The South and the National Government

by William H. Taft

North Carolina presents an admirable type of the present conditions in the South. It offers, therefore, a suitable subject for the discussion planned for this evening, and I count it a privilege to be present to hear it. One, in any degree responsible for the government and welfare of the whole country at this time in her history, must take an especial interest in the trend of public opinion and the conditions, material and political, of the South.

The laws of the United States have equal operation from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. Congress has representatives from every part of the country, including the South, whose votes are recorded upon national legislation. Railroads do not break bulk between North and South. Interstate commerce goes on unvexed between the one and the other. The Post-office department distributes its mail with impartiality on each side of Mason's and Dixon's Line. Prosperity in the North is accompanied by prosperity in the South, and a halt in the one means a halt in the other. Northern people meet Southern people, and find them friendly and charming and full of graceful and grateful companionship.

What is it that sets the South apart and takes from the Southern people the responsibilities which the members of a republic ought to share in respect to the conduct of the National Government? Why is it that what is done at Washington seems to be the work of the North and the West, and not of the South? Should this state of affairs continue? These are the questions that force themselves on those of us concerned with the Government and who are most anxious to have a solid, united country, of whose will the course of the Government shall be an intelligent interpretation and expression.

We can answer these questions as the historian would, and we can explain the situation as it is; but I don't think we can justify or excuse a continuance of it. Looking back into the past, of course, the explanation of the difference between the South and the other two sections was in the institution of slavery. It is of no purpose to point out that early in the history of the country the North was as responsible for bringing slaves here as the South. We are not concerned with whose fault it was that there was such an institution as slavery. Nor are we concerned with the probability that, had the Northerners been interested in slaves, they would have viewed the institution exactly as the Southerners viewed it and would have fought to defend it because as sacred as the institution of private property itself. It is sufficient to say, as I think we all now realize, that the institution of slavery was a bad thing and that it is a good thing to have got rid of it. It doesn't help in the slightest degree in the present day to stir up the embers of the controversy of the past by attempting to fix blame on one part of the country or the other, in respect to an institution which has gone, and happily gone, on the one hand, or in respect to the consequences of that institution which we still have with us, on the other. These consequences we are to recognize as a condition and a fact, and a problem for solution rather than as an occasion for crimination or recrimination.

Over the question of the extension of slavery the Civil War came, and that contest developed a heroism on both sides, in the people from the North and the people from the South, that evokes the admiration of all Americans for American courage, self-sacrifice, and patriotism. But when slavery was abolished by the war the excision of the cancer left a wound that must necessarily be a long time in healing. Nearly 5,000,000 slaves were freed; but 5 per cent. of them could read or write; a much smaller percentage were skilled laborers. They were but as children in meeting the stern responsibilities of life as free men. As such they had to be absorbed into and adjusted to our civilization. It was a radical change, full of discouragement and obstacles. Their rights were declared by the war Amendments, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth. The one established their freedom; the second their citizenship and their rights to pursue happiness and hold property; and the third their right not to be discriminated against in their political privileges on account of their color or previous condition of servitude.

I am not going to rehearse the painful history of reconstruction, or what followed it. I come at once to the present condition of things, stated from a constitutional and political standpoint. And that is this: That in all the Southern States it is possible, by election laws prescribing proper qualifications for the suffrage, which square with the Fifteenth Amendment and which shall be equally administered as between the black and white races, to prevent entirely the possibility of a domination of Southern state, county, or municipal governments by an ignorant electorate, white or black. It is further true that the sooner such laws, when adopted, are applied with exact equality and justice to the two races, the better for the moral tone of state and community concerned. Negroes should be given an opportunity equally with whites, by education and thrift, to meet the requirements of eligibility which the State Legislatures in their wisdom shall lay down in order to secure the safe exercise of the electoral franchise. The Negro should ask nothing other than an equal chance to qualify himself for the franchise, and when that is granted by law, and not denied by executive discrimination, he has nothing to complain of.

The proposal to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment is utterly impracticable and should be relegated to the limbo of forgotten issues. It is very certain that any party founded on the proposition would utterly fail in a national canvass. What we are considering is something practical, something that means attainable progress. It seems to me to follow, therefore, that there is, or ought to be, a common ground upon which we can all stand in respect to the race question in the South, and its political bearing, that takes away any justification for maintaining the continued solidity of the South to prevent the so-called Negro domination. The fear that in some way or other a social equality between the races shall be enforced by law or brought about by political measures really has no foundation except in the imagination of those who fear such a result. The Federal Government has nothing to do with social equality. The war amendments do not declare in favor of social equality. All that the law or Constitution attempt to secure is equality of opportunity before the law and in the pursuit of happiness, and in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. Social equality is something that grows out of voluntary concessions by the individuals forming society.

With the elimination of the race question, can we say that there are removed all the reasons why the people of the South are reluctant to give up their political solidarity and divide themselves on party lines in accordance with their economic and political views? No. There are other reasons, perhaps only reasons of sentiment, but with the Southern people, who are a high-strung, sensitive, and outspoken people, considerations of sentiment are frequently quite as strong as those of some political or economic character. In the first place it is now nearly forty years since the South acquired its political solidarity, and the intensity of feeling by which it was maintained, and the ostracism and social proscription imposed on those white Southerners who did not sympathize with the necessity for such solidarity, could not but make lasting impression and create a permanent bias that would naturally outlast the reason for its original existence. The trials of the reconstruction period, the heat of the political controversies with the Republican party, all naturally, during the forty years, implanted so deep a feeling in the Southern Democratic breast that a mere change of the conditions under which this feeling was engendered could not at once remove it. The Southern people are a homogeneous people; they preserve their traditions; they are of the purest American stock; and the faith of the father is handed down to the son, even after the cause of it has ceased, almost as a sacred legacy.

Again, for a long time succeeding the war, the South continued poor. Its development was much slower than that of the rest of the country. Prosperity seemed to be Northern prosperity, not Southern. And, in such a time, the trials of life of the present only accentuated the greater trials of the past, and reminiscences of the dreadful sufferings and privations of the war were present on every hand, and feelings that the controversy had given rise to, remained with an intensity that hardly seemed to be dimmed by passing time.

But times change, and men change with them in any community, however fixed its thoughts or habits, and many circumstances have blessed us with their influence in this matter.