The difference between the Chinese and negroes is as that between old men, with fixed ideas, and children. If we have ideas and institutions to perpetuate and preserve, we shall entrust and communicate them to children rather than to those grown old in an opposite philosophy and experience. The new born mind is a blank, ready to receive impressions and to develop largely according to its surroundings. Early impressions may never be lost.
The minds of the American negro and the American Indian, considered as adults, were the only maiden minds among all those present in the early days of the colonies and the formative period of the republic. By maiden minds I mean blank minds; minds never before impressed with any phase of civil government; minds ready to receive new impressions; ineradicable impressions. The American negro has never known anything save those things distinctly American. We may have various opinions as to the desires of the forefathers of our republic, and we may differ on many other points, but it may be very safely asserted that we will all agree that, notwithstanding their desire for the preservation of religious freedom, it was, nevertheless, their aim and hope, and it is the aim and hope of their children and grandchildren to found and perpetuate a government immovably fixed upon Christian principles and philosophy. Has it ever occurred to our friend’s mind that the presence of the negro is threatening to that central thought? On the other hand, what of the Chinese?
As we have said, the negro came with his mind a blank, with no preconceived opinions as to forms of government, no attachment to a foreign flag or institutions. No flag, only the American flag; no home save America. The faith of the fathers is his faith. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Grant, his highest conceptions of human greatness. Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill the shrines of his patriotic pilgrimages. Christ his only refuge in religion. The Sunday of the forefathers his holy day, the Fourth of July his highest patriotic reverence. Christmas and Eastertide his hours of holy reflection. The machinations, seditions and conspiracies of the socialist, communist and anarchist his greatest aversion.
Religious freedom is the law of the land, and yet the most superficial observer is aware that our whole fabric, our whole structure is builded upon Christian philosophy. It is stronger than the written law; upon it is founded the whole law and order of society. It was the faith of the forefathers and upon its philosophy and reasoning was and is based every act, every constitutional engagement, every personal property and public right. These institutions could not have been evolved from minds immersed in centuries of Buddhism, nor can they ever be more than dimly perceptible to its children. Has any one ventured to indict the negro for lack of sympathy for the Christian faith? Of all the people possibly the negro lives nearest the faith of the founders of this government. Of the 50,000 Chinese settled in the City of San Francisco for many years, upon how many has Christianity made the least perceptible impression? There Buddha and Confucius still live.
Maltreat the negro as you may, he is nevertheless American to the core and he will follow the flag wheresoever it leads, Santiago and San Juan Hill he will rush upon to the inspiring strains of “Yankee Doodle” and “The Star Spangled Banner,” insensible to every danger.
Socially ostracise the negro, make rules that bar him from the orders of Masonry, Odd Fellowship and the many American institutions and he will immediately turn up possessed of signs, tokens and passwords of these orders, fully caparisoned and equipped, bound to be an American. The curled lips, flat nose and crispy wool, which were such powerful arguments against the negro in our Boston editor’s mind, need not be taken into account when the flag is endangered or its supremacy to be upheld. He had shown the quality of his mind by coming out first in many a college contest; the deftness of his fingers proven whenever an opportunity has been given him. The wage paid him has gone into circulation again for things distinctively American, his savings invested in an American home and not hoarded up to be sent abroad to enrich other countries.
The doctrines of Spiess, Parsons and Herr Most have never found lodgment in a negro breast, and should the day ever come that Beacon Hill or Murray Hill shall be threatened by the disciples of anarchy, the sword of the commonwealth may be placed in the hands of every negro, without question, for the salvation of our institutions, pure and simple, as handed down from the earliest days of the republic; and it may again be said, as of old, that “the stone which the builders rejected had become the chief corner stone of the temple.”
Indeed, the negro has shown that he possesses all the qualities that render a people readily assimilable into the body politic, and he has shown these qualities under most adverse circumstances; workshops closed to him, despised, proscribed socially, absolutely barred and deprived of all those helps accorded all other races by the American people, he has nevertheless risen to the full dignity of a most trusted and intelligent citizen, only too eager, possibly, to be found foremost in expressions and acts of patriotic devotion. So well has he succeeded that he can afford to rest his case, feeling assured that the people will in the end deal justly by him. He has reached that exalted place of life which prompts him not to unjustly criticise other races anxious, like himself, to become a part of this great nation; nor to make any odious comparisons unless compelled in his own defense when unjustly assailed. His home is wherever the American flag is unfurled and he will cheerfully give his whole self to the development of every inch of territory acquired by his government.
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