The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences: Four Periods of American History

by Hilary A. Herbert

In 1880 the twelve reconstructed States cut, of lumber, board measure, 2,981,274,000 feet; and in 1909 22,445,000,000 feet.

Their output of pig-iron was, in 1880, 264,991 long tons; in 1910, 3,048,000 tons. The assessed value of taxable property was, in 1880, $2,106,971,271; in 1910, $6,522,195,139.

The negro, though the white man, with his superior energy and capacity, far outstrips him, has shared in this material prosperity. His property in these States has been estimated as high as $500,000,000.

During the last decade, 1900-1910, the white population of the South increased by 24.4 per cent, while the negro population in the same States increased only 10.4 per cent. There has been a very considerable gain of whites over blacks since 1880, the result largely of a greater natural increase of whites over blacks, immigrants not counted. All this indicates that the negro problem is gradually being minimized.

Taken in the aggregate, the shortcomings of the negro are numerous and regrettable, but not greater than was to be expected. The general advance of an inferior race will never equal that of one which is superior by nature and already centuries ahead. The laggard and thriftless among the inferior people will naturally be more, and it is from these classes that prison houses are filled.

There is a very considerable class of negroes who are improving mentally and morally, but improvidence is a characteristic of the race, and very many of them, even though they labor more or less steadily, will never accumulate. The third class, much larger than among the whites, is composed of those who are idle, dissipated, and criminal. Taken altogether, however, what Booker Washington says is true: "There cannot be found, in the civilized or uncivilized world, a like number of negroes whose economic, educational, and religious life is so far advanced as that of the ten millions within this country."[95] This advancement is one of the results of slavery. When the negroes come to recognize this, as some of their leaders already do,[96] and come to appreciate the advantages for further improvement they have had since their emancipation, they will cease to repine over the bondage of their ancestors. There were undoubtedly evils in slavery, but, after all, there was some reason in the advice given by the good Spanish Bishop Las Casas to the King of Spain—that it would be rightful to enslave and thus Christianize and civilize the African savage. Herbert Spencer, "Illustrations of Universal Progress" (p. 444), says: "Hateful though it is to us, and injurious as it would be now, slavery was once beneficial, was one of the necessary phases of human progress."

Sir Harry Johnston, African explorer and student of the negro race, in both the old and the new world, and perhaps the most eminent authority on a question he has, in a fashion, made his own, says: "Intellectually, and perhaps physically, he (the negro) has attained the highest degree of advancement as yet in the United States."[97]

"In Alabama (most of all) the American negro is seen at his best, as peasant, peasant proprietor, artisan, professional man, and member of society."[98]

Race animosities are now abnormal, both South and North. The prime reasons for this are two:

1. The bitter conflict during reconstruction for race supremacy and the false hopes once held out to the negro of ultimate social equality with the whites. Among the early measures of congressional reconstruction was a "civil rights" enactment which the negroes regarded as giving to them all the rights of the white man. Their Supreme Court in Alabama decided, in "Burns vs. The State," that the "civil rights" laws conferred the right to intermarriage. Negroes, North, no doubt also believed in this construction. But the Supreme Court of the United States later held that the States, and not Congress, had jurisdiction over the marriage relation within the States. All the Southern and a number of the Northern States have since forbidden the intermarriage of whites and blacks, and so the negro's hopes of equal rights in this regard have vanished.