And so these people flocked to the burning—the Negro haters, who had never owned a slave and had no sympathy—no sentiment for them.
In one scene a group of Negro night-riders, instigated by the villains of the Union League and a mulatto politician, terrorize the faithful Negroes. The latter, who had been overseers, had “absorbed many of the virtues of the best class of whites,” while the Negroes who wished to vote were “but a few generations removed from the cowardice of darkest Africa.” Lushly overflowing with love for the poor millhands, Moore has a kind word for the Negro only as serf.
Summary. These authors urged reconciliation of North and South, but on southern terms. They shuddered at the rising tide of bad Negroes, dreading amalgamation, but too often “bad Negroes” to them were the educated, or the propertied, or the militant. Their books seem to be conceived in fear and written with hate. They reflected the thought of the South of their day, from planter aristocrat and political boss down to the poor-white on the farm or in the mills. They wanted the South left alone to deal with the Negro in its own way, and this way, since the Negro was needed as ignorant laborer and scapegoat, was the way of exploitation and cruelty. These authors merely transferred melodrama of action into written melodramas. They were sometimes vicious, sometimes stupid, and as in the case of Dixon, sometimes mob inciters rather than novelists. But still, be it recorded to democracy’s shame, they got what they wanted.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Account for the vogue of Thomas Nelson Page at the beginning of the century.
2. Why was Cobb anxious to show “Negroes always skinned by Negroes”?
3. What is significant in the fact that after Jeff Poindexter makes his greatest speech he is given ten dollars?
4. In the recent filibuster on the Anti-Lynching Bill, what arguments were advanced that are to be found in this chapter?
5. What is the relationship of Page’s Red Rock to the problem fiction of this chapter?
6. What were the chief problems that concerned southern authors in this chapter?