CHAPTER XLVII. CASTE AND PROGRESS.
Caste is usually found to exist in communities or countries among majorities, and against minorities. The basis of it is owing to some supposed inferiority or degradation attached to the hated ones. However, nothing is more foolish than this prejudice. But the silliest of all caste is that which is founded on color; for those who entertain it have not a single logical reason to offer in its defence.
The fact is, slavery has been the cause of all the prejudice against the negro. Wherever the blacks are ill-treated on account of their color, it is because of their identity with a race that has long worn the chain of slavery. Is there anything in black that should be hated? If so, why do we see so much black in common use as clothing among all classes? Indeed, black is preferred to either white or colors. How often the young man speaks in ecstasies of the black eyes and black hair of his lady-love! Look at the hundreds of advertised hair-dyes, used for the purpose of changing Nature! See men with their gray beards dyed black; women with those beautiful black locks, which but yesterday were as white as the driven snow! Not only this, but even those with light or red whiskers run to the dye-kettle, steal a color which Nature has refused them, and an hour after curse the negro for a complexion that is not stolen. If black is so hateful, why do not gentlemen have their boots whitewashed? If the slaves of the South had been white, the same prejudice would have existed against them. Look at the “poor white trash,” as the lower class of whites in the Southern States are termed.
The general good conduct of the blacks during the Rebellion, and especially the aid rendered to our Northern men escaping from Southern prisons, has done much to dispel the prejudice so rampant in the free states. The following, from the pen of Junius Henri Browne, the accomplished war correspondent of “The Tribune,” is but a fair sample of what was said for the negro during the great conflict. In his very interesting work, “Four Years in Secessia,” he says:—
“The negro who had guided us to the railway had told us of another of his color to whom we could apply for shelter and food at the terminus of our second stage. We could not find him until nearly dawn; and when we did, he directed us to a large barn filled with corn-husks. Into that we crept with our dripping garments, and lay there for fifteen hours, until we could again venture forth. Floundering about in the husks, we lost our haversacks, pipes, and a hat.
“About nine o’clock we procured a hearty supper from the generous negro, who even gave me his hat,—an appropriate presentation, as one of my companions remarked, by an ‘intelligent contraband’ to the reliable gentleman of ‘The New York Tribune.’ The negro did picket-duty while we hastily ate our meal, and stood by his blazing fire. The old African and voice and moistened eyes, as we parted from them with grateful hearts. ‘God bless negroes!’ say I, with earnest lips. During our entire captivity, and after our escape, they were ever our firm, brave, unflinching friends. We never made an appeal to them they did not answer. They never hesitated to do us a service at the risk even of life; and under the most trying circumstances, revealed a devotion and a spirit of self-sacrifice that were heroic.
“The magic word ‘Yankee’ opened all their hearts, and elicited the loftiest virtues. They were ignorant, oppressed, enslaved; but they always cherished a simple and beautiful faith in the cause of the Union, and its ultimate triumph, and never abandoned or turned aside from a man who sought food or shelter on his way to freedom.”
The month of May, 1864, saw great progress in the treatment of the colored troops by the government of the United States. The circumstances were more favorable for this change than they had hitherto been. Slavery had been abolished in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Missouri. The heroic assault on Fort Wagner, the unsurpassed bravery exhibited at Port Hudson, the splendid fighting at Olustee and Honey Hill, had raised the colored men in the estimation of the nation. President Lincoln and his advisers had seen their error, and begun to repair the wrong. The year opened with the appointment of Dr. A. T. Augusta, a colored gentleman, as surgeon of colored volunteers, and he was at once assigned to duty, with the rank of major. Following this, was the appointment, by Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, of Sergeant Stephen A. Swailes, of Company F., Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, as second lieutenant.