The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

Those whites who know the race best and hold the most far-reaching conception of the subject maintain that this disfranchisement was necessary, and, even of the Negro race, those who are wisest and hold the highest ideal for their people acquiesced in this—at least, to the extent of recognizing that the Negroes at large needed a more substantial foundation for full citizenship than they had yet attained—and were preaching and teaching the imperative necessity of the race’s applying its chief energies to building itself up industrially.

The South, indeed, after years of struggle, considered that the question which had confronted it and largely affected its policy for more than a third of a century was sufficiently settled for the whites to divide once more on the great economic questions on which hang the welfare and progress of the people. Suddenly, however, there has been a recrudescence of the whole question, and it might appear to those who base their opinion wholly on the public prints as though nothing had been accomplished toward its definite settlement in the last generation.

Only the other day, the President extended a casual social invitation to the most distinguished educator of the colored race: one who is possibly esteemed at the South the wisest and sanest man of color in the country, and who has, perhaps, done more than any other to carry out the ideas that the Southern well-wishers of his race believe to be the soundest and most promising of good results. And the effect was so unexpected and so far-reaching that it astonished and perplexed the whole country. On the other hand, this educator, speaking in Boston to his race in a reasonable manner on matters as to which he is a high authority, was insulted by an element, the leaders of which were not the ignorant members of his race, but rather the more enlightened—college-bred men and editors—and a riot took place in the church in which he spoke, in which red pepper and razors were used quite as if the occasion had been a “craps-game” in a Southern Negro settlement. The riot was quelled by the police; but, had it been in a small town, murder might easily have been done.

In view of these facts, it is apparent that the matter is more complicated than appears at first thought, and must be dealt with carefully.

One great trouble is the different way in which the body of the people at the North and at the South regard this problem. We have presented to us the singular fact that two sections of the same race, with the same manners and customs, the same traits of character, the same history and, until within a time so recent that the divergence is within the memory of living men, the same historical relation to the Negro race, should regard so vital a question from such opposite points; the one esteeming the question to be merely as to the legal equality of the races, and the other passionately holding it to be a matter that goes to the very foundation of race-domination and race-integrity. What adds to the anomaly is the pregnant fact that the future of these two sections must hereafter run on together; their interests become ever more and more identified, and if the one is right in holding that its position is founded on a racial instinct, the other, in opposing it, is fighting against a position which it must eventually assume. Yet, their views have up to the present been so divergent—they have, indeed, been so diametrically opposed to each other, that if one is right, the other must be radically wrong.

Another difficulty in the way of a sound solution of the problem is the blind bigotry of the doctrinaire, which infects so many worthy persons. An estimable gentleman from Boston, of quite national reputation, observed a short time ago that it was singular that the Southerners who had lived all their lives among the Negroes should understand them so little, while they of the North who knew them so slightly should yet comprehend them so fully. He spoke seriously and this was without doubt his sincere belief. This would be amusing enough were it not productive of such unhappy consequences. It represents the conviction of a considerable element. Because they have been thrown at times with a few well-behaved, self-respecting Negroes, or have had in their employ well-trained colored servants, they think they know the whole subject better than those who, having lived all their life in touch with its most vital problems, have come to feel in every fibre of their being the deep significance of its manifestations. Such a spirit is the most depressing augury that confronts those who sincerely wish to settle the question on sound principles.

With a Negro population which has increased in the last forty years from four and a half millions to nine millions, of whom eight millions inhabit the South and four and a half millions inhabit the six Southern Atlantic and Gulf States, where in large sections they outnumber the whites two and three to one, and in some parishes ten to one;[2] with this population owning less than 4 per cent. of the property and furnishing from 85 to 93 per cent. of the total number of criminals; with the two races drifting further and further apart, race-feeling growing, and with ravishing and lynching spreading like a pestilence over the country, it is time that all sensible men should endeavor as far as possible to dispel preconceived theories and look at the subject frankly and rationally.

It must appear to all except the doctrinaire and those to whose eyes, seared by the red-hot passions of the war and the yet more angry passions of the Reconstruction period, no ray of light can ever come, that it is of vital importance that a sound solution of the problem should be reached. It behooves all who discuss it to do so in the most dispassionate and catholic spirit possible. The time has passed for dealing with the matter either in a spirit of passion or of cocksure conceit. Well-meaning theorists, and what Hawthorne termed “those steel machines of the devil’s own make, philanthropists,” have with the best intentions “confused counsel” and made a mess of the matter. And after nearly forty years, in which money, brains, philanthropy, and unceasing effort have been poured out lavishly, the most that we have gotten out of it is the experience that forty years have given, and a sad experience it is. The best-informed, the most clear-sighted and straight-thinking men of the North admit sadly that the experiment of Negro suffrage, entered into with so much enthusiasm and sustained at so frightful a cost, has proved a failure, as those who alone knew the Negro when the experiment was undertaken prophesied it must, in the nature of things, prove. Only those who, having eyes, see not, and ears, but will not hear, still shut up their senses and, refusing to take in the plain evidences before them, babble of outworn measures—measures that never had a shred of economic truth for their foundation, and, based originally upon passion, have brought only disaster to the whites and little better to those whom they were intended to uplift.

II

Two principles may be laid down to which, perhaps, all will assent. First, it is absolutely essential that a correct understanding of the question should be had; and, secondly, the only proper settlement of it is one that shall be founded on justice and wisdom—a justice which shall embrace all concerned.