The Story of the Soil; from the Basis of Absolute Science and Real Life

by Cyril G. Hopkins

"During the Secession it was the most common thing for the men to go to war and leave their defenseless women and children wholly in the care of their slaves; and, even though the federal soldiers were fighting to free the slaves and their masters to keep them in slavery, rarely did a negro fail to remain faithful to his trust. They hid from the northern soldiers the horses and mules, cotton and corn, clothing and provisions, and all sorts of valuables; and in most cases were ready to suffer themselves before they would reveal the hidden property. To be sure there were masters who abused their slaves, and some of these were naturally ready to desert at the first opportunity; but in the main the slave owner was more kind to his human property than the considerate soldier was to his horse, and the negro as a race is appreciative of kindness."

"I suppose the depreciation in soil fertility and crop yields dates largely from the freeing of the slaves does it not?" asked Percy.

"Well, that was one factor, but not the most potential factor. Much land in the south had been abandoned agriculturally long before the war, and much land in New York and New England has been abandoned since the war. The freeing of the negroes produced much less effect in the economic conditions of the south than many have supposed. The great injury to the South from the war was due to the war itself and not to the freeing of slaves. In the main it cost no more to hire the negro after the war than it cost to feed and clothe him before; and the humane slave owner had little difficulty in getting plenty of negro help after the war. Very commonly his own slaves remained with him and were treated as servants, not particularly differently than they had been treated as slaves. Of course there were some brutal slave holders, just as there are brutal horse owners, and such men suffered very much from the loss of slave labor.

"The southern people have no regrets for the freeing of the slaves. Probably it was the best thing that ever happened to us; and the South would have less regret for the war itself, except that our recovery from it was greatly delayed by the reconstruction policy which was followed after the war. The immediate enfranchisement of the negro, especially in those sections where this resulted in placing all the power of the local government in the hands of the negro, was a worse blow to the South than the war itself.

"It is believed that this would not have been done if Lincoln had lived. Lincoln was always the President of all the people of the United States, and his death was a far greater loss to the South than to the North. To place the power to govern the intelligent white of the South absolutely in the hands of their former ignorant slaves was undoubtedly the most abominable political blunder recorded in history; and even this was intensified by the unprincipled white-skinned vultures who came among us to fatten upon our dead or dying conditions. Those years of so-called reconstruction, constitute the blackest page in the history of modern civilization."

"I quite agree with you," said Percy, "and so far as I know them the soldiers of the northern armies also agree with you. Several of my own relatives fought to free the negro slave; but none of them fought to enslave their white brothers of the South by putting them absolutely under negro government. And yet there is one possible justification for that abominable reconstruction policy. It may have averted a subsequent war which might have lasted not for four years, but for forty years. Even if this be true, perhaps there is no credit in the policy for any man who helped to enforce it, but you will grant that there were two important results from those bitter years of reconstruction:

"First, the negro learned with certainty at once and forever that he was a free man.

"Second, he at once acquired a degree of independence effectually preventing the development of a situation throughout the South, in which the negro, though nominally free, would have remained virtually a slave, a situation which, if once established, might have required a subsequent war of many years for its complete eradication. Even under the conditions which have prevailed, there have been isolated instances of peonage in the southern states since the war; and if the education and gradual enfranchisement of the negro had been left wholly in the hands of their former masters, from the immediate close of the war, I can conceive of conditions under which slavery would essentially have been continued."

"Such a possibility is, of course, conceivable," said Mr. West, "and we must all admit that there were some slave holders who would have taken advantage of any such opportunity; but had Lincoln lived the terms made would probably have been such that the South would have felt in honor bound to enforce them. Probably the enfranchisement would have been based upon some sort of qualification such as the southern states have very generally adopted in subsequent years; but the idea of social equality of slave and master was so repulsive to the white people of the South that it could not be tolerated under any sort of government."

"This question of social equality," remarked Percy, "has probably been the cause of more misunderstanding between the North and the South than all other questions relating to the negro problem. I have rarely, if ever, talked with a southern man who did not have it firmly fixed in his mind that the common idea of the northern people is that the negro race should be made the social equal of the white race. This I have heard from southern lecturers; I have read it in southern newspapers; and I have found it in books written by southern authors; but, Mr. West, I have never yet heard that idea advanced by a man or woman of the North.