VIII
Twenty-seven years have rolled by since the Negro was given his freedom; nearly twenty-five years have passed since he was given a part in the government, and was taken up to be educated.[97] The laws were so adapted that there is not now a Negro under forty years old who has not had the opportunity to receive a public school education. Through private philanthropy these public schools (many of which are of a high grade) have been supplemented by institutions established on private foundations. That the Negroes have had a not ungeneral ambition to attend school is apparent from the school attendance of the race, as shown by the statistics, the Negro enrolment in the schools for the session of 1878-88 being 1,140,405, or a little over one-half of their entire school population.
Besides this, every profession, every trade, and every department of life have been open to him as to the White; he has had his own race as his constituency; he has possessed the backing of the North, and the good-will of the South. But what has he done? What has he attained?
The South has viewed his political course with suspicion, and in this field of activity has opposed him with all her resources; but she has not been mean or niggardly toward him. On the contrary, in every place, at all times, even while she was resisting and assailing him for his political action, she has displayed toward him in the expenditures for his education a liberality which, in relation to her ability, amounted to lavishness.
The Rev. Dr. A. D. Mayo, eminent alike for his learning and philanthropy, and a Northern educator of note, declared not long ago that “No other people in human history has made an effort so remarkable as the people of the South in reëstablishing their schools and colleges. Overwhelmed by war and bad government, they have done wonders, and with the interest and zeal now felt in public schools in the South, the hope for the future is brighter than ever.” “Last year,” he says, speaking in 1888, “these sixteen States paid nearly $1,000,000 each for educational purposes, a sum greater according to their means than ten times the amount now paid by most of the New England States.”
Virginia has expended on her public schools, including the session of 1890-91, according to the figures of Colonel Ruffin, the Second Auditor of Virginia, taken from official sources, $23,380,309.97. Her Negro schools cost her for the year 1889-90, by the same estimate, $420,000, of which the Negroes paid about $60,000.[98]
Governor Gordon, of Georgia, in a recent address, said of that State: “When her people secured possession of the State government, they found about six thousand colored pupils in the public schools, with the school exchequer bankrupt. To-day, instead of six thousand, we have over one hundred and sixty thousand colored pupils in the public schools, with the exchequer expanding and the schools multiplying year by year.” He says further, “The Negroes pay one-thirtieth of the expense, and the other twenty-nine-thirtieths are paid by the whites.”
The other Southern States have not been behind Virginia and Georgia in this matter.
Now what has the Negro accomplished in this quarter of a century? The picture drawn by Dr. Field of his accomplishment in Massachusetts would do for the South.
“They work in the fields, they hoe corn, they dig potatoes; the women take in washing.” They are barbers and white-washers, shoe-blacks and chimney-sweeps. Here and there we find a lawyer or two, unhappily with their practice in inverse ratio to their principle. Or now and then there is a doctor. But almost invariably these are men with a considerable infusion of white blood in their veins. And even they have, in no single instance, attained a position which in a white would be deemed above mediocrity. Fifteen years ago there were in Richmond a number of Negro tobacco and other manufacturers in a small way. Now there are hardly any except undertakers.
They do not appear to possess the faculties which are essential to conduct any business in which reason has to be applied beyond the immediate act in hand.
They appear to lack the faculty of organization on which rests all successful business enterprise.
They have been losing ground as mechanics. Before the war, on every plantation there were first-class carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, etc. Half the houses in Virginia were built by Negro carpenters. Now where are they? In Richmond there may be a few blacksmiths and a dozen or two carpenters; but where are the others?
A great strike occurred last year in one of the large iron-works of the city of Richmond. The president of the company stated afterward that, although the places at the machines were filled later on by volunteers, and although there were many Negroes who did not strike employed in the works, it never occurred to either the management or to the Negroes that they could work at the machines, and not one had ever suggested it.
The question naturally arises, Have they improved? Many persons declare that they have not. My observation has led to a somewhat different conclusion. Where they have been brought into contact with the stronger race under conditions in which they derived aid, as in cities, they have in certain directions improved; where they have lacked this stimulating influence, as in sections of the country where the association has steadily diminished, they have failed to advance. In the cities, where they are in touch with the whites, they are, I think, becoming more dignified, more self-respecting, more reasonable; in the country, where they are left to themselves, I fail to see this improvement.
This improvement, however, such as it is, does not do away with the race issue. So far from it, it rather intensifies the feeling, certainly on the part of the Negro, and makes the relation more strained. Yet it is our only hope. The white race, it is reasonably certain, is not going to be ruled by the Negro either North or South. That day is far off, and neither Lodge bills nor any other bills can bring it about until they can reverse natural law, enact that ignorance shall be above intelligence, and exalt feebleness over strength. The history of that race is a guarantee that this cannot be. It has been a conquering race from its first appearance, like the Scythians of old,
“Firm to resolve and steadfast to endure.”
The section of it which inhabits the United States is not yet degenerate. That part of it at the South assuredly is not. It is not necessary to recall its history. It is one of the finest pages in the history of the human race. Let one who has not been generally regarded as unduly biassed in favor of the South speak for it. Senator Hoar, speaking of the people of the South on the floor of the Senate, in the speech already referred to, said:
They have some qualities which I cannot even presume to claim in an equal degree for the people among whom I, myself, dwell. They have an aptness for command which makes the Southern gentleman, wherever he goes, not a peer only, but a prince. They have a love for home; they have, the best of them, and the most of them, inherited from the great race from which they come, the sense of duty and the instinct of honor as no other people on the face of the earth. They are lovers of home. They have not the mean traits which grow up somewhere in places where money-making is the chief end of life. They have, above all, and giving value to all, that supreme and superb constancy which, without regard to personal ambition and without yielding to the temptation of wealth, without getting tired and without getting diverted, can pursue a great public object, in and out, year after year and generation after generation.
This is the race which the Negro confronts. It is a race which, whatever perils have impended, has always faced them with a steadfast mind.
Professor James Bryce in a recent paper on the Negro question arrives at the only reasonable conclusion: that the Negro be let alone and the solution of the problem be left to the course of events. Friendship for the Negro demands this. It has become the fashion of late for certain Negro leaders to talk in conventions held outside of the South of fighting for their rights. For their own sake and that of their race, let them take it out in talking. A single outbreak would settle the question.
To us of the South it appears that a proper race pride is one of the strongest securities of our nation. No people can become great without it. Without it no people can remain great. We purpose to stand upon it.
The question now remains, What is to become of the Negro? It is not likely that he will remain in his present status, if, indeed, it is possible for him to do so. Many schemes have been suggested, none of them alone answerable to the end proposed. The deportation plan does not seem practicable at present. It is easy to suggest theories, but much more difficult to substantiate them. I hazard one based upon much reflection on the subject. It is, that the Negro race in America will eventually disappear, not in a generation or a century—it may take several centuries. The means will be natural. Certain portions of the Southern States will for a while, perhaps, be almost given up to him; but in time he will be crowded out even there. Africa may take a part; Mexico and South America a part; the rest will, as the country fills up, as life grows harder and competition fiercer, become diffused and disappear, a portion, perhaps, not large, by absorption into the stronger race, the residue by perishing under conditions of life unsuited to the race. The ratio of the death-rate of the race is already much larger than that of the white. Consumption and zymotic diseases are already making their inroads.[99]
Meantime he is here, and something must be done to ameliorate conditions.
In the first place, let us have all the light that can be thrown on the subject. Form an organization to consider and deal with the subject, not in the spirit of narrowness or temper, but in a spirit of philosophic deliberation, such as becomes a great people discussing a great question which concerns not only their present but their future position among the nations. We shall then get at the right of the matter.
Let us do our utmost to eliminate from the question the complication of its political features. Get politics out of it, and the problem will be more than half solved. Senator Hampton stated not long ago in a paper contributed by him to the North American Review that, to get the Negro out of politics, he would gladly give up the representation based on his vote. Could anything throw a stronger light on the apprehension with which the Negro in politics is regarded at the South?
There never was any question more befogged with demagogism than that of manhood suffrage. Let us apply ourselves to the securing some more reasonable and better basis for the suffrage. Let us establish such a proper qualification as a condition precedent to the possession of the elective franchise as shall leave the ballot only to those who have intelligence enough to use it as an instrument to secure good government rather than to destroy it. In taking this step we have to plant ourselves on a broader principle than that of a race qualification. It is not merely the Negro, it is ignorance and venality which we should disfranchise. If we can disfranchise these we need not fear the voter, whatever the color. At present it is not the Negro who is disfranchised, but the white. We dare not divide.
Having limited him in a franchise which he has not in a generation learned to use, continue to teach him. It is from the educated Negro; that is, the Negro who is more enlightened than the general body of his race, that order must come. The ignorance, venality, and superstition of the average Negro are dangerous to us. Education will divide them and will uplift them. They may learn in time that if they wish to rise they must look to the essential qualities of good citizenship. In this way alone can the race or any part of the race look for ultimate salvation.
It has appeared to some that the South has not done its full duty by the Negro. Perfection is, without doubt, a standard above humanity; but, at least, we of the South can say that we have done much for him; if we have not admitted him to social equality, it has been under an instinct stronger than reason, and in obedience to a law higher than is on the statute-books: the law of self-preservation. Slavery, whatever its demerits, was not in its time the unmitigated evil it is fancied to have been. Its time has passed. No power could compel the South to have it back. But to the Negro it was salvation. It found him a savage and a cannibal and in two hundred years gave seven millions of his race a civilization, the only civilization it has had since the dawn of history.
We have educated him; we have aided him; we have sustained him in all right directions. We are ready to continue our aid; but we will not be dominated by him. When we shall be, it is our settled conviction that we shall deserve the degradation into which we shall have sunk.