The Women of the Confederacy

by J. L. Underwood

The only man who has understood the negro, knew his wishes and his failings, knew how to be kind to him when a slave, and a safe counsellor now that he is free, is the man who, when a boy, played with Jere and slept by his side in the midnight campfire. It is mammy’s people, and daddy Jacob’s and Mandy’s and Jere’s people, that understand the negro and have always been his best friends. Had the country abided by Grant and Sherman and Lincoln and Johnson as to the status of the restored Union and left the rights of the emancipated slaves in the hands of their old owners and their interests to be regulated by the Mars Henrys of the South how much better it would have been for the poor negro and infinitely better for the white people. Southern people know best how far the negro may go and where it is best for him to stop. Now when the fearful problems which have been brought about by vindictive politics, personal demoralization and fanatical race prejudices, for which the people of the South are not responsible, the whole country is beginning to realize that if these problems are to be solved in the negro’s favor he himself is to do the solving. “Mars Henry” and “Jere” would once have died for each other. But “Mars Henry” can’t help “Jere” much now. Reconstruction politics led “Jere” too far away from “Mars Henry” and kept him too long. In a very few years there will be no “Mars Henry,” no “Jere.” 308 “Mars Henry’s” children know how to take care of themselves. May God teach poor “Jere’s” children to work out their own good.

DREAM OF RACE SUPERIORITY

[J. L. Underwood.]

In a previous article the author has given an account of what was nearer social equality between the white and black races than will ever again be seen in the South or anywhere else. But the deluded negro has been led to look for something higher than social equality. The most awfully destructive work done by the Northern attempt to reconstruct Southern society has been seen in the complete demoralization of the generation of the negroes succeeding the playmates of the young Southerners of 1861-1865. They were thrown directly under Northern teachers profoundly ignorant of the negro race, their condition, and their danger; but teachers supremely bent on injury, as far as possible, to the white people of the South. From them and the literature which they circulated, and his own folly, the young negroes became imbued with the idea, not of social equality with the white people, but of social superiority to them. They themselves were heralded in the highest places as the “wards of the nation;” the white people were branded as its enemies; they were the lions and the heroes of the revolution, the white people were its victims. They were the acknowledged pets of the triumphant Northern people, while the whites were their doomed enemies. They were to have offices, endowments, and bounties from the government. This government gave them a Freedmen’s Bank and a Freedmen’s Bureau and they saw no bank nor bureau for white people. They saw the white people to whom nothing was promised with no prospect but that of poverty and degradation. The North gave them colleges and the South taxed itself to give them schools. They were lauded in Congress, on the hustings, in the Northern pulpits, and in the party newspapers, as the innocent 309 Uncle Tom-like, angelic people who were to redeem the South and glorify America, while the white people, only living by Northern sufferance, were branded as traitors and rebels and enemies of the government. To insure the triumph of the negro and the degradation of Southern whites Congress kept the ominous Force Bills before the public. Who can wonder that the heads of these poor ignorant people were turned and their moral natures poisoned?

Then, with all this, came the awful lawlessness under which this young generation grew up. There was no longer “old massa and old missus” to see that they were controlled. Their parents gave way to delusive dreams and devoted their energies to “going to town” by day “going to meetin’” by night. Home life in the family was, and is to this day, almost a thing unknown. There was no parental control whatever. When undertaken much of it was so childish or so brutal as to do more harm than good. Some of these boys went to school enough to learn to read a little and sign their names, and right there the most of them graduated. A large portion cannot read now. They seldom went to church, except just enough to be baptized and to join in a special revival shout of

“We are all going to heaven,

Hallelujah!”

At other times when they did go they stood out on the church grounds and smoked cigarettes. The negro preachers, in nine cases out of ten, knew nothing and could teach nothing. The aim of most of them seemed to be to have a happy Sunday religion and enjoy the honor of religious office and prominence. What a passion this has been with the free negro. Then the inevitable collection of the preacher, and all would scatter without a thought of a religion to make good their lives through the remaining six days of the week. Mrs. Stowe’s Topsy said she did not know anything about herself except, “I specs I growed.” Those young reconstruction negroes just “growed.” They “growed” without law at their so-called homes; they “growed” ignorant of, 310 or defiant of the laws of the State, and they “growed” without any aim except self-indulgence in ease and pleasure.

Then there before their eyes rose the Paradise tree of the forbidden fruit—the white women beyond their reach. There was in every State the law against intermarriage of the white and black races which stood and will stand in Median and Persian unchangeableness. Then came, wherever these young negroes were scattered, at the North as well as the South, the mighty resolve of passion, pride, and revenge—“these white women are ours, we are better than they are, they shall not be monopolized by white men.”