De Tocqueville, more than a century ago, declared that he was obliged to confess that he did not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern States. Thomas Jefferson pronounced the same view, and declared that they must be separated. In the light of modern conditions, it would appear as though, unless conditions change, these views may be verified. It may even be possibly true, as some believe, that, with the present increase of the two races going on, whether the Negro race be educated and enlightened or not, the most dangerous phases of the problem would still exist in the mere continuance together of the two races.
It is with the hope of throwing some light on this great Question that these studies have been made.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | Slavery and the Old Relation Between the Southern Whites and Blacks | [3] |
| II. | Some of Its Difficulties and Fallacies | [29] |
| III. | Its Present Condition and Aspect, as Shown by Statistics | [56] |
| IV. | The Lynching of Negroes—Its Cause and Its Prevention | [86] |
| V. | The Partial Disfranchisement of the Negro | [120] |
| VI. | The Old-time Negro | [163] |
| VII. | The Race Question | [205] |
| VIII. | Of the Solution of the Question | [286] |
THE NEGRO:
THE SOUTHERNER’S PROBLEM
THE NEGRO:
THE SOUTHERNER’S PROBLEM
CHAPTER I
SLAVERY AND THE OLD RELATION BETWEEN
THE SOUTHERN WHITES
AND BLACKS
I
Among the chief problems which have vexed the country for the last century and threaten to give yet more trouble in the future, is what is usually termed “The Negro Question.” To the South, it has been for nearly forty years the chief public question, overshadowing all others, and withdrawing her from due participation in the direction and benefit of the National Government. It has kept alive sectional feeling; has inflamed partisanship; distorted party policies; barred complete reconciliation; cost hundreds of millions of money, and hundreds if not thousands of lives, and stands ever ready, like Banquo’s ghost, to burst forth even at the feast.
For the last few years it has appeared to be in process of being settled, and settled along the lines which the more conservative element of the white race at the South has deemed for the permanent good of both races, a view in which the best informed element at the North apparently acquiesced. The States which the greater part of the most ignorant element of the Negro race inhabited had substantially eliminated this element from the participation in political government, but had provided qualifications for suffrage which would admit to participation therein any element of the race sufficiently educated to meet what might to an impartial man appear a reasonable requirement.[1] Meantime, the whites were taxing themselves heavily and were doing all in their power to give the entire race the education which would enable them to meet this requirement.