THE INSPIRATION OF THE OPPOSITION.
It is well in every species of combat for a man to seek to know the exact nature of the opposing force. Knowing this, one understands the better how to gauge his efforts. With this aim in view, we shall make a reconnoitre to discover just what is arrayed against us.
Mr. Herbert Spencer says: "It has come to be a maxim of science that in the causes still at work, are to be identified the causes which, similarly at work during past times, have produced the state of things now existing."
We would expect, therefore, to find the past yet affecting the Negro, and such is indeed the case. From the year 1619 until the close of the civil war, the white people of the South held the Negroes in slavery.
It is the habit of nature to confer upon a man those equalities that the better fit him for his line of work. In order to successfully hold slaves, the Southern man fostered the belief that the Negro's humanity was somehow of a different brand from his own. Having satisfied himself that essential differences existed between himself and the Negro, he was the better prepared to mete out treatment which he would have deemed outrageous if applied to himself by another.
To prevent uprisings on the part of the slaves repressive measures were instituted, and the Southern white man became an adept in the art of controlling others, and his nature became inured to the task. The traits of character acquired in one generation were transmitted to succeeding generations, so that notions of inherent superiority and the belief in the right of repression became ingrained in Southern character.
In confirmation of this conclusion, we again quote from Mr. Herbert Spencer, who says: "The emotional nature prompting the general mode of conduct is derived from ancestors—is a product of all ancestral activities. * * * The governing sentiment is, in short, mainly the accumulated and organized sentiment of the past."
In view of the foregoing, it becomes evident that the repression which the Negro encounters to-day is but the offspring of his repression of yesterday.
