CHAPTER XI
THE SOUTH UNDER SELF-GOVERNMENT
For now more than thirty years, whites and blacks, both free, have lived together in the reconstructed States. In some of them there have been local clashes, but in none of them has there been race war, predicted by Jefferson and feared by Lincoln; and there probably never will be such a war, unless it shall come through the intervention of such an outside force as produced in the South the conflict between the races at the polls in 1868-76.
Every State government set up under the plan of Congress had wrought ruin, and the ruin was always more complete where the negroes were most numerous, as in South Carolina and Louisiana.
The rule of the carpet-bagger and the negro was now superseded by governments based on Abraham Lincoln's idea, the idea he expressed in the debate with Douglas in 1858, when he said: "While they [the two races] do remain together there must be the position of inferior and superior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white man."
Conducted on this basis, the present governments in the reconstructed States have endured now for periods varying from thirty-six to forty-two years, and in every State, without any exception, the prosperity of both whites and blacks has been wonderful, and this in spite of the still existent abnormal animosities engendered by congressional reconstruction.
In the present State governments the race problem seems to have reached, in its larger lines, its only practicable solution. There is still, however, much friction between whites and blacks. Higher culture among the masses, especially of the dominant race, and wise leadership in both races, will in time minimize this, but it is not to be expected, nor is it ever to be desired, that racial antipathies should entirely cease to exist. The result of such cessation would be amalgamation, a solution that American whites will never tolerate.
Deportation, as a solution of the negro problem, is impracticable. Mr. Lincoln, much as he desired the separation of the races, could not accomplish it, even when he had all the war power of the government in his hands. He was, as we have seen, unable to find a country that would take the 3,500,000 of blacks then in the seceded States. Now, there are in the South, including Delaware, according to the census of 1910, 8,749,390, and, quite naturally, the American negro is more unwilling than ever to leave America.
Another solution sometimes suggested in the South is the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, which declares that the negro shall not be deprived of the ballot because of his race, but agitation for this would appear to be worse than useless.
The negro vote in the reconstructed States is, and has for years been, quite small, not large enough to be considered a factor in any of them. One cause of this is that the whites enforce against the blacks rigidly the tests required by law, but the chief reason is, that the negro, who is qualified, does not often apply for registration. He finds work now more profitable than voting. He can not, he knows, control, nor can he, if disposed to do so, sell his ballot as he once did. One of the most signal and durable evils of Congressional Reconstruction was the utter debasement of the suffrage in eleven States where the ballot had formerly been notably pure. Gideon Welles saw clearly when he said in his diary, June 23, 1867 (p. 102, vol. III): "Under the pretence of elevating the negro the radicals are degrading the whites and debasing the elective franchise, bringing elections into contempt." During the rule of the negro and the alien, in every black county, where the negro majority was as two to one, there were, as a rule, two Republican candidates for every fat office, and an election meant, for the negro, a golden harvest. Rival candidates were mercilessly fleeced by their black constituencies, and the belief South is that as a rule the carpet-baggers, in their hegira, returned North as poor as when they came.