Equal 95 per cent. or higher.
Equal 80 per cent.
Equal 70 per cent.
Equal 57.1 per cent.
Equal 44.5 per cent.
Is it credible that our millions lived under the benign influence of slavery, almost without crime and continued even after the Emancipation Act to live peacefully and honestly:—and then, upon the passage of the 14th Amendment dropped suddenly from this moral zenith? Such sudden transformations are not natural: either slavery made the criminality of the African: or held it in a grip barely strong enough to prevent its issue in acts of violence: or, else this record of crime is false. One of these three explanations, we cannot choose but accept. The South at least, cannot admit the first, for slavery, they declared, even before God at His Altar, to be a benign institution; neither can they admit the second, for it, too, is inconsistent with the gentleness and benignity of slavery. But will they admit the third? "Nine tenths of the illicit gains," says James Bryce, speaking of Reconstruction, "went to the whites." Into like parts, Woodrow Wilson divides the responsibility and the discredit. "Negroes," he writes, constituted the majority of their electorates, but political power gave them no advantage of their own. Adventurers swarmed out of the North, to cozen, beguile and use them.... They gained the confidence of the Negroes, obtained for themselves the more lucrative offices, and lived upon the public treasury, public contracts and their easy control of affairs. For the Negroes there was nothing but occasional allotments of abandoned or forfeited land, the pay of petty offices, a per-diem allowance as members of the conventions, and the state legislatures, which their new masters made business for, or the wages of servants in the various offices of administration. Their ignorance and credulity made them easy dupes. A petty favor, a slender stipend, a trifling perquisite, a bit of poor land, a piece of money satisfied, or silenced them." This is the record of crime until the quickly passing day of freedom was ended. And if crime has increased since, so presently will ignorance increase and idleness unless their growth is checked by the restoration of freedom and justice and hope. Punishment will fail to stop the growth of idleness, vice and crime, as it has always failed, and if brutal punishments are next resorted to when milder ones have failed, one sickens at the prospect. Can Southern, abetted by Northern men strew the earth with the seeds of accursed slavery, bastardy and treason, secret conspiracy, callous, sneering fraud and the brutality of the mob, and think to stop by lynching the harvest of black duplicity, bred of fear, and black criminality, bred of misery and hate,—when they have gathered enough of the fruits to make an exhibit of Negro vice? The departure of lynching waits for two events: the breeding of the animal out the most wretched Negroes until they find greater satisfaction in something higher than sensuality and revenge; and the breeding of savage cruelty out of the white man until he can find pleasure in something more humane than torture by fire. As our counsellors bid us turn our attention to the dark side of our life, we bid them turn theirs from it. Your boasted civilization on its under side is but a progress from rape to adultery, from brute to devil. The savage honors the brute and tortures the devil; the civilized man tortures or crushes the brute and honors the devil. There is a pitcher plant of California, which is so described: Above a funnel shaped stem, it flaunts a crimson banner. The hood of the flower is transparent, so that the wary are caught even in their efforts to flee. From the mouth downwards the walls exude intoxicating sweets but multitudinous hairs, all pointing downward, lower the victim farther with every struggle. At its bottom a charnel heap, poisoning the air. Such plants flourish amidst civilization, and millions are their victims, who debauch their appetites until their intellects shrink to the size of their already shrunken consciences, and they are helpless to do anything but die. Liberty is perilous, a very 'valley of the shadow of death,' but the history of every nation which has lived and died teaches us that the danger of a false step is even greater near the end of the journey than at the beginning. Egypt, Assyria, Judea, Greece, Rome—the history of every nation is a light-house marking a reef in the harbor of humanity.
When Cain had killed Abel, he hid the body, and when God called, replied, "Am I my brother's keeper?" A chill foreboding comes over us with these Northern doubts of the wisdom of Reconstruction, and we cannot refrain from wondering if the North still retains the sense of duty of 61; if the North can do, can even will to do justice. And here let us turn from our first question: What does justice to the Negro demand? To the second: What can the Negro do to get justice? My end has been reached if there is felt more than before the need of answering the latter question.
Underlying the civil laws of the nation are certain high ideals. The fidelity of the nation to these is measured by the quality and the force of public opinion. Just as long therefore as the republic endures, the executive, legislative and judicial powers will obey the people's will. To this oracle the rulers have again appealed, and its answer has been an expression of renewed and increased confidence in the Republican party. The hour of the new administration has almost come, and the message may be now on its way to the country that the party pledges are to be redeemed. It may be that there are brighter days before us; but if, as in the past, we stand on no securer footing than two men wrestling on a steep and icy hill-side, where both roll over and over, and there is no chance between throwing and being thrown,—then it matters not whether we appeal to President, or Congress, or Supreme Court; to the 14th or 15th amendment, for the righting of our wrongs.
Congress is empowered to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments by appropriate legislation. Such legislation has been enacted and by one President, at least, enforced. But, now, it is held that it must be shown that the amendments are being violated, and this cannot be done until the Supreme Court fully interprets them. What a mockery it has all become! Insolently, sneeringly, the violators of the plain intent of the law rise from their seats in Congress and demand how far they are going to be obliged to walk around these Amendments instead of kicking them aside. By law, or by force, colored men are being deprived of the right to hold office; by law or by force excluded from the jury; by law or by force sent into slavery for crimes of which they were convicted by these juries from which they are excluded; by law or by force, they are being disfranchised. The alternative is clear. Southern men do not evade it. The revised Constitutions stand boldly for disqualification by law. Southern Congressmen in debate as boldly proclaim the force. More cautiously Mr. Murphy testifies to the same effect, denying that "the abuse of discretionary power by the registrars of elections,—an abuse which the State permits, but which the State does not necessitate or prescribe, brings the State within reach of the penalties of the Constitution."
If not by law then the Constitution is nullified by force, and it becomes the duty of Congress to maintain it. But is Congress so near the performance of this obligation that we can profitably advise as to the method? Shall we say that candidates for Congress, by force or fraud elected, shall be refused their seats or that an election bill shall be passed, guaranteeing just laws; or that the penalty clause of the 14th Amendment shall be first enforced? At least, we had better wait until the House has reversed the policy outlined by its Committee on Elections, whose concluding words in the Dantzler-Lever case follow:—