These statements are but fragments taken from the papers by Mr. Hemphill, Governor Hampton, and others, who cite the public records, and are simply bare statistics. No account has been taken of the imposition practised throughout the South during the period of Negro domination; of the vast, incredible, and wanton degradation of the Southern people by the malefactors, who, with hoards of ignorant Negroes just freed from the bonds of slavery as their instruments, trod down the once stately South at their will. No wonder that Governor Chamberlain, Republican and carpet-bagger as he was, should have declared, as he did in writing to the New England Society: “The civilization of the Puritan and Cavalier, of the Roundhead and Huguenot, is in peril.”[96]
A survey of the field and a careful consideration of the facts have convinced me that I am within the bounds of truth, when I say that the Southern States, with the exception, perhaps, of one or two of the border States, were better off in 1868, when reconstruction went into force, than they were in 1876, when the carpet-bag governments were finally overthrown; and that the eight years of Negro domination in the South cost the South directly and indirectly more than the entire cost of the war, inclusive of the loss of values in slave property. I think if Mr. Cable, and those who accept his theorem, will study the history of the Southern States, even as written only in the statistics, taking no account, if they please, of the suffering and the humiliation inflicted on the white race of the South during the period in which the South was under the domination of the rulers selected by the Negroes, they will find that there is not so much difference between the proposition which he formulates and that which the South states, when it declares that the pending question is one of race domination, on which depends the future salvation of the American people.
VIII
Twenty-seven years have rolled by since the Negro was given his freedom; nearly twenty-five years have passed since he was given a part in the government, and was taken up to be educated.[97] The laws were so adapted that there is not now a Negro under forty years old who has not had the opportunity to receive a public school education. Through private philanthropy these public schools (many of which are of a high grade) have been supplemented by institutions established on private foundations. That the Negroes have had a not ungeneral ambition to attend school is apparent from the school attendance of the race, as shown by the statistics, the Negro enrolment in the schools for the session of 1878-88 being 1,140,405, or a little over one-half of their entire school population.
Besides this, every profession, every trade, and every department of life have been open to him as to the White; he has had his own race as his constituency; he has possessed the backing of the North, and the good-will of the South. But what has he done? What has he attained?
The South has viewed his political course with suspicion, and in this field of activity has opposed him with all her resources; but she has not been mean or niggardly toward him. On the contrary, in every place, at all times, even while she was resisting and assailing him for his political action, she has displayed toward him in the expenditures for his education a liberality which, in relation to her ability, amounted to lavishness.
The Rev. Dr. A. D. Mayo, eminent alike for his learning and philanthropy, and a Northern educator of note, declared not long ago that “No other people in human history has made an effort so remarkable as the people of the South in reëstablishing their schools and colleges. Overwhelmed by war and bad government, they have done wonders, and with the interest and zeal now felt in public schools in the South, the hope for the future is brighter than ever.” “Last year,” he says, speaking in 1888, “these sixteen States paid nearly $1,000,000 each for educational purposes, a sum greater according to their means than ten times the amount now paid by most of the New England States.”
Virginia has expended on her public schools, including the session of 1890-91, according to the figures of Colonel Ruffin, the Second Auditor of Virginia, taken from official sources, $23,380,309.97. Her Negro schools cost her for the year 1889-90, by the same estimate, $420,000, of which the Negroes paid about $60,000.[98]
Governor Gordon, of Georgia, in a recent address, said of that State: “When her people secured possession of the State government, they found about six thousand colored pupils in the public schools, with the school exchequer bankrupt. To-day, instead of six thousand, we have over one hundred and sixty thousand colored pupils in the public schools, with the exchequer expanding and the schools multiplying year by year.” He says further, “The Negroes pay one-thirtieth of the expense, and the other twenty-nine-thirtieths are paid by the whites.”
The other Southern States have not been behind Virginia and Georgia in this matter.