There is an astounding ignorance in the North regarding the conditions and relations of the blacks and whites of the South. The North in full control of the National Government for many years, has had before it a vast and complicated problem in statesmanship. Instead of working at it intelligently, it has lost itself in a fog of political prejudice, and is not ready at this late day to take an honest look into the matter.
For the last fifteen years what have we known of the South, especially of the blacks? What steps have we taken to ascertain the actual truth regarding four millions of negroes whom we suddenly railroaded into our political system? When the General Government wished to obtain facts concerning the geological, botanical and mineral character of the Western territory, it sent out experts skilled in examining, testing, classifying and surveying. These men were kept in the field for years, and their reports fill a score of volumes, and now we know something about the plains and the mountains. For the intricate social questions of the South, that vast tract of unknown land, that section of the Dark Continent in America, we have neither expert or surveyor, or intelligent process of examination, though the demands for accuracy in social science are as imperative as in physical. Visiting statesmen have been there. But was a visiting statesman ever known to report a fact which hurt his party?
Northern men who are in the South for the purpose of getting office will not tell the truth, because it may bear against them. Southern men, as a rule, do not report the real facts, because they are prejudiced. Northern men who have become prosperous in business at the South, long since discovered that silence was golden, and their lips are sealed to the public. The testimony of the blacks is the most unreliable of all for reasons which will be given hereafter. The poor Northern men who have failed to make a fortune in the South have a grievance, and cannot be trusted. It is upon the newspaper correspondent that the North has relied mainly for information. But he is always under limitations. One of them (whom you all know by reputation) said to me—“We correspondents are not sent here to find out the actual truth, but to support the theories of the papers which send us. It won’t do for me to say in my letters that the nigger is to blame, when the editorial columns of my paper say the white men are in the wrong.” The newspaper makes its theory first, or it inherits a theory, and then sends out for facts to fit it. Does not every one know beforehand how every daily paper in this city will treat any given political event? The best sources of information regarding the blacks are his educators. These men, all of them from the North, know something about the negro. Though little enough as yet, Congress has never asked these teachers to tell what they know about him. Facts regarding the lives or the motives of men are not obvious. The newspaper correspondent cannot reach them in an hour, or even in a year. I have been personally familiar with a number of events in the South. I have never known one of these to be correctly reported. Has any lawyer of this city ever known one of his cases to be reported accurately in the daily press? Truth seems to be in a deep well everywhere. The Herald says Edison’s light is a great success. The Nation is doubtful about it. An electrician of rare skill tells me it is a humbug. If we cannot get at the truth about matters near at home, what shall be expected regarding matters in a distant section of the country?
The Republican believes what his newspaper tells him about the South, and the Democrat does not believe it. They never unite for investigation. The historian will say hereafter that the real outrage was in our criminal neglect to ascertain the truth. It is easy to see that it is supremely difficult to get at the facts about two races jostling together, like huge vessels thumping and pounding against each other in a rolling sea.
Last year the negro paper in Charleston, South Carolina, advocated the election of a Democratic mayor. The Republican papers had no use for that fact. It did not indicate the existence of outrages. It was rather in the line of what Tyndall calls the tragedy of science—a beautiful theory killed by an incontrovertible fact. For two years the Democratic party of Georgia has been so broken up that as many as six or seven independent Democratic tickets in local issues have been in the field in many counties, and the white candidate, who has captured a negro vote, sees to it with rifle and revolver that no other white opponent interferes with that black vote.
Facts like these occur by the hundred in Southern politics, but the Republican press ignore them. The Northern men who are educating the negro regard Captain Thompson, superintendent of public schools in South Carolina, as one of the most efficient men of the South in extending negro education; but the Tribune calls him a bloody-shirt orator. The negro teacher is at present his best friend, and his evidence about the whites should be credible if not conclusive.
AN ILLUSTRATED PRESS.
We have received two communications lately in regard to the importance of the Press in the education of the colored people—one from an esteemed friend in the West, urging that other institutions should follow the example of Hampton and Talladega in publishing papers. We are not sure that this is altogether desirable. There must be many favoring conditions to make it a success; otherwise there is a certainty of pecuniary loss and wasted effort. The other letter is from an English missionary in the West Indies, who thus states the case as to the value of periodical literature to supplement the influences of the church and the school:
“There remains, as a means of elevating and advancing the colored people, the Press. The periodical Press has been of untold service in promoting the civilization of the English and American white laborers. It has come into their homes, arousing them, week by week, with fresh power and stimulus. It has filled their homes with pictures of beauty, which delighted themselves and their children, and taught them, indirectly, (and therefore most effectually,) lessons of thrift, neatness and refinement. Every picture of a clean, neatly-dressed child, of a well-kept home, of a happy fireside group, etc., etc., carried its lesson and left its impress, suggesting imitation, and stimulating efforts for improvement.