"I was surprised," he said, "to find a village so well managed and looked after, and all by negroes."
"There's nothing surprising in that," the Colonel answered. "How could they do anything different? I have shown them every step they were to take; all that they had to do was to continue."
"You mean they couldn't have done it by themselves?"
"The negro never has done anything by himself," the old Confederate replied. "He has lived as far back as time goes in one of the most fertile and well-watered countries of the world,—Africa—and he never had enough initiative to rise out of tribal conditions."
"But he seems to be doing all right now," suggested Hamilton. "I hear the negro is getting to own quite a share of the cotton crop."
"He has not done so well as appearances would show," the soldier replied; "he has learned a few—only a few—of the tricks of modern civilization, and those only outwardly. The few cases of leadership such as that of Booker T. Washington, for instance, are due to the white strain, not the negro."
"I thought Booker T. Washington was a pure negro!" exclaimed Hamilton.
"He is not," was the emphatic reply. "In his own writings he states that his father was a white man. His mother was a negress. He gets his brains from his father and his color from his mother."
"Do you think that the negroes will ever marry enough with the white to become all white?"
"Not now," the Southerner answered. "It is a crime in many States and punishable with imprisonment."