CROSSING THE RUBICON.
Bernard assumed the Presidency of the Imperium and was duly
inaugurated in a manner in keeping with the importance of his high
office. He began the direction of its affairs with such energy and
tactful discretion as betokened great achievements.
He familiarized himself with every detail of his great work and was
thoroughly posted as to all the resources at his command. He devoted
much time to assuaging jealousies and healing breaches wherever such
existed in the ranks of the Imperium. He was so gentle, so loving, yet
so firm and impartial, that all factional differences disappeared at
his approach.
Added to his great popularity because of his talents, there sprang up
for him personal attachments, marvelous in depth. He rose to the full
measure of the responsibilities of his commanding position, and more
than justified the fondest anticipations of his friends and admirers.
In the meanwhile he kept an observant eye upon the trend of events
in the United States, and his fingers were ever on the pulse of the
Imperium. All of the evils complained of by the Imperium continued
unabated; in fact, they seemed to multiply and grow instead of
diminishing.
Bernard started a secret newspaper whose business it was to chronicle
every fresh discrimination, every new act of oppression, every
additional unlawful assault upon the property, the liberty or the
lives of any of the members of the Imperium. This was an illustrated
journal, and pictures of horrors, commented upon in burning words,
spread fire-brands everywhere in the ranks of the Imperium. Only
members of the Imperium had access to this fiery journal.
At length an insurrection broke out in Cuba, and the whole Imperium
watched this struggle with keenest interest, as the Cubans were in a
large measure negroes. In proportion as the Cubans drew near to their
freedom, the fever of hope correspondingly rose in the veins of the
Imperium. The United States of America sent a war ship to Cuba. One
night while the sailors slept in fancied security, some powerful
engine of destruction demolished the vessel and ended the lives of
some 266 American seamen.
A board of inquiry was sent by the United States Government to the
scene of the disaster, and, after a careful investigation of a most
thorough character, decided that the explosion was not internal and
accidental but external and by design. This finding made war between
the United States and Spain practically inevitable.
While the whole nation was in the throes of war excitement, a terrible
tragedy occurred. President McKinley had appointed Mr. Felix A. Cook,
a colored man of ability, culture and refinement as postmaster of Lake
City, South Carolina. The white citizens of this place made no protest
against the appointment and all was deemed satisfactory.
One morning the country awoke to be horrified with the news that Mr.
Cook's home had been assaulted at night by a mob of white demons in
human form. The mob set fire to the house while the occupants slept,
and when Mr. Cook with his family endeavored to escape from the flames
he was riddled with bullets and killed, and his wife and children
were wounded. And the sole offense for which this dastardly crime
was perpetrated, was that he decided to accept the honor which the
government conferred upon him in appointing him postmaster of a
village of 300 inhabitants. It was the color of his skin that made
this acceptance odious in the eyes of his Anglo-Saxon neighbors!
This incident naturally aroused as much indignation among the members
of the Imperium as did the destruction of the war ship in the bosoms
of the Anglo-Saxons of the United States. All things considered,
Bernard regarded this as the most opportune moment for the Imperium to
meet and act upon the whole question of the relationship of the negro
race to the Anglo-Saxons.
The Congress of the Imperium was called and assembled in special
session at the Capitol building just outside of Waco. The session
began on the morning of April--the same day on which the Congress
of the United States had under consideration the resolutions, the
adoption of which meant war with Spain. These two congresses on
this same day had under consideration questions of vital import to
civilization.
The proceedings of the Anglo-Saxons have been told to the world in
minute detail, but the secret deliberations of the Imperium are herein
disclosed for the first time. The exterior of the Capitol at Waco
was decorated with American flags, and red, white and blue bunting.
Passers-by commented on the patriotism of Jefferson College. But,
enveloped in this decoration there was cloth of the color of mourning.
The huge weeping willows stood, one on each side of the speaker's
desk. To the right of the desk, there was a group of women in widow's
weeds, sitting on an elevated platform. There were fifty of these,
their husbands having been made the victims of mobs since the first
day of January just gone.
To the left of the speaker's desk, there were huddled one hundred
children whose garments were in tatters and whose looks bespoke lives
of hardship. These were the offsprings robbed of their parents by the
brutish cruelty of unthinking mobs.
Postmaster Cook, while alive, was a member of the Imperium and his
seat was now empty and draped in mourning. In the seat was a golden
casket containing his heart, which had been raked from the burning
embers on the morning following the night of the murderous assault.
It was amid such surrounding as these that the already aroused and
determined members of the Congress assembled.
Promptly at 11 o'clock, Speaker Belton Piedmont took the chair. He
rapped for order, and the chaplain offered a prayer, in which he
invoked the blessings of God upon the negro race at the most important
crisis in its history. Word was sent, by proper committee, across the
campus informing the president that Congress was in session awaiting
his further pleasure. According to custom, the president came in
person to orally deliver his message.
He entered in the rear of the building and marched forward. The
Congress arose and stood with bowed heads as he passed through. The
speaker's desk was moved back as a sign of the president's superior
position, and directly in the center of the platform the president
stood to speak. He was dressed in a Prince Albert suit of finest
black. He wore a standing collar and a necktie snowy white. The hair
was combed away from that noble brow of his, and his handsome face
showed that he was nerved for what he regarded as the effort of his
life.
In his fierce, determined glance you could discover that latent fires,
hitherto unsuspected even in his warm bosom, had been aroused. The
whole man was to speak that day. And he spoke. We can give you his
words but not his speech. Man can photograph the body, but in the
photograph you can only glimpse the soul. Words can portray the form
of a speech, but the spirit, the life, are missing and we turn away
disappointed. That sweet, well modulated voice, full of tender pathos,
of biting sarcasm, of withering irony, of swelling rage, of glowing
fervor, according as the occasion demanded, was a most faithful
vehicle to Bernard; conveying fully every delicate shade of thought.
The following gives you but a faint idea of his masterly effort. In
proportion as you can throw yourself into his surroundings, and feel,
as he had felt, the iron in his soul, to that extent will you be able
to realize how much power there was in what is now to follow:
THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.
"Two terrible and discordant sounds have burst forth upon the
erstwhile quiet air and now fill your bosom with turbulent emotions.
One is the blast of the bugle, fierce and loud, calling us to arms
against a foreign nation to avenge the death of American seamen and
to carry the cup of liberty to a people perishing for its healing
draught. The other is the crackling of a burning house in the night's
dead hours, the piteous cries of pain and terror from the lips of
wounded babes; the despairing, heart-rending, maddening shrieks of the
wife and mother; the harrowing groans of the dying husband and father,
and the gladsome shout of the fiendish mob of white American citizens,
who have wrought the havoc just described, a deed sufficiently
horrible to make Satan blush and hell hastily hide her face in shame.
"I deem this, my fellow countrymen, as an appropriate time for us to
consider what shall be our attitude, immediate and future, to this
Anglo-Saxon race, which calls upon us to defend the fatherland and at
the same moment treats us in a manner to make us execrate it. Let
us, then, this day decide what shall be the relations that shall
henceforth exist between us and the Anglo-Saxon race of the United
States of America.
"Seven million eyes are riveted upon you, hoping that you will be
brave and wise enough to take such action as will fully atone for
all the horrors of the past and secure for us every right due to
all honorable, loyal, law-abiding citizens of the United States.
Pleadingly they look to you to extract the arrow of shame which hangs
quivering in every bosom, shame at continued humiliation, unavenged.
"In order to arrive at a proper conclusion as to what the duty of
the hour is, it would be well to review our treatment received at the
hands of the Anglo-Saxon race and note the position that we are now
sternly commanded by them to accept.
"When this is done, to my mind, the path of duty will be as plain
before our eyes as the path of the sun across the heavens. I shall,
therefore, proceed to review our treatment and analyze our present
condition, in so far as it is traceable to the treatment which we now
receive from the Anglo-Saxon.
"When in 1619 our forefathers landed on the American shore, the music
of welcome with which they were greeted, was the clanking of iron
chains ready to fetter them; the crack of the whip to be used to plow
furrows in their backs; and the yelp of the blood-hound who was to
bury his fangs deep into their flesh, in case they sought for liberty.
Such was the music with which the Anglo-Saxon came down to the shore
to extend a hearty welcome to the forlorn children of night, brought
from a benighted heathen land to a community of _Christians!_
"The negro was seized and forced to labor hard that the Anglo-Saxon
might enjoy rest and ease. While he sat in his cushioned chair, in
his luxurious home, and dreamed of the blessedness of freedom, the
enforced labor of slaves felled the forest trees, cleared away the
rubbish, planted the seed and garnered the ripened grain, receiving
therefor no manner of pay, no token of gratitude, no word of coldest
thanks.
"That same hammer and anvil that forged the steel sword of the
Anglo-Saxon, with which he fought for freedom from England's yoke,
also forged the chain that the Anglo-Saxon used to bind the negro more
securely in the thralldom of slavery. For two hundred and forty-four
years the Anglo-Saxon imposed upon the hapless, helpless negro, the
bondage of abject slavery, robbed him of the just recompense of his
unceasing toil, treated him with the utmost cruelty, kept his mind
shrouded in the dense fog of ignorance, denied his poor sinful soul
access to the healing word of God, and, while the world rolled on to
joy and light, the negro was driven cowering and trembling, back, back
into the darkest corners of night's deepest gloom. And when, at
last, the negro was allowed to come forth and gaze with the eyes of a
freeman on the glories of the sky, even this holy act, the freeing of
the negro, was a matter of compulsion and has but little, if anything,
in it demanding gratitude, except such gratitude as is due to be given
unto God. For the Emancipation Proclamation, as we all know, came not
so much as a message of love for the slave as a message of love for
the Union; its primary object was to save the Union, its incident,
to liberate the slave. Such was the act which brought to a close two
hundred and forty-four years of barbarous maltreatment and inhuman
oppression! After all these years of unremitting toil, the negro was
pushed out into the world without one morsel of food, one cent of
money, one foot of land. Naked and unarmed he was pushed forward into
a dark cavern and told to beard the lion in his den. In childlike
simplicity he undertook the task. Soon the air was filled with his
agonizing cries; for the claws and teeth of the lion were ripping open
every vein and crushing every bone. In this hour of dire distress the
negro lifted up his voice in loud, long piteous wails calling upon
those for help at whose instance and partially for whose sake he had
dared to encounter the deadly foe. These whilom friends rushed with a
loud shout to the cavern's mouth. But when they saw the fierce eyes of
the lion gleaming in the dark and heard his fearful growl, this loud
shout suddenly died away into a feeble, cowardly whimper, and these
boastful creatures at the crackling of a dry twig turned and scampered
away like so many jack-rabbits.
"Having thus briefly reviewed our past treatment at the hand of the
Anglo-Saxon, we now proceed to consider the treatment which we receive
at his hands to-day.
THE INDUSTRIAL SITUATION.
"During the long period of slavery the Negro race was not allowed to
use the mind as a weapon in the great 'battle for bread.'
"The Anglo-Saxon said to the negro, in most haughty tones: 'In this
great "battle for bread," you must supply the brute force while I will
supply the brain. If you attempt to use your brain I will kill you;
and before I will stoop so low as to use my own physical power to earn
my daily bread I will kill myself.'
"This edict of the Anglo-Saxon race, issued in the days of slavery, is
yet in force in a slightly modified form.
"He yet flees from physical exertion as though it were the leprosy
itself, and yet, violently pushes the negro into that from which he
has so precipitately fled, crying in a loud voice, 'unclean, unclean.'
"If forced by circumstances to resort to manual labor, he chooses the
higher forms of this, where skill is the main factor. But he will not
labor even here with the negro, but drives him out and bars the door.
"He will contribute the public funds to educate the negro and then
exert every possible influence to keep the negro from earning a
livelihood by means of that education.
"It is true, that in the goodness of his heart he will allow the negro
community to have a negro preacher, teacher, doctor, pharmacist and
jackleg lawyer, but further than this he will not go. Practically all
of the other higher forms of labor are hermetically sealed so far as
the negro is concerned.
"Thus, like Tantalus of old, we are placed in streams of water up to
our necks, but when we stoop down to drink thereof the waters recede;
luscious fruit, tempting to the eye and pleasing to the taste,
is placed above our heads, only to be wafted away by the winds of
prejudice, when, like Tantalus we reach up to grasp and eat.
OUR CIVIL RIGHTS.
"An Italian, a Frenchman, a German, a Russian, a Chinaman and a Swede
come, let us suppose, on a visit to our country.
"As they draw near our public parks they look up and see placards
forbidding somebody to enter these places. They pause to read the
signs to see who it is that is forbidden to enter.
"Unable to understand our language, they see a negro child returning
from school and they call the child to read and interpret the placard.
It reads thus: 'Negroes and dogs not allowed in here.'
"The little negro child, whose father's sweaty, unrequited toil
cleared the spot whereon the park now stands, loiters outside of
the wicker gate in company with the dogs of the foreigners and gazes
wistfully through the cracks at the children of these strangers
sporting on the lawn.
"This is but a fair sample of the treatment which our race receives
everywhere in the South.
"If we enter a place where a sign tells us that the public is served,
we do not know whether we are to be waited upon or driven out like
dogs.
"And the most shameful and hopeless feature connected with the
question of our civil rights is that the Supreme Court has lent its
official sanction to all such acts of discrimination. The highest
court in the land is the chief bulwark of caste prejudice in
democratic America.
EDUCATION.
"The race that thinks of us and treats us as we have just indicated
has absolute charge of the education of our children.
"They pay our teachers poorer salaries than they do their own; they
give us fewer and inferior school buildings and they make us crawl in
the dust before the very eyes of our children in order to secure the
slightest concessions.
"They attempt to muzzle the mouths of negro teachers, and he who
proclaims too loudly the doctrine of equality as taught by Thomas
Jefferson, will soon be in search of other employment.
"Thus, they attempt to cripple our guides so that we may go forward at
a feeble pace.
"Our children, early in life, learn of our maltreatment, and having
confidence in the unused strength of their parents, urge us to right
our wrongs.
"We listen to their fiery words and gaze in fondness on their little
clinched fists. We then bow our heads in shame and lay bare to them
the chains that yet hold our ankles, though the world has pronounced
us free.
"In school, they are taught to bow down and worship at the shrine of
the men who died for the sake of liberty, and day by day they grow to
disrespect us, their parents who have made no blow for freedom. But it
will not always be thus!
COURTS OF JUSTICE.
"Colored men are excluded from the jury box; colored lawyers are
discriminated against at the bar; and negroes, with the highest legal
attainments, are not allowed to even dream of mounting the seat of a
judge.
"Before a court that has been lifted into power by the very hands
of prejudice, justice need not be expected. The creature will,
presumably, serve its creator; this much the creator demands.
"We shall mention just one fact that plainly illustrates the character
of the justice to be found in our courts.
"If a negro murders an Anglo-Saxon, however justifiably, let him
tremble for his life if he is to be tried in our courts. On the other
hand, if an Anglo-Saxon murders a negro in cold blood, without the
slightest provocation, he will, if left to the pleasure of our courts,
die of old age and go down to his grave in perfect peace.
"A court that will thus carelessly dabble and play in puddles of human
blood needs no further comment at my hands.
MOB LAW.
"The courts of the land are the facile instruments of the Anglo-Saxon
race. They register its will as faithfully as the thermometer does the
slightest caprice of the weather. And yet, the poor boon of a trial in
even such courts as these is denied the negro, even when his character
is being painted with hell's black ink and charges that threaten his
life are being laid at his door. He is allowed no chance to clear his
name; no opportunity to bid a friend good bye; no time to formulate a
prayer to God.
"About this way of dealing with criminals there are three horrible
features: First, innocent men are often slain and forced to sleep
eternally in dishonored graves. Secondly, when men who are innocent
are thus slain the real culprits are left behind to repeat their
deeds and thus continue to bring reproach upon the race to which
they belong. Thirdly, illegal execution always begets sympathy in
the hearts of our people for a criminal, however dastardly may be his
crime. Thus the execution loses all of its moral force as a deterrent.
That wrath, that eloquence, which would all be used in abuse of the
criminal is divided between him and his lynchers. Thus the crime for
which the man suffers, is not dwelt upon with that unanimity to make
it sufficiently odious, and, as a consequence, lynching increases
crime. And, too, under the operation of the lynch-law the criminal
knows that any old tramp is just as liable as himself to be seized and
hanged.
"This accursed practice, instead of decreasing, grows in extent year
by year. Since the close of the civil war no less than sixty thousand
of our comrades, innocent of all crime, have been hurried to their
graves by angry mobs, and to-day their widows and orphans and their
own departed spirits cry out to you to avenge their wrongs.
"Woe unto that race, whom the tears of the widows, the cries of
starving orphans, the groans of the innocent dying, and the gaping
wounds of those unjustly slain, accuse before a righteous God!
POLITICS.
"'Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed!'
"These words were penned by the man whom the South has taught us to
revere as the greatest and noblest American statesman, whether those
who are now alive or those who are dead. We speak of Thomas Jefferson.
They have taught us that he was too wise to err and that his sayings
are truth incarnate. They are ready to anathematize any man in their
own ranks who will decry the self-evident truths which he uttered.
"The Bible which the white people gave us, teaches us that we are men.
The Declaration of Independence, which we behold them wearing over
their hearts, tells us that all men are created equal. If, as the
Bible says, we are men; if, as Jefferson says, all men are equal;
if, as he further states, governments derive all just powers from the
consent of the governed, then it follows that the American government
is in duty bound to seek to know our will as respects the laws and the
men who are to govern us.
"But instead of seeking to know our will, they employ every device
that human ingenuity can contrive to prevent us from expressing our
opinion. The monarchial trait seems not to have left their blood. They
have apparently chosen our race as an empire, and each Anglo-Saxon
regards himself as a petty king, and some gang or community of negroes
as his subjects.
"Thus our voice is not heard in the General Government. Our kings,
the Anglo-Saxons, speak for us, their slaves. In some states we are
deprived of our right to vote by frauds, in others by violence, and
in yet others by statutory enactment. But in all cases it is most
effectually done.
"Burdens may be put upon our shoulders that are weighing us down,
but we have no means of protesting. Men who administer the laws may
discriminate against us to an outrageous degree, but we have no power
to remove or to punish them.
"Like lean, hungry dogs, we must crouch beneath our master's table
and snap eagerly at the crumbs that fall. If in our scramble for these
crumbs we make too much noise, we are violently kicked and driven
out of doors, where, in the sleet and snow, we must whimper and whine
until late the next morning when the cook opens the door and we can
then crouch down in the corner of the kitchen.
"Oh! my Comrades, we cannot longer endure our shame and misery!
"We can no longer lay supinely down upon our backs and let oppression
dig his iron heel in our upturned pleading face until, perchance, the
pity of a bystander may meekly request him to desist.
"Fellow Countrymen, we must be free. The sun that bathes our land in
light yet rises and sets upon a race of slaves.
"The question remaining before us, then, is, How we are to obtain this
freedom? In olden times, revolutions were effected by the sword and
spear. In modern times the ballot has been used for that purpose. But
the ballot has been snatched from our hands. The modern implement of
revolutions has been denied us. I need not say more. Your minds will
lead you to the only gate left open.
"But this much I will say: let not so light, so common, so universal a
thing as that which we call death be allowed to frighten you from the
path that leads to true liberty and absolute equality. Let that which
under any circumstances must come to one and all be no terror to you.
"To the martyr, who perishes in freedom's cause, death comes with a
beauteous smile and with most tender touch. But to the man whose blood
is nothing but sour swill; who prefers to stay like fattening swine
until pronounced fit for the butcher's knife; to such, death comes
with a most horrifying visage, and seizing the victim with cold and
clammy hands hurries with his disgusting load to some far away dumping
ground.
"How glad am I that I can glance over this audience and see written
upon your faces utter disdain of death.
"In concluding let me say, I congratulate you that after years of
suffering and disunion our faces are now _all_ turned toward the
golden shores of liberty's lovely land.
"Some tell us that a sea is in our way, so deep that we cannot cross.
Let us answer back in joyful tones as our vessels push out from the
shore, that our clotted blood, shed in the middle of the sea, will
float to the other side, even if we do not reach there ourselves.
"Others tell us that towering, snow-capped mountains enclose the
land. To this we answer, if we die on the mountain-side, we shall be
shrouded in sheets of whitest snow, and all generations of men yet
to come upon the earth will have to gaze upward in order to see our
whitened forms.
"Let us then, at all hazards, strike a blow for freedom. If it calls
for a Thermopylæ, be free. If it calls for a Valley Forge, be free.
If contending for our rights, given unto us by God, causes us to be
slain, let us perish on the field of battle, singing as we pass out
of the world, 'Sweet Freedom's song,' though every word of this
soul-inspiring hymn must come forth wrapped in our hearts' warm blood.
"Gentlemen of the Imperium in Imperio, I await your pleasure."