Unfettered: A Novel

by Sutton E. Griggs

Our racial organization must form an alliance with such white neighbors—must labor with them in matters looking to the highest interests of our common country. As evidence that there is a possibility of such an alliance, we quote the following from "The Washington Post," a leading newspaper in the nation's capital, and a recognized champion of Southern interests: "So far as we are concerned—and we believe that the best element of the South in every State will sustain our proposition—we hold that, as between the ignorant of the two races, the Negroes are preferable. They are conservative; they are good citizens; they take no stock in social schisms and vagaries; they do not consort with anarchists; they cannot be made the tools and agents of incendiaries. * * * Their influence in government would be infinitely more wholesome than the influence of the white sansculotte, the riffraff, the idlers, the rowdies, and the outlaws."

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD.

While paying strict attention to our home influences, we must not be unmindful of the outside world. If we can bring to bear upon the local situation the moral support of other sections of our country and of other civilized lands, our travel in the direction sought will be the faster. One of the chief labors of our racial organization will be to lay the case of the Negro upon the heart of the world and cause all humanity to lift a voice in our behalf. As evidence that this course is pregnant with hope, we cite the following authorities:

Herbert Spencer designates "the control exercised by public sentiment over conduct at large" as "irresistible." He further says: "It requires only to contemplate the social code which regulates life, down even to the color of an evening necktie, and to note how those who dare not break this code have no hesitation in smuggling, to see that an unwritten law enforced by opinion, is more peremptory than a written law not so enforced. And still more on observing that men disregard the just claims of creditors, who for goods given cannot get the money, while they are anxious to discharge so-called debts of honor to those who have rendered neither goods nor services, we are shown that the control of prevailing sentiment, unenforced by law and religion, may be more potent than law and religion together, when they are backed by sentiment less strongly manifested. Looking at the total activities of men, we are obliged to admit, that they are still, as they were at the outset, guided by the aggregate feeling, past and present."

Huxley remarks: "It is only needful to look around us to see that the greatest restrainers of the anti-social tendencies of men is fear, not of the law, but of the opinions of their fellows. The conventions of honor bind men who break legal, moral and religious bonds; and while people endure the extremity of pain rather than part with life, shame drives the weakest to suicide."

Moses, recognizing the influence of the crowd even when in the wrong, felt the necessity of imbedding in the Jewish code this declaration: "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil."

Jesus Christ in projecting a world-wide kingdom designates public reprobation as the highest form of punishment to be known in his realm. "Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican."

The exponents in the Anglo-Saxon race, of justice, liberty, equality and progress, have contended most zealously for the freedom of the press and have evinced in every way a keen appreciation of the value of this instrumentality developed among them for the utilization of the force of public sentiment. In discussing the manner of effecting results in problems of the general nature of ours, Benjamin Kidd remarks: "* * * * In like manner the effect produced on the minds of the British people by descriptions of the wrongs and sufferings of oppressed nationalities, has been one of the most powerful influences affecting the foreign policy of England throughout the nineteenth century; and any close student of our politics during this period would have to note that this influence, so far as the will of the people found expression through the government in power, has been a far more potent factor in shaping that policy than any clear conception of those far reaching political motives so often attributed to the British nation by other countries."

Resolved upon the enlistment of the enlightened sentiment of the world, our racial organization must utilize the talent of the race for oratory and send able men with burning hearts to speak with flaming tongues of such wrongs as the South wittingly or unwittingly imposes upon us. Negro newspapers must be supported, until their unquestioned excellence makes a way for them into homes without regard to race. Daily newspapers and magazines, favorable to the highest interests of the race, must be established so that the outpourings of the souls of Negro writers may have better opportunities of reaching the world. The poem, the novel, the drama must be pressed into service. The painter, the sculptor, the musical composer must plead our cause in the world of æsthetics. The bird that would live must thrill the huntsman with its song. With the sympathies of the world thus enkindled, there are none who would wish to withhold our rights. Even a Cain cries out against a situation in which every man's hand would be against him. Our racial organization must gird itself for the stupendous task of thus winning our great battle, of thus inducing the iron hand to relax its grasp.