There was a new day for the Negro in history after the Civil War. This rending of the nation was such an upheaval that American historians eagerly applied themselves to the study of the ante-bellum period to account for the economic, social, and political causes leading up to this struggle. In their treatment of slavery and abolition, they had to give the Negro some attention. In some cases, therefore, the historians of that day occasionally departed from the scientific standard to give personal sketches of Negroes indicating to some extent the feeling, thought and the aspiration of the whole race. Writers deeply interested in the Negroes at that time wrote eulogistic biographies of distinguished Negroes and of white persons who had devoted their lives to the uplift of the despised race. The attitude in most cases was that the Negroes had been a very much oppressed people and that their enslavement was a disgrace of which the whole country should be made to feel ashamed. As it was the people of the South who had to bear the onus of this criticism and they were not at that time sufficiently enlightened to produce historians like Hildreth, Bancroft, Prescott, Redpath and Parkman, the world largely accepted the opinions of those historians who sympathized with the formerly persecuted Negroes.
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, there came about a change in the attitude of American scholarship effected largely by political movements. Because of the unpopularity and the blunders of the southern States reconstructed on the basis of universal suffrage and mainly under the dictation of white adventurers from the North, the majority of the influential men of the country reached the conclusion that the southern white man, in spite of his faults as a slaveholder, had not been properly treated. This unsatisfactory régime, therefore, was speedily overthrown and the freedman was gradually reduced to the status of the free Negro prior to the Civil War on the grounds that it had been proved that he was not a white man with a black skin.
Following immediately thereupon came a new day for education in the South. Many of its ambitious young men went North to study in the leading universities then devoting much attention to the preparation of scholars for scientific investigation. The investigators from the South directed their attention primarily toward the vindication of the slavery régime and the overthrow of the Reconstruction governments. As a result there have appeared a number of studies on slavery and the Reconstruction. All of this task was not done by southerners and was not altogether confined to the universities, but resulted no doubt largely from the impetus given it in these centers, especially at Johns Hopkins and Columbia. It was influenced to a great extent by the attitude of southern scholars. Ingle, Weeks, Bassett, Cooley, Steiner, Munford, Trexler, Bracket, Ballagh, Tremain, McCrady, Henry, and Russell directed their attention to the study of slavery. With the works of Deane, Moore, Needles, Harris, Washburn, Dunn, Bettle, Davidson, Hickok, Pelzer, Morgan, Northrop, Smith, Wright, and Turner dealing with slavery in the North, the study of the institution by States has been considered all but complete. In a general way the subject of slavery has been treated by A. B. Hart, H. E. von Holst, John W. Burgess, James Ford Rhodes, and U. B. Phillips.
The study of the Reconstruction has proceeded with renewed impetus and has finally been seemingly exhausted in a way peculiar to the recent investigators. Among these studies are those of Matthews, Garner, Ficklen, Eckenrode, Hollis, Flack, Woolley, Ramsdell, Davis, Hamilton, Thompson, Reynolds, Burgess, Pearson, and Hall, most of whom received their inspiration at Johns Hopkins University or Columbia. The same period has been treated in a general way by W. A. Dunning, John W. Burgess, James Schouler, J. B. MacMaster, James Ford Rhodes and W. L. Fleming. Most of these studies deal with social and economic causes as well as with the political and some of them are in their own way well done. Because of the bias in several of them, however, John R. Lynch and W.E.B. DuBois have endeavored to answer certain adverse criticisms on the record of the Negroes during the Reconstruction period.
Speaking generally, however, one does not find in most of these works anything more than the records of scientific investigators as to facts which in themselves do not give the general reader much insight as to what the Negro was, how the Negro developed from period to period, and the reaction of the race on what was going on around it. There is little effort to set forth what the race has thought and felt and done as a contribution to the world's accumulation of knowledge and the welfare of mankind. While what most of these writers say may, in many respects, be true, they are interested in emphasizing primarily the effect of this movement on the white man, whose attitude toward the Negro was that of a merchant or manufacturer toward the materials he handled and unfortunately whose attitude is that of many of these gentlemen writing the history in which the Negroes played a part as men rather than as coal and iron.
The multiplication of these works adversely critical of the Negro race soon had the desired result. Since one white man easily influences another to change his attitude toward the Negro, northern teachers of history and correlated subjects have during the last generation accepted the southern white man's opinion of the Negro and endeavor to instill the same into the minds of their students. Their position seems to be that because the American Negro has not in fifty years accomplished what the master class achieved in fifty centuries the race cannot be expected to perform satisfactorily the functions of citizenship and must, therefore, be treated exceptionally in some such manner as devised by the commonwealths of the South. This change of sentiment has been accelerated too by southern teachers, who have established themselves in northern schools and who have gained partial control of the northern press. Coming at the time when many Negroes have been rushing to the North, this heresy has had the general effect of promoting the increase of race prejudice to the extent that the North has become about as lawless as the South in its treatment of the Negro.
Following the multiplication of Reconstruction studies, there appeared a number of others of a controversial nature. Among these may be mentioned the works of A. H. Stone and Thomas Pierce Bailey adversely criticizing the Negro and those of a milder form produced by Edgar Gardner Murphy, and Walter Hines Page. Then there are the writings of William Pickens, and W. E. B. DuBois. These works are generally included among those for reference in classes studying Negro life, but they throw very little light on the Negro in the United States or abroad. In fact, instead of clearing up the situation they deeply muddle it. The chief value of such literature is to furnish facts as to sentiment of the people, which in years to come will be of use to an investigator when the country will have sufficiently removed itself from race prejudice to seek after the truth as to all phases of the situation.
The Negro, therefore, has unfortunately been for some time a negligible factor in the thought of most historians, except to be mentioned only to be condemned. So far as the history of the Negro is concerned, moreover, the field has been for some time left largely to those sympathetically inclined and lacking scientific training. Not only have historians of our day failed to write books on the Negro, but this history has not been generally dignified with certain brief sketches as constitute the articles appearing in the historical magazines. For example, the American Historical Review, the leading magazine of its kind in the United States, published quarterly since 1895, has had very little material in this field. Running over the files one finds Jernagan's Slavery and Conversion in the American Colonies, Siebert's Underground Railway, Stevenson's The Question of Arming the Slaves, DuBois's Reconstruction and its Benefits, and several economic studies of the plantation and the black belt by A. H. Stone and U.B. Phillips. It has been announced, however, that the Carnegie Institution for Historical Research will in the future direct attention to this neglected field.
In schools of today the same condition unfortunately obtains. The higher institutions of the Southern States, proceeding doubtless on the basis that they know too much about the Negro already, have not heretofore done much to convert the whites to the belief that the one race should know more about the other. Their curricula, therefore, as a general thing carry no courses bearing on Negro life and history.
In the North, however, the situation is not so discouraging. Some years ago classes in history in northern colleges and universities made a detailed study of slavery and abolition in connection with the regular courses in American history. There has been much neglect in this field during the last generation, since many teachers of history in the North have been converted to the belief in the justice of the oppression of the Negro, but there are still some sporadic efforts to arrive at a better understanding of the Negro's contribution to history in the United States. This is evidenced by the fact that Ohio State University offers in its history department a course on the Slavery Struggles in the United States, and the University of Nebraska one on the Negro Problem under Slavery and Freedom.