VII
Here in America for over two hundred years the Negro has been under the immediate influence of the most potent race the world has known, and within the sweep of the ripest period of the world’s history.
It may be charged that as a slave he never had an opportunity to give his faculties that exercise which is necessary to their development. But the answer is complete. He has not been a slave in all places, at all times. In Africa he was not a slave, save to himself and his own instincts; in Rome he was no more a slave than was the Teuton, the Greek, or the Gaul; in New England he has not been a slave for over a hundred years, and may be assumed to have had there as much encouragement, and to have received as sustaining an influence as will ever be accorded him by the White. What has been the result even in New England?
Dr. Henry M. Field a few years since wrote a book of travels in the South with his reflections thereon. Dr. Field comes of a distinguished Northern family, of which the whole country is proud. He is a close observer, a fair recorder, and the friend of the whole human race. He will not be accused of prejudice. Speaking of the present intellectual condition of the Negro in Massachusetts, he says:
“Yet here we are doomed to great disappointment. The black man has had every right that belongs to his white neighbor; not only the natural rights which, according to the Declaration of Independence, belong to every human being—the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—but the right to vote, and to have a part in making the laws. He could own his little home, and there sit under his own vine and fig-tree with none to molest or make him afraid. His children could go to the same common schools, and sit on the same benches, and learn the same lessons as white children.
“With such advantages, a race that had natural genius ought to have made great progress in a hundred years. But where are the men that it should have produced to be the leaders of their people? We find not one who has taken rank as a man of action or a man of thought; as a thinker or a writer; as artist or poet; as discoverer or inventor. The whole race has remained on one dead level of mediocrity.
“If any man ever proved himself a friend of the African race it was Theodore Parker, who endured all sorts of persecution and social ostracism, who faced mobs and was hissed and hooted in public meetings, for his bold championship of the rights of the Negro race. But rights are one thing, and capacity is another. And while he was ready to fight for them he was very despondent as to their capacity for rising in the scale of civilization. Indeed, he said in so many words: ‘In respect to the power of civilization, the African is at the bottom, the American Indian next.’ In 1857 he wrote to a friend: ‘There are inferior races which have always borne the same ignoble relation to the rest of men and always will. In two generations what a change there will be in the condition and character of the Irish in New England. But in twenty generations the Negroes will stand just where they are now; that is, if they have not disappeared.’
“That was more than thirty years ago. But to-day I look about me here in Massachusetts, and I see a few colored men; but what are they doing? They work in the fields, they hoe corn, they dig potatoes; the women take in washing. I find colored barbers and white-washers, shoe-blacks and chimney-sweeps; but I do not know a single man who has grown to be a merchant or a banker, a judge or a lawyer, a member of the legislature or a justice of the peace, or even a selectman of the town. In all these respects they remain where they were in the days of our fathers. The best friends of the colored race, of whom I am one, must confess that it is disappointing and discouraging to find that with all these opportunities they are little removed from where they were a hundred years ago.”[82]
But suppose that the statements of others, whose observation has enabled them to pick out a well-to-do lawyer or dentist or doctor or restaurateur, be different, it only proves that in individual instances they may rise to a fair level; it simply emphasizes the fact that these are exceptions to the great rule, and does not in the least affect the argument, which is that the Negroes as a race have never exhibited much capacity to advance; that as a race they are inferior to other races.[83]
Opportunity is afforded us to examine the Negro’s progress in two countries in which a civilization was created for him, and he was surrounded by every condition helpful to progress.
The first is Liberia. There he had a model republic founded by the Caucasian solely for his benefit, with freedom grafted in its name. It was founded in as splendid hopes as even this Republic itself. Christendom gave it its assistance and its prayers. How has the Negro progressed there? Let one of his own race tell the story, one who was thought competent to represent there the United States. Mr. Charles H. J. Taylor, late Minister from the United States to Liberia, has given a picture of life in Liberia, which cannot be equalled save in some other country under the same rule. He says, in a paper published in the Kansas City Times, April 22, 1888:
“Not a factory, mill, or workshop, of any kind, is to be found there. They (the government) have no money or currency in circulation of any kind. They have no boats of any character, not even a canoe, the two gunboats England gave them lying rotten on the beach.”... “Look from morn till night you will never see a horse, a mule, a donkey, or a broken-in ox. They have them not. There is not a buggy, a wagon, a cart, a slide, a wheelbarrow, in the four counties. The natives carry everything on their heads.”
The whole picture presented is hopeless.
If this were an isolated instance we might think that climatic influences or the proximity of a great savage continent had affected the result. But we have nearer home a yet more striking illustration, a yet more convincing proof that the real cause was the Negro’s inability to govern, his incapacity to rise.
For a hundred years now the Negro has cast his influence over sundry of the West Indies, and has had sole possession of one. With this Republic constructed by our fathers before him for a model, he has since 1804 been masquerading at governing Hayti, one of the most fertile spots that Spain ever ruled.
A more fantastic mummery never disgraced a people or degraded a land. From the time of Toussaint L’Ouverture to the present there has not been a break in the darkness which settled upon Santo Domingo when it passed under the control of the Negro.
The bloody Dessalines aping Napoleon, and with the oath of allegiance to the republic yet warm on his lips, crowning himself “Emperor” of half an island; the brutal Gonaives, Boyer, Soulouque, and their like, following each other, each as brutal and swinish as the other, or with degrees limited only by their capacity, present a picture such as history cannot duplicate.
We have accounts of Hayti by two Englishmen, one the historian Froude, the other, Sir Spencer St. John, for years British resident at Hayti, both of whom assert that they have no race antipathy. And what a picture do they present! Santo Domingo, once the Queen of the Antilles, has in less than a hundred years of Negro rule sunk well-nigh into a state of primeval barbarism.
Sir Spencer St. John, in his astounding work, “The Black Republic,” has given a picture of Hayti under Negro rule which is enough to give pause alike to the wildest theorist and the most vindictive partisan. He takes pains to tell us that he has lived for thirty-five years among colored people of various races, and has no prejudice against them; that the most frequent and not the least honored guests at his table in Hayti for twelve years were of the black and colored races. The picture he has presented is the blackest ever drawn: revolution succeeding revolution, and massacre succeeding massacre; the country once, under white rule, teeming with wealth and covered with beautiful villas and plantations, with “a considerable foreign commerce, now in a state of decay and ruin, without trade or resources of any kind; peculation and jobbery paramount in all public offices”; barbarism substituted for civilization; Voudou worship in place of Christianity, and occasions when human flesh has been actually sold in the market-place of Port au Prince, the capital of the country.
Sir Spencer St. John says that a Spanish colleague once said to him: “If we could return to Hayti fifty years hence, we should find the negresses cooking their bananas on the site of these warehouses.” On which he remarks: “It is more than probable—unless in the mean time influenced by some higher civilization—that this prophecy will come true. The negresses are, in fact, cooking their bananas amid the ruins of the best houses of the capital.”
If it shall seem to those who have no actual knowledge upon the subject that I have overdrawn the picture, I would refer them to the papers which I have cited, and the works which I have quoted, and to the great body of the Southern people who have had experience of what Negro domination imports.
What has been stated has been said in no feeling of personal hostility, or even unfriendliness to the Negro, for I have no unfriendliness toward any Negro on earth; on the contrary, I have a feeling of real friendliness toward many of that race, and am the well-wisher of the whole people.
What is contained in this paper is stated under a sense of duty, with the hope and in the belief that it may serve to call attention to the real facts in the case; that it may help to discard from the discussion all mere sentimentality or prejudice, and to base the future consideration of the matter upon the only solid ground—the ground of naked fact.
The examples cited, if they establish anything, establish the fact that the Negro race does not possess, in any development which he has yet attained, the fundamental elements of character, the essential qualifications to conduct a government, even for himself, and that if the reins of government be intrusted to his unaided hands, he will fling reason to the winds, and drive to ruin. Were this, however, only Hayti or Liberia, we might bear it with such philosophic patience as our philanthropy calls to our aid, but we have nearer home a proof not less overwhelming of this truth. The Negro has had control of the government in the Southern States; for eight years a number of Southern States were partly, and three of them were wholly given up to the control of the Negroes, directed by men of, at least, ability and experience, and sustained by the invigorating influence of the entire North. It was “an experiment” entered on with “enthusiasm.”
The reconstruction acts gave the black the absolute right of suffrage, and disfranchised the whites. The Negro was invested with absolute power, and turned loose. He selected his rulers. The entire weight of the government—an immense force—was under the misapprehension, born of the passion which then reigned, thrown blindly in the Negroes’ favor; whatever they asserted was believed; whatever they demanded was done; the ballot was given them, and all the forms established by generations of Caucasian patriots and jurists, and consecrated by centuries of Caucasian blood, were solemnly set up and solemnly followed. The Negro at least then selected his own rulers. The Negro had thus his opportunity then, if ever. The North had put him up as a citizen against the protest of the South, and stood obliged to sustain him. What was the result? Such a riot of folly and extravagance, such a travesty of justice, such a mummery of government as was never before witnessed, save in those countries in which he had himself furnished the illustration.
In Virginia, where the Negroes were in a numerical minority and where the prowess of the Whites had been but now displayed before their eyes in an impressive manner which they could not forget, we escaped the inconveniences of carpet-baggism, and the Hunnycuts, Underwoods, and such vultures kept the carcass for their own picking, and were soon gorged and put to flight. But it was not so where the Negroes were in a large majority. In South Carolina, in Louisiana, in Mississippi, and in other Southern States there was a very carnival of riot and rapine.
Space will not permit the going into detail. Reference can only be made to one or two facts, from which the whole dreadful story may be gathered. Louisiana will be first cited.
Warmouthism and Kelloggism, in Louisiana, and carpet-baggism generally, with all their environments of chicanery and venality, and all their train of poverty and profligacy, cannot be done justice to in a paper of this character.[84] Such a relation of theft, debauchery, and crime has not been found outside of those countries in which carpet-baggism has ruled, with the Negro as its facile and ignorant instrument.
In Louisiana, soon after Warmouth came into office, he stated in his message of 4th January, 1868, to his legislature: “Our debt is smaller than that of almost any State in the Union, with a tax-roll of $251,000,000, and a bonded debt that can at will be reduced to $6,000,000. There is no reason that our credit should not be at par.” This was too good a field for Warmouth and his associates to lose. Says Mr. Sage: “The census of 1870 showed the debt of the State to have increased to $25,021,734, and that of the parishes and municipalities to $28,065,707. Within a year the State debt was increased fourfold, and the local indebtedness had doubled. Louisiana, according to the census, stood, in the matter of debt, at the head of the Union.”[85]
This was but the beginning. The total cost of four years and five months of Republican rule amounted to $106,020,337, or $24,040,089 per year. “To this,” says Mr. Sage, “must be added the privileges and franchises given away and the State property stolen.”[86] Taxation went up in proportion—in some places to 7 or 8 per cent.;[87] in others as high as 16 per cent.[88] This was confiscation.
The public printing of the State had, in previous years, cost about $37,000 per year. During the first two years of Warmouth’s régime the New Orleans Republican, in which he was a principal stockholder, received $1,140,881.77 for public printing.[89]
When Warmouth ran for governor, he was so poor that a mite chest was placed beside the ballot-box to receive contributions to pay his expenses to Washington. When he had been in office only a year, it was estimated that he was worth $225,000, and when he retired he was said to have had one of the largest fortunes in Louisiana.
The Louisiana State Lottery, with all the debauchery of morals and sentiment which it has occasioned, was chartered by Warmouth and his gang, and is a legacy which they have left to the people of that State, an octopus which they have vainly striven to shake off.[90] Time fails to tell of the rapine, the vice, the profligacy in which the government—State and municipal—was the prize which was tossed about like a shuttle-cock, from one faction to the other; of the midnight orders to seize the government, the carnival of corruption and crime, until the Whites were forced to band themselves into a league to prevent absolute anarchy. It suffices to say that it was in Louisiana under Negro rule that troops were marched into the State House, and drove out the assembled representatives of the State, at the point of the bayonet, a thing which has happened during peace only twice before in the history of modern civilization, once under Cromwell and once under Napoleon.
“The vampire Warmouthism had reduced the wealth of New Orleans from $146,718,790 at Warmouth’s advent, to $88,613,930 at Kellogg’s exit—a net decline of $58,104,860 in eight years; while real estate in the country parishes had shrunk in value from $99,266,839.85 to $47,141,696, or about one-half. During this period the Republican leaders had squandered nearly $150,000,000, giving the State little or nothing to show therefor.”[91]
In Mississippi the corruption was almost as great, and the result almost as disastrous. The State levy for 1871 was four times what it was in 1869; for 1872 it was four times as great; for 1873 it was eight and a half times as great; for 1874 it was fourteen times as great. Six million four hundred thousand acres of land, comprising 20 per cent. of all the lands in the State, had been forfeited for non-payment of taxes.
In South Carolina, if it were possible, the situation was even worse, and the paper contributed to the series to which I have already alluded, by the Hon. John J. Hemphill, to which I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness, outlines briefly the condition of affairs, and presents a picture which ought to be read by every man in the Union. The General Assembly, which convened in 1868, in Columbia, consisted of 72 Whites and 85 Negroes. In the house were 14 Democrats, and in the senate 7; the remaining 136 were Republicans. One of the first acts passed was somewhat anomalous. After defending the rights of the colored man on railroads, in theatres, etc., it provided that if a person whose rights under the act were claimed to be violated, was a Negro, then the burden of proof should shift and be on the defendant, and he should be presumed to be guilty until he established his innocence. This Act was more or less expressive of the spirit in which a good many people at the North still appear to regard all questions arising between the Southern Whites and the Negroes.
When the legislature met, they proceeded to furnish the halls at a cost of $50,000, for which they appropriated $95,000. This hall has since been entirely refurnished at a cost of $3,061. They paid out in four years, for furniture, over $200,000, and when, in 1877, the matter was investigated, it was found that, even placing what remained at the original purchase price, there was left by them in the State House only $17,715 worth; the rest had disappeared.
“They opened another account, known under the vague but comprehensive head of ‘Supplies, sundries, and incidentals.’ This amounted, in a single session, to $350,000. For six years they ran an open bar in one of the legislative committee rooms, open from 8 A.M., to 3 P.M., at which all the officials and their friends helped themselves, with cost—save to the unfortunate and helpless taxpayers.’
They organized railroad frauds, election frauds, census frauds, general frauds—whatever they organized was filled with fraud. They enlisted and equipped an armed force, the governor—one Scott—refusing to accept any but colored companies. Ninety-six thousand colored men were enrolled at a cost, for the simple enrolment, of over $200,000. One thousand Winchester rifles were obtained, for which the State was charged about $38,000; 1,000,000 cartridges cost the State $37,000; 10,000 Springfield muskets were bought, and charged at a cost, they claim, of $187,050; it was all charged to the State at $250,000. The troops, as organized, were employed by Scott and the notorious Moses as their heelers and henchmen. The armed force, or constabulary, were armed and maintained for the same purpose.[92]
Governor Scott spent $374,000 of the funds of the State in his canvass.[93] Eight porters were employed in the State House; they issued certificates to 238; eight laborers and from five to twenty pages were employed; certificates were issued to 159 of the former and 124 of the later. One lot of 150 certificates were issued at once—all fraudulent. During one session pay certificates were issued to the amount of $1,168,255, all of which but about $200,000 was unvarnished robbery.
The public printing was another field for their robbery. The total cost of the printing in South Carolina for the eight years of Republican domination, 1868-76, was $1,326,589. The total cost for printing for 78 years previous—from 1790 to 1868—was $609,000, showing an excess for the cost of printing in eight years, over 78 years previous, of $717,589. The average cost of the public printing under the Republican administration per year, was $165,823; average cost per annum under Hampton’s administration, $6,178. The amount appropriated for one year, 1872-73, by the Republicans, for printing, was $450,000; amount appropriated in 25 years ending in 1866, $278,251. Excess of one year’s appropriation over 25 years, $171,749. The cost of printing in South Carolina exceeded in one year by $122,932.13 the cost of like work in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland together.
In 1860 the taxable values in the State amounted to $490,000,000, and the tax to a little less than $400,000. In 1871 the taxable value had been reduced to $184,000,000, and the tax increased to $2,000,000. In 19 counties taken together, 93,293 acres of land were sold in one year for unpaid taxes. After four years of Republican rule, the debt of the State had increased from $5,407,306 to $18,515,033. There had been no public works of any importance, and the “entire thirteen millions of dollars represented nothing but unnecessary and profligate expenditures and stealings.”[94]
The governor’s pardon was a matter of mere bargain and sale. During Moses’s term of two years, he issued 457 pardons—pardoning during the last month of his tenure of office 46 of the 168 convicts whom he had hitherto left in jail.
In May, 1875, Governor Chamberlain declared, in an interview with a correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial, that when at the end of Moses’s administration he entered on his duties as governor, 200 trial justices were holding offices by executive appointment who could neither read nor write.[95]
These statements are but fragments taken from the papers by Mr. Hemphill, Governor Hampton, and others, who cite the public records, and are simply bare statistics. No account has been taken of the imposition practised throughout the South during the period of Negro domination; of the vast, incredible, and wanton degradation of the Southern people by the malefactors, who, with hoards of ignorant Negroes just freed from the bonds of slavery as their instruments, trod down the once stately South at their will. No wonder that Governor Chamberlain, Republican and carpet-bagger as he was, should have declared, as he did in writing to the New England Society: “The civilization of the Puritan and Cavalier, of the Roundhead and Huguenot, is in peril.”[96]
A survey of the field and a careful consideration of the facts have convinced me that I am within the bounds of truth, when I say that the Southern States, with the exception, perhaps, of one or two of the border States, were better off in 1868, when reconstruction went into force, than they were in 1876, when the carpet-bag governments were finally overthrown; and that the eight years of Negro domination in the South cost the South directly and indirectly more than the entire cost of the war, inclusive of the loss of values in slave property. I think if Mr. Cable, and those who accept his theorem, will study the history of the Southern States, even as written only in the statistics, taking no account, if they please, of the suffering and the humiliation inflicted on the white race of the South during the period in which the South was under the domination of the rulers selected by the Negroes, they will find that there is not so much difference between the proposition which he formulates and that which the South states, when it declares that the pending question is one of race domination, on which depends the future salvation of the American people.