PPEAL LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH THE NEGRO PROBLEM, AND ITS RADICAL SOLUTION NEW YORK FORDS, HOWARD & HULBERT 1890 COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY FORDS, HOWARD & HULBERT. Press of W. L. Mershon & Co., Rahway, N. J. NOTE. IT should be said, perhaps, that this book was written in the winter of 1887-88, with a view to its publication in the summer of 1888. Circumstances having delayed its appearance, however, a few minor changes and additions have been rendered possible, mainly in the character and recent dates of t .ie notes of reference, showing how continuous and active are the conditions that gave rise to the book. This explanation, it is hoped, will commend the work to the thoughtful reader, and relieve it of any idea of having been inspired by recent political events. The argument has lost nothing of its pertinence, at least, by reason of the delay which has been noted, and is wholly independent of party policies and ends. It is an appeal to the whole People, on a matter of vital interest to the whole Country. September i, 1889. THE AUTHOR. 224077 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. A SECTIONAL UNION, 5 II. THE DIVISIONAL LINE, ..... 15 III. THE CONTINUING CAUSE 25 IV. A RACE-QUESTION, . . . . . . 33 V. THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION, . . 41 VI. RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH, . . 61 VII. A TRILEMMA, .102 VIII. THE RADICAL SOLUTION, 120 IX. RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS, . . . . .131 X. RECKONINGS OF COST, ..... 146 XI. WILL HE Go ? .164 XII. OUR DUTY, 19$ iii AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. THE NEGRO PROBLEM AND ITS RADICAL SOLUTION. I. A SECTIONAL UNION. WHEN the war between the States ended in 1865, Negro Slavery disappeared from the North American Continent. The victors and the van quished in the struggle alike congratulated them selves that their long standing cause of quarrel had disappeared with it ; that the coming years contained no prospect of a renewal of the old controversies ; and that their children would grow up together the joint heirs of a Union more peaceful, more powerful, and "more perfect" than themselves or their fathers had ever known. Certainly most of us cherished the hope, the belief, when the first flush of triumph, or the first keen pang of defeat, had given place to sober re flection concerning the future of our common country, that the only obstacle to the cordial union of the peoples of the long divided and lately warring " sections " had been removed at last, and that they would go forward thenceforth 5 6 Atf APPEAL TO PHARAOH. united and unimpeded in the fulfilment of their happy and high destiny among the nations. We have been disappointed. True, there have been great and radical changes, social, political, industrial, and other wise, in the conditions of the country, in the conditions of the Southern States particularly ; but these changes have not brought us nearer together. On every hand, and at all times, is heard a chorus of voices proclaiming that the Union is restored, and has become again " the Union of our fathers." Alas, it is nothing more! The old questions disturb us in new shapes; our distrusts and differences are none the less real and deep and wide for being denied or thinly covered over. Athwart the map of the Republic runs, as plainly and sharply defined as ever, the line across which we fought to the death a few years ago. The two sections are sections still. The two peoples are two peoples still, differing in character, and interests, and aims ; having not much in common, indeed, save a common gov ernment, re-established by force. The participation of the true " representatives " of the one section in the administration of that government is still regarded with unconcealed jealousy and distrust by the great majority of the people of the other section ; the election and appointment of these representatives to office provoke renewed and widespread irritation and complaint as often as they occur ; the sentiments A SECTIONAL UNION 1 . 7 of sectional dislike and antagonism find constant and bitter expression even in the National coun cils ; the first and second places in the govern ment are perfectly well understood, on both sides, to be beyond the aspiration of any citizen of the restored Union who is identified with the losing side in the war which ended nearly twenty- five years ago. There should be no exaggeration of the facts here stated. There is nothing to be gained by ignoring them, or pretending to ignore them. They cannot be brushed aside or explained away. The writer has no desire or motive to make our case appear worse than it is. It is bad enough at the best. The substance of what is asserted is that the familiar and fateful terms " the South " and " the North " still mean, practically, what they have always meant in our history no more, no less and the intelligent and honest reader requires surely but to study and interpret the events and the signs and the sayings of the times to make the statement clear to his own mind, without the risk of misconception, and to convince himself of its truth. It is not practicable or necessary to present the evidences here. It is not practicable because they would fill many volumes. It is not neces sary because they are everywhere ; are not hid den ; and cannot be missed. The literature of the Reconstruction Era is crowded with them ; and contains little else. And whether we con- 8 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. sider that that Era closed in 1876, or in 1884, the volume of evidence is still open and growing. The recent files of the Congressional Record and of every newspaper and magazine in the land, from the greatest to the least, afford a mass of proof to which a new chapter is added daily. A striking but most dispassionate statement of our dual condition as a nation, so late as in 1884, was made by an able, well-informed, and thoroughly patriotic writer, Judge Albion W. Tourge, in his book, An Appeal to Ccesar, which was pub lished in that year. Since then we have had the deliberate testimony of a distinguished Senator from Ohio, one of the most eminent statesmen of our time, and recently a conspicuous candidate for Presidential honors, which was delivered, from a carefully written speech, at Springfield, Ohio, two years ago. Besides this may be cited particularly the declarations of other high au thorities, made in connection with the proposi tion to return the captured Confederate flags to their former guardians ; with the consideration in the last Congress of the various general pension bills; with the appointment and confirmation of Minister Lawton and Justice Lamar; with the discussion of the character and conduct of emi nent Northern statesmen and generals ; with the debates on the civil service and tariff reform questions ; and, finally, general reference may be made to the numerous formal deliverances of divers political, religious, and other public bodies A SECTIONAL UNION. 9 which have directly or indirectly passed upon questions relating to recent or remote sectional issues, or growing out of them. We need not attach too much importance to the utterances of any or all of these weighty and widely scattered authorities. We should not at tach too little. It is the highest order of human testimony; and is all to the same effect. When both its quantity and quality are considered, to gether with its entire agreement throughout, it is conclusive of the subject to which it is di rected. There is indeed as plain, as positive, and as much testimony to the continued and pro found estrangement of the people of the two sec tions as could reasonably be expected to be given under the circumstances of their peculiar rela tions as victors and vanquished in a recent great and bloody war ; and when these circumstances are taken fully into account, the evidences that are presented must be regarded as not less sig nificant of the existence of an underlying fact in our national condition than were the unreserved and open declarations of the public men and the public press on both sides of the sectional line as to the existence of the same fact prior to 1861. Most, if not all, of the testimony that has been referred to has been given by Northern men, who spoke in sorrow or in anger, according to the cir cumstances under which they testified. Both these emotions, however, prompt the utterance 10 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. of truth, or what is believed to be the truth. What was said was sincere at least, and is entitled therefore to be received with more respect than the expressions of more politic men, which have been shaped by their patriotic wishes rather than their secret convictions. The people of the North do not wish to believe that the people of the South are estranged from them, in any sense, or to any degree. The people of the South, to render them bare justice, do not wish to re main estranged, or to be regarded as separate and apart from the rest of the nation, on any grounds. The result of the war demonstrated their relative weakness as a distinct community, and they are becoming relatively weaker every year, as they know well. The symbol and the substance of their former power have departed from them for ever ; and this they know. They can expect to derive no advantage or benefit from maintaining a sectional organization, now or hereafter. Their first desire is to regain a footing of perfect confi dence and equality, marked by no line of division, among the rest of the people of the Union. Prin ciple and policy ; regard for the lessons of the past and their hopes for the future ; every con sideration that appeals to their selfish interests, their sense of duty, their love for their children and for the land of their birth, impel them to seek earnestly to undo the fatal error which they committed when they left the house of their fa thers, No Southern man has been heard to utter A SECTIONAL UNION. II one sentiment to encourage the idea of the main tenance of even the shadow of a Southern Con federacy, since the Union was restored. The madness, the folly, of such an organization, on whatever basis, within whatever lines, is recog nized, and has been recognized since the civil war ended, alike by the most obstinate disciple of the dogma of State Sovereignty and the most igno rant of his followers. The whole hope of the South depends upon its recovering its former place in the Union. Its unqualified desire and aim is to recover this as perfectly and as speedily as possible. There has been, therefore, little or no assertion by Southern men of the existence of conditions or sentiments of continued estrange ment in the South ; and there will be none. The evidence need not be looked for in this form or from this quarter. Nevertheless, it can readily be found ; it cannot be overlooked. The Solid South speaks for the Silent South, and the one unquestionable fact of its solidity however justified isthe sufficient and unimpeach able witness to the maintenance of fixed sectional limits, and unreconciled sectional antagonisms, of some kind. Let us avoid all danger of misapprehension on this difficult and grave subject. No sane man certainly no man who knows the real sentiment of the Southern people towards the Union as it was and is believes for an instant that the peo ple of any Southern State would secede to-mor- 12 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. row, if they could go unchallenged. Secession separation by any means is forever out of ques tion, and out of mind. The overthrow of the principle is not so much as regretted. This, at least, has been gained by war, and it is a great deal to have gained, in any event. Perhaps it is worth all that it cost. On both sides there is now the sincere and earnest desire for " a more perfect union," that was confined to one side before the attempt at division was made. This, too, has been gained, and it is the greatest result attained by the war, since it places the Union on a firmer foundation than ever before. The most serious error that the people of the North have com mitted since the war has been in not recognizing and acting on this natural and assured change in the sentiment of Southern men, of all classes, but mainly of the most intelligent class. There has been enough of troubles in the South in its new condition, but none of them has been due to lack of loyalty to the restored Union itself. There is undoubtedly, in short, as sincere and ar dent a desire for a cordial and complete reconcil iation and reunion on the part of the people of the South, as there is on the part of the people of the North. Whatever degree of estrangement exists is due, not to the choice of either side, but to circumstances which neither side is wholly responsible for, and which are now beyond the control of either side alone. The hope of the future of this country rests on the common re- A SECTIONAL UNION. 13 gard of both sides for the Union, on their common desire for reconciliation, and on their joint action for the common good which this common regard and desire shall inspire them to undertake. And yet, notwithstanding these gains, and this common disposition and desire, the two peoples are still far apart. Regret it, explain it, as we may, the persistent truth comes to us constantly in countless disquieting forms, to mock our hope and vain self-deception. The Union of to-day is at last but the Union of yesterday, in fact , an indissoluble alliance of the North and the South, not a union of the People of the whole country. Is it not so ? The very existence and oft- repeated expression of a desire for a closer union is evidence that that desire has not been fulfilled. On how many occasions, every year, are we as sured that, now the Union is certainly restored, and sectionalism is no more. We have heard this over and over again nearly every day for more than twenty years. Each new assertion but shows how little of truth there was in the last. It is not necessary to press this view farther, or to qualify it in the particulars in which it may be qualified. The truth is better known by every man in the Republic than it can be told to him. Let the reader consider for himself how near to gether in sentiment, in sympathy, in true national spirit, are the people, for instance, of Connecticut and California ; of South Carolina and Texas ; 14 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. how far apart are the people of Pennsylvania and Virginia, of Ohio and Kentucky; and he cannot miss the meaning of what is asserted, or deny its verity. The deliberate testimony of three United States Senators, not uttered in the heat of debate and without weighing their words, but committed to writing and published after careful revision, ought to be conclusive, at any rate. All that has been said in this chapter as to our divided state, is said in much more forcible terms in the speech of Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, already men tioned ; in an article contributed by Senator J. J. Ingalls, of Kansas, to the June, 1888, number of the North American Review, and by Senator Wm. E. Chandler, of New Hampshire, in the Forum for July, 1888. These Senators are among the foremost statesmen and representatives of the Eastern, Middle, and Western States. Their views are in entire accord with each other, and to gether compel acceptance, if there were ground for doubt before. Their words are on record, and need not be repeated here. The fact of a divided country is recognized and asserted on all hands. It cannot be set aside with out setting aside the plainest, strongest evidence in which it could be presented. We may deal with it as a hard, cold, ugly fact, temporarily and thinly disguised, undoubtedly ; but a fact, never theless, and one which the revival of a single polit ical issue would certainly expose in all its ugliness, II. THE DIVISIONAL LINE. BUT if the fact of division, of the continued existence of two sections in the Union, is plain and well known, is not the cause of such division equally plain and notorious? Has it, indeed, ever been hidden, or even obscure ? Does any intel ligent and honest man, North or South, doubt where it is to be found, or what it is ? Every day it confronts us anew, as it has confronted us through all these many years, and compels recog nition and consideration and action. We could not avoid stumbling over it, if we would, and we have stumbled often enough and fallen more than once. We are not yet a united people, because we are not yet a homogeneous people. And we are not a homogeneous people because of the presence and potent operation of an important and pervading factor in the social and civil life of the one section which is absent from or exerts scarcely an appreciable direct influence on the life of the other section. We need not mince words, nor multiply them. The presence of the Negro, in so largely disproportionate numbers, is the one distinguishing and differentiating characteristic of the condition of the South, as it has been from 1 6 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. the beginning; and as to this special and impor tant feature of its condition we must attribute whatever is peculiar to that section, so likewise to its peculiarities, thus produced, we must attribute its inharmonious and isolated position in the Re public, and the diversity of character, opinion, and sentiment between the two peoples, North and South, of which that isolation is the stub born, conspicuous, and fateful token. Is not this true? Here is a notable and con spicuous fact in our past and present history, at all events. The North has stretched away, unhindered in its growth, adding States and countries to its territory,- until it reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean ; and very much of that growth has taken place since the war ended and the slave was made free. The population of the whole extended section, composed as it is of the most diverse elements, drawn from many and widely removed lands, are practically one in sen timent, in purpose in all that goes to make of a people one nation. The South remains separate and apart from the newer North and the old North alike ; and is further removed, perhaps, in respect of sympathy and harmony, from the newer North than from the old if that be possible. The sun, from its rising to its setting, shines on a united people spread across the whole extended Continent, and ever growing more numerous, THE DIVISIONAL LINE. 17 more closely identified, and more powerful the people of the old and the new " Free States" of the American Union, the only truly united States of our post-Revolutionary history. A cloud hangs forever and far along the skirts of this grand march of Empire to the south ward. The " South," as such, has grown only with the growth of its negro population ; its western border is fixed, half-way to the Pacific Ocean, at the line where the extension of that population was arrested, a quarter century ago, by the shock of war. The shadow of slavery still rests on the whole region that slavery blighted. The darkness of the Dark Continent lies upon the fairest, richest portion of the New World. Its forests and mineral fields are exploring-ground for the rest of the country. Africa is grafted on America. It is " the South " that it was from 1787 to 1860 a separate South, a solid South, a shad owed South, an undeveloped South and " the South " it is doomed to remain until the cause the marked, alien, and unassimilable element of its population, that made it what it was and is ; binding it together and excluding it from genuine and cordial sympathy with the life and thought and purpose and achievement of the rest of the Republic is removed. This is plain speaking. There is need for plain speaking. We have trifled with each other and deceived our selves long enough. No matter, now, who is to be blamed for his 1 8 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. presence here, or who are responsible for his mis fortunes and the misfortunes he has caused or occasioned us, is not the fact of the ill plight of the Negro, and of the injurious effects of his pres ence on the conditions of the one section, and the relations of the two sections, plain and incon trovertible? If there is any honest doubt on this subject, however, it should be satisfied. The future peace and happiness of the Republic depend on this gen eration of its citizens understanding the Negro Question aright, and on the right use of such understanding. Can we not then, as reasonable men, put aside personal and sectional feeling, and agree upon the bare conditions of our na tional existence and of the grave problem with which we are confronted? Let the main proposition be set forth again, in the plainest terms : The Negro was the cause of the division of the United States into the two sec tions, the North and the South, and has been the cause of all the strife that has taken place between those sections since the independence of the col onies was established. An innocent cause, as suredly. A remote or indirect cause sometimes, it may be conceded. But the one, real, first cause, always. Let us not quibble about words. What is meant is that, but for the presence of the Negro in the United States there would have been no division of the country on sectional lines as we have known them, no North, no South, no Nulli- THE DIVISIONAL LINE. 10 fication, no Secession, and probably no civil war over any question ! A wide and interesting field for speculation opens to us here, but we need not enter it, for the present at least. It is enough if we can haply agree on the facts of our national history. The main fact which is asserted is that that history has turned upon the Negro, and the Negro Question, from first to last. The rift between the North and the South ap peared plainly in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, as every one of our historians tells us, and it has steadily widened ever since. It was seen by the delegates to the Convention, whose divis ion on the Negro question, as it was presented to them for the first time, foreshadowed the fatal division of the whole people in 1861. On the floor of the Convention Mr. Madison " contended that the States were divided into different inter ests, not by their difference in size, but by other circumstances; the most important of which re sulted from climate, but principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These two causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in the United States. It did not lie between the large and small States ; it lay between the Northern and Southern." * This was the beginning of the trouble, but we need not trace its development step by step. It should be said, however, that difference in climate * Madison Papers, p. 1006. 2o AN APPEAL TO PHARAOtf. did not have the importance which Mr. Madison assigned to it, or that has been assigned to it since his day. The State line between Virginia and Pennsylvania has never marked so wide a varia tion of climate that the Negro or slavery could thrive on but one side of it. Virginia and Ohio are in the same latitude, yet Ohio has never been identified with the South on any sectional issue. The presence of its negro population alone carried Virginia into the Southern Confederacy, when Ohio and Pennsylvania remained in the Union. Slavery alone, not slavery and climate, has marked the line of cleavage between the North and the South, from Mr. Madison s time down. The one true cause of division which he indicated in the Convention at Philadelphia was made plain enough in the Congress of 1860 61, when it was proclaimed in terms that leave no room for doubt or dispute as to its recognition, and the map of the Southern Confederacy adds demonstration to assertion. We are told still, indeed, that the war in which our differences culminated was waged in defence of the sovereignty of the States and the right of self-government, on the one hand ; and for the preservation of the Union, on the other. The dogma of State Sovereignty was asserted so stren uously by the Slave States alone, however ; and only the Slave States seceded ; while the States that triumphed in the struggle for the mainte nance of the Union formulated their success in THE DIVISIONAL LINE. 21 additions to the organic law of the Union that were designed alone to settle the Negro Question in accordance with the views of that question which the North had upheld throughout the con troversy that preceded the war. The Union is restored, and the States have resumed the rela tions which they formerly sustained towards each other. The amended Constitution contains no word in reference to State Sovereignty that it did not contain prior to 1861. The old controversy has been renewed on changed lines, and relates wholly to the one question of the status of the Negro. If we have regard to the substance of our former differences, then, and not to the ex pression of them, we see that the Negro question was the issue that divided us. Nay, the South itself was divided, on the same question, when the final conflict was precipitated. A considerable portion of the people of the South sided with the North in the struggle that fol lowed secession, and either held aloof from the Confederate armies, or took active part against them. This class Union men or Union sym pathizers, as they were called were the inhabi tants of the mountain region which extended from Mason and Dixon s line far down into the heart of the Confederacy. And the distinguish ing feature of this central or wedge-shaped re gion, as compared with the rest of the South, was and is the almost entire absence of a Negro population. The apparent exception to the rule 22 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOtf. that has been noted, but confirms the rule when closely examined. The line of separation of the people followed the actual boundary of the Slave territory in all its course. Certainly, more than one motive or principle influenced the people of America in their conflict. But we need not consider what other motives there were. It is idle to deny, it is the blindest self-deception not to see, that Slavery was the real occasion, and the unfortunate Negro the real cause, of all our strife. Slavery has disappeared. The Negro remains. His changed status fur nishes us with new occasion for renewed conten tion. We are still divided. The Negro keeps us apart. His presence is enough, whatever his condition, to maintain the difference and conse quent division that his presence caused in the first instance. He has stood between us, as slave, as freedman, as citizen, and he stands be tween us still in his present anomalous and most undesirable character, for which it is difficult to find a name. No matter whose the fault, is not the/<z^ evi dent that, in whatsoever guise and howsoever re garded, the Negro himself has been and is and promises to remain the one insuperable barrier to the perfect Union which our forefathers sought to form, and which the people of America, of the South and the North alike, still desire above all things to see consummated ? THE DIVISIONAL LINE. 23 If not, so much the worse for us. For if the Negro was not the cause of our difference and division, then is that cause radical indeed. The old Union was a lie and no Union. The new Union is the old Union restored, with a line of graves to remind us forever of the existence of two antagonistic sections, and to form a lowly but always impassable wall between them. No, it is better for us that the Negro is surely the cause of our estrangement, and that the cause does not consist in a deep-rooted antipathy, as irreconcilable as inexplicable, between the people of the two groups of States. We might solve the Negro problem in time, though it were in volved in tenfold the difficulties it now presents. Woe betide us and our children if our old hatreds were innate, and so strong on both sides, or on either side, that they could find adequate expres sion only in four years of bloody warfare ; and if they are but concealed now under the old cloak of false friendship, or even the new cloak of a false hope, and can never be wholly displaced from our secret hearts! Every day the truth confronts us, and de mands recognition and consideration and action. Strange that we should have ignored it or evaded it so long. It had been far better for us the people of the North and of the South alike if we had recognized it and accepted it and acted on it, long ago. We shall be wise when we deal with it, and with each other, openly, frankly and 24 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. honestly. We shall but multiply our difficulties and our differences, we may be assured, and shall remain apart, while professing to stand together, so long as we refuse to see what is between us; to declare what we see and know ; and to under take the work that knowledge and experience teach us must be undertaken, if we are ever to make the Union a union in more than name. III. THE CONTINUING CAUSE. THE purpose being to present the facts of our condition as plainly as practicable, and to deal with them honestly, we cannot make too sure of our ground, nor pass over any reasonable critic ism that can be anticipated. If we could proceed upon the assumption that it will be conceded that the Negro has been, and is, the cause of all our contention and strife, the rest of our task would be quickly disposed of. The cause of trouble being granted, it would re main only to consider how it could be remedied or removed. But we cannot assume so much, or so little. Some there are, doubtless, and not a few hon est men among them, who will be ready enough to concede that the Negro was such a cause be fore the war and during the Reconstruction peri od, but will deny that he is a cause of difference now, or that there is, indeed, any longer a serious cause of difference between the sections. It is not infrequently asserted that there is, at last, no North, no South, and " no longer a negro ques tion "; or, at any rate, that there would be none if the politicians of the North would let the South 25 26 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. alone, and, on the other hand, if the South would let the Negro alone : all of which assertions and qualifications balance each other quite satisfac torily, for our purpose, and certainly render it un necessary to go into an extended argument to show that the Negro is well up to the front among the issues of our day. The South has not yet wholly dematerialized as a political entity, and the negro question remains quite prominent enough there to make us reasonably sure that the South will not let the Negro alone, or the politi cians let the South alone, in our time, if ever. The plea for the preservation of the Union did not suffice to keep down the negro question before the South seceded, and when the Negro himself was silent perforce. The cry of a re stored Union will not suffice to keep that ques tion in the background, now that secession has failed of its purpose, and the voice of the Negro himself is raised in appeal for the enjoyment of the rights to which he is entitled by virtue of his changed condition from slave to citizen, and of our solemn engagement with him. Nay, we cannot so easily forget him. Let those good people, North and South, who flatter themselves that the negro question has been for ever displaced, or even so much as temporarily obscured, by another issue the issue of a Pro tective Tariff which, as they say, divides the country on new and shifting and non-sectional lines but consider for a moment. THE CONTINUING CAUSE. 27 The old, familiar line runs sharp and clear through the whole discussion of this tariff ques tion. It was recently drawn without break or de viation on the floor of Congress, and whatever dis position to transgress it appeared among the rep resentatives of the North, the representatives of the South showed their usual unbroken, unwaver ing front. It is the statement of a fact only. The presence of its vast negro population affects, de termines and unifies every interest in the South, material and industrial as well as political ; and those interests, if we may judge by the record of the balloting in Congress, and by the discussion in and out of Congress on the tariff question, are not held, by either side, to be identical with the interests of the North. The influence of the Ne gro in determining the attitude of the Southern States towards the " Protective system," more over, is not a discovery of to-day. It is as mani fest to the thoughtful reader in the reports of the proceedings of the Convention of 1787 as in the reports of the proceedings of the Congress of 1887-88, and 1888-89. Tne conflict between the two sections on this issue is at least as old as the Union itself. The Protective system and the Slave system were the complements of each other from the beginning of our history as a nation. Is it too much to say that the Nation owes its existence to a compromise between the bene ficiaries of the two systems and came near ow ing its destruction to that compromise as well? 28 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. However this may be, it is seen that the for mer Slave States are solidly arrayed against the surviving system, and that the negro question is still uppermost among our troubles, even when we would fain believe it to be buried beyond resurrection. And if it be so prominent an ele ment in such an issue as that of the Tariff, we do not need, surely, to trace its presence and activity in other issues. The temptation is not slight to take up this quest, indeed, if only because of the ease with which it can be followed, but it is be lieved that it is enough to have suggested the line of investigation, without pursuing it in any field. The broad proposition already laid down covers the whole ground. It could not but be that the presence of so marked, peculiar and considerable an element of population as that of the negro population in the Southern States, and its ab sence almost from the Northern States, would effect a notable diversity of character, occupation and interest, as between the peoples of the two sections. We know that such diversity was early established and has been maintained hith erto. It is not too much to assume or assert in the absence of evidence to the contrary that, the cause remaining the same, its effects must and will continue to be manifested. We need not quarrel over our past quarrels, whether remote or recent. Some of them, it ap pears, will never be settled. Our present troubles THE CONTINUING CAUSE. 29 are quite large enough and important enough to engage the attention and the most earnest efforts of patriotic men in every part of the country. The negro question is scarcely concealed beneath the surface of the tariff question, as has been shown in the discussion of the tariff question, and that is enough of itself to answer the claim that there is no longer a negro question to vex us. But this is not all. The settlement of the tariff question, one way or the other, or the set tlement of any or all of the incidental and minor questions with which we have to do, would not dispose of the great issue that is beneath and behind them all, and of which in so far as the North and the South differ they are but so many phases. There is one view of our condition that will solve every honest doubt as to what it really is and what we have to expect in the future. Whatever degree of harmony and unity be tween the two sections now obtains, has been secured, within the past dozen years, by the prac tical concession to the white people of the South of nearly everything that they have claimed rela tive to the status of the Negro ; even his politi cal status, which was the last point in dispute. Perplexed and baffled in their efforts to make the Negro a citizen, in the full sense of the term, the people who freed him and conferred suffrage on him have virtually retired from the contest in his behalf. The existing harmonious condition 30 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. of affairs between the North and the South is maintained at his expense. Let the Negro alone, let the South alone, and there will be no more a ne gro question until, like the slavery question, after festering and rankling awhile below the surface of events, it shall break forth suddenly to plague the whole country anew and compel us to con sider it again. Let the Negro alone ; leave the South to deal with him ; and the Union will be as sincere and cordial as at any time since it was formed. Let him not alone; assert effectively the principle of his equality as a citizen, which the South rejects in practice, and the fires of sec tionalism will burn as fiercely on the instant as they burnt at any time between 1865 and 1876. Do we not know this to be true ? Are we not acting on the knowledge ? Our present peace and unity are purchased by the sacrifice of the Negro s civil and political rights, and by the sac rifice of every principle and sentiment, right or wrong, that is embodied inthe^ta?/ bellum amend ments of the Constitution. It is an evil condi tion of things, but we have accepted it as a lesser evil than the condition which it has supplanted. It cannot last, however. The end will come sooner or later. Soon, if the North shall pres ently insist again on its former view of the Ne gro s rights, or on any modified or alternative view ; later, but none the less surely, if it do not. The certain source and cause of trouble, sectional or otherwise, is the Negro himself. The question THE CONTINUING CAUSE. 31 concerning him is becoming more complex, and is assuming new and more difficult phases while we try to ignore it. We shall have inevitably to meet it again, before very long, in some form, and in a more troublesome form than ever before. The present condition of the Negro challenges our thought every day, and compels our concern, whether we will or no. He is not satisfied, and we are not satisfied about him. He remains where he was, and for the most part what he was. We cannot let him alone, if we would. We have treated with him in the three characters under the three disguises, it may be said of slave, freedman, and pseudo-citizen, which we have imposed on him. We have yet to treat with him in his own personality, in his essential character of a stranger, an alien, a hopelessly un- assimilable intruder in our national household. The truth is that the War and the results of the War emancipation, enfranchisement, and the rest but brought us face to face with the real underlying question over which we pondered and blundered and quarrelled so long. Perhaps we could not have seen it and attempted its solution while it was obscured by slavery. We should have seen it right speedily when slavery was abolished, had we not hastened to cast the cloak of " manhood suffrage " over it. We have no longer an excuse for our failure to see what we should have seen long ago had we not been blinded by our selfish interests, first pecuniary and then political. 32 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. It is the old question still the Negro Ques tion but we are just beginning to understand it and to consider it in its ultimate and inevitable form. The suffrage experiment delayed this un derstanding, indeed, for a time ; but it has made the true issue the plainer and more imperative, now that it is forcing itself upon us. Its ultimate form is its primary form. We have nearly or quite des cribed the great circle of error three hundred years around and are now where our forefathers would have speedily found themselves if they had allowed negro immigration in the first place, and thereafter, on a considerable scale, without en slaving the immigrants as fast as they landed ! The coarse garb of the slave concealed the Negro himself, the Man of diverse race, character, history and capability, from the selfish and short-sighted gaze of the founders of the Republic, and of their sons, our fathers. We stripped him of his rags, and clothed him with the robe of citizenship. Some of us have since stripped him of that robe after his brief masquerade in it. We are face to face with the African at last. IV. A RACE-QUESTION. WHAT then is the Negro Question? The answer is in the very terms of the inquiry. It is a race-question, on its face. True, it has still a sectional feature, and a polit ical feature, and social and religious and other features ; but they are mere features. The per sonality of the Negro is behind them every one. It is a sectional question, because the negro is practically confined to one section. It is a politi cal question because it is a sectional question. Its remaining features have been merged in these two, or overshadowed by them, and need not now be considered. It would never have presented either of these its principal features, perhaps, if the negro population had been evenly, or more evenly, distributed throughout the country. In the section where that population is concentrated, and where it promises to remain concentrated, it is purely a race-question, and is recognized as such. It is, therefore, a race-question for the whole country. Is not the truth as large and plain as the " Solid South" itself? Why should any one have to labor or argue to make it plainer ? What room 33 34 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. is there for honest doubt as to the real issue ? A race-conflict has been waged in the Southern States every day and hour since the slave was freed, since, that is to say, the former subordi nate race was put in a position to assert itself in some measure. The conflict is still in progress, wherever two representatives of the two races stand together. There is not one faint token that it will ever end. Whatever may be thought or hoped for by others, neither party to it ex pects it to end. The third party, the people who precipitated the sullen, ceaseless warfare, and who looked for its peaceful termination long ago in a condition of things in accordance with their ideas and plans, have no direct part in it, and can take no part that will not aggravate its worst phases, as they have learned. Certainly, they have no power or skill to shape the result to conform to their wishes. Every man, woman, and child in the South, and of both races, is engaged in it al ways. It is the most extended and inveterate race-conflict that the world has ever known, and is indeed unparalleled of its kind ; there is abso lutely no precedent for it in history: but we need be at no loss to understand its character. It is such a conflict as there is every reason to believe would be waged if the same number of negroes, or a much smaller number, were now introduced into any part of America for the first time, except that its conduct is modified in many wsys by Uie former and long-continued relations A RACE-QUESTION. 35 of the two parties to it. It is such a conflict as there is no reason to doubt would have taken place long ago if the Negro had been introduced into any part of America on the same footing with other immigrants, and in any considerable numbers. It has been said that the institution of slavery served to postpone the conflict so long, by merging the Negro in the slave, and the thoughtful reader will be at no loss to understand and accept the assertion, and to follow out the reflections it suggests. It is such a conflict as the extreme Western States were threatened with, and experienced, in a measure, a few years ago, in consequence of the sudden irruption of Mongolians into their territory; the nature of which conflict no one, anywhere, was at a loss to understand when the lines were first drawn, or later, when governmental aid was invoked, and granted, for the exclusion of the alien race. It is just such a conflict, to carry the comparison a little farther, as these Western States would have been subjected to, if the Chinese had been intro duced as slaves; had become established by reason of residence and numbers ; and, after over running a vast area of country, had been emanci pated and made citizens under the circumstances which marked the emancipation and enfranchise ment of the negroes in the Southern States.* It is such a conflict, in fine, as our knowledge of human nature, as illustrated by the history of the * See note, p. 126. Remarks of Senator Stewart. 36 AN APPEAL TO PHA&AOH. world and the map of the world, should have taught us to expect as the result of trying to fuse two unlike races of men into one body politic be fore the millennium had fairly dawned, and under conditions that were not particularly favorable for the experiment. Let us consider for a mo ment what the conditions were. If it had been asked, prior to 1865, under what circumstances it would probably be practicable to induce two unlike races of mankind to live together on the same soil, on equal terms gen erally, and under a common government, of course, the answer of any intelligent man would have been somewhat as follows : The two races should be as nearly alike as practicable, in all respects, to begin with. They should be as nearly equal as practicable in re spect of numbers, strength, knowledge, culture, wealth, etc., etc., to ensure the maintenance of equality in all their joint relations. They should entertain sentiments of peculiarly friendly regard for each other, and of confidence in each other. There should never have been any serious or long-standing cause of enmity or distrust between them, that would be likely to be revived or re called under any circumstances. Both races should heartily desire the fusion to be effected, and should enter into the experiment voluntarily, and earnestly disposed to make it successful not to say with eagerness and enthusiasm. And, not to lay down too many requirements, it would A RACE-QUESTIOtf. 37 probably have been added that, when the novel and hazardous experiment should be fairly in progress, its conduct should be left indubitably to those most concerned in its success, without interference from any outside source that would be likely to develop latent antagonism, or intro duce any element of discord, or dislike or distrust, where perfect harmony of feeling and purpose was so plainly essential to be preserved and fostered. How have these simple and obvious prerequi sites to the success of such an experiment been observed in the instance before us? The reader, may answer this question in detail for himself. The general answer is that every condition of success that has been suggested, or that can be suggested, perhaps, has been carefully violated or disregarded in the conduct of the great American experiment on this line during the last quarter century. Starting out with the two races, the Caucasian and the African, which differ most widely from each other in every re spect in which two races can differ as the sub jects of the venture, we have spared no pains to complicate it and render it more difficult and more hopeless at every step, and have indeed the full satisfaction, at the last, of knowing that we have left no blunder untried, nor missed any impor tant error that ignorance could suggest or ingenuity invent, to insure its failure. We have only to reflect, besides, that this par- 38 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. ticularly unpromising undertaking was not only not entered upon voluntarily by at least one of the peoples directly concerned in it and that by far the more numerous and more powerful of the two, and upon whom, therefore, the success of the scheme was mainly or wholly dependent but was forced upon them by their conquerors in a protracted and bloody war, as a penalty of the war, and for the avowed purpose of establishing their political subjugation to the allied forces of their recent enemies and recent slaves: we have only to reflect on these things, surely, to dis charge our minds of any lingering element of surprise that the first great experiment of racial fusion has not wholly met the expectations of its promoters, and to remove the last lingering ele ment of uncertainty as to the final result. Nor is there room for surprise that the strug gle has involved loss of life, to whatever extent and under whatever pretext. The only matter for wonder is that the land has not been drenched with blood; and blood would have flowed in rivers instead of rills, we may be sure, but for the general inequality of the two parties to the con test, and, especially, the radical weakness of the Negro, which has impelled him to yield place and power everywhere, and always, with a readiness that has preserved his race from destruction, in deed, but at the same time has demonstrated his peculiar unfitness to be made the subject of the experiment that was forced upon him also, A RACE-QUESTION. 39 willing or unwilling. It is not pleasant to con template, even in imagination, what would have been the probable condition of affairs in the South during the Reconstruction period, had the negroes there largely outnumbered the whites ; or if they had possessed more of the aggressive spirit of their white neighbors. It is bad enough as it is; but perhaps it is better as it is, after all for the black people and the white people of the South, and for the whole people of America, both now and hereafter that the gentle and patient Ethiopian changes his natural character no more readily than his natural skin under the operation of statute laws. We may abandon the speculative point of view, however, without ceremony. There is no need to conjure up imaginary troubles. Our actual present and probable, or certain, future ills are quite enough to engage our whole attention. The question before us is, at last, a question as to the plain facts of the condition and position of the Negro among his white neighbors, of their relations and disposition toward each other, and their probable conduct hereafter. The experi ment of which the Negro has been the principal subject, and the object of which to express the purpose in conveniently comprehensive terms was to make him the " equal " of other men in habiting the same soil with him, has been in force for more than a score of years. What is the net result? What has been accomplished for the 40 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. Negro, in that period? Let us determine if we can, and set down as truly as we can within so narrow limits, the bare facts of his case as they are presented to us to-day. V. THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. Is it not a bare, hard fact, then, that the Negro in America has made very little progress, since his emancipation, towards the shining goal set for him by his liberators the goal of American citizenship, in the true and full sense of the term ; the sense in which it is applied to the white man? The desire and endeavor of his friends was to absorb him into the body politic ; to assimilate him wholly; to cancel and obliterate every dis tinction and difference that was in his way, ex cept those imposed on him by nature, and to ignore these. It was hoped and expected that he would de velop to our standard so surely and so rapidly under this generous treatment, that our preju dices, born and nurtured of former relations only, perhaps, would disappear, and that he would be come as one of us ; and so vindicate the heroic measures adopted in his behalf. The struggle of the Reconstruction period was to clear his way to higher ground, and but for the hope and ex pectation that he could reach it and would reach it, almost at a bound, the efforts of the Republi can party, of his friends everywhere, to push him 41 42 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. forward would have been as criminal as they have been vain. And vain they have been when meas ured by the purposes here indicated. Progress the Negro has made, unquestionably, in some directions ; in some places ; perhaps, even when we have regard to his whole race in the United States. He is no longer a slave, and his emancipation has uplifted him in heart and mind to some degree above the low plane of his former estate. Freedom has brought its responsibilities and cares and pains, but these he accepts with out a murmur, in consideration of the blessed privilege of directing his own ways and calling no man " Master." He has justified his deliver ance even in the eyes of his former owner, by showing that he appreciates his liberty and loves it with all his soul. There has been no sighing on his part for the flesh-pots of slavery even when he starved in sight of them. The husks that have been his portion but too often since he began, unaided, to provide for his own wants, are sweeter to the humblest, most ignorant of his race than all the dainties that ever fell to his lot from the kindest master s table. Ask him, and he will tell you that he is not infrequently in sore straits, and knows not in the morning where his dinner, or eke his breakfast, will come from, if it shall come at all. But he feels that he is free" free till he is fool," is his own expressive language and he would not exchange places with his for mer self for any price that could be offered him. THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. 43 And he is free, in so far as his intelligence en ables him to assert his liberty. Free to come and go ; to work or play ; to live or die ; as he pleases, or as may befall him. And more is conceded to him than is expressed by sheer indifference to his existence and conduct and end. He exercises many rights and privi leges, before denied to him and ardently desired by him. We need not try to mention all of these the list, happily, is too long for detailed mention. A few examples must suffice. The courts, from the lowest to the highest, are open to him and he " laws " therein to his heart s con tent. He is admitted to the jury-box in some places ; and to the prisoner s dock in all places save when he commits one crime. Whether jus tice holds the scales equally balanced between him and the white man, cannot be said here. The question is difficult of determination, in so far as it is a question of fact. The opinions of whites and blacks differ on the subject. Work is furnished him, in many industries. Some of his race have accumulated a little property, some even much, and in this respect are better off than many white laborers of their class, both North and South. He has the right to bear arms, and exercises it unchallenged, save in extremely rare instances. He parades at pleasure with his fel lows, and holds when he will the political, social, religious and other assemblies which he so much affects : the exceptions to this rule are exceptions > 44 ANAPPEAL TO PHARAOH. and are not numerous. Hischildren go to school, and to college sometimes, mainly at the white man s expense. He can obtain any degree of the higher education that he is capable of and can pay for, and having acquired a profession he is at liberty to practice it freely among his own people. At times, his vote is courted, and counted. In many ways which need not be mentioned more particularly, he enjoys equal rights and privileges with his white neighbors, and such enjoyment has exalted him somewhat in his own eyes and given him a better opinion of himself. He has indu bitably made progress upward in certain direc tions, as compared with his position as a slave. The advance is unmistakable, though we can not set the tide-mark of the unequal wave, nor say how much is due to his own efforts. After giving full credit to him, and to the peo ple among whom he lives, for these evidences in his favor and theirs and for any other evidences that may be adduced much requires to be said on the other side. In some respects his condition has scarcely improved upon that of slavery ; in others it is worse. The great majority of his race work for a bare and poor living. The wages of the average laborer scarcely serve to provide food and cloth ing, of the plainest quality, for himself and family. The women, as a rule, work as hard as the men in both town and country. Few negro families are as well fed, or well clothed, or as well off in point THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. 45 of general comfort as they were when slaves. The head of the family, in this generation, is usually ignorant, and his ignorance, improvidence and dependence together render him the easy victim of designing and unscrupulous white men ; he is defrauded and imposed on at every turn. The rule of confirmed and hopeless poverty in the Negro s case is painfully familiar to those who have looked closely into the every-day life of the masses of his people. The assertion will be challenged, doubtless, and exceptions pointed out as usual ; but regard is had here to the rule only, and it cannot be lightly set aside. The following excerpts will indicate what that rule is : To what extent the Negro has advanced as a property holder is a matter which has been lately discussed, and which has brought out a number of contradictory statements. The Comptroller-General of Georgia reports the taxable property owned by negroes in that State as owned by white citizens. On the other hand, the Charleston News and Courier points out that in Charleston the negroes stand just where they did in 1860; that the value of the property held by them to-day is just about the same as that held by the free negroes twenty-eight years ago, and strange to say, the colored property-holders are of the same class as in 1860, the descendants of negroes free before the war. This is a piece of conservatism very infrequent in this country even among the whites, where fortunes shift in a generation. We cannot but think that the Georgia return is nearer the average of the South ; although what the News and Courier says of Charleston is largely true of this city also. We 46 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. doubt whether the value of property held by colored men in New Orleans is any greater to-day than that held by the freed men of color in 1860 ; and yet both in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana the negro has been improving his condition steadily. It takes more than one generation, how ever, to raise a race held in the bond of slavery to the condi tion of property-holders. When the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been paid the negro in wages, and the mil lions wasted by them in the veriest trash, are considered, it seems strange that so few dollars of it have been invested in land, houses or any permanent property. The freed men of color who inherited land or houses have held on to them or at least to a portion of them. The negroes engaged in any very profitable trade or business may have laid aside something and own some little property, but the great majority of the race, who are simply farm hands, laborers or domestic servants, have acquired no per manent property of any kind, During the days of Republican supremacy, when the gov ernment was held by them or their pretended friends, they made no advance whatever, if they did not actually go back ward. Latterly, as the Georgia statistics show, they have been improving their condition financially. In the Yazoo delta of Mississippi in particular they have become property- holders in great numbers and have done well. There has certainly been a considerable increase in the amount of property owned by the Southern negroes in the past ten years, but it is still very small, certainly not over 3 or 5 per cent, of the total, and not anything like those wild and ex aggerated figures which went the rounds of the press lately, until contradicted and exposed by The Times-Democrat, and which placed the value of farm-property held by negroes in this State at one-fifth of the total. From the Times- Democrat (New Orleans), May, 1888. The recent action of the Legislature of Georgia has at- THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION, 47 tracted much attention. The Legislature passed a bill which provided that all the revenue collected from taxes on property owned by white people in Macon should go to the .white schools there, and that taxes derived from the colored people be applied to the colored schools. On this basis, the negroes of Georgia in general, it is stated, would be entitled to $12,000 or $15,000 a year for the education of 200,000 children. Governor Gordon vetoed the bill, on the ground that it was against sound policy and a violation of the spirit of the Constitution of the State and of the United States. From the News and Courier, Charleston, S. C., January 12, 1889. The unanswerable evidence of the general bad physical condition of the race is given in the re sults of that condition. Taking the United States as a whole, the annual mortality among the " black and colored " population is about 25 per cent, greater than among the white population. In the cities and towns, despite the charitable- medical attendance nearly everywhere provided, the difference is something frightful. If the death-rate among the white population in any of our cities were to range for a short period with the constant rate among the negroes, a general alarm would be speedily sounded. A fatal epi demic among the whites would be required to equalize the mortality returns of the two races for weeks together, in some cities. In many cities where the whites outnumber the blacks two to one, the death rate among the latter exceeds that among the former. The death rate in this city [Charleston, S. C.] in 1884 was, for the white population i in 42, and for 48 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. the colored population I in 22. In 1883 the figures were, for whites and blacks respectively, I in 46 and I in 21. This showing is rendered the more striking by the fact that the poorer classes of the colored people in Charleston are sup plied with medicines and medical attention at the expense of the city. Last year 17,950 colored patients were treated in the city hospital and in the different health districts, against about one-third that number of white patients. Close ob servers in the rural districts all over the South say that the relative rates there do not materially differ from what is ob served in the cities, although it is well established that ne groes thrive better away from the towns. The News and Courier, Charleston, S. C M June i, 1885. In Charleston, in the year 1886 the death rate per thousand among the white people was 20.65, while the death rate per thousand among the colored people was 49.01, or nearly two and a half times as great. The News and Courier, Dec. 30, 1887. The ninth annual report of the Atlanta Board of Health has just been issued in neat pamphlet-form. For the first time in the history of the city the board presents an abso lutely accurate report of deaths. To this fact is due the ap parent increase in the death rate and other notable deviations from past records. The total number of deaths from disease during the year was 1315. The total annual death rate was 20.87 per thou sand, estimating the population of the city at 63,000 white 41,000, colored 22,000. Of the total number of deaths, there were 608 white and 707 colored. The annual rate of mortality, per thousand, among the whites was 14.82, among the colored population 32.13. The number of deaths among persons over five years of age reached 719 white 344, colored 375. The deaths among children under five years of age were 596 white 264, colored 332. Of this number 318 were under one year olcj THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. 49 white 139, colored 181. The Constitution, Atlanta, Ga., Feb. 21, 1888. The New Orleans Board of Health present some interest ing matters. The population of the city, according to the census of 1880, was: Whites, 158,367; negroes, 57,723 ; total, 216,090. The death-rate of negroes has always aver aged from one-third more to twice as great a mortality per 1000. For the week ending March 9, 1889, when the popu lation of the city is estimated at : Whites, 184,500 ; colored, 69,500, the death-rates are given per 1000 persons at : Whites, 14.13; colored, 30.03, or more than twice as great a mortality for the negroes as for the whites. It thus ap pears that in this city the negroes are dying off twice as fast as the whites per thousand of population, and the mortuary statistics of all the principal Southern cities show generally a like result. Nothing can be predicated of the negroes in the country in the absence of statistics, but the same cause of neglect of hygienic laws, lack of comforts in their habita tions, and general unrestrained indulgence of all animal ap petites and in vicious practices, contribute largely to increase mortality among the colored people. Nothing but detailed statistics acquired by the United States Census Bureau in the course of a number of successive decades will give any reliable information upon which to base laws of comparative race-growth. New Orleans Picayune, March, 1889. In Charleston in 1887 the number of [white] children under i year of age who died was 86. In 1888 the number was 79. In the same years the number of deaths of colored children was 306 and 349. In 1887 the number of deaths of white children over i year, under 5 years, of age was 66 and in 1884 the number was 54. The deaths of colored children of the same age footed up for the same years 196 and 237. The same ratio holds good for any given number of years. The number of deaths up to 5 years of age in Charleston in 1887 was, therefore, white, 152, colored, 502; total 654. The News and Courier, July 17, 1889. 5 APPEAL TO PHARAOH. The Morning News, Savannah, Ga., March 9, 1889, says: The mortality for February for the last twenty-one years is as follows : YEAR. Whites. Colored. \ L YEAR. Whites. Colored. g L 1868 ^8 7,6 64 1870 27 *6 60 1869 . 22 2C 4.7 1880 22 4.2 64 1870 24 CO 81 1881 . . . . 24. CI 7C 1871 22 or 6? 1882 22 cc 87 1872 2C 16 71 1883 73 60 Q? 1873 . 4.0 07 14.2 1884. 31 c8 80 1874 . 4O 46 86 188; . 23 56 7Q 1875 1876 31 27 46 07 77 64 1886 1887 26 7 8 53 C I 79 80 1877 . 21 c6 77 1888 22 6 68 1878 7O 4. -3 7-2 1880 . 10 4.1 60 The difference in mortality between whites and blacks is now accepted as a matter of course. This same difference however tells the story of the Negro s struggle for existence. The odds are fearfully against him in the cities and towns, as he knows ; yet the movement of his race is steadily from the country to these centres. There must be a powerful motive to impel them to leave the country, at least, the hope of bettering their condition in some respect. A very large subject is opened by these consid erations, but it cannot be discussed here. The sta tistics are of public record and can be studied and applied by any one who chooses to consult them. Enough has been said, perhaps, to show that the general physical conditions of the mass of the ex- THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. $1 slaves have not been improved since their eman cipation, and this is the point immediately in question. A single suggestion may be added. The writer has not the data at hand to enable him to say how the general mortality among the negroes since 186^ compares with the mortality before that year. It would be interesting to determine the excess, if any, in the later period, if only to discover whether his freedom has not cost the black man, so far, as great a loss of life as it cost the white man to set him free. Perhaps it has not ; but if it has, we may well ask ourselves very seriously whether we discharged our whole duty in giving him his liberty and a ballot, and noth ing else. The conditions of the political and social life of the Negro are scarcely more favorable than those we have considered. The public places of honor and trust and profit, which are open to the aspirations of every white man, are closed to the black man as by iron doors. He holds scarcely more public offices in all the United States than he is entitled, under the law, to hold in one or two minor districts; and he occupies no single position of a high grade anywhere in the country. He has not one representative of his own color in Congress, and few in the principal departments of the general Government. He has an overwhelm ing voting majority in many districts and counties in the Southern States, and a respectable and $2 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. powerful minority in those of several Northern States ; yet his representatives in the legislatures and local governments in all these States number together perhaps less than a score. There are over a million voters of his race in America. Evidently, citizenship does not mean to him what it means to the white man, and the manifest and wide difference in meaning is not in his favor. Assertion and comment on the subject may be allowed safely to rest here. The familiar explana tions or denials of the facts are simply tributes to the lingering innocence in human nature. Outside of political offices, the Negro is not more favored. His race contributed 250,000 sol diers to the armies of the Union in the late war. No genuine negro holds a commission in the military or naval service; but one colored man, nearly white, has reached and held the grade of lieutenant since the war ; one colored man has just been graduated at the military academy, but there are no other colored cadets either there or at the naval academy. The colored troops in the forces of the United states and of the several States are separate and distinct organizations. The rule is the same in private life. In the learned professions, in the marts of trade, in the direction of corporate enterprises and important industrial agencies, in the higher industrial and mechanical occupations, even in the factories and workshops where some small degree of skill and intelligence is required of the operatives, he has no standing or place whatever among white men. THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. S3 As professor, teacher, merchant, lawyer, physician, journalist, etc., he receives, indeed, the counte nance and custom of his own race, and he looks for no other. Porter, butcher, drayman, black smith, fireman, hod-carrier, mason, carpenter, coachman, butler, barber, cook, or waiter, he may be at pleasure and find service and favor any where ; but it is ever the service of the inferior to the superior that is exacted from him as the con dition of favor, or even toleration, and he cannot rise above the exaction though he were the most capable and skilled member of the community in which he lives. Exceptions there are, doubtless ; but they require to be hunted for, and most sig nificant stress is laid on them when found ; and they usually admit of exceptional explanations. The rule is well nigh absolute. The Negro is ad mitted to hotels and various other public resorts, but his place is on his feet while there, or is fixed apart. He may never sit at the table, public or private, around which he waits so assiduously. He is admitted into street cars upon a more equal and pleasant footing than he enjoys in any other place or institution whatever, and usually sits by himself in that small, perambulating temple of liberty. His position in most railway-coaches is always subject to a conflict between the con ductor and the Constitution, and separate quar ters are provided for him in most trains. If he attend the white man s church, which he rarely does, he is assigned to a corner as near heaven as 54 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. practicable. He has no seat in the congregation, and perhaps none at the communion-table. He is excluded from the councils of the laity, with out ceremony. He is sexton and organ-blower and bell-ringer. His position in the household of faith is the same as in the household of fashion, that of a doorkeeper and servitor. In the theater and the circus, the camp-meeting and the court room, the hospital and the prison, the cemetery and the potter s field, his place is his only ; and is readily located. Wherever he goes or stays, works or worships, plays or suffers, lives or dies, the lines are drawn sharply around and about him, and there is no transgressing them, from his side. If he were a leper if his skin were livid or festering, instead of black only he could scarcely be more shunned, in effect, and shut out from association of every kind with his fellow men of a Only in so far as the taint of * It is interesting to note here one observation which is perti nent to the subject, and was made by an unbiased wri er, evi dently. A correspondent of the New York Herald, who visited the iron manufacturing district in Alabama in 1887, published the following incident, which is of interest because it was thought worthy of publication : " In a mill in Birmingham the writer ob served that black and white workmen drank ice-water from a com mon dipper. Even a year or two ago, the black who would walk up and put his lips to the cup used by his white associates would have been knocked down, but now the incident passes without notice." It is added, a few lines further on, that many of the white work men went to Birmingham from the mills in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and possibly, therefore, the incident does not prove the de- THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. 55 slavery clings to him are the old and intimate re lations of the slavery period recognized and main tained ; for the sake of the service he still ren ders ; there being none other to fill his lowly place and part. There is no lack of examples to illustrate and confirm every assertion that has been made on this subject, but a volume would be required to present them, and they are not needed. Who is there in America that does not know the truth for himself? The fact of the utter separation of the two races is what is as serted, and it could not be more complete or more obvious. It is manifested in every place and in every way in which it can be manifested. Nay ! but something has been overlooked, it will be said. The progress of the Negro in cer tain important respects has just been conceded. He is developing, even if but slowly, on lines marked out by the progress of the white man. This will bring them nearer together, after awhile, in the end. The river that separates them narrows towards its source, and the Negro is marching up-stream ; he will cross it yet, and cadence of race-prejudice among the white people of the section where it occurred. If the white workmen were natives, however, we should still not give ourselves up to undue elation over the progress of liberal ideas. After all these years of preaching the doctrine of the brotherhood of the white and black man, it is not much to have accomplished that the black laborer can drink out of the same dipper used by the white laborers, in one iron mill, with out being rebuked with a club. 5^ AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. meet the white man on an equal footing, some day, in the near or distant future. A hopeful view, truly, and some there are who honestly entertain it ; but what warrant is there for such hope? The river is indeed an arm of a great sea, and is widening daily. The negro is progressing, in those respects in which he is progressing, on lines that lead him away from, not towards, the white man. The effort to fit him for common citizenship and common fellow ship has been in operation for nearly a quarter of a century. The statement of his condition and position, which has been made in this chapter, is the statement of the results of that effort, as they appear to us to-day. It is a record of divergence. The Negro is farther from association with his former master than when he was a slave. Save when he enters the home or the public resort of the white man as a servant, he enters it never. Their children no longer play together as they played in the slavery period. The rising generation of whites and blacks in the South are very much farther apart than any generation that has preceded them. There is no tie whatsoever between them ; they are as much strangers to each other as though they lived in different lands. Their schoolhouses are as far removed from each other as they can conveniently be placed. Nowhere are they taught under the same roof. The rule of separa tion is absolute. White teachers have been em- THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. 57 ployed for the most part in the colored schools heretofore, but the tendency is to displace them by colored teachers, so far as practicable. If not, the relation between teacher and pupil is not an exceptionally close one, and the white teacher is preferred by colored parents, where he is pre ferred, mainly because of his racial authority and habit of control. But leaving the teacher out of the question, the white and black children are kept jealously apart throughout their early years. The lesson of racial distinctions and prejudices is the first and plainest lesson they are taught in the very schools which are to fit them for future citizenship. There could be but one consequence of such a system of " education " if applied to any marked classes in any community and that con sequence is fully exhibited in the South. The strongest antagonisms are manifested already be tween the younger members of the races, now entering manhood and womanhood. The " old family servants" are almost the only remaining bond between them, and when these shall have vacated the stage of life, together with their old master and mistress, that last bond also will have been broken. The difference of sentiment between the older people of the two races, on the one hand, and be tween the younger people on the other, is too well known to require more than this slight men tion. The obvious fact is that the races have moved far apart in the course of one generation, 58 AN A PPEA L TO PHA RA OH. and that the gap widens yearly. The Southern white man never contemplates the possibility of closer relations. The Negro entertains little or no hope of closer relations. There is peace be tween them so long as the Negro " knows his place " and keeps his place, and no longer. The slightest assertion of equality provokes a conflict, in some form, and the Negro is never the victor. He has made some costly mistakes, but has learned a lesson from them. He seldom asserts himself very positively now ; and when he does assert himself the lesson is usually taught anew, promptly and impressively. He knows his place at last, very nearly, and is keeping to it very closely, being hedged around by a thousand in visible thorns and spears which materialize the instant he approaches forbidden ground, and prick him or pierce him according as he presses against them. The lesson of the school-room is the lesson of his whole life. The writer does not wish to be betrayed into any exaggeration, to miss any important qualifi cation, to state any fact offensively, or to mislead himself or others by sweeping generalizations. What is desired rather is to present the plain, broad facts of the existing status of the Negro in the Southern States, and some of the plainest and broadest of these facts, as they appear to be, have been presented as frankly and honestly as practicable. If some of the assertions that have been made have somewhat of a dogmatic char- THE NEGRO S CONDITION AND POSITION. 59 acter, this may be pardoned, because it is impos sible to go into details of evidence or argument on every point within the scope of this book. A volume would be required indeed to exhibit fully any one of several phases of the negro question which have been passed over in a line or two. Moreover, it is not possible to anticipate every objection or denial, or to guess at what passages they will be directed. It is probable that no statement of fact whatsoever, on this general sub ject, could be made without being called into question by some critic on one side or the other. There are not wanting those who would still deny that Slavery was injurious to the States which tolerated it ; that Emancipation was due to mili tary necessity ; and that Reconstruction was a national nightmare. There are some persons who deny constantly and publicly and strenuously that there is the slightest interference with the Negro s exercise of the right of suffrage in the South, at any time or place. The best that one can do, under these circumstances, perhaps, is to tell the truth as he sees it, and as freely and fully and honestly as he can, leaving his words to justify themselves if they can in the minds of honest, truth-seeking and truth-loving men. This course the writer has tried to pursue, by the light of conscience, without motive for misrepresentation, and without regard for aught but the truth and its seemingly vital consequence. What he has written must stand for itself, 60 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. The main fact perhaps is enough after all, if we can accept it alone. That fact is, as it has been stated, that the two races in the South are absolutely separate and apart in every relation of life, and meet in friendly intercourse, or in formal intercourse, only on the ground that remains of the old relationship of master and slave. When the Negro, in other words, cannot or will not serve the white man in a capacity or in a position or under circumstances where equality is out of question, or where his inferiority is distinctly and unwaveringly recognized, on both sides, as a con dition of the service or association, they do not meet at all except under compulsion ; and outside of this kind of association they certainly have no dealings with each other, nor expectation of any dealings. VI. RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. THE " cause " of the condition of things out lined in the preceding chapter need not be dis cussed at very great length. It is as well known and as well understood, perhaps, as it ever will be. We are not expounding mysteries, nor in vestigating new discoveries. It is enough for our purpose that the line of separation which has been so broadly traced follows the race-line, the " color-line, " undeviatingly ; that the Negro, be cause he is a negro, is shut out absolutely, with out exception, from association, on any ground of equality, with the white man of the South. The motive of exclusion has its origin unques tionably in racial differences ; and draws its strength from some sort of sentiment of racial antagonism, as was asserted and sought to be proved. There is no other explanation of it, and we need not seek for any other. The familiar name of this sentiment is "race- prejudice," and we may retain the term because it is familiar, and because we know what it means, in effect. Why such a sentiment exists, and what are the secret springs of its operation in any case, we need not consider. The important 61 62 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. and sufficient fact is that it does exist, is persist ent, and is as radical and strong and active a mo tive of human conduct, always and everywhere, as any motive that we have knowledge of. The law that governs the distribution, associa tion, and conduct of all other living creatures rules the actions of men also. Birds and beasts, fishes, reptiles and insects nay, the very trees of the forest, and flowers and weeds of the field group themselves together, " after their kind," in obedience to the edict that was pronounced at their creation. Man is no exception to the uni versal rule. In every land and clime, under what ever circumstances and conditions he is placed, he recognizes and obeys the second law of his nature and seeks his own " kind," avoiding every other, and warring with his unlike neighbor. Families, classes, societies, tribes, nations, form around some common centre of agreement, or likeness, whatever it may be, which unites the " like," and excludes the " unlike " from the in visible but infrangible circle. Instances of the manifestation and power of the law are every where. We cannot miss them, if we would. The map of the world is a map of the larger groups. The history of the world, sacred and profane, is but the history of the formation and organiza tion and contentions of the infinitely varied groups, of every degree and kind. It was not a bolt from frowning skies, but a difference of speech, that stayed the hands of the builders of RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 63 Babel, and dispersed them and their children to the four corners of the earth ; and even that dif ference, of a breath only though it be, has kept separate from that day to this those who can recognize no other cause of variance. Differences of opinion and sentiment to take no note of more substantial and more conspicuous marks of unlikeness have been not less effective causes of division and rearrangement. The history of our own country is one unbroken demonstration of the energy and persistence of the law under con sideration. Four centuries have not elapsed since the white man first set his foot on the eastern shore of the new world. Every step westward has been marked by the blood of the race he found here and drove before him. The Indian has been nearly swept from the face of so much of the North American Continent as is especially consecrated to the principle of the equality and brotherhood of mankind. And now at the last, standing on the grave of the Red Man, and shut ting the western gate of the Republic, without ceremony, in the face of the Yellow Man, we turn and proclaim anew to ourselves and to the world that our destiny and the destiny of the Black Man is one ! It is very strange. It is true that we have become a mighty nation, the constituent elements of which have been drawn at random from every branch of the widely scattered Indo-Germanic stock. We pride our selves that these branches have grown again into 64 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. one harmonious whole. Has the fundamental law then been indeed suspended or set aside, as between ourselves? Has it not rather been even more plainly exemplified, if possible, in our deal ings with each other, than in our dealings with that brother whom we slew because he would not work, and the other whom we expelled because he was rather too industrious on his own account ? The influence of the varied " groups " which first dotted the Atlantic shore has been felt through out our national life. The differences which characterized the Puritan and Cavalier and Hu guenot immigrants of the colonies may be traced, broadly and deeply marked to-day, along lines that divide State from State and section from section. Are we all Americans only? Do we hold one faith? Do we speak one tongue? Or does every such political contest as that from which we have just emerged remind us more and more forcibly that there are yet Saxons and Celts and Latins, English and Irish, Germans and French, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protes tants, etc., etc., etc., among us, all answering the appeals to old racial, national, and religious dif ferences and prejudices as promptly and heartily as though the Atlantic Ocean did not roll be tween them and the graves of their warring fore fathers ? Even while we try to ignore these phases in our national life, we give full recogni tion to them when exhibited by the peoples who are nearest to us. A hundred years and more of RACE-PREJUDICE, SOVTH AND NORTH. 65 association under a common government have not modified the antipathy between the English- Canadian and the French-Canadian. We are counting with eager confidence upon the power of a race-prejudice between neighbors whom we cannot distinguish the one from the other, to bring both into our national family, and over half a million of their number have come already in obedience to it. We must discharge our minds assuredly of the notion that " race-prejudice," in its broadest sense, is peculiar to the white people of the Southern States. Wherever there is a recognizable differ ence, though comparatively slight, between any two sub-families of the human frfce living in con tact or communication, the subtle repelling in fluence manifests itself on one side or both. They who dwell perforce in one community fall apart and move apart, so far as they can, within the limits of their environment, whatever its char acter or extent, and readjust their relations with out hesitation or conscious intention. The process is instinctive and inevitable. Even where there were sameness and harmony at first, differences and distinctions arise in time, and but multiply and become more operative as any community advances in civilization. But if it be true that comparatively slight and unimportant differences even artificial, and therefore removable differences serve always to estrange and segregate families and peoples who 66 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. are generally alike, what grounds have we for the belief, or hope, that the Caucasian and African will ever form one permanent, harmonious com munity of equals on a political basis, of all the bases that can be named anywhere on the face of the globe ? The difference between these races is conspicu ous and inexpugnable. It is as glaring as nature can make it. The one race is white ; the other black. They are not merely unlike races but are contrasted races. They are the poles of human ity. They have kept apart, so far as we know, from the beginning of the world. There has been no association, and scarcely any communi cation between them since the dawn of history. The black race in Africa indeed has no place in his tory. It has remained secluded in the darkness of the Dark Continent while the march of civilization has swept around its northern and southern boun daries and girdled the earth. Beyond the limits of the small colonies at the southernmost cape of the continent, and of the few widely scattered trad ing posts that fringe the east and west coast, the foot of the white man has rarely ventured until recently. In none of these colonies, at none of these posts, has there been any approach towards equality of association, on any ground, between the two races there brought together. The white man maintains by force the foothold his cupidity alone led him to seize. The story of his neighbors is told in a few expressive words in RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 67 one of our educational text-books: "A pure Hottentot is hardly to be found. They have been great sufferers in war with the Dutch and English of South Africa, and as a race are rapidly passing away." The Bushmen, it is added, are " now nearly exterminated." * The Mediterranean Sea alone separates Eu rope from the vast and almost unknown territory which the black man inhabits. Four hundred years ago the Spanish Admiral sailed along the African coast until the wide ocean opened before him, and then, instead of turning southward to the strange lands awaiting conquest there, set his face toward the unknown and drifted over "the edge of the world." Many millions of the white race have followed in the wake of his frail fleet to occupy the New World he discovered. That New World has become old, and when these words are penned, is waiting with breathless anxiety for tidings of one of its adventurous sons who has been lost for two years in the still unex plored heart of Africa in a region that is drained by the great river that flows by the tombs of the Pharaohs ! What has kept this vast continent alone so strangely isolated from the rest of the world throughout all the ages? One obvious and suffi cient reason arises in every mind, and it is diffi cult to frame another. Appleton s Physical Geography. 68 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH, But if there be a lingering doubt that a posi tive sentiment of racial antipathy impels the white man everywhere and always, when his own interest is not concerned to avoid association with the Negro, and to avoid even the territory occupied by him, it is removed by consideration of the conduct of both the European immigrant and native American in the United States. No sea or other natural barrier divides the old Free States from the old Slave States. Yet the in visible boundary line between the two sections is seemingly as impassable as the Mediterranean ; as forbidding as the wide waste of Sahara. What are the facts ? We may leave our South American neighbors out of consideration. There is nothing peculiar, it is believed, in their experience or behavior. Nor need we review here any part of the especial behavior of the people of the former Slave States of North America in this respect. Ample illus tration of the power of the prejudice in question still remains to us. The first broad fact that confronts us is that the millions of immigrants from every part of Eu rope, who have come to the United States since the Negro became a prominent element in our population, have consistently and persistently avoided the territory which the Negro occupies. We need not enlarge at all on this familiar and glaring feature in the settlement and develop ment of the Republic. It is strikingly and ex- RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTti AND NORTH. 69 haustively presented by Judge Albion W. Tour- ge"e in An Appeal to Ccesar, and we may con tent ourselves with quoting some of the most pertinent statements set forth in that interesting work, upon the authority of the Tenth United States Census. In the chapter entitled "A Ma cedonian Cry," it is shown that in the sixteen Southern States named Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia there were, in 1880: 12,460,247 whites ; 6,039,657 colored ; 642,988 foreign born. In the Northern States, at the same time, there were: 30,942,733 whites; 540,736 colored ; 6,047,- 155 foreign born. The proportion of foreign born in all the former Slave States was three and five-tenths per cent ; in the Northern States about twenty per cent. The next statement is more striking. The total population of the eight States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro lina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, in 1880, was 9,053,613. Of this num ber only 1 19,686, or one and one-third per cent, were of foreign birth. Other statistics of like character might be added, but all are to the same effect. What they prove is summarized in the language of the Census report itself on the subject of the distri bution of population, as follows: Comparing the tables which exhibit the number of per- 70 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. sons resident in each State and Territory who are of foreign birth, with the tables which exhibit the number of colored persons residing in each State and Territory, we note that the two elements of the population are in a high degree mutually exclusive. There is a group of five States, forming an irregular belt extending from the Atlantic westward, in which the two elements, each in appreciable degree, are found together. These are Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. The District of Columbia also falls into this group. Far to the South and Southwest are found Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, having also the two elements in an appreciable degree, although the colored are vastly in excess. To the north and northwest are found New Jersey and Kansas, having also the two elements in an ap preciable degree, though here the foreign born are largely in excess. In all the remaining States it may be said emphati cally, with but slight qualification, that where the colored are found, the foreign born are not ; and vice versa. (Tenth Census, vol. i., pp. 464, 465.) This conspicuous avoidance of a large and well defined part of the Union has not been confined to our foreign population. Whatever motive or sentiment has diverted the movement of so many millions of strangers around the border of the territory occupied by the Negro, has influenced the restless, ever-shifting element of the native population of the Northern States no less. There is abundant evidence of this without going into details, in the figures collated by Judge Tourge"e in the book and chapter already mentioned ; from which it is learned that the total number of per sons of Northern birth residing in all the sixteen former slave States in 1880 was 876,445, or but RA CE-PREJUDICE, SO UTH AND NOR TH. 7 1 four and seven-tenths per cent, of the entire popu lation. Much more than half of these, it should be added, resided in Missouri, and only 53,267 were to be found in the particular belt of eight States before named, extending from the Potomac to the Mississippi, where the negroes are most numerous. The European immigrant and the native white man of the North have acted in full accord, it is seen, in avoiding the States where the Negro is present in considerable numbers. But this is not all that requires to be said. The sentiment that has prompted their conduct is not weakening in view of the Negro s improved position and condi tion. He has been free for nearly a quarter of a century. He stands on the same plane of citizen ship with the white native American, and higher than the newly arrived foreigner. He is more shunned by both, however, than when he was a slave and chattel. To follow the statements of Judge Tourge on this point, we find that while there was a gain of 284,679 in the aggregate Northern-born popula tion of all the Southern States duringthe decade from 1870 to 1880 (mainly due to an increase of 200,000 in Missouri and Texas), the numerical in crease barely keeps pace with the increase of population, being at the rate of " five-tenths of one per cent, in ten years." In the belt of eight States before considered separately, there was a loss of nearly two thousand in the same period, ^2 AM APPEAL TO PHARAOti. which reduced the proportion of Northern-born residents in those States from eight-tenths of one per cent, of the whole population to six-tenths of one per cent. In all the sixteen Southern States there was an aggregate increase of foreign-born population in the tivo decades from 1860 to 1880, of about 120,- ooo; a result that is due again to the influx of about 222,000 immigrants into the two States of Missouri and Texas. The eight Atlantic and Gulf States lost, in the same period, 29,000 foreign- born inhabitants ; or nearly one-fourth the num ber which they had in 1860. What is the explanation of all this? To as sume and assert that it is due to race-prejudice alone, would be to beg the whole question out right, and would certainly satisfy no careful and honest seeker after truth. The explanation that is commonly given and generally accepted, among us, is too familiar to require to be recounted here at length. We may anticipate with serene confidence, moreover, that any omission on this score, in these pages, will be speedily supplied from other sources ; andean content ourselves therefore with the barest sketch of the reasons usually offered. The brief state ment of these reasons is, then, that the distinc tive negro territory in the Union is avoided by the white immigrant and native American be cause they cannot compete with the negro laborer or mechanic upon equal terms ; nor afford to RA CE-PREJUDICE, SO UTH AND NOR TH. ^ 3 work at all for the wages which negro labor has established ; nor live in the hovels and under the conditions with which the Negro is content ; nor consent to be degraded to the low level which the laborer and mechanic occupies in the South a level which is fixed and maintained by the presence of the Negro ; nor buy valuable land, because the Southern man holds it at too high prices, etc., etc. This general view is fully presented and ably sustained by Judge Toiirge"e in An Appeal to Ccesar, in the chapter entitled, " Accounting for Strange Things," and it is quite enough to refer to the words of that writer, without incorporating them here. Very much of what he says is be yond controversy; much of the rest contains a large element of verity, and a vast deal more might be added in the same line of argument without liability to being so much as challenged. The trouble with Judge Tourgee s explanation, however, as with others of similar purport directed to the same subject, is that it has regard to only one of two correlated phases of the problem which is sought to be explained ; and just to the extent that it explains the one, it makes the other more problematical than before. While account ing for strange things, in some sort, perhaps, it renders familiar things utterly unaccountable; and is therefore fairly open to serious question as to its correctness in the first instance. Let us consider as briefly as we can the first phase which 74 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. has been overlooked, in its relation to the main question before us. The African in America has avoided the terri tory occupied by the naturalized immigrant and the native white man of the Northern States, no less carefully than these have avoided the terri tory occupied by the Negro. For obvious reasons, we need not consider the movements of population between the Northern and Southern States during the census decade marked by the occurrence of the civil war, or be fore that decade. The comparison therefore must be restricted to the result exhibited in the Ninth and Tenth Censuses: The number of persons of Northern birth resident in the sixteen Southern States in 1880, was . . 876,425 The number of foreign born in the same States, was 642,988 Total, 1,519,433 The number of colored persons resident in the twenty-two Northern States in 1880 was . . 478,715 The number of persons of Northern birth resident in the sixteen Southern States increased, in the decade 1870-1880 284,679 The number of foreign born in the same States increased in the same period 37,ooo Total increase, 321,679 The number of colored natives of Southern States resident in the twenty-two Northern States in creased in the same period 61,740 The number of colored natives of the Black Belt resident in Northern States increased in the same period 23,069 RA CE- PREJUDICE, SO UTH AND NOR Tff. 7 5 There are other interesting phases of the move ment of population on either side of the sectional line, and across it since 1870, but we cannot go further into this branch of the subject. A glance at the census tables for 1870 and 1880 will show that the greater number of colored natives of Southern States resident in Northern States in those years were from the States of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky. The inference is that most of them escaped from those States during the war ; at any rate but few of them were from the farther Southern States. More over, the northward migration of the colored people has practically ceased, the increase amount ing to only three-tenths of one per cent, for the decade under consideration. (Appeal to Cczsar, P . 182.) How shall we account for this conduct on the part of the negroes of the Southern States? It goes without saying that every reason that is so eloquently and elaborately presented by the author of An Appeal to Ccesar, and every reason that is commonly advanced by other persons, to explain why the native American and naturalized European immigrant alike avoid the Southern States, should constitute an equally powerful reason, at least, to impel the naturalized African to leave the Southern States without delay or ceremony. To which remark it is scarcely neces sary to add the further reflection that there are assuredly many reasons to impel the Negro to 76 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. leave the South which can not possibly operate to deter the Northern man and foreign immigrant from entering that region. Yet the Negro has not left the South, and is not leaving it in appre ciable numbers. The question recurs again : Why? There is one obvious and sufficient explana tion ; and but one. The colored man has learned by experience that a change of residence works no change in his condition, in the respect that he most desires to have it changed. The same pre judice confronts him wherever he goes. We may deceive ourselves by our professions in regard to him ; but he is not deceived. There are many evidences of the prevalence and strength of the unfriendly sentiment which he encounters in every part of the North, but we must confine ourselves to a very few, of the most general char acter. Leaving out of consideration altogether the mass of evidence to be obtained from our ante bellum history, is it not plain enough that the colored man has almost no part whatever in even our political life, save as a voter? How many elective offices, and of what grade, does he fill in all the Northern States ? How many has he filled in all the years that he has been with us? To how many public offices of consequence, civil or military, has he been appointed ? There are 400,000 colored people in the States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illi- RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 77 nois and Kansas. What representation have they of their own race, in the National Congress, the State Legislatures, the municipal councils, or in any position that is filled by the popular vote? And, outside of public office, how many places of honor and trust, of whatever kind, in which the white people around them are concerned or interested, are occupied by colored men in all the Northern States ? What part have colored men and women in our social organizations, or our social gatherings, of whatever character? Are our theaters, and hotels, and watering-places, and schools and colleges and churches indeed open to them, without exception or reserve ; or are those which are open the exceptions ? Are they ever invited to our homes? Do we ever enter their homes, on a footing that has no re gard to their race or color, to say nothing of their previous or present condition of servitude ? Are there no evidences of a prejudice on our part against them; or is the evidence of such preju dice ever wanting, or obscure, to their eyes? It is not enough to ask these general questions however. They require to be answered, if only in part; and though we have not had much occa sion to exhibit the strength of the sentiment in question, being mostly engaged in preaching about it to our friends at a distance, positive and plain testimony is not wanting. The witnesses repre sent a large extent of territory, it will be seen, and their testimony is alike unbiased and con- 7^ AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. elusive. Presented in the most summary form, and having regard only to comparatively recent declarations, the testimony is as follows : Neither Republican Philadelphia, Pennsylvania nor Maine has ever nominated or elected a colored citizen to a repre sentative or other honorable or lucrative office. The Times, Philadelphia, Oct. 26, 1886. Speaking of the color line in politics, Texas, with its Democratic majority of something less than 200,000 votes, has elected five colored men to the Legislature. What North ern Republican State has elected even one? It looks as though the Northern Republicans were more than willing that the Southern Democrats should furnish all the recogni tion the colored brother is to get. The Times, Philadel phia, Dec. , 1888. Kansas, the banner Republican State in the universe, has for the first time chosen a colored man to the Legislature. Newport News, Norfolk, Va., Dec. , 1888. The constitution and the law of Ohio guarantee to the colored children of Oxford, O., admission to the public schools, but the white citizens of that village nullify that constitution, and deny the colored children their school rights. Seventy-five of the leading citizens have banded together to boycott these poor negro children not, mark you, to protect themselves against the vote, the rule of these negroes but to deny them the opportunity of education. And yet the people of Oxford would vote to enforce negro rule in Louisiana. Judge WM. M. DlCKSON, of Cin cinnati, in The Commercial Gazette, Cinn., Jan. , 1888. The pretext upon which suffrage is denied the blacks in the South is that the race is not capable of self-government, RA CE-PREJ UDICE, SO U TH A ND NOR TH. 7 9 and that its supremacy would result in the degradation and destruction of society and the State. I don t distrust the sincerity or candor of the Southern whites. They probably believe what they affirm, but I have no doubt they have deliberately determined to eliminate the negro from their politics, and upon the ground, they reason, of their superior intelligence, wealth and morality, the whites must remain supreme ? What is the feeling at the North ? There is no malevolence or hatred towards the South in Northern people so far as I have heard or known on account of the war. If that sentiment ever existed it has disappeared, On the contrary, there is much sympathy, and the feeling of amity is strong. Many intelligent Northerners, even among the Republicans, appreciate the motives which impel the suppression of the colored vote, and admit that under similar circumstances they would be strongly moved in the same direction. It was on this account that the sectional appeal lost its force in the North, and the public ear apparently be came dull and deaf to it. Senator J. J. INGALLS, in the Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution, Dec. 3, 1888. The white people of Felicity, O., kept colored children out of the schools by force, and beat and maltreated the colored parents, destroyed their property in some cases, and estab lished a boycott against all colored people to drive them out. The offenders are not punished, and defy the law. The Republican party leaders are also leaders in these outrages. We find no reference to these matters in the Governor s message. Cleveland (O.) Plaindealer, Jan. , LOUISVILLE. A disturbance which may cause further trouble is reported from Berea College, a school founded near Richmond, Ky. , in 1856, for the co-education of whites and blacks. On January 1st ten white boys took their seats for the year at a table, to the exclusion of the colored sty- 8o AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. dents. One of the latter at the next meal slipped into one of the ten seats. An angry quarrel ensued, which was settled by the faculty ruling that it was contrary to the principles of the school for white students to establish an exclusively white students table. Associated Press dispatch, Jan. 12, 1889. CHICAGO. A dispatch from Marion, 111., says : " What threatens to be a very serious race war has broken out in this city. A few weeks ago the firm of M. Westboard & Sons, tobacco packers, imported a number of colored men to work in their factory, claiming that there are no white men capable of performing the work of stemming and stripping. This action on the part of the company greatly enraged a number of white workmen, and they sent notices to the col ored men warning them to leave town within ten days or receive summary punishment. Threats were also made to burn the factory and the homes of the imported laborers." Associated Press dispatch, Feb. 5, 1889. RlPLEY, O. A peculiar state of affairs is brought to light among the farming communities in this county, produced by the now famous " Arnett law. Formerly the farms had numerous colored tenants, but since the passage of the Arnett bill, which made mixed schools, the colored tenant farmer gradually is being driven out. Whenever his lease upon the land runs out he is quietly informed by his white landlord that the latter has another man for his place, and upon his applying to another farmer in the same district he is certain to be refused. In this manner the white farmers gradually, without vio lent or harsh means, removed the colored people from the community until there is not one left in some of the school districts, and the law which was intended to benefit, does positive injury to the colored man. United Press dispatch, Feb. 14, 1889. RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 81 Now it is a fact that there exists, not merely in the Southern States, but equally in the Northern States, a strong preju dice against colored men holding federal offices. We do not hear of any Northern community of Northern political leaders demanding the appointment of colored men to office in their neighborhood even to small postoffices. To our minds the prejudice is inhuman and unchristian ; but it is even stronger in the North than in the South, for we know of several instances in which Democratic Governors of Southern States have made colored men sheriffs without serious objection from their fellow Democrats, and we doubt if a colored man has ever been either appointed or selected to so important an office in any Northern State or in any Northern Republican community. New York Herald, April, 1889. Another serious outbreak of race prejudice is reported from Ohio. New Richmond, a town of 3000 inhabitants in Clermont County, has about 700 white school-children to 300 black. After the repeal of the " black laws " two years ago, and the consequent throwing open of the public schools of the State to children of both races on equal terms, the negroes of New Richmond were persuaded to have their children kept in separate rooms, and thus virtually allow the old line of distinction to be maintained. But one negro, James Ringold, decided to insist upon his rights, and sent his children into a room occupied by white children. The little negroes were abused and made miserable in every way, and finally Ringold appealed to the courts to protect him and them, suing the Superintendent of Schools and thirteen prominent citizens for $5000 damages. On Tuesday last the Circuit Court decided in his favor, giving him one cent and costs. This showed the negroes generally that they could legally send their children into the rooms occupied by white children, and they did so on Friday. Great excitement resulted, and so much disgust was expressed that on Satur- 82 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH, day the School Board closed the schools for the remaining three months of the school year, as the only way out of the difficulty. The situation yesterday is thus described in a dispatch to the Times : " This has been one of the most interesting Sundays the place has ever known. The streets have been crowded all day. All other topics were forgotten. Ministers counselled forbearance, and wise heads attempted to calm the impetuous. Each side professes to fear violence from the other." New York Evening Post, April i, 1889. The color line is everywhere. It is in the Northern Pres byterian Church. It is in every Northern church. It is in society. It is in politics. And there is no class that knows this better than the colored people. However it may be in politics, we are sure the colored people desire their own churches. They may be Methodists, or Episcopalians, or Baptists, or Presbyterians, but they prefer their own church organizations. There may be a sentiment in favor of wiping out the color line, but it is not honest. Cincinnati Commer cial-Gazette, June , 1889. Race prejudices still exist, and always will exist to such a degree, outside of politics, that the advancement of any colored man to a representative position will be obnoxious to a large proportion of men of either party in this State. The Medical Monthly, Peoria, 111., June , 1889. The Rev. J. Francis Robinson, a Baptist preacher of good character, has been visiting in the city of Auburn, N. Y. The day after his arrival he wished to get shaved, and went to a barber-shop, but was refused attention. He went in succession to several other barber-shops, but received the same treatment at each. The Rev. F. D. Penny, pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Auburn, accompanied the Rev. Mr. Robinson to a number of shops, and offered the proprietors a dollar to shave his friend, but his co-operation RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 83 was of no use. The trouble was that the Rev. Mr. Robinson has a black skin, and as one of the barbers said, " I refused to shave him because it is against the rules of the trade to shave a colored man." Auburn last fall gave Harrison 3122 votes to 2214 for Cleveland, and doubtless the Republicans of Auburn have often been filled with indignation at the idea that negroes do not enjoy equal rights with white people in the South. New York Evening Post, Aug. 3, 1889. The testimony of prominent colored men alone is pointed and sufficient. Some of their recent statements are as follows : We know nothing about Northern colored people and Southern colored people. We know only the colored people of the United States, and we know that their condition differs in very few essential points in either section. The New York Freeman, July 9, 1887. Editor T. Thomas Fortune, of the New York Freeman, talked to a Sun reporter yesterday about the proposed Afro- American League, whose formation Editor Fortune is urging in his newspaper. " I first proposed the idea of a national leaguing together of colored people," said Mr. Fortune, " at the close of an edito rial which I published five weeks ago upon the lynching of four colored men at York, S. C. I asked if the colored peo ple of the whole country couldn t band themselves together in some way and do something to better the condition of our race in the South, as well as to secure some of the civil rights which are denied us in the North. The idea was taken up and advocated by all the leading newspapers edited by colored men in the land, and received the endorsement of our leading colored citizens We don t fear that this formation of the race into a separate political organiza- $4 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. tion can draw upon it any greater social ostracism than it suffers now. " The work of preliminary organization is going on splen didly. We have a large organization in Virginia, and I understand that the first steps toward State organization in Connecticut were taken yesterday in Hartford by the coali tion of the negro societies there." The New York Sun, July 15, 1887. WASHINGTON. Referring to a dispatch published re cently, stating that there was much dissatisfaction and suffer ing among the colored people who had emigrated to Liberia from this country, William Coppinger, the Liberian consul general and secretary of the Colonization Society, said to-day that the report was a great exaggeration of the facts. " It is just the same in Liberia," he continued, " as the world over. Some emigrants succeed and some fail." Mr. Coppinger said that he had received few complaints and they were unable to respond to all the applications they received. He added : " Since our society was organized we have given homes to about twenty thousand colored people in the land of their fathers, and we are sending others as fast as we can raise the necessary funds. We could send a million to-day if we had the wherewithal with which to do it. You have no idea of the unrest there is in the minds of the colored population and the desire they have to return to Africa." " Where do most of these appeals come from ? " "Well, of course, the largest number come from the South, for the bulk of the colored population is in the South, but that does not mean that the colored people in the North ern States are better satisfied with their condition than those of the South. I am receiving large numbers of appeals from the colored people of Kansas, many of whom went there during the exodus of some years ago. They did not im prove their condition as much as they expected. At any RA CE-PREJUDICE, SO UTH AND NOR TH. 85 rate, they are very anxious to exchange Kansas for Africa. We are sending more or less of them, but cannot respond to anything like the number of appeals we get." " What seems to be the reason of the desire of the colored people in the North for leaving the country ? " " They feel that they are not a part of the dominant race, and that they are not properly recognized socially and politi cally by the whites, and never will be. The general public do not understand how strong this feeling is with the ne groes, and it will probably continue so. Many of them feel it very keenly. We hear it in a marked degree from those who went to Kansas a few years ago." Associated Press dispatch, July 17, 1887. ST. PAUL. Fifty colored men from various parts of the State met last night and organized a Minnesota Protective Industrial League, for the advancement of the interests of the race in this State. A permanent organization was effected with L. H. Reynolds, president. A constitution was adopted, which declares the object of the League to be to secure to colored citizens of the State the full and free enjoyment of their natural and civil rights, impartial trials, freedom from slander and odium through the press, and to arrange for colored immigration to this State. Associated Press dispatch, Dec. 7, 1887. CHICAGO. A special from Indianapolis says : Col. A. O. Jones of the State auditor s office, who is connected with the latest proposed exodus of negroes from the Southern States to South America, talks freely about the scheme. He is an active friend of all movements for the improvement of the condition of his race. He accompanied Gov. Chamberlain, together with several other young colored men, to South Carolina from Massachusetts. " The exodus," he says, will be effectually pushed This is not a question of politics at bottom We have selected South Amer- 86 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. ica for the location. Our people do not want to come North and West because of climatic conditions, and because the prejudice against a black face follows them even there ! " Associated Press dispatch, January 27, 1888. What the race has gained, came to it through the antag onisms and animosities of the white race. We have pros pered by their falling out, and the most serious question for us is what shall we lose by their friendship. The white people of the United States cannot always be separate and distinct. The Northern and Southern people can t always remember the war and its incidents. The time is coming, if it is not already here, when the Southern whites and the Northern whites will be in perfect accord. What is then to become of us ? The question makes me thoughtful, but not despairing. My hope is in the growing intelligence of the colored race. My belief is that we shall yet exercise all the functions of the American citizen. From Address of Mr. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, in Charleston, S. C, March 8, 1888. Report of the Charleston News and Courier. As long as the separate school system is adhered to, based upon color, prejudice will never die out, and will always work to the great disadvantage of the colored citizen It is felt in all the various industries in the country. When ever you wish employment for your son in the machine shop, you are told that if I give your son employment my work men will not work, and your son fails of employment ; but if the workmen had been brought up side by side with the colored boy in school, there would be no trouble about their working together through life. When a colored man op poses mixed schools, he is encouraging his white fellow citi zens to keep up prejudice and helping to close the door of the workshop against his son. Our streets are full of young men ready and willing to learn trades, and enter the various kinds of employment, who are kept from so doing on ac- RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 87 count of this prejudice, which will never be wiped out except through one public school for all American citizens. You may educate your sons, but they cannot all be professional men ; there must be an opening for them in other directions. There is no inducement held out to the colored young man attending school to encourage him for the future, no place of employment can he see in the distance when he has fin ished his high school ; but when his school days are over he is thrown upon the world to struggle for his bread, and forced to face a mountain of prejudice." The Leader, Washington, D. C, Dec. 24, 1888. Save us from our friends, must be the sentiment of all intelligent colored persons toward a bit of correspondence from New York to the Cleveland Gazette, with the signature of " SCOTT." This is part of it : " Let me tell you that amidst anarchy and confusion lies the negro s opportunity. Whenever the negro has gained entrance to the workshop, it has been because of labor trou bles. The labor troubles of 1877 opened to him the shops at Indianapolis, Springfield, and Pittsburgh. Whenever, since then, foreign workmen have made a general strike, negro labor has been advanced." " Piping times of peace " are not conducive to the negro s welfare. When business is good, and the American mer chant and manufacturer living at ease, with nothing much to do save to clip off his coupons, he is not disposed to stir up the hands in his mill or office by introducing a black face among them. New York Sun, Dec., 1888. We do not need to look South for crimes against our race. In the most highly civilized regions of the " culchared " East, and in the reputed Christian North, outrages are daily committed against the rights and privileges of the Negro. The " Northern problem " differs from the Southern only in species of manifestation, not in organic principle. The true solution of the whole trouble is to have no Northern or 88 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. Southern problem per se t but a grand national problem which contemplates the equal and exact enforcement of the letter and spirit of our constitution. Indianapolis Freeman, Feb. 23, 1889. This prejudice is most sharply defined and emphasized by the refusal of decent habitations for us, even though our people are willing to pay larger rentals than are required from white tenants. The agents and landlords are not alto gether responsible for this condition of things But the landlords are afraid to rent to colored people because of the objection of white people living in the same building or in the same neighborhood with colored people. The Rev. H. C. BISHOP, Rector of St. Philip s Church, New York, in the Times, April, 1889. The American Citizen, of Kansas City, con ducted by colored men, in discussing a theory of President Harrison s " Southern policy," which should divide the votes of the whites on economic issues, says : But if such a policy should succeed, to what extent will it profit the negro ? Will it benefit his social or civil condition? Will it make less indistinct the lines of caste! Will it lift him up in the mind of the Southern whites to the dignity of a man and citizen ? We think not The negro s vote is counted in many of the Middle and Northern States, and his presence at the ballot-box excites no comment, and yet, even in those States, his immunities are abridged. .... The rise of the negro to an equal footing with the other races will be a long, slow process. August , 1889. The former spirit of prejudice exercised against the colored mechanic, working alongside of the white, is more rapidly dying out in the South than, it appears, in the North. . . . In the North the idea is against the equality of the Negro RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 89 as a race ; for he who will aid and assist the Negro to become educated as an individual in school, college, or university, will close the doors of the workshop, the store of merchan dize, the counting house, and the printing press against him ; and union leagues of trade deny him admission. The New South Investigated. By D. A. STRAKER, Detroit. Pp. 3436. Is it not made plain by even this brief array of testimony, that the prejudice against the Negro is very largely shared by the white people of the Northern States? And when it is considered how small is the whole number of negroes in the North, their superior intelligence and character as representatives of their race; the absence of causes of dissension and difference with them and of occasions to provoke the exhibition of preju dice against them: when we reflect upon the professions of unbiased opinion and of liberal sentiment regarding the Negro, " as a man"; upon what the Northern people have sacrificed for him, and done for him, in the assertion of opinions and sentiments, and in the endeavor to establish him upon the high pedestal assigned to him in the South, when we consider and reflect upon these things, can it be said indeed that there is in the North less prejudice towards him than is displayed by the white people of the Southern States ? We may leave this question unanswered, how ever, and may abandon this particular line of dis cussion incontinently. It is unprofitable in itself, and leads to no desirable ground. The purpose 90 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. in following it so far was only to show that the prejudice against the Negro is not peculiar to the white man of the South ; and this has been proved, assuredly. The investigation has, how ever, established another important and related fact. Whatever the reason for his conduct, the Negro avoids the Northern States. It is of little consequence at this stage of his occupation of our soil whether or not the sentiment against him is as strong, or nearly as strong, in the North as it is in the South. If there were indeed no prejudice whatever against him in the minds of the Northern white man, this would not affect the sentiment and conduct of the Southern white man in the slightest degree, so far as we can judge from past experience and observation. The prejudice is certainly active, relentless and gen eral in the South, where the Negro elects to remain nevertheless, and where the number of his people amounts already to millions instead of a few thousands only. The question as to his status in America is, for the present, a question as to his relations with the white people of the South ; we shall act wisely if we study it as it is presented there ; without shutting our eyes to its essential and probable permanent conditions. Our survey of the relations of the white and black races where they have been brought into contact in considerable numbers in America has not yet included, as has been noted doubtless, the relations of the two races in the West Indies. RA CE-PREJUDICE, SO UTH AND NOR TH. 9 J There is good reason for the omission. The con ditions existing in those islands and in the South ern States are too widely unlike to afford much ground for instructive comparison. The black race is present in overwhelming numbers on all the larger islands in question except Cuba, and has controlled some of them for nearly a hundred years after its own fashion. The negroes in the United States constitute but a tenth of the whole population, are in a minority in nearly eveiy Southern State, and control no part whatever of the extended territory occupied by them. What ever the lesson taught by the history of the West Indies, therefore, it has little especial significance for us ; and probably will never have more than now. The social and political relations of the white colonists on the islands, with their black neigh bors and fellow-citizens, are alone pertinent to our purpose, and should be considered briefly. There is no lack of other competent evidence on this subject, but we may confine ourselves for the most part to the testimony of a recent disinter ested visitor to the colonies, who has no concern in our disputes, and who has recorded what he saw and heard, without the remotest reference to our affairs. The visitor is the distinguished En glish historian, Mr. James Anthony Froude, from whose recently published book, The English in the West Indies, the following passages are taken ; 92 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. The personal influence of the white man over the black, which might have been brought about by a friendly inter course after slavery was abolished, was never so much as attempted The forced equality of the races before the law made more difficult the growth of any kindly feel ing No relations remained save that of employer and employed. They lived apart. They had no longer, save in exceptional instances, any personal communication with each other. The law refusing to recognize a difference, the social line was drawn the harder, which the law was unable to reach (p. 106). From general conversation [in Kingston] I gathered that .... there was the same uneasy social jealousy, and the absence of any social relations between the two races. There were mulattoes in the island of wealth and conse quence, and at the Government House there are no distinc tions ; but the English residents of pure colonial blood would not associate with them, social exclusiveness increas ing with political equality. The impression was .... that the tendency of the whites and blacks was to a con- stantly sharpening separation (p. 213). Slavery could not last ; but neither can the condition last which has followed it. The equality between black and white is a forced equality and not a real one, and Nature in the long run has her way, and readjusts in their proper re lations what theorists and philanthropists have disturbed (P- 247). The white gentry have blacks for laborers, blacks for do mestic servants, yet as a rule they have no interest in each other, no esteem nor confidence (p. 258). Where in character, in mutual force, in energy, in cultiva tion, there is no equality at all, but an inequality which has existed for thousands of years, and is as plain to-day as it RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH* 93 was in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, to expect that the intelli gent few will submit to the unintelligent many is to expect what has never been found and what never ought to be found. The whites cannot be trusted to rule the blacks, but for the blacks to rule the whites is a yet grosser anomaly. Were England out of the way, there would be a war of ex termination between them. England prohibits it, and holds the balance in forced equality (p. 262), The Legislature [of Jamaica] represented the white inter est only, and was entirely composed of whites. It remained substantially unaltered till 1855, when modifications were made which admitted colored men to the suffrage, though with so high a franchise as to be almost exclusive. It be came generally felt that the franchise would have to be extended. . . . The assembly, aware that if allowed to exist any longer it could exist only with the broad admission of the negro vote, pronounced its own dissolution, surren dered its powers to the Crown, and represented formally that nothing but a strong government could prevent the island from lapsing into the condition of Hayti (pp. 201-2). The relations between the two populations are too embit tered, and, equality once established by law, the exclusive privilege of color over color cannot be restored. While slavery continued the whites ruled effectively and economi cally ; the blacks are now as free as they ; there are two classes in the community; their interests are opposite as they are now understood, and one cannot be trusted with control over the other. As little can the present order of things continue (p. 286). The scanty whites are told that they must work out their own salvation on equal terms with their old servants. The relation is an impossible one The two races are not equal and will not blend (pp. 123-4). 94 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. The English of those islands are melting away. Families who had been for generations on the soil are selling their estates everywhere, and are going off. Lands once under high cultivation are lapsing into jungle (p. 284). The deep-rooted prejudice of the white man against the black man could not be more plainly and persistently exhibited, it is seen, than it is exhibited in these neighboring colonies, under governmental and other conditions entirely dif ferent from those which obtain in the United States. The power of the race-prejudice, how ever, is not exemplified in the West Indies by the conduct of the white man alone. There are about ten thousand coolies in the colonies, of whom Mr. Froude says : They are proud and will not intermarry with the Afri cans. If there is no jealousy, there is no friendship. The two races are more absolutely apart than the white and the black. Nor are the blacks free from the domination of the same kind of prejudice, when they are in po sition to assert it. The white man has no status in Liberia, as is well known. The black man is master of St. Domingo also, and has been for nearly a century. What is his behavior there to the man of different color from his own ? There is some striking testimony in Mr. Froude s book on this point : There is a saying in Hayti that the white man has no rights which the blacks are bound to recognize. . . . They can own no freehold property, and exist only on toler-* RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 95 ance. They are called " white trash." Black dukes and marquises drive over them in the street and swear at them (p. 192). Englishmen move about in Jacmel as if they were ashamed of themselves among their dusky lords and masters. The presence of Europeans in any form is barely tolerated (pp. I84-S). It will be said, of course, that this intolerance of white men is natural to the negroes of the West Indies, in view of the former relations of the two races, and is but a reflection of the sen timent from which the blacks have suffered. We seem, however, to be shut out from accepting this plausible explanation by the fact which has been noted of the antipathy between the blacks and the coolies, and by the further fact that the genuine Negro manifests the strongest dis like to the white man who is subordinate to him and to the half-breed, or mulatto, who was for merly his fellow-slave, and who certainly has nothing in common with the white man except his disowned blood. The attitude of the Negro toward these of his neighbors is thus described by Mr. Froude : The negro voters might elect, to begin with, their half- caste attorneys, or such whites (the most disreputable of their color) as would court their suffrages. But the black does not love the mulatto, and despises the white man who consents to be his servant (p. 88). The blacks hate the mulattoes, and the mulatto breed will not maintain itself, as with the independence of the blacks 96 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. the intimacy between blacks and whites diminishes and must diminish (p. 97). The blacks disliked the mulattoes ; the mulattoes despised the blacks, and would not intermarry with them (p. 213). The intensity of the prejudice against the half- breeds, however, is now moderated in the colonies by the restraining power of the government. Its free expression was exhibited in Hayti soon after the massacre and expulsion of the whites, when, it is stated, 15,000 mulattoes were put to death within two years. The number of the killed may be exaggerated, indeed, but there is no room for a doubt as to the motive for their slaughter. Too much stress should not be laid, as has been said, upon the conduct of the negroes in the West Indian colonies and republics, for the reason already given that the circumstances of the blacks in those countries, and especially the con ditions of government under which they live, are too widely different from those which affect the blacks in the United States to afford much ground for instructive comparison. There is in struction, however, without instituting any kind of comparison, in a comprehensive view of the actual past and present conditions of the black race in St. Domingo ; for the reason that there alone has the Negro enjoyed for a long period the opportunity to exhibit his capacity for self gov ernment, in an independent field, and under cir cumstances favorable to his self development, if the spirit of development is in him ; and for the RA CE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH A ND NOR TH. 9 7 further reason that under such peculiar conditions only can we learn what are the essential charac teristics of the material with which we have to do in forcing or aiding his development under the conditions of our own making and inheritance. The view that is offered for our contemplation is not a pleasing one ; but there is no other; and it must be presented here for the information of those who are not familiar with it, and for the consideration of some others among us who are perhaps too much inclined to follow blindly the dictates of political expediency or of philanthro- pical sentiment without regard to the facts and lessons of history. Mr. Froude s book, The English in the West Indies, supplies all the information that is needed for our purpose, and in concise form. The his tory and present status of the Island of St. Domingo are summarized by him as follows : St. Domingo, of which Hayti is the largest division, was the earliest island discovered by Columbus, and the finest in the Caribbean Ocean. The Spaniards found there a million or two of mild and innocent Indians whom . . . they con verted off the face of the earth, working them to death in their mines and plantations. They filled their places with blacks from Africa. They colonized, they built cities ; they throve and prospered for nearly 200 years, when Hayti was taken from them and made a French province. The French kept it till the Revolution. They built towns ; they laid out farms and sugar fields ; they planted coffee all over the island, where it now grows wild. Vast herds of cattle roamed over the mountains ; splendid houses rose over the 98 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH, rich savannahs. The French Church put out its strength ; there were churches and priests in every parish. So firm was the hold that they had gained that Hayti, like Cuba, seemed to have been made a part of the old world, and as civilized as France itself. The revolution came, and the reign of Liberty. The blacks took arms ; they surprised the planta tions ; they made a clean sweep of the whole French popu lation. . . . The island being thus derelict, Spain and Eng land both tried their hand to recover it, but failed . . . and a black nation, with a republican constitution and a population perhaps of about a million and a half of pure blood negroes, has since been in unchallenged possession, and has arrived at the condition which has been described to us by Sir Spencer St. John (p. 182). Morals in the technical sense they have none ; but they cannot be said to sin, because they have no knowledge of a law. They are naked and not ashamed. They sin, but they sin only as animals, without shame, because there is no sense of doing wrong. In fact, these poor children of dark ness have escaped the consequences of the Fall, and must have come of another stock after all (p. 50). Evidently, they belonged to a race far inferior to the Zulus and Caffres, whom I had known in South Africa. They would have been slaves in their own country, if they had not been brought to ours ; and at the worst had lost nothing by the change (p. 49). The West Indian negro i* conscious of his own defects . . . and with a century or two of wise administration might prove that his inferiority is not inherent (p. 98). A religion which will keep the West Indian blacks from falling back into devil-worship is still to seek (p. 234). ^ACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH. 99 Immorality is so universal that it almost ceases to be a fault . . . it is the rule. In spite of schools and mission aries, seventy per cent, of the children now born among them are illegitimate. Young people make experiment of one an other before they will enter into any closer connection. So far they are no worse than in our own English islands, where the custom is equally general ; but behind the re ligiosity, there lies active and alive the horrible revival of the West African superstitions ; the serpent-worship, and the child-sacrifice, and the cannibalism. The facts are notori ous. ... A few years ago persons guilty of these infamies were tried and punished ; now they are left alone because to prosecute and convict them would be to acknowledge the truth of the indictment. The blacks, as long as they were slaves, were docile and partly civilized . . . but the effect of leaving the negro na ture to itself is apparent at last There is no sign, not the slightest, that the generality of the race are improving either in intelligence or moral habits ; all the evidence is the other way The generality are mere good-natured animals The customs of Dahomey have not yet shown themselves in the English West Indies and never can while the English authority is maintained : but no custom of any kind will be found in a negro hut or village from which his most sanguine friend can derive a hope that he is on the way to mending himself. Ninety years of negro self-gov ernment have had their use in showing what it really means .... The movement is backward, not forward (PP- 343- 344, 348). There is unlimited testimony, covering the period of the past fifty years, to support all and more than all that Mr. Froude has asserted. We need not multiply witnesses, however, who differ only in their ability to express themselves in strong language. Nor need we repeat their comments loo AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. on the state of affairs which they describe. It is enough to say, instead : i. That there is evi dently a strong and confirmed prejudice on the part of the white residents of the West Indies, of whatever nationality, against the Negro. 2. That there are ample and increasing grounds for the prejudice, aside from political relations. 3. That there is the same reason, no more nor less, for the exhibition of the same prejudice on the part of the white people of the Southern States towards the negroes in the Southern States since the negroes in those States are members of the same peculiar and hapless sub-family of the African race to which the Haytian negro be longs.* 4. And finally it should be added that: our general review of the relations of the white man and Negro a review which has included, * The identity of the negroes on the continent of America with those of St. Domingo and other West Indian islands is too often lost sight of ; it should be kept prominently in view. The authoritative statement of their common origin, and of their dis tinctive physical marks without going into details of structural peculiarities is as follows : " Negro, a name properly applied to the races inhabiting the African continent, principally between latitude 10 N. and 20 S., and to their descendants in the old and new world .... The term negro denotes an ideal type distinguished by certain physical characters, such as are seen in the people of the coast of Guinea, viz : black skin, woolly hair, flat nose, thick everted lips, and a prognathous form of skull. Negroes occupy about one-half of Africa, excluding the Northern and Southern extremities. Out of Africa they are found .... throughout America and the West Indies." American Encyclopaedia. Art. Negro. RACE-PREJUDICE, SOUTH AND NORTH, roi so far as practicable, the conduct of white men of nearly every nation in the civilized world in their association with the black men under every variety of government and condition has af forded us no single instance of the absence of the prejudice among any people, or of its weakening in the slightest degree, in any course of time, in any country where the occasion is presented for its exhibition. There is therefore no basis whatever in all our knowledge of the conduct of the white race gen erally, for the expectation that the antipathy of the white man of the Southern States to the Negro will ever be appreciably moderated. VII. A TRILEMMA. THERE is no basis for the expectation that the antipathy between the white man and the Negro will ever be appreciably moderated. The two races in America will remain apart, in obe dience to a law that is so nearly if not wholly universal in its operation that we are compelled to regard it as a fundamental law of human nature, and therefore beyond hope of repeal or evasion. These assertions and assumptions are of the most momentous character, truly, and everything depends on their truth. The negro question is practically a question of the future relations of the white and colored people in America ; and this question easily resolves itself again into the ultimate inquiry as to the probable persistence or decline of the race-prejudice in the mind of the white man of the South. This last, then, is the all-important question which remains to be con sidered. We can agree or disagree about much of what has gone before, and be little the worse for disagreement in any event. We can not af ford to make any mistake in taking the next step. 102 A TRILEMMA. 103 Is it probable that the white people of the South, for any reason or motive, under any cir cumstances that are likely to arise, will ever regard the negroes among whom they live with much less aversion, or with more favor, if that term be preferred, than they now entertain towards them ? The answer must be an emphatic, unqualified negative, if we can determine the probable future conduct of the people in question by what we know of their past and present conduct, and of their sentiment and disposition however mani fested. For, what single reason have we to expect a change in any of these respects? No such reason presents itself to ordinary minds, assuredly. The prejudice of race has always been exhibited, and is still exhibited, by every white man, woman and child in the South. It is rooted in the minds of fifteen millions of people. Argu ment does not touch it. All the pleadings and protests and threats and blows that have been employed to modify it have not affected it in any individual mind, save to confirm and strengthen it. It is stronger to-day, if possible, than ever before. It is so strong that it laughs at the sug gestion of yielding. There is not a white person in the old Slave States not one who advocates a change in any respect in the social relations of the two races ; not one entertains the thought of change. The existing status is perfectly satisfactory to 104 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. all those who alone can change it ; and is jeal ously maintained by them. They regard as ene mies all who would overthrow or even disturb it. Their whole energy is directed to preserving the situation as it is, from the first approach toward a change. The evidence and results of this disposition cannot be overlooked or misunderstood, and have been fully exhibited in a preceding chapter. The whites and blacks of mature age, it was shown, are absolutely separated in every relation of life which would require them to meet under even the semblance of equality. The white and black youths are only farther apart than their parents. The younger and succeeding generations will hold still less ground in common. The manifest tendency of the two peoples, everywhere, is to drift ever farther away from each other. There is no single bond or force to counteract or check this tendency ; there are ten thousand strong forces in ceaseless operation to confirm and pro mote it. Assuredly, there is nothing nothing in the conduct and known disposition of the Southern white people to encourage the slightest hope or expectation that they will change either their conduct or disposition towards their black neighbors ; and assuredly these, on the other hand, can neither compel nor induce such a change. Do not these bare assertions faithfully depict, so far as they go, the position and relations of the A TRILEMMA. 105 white and black peoples in the South ? And do not they go far enough? They are the plain, unvarnished statements of the most conspicuous feature in the present condition of our country, and their substantial verity can not be honestly denied. Yet, if they be true, who can estimate their tremendous importance ? They are fraught with so grave meaning, when fully understood, that it is not strange that thoughtful men, North and South, have been slow to advance them or accept them ; and have tried rather to persuade them selves that the facts are not as they appear to be, or to avoid facing them altogether until now. They mean the assured failure of the great work the American people have been engaged in for twenty years, the work of making American cit izens of several millions of African people occupy ing the same soil with us. They mean not only that the Negro question has not been settled, but that it is not in the way of settlement, and will never be thus settled. Shall we then accept this as the true statement of our condition, and act on it? This would seem to be the wise course ; but, unfortunately, it is not the course that is being pursued. There are some, if not many, among us among our public men especially who cannot or will not see what is so plainly to be seen. They accept part of the statement as true, and reject the rest ; or accept the whole in substance and reject the 106 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. inevitable conclusion that is drawn from it. They see the situation as it is, but cannot accept the assertion of its continuance and consequences. They see that the races remain wholly separated, that the gulf between them is widening and yet hope that they will unite. They recognize the existence and potent operation of the race-preju dice in all lands and in all ages, and yet expect it to fade out, sooner or later, in the Southern States of North America where its intensity and energy have ever found their fullest expres sion. What are the grounds of this hope and expec tation ? Briefly stated, they are two-fold. The more familiar ground is that, under the favoring conditions of general " education" and "devel opment," the negroes will be brought more and more nearly to the level of the white race ; that the prejudice against them will naturally subside as they rise to that level ; and that the process of assimilation will be made effective, and will be hastened, by the knowledge of the white people that the two races are hopelessly doomed to compulsory association, and must assume equal, or nearly equal, relations for the good of both. The less familiar ground, perhaps, is that the presence of a large mulatto population in the South shows conclusively that the race-prejudice has not served to keep the races apart hitherto, and that it may be expected to prove less of a barrier in future, under the conditions already A TRILEMMA. 107 suggested. We may safely consider these two lines of argument together; fqr it will be found on investigation that they are intimately related, wide apart as they appear to be at the first glance. The force of the argument which is based on the presence of the " colored " people in the South is applied, of course, in the form of the conten tion that if the blood itself of the two races was so far commingled in the slavery period, and de spite the operation of the prejudice which was then in full play, it can be reasonably expected that the most harmonious relations, civil and so cial, short of general and legalized miscegenation, will eventually take the place of the former ir regular and intimate association. This way of reasoning has found much favor in certain quar ters. Let us consider it on its merits. In the first place, the number of " Mulattoes," strictly classified that is, the immediate off spring of white and black parents is very much smaller than is commonly supposed. The " col ored people " in the South constitute a very con siderable part of the population, but the mulatto is the exception among their number. There are likewise fewer quadroons than mulattoes, and the proportion of colored persons having one eighth or one sixteenth of negro blood in their veins is relatively smaller still. The intermixture of blood between the mulatto and the negro, on the other hand, is manifested by the countless grada tions of color which gradually darken from the Io8 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. hue of the mulatto to that of the black, until they are lost in the shadows of the pure negro type, The individuals who manifest these gradations are of course correspondingly numerous. The gradations of hue below that of the mulatto, in other words, mark the vast majority of the " col ored " people. The gradations above his are few in fact, and those who exhibit the lighter hues are a small and conspicuous class in the Southern States. Small as is the number, moreover, of those who must be ranked as mulattoes, quad roons, etc. that is, all persons of and above the grade of mulatto -even that number is largely made up of the descendants of parents of mixed blood, the strong tendency of members of this class having always been to marry among them selves. There are not a few of these lighter-col ored people, in the South, who can trace their legitimate descent for several generations. Some of them, indeed, were themselves slaveholders. In some of the Southern cities they constitute a distinct community of highly respectable peo ple, living to themselves for the most part, and having little in common with their darker-skinned neighbors save the common heritage of a reproach which attaches to any, even the slightest, taint of African blood. Two important facts stand out prominently in this view of the admixture of blood which has al ready been effected, and on which so mech stress had been placed. The first fact is that there has A TRILEMMA. 109 been comparatively little of such admixture at the first step. The second and more important fact is that the process is never continued beyond a few steps farther, and halts abruptly at the point where it promises to prove effective by the obliteration of the negro type in an individual who shall still represent the union of the two di verse strains of blood. Such an individual may indeed exist in America; but, if so, he wisely holds his peace as to his pedigree. The octoroon is nearly white, and is usually attractive in person. He is free to marry in his own class, or below it; but he is as far from marrying a white woman as was his blackest ancestor. And so of the mythical individual whose case we have just considered. Nor is this all. The white blood " tells " even where it is greatly adulterated. The octoroon, and mulatto are free to marry below their grade, indeed, but they are not prone to avail them selves of this privilege. Shut out from marriage or association with the whites, in turn they shut out the blacks, and form what has now become a fixed intermediate class, or compound race. The shades of color between their complexion and black are not the result of marriage, for the most part, but of the favor accorded in the slave period to the possession of some share of the white man s blood and qualities. And, finally, the birth of a mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, out of wedlock, is of rare occurrence since the war, and is, indeed, al most unknown. HO AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. The process which once promised to solve the Negro problem eventually, has been arrested absolutely by the Negro s emancipation. The " colored people " are increasing, if at all, only by the natural increase from colored parentage ; the negroes are absorbing the darker shades next to their own ; the current of fresh white blood flow ing into " colored " veins has been stayed ; in stead of having two races to consider, we have practically three, and this fact has been found already to have an important bearing upon every phase of the Negro problem in the South. The argument from the facts of miscegenation, as practiced to some extent in the past, has not withstood the test of examination, up to this point, and more yet may be said in evidence of its utter invalidity. The intercourse between the races, so far as any intercourse has taken place, has always been absolutely confined to the white man and negro woman. Regarded as an evidence of the weakness of racial barriers, there fore, it is at once deprived of half its force, and one more consideration will deprive it of the re maining half. The instances of such intercourse were not numerous, as we have seen. But even where intercourse occurred, it had its sole motive in the basest passions of human nature; was wholly of a criminal character, and was limited to the criminal association. The offspring of such unions was disowned by one of its parents, and was a life-long disgrace to the other, who A TR I LEMMA. in was, moreover, contemned as an inferior by her own child. There has never been the slightest progress toward racial assimilation or association on any other line than this, and as suredly there is nothing in this sort of progress to encourage the most sanguine to look forward to the establishment of more open and more le gitimate relations in future between the two, or three, races. Still another phase of this general subject re quires more attention than has been given to it. It has been said that the white blood " tells" even when adulterated. The fact is that it as serts the characteristics of the type of race from which it is drawn, wherever and in whatever de gree it is found to exist. Some of the plainer man ifestations of these characteristics may be noted. The intelligence, the general aptitude for af fairs of every sort, business, political and other wise, as well as the degree of culture, of the " col ored " man, are ever closely measured by the degree of whiteness in his skin. It is the recog nition of this fact that causes the lighter-colored people to associate together and marry among themselves. It is an instance of natural selection of one kind, a striking instance of the persistence of the law to whose infraction these people owe their very existence. Like must consort with like, however the likeness is derived. The bare fact of the superiority of the lighter-colored peo ple to the blacks, at any rate, is generally, if not 1 1 2 AN APPEAL TO PHARA OH. universally, recognized by whites, colored, and blacks alike. It is instructive to note, for exam ple, how surely, and as a matter of course, colored men take the leadership in all matters and on occasions in which the colored and black people have common part. They have been the politi cal leaders of the race with which they are iden tified ever since that race entered the political field. The history of every Southern State, since the war, affords all the evidence needed to sup port this assertion. The colored men came promptly tq the front, and to the top, at the out set of the Reconstruction Era, as the white peo ple know to their cost, and retained their leader ship to the end, despite their small numbers. There were exceptional cases, of course; but the rule was writ large, and is still in force. It should be added that many of the later excep tions were notoriously due to the existence of a prejudice in the minds of the blacks against their lighter-colored cousins ; and that this prejudice was due in part to their complexion, and in part to the awakening of the more ambitious black men to the fact above mentioned, that the col ored men, by virtue of superior knowledge, ca pacity and management, enjoyed far more than their numerical share of political offices, influence and rewards. The only representative of the colored popula- lation who ever reached a seat in the United States Senate was nearly white. The most promi- A TRILEMMA. 113 nent black man in Congress during the Recon struction period was a citizen of Massachusetts, and owed his elevation to the advantage of having received a complete education at a time when his black and colored fellows in the South were on the lowest plane of ignorance. Other exceptional cases need not be discussed ; it is enough that they are exceptions, and taken altogether they scarcely affect the rule. In the absence of white Republican leaders and of their ready-witted col ored lieutenants, the white people of the Southern States would have found small difficulty in over throwing the Reconstruction Governments long before they were overthrown ; if indeed, those governments could ever have been established. It is the statement of a plain fact, indeed, that the hopes of the Republican politicians of the North, for the maintenance of their party in the South, were built upon the "colored " voters, and have no other foundation to this day. The fail ure of " negro suffrage " in the South is owing to the comparatively small number of colored voters of the lighter shades. The experiment of negro suffrage would doubtless never have been made with negroes alone. The most glaring abuse of slavery the demoralization and debauching of the slaves by unprincipled white men made " Re construction " possible. The hybrid of the white man s begetting became the ready instrument of the sorest punishment and deepest humiliation that the white race, or any race, was ever subjected 114 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. to, the rule of their own newly emancipated slaves. The white people of the South, at any rate, have abundant reason to regret that any of their number ever transgressed the natural limits which separate the different orders of mankind. Like every other natural law, the law that keeps the races apart carries its penalty in its bosom in some form, and we may be sure that it will vin dicate itself as often as it is defied. The race-problem, it is seen, has been rendered but the more complicated by the introduction of the intermediate race. Instead of proving the weakness of the racial barriers, or tending to re move them, the result of fusion, so far as fusion progressed, has been to raise an additional barrier, and to bring the old prejudice into stronger re lief than before. Without going into this subject at any greater length, certain obvious facts and conclusions may be concisely stated. The prejudice of the white man as manifested towards the Negro is manifested towards the com bined white-and-negro in no less degree. The mulatto inherits the sentiment with his blood, and exhibits its force as far as he can, in his cir cumstances. The "taint" of negro blood clings to it so far as its presence can be detected or is suspected. The prejudice to which it is ever sub ject is most aggressively manifested towards the persons who are least tainted, those who are nearest in racial position to the white man. The very hopelessness of the black s case wins for A TRILEMMA. 115 him from the white man a measure of recognition and of guarded association which is denied to the almost-white man. If the negro race were wholly supplanted on American soil by a race of mulat- toes, or even of octoroons, the race problem would be so far from approaching a solution that it would be at least as perplexing and as fraught with present difficulty and promise of future trou ble as is the Negro problem of to-day. If the Negro shall ever rise, or be raised, in the scale of humanity, despite the weights and drawbacks which nature has imposed on him, to the very much higher plane now occupied by his colored cousin, or to any height, there is every reason to believe that he will encounter only the more pre judice and opposition on that account from both the white man and the colored man, with whom he will be brought the more into competition and conflict. And, finally, it requires to be said, that if all the negroes and colored people in the South should be raised, by any means, to the highest level of attainment and achievement now occu pied by the most intelligent and educated indivi duals of their race, there is assuredly nothing in the experience of these individuals to warrant the belief that the present disposition and conduct of the white people would be modified in the least degree. If these statements and conclusions shall be accepted as true and it is difficult to imagine how or where their substantial truth can be called into i 1 6 A N A PPEA L TO PHA RA OH, question we need touch but lightly on the scheme of "educating" and developing" the black and colored people, as a means of solving the race-problem in America. They should be educated and developed, undoubtedly; and to the utmost extent of the capacity of the Nation to promote the good work. Our duty is plain in this matter, and is generally recognized. In any event the condition of the negroes and colored people themselves will be improved in many ways by the work of the school-teacher, and there is need for improvement. There is, how ever, no apparent ground for the claim, or expec tation, that the relations of the races in the South will be changed for the better by the edu cation of the black and colored race, or by the improvement of their condition which education may be expected to produce. There are not a few well-educated colored men in the South, and the number of black and colored men who have acquired considerable property by their skill and industry we are told is considerable. There is no evidence anywhere, however, that the pos session of educational or other advantages has ever secured for any black or colored man the slightest abatement of the prejudice exhibited toward his race in general. The always bitter and sometimes bloody political contests in the South, we must believe, have been caused by the efforts of intelligent and educated colored men to assert the rights of their A TR I LEMMA. 117 race, which efforts have failed for the most part because of the ignorance and want of discipline of the mass of the black and colored voters. It goes without saying that, in proportion as they shall become better educated, the negroes will expect and demand more consideration in the division of public offices, and will be better pre pared to maintain their demands. How this will tend to promote division on other than race lines, or will improve the present relations between the several races, it is impossible to con ceive. The blacks are allowed practically no representation now, alike where they number but a handful and where they are in overwhelming majority. The treatment which they receive in politics is plainly the result of an unwillingness even to share political honors and power with them in any measure. It is not likely that the prejudice against them will be at all subdued when they shall claim their political portion in full measure and shall endeavor to seize it, with or without the aid of the general Government.* * The differences and lines between the parties in the South are deeper than any questions of policy or principle or patron age. They are the differences and lines between Anglo-Saxon and Ethiopian, between former master and former slave, between aggregated capital and aggregated labor, between a race kept down by sentiment, custom, inheritance and necessity, and a race forced by sentiment, custom, inheritance and necessity to keep it down. The evils will increase with time. As the two races in crease they will crowd each oiher within their territory, and the struggle for place and foothold will become stronger and harder ; Ii8 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. The question recurs, what single substantial ground has he, or have we, to expect that the Negro, or colored man, will ever attain, under any circumstances, to any sort of fellowship with the white man which is now denied by the white man to both, and is denied in large part to the Negro by the colored man? Does not the history of Hayti teach us indeed that, even if the white man were compelled to abandon the Southern States altogether, the race-problem would remain to be settled between the black man and the colored man? Remove one of the three races, and the other two will still be divided. How then shall we expect the three to dwell together in har mony? And how shall we expect the white man of the South, of all men, to concede to both the colored man and the black man the right to rule over him, or to take an effective part in their common government, which is denied by the Negro to the white man in every place where the former is in position to dictate the terms of their relationship? It may indeed be possible for such a state of things to come to pass in America. But it appears to be impossible, if only because it is contrary to every teaching and suggestion of history and present experience, and to the distin guishing and most deeply-rooted principles of the as the educated class increases among the negroes, its pressure against the confining, repressive forces above will be more serious, and the friction will be more irritating to both sides. A. B. WILLIAMS, in Harper s Weekly. A TRILEMMA. 119 white race, as a race. The experiment of trying to fuse two unlike, unequal, and unwilling races of men into one body politic, under circumstances where compulsion was out of question, and where every innate sentiment of exclusion and antagon ism was developed and strengthened by the long continued influences of the enslavement of the one race, and confirmed and intensified by the peculiar events which terminated that most un favorable relation was certainly unique in the recorded history of nations ; and was probably predestined to failure from its beginning. Its suc cess would still be doubtful, we are forced to be lieve, even if the white people of the former Slave States had entered upon the novel venture of their own will ; under the impulse of whatever strong motive ; with unanimous purpose ; and under the most favorable conditions of time and circumstance that could be imagined. In view of the actual past and present conditions, the hope of any measure of success is the dream of a fanatic or a fool. Having failed miserably at every step so far as it has been tried, fraught with the assurance of illimitable evils to both races, and barren of promise of any good result to either race why press the rash endeavor farther, if we can find, or make, any other way out of our difficulties? VIII. THE RADICAL SOLUTION. PERHAPS we can arrive at a better understand ing of the real disposition of the whole people of America towards the Negro, and of their proba ble future sentiment and behavior towards him, and can approach at the same time more nearly to some common basis of agreement among our selves with regard to the mode of settling the problem of which he is the subject, if we consider how that problem was thrust upon us how, that is to say, the Negro came to be in America. Is not his presence here owing wholly to a very ancient and general prejudice against him ? He was a slave before the Southern planter bought him from the Northern ship-master, who brought him to our shores. He was a slave be fore he was bought by the ship-master and re ceived on board the slave-ship. He was bought as a slave, and brought here for sale as a slave, without the aid or invitation of his late Southern masters, who, whatever their subsequent offences, were certainly not responsible for the introduc tion of negro slavery into the world or into the United States. 120 THE RADICAL SOLUTION. 12 1 But the question of responsibility for his sub jugation aside, be it remembered that the Negro was selected for his hard fate from among all the nations and races on the face of the earth. The slave yoke has been so long and so generally im posed on him that it suggests a world-wide and abiding recognition of something in his nature to invite the treatment he has received. We need not call it prejudice, and still the fact remains that many nations and peoples, agreeing in little else, have been moved by one idea and impulse common to them all, to enslave this order of man. Why was he alone chosen for this purpose, and why was he alone still held in chains, in this Nineteeth century, while the missionaries of the master race were preaching the gospel to other black men in the African jungles ? Was it be cause he was a negro ; because he was a fit and approved subject for slavery ? This is to concede all that is urged by those who have least regard for him, least hope of him. And if not for these reasons, then for what reasons ? At any rate, let us consider his present position in the light of what we know of the circumstances of his coming among us. We have seen that the sentiment which led to his enslavement in America was not and is not confined to the white people of the South or of America. It is older than the Federal Union, or the Colonies, is nearly world-wide, and has been the cause of his enslavement everywhere. If 122 AN APPEAL TO PHA RA OH. Noah s curse be not accepted as the cause of all the black man s misfortunes, the curious story of its fulmination must still be regarded as the legendary explanation of a historical fact so ancient that it antedates the writing of the book of Genesis itself. However this may be, it is not disputed that the Negro was originally brought to America by others than Americans ; and was brought by force, as a slave, and to be a slave. The next statement scarcely admits of serious challenge. The Negro would not have been al lowed to land in America in the first instance, nor later, but for the intention to keep him as a slave to the end. And is it not also significant that he should submit to his lot nearly always and everywhere with so unquestioning willingness, so patient do cility, so feeble protest ! Subjection seems to be his second nature, if not his first ; and his alone. He was brought here to be a slave, at all events, because he was known to possess the qualities that fitted him for slavery Heaven help him ! And the men who enslaved him, who wounded and bound him, who tore him from his miserable home and sold him to the white man, were men of his own color and blood and race. Deep indeed must be the slave instinct in the savage even, who could sink so low and stay down so long to permit him to practice and profit by a degrading traffic in his own flesh! The curse is in the bone. The slave trade still THE RADICAL SOLUTION. 123 thrives in Africa, though it has been abolished from every other land. The Negro was brought here to be a slave, and a slave he remained for two hundred years, with scarce one effort to throw off his yoke. His life itself was in the hands of his taskmasters ; yet he lifted no hand to win the fruits of that liberty which he saw all around him ; and this very fatal docility and stolidity was and is accounted a virtue to him, by himself and his friends. Strong indeed must have been our, and his, conception of the differences between us, and the conviction of his inferiority, that permitted him to remain a slave so long in this Land of the Free, under this gov ernment of the people, by the people, for the people ! And yet another fact. This state of affairs, his subjection under conditions and in circum stances that made the desire on his part to taste one free breath of God s free air a crime in our eyes, would have continued until now, and for many years to come, in all probability, but for the discovery that the slave thus brought here, and held here, was better adapted for residence and labor in one part of the country than in an other, and his consequent transfer to the lat itude where he thrived best, and where his toil was most profitable to his owner. The conflict of material and political interests arising out of his unequal distribution brought about the great conflict of opinion and arms which led to his 124 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. emancipation as a stroke of diplomacy, of mili tary strategy, a blow at the power of his war ring master, a sacrifice for the sake and salvation of the Republic he had so long served, and that was about to go to pieces in fighting over the problem his presence had raised. His present freedom was an incident of the war, and was not contemplated by his liberators until it became necessary or advisable for the sake of the advan tage it promised to one of the contending sections the one which had no remaining property-rights vested in him, and which lost nothing, but gained everything, by giving him his liberty. Is this pushing the probe too deep ? Perhaps so, and it is not desired to touch any nerve un necessarily. There is high authority however for the assertion last made : I appreciate your motive when you suggest the propriety of my writing for the public something disclaiming all inten tion to interfere with slaves or slavery in the States ; but in my judgment it would do no good. I have already done this many, many times, and it is in print, and open to all who will read. MR. LINCOLN, to W. S. SPEER, Oct. 23, 1860. The Century Magazine, Nov. 1887. I met on Monday my Republican associates on the Com mittee of Thirteen, and afterwards the whole committee. With the unanimous consent of our section I offered three propositions which seemed to me to cover the ground of the suggestion made by you through Mr. Weed, as I understood it. First, that the Constitution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in THE RADICAL SOLUTION. 125 the States. This was accepted. MR. SEWARD to MR. LINCOLN, Dec. 26, 1860. The Centurv Magazine, Nov. 1887. Does any man in the United States honestly believe that the Negro would be free to day, that the Negro problem would confront us in its present shape, if the cotton plant only grew on the shores of the Lakes as it grows on the shores of the Gulf ; or if black labor could have been as profitably employed at the North as at the South ? We have indeed drifted far apart in character and disposition we of the two sections ; but what if the climate of the Southern section extended a few degrees nearer to the Pole ? There are men and women and children north of Mason s and Dixon s line to-day who are called " white slaves " by their neighbors, and who are as white as their masters. What of these, if their skins were black? What if the Negro had fallen into their place two hun dred years ago, and had become established there, as he was established on the plantations a few miles south of the mine and manufactory ? But let this pass. We are all wiser and better now than we were, and some may honestly believe that they would have been as wise and good as they are, had they lived and died one or two centuries ago. The Negro was brought here to be and remain a slave. That is the main fact. Is it too much to say, on conscience, that if he had not come when he did, and as he did, and for the express 126 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. purpose for which he came, he would not have been allowed to come at all ; or to remain after he landed ? Does any man believe fora moment, that, if the Negro were not here, and if it were proposed by any person or power to bring him here now to take his place among us, to share our heritage and citizenship, to be established here on the footing now conceded to him or on any other footing whatsoever, leaving slavery out of the question he would be allowed to set foot on American soil on any terms? If there is any doubt as to what our course of conduct would be in such an event, it will be solved, perhaps, by a consideration of the present demand for the lands held by the remnants of the Indian tribes, and of the hot and earnest and long continued cry for the Chinese to be driven back to their own country a cry, it may be said in passing, that is raised mainly by those who have least objection to the African remaining with us, and who most loudly clamor for his full and free exercise of all the rights and privileges of American citizenship at a safe distance from themselves. We are very much alike, North and South, East and West, in some respects, after all.* * THE ADMINISTRATION AND THE CHINESE. Some of the Democratic papers persist in the endeavor to make party capital out of the Chinese immigration question as against the Republi cans. They would be wise to drop it, because the more the matter is discussed the more clearly will it appear that the Administration blundered sadly in handling this subject. The treaty, which was. THE RADICAL SOLUTION. 127 It may be remarked here that a strong and growing sentiment has been developed in the Northern States in late years, which has found emphatic expression in every political platform and in divers other public deliverances, in favor of restricting immigration to this country from Europe, for the avowed reason that we have admitted strangers too freely already, and are threatened with being overwhelmed by a flood of foreigners, aliens in thought and manner a peo- negotiated after three years delay and submitted to the Senate with a flourish, contained provisions which would have left the door wide open to the influx of Chinese. It prohibited the com ing of Chinese laborers to the United States during a period of tweniy years, but said nothing regarding the coming back of Chinese laborers who have left the United States with return cer tificates. This was precisely the point at which the greatest dan gers and abuses arose under the former treaty. These certificates were sold in large numbers in China, and the difficulty of distin guishing between Mongolians made their transfer easy. Then, too, where a Chinese laborer claimed to have lost his certificate, he was allowed to enter on proof that he had had one. In both cases Chinese perjury was too much for American law, and the immi grants were sworn through in shoals. It is obvious that this could have gone on for a long period under the treaty as negotiated. The Senate, however, made two amendments, one prohibiting the retu-n of Chinese laborers who are not now in the United States, whether holding certificates under exiting laws or not ; and the other providing that no Chinese laborer, of the class per mitted to return under the new treaty, viz. : those having lawful wives, children or parents in the United States, or property therein of the value of $1000, or debts of like amount due and pending settlement, shall be permitted to enter the United States by land or sea without producing to the proper officer of the customs the return ce-tificate required. In other words, after the treaty, as amended by the Senate, has been ratified, even such Chinese labo- 128 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. pie different from ourselves. Yet these immi grants are white people, and their children cannot be distinguished from our own. Would a tide of black immigration be welcomed to-day in any Northern or Western State, or Territory ? Would it have been permitted in any recent year, whether the immigrants came from Africa or the West Indies or elsewhere, and were never so well educated or wealthy? And if not, why not? Does any man believe, again, that, if the Negroes who are here numbered as many thou sands only as they now number millions, our rers as have left the country with certificates will not be permitted to return except under the conditions named, and oral testimony will not be accepted in lieu of a certificate. By an inadvertence, the bill pa-sed to put the provisions of the treaty in force, imme diately up >n its ra ification, repealed the former restriction laws from the date of its passage, wi hout allowing for the time it would take to get the assent of the Chinese Government to the Senate amendments to the treaty. This error was at once detected, and Mr. Morrow, a Republican member of the House, was ready with an amendment making the repealing clause take effect upon the ratification of the treaty. The Democrats delayed action upon this in the hope of getting some small shred of party capital out of the Chinese question, but it was finally adopted, and the bill passed the House without division. Senator Stewart, of Nevada, showed the other day that it was the amendment of Mr. Conness, a Republican Senator, to the Builingame Treaty which prevented the natuialization of Chinese. If this amendment had not been adop ed, Senator Stewart say s and no doubt truly, " the Chinese question would be to-day one of the most momentous que-tions ever presented to the American people." Once armed with vote , the Chinese would have become a powerful element. Politicians would have truckle 1 to them. Their exclusion would have been almost an impossibility, and their presence might easily have become a National, instead of a local, scourge. Editorial New York Tribune, Aug. 27, 1888. THE RADICAL SOLUTION. 129 knowledge of them and of the effects of their presence remaining what it is there would be any question or hesitation as to the disposition presently to be made of them ? If there were but 7000 of them in the country, anywhere, and these few had occasioned such heartburnings and divisions and conflicts as we have had since the war only, and are having now, and are certain to have in the near future, would they not be expelled somehow, sent somewhere, anywhere, before another year had passed ? Suppose they had come from Mexico, instead of from Africa, in the first instance ; is there any question that the whole race would have recrossed the Rio Grande before now, though double their present number? Or, if they could not be expelled, would not they be gathered together on some Reservation set apart for them, where they would be left to themselves, and kept to themselves for all time ? If it were practicable now to collect them in this way, would not all that are here be collected and given a place to themselves? And why has this proposition never been seri ously offered and entertained ? Is it not because the people of the United States would not con sent to surrender any part of their territory to be devoted to such purpose, the exclusive and per manent occupation of the Negro and colored population ? Would not the people of any State, or Territory, however few in number, or remote from the centers of population, resent the prop- 13 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOtt. osition, if made with regard to the soil they oc cupy, and resist it by every means in their power? Would not the presence of the race in such selected Territory be enough to drive out the last white settler; and would not the rapid increase of the race within such limits be viewed with anxiety for its future results, by the whole nation? Or, finally, if the Negro were now con fined to one Southern State, our knowledge and experience of him remaining the same, would any other Southern State invite his presence, or tolerate it, if his coming were conditioned upon full and free citizenship to be accorded to him ? or on any other terms ? Would any Northern State ? Instead of being confined to one State, or Ter ritory, or Reservation, the race is scattered throughout nearly half the Union. Instead of 7000, they number 7,000,000 ; and are increasing rapidly. We cannot assign them a separate place among us. The seven millions will become seventy millions in a very few more decades, if their former rate of increase shall be maintained. The problem begins to press urgently for a solution. The removal of the Negro from our country to his own country from America to Africa alone will solve it. Let him go in peace, if he will, bearing with him and followed by such substantial evidences of our kindly regard and brotherly love as will atone for the manner of his coming. But, in any event, let him go ! IX. RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS. " IT is desirable enough to get rid of the Negro ; we can all agree to that proposition," will it be said ? " But it is impracticable." Ah, if we were but so agreed ; if " impractica bility " were the only objection ! Grant all the rest, or the material substance of it, and the arith metic will serve us where the Constitution and the sword have alike failed. If we can only agree that the races should be separated that the Negro should be removed from America, if practi cable these pages have not been written in vain. There will be then a plainer course ahead of us than we have ever had before, on this question, or any other of approximate importance. " But, seven millions of people ! Remove all these ! It is the extreme of folly and extrava gance to offer such a proposition ! " Let us see. The question now is one of ways and means, of practicability only, and we may deal with it ac cordingly. Figures express no feeling ; but let not their use in this instance be construed as an evidence of unfeelingness. Take the proposition in its most formidable shape the exportation in a few years, of the 131 13 2 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. whole black and colored population of the United States. Even this is not impracticable. Going back to the year 1880, for the sake of the convenience and accuracy of the United States Census returns of that year, and making allowance for the subsequent lapse of time, where neces sary, we have a sound basis of calculation. Ac cording to that census there were present in the United States and Territories in the year named, 6,580,793 " persons of color," all of whom we may regard as " negroes " for the present purpose. The number of " persons of foreign birth " in the same territory at the same period, was 6,679,943. That is to say: If only the vessels that were engaged in bringing these foreigners to our shores, had carried back with them to Africa on their return trips as many negroes as they brought immigrants on the voyage hither, not a single black or colored man, woman, or child would have been left in the country in 1880, and there would still have been a clear gain of 100,000 persons added to the population. Yet the transportation, distribution, and absorption of these millions of immigrants was a mere incident in our national life, most of them having been landed in one or two ports and forwarded to their destination in the interior without interrupting our everyday business, and almost without attracting passing notice. Nor is this the most striking example of the ease with which the transportation of vast num- RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS. 133 bers of people can be effected. Senator Morrill, of Vermont, stated in the course of a speech de livered in the Senate in the winter of 1887-88, that four-and-a-half millions of immigrants were brought into the United States in the seven years following 1880 ; and it is assumed that he had au thority for his statement. With no larger fleet, therefore, than is engaged in the immigration business on the North Atlantic Coast, we could have sent away nearly three-fourths of our col ored population in the period indicated, or could send away all of them in the course of one decade. But we need not consider the movement on so grand a scale. Such a movement would not be desirable, for many reasons not necessary to be suggested to the thoughtful reader. The problem does not call, fortunately, for so violent a mode of solution. A slower method would be better on all accounts, provided only that it be sure of the ultimate result. What is desired is that the Negro shall be transported to his own land without forcing him to go, without injury to himself, and without injury or undue cost to the people whom he leaves behind, and who must bear the expense of his removal. Every right principle, as well as consideration for ourselves, which is a sufficient motive in itself, requires that we shall deal justly and kindly with him when we would have him leave our land. He will leave behind him the fruits of two centuries labor. He should not be sent forth against his will, or weeping, or empty- 134 AJV APPEAL TO PHA&AOtt. handed. It will be a solemn leave-taking at best, when it comes to pass, and we begin to reflect on all that preceded it. Let not our last act in the tragedy of errors, the act which is to redeem in part those that have gone before it, leave material for additional regret and reproach to us who shall stand on the shore and see the ship that bears him away sink below the line of the eastern horizon at the point where the slave-ship loomed up dark and ominous before the gaze of our ancestors. It is as little as we can do in sending him away from the sight of the snowy cottonfields and of the smoky cotton-factories, to send him with some part of his over-due wages in his pocket, or in the shape of provisions and tools to enable him to make a home in the home-land from which we beguiled or wrested him away. Go he should, undoubtedly, and go he will as suredly, sooner or later ; but he should be allowed to go at his leisure and at his pleasure, if only he will go in sufficient numbers to make sure that the natural increase of those whom he leaves behind shall not make the process perpetual, and futile for its purpose. Calculations as to the number of those who should go in a given time so as to effect the de sired result may be so varied and multiplied as to fill a book. Let us avoid this unnecessary labor, which everyone who is so minded can perform for himself. One example of such calculations is sufficient to indicate how the desired exodus can RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS. 135 be acomplished in an easy and kindly way, and at small expense when we consider the impor tance of the object to be obtained. Time itself can be made a potent factor to aid us in our task, if we take advantage of time s cer tain operation. Is it not apparent, for instance, that, if we were to set ourselves to work patiently and surely to remove in forty years all of the negroes who are now under the age of forty years, the rest will nearly all have passed, in the same period, over to the Dark Continent that lies so much nearer to our shores than Africa, and that without labor or cost to us ? We would, then, have to provide for the emigration of those only who are now under forty and of those who shall be born in the next forty years, in order to accom plish our purpose. Our task would be reduced by over 3,000,000 emigrants in any event, what ever the number to be transported might become by reason of the natural and net increase of those who remained in waiting. But neither would it be necessary to undertake the removal of half of the race, with the increase in forty years. It is evident that if we should remove the increase only, the children who shall be born in the next fifty years, all the others will disappear in the course of a little more than that time. The year 2000, in any event, would find not a single black man, woman or child on these shores. The problem, however, can be still further sim- I3 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. plified, since it is practicable to prevent the in crease in part, instead of trying to keep pace with it. The removal of the maternal element alone will effect this object. For, if we were to induce the emigration, year by year, for fifty years, of every marriageable woman of the colored population who should at tain the age of twenty-five years, for example, there would be, at the end of fifty years, or be fore, a cessation of the increase of the race in America ; since the female children of all the women over twenty-five years of age would reach the emigration-age during the indicated period, as well as the children of those who were of and tinder the age of twenty-five years. It would not be necessary, however, to adopt even so sweeping a measure as this. The problem would be greatly simplified of course, by adopt ing some such scheme and fixing any age, be tween twenty and thirty years preferably, be yond which no colored woman should be allowed to remain in America. But this arbitrary and cruel way of dealing is not to be thought of. Our right course lies between the two courses we have considered, and should be devised with a reference to the voluntary and steady emigration of the active maternal element in such numbers as to insure a constant lowering of the birth-rate, until it should cease altogether. Longer time would be required, but this would not be objec tionable since it would permit the process to be RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS. 137 carried on by so easy degrees as to enable us to provide for the emigrants properly, and at the same time to permit the readjustment of affairs and relations in the South, and in the whole country, that would be rendered necessary by the loss of so large a body of laborers, not to say citizens. If we are required to suggest what number should be exported annually, the answer is that it ought to be large enough to remove the whole maternal element in forty or fifty years, or in as much longer or shorter period as might prove to be practicable and consistent with the general welfare of both races. The total number of "colored females " in the United States in 1880, who were between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, inclusive, was 1,327,718. The number of colored females under one year of age at that time was 115,468, and the number of deaths of the same class reported for the census year was 14,165 ; indicating a total of births of females amounting to 129,633, or 130,000 in round numbers.* By doubling the annual birth-rate of females ( 130,000), we find again that the total number of births annually is 260,000, which affords a sufficiently close approximation to * The total number of deaths of colored females under the age of eighteen years was about 30,000 annually, leaving about 100,000 as the average annual contribu ion of the colored race to the pos sible child-bearing element of the population of the United States. All these 100,000 however.it is scarcely necessary to say, do not become mothers. I3 8 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. the whole number of actual child-bearing colored females in any year, and shows them to constitute about twenty per cent, of the whole number of colored females between eighteen and forty-five years, which may be assumed as the practical limits of the age of maternity. Unfortunately, the next calculation must be made very much in the dark. It is impossible to ascertain from the census the number of colored persons of any given age. A glance at the tables showing the number of colored females at each age between 18 and 45, for example, will discover the utter untrustworthiness of the returns on this point. Very few of the colored people knew their ages at that time, in fact ; and the guessing of the enumerators and of those upon whom they were compelled to rely for information, is plainly manifested by the marked tendency to fix on the popular age of 18 for the younger women, and on the five year periods, from twenty upward, for those of maturer years. The number reported as being 1 8 years of age was 80,492 ; at the next stage, 19 years, it fell off about 23,000; and at 20, a good round age to guess at, it rose sud denly to 97,095, falling off at the next step again to 55,502. At 27 years the number was 25,622; at 30 it was 107,551 ; at 31 it was 14,994. At 39 the number was 18,194; at 40 it was 96,287; at 41 it was 8,985. At 44 it was 12,675, and at 45 it was 56,487. It is plain that no reliance can be placed on the figures for any single group, and RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS. 139 we must therefore resort to estimate, with such assistance as can be derived from other sources, for an approximate distribution according to age.* The average number at each age from 18 to 45, obtained by dividing the total, 1,327,718, by the number of years (28) in the series, is 47,718. The tables for the State of Massachusetts, where it may be supposed that the records as to age are as nearly correct as can be obtained in the United States, show that the number of na tive femalesf of the age of 18 in that State is about double the number of those who had at tained the age of 45, and all the other New Eng land States give the same proportion very nearly. If we may apply this proportion then, in the ab sence of a surer guide, to the colored population, it will indicate that the average already obtained should be so redistributed as to give about 63,624 colored females of the age of 18 to 31, 812 of the age of 45. The average number for each of the ten years from 20 to 29, both inclusive, again, as shown by the census, is 61,716, which goes far to confirm the result otherwise obtained. These are estimates only, of course, but we have * The same variations, though in less degree, are exhibited in the general tables for white females, so that we can derive no guid ance from that source. f The returns of the number of foreign-born females, at the dif ferent ages, show as marked variations as those which have been noted in the returns for colored females. 140 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. nothing more definite to depend on. If, then, we assume 62,000, in round numbers, to rep resent the number of colored females at the age of twenty, we shall not perhaps be very far wrong, and can proceed with more or less confidence. The proportion of actual child-bearing colored females, as we have seen, is about twenty per cent, of the whole potential maternal element, between the ages of 1 8 and 45 inclusive. Apply ing this proportion to the ages from 20 to 29 in clusive, we find the number of child-bearing col ored females of the age of 20 to be not over 12,500, the average number for each of the suc ceeding ages, to and including 29, being some what less. The significance of these figures appears when we reflect that they prove, so far as they prove anything, that the annual emigration of 12,500 persons of the indicated class of the colored popu lation (child-bearing females of the age of 20 years), would remove the greater part of the ma ternal element of the colored race in forty years, leaving the rest to be removed in smaller de tachments, after the end of that period. It is not now requisite to go into the calculation very closely, or to indicate every qualification and allowance that must be made. The broad view and round numbers, will serve the present purpose. The broad view is that in 20 years 250,000 colored females, constituting the active maternal element of their race, will have been removed from the RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS. 141 United States, and that all their children born during that period, perhaps 750,000, will have been born in another land. After the 2Oth year of the operation of such a process, it is evident that the number of the indicated class to be re moved would be suddenly and materially dimin ished, and would fall off steadily until exhausted wholly. For, all the colored female children who were of the age of one year and under at the time the movement began, would then have reached the age of 20 years, and the succeeding generations would be reduced year by year, by the whole number of children born to parents who had emigrated in the twenty-year period. To put it another way: In the 2ist year suc ceeding the beginning of the emigration move ment, the number of young women who would reach the age of 20 would come short of the 62,000 annually maintained up to that time by just the number of surviving daughters of the 12,500 young women who had emigrated 21 years before. In the 22d year of the movement, the number would be diminished by the surviving daughters of 25,000 mothers, and so on with each year until the 4ist, when the number of young women who would reach the age of 20 would be di minished by the number of surviving daughters of the 250,000 mothers who had emigrated in the first period of twenty years. In the meanwhile, it must be remembered, another effect of the move ment will have become manifest. After the 2ist 142 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. year, all the child-bearing women who were over 20 when the movement began will have passed the age of 40 years, and there will be none to take their place ; since, by the theory, all ac cessions to their class were removed as fast as they reached 20. The only accessions to the active maternal element of the colored popula tion then, after the 2ist year of the movement, would be the children of women who were over 20 when the movement began, and these children would be removed in turn in another period of 20 years ; and in steadily diminishing numbers each year. The children of women over 40 need not be taken into account. But we need not follow this line of suggestion farther. It has led us apparently to one safe and satisfactory conclusion that the annual emigra tion of only 12,500 child-bearing colored women will remove the maternal element of the colored population within fifty years, and we may now consider how the knowledge thus acquired can be applied in practice. It would not be practicable to induce the emi gration of all child-bearing women of any particular age, for forty years or in any one year. We must dismiss the idea of holding to the one-age limit. This will not materially affect the foregoing cal culations, however, as is made manifest when we reflect that the emigration of 12,500 women of the maternal class, between the ages of twenty and thirty, for twenty years, would, in any event, lessen RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS 143 by 250,000 the number who would attain the age of forty years in this country, and would remove that number as surely as though they had all been removed upon entering the age of twenty years. The effect upon the movement, after the twenty- first year, would be somewhat modified, of course, but the final complete result would seem to be postponed about ten years only at the most. It ought not to be difficult to induce the annual emigration of 12,500 women of the ten ages be tween twenty and thirty, and we may probably accept that feature of the scheme as practicable. The number of emigrants remaining the same, any further extension of the limits in respect of age would result, of course, in extending by so much, or more, the time required for the accom plishment of the ultimate purpose. For every reason it would be well to keep these limits as re stricted as practicable, and the reasons for keep ing the maximum age at or even below thirty are too manifest to require to be stated. One such reason however should be mentioned. The fundamental idea of the scheme here pro posed is the emigration of actual child-bearing women. This means, of course, married women who have become mothers already. It would be desirable then to effect their removal as soon as possible after they enter the maternal class, rather than to postpone it until they should be cum bered with a number of young children who would greatly multiply the difficulties, expenses and 144 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. risks of their emigrant parents, if they did not deter many families from emigrating at all. The scheme necessarily includes also, it is seen, the emigration of the husbands of the women under consideration. These will double the num ber of emigrants at once, and it is therefore the more necessary to restrict the number of persons to be removed, both for their own sake, and for the sake of the economy thus insured. It is plain that the emigrant parents should, for every reason, be induced to go as soon as practicable after they become parents. Another matter requires to be mentioned be fore leaving this part of the subject. The num ber of adult persons proposed to be removed annually has been increased, at one bound, from 12,500 to 25,000. This number, according to the calculations based upon the Tenth Census, should be sufficient to solve the negro problem > finally, in fifty years. We cannot rest on these figures, however. If the scheme should be adopted and appointed to go into effect with the opening of the year 1890, for instance, the col ored population in the United States will have increased, at the normal rate, by twenty-five per cent. The 25,000 must be increased in that pro portion. Allowance should also be made for pos sible errors in the estimates presented, and such allowance must be made on the safe side. Pro vision also would have to be made for the emi grant children. It is apparently necessary to base our calculations as to the number of emi- RECKONINGS OF NUMBERS. 145 grants whose removal annually must be provided for in 1890, and for twenty years thereafter, upon a total represented by 50,000 adult persons.* The number may be less if we begin the work of removal in 1890. It cannot well be more in that year; but it may be accepted as a certainty that it will never be so small in any subsequent cen sus year. Whatever the proportions of the task may be now, they will be more than doubled in the next forty years. Our children and the chil dren of this peculiar people, who shall grow up together in the interval, will have ample reason, it is feared, to curse our procrastination and sel fish folly, if we hand the inevitable and magni fied undertaking down to them, as it has been handed down to us. The number of the colored population in the United States in 1790 was 700,000. In 1860 it was 4,000,000. In 1890 it will be over 7,000,000. These figures present argument enough for im, mediate action, on some scale. If 50,000 emi grants annually will not meet the requirements of our task, we should not longer delay going to work. If that estimate is excessive, so much the better. It can be easily reduced if necessary. In the meanwhile we may use it as the basis of further estimates which will give us an approxi mate and safe idea, at least, of what is before us. * This number will not appear to be excessive when it is remem bered that from 30,000 to 60,000 negroes were taken yearly from Africa to Cuba by vessels from the single port of New York, as late as 1855-60. Vice-President Wilson : " Rise and Fall of the Slave Trade in America," Vol. 2., p. 618, X. RECKONINGS OF COST. The next branch of the subject to be considered is the cost, to the people of the United States, of carrying into effect the proposed movement upon the basis here suggested, in the absence of any other. This cost would comprise : 1. The actual expenditure required for the transportation of the emigrants from their homes to their destination. 2. The expenditure required for their mainten ance for a fixed period after colonization. 3. To these items should be added the proba ble cost of the support, in some degree of com fort, at least, of the aged or decrepit relatives of some of the emigrants who are dependent on them, and who must be either sent away with them or provided for in their absence. What is the average cost of the transportation of immigrants from their former homes to their new homes in this country is not known to the writer. If we say $50 a head, which is a liberal estimate, and confine the calculation to the arri vals during the last seven years (1880-87) the average cost per annum for the transportation of these 4,500,000 was about $32,000,000. At which 146 RECKONINGS OF COST. 147 rate, the whole colored population could be trans ported to Africa in ten years, at a total cost of $320,000,000. And the people of the United States have paid, without feeling the expenditure, and while paying off the war debt, principal and interest, at the same time, and while trying to spend a rapidly-accumulating " surplus " besides, the sum of about $800,000,000 for pensions alone between the years 1861 and 1887. This sum would have sufficed to send all the negroes on this continent to Africa and bring them back again, since we began to fight about them. The calculation admits of many striking varia tions, but one more statement will be enough. An expenditure of $32,000,000 a year for ten years, as we have seen, would serve to transport the whole black and colored population of this country to Africa. The internal revenue tax on whiskey and tobacco alone has yielded nearly four times that amount annually in recent years. The cost of simply transporting the negroes from these shores to Africa would not average, per haps, more than $25 a head.* On this basis the revenue from whiskey and tobacco for 18 months would cover the whole transportation-expense of removing the whole race ! * Since the incorporation of the Central and South American Emigration Society. . . . shipping firms in nearly all the Atlantic coast ports have made propositions to the Association to furnish transportation. . . . The figures for transportation are given at from $10 to $15. Kansas City correspondence of the Chicago Tribune, January 31, 1888. 148 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. On the second point, the cost of the provision to be made for the colonized emigrants, there is the widest latitude for varying the estimates. Every such estimate, however, should proceed from the basis of a sum per capita, sufficient to ensure the emigrant a certain support for one year at least after arriving at his destination. " Support " means, of course, a house, agricultural implements, or other tools, clothing, shoes, a cer tain supply of food, provision for adequate medi cal attendance everything, in short, that would be required to establish a colony of poor and de pendent people upon a foundation that would enable them to become self-supporting at the end of a year. The poorer negroes would most de sire to leave, and should be the first to be accorded the opportunity. It is our fault that they have remained poor, while enriching every part of our country, directly or indirectly, by their labor. As a nation, we owe the living representatives of their race many years wages, and it would be little for us to pay some small part of our great debt to those whom we would otherwise send away utterly empty-handed. Something, at least, is due to conscience in dealing with the negroes. They can do little for themselves. They have little or nothing to carry with them in the way of household goods. There will be no auctions when they leave. Their cabins are well nigh bare. There is not much that they own which they cannot afford to throw away or RECKONINGS OF COST, 149 abandon. For vast numbers of them, a few blankets and pots and pans would furnish a hut on the Congo very nearly as well as the cabin they would leave behind on the banks of our own rivers, or on the side of one of our highways in town or country. They are more likely to be enlarged than diminished in the new venture, as to household belongings. They will require, at least they have required, but little in the way of clothing and food. Their fare is but little varied, even when and where it is most abundant. From childhood to old age they have been accustomed to few luxuries, save such as have fallen to them from their masters table, when they waited at his elbow. The slave s regular weekly ration, for a working " hand," was a peck of corn meal, three, four, or five pounds of bacon, a pint of molasses, and perhaps sugar, salt, rice, and coffee at times. It is very much to be doubted whether the fare of the freedman and of his wife and children comes up to the slave- ration, either in respect of quantity, quality, or variety. It will not require much to feed, even for a whole year, those who have learned to live on one meal a day of late years, and on one or two coarse kinds of food at a meal. Many families of agricultural laborers, in every part of the South, are fed and clothed, year after year, out of the wages of one bread-winner in each family, and he nearly, if not quite, the lowest paid laborer in the land, with the small help of 15 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. the little " garden-patch " worked by the wife and children. The average wage of a competent col ored farm-laborer in the South the year round is about $10 a month, which must supply nearly all the wants of his family. It is not far wide of the mark to say that a hundred dollars will cover the annual expenditure for the food of the aver age black family in the South to-day, assuming the family to consist of man, wife, and three chil dren. The same sum or a little more would sup ply them with like food for a year in Africa, and the garden there will count for as much as here. Two hundred dollars fora family of three persons, or, at any rate, one hundred dollars per capita, would certainly support them for a year after the house or hut is built, and furnish them with cloth ing besides. One hundred and fifty dollars each would doubtless pay the cost of their transporta tion and maintenance for a year. Two hundred dollars for each member would be an extravagant estimate, perhaps, of the total cost of removing a family, building a house as good as that which they shall leave behind, maintaining them for a year, and equipping them for work when they should cease to be a charge upon our selfish generosity; and the proffer of this amount, there is small rea son to doubt, would serve to induce the emi gration of the younger and more intelligent class it is desired to reach, who would become at once the envy of all their neighbors, and would count themselves among the fortunate ones of the earth. RECKONINGS OF COST. 151 The great majority of the race, of all classes, would go gladly, it is believed, if only transpor tation were furnished, and they were assured that they could make a bare living in the colony ; but, as a special class is desired to be removed, there should be an inducement adequate to ensure the emigration of this class in any event. Provision might be made also, if necessary or advisable, for the removal of other classes on other and less expensive terms ; but we need regard now only the cost of removing the particular class under consideration. The number of persons of this class to be provided for yearly, we have estimated to be represented by 50,000 adults. At $200 a head the cost of the proposed movement would be $10,000,000 a year, or one twelfth of the annual revenue derived by the Government from the internal revenue taxes alone, as determined by the receipts for 1887. The total cost of the movement, for fifty years, would be far more than covered by the revenue from this source for five years ; or, again, would be met, from year to year, by the revenue de rived from import duties on " cigars, cheroots and tobacco," or on " cotton manufactures," or on a part of the imports of " silk goods." An indefinite number of calculations could be made on this line, but they need not be presented here. So far as the mere question of cost goes, it is enough to say that if the estimate of the number of emigrants annually were doubled ; and if the 152 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. sum proposed to be allowed for the removal, maintenance, etc., of each one of this largely increased number were also doubled ; so that the total annual cost should be increased from $10,000,000 to $40,000,000, the import duty on the article of sugar, alone, would more than cover the whole expenditure. There is nothing impracticable in the scheme on the score of its cost ; but if there is yet objec tion on that account a single additional state ment may be submitted for our reflection. The total cost of the movement, at $10,000,000 a year, for fifty years, would be $500,000,000. "The cost, measured in money, of removing the compromise with slavery from the Constitution of the United States," says Mr. Edward Atkin son, "was $8,000,000,000." The cost of seven years of war and reconstruction, according to this eminent authority, was, therefore, $1,155,000,000 a year paid and to be paid for the luxury of cutting each other s throats and trying violent methods in attempted solution of the negro question.* It would have been cheaper to send the Negro away before 1860. It is cheaper to * At the close of the war, in 1865, these [the Southern] States had lost in slaves emancipated, credits, stocks, and property de stroyed, more than $6,000,000 ooo. Gen. BRADLEY JOHNSON, in the Baltimore Sun, February, 1888. The War of Rebellion cost the North alone fifteen million dollars a week. It cost the Confederates, counting in the results, not less than twenty millions a week. A. W. TOTJRG&E, An Appeal to Casar. P. 287. RECKONINGS OF COST. 153 send him away now than it will ever be again, in any event ; and there is really no saying what his stay will cost us hereafter, and is costing us in retarding the development of so large a part of the Union. The third point, the cost of the maintenance of the decrepit and dependent colored people who shall be left behind, need not be discussed at length. There are very few negro paupers in any Southern State, as is shown by the census. The oldest and feeblest of the race work to the bitter end, nowadays, wanting little, content with less, and having next to nothing. We might greatly increase the number of those who have proved to be helpless in any year hereto fore, and still not feel the burden of their care for the few years of life left to them. Most of them were slaves, moreover ; and we owe them a sup port, aside from the question of emigration. It is a reproach to us that we have paid so small a part of this debt. Freedom has cost them dearly already. We can well afford to smooth the path way of so many as remain a pathway which was so rugged in youth and in faithful manhood and womanhood to the verge of the waiting, name less grave that shall swallow them forever, as it has swallowed so many millions of their kith and kin, leaving no sign to tell that they ever existed, or who they were, or where they lie. The mor tality tables tell the story of their silent sufferings and death. No appeal can add to the force of 154 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. the official records when these are read and un derstood. The abandonment of the superannu ated slaves to their fate, by our Government, is one of the most heartless incidents in the history of the Nation. Some atonement should be made yet to those who are left alive. We have dwelt at length on the subject of the practicability and probable cost of transporting the Negro emigrants and providing for them when colonized, because in the mind of a large part of the public that is perhaps the main question to be con sidered. That the cost is easily within our means has been shown unquestionably ; but that is not all that can be said in regard to such cost. For there is no reason whatever to regard the proposed expenditure otherwise than as a profitable invest ment for the whole people, who will be called on to furnish the money. We need not give all the reasons for holding this view, but a few of the more prominent may be briefly indicated. The removal of the colored population, within a reasonable period, would itself richly repay the white people of the United States by its effects on the social, political and industrial conditions and relations of the two sections, North and South. There would be a perfect union and lasting peace and harmony between them ever afterward, with all that such conditions imply ; they cannot attain these results in any other way : and the value of such results is truly above all estimate. The Nation could well afford to beggar itself, on his account, for one RECKONINGS OF COST. 155 hundred years, if only it could start anew at the end of that time with the African back in Africa. The Nation would not beggar itself, however, for a single day. The greater part, if not all, of the money to be expended on the movement would be expended in this country. The ships for the transportation of the emigrants would be built here, manned here, and kept in repair here. The supplies of food, clothing, tools, implements, etc., etc., would be drawn from different parts of the country, and to furnish these would give steady employment to thousands of men, so that the ab sence of the emigrants would not materially affect the market for such supplies at the outset of the movement, and the colonies so founded would constitute a continuing market for some time and would probably spread the sale of American prod ucts in the territory about the colonies in Africa. The main objection to the removal of the negroes, in any large numbers, would come doubt less from the cotton-farmers and representatives of the cotton-interest generally. Even their ob jection might well prove to be a mistaken one, however, from their own narrow point of view. For these same classes have long and loudly asserted that " too much cotton " is produced in the South, and that what that region most needs is a diversification of industries. If the Negro is the great cotton-producer, his departure would compel such wholesome diversification, which would probably be attended by an increase of the 156 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. price of cotton that would compensate for its diminished supply. If he is not the main cotton- producer, his absence would not affect the pro testing interests. It will be remembered, more over that it was formerly contended, in behalf of the same interests, that cotton could be produced extensively by slave labor only. Mr. Edward Atkinson has shown that the crop pro duced in twenty-one years by free labor was 35,- 000,000 bales in excess of the crop produced in the preceding period of twenty-one years by slave labor. The claim has been often iterated in the South that this difference is due to the white labor that has entered the cotton-fields since the war ended. If so, the Negro s place there can be readily filled, and more than filled ; and in any event it would seem that the cotton-crop is not dependent on his labor.* * This old nonsense about our climate, and the "inability of the white man to toil under a blazing Southern sun, is so trans parent that it is scarcely necessary to show its falsity. White immi gration has poured into Florida of late, passed over the negro districts, and, settling in the extreme southern portion, the hottest section of the State, has built up there, amid its waste swamp lands, an agricultural prosperity that Florida never knew under slavery and negro labor. The white men who have poured into Texas since the war from all sections of the Union have shown that the climate did not affect their labor in the slightest degree, but they have worked to such good purpose that they have placed Texas at the head of the cotton States, the producer of nearly one- quarter of the entire crop. In the most southern portions of Louisiana the white farmers of Plaquemines have developed and built up a profitable rice industry. Those who talk to us of climate RECKONINGS OF COST. 157 The statistics of tobacco-production are not at hand, but it would be interesting to compare the crops made since the war, in some of the old Slave States and Free States respectively. If objection shall still be urged against the removal of the negroes, however, on account of the supposed injury which the departure of a large body of laborers would inflict 6n any or all of the industrial interests of the South, it should be noted that the plan which is proposed con templates the emigration of a limited and uni formly distributed class only, whose gradual with drawal could not seriously affect any particular have but to note the fact that the southernmost portions of the South are white in population, and that along the Gulf coast in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and in the southern peninsula of Florida, the land is cultivated and the crops are raised mainly by white labor. Cotton has long since ceased to be the product of the negro. When the war ceased nine-tenths of it was raised by the colored race ; to-day three-fifths come from white farms. The white States and white districts have become the cotton centers of the South. The negro parishes of Carroll, Tensas and Madison, the finest cotton country in the world, where the yield is greater and the staple the finest, produce far smaller crops than they bore thirty years ago, while the white counties of Texas have increased their production four and five fold. This fact attracted the particular attention of Prof. Hilgard, who prepared the census report on cot ton, and he notes the singular coincidence that the bulk of the crop of Mississippi is raised in the hills, where the yield per acre is small, instead of in the bottoms, where every condition is fav orable. The fact did not seem to strike him that the true reason lay in the fact that in the hills the cotton was raised by the whites. ; in the bottoms by the negroes. 158 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. industry or locality. And it should be especially noted also, that objection on the score which has been mentioned would plainly have regard to the Negro as a hired laborer only, and in so far would confirm what has been said as to the fixed position which he seems to be destined to hold in the South, if he remain there. The more strongly this objection is urged, therefore, the less force is likely to be accorded to it. It would be dictated obviously by pecuniary and selfish considerations, on the part of a rela tively small class of men, and it would be advis able to sacrifice their interests absolutely, if necessary, as the like interests of practically the Wh te immigration would mean the industrial regeneration of the South. New Orleans Times- Democrat, January, 1889. The Memphis Avalanche, New Orleans Times- Democrat and Birmingham Age-Herald argue that we can raise cotton by white labor just as successfully as by black labor. Our contemporaries are clearly right. From the first settlement of the South down to the present time white men have worked in our fields without suffering the slightest injury. It is true that we have long summers, but in this climate the heat is never intense, and sunstrokes are the rarest things in the world. The fact is that the white man stands open air work in the South better than the negro. Even northern men have found it possible to work in the fields of Louisiana and Florida. Thirty per cent, of the cotton in South Carolina is raised by white labor, a much larger per cent, in Mississippi and Georgia, and it is safe to say that when we include Arkansas and Texas, with their legion of white workers, about half of our cotton crop is raised by white labor. This is the deliberate judgment of our leading Southern news papers, and they have not overstated the facts of the case. At- lanta, Ga., Constitution, June 20, 1889. RECKONINGS OF COST. 159 same class " the employers of negro labor " were sacrificed to rid the country of slavery.* The selfish opposition of any class, or classes, of white men to the emigration of the blacks, it should be said in conclusion of this branch of the subject, would count for little or nothing in any event, if the proposed scheme were adopted arid begun to be carried into operation. The objec- * The number of employers of negro labor on an extended scale is small at the most, as has been said. How the scheme of negro emigration would be regarded by the whites generally in the South may be learned from the article of the New Orleans Times-Democrat already quoted, in which it is further said : "We have a means close at hand for preventing and for solving this problem, and we can and will solve it and save the South for the white race and for white civilization. " Slavery made it black ; freedom must make it white again. Glance at the story of Louisiana told by the census. There was a time when St. Charles, which boasts five negroes to one white to day, was a white parish, populated by industrious, energetic Ger man farmers. It has fewer whites to-day than it had a century ago. They were driven out by slavery and its methods. There was a time when West Feliciana (five negroes to one white to-day) was a white parish ; a time when Pointe Coupee (three negroes to one white) was essentially a white man s land, a country of pros perous white Creole farmers. Some of them remain, but the great majority have been driven out by slavery, which built its whole agricultural system on negro labor. The planters bought out the white farmers around them and drove them to the hills and less fertile lands ; for to the slave-holder with his 500 slaves these whites, cultivating small farms, were undesirable neighbors. What slavery did toward Africanizing the South we must undo. The heritage it left us in the negro question must be solved by making the Southern States white again by means of immigration. It is better for the country, for the South, for the negroes them selves." 160 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. tors certainly could not prevent any negro from emigrating, and their opposition would constitute both an added reason for sending him beyond their control and a powerful incentive to him to go. The place left vacant by the colored emigrants, it need scarcely be suggested, would unquestion ably and speedily be filled by the white immi grants from the Northern and Western States whose coming the South has looked and longed for in vain for so many years and still solicits with eager hope. Indeed, it is in the first degree prob able that the mere beginning of the movement for the exportation of the colored race, with the assurance that it will be sustained until its object shall be accomplished in the entire removal of the race, would lead, at once, to an inflow of white settlers from the old Free States, the Northwest and Europe, who would be glad to find homes in a region so inviting as the South would appear to them under its changed conditions, or even the prospect of them. The Southern land-holders, as a class, would assuredly be promptly and greatly benefited by the new order of affairs. They have always been the ruling element in the South, and their influence should be thrown on the side of negro emigration, and probably would be, if a proportionate white immigration were assured or could be reasonably expected. There is ample material for the instruction and conviction of most of the owners RECKONINGS OF COST. 161 of the soil, at any rate, in the returns of the Tenth Census, showing the comparative valuation of land in the Northern, Southern, and Western States. It is not necessary to incorporate the tell-tale tables here. They are accessible to the reader everywhere. The curiously disposed may com pare, however, at this point, the assessed valua tion of land and other property per capita, in al most any one of the Southern States with the same valuation in any one of the Northern and Western States, or even the Territories. Or, leaving out such exceptional and small areas, only, as the richer sugar, rice, and cotton-producing districts, he may find like material for instructive comparison between the returns for Southern States, and counties in the same State, where the proportion of colored to white population varies most, on one side and the other, from the line of numerical equality. Broadly speaking, the rule is, it is believed, that from the mountains or hill-country, where the white population predominates in all of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, to the coast, where the negroes are congregated in overwhelming ma jority, the assessed value of the land falls with the rise of the barometer. If this be found to be the rule, indeed, may it not be expected that, if the departure of the blacks shall be followed by white immigration and occupation of the vacated soil, the enhancement of land-values alone that will 162 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. result will repay the South, and consequently the whole country, many times over, for the loss of slave-property, the cost of the removal and col onization of the freedman, and for every loss occasioned by his absence ? * * MACON, GA., February 2. The contrast between the cotton and grain belts of Georgia was never more marked than it is to day. A compilation of trade statistics, which has just been made for business purposes, shows that in every town located in North Georgia important enterprises involving the expenditure of large sums of money are under way. In Cartersville, for instance, $750,000 has been invested within the last few months. Griffin shows recent investments of about $1,200,000. In Rome the scenes remind one of a Western city in the hands of boomers. Tallapoosa is also making a good display in the development of her mineral capabilities. What is true of these cities is also true of Carrollton, Newnan, Gainesville, Madison, and of all of the towns north of a line drawn from Columbus to Augusta. South of that line stagnation reigns. But two points Americus and Albany show any evidence of progress. The merchants are engaged in the same old trade of dealing out provisions and guano on long time, and the principal occupation of the planters is the signing of liens against next year s crop. The same old cabins which have done duty ever since the war, grown old and leaky, will have to perform the same service for the next twenty years. Bad as is the condition of the planter, that of the colored tenant is worse. The merchant belongs to his factor in the West or East, the planter belongs to the merchant, and the tenant belongs to all at once. When the merchant is squeezed he seeks relief by pushing the planter, who in turn tries to unload it all on the ten ant. The evil is in the system ; the system seems to be an una voidable part of cotton planting, and a community which depends upon that product must bow in slavery to the holder of the purse. In North Georgia a different system prevails, and just in pro portion as it differs the community is successful. Small farms and RECKONINGS OF COST. 163 diversified industries are the rule and not the exception. There are more home owners who owe allegiance to no landlord. There is among them a spirit of marked independence instead of the helplessness which rules in South Georgia. To add to all these advantages, the mechanic arts and handicrafts are encouraged. There is not a town but prides itself upon shop or factory. The result is a home market, as well as a ready distribution of money, which goes in exchange between producer and consumer." Cor respondence of the Ntw York Times, Feb. 3, 1889. XL WILL HE Go? THE writer has no desire to prolong the task which he imposed on himself in discussing the problem which forms the subject of this volume, and for the discharge of which he lays claim to no especial fitness. Certain minor phases of the general question suggest themselves, however, in reflecting on the scheme that has been proposed for relief from our troubled condition, or any scheme of substantially like character, and these require to be frankly, if briefly, considered. A more careful discussion of the subjects presented will not be required unless the proposed move ment shall meet with a measure of favor which is not yet assured to it. There is the possibility, of course, that the ne groes will not take kindly to any plan for their re moval which may be adopted or proposed. It is well nigh inconceivable, however, that any con siderable number of their race would refuse to emigrate, if the means were provided for their going and for their maintenance in the colony for a reasonable time after arriving there. If com mon report be true, they are restless and dissatis fied everywhere, except as to the few who have 164 WILL HE GO? 165 accumulated a little property and made homes for themselves. With the inducements proposed herein to be held out to them it is highly proba ble that the only difficulty would be in rejecting many who would desire to be among the fore most to leave. Even without such inducements there was recently a widespread movement on foot among their leaders to promote emigration to South America, and every proposition looking to any change of residence throws the masses of the race into a fever of hopeful excitement. A few news-paragraphs concerning this movement will be pertinent here, and will give a fair idea of its extent and importance : TOPEKA, KAN., January 27, 1888. The movement for the colonization of colored people in South America is at tracting attention all over the country, particularly in the States of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, from which most of the colonists will be drawn. The movement has been in progress for three years, but conducted secretly, and the facts have only been given to the public within the past few days, while the organization has been assuming shape. A charter has been obtained from the Secretary of State of Kansas, under the corporate title of " The South and Central American Immi gration League of the United States of America." Those identified with the league are prominent and wealthy colored men of Kansas, and a number of leading colored men of the Southern States, whose names have not yet been made pub lic on account of the embarrassment and intimidation to which they would be subjected in the South. Among the Topeka representatives in the scheme are John M. Brown of the State auditor s office, and formerly a sheriff in Mississippi, 166 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. from which State he was driven for political reasons ; S. W. Winn of the banking house of John D. Knox & Co. ; the Rev. B. F. Watson, pastor of one of the colored churches in this city ; William Harris, William Anderson, S. G. Watkins, J. P. Berry, Philip Pickett, William Freeman, and others well known. The capital stock of the Association is placed at $2,000,000, of which $80,000 has already been put up or pledged to the cause. Mr. Freeman, mentioned above, is worth $70,000, and others named are well-to-do, and all say they will expend every dollar of their means for the cause. The directors of the company met here to-night and elected the following officers : President, John M. Brown : Secretary, S. W. Winn, and Treasurer, James P. Berry. There are 80,000 colored people in Kansas, about 7000 of whom reside in Topeka. They are all enthusiastic in the new movement, and while it is not intended directly to embrace the colored population North, a great many colored men announce a de termination to join the march. Letters are being received by every mail from all parts of the South, making inquiry in regard to the proposed exodus, and from various localities in the North, showing that these people have laid their plans well, and propose to carry out their purpose of bringing the colored man out of the South and causing the abandonment of many a plantation The association has had agents in the Southern States fomenting the scheme, and it is enthusiastically received among the oppressed colored peo ple of that section of country. Advices are at hand from Mississippi that much enthu siasm exists there and that the colored people are eager for the change. The first efforts will be directed against Mississippi, Lousiana and South Carolina, representatives from these States being especially urgent in behalf of their fellow-citi zens. The expression of to-night s meeting was that the colored race desired to leave a land where the oppressor is in a position to rule and make half-slavery worse than the WILL HE GO? 167 peonage of Mexico. They state that the professions and trades are closed to them in the South, and the only avenue open to them is labor of the most degrading sort. They urge that in the Argentine Republic the man is recognized for what there is in him. President Brown said to-night that according to his information, if ships could be obtained, he could find 500,000 colored people in the Southern States ready and anxious to embark for a new home. The New York Times. KANSAS CITY, Jan. 31, 1888. Since the incorporation of the Central and South American Emigration Society, from fifty to one hundred letters are received every day from the South. Louisiana has twelve colonies formed with an en rolment of 3600 members ; Alabama has three colonies with looo members; Mississippi has seven with 1900 members; South Carolina has six with 1300 members; Florida has three with 800 members ; North Carolina has four with 1200 members ; Kentucky has two with 700 members, and Tennessee has five with 1400 members. Chicago Tribune. See, also, testimony of Consul-General Coppinger, p. 84 : " We could send a million to-day, if we had the wherewithal with which to do it." The negroes of South Alabama are leaving by car-loads for the West. The contractors who are securing them say that an hour s work will get fifty or an hundred negroes, from any neighborhood, ready to emigrate to the West. It fs. estimated that 5000 have left Alabama this season. The Southern Farmer (Magazine) for January, 1889 : pub lished in Atlanta, Ga. Col. D. C. Allen, the general passenger and ticket agent of the South Carolina Railway, was asked if he 1 68 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. knew anything about the exodus from this State to the West. He said : " There seems to be a general movement on the part of the laborers in the State to go to Arkansas, Louisiana, and in that direction, and I have reliable information that the negroes are leaving the State in large numbers. Soliciting agents and emigrant agents are scattered in various parts of the State, and they are exerting all their efforts to entice the laborers away. Applications to furnish special rates to these agents have been refused point-blank by me, and I have is sued an order that nothing but trunks be checked over the South Carolina Road for these emigrants. I have tried my utmost to put an end to the exodus as far as I am able, and I propose to continue my exertions in that direction." The News and Courier, Charleston, Jan. 22, 1889. CHARLOTTE, N. C., April 28. The negroes in this State in convention at Raleigh last Friday night perfected an organization looking to a wholesale emigration to the Western States. Nearly every county in the State was represented, and the meeting was very enthusiastic. In all, three hundred delegates were present. The following offi cers were elected : President, G. W. Price, of Wilmington ; vice-president, I. G. Hayes, of Raleigh ; secretary, E. W. Turner, of Vance, Iredell County. The Rev. L. R. Ferrebee, of Raleigh, chairman of the committee on resolutions, read the report of the committee. It consisted of a lengthy and labored recital of the grievances and hardships of the Negro. It was stated that his condi tion was now more precarious than ever before. His rights had been constantly disregarded by the white people, and after twenty-five years of freedom he was in a worse condi tion now than ever before. The white people no longer tried to conceal their animus toward the Negro. They were persecuting him by oppressive legislative enactments, such as the Tenement Act, a law making- it an indictable offence WILL HE GO? 169 for a man under contract to leave his employer without his consent. It was alleged that white juries were also preju diced against the negro, and that their verdicts were affected accordingly. It recommended that a committee of seven go on a pros pecting tour and find lands suitable for the negroes to settle upon, and then confer with the President of the United States as to the terms on which such lands can be obtained. It was urged that emigration be advocated in every county in the State. The News and Courier, Charleston, S. C., April 30, 1889. ST. LOUIS, June 29, 1889. A dispatch from the City of Mexico says that two colored emigration commissioners from Texas arrived there to consult with Government officials in regard to procuring land for a large colony of colored cotton- raisers from Texas. Ellis, one of the commissioners, a bright, well-educated colored man, stated that he had an appointment with Secretary Pacheco and would fully explain the project to him. He further stated that if satisfactory arrangements could be made with the Government for land, a colony of at least ten thousand persons would soon be in Mexico. Already seven hundred families in Washington, Wharton, Brazoria and Bastrop counties have signed an agreement to emigrate. These, Ellis says, are all hard-working, industrious people. Many of them own farms and some are large cotton plant ers. Associated Press Dispatch. RALEIGH, N. C., Aug. 9, 1889. About three months ago the negroes of this State held a meeting in this city and ap pointed a committee to correspond with the colored people throughout the State and make all the arrangements neces sary for the emigration of all who desire to leave the State. This committee has been diligently at work, and has now on its books the names of heads of families who represent nearly one hundred thousand men, women, and children who have 1 70 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. signified their desire to leave the State during the approach ing Fall, after their crops have been gathered and their settle ments made with the land-owners. It is not expected that this number of negroes will migrate during the remainder of the year, but a very large number will leave. The discon tent among the negroes arises from several causes, and is very great and constantly increasing. They are dissatisfied with the present lien law, which op erates so as to make the land-renter pay enormous prices for all the advances he gets from the commission merchant in order to make the crop ; and the same law puts the renters entirely at the mercy of the landlords. The negro is also dissatisfied because he is not allowed to do jury duty unless he owns land. He is also dissatisfied with the road law. All able-bodied male persons between the ages of eighteen and forty-five are required to work and keep up the public roads, and nearly all this work is done by the negroes, who are required to pay poll taxes in addition to their work. The law passed by the Legislature last winter amending the elec tion law so as to make it easy to prevent the registration of negroes, and the failure of President Harrison and the offi cers appointed by him for this State to appoint colored men to the places they have heretofore filled, have greatly in creased the discontent among the negroes, and to that ex tent have accelerated the migratory feeling. About 15,000 negroes have left the State since last No vember. They can be heard on every hand saying that poli tics do not raise their wages, and that neither they nor any of their race fill the offices ; that the negroes do the principal part of the voting, and the white Republicans hold all the good fat offices. Wages for able-bodied men do not aver age over $7 per month, accompanied by a house to live in, firewood, and one peck of meal, three pounds of bacon, and one quart of black molasses for each week as rations. There are agents for emigration societies scattered all over the State, who are doing all they can to induce the colored peo- WILL HE GO? 171 pie to leave. Several hundred have gone to California, and write back that they are doing well. The large proportion of those who have left the State within the last year have gone to the States farther south. Lack of labor in many counties because of the exodus has caused much inconvenience and loss to the farmers, and it seems probable that this trouble will be greatly increased by the events of the next eight months. No laborers, white or black, are coming into the State to take the places of the exodusters. New York Times. In due season there will be a large exodus of colored peo ple from the South. The signs of unrest unmistakably point to this fact. The people will go from there of their own accord. Where they shall go is a problem which will be made plain at the proper time. The New York Age [Con ducted by colored men], June 8, 1889. In view of these and other indications, it is not to be doubted that, at any rate, the poorer classes among the negroes will be glad to go at once, upon the terms suggested ; and if these only shall emigrate it will scarcely be necessary to give a present thought to the rest. The few who are really comfortable and inde pendent can very safely be allowed to remain until they shall be willing to follow their neigh bors ; as they will gladly do when the success and welfare of the colonies shall become assured and made known. The more prosperous class of the black population are the more intelligent and educated class, of course, and there would be at tractions enough for its younger members in the freedom and equality of the colonial establish- 172 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. ment as compared with the prolonged discomfort and embarrassment of their position here, at its best. A sufficient number of the race would doubtless be willing to go at the outset of the movement to enable us to establish a considerable colony, or colonies ; and if we shall protect and nourish, as we ought, those whom we first send away, there will be encouragement in their im proved condition for others to follow. The knowledge that our neglect of those who have gone will deter the rest from going, will be a strong incentive to us, at every stage of the move ment, to perform our whole duty to the colonists. Such an incentive, unhappily, will probably be needed; and it is reassuring to reflect that we shall find it in our self-interest. It should be said, once for all, in this view of the subject, that any plan that contemplates the emigration of the negroes at their own expense, or with the aid only that is required to transport them to their destination, is foredoomed to fail ure. The inevitable disappointment, trials and suffering experienced by so ignorant, impoverished and helpless people, when suddenly thrown upon their own resources in a strange land, quickly be come known in the communities they have left, and deter others from following in their foot steps. The more intelligent black and colored men have learned already to look upon all emi gration schemes with distrust, and to counsel their people against them. Every project for WILL HE GO? 173 their removal which will not avoid manifest and familiar errors of management, by insuring the health and comfort of the colonists for a reason able period, will fail, and ought to fail, and should be frowned down at its inception. With the assurance of proper care in the widest sense of the term for a time after ar riving at their destination, there should be no difficulty in filling the ranks of the emigrants, and probably there would be none. We can rest on this probability, at any rate until it shall be removed by contrary evidence and experience. Certainly, we should not reject any plan of relief for the reason, alone, that the negroes may not avail themselves of it. Let the opportunity to go be offered to them ; let every necessary and reasonable inducement be added to the oppor tunity; and, if they shall still refuse to leave us, we can then make up our minds as to the fact, and conditions, of their stay ; or consider the advisa bility of withdrawing some of the strong counter inducements now held out to them to remain. It is necessary, perhaps, to dispose just here of one erroneous notion which is vaguely entertained by many intelligent persons who have not taken the trouble to inform themselves particularly on the subject to which it relates, and which would consti tute in their minds, as in the minds of many of the colored people, no doubt, the readiest and most serious objection to the proposed scheme of emigration. 174 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. This error consists in the belief or impression that the African territory in general is highly undesirable or even forbidding ground ; that it is about equally divided between sandy deserts and dark jungles, steaming forests, and malarious marshes, which are alike impossible of cultivation, except in patches, and where human life can be sustained only under conditions that make exis tence well-nigh intolerable ; and, therefore, that no small degree of hardship, not to say cruelty and suffering, would be involved in the experience of the colonists who should be betrayed into set tling in such a land. The truth is, on the contrary, that the country in question compares favorably, in respect of physical features and natural resources and ad vantages, with the fairest and best parts of America. The evidence in support of this view is set forth fully in the encyclopaedias and current litera ture of the day. Leaving the better known dis tricts out of present consideration, and having regard only to the vast and newly explored region which is now receiving so large a share of the at tention of capitalists and colonization societies in Europe, the appended accounts of the character, resources and development of the territory in the Middle Zone of Africa will be found to be both interestingand conclusive for our present purpose. The following general description of the Great Congo Basin and the adjacent country is con- WILL HE GO? 175 densed from the pages of the Annual Cyclopedia The interior of Africa is an elevated plateau, ranging in alti tude from 2000 to 4000 feet, with mountains masses rising to 10,000 or 1 2,000 feet, and even 19,000 feet. ... In the most elevated region, among the great lakes, the three prin cipal rivers take their rise. . . . The navigable water-courses of that part of Africa are innumerable. The Congo Valley is also intersected by long rivers, many of them navigable to their source, and is sprinkled with a multitude of lakes. The course of the main river is about 3000 miles long. The soil of Central Africa is exceedingly fertile, and the climate pleasant and healthful. The interior is thickly populated by tribes that are generally peaceful and good agriculturists, with a taste for trading. The popula tion of the Congo Basin is estimated at 40,000,000 ; that of the lake region at about the same. The Congo issues into the Atlantic Ocean in one stream, seven miles broad, and of enormous depth. The estuary leads up no miles to Vivi, where the series of cataracts and rapids known as Living stone Falls begin. It is navigable to vessels drawing 15 feet of water. Navigation is more or less interrupted for 140 miles beyond Vivi, and then has an unimpeded course of 1060 miles. The Congo and its tributaries have 3000 miles of unimpeded navigation, and beyond the portages 2000 more. . . . The chief commercial product of the Upper Congo at present is ivory. The banks of the Middle and Upper Congo are lined with groves of the oil-palm. The orchilla weed is found everywhere. The wild coffee plant yields excellent berries. In some districts India-rubber can be obtained in unlimited quantities. Ground camwood and nutmeg are common products. Gum copal can also be supplied in large quantities. In the lake region there are rich iron and sulphur mines, and gold and silver deposits. Bananas, oranges, and other fruits have been cultivated by settlers on I7 6 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. the Lower Congo. Some of the timber of the Congo region is valuable enough to repay the costliest transportation. There are also precious spices and gums. The Upper Congo region, particularly the elevated country between the Congo and the Lakes, is described as a promising field for colonization. The climate there is salubrious and temperate. The rich river-valleys and old lake-bottoms yield wonderful crops of rice and grain. There are pastoral plains which are covered with the herds of flourishing native communities. The trade of the Lower Congo and of the adjoining coast districts for a distance of 388 miles amounts to about $14,000,000 annually. As to the climate of Africa, the thermometer ranges from 70 to 85. I do not consider Africa as unhealthful as many parts of America. There does not appear to be as much cause for malaria in Africa as in our own Mississippi Valley. There are fevers in Africa, but no worse than in the Mississippi Valley, which I think, at one time, was quite as unhealthful as any part of our country. Our stations in Africa are located on high plateaus, and the country is swept by sea-breezes most every day. Bp. WM. TAYLOR, in The Epoch, New York, June I, 1888. The history of recent political and industrial enterprises for the development of the Congo River region covers too much ground to permit of a thorough review being presented here. The following extracts from an interesting sketch, which was published in the New York Times on February 14, 1889, w 1 ^ serve sufficiently well, however, to show what is the character of the present government of the country, what has been accomplished in part towards opening it to WILL HE GO? 177 commerce and civilization, and how far it is in general from being an uninhabitable and unat tractive wilderness : Gen. H. S. Sanford, formerly United States minister to Belgium, and the man most instrumental in securing the perpetual neutrality and freedom of trade of the independent State of Congo, in Africa, arrived in the Umbria last Mon day. . . . To a Times reporter who called upon him at the Brevoort House to make some inquiries about the present condition of affairs in the new African State, Gen. Sanford recounted the proceedings which led to the organization of the existing Government of the Congo Free State and its perpetual guar antee by the nations of Europe. " The Independent State of Congo," he said, "contains 1,000,000 square miles of as fat and fertile soil as the sun shines upon. It is inhabited by 35,000,000 people of considerable natural ability and shrewdness. Their primitive forms of government were of the patriarchal character, and they had developed a crude but sufficient system of textile manufactures to supply their simple wants. In the manipulation of copper, too, they had made considerable progress, and they were not far behind other aboriginal races in the manufacture of pottery. " But they were an essentially savage people when the In ternational African Association was organized, in 1876, for purposes of exploration and development of the country, and to carry to its people the benefits of civilization. Of this Association, Leopold II., King of the Belgians, was presi dent ; and to his personal sacrifices and great philanthropy is essentially due the opening up of the Dark Continent to the civilizing and elevating influences of commerce and re ligion. The earlier operations of the Association were attempted from the east coast of Africa, where Stanley fitted out. his first expedition to the interior. . . . "By the end of 1884 there was a line of stations established from the Atlantic Ocean to Stanley Pool, occupied by 150 I7 8 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. European agents, and 500 treaties had been made with local chiefs, recognizing the sovereignty of the King of the Bel gians. Meanwhile the jealousy of France and Portugal had been aroused, and they began a systematic crowding of the philanthropic enterprise, on account of the political possibili ties that were involved in it. It became supremely necessary that the association should have a flag and obtain the recog nition of some Power that would assure it a standing and protection. " I was a member of the executive committee of the Asso ciation at the time, and on one of my trips home I laid the matter before President Arthur, and in his annual message to Congress in 1883 he pronounced energetically in favor of recognizing the flag of the Association. The Senate subse quently passed resolutions in accordance with the President s suggestion, and by a declaration signed April 22, 1884, in pursuance of the Senate s resolution by Secretary Freling- huysen and myself, the flag of the African International Asso ciation was recognized as that of a friendly government. This step secured to us perpetual freedom of trade, with the right to acquire and hold property in that vast region, and the engagement on the part of the Association to abolish slavery. " This was the salvation of the Association the birth unto a new life, as Stanley says in his book the point of departure of its existence as a State. The example of the United States was one that every European nation subse quently followed. This act defeated the attempt of Great Britain to secure control of the Congo region through treat ies with Portugal. The first to follow the example of the United States was Prince Von Bismarck, with the same decla ration and recognition. But to secure to all time the advan tages of perpetual neutrality, freedom of trade, and a free flag, European sanction to the arrangement was.necessary individuals die, nations are immortal. " Hence the conference at Berlin of November, 1884, where WILL HE GO? 179 not alone the new State, but the whole Congo basin and more was secured to perpetual free trade and neutralized. The important agreement was also made that arbitration, not war, should decide all difficulties with other States. The acts of the conference have been ratified by every civilized nation except the United States. " Belgium gave her consent to the sovereignty of the new State in the person of her King, who has organized and is carrying on a Government, and is developing the country in a most remarkable way. He has already invested $8,000,000 of his own personal fortune in the work, which he is carrying forward from purely philanthropic motives. No man, living or dead, has done more toward extinguishing the slave trade than Leopold II., and this, too, by peaceful methods ; and if exaggerated philanthropy will not interfere, it is certain that the slave trade will be perfectly done away with within the limits of his jurisdiction. " It is now ten years since the Congo committee began its work. Already 13,000 miles of navigable waters have been traversed by its steamers. The Sanford Exploring Expedi tion was the first commercial enterprise started there, and its steamers, the Florida, named after my native State, and the New York, were the first commercial boats launched on the waters of the Upper Congo. Its work has now developed into 5 steamers, soon to be 7, with 10 stations and depots and a large and increasing trade. Others have followed ; the Dutch have 2 steamers, the French I ; the missionaries have 2, the State has 7 ; and to-day, where Stanley ten years ago failed to get a single carrier to go to the interior, and had to bring from Zanzibar the 50 porters to transport his stuff around the cataracts, there are 5000 native porters a month busy carrying Manchester goods around the cataracts to Stanley Pool. The Sanford Exploring Expedition, now developed into the Belgian Upper Congo Company, will alone employ 15,000 porters this year, one single order made the other day requiring 4000 porters to carry it. i8o AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. 11 Several new enterprises have been started on the lov/er river. A large iron hotel is now being forwarded, to be erected at Boma (the capital, 75 miles from the mouth of the river), and a tramway under the auspices of a large storage and trading company. Direct steamers are to go from Ant werp to Matadi, at the foot of the cataracts, 1 50 miles from the mouth of the river, in 21 days, and under the new Portu guese postal contract, the mails will reach Lisbon in 15 and London in 18 days. A railroad has been surveyed and laid out from Matadi to Stanley Pool, 400 kilometers in length, owing to the sinuosities necessary to get around difficult ground, but it is of easy construction. Most of the capital has been subscribed in Belgium, and work will be begun before the year is over, and within two years thereafter it will be opened to Stanley Pool. A cable will soon connect Europe with Boma, and telegraph lines will be established to the pool. The State has entered the Postal Union, and a five-cent stamp will carry a letter to Stanley Falls, and 20 cents will carry a parcel. "In the opinion of some of the eminent scientists of the world, the Congo basin will become the granary of the world. Vegetation of all kinds thrives most luxuriantly, as many as three crops a year of some kinds of vegetables coming to maturity. Coffee grows wild ; the dense forests are rich in dyewoocls, and fine qualities and species of furniture woods, and there are extensive copper and tin mines already dis covered, although the beginnings of exploration and survey have not been made. The present demands of the inhabitants are cheap cottons, tinwares and trinkets, but their demands are beginning to take on the variety and character of civili zation, and before long they will be purchasers of all kinds of manufactures " In the Free Zone there are 50,000,000 of inhabitants and 1,500,000 square miles of land, equal in fertility and richness to the best lands of the Mississippi Valley and of far greater extent. The Independent State of Congo includes the best WILL HE GO? 181 two-thirds of this vast territory and 25,000,000 of the people. It is developing in a most wonderful and remarkable fashion, and the world will wake up some day to the realization that the Dark Continent is reflecting the light of civilization and commercial and intellectual progress." Later reports of the development of the Congo region show that General Sanford s confidence in the future of the country he describes is shared by capitalists and other thoughtful, conservative, and enterprising men of almost every nation in Christendom, and that some of his anticipations of its early development are already being real ized. The railroad which he mentioned will be built, at an estimated cost of $5,000,000; is ex pected to be completed and in operation within four years ; and will be graded and railed by na tive laborers, who are said to " seek work eager ly" and to have been employed satisfactorily in large numbers as soldiers, steamboat-hands, sta tion-workmen, etc. Other published reports, which show with what favor white men regard the newly opened territory, and the important work that is being accomplished in it, are numerous. Those which follow are taken from American newspapers of recent date : The partition of the interior of the continent has made very rapid progress on paper within the past eighteen months. A map showing the claims of the various powers reveals the fact that about five-sixths of the continent south of the equator is now owned by England, Germany, France, Portugal, and the Congo State. The largest unappropriated 1 82 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. area is the extensive native kingdom of Lunda, south of the Congo State. In this region the Portuguese have recently planted several stations. A very large aggregate of capital and energy is now de voted to ascertaining the capabilities of these newly acquired possessions. France is encouraged to persevere in the large region of the French Congo by the progress De Brazza is making in civilizing the large riverine tribes, by the exports of Gaboon, which in the past few years have increased several fold, and by the opening of a new trade route along the Kwilu-Niadi River, which is attracting a good deal of the ivory and palm oil trade that formerly went down the Congo. The building of the railroad from Loanda to Am- baca is well on the way, and a survey is in progress for the extension of the road to Malange, which will make an iron highway about 400 miles long toward Central Africa. Nothing but favorable reports have been published from the engineers who are surveying the route for the 235 miles of railroad around the Congo Rapids, and who had half completed their work when they suspended operations during the rainy season. The Germans are opening a score of large plantations among the Usugara highlands ; are building many stone houses and training the natives to work. The English are sending two colonies of farmers to Bechu- analand, are talking of extending the Kimberley railroad far north toward the Zambesi, while the new gold fields bid fair to give a great impetus to the development of the south ern part of the continent. It has taken men of splendid faith and enthusiasm to set these apparently Quixotic enterprises on foot. Much that they hope to achieve may not be accomplished for many years, if ever, but they have already done enough to silence some of the critics who thought their projects were purely Utopian, and never tired of declaring that nothing good could ever come out of Africa. New York Sun, April 28, 1888. WILL HE GO? 183 The rapidity with which commercial enterprises are mov ing far up the Congo is not a little surprising. Dutch, French, and Belgian companies have established about twenty trading stations on the upper river, between Stanley Pool and Stanley Falls. These companies evidently do not share the opinion Stanley expressed four years ago, that the upper river would not be worth a penny for trading purposes unless the railroad was built around the cataracts. A flour ishing Dutch station is now at Stanley Falls, 1300 miles up the river, where, two years ago, the Arabs burned the Congo State buildings, and drove the whites down the river. These traders own five steamers that are plying on the Upper Congo. The caravan route along the cataract is being im proved by placing large ferries at the principal rivers, and bridging the small streams. The fact is that the most san guine friends of the Congo enterprise did not dream that the early stages of its development would so rapidly advance. The French are endeavoring to raise the funds for a Congo railway, which will pass entirely through French ter ritory, in opposition to a scheme for a railway from Vivi to Stanley Pool to the River Kwilu, 100 kilometers. Steps, it is said, will be taken to render the Kwilu navigable, and so establish direct communication between the Congo and the Atlantic. Nor is the Congo region the only field of ad venture. It is difficult to believe that the story which follows relates to any part of the Dark Continent : South Africa promises to be the next great center of the gold-mining industry, and may rival in productiveness Cali fornia and Australia. The rush of people to the Transvaal gold fields has been very great, and Johannesburg, laid out two years ago, has now forty thousand inhabitants, with fine buildings, waterworks, gas and electric lights. Such rapid i&j. AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. growth is said not to have been equaled by the most phenom enal of our Western cities. The discovery of gold in large quantities in this part of Africa may lead to a development of the resources of the country as rapid as was seen in Cali fornia after 1849, and perhaps as permanent, so that in a few years England may have another added to her long list of wealthy dependencies and valuable markets. English capi tal is developing the mines and building railways. Regarding the condition of affairs in Liberia, conflicting accounts are given. The following paragraph from a report made to our State De partment a few years ago by Mr. John H. Smyth, United States Consul-General at Monrovia, shows, however, the possibilities of that country for intelligent and industrious settlers: Too much stress cannot be laid upon the fact that the new immigrants arriving here from the United States are pushing their agricultural settlements toward the interior, and gaining the salubrious and fertile highlands. These are some of the same people who are now wandering from one portion of the United States to another, finding nowhere any permanent relief for their peculiar grievances. On their arrival here each family receives from the Government twenty-five acres of the finest lands, and each individual ten acres. . . . They at once become proprietors and directors of aboriginal labor, and are not only able to take care of themselves, but to attain, in many cases, competence, and to add to the productive capacity of the country. There are cases of individuals who a few years ago were in poverty and distress in the United States, but who, by crossing the ocean, have built up their fortunes to the extent of having coffee-farms in places where they found primeval forests, yielding several thousand pounds of coffee a year, and with an easy and constant increase of their production. WILL HE GO? 185 This is enough, assuredly, to show that no hard ship is involved in the plan of sending any con siderable number of black people to middle Af rica. The way is open to them ; a goodly land awaits their occupation ; their future would de pend on their own endeavors, employed under the most favorable conditions presented to them any where on earth. Their right place is the place whence they came the Valley of the Congo where there is room and material resource for all the development of which they are capable, and where every agency of civilization will accom pany them, or precede them, and strengthen their hands in the work of uplifting themselves as a race and redeeming their own country and kin dred from the chains of the fanatical and merciless Arab. If they are indeed men of like passions and powers with ourselves, they should require no other invitation or incentive to go than is contained in the " Macedonian cry" that rises for ever from the heart of the Dark Continent. The time is especially favorable for the removal of the younger generation of black and colored people from America ; and the scheme of emi gration which is proposed has regard to the younger generation only. The class which has been designated as the proper class for coloniza tion namely those between the ages of twenty and thirty years have grown up since the end of the slavery period. They have not become attached to the soil or the institutions of America, 1 86 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. by possession of the one, or enjoyment of the other, in any great degree. They have never been slaves, and are not yet citizens in any cer tain or satisfactory sense of the term. They have had no association with the white race which they should desire to sustain or prolong. The former conditions of their race have disap peared. Their own position and conditions are unsettled and in the highest degree uncertain. They are in a transition-stage generally, and their removal should be attended, therefore, with less of violence to their own interests or senti ments than has ever marked the emigration of any body of people from any land in any age, or than would attend their own removal at any future time. It should be noted, moreover, that most of the younger generation of the black population in the United States are well fitted already for the colonial estate. The great majority of them are practical agriculturists. Many are skilled in various mechanical and industrial occupations. Thousands of their number have received the full benefit of a common-school or collegiate education. Very nearly all have been trained from early youth in habits of labor and self- denial which, to say the least, should make their transfer to a field of independent effort not an abrupt or painful process. Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, agent of the Slater Fund, in Harpers Magazine, July, 1889, notes WILL HE GO? 187 some interesting and promising indications of the future independence of the race: There has been some prejudice excited by the over-nam ing of the institutions established for the colored people. Many are called " university," but not one does university work ; nor is there now occasion for such work ; many more are called colleges, but the least part of the work they do is college work. I had occasion to look carefully into the matter. In 1883-4, in the schools receiving aid from the " John F. Slater Fund," there were employed 303 teachers, and enrolled 7273 students. They were in colleges, univer sities, institutes. An actual count, as the catalogue classed the students, resulted in the following conclusion : " The percentage of the whole number engaged in classical studies, the higher mathematics, and other college studies, and stud ies preparatory to admission to the college classes, was less than 5 per cent, of the whole number." The ninety-five in each hundred were learning just what they should have been learning ; they were fitting themselves to be intelligent men and women, and to teach in the public schools for their peo ple. The president of one of these institutions tells me that "more than 1000 of his former students have taught in the public schools." In connection with some of the best of these institutions are professional schools. The negro preacher has abundant opportunity to use his gifts. The negro lawyer has not much encouragement. The negro doctor is rapidly winning his way. There are three really admirable medical schools for colored men in the South : Medical department, Howard University, Washington city; Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn., and Leonard Medical School, Raleigh, N. C. There are in the South, in 1889, 16,000 common-schools conducted by colored teachers ; in these schools about one million colored children receive elementary instruction from three tq four months per annum at public expense. 1 88 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. Not less than two millions of the colored people can at least read. The African churches in the South are fired with com mendable zeal to do what they can in the education of their people. In some enterprises they have done notably well, justifying the firm persuasion that some day they will be capable of conducting their own institutions. The introduction of industrial training into all the leading institutions for the colored people has been an unmixed blessing. It has helped scholarship, discipline, and the build ing up of self-reliant, self-maintaining manhood and woman hood. The proposed movement, it should be made very clear, is not designed to be a forcible one in any event, and the Negro can safely be allowed to decide the question of his fitness and disposi tion to provide for himself, in view of the aid that will be extended to him ; and himself will probably reach the conclusion that he will have much to gain and little to lose in working for himself in his own land, rather than for the most liberal employer whom he shall leave behind. Nor need our efforts in his behalf cease with the beginning of the emigration movement, or at any later period. The school and college should continue their work, both here and in the colo nies. There would be full play in every field for the freest exercise of beneficence towards him both before and after his removal ; and the fear of helping him overmuch, of placing him too high for our convenience, would no longer ope rate to chill our interest in him, when our speedy and final separation from him shall have become WILL HE GO? 189 assured. There will be, we may hope, an early and growing demand in the colonies for every qualification for a useful citizenship. Any sur plus concern for the welfare of the race, which we now entertain, or may hereafter entertain, can well be employed in equipping for the duties of life the black child who is destined to leave us on reaching manhood or womanhood. And there would be opportunity even in the colonies, no doubt, for the continued exercise of the most unselfish devotion on the part of every politician and philanthropist in America who really loves the Negro, for his own sake ; or has most faith in his capacity ; and who should desire, therefore, to join him in exemplifying in his own country the broad principle of the brotherhood of man. The proposition in regard to the negro emi grants is, distinctly and without thought of modi fication, to send them back to Africa. What of their " colored " cousins ? Are the two people to be regarded and treated as distinct races? It will come to that in the end, no doubt. We have the experience of the mulattoes in the West Indies to instruct us, and warn us. The lesson taught there, and which is being taught here, cannot be ignored. Though the white people of America show the colored people little more or less favor than they show the negroes, they cannot make negroes of them. The intermedi ate race must be recognized and treated as such, 19 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. so far as our part in the work of racial separation is concerned. The least we can do is to give its members liberty to choose for themselves whether or not they will go with their black kindred or apart to themselves. Otherwise, it is exceed ingly probable that they will remain where they are. In view of the differences, distinctions, and jealousies that are already manifest in the re lations of the black and colored people of the South, and which are becoming more marked every year, it is out of the question to suppose that the lighter-colored people will ever consent to emigrate to a negro colony. And certainly we should recognize the prejudice which they have inherited with their portion of our blood. We shall be compelled to recognize it, in any event. The alternative will be presented to us of providing these people with a separate home of their own, or of sharing our home with them indefinitely. They have a peculiar and strong claim on our regard, unquestionably, and it is by no means clear that we should not foster, for all time, in our own country, the race of our own devising. If they are willing to go, however, let them go to a place to be set apart to them, if they shall so elect. The expense of their removal has been included in the estimates already made. It re mains to determine only whither they shall be sent. And to this question, too, it appears that we WILL HE GO? 191 have an answer at hand. The place for the colored people of America is obviously on some one of the West Indian islands which the Negro now holds in possession, and in utter waste, and which we could doubtless readily acquire by pur chase or otherwise. The blacks there who would require to be removed are Africans still, and Af ricans only ; of the original type. There would be no loss or injury to them, in restoring them to Africa. The colored people of the United States would rejoice doubtless to be established in possession and undisputed control of so fair an inheritance as one, or mo; e, of these islands would become in their hands, and there is small reason to fear that they would not give an early and lasting good account of themselves. Whether or not, indeed, we shall cling to fel lowship with the Negro, a way should be opened to the colored man to escape from the position in which we have placed him, and for the depress ing and degrading conditions of which we alone are responsible. He is between the upper and the nether mill-stones here ; and might very well and wisely demand his removal, as an im perative right and duty which we owe to him. He is perfectly well prepared to take care of him self in a separate estate. Much has been said in recent years about the accumulation of property by the Negro, and his progress in this country; and most important conclusions and determinations have been based 192 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. upon the assertions made with regard to these matters. It would be found, probably, that, when the " colored " man and the black man who is not a true negro are credited with their full share in the general account, there will be a painfully small balance to the share of the Negro of pure blood. In any event, the colored people present ex cellent material for the redemption of one or more of the Antilles to civilization ; and it is hazarding little to say that they would be far happier in a country of their own than in ours, and that any one of the Powers that now control the West Indian group would heartily welcome them as colonists, on any terms. The notori ously bad condition of some of the islands in question, and the well-known and growing desire of the governments to which they belong to effect a change in their population, or dispose of them altogether, render the present a most favor able time for the removal of the " colored peo ple," strictly speaking, from the Southern States; and it scarcely admits of question that with them would depart every cause for doubt or uncertainty as to the proper and necessary dis position to be made of the negroes. The present time is most opportune, again, having regard to the general condition of the country, for the adoption of some humane and well-ordered plan for the removal of the weaker race, and for beginning the movement in earnest. WILL HE GO! 193 The first quarter of a century of our post- bellum history is drawing to a close. Its record is one of confessed and utter failure to adjust the Negro in a position satisfactory to him or to our selves. The dawn of the second quarter finds the Negro Problem only larger and more compli cated than ever before. The new administration of the National Government comes into power having a new Southern Policy of its own, intent on new political experiments, having new difficul ties to contend with ; and there is absolutely no assurance whatsoever in any part of the prospect, near or remote, save of new troubles for both races and both sections for another term of years, and of repeated failure and disappointment, and added cause of dissension and difference, as the result of every new venture. Nor is this all. There are numerous signs of a disposition on the part of the Negro t^ change his residence from the Southern to the Western States,* and of a corresponding and growing dis position on the part of an influential element of the white people of the South to encourage and aid his migration, which should not be over looked. The Negro is not a landholder. He is tied to no place, as yet. By simply refusing to give him employment, the people of any South ern State can compel his departure at any time, and thus relieve themselves forever of especial concern on his account. This plan has not been * See pp. 167-70. 194 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOtf. tried heretofore, because others have been found to afford temporary relief. It may be adopted at any hour and on any scale, however; and in such event the country at large would have to confront at once the certainty of being called on to deal with the negro question, in whole or in large part, as it shall be presented under scarcely changed conditions in a new, enlarged and un familiar field. The wise course is to anticipate and prevent an exodus across the Mississippi, if we can. If the negroes are to leave the South, or any single Southern State, whether under compulsion or voluntarily, it were better for them to go Eastward, across the sea, rather than Westward into the heart of the Continent. Now is a favorable time to determine the direction of their movement, once for all. XII. OUR DUTY. Is not our duty set plainly before us? Can any intelligent man, North or South, doubt for a moment that it was a mistake to bring the Negro here in the first instance a woeful mistake for us, a cruel mistake for him, so far as our part in determining the results of his coming is con cerned ? His stay with us has been marked by suffering for him, and shame and suffering and crime for us. We try to quiet conscience with the reflection that we have lifted him out of the condition of slavery in which he was delivered to us, and have civilized him, and educated him. Have we indeed made so much progress on this line ? After so many generations, the large ma jority of his people are not very far from where we found them. We will not associate with him, at any rate, nor allow him the rights and privi leges which are allowed to all other civilized and o educated men. We condemn ourselves as often as this plea is made and honestly tested. We did not buy him and bring him here, moreover, on the impulse of high motives, or to do him good. We can claim no credit, before Heaven, for the good I9 6 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. done to him incidentally, or done for our own self-protection or advantage, when he was a slave. We brought him here for purely selfish reasons, under horrible conditions on the way, and bred him, and worked him, and bought and sold him as we imported and sold and bred cattle in our fields and forests for our own profit. His back and breast are scarred with the stripes we inflicted on him. Our hands are red with his blood, and with our own blood shed in fratricidal war on his account. It is a dreadful story, from beginning to end, at its best. We cannot bear to have it told in its naked truth, and we have no love for him who tells it, even though he be one of ourselves. It must be told and retold, however, if only to warn us against making new chapters of scarcely more pleasing incidents. We have sinned against him, and against ourselves, and against God. We may measure our offence by its punishment, and its punishment has been great and grievous. We cannot certainly declare God s judgments, it is true, and need not insist that the great war was His judgment upon us. It is enough that we erred, North and South, in our dealings with a most innocent, helpless, unoffending and patient people ; that, somehow, our national sin, or error, found us out. If the imposition of the slave s yoke upon a fellow-creature is not a sin per se, then has it been made sure that we violated some other than the great law of liberty and equality OUR DUTY. 197 in our dealings with the African. Was it in at tempting to join together those whom God had put so far asunder, in trying to unite two utterly unlike peoples whom He had separated, as far as the limits of the earth would permit, by the wide ocean itself ? The familiar and Pharisaical plea of " the brotherhood of man " will not excuse our folly. The same inspired authority who tells us that u God made the world . . . and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on the face of the earth," reminds us in the same breath that He himself " hath deter mined the bounds of their habitation ! " The brotherhood of men who are born of the same womb, moreover, insures no peace to their families, dwelling under the same roof-tree. We say, and say truly, that there is no room for two distinct nations of white men in America ; we can not expect that two unlike races, each con stituting a nation in numbers, can dwell harmo niously together on the self-same soil. It is cer tain that we broke some law in compelling their cohabitation ; we have committed political and national adultery at least ; and if slavery was wrong in itself, then were we doubly guilty of offense. For we have got rid of slavery, yet our punishment is a continuing one. It seems that the conclusion cannot be avoided. If slavery was a large part of our offending, it was only a part. We have not yet made full atonement for our error, to call it no worse. If we are wise, we 198 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. will not rest until we undo our wrong-doing wholly, from the beginning. There is strong support for the general view of our danger and the duty that is here presented, in the conclusions reached and announced by the two distinguished writers whose books we have quoted so freely already ; and their reflections are none the less pertinent and instructive for not having been directed to the purpose to which they are here applied. " If for the sake of theory," says Mr. Froude, in discussing the negro problem as it is presented in the West Indies, "we force them to govern themselves, we shall be sinning against light the clearest light that was ever given in such affairs. The most hardened be liever in the regenerating effects of political lib erty cannot be completely blind to the ruin which the infliction of it would necessarily bring upon the race for whose interest they pretend particu larly to care." We shall sin against no less clear light if we persist in forcing the same race to take part in the government of the white race in any part of this country.* " Let us hope," says the same writer, " that enthusiasm for constitutions will for once moderate its ardor. The black race have suffered enough at our hands. They have * " Unless history is a false teacher, it is not possible for two dis tinct races, not homogeneous that is, which cannot assimilate by intermarriage and the mingling of blood to exist upon terms of political equality under the same government. One or the other must go to the wall." Senator J. J. INGALLS, in the Atlanta, Ga. Constitution, Dec. 3, 1888. OUR DUTY. 199 been sacrificed to slavery ; are they to be sacri ficed again to a dream or a doctrine ? " We may leave the application of these warning words to the author of "A Fools Errand" In his later book, "An Appeal to Cczsar" Judge Tourge"e says : It is a favorite notion of the American people that every thing which promises evil to the nation will cure itself, if only it be let alone. In a sense we are, perhaps, the most unreasonable optimists the world has ever seen. . . . We are inclined to forget that the laws which govern humanity apply in any degree to us, or to our future. . . . Because we are Americans we think we are exempt from the perils and dangers which beset other nations. We regard it as some thing abnormal if the laws which control other associated communities become factors in our own development. For a hundred years all the world except us knew that sooner or later the conflict between freedom and slavery must come. . . . The penalty which is demanded for the disregard of the laws of God is always a heavy one. It cost a million lives and untold millions of treasure to repress the rebellion which was founded upon slavery. If the words of warning which for fifty years had been uttered with passionate im portunity to the people of the whole country by the few who saw and felt and knew if these words had been heeded either the struggle would have been short and sharp or never have occurred at all. The nation suffered in the War of the Rebellion because it would not listen to the words of warning, and would not obey the laws which must govern every associated commu nity. Peoples have been swept off the face of the earth for a disregard of natural laws of far less importance than those with which we trifled. Year after year the danger grew ; year after year our trade and commerce clamored angrily against those who told the truth which we were forced to 200 AN A PPEA L TO PHA RA OH. learn when it was written in blood. It was only procrasti nation, indecision, that made the problem of African slavery in the United States one of overwhelming danger. It is the same inclination to trifle with the danger which lies before us that makes the problem of the African in the United States a terrible one to-day. No natural laws are plainer or have vindicated their wisdom and binding force oftener than the law which from the beginning has commanded and compelled the separation of the races. We have suffered the penalty of disregarding it, and are now groaning under the consequences of our transgression. We have learned the lesson of bitter experience in one field and have prof ited by it and applied it. We shall be without excuse if we trifle with the danger that is still before us, by neglecting the duty which alone can avert it. What is that duty ? Every fact of history which we have considered, every argument that we have weighed, and every conclusion to which we have been led, are brought together in one comprehensive, unqualified, and imperative statement of our first obligation to ourselves as a nation by one of our statesmen, to whom we have given authority to speak to us, and for us, on every public question. In his letter accepting the nomination for the highest place in the gift of the American people, Gen. Harrison wrote : " We are clearly under a duty to defend our civilization by excluding alien races whose ultimate assimilation with our peo- OUR DUTY. *OI pie is neither possible nor desirable." " The home," we are told in the next sentence of the same letter, " has been the most potent assimilating force in our civilization." Is not the African race an alien race, whose ultimate assimi lation with any white race is neither possible nor desirable ? Is not the home an idle factor in whatever assimilative force, if any, is at work in the adjustment of the relations of the two races in America ? To ask these questions is to answer them.* It is too late, indeed, to " exclude " the Negro from our soil. Something has been gained, however, if we accept the broad principle that it would be our duty, clearly, to deny him a place among us, if he had not already secured a foot hold on our territory. Let us not mistake the plain duty that is before us. Our country is one, and any error that we shall commit will be felt in every part again, in the end, we may be assured. * We should not lay too much stress on single and isolated expressions of opinion, of whatever authority. It is interesting, however, to compare these sentiments of our latest Republican president with those of Mr. Lincoln himself. In his famous joint debate with Stephen A. Douglas, on September 18, 1858, seven years before his death, Mr. Lincoln said : "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people ; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." 202 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. Our duty to expel alien races is as clear as the duty to exclude them. There is no place in this volume, it is seen, for the discussion of such temporary expedients as an educational qualification, or other means for the partial or total disfranchisement of the colored people, whether attended with loss of suffrage, t.r of representation to the whites, or not. If the races are as far apart as we have tried to show that they are, and if they shall remain separate and antagonistic as, in that event, we must believe they will, the problem as to their relations will likewise remain practically unchanged. Our con dition cannot be greatly improved by any kind or degree of homoeopathic treatment. It is a case for the knife of the surgeon, not for philanthropi- cal pills or political plasters. We should have learned by this time, moreover, that we cannot treat the Negro with injustice, however disguised, without sharing the conse quences with him. If he is fitted by nature to enjoy our advantages and use them to rise in time to our estate and level he should receive all the aid and encouragement we can give him, should we keep him with us. It would be a foul wrong to him to beat him back in his upward struggle, and consign him to a lower plane and establish him on it. He as well as we must be considered in our dealings with him ; in every endeavor to solve the problem of what to do with him. Half a right is usually half a wrong. To OUR DUTY. 203 give him half his rights as a man is to deny him the other half his title to which is conceded in the bestowal of a part. There is no half-way ground to be occupied in dealing with him. If he is not our " equal " in every respect, or if we must believe that he can never become such, then his place is not with us, and he should be sent to his own place, whence we brought him, to develop in his own way, after his own fashion, without the disturbing and positively depressing influences and conditions which must ever surround him here. His continued presence in America affords no promise of good either to him or to us that any man can see ; while the evil is apparent and present. He is in our way, and we block nearly every avenue of progress to him. There would be no cruelty in removing him from the midst of the civilization which now surrounds him, and which chills him to the soul ; the cruelty was in setting him in so unfriendly a place. If he can not develop apart from us, he is a mere depen dent on our instruction and scant favor, and is not our equal. We cannot wet-nurse him for ever. It is easier to wean him now than it will be at any later period. It may seem cold-blooded patriotism which dictates his removal, but it is practical patriotism. We can never be a homogeneous people while so widely diverse con ditions obtain between the two sections of the country as must result from the presence of so large a class of peculiar and permanent "laborers " 204 AN APPEAL TO PHARAOH. even, in one section only. So long as the Negro is in the South there will be a " South," solid and shadowed, and a " North " over against it ; and so long there can be no true and intimate and cordial union of the two peoples so differentiated. In the name of our common country and of humanity itself, for the sake of the generations to come, whom we would have forget our follies and our hatreds, and whom we can spare, if we are wise, the conflicts which have marked our times and the times of our fathers, let us put the one and only barrier to a " more perfect union " a perfect Union, indeed out of their way, remembering how much cause we have to regret that our fathers did not remove it from our way. Let us not bequeath to our children the legacy of strife which we inherited in the person and presence of this unfortunate and misplaced stranger. A common interest and a common patriotism alike demand that the white people of the North and of the South the American people should forget every past difference and cause of difference, and unite their energies to redeem their common country from the curse that now rests on so many of the States, and threatens all the curse of the perpetual confusion and conflict resulting from the unnatural mixture of two diverse races, " whose assimilation is neither possible nor de sirable," and is not even contemplated. For the Negro s sake, and our own ; for his children s sake, and the sake of our children who OUR DUTY. 205 shall inherit this great land after us, let us have done with all experimentation! There is one sure, safe and peaceable solution of the miserable and momentous problem before us ; and but one that any man can see. It can be solved, and will be solved, by the elimination of its prime factor ; and the strong probability is that no approach to a solution can be made in any other way. Why seek another ? The forcible removal of the whole black and colored population of the United States could be accomplished, and should be accomplished, if that were necessary. Their gradual and induced emigration will be equally efficient and far pref erable, and should be encouraged and effected wherever and so far as it shall be favored, by either the white people or the blacks themselves. The whole influence and resources of the Nation, operating through the agency of the General Government, can be and ought to be employed for the permanent restoration to the Union for that is what it amounts to of so much of the soil of the Union as shall bid for redemption through its return to the exclusive control of the white race. 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" It will open the eyes of probably nine in ten of its readers to the magni tude of that affair. . . . Its au ,hor served during part of the riot week as a special on the police force, and there fore has personal knowledge of much concerning which he writes, and he has besides searched every available means of information to make his story com plete and trustworthy." Chicago r imes. " For those who are interested in the study of the late war of the rebellion in all its phases the book is indispensable. A map of the lower part of New York makes it easy to follow the course of the riot." Brooklyn (N. Y.) Eagle. FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York. AMERICAN NOVELS BY ALBION W. TOURGEE, A.M., LL.D., Late Judge Superior Court of North Carolina. UNIFORM EDITION. HOT PLOWSHARES. 610 pp. Illustrated. $1.50. " Completes that series of historical novels . . . which have illustrated so forcibly and graphically the era of our civil war the causes that led up to it, and the consequences resulting from it. This volume, although the last, covers a period antecedent to the others. The opening scene of the story is in the valley of the Mohawk, in central New York, and the time is November, 1848, just when the grow ing anti-slavery sentiment of the country was beginning to make itself felt. . Forcible, picturesque." Chicago Evening Journal. FIGS and THISTLES. (A Typical American Career.) 528 pp., with Gar field frontispiece. $1.50. "Crowded with incident, populous with strong characters, rich in humor, and from beginning to end alive with absorbing interest." Commonwealth (Boston). " A capital American story. Its characters are not from foreign courts or the pestilential dens of foreign cities. They are fresh from the real life of the forest and prairie of the West. 1 Chicago Inter-Ocean. A ROYAL GENTLEMAN. (Master and Slave.) [Originally published under the title of " Toinette. "] 424 pp. Illustrated. $1.50. " While, with no political discussions, it grasps the historic lines which have formed so large a part of this author s inspiration, it mingles with them the threads of love, mystery, adventure, crime, and the personal elements of battlefield and hospital in such a way that the reader is led on by the most absorbing interest in the characters themselves." Albany Evening Journal. A FOOL S ERRAND: and, The Invisible Empire. (The Re construction Era.) 528 pp. Illustrated. $1.50. " Holds the critic spell-bound English literature contains no similar picture." International Review. " Abounds in sketches not matched in the whole range of modern fiction." Boston Traveller. "Among the famous novels that, once written, must be read by everybody." Portland Advertiser. BRICKS without STRAW. (The Bondage of the Freedman.) 522pp. Frontispiece. $1.50. " The characters are real creations of romance, who will live alongside of Mrs. Stowe s or Walter Scott s till the times that gave them birth have been forgotten." Advance (Chicago). "Since the days of Swift and his pamphleteers, we doubt if fiction has been made to play so caustic and delicate a part." San Francisco News-Letter. JOHN EAX : Including MAMELON and ZOURI S CHRIST MAS. (The South Without the Shadow.) $1.25. " Rare genre pictures of Southern life, scenes, men, women, and customs drawn by a Northern hand in a manner as masterly as it is natural. . . . Such books as Tourgee s last will do more toward bringing Southern and Northern people into complete social and business intercourse than all the peace conferences and soldier reunions that were ever held since the war, put together." Vicksburg (Miss.) Herald. BLACK ICE. A Story of a Northern Winter. i6mo, 435 pp. Cloth. $1.25. " We have to confess to having read 400 pages at a sitting. 1 Daily A merican (Nashville). " His portraitures pass before the mind s eye as living figures real men nnd women, clothed in veritable flesh and blood. The reader feels that he is in the midst of life." Utica (N. Y.) Daily Press. Sets, the above 7 vols., i6mo, new Popular Edition, extra cloth, boxed, $10.00. FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York. " Written in a style pure and entirely unimpeachable , it deserves high pra Compressing so muck into so small a compass, without omitting the details that enliven and the colors that allure." PHILADELPHIA NORTH AMERICAN. A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. BY JACOB HARRIS PATTON, A.M. Illustrated with Portraits, Charts, Maps, etc., and containing Marginal Dates, Census Tables (1880), Statistical References, and full Indexes both Analytical and Topical. Hebisefc SStrtttou* Originally undertaken to provide, within moderate limits, a history of the people for the people," which should be at once comprehensive and compact, this work has held a high rank for its success in the precise diing aimed at. " Prof. PATTON approaches much nearer to the ideal historian than any writer of similar books. His work must be given the highest place among short histories of the United States. 11 Christian Union (New York). The result of Prof. PATTON S plan, arrangement of material, and style of execution, in this work, is virtually tc give three histories in one. First, a complete civil and military History of the United States, from the discovery of the Continent to 1882. Then, a History of Amer ican Politics, divided into Presidential terms, showing the character- !3tic bearings and accomplishments of each. And, pervading all, the general effect is that of an animated narrative of the Life of the American People, comprising the mingling of nationalities ; the begin nings and growth of industries, commerce, finances ; the force of religious ideas ; the development of individual independence and popular govern ment ; the results of education and its influence upon public opinion ; the motives and progress of the several wars in short, an admirably complete view of the annals of our people, attractive in color and clear of comprehension. " Prof. PATTON . . . is a successful teacher of long experience, and he lias thor ough command of his material. . . . We regard the book as, on the whole, the most valuable popular manual of American history now in the market. It is a book to be placed in the hands of young people, . . . and students and readers of all kinds will find it an invaluable hand-book for reference." The Presbyterian Review. Special facilities for reference are found in the continuous Mar ginal Dates, Cross References from one part of the work to another, interesting Statistical Tables, and full Indexes. The Analytical Index is very complete, giving alphabetically more than 2000 References. The Topical Index is of great value in the study or search after special subjects. " We take great pleasure in commending it for general reading and reference, for use in colleges and schools, and for all the purposes of a complete and accurate history. . . \Ve have in it a panoramic view of the nation, from its origin, through its wonderful progress, to its present standing among the nations of the world. . . . The publishers have brought out the work in very handsome style. The numerous engravings of eminent men give it also the attractiveness of a National Portrait Gal lery." New York Observer. " It is without doubt the best short history of the United States that has ever been published. No progressive teacher can afford to do without it." Teacher s Insti tute, N. Y. Complete from the discovery of the continent to Arthur s Administra tion, embracing the Colonial, the Constitutional, the Rebellion, and the Reconstruction periods. 2 Vols., Extra Cloth, gilt top . . $5.00 | 2 Tols., Half Morocco .......... $9.00 1 Vol., Half Russia ............ $7.00 FORDS, HOWARD & HULBERT, New York. "A charming iddition to the personal history of American literature? BRYANT,*? HIS FRIENDS: SOME REMINISCENCES OF THE KNICKERBOCKER WRITERS. Biographical and Anecdotal Sketches of WILLIAM CULLEN BRYAN S, JAMES K. PAULDING, WASHINGTON IRVING, RICHARD HENRY DANA JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, and JAMES RODMAN DRAKE ; together with POE, WILLIS, and BAYARD TAYLOR. Also con- eluding chapter on "The Knickerbocker Literature," giving shorter notices of quite a number of others, who, making their fame in the first half of the century, were the pioneers of American literature, as grouped around the most conspicuous figure of the early writers of New York. BY JAMES GRANT WILSON, Author of "Poets and Poetry of Scotland," "Life and Letters of Fitz-Grtent Halleckr , , with Steel Portraits of BRYANT, PAULDING, and HALLECK ; and Facsimile MSS. of BRYANT, IRVING, DANA, DRAKE, WILLIS, POE, PAYNE, 1 AYLOR, MORRIS, and STREET. INDEXED with about 400 reference-names. Pages 444. Cloth beveled, gilt top. $2. "I have read it with interest and pleas ure, following your words often with my memory, and, under your guidance, recalling delightful hours and famous men. Your book is sure to be read gladly, if what Willis once said to me be true, that people always read with avid ity two things, stones of themselves and of other people." GEORGE WIL LIAM CURTIS. " A standard volume of literary his tory. It is valuable for its concise and clear collection of facts and statistical knowledge; valuable for its grouping of the eminent men who were the found ers of a pure and noble national library; and especially valuable in the vigor and graphic pictorial power with which those days and scenes, gone from all save memory, are brought to life and light again." Boston Ev^g Traveller. " I have read it with interest and re spect. ... It was time that some au thor of knowledge and authority should do justice to the Knickerbocker group, whom it has been the poor fashion to de preciate of late years. . . . Accept my thanks, as a New York author, for the work you have accomplished." EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. " No man living is probably so well fitted as the author of this volume to sketch the group of Knickerbocker writers. . . . These reminiscences are necessarily fragmentary, but they are specially interesting in that they for the most part record personal experi ences of the writer. ... A welcome publication." New York Tribune. " A delightful addition to the stores of literary and personal history." Chi~ cago Inter-Ocean. Eetnainber of arg JJaper (Ebitiott STRICTLY LIMITED TO 195 NUMBERED COPIES. Illustrated with 48 rare Steel Portrait Plates, 4 Views of Poets Homes (Steel) and 17 pages of Manuscript fac-simile. Cased in Cloth, gilt top, uncut edpfes, $15. Furnished in Sheets, for those who wish to add illustrative rlates, at t e same price as cloth-cased. Bound in Full Turkey Morocco, gilt, $25. [All styles in Boxes.] FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York. fH ONLY EXISTING COMPLETE BOOK ON THE SUBJECT. THE FIELD OF HONOR. BEING A FULL, GRAPHIC, AND COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF DUELLING AND DUELLING SCENES. From the Introduction of the Judicial Duel into Europe during the Sixth Century up to the time of its General Debasement and Prohibition ; Also of the Rise and Prevalence and General Decadence of the Private Duel throughout the Civilized World ; and, also, Graphic and Elaborate Descriptions .of all the Noted Fatal Duels that have ever taken place in Europe and America, and of the Many Other Famous Hostile Meetings of Distinguished Amer icans and Europeans upon the (so-called) " Field of Honor." By MAJOR BEN C. TRUMAN, Author of " Campaigning in Tennessee^ "The South after the War," ^^ Semi* Tropical California, "Tourists Illustrated Guide to the Celebrated Summer and Winter Resorts of California , Homes and Happi ness in the Golden State of California" Etc., Etc. Published by FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, 27 Park Place, N. Y. i. Introductory and Historical. 2. Duelling in France. 3. " England. 4. Ireland and Scotland. 5. Other European Countries. 6. Duelling in United States. 7. " Mexico, West Indies, Japan, among the Indians, and among all other Nations. 3. Duelling on Horseback, in Bal loons, at Sea, in Fiction, on the Stage, etc.; Tournaments and Jousts. 9. Duelling among Clergymen, lo. Duelling among Women. ii. Duelling in the Dark, by Moon light, and by Candlelight. 12. Noted European Duels (several chapters). 13. Noted American Duels (several chapters). 14. First and Last Fatal Duels in United States. 15. Hamilton and Burr. Foote and Prentiss. 16. Decatur and Barren. Crittenden and Conway. 17. Cilley and Graves. Jackson and Dickinson. 18. Duels among U. S. Army and Navy Officers. 19. Broderick and Terry. Tevis and Lippincott. 20. All the other noted California Duels. si. Duels among American Journal ists. 22. Noted Duels in which there was no blood shed. Randolph and Clay s, and others. 23. The Rarest Kind of Bravery. 24. Duellists of Various Types. 25. Remorse of Duellists. 26. Notable Escapes. 27. Pathos and Sentiment of the Field. 28. Romance of Duelling. 29. Humors and Pleasantries of the Field. Every Lawyer and every Journalist must hare it as a Book of Reference. Every Gentleman should have it in his House. No Army or Navy Officer should be without it. No Library in the World will be Complete without it. Every Historical Student and Curious Header will want it. 599 PAGES, i2Mo. THOROUGHLY INDEXED, AND HANDSOMELY BOUND IN SCARLET ENGLISH CLOTH, BEVELLED BOARDS, $2.00. FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York. VAN DYKE S FASCINATING OUT-DOOR BOOKS. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: Its Valleys, Hills, and Streams; Its Animals, Birds, and Fishes; Its Gardens, Farms, and Climate. BY THEO. S. VAN DYKE. " A keen and observant naturalist." London (Eng.) Morning Post. 12mo, Extra Cloth, beveled, ... - $1.50. "A variety of topics are presented, some of interest to the pleasure seekers, others to those who would find in South ern California means of livelihood or health. We have yet to read any book wherein a more careful and thorough resume is presented of the climate of Southern California, a question so vital to invalids. . . Very beautifully does the author describe the sequence of the seasons in Southern California and the flowers which sing of these gradual changes." Neiv York Tunes. "Without question the best book which has been written on the Southern Counties of California. . . May be com mended without any of the usual reser vations." San Francisco Chronicle. " The most truthful and interesting book on the subject we have yet seen. . . Cannot fail to awaken the sports man s enthusiasm." New York Sun. " May be safely trusted by those in search of information on the various as pects of the country indicated in the title." London (Eng.) Times. " The result of twelve years experi ence in that noted region. The author lias traversed it many times, rifle in hand." Cincinnati Coin.- Gazette. "A subdued enthusiasm that has the ring of truth about it " Puck. " Reading it makes one long at once to be away to taste the delights of that charming country." London (Eng.) Graph ic. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. "An author v r ho is one of the first authorities in the sporting world." Boston Gazette. The STILL HUNTER. A Practical Treatise on Deer-Stalking. I2tno, extra cloth, beveled, $2. " The best, the very best work on deer hunting." Spirit of the Times ^. Y.). " Altogether the best and most com plete American book we have yet seen on any branch of field sports." New York Evening Post. u It is by far the best book on the sub ject I have seen in fac f , the only really good one." SIR HENRY HALFORD (Cap\ tain of the English Rifle Team), Wistow, Leicester, England. The RIFLE, ROD, and GUN in CALIFORNIA. A Sporting Romance. I2mo, extra cloth, beveled, $1.50 "A very successful attempt to combine the interest of a novel with the more practical features of an authoritative work on the hunting and fishing of a country celebrated among sportsmen." Wakes Spirit of the Times. " Crisp and readable throughout, and, at the same time, gives a full and truth ful technical account of our Southern California game, afoot, afloat, or on the wing." San Francisco A It a Califor nia. Publishers, FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York City. OF POETRY AND SONG. New Holiday Edition. 000 Poems from 600 Authors English, Scottish, Irish, and American, including translations from Ancient and Modern Languages Classified and fully Indexed. The LARGEST, COMPLETES!, and BEST. THIS BOOK stands by general consent at the head of its class. Its fame is an established fact not only with the reading and book-buying public, but among the severest critics. It is now the completest existing collection of the best work of the best poets of all countries and all times the garnered wheat without the chajf. " . . It affords a collection of the most memorable productions in English verse for the delight of the family, the recreation of the student, the refreshment of the weary, and the solace and charm of all ages. . . It has taken rank as the most complete and satisfactory work of the kind ever issued." New York Tribune. It is adapted to all ages and classes, and is pre-eminently " The Family Book" as Mr. BRYANT was wont to call it. " It is a perfect treasure-house of fine things handy, handsome, and well- indexed. 1 S. B. NOYES, Editor of the famous Analytical Index of the Brooklyn Library. The Poets and Poetry of the English spealiing world are here ILLUSTRATED By SPECIMENS of their HANDWRITING, PICTURES of POETS HOMES, SCENES OF POEMS, and the NEW STEEL PORTRAIT OF BRYANT. A classic for the Home Circle ; a Gift of real and permanent value for Birth-days, Wedding Days, Holidays, or any days. FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York. FACE TO FACE WITH THE MEXICANS: THE Domestic Life, Educational, Social, and Business Ways, Statesmanship and Literature, Legendary and General History of the Mexican People, As Seen and Studied by an American Woman During Seven Years of Familiar Intercourse with them. By FANNY CHAMBERS GOOCH. With 200 Illustrations from Original Drawings and Photographs, Giving a Complete Picturesque Delineation of Interesting and Beautiful Places, Famous Heroes, Rulers and Authors, and a multiplicity of the detail of every day life among that unique people. "Mrs. Gooch has really seen the Mexican people face to face. Her hook is true to its title. It is the report not of a visitor but of a resident, ... a minute photographing of its interior as explored and studied through daily familiarity long continued. . . . The Mexican people are exhibited in this book, in their streets, shops, homes; we observe their habits and peculiarities, we hear their language, we are taken into the penetralia of their dwellings their nurseries and kitchens; nothing is reserved from us; the whole Mexican character is unveiled. It is like living in Mexico to read this book. . . . Alto gether this is a fresh, piquant, instruc- get at the details of Mexican life, and for the masculine foreigner altogether impossible. Mrs. Gooch appears to have learned the whole, and she tells it all. . . . There is no other book so full, so minute, and at the same time so au thentic." Chicago Times. "Graphic, . . . trustworthy, . . . delightfully naive and entertaining." Critic, New York. "With a peculiar insight into their habitudes and customs, and a singular sympathy for every phase and condition of life of the Mexican people, the au thor has given a remarkable variety of details, ... of valuable information live and readable work. Many books alike 7 nt eresting to the traveler and take one to Mexico; this takes one into useful , the busine ss community. Mexico." Literary World, Boston. " It is difficult for any foreigner to The book is a treasury." M. ROMERO, Mexican Minister at Washington. A Treasury of Romance, Legend, History, Picturesque Des cription, Valuable Information, and Genial Humor. It is also Beautifully Illustrated, Brilliant??/ Printed^ and Richly Bound. English Cloth, plain edges ; English Cloth, gilt edges ; Half Morocco, gilt edges. SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. SEND FOR CIRCULAR. FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York. RECENT ISSUES. The HUMAN MYSTERY in HAMLET. An Attempt to Say an Unsaid Word : with Suggestive Parallelisms from the Elder Poets. By MARTIN W. COOKE, A.M., President N. Y. State Bar Association. i6mo. Vellum cloth, gilt top, $i. spiration from Greek and Roman class ics, while bettering their instruction. He certainly makes out an excellent case, and has done it with remarkable " The author believes he has a theory that will account for all the facts, har monize conflicting views as to Hamlet s insanity or feigned insanity, and show that Shakespeare drew much in- clearness and attractive interest " Unhackneyed. ... A really original work of fiction." Boston Gazette, BLACK ICE. A Story of a Northern Winter. By ALBION W. TOURGEE, author of "A Fool s Errand," "Bricks without Straw," etc. i6mo, 435 pp. Cloth, $i. " He has a peculiar faculty of getting hold of unique and interesting phases of life and quaint characters, which fascinate the reader and hold the un divided attention. His portraitures pass before the mind s eye as living figures real men and women, clothed in veri table flesh and blood. The reader feels that he is in the midst of life. This is why any book from the pen of Judge Tourgee meets with a hearty welcome." Utica (N. y.) Daily Press. " Thoroughly interesting." Chicago Inter-Ocean. "Strange and exciting." Art Ama teur, New York. " Fresh and entertaining." Congre- gationalist, Boston. " We have to confess to having read 400 pages at a sitting." Daily Ameri can^ Nashville. NORWAY NIGHTS and RUSSIAN DAYS. The Record of a Pleasant Summer Tour. By Mrs. S. M. HENRY DAVIS, author of "Life and Times of Sir Philip Sidney." With many Illustrations. Decorated cloth, $1.25; half calf, gilt top, uncut, $2.50. " Simply and entirely delightful ; fresh, breezy, picturesque, charmingly written." New York Commercial Ad vertiser. " In form it is a joy to the eye, so delicate are print and paper, with abundant illustrations and pretty bind ing." The Critic, New York. EPICS and ROMANCES of the MIDDLE AGES. Adapted from the German of Dr. W. WAGNER. 500 pp., 8vo. Cloth, gilt edges, $2. etc.), Tristan and Isolde, and all the rich, romantic realm from which Rich ard Wagner drew his potent inspira tion." Literary World, Boston. Numerous spirited Illustrations. " Presenting familiarly the stirring legends of the Amelungs, the Dietrichs, the Niebelungenlied, Charlemagne and his Knights, King Arthur and the Holy Grail (Lohengrin, Parsifal, Tannhaiiser, PRINCIPLES of ART. Part I. ART IN HISTORY, its causes, nature, development, and different stages of progression. Part II. ART IN THEORY, its aims, motives and manner of ex pression. By JOHN C. VAN DYKE, Librarian, Sage Library, New Brunswick, N. J. ; recently editor of The Studio, New York. I2mo, vellum cloth, $1.50. " A clear exposition of the principles of art, couched in the simplest language. ... It pays to read a book like this pays anybody." Philadelphia Press. " Thickly set with points of interest, judiciously taken anr 1 intelligently sus tained." The Dial, Chicago. " The amount of interesting informa tion that the book contains is of itself a justification for its appearance." The A rt Review, New York. " As a rapid, bright series of historical narrations the book is beyond compute a perfect treasury." Graphic, N. Y. FORDS, HOW/iRD, & HULBERT, New York. " May be said to be a perpetual passport to the minor kingdoms of nature. It is the work of an accomplished and practical naturalist who is hand and glove (so to speak) with the populace of the leaves and fields, the woods and waters."^. Y. Mail and Express. TENANTS OF AN OLD FARM: Leaves from the Note-Book of a Naturalist. By Dr. HENRY C. McCooK, author of " Honey and Occident Ants/ "Agricultural Ants of Texas," etc.; Vice-Pres. Acad. Nat. Sciences, Philadelphia, etc. Profusely illustrated, for Science, after Sketches by the author; for comical characterizations of Insect Life by DAN C. BEARD. Small 410, 460 pages. Well indexed. New Popitlar Edition, $i 50. A delightful series of excursions and investigations into the habits of bees, ants, spiders, crickets, and many varieties of insects. nected with them, and other points fitted to arrest and hold the attention." Bor* Of Scientific Worth. " Of special value, for we have in it a popular account of scientific subjects by one who has himself observed every thing he describes. The scientific state ments of the author are not only reliable, but coming directly from nature they still retain evidence of direct contact with life, which is so sure to disappear with too many repetitions." Science. " Probably there is no one in America who is better fitted to guide the young in the study of his sphere of natural his tory." Sunday School Times, Phila. "Of the highest order of interest. The author has made studies and draw ings of the insects which can be found on any old farm, and has made discov eries which give him a high place among entomologists." Chicago Advance. " Dr. McCpok is an enthusiastic nat uralist, and in one particular branch of study that of the habits of ants and spiders stands as high as any living writer." Boston Evening Transcript. " Mr. McCook as literally lived among his pets, has studied them oy day and by night in their natural state, has not scruple formidable stings, and has deemed no not scrupled to subject himself to their pains too great to make the world ac quainted with insects upon which he looks with a species of respectful vener ation. He is, in truth, a veritable en thusiast, and it would indeed seem as though ants, bees and wasps, all be longing to the same order of insects, possessed a fascination for the true naturalist far greater th that excited by larger animals." Th. Westminster Review (British). Attractive. " Delightful talks on the characteris tics and habjts of insects, the part they play in the economy of the animal and vegetable world, the superstitions con- ton Advertiser. " Belongs to a claaS which might with great profit take the place of much of the literature, sentimental and otherwise, which finds its way into the hands of our children through Sunday School and other libraries. It is pleasantly written, and beautifully illustrated with original drawings from nature." Neiv York Examiner. " Mr. Dan Beard has brightened it by a great many comical adaptations, sketch ing spiders, ants and other dramatis personce in keeping with his facetious conception of their characters ; while the matter-of-fact natural history draw ings (of marked excellence) are by Mr. Edward Shepard and Mr. Frank Stout" [after the author s sketches from na ture]. Boston Literary World. Worth Having or Giving. " The book is a beautiful one, and would make a charming present to one of scientific tastes." Chicago Advance. "The scientific accuracy, the good illustrations and simple descriptions make it a valuable book for amateurs and a good book of reference for ad vanced students in that department of natural history." Springfield Republi can. " A charming account of a series of ex cursions over woodlawn and meadow, and is full of a great variety of informa tion about all sorts and conditions of in sects, written by a naturalist of acknowl edged authority." Boston Post. " Contains the results of a series of carefully conducted observations on diff erent species of insects. their dispositions and habits, all of which are detailed in such a familiar, winning style that no one can fail to be fascinated with the study. New York Observer. FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York. BOOKS FOR THE HOUSEHOLD. The EASIEST WAY in HOUSEKEEPING and COOKING. By HELEN CAMPBELL. Cloth, $1.00. " By all odds the completest household 4 Cook-book that has come under our notice." New York Examiner. "Admirable in matter, cheap in price, i seems well calculated to supply the mis ing link in that line." Ch icago 7> ibun* The HOUSEKEEPER S YEAR BOOK. By HELEN CAMPBELL. Limp cloth, 50 cents. " Gives a sort of culinary almanac for the year, with various instructions for all seasons ; pages for household ac counts, arranged week by week ; para graphs on marketing for the various months ; menus for the table ; useful in- swork; and and outline , , household hints, etc." Chicago Standard. MATERNITY: A Popular Treatise for Wives and Mothers. Eighth Edition. By TULLIO S. VERDI, A.M., M.D. I2mo. Cloth, $2.00. A monitor to young wives, a guide to young mothers, and arc assistant to the family physician. Treating of the needs, dangers, and alleviations of the duties of maternity, and giving extended de tailed instructions for the care and medical treatment of infants and children. " A carefully written and very com prehensive work, whose author has for years been well known in Washington as an unusually able and successful practitioner. ... In short, the whole contents will be at once recognized by any sensible woman as constituting a safe friend and guide." N. Y. Times. THE INFANT PHILOSOPHER: Stray Leaves from a Baby s Journal. By TULLIO S. VERDI, A.M., M.D. Parchment Paper, 30 cents; Vellum Cloth, 50 cents. " Amusing as this booklet is, its object not frivolous, nor even literary ; but the serious one of presenting the matter of the child s needs from the child s standpoint. . . . The good sense and long experience of the most observing of the profession is embodied in a new form of quaint simplicity." The Inde pendent, N. Y. " In its combination of simplicity, wit and wisdom, the book is unique. Every body who has had to do with an Infant Philosopher of his own, will find the Stray Leaves both comical and pro fitable reading." Boston Transcript. " Every young mother should be fur nished with a copy of this dainty bro chure, which is as much a book of practical sense as it is a.jeu d* esprit" Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia). BLAKELEE S INDUSTRIAL CYCLOPAEDIA. How TO MAKE AND MEND. Giving easy forms for doing All Kinds of Work, indoor and out, with LENGTHS, BREADTHS, and DEPTHS, and How to PUT TOGETHER. By GEORGE E. BLAKELEE, Practical Mechanic, and former Editor of the Ohio Farmer. Practical instructions for doing more than 2000 Common Things. Above 700 pajres, 8vo. 200 Illustrations. Cloth, S3. 75; Cloth dec orated, red edges, $4.25; Library Leather It is comprehensive, covering the main practical operations that come up "* every day life." The Homestead, ingfic in tyri. Mass. $5.00. "Hard to overestimate its value." Orange Co. Farmer, Portjerins, N. Y. " Will much more than pay its cost in a very short time." Conn. Farmer: Hartford, Conn. FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, New York. 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