Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

by Various

Judy threw her apron over her head with a vari-toned cry issued in the keys of grief, anger and scorn. Then she stiffened her neck and rolled her eyes from side to side till the whites glistened again. "Go dar, indeed!" she indignantly exclaimed. "Ef I couldn't go on de lot to see my own dear cousin, I know I ain't gwine to dress up his dead nigger!"

The leading trait of the negro is his instability, his superficiality. It is superlative. His emotions are as easily aroused and as evanescent as those of children, flowing in a noisy and tumultuous current, but utterly without depth and volatile as ether. To this may in a measure be attributed his lack of progress, but I doubt whether he be capable of any high order of development without an infusion of Caucasian blood which will dissipate his simian type, improving the shape of his retreating forehead, changing the contour of his heavy jaw, giving weight and measurement to his now inferior and inactive brain. Since the surrender and the institution of public schools, and the opportunities for improvement afforded him, we seem to have all around us evidence of this utter instability of character. Never since the world began has he had, and never will he have again, the incentives and aids to improvement which at that time fell into his hands. There was, as one spur to ambition, the spirit of resentment which he was supposed naturally to entertain at having been kept in servitude by even the kindest of masters; but the negro is amiable and forgiving, and not only during but after the war conducted himself with admirable good feeling and moderation. Granting, then, that he indulged no feeling of resentment, there must have been, should have been, there was, a sentiment of rivalry with the whites which was pardonable and proper to the most amiable and forgiving nature; and at first the young negroes applied themselves with assiduity, and learned with an avidity which delighted some classes, and was no doubt a discomfiting surprise to others. It was astonishing to see the rapidity with which they mastered the alphabet of progress, and white mothers said to their indolent or refractory children, "Are you not ashamed to see little negroes more studious than yourself, making even greater progress according to their advantages, and in matters with which you should be already familiar?"

As time went on even the indolent or refractory white boy to some extent improved, and seemed conditionally sure of further improvement; but the negro, having arrived at a certain point—and that usually no high one—seemed incapable of further progress, as a man, though not afflicted with dimness of vision, is prevented by natural causes from seeing beyond the horizon. Doubtless the spirit of rivalry already mentioned, born of defiance and resentment in a mild form, was to some extent the incentive to application, and its brief duration serves to illustrate the instability of which we speak. Doubtless, also, many others, by reason of poverty, which necessitated manual labor, were unable to continue the pursuit of an education to any great advantage; but what numbers of white children, by the losses of war placed on the same footing—placed identically on the same footing, because they also and their parents were compelled to earn by labor their daily bread—have yet continued to improve! The negro had the same privilege of night study and (immediately after the war) as many teachers at his service as any white child. He had also one advantage over the white: he had never learned the difference between meum and tuum, and the silver lining to this cloud of ignorance lay in the fact that he was thereby enabled more speedily to increase his store of worldly goods, thus leaving time for greater devotion to the particular of mental development.

But take the minority of instances, where every advantage has been given him; where, freed from the relations of master and slave, he has been thrown with whites and the spirit of emulation naturally excited; where his parents have made every sacrifice necessary to procure him tutors (numbers of them had private teachers, and very competent ones too, just after the war) and books and all the paraphernalia of learning, and even the best social position possible to him in the section where he happened to be, themselves retreating into the background with the pathetic humility and self-abnegation of parents who believe and desire their offspring to be of a higher order than themselves,—does the highest culture of which he seems capable make him more than the peer of the mediocre white? I and hundreds of others have read with pleasure the speech of Rev. William D. Johnson, A.M., colored delegate to the Methodist Episcopal Conference which some months ago met in Georgia. It was a good speech for a colored man—a capitally, wonderfully good speech—and I applaud it with cordial pleasure and reciprocation of the good feeling which pervades it; but is it more than the address of the average white? As the address of any one of the white members would it have been reported, or have attracted attention, save for its animus?

There are exceptional cases among the negroes as among the whites; but because we have a Cuvier, a Webster, a Dupuytren, are we prepared to assert as a general fact that the brain of the white man weighs sixty-four ounces? And I speak of the negroes as a class. I refer to the negro of the South, not to the barbarian of Africa, who really exists, nor to the negro of the Northern mind, who is only "founded on fact." I refer to the negro as he is in our day and generation, not as he will or may be after centuries of revolution in his circumstances which will produce Heaven knows what changes in his mental, moral and physical nature. Many believe that these negroes, whom and whose children we have civilized, having with their freedom received ideas of social equality and personal ambition which except in isolated cases can never be realized on this continent, will gradually return, as in South Carolina they are now doing, to their original land, and thus eventually civilize their own race. Were they to return in a body, they would all probably relapse into barbarism, but if a clear stream be kept running, though the pool through which it flow be stagnant, it will in time become pure. And there is material in this country for a pretty continuous flow.

I do not say that the negro is incapable of progress, but his mental horizon is very limited, and seems bounded by natural causes as immovable (except by aid of foreign blood, which having he ceases to be a genuine negro) as the chains of mountains which in some localities limit the horizon in material Nature; and that as a people they will become the peer of the white race is simply impossible, for if progress be a law of Nature, it will be obeyed by the white man also, and he is already centuries ahead of the black, with advantages of every possible nature. Also, that they should now be competent to fill the offices many of them occupy is a pure absurdity, as demonstrated all around us—at the polls, in the jury-box, in the chair of the magistrate. A very cruel absurdity it has sometimes proved.

But speaking of their mercurial nature: I was once spending the summer at a village in the mountains, and not far from my chamber-window were three or four cabins occupied by very cleanly, orderly negroes, who had hitherto been a source of no annoyance, for I am very fond of negroes and like to have them about me. These cabins were situated near the mouth of a deep ravine heavily wooded and producing echoes of beautiful distinctness. One evening negroes began to assemble in and around the largest cabin, and there was evidently to be a meeting of some very mournful—or at any rate solemn—character, for they came quietly, shook hands silently, and crept into their places with a stealthy gliding motion. It was a weird, uncanny scene. The moon rose slowly behind the great black mountains, and cast its rays upon the tree-tops and shimmered its light on the whitewashed cabins, and only half revealed the dark figures that glided like spectres in and out; but nothing could pierce the depths of that black ravine, and it was easy to believe it the abode of spirits blest or otherwise—especially otherwise. There was a long, oppressive silence: then they began to sing. What remarkable voices they have, especially the men—so full, so rich, so deep and sonorous! If the mental development of the negro is to involve change in his physical conformation, it is to be hoped it will not interfere with his chest and lungs, nor with that wonderful cavern in the back of his mouth and at the base of the nose. Some should be kept barbarians that they may continue to be vocal instruments. No one who has heard him only as a "minstrel" can have any conception of the exquisite mournfulness, the agonizing pathos, which the negro voice is capable of expressing; nor, we may fairly add, of the wild, devil-may-care jollity; but this last is more truly represented on the stage, the invariable adjuncts of caricature not only contributing to stimulate the comedian, but broadening the effect of his voice on the hearer. Why is it that we always have caricature in negro delineations—that we never have any simple representations of the reality or any touches of unalloyed pathos? In all Nature there is nothing more pathetic than a pitiful negro. You may paint the negro's lips and roach his hair, and even exaggerate the peculiarities of his feet, but I can pick you up one, out on the suburbs or down in the alleys, who has become old and feeble and cannot work any more, whose old master is dead and whose children have kicked him out, who steals and struggles and starves in ignorant terror of the poorhouse; and for yours people will raise their opera-glasses to their eyes—for mine, their handkerchiefs.

But to return. Oh how inexpressibly mournful were their chants that night! I remember one especially. It began with a wailing recitative—a prolonged, mournful recitative in the minor key by female voices only, and at its close the men joined them in a full, deep chorus, slow and solemn, the last words of which were "Dead and gone!" The black ravine took up the sound, and from its deep, mysterious heart came back the solemn echo, "Dead and gone!" It was simply horrible. I never felt so homesick in my life; and as the mournful chant rolled toward the mountain, and then came floating back again like a corpse upon the ebbing tide, I leaned my head upon the window-sill and cried heartily. One by one my friends died and were buried, my children became orphans, and, by a curious freak of circumstances, their father and I were left to a childless old age. All possible accidents were put in requisition, all manner of possible misfortunes called upon to contribute their quota of woe. Then I fell to wondering how people could like to sing mournful things and make themselves and other people miserable; and that made me think of what negroes liked, and that naturally led to watermelons; so I dried my eyes and summoned my maid: "Betty, what is it they are singing about? Is anybody dead?"

"It's de las' en' of a funerul, I b'lieve, m'm—somebody whar dey didn't git done preachin' over him, 'count of a storm."

"Betty, the singing does make me feel so badly. Just step over and say I will send them a barrel of watermelons and cantaloupes, and those Mrs. Brown sent me too, if they will get up a dance or make any kind of cheerful noise. There is a tambourine among the children's toys: you can beat it as you go."