The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

FOOTNOTES:

[39] An interesting paper on “Lynch Law,” by Albert Matthews, of Boston, was published in The Nation, December 4, 1902. Mr. Matthews, after giving the numerous alleged derivations of the term, and reciting a score or so of instances in which “Lynch Law” had been applied (his first reference being to Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henry, 1818, page 372), states his conclusions, as follows:

“From this evidence and from other material in my possession, it appears that the original term was “Lynch’s Law”; that this was soon shortened to “Lynch (or lynch) Law,” and then to “Lynch”; that originally lynch law was a whipping or other personal chastisement; that lynch law originally obtained only in the border settlements, where the administration of justice either was, or was supposed to be uncertain; that in the early days of lynch law, innocent persons were sometimes punished, and suits for damages were by no means unknown; that, about 1830, writers regarded the practice as on the wane and likely soon to disappear altogether; that before about 1835 the victims of lynch law were generally whites, occasionally Indians, but never Negroes; that soon after 1830 a revival of lynch law took place, due to the anti-slavery agitation, and the practice spread throughout the country; that between 1830 and 1840 the term “lynch” underwent a change in meaning and “to lynch” began to acquire the sense of to put to death; that during the same period Negroes were first lynched; that about 1835, we first hear of “Judge Lynch”; that in recent years, lynching has been confined largely, but by no means wholly, to Negroes in the South and West. It further appears that there is a direct historical connection between the killing of a Negro in a highly civilized community in 1902 and the whipping of a white man along the frontiers in 1817. Step by step, the illegal whippings of 1817 have led to the illegal burnings alive of 1902. In short, the more civilized the country has become, the more brutal has been the punishment meted out under lynch law.”

[40] In 1901 one Indian and one Chinaman were lynched.

[41] In 1902 one Indian was lynched.

[42] For an interesting study of the early history of lynching and its causes, see note, p. 86.

[43] For outrages in Arkansas, see “Brooks-Baxter War.”

[44] Mr. Matthews points out that though rape existed and was frequently legislated against during the Colonial period, he cannot find between 1676 and 1825 a single instance of the illegal punishment of the crime.

[45] It is significant that, on large plantations where the Negroes, though in large numbers, are still in the position of old plantation servants, the crime of assault is almost unknown.

[46] The following table is from the Chicago Tribune. The number of legal executions in 1900 was 118, as compared with 131 in 1899, 109 in 1898, 128 in 1897, 122 in 1896, 132 in 1895, 132 in 1894, 126 in 1893, and 107 in 1892. The executions in the several States and Territories were in 1900 as follows:

Alabama	4	New York	3
Arkansas	0	Nevada	0
California	5	North Carolina	9
Colorado	0	North Dakota	1
Connecticut	1	Ohio	1
Delaware	0	Oregon	1
Florida	1	Pennsylvania	15
Georgia	14	Rhode Island	0
Idaho	2	South Carolina	3
Illinois	0	South Dakota	0
Indiana	0	Tennessee	4
Iowa	0	Texas	18
Kansas	0	Vermont	0
Kentucky	0	Virginia	7
Louisiana	6	West Virginia	0
Maine	0	Wisconsin	0
Maryland	3	Wyoming	0
Massachusetts	0	Washington	2
Michigan	0	Arizona	4
Minnesota	0	District of Columbia	3
Mississippi	1	New Mexico	0
Missouri	3	Utah	0
Montana	3	Indian Territory	0
Nebraska	0	Oklahoma	0
New Jersey	4	Alaska	0
New Hampshire	0

There were 80 hanged in the South and 39 in the North, of whom 60 were whites, 58 were blacks, and one a Chinaman. The crimes for which they were executed were: murder, 113; rape, 5; arson, 1. Thus, of the 119 hangings, about two-thirds (80) were in the South and one-third (39) in the North; about one-half (60) of the entire number were of whites, and one-half (58) were of blacks. So, the South appears to have done its part in the matter of punishing by law as well as by violence.

[47] See “The American Negro,” by William Hannibal Thomas, pp. 65, 177.

CHAPTER V
THE PARTIAL DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO

Among the various factors that have contributed to bring about the recrudescence of the Negro question in the last year or two a prominent one is the movement in the South to disfranchise the ignorant element of the Negro race. This is usually termed the “Disfranchisement of the Negro.” But although the object of the movement is frankly to disfranchise the large ignorant element among that race, while an ignorant element among the whites is left the ballot, the term is by no means exact.

Few things are rarer yet nothing is more important than accuracy in definitions. In the matter under consideration much misapprehension exists as to the extent of the disfranchisement, and possibly more as to its effect.

Reams of paper have been covered with frantic denunciation; courts have been appealed to; threats have been made against the Southern States of reducing their representation in Congress, and still the movement has gone on under the direction of the most enlightened and conservative men in the South. And so far as has yet been tested, it has proceeded by legal methods.

The disfranchisement clauses have not only caused an outcry on the part of the politicians, white and colored, and the doctrinaires who were brought up on hostility to the South, but they have excited unfavorable comment even among some friendly enough to the South, who, while conceding that the former “experiment” has proved a disastrous failure so far as the South is concerned, yet believe that a manifest injustice is done to the rest of the country by one section holding a representation in Congress which, according to the votes cast there, appears to be in excess of that held by the rest of the country.

A singular feature of the case is that the division-line of opinion for or against the measure is not so much that of party affiliation as that of familiarity with the conditions that have brought about the changes in the constitutions of the Southern States.

Within the last year, a man of national reputation, a gentleman of high standing, of broad sympathies and much learning,[48] whose affiliations are with the party that is dominant in the South, in an address before the New England Suffrage Conference, warmly approved the reconstruction measures of Thaddeus Stevens setting aside the civil governments in the South, putting the Southern States under military control, and providing for the Congressional system of reconstruction based on Negro suffrage. “The measure finally adopted was,” he says, “of proved necessity. Thus, and thus only, could the lives of the colored men and white Union men be protected. They needed every weapon that we could place in their hands, and this weapon was among them.”

This statement presents clearly the basic error which underlies all others. It is that the Negro needs “weapons” with which to oppose the white, and that “we” must place them in his hands.

Yet another gentleman of varied experience and extensive general knowledge,[49] whose affiliations have at times been with the same party, has recently published a paper written with all his well-known ability, based, however, mainly on a study which he made of conditions at the South during a rapid tour in 1865. Neither of these gentlemen has added much to his knowledge of the Negro question since that time. That men of these gentlemen’s standing can really believe at this day the facts stated by them demonstrates the hopelessness of ever having the matter clearly viewed by a large body of well-meaning people.

The weapon which the advocate of universal suffrage applauds himself for having helped to place in the Negro’s hands has been his destruction. It was a torch placed in the hands of a child, with which he has ravaged all about him and involved himself in the general conflagration.

Happily, this somewhat outworn view of conditions at the South is not the view of the body of the American people who have any familiarity with the subject, or of any portion of them who have had experience of the conditions which existed under the Negro régime.

A respectable element among the white Republicans of the South have given it up. One of the most distinguished and thoughtful Northern men in the country, a life-long Republican, a man of approved Republicanism, declared before the leading Republican club of the country not long ago, that the “experiment entered on with so much enthusiasm” had undoubtedly proved a failure.

Looking back on this period, it is impossible for the open-minded student not to see that whatever the motive, the result was, as Mr. Root declared before the Union League Club, a miserable failure, disastrous to both races. The South was devastated and humiliated beyond belief; the Negroes were hopelessly misled in matters where right direction was vitally necessary to their permanent progress. And the consequence was a riot of civic debauchery which must bring shame to every honest man of the African race and will always prove a bar to the possibility of Negro domination hereafter.[50]

Whether it be recognized as yet or not, the whole country owes a debt to the Southern people who withstood to the end the policy of the misguided fanatics and politicians who would have put the South permanently under Negro domination. But for the resolution and constancy of the Southern whites, one-sixth of the then existing States of the Union would have become Negroized and we should possibly have had by this time several States of the Union substantially what Santo Domingo is to-day.

As the realization is becoming more common that the “experiment” which was entered on with so much enthusiasm a generation ago, of arming the Negro with “the weapon” of the ballot, has proved a disastrous failure, it is also gradually being recognized that the kind of education on which so much money, both from public taxation and from private philanthropy, has been lavished, and so much care has been expended, has not only failed to bring about the results which had been expected, but has, so far as the great body of the race is concerned, proved an absolute failure. The Negroes at large and the doctrinaires will not accept this, but nevertheless it is recognized by those who know the Negro best and have sufficient breadth of knowledge to look at things as they are. The sanest and most broad-minded among the Negro leaders of to-day has recognized it, and the foundation of his success is his recognition of it—the recognition of it by him and the recognition of it by the whites of the South, who have, because of it, sustained him by their sympathy and their aid. It is because of this that Booker T. Washington has become the best proof of what the Negro race at its best may produce, and is the most unanswerable argument adduced since the war of the value of Negro education.

He believes that the Negroes at large should be taught, first of all, to work; that they should begin by being made trained laborers and skilled artisans, and that then they will develop themselves. This principle, though sound, is strongly repudiated by a considerable element among the more advanced Negroes. And the riot in the Boston church in July, 1903, when the Principal of Tuskegee spoke on the industrial training of the Negro, was precipitated by an educated element who believe in agitation rather than in Principal Washington’s pacific and rational methods. The latter acts on the theory that, in the main, the education of the Negroes as hitherto conducted has not been generally a success. Those who espouse the other view assert, on the contrary, that the education has been a marked success and that the Negro is in every way the equal of the white. And to prove their case they use red pepper and razors.

The limits of this paper do not admit of even the most cursory discussion of the comparative equality of the two races. It may be stated, however, that, notwithstanding exceptional instances, the case of the South rests frankly on the present demonstrable inferiority of the Negro race to the White race. Its superiority is a dogma of the White race wherever it may have established itself, and without doubt, as Mr. Chamberlain recently pointed out in his address at Birmingham, this profound conviction has been one of the sources of its strength.

Much injury has been done the Negro race by the misdirected zeal of those who continually prate about their right to equality with the whites.

In 1865, when the Negro was set free, he held without a rival the entire field of industrial labor throughout the South. Ninety-five per cent. of all the industrial work of the Southern States was in his hands. And he was fully competent to do it. Every adult was either a skilled laborer or a trained mechanic. It was the fallacious teaching of equality which deluded him into dropping the substance for the shadow. To-day their wisest leader is trying to emulate his great teacher, Armstrong, and lead them back to the field which they so carelessly abandoned. Men who are the equals of others do not go about continually asserting it. They show their equality by the fruits of their intellect and character. Among the whites, the poor class are not always haranguing and adopting resolutions as to their equality with the other classes, any more than are the well-to-do class always insisting upon their equality with the wealthy class. They know that they are equal, if not superior, and do not feel continually called on to assert it offensively. The same may be said about the best educated, best behaved, and most worthy among the Negroes. It is the blatant demagogue and “mouthy” Negro—a term that was well known during the period of slavery—who is mainly heard on this subject. Happily for the Negroes, the major portion of them have retired from the struggle for political power, and, except when excited by agitators, live harmoniously enough with the whites; and the industrious element are saving, and are building themselves homes.

While, however, the body of the Negro race are going about their business in good-humored content, generally in good fellowship with the people on whose friendship they are most dependent, the so-called “leaders” and their so-called “friends” are spending their time in stirring them up, adopting lurid resolutions, asserting their equality and calling on everybody outside of the South to help them establish it.

The phrase usually employed is that the Negro is “robbed of his vote,” this formula being equally applied whether he is restrained from voting by the unlawful act of one or more individuals or by the most solemn act that a people can perform—the provision of a duly ordained constitution.

It may be well, at the outset of the discussion of this matter, to call attention to a fact somewhat generally overlooked: that the right to vote is not an inherent right. It is a privilege conferred by positive enactment on those citizens possessed of certain specified qualifications.

Further, the right to determine the qualification for the suffrage—that is, to declare on what condition a citizen shall exercise the suffrage—rests with the several States; the only limitation to this being the express restrictions contained in the Constitution of the United States bearing on the subject. Where a State duly enacts a law it stands until it is changed by law or is declared invalid by the proper court of competent jurisdiction. Its provisions are until then the law.

It is not necessary to go largely into the history of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. They were the offspring of ignorance and passion. They were adopted partly to punish the South, partly to arm the Negroes with a weapon which would enable them to hold their own against the whites, and partly to perpetuate the ascendancy of the radical wing of the Republican Party.

Prior to, and even for some time subsequent to the war, the idea of endowing the Negro race generally with the ballot had not been seriously entertained by any considerable portion of the American people.

Mr. Lincoln again and again, during his debates with Douglas, declared his opposition to the idea. He said in one of his speeches: “I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office or intermarry with the white people; and I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which, I believe, will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

This declaration he reiterated in a speech delivered at Columbus. The furthest he ever went in favor of admitting any Negroes to the privilege of the ballot was when, on March 13, 1864, in his letter to his provisional governor in Louisiana, Governor Hahn, he said: “I barely suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in: as, for instance, the very intelligent and especially those who have fought so gallantly in our ranks.”

Of the thirty-four States which formed the Union in January, 1861, thirty excluded Negroes from the franchise by constitutional provision; while in the four States whose constitutions contained no such provision—New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire—owing to the small number of Negroes among their population, and the property and educational qualifications, the Negro vote was so small as to be a negligible quantity.[51]

The opposition to universal Negro suffrage was so great throughout the North during the agitation of the question which was subsequently embodied in the Fifteenth Amendment, that, excluding the enforced acquiescence of the Southern States, it was when submitted to the people defeated in every State except Iowa and Minnesota.[52] After the adoption of the Amendment other States voted for it.

It is probable that, had the South not been so intractable in matters relating to the Negroes, the admission of the Negroes to the suffrage would have been along the line suggested by Mr. Lincoln to Governor Hahn. But at that time it was deemed necessary to quell the South though the heavens fell. Moreover, there was grave danger that the South might again hold the balance of power in the National Assembly. With stern and reckless determination the implacable leaders of the radical wing of the dominant party created what one of them termed a force of “perpetual allies.”

Having been drilled by years of slavery to follow the lead of their masters, and being reasonably apt at imitation, these allies followed slavishly the direction of their new leaders. It was perfectly natural that they should at that time have given themselves unreservedly to the representatives of the agencies which had emancipated them, which stood for them, and which held out to them such glittering rewards as complete equality with, and finally domination over, their former masters. Possibly, it was not unnatural that they should have followed with unexampled credulity the most unprincipled among those representatives who steadily held out to them greater and greater rewards.

However it was, this was the history of the exercise of the suffrage. With the weapon of the ballot, the Negro soon exceeded the expectation of the most sanguine advocate of Negro suffrage. Only the supreme constancy of the Southern whites saved the Southern States.

From this beginning, every question became a race question, until to-day no question can arise which is not regarded by the Negroes generally from a racial standpoint. It may be asserted that this was quite natural. But the fact that it is so is the best argument for the Southern view.

It is a somewhat curious if not pertinent fact that in the place where Negro suffrage was first established by Act of Congress, the District of Columbia (where it was established by the Act of January 8, 1867), which has always been under the direct control of National Government, subsequent conditions became so insupportable that it was deemed necessary to do away with the ballot altogether.

In all the years that have passed the same unhappy condition has continued. The Negroes remained solidly banded against the whites. This solidarity effectually prevented the whites from dividing on any of the great economic questions of the time. To meet this condition, one method after another was essayed. At times force was openly resorted to to prevent the recurrence of conditions that rendered life unbearable; at times shifts came into vogue that no one pretended to excuse except by the argument of necessity—such, for example, as the system of having separate ballot-boxes for each candidate, with a view to shifting them about; the system of “understanding-clauses” unequally applied; the system of ballot-box stuffing; the system of bribery, whether of leaders or of individuals.

In some places the question was seriously debated whether it was worse to use force or fraud, the necessity for one or the other being simply assumed. In others, some Negroes substantially auctioned off their votes.[53]

The result of such conditions was the retirement of many of the best men in the South from all part in public affairs, the withdrawal of the South from due participation in all other questions of the national life, the menace of the debauchery of public morals.

In this wretched state of affairs the Southern people resolved to eliminate by law, as far as possible, the ignorant Negro vote. How universal the conviction was of its necessity may be judged from the fact that it has been attempted in nearly every State in the South. How legal it may be is a question for the Supreme Court of the United States.

The new movement is being followed by stringent laws striking at all debauchery of the ballot.

As absolutely necessary, however, as the South has deemed this movement, perhaps nothing of late has done more to arouse feeling in the North, than the small vote cast in the latter section. It would appear as though the North deemed itself discriminated against and consequently injured by this action. The charge is constantly made that owing to this disfranchisement, the South has a larger representation than the North.

This idea has recently been set forth in a paper in one of the leading magazines, which, admitting that the law has not been contravened, has yet gone so far as to suggest that a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States should be adopted to rectify this inequality. This suggestion would appear to be based on a false conception of the fundamental law. Representation is apportioned by law according to the number of the population, not of the voting population, and each State has the absolute right to make its qualification for the suffrage high or otherwise, subject only to the restrictions contained in the amendments to the Constitution.

The feeling seems to be that in some way the South without violating the amendments, has, by proving that they do not cover the case, secured an undue advantage over the North. It is, however, difficult to understand how it should be an advantage when a State, by acting within the law, simply cuts down its suffrage list. How was North Carolina, which in 1880 cast a vote equal to 81 per cent. of its voting population injured by the fact that Massachusetts in that election cast only 56 per cent. of its voting population; or how was South Carolina, which, that year, cast 82 per cent. of its entire vote, injured by Rhode Island’s casting only 37 per cent.? How would Delaware, which requires no qualification for the suffrage, except that a resident voter shall have paid a registration fee of $1, be discriminated against by the fact that California provides that only those may vote who can read the Constitution in English and can write his name; or, how are the people of Colorado, where women, as well as men vote, injured by the fact that only men vote in Massachusetts and Virginia?

Yet, as plain as this would have seemed, the action of the Southern States has undoubtedly aroused a feeling in the North that the Northern people have, in some way, been injured thereby.

It has been proposed to cut down the representation of the Southern States in Congress, and resolutions have been introduced in Congress to carry out this idea. Possibly the movement has not been as serious as it has appeared. However, it has been already serious enough in its consequences to excite the Negroes into a state of renewed aggressiveness.

This proposition, which is intended to be partly monitory and partly punitive, is warmly advocated by most if not all of the Negro leaders and their doctrinaire friends.

It would undoubtedly be strongly opposed by the majority of the white people of the South, and possibly by some of the more far-sighted friends of the Negro race outside of the South, who, looking a little beyond the immediate disfranchisement of ignorant Negroes, see that the ultimate effect will be to establish a general and impartial electoral system, based on the disfranchisement of ignorance and vice.

Before the proposal is carried into effect, it might be well for its advocates to consider certain facts.

In the first place, it is a grave question whether the section of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution on which such action must be based is now valid or whether it was not repealed by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits disfranchisement on account of race, color, etc. The latter view was taken and was ably argued in the recent notable address delivered in Albany in June, 1903, by Charles A. Gardiner, Esq., of New York, before the Forty-first Annual Convocation of the University of the State of New York. He maintains that “a State can discriminate against Negro suffrage only by an organic or statutory law,” and that before Congress can penalize a State such a law must be adopted and it must be a valid law. But (he argues) since the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, no law which violated its provision could be valid. It would not merely be voidable, but void ab initio. “And a void law is no law.”[54]

But even assuming that the Congress might have the authority to cut down the representation under the present law, it is a question whether the disfranchising clauses of the New Constitution in the Southern States afford any basis for such an attempt at reduction in their representation.

The qualifications for voting in the various States of the South would not seem to be in any way improper on the face of their constitutions. The impropriety charged against them is based wholly on the fact that they disfranchise more of one class of citizens than of others.

According to the tabulation of the “Qualifications for Voting in each State in the Union,” published in the World Almanac for 1904, and “communicated to it” and corrected to date “by the Attorneys-General of the respective States,” all the States except the two Carolinas have the “Australian Ballot Law,” or a modification of it, in force, and all the States require that the “Voters shall be citizens of the State or of the United States, or an alien who has declared intention to become naturalized”; and all the States except Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Vermont exclude from the right of suffrage those convicted of felony or infamous crime, unless pardoned.

Besides these, paupers and persons non compos mentis are generally excluded. These provisions are general.

Arkansas, however, excludes from the right to the suffrage those who have failed to pay the poll-tax. California excludes everyone unable to read the Constitution in English and to write his name. Connecticut requires for citizenship that a man shall be a citizen of the United States who can read the English language. Delaware requires the payment of a registration fee of $1; Georgia requires the payment of all taxes since 1877. Louisiana admits only those able to read and write, or who own $300 worth of property assessed in their names, or whose father or grandfather was entitled to vote on January 1, 1867. (This last is the celebrated “Squaw Clause.”) Massachusetts admits only those who can read and write. Mississippi admits only those who can read or understand the Constitution when read to them. Missouri requires voters to have paid their poll-taxes for the current year. Pennsylvania requires a voter, if twenty-two years of age or more, to have paid taxes within two years. South Carolina requires that a voter shall have paid six months prior to the election any poll-taxes then due, and shall be able to read and write any section of the State Constitution, or to show that he owns and has paid the previous year all taxes on property in the State assessed at $300 or more.

Tennessee requires that a voter shall have paid his poll-tax for the preceding year. Vermont excludes from the suffrage “those who have not obtained the approbation of the local board of civil authority.”

Virginia’s qualification for registration is as follows, until 1904: “First, a person who, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, served in time of war in the army or navy of the United States or the Confederate States, or of any State of the United States or of the Confederate States; or, second, a son of any such person; or, third, a person who owns property upon which, in the year next preceding that in which he offers to register, State taxes aggregating at least $1 have been paid; or, fourth, a person able to read any section of the Constitution submitted to him by the officers of registration, and to give a reasonable explanation of the same, or if unable to read such section, able to understand and give a reasonable explanation thereof when read to him by the officers.” Those registering prior to 1904 form a permanent roll. After 1904 the soldier’s-son clause and the understanding clause are done away with, and a poll-tax must be paid.

Thus, it will be seen that Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee require the prepayment of a poll-tax, while Delaware requires the payment of a registration fee of $1; that Georgia and Pennsylvania require the prepayment of taxes, while South Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia require the payment of taxes in the alternative, another alternative being that the voter must, in South Carolina and Louisiana, as in California, be able to read and write, while in Virginia, as in Mississippi, he is required only to be able to read or understand the Constitution when read to him, though in Virginia this last requirement was only for two years; and after two years the voter must be able to read and write.

Louisiana excepts those whose father or grandfather was entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, and Virginia excepts until 1904 those who were soldiers or seamen or whose fathers served as soldiers or seamen in time of war.

Vermont, on the other hand, has the singular requirement that the voter must “obtain the approbation of the local board of civil authority”—a requirement which would seem to place the qualification wholly at the mercy of the party in power.

Though the representation in Congress of the Southern States would appear at present to be greater than the recorded vote of those States would entitle them to, the inequality is by no means so real as it appears, and is not greater than that which exists between some of the Eastern and Western States.[55]

It has been well shown by the same distinguished member of the New York Bar already quoted that “the disparity between the Southern States where the ignorant Negro vote has been practically eliminated and the Eastern States, though glaring, is less than that between the Eastern States and some of the Western States. For example, “Rhode Island’s vote is 1.59 times as great as Alabama’s, but South Dakota’s is 3.39 as great as that of Rhode Island. Vermont’s is 2.22 times as great as Florida’s, but Utah’s is 3.01 as great as Vermont’s. Maine’s is 2.36 as great as Georgia’s, but Colorado’s is 3.48 times as great as Maine’s.”[56]

The figures cited fail to give the strength of the Southern vote. The small vote in the Southern States is due partly to the fact that the ascendancy of one political party is so great that voters do not feel it necessary to attend the polls.

In the next place, though it was frankly admitted that the motive of the disfranchisement clauses was to disfranchise the ignorant colored vote, while the ignorant white vote was admitted for a time, provided the voters or their fathers had been soldiers, this is but a temporary inequality; and that the ignorant colored vote does not come within the grandfather clause or other saving clauses is an incident of the time. In a comparatively short time the effect of these saving clauses will have passed away and the suffrage will be based on a purely educational or property qualification.

A writer in The Outlook of June 13, 1903, in an article entitled, “Negro Suffrage in the South,” says: “How far do they exclude him (the Negro) in point of fact? In answering this question the reader must note that in three of the States, Alabama, South Carolina, and Virginia, a Negro who possesses property amounting in value to $300 and has paid his taxes may vote. He may not be able to read and write, he may not be able to understand the Constitution when it is read to him. But if he has had the industry, the sobriety, the thrift which have enabled him to accumulate taxable property to the amount of $300, he has the ballot. How many Negroes there are in the South who under this provision are admitted to the ballot we have no means of knowing. It has been estimated that the total ownings of Negroes in the Southern States mount up to $300,000,000 worth of personal and real estate. It is officially reported that in Virginia they own one-twenty-sixth of all the land in the State. These facts would seem to indicate that a not inconsiderable number of Negroes are admitted to the ballot in the Southern States under the property qualification. On the other hand, a considerable white population has been disfranchised under this property-qualification clause. We are informed by a Southern correspondent, whose means of acquaintance justify our placing some confidence in his statement, that in Alabama fully fifty thousand white men, under the practical operation of the Constitution, by non-payment of poll-taxes or other clauses, have been disfranchised.”

It may also be well to consider the effect of such a penalizing measure on the future of the Negro himself. To adopt it would be to violate the one principle on which the permanent advance of the Negro race must be founded. That is, the recognition, even at this late hour, by the Negro that he must stand on his own merits and is to be left to work out politically, as well as economically, his own future. To adopt it would mislead him into thinking he is still the ward of the nation and is to be supported by it, irrespective of his conduct—an idea to which may be traced a considerable portion of all that has retarded the Negro’s advance in the past. It will tend to divert once more his aim from the paths of industry to which it is being turned by the wisest of his friends. It will engender a new hostility to him on the part of the stronger race, on whose friendship his future welfare must depend.

Finally, should such a measure be adopted, it might lead the whites of the South to do what they have hitherto steadfastly refused to do—apply the money derived by taxation on the property of each race exclusively to the education of that race. It has been publicly alleged and appears to be generally assumed that the recent election in Mississippi was in a measure reactionary. The ground for this assumption seems to be that the successful candidate for the Governorship had declared himself to a certain extent opposed to a continuance of the prevailing system. The writer, while recognizing the disappointing results that have followed the large expenditure for the education of the Negroes, would deplore immeasurably any backward step in the matter of education in the South. Light, however glimmering, is far better than darkness. The present system of education may be a poor one, but it is infinitely better than none. Every consideration of public policy would seem to urge its continuance until a better system can be devised. And one consideration would appear unanswerable. The Negroes will always have their own leaders, and it is better that these leaders should be enlightened rather than ignorant. No more deplorable disaster could befall the South than in this age of advancing enlightenment to have a great pariah class hopelessly and irrevocably ignorant established within her borders.

In this view he believes the great body of thoughtful Southerners will unite. But no one can foretell what effect on public sentiment a crusade against the South, based on her attitude toward the Negroes, might produce. It might sweep away the last remnant of good feeling that remains, and with it every dollar raised by taxation on the property of the whites to educate the blacks. The South is now spending on the education of the Negro race, by voluntary taxation of the property of the white race, over five and one-half millions of dollars annually. It would be a poor bargain to exchange for the figment of a right which ignorance should never have had, the remaining good-will of the Whites of the South and the sum they annually expend from their own pockets in trying to uplift the Negro and fit him for the exercise of that right.

It is the conviction of the writer, and he gives it for what it is worth, that the disfranchisement of the main body of the Negro race in the Southern States was a measure of high necessity. He further believes that this disfranchisement is for the permanent welfare of both races. It removes for the time being what is the chief cause of bitterness—a bitterness from which the Negro is a greater sufferer than the white. It will turn the Negro generally from the field where, in his present condition, he has proved a failure, and leave him to develop himself in a field where he may be the equal of any other man.

One who has been a serious and, as is generally agreed, a profound student of our Government and our people has recently given his conclusions after study of conditions in the South, and they agree substantially with the views of the more conservative element of the Southern whites.[57] Mr. James Bryce declares, “that those who rule subject Races on despotic methods ... do not realize all the difficulties that arise in a Democracy. The capital instance is afforded by the history of the Southern States since the Civil War....

“The moral to be drawn from the case of the Southern States seems to be that you must not, however excellent your intentions and however admirable your sentiments, legislate in the teeth of facts. The great bulk of the Negroes were not fit for the suffrage; nor under the American Federal system was it possible (without incurring other grave evils) to give them effective protection in the exercise of the suffrage. It would, therefore, have been better to postpone the bestowal of this dangerous boon. True it is that rocks and shoals were set thick around every course; true that it is easier to perceive the evils of a course actually taken than to realize other evils that might have followed some other course. Nevertheless, the general opinion of dispassionate men has come to deem the action taken in A.D., 1870, a mistake.

“The social relations of two Races which cannot be fused raise problems even more difficult, because incapable of being regulated by law....

“The tremendous problem presented by the Southern States of America, and the likelihood that similar problems will have to be solved elsewhere, as, for instance, in South Africa and the Philippine Isles, bid us ask, What should be the duty and the policy of a dominant Race where it cannot fuse with a backward Race? Duty and policy are one, for it is equally to the interest of both Races that their relations should be friendly.

“The answer seems to be that as regards political rights, Race and blood should not be made the ground of discrimination. Where the bulk of the colored Race are obviously unfit for political power, a qualification based on property and education might be established which should permit the upper section of that Race to enjoy the suffrage. Such a qualification would doubtless exclude some of the poorest and most ignorant whites, and might on that ground be resisted. But it is better to face this difficulty than to wound and alienate the whole of the colored Race by placing them without the pale of civic functions and duties.”

One of the fundamental errors has been in considering the Negroes as a special class, to be regarded, discussed, legislated for, aided, and sustained as such, instead of as plain human beings who, judged according to certain universal standards, belong to various classes in which those standards would place other members of the human family. This was the fundamental error of the doctrinaire in the first instance, and, unfortunately, the Negroes themselves have gotten the idea so firmly fixed in their minds that they have long regarded their race as a special species, to be considered from quite a special standpoint, judged by different standards, and dealt with in a different manner from the rest of the world.

Nothing could be more unwise, because nothing tends more to mislead the Negro as to the future and keep up the misunderstanding which blocks the way to a proper solution of the question. The Negroes must learn that before they can claim to be accorded the treatment that the Whites receive they must themselves act along lines which govern the conduct of the whites.

If a white man is a brute or a blackguard, all whites do not feel it necessary to defend him. If a white man commits a crime, all whites do not conspire to shield him and aid him in escaping the penalties of the law. If a white man is arrested, all whites do not assail the arresting officers; he is left to his remedy at law. If a white man has committed rape and murder and a mob catches and lynches him, all white men, however they deplore and denounce lawlessness, do not feel it necessary to declare the miscreant innocent and a martyr.

A great step will be taken toward the correct solution of the problem when the Negroes shall be considered and shall consider themselves not “in the lump,” but as individuals, just as any other members of the community are considered; not as a separate class, but as part of various classes to which their standing morally, mentally, and personally would assign them—when they shall be judged by the same standards and governed by the same rules; when the malefactor shall be dealt with as a malefactor; the reputable man shall be esteemed for his good character: in other words, when every man shall be judged on his own merits and shall stand or fall on his own showing. This must be the work of both races. It is what the more enlightened Negroes say they desire; but, unfortunately, not a great many of them appear to act upon this. Their acts, their addresses delivered at Afro-American meetings, their newspapers, their writings, all tend to show that those who claim and would appear to be the leaders among them regard all matters wholly from a racial standpoint. They clamor for recognition and for assistance as Negroes; make inflammatory speeches; call on Congress to intervene in their behalf as such, and at times even suggest, in case Congress does not interpose, that an appeal be made to foreign nations.

It is worth while to note that most of the appeals, addresses, resolutions, and other clamors that tend to stir up the Negroes in the South come from those who are outside of her borders, and consequently are beyond any direct suffering from the oppression and other outrages against which they protest. This feeling is, therefore, entirely racial. In the main, the Negroes in the South appear to get on fairly well with their other fellow-citizens; and the resolutions and addresses that emanate from these are much more temperate and reasonable than those which come from the outside. Compare, for example, the addresses and resolutions of the Negro Convention held two years ago at Louisville with those in some of the Northern cities.

A sentiment has developed in parts of the South since the recent agitation to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, but this has not been strong enough to lead to any overt, much less concerted attempt to promote such a movement. On the contrary, the leaders among the Southern people have hitherto firmly opposed the suggestion of such a measure. One reason undoubtedly has been the practical difficulties in the way of carrying it through; but another has been that they have generally not wished to exclude from the suffrage the best element among the Negroes.

Personally the writer does not, under existing conditions, believe in repealing the amendment. He would, indeed, rather have it repealed than have a perpetual continuance of the evils that have resulted from unrestricted suffrage. But he believes that these evils will to a large extent be done away with by the new constitutions, and he believes that, proper restrictions being provided, the rule should be applied impartially to all; and those individuals, whether white or black, should be admitted to the rights of citizenship who measure up to the full standard of citizenship.

A certain element among the Negroes are good citizens, and are becoming better citizens all the time. When this element shall have broken away from the false teaching which has been their bane, they will have no need to ask for outside aid. The South will recognize their value, and their reward will be the clear distinction between them and the ignorant element which now weighs them down.

It has long appeared to the writer that the prime necessity of the Negroes is to learn to distinguish between Negroes and Negroes; between the law-abiding and self-respecting Negro and the lawbreaker and blackguard; between the honest man and the thief; the decent man and the dive-frequenter; the good citizen and the “tough”—in other words, to create for themselves some standard of virtue and right living for both men and women according to which they shall be classified. Not the least evil of the solidifying of the Negro race during the period of reconstruction was the destruction of all distinctions between virtue and vice, as a qualification for civic promotion. After thirty years the upright, law-abiding, conservative Negro is bound by that manacle to the thief and the evil-liver, and strangely enough he mainly appears unwilling to help break the shackles which hold him down.

These laws give him a chance to break away from his burden, if he but has the sense to see it. It will tend to break up the dense solidarity of the Negroes, and will give the best among them—that is, the conservative, the industrious, the thrifty, and the enlightened—an opportunity to rise and range themselves in a class where they will be freed from the burden of the ignorant mass which weighs them down, and may form a better class to which the others may aspire. And this the writer esteems a supreme necessity. It leaves open the avenue by which all who are capable may reënter the former field, not as Negroes who are admitted simply as such, however feeble and dull they may be, but as men who are admitted because they are strong and intelligent.

The Negro as a race, considered and acting solidly, may be a burden and a menace; but many Negroes are good men and good citizens. They contribute their part to the public wealth and are on every ground of justice and sound policy entitled to consideration.

This upper fraction of the race, relieved from the incubus of the great body which they have been forced to carry as it were on their backs, would inevitably secure political representation in the South precisely as they have secured it in the North. They would before long probably have the intelligence to divide upon all economic questions just as any other race divides, and the whites, released from the necessity of maintaining a solidarity, would likewise be free to divide, in which case there would always be an inducement to secure rather than to repress the Negro vote.

A possible step in reaching the solution of the question might be for a reasonably limited number of representative Southern men to meet in conference a reasonable number of those colored men of the South who are more familiar with actual conditions there, and thus are representative of the most enlightened and experienced portion of that race. These, in a spirit of kindness and of justice, might confer together and try to find some common ground on which both shall stand, and formulate some common measures as to which both sides shall agree and which both shall advocate.

One guiding principle should be, that having established a law to eliminate forthwith the ignorant Negro and henceforth all ignorance, this law should be administered honestly, bravely, and impartially.

It is not imagined that such a conference could settle the question, but at least it would throw some light on it, and it would serve two good purposes. It would be a starting point for securing information which would command respect, and it would show what the most conservative and broad-minded element at the South, both of the whites and of the blacks, who know the subject thoroughly and have no personal interest to subserve except that arising from the just and reasonable settlement of this vital problem, think of it, after they have had the fullest means of securing information.

Meantime, let the politician and the doctrinaire, if they are truly the Negro’s friends, hold hands off. The best service the Negro’s best friend can render him is to tell him the truth. The direst injury the Negro’s worst enemy can do him is to perpetuate hostility between him and the Southern White. Left to themselves they would settle the question along economic lines, and this it must come to at last.

However one side or the other may dogmatize, it is safe to assume that any final settlement of the problem must be one that will commend itself to the body of the intelligent whites at the South. No other settlement will ever be final.