The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

They have some qualities which I cannot even presume to claim in an equal degree for the people among whom I, myself, dwell. They have an aptness for command which makes the Southern gentleman, wherever he goes, not a peer only, but a prince. They have a love for home; they have, the best of them, and the most of them, inherited from the great race from which they come, the sense of duty and the instinct of honor as no other people on the face of the earth. They are lovers of home. They have not the mean traits which grow up somewhere in places where money-making is the chief end of life. They have, above all, and giving value to all, that supreme and superb constancy which, without regard to personal ambition and without yielding to the temptation of wealth, without getting tired and without getting diverted, can pursue a great public object, in and out, year after year and generation after generation.

This is the race which the Negro confronts. It is a race which, whatever perils have impended, has always faced them with a steadfast mind.

Professor James Bryce in a recent paper on the Negro question arrives at the only reasonable conclusion: that the Negro be let alone and the solution of the problem be left to the course of events. Friendship for the Negro demands this. It has become the fashion of late for certain Negro leaders to talk in conventions held outside of the South of fighting for their rights. For their own sake and that of their race, let them take it out in talking. A single outbreak would settle the question.

To us of the South it appears that a proper race pride is one of the strongest securities of our nation. No people can become great without it. Without it no people can remain great. We purpose to stand upon it.

The question now remains, What is to become of the Negro? It is not likely that he will remain in his present status, if, indeed, it is possible for him to do so. Many schemes have been suggested, none of them alone answerable to the end proposed. The deportation plan does not seem practicable at present. It is easy to suggest theories, but much more difficult to substantiate them. I hazard one based upon much reflection on the subject. It is, that the Negro race in America will eventually disappear, not in a generation or a century—it may take several centuries. The means will be natural. Certain portions of the Southern States will for a while, perhaps, be almost given up to him; but in time he will be crowded out even there. Africa may take a part; Mexico and South America a part; the rest will, as the country fills up, as life grows harder and competition fiercer, become diffused and disappear, a portion, perhaps, not large, by absorption into the stronger race, the residue by perishing under conditions of life unsuited to the race. The ratio of the death-rate of the race is already much larger than that of the white. Consumption and zymotic diseases are already making their inroads.[99]

Meantime he is here, and something must be done to ameliorate conditions.

In the first place, let us have all the light that can be thrown on the subject. Form an organization to consider and deal with the subject, not in the spirit of narrowness or temper, but in a spirit of philosophic deliberation, such as becomes a great people discussing a great question which concerns not only their present but their future position among the nations. We shall then get at the right of the matter.

Let us do our utmost to eliminate from the question the complication of its political features. Get politics out of it, and the problem will be more than half solved. Senator Hampton stated not long ago in a paper contributed by him to the North American Review that, to get the Negro out of politics, he would gladly give up the representation based on his vote. Could anything throw a stronger light on the apprehension with which the Negro in politics is regarded at the South?

There never was any question more befogged with demagogism than that of manhood suffrage. Let us apply ourselves to the securing some more reasonable and better basis for the suffrage. Let us establish such a proper qualification as a condition precedent to the possession of the elective franchise as shall leave the ballot only to those who have intelligence enough to use it as an instrument to secure good government rather than to destroy it. In taking this step we have to plant ourselves on a broader principle than that of a race qualification. It is not merely the Negro, it is ignorance and venality which we should disfranchise. If we can disfranchise these we need not fear the voter, whatever the color. At present it is not the Negro who is disfranchised, but the white. We dare not divide.

Having limited him in a franchise which he has not in a generation learned to use, continue to teach him. It is from the educated Negro; that is, the Negro who is more enlightened than the general body of his race, that order must come. The ignorance, venality, and superstition of the average Negro are dangerous to us. Education will divide them and will uplift them. They may learn in time that if they wish to rise they must look to the essential qualities of good citizenship. In this way alone can the race or any part of the race look for ultimate salvation.