THE SOUTH UNDER SELF-GOVERNMENT

For now more than thirty years, whites and blacks, both free, have lived together in the reconstructed States. In some of them there have been local clashes, but in none of them has there been race war, predicted by Jefferson and feared by Lincoln; and there probably never will be such a war, unless it shall come through the intervention of such an outside force as produced in the South the conflict between the races at the polls in 1868-76.

Every State government set up under the plan of Congress had wrought ruin, and the ruin was always more complete where the negroes were most numerous, as in South Carolina and Louisiana.

The rule of the carpet-bagger and the negro was now superseded by governments based on Abraham Lincoln's idea, the idea he expressed in the debate with Douglas in 1858, when he said: "While they [the two races] do remain together there must be the position of inferior and superior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white man."

Conducted on this basis, the present governments in the reconstructed States have endured now for periods varying from thirty-six to forty-two years, and in every State, without any exception, the prosperity of both whites and blacks has been wonderful, and this in spite of the still existent abnormal animosities engendered by congressional reconstruction.

In the present State governments the race problem seems to have reached, in its larger lines, its only practicable solution. There is still, however, much friction between whites and blacks. Higher culture among the masses, especially of the dominant race, and wise leadership in both races, will in time minimize this, but it is not to be expected, nor is it ever to be desired, that racial antipathies should entirely cease to exist. The result of such cessation would be amalgamation, a solution that American whites will never tolerate.

Deportation, as a solution of the negro problem, is impracticable. Mr. Lincoln, much as he desired the separation of the races, could not accomplish it, even when he had all the war power of the government in his hands. He was, as we have seen, unable to find a country that would take the 3,500,000 of blacks then in the seceded States. Now, there are in the South, including Delaware, according to the census of 1910, 8,749,390, and, quite naturally, the American negro is more unwilling than ever to leave America.

Another solution sometimes suggested in the South is the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, which declares that the negro shall not be deprived of the ballot because of his race, but agitation for this would appear to be worse than useless.

The negro vote in the reconstructed States is, and has for years been, quite small, not large enough to be considered a factor in any of them. One cause of this is that the whites enforce against the blacks rigidly the tests required by law, but the chief reason is, that the negro, who is qualified, does not often apply for registration. He finds work now more profitable than voting. He can not, he knows, control, nor can he, if disposed to do so, sell his ballot as he once did. One of the most signal and durable evils of Congressional Reconstruction was the utter debasement of the suffrage in eleven States where the ballot had formerly been notably pure. Gideon Welles saw clearly when he said in his diary, June 23, 1867 (p. 102, vol. III): "Under the pretence of elevating the negro the radicals are degrading the whites and debasing the elective franchise, bringing elections into contempt." During the rule of the negro and the alien, in every black county, where the negro majority was as two to one, there were, as a rule, two Republican candidates for every fat office, and an election meant, for the negro, a golden harvest. Rival candidates were mercilessly fleeced by their black constituencies, and the belief South is that as a rule the carpet-baggers, in their hegira, returned North as poor as when they came.

In the Reconstruction era the whites fought fraud with fraud; and even after recovering control they, the whites, felt justified in continuing to defraud the negro of his vote. To restore the purity of the ballot-box was the chief reason for the amendments to State constitutions, by means of which amendments, having in view the limitations of the Federal Constitution, as many negroes and as few whites as was practicable were excluded.

This accounts in part for the smallness of the negro vote South. A more potent reason is that the Democratic party, dominated by whites, selects its candidates in primaries; and the negro, seeing no chance to win, does not care to pay a poll tax or otherwise qualify for registration.

Southern whites have now for more than three decades been governing the blacks in their midst. It is the most difficult task that has ever been undertaken in all the history of popular government, but sad experience has demonstrated that legal restriction of the negro vote in the South there must be.

Party spirit tends always to blind the vision, and, as we have seen in this review of the past, it often stifles conscience; and this even where the masses of the people are approximately homogeneous. Southern statesmen are now dealing not only with party spirit, but with perpetual race friction manifesting itself in various forms. Failure there must be in minor matters and in certain localities; the progress that has been made can only be fairly estimated by considering general results. Those who sympathize with the South think they see there among the whites a growing spirit of altruism, begotten of responsibility, and this promises much for the amelioration of race friction.

Since obtaining control of their State governments the whites in the Southern States have as a rule increased appropriations for common schools by at least four hundred per cent, and though paying themselves by far the greater proportion of these taxes, they have continued to divide revenues pro rata between the white and colored schools.

Industrial results have been amazing. The following figures, taken from the Annual Blue Book, 1911 edition, of the Manufacturers' Record, Baltimore, Maryland, include West Virginia among the reconstructed States.

The population of these States was, in 1880, 13,608,703; in 1910, 23,613,533.

Manufacturing capital, 1880, $147,156,624. In 1900—twenty years—it was $1,019,056,200.

Cotton crop, whole South, 1880, 5,761,252 bales. In 1911 it was about 15,000,000.

Of this cotton crop Southern mills took, in 1880, 321,337 bales, and in 1910, 2,344,343 bales.

In 1880 the twelve reconstructed States cut, of lumber, board measure, 2,981,274,000 feet; and in 1909 22,445,000,000 feet.

Their output of pig-iron was, in 1880, 264,991 long tons; in 1910, 3,048,000 tons. The assessed value of taxable property was, in 1880, $2,106,971,271; in 1910, $6,522,195,139.

The negro, though the white man, with his superior energy and capacity, far outstrips him, has shared in this material prosperity. His property in these States has been estimated as high as $500,000,000.

During the last decade, 1900-1910, the white population of the South increased by 24.4 per cent, while the negro population in the same States increased only 10.4 per cent. There has been a very considerable gain of whites over blacks since 1880, the result largely of a greater natural increase of whites over blacks, immigrants not counted. All this indicates that the negro problem is gradually being minimized.

Taken in the aggregate, the shortcomings of the negro are numerous and regrettable, but not greater than was to be expected. The general advance of an inferior race will never equal that of one which is superior by nature and already centuries ahead. The laggard and thriftless among the inferior people will naturally be more, and it is from these classes that prison houses are filled.

There is a very considerable class of negroes who are improving mentally and morally, but improvidence is a characteristic of the race, and very many of them, even though they labor more or less steadily, will never accumulate. The third class, much larger than among the whites, is composed of those who are idle, dissipated, and criminal. Taken altogether, however, what Booker Washington says is true: "There cannot be found, in the civilized or uncivilized world, a like number of negroes whose economic, educational, and religious life is so far advanced as that of the ten millions within this country."[95] This advancement is one of the results of slavery. When the negroes come to recognize this, as some of their leaders already do,[96] and come to appreciate the advantages for further improvement they have had since their emancipation, they will cease to repine over the bondage of their ancestors. There were undoubtedly evils in slavery, but, after all, there was some reason in the advice given by the good Spanish Bishop Las Casas to the King of Spain—that it would be rightful to enslave and thus Christianize and civilize the African savage. Herbert Spencer, "Illustrations of Universal Progress" (p. 444), says: "Hateful though it is to us, and injurious as it would be now, slavery was once beneficial, was one of the necessary phases of human progress."

Sir Harry Johnston, African explorer and student of the negro race, in both the old and the new world, and perhaps the most eminent authority on a question he has, in a fashion, made his own, says: "Intellectually, and perhaps physically, he (the negro) has attained the highest degree of advancement as yet in the United States."[97]

"In Alabama (most of all) the American negro is seen at his best, as peasant, peasant proprietor, artisan, professional man, and member of society."[98]

Race animosities are now abnormal, both South and North. The prime reasons for this are two:

1. The bitter conflict during reconstruction for race supremacy and the false hopes once held out to the negro of ultimate social equality with the whites. Among the early measures of congressional reconstruction was a "civil rights" enactment which the negroes regarded as giving to them all the rights of the white man. Their Supreme Court in Alabama decided, in "Burns vs. The State," that the "civil rights" laws conferred the right to intermarriage. Negroes, North, no doubt also believed in this construction. But the Supreme Court of the United States later held that the States, and not Congress, had jurisdiction over the marriage relation within the States. All the Southern and a number of the Northern States have since forbidden the intermarriage of whites and blacks, and so the negro's hopes of equal rights in this regard have vanished.

This disappointment and his utter failure to secure the social equality that once seemed his, have tended to embitter the negro against the white man.

2. Whites have been embittered against blacks by the frequency in later years of the crime of the negro against white women. This horrible offence began to be common in the South some thirty-two or three years since, or perhaps a little earlier, and somewhat later it appeared in the North, where it seems to have been as common, negro population considered, as in the South. The crime was almost invariably followed by lynching, which, however, was not always for the same crime. The following is the list of lynchings in the sections, as kept by the Chicago Tribune since it began to compile them:

1885184
1886138
1887122
1888142
1889176
1890127
1891192
1892205
1893200
1894190
1895171
1896181
1897166
1898127
1899107
1900107
1901185
190296
1903104
190487
190566
190666
190768
1908100
190987
191074

The general decrease, while population is increasing, is encouraging; but lynching itself is a horrible crime; and lynching for one crime begets lynching for another. Of the total number lynched last year, nine were whites; sixty-five were negroes, among them three women; and only twenty-two were for crimes of negroes against white women. The other crimes were murder, attempts to murder, robbery, arson, etc.

Census returns indicate that in the country at large the criminality of the negro, as compared with that of the white man, is nearly three times greater, and that the ratio of negro criminality is much higher North than South. Such returns also indicate that so far education has not lessened negro criminality,[99] but it is not known that any well-educated negro has been guilty of the crime against white women.

In the South the negro is excluded from many occupations for which the best of them are fitted, but in the North his industrial conditions are worse. Fewer occupations are open to him and the wisest members of his race are counselling him to remain in the more favorable industrial atmosphere of the South.

The dislike of negroes for whites has been increased South by the laws which separate them from whites in schools, public conveyances, etc. But it is to be remembered that these laws were intended to prevent intermarriage; they are in part the result of race antipathies. But the sound reason for them is that they tend to prevent intimacies which, at the points where the races are in closest touch with each other, might result in intermarriage. Professor E. D. Cope, of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the very highest of American authorities on the race question, in a powerful article published in 1890,[100] advocated the deportation of the negroes from the South, no matter at what cost. Otherwise he predicted eventual amalgamation, which would be the destruction of a large portion of the finest race in the world.

This little study now comes to a close. An effort has been made to sketch briefly in this chapter the difficulties the South has encountered in dealing with the negro problem, and to outline the measure of success it has achieved. However imperfectly the author may have performed his task, it must be clear to the reader that no such problem as the present was ever before presented to a self-governing people. Never was there so much need of that culture from which alone can come a high sense of duty to others. The negro must be encouraged to be self-helpful and useful to the community. If he is to do all this and remain a separate race, he must have leadership among his own people. In the Mississippi Black Belt there is now a town of some 4,000 negroes, Mound Bayou, completely organized and prospering. It may be that in the future negroes seeking among themselves the amenities of life may congregate into communities of their own, cultivating adjacent lands, as the French do in their agricultural villages. Wherever they may be, they must practise the civic virtues, honesty, and obedience to law. W. H. Councill, a negro teacher, of Huntsville, Alabama, said some years since in a magazine article: "When the gray-haired veterans who followed Lee and Jackson pass away, the negro will have lost his best friends." This is true, but it is hoped that time and culture, while not producing social equality, will allay race animosities and bring the negro other friends to take the place of the departing veterans.

The white man, with his pride of race, must more and more be made to feel that noblesse oblige. His sense of duty to others must measure up to his responsibilities and opportunities. He must accord to the negro all his rights under the laws as they exist.

The South is exerting itself to better its common schools, but it cannot compete in this regard with the North. Northern philanthropists are quite properly contributing to education in the South. They should consider well the needs of both races. Any attempt to give to the negroes advantages superior to those of the whites, who are now treating the negro fairly in this respect, might look like another attempt to put, in negro language, "the bottom rail on top."

Looking over the whole field covered by this sketch, it is wonderful to note how the chain of causation stretches back into the past. Reconstruction was a result of the war; secession and war resulted from a movement in the North, in 1831, against conditions then existing in the South. The negro, the cause of the old quarrel between the sections, is located now much as he was then. How full of lessons, for both the South and the North, is the history of the last eighty years!

There is even a chord that connects the burning of a negro at Coatesville, Pennsylvania, by an excited mob on the 13th of August, 1911, with the burning of the Federal Constitution at Framingham, Massachusetts, by that other excited mob of madmen, under Garrison, on the fourth day of July, 1854. One body of outlaws was defying the laws of Pennsylvania; the other was defying the fundamental laws of the nation.