleman had read the history of our country to little purpose, or
at least not as I have.... Again the gentleman denies us the right
of suffrage on the ground of our ignorance. Why, sir, for every
negro vote registered in this State I can duplicate it with the vote
of a white man that can neither read or write; and still we are
charged with ignorance. I do not deny it, but we are not isolated.
If these men can vote, I see no injustice in permitting me to vote
also. And in this connection I would say that the colored people of
this State met in convention in this city, in 1865, for the purpose
of considering their condition and prospects, and then asked simply
for the most remote recognition of their rights, but it was
unheeded. I then said that I had an unshaken confidence in the
eventual justice of the American. Since then we have crossed the
Rubicon, as a nation, and cannot recede if we would.... We are told
a republican form of government must rest upon the intelligence and
virtue of the masses, and that we have not these qualifications;
they are qualities that are at least susceptible of improvement. In
other races of men—and they were not largely displayed when the
Huns, Vandals, and other tribes were laying waste the fair fields of
Italy, or when the Danes and Normans were making sad havoc of your
ancestral estates—our condition would compare favorably with that of
England, as described by Macaulay, at the time of the conquest of
the island by the legions of Cæsar, when he says the condition of
the people was little better than that of the Sandwich Islanders. We
were not far behind those who sold civilized women along the banks
of the James for 200 pounds of tobacco, or less. Nor has our
intelligence, even in a barbarous state, been much below the level
of those who ate the acorns falling from the lofty oak of Dodona,
and worshipped the tree from which they fell. The civilization of
the nineteenth century is the product of 800 years; and with this
start ahead, with all the wealth, intelligence, and power and
prestige of a great government, men pretend to believe that they are
afraid of negro domination, afraid that 4,000,000 of negroes,
scattered over this vast country, will rule 30,000,000 of
intelligent white people. They cannot believe it. But they are
endeavoring to work on the prejudices of the masses, to produce
outrage and bloodshed; and, if possible, what they pretend to
deprecate, a war of races. But, sir, this I do not fear, so long as
we are led by the best minds of the nation, and count in our ranks
those distinguished men of both sections, whose gleaming swords were
seen flashing on many a skirmish line and in the smoke of battle.
The gentleman says we are not citizens, by the highest judicial
decision. That decision, sir, travelled outside of American History,
outside of the presence of the courts; and hence I regard Chief
Justice Taney as the American Jeffries. Could I afford to trust my
dearest rights in the hands of men who hold up such a decision as
the measure of my rights, and at the same time profess to be my best
friends? I beg respectfully to decline such friendship—men who are
willing to consign us to a system of peonage worse than slavery, a
system that strips us of every right or privilege, and turns us
bound hand and foot over to the tender mercies of mob law....
“Man cannot prevent it, for God has written it in burning characters
across the pages of American History—emblazoned it as upon a
sign-board, and hung it on the brows of the Rocky Mountains—‘This is
the asylum for the oppressed of all nations, and all people.’ This
is according to the original contract, drawn up by those patriotic
men of the Revolution, and I believe they were honest when they
declared that ‘All men are created equal.’ I believe the hand of an
angel guided the pen that wrote those words, and that they were
recorded in heaven. God intends you shall keep the original
contract. The acting in bad faith by the children of those good men,
has cost the country a million lives—the flower of the land—and
untold sums of wealth. I believe He intends to demand its
fulfillment now, and I plant myself upon the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, as defined by the framers of
those documents, and expounded by the leading men of that period,
and claim that they secure me my rights, if honestly and faithfully
executed. Settle at once and forever the question of human rights by
giving us equality before the law. Then, and not till then, will
peace come to our borders. Until that is done, capital will not seek
investment within our limits, nor will immigration flow to a State
that continues to oppress and crush the laborer. Arkansas has tried
it for thirty years, and she is still comparatively a vast forest.
With an extent of territory sufficient for an empire,—stretching
from Missouri on the north to Louisiana and Texas on the south, from
the Cherokee territory on the west to where her eastern front looks
out on the Father of Waters; with internal streams sufficiently
navigable to bear the commerce of an empire to the sea,—thirty years
a State and not a railroad worth the name, no means of
inter-communication, except that employed in a by-gone age. Not a
respectable school-house, and her primeval forests still keeping
silent guard along her watercourses: and why? because her soil was
desecrated by Slavery. It was here this Moloch of the nineteenth
century reared his altars and sacrificed his human victims. God has
removed the idol and shattered the altars, and those that opposed
it, like the devotees that cast themselves before the Hindoo car of
Juggernaut, will be crushed beneath the progress of the age.”
The pictures of the condition of the South in the beginning of the
present year were gloomy in the extreme. We have taken in preference the
testimony of moderate men who have spent some months in the South during
the early part of the present year. One of these, a Mr. D., for a long
time, and we believe still, connected with the “Cincinnati Gazette,”
gives in January, 1868, the following summary of the condition of
affairs from his own personal observation:—
“There is literally ‘no show’ for an outspoken Union man. He is
socially ostracized; nobody will trade with him. If he be a farmer,
his horses are stolen, his stock dies suddenly, his fences
mysteriously disappear, ‘spontaneous combustion’ destroys his
out-houses; and if he is still foolish enough to misunderstand these
‘manifestations of Providence,’ he is accidentally shot, or some
equally broad hint is given him to leave. To learn these facts,
leave the railroad towns and live in the interior for a few months,
and you will get your fill. I believe that even Andrew Johnson
himself might be reformed, provided he could visit Mississippi
_incog._, and stay at the house of a Union man even a fortnight.
“But to know Rebeldom in its truest character, you must leave its
dealings with white men, and view its dealings with the negro. It
could not be expected that the relations existing between the whites
and their late chattels would be very decidedly cordial, for it will
be years ere former owners can calmly view what was once their
property and source of wealth now toiling for themselves; but still
common humanity would dictate a treatment toward the negroes fully
as generous as that usually extended to brutes. Villainy of the
whites is the cause of three fourths of the destitution among the
negroes. In four cases in five where he has worked for a white man,
either on shares or wages, the negro has been defrauded out of his
earnings. If a crop has been raised on shares, it is disposed of by
the land-owner, and if the laborer receives one half his dues he is
most fortunate; if he is employed by the year, he is turned adrift
as soon as crops are gathered, and he is given but a moiety of his
wages; when he asks for the balance due, he is cursed and
threatened, and, if he persists in his demand, he is knocked down,
or, more often, shot; if he resents the blow, his death is certain,
for no negro dare strike a white man here, unless there be a company
of soldiers present. To kill a negro is no crime here, and I have
heard men talk of their exploits in this line with the utmost
complacency. The only protection that the colored man now has in the
South is the Freedmen’s Bureau, backed up by Federal bayonets. Break
up the Bureau before reconstruction is effected, and the colored
race will be exterminated in ten years, unless a ‘war of races’
ensues, and the whites be brought to their senses thereby. It
appears to be the policy of not a few leaders to bring about such a
conflict. The excessive tyranny practiced upon the poor blacks, and
the appeals to the prejudices and baser passions of the whites, tend
to that end, and certainly must have that object.
“Great destitution prevails in the interior of Alabama and
Mississippi, but it is by no means so severe as has been
represented. Here again is another fiendish device of the opponents
of reconstruction. The colored laborer is defrauded out of most of
his earnings. As a consequence, he is in want, and his family are
nigh to starvation. This is heralded forth to the world as an
evidence of the negro’s natural laziness and disability to take care
of himself. If the whites had dealt justly and generously by their
colored laborers, they would not now be asking alms of the North,
nor begging relief of government. It makes me mourn for the white
race when I witness their oppression of the negro. A just Providence
cannot permit such iniquities to be perpetrated.
“The prime cause of Southern want is the laziness of the whites. The
Southern climate is notoriously enervating, and is made the excuse
for not working by the ‘privileged classes.’ At every cross-roads
doggery, every shop, and every store in every town and village, is
to be found a crowd of long-haired, stalwart fellows engaged in
whittling sticks, chewing tobacco, and cursing the negro—three
things which they do well and industriously follow up. Without a
dollar, save what they make or defraud their laborers out of, they
spend their time, week in and week out, in idleness, regretting ‘old
times,’ instead of turning to work and industriously striving to
retrieve their fallen fortunes. They have land in abundance, but
this few only will sell, lest the negroes get a foothold and become
property owners. The South is by no means as impoverished as has
been represented. The Southern people still have in abundance all
the elements of wealth, and it only requires industry among the
whites, and encouragement and fair dealing toward the colored
laborers, to raise the late Rebel States to even a higher state of
prosperity than they ever before enjoyed.”
Still amid all this gloom and darkness there were some gleams of light.
EDUCATION is and has been, for the past two years, advancing in the
South with a rapidity hitherto unknown. Heretofore in most of the
Southern States, everywhere except in the large towns, education was
only the boon of the wealthy, and the poor white had almost as little
chance of learning to read and write as the slave, to whom all knowledge
of books was prohibited by law under the severest penalties. But now,
thanks to the efforts of the philanthropic citizens of the North, the
Missionary Associations, Home Missionary Societies, Freedmen’s Aid
Societies and Commissions, and to the Freedmen’s Bureau, there were
thousands of schools where the negro and the child of the poor white
were taught the elements of knowledge, and an intense rivalry, in which
truth compels us to say the negro child oftenest came out winner, ensued
between the two in regard to the rapid acquisition of knowledge.
This laudable enterprise for the general diffusion of education in the
South was powerfully aided and will continue to be so by the munificent
gift by George Peabody, Esq., of the sum of more than two millions of
dollars, the income of which is to be distributed annually to southern
schools and institutions of learning, without distinction of color or
race. Several institutions have been founded in Washington, D. C.,
Wilmington, N. C., New Orleans, and Pittsburgh for the higher education
of colored young men, with a view to qualify them for teachers and
preachers among their own people.
The constitutional conventions of the desolated States have wisely
incorporated into their bills of rights and their constitutions the
right and the provision for universal education, and the legislatures
elected are manifesting a willingness to tax themselves for this
purpose, to an extent which, in their present impoverished condition, is
highly creditable to them.
The result of this will be that in a few years the mass of voters in the
Southern States will be equal in intelligence to the people of any other
section of the country, or to any nation in the world, and with that
intelligence they may safely be trusted to govern themselves. In all
countries and states, and at all times, ignorance, which brings in its
train all other vices, has been the worst foe of good government. But
with an intelligent and enterprising people no form of despotism,
neither autocracy, oligarchy, or mob law, can prevail. Hence dark as may
be the clouds which now overhang the South, we look confidently for a
brighter future, when its despotic aristocracy shall no longer hold
sway.