Only a minority—some members of which try to make up in noise what it lacks in numbers—cling to the old prejudices, passions, and policy of interference. Mr. Ernest Crosby—a hot partisan for negro rights—has recently published a “Life of Garrison,” and very boldly admits that while Slavery was wrong the war which was waged upon the South was also wrong.
Ten years ago such a sentiment would have drawn volleys of protest from the North, the East and the West.
There are no protests now; and I shouldn’t wonder if a majority of the intelligent people of those sections would admit that while Slavery was a moral wrong, that it had been practiced by both sections, given a solemn Constitutional sanction as a condition precedent to the Union, that the South had a right to withdraw from a voluntary compact whose terms had not been kept, and that the war which was made upon her to force her back into the Union was a colossal mistake and wrong.
(2) None whatever.
(3) It is.
(4) If it is a question where sectional interest or feeling is aroused—yes.
(5) Because of the tyranny of party name and party organization. Southern Democrats dare not vote independently.
(6) I think they begin to understand it. The more they see of the negro in Mass, the better they will realize our problem. As long as they seem to think that all the Southern negroes are as nice and wise as Booker Washington, they will, of course, find it difficult to get our point of view of the race question. But they will gradually come to see that there is only one Booker Washington and that he isn’t doing anything more than running a large school which any ordinary white College President could run on one half the money which Doctor Washington rakes in—why opinion will change. The doings of the negroes in San Domingo—where there are no mean Southern whites to beat, cheat, or lynch them—will also have influence in opening the eyes of the world as to what the negro, in Mass, actually is.
The idea that the negro is merely a white gentleman whom the Almighty inadvertently painted black will disappear, in time.