The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

Among the various factors that have contributed to bring about the recrudescence of the Negro question in the last year or two a prominent one is the movement in the South to disfranchise the ignorant element of the Negro race. This is usually termed the “Disfranchisement of the Negro.” But although the object of the movement is frankly to disfranchise the large ignorant element among that race, while an ignorant element among the whites is left the ballot, the term is by no means exact.

Few things are rarer yet nothing is more important than accuracy in definitions. In the matter under consideration much misapprehension exists as to the extent of the disfranchisement, and possibly more as to its effect.

Reams of paper have been covered with frantic denunciation; courts have been appealed to; threats have been made against the Southern States of reducing their representation in Congress, and still the movement has gone on under the direction of the most enlightened and conservative men in the South. And so far as has yet been tested, it has proceeded by legal methods.

The disfranchisement clauses have not only caused an outcry on the part of the politicians, white and colored, and the doctrinaires who were brought up on hostility to the South, but they have excited unfavorable comment even among some friendly enough to the South, who, while conceding that the former “experiment” has proved a disastrous failure so far as the South is concerned, yet believe that a manifest injustice is done to the rest of the country by one section holding a representation in Congress which, according to the votes cast there, appears to be in excess of that held by the rest of the country.

A singular feature of the case is that the division-line of opinion for or against the measure is not so much that of party affiliation as that of familiarity with the conditions that have brought about the changes in the constitutions of the Southern States.

Within the last year, a man of national reputation, a gentleman of high standing, of broad sympathies and much learning,[48] whose affiliations are with the party that is dominant in the South, in an address before the New England Suffrage Conference, warmly approved the reconstruction measures of Thaddeus Stevens setting aside the civil governments in the South, putting the Southern States under military control, and providing for the Congressional system of reconstruction based on Negro suffrage. “The measure finally adopted was,” he says, “of proved necessity. Thus, and thus only, could the lives of the colored men and white Union men be protected. They needed every weapon that we could place in their hands, and this weapon was among them.”

This statement presents clearly the basic error which underlies all others. It is that the Negro needs “weapons” with which to oppose the white, and that “we” must place them in his hands.

Yet another gentleman of varied experience and extensive general knowledge,[49] whose affiliations have at times been with the same party, has recently published a paper written with all his well-known ability, based, however, mainly on a study which he made of conditions at the South during a rapid tour in 1865. Neither of these gentlemen has added much to his knowledge of the Negro question since that time. That men of these gentlemen’s standing can really believe at this day the facts stated by them demonstrates the hopelessness of ever having the matter clearly viewed by a large body of well-meaning people.

The weapon which the advocate of universal suffrage applauds himself for having helped to place in the Negro’s hands has been his destruction. It was a torch placed in the hands of a child, with which he has ravaged all about him and involved himself in the general conflagration.

Happily, this somewhat outworn view of conditions at the South is not the view of the body of the American people who have any familiarity with the subject, or of any portion of them who have had experience of the conditions which existed under the Negro régime.