Part 21
This is a period of transition in the relations of the Negro to this nation. The question which America is trying to answer, and which is must soon definitely settle, is this: _What kind of Negroes do the American people want?_ That they must have the Negro in some relation is no longer a question of serious debate. The Negro is here 10,000,000 strong, and, for weal or woe, he is here to stay--he is here to remain forever. In the government he is a political factor; in education and in wealth he is leaping forward with giant strides; he counts his taxable property by the millions, his educated men and women by the scores of thousands; in the South he is the backbone of industry; in every phase of American life his presence may be noted; he is also as thoroughly imbued with American principles and ideals as any class of people beneath our flag. When Garrison started his fight for freedom, it was the prevailing sentiment that the Negro could have no place in this country save that of a slave, but he has proven himself to be more valuable as a free man than as a slave. What kind of Negroes do the American people want? Do they want a voteless Negro in a Republic founded upon universal suffrage? Do they want a Negro who shall not be permitted to participate in the government which he must support with his treasure and defend with his blood? Do they want a Negro who shall consent to be set apart as forming a distinct industrial class, permitted to rise no higher than the level of serfs or peasants? Do they want a Negro who shall accept an inferior social position, not as a degradation, but as the just operation of the laws of caste based upon color? Do they want a Negro who will avoid friction between the races by consenting to occupy the place to which white men may choose to assign him? What kind of a Negro do the American people want? Do they want a Negro who will accept the doctrine, that however high he may rise in the scale of character, wealth, and education, he may never hope to associate as an equal with white men? Do white men believe that 10,000,000 blacks, after having imbibed the spirit of American institutions, and having exercised the rights of free men for more than a generation, will ever accept a place of permanent inferiority in the Republic? Taught by the Declaration of Independence, sustained by the Constitution of the United States, enlightened by the education of our schools, this nation can no more resist the advancing tread of the hosts of the oncoming blacks than it can bind the stars or halt the resistless motion of the tide.
The answer which the American people may give to the question proposed cannot be final. There is another question of greater importance which must be answered by the Negro, and by the Negro alone: _What kind of an American does the Negro intend to be?_ The answer to this question he must seek and find in every field of human activity and endeavor. First, he must answer it by negation. He does not intend to be an alien in the land of his birth, nor an outcast in the home of his fathers. He will not consent to his elimination as a political factor; he will refuse to camp forever on the borders of the industrial world; as an American he will consider that his destiny is united by indissoluble bonds with the destiny of America forever; he will strive less to be a great Negro in this Republic and more to be an influential and useful American. As intelligence is one of the chief safeguards of the Republic, he will educate his children. Knowing that a people cannot perish whose morals are above reproach, he will ally himself on the side of the forces of righteousness; having been the object of injustice and wrong, he will be the foe of anarchy and the advocate of the supremacy of law. As an American citizen, he will allow no man to protest his title, either at home or abroad. He will insist more and more, _not only upon voting, but upon being voted for_, to occupy any position within the gift of the nation. As an American whose title to citizenship is without a blemish or flaw, he will resist without compromise every law upon the statute-books which is aimed at his degradation as a human being and humiliation as a citizen. He will be no less ambitious and aspiring than his fellow-countrymen; he will assert himself, not as a Negro, but as a man; he will beat no retreat in the face of his enemies and opposers; his gifted sons and daughters, children of genius who may be born to him, will make their contribution to the progress of humanity on these shores, accepting nothing but the honors and rewards that belong to merit. What kind of an American does the Negro intend to be? He intends to be an American who will never mar the image of God, reproach the dignity of his manhood, or tarnish the fair title of his citizenship, by apologizing to men or angels for associating as an equal, with some other American who does not happen to be black. He will place the love of country above the love of race; he will consider no task too difficult, no sacrifice too great, in his effort to emancipate his country from the un-Christlike feelings of race hatred and the American bondage of prejudice. There is nothing that injustice so much respects, that Americans so much admire, and the world so much applauds, as a man who stands erect like a man, has the courage to speak in the tones of a man, and to fearlessly act a man's part.
There are two views of the Negro question now at last clearly defined. One is that the Negro should stoop to conquer; that he should accept in silence the denial of his political rights; that he should not brave the displeasure of white men by protesting when he is segregated in humiliating ways upon the public carriers and in places of public entertainment; that he may educate his children, buy land, and save money, but he must not insist upon his children taking their place in the body politic to which their character and intelligence entitle them; he must not insist on ruling the land which he owns or farms; he must have no voice as to how the money he has accumulated is to be expended through taxation and the various forms of public improvement. There are others who believe that the Negro owes this nation no apology for his presence in the United States; that, being black, he is still no less a man; that he should not yield one syllable of his title to American citizenship; that he should refuse to be assigned to an inferior plane by his fellow-countrymen; though foes conspire against him and powerful friends desert him, he should refuse to abdicate his sovereignty as a citizen, and to lay down his honor as a man.
If Americans become surfeited with wealth, haughty with the boasting pride of race superiority, morally corrupt in the high places of honor and of trust, enervated through the pursuit of pleasure, or the political bondmen of some strong man plotting to seize the reins of power, the Negro American will continue his steadfast devotion to the flag, and the unyielding assertion of his constitutional rights, that "this government of the people, for the people, and by the people, may not perish from the earth."
It is so marvelous as to be like a miracle of God, to behold the transformation that has taken place in the position of the Negro in this land since William Lloyd Garrison first saw the light a century ago. When the Negro had no voice, Garrison pleaded his cause; to-night the descendants of the slave stand in Faneuil Hall, while from ocean to ocean every foot of American soil is dedicated to freedom. The Negro American has found his voice; he is able to speak for himself; he stands upon this famous platform here and thinks it no presumption to declare that he seeks nothing more, and will be satisfied with nothing less than the full measure of American citizenship!
I feel inspired to-night. The spirits of the champions of freedom hover near. High above the stars, Lincoln and Garrison, Sumner and Phillips, Douglass and Lovejoy, look down to behold their prayers answered, their labors rewarded, and their prophecies fulfilled. They were patriots; the true saviors of a nation that esteemed them not. They have left us a priceless heritage. Is there to be found among us now one who would so dishonor the memory of these sainted dead; one so lost to love of country and loyalty to his race, as to offer to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage? When we were slaves, Garrison labored to make us free; when our manhood was denied, he proclaimed it. Shall we in the day of freedom be less loyal to our country and true to ourselves than were the friends who stood for us in our night of woe? Many victories have been won for us; there are still greater victories we must win for ourselves. The proclamation of freedom and the bestowal of citizenship were not the ultimate goal we started out to reach, they were but the beginnings of progress. We, of this generation, must so act our part that, a century hence, our children and our children's children may honor our memory and be inspired to press on as they receive from us untarnished the banner of freedom, of manhood, and of equality among men.
The Negro went aboard the ship of state when she was first launched upon the uncertain waters of our national existence. He booked as through passenger until she should reach "the utmost sea-mark of her farthest sail." When those in command treated him with injustice and brutality, he did not mutiny or rebel; when placed before the mast as a lookout, he did not fall asleep at his post. He has helped to keep her from being wrecked upon the rocks of treachery; he has imperiled his life by standing manfully to his task while she outrode the fury of a threatening sea; when the pirate-craft of rebellion bore down upon her and sought to place the black flag of disunion at her masthead, he was one of the first to respond when the captain called all hands up on deck. If the enemies of liberty should ever again attempt to wreck our ship of state, the Negro American will stand by the guns; he will not desert her when she is sinking, but with the principles of the Declaration of Independence nailed to the masthead, with the flag afloat, he would prefer rather to perish with her than to be numbered among those who deserted her when assailed by an overwhelming foe. If she weathers the storms that beat upon her, outsails the enemies that pursue her, avoids the rocks that threaten her, and anchors at last in the port of her desired haven, black Americans and white Americans, locked together in brotherly embrace, will pledge each other to remain aboard forever on terms of equality, because they shall have learned by experience that neither one of them can be saved, except they thus abide in the ship.
For the present our strivings are not in vain. The injustice that leans upon the arm of oppression for support must fall; truth perverted or suppressed gains in momentum while it waits; generations may perish, but humanity will survive; out of the present conflict of opinion and the differences of race and color that divide, once the tides of immigration have ceased to flow to our shores, this nation will evolve a people who shall be one in purpose, one in spirit, one in destiny--a composite American by the co-mingling of blood.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN[37]
BY JAMES L. CURTIS, of New York
[Note 37: Speech delivered on the Centenary of his birth, February 12, 1909.]
Since the curtain rang down on the tragedy of Calvary, consummating the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth, there has been no parallel in history, sacred or profane, to the deeds of Abraham Lincoln and their perennial aftermath.
For two hundred years this nation writhed in the pain and anguish of travail; and as a happy sequel to this long night of suffering, in the dawn of the nineteenth century, she bore a son who was destined to awaken a nation's somnolent conscience to a monstrous evil; to lead a nation through a fierce siege of fratricidal strife; to strike the shackles of slavery from the limbs of four millions of bondsmen; to fall a victim to the assassin's bullet; to be enshrined in the hearts of a grateful nation; and to have an eternal abode in the pantheon of immortals.
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Abraham Lincoln! What mighty magic is this name! Erstwhile it made the tyrant tremble on his throne and the hearts of the down-trodden leap for joy. Now, over the chasm of two score years, it causes the drooping hopes of freemen to bud anew, and the smoldering embers of their ambition to leap into flame.
With talismanic power, it swerves the darts of hate and malice aimed at a defenseless race, so that though they wound, they do not destroy. With antidotal efficacy, it nullifies the virus of proscription so that it does not stagnate the blood nor paralyze the limb of an up-treading and on-going race.
When the nation was rent in twain, Lincoln, the propitiator, counselled conciliation. When the States of the South sought to secede, Lincoln, the concatenator, welded them into a solid chain, one and inseparable. When brother sought the life of brother and father that of son, Lincoln, the pacificator, advised peace with honor. When the nation was stupefied with the miasma of human slavery, Lincoln, the alleviator, broke its horrid spell by diffusing through the fire of war the sweet incense of liberty.
The cynic has sneered at the Proclamation of Emancipation. The dogmatist has called the great Emancipator a compromiser. The scholar, with the eccentricity peculiar to genius, has solemnly declared that the slaves were freed purely as a war necessity and not because of any consideration for the slave. The undergraduate, in imitation of his erudite tutors, has asserted that the freedmen owe more to the pride of the haughty Southerner than to the magnanimity of President Lincoln. But the mists of doubt and misconception have been so dissipated by the sunlight of history, that we, of this generation, may clearly see the martyred President as he really was.
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All honor to Abraham Lincoln, the performer, not the preacher; the friend of humanity, the friend of the North, the friend of the South, the friend of the white man, the friend of the black man; the man whose heart, like the Christ's, was large enough to bring within the range of its sensibilities every human being beneath the stars. The man who, when God's clock struck the hour, swung back on its creaking hinges the door of opportunity that the slaves might walk over its portals into the army and into new fields of usefulness in civil life.
One hundred years have rolled into eternity since freedom's greatest devotee made his advent on this earth. One hundred years, as but a moment compared with the life of nations; yet, changes in our form of government, in the interpretation of our laws, in the relation between the North and the South, in the status of the Negro, have been wrought, that were beyond the wildest dreams of Lincoln. And wonderful as have been these changes to our advantage, in the acquisition of property, in moral and mental development, in the cultivation of sturdy manhood and womanhood, yet, all these have come to us as a direct result of the labors of Lincoln, who, with the ken of a prophet and the vision of a seer, in those dark and turbulent days, wrought more nobly than he knew.
From these prodigious tasks so well performed, I adjure you, my friends, that you catch inspiration; that you take no backward step in the future; that you prove worthy heirs and joint heirs to the heritage of golden opportunities bequeathed you; that you demand every right with which his labors have endowed you; and that the righteous sentiment of "Equal and Exact Justice" be emblazoned on a banner and flaunted in the breezes till every foe of justice is vanquished and right rules supreme.
That you will do this, I doubt not, for in my heart of hearts, I believe with Henry Clay that "Before you can repress the tendencies to liberty, or the tendencies to absolute emancipation from every form of serfdom, you must go back to the era of our independence and muzzle the cannon which thunders its joyous return; you must penetrate the human soul and eradicate there the love of liberty." Then, and not till then, can you stifle the ennobling aspiration of the American Negro for the unabridged enjoyment of every right guaranteed under the Constitution and the laws.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND FIFTY YEARS OF FREEDOM[38]
BY ALEXANDER WALTERS, D. D.,
_Bishop of A. M. E. Zion Church_
[Note 38: Extract from address given at Carnegie Hall, New York, February 12, 1909.]
The distinguished person whom we pause to honor was not born great, if to be born great means to be born in a mansion, surrounded at the start of life with opulence, "dangled on the knee of indulgence and charmed to sleep by the voice of liveried servants"; if this is the measure of greatness, then Abraham Lincoln was not born great,--but if to be born great is to be ushered into the world with embryonic qualities of heart, elements calculated to unfold into the making of the stature of a complete man, a manly man, a brave, a God-fearing man--a statesman equal to the greatest emergency of a nation, then the little fellow of destiny who made his initial bow to the goddess of light in Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809, was born great.
If to achieve greatness is to win the hearts of one's youthful companions, one's associates in professional life, and to merit the confidence and genuine love of a nation to the extent of securing its greatest honors and to perform the mightiest work of a century, then Abraham Lincoln achieved greatness.
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The assertion has been made that President Lincoln was not in favor of universal freedom. I beg to take issue with this view.
A careful study of this sincere, just, and sympathetic man will serve to show that from his earliest years he was against slavery. He declared again and again; "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong; I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel."
Back in the thirties this young man clad in homespun was standing in the slave-mart of New Orleans, watching husbands and wives being separated forever, and children being doomed never again to look into the faces of their parents. As the hammer of the auctioneer fell, this young flat-boatman, with quivering lips, turned to his companion and said: "If ever I get a chance to hit that thing (slavery), I will hit it hard, by the Eternal God I will."
In March, 1839, he had placed upon the _House Journal of Illinois_ a formal protest against pro-slavery resolutions which he could get but one other member beside himself to sign. Long before he was made President, in a speech at Charleston, Illinois, he said: "Yes we will speak for freedom, and against slavery, as long as the Constitution of our country guarantees free speech, until everywhere on this wide land the sun shall shine, and the rain shall fall, and the winds shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil."
While in Congress in 1848 he offered a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. It was his opinion that Congress had control over the institution of slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories, and he evidenced his desire for the freedom of the slaves by offering a bill to abolish it in the District, and he afterwards strenuously advocated the elimination of slavery from the territories.
In 1864, about the time of the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, President Lincoln said to some gentlemen from the West: "There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity."
Through all the mighty struggle of the Civil War when bowed in sorrow, and when it was truly said of him "That he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," he was ever heard to say, "It is my desire that all men be free."
If President Lincoln were not in favor of the freedom of the slaves, why did he write the Emancipation Proclamation without the knowledge of his Cabinet and, when reading it to them, informed them that he did not do so to have them make any changes, but simply to apprise them of its contents? I answer, because he saw the time had come, the opportune time for which he had longed, when he, as President of these United States, could free the slaves. The South was so certain that it was Mr. Lincoln's intention to liberate the slaves, that, upon his election as President, they seceded from the Union. They felt that the institution which they had struggled so long to maintain was doomed.
His famous letter to Horace Greeley, so diplomatically written, shows him to be in favor of the emancipation of slaves. Said he; "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves 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. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."
Had President Lincoln not desired the freedom of the slaves would he have written this last sentence?
Professor Pickens, of Talladega College, says: "He was a patriot statesman; although he abhored slavery in his own inclination, he was wise enough to see that the question of slavery was subordinate to the immediate object of saving the Union. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong; he declared as his private opinion; but it was his public duty and his oath to save the Union, regardless of slavery. His logic and clear seizure of the main point stood him in good stead against the over-zealous Abolitionists on the one hand, while on the other hand, as soon as the interests of Negro freedom and the interests of the Union coincided, the same unchanged and consistent logic answered those who assailed him on constitutional grounds."