I have before me a book recently published by a Bible house (of all places!) in St. Louis and widely circulated in the South. It is entitled “Is the Negro a Beast?” and it goes on to prove by Biblical quotation that he has no soul! Being a beast, it becomes a small matter to kill him.
One also hears the argument now, as in slavery times, of the divine right of the white man to rule the Negro. “God intended the white man to rule,” says Vardaman, “and the Negro to be a humble servant.” And finally there is the frank argument of physical force; that the white man, being strong, will and must rule the Negro.
Hoke Smith to-day is supporting much the same position that Robert Toombs held before the war. Of course Hoke Smith has receded from the belief in the chattel slavery of the Negro for which Toombs contended; but in many other respects he evidently believes that the Negro should be reduced (as Ex-Congressman Fleming of Georgia says in the quotation given above) “to slavery in many of its substantial forms.” In order to validate its position and keep its place (and make the Negro keep his) the white aristocracy has been forced to defend the doctrine of all monarchies and aristocracies—the inequality of men in all respects. Hoke Smith states the fundamental assumption thus plainly in his address (June 9, 1906):
“I believe the wise course is to plant ourselves squarely upon the proposition in Georgia that the Negro is in no respect the equal of the white man, and that he cannot in the future in this state occupy a position of equality.”
Both the South and the North Undemocratic
Thus I have attempted to present the political situation in the South and the reasoning which underlies it. It possesses a large significance for the entire country.
Here is the fact: the war and the emancipation proclamation did not make the South completely democratic; it merely cut away one bulwark of aristocracy—slavery. The South is still dominated by the aristocratic idea, and more or less frankly so. The South has admitted only grudgingly, and not yet fully, the “poor white” man to democratic political fellowship. There are, as I have shown, hundreds of thousands of disfranchised white Americans in the South. Moreover many white leaders look askance on the new Italian immigrants, though they, too, are white men. The extreme point of view in regard to the foreigner was expressed in a speech by the Hon. Jeff Truly, candidate for governor of Mississippi, at Magnolia in that state on March 18, 1907:
“I am opposed to any inferior race. The Italian immigration scheme does not settle the labour question; Italians are a threat and a danger to our racial, industrial, and commercial supremacy. Mississippi needs no such immigration. Leave your lands to your own children. As governor of the state, I promise that not one dollar of the state shall be spent for the immigration of any such.”
As for the Negro, of course, the South has never believed in a democracy which really includes him.
But neither does the North. When we get right down to it, the controlling white men in the North do not believe in an inclusive democracy much more than the South. I have talked with many Northerners who go South, and it is astonishing to see how quickly most of them adopt the Southern point of view. For it is the doctrine which many of them, down in their hearts, really believe.