FOOTNOTES:
[65] This paper was written some years ago and was published in a volume of essays by the author, entitled “The Old South.” It is reprinted here substantially as it was then published, partly with a view to having the entire discussion of the subject by the author in one volume, and partly to show the result of studies of the Race Question at that time and since that time. A comparison may readily be made by anyone who may be sufficiently interested in the matter to make it.
[66] The percentage of increase of the Negro race is shown to be considerably less than that of the white; the percentage of deaths among the former race being largely in excess of that of the latter. See “Vital Statistics of the Negro,” by Frederick L. Hoffman, The Arena, April, 1891, p. 529.
[67] “The commissioners of the United Colonies found occasion to complain to the Dutch governor in New Netherlands in 1646 of the fact that the Dutch agent in Hartford had harbored a fugitive Indian slave-woman, of whom they say in their letter: ‘Such a servant is parte of her master’s estate, and a more considerable parte than a beaste.’ A provision for the rendition of fugitives, etc., was afterward made by treaty between the Dutch and the English” (Moore’s “History of Slavery in Massachusetts,” p. 28, citing Plymouth Colony Rec. IX. 6, 64, 190).
[68] “History of New England,” II., p. 30, note; Moore, p. 21.
[69] M. H. S. Coll. III, VIII. 231.
[70] Compare Hildreth, I. 278.
[71] “The breeding of slaves was not regarded with favor. Dr. Belknap says that negro children were considered an encumbrance in a family; and when weaned were given away like puppies” (Moore, p. 57, citing M. H. S. Coll. 1, IV. 200).
[72] “Carriage in public conveyances was denied them; physicians would not wait upon them; Miss Crandall’s own family and friends were forbidden under penalty of heavy fines to visit her; the well was filled with manure, and water from other sources refused; the house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs, and finally set on fire.” (“Life of William Lloyd Garrison,” I. p. 321.)
[73] Id. p. 494.
[74] “Life of William Lloyd Garrison,” I. p. 452.
[75] Id. p. 517.
[76] Letter from Garrison to his wife, November 9, 1835.
[77] Lib. 5, 197.
[78] “Life of William Lloyd Garrison,” II. p. 35.
[79] In Virginia the Legislature which assembled in December, 1865, had in the House of Delegates but one member who was not an old-time Whig, and in the Senate it was “pretty much the same.” (“The Political Hist. of Va., During Reconstruction,” by Hamilton James Eckenrode, p. 41. Johns Hopkins Press, 1904.)
[80] Lincoln’s letter to Governor Hahn, March 13, 1864.
[81] A valuable contribution to it, entitled “Noted Men on the Solid South,” has recently appeared, and to the papers comprised in it I am indebted for much material in this branch of my subject.
[82] Since this was written, a certain class have shown marked signs of advance.
[83] “Sunny Skies and Dark Shadows,” p. 144.
[84] I would refer to the valuable paper contributed by the Hon. B. J. Sage to the volume “Noted Men on the Solid South,” already cited.
[85] “Noted Men on the Solid South,” p. 404.
[86] “Noted Men on the Solid South,” p. 406.
[87] Id. p. 406.
[88] Dr. Henry M. Field, “Bright Skies and Dark Shadows.”
[89] “Noted Men on the Solid South,” p. 408.
[90] Since writing this, after a struggle which taxed all the civil resources of the government, this organization has been overthrown.
[91] “Noted Men on the Solid South,” p. 427.
[92] “Noted Men on the Solid South,” Mr. Hemphill’s paper, p. 94.
[93] “Noted Men on the Solid South,” p. 95.
[94] “Noted Men on the Solid South,” pp. 99-102.
[95] “Noted Men on the Solid South,” p. 104.
[96] Governor Chamberlain has recently written an open letter to Mr. James Bryce, the eminent English student of American governmental conditions, in which after thirty-odd years’ experience he takes absolutely the Southern side of the Race Question.
[97] This was written in 1892.
[98] See Appendix.
[99] See “Vital Statistics of the Negro.” Cited supra.
CHAPTER VIII
OF THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION
The question is often asked, “Now that the race problem in the South has been laid down and discussed, what solution of it do you offer—what have you to propose to ameliorate the conditions which have grown out of that problem?”
The answer is simple. None, but to leave it to work itself out along the lines of economic laws, with such aid as may be rendered by an enlightened public spirit and a broad-minded patriotism. The solution proposed so glibly by ignorant doctrinaires is like the nostrum of the quack—good only for fools. The single solution that can really solve it is that which time alone can disclose—the natural and imperative resultant of the forces represented in the two races. The racial traits, instincts, and forces which have governed and propelled them since the dawn of history will in all human probability still control and propel them so long as they exist as races.
One fact that may be stated with some degree of assurance is that there is no one universal Negro problem or question except the single one constituted by the existence in the same country of two populous and fecund races, essentially and, perhaps, radically different in their history, manners, life, and instincts. In fact, the problems are almost as numerous and as various as the communities where the two races exist side by side. For example, one problem exists where the races are equally educated; another, where they are equally ignorant; a third, where the one race or the other is in numerical superiority; yet another, where the members of either race are of one class or another. All of these things have to be fully considered in determining the various questions that seem to be inherent in the subject, and any positive formulation of one set of conditions may readily be met by the production of a partially if not a totally different set of conditions.
Out of all these questions, as has been stated, but one essentially common to the whole obtrudes itself: Whether two races, like the white race and the black, with such histories and such characteristics as those races have, can continue permanently to live together under conditions similar to those which exist in the United States with mutual benefit to both?
On the proper answer to this question depends our future, both as a people and as a nation. Next to the question of Representative government, this would appear to be the most vital and fundamental question that exists within the limits of the United States to-day. Hinging upon it are such subordinate questions as representation, personal security, freedom of speech, race integrity, national strength and permanency, and, possibly, even national existence.
The Negro race has already doubled three times in the United States since the beginning of the last century, and, unless conditions change, it is possible that before the end of the century there may be between sixty and eighty millions of Negroes in this country; a situation which will tax all, and more than all, of the wisdom and constancy of the white race.
In fact, the situation is already too serious to be disposed of without the expenditure of all the courage, wisdom, and patriotism of the entire white race in America, or, at least, without more than they have yet shown. Hitherto, the Negro race has been treated on the one side as an amiable and servile class, useful under regulation and direction to furnish the labor of a great section, and on the other side as a pliable class, useful under certain conditions as a weapon to punish or control the opposite party. The one section has leaned decidedly to keeping the Negro as a mere laborer; the other has leaned with firmness to using him for its own advantage. But, when the Negro race shall reach the numbers suggested, new questions will have arisen. The question then will be, “What shall be done with this colored population of sixty to eighty millions of souls?”
It is true that prognostications of increase in a population often fail, but judging the future by the past and taking into account known racial characteristics, it would appear that the number thus prophesied will in all human probability exist in the United States by the end of the century. If it does exist, it is useless for us of the present generation to blink our eyes to the gravity of the situation.
The answer at present would appear to be alternative: either they must live separately among us—that is, a people within a people, separate and distinct—or they must be amalgamated and mixed in with the whites; or, they must be removed and still live separate and distinct, whether in some country beyond the confines of the United States, or in some portion of this country which shall be given up to them.
It is not believed by those best acquainted with the subject that the solution of the race question will ever be along the lines of amalgamation. That there will be some intermixture is doubtless true, but unless all observations are erroneous, while the percentage of mulattoes in the total Negro population has increased, this increase is mainly due to the intermixture of the white with the mulatto, or of the mulatto with the pure Negro, and the intermixture between the pure Negro and the pure white is growing less all the time.
“The general conclusion,” says the Director of the Department of Commerce and Labor of the Census Bureau, after giving tables of increasing per cent. of mulattoes to total Negro population of the several divisions of the country, “seems warranted that the proportion of mulattoes to total Negroes was found by the enumerators to be high or low, according as the proportion of whites to Negroes is high or low. That is, it appears that where the whites are in large numbers and the Negroes in small numbers, the proportion of mulattoes to Negroes is likely to be higher than where the whites are in small numbers and the Negroes in large numbers.”
Moreover, the percentage of mulattoes in the total Negro population is decidedly greater in cities than in the country.
Although the reports are admittedly incomplete,[100] “yet even so,” says the Director, “it is a step away from ignorance to have the observation of many thousand enumerators at four independent inquiries as evidence that in the United States between one-ninth and one-sixth of the Negroes were of mixed blood, while in Cuba one-half and in Porto Rico five-sixths have been so classed by the census.”
As race feeling grows the intermixture of the two races will necessarily grow less and less.
The solution of the question, then, must be along one of the other lines suggested. That is, the Negro race must either remain distinct and keep to itself, or it must be removed to some region, whether within or without the confines of the United States, where it will be substantially separated.
There are those who advocate warmly the attempt, however apparently Herculean, to remove the Negro race without further delay. That it may come to this in the future is certainly possible. It is, however, much more likely that the Negro race will find its best security in remaining in this country, a people within a people, separate and distinct, but acting in amity with the stronger race and trying to minimize rather than magnify contentions upon those points as to which the stronger race is most determined. Should the time ever come when, for any reason whatever, a conflict arises between the two races, which would appear to jeopard the supremacy of the stronger race, the weaker race would go down, never to rise again on this continent.
When the writer first began to study the conditions of the race problem they appeared to be most disheartening. As, however, he surveyed the entire field, he has become more hopeful, and certainly more firm in his convictions as to a few principles.
One of these principles is the absolute and unchangeable superiority of the white race—a superiority, it appears to him, not due to any mere adventitious circumstances, such as superior educational and other advantages during some centuries, but an inherent and essential superiority, based on superior intellect, virtue, and constancy. He does not believe that the Negro is the equal of the white, or ever could be the equal. Race superiority is founded on courage (or, perhaps, “constancy” is the better word), intellect, and the domestic virtues, and in these the white is the superior of every race.
Another principle is that many, if not most, of the difficulties of the race problem since the war have been caused, or at least increased, by the ignorance of those outside of the South, who, most cocksure of their position where they were most in error, have tried to force a solution on lines contrary to natural and unchangeable laws. The selfish politician and the cocksure theorist have equally contrived to create problems where none might have been but for their bigotry and their folly.
The first step toward the solution of the problem would be taken if the Negro were simply let alone and left to his own resources, with such help as equity or philanthropy might contribute—in other words, if the whites and blacks were left to settle their difficulties and troubles in the various States and sections precisely as they would be left were all whites or all blacks.
Among the errors made in the early years none was more fatal than the inculcation in the mind of the Negro that he was the ward of the nation, and, as such, would be sustained. He was not sustained in the end and he never can be; but he learned just enough from the experience of that time to know that the Government was powerful enough to trample down the Southern whites. The memory of that time has been an ignis fatuus to delude him ever since. And the continual harping on this theme by the section of the Northern press and the politicians, who forget that this is no longer the decade following the war, is just sufficient to mislead them.
At the end the Negroes must rise by their own exertions and their own approach to the standards by which peoples rise. And the chief aid in this is the sympathy of those among whom they live.
Left alone, the whites and the blacks of the South would settle their difficulties along the lines of substantial justice and substantial equity.
Yet another principle is that the final settlement must be one in which the great body of that portion of the white race who know the Negroes best shall acquiesce. No other will ever be final.
The “MacVeagh Commission,” which visited Louisiana in 1876, reported that the Negro party had a great majority in the State, had had possession of every branch of the State Government, and had been sustained by the United States Government, and yet the whites had defeated and ousted them. Were the same conditions to exist to-day the same results would occur. This country is as “fatally reserved for” the Anglo-Saxon race as it was when the Virginia Adventurers declared it to be so in their first report to Elizabeth.
And, lastly, I am satisfied that the final settlement must be by the way of elevating both races.
There is much truth in the saying that unless the whites lift the Negroes up, the Negroes will drag them down, though it is not true in the full sense in which it was intended. It is not true to the extent that the white must lift the Negro up to his own level; it is true to the extent that he must not leave him debased—at least, must not leave him here debased. If he does, then the Negro will inevitably hold him, if not drag him down. No country in the present state of the world’s progress can long maintain itself in the front rank, and no people can long maintain themselves at the top of the list of peoples if they have to carry perpetually the burden of a vast and densely ignorant population, and where that population belongs to another race, the argument must be all the stronger. Certainly, no section can, under such a burden, keep pace with a section which has no such burden. Whatever the case may have been in the past, the time has gone by, possibly forever, when the ignorance of the working-class was an asset. Nations and peoples and, much more, sections of peoples, are now strong and prosperous almost in direct ratio to their knowledge and enlightenment.
It can readily be demonstrated by unquestioned proof that the wealth and strength of modern nations are in almost exact proportion to the education of the population. It is not, however, necessary for the present argument to go outside of America. Viewing the matter economically, the Negro race, like every other race, must be of far more value to the country in which it is placed, if the Negro is properly educated, elevated, and trained, than if he is allowed to remain in ignorance and degradation. He is a greater peril to the community in which he lives if he remains in ignorance and degradation than if he is enlightened. If the South expects ever to compete with the North, she must educate and train her population, and, in my judgment, not merely her white population, but her entire population.
I know well all the arguments against educating the Negroes. I know the struggle that the South made in the days of her poverty to educate that race, even at the expense of her white children; expending upon them, out of taxes levied by the whites on the property of the whites, over $110,000,000, though over a fifth of the whites were left in ignorance.[101] I know the disappointment from which she has suffered. What is charged as to the educated Negro’s being just educated enough to make him worthless as a laborer and leave him useless for anything else has in it often too much truth. I am well aware that often the young Negro thinks his so-called education gives him a license to be insolent, and that not rarely it is but an aid to his viciousness. But, for all this, the economic laws are as invariable and as certain in their operation as any other laws of nature.
In the first place, it seems to me that our plain duty is to do the best we can to act with justice and a broad charity and leave the consequences to God.
But there are other reasons for our continuing in well-doing. And not for sentimental reasons and not for political reasons, but for reasons on which depend the future of the South and of the Southern people; for reasons as certain as that light is safer than darkness, and that intelligence is better than stupidity, or even mere craftiness, the South must educate all her population. She must do this, or she must fall behind the rest of the country. She has no option in this matter. She has the population and they are increasing. The matter seems to me to be not susceptible of question on sound economic grounds. We must educate them. It is not a question of choice, but of necessity.
We have the Negro here among us to the number of ten millions and increasing at a rate of about twenty-five per cent. every ten years. They are here; what must we do with them? One of three courses must be taken: We must either debase them, keep them stationary, or improve them.
Everyone will discard the first plan.
No one can make the second feasible. A race, like a class, is always in a state of change, at least, under conditions like those in America.
Then, we must adopt the third course.
At this point, the question arises: How shall they be improved? One element says, Improve them, but only as laborers, for which alone they are fitted; another, with a larger charity, says, Enlarge this and give them a chance to become good mechanics, as they have shown themselves capable of improvement in the industrial field; a third class goes further yet, and says, Give them a yet further chance—a chance to develop themselves; enlighten them and teach them the duties of citizenship and they will become measurably good citizens. Yet another says, Give him the opportunity and push him till he is stuffed full of the ideas and the learning that have made the white race what it is.
The last of these theories appears to the writer as unsound as the first, which is certainly unsound. Keep them ignorant, and the clever and the enterprising will go off and leave to the South the dull, the stupid, and the degraded.
The question is no longer a choice between the old-time Negro and the “new issue,” but between the “new issue,” made into a fairly good laborer and a fairly enlightened citizen, who in time will learn his proper place, whatever it may be, or the “new issue,” dull, ignorant, brutish, liable to be worked on by the most crafty of those who would use him; a noisome, human hot-bed, in which every form of viciousness will germinate.
Perhaps, the best argument ever advanced for general suffrage was that of George Mason in the Constitutional Convention: that through a general suffrage it may be known what is underneath. The Negroes will always have their leaders, and it is better to have enlightened leaders than ignorant.
Nothing could be more disheartening than the poor return that the Southerner has received for his outlay and patience. Often, worthlessness and insolence on the part of the beneficiaries of his bounty, and misunderstanding and abuse on the part of Pharisaical critics, have been his reward. But, for all this, let us keep on doing what we believe to be right. We have in the past had experience of the Negro fairly well trained and in amity with the white, where he recognized the latter’s superiority. We have the high authority of one of the leading Negro teachers and leaders, that the Negro yearns toward the white. This is strongly corroborated by the well-known fact that wherever the Negroes and the Southern whites are let alone, and are not affected by outside influences, they, for the most part, live in harmony. If we keep on and manage the race question with firmness and with equity, we shall yet show the Negro that his true interest lies in maintaining amity with the Southern white. This we can never do if we take ground against educating him and leave the Northern white to advocate uplifting him. In such case, the North would always have an argument, and the Negro always proof, that the Northerner is his friend and the Southerner not.
The alleged danger of the educated Negro becoming a greater menace to the white than the uneducated is a bugaboo which will not stand the test of light. That this might be true if the white is allowed to remain uneducated, may readily be admitted. The answer, however, to the argument, if it has any merit whatever, is that we must give a sound and not a spurious education and simply educate our whites better. If there were not a Negro on the continent of America, we shall have to do this anyhow, unless we are willing to have the Southern people fall ever further and further behind the people of the North and West.[102]
Education is now the talisman—the desire and aim of all the vast influx of immigrants who come within our gates. The children of the foreign-born population of the country are, by the last census, less illiterate, even in the North, than those of the native-born. Unless we furnish these people good schools, we can never hope to get a good class of immigrants to come to us. Without good schools, if we get any, it will be only the poorest class. And nothing would help us more in the South than to get in the best class.
Now, as to the form of education which will be of most value to the Negroes and of most value to the South—for the two, instead of being opposed to each other, as, according to our self-righteous critics, we appear to believe, are bound up in one.
Unhappily, the system of education heretofore pursued with the Negroes has been so futile in its results that a considerable proportion of Southerners, knowing the facts against all the assertion of Negro leaders, and all the clamor of those outside the South who are ignorant of the facts, believe sincerely that the educated are more worthless and more dangerous to the welfare and peace of the community in which they live than the uneducated.
That is, it is the sincere belief of a considerable number of enlightened and thoughtful whites, perfectly conversant with the situation, that the earnest effort of the South to educate the Negroes, extending through a generation, at an expense of over $110,000,000, contributed out of the property of the Southern whites, has been a complete failure in that the beneficiaries of this effort are not as good workers, or as good citizens, as the generation which preceded them, and use the education so given them, where they use it at all, in ways which are not beneficial to themselves and are injurious to the whites.
This is a condition sufficiently grave to require thoughtful consideration, and it must be met by argument rather than by vilification, or even by mere dogmatism.
It is, undoubtedly, true that the apparent result of the effort to educate the Negro has been disappointing. There are a few thousand professional men, a considerable number of college or high school graduates, but, for the greater part, there is discernible little apparent breadth of view, no growth in ability, or tendency to consider great questions reasonably. There is, indeed, rather a tendency to racial solidarity in opposition to the whites on all questions whatsoever; continued failure to distinguish soundly between outward gifts and character; a general inclination to deny crime and side with criminals against the whites, no matter how flagrant the crime may be. There is, moreover, a not rare belief among the whites that the preachers and leaders contribute to increase these tendencies and teach hostility rather than try to uplift the race morally. This view is held sincerely by a considerable section of the well-informed whites of the South.
All this is very disappointing, and yet the only lamp by which we can guide our way safely is the light of experience. Enlightenment and religion are the two great powers that have raised races and peoples. Since the dawn of history, Education and Christianity have raised the Western nations, among them the Anglo-Saxon race. With all the faults men show in practice, these two contain the vital principles. They are founded on those precepts, by which alone nations rise and civilization advances—knowledge, morality, and duty.
Whatever disappointment, then, there may be, this much at least may be laid down: There are only two ways to solve the Negro problem in the South. One is to remove him; the other is to elevate him. The former is apparently out of the question. The only method, then, is to improve him.
In suggesting the method of education that will prove of greatest service, it is easier to criticise than to reform. Hitherto, the idea has been to educate the Negro race just as the white race is educated; that is, to give him book education and “turn him loose.” There was, it is true, no field except the curious politics of the time in which the Negro could exercise his powers, based on such an education. The whites did not want this; the Negroes could not use it; but this made no difference with those who had the matter in charge. Education was understood to be ability to show book-learning. With this meagre equipment, the “educated Negro” rushed into politics, or into the pulpit, which mainly was but another name for the same thing. Sentiment, however, demanded that the Negro should be placed on an equality with the whites, and other conditions were left out of account, with disheartening results.
It is axiomatic to say that the education given to the Negro should be of the kind which will benefit him most. A few plain principles may be stated: He should be taught that education consists of something more than a mere ability to read and write and speak; that education includes moral elevation as well as intellectual development; that religion includes morality and is more than emotional excitement. He should be taught that one of the strongest elements in racial development is purity of family life; he should be taught that the duties of citizenship are much more than the ability to cast a ballot, or even to hold an office; that elevation to superiority among the people of his own race is of far greater moment to him at this time than external equality with another race, and that true superiority is founded on character. He should be taught to become self-sustaining, self-reliant, and self-respecting. A people, like a class, to advance must either be strong enough to make its way against all hostility, or must secure the friendship of others, particularly of those nearest it. If the Negro race in the South proposes, and is powerful enough to overcome the white race, let it try this method—it will soon find out its error; if not, it must secure the friendship of that race. Owing to conditions, the friendship and the sympathy of the Southern section of that race are almost as much more important to the Negro race than is that of the North, as the friendship of the latter is more important than that of the yet more distant Canadian section of the white race.
The best way—perhaps the only way—for the Negro race to progress steadily is to secure the sympathy and aid of the Southern whites. It will never do this until the race solidarity of the Negroes is broken and the Negroes divide on the same grounds on which the whites divide; until they unite with the whites and act with them on the questions which concern the good of the section in which they both have their most vital interests.
The urgent need is for the Negroes to divide up into classes, with character and right conduct as the standard for elevation. When they make distinctions themselves, others will recognize their distinctions.
As a result of the above principles, it would appear, first, that elementary education should be universal. Even the commonest laborer, speaking in general terms, profits by it.
This education should be of the kind best adapted to the great body of those for whom it is provided. The wisest and most conservative teacher of the Negro race, following the precepts of his own great teacher, General Armstrong, has attained his distinction largely by the success he has achieved in applying methods of industrial, rather than of mere literary education. In this view he is bitterly opposed by many, perhaps by most, of the “educated Negroes,” who are fond of declaring that they act upon principle; that the object of education is to make men, not to make potatoes, or even to make carpenters; little realizing that “men,” in the sense in which the term is, or should be used, are no more made by the superficial and counterfeit education which most of their so-called college graduates display, than are vegetables or mechanics. It has taken a generation and something like $150,000,000, including the entire input from public and private sources, to produce one Booker T. Washington, and—to select from the other school—one Professor Du Bois, though I take pleasure in stating my belief that there are a considerable and possibly an increasing number of modest, unassuming, faithful, and devoted teachers and representatives of both schools not so distinguished, but, perhaps, not less worthy than these. But, the question arises, or should arise, How many thousands are there who, in the making of these, have been ruined for the life for which they were fitted?
It might seem that the true principle should be elementary education for all, including in the term “industrial education,” and special, that is, higher education of a proper kind for the special individuals who may give proof of their fitness to receive and profit by it.
A college education should be the final reward and prize only of those who have proven themselves capable of appreciating it and who give promise of being able to use it for the public good.
To ignore rules founded on such plain common sense is worse than folly. The money so expended is not merely thrown away; this might be tolerated; it is an actual and positive injury. It unfits the recipient for the work for which alone in any case he might be fit, and gives him in exchange only a bauble to amuse himself with, or a weapon with which to injure himself and others.
Finally, and as the only sound foundation for the whole system of education, the Negro must be taught the great elementary truths of morality and duty. Until he is so established in these that he claims to be on this ground the equal of the white, he can never be his equal on any other ground. When he is the equal of the white, it will make itself known. Until then, he is fighting not the white race, but a law of nature, universal and inexorable—that races rise or fall according to their character.