CHAPTER VI.

THE IDEAL SOLUTION.

I have attempted to show that the negro problem in the Southern States cannot be satisfactorily solved by the limitation of the suffrage, by the surrender of any portion of the country to the control of the black majority, by education of the coloured citizen, or by miscegenation of the races. The central point of the situation is the presence of the negro in the South. If he were not there, there would be no negro difficulty. The solution, therefore, that alone promises to be thoroughly effective is his removal. His mere dissemination throughout the Union would not be sufficient. No scheme of emigration from the South to the North and West can permanently benefit the negro or settle the race question. The “colour line” is, as has been repeatedly shown, even more clearly defined in the North than in the South. Everywhere in the South, for example, one may see black and white cab-drivers, though they do not love one another, plying indiscriminately for hire, black and white bricklayers working on the same buildings, black and white compositors setting up type at adjoining cases; but in most parts of the North things are different. There, with very few exceptions, the negro is not admitted to ordinary trade-union organisations; he is remorselessly “crowded out” from every occupation and employment; and his position is, upon the whole, worse than in Georgia or Louisiana. If the seven or eight millions of coloured people were to-morrow scattered equally over the States, the South, no doubt, would be relieved, but neither the North and West nor the negro would be better off. A more radical programme of removal must be adopted by any party that earnestly desires alike the welfare of the inferior stock and the final solution of the problem. There must be another exodus from Egypt, another restoration of the captive tribes.

In its bare outline the policy with which I am about to deal is not new. One of Thomas Jefferson’s most prophetic utterances was:—“Nothing is more clearly written in the Book of Destiny than the emancipation of the blacks; and it is equally certain that the two races will never live in a state of equal freedom under the same Government, so insurmountable are the barriers which nature, habit, and opinion have established between them.”

Jefferson, who died nearly forty years before emancipation became an accomplished fact, did not omit to prepare, so far as lay in his power, for the evil which he saw approaching. With Henry Clay and others, he founded the African Colonisation Society, which established on the west coast of Africa the Negro Republic of Liberia, and, between 1820 and 1860, sent thither about 10,000 free coloured people. It may at once be admitted that the colony has not been a conspicuous success, for the American immigrants and their descendants now hardly number 5,000 souls, and, according to Mr. Charles H. J. Taylor, a late American Minister to the Republic, the place is to-day “a land of snakes, centipedes, fever, miasma, poverty, superstition, and death.” But the comparative failure of the Liberia scheme is due, in my humble opinion, rather to the principles in accordance with which it was carried out than to any inherent and necessary unfitness of the negro for colonisation. I shall later point out what appears to me to be the weak points in the Constitution of Liberia, as well as in that of Hayti. If they lie where I suspect they do, it is only natural that Jefferson and his associates and successors should have overlooked them.

Nor were Jefferson and his friends the only ones who, early in the century, sought to fend off the looming negro difficulty. In 1825 Senator Rufus King, of New York, was so far-seeing as to introduce to the United States Senate a resolution declaring that “the whole public land of the United States, with the net proceeds of all future sales thereof, shall constitute and form a fund which is hereby appropriated; and the faith of the United States is hereby pledged that the said fund shall be inviolably applied to aid the emancipation of such slaves within any of the United States, and to aid the removal of such slaves and the removal of such free persons of colour in any of the United States, as by the laws of the States respectively shall be allowed to be emancipated, to any territory or country without the limits of the United States.”

Senator King was far in advance of his day and generation, and, not unnaturally, his motion came to nothing; but it is very likely indeed that, had it been carried, there would at the present moment be no considerable number of negroes in North America. The sum of money which under his scheme would already have become available for the removal of the coloured people exceeds £50,000,000 sterling, exclusive of interest, and the lands still undisposed of are worth, at a moderate computation, a hundred millions more.

Nothing practical, however, save the Liberia experiment, was attempted in Mr. King’s day, or has been attempted since, towards the final solution of a problem which for a generation has been yearly growing graver and more dangerous.

It looks now as if the moment were about to arrive when either the question must be peaceably settled or it will settle itself by violence; and it is, therefore, worth while to consider whether the most radical and permanent solution of the difficulty is practicable, and, supposing it to be so, how it may, even at this late hour, be accomplished without force and injustice.

First, let me premise that the United States, as a whole, and not merely the South, owes an enormous debt to the negro race. Everyone admits that the institution of slavery was a crime against humanity; but everyone does not remember that for a century and more the North was _particeps criminis_. Some aspects of her responsibility will be found dealt with in the Appendix on Slavery in the North. It is too often forgotten that Southern slavery, up to the time of emancipation, existed under and was protected by the laws of the Union.

The debt owing to the blacks is manifold. Something is due to those who, against their will, were dragged from their homes, subjected to the untold horrors of the middle passage, and forced to labour, unrequited, for strangers. What the horrors of the middle passage were is hinted at rather than told in the log-book of Her Majesty’s ship _Skipjack_, which, in 1835, captured the Portuguese slaver _Martha_, with 447 slaves on board. The _Martha_ had left Loango forty-three days before for Brazil with a freight of 790 slaves, of whom 353, or nearly 45 per cent., had perished from the tortures and miseries of the voyage. These tortures and miseries were not less, we may be sure, fifty or one hundred years earlier. Something, again, is due to those who, in the land of their captivity, were deprived by law of education, of the privilege of marriage, and of the guardianship of their children. More, perhaps, is due to those who, in support of the triumphant principles of the land of their captivity, shed their blood. As many as 300,000 people of colour took arms during the Civil War. And thankful recognition, if nothing beyond, is owing by the South to the subject race which, in the hour of national adversity, instead of rising to complicate the troubles of the Confederacy, was loyal, and even helpful, to the dominant class. There are other grounds of indebtedness, but they have been so fully indicated in the course of this work that I need not again specify them. My only objects here are to insist upon the fact that a heavy debt has been incurred, and to point out that the time has not yet come when the United States can say, “We are doing something tangible towards paying it off.”

In considering the practicability of the removal from the United States of the blacks and coloured people, one must bear in mind the following questions:—

Is the negro willing to go?

Can the negro be dispensed with?

How can he be removed?

Whither can he be sent?

First let me attempt to offer a reply to the question, “Is the negro willing to go?” I believe that he is, but he can best answer for himself. The Rev. T. S. Lee, a coloured clergyman of Charleston, speaking on Emancipation Day, 1890, said:—

“I believe that the ultimate solution of the so-called race problem will be emigration, from necessity, if not from choice.... For two people so distinct from each other in their physical structure, and between whom there are naturally such insurmountable barriers, to develop on separate and distinct lines, dwelling together here, is about as reasonable as for two kings to reign on the same throne at one and the same time.... We make a great mistake when we suppose that the Anglo-Saxon gave us our enfranchisement for the love he had for us ... He did it because he thought he could use us.... It is a mistaken idea for us to kneel down to the whites. The Anglo-Saxon and the black man cannot work together; one or the other will have to leave, and I am somewhat of a believer in the tale about the Lord’s fire. The fire will not burn the people, but it will be so warm that our people will have to move on or get burnt; and I rather believe that they will move on.... We must show our independence, and the sooner we do this the better. Let some of us leave—go to Africa if necessary—and show that we can get along without the Anglo-Saxon, and, by this spirit of independence, make him learn and appreciate our value. Independence and emigration are, in my opinion, the only solutions to this great question.”

And Mr. Lee does not stand alone. Bishop H. M. Turner, of Atlanta, Georgia, a leader among the negro Methodists, said, in the course of a public speech in 1889, that nothing but poverty had kept his people where they were, and that nothing but actual departure from the country could cure existing evils.

And a few days later, he said, with reference to the Morgan Bill which was then before Congress:—

“May God grant that the Bill may pass. The white people brought us here against our will. Now they ought to provide for us to leave if we desire. Besides, we must work out our destiny anyhow, and if a portion of us think we can do it better elsewhere, let the nation help us to try it. If the Bill meant compulsory expatriation, we would fight it to the death; but, as it is voluntary upon the part of the negro, let it pass as soon as possible. The negro at best is but a scullion here, and he can be no less in Africa. I am tired of negro problems, lynch law, mob rule, and continual fuss, and millions of other negroes are tired of it. We want peace at some period in our existence, and if we cannot have it here, where we were born and reared, let that portion of us who choose to try another section of the world have a little help. This nation owes the negro forty billion of dollars any way; so give us a little to emigrate upon.”

Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden, formerly of the West Indies and more recently of Sierra Leone, is another distinguished negro who advocates negro emigration from the States. More than this, in November, 1889, a negro colonisation society was established in Augusta, Georgia, to promote emigration to Africa. At about the same time a wholesale emigration of negroes to Mexico was projected, and a negro delegation visited the city of Mexico to make arrangements for it; while, a little earlier, a large scheme of negro migration from the States to the Argentine Republic was extensively advocated by most of the negro journals of the South. Unfortunately, neither Mexico nor the Argentine Republic wants the negro. The Mexican newspapers, as with one voice, bitterly attacked the scheme, and called upon their Government to be patriotic, and not to countenance a plan which would bring into the Republic a race alien in blood and language. And the Buenos Ayres _Standard_ said:—“The darkey is destined to give the United States far more trouble some day than the detested heathen Chinee; and it would be really too cool of Jonathan to ask us here to help him out of the unsavoury mess.” The _Prensa_, a Spanish newspaper of the same city, declared upon the same occasion:—

“It cannot be comprehended that a country proud, as ours is, of its wonderful and rapid advancement should commit the folly of introducing an element of obstruction, offensive both to sight and smell, and with marked tendencies to laziness. The United States would ridicule South America if the latter were to accept this Greek gift.”

But these remarks do not touch the question of the negro’s readiness to migrate. There is really no doubt that he is quite ready, provided always that migration will better him, and provided also that he can accomplish it without serious immediate loss to himself.

Can he, then, be spared? The answer, I think, is “Yes.” The Birmingham, Alabama, _Age-Herald_ took up the question in June, 1889, and thus expressed itself:—

“In the lowlands of the Mississippi delta, the river bottoms of Arkansas and Louisiana, the Alabama black belt, and the South Carolina coast, negro labour may seem indispensable; but this is simply because the big plantation system exists in those sections. It would be a blessing to the South if the big plantation system could everywhere be broken up, and small farms, occupied and cultivated by thrifty white owners, substituted. In Texas, in Georgia—in all parts of the South, in fact, except those enumerated above—the white farmers work their own fields, and work them to much better advantage than those tenanted out to negroes.... The negro can be easily dispensed with, and if he stays in the South it is painful to conceive what must be the inevitable consequence.... The negro must go, or those Southern communities where he is found in such large numbers will go to something worse than perdition.”

Upon this the Memphis _Avalanche_ of June 8th, 1889, remarked:—

“We have no hesitation in endorsing as true everything the _Age-Herald_ has said. There are hundreds and thousands of white labourers in the cotton fields of the South to-day. In Texas, where an immense amount of cotton is grown, a negro is frequently not seen in a day’s ride.”

The New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, one of the most respectable and influential of Southern journals, on June 17th, 1889, took the same view in very decided terms, and added:—

“There is no portion of the South where the whites cannot live, where they do not work more intelligently and better than the negroes, and where they do not produce larger crops _per capita_. The South would be more productive, richer, and more prosperous in every way if it were peopled altogether by white men.”

The Galveston, Texas, _News_ held similar language; so did the Charleston _News and Courier_; so did the Atlanta _Constitution_, the Nashville _American_, the Richmond _Dispatch_, the Arkansas _Democrat_, the New Orleans _Picayune_, and, in brief, all the leading newspapers of the South. Indeed, I know of no important exception. Concerning the filling of the gap which would be created by the removal of the negro, the Greenville, South Carolina, _News_ of March 17th, 1889, had already said:—

“If we can keep the white people there will be no lack of labour and population. The natural increase may be trusted to occupy every acre of available ground without the coming of new citizens; but we might reasonably hope for a great inflow of white immigration to follow the tide of coloured emigration.”

Colonel Stokes, a representative Southern, writing on the same subject, argues forcibly and convincingly against the assumption that the negro is an essential element in cotton raising. “It is generally admitted by all who are acquainted with the matter that the negroes are the most inefficient of all labourers in nearly all the fields of labour. The Southern negroes cultivate an average of not more than six or eight acres to the hand; the Northern farmer cultivates forty to sixty acres. The latter uses a great variety of improved farming implements. The negro cannot be taught to use any other than the primitive types he has been long accustomed to. Still, the planter is dependent upon the negro to till his fields simply because the negro is here and cannot be got rid of, and white labour is not available in any sufficient numbers while the field is so occupied. But it is certain that if the negro cotton-raiser could everywhere be replaced by white men, the cotton region would wear a very different aspect.”

There are even signs that the negro is being dispensed with already, and that, if he remain, his position as a labourer will deteriorate rather than improve. The _Forum_ for December, 1889, contained a powerful article on “The Race Problem,” by Professor Scomp, of Emory College, Georgia. The writer, in summing up, says:—

“Sadly, yet with perfect conviction, we are driven to the inevitable conclusion that if the negro’s citizenship and his social and business privileges are to have play and development, it must be upon another soil than that of the whites. As equals, the races cannot and will not exist together.”

And, writing privately to Dr. E. W. Blyden, Professor Scomp thus explains his views as to one aspect of the negro’s future in the States:—

“One feature which I regard as ominous to the future of most of the Southern negroes is the steady and rapid improvement in machinery in all departments of the cotton-plantation industry; _e.g._, less than two months ago there was exhibited at the Georgia State Fair, at Macon, a machine for chopping cotton, by which one man, upon a kind of buggy plough, could in one day do the work, by horse-power, of more than a dozen ordinary choppers. Such machinery, generally introduced, must, for the most part, put an end to the plantation negro’s summer work and his means of subsistence. Many efforts, too, are making at the invention of a proper cotton-picking machine, and, though this has not yet succeeded to any great degree, American industry will undoubtedly prove equal to the task of invention. When that day comes the mass of Southern negroes will be practically out of an occupation and without a livelihood.”

Apart from this, the negro is now doing much less in the South than he used to do. The Charleston _News and Courier_, which made a careful investigation of this matter in South Carolina, county by county, a few years ago, found that 30 per cent. of the cotton was raised by white and 70 per cent. by coloured labour. In Mississippi the State census of 1880, taken coincidentally with the United States census, showed that 328,568 bales were produced by white and 627,240 bales by negro labour. In these States, with large negro majorities, nearly a third of the cotton crop was raised by the whites. Judging by these figures, it is safe to say that, including the comparatively white States of Texas and Arkansas, very nearly half the cotton is raised by the whites, whereas thirty years ago not over 400,000 bales, or one-tenth the crop, was grown by them.

If, as would appear to be the case, the negro be willing to migrate and can be dispensed with, the next questions for consideration are—How can he be removed? And whither can he be sent? The two questions are intimately allied, and may best be examined together. I think that a rough key to one of them has been furnished by Mr. J. A. D. Mitchell, who, writing on January 11th, 1890, to the Cleveland, Ohio, _Gazette_, a newspaper conducted by and in the interests of coloured people, says:—

“Let the United States Government assume a protectorate over such portions of the African Continent as are not already provided for, and, to enforce the claim, call for 100,000 or more American negro volunteers to assist, not only in the abolition of the slave traffic, but also in Christianising and reclaiming the African negro from heathenism and idolatry. I claim that climatic and other influences preclude the possibility of the white man accomplishing much without the aid and influence of the negro.... The necessity for forced emigration or colonisation would (either being distasteful as well as impracticable) be supplanted by a voluntary uprising of the negro to participate in reclaiming the land of his forefathers.”

There is here, I really believe, the germ, though only the germ, of a sound and useful scheme. It is not likely that the United States Government will, in our day, assume onerous protectorates in other continents; and it is not, I am convinced, desirable that, in the future home of the negro, the emigrant shall live under institutions similar to those which at present contribute so much to his discomfort. If the black were to move to what would practically be an American foreign possession, he would scarcely improve his position. He would still find himself on nominal equality with, but in actual inferiority to, the white governing powers. If not, he would have to govern himself; and for this task the negro is peculiarly unfitted. It is for this reason that Hayti and Liberia have proved failures.

Where I detect the true ring in Mr. Mitchell’s crude suggestion is in his proposal that the negro shall be given not only a country, but also a stimulus to make himself worthy of the boon. In one or other of these, to my mind, absolutely essential features, all the remaining projects of negro migration that have come under my notice are lacking.

Several Bills, aspiring to deal in an adequate manner with the race problem, have lately been brought before the notice of the United States Senate. Senator Butler, of South Carolina, asked for the appropriation of five millions of dollars in aid of negro emigration generally. Senator Gibson, of Louisiana, advocated the acquirement, as the negro’s future home, of extra-Union territory. Senator Morgan, of Alabama, brought forward a scheme of African colonisation; and Senator Call, of Florida, revived the old project of opening negotiations with Spain to secure the establishment in Cuba of a negro republic.

But all these legislators have missed the one important point. You cannot, without the use of force, ensure anything approaching to a general exodus of a whole race, unless you first provide the people with high aims, and also hold out to them a reasonable hope of improved political, social, and financial conditions. Had the Israelites seen nothing better than Egypt before them, they would never have quitted the land of Goshen; had the Babylonian captives not looked to the rebuilding of the Temple, it is doubtful whether many of them would have availed themselves of Cyrus’s permission to return to Palestine.

Speaking in the Senate on the subject of the Butler Bill, Senator Wade Hampton, who has been one of the most honoured and successful Governors of South Carolina, the blackest State in the Union, said, on January 30th, 1890:—

“I have expressed the opinion that the separation of the white and coloured races in the United States would be of permanent benefit to both.... I recognise as fully as anyone the political rights of the coloured people, and amongst these rights is that paramount one of every citizen of the Republic to choose his own home. The forcible expulsion of the negroes would not only be unlawful, but would be impolitic, unjust and cruel.... No thoughtful patriotic man would contemplate any such action. But whilst patriotism, wisdom, and an enlarged philanthropy dictate these views, it may still be a question whether some feasible plan cannot be adopted by which such coloured people as desire to seek a new home, where, under their own laws and their own government, they could work out their own destiny free from contact with the white race, could not receive the generous and fostering assistance of this great and rich Government.”

Like his brother legislators, Senator Hampton fails to grasp the necessity of giving to the negroes a motive to induce them to leave the States; like them, too, he appears to be of opinion that, no matter whither the negro may remove, he must be, if not an American subject, at least a self-governing individual. On both these points, I venture to think, his attitude is a wrong one; but on the other point which is dealt with in this extract from his speech he is right. The American Government ought, in recognition of its indebtedness, as well as from politic consideration of its own best interests, to be prepared to assist the proposed negro emigration; and on that point Senators Butler, Gibson, Morgan, and Call are in practical agreement with Senator Hampton.

One of the most conspicuous characteristics of the negro is, as I have already had occasion to point out, his childishness. Referring to the negroes of Africa, Mr. H. M. Stanley, writing in December last to _The Times_, said:—

“If one regards these natives as mere brutes, then the annoyances that their follies and vices inflict are, indeed, intolerable. In order to rule them and to keep one’s life amongst them, it is needful resolutely to regard them as children, who require, indeed, different methods of rule from English or American citizens, but who must be ruled in precisely the same spirit, with the same absence of caprice and anger, the same essential respect to our fellow-men.”

Another recent writer has said of them:— “They are children; children naughty or children good; pleased or angry; children to be ruled firmly, treated kindly; but always, at bottom, children.” And everyone who knows thoroughly the African negro, either in Africa or in America, can have no other estimate of his character.

This being so, is it reasonable, on the one hand, to elevate the negro, as he has been elevated in America, to a level of political and legal equality with the Caucasian; or, on the other hand, to expect this child of nature to properly govern himself? The experiment of equality has failed in America; the experiment of self-government has failed in Hayti, in Liberia, and wherever else it has been tried. Surely, then, it is as necessary, in the experiment of the future, to avoid placing the negro on a pedestal which he has proved himself incapable of occupying as it is to avoid enslaving him, oppressing him, or in any way unfairly treating him. If my contentions be sound, it results that the experiment of the future must be conducted with due regard to the following conditions:—

1. The emigrating negro must be offered a country in which he may pursue high aims, enjoy a prospect of improved political, social, and financial _status_, and find climate and employment suited to his needs.

2. He must not govern, but be governed. At the same time he must not be oppressed, either physically or morally; and there must be no restraint upon his improvement and advancement.

3. His emigration must be assisted, either by those who owe him a debt or by those who will benefit by his migration, or by both.

Accepting the above conditions as postulates, I may now definitely indicate what, after a long and careful study of the problem in its various aspects, seems to be the only solution that will be alike just and permanent.

The country that is most suitable for the negro is, beyond all cavil, that central belt of Africa which lies between the Sahara and the Tropic of Capricorn, and which includes the Congo Free State, Senegambia, Liberia, the British and German possessions on the Gulf of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gaboon, Angola, Damaraland, Mozambique, Zanzibar, and the territories of the various British and German African companies. The greater part of this belt is the negro’s own country, the place whence his ancestors were kidnapped, or in which his race still dwells; and, so far as civilisation is concerned, nearly all of it is, to this day, virgin soil.

The past fifty years have witnessed the first serious attempts on the part of civilisation to open up this immense district, the riches and fertility of which no one, even now, is in a position to estimate. Very little progress has been made. The climate and general conditions are, over much of the tract, unsuitable for the majority of Europeans. European influences, nevertheless, are almost everywhere dominant; and almost everywhere there exists the framework, though not all the machinery, of just government. The crying need of the situation is more civilisation—civilisation not of a very advanced or cultured variety, but rather civilisation of a kind which, not being too much superior to native habits and modes of thought, and being, nevertheless, of a moderately progressive type, may first, if properly encouraged and led by white influence, capture the Africans and then gradually raise them with itself to higher planes.

Who are more suited to apply such modest civilisation to the blacks of Africa than the blacks of America? Africa, as a whole, will never be a white man’s country. It will not, therefore, be the scene of such race jealousies as torment the Southern States of the American Union.

At the same time, Africa, it is tolerably certain, will always have the advantage of white rule, and of a kind of white rule, moreover, that will not possess the irksome defects of white rule as it now exists in America. In no British colony, for example, is there any reason why a capable negro should not raise himself to high position and honour. In no British colony, on the other hand, does the negro govern. And I think it may also be said that in every British colony in which he is to be found the negro is a fairly happy and contented person. It is a great mistake to suppose, as many people do, that the negro objects to be governed, and to be governed firmly. On the contrary, he likes it, provided always that the government be fair as well as firm. Colonel Shepard, an acknowledged advocate of the negro, admits, with regard to the present condition of Hayti, that the whole business is a fine illustration of the futility of introducing republican institutions to a country whose people are uneducated, untrained in affairs, and incapable of self-government.

Nor is the negro hopelessly enamoured of the suffrage. He clings to it in the United States, because there it constitutes almost his only badge of humanity; but to those who will freely concede his humanity he will as freely surrender the suffrage.

By a wholesale migration, and properly conducted, of Southern negroes to Africa, America would be relieved, and Africa would be benefited.

Already this fact has, to a limited extent, been recognised and acted upon. In 1884 a plan for the introduction of Southern negro labour to the Congo district was submitted to the King of the Belgians by an American, Colonel George W. Williams; and I believe I am correct in saying that Colonel Williams was in consequence empowered to engage twelve clerks, accountants, and storekeepers at 125f. a month, and twelve mechanics and engineers at from 200f. to 300f. a month, transportation, board, lodging, and medical attendance to be provided by the Congo Free State. Five years later, in 1889, the King of the Belgians made application to the United States for twenty-four professional men and artisans to go to the Congo as representatives of the trained and educated American negro. His Majesty’s agent visited, among other places, Shaw University, at Raleigh, North Carolina, a remarkably well-conducted college for coloured students. The principal, Dr. H. M. Tupper, declared his firm belief that thousands of American negroes would, within a few years, go to the Congo country; and he said that he recognised in the opportunity a grand means of permanently improving the condition of many coloured people.

If the American negro were shown, as he easily might be shown, first, that his exodus to Africa would result in vast good to his race, and would open to him an honourable mission as a civiliser; next, that the proceeding would result in a general amelioration of his own condition; and finally, that in Africa he would escape from the discomforts and persecutions that hem in his career in America; and if, at the same time, he were offered aid to enable him to migrate to and establish himself on the soil of his fathers, I do not doubt that he would leave America, not merely in his thousands, but in his millions. He desires, above all things, a country and an aim in life. Give him those, and he will seize them gladly. But it is useless to counsel him to go to Africa, or elsewhere, unless you also hold out to him an object to be attained. And even a grand object will not alone induce him to move. He is, as a rule, poor. His investments, such as they are, are all in America. It is necessary not only to assist him to move and settle, but also to pay him generously for the little that he must surrender.

It is impossible, while considering this scheme, to avoid thinking, again and again, of the parallelism of the exodus of the Israelites, and of the Biblical conclusion, “And they spoiled the Egyptians.” The Egyptians, like the Americans, had incurred a great debt to their bondsmen, and, like the Americans, they sought to evade it, and suffered bitterly in consequence. But the payment was inevitable in Goshen, and it is inevitable in the United States. In Goshen it was paid in the form of spoils, surrendered in panic by a people who, at the last, were glad to be rid of their captives at any cost. How will it be paid in America?

One cannot foresee, but it is quite certain that it is not yet too late for it to be voluntarily tendered in cold blood, and to be gratefully accepted; and it is reasonable to suppose that delay in payment will not lessen but rather increase the amount—be it of treasure, blood, misery, or unrest—to be ultimately paid.

It would seem, therefore, that principles of ordinary economy, as well as of common justice, indicate that an effort should be made to pay off the negro as soon as possible.

It cannot be said that the Union has any lack of means. Her actual indebtedness at the conclusion of the Civil War was, roughly speaking, £551,286,000; it is now only £187,115,000, and between June 30th and October 1st, 1890, it was reduced by £14,537,000. In twenty-five years the Federal Debt has been lessened by £364,171,000, or at the average rate of over fourteen and a half millions sterling per annum; and the annual surplus available for reduction is now, as a rule, so much larger than it was a few years ago, while the debt remaining is of such very manageable proportions, that very little hardship to the United States would result from a temporary diversion—say, for thirty years—of a portion of the surplus from the purposes of the reduction of the Federal Debt to the payment of interest and gradual payment of principal of a special series of negro emigration and settlement loans.

It is calculated that an annual sum of twelve or fourteen millions sterling might thus, without undue pinching, be diverted; and this represents a very large capital amount—an amount which would probably be quite sufficient, with a certain quota of aid from outside, not only to decently transport, but to comfortably establish in Africa, every pure-blooded negro now on United States territory.

It might not be also sufficient to buy out the negro; but that might justly be assigned as a duty, in whole or in part, to the individual States concerned, seeing that they are more immediately interested than is the nation at large in getting rid of him, and that the expenditure to be incurred would sooner or later be returned to the States in the shape of payments on the re-sale of lands and buildings now belonging to the negroes.

That the United States have not already entered upon some such course is rather remarkable; for they have spent scores of millions in the payment of debts which are less pressing, and they have, indeed, been so generous in certain directions as to have incurred the reproach of unwarrantable extravagance. They have over half a million names on their pension-roll, and they pay the pensioners more than twenty millions a year, in spite of the fact that most of the persons who benefit had no legal claim upon the country at the time when the services in respect of which pensions are now paid were rendered. The pensions are not, as pensions are in England, deferred pay; they are compensations and gratuities. The Union has been lavish with them; but the Governments which have granted them have always looked forward to a return in the shape of political support, and so the sums disbursed have been regarded as profitable investments.

Hitherto, there is no doubt, American politicians as a body have not discovered that any profit can result from the payment of the nation’s indebtedness to the negro; and that is the reason why they have not dealt with the negro as they have dealt with the soldier.

But will there be no profit? The South is now stagnant under the incubus of the negro.

According to Governor Lee, of Virginia, the negro does not “pay” as a citizen. The Greenville _News_ goes so far as to make the following estimate of the results which would follow upon the removal of two-thirds of the present coloured population from South Carolina:—

“We should lose,” it says, “$50,000 to $75,000, which is probably a full estimate of the total amount of taxes paid by coloured people; the cultivation of some land, the production of some cotton, for a time. We should have about $175,000 of the amount now used for coloured public schools for the use of white schools, nearly doubling the present terms and adding much to the facilities and comforts of teachers and scholars. We should have in the penitentiary about 100 convicts instead of 800. Our criminal courts would sit on an average from a day to a day and a half a week, nine-tenths of their time being now occupied by trying coloured persons. Our gaols would have about one-fifth of the inmates they now have, nineteen-twentieths of the prisoners now fed and kept at the cost of the taxpayers being coloured. The lunatic asylum would have one-half its present population and would cost one-half of what it now costs. The county poor-houses would contain one-half, or less, of their present population. The trial justices would have, on an average, about a case a month. These calculations are from the actual figures. What we should gain in the way of keeping white people who are now crowded out by coloured competition, the improvement of lands by intelligent and careful cultivation, and the incoming of white mechanics and farmers, are matters of further estimation.”

The Union is divided, and it is the presence of the negro that causes the division. Nearly one-eighth of the population of the Union is of alien race, and, besides being hopelessly alien, is oppressed, discontented, and dangerous. These are evils which might be abolished to the general profit. And worse evils lurk in the future. The prosecution of a race war would not be cheaper than the promotion of a negro exodus. The severance from the Union of six or eight States would be vastly more weakening to the nation as a whole. In some form the debt must be paid. Nature has never yet admitted the plea of any Statute of Limitations in cases like the one under discussion. It were well, then, to make a settlement while it can still be made peacefully and, comparatively speaking, cheaply.

If America would do its duty by the negro, those civilised nations which have established themselves in Africa would, in pursuance of their own interests, aid her. Great Britain, Germany, and France would each and all welcome the immigration to their African possessions of large and leavening bodies of American blacks. Not long ago Sir Alfred Moloney, Governor of Lagos, received a deputation from “the Brazilian and Havannah repatriates in the colony of Lagos,” and was assured that all the negroes of Brazil wished to return to the country of their ancestors. In reply, Sir Alfred Moloney said that he had induced the commercial world to take an interest in the project, and that the African Steamship Company had engaged to provide improved and cheaper facilities for negro immigrants from Brazil. He welcomed the idea of “repatriation,” and would encourage it. Much more, no doubt, would he welcome the idea of the “repatriation” of the immeasurably more civilised and less debauched American negro. The black, it is true, will not do much good for himself anywhere without white superintendence, but there is no reason why such superintendence as is necessary should not be forthcoming, and, if it be once understood that the salvation of Africa lies with the negro even more than with the white, there is every ground for believing that the American negro will rise bravely to the occasion.

Even in a greater degree than in the African possessions of Great Britain, Germany, and France does there appear to be a career for the American negro in the Congo Free State. The author of “An Appeal to Pharaoh” has indicated that State as the American negro’s promised land. A copy of the book was recently given to Mr. H. M. Stanley, a man who, having spent parts of his life not only in the Dark Continent but also in Louisiana, knows the negro both in America and in Africa. The volume drew from the traveller a very interesting letter, from which I extract the following:—

“There is space enough in one section of the Upper Congo basin to locate double the number of the negroes of the United States without disturbing a single tribe of the aborigines now inhabiting it. I refer to the immense Upper Congo forest country, 350,000 square miles in extent, which is three times larger than the Argentine Republic, and one and a half times larger than the entire German Empire, embracing 224,000,000 acres of umbrageous forest land, wherein every unit of the 7,000,000 negroes might become the owner of nearly a quarter square mile of land. Five acres of this, planted with bananas and plantains, would furnish every soul with sufficient subsistence—food and wine. The remaining twenty-seven acres of his estate would furnish him with timber, rubber, gums, dye-stuffs, for sale. There are 150 days of rain throughout the year. There is a clear stream every few hundred yards. In a day’s journey we have crossed as many as thirty-two streams. The climate is healthy and equable, owing to the impervious forest which protects the land from chilly winds and draughts. All my white officers passed through the wide area safely. Eight navigable rivers course through it. Hills and ridges diversify the scenery and give magnificent prospects. To those negroes in the South accustomed to Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, it would be a reminder of their own plantations without the swamps and the depressing influence of cypress forests. Anything and everything might be grown in it, from the oranges, guavas, sugarcane, and cotton of sub-tropical lands to the wheat of California and the rice of South Carolina. If the emigration were prudently conceived and carried out, the glowing accounts sent home by the first settlers would soon dissipate all fear and reluctance on the part of the others. But it is all a dream. The American capitalists, like other leaders of men, are more engaged in decorating their wives with diamonds than in busying themselves with national questions of such import as removing the barrier between the North and the South. The ‘open sore’ of America—the race question—will ever remain an incurable fester. While we are all convinced that the Nessus shirt which clings to the Republic has maddened her, and may madden her again, it is quite certain that the small effort needed to free themselves for ever from it will never be made.”

I am inclined to be more sanguine than Mr. Stanley was when he wrote that letter. Some solution of the race question cannot be long deferred, and surely there is enough latent justice and prudence in the American people to induce them to render the inevitable solution a peaceable and equitable one.

In a still later utterance on the subject Mr. Stanley has taken a cheerier view. The Congo Government, he declares, is favourable, and the laws are calculated to promote happiness and content. Whites cannot colonise the State, since a white man living in the Congo Valley for three years expends ten years of vitality, while women cannot retain health.

“With negroes forming the majority of its citizenship, the State would, with proper encouragement, make remarkable development, and, in time, become a great nation.... At present the Congo Free State’s government is entirely in the hands of whites, but, in my opinion, any man who can prove his capacity would receive all that any could expect.”

For the half-breed of the South another haven must be sought. He is no more the friend of the black than he is of the white. Neither desires his company. But in the West Indies, or in some parts of South and Central America, he might, no doubt, discover a land in which his existence would be a not unpleasant one.

I have discussed this great subject copiously, but very inadequately. No question at present before the world has so many aspects; and to America no question is equally important. The solution which I have advocated is costly; but it is, I believe, the only one that promises a permanent and honourable settlement of the difficulty. Any other must be imperfect, or must involve wholesale bloodshed. Until something of the kind is put into practice, the dearly bought union must remain a nominal one, and North and South must continue to cherish different aims, and to be, in effect, separate nations. Only when the negro shall have departed will the name of the United States truly represent anything more than a magnificent aspiration.

It would be ungenerous to conclude this work without some acknowledgment of the great assistance that has been rendered to me in my study of the subject by, among others, Mr. Eustace Ballard Smith, Mr. John Bigelow, Mr. P. Bigelow, Major Post, U.S.A., Mr. Chauncey M. Depew, Mr. J. W. Barnwell, Mr. G. W. Cable, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. C. M‘Kinley, Mr. S. J. E. Rawling, Mr. R. W. Gilder, and the Governors of most of the Southern States. To them, and to many others, including a number of negro gentlemen, whose names, if I have not already mentioned them incidentally, are, at their own wish, withheld, I desire to express my most grateful thanks, coupled with the sincere hope that the difficulty which interests all of them, and which is only fortunate in that it has enabled me to make their acquaintance, may, before long, cease to exist.

APPENDIX.

[Illustration: Black ornamental horizontal divider with a central diamond-shaped motif.]

A.—THE POPULATION OF THE SOUTH IN 1890.

Up to the time of sending this book to the press, no official statistics of the relative proportions of the races in the Southern States of the Black Belt in 1890 have reached me from Washington. Bulletin No. 16 of the Census Office contains, however, a final statement as to the total population of each State in question. I give the figures in tabular form, leaving vacant columns for the insertion hereafter of the missing information:—

──────────────┬───────────┬───────────┬─────────── │ Total │ White. │ Coloured. │Population,│ │ │ 1890. │ │ ──────────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────── North Carolina│ 1,617,947│ │ Virginia │ 1,655,980│ │ Georgia │ 1,837,353│ │ Florida │ 391,422│ │ Alabama │ 1,513,017│ │ Louisiana │ 1,118,587│ │ Mississippi │ 1,289,600│ │ South Carolina│ 1,151,149│ │ ──────────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────── │ 10,575,055│ │ ──────────────┴───────────┴───────────┴───────────

B.—COLOUR CASTE.

To the _Forum_ for October, 1889 (_Forum_ Publishing Company, 253, Fifth Avenue, New York), the Rev. John Snyder contributed an article with the above title. As it illustrates many points that are briefly touched upon in the present volume, I venture to append some further portions of it beyond those already quoted.

“A gifted American actor,” says Mr. Snyder, “has conceived a professional scheme which promises an affluent return of profit and reputation. He is convinced that, under certain clearly recognised conditions, the drama of _Othello_ may be made popular in the Southern States. He sees clearly, of course, why this great product of the master’s genius has been ‘under a cloud,’ so to speak, south of Mason and Dixon’s line, and he purposes revealing to the art-loving people of that section the beauties of a work which the interpretative power of the greatest actors of the past has never made tolerable on the Southern stage.

“He is conscious of the natural difficulties to be overcome; of the state of social feeling which will always resent the intrusion of the African on the histrionic stage, except within the limited range of the minstrel show. But his system contemplates an easy solution of these apparently insuperable difficulties. He does not design to impart a less pronounced colour to the face of _Othello_, because experience has taught him that the slightest tinge of creaminess in the complexion and the faintest crinkle in the hair would leave the prejudice against his hero’s race practically unaffected. He simply intends to ‘improve’ Shakspeare so that the great bard’s creations may be made generally acceptable to all sections of our free and enlightened land.

“There is no intention wilfully to misrepresent Shakspeare, or to distort his plain meanings. But this artist has reasoned himself into the conviction that the great author’s hero could not have been a negro. Therefore, all the prejudice against him on that ground is manifestly unreasonable. In the very nature of things, he must have been the representative of another race, or else _Brabantio’s_ friendship, _Desdemona’s_ love, _Cassio’s_ esteem, and the unstinted admiration of Venice would all be impossible and inconceivable. Accordingly, our actor holds, _Othello_ must have resembled one of those stately Arab chiefs whose portraits gleam from the pages of ‘Picturesque Palestine.’

“Our Southern brethren are at last to have an _Othello_ who cannot, as the moral circus advertisements say, ‘offend the most fastidious.’ Shakspeare, carefully modernised, will become popular once more in the sunny South. All references to the blackness of _Othello’s_ face and the thickness of his lips are to be conscientiously softened down into less objectionable phrases, and those audiences which may be ethnologically unenlightened are to have their sensitive natures soothed by some such prologue as _Bottom_ proposed for the sapient actors of Athens: ‘Ladies, or fair ladies, I would wish you, or I entreat you, not to fear, not to tremble; my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a “nigger,” it were a pity of my life. I am no such thing. I am an Arab.’ That would put all doubt at rest.

“The only thing likely to interfere with the success of this scheme of mingled philanthropy and profit is the presence of that vast amount of astute Shakspearean philosophy which is based upon the assumption of _Othello’s_ objectionable ethnic relationship. What becomes of Professor D. J. Snider’s ‘System of Shakspeare’s Dramas.’? It is quite probable that Shakspeare, could he be consulted, would offer no strenuous objection to the proposed change. Having been an actor himself, he would doubtless sympathise with the despair to which the modern representative of his profession is reduced in the task of catering to the present unreasonable demand for dramatic novelties. As there is not the slightest appreciable trace of a ‘system’ in any of his dramas, and as the social prejudice against the African race as such is something which in his day and generation was still unborn, it is reasonable to suppose that _Othello_ might be re-made into a Chinaman or a Choctaw without seriously affecting the motive of the tragedy.

“Still, when a man has constructed a ‘System of Shakspeare,’ and has announced that ‘Shakspeare makes race an ethical element of marriage, as important as chastity,’ and that ‘in Europe to-day the marriage of a lord and a servant-girl collides with the moral consciousness of the whole public,’ he naturally has the same kind of affection for that system which Dr. Sangrado had for his, and any attempt to upset its ‘ethical’ conclusions by substituting an Arabian _Othello_ for an Ethiopian, will be apt to be resented. It is as fundamentally unethical to marry an Arab as a negro. It will be much wiser for our actor frankly to retain the African characteristics of his hero, letting it be understood that a true Shakspearean system employs this tragedy as an ‘awful example’ to warn those who are tempted to leap over the ethical fence of racial distinctions.

“Once outside of the atmosphere of American social life, it is difficult to treat the spirit of colour caste with seriousness or decent respect. Of course, that man would be but a shallow ethnologist who should maintain that the terms ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ do not justly mark the distinctions between races, or who should refuse to acknowledge that certain choice characteristics of civilisation are confined within fairly well-ascertained racial limitations. And the man who looks with disapproval upon marriage unions between the members of a progressive race like the Caucasian, and the members of a conditionally unimprovable race, is governed by principles of the simplest prudence, to say no more. The difficulty is always in determining this question of improvability. The Spanish race in its various colonies has seemed to stand still for three centuries, yet to attribute racial inferiority to the countrymen of Cervantes and Loyola would be manifestly unjust. The negro race in this country may be mentally and morally both inferior and unimprovable, and hence it would be both wise and ethical for our stock to refuse to make with it a mixture of blood. But the average American knows nothing and cares nothing about any physiological reasons for declining such marriages. In truth, the race question does not, with us, involve this marriage element at all. Generally speaking, nobody wants his daughter to marry a negro, and the negro is not anxious to seek such marriages. As a matter of fact, in the matter of marriage the negro is ridiculously fastidious, accepting without complaint the white man’s classification of every shade of colour, even the slightest, under the head of negro, and rigorously claiming for his own race every possible modification of the original type. There are plenty of octoroons and quadroons who might easily pass for members of the white race, but who never think of seeking marriage associations outside their mother’s stock. And they would be subjected to the severe censure of the black race if they did so. The bugbear of ‘miscegenation’ is the least substantial phantom that haunts the imagination of ignorant people.

“The cruel wall of caste which has been relentlessly built around the negro in this country was not created by the fear of racial deterioration on the part of the Caucasian. The feeling from which it sprang is so inexplicable as almost to defy any philosophical analysis. That in the Southern States slavery should have created a clearly defined colour caste was reasonable and natural. That among a people generous in disposition and generally religious in their habits of mind this caste feeling should have been strengthened by every argument tending to show the negro’s natural inferiority and fitness for his servile position was equally natural. That within the limits of slave territory every Southern gentleman should consider the presence of mental ability in an individual negro a reflection upon the system and a menace to its continuance, was the most reasonable thing in the world. But it is only justice to say that not in the South but in the North did this curious feeling of colour caste first have its rise. The Southern man apparently denied to the negro social recognition not primarily because he was a negro, but because he was a slave. The Northern man seems to hate the negro primarily on account of his colour. In domestic service, the filthiest and most ignorant Irish or German servant refuses to eat at the same table with the cleanest and most respectable negro. In some of our hotels the wealthiest negro in the land could not purchase, at any price, the privilege of sitting in the common dining-room, or of occupying one of the sleeping apartments. Industrially, he is practically restricted to a “beggarly account,” of the least profitable and most menial trades. Those labour unions which complain so bitterly of the oppression of capital, and announce Utopian principles of universal brotherhood, do not dare to cast their mantle of protection over the despised and neglected labourer with a black skin. But saddest of all is the attitude which the Church has held towards this spirit of colour caste. Ideally, at least, the Church is the home of human equality. All classes and conditions of men are supposed to meet there on a common ground. And while we constantly depart from this principle in practice, we usually try to cover and disguise our shortcomings by a thin veil of self-exculpation. We may not want the poor and poorly dressed man sitting in our pews, but we rarely make a frank confession of the fact. Only the negro is openly, and by common consent, excluded from the broad definition of Christian equality. We have not yet accepted Mr. Nasby’s advice, and altered our version of the New Testament so that it shall read ‘Suffer the little (white) children to come unto Me,’ but it would be quite consistent for us to do so.

“This condition of things would cease to be mysterious if it were based upon recognised physiological reasons. We can easily understand _Brabantio’s_ surprise when his daughter became enamoured of a thick-lipped African, or Aunt Ophelia’s disgust at seeing Eva hanging about the neck of Uncle Tom. We are not disposed to question the good Puritan’s conviction that the pure negro is ‘an acquired taste.’ But we entertain the same personal and social repugnance for every possible modification of the negro. Even when the bleaching process has been so thorough that no external indication of African blood remains; even when the individual has assumed all the characteristics of Caucasian beauty and intelligence, we still treat him as a social pariah. Several years ago there was, at a certain school in Pittsburg, a very beautiful and intelligent young lady. In scholarship and deportment she stood for a year at the head of the school. At the end of that time somebody told the principal that his favourite pupil had lurking in her veins a few unsuspected and undiscoverable drops of African blood. She was turned out of the doors as ignominiously as if she had been guilty of unchastity or was afflicted with some infectious disease.

“Tell the average American that he is descended from Pocahontas, that his blood may be traced to Confucius, or that his daughter has secretly married one of Madame Blavatsky’s mythical Indian Mahatmas, and the chances are that he will be flattered and gratified. You stumble over no ‘ethical principle’; you encounter no fatal racial prejudice. Tell him that his great-great-grandfather was probably a powerful potentate from the Congo or the Niger, and you touch the acme of insult. It would be safer to accuse him of highway robbery.

“But the most astonishing feature of this colour caste is found in the complacent assumption of the average American that it is something inherent and natural in the human mind, and is therefore universal. Tell such a person that it is the result of social and political education, and he will smile at your ignorance. Yet when such an American steps over the borders of his own country he does not find this prejudice shared by any other nation. The Frenchman, Englishman, or German may not want his daughter to marry a negro, but in no part of Europe do you detect the presence of that galling system of social discrimination which so exasperates the black man in this country. All over the continent of Europe you find the negro living in the best hotels, travelling in first class coaches, and sitting as an equal on the benches of the great scientific and art schools. You find no trace of this prejudice in the press or literature of Europe; you find no taint of it in its social life. London is the great meeting-place of all the varied races of the world. A new Peter would find there the representatives of more peoples than listened to the many-tongued sermon on the Day of Pentecost. All colours and conditions of men make up the varied web and woof of its marvellous life. Each man’s condition is determined by his rank, his wealth, his social position. Social caste indeed exists of the most rigid type; but it is never based on colour, hardly ever upon racial distinctions. It may be, as the author of the ‘System of Shakspeare’s Dramas’ affirms, that the marriage of a lord and a servant-girl ‘collides with the moral consciousness of the whole public,’ but a man’s treatment is conditioned upon his wealth, his intelligence, his knowledge, his rank, or his personal character, never upon the colour of his skin. In the light of this fact our colour caste seems as provincial as it is undeniably absurd, cruel, and indefensible.”

C.—SLAVERY IN THE NORTH.

The following letter was addressed in 1888 to the Editor of, and was printed in, the Charleston _News and Courier_. As it deals very ably, though from a pronouncedly Southern standpoint, with the responsibility of the North towards the negro, I reprint it with a few insignificant corrections:—

“SIR,—I was glad to see your editorial on March 9th last on the Emancipation Proclamation. It is surprising how much ignorance exists upon the subject of emancipation in some of the usually best-informed circles. I desire to call your attention to two instances of this in that usually accurate journal, the _Nation_ (of New York). In a recent number there appeared the review of a letter written from Washington to a paper in Frankfort:—

“‘The condition of our negro population is the subject of a Washington letter in the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ of December 24th, 1887. The writer’s view of their social status is correct enough, but he is rather at sea in his historical retrospect, as when he says that the South was at one time more opposed to slavery than was the North, and that the Civil War was a struggle between “the sons of the slave-owners and the planters to whom their fathers had sold their dark commodities.” This is a corollary to the misleading statement that “in 1790 the negroes were distributed throughout this country, and were almost exclusively slaves,” but that, “during the first quarter of a century the inhabitants of the Northern States gradually sold their slaves to the South, where climate and the nature of the agricultural products increase the value of negro labour,” all of which sounds as if the countryman of Von Holst had drawn his inspiration from the pro-slavery pamphlets of Buchanan’s Administration.’

“I have not seen this letter, nor do I know who is the writer, but if you will allow me space I think I can convince even the _Nation_, and its readers who shall happen to see this communication, that the statements quoted are not so wide of the mark as the _Nation_ seems to think.

“If such, as the _Nation_ suggests, was indeed the source of the writer’s information, can the following facts and figures, which are taken mostly from a work of that time, be disputed? The author from whom I take the figures, as I cannot at this moment put my hand upon the census of 1790, was, it is true, a Rebel brigadier, the heroic defender of Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg, where he was killed; but, all the same, can the statements be denied?—(‘Cobb on Slavery,’ Philadelphia, T. and I. W. Johnson and Co., 1858):—

“By the census of 1790 there were 40,370 slaves in the States north of Virginia. Now how were those 40,000 slaves emancipated? Can any one point to a single Act by any Northern State by which any negro was actually and immediately emancipated? We ask this because it is clear that all the gradual emancipation schemes had just the effect which the Frankfort writer states: to wit, they caused the inhabitants of the Northern States generally to sell their slaves to the South. Laws prohibiting slavery after some future date were but warnings to the owners of slaves to send them out of the State before the Act should go into effect. The inevitable working of such Acts was to send the slaves South for sale.

“Vermont, we know, claims the honour of having been the first to exclude slavery. She claims that this was done by her Bill of Rights in 1777. But the census of 1790 shows seventeen slaves. Her Bill of Rights could not have done a very perfect work since it allowed seventeen slaves to remain in bonds thirteen years after its adoption. Slavery, which had been introduced into Massachusetts soon after its first settlement, was ‘tolerated,’ as Chief Justice Parsons gently expresses it, certainly until the adoption of the Constitution of 1780. Nor, indeed, did the Constitution of 1780, by any express provision or declaration, prohibit slavery. But a very few days ago a letter of Mr. Thomas Silloway, of Boston, appeared in the Charleston _Sun_, giving instances of bills of sale and disposition by will of Indian and negro slaves in Massachusetts as late as 1771. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes makes Old Sophy, the nurse of Elsie Venner, the daughter of a slave mother. So gradual was the decadence of slavery in Massachusetts that as late as 1833 her Supreme Court could not say by what specific Act the institution had been abolished. (Winchendon v. Hatfield, 4 Mass. 123; Commonwealth v. Aves, 18 Pick, 209.)

“In Belknap’s ‘New Hampshire,’ Vol. III., 280, published in 1792, the matter is thus explained:—

“‘Slavery is not prohibited by any express law. Negroes were never very numerous in New Hampshire. Some of them purchased their freedom during the late war by serving three years in the army. Others have been made free by the justice and humanity of their masters. In Massachusetts they are all accounted free by the first article in the Declaration of Rights, “All men are born free and equal.” In the Bill of Rights of New Hampshire the first article is expressed in these words: “All men are born equally free and independent;” which, in the opinion of most persons, will bear the same construction. But others have deduced from it this inference, that all who are born since the Constitution was made are free; and that those who were in slavery before remain there still. For this reason, in the late census, the blacks in New Hampshire are distinguished into free and slaves. It is not in my power to apologise for this inconsistency.’

“The author then goes on to explain, as we Southerners afterwards continued to do, how much better off those who were slaves were than those who were free in other States. By the census of 1790 there were 158 slaves in New Hampshire, and in 1840 there was still one remaining.

“In the plantations of Rhode Island slaves were more numerous than in the other New England States, as, indeed, they necessarily were, considering that the merchants and sailors of that little State were the greatest slave traders of this country. But as the negroes could not thrive in that latitude, her Legislature provided a gradual scheme of emancipation, which took a lifetime to work out, leaving as late as 1840 five slaves in that State. Connecticut was too much interested to indulge her philanthropy at the expense of an immediate emancipation. In 1790 she had 2,750 slaves. So she too adopted a plan of gradual emancipation, by the slow and prudent workings of which seventeen of her slaves remained as such in 1840.

“As Mr. Bancroft observes: ‘that New York is not a slave State like Carolina, is due to her climate and not to the superior humanity of her founders.’ (Vol. II., 303). When South Carolina prohibited the importation of slaves from Africa in 1789, New York imported them and shipped the savages to this State as American slaves. As late as 1858 the London _Times_ charged that New York had become the greatest slave-trading mart in the world, a charge which Wilson, in the ‘Rise and Fall of the Slave Power,’ fully corroborates. In 1790 New York had 21,324 slaves. She, too, adopted an Act of gradual emancipation, by the operation of which in 1840 all but four slaves had been gotten rid of. New Jersey, though adopting the same scheme, was slower in getting rid of her slaves, 674 still remaining in 1840.

“Adam Smith observed:—‘The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania to set at liberty all their negro slaves may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great. Had they made any considerable part of their property such a resolution could never have been taken.’ (‘Wealth of Nations.’) There were 3,737 slaves in Pennsylvania in 1790, and, as Adam Smith predicted, she would not sacrifice so much property. So she, too, provided for gradual emancipation. The census of 1840 showed sixty-five negroes still in slavery. In 1823 a negro woman was put up on the auction block along with some machinery, smith’s tools, and one cow, and sold for debt by the sheriff of Fayette County, in the State of Brotherly Love. They were still discussing this case in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania as late as 1837, but it was the inadequacy of the price the poor wretch brought, and not the iniquity of the transaction, about which they were contending. (Lynch v. Commonwealth, 6 Watts 495.) It was the frosts and snows which put an end to slavery at the North, not philanthropy.

“It is familiar history that the slave trade by which slavery was established in this country was carried on by Old England and New England, and not by the South. As Mr. Lecky points out, the New England trade, just prior to the Revolution, consisted in sending her lumber out and bringing slaves in.

“Some time since in his notes, in this same paper, while reviewing a work on ‘Brazil and Slavery,’ the editor of the _Nation_ wrote as follows:—

“‘We can recommend it for its own sake, but we have read it with the deepest interest for its reflected light on that irrepressible conflict which ended, some would say, in April, 1865, and others in March, 1876. First, and above all, it inspires a sense of profound thankfulness that there never existed in this country a party, or a policy, or a measure of gradual emancipation. We mean, of course, against that purely Southern slave power which dictated the compromises of the Federal Constitution.’

“In this the editor of the _Nation_ could not have meant that there never existed in this country a policy or a measure of gradual emancipation, for, as we have seen, just such a policy was adopted throughout the Northern States. It was by just such measures that the Northern people rid themselves of the institutions which they had so large a hand in imposing upon the South. But was this statement correct even if limited by his last sentence, ‘We mean, of course, against the Southern slave power,’ &c.?

“Mr. Lincoln declared, in his inaugural address, that the Republican party had no intention to interfere with the institution of slavery; and Congress, by a joint resolution, approved July 22nd, 1861, repeated Mr. Lincoln’s declaration, and announced to the South that the war was only for the preservation of the Union, and not for the abolition of slavery; and Congress actually passed in March, 1861, by a two-thirds vote, a proposed amendment to the Constitution that:—

“‘No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorise or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any State with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labour or service by the laws of the said State.’

“Upon the recommendation, however, of Mr. Lincoln, made in a special message in April, 1862, Congress passed another joint resolution offering pecuniary aid from the General Government to induce the States to adopt ‘general abolishment of slavery.’

“Mr. Lincoln expressed the sentiment of the North, which enabled him to carry on the war successfully, when, on the 22nd August, 1862, he said:

“‘My paramount object is to save the Union, and not to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.’

“The slaves in the States at war with the Federal Government were freed as a military and not as a political measure. The Federal Government did not free the slaves in Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. The results of the war rendered slavery impracticable, but that was all.

“The truth is that the South could at any time during the war have secured the institution of slavery at the sacrifice of the right of secession. That sacrifice she would not voluntarily make, and she lost both her sovereignty and her slaves. She was the unfortunate, innocent, last holder of a dishonoured bill, and the emitters of it turned upon her and called to the world to see how they would punish her for holding it.

“EDWARD MCCRADY, JR.”

To this it may be added that, under the old territorial laws of Illinois, persons were allowed to bring slaves into the Territory under the name of indentured servants. As such they might be held in bondage for a term of ninety-nine years or less. This was in direct violation of the spirit of the ordinance of 1787, which interdicted slavery or involuntary servitude in all the territory north of the Ohio River. The first Illinois State Constitution, adopted in 1818, prohibited the further introduction of slaves, but did not abolish this species of slavery by liberating the victims of the old Territorial enactments. Thus slavery existed in Illinois in defiance of the ordinance of 1787 until the adoption of the Constitution of 1848, which contained the following provision:—“There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in this State, except as a punishment for crime.” After the adoption of the Constitution of 1818, the first Legislature re-enacted the law “respecting free negroes, mulattoes, servants, and slaves” of Territorial times. No severer law was to be found in any slave State. It forbade negroes or mulattoes to settle in the State without certificates of freedom. No person was to employ any negro or mulatto without such certificate, under a penalty of $1.50 for each day. To harbour any slave or servant, or hinder the owner in retaking a slave, was made a felony, punishable by restitution or a fine of two-fold value, and by a whipping not to exceed thirty stripes. Every black or mulatto without a proper certificate was subject to arrest as a runaway slave, to be advertised for six weeks by the sheriff, when, if not reclaimed or his freedom established, he was sold for one year, after which he was entitled to a freedom certificate. Any slave or servant found ten miles from home without permit was liable to arrest and thirty-five stripes, on the order of a justice. For misbehaving to his master or family he was punishable with the lash. Indeed, punishment with the lash to the number of thirty-nine and forty stripes was prescribed for each of a long list of offences, real or of legal construction. Even after the adoption of the Constitution of 1848, which required the General Assembly at its first session to pass such laws as should effectually prohibit free persons of colour from immigrating to, or settling in this State, and should prohibit the owners of slaves from bringing them there for the purpose of setting them free, the Legislature passed an Act, February 12th, 1853, which imposed on every such coloured person a fine of $50. If the fine was not paid forthwith he was to be advertised and sold to any one who would pay the fine and costs for the shortest period of such person’s service. A case under this law was carried up to the Supreme Court, and decided, so late as 1864, to be valid. Other provisions of these enactments, which were known as the Black Laws, were almost equally detestable. On February 7th, 1865, they were repealed. Had it not been for these Black Laws the census of Illinois would not be blotted with an enrolment of “168 slaves” in 1810; 917 in 1820; 747 in 1830; and 331 in 1840—the last census that carries such a stain. Fortunately, the masters and people at large were better than their laws.

D.—THE GROWTH OF THE COLOURED RACE.

The following table shows the white and coloured populations of the whole of the United States at the various decennial periods from 1790 to the present time:—

─────┬──────────┬───────────────────── Year.│ Total │ Coloured. │ White. │ „ │ „ │ Free. │ Slaves. ─────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────── 1790 │ 3,172,006│ 59,527│ 697,681 1800 │ 4,306,446│ 108,437│ 893,602 1810 │ 5,862,073│ 186,446│ 1,191,362 1820 │ 7,862,166│ 233,634│ 1,538,022 1830 │10,537,378│ 319,599│ 2,009,043 1840 │14,195,805│ 386,293│ 2,487,355 1850 │19,553,068│ 434,495│ 3,204,313 1860 │26,922,537│ 488,070│ 3,953,760 1870 │33,589,377│ 4,880,009│ none 1880 │43,402,970│ 6,580,793│ none 1890 │ │ │ none ─────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────

INDEX.

Abolition of slavery, 19

Adams, J. A., 52

Advantages of getting rid of the negro, 208, 209

Africa for the negro, 195, 201, etc.

African Colonisation Society, The, 183

African Steamship Co., The, 210

Aims, Necessity for providing the emigrant with, 197, 200, 204

Anderson, J. W., 43

Alabama, Reconstruction in, 32

Amendment XIII., 19, 21, 67

—— XIV., 25, 35, 67

—— XV., 39, 64, 67, 86, 151, 153, 154

American institutions unsuited for the negro, 196, 198

Anglo-Saxon antipathy to miscegenation, 169

“Appeal to Cæsar, An,” 90

“Appeal to Pharaoh, An,” 131, 165, 175, 178, 211

Argentine, Suggested migration to the, 189, 190

Arkansas, Cotton raised in, 194

—— _Democrat_ quoted, 192

Arms, Length of the negro’s, 69

Arrest of Democratic Legislators, 61

Arrest, Illegal, 51

Assisted emigration for the negro, 200

Atlanta _Constitution_ quoted, 73, 192

Augusta _Chronicle_ quoted, 128

Ballot, American system of, 81

——, Unsuitability of the negro for the, 86

Bancroft, Mr., 227

Barbers’ shops, Race prejudice in, 102

Barksdale, E., 23, 53

Barnwell, J. W., 214

Bassett, E. D., 163

_Belford’s Magazine_ quoted, 167

Belgians, H.M. the King of the, 203, 204

Bigelow, J. and P., 214

Birmingham _Age-Herald_ quoted, 190

Black Belt? What is the, 9

—— blood, Prejudice against, 87

—— Parliament, A, 41

Blank resignations, 59

Blyden, Dr. E. W., 189, 193

Board of Registration, The, 57

Boston _Advertiser_ quoted, 97

—— _Herald_ quoted, 72, 112

—— _Transcript_ quoted, The, 164

Brain, Weight of the negro’s, 69

Bruce, B. K., 162

Buckalew, Mr., 28

Buenos Ayres _Prensa_ quoted, 190

—— _Standard_ quoted, 190

Bullock, Governor, 50

Bureau, Freedmen’s, 25, 27

Butler, Senator, 196, 199

Cable, G. W., 91, 93, 102, 214

Call, Senator, 197, 199

Cardozo, Mr., 49

Carpet-baggers, 27, 33, 39, 52, 55, 141

Caste, Colour, 218

Census, Eleventh, 1

——, First, 3, 4

——, Tenth, 1 _et seq._

Chamberlain, Governor D. H., 46

Charleston _Budget_ quoted, 95

—— _News and Courier_ quoted, 80, 96, 102, 104, 105, 106, 120, 192, 194, 224

—— _Sun_ quoted, 226

—— _World_ quoted, 136

Chicago _Herald_ quoted, 101

Childishness of the negro, 199, 200

Church, A. M. E., 86

Cincinnati, Race prejudice at, 98

Civilisation of Africa by the negro, 201, 202, 203, 204

Civil Rights Bill, The, 65, 68

Clay, Henry, 183

Cleveland _Gazette_ quoted, 195

“Cobb on Slavery” quoted, 225

Colour caste, 217

Coloured majority, States having a, 5

—— men, Prominent, 162

—— National League and Voodooism, The, 113

—— people, _see also under_ Mulatto, Octoroon, etc.

Colour line in the North, The, 181, 182

Coloured race, Increase of the, 232

Colour, The significance of racial, 167

Columbia, Abolition of negro suffrage in, 74

Columbia, Negro suffrage in, 28

Columbia, S.C., Extravagance at, 40

Compensation of the negro, 207

Cone on Race Colour, Mr., 167

Confederate States held to be out of the Union, Ex-, 27, 29

Congo, American negroes for the, 203, 204, 211, 212

——, Advantages of the, 211

Congress may limit the suffrage, 86

——, Thirty-ninth, 24, 27

Connecticut, Slavery in, 227

Constitution, _see_ Amendments

Constitutional Conventions, 30

Conventions, Constitutional, 30

Corbin, Judge, 33, 34

Corruption in South Carolina, 44

——, Official, 36

—— of negro-Republican party, 58

Cost of negro emigration, 207

Cotton raised by white and by negro labour, 194

Cotton fields, The negro not necessary in the, 191, 192

“Counting out,” 80

Cranium, The negro, 70

Criminality of the negro, 114

“Cuffy, Old,” 36

Curtis, G. W., 71

“Cyclopædia of Political Science” quoted, 52

Dangers of the situation, 16, 143

Darnell, Prof. S. B., 172

Death-rate of the white and the negro, 3

Debt of the U.S. to the negro, 185, 186, 189, 198, 205

—— of the United States, 206

Democrat, The Southern white is a, 22

Democratic Legislators arrested, 61

Depew, C. M., 214

Diseases of negroes, 108

Disenfranchisement of ex-Confederates, 29, 54

Douglas, Senator, 172

Douglass, Mr. Fredk., 98, 163

Drummond, Prof., 179

Duty of the United States, 210, 213

Edgington, Col. T. B., 153

Edmunds, Senator, 75

Education as a suggested panacea, 157, 161, 164, 165

Education, Negro, 75, 116

Eight-box Law, The, 82, 83

Election at Mount Pleasant, An, 84

Elections, Fraudulent, 33, 50, 78–85

—— of 1886, 27

Elliott, R. B., 163

Emancipation a failure, 125

—— destructive of miscegenation, 177

—— in the North, 225

Emigration as a panacea, 181

——, Cost of negro, 207

—— from the South, White, 10, 11

——, Futile plans of, 184

——, The negro’s willingness for, 187, etc.

—— the only cure, 182, 188, 189

Enfranchisement of the negro, 29

Equality a hopeless dream, 155

Equity of pre-Reconstruction legislation in Virginia, 52

Eustis, Senator, 83

Expulsion by force impracticable, 198

Extermination of the negro, 155

Extravagance, Negro-Republican, 39

—— of the Reconstruction Era, 59

Eyes, Peculiarity of the negro’s, 69

Facial angle, The negro’s, 69

Farmer’s Alliance, The, 84, 145

Fleet, Governor Warmoth’s, 58

Florida, Reconstruction in, 50

Foreign birth in the South, People of, 11, 12

Forgery of an Act of the Florida Legislature, 50

_Forum_ quoted, The, 96, 193, 217

_Frankfurter Zeitung_ quoted, The, 224

Fraud, Apologists for white, 15

—— at elections, 33, 50, 78–85

——, The white rules by, 14, 15

Freedman, The liberties of the, 91

Freedmen’s Bureau, 25, 39

Froude on negro inferiority, 88

—— on race pride, 172

—— on the Haytian negro, 158

—— on the negro in San Domingo, 159, 160

Fulkerson, H. S., 115

Fulton, Dr., 142

Gaillard destroys registration books, 84

Galveston _News_ quoted, 192

Garfield on Reconstruction, 30

Georgia, Cost of General Assembly in, 49

——, Murder in, 96, 99

——, Negro ownership in, 120, 121, 122, etc.

——, Race prejudice in, 94

——, Reconstruction in, 49

Gibbs, Senator, 139

Gibson, Senator, 197, 199

Gilder, R. W., 214

Gilham on negro inferiority, 88, 89

—— on the growth of negro population, 12, 13, 14

Gouldsboro, Riot at, 94

Governors, Power of the Military, 30

Grady, H. W., 165

Grant, President, 26

Greenville _News_ quoted, 105, 192, 208

Growth of negro population, Estimated, 12, 13

Hamilton, Rev. J. W., 172

Hampton, Governor Wade, 46, 49, 197, 198

_Harper’s Weekly_ quoted, 71

Harris, G. E., 56

Hart, Governor, O. B., 51

Haskell, General, 84, 145

Hayti, Condition of, 158, 203

Healthiness of the South, General, 147

Hemphill, J. J., 23

Herbert, H. A., 22, 23

Hoar quoted, Mr., 36

Hoffman House, Race prejudice at the, 98

Holmes, Dr. O. W., 226

Hotels, Race prejudice at, 97, 98, 105

Hubbard, J. B., 43

Hybridism and sterility, 179

Ice-cream shops, Race prejudice in, 100

Idle class of whites peculiar to U.S.A., 148

Ignorance of the negroes, 33, 36, 73

—— of the Southern white, 149

Illegal arrests, 61

Illinois, Slavery in, 230

Illiteracy, Negro, 21

——, Statistics of, 117

Increase among the negroes, Rate of, 2, 233

Indebtedness of America to the negro, 198, 205

Inequality of the races, 20, 199

Infant mortality among the blacks, 8, 108

Ingalls, Senator, 80, 85

Instep, The negro’s, 70

Intimidation at Jackson, 95

——, Republican, 37

Intolerance excused, White, 73

Jefferson, President Thomas, 145, 182, 183, 184

Johnson, President, 25, 28, 29

Johnston, Professor Alexander, 52

Jones, A. O., 48

Judges, Dependency of the, 59

——, Ignorance of, 52

Judge’s charge, A queer, 34

Kellogg, W. P., 60, 61, 62

King, Senator Rufus, 184, 185

Kirk, Colonel, 37

Knott, Dr. J. C., 179

Ku-Klux Klan, The, 77

Lagos, American negroes in, 210

Langston, J. U., 163

“Lark heel,” The negro’s, 70

Laws, Danger of enforcing the, 66

——, Importance of the, 128

Lecky on the New England Slave Trade, 228

Lee, Governor, 208

——, Rev. T. S., 187

Legislature of South Carolina, The, 39, etc.

Liberia, Condition of, 160

——, Establishment of, 183

Limitation of Suffrage, Suggested, 154

Lincoln, President, 229

—— on miscegenation, 172

—— on negro inferiority, 88

—— on slavery, 20

—— on the suffrage, 30

Lopez not more powerful than Warmoth, 60

Lottery, The Louisiana, 62

Louisiana Lottery, The, 62

——, Reconstruction in, 56

——, Riot in, 94

Louisville _Courier Journal_ quoted, 132

Luxury of negro legislators, 39, 54

Lynching, 96, 116, 132, 133, 134, 135, 142

McCrady, Letter from Mr. Edward, 224–231

Machinery inimical to the negro, 194

Macon _Telegraph_ quoted, 99

M‘Kinley, C., 214

Maltreatment of the blacks, 94

Manumission a political measure, 19

——, Lincoln’s views on, 20

——, Seward’s views on, 19

Marriage, Negro avoidance of, 110

Martial Law in the South, 29

Massachusetts, Slavery in, 225, 226

Mean whites, 148

Memphis _Avalanche_ quoted, 191

Mexico, Suggested emigration to, 189

Middle passage, Horrors of the, 186

Military Governors, 23, 24

Military Governors, Power of the, 30

—— Rule in the South, 21

Militia, A coloured, 37, 42, 43, 46, 58

Minority, Rule of the, 8

Miscegenation, 217, etc.

—— as a suggested panacea, 157, 165, 178

——, Causes of, 175

——, Illegal, 106

—— is now rare, 174, 175

——, Lincoln on, 172

—— unnatural, 166

——, one-sided, 177

Mississippi, Cotton raised in, 194

——, Intimidation in, 95

——, Reconstruction in, 52

Missouri, Race prejudice in, 103

Mitchell, J. A. D., 195, 196

Moloney, Sir Alfred, 210

Montgomery _Herald_ quoted, The, 141

Morals of Southern whites, 143, 176

—— of the negroes, 110

Morgan, Senator, 197, 199

Morrill, Senator, 75

Mortality, _see also_ Death-rate

—— among the negroes, 109, 147

——, Infant, 8

Moses, Franklin J., 44, 45, 46, 47, 49

Mount Pleasant, An Election at, 83, 84

Mulatto, The, 174, 178 _et seq._

—— a bad citizen, The, 163, 177, 179, 180

—— children, Rarity of, 174

—— communities, 176

—— decreasing in numbers, 163

——, Intelligence of, 162

——, Short life of the, 179

——, The future of the, 213

—— unhealthiness, 178

Murder as a political factor, 77

—— in Alabama, 104, 136

—— in Georgia, 105, 133, 136

—— in Indiana, 137

—— in Kentucky, 137

—— in Louisiana, 105

—— in North Carolina, 135

—— in South Carolina, 97, 136

—— in Tennessee, 136

—— near Robins, 95

Nashville _American_ quoted, 192

_Nation_ quoted, The New York, 224, 228

Navy, Race prejudice in the American, 98

Negro, _see also_ Coloured Mulatto, Octoroon

——, Advantages of getting rid of the, 208, 209

——, Aims of the, 68

—— as a child, The, 199

—— as a worker, The, 139

—— at the polls, The, 77

—— avoidance of marriage, 110

—— can be dispensed with, 193

—— cannot govern, The, 161

—— childishness, 76, 199

—— colonisation, Causes of failure of, 183

—— —— Society of Augusta, 189

—— criminality, 114

——, Death-rate of the, 3

——, Debt of the United States to the, 185, 186, 189

——, Diseases of the, 108

—— education, 75, 116

—— emigration, Cost of, 207

——, Employments of the, 9, 10

——, Enforced inferiority of the, 71

—— enfranchisement, 29

——, Expectations of the extinction of the, 152

——, Extermination of the, 155

—— Government intolerable, 64

——, His unambitious nature, 11

——, How far the White depends upon the, 146

—— Ignorance, 33

——, Illiteracy of the, 21

——, Increase of the, 2

—— inferiority, Lincoln on, 88

—— ——, Froude on, 88

—— ——, Gilliam on, 88, 89

—— ——, Tourgée on, 89, 90

—— in sickness, Provision for the, 75

—— legislators, Vices of, 36

——, Material position of the, 119, 125

—— mortality, 109

—— must be assisted to emigrate, The, 200

—— must be governed, The, 200, 202

—— newspapers, 98, 120, 138, 141

——, Physical peculiarities of the, 69

——, Repression of the, 8

—— rule, 31, etc.

—— schools, 119

——, Social position of the, 65, 87

—— soldiers during the war, 186

—— suffrage advocated by Sumner, 28

—— suffrage in Columbia, 28

—— —— —— ——, Abolition of, 74

—— ——, Lincoln on, 21

—— ——, Opposition to, 24

—— tendency to relapse to barbarism, 168

——,” “The, 115

——, The South can spare the, 190

——, The White’s attitude towards the, 75, 140

—— threats to the Whites, 138, 142

——, Unhealthy habits of the, 108

——: Why he may not rule, 16

—— Venality, 33

Negrophobia in the North, 73, 74

Negro’s readiness to migrate, 187, etc.

Negroes are but small farmers, 192

——, Infant mortality among, 107

——, Morals of the, 110

——, Prominent, 162

—— unable to govern, 54

—— voting before they have the suffrage, 35

Nelson, Mr. Justice, 29

New England slave trade, The, 228

—— Hampshire, Slavery in, 226

—— Jersey, Slavery in, 227

—— Orleans, Coloured ownership in, 121

—— ——, _Picayune_ quoted, 97, 192

—— —— _Republican_ subsidised, 59

—— ——, Riot at, 61

—— —— _Times-Democrat_ quoted, 121, 191

—— York _Evening Post_ quoted, 99, 102

—— —— _Herald_ quoted, 99

—— ——, Race prejudice in, 97, 102

—— —— Slavery in, 228

—— —— _Star_ quoted, 96

—— —— _Tribune_ quoted, 108, 156

—— —— _World_ quoted, 98

Nicholls, Governor, 62

_North American Review_ quoted, 85, 171

North and South compared, 73

North Carolina, Reconstruction in, 35

North, Slavery in the, 224, etc.

Northern Ascendency, 24

Octoroon, White prejudice against the, 175

Oppression of the Southern Whites, 31

Orangeburg _Plain Speaker_ quoted, 98

_Othello_ in the South, 217

Outrage in Alabama, 134

—— in Georgia, 133, 134

—— in Kentucky, 132

—— in Maryland, 134

—— in South Carolina, 133

—— in Tennessee, 134

Outrages by negroes on women, 116, 132, 133, 134, 142

Packard, Governor, 62

Pardons given before trial, 50

Pasco, S., 23

Penalties for teaching a slave, 116

Pennsylvania, Slavery in, 227

Pension-roll of the United States, 207

Philadelphia _Evening Telegram_ quoted, 95

Pike, J. S., 41, 44

Pinchback, Governor, 60, 163

Pittsburg _Dispatch_ quoted, 95

——, Race prejudice at, 222

Politics, Effect of the situation upon, 144

Politics in the South, 21, 24

Polls, The negro at the, 77

Population of the South, 216

Post, U. S. A., Major, 214

_Presbyterian Quarterly_ quoted, 165

Printing in South Carolina, Cost of public, 48, 49

——, Republican monopoly of, 58

Property, The negro as a holder of, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124

Proportions of white and coloured, 5

Prostrate State, The, 38, 41

Puberty, Change in the negro at, 76

Public Funds, Waste of, 44

—— Offices, Race prejudice in, 102

Qualifications for the suffrage, 6

Race antagonism increases, 90

—— hatred, 26

—— prejudice, 72

—— —— at Cincinnati, 98

—— —— at hotels, 97, 98, 105

—— —— at ice-cream shops, 100

—— —— at Pittsburg, 222

—— —— at railway stations, 102

—— —— at Saratoga, 97

—— —— in barber-shops, 102

—— —— in Missouri, 105

—— —— in New York, 97, 102

—— —— in public offices, 102

—— —— in restaurants, 98

—— —— in schools, 100, 101

—— —— in the American Navy, 98

—— —— in the Church, 96, 103, 156

—— —— on railways, 99, 101, 102, 103

—— —— on the gallows, 96

Race pride, Froude on, 172

—— Problem, Its supposed settlement by the Civil War, 15

—— question, Importance of the, 68

Races, Irregularity of the, 20

Race war, 129, 209

Racial colour, 167

—— inequality, 106

—— separation beneficial, 198

Railways, Race prejudice on, 99, 101, 102, 103

—— stations, Race prejudice at, 102

Raleigh _State Chronicle_ quoted, 165

Ratification of Amendment XV., 151

Rawling, S. J. E., 214

Reconstruction, 22, etc.

—— Acts, 29

—— a political measure, 52, 53

——, Garfield on, 30

—— in Alabama, 32

—— in Florida, 50

—— in Georgia, 49

—— in Louisiana, 56

—— in Mississippi, 52

—— in North Carolina, 35

—— in South Carolina, 38

—— in Virginia, 51

——, Joint Committee on, 26

——, Lincoln on, 30, 31

Reed, Governor Harrison, 50

Registration books destroyed, 84

—— Certificates, Loss of, 80

——, The Board of, 57, 61, 62

Religious race prejudice, 156

Repeal of Amendment XV., Suggested, 153

Representation of States in Congress, 24

Repression of the Negro, 8

Republican majority in the Thirty-Ninth Congress, 28

_Republican_, New Orleans, 59

Republican, The negro is a, 21

Restaurants, Race prejudice at, 98

Returning Board, _see_ Registration, The Board of.

Rhode Island, Slavery in, 227

Richardson, Governor J. P., 82

Richmond _Dispatch_ quoted, 192

Riot at Gouldsboro’, 94

—— at New Orleans, 61

Roosevelt, T., 214

Sage, B. J., 23, 58, 60

St. Louis _Republic_ quoted, 98

San Domingo, Condition of, 159, 160

Saratoga, Race prejudice at, 97

Savannah _Times_ quoted, 103

Schoffner Act, The, 37

Schools for negroes, 119

——, Race prejudice in, 100, 101

Scomp, Professor, 193

Scott, General R. K., 39, 42, 43, 44

Selma _Independent_ quoted, 138

—— _Times_ quoted, 100

Separation of the races beneficial, 198

Seward on Manumission, 20

Shakespeare and race questions, 217, etc.

Shaw University, 204

Sherman, Senator, 75

Shepard, Colonel, 203

Shepley, Governor, 30

Sickness, Provision for the negro in, 75, 109

Silent South,” “The, 91

Silloway, T., 226

Skin, Peculiarities of the negro’s, 70

_Skipjack_, Log of H.M.S., 186

Slave, Illiteracy of the, 21

——, Penalties for teaching a, 116

Slavery, Abolition of, 19

—— in Connecticut, 227

—— —— Illinois, 230

—— —— Massachusetts, 225, 226

—— —— New Hampshire, 226

—— —— —— Jersey, 227

—— ——, Abolition of, New York, 227

—— —— Pennsylvania, 227

—— —— Rhode Island, 227

—— —— Vermont, 225

——, Lincoln on, 20

—— not the origin of the war, 19

—— said to be the only logical position for the negro, 164

Slaves in 1790, 225

Smith, Adam, 227

——, Dr. S. M., 165

——, E. B., 214

Snider, Professor J. D., 218

Snyder, Rev. J., 217

Social position of the negro, 87

—— equality said to be disclaimed by both races, 99

Solid South, The, 23

South Carolina, Cotton raised in, 194

—— ——, Inquiry into Scandals in, 47

—— ——, Murder in, 95, 97

—— ——, Reconstruction in, 38

—— Carolinian Statute of Ignorance, 116

——, Deterioration of the, 139, 191

——, General healthiness of the, 147

——, Military Rule in the, 21

——, Politics of the, 21, 24

——, Population of the, 216

——, The negro not indispensable to the, 190, etc.

——? Why the solid, 23

Southern Question, What is the, 71

Spain, Suggested negotiations with, 197

Speer, W. S., 20

Stanley, H. M., 199, 211, 213

Stanton, Secretary, 28

State House, Siege of the Louisiana, 62

States having a coloured majority, 5

Sterility and hybridism, 179

Stevens, T., 24

Stiles, R., 23, 52

Stokes, Colonel, 192

Suffrage, Negro, 21

—— in Columbia, Negro, 28

——, Lincoln on the, 30

——, Negroes voted before they had the, 35

——, Northern opposition to the, 24

——, Possible limitation of the, 86

——, Qualifications for the, 6

——, Suggested limitation of, 154

——, The negro not enamoured of the, 203

Sumner advocates negro suffrage, 28

Superstition, Negro, 112

Supremacy, White, 77

Supreme court, Decision of the, 65, 66, 68

Surrender, as a suggested panacea, 158

Tanner, Rev. Dr. B. T., 171, 173, 174

Taxation, Excessive, 55

Taylor, C. H. J., 183

Tennessee, Race prejudice in, 96

Texas, Cotton raised in, 194

——, Negro ownership in, 119

Thomas, Judge, 33

Thompson, J. E. W., 163

Tillman, Governor, 84, 145

_Times_ quoted, 199, 227

Tissue-ballots, 78

Tourgée, Judge, 118, 152, 161, 173

Trade jealousy in the North, 182

Troops, United States, 61, 62

Tucker, Rev. Dr. 110

Tupper, Dr. H. M., 204

Turner, Bishop H. M., 188

——, H. G., 23

Union divided, The, 209, 214

——, Ex-confederate States held to be out of the, 27

Vance, Z. B., 23, 36

Vermont, Slavery in, 225

Vetoes, President Johnson’s, 28, 29

Vices of negro legislators, 36

Virginia, Reconstruction in, 51

Voodooism, 112, 114

“Vote early and often,” 80

Voters, Qualifications of, 6

Voters, tampering with, 77 _et seq._

Voting populations, 7

War, The South after the, 22, 26 etc.

Warmoth, H. C., 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63

Warrants of Arrest, Blank, 61

Waste of Public Funds, 44

Wealth of the United States, 206

Whipping of negroes, 104

White intolerance excused, 73

White supremacy, 77, 85

White, The negro’s treatment by the 75

White, Ignorance of the Southern, 149

White people are enough for the South, 191, 192

White women to the negro, Attitude of the Southern, 141, 142, 177

Whites assumed without evidence to be guilty, 39

Whites, Depravity of the, 54

Whites, Increase of the Southern, 2

Whites, Idle class of peculiar to U.S., 148

Whites, Oppression of the Southern, 31

Williams, Col. G. W., 203

Williams, Rev. Isaac, 112

Wilson’s “Rise and Fall of Slave Power,” 227

Women, Their position in the Black Belt, 131 _et seq._, 141, 177

PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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