The Negro and the Nation / A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement

by George Spring Merriam

It must be remembered that in the growth of a tree the upper boughs must have space and air and sunlight, as much as the roots must have earth and water,—and so with a race. There is need of scholars and idealists, as well as toilers; and for these there should be their natural atmosphere. Again let us hear the moving words of Professor DuBois: "I sit with Shakespeare, and he does not wince. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest, peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?"

Yet it is not for himself or the cultured few that he makes the strongest plea:

"Human education is not simply a matter of schools, it is much more a matter of family and group life, the training of one's home, of one's daily companions, of one's social class. Now the black boy of the South moves in a black world—a world with its own leaders, its own thoughts, its own ideals. His teachers here are the group leaders of the negro people—the physicians, clergymen, the trained fathers and mothers, the influential and forceful men about him of all kinds—here it is, if anywhere, that the culture of the surrounding world trickles through, and is handed on by the graduates of the higher schools. Can such culture training of group leaders be neglected? Can we afford to ignore it? Do you think that if the leaders of thought among negroes are not trained and educated themselves, they will have no leaders? On the contrary, a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold the places they so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous busy-bodies will multiply. We have no choice; either we must help furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men, of trained leadership, or suffer the consequences of a headless misguided rabble."

Turning now to the political status of the negro, it may be said that the most pressing need will be substantially met if the South will carry out in good faith the provisions of her statute-books. By some of those statute-books, suffrage is still equal and universal. In others, the negro in required to own $300 worth of property, or to be able to read and write, or to understand the Constitution when read to him. That the white man is practically exempt from these tests, by the "soldier" or "grandfather" clause, whatever be its theoretic injustice or unwisdom, would be no great practical grievance to the negro if only he were fairly allowed to cast his own vote when he can meet the statutory tests. At present, throughout the greater part of the South, the practical attitude of the election officials, and the social sentiment enforced in subtle, effectual ways, debars the negro vote almost as thoroughly as if it were disallowed by law. That this should be so may be satisfactory enough for those to whom the matter ends with "This is a white man's country," or "Damn the niggers anyhow." But will the intelligent, large-minded Southerners,—the men of light and leading—always allow the theory of their own statute-books to be nullified? Will they forever maintain a suffrage-test of race rather than of property and intelligence?

It is said, no doubt truly enough, that a large part of the negroes are indifferent to the suffrage, and do not care to vote. But is this a desirable state of things? Taking the class to whom the law awards the suffrage,—the men of some modest property qualification and intelligence,—is it well for the community that they should be indifferent to questions of taxation, of law-making, of courts and schools and roads and bridges? Is it not in every sense desirable that they should be encouraged to take an intelligent and active interest in such matters? John Graham Brooks tells of his recent observations in Gloucester county, Virginia, where whites and blacks have been co-operating for good local government, and the curse of liquor-selling has been restrained by the votes of a black majority. Surely we should all like to see that precedent widely followed. That is a very crude idea of politics which sees in it only a scramble for public offices. That is an obsolete idea which construes Southern politics as a struggle for power between whites and blacks. Politics, in a large sense, is the common housekeeping of the community. It is the administration of the broadest and highest common interests. The importance to the Southern negro of the political function was greatly overrated when he emerged from chattelhood. But is there any wiser course now than to educate and train and encourage him to a living membership in the body politic?

In this connection we naturally recur to the relation of the national government to the negro problem. In general, the let-alone policy of the last twenty-eight years is likely to continue, and there is every reason why it should. The termination of Federal interference in 1877 was not due to criminal indifference or lassitude on the part of the North, or to political accident. It was essentially the gravitation of the nation to its normal position, after the shock of war and the adjustment of the vital changes involved in the abolition of slavery. Those changes recognized in the national Constitution, and the new order set on its feet, it was natural, inevitable, and right, that the States should resume the control of their local affairs. The division of governmental functions between State and nation was one of the most fortunate circumstances of our birth-period; it was the ripening of our historical antecedents, felicitously grasped and molded by a group of great men. It rests on the fitness of each local community to handle its own affairs, while only the most general and fundamental interests are intrusted to the central authority. When the Southern States were left to themselves, they did some unwise and unjust things,—and there had been something of unwisdom and injustice in the time of Federal supervision—but on the whole it was the re-establishment of the normal order. The policy which naturally followed on the part of the general government was the avoidance of special legislation, especially of the restrictive kind.

But within its own sphere, the national government should follow those principles which are in the best sense American. Thus the executive, in its appointments to office, ought to recognize an equality of race, like that which the Constitution affirm as to civil rights and the suffrage. It is of vital moment that the American nation,—whatever local communities may do,—should not bar competent men from office because of race. Here as elsewhere,—the tools to him who can use them, the career open to the fit talent. This should hold good wherever the national executive acts, South as well as North. The principle should be applied with reasonable regard to the sentiments of the local community,—reasonable but not servile regard. In a city by character and tradition a stronghold of the white race, it seems unwise to give a principal office to a black man. But in a community where the black element is strong in numbers and in character, and where the dark race offers fit incumbents for office, there should be a fair number of such appointments. If it is said "This is offensive to the Southern people," the answer is, Who are the Southern people? Not the white people only, but the black people also.

As to legislation, a measure was recently proposed and somewhat discussed, which has perhaps passed like other bubbles, but the proposal of which caused natural agitation and apprehension at the South. This was a scheme for applying the Fourteenth Amendment to the reduction of Congressional representation in the South in proportion to the negroes excluded from suffrage by the new State Constitutions. Some such reduction may be permissible under the amendments,—for the later Fifteenth Amendment only forbids the States to limit suffrage by "color, race, or previous condition of servitude." Limitation by a property or educational test is not forbidden; but under the Fourteenth Amendment it might be made the ground for reducing a State's representation in Congress. But when it has been said that the proposed measure of reduction is permissible under the Constitution, there is nothing more in its favor. From the standpoint of its proposers, it would be only half-effective, for it could reach only those debarred by actual want of property or education; the larger exclusion by the unfair administration of election officers is an individual matter, beyond the cognizance of statute-books. But the weighty objection is that it would recognize, accept and confirm that very exclusion of the negro vote against which it professes to be aimed. It would only enforce a penalty, from which the gain would accrue solely to the Republican majority in Congress and the electoral college. The Republican party, it is safe to say, has too much virtue and intelligence in its rank and file to accept such a gain at such a cost. For the cost would be a bitter intensifying of race and sectional hostility. The Southern negro, his disfranchisement accepted and ratified by the North, would be freshly odious to his white neighbors on whom he had unconsciously brought this humiliation. The fast closing breach between the North and South would have a sharp and heavy wedge of division driven in. The peaceful forward movement of the nation—for forward it is, spite of some lurches and staggers—would be set back by a return to the old methods of sectional conflict. But indeed the proposal hardly merits so much space as has here been given it. It is a scheme of politicians and not of the people, unhopeful even as a political scheme, unsupported by the sober thought of the North, utterly unlikely to be realized or seriously attempted.

There is another kind of legislative action which may well be seriously considered. Would it not be wise, just, and statesmanlike, for the nation to give financial aid to the tremendous work of public education with which the South is struggling? The Blair bill for this purpose,—in a word, an appropriation of $100,000,000, running through ten years, on the basis of illiteracy,—came very near success in Congress. It was defeated by an ardent championship in the North of local independence and self-reliance. It is questionable whether that championship was not misdirected. Here are States burdening themselves beyond their Northern neighbors, to give schooling for only a third of a year, and necessarily sometimes of inferior quality. The deficiency, compared with the standards of wealthier States, results in a widespread ignorance detrimental not only to the community but to the nation. The interests at stake are common to us all. The backlying cause of the trouble,—slavery and its accompaniments—was in a sense our common responsibility; we all ought to have united to get rid of it peaceably, and the North ought to have paid its share. For the dereliction the South has paid a terrible price. The North, too, suffered wofully, yet in far less measure. Would it not be the part of patriotism and statesmanship—of wisdom and good-will—that all should now take some share in lifting the load which weighs heaviest on the South, but hurts us all?

We are spending a hundred millions a year for a navy. Would not some of that money be put to better use in training our own citizens, who will otherwise go untaught? Someone has said: "The cost of one battleship would endow the higher education of the Southern negro for half a century to come."