“The Congress was called by Dr. Burghardt DuBois, an American mulatto who has been prominent in his native country for many years as a race agitator. Its purpose was to draw together all Negro organizations throughout the world. The agenda included: the segregation of the colored races; the race problem in England, America and South Africa; and a future programme....
The attendance at London and Brussels was very small, but some four hundred delegates from every portion of the world participated in the proceedings at Paris.... At the London session the radical ideas of DuBois, which approached those of Garvey were in the ascendant and force was preached as a possible alternative to attain the ends which the Negroes have in view.... At Brussels, Deputy Diagne, a member of the French Parliament from Senegal, presided. When he saw that radical ideas were likely to prevail there also, he arbitrarily terminated the session. At Paris the programme was cut and dried.... The newspapers gave full and sympathetic reports of the sessions. France by this stroke of diplomacy attained her purpose. Under the skilful leadership of the French deputy Diagne, the Congress adopted a more moderate programme of evolution instead of revolution, culminating in a platform demanding equality of all civilized men without distinction of race; a systematic plan for educating the colored races; liberty for the natives to retain their own religion and manners; restoration of native titles to their former lands and to its produce; the establishment of an international institute to study and record the development of the black race; the protection of the black race by the League of Nations; and the creation of a separate section in the International Labor Bureau to deal with Negro labor.”[383]
In this report it is claimed both the United States and England are handled harshly, while France is praised. It seems Sir Harry Johnston is, to some degree, in accord with this praise of France, at the expense of his own country, his opinion being:
“All in all, I am of the opinion that the French nation since 1871 has dealt with the Negro problem in Africa and in tropical America more wisely, prudently and successfully than we English have done.”[384]
It is this very fluent gifted linguist, in all probability, who is responsible for the picturesque conclusion:
“Finally it is perfectly certain that the race question is the rock upon which the British Empire will be wrecked or the corner stone upon which the greatest political structure in the history of the world will be erected.”[385]
But if from a representative of Imperial Germany, the only country which ever enacted as a part of its organic law the principle of Nullification, it surpasses in grandiosity and positiveness of statement the dictum of Calhoun in 1837:
“We have for the last 12 years been going through a great and dangerous juncture. The passage is almost made and, if no new cause of difficulty should intervene, it will be successfully made. I, at present, see none but the abolition question, which however, I fear is destined to shake the country to its centre.... For the first time the bold ground has been taken that slaves have a right to petition Congress ... itself emancipation.... Our fate as a people is bound up in the question. If we yield, we will be extirpated; but if we successfully resist, we will be the greatest and most flourishing people of modern time. It is the best substratum of population in the world and one on which great and flourishing Commonwealths may be most easily and safely reared.”[386]
We of the South know, we did not successfully resist emancipation; were not extirpated; but do form part of “the greatest and most flourishing people of modern time.” We must realize that, no matter what was the price paid for it, emancipation was salvation for the South. It was a deliverance from the “body of death,” Reviewing our history, we find that in the same year that Calhoun, the greatest disruptive force in our politics, pronounced the dictum last quoted, a comparatively young and unknown politician, destined to be the greatest cementing force of the Union, declared—
“That the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to promote than to abate its evils.”[387]