Characteristics of the Southern Negro [by E.H. Randle]

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Characteristics of the southern negro
by Randle, Edwin Henderson, 1830-
Publication date 1910

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CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE SOUTHERN NEGRO




By


E. H. RANDLE, A. M., LL. D.






New York and Washington

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY

1910



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COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY




To Mrs. Ella Roberts Randle, my wife, who has been
a present help and an inspiration to me, this
volume is affectionately dedicated



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CONTENTS


CHAPTER​
I. CONDITIONS AND CHANGES IN FREEDOM​
II. SOME AFRICAN TRIBES​
III. THE NEGRO CONSUMES MORE THAN HE EARNS​
IV. THE IMPROVIDENCE OF THE NEGRO​
V. THE HISTORIC NEGRO​
VI. CHANGES WROUGHT IN THE NEGRO BY HIS FREEDOM​
VII. WANT OF INVENTIVE POWERS AND MECHANICAL SKILL THE CROWDING-OUT PROCESS​
VIII. THE NEGRO THE MOST CONTENTED OF ALL RACES​
IX. THE NEGRO LIVES IN THE PRESENT​
X. THE ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE FOLLY​
XI. THE CARPETBAGGERS AND RIOTS​
XII. A NEGRO AUDIENCE​
XIII. SINGING, CORNSHUCKINGS, AND RELIGIOUS REVIVALS​
XIV. PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE​
XV. MISCEGENATION AND MIXED RACES​



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THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO


CHAPTER I

CONDITIONS AND CHANGES IN FREEDOM


It is strange how knowingly people who have but a glancing acquaintance with the negroes of the South, can write up their character. Various prominent writers from the North occasionally come South, visit Booker T. Washington, Bishop Cottrell, a colored bishop, and a few others, and then write glowing accounts of the progress and development of the negroes. Their reports remind me of some of the reports of our early missionaries to Africa, who, in their zeal, gave most encouraging statements of the spread of the Gospel amongst the benighted negroes, and afterward the results of their labors could no more be traced than could their tracks in the desert sands.

In the North American Review of June, 1908, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, one of America's strongest thinkers, wrote most knowingly and unlearnedly about the wonderful progress of the Southern negroes. Such writers of judgment do the South a great injury without being aware of it. It is like learned preachers, who, without a knowledge of science, try to discredit the teachings of geology by the Scriptures; or like Haeckel, Huxley and others trying to prove by chemistry that the Christian religion is false—that Christ was a man and not a god. If Mr. Carnegie will come South, lease a large plantation in the Delta and try farming a few years with free negro labor, it will knock all his philosophy and preconceived notions into invisible vapor, and will send his philanthropy for the negro beyond the perpetual snow line. Our Northern friends know as little how to make allowance for the negro after they have tried him, as they know how to write up his character before they try him.

The Southern planters who have had long acquaintance and dealings with all kinds and varieties of negroes,—no picked few or specialized class,—both before the war and since, certainly ought to be the best judges of negro character.

All that I shall write about the character and habits of the negro has been gathered from these planters, with a few of my own observations thrown in. As to my own qualifications, I will add that I was raised among negroes, in a section where the two races were about equally divided; inherited negroes, was brought up among them; I played with them, fought with them, worked with them, but never slept or ate with them.

In my boyhood I often spent a day or night with some neighbor boy, and as white boys in those days were fond of going out to the cabins to hear the negroes talk. I, like the others, saw into a great many negro cabins and had good opportunities for studying negro character and habits. In those days most of the negroes had more liberty without freedom than they now have with freedom.

In studying the race question we must not forget some psychical and physical differences. The mind of the white man does not attain its full growth till about five to ten years after the full growth of the body, while the mind of the negro matures several years sooner than his body. There seems to be much less difference in the mental capacity of the children of the two races than there is in the adults; but, before the twenties are reached, the breach begins to widen, and continues to widen fifteen or more years, and then continues after maturity of capacity to widen by training and in information. By maturity we mean the cessation of the growth of capacity for improvement. But the mind and body both may be greatly strengthened by training after maturity, as the scholar improves his mind, and the athlete, his body.

Mr. Winwood Read, a distinguished African traveler, gives the following physical description of the negro:

"His skin is very black, excepting the palms and soles of his feet, which are of a dirty yellow. In them the coloring matter has been removed by friction; it can, however, be always traced in the deep lines of the hand. It appears to be most abundant on the knuckles, the knees, and the elbow joints.

"The skin is very thick, especially on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. Touch these, and they feel like wood. A negro will take up a live coal in his hand and light his pipe with it without suffering pain. But, with the exception of these parts, the skin of the negro is peculiarly smooth. It can only be compared to fine black velvet.

"The hair of the typical negro is short and crisp, and closely resembles wool.

"The forehead is low and compressed; the nose flat; the lips thick and brutal; the mouth projecting, presents the appearance of a muzzle. As in the lower animals, the brain retreats to the back of the head, and the organ of gluttony becomes the character of the face.

"The heel is flat and long; the ankle is raised only from one and one-eighth to one and one-half inches above the ground. The toes are small, and, as in the apes, the great toe is separated from the others by a wide space.

"The foot is often used by the negro as a hand. The natives of equatorial Africa do not climb a tree, as we do, by 'swarming,' but by clasping them with their feet. The natives of the Gambia, when fishing, hold their line between the great toe and the next. When a Kru-man is sewing anything he holds his work between his toes. And the Wollofs will frequently steal articles with their feet.

"The virile member is much larger than is found in Europeans, excepting in those who are idiotic. It is one of the chief seats of color. When the negro child is born it has a black ring around the virile member; a reddish mark on the nail, and another in the corner of the eye. These are the last signs also by which a negro descendant can be distinguished.

"According to some writers, the same secretion forms the beard and propagates the human species. The negro seldom has any hair upon his face; it is rarely abundant, and he rarely has a great number of children. There is also a peculiarity in his voice by which it can be distinguished. It is not unlike that of a eunuch.

"The stature of the negro is stunted; the knees are bent; the calves weak; the upper part of the thigh is thin; the head large and sunk between the shoulders; and the whole form angular and badly shaped.

"The skull is extremely thick. If a negro wishes to break a thick stick, he does not break it across his knee, as we do, but across his head. The power of his skull in resisting a blow is something marvelous. When I was in the Senegal, I saw a most remarkable case at the military hospital, St. Louis. A Wollof soldier, in the French service, had been shot at from a distance of fifteen yards. The ball struck the os frontis and had flattened against it as if it had struck a stone wall.[1] ...

"It has been discovered by Iruner Beaj, Gratiold, Waitz, and other eminent anatomists that there exist internal differences equally as significant; that the blood and bile, and, according to some, the semen, is different from that of the Europeans; that in the skeleton, the bones are larger, whiter and thicker; that the growth of the brain in the negro, as in the ape, is sooner arrested than in those of our race;[2] that its convolutions are less numerous and more massive; that its gray substance is of a darker color; that the brain itself is of a smoky tint, and that the pia mater contains brown spots, which are never found in the brain of the European.

"Therefore, in the muzzle-like extension of the jaws, in the manual application of the foot, and in the early cessation of the brain-growth, the negro, speaking physically, approaches the ape.

"In his flattened nose, elongated cranium, simplicity of cerebral convolutions, rounded larynx, and less strongly marked curves of the vertical column, the negro approaches the child; for all these are found in the foetus of the child of the Aryan race in its different periods of development.

"And in the curvature of his arteries, in the flatness of his cornea, in the fulness of his muscles, in his general lack of enthusiasm, and love of repose, the negro presents the characteristics of old age.

"Thus it has been proven by measurements, by microscopes, by analysis, that the negro is something between a child, a dotard, and a beast. I cannot struggle against the sacred facts of science. But I contend that it is only degradation; that it is a disease; that it is not characteristic of the African continent, and that it is confined only to a small geographical area."[3]

These statements have not been denied by the ethnologists and biologists of the scientific world, but have been generally assented to.

To be fair with Mr. Read, I must say he did not describe the typical negro, but a class below the highest type of the negro race. As to the extent of the area, it is no small portion of the west coast of Africa. Fully half of Africa, the northern half, is inhabited by the Aryan race, or of races whose blood is mixed with a strong infusion of Aryan blood. Mr. Read believes in the unity of the human race.


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[1] I am able to vouch for the truth of the story.

[2] This is in accordance with what I have said about the maturity of the mind.

[3] "Savage Africa," by Winwood Read, p. 397.


CHAPTER II

SOME AFRICAN TRIBES


That we may better understand the Southern negro, we will give a short chapter on a few of the leading tribes of Africa, from the highest to the lowest.

We now approach a singular phase in ethnology, or rather in the relational appearance of the negro to the white man—a fact which denies that the negro and the Aryan are of the same original or Adamic origin.

If the Ovambos, the Damaras, the Fans, the Hottentots are degenerate Zulus, it is singular, that in proportion as they are degenerate they are found of lighter color and of a greater resemblance to the white man. In all domestic species, as I have shown in another work, loss of color is one of the first signs of degenerate variation, so these lower tribes must have lost color in their evolution downward from the Zulu. The tribes below the Zulus occupy largely more than nine-tenths of negro Africa. We must judge from this that the negro race in Africa is traveling to extinction.

The Zulus or Kaffirs "are darker than these lighter colored tribes, but not so black as the negroes of the West Coast. Their hair is crisp, short and curled, but not so woolly as that of the negro (of the West Coast); their lips, though large when compared with those of the Europeans, are small when compared with those of the negro.[4] Their form is finely modeled, their stature tall, their limbs straight, their forehead high, their expression intelligent, and altogether this group of mankind affords as fine examples of the human form as can be found anywhere on the earth."

The Zulus seem to be of a less variable type than the other tribes. Great variations among individuals of any species, whether in form, color, or habits, is a sign of degeneracy.

The Tonga, the Bechuana, the Ovambo, the Namequa, and some others, are classified by some with the Zulus; but they are lighter in color and resemble the European much more than the Zulus do.

The Bechuanas: "The Bechuana character is frank and sociable, which, however, does not arise from a benevolent disposition. They are exceedingly vindictive and revengeful, but easily propitiated with gifts. From the king to the slave, theft is a peculiar vice. The women are tenacious of their toilet, appearing to prefer the garb of Mother Eve. They are masculine, short, stout, and clumsy. They have little regard for human life. A husband may kill his wife if he likes, without any particular notice being taken of it."[5]

The Bechuanas have no notion of a superior being. "I have often wished," says Mr. Moffat, "I could find something by which I could lay hold on the minds of the natives; an altar to the unknown God, the faith of their ancestors, the immortality of any association, but nothing of the kind ever floated through their minds. They looked upon the sun with the eye of an ox."[6]

These stand about next to the Zulus. We have descriptive evidence from many reliable authors that the following tribes differ in appearance from the Zulus in an approach to the Europeans, though none of these authors noted this fact. They are all lighter in color; some, the color nearly of a ripe plum, some a sort of dark milk-and-coffee color, etc., those of the smallest hands and feet being lighter in color and of less vigor. They are the Ovambos, the Demaras, the Makololos, the Wagogos, the Neam Nams, the Fans, and some others. The lighter colored ones are generally nearer the equator. Not many of any of these tribes, I think, were brought to America, yet we see some representatives of them. We sometimes are mistaken when we judge a negro to have a tinge of white blood. It is one from some of these tribes.

The Hottentots: Having now come to such low grades, near the bottom, we must note more closely.

Neither in color nor in general aspects do the Hottentots resemble the dark races around them. Their complexion is sallow and much like that of a very dark person suffering from jaundice. Indeed the complexion of the Hottentot much resembles that of the Chinese.

In shape, the Hottentots alter strangely according to age. When children they are not agreeable objects; if tolerably well fed, they lose their strange shape when they approach the period of youth; and as young men and girls they are almost perfect in form, though thin faces are not entitled to as much praise. But they do not retain this beauty of form for any long period, some few years generally comprehending the beginning and the end. "In five or six years after their arrival at womanhood," writes Burchell, "the fresh plumpness of youth gives way to the wrinkles of age, and unless viewed with an eye of commiseration and philanthropy, we would be inclined to pronounce them the most disgusting of human beings." The existence of this light-colored race in such a locality affords proof that complexion is not entirely by climate. These and other pale-skinned tribes live close to the tropics, while the Esquimaux, who live amid eternal ice, are often so dark they might almost be mistaken for negroes.

"Unlike the Kaffirs, who are the most superstitious of mankind, the Hottentots are entirely free from superstition, as they have not the least conception whatever of any religious sentiment. The world forms the limit of all their ideas, and they seem, so far as is known, equally ignorant of a creator and the immortality of the soul" (Wood). In this respect they are on a level with the beast, sunken too low even to be superstitious.

The Bosjemens: The Bosjemens, or Bushmen, have no language to express God, spirit, immortality, a life beyond the grave, or any superstitious belief. They have no traces of a lost civilization—nor have any of the negro tribes of Africa. They abandon their parents when old, and instruction and moralizing to them is as ineffectual as teaching monkeys to draw portraits. Haeckel of Jena uses them as a connecting link between the apes and man.

I will not describe the Obongos or Pigmies, as the slave stealers would not have them.

The West Coast Africans: These are the ones Mr. Winwood Read described as the typical negro, so we will have little else to say of them. They are the blackest of all negroes, large, strong, and capable of great endurance, and the most indifferent to suffering of human beings, hence they are cruel in proportion; this is as much because they are but little sensitive to suffering themselves; sympathy of any kind is almost as absent from their nature as color is from their skin.

Mr. Read, I think, degrades their strength and endurance a little lower than others do. We see frequent specimens of these West Coast negroes in America. We can distinguish them by their coal blackness, stout frames, and coarse features.

Graded in the scale of negroes they are below the Zulus, Ovambos, Bechuanas and the Damaras, and perhaps some others we have mentioned, but scarcely below some of these, and they are farther above the Hottentots than they are below the Zulus. They much less resemble the Europeans than the Zulus do, while the other degenerate tribes resemble the Europeans more than do the Zulus.

We have now given most of the tribes from which the American slaves derive their origin. They are so mixed up that we can now definitely trace but few individuals. We oftener see examples of the West Coast African than of the others. The characteristics of these African negroes will help us to understand the American negro.


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[4] Mr. Read does not class the Zulus with the negro. He strangely considers the inhabitants of the West Coast alone as true negroes.

[5] Anderson, p. 450.

[6] Anderson, p. 339.


CHAPTER III

THE NEGRO CONSUMES MORE THAN HE EARNS


We are of the opinion that the negro consumes more than he earns, and that the difference is increasing.

For a few years after the war the farmers made some money, for the negroes were, at that time, not far from their training and habits; and while they did not work so well as they did in slavery, they worked better than they have at any time since. In the nineties I asked numerous planters who had had much to do with negro farm laborers, both before emancipation and after, the following question: Have the negroes in the upland counties produced as much as they have consumed since the war? The uniform answer was, "They have not." But the answers varied as to how much they lacked. A few planters said they had not made enough, upon an average, to pay land rents. The average answer was, "They have made a living and paid half rents for their lands." To make a living with rents half free, is consuming more than they produce. As an evidence of this, the value of uplands fell to about half price.

Another evidence of this: The sections where there are the most negroes are the least prosperous. Compare Marshall County, Mississippi, with Henry County, Tennessee. Before the war, the people of Marshall were prosperous and were rapidly accumulating, and the negro population was, I judge, about double the white inhabitants. The people of Henry County were industrious and slowly accumulating property. Both were early settled counties. Marshall County was worth, I judge, about five times what Henry was. Now, Marshall is left far in the rear, and Henry has shot out well in advance. We cannot account for this in any other way than that negro labor is consuming more than it is producing. I could give many other illustrations, showing the fewer the negroes, the greater the prosperity. Making, of course, proper allowance for the difference in the quality of the lands.

We must not compare the rich alluvial lands of the Yazoo Delta, where there are ten negroes to one white person, with the impoverished ridges along the Tennessee River in Tennessee, where there are fifty white men to one negro, and where poverty reigns in log cabins. Wherever there are few negroes in good upland counties there is enterprise and progress; and where there are many negroes in such counties, there is retrogress.

The farmers will tell you that a very large majority of the colored race is in debt to the white race and that with not the slightest prospects of ever paying. The white people would be well off if they only had what is due them from the negroes. I know many large farms that were entirely consumed by the tenants during the first twenty or thirty years and were sold out and left destitute.

Many of the most successful farmers before the sixties, found themselves unable, after the war, to make a living with free labor on large plantations, but the laborers on the farm got their living. I will narrate a single case well known. Mr. H. tried to farm on a large and well-ordered plantation of his own, a farm on which he had formerly realized handsome profits. The first year he came out in debt, the second year, still deeper in debt. He then called up his oldest son, a young man of energy and good habits, and said to him, "If I run the farm a few more years it will require the sale of the farm to pay our debts. I now turn over the entire management of the farm to you; I have made a failure. I have no advice to give. Trust your own judgment." The young man took the lead and did well. He is now an old man and is still prosperous.

I have often heard the remark that the owners of negroes before the war were usually unsuccessful farmers with free negro laborers, and the saying seems to be true. The chief cause of it was that they trusted the negroes too much. In crop gathering time, when a hand would foresee that he would have nothing at the end—that he had already consumed all that would be due him, he would leave and hire out to some other man. In this way the planter would not only lose the labor, but sometimes the part of the crop the hand had deserted. For hands in crop gathering are scarce and it is often a question with a planter how to secure enough labor to gather his cotton.

I am aware that statistics show that wealth, in large quantities, is acquired by negroes, and I know a few scattered negroes—mostly mulattos—commenced accumulating from the beginning. It would be a sad comment, indeed, if none of them had acquired property. Great wonder is made that the negroes of Georgia now own fifty million dollars' worth of property. Doubtless half of this belongs to men whose blood is tinged with a Caucasian streak, but we cannot attribute such wealth to negro energy any more than to the energy infused by his Caucasian blood.

Wholesale numbers look large. There are about one million of negroes in Mississippi. Suppose one in one hundred of these had saved five thousand dollars, that would make fifty million for the negroes of Mississippi. The fact is the great body of the negroes have little or nothing, and are getting less reliable as laborers every year. Within the last decade, or rather since the country recovered from the shock of '93, negroes have shown a tendency to buy homes, and a larger per cent. are now self-sustaining and prosperous than at any previous time, and a larger per cent. are utterly worthless.

Before the war an able-bodied negro in north Mississippi would hire out for $200 to $250 a year, and his board and clothes. Now he does well to get half that and his board. This is the difference between slave labor and free colored labor.

The colored women usually make their own living, but, like the men, only at about half the wages paid before the war. For some years they did full half work; now they rarely perform more than one-fourth the amount of labor that they did in slavery. For a family of two or three persons, the wages range in the country villages from four to seven dollars a month and table board. The cooks and housemaids greatly prefer to live in their own rented cabin off to themselves, and occasionally they own the cabin. As they generally refuse to do any work outside of the kitchen and dining-room, with a small family they have several hours in the forenoon and nearly all the afternoon to themselves. A brisk white cook in a Northern city performs fully five times the labor that one of these dusky ones does in the South. The cook knows that if she is turned off she can get another job in twenty-four hours, and if a little extra work is put on her, she will quit and try another place. A majority of the white women in the South do their own work, even many of the wealthy women, but there are numbers of delicate or invalid women unequal to the task, and this keeps up the demand for house servants.

A little farther north, in Tennessee and Kentucky, where there are not so many negroes, very few ladies have house servants of any kind. Some of our nicest ladies refuse to employ colored house servants at all because they can not train them away from filth—can not train them to be decent. Twenty years ago there were quite a number of old well-trained house servants, well qualified in decency and gentility, but this class is now very small and its members have few successors.

During the cotton hoeing season in the spring, and the cotton picking season, many of the house servants go to the field for better wages, and because they like the work better, and this adds to their inefficiency in the house. The chief reason, however, why the domestic servants get so little training is this: they change so often and are occasionally employed by women who themselves are untidy housekeepers; and then, no woman cares to train a servant when she expects that servant to leave in a few months. The housekeepers say it does not pay to train their domestics for some other housekeeper's benefit. The domestic servants are awkward and bungling in their work, untidy, often filthy, have no management, are wasteful, and have little care to please their employers.

We come now to what every one of these colored cooks is an adept in. She understands remarkably well how to feed several other negroes from her employer's table. No matter how carefully the mistress of the house carries the keys, the cook will feed her husband, or children, or neighbors. It seems to be a part of her social duty; she carries off everything from the table that is not locked up. When much care is taken to put away the leavings, the table will become a little scarce in provisions, the coffee weak, and there will be barely enough to go round. But the employers are usually very liberal in allowing all the leavings to disappear, and after every meal the cook will be seen going off with a large pan or basket covered with a napkin.

Some house servants are addicted to enriching, by slow degrees, their own tableware from their employer's, but this is not very common, and still less common is the habit of stealing other valuables from the house, such as jewelry, clothing, and so on. In fact, I will say such theft is rare.

After all, there is a clever feeling usually between the housewife and her servants with all their faults. No other class of delinquents in the world is looked on with so much kind indulgence as these colored domestics.

But we must face the facts, and the fact is that in another twenty years colored domestics will be scarce and as worthless as scarce.
 

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CHAPTER IV

THE IMPROVIDENCE OF THE NEGRO


If the negro makes more than his rents and expenses, he wastes it. The race, with few exceptions, knows nothing of saving. "Money burns in his pocket." Many of them, that do work enough to support them well, are often in want and have nothing ahead. They waste time in the winter and spring, and get a late start with their crop. Hirelings rarely set in before time for spring work, then they look about for "crop job." Before the war, the landlord arranged his plans for crops several years ahead: now it is difficult to forecast the ensuing crop till one secures laborers in the spring when the crop ought to be already well started. Those that rent land and those that crop on shares usually do a little better. The planter rarely knows what lands he will rent to croppers, what he will let out on shares till after New Year, and he must wait longer to see what he will work with hired labor. These three plans are intermingled, and having to arrange for them every year makes farming an unsatisfactory business. All these hands are to be supplied. The renters usually have their stock, a wagon and some implements, but the croppers are supplied with these by the landlord. Mortgages follow, and on a large plantation the merchant or planter, sometimes both of them, loses on some of these contracts.

In crop gathering time many of them waste much good weather, allowing the late rains and frosts of winter to damage their crops materially. The system, however, is becoming constantly more rigid. During crop season the large supply merchants employ riders to visit all the parties whom they supply and to push up the laborers, who stand in awe of these riders lest their supplies may be cut off. The large planters employ bosses to see after their crops. In the rich delta lands these bosses command the negroes almost as well as in the days of slavery. It is singular how one white man can command so well fifty or a hundred negroes. If a negro gives a boss impudence he is likely to be knocked down, and other negroes, seeing it, are all silent, but rather enjoy it and side with the white man.

But in the upland sections where there are few negroes they are less manageable. From laying by time till gathering time, and from the time one crop is gathered till another is commenced, the supplies are cut off, so if the hands need anything they have to do job work for it. This forces many of them to work when otherwise they would be idle.

Thrifty farmers can find work the year round, and this is one difference in farming where the work is done by white men and where it is done by negroes. This again accounts for the difference in the price of the Yazoo Delta lands and the Illinois rich prairie lands. Fifty dollars per acre is a good price for the former, while the latter sell for $100 to $200 per acre. I know of no cause for this but the difference in the quality of the labor. Then we must recur to the question asked in a former chapter, "Does the negro make his living and pay half rents for his land?"

The negro takes poor care of his belongings. He leaves his plows in the weather to rust all winter and treats his other implements the same way. When he wants a hoe or rake he sometimes has to go to the back of the field after it. His implements are always scattered. He has no wagon shelter or house for his tools, has poor barns and poorer stables, and no sheds for his cattle. All this causes much loss of time, a rapid wearing of his tools, and a costly wintering of stock, for stock not warmly housed, require more food to keep them in order. Negroes are notoriously bad stock masters. In plowing, his gear is often illy adjusted to its work, galling the mules' shoulders, making the plow run badly, too deep or too shallow. He is slow to see anything wrong with the gear, or any tool he uses. If he has a rickety door or gate that might be remedied in a few minutes, he will continue to pass through it, though it is troublesome to open, and never think of fixing it. Poor stock and poor dogs are characteristic of a negro's premises. The negro's general bad management and unmethodical ways cause much loss to his profits.

Negro improvidence is shown in the following bit of conversation. I was in a jeweler's store when a good-looking young negro man came in and asked the jeweler to examine his watch. I said to him: "Why, have you got a watch?" "Yes, sir," he replied, seeming much pleased. "You must be prosperous. Have any money in the bank?" "No, sir." "Have a home and land?" "No, sir." "Have you a mule or wagon?" "No, sir." "Have an axe or hoe or any implement?" "No, sir." "Have a wife?" "Yes, sir." "Is a wife and a watch all you own?" "Yes, sir." By this time his pleased looks had fallen, and he went out. This was an actual conversation and represents well the character of the negro's improvidence. There is nothing mean or vicious in such habits, and all negroes are not so lacking in financial ability.


CHAPTER V

THE HISTORIC NEGRO


I once met a very intelligent gentleman from Montana, who told me that there is no such personage as the historic Indian; that those who are acquainted with the Indian only through books, have but little knowledge of his real character. After discussing the matter with him, I remarked that his statement about the Indian would apply equally well to the negroes of the South. He said he thought so too, but having only slight acquaintance with the negroes, he could not speak positively.

Most people living in the South understand tolerably well the characteristics of the colored race, but the farmers who employ them understand them better than others do. People living outside of the old slave States understand but faintly the real character of this greatly misrepresented race. Even the ministers, in their zeal for good works, not coming in contact with the negroes on the exposed side of their characters, fail to understand their nature, over-estimate their capacity, mistake their book learning for progress, and their zeal in church work for true religion, and they give a hurrah statement to the world about an encouraging development, a development that has not been made.

At steady, hard labor, such as chopping, splitting rails, ditching, the negro is fully the white man's equal, if not his superior: he can do as much work in a day, can work as many days in a year, and as many years in a life time. But he must not be pushed. At work that requires quickness of action and rapidity of movement, he falls behind the white man. In severe army life, where running, wading, swimming, starving, feasting, doing without sleep, resting, working, and freezing are all mingled together in the most irregular order and quantity, the negro goes down rapidly and finds an early grave. One white man can last as long as three negroes, at least.

The negro left to himself, separated from other workers, is a poor laborer, both as to work and as to how to work, whether he is hireling, renter, or cropper. There are a few, of course, who do well, but negroes work best in squads under a boss, and they are attracted to this kind of work. A section boss on a railroad can command them well, govern them easily and get much work out of them. In sawmills and all factories where colored labor is employed, they are obedient, manageable, and work well.

The negro needs a boss. In all his years of slavery he worked under a boss and looked up to him. In his African life he did no regular work of any kind. He still looks to some one to advise, direct him and to tell him to go. He likes a man of authority. A man with a large supply store, or the owner of a large plantation, is about his highest ideal of a great man. Such men as these, understanding the nature of the negro, can control negroes at will. They like him, look up to him, and feel that he has the right to boss them almost as they did in the days of slavery. They fear him, admire him, and look to him for help in all times of trouble. If he knocks one of them down for impudence, the others are all on the boss's side and tease the one knocked down for having no more sense than to affront that white man.

They respect the whole white race and feel that they can not hope to cope with the whites. There are two classes of whites a negro has a profound contempt for: the really low grade, log cabin "poor folks"—not "poor white trash"; that phrase was put into the negro's mouth by writers—and white people who equalize themselves with negroes. If a man treats a negro as a white man, the negro will treat him as a negro, and will have a contempt for him.

In the Yazoo Delta, where there are five to twenty negroes to one white person, the colored race is most peaceable and best behaved. On large plantations, where the owners employ intelligent practical men as bosses, the negroes do best. The boss is generally kind and positive and allows no impudence, and if he understands the negro nature, they like him, honor him, and obey him, and he wields unbounded influence over them. But of course there is occasionally found a bad negro among them. In the days of slavery, the negro looked up to his master with the reverential respect with which a subject looks up to his king. He felt great fear of him and half worshiped him. He had an implied ownership in everything on the place, and always said "our horses," "our cattle," "our land," "our crop," "our black folks," "our white folks," and so on about everything on the place. He prided in "our things" being better than those of his neighbors. "Ole miss" stood above everything else, next to "ole master." They all had a respectful fear of these two personages; and looked to them for protection in everything—even in times of storms, or lightnings, or Indian invasions. A regiment of them, well drilled and under "ole master's" command, would have been a dangerous foe, and could have been led to charge the most formidable odds. Under a commander of their own race, they could have been easily panicked. A charge of fifty Indians would have routed a thousand of them.

To this day one will scarcely find an old negro who does not quote his old master as one of the highest authority and he always speaks of him with great respect. They even boast of what good and happy times they had in the days of slavery; still, rarely is one found who would like to be a slave under the same conditions he once served. The fable of the well-fattened dog and the hungry wolf illustrates the case. The dog asked the wolf to go and live with him and have plenty. The wolf spied the hair worn off the dog's neck, and asked, "Why that?" The dog replied, "Oh, that is nothing. They put a collar on me in the daytime that I may be fiercer at night." " Good-bye," said the wolf, "I would rather be a hungry wolf than a fat slave."

The old plantation negro loved his "white folks" and all on the place as a man loves his country, and looked up to "ole" master as a man looks up to his king and the royal family, whether good or bad. About his highest idea of an independent government was one of these knights of a big plantation. If there was a young lady in the family every negro on the place was delighted at her smiles and well-nigh worshiped her as their model and their queen. All the colored maids about the house tried to be like her, to walk like and talk like her. If she was fractious and ill tempered, it was her right; if she was kind and good to them, she was their good angel.

The white boys and the colored boys usually played together and fought together, but by the time they were twelve to thirteen, the colored boy began to look to his white playmate as in some way heir to the kingdom. He would then fight for him more readily than he would for one of his own color. I remember when I was a small boy my older brother had a colored playmate of his size and age, but a little stouter and more active. My brother, then twelve years old, concluded he wanted to whip a certain negro in the neighborhood about his own age and size. We met him one day when our negro was present. My brother and this neighbor negro had the fight, a long and hard one, the negro getting a little the best of it. Finally seeing the negro was too much for him, my brother called his colored playmate to take up the fight for him. So my brother stood aside, and his colored playmate took up the fight. After a long, hard struggle, with occasional blowing spells interjected, neither one getting much the better of the other, my brother told them to quit, and they both were willing. During the fight my brother forbid any help to be given during his part of it, and he would not allow any to be given his colored playmate. None of this was told at the home of either party—except among the boys—for each side, of course, claimed the victory. Every negro boy would fight at any time for any white boy on his place. I always felt as safe among the negroes on our place as I did with my larger brothers. In fact, I felt that I would be well cared for among any of our neighbors' negroes.

This safety of white children among negroes seemed almost without exception. They were kind and attentive to white children on all occasions, and certainly too much so to be accounted for by fear. A small boy would sometimes get into a fight with the negro boy, but the larger negroes would not let them hurt one another.

One or more white women were often left at home during the day with a feeling of perfect safety, if only the cook or house-maid were present. This faithfulness of the negroes continued during the war. The women and children of the South were left to a great extent to the protection and support of the negroes, who proved faithful beyond all expectation of the world and even beyond the expectation of their owners.

They were trusty in hiding stock and all valuables from the invaders. It is true that many of them, enticed by the idea of freedom, went to the Federal army. But it is a singular proof of their faithfulness that so few of them rode off their master's horse and saddle, or carried anything of value with them. Still more remarkable is it that these runaways never led the Yankees back to their old master's home, or to any of their neighbors, or gave any information concerning the property or politics of their old neighbors. It is strange that they did not tell harrowing tales of bad treatment and want the Yankees to hang their old masters. But if any runaway negro ever did, I have never heard of it, not even where the negroes had had hard masters.

In this respect they show a fine contrast when placed beside Southern Union men, many of whom deemed it the special business for which they were born to report the sayings and property of their neighbors and their political activity to the Federal officers, and induce them to send out squads of soldiers to pillage and burn out certain rebellious parties. I never heard of negroes doing any mischief of such character. I will say, however, that all Union men were not so bad, and that many were a protection to their neighbors of the Southern cause.

The Southern people have ever acknowledged the faithfulness of the negroes during the war, have ever appreciated it, and still bear to the negroes a grateful remembrance for it.

This faithfulness of the negroes to their "white folks" is indubitable evidence of the kindly feeling existing between the two races in those days. It puts to silence the charges often made by the abolitionists of the intolerable sufferings of the slaves, and establishes the fact of the slaves' good treatment and of their contentment. For they still served as slaves when no one was present to make them afraid, and, when on the other hand, they were in the presence of an army offering them freedom. The world's history has nothing equal to it. Dr. B. F. Ward, of our State, in one of his logical essays, says a monument ought to be erected to their memory by the Southern people. And so it ought.


CHAPTER VI

CHANGES WROUGHT IN THE NEGRO BY HIS FREEDOM


The negro's greatest failure, perhaps, lies in his failure to raise his children to be as good as himself. Even the best and most sensible of them rarely exhibit any tact in molding the character of their children. They seem to think they perform their whole duty when they clothe and feed their children and send them to school. They rarely whip except to gratify their anger, and never praise or censure good and bad conduct in their children. They scold because they are fretted and not to improve the child's character.

Truly one of the negroes' most serious losses in the changed condition is in no longer having their children partly raised by the white people. In slavery days sick negro children were well cared for. They were often seen on a pallet by the chimney corner in the housewife's own room, properly fed and administered to and they had the service of a doctor if such services were needed. When not sick they played with the white children, absorbed much from them, and while performing such work about the house and yard as they were capable of, the mistress instructed them in morals and becoming conduct. The master's counsel and thoughts also continued to be poured into the minds of all his negroes, and that with good effect, for they looked up to him as a man of wisdom and authority. In this way the negroes were generally well trained.

Fewer negro children are born now than before the war, and a much smaller per cent. of those born are raised, and those raised lack the training those had who were raised in slavery. The master has almost ceased to live on his plantation. There is now no inducement for him to live there to see after the sanitary condition, and the raising of his negroes, for they are not his; so he rents out his land, or crops it on shares and lives in town. The two races are continually coming less and less in contact, and this is to the disadvantage of the negro.

I must commend the negroes for one thing; they treat step-children about as well as they do their own. It is easier for an orphan child to find a home among them than for a white orphan to find a home with its own race. As badly as negroes raise children, they all seem to want them. Their women are far more barren now than before the war. A barren wife, the doctors tell me, often consults a physician, that he may remove her barrenness. This is the very reverse of what white women often do, who consult physicians as to how to prevent the multiplication of responsibilities. The negroes give poor attention to the comforts of the aged, are poor hands to sit up with the sick and give medicine, but prompt to sit up with the dead and to attend funerals. Be it said to their credit, however, when any one of their number becomes an invalid, man, woman, or child, that one can find a home somewhere, even where the sick one has no kinsfolk. Their want of attention to the sick and aged is not from any selfishness or meanness, but from their careless habits in all their ways. They take care of their farms and their stock in the same way. They have the goodness of heart to feed the hungry and to support the invalid or the orphan.

Where the negroes greatly outnumber the whites they seem to be less prolific than where there are few. In slavery they were the most prolific race ever known. Infertility seems to be greatly on the increase among them. I will give one instance in this county:

Esquire Gatlin tells me that on his and his partner's places in the delta lands, they have thirty-five families; some are occasionally moving out and others moving in, but the number is kept full. He states, "Within the past sixteen years only nine births have occurred on these thirty-five settlements" (1906). This, however, I think, must be an unusual case even for the delta negroes, though the long time and the large number of families look quite significant. Something akin to this must take place in the crowded negro parts of cities.

About fifteen years ago I wrote to a great many physicians and asked them the history of tuberculosis among the colored people. The consensus of opinion was uniform. Before the war consumption was scarcely known among the negroes, now (1895) it is quite common among them, greatly on the increase, and the time from attack to death is shortening. I will add at this date, consumption seems on the accelerated increase. It is increasing so rapidly that some think this will be the final solution of the race problem.

With regard to similar questions concerning venereal diseases, the conclusions were that a majority of the negroes are at all times afflicted, some being cured and some becoming afflicted, and some diseased all the time, and that negroes do not suffer from these diseases as the white people do. If they did, it would soon end the race. Some negroes are almost immune from any venereal afflictions. Some of the doctors were of opinion that these diseases, by weakening the constitution, reduced the system so that it is an easy victim to tuberculosis and scrofula. In slavery times the doctors attested that the race suffered but little from excessive venery. The doctors now tell me it is not on the increase, for the reason that the limit of excess has been reached, and some think this is the cause of increasing infertility of the race. I am decidedly of opinion that it is the chief cause.

My remarks must be understood in this work to refer, when not otherwise stated, to the true negro and not to the mulatto. The mulatto is more subject to the diseases mentioned than the negro is, and he has less hope of recovery.

It is to be hoped that the great war at present being waged against tuberculosis will prove beneficial to the colored race; but nothing can be done to check excessive venery of the race.


CHAPTER VII

WANT OF INVENTIVE POWERS AND MECHANICAL SKILL THE CROWDING-OUT PROCESS


THE Southern landlord is slow to introduce improved methods and useful machinery on account of the character of the labor he uses. He knows the difficulty of changing the habits of the negro in farming, and his want of skill in handling machinery. The negro is a creature of habit and imitation. When his habits are changed he has to learn all over again. I will narrate one instance which well illustrates why men farming with negro labor are slow to introduce machinery.

Some years ago I was on Farmer Capell's large plantation during harvest gathering.

"Mr. Capell," I said, "reapers are a great invention for saving wheat, are they not?" "I don't know," replied he. "I think I used to do as well with the cradles as I now do with the reapers. A negro can handle a cradle better than he can a reaper."

Some days later I met Mr. Johnston, of Ripley, Tennessee, a neighbor to Mr. Capell, and asked him the same question. Mr. Johnston replied: "Why, a reaper is a wonderful improvement on the cradle." I said, " Mr. Capell thinks the reaper no better than the cradle." "Oh, I know what is the matter with Capell," said he; "Capell puts a negro to drive his reaper, and about every other round he runs it against a stump or manages in some way to break something, and then takes hours or a day to go to the blacksmith and return, and so the loss of time balances the advantage of the reaper. No one ever drives mine but myself. I have had it three years and it has not yet formed the acquaintance of the blacksmith." I have given almost the exact words of the two men.

Some negroes, however, have good mechanical skill, but the harvester can not depend on getting them when needed.

The negro has no invention, but he can be trained to do good mechanical work, and after being trained he must ever afterwards work exactly according to his training. When he learns to make an axe handle, his process in making one never changes, and all his axe handles are just alike. He can be taught to manage a piece of machinery by showing and explaining the machine itself; but from drawings and explanations, without the machine, he learns nothing. In fact he is a grievous failure in understanding instructions of any kind. With the best of intentions he often does what he was cautioned not to do.

He is a great imitator and a poor mimic, and when he sees some one else do a piece of work he is quick to "catch on" and to perform a like job himself in the same way. Then, left to himself, he rarely makes any improvements, but soon becomes expert in that one way.

With proper instruction in doing, negroes make good journey workmen as carpenters, but never rise to the dignity of architects or even contractors on a large scale. They, perhaps, succeed better as brickmasons than in any other trade, and they make fine barbers and good blacksmiths. They work single pieces of machinery well, but when it comes to running complicated machinery on the ground, such as reapers, mowers, gang plows, and so on, where the machine has to be adjusted to varied and changing conditions, the height and quantity of grass, the character of the ground, and the strength of the machinery, few colored men can be found equal to the task. If the machine is running heavily or is out of order in some way, they never know it till something breaks. In hot weather they often drive a horse beyond his power of endurance before they are aware of it. They are slow to observe, as a rule, and slow to profit by their observations.

The same habits they have in managing machinery applies to their care of stock. Most negroes have poor stock, even when they have plenty of provender. The planter who employs colored labor has to look after his stock constantly, not risking a single feed without seeing it done. A good cow is about the cheapest and best method of securing table luxuries, but it is a costly way if trusted to a milk-maid; for she will not get cream enough to churn, and will soon milk the cow dry. With abundance of convenient food she will let the cow get poor. I have quit keeping cows in disgust at the impossibility of getting them well attended to without doing it myself.

There was a time before the sixties and for some time after, when a white barber could scarcely be found in our Southern cities and villages; now scarcely a colored one can be found. This, I judge, is more from bad management than from bad barbering. I found many colored barbers in Washington, but all I saw were mulattos or quadroons. Possibly race prejudice may also have had something to do in crowding out the barbers. I once asked a prominent lawyer in Memphis which he preferred before the war, a white barber or a colored one? He replied promptly, "A colored one." "Which do you prefer now?" I said. "A white one," he replied, "but I don't know why." This must be a sort of unconscious race preference. All I know is the fact that the men who formerly preferred the colored barber, now prefer the white.

At the close of the war the negroes practically had the blacksmith trade in their own hands. They are now nearly all crowded out. I judge this resulted from the negro smiths having inferior appointments,—being often out of iron and suitable material, want of good management, and workmanship inferior usually to that of a neighboring white smith.

The negroes do better in carpentering, for in this they can work as journey workers. They fail in the trades where they have to run the business themselves. The only trade in which they hold what they had in 1865 is bricklaying. They are slowly disappearing as hotel servants, and they seem in a process of being crowded out of all the easier and better paying labors. They are increasing as mail carriers because white men refuse to work with them on an equality. Here again we find the mulattos in the majority. One sees but few full-blood negroes in the mail service.

In 1865 there were set free many colored seamstresses, mostly mulattos. I now know of none in the business as a trade.

One reason why negro farm laborers are becoming scarcer and more worthless every year is not because the whole race is traveling down grade, but because many of them are doing well in buying land and setting up for themselves. Another cause is that many of them migrate to the towns and cities. There some find a precarious living and some do well as porters, carriage drivers, freight and lumber handlers, and in similar work.


CHAPTER VIII

THE NEGRO THE MOST CONTENTED OF ALL RACES


As a race the negroes were more contented, happier, made more progress in morality and practical knowledge, were better fed, better developed, physically and mentally, were more elevated in spirit, had fewer troubles and more pleasures in slavery than in freedom; yet doubtless all or nearly all of them desired freedom, and still prefer it to slavery. I have found a few that preferred slavery, and many that agree with what I have said in comparing their states of slavery and of freedom. They get sentimental pen pictures, telling what good times they had living with "ole master"—how well they were treated, how little trouble they had, how no thought of food and clothing bothered them, for they knew those things would come, and how they looked at ole master's barn and smoke-house and hog-pen and saw plenty, and called them ours.

Of all living men the negro in his contentment is the hardest to disturb. In poverty, in jail, on the rock pile, in slavery or freedom, at home or abroad, he bears his condition with patience, sulks not, broods not over his troubles, seems to think his lot is a matter of course, and enjoys what little pleasure may be found in it. In this respect, he seems fitted for slavery. As far as they were tried, the Indians were unprofitable as slaves. They sulked and failed in health. If freedom has bettered the negroes' condition, it cannot be proved.

The negro had more liberty in slavery than he now has in freedom. In slavery he was always in a good humor, and sang much while at work. A young negro boy in his teens or later, off by himself, had a whoop he would give hours at a time. It was something like this: "eh-oo," with a flute-like change from one note to the other. It was whooped once, and then twice in quick succession. I never hear it now. It gradually ceased during the first twenty years of freedom. The negro's freedom possibly may yet prove the same to him as civilization has to the Indians, and to the South Sea Islanders—more destructive than elevating.

The question now arises, "Can the negro be elevated?" "Yes," say the preacher and the Northern press, "by education and the Gospel he can be elevated." The South looks on with doubt and says nothing. The negro has had freedom now nearly fifty years, and this is the consensus of opinion among those who know the race best—the farmers. The race as a whole is on the down grade. All are not. The opinion prevails almost universally that the negroes are now less intelligent, less moral and reliable, less thrifty and industrious, less polite, less respectful to white folks. That they have more religion, more book knowledge, and are more incontinent and thievish. Some farmers object to employing religious negroes, because they lose too much time attending church.

Their education is a sort of rote training, and they make little or no application of it. It does not enable them to think and reckon upon results. As I have said, the negro must learn by doing; he does not understand what he reads.

I think schools might do some good if a course of instruction and text-books were used different from those used in schools for white children. But if this were done the cry would be raised of discrimination against the negro. As colored schools are usually taught, they hamper the mind more than they develop it. It is unbelievable how the colored pupils mix up unpardonable errors with some correct knowledge—not understanding. They are often put in studies beyond their ability to comprehend.

A seventh grade bright boy in a high school, and even studying Latin, was asked how he was getting on in grammar. He replied, "The 'fessor said we didn't know the verb well enough, and he turned us back to the 'I ams' and the 'you ams.'" One who had completed geography did not know the north, east, south or west sides of the map. Another, on being asked the capital of the United States, said "It's Roosvel." "In what State? In Tennessee or Mississippi?" "It's in Miss'ippi." "In what county, Tate or De Soto?" "It's in Tate." Such questions and answers might be multiplied to any extent. Many answers almost as bad might be quoted from the examinations of colored teachers. If book education has benefited the race, the planters have not found it out.

As before stated, the mind of the black attains its full growth a few years before his body ceases to grow, while that of the white child does not attain its full growth till five to ten years after his body has its full size. There seems to be no great difference between the mental capacity of colored and white children, but before the twenties are reached the breach widens. Either one may greatly improve and strengthen his mind after maturity, as an athlete develops his bodily strength and activity by training. When the mind or body matures it takes on no more growth, but has attained its highest capacity for training. It is like a well-ripened seed, which has within it its greatest capacity for development, but has not attained that development. I would place the matured capacity of the black at about eighteen, and of the white at about thirty. This makes a wide difference in the benefit the two may receive by training.

The negro is capable of learning some by rote education, but his book knowledge, for want of understanding, is of but little use. He cannot understand verbal instructions plainly given; he learns only by showing, by imitating and doing. Much less, then, can he understand book instructions.

As he approaches sexual development, he fails in further book learning. His developing passions seem to rob his mind and conscience of food to administer to the strong demands of his genital organs. He can learn the use of language, but not of grammar, and in all advanced studies like philosophy, logic, mathematics, he is a failure. I am aware that a few negroes have stood well and won honors in great universities, but I have no account of any full-blooded negro among them. I do not believe one in a million of them is capable of such training.

There is a great difference in individual negroes in their comprehension of numbers. I have occasionally found both men and women who could not subtract 9 from 11, or 5 from 7. One I tried, a fifty-year-old man, on these numbers, and by his counting aloud I found he did not subtract at all, but counted to what he thought about right, and then guessed. In subtracting 9 from 11, he counted to 10 and said it left 1,—then again he
counted to 7 and gave that as the remainder. One time he counted 13 and said it left 13; but he finally got it. In this way he could generally subtract one from a number and he would even sometimes miss this. If one will investigate he will find many surprises of this kind.

On the other hand, the investigator will find many negroes surprisingly quick on numbers. Many years ago there was a Virginia negro of remarkable powers of calculation. His gift was first noticed by his counting the number of grains in a bushel of wheat, and next in counting the hairs in a cow's tail. He was as great a prodigy in numbers as Blind Tom was in music. He could multiply, divide, add or subtract any numbers up into the millions seemingly by instinct, but could not tell you how he did it.

Some of the Southern tribes in Africa are deficient in observing quantity. It is related of white traders that they will show a negro a plug of tobacco and sell it to him, then turn about and hand the negro a half plug without the latter's perceiving the cheat. With such foundations to build on, the education of the negro is an up-hill task. Blind Tom knew harmony, but nothing of its laws; the Virginia negro knew numbers, but nothing of rules. Neither one of these prodigies was capable of learning anything in their specialties. All that they had was born into them.

Colburn, a white man and a prodigy in numbers, was capable of great progress in mathematics. If this difference exists in the prodigies of the two races, it must also exist in the ordinary minds of the two races.

Of all races in the world, the negroes are the most superstitious. When a boy I was often out at night in one of the negro cabins where I heard ghost tales, and of tricks and conjuring, and such like strange things till I was afraid to go in the house and had to have some of the negroes carry me. Other boys of my neighbors gave the same experience. Every chronic disease of a negro is attributed to a spell some other negro has put on him; especially if there is anything peculiar about the case.

Last year I employed a cook who threw salt-water on the yard gates, and rubbed the kitchen and dining-room doors with a rag dipped in salt-water. She said she had been tricked by a certain person and was doing this against the effects of it and to keep off any further tricks. When I tried to disabuse her belief in such things, she said: "I know you white folks don't belief in such, but we black folks knows."

In sight of my house there is a home in which a white man was shot to death by his wife a few weeks ago. My cook will not go by that house alone at dusk. No one lives in it now, but many tale's are told of noises heard and lights seen in it at night by negroes.

Six miles from here a fearful cyclone passed a small village, completely demolishing every house and killing quite a number of people, negroes and whites. In the work of rescue the negroes were kind to help, but not one of them could be induced to touch a dead person of their own color, and everywhere they kept close to the white people and could not be separated from them more than a few steps.

The same extreme may be said of their gullibility as I have remarked of their superstition. An auctioneer of patent medicine will set up at some corner; soon a crowd of negroes will gather about him, and buy liberally. One who has never had a pain will buy a bottle of "pain-killer," or anything else that is up for sale. Soon after the war there were certain persons passing through the South claiming to be from the North, selling government land titles to negroes, on condition of a small payment in advance, and giving various reasons for profound secrecy till a certain date. Many negroes were taken in. The negroes for a long while after their freedom lived on the hope of "forty acres and a mule" to be given them by the government.

The innocent creatures are easily led into almost any absurdity, especially if it is anything about politics, proposed by a Yankee. There is only one way he can not be gulled. He believes nothing a Southern man says to him about politics. In sickness, law, debt, fights, troubles with neighbors, he never thinks of going to a man from the North, and rarely to a Republican in the South, for advice or help. He invariably goes to a Southern man, generally to his old master or some of the family if near them. This shows where his real trust is, and where his gullibility is.
 
CHAPTER IX

THE NEGRO LIVES IN THE PRESENT


The negro of the South regards but little the past or the future. He lives preëminently in the present. He can make up with the bitterest enemy and forgive any injury if the present offers any inducement for friendship. He bears malice in his heart not much longer than the time of acquiring it.

In this respect he greatly differs from the Indian, who never forgets an injury or a favor. He will watch twenty years for an opportunity to get revenge; and he will be glad any time to return a favor. The same is true of the white man, but not to an equal extent with the Indian. The negroes are not so cruel as the whites. The higher races, as a rule, are more cruel than the lower races; they are more inventive of means of torture and are more relentless in its application when they give way to their feelings of revenge. The negro has greater apathy to the suffering of an enemy or even of anyone, than the white man, and his sympathies of both friendship and enmity are weak.

The history of the ancient kings and nations; the ten bloody persecutions of the Christians under the Roman emperors; the religious wars, the Inquisition led by Spain, the hundred thousand Protestants butchered in France on St. Bartholomew's day—all these things attest the excessive cruelty of the white man. No nation in Europe is guiltless of such charges.

This, however, is nothing against the Christian religion or the high-grade individual of the proud Aryan race. It shows that these people have most intense feeling. The rule is, the greater the gift, the more ruinous its results are when pursuing a mistaken course. A railway train causes much greater damage when it flies the track than a horse-car or horse and buggy can do. So when man's religious sentiments fly the track, they produce more wreckage of human life than any other powers of his mind. Whatever is potent for the most good, is potent for the most evil. The Indians are cruel, but they never went into wholesale burnings like the pale-faces. The Indians burned only their enemies; the pale-faces burned their kith and kin, if enemies only to their religious convictions. Whole sections of country have been wiped out—men, women, and children—by the sword of religious intolerance. The negroes and the Indians are guiltless of all such barbarity.

The negro's cruelty arises more from a want of sympathy than from malicious revenge. It is provoked almost as much by small offences as by great. His sexual propensities, not his religious sentiment, are the strongest motive powers of his nature, and drive him to commit greater outrages than does his anger, or hatred, or malice, or love, or religious sentiment, or love of money, or any other motive power. Many a brute has killed a small white girl and used the knife to make a bloody way for his hellish lust. And this, too, without anger or hatred of any kind, or any thought of his future suffering for the crime.

One excuse may be given in a slight palliation of his cruelty or rather apathy to human sufferings. The negroes themselves suffer little in comparison to what "white folks" do, either in the pains of bodily affliciton or in the anguish of sorrow. This is a well established fact with regard to their physical suffering; and I can bring to bear the opinion of all Southern planters together with my own observations as to their light mental suffering.

During the days of slavery, husbands and wives, parents and children were sometimes separated. On the day of parting, expressive sobs and signs of sorrow were made, but all was soon over with and most of them were soon as happy as ever. They give more outward expression to any grief or excitement than white people do. Their sorrow for departed relatives is manifested mostly on the funeral occasion. As they live in the present, their memory is little rankled by sorrows, or delighted by the pleasures of the past, and their spirits are sprung but little by any hopes or fears of the future. The penitentiary has few terrors for them.

The greatest legal farce that stands upon the penal code of the nineteenth century is the penitentiary for the negro, and the greatest political folly is investing him with the elective franchise. Gratitude is wanting in him, because it pertains to the past, and malice is wanting, because it pertains to the future.

We will suppose an illustration: A vicious pig is found in the streets of Memphis. The mayor is notified; he calls a council of all his officials; the assembly is gathered; the matter is decided. The city marshal is instructed to take a posse of men and go and arrest the pig without dogs, lest they tear its ears, and to bring said pig into court. The lawyers assemble and a jury is impaneled. After much debating, it is decreed that the pig shall be put in a pen for one year, kept reasonably well on coarse but sufficient food, and then set free—all of course at the city's expense. One can imagine how such a course would punish the pig and reform its nature, and what influence it would have in preventing other pigs from vicious habits.

A negro steals a sheep. The sheriff and magistrate attend to his wants till the session of court. He has no further need to steal a sheep, for the county feeds him. The lawyers from various parts appear; the witnesses are examined and re-examined; and to cut the story in the middle, the case is thoroughly piggified. After he leaves the penitentiary he will soon be found again with wool in his teeth.

He lost no caste, suffered no disgrace, was as well fed and clothed as usual, was not in the least mortified or in any way severely punished. All he suffered was the loss of opportunity for lustful gratification—and that was all the pig suffered. Shakespeare never represented "Much Ado
About Nothing" better than this case does. In stealing the sheep the negro was in far greater dread of being caught and whipped by the owner than he was of court punishment. The whipping-post is the best for all such cases.

One characteristic of the negro, arising from his contented nature, and his disregard of the future and the past, is his want of remorse. No matter how much a negro has injured one, he is little troubled about it. Leave your stock in his care and he may let them die from starvation and want of care, but you will not be able to detect any remorse in him. He may give some little evidence of sorrow that the animal is dead, but he will exhibit no remorse. If he is careless about putting up the gap and thus allows stock to break over and greatly damage his employer's garden or field, he may exhibit anger at the stock, but no hurt of his conscience. If he wishes to leave his employer for a better job, no consideration for the interest of his employer—no matter how great the injury caused by his leaving, he will go; no appeal to his sense of right can induce him to remain. This characteristic of his caused the State of Mississippi to pass a law that a laborer hired for a certain time should not be employed by another party during that time. Our Northern friends made a great complaint of the unjustness of this law, but they do not know the negro and can not learn that different laws and schools ought to be established for the negro and the white man. The nearest extinct trait of his nature is his diminutive conscience. Many exceptions, of course, may be found, but this is a race character.

The old slavery plantation laws are the only ones that have been beneficial to the negro. Under them he was restrained, controlled and put in process of development. It was a petty despotism, but the self-interest of the despot made him merciful to his subjects and made him protect them. No despotism on earth was more mild and merciful than was the average despotism of the old Southern plantation. "The master's lash" was an expression of our Northern cousins by which to sum up all the terrors and horrors of slavery, and was repeated for a thousand times more than its reality justified. It did not severely sting the negro's flesh, mortify his pride or cow his spirit. The negro's flesh is not sensitive to pain like the white man's; he has no great pride of independence so as to be mortified, and no spirit of ambition to be broken. The memory of it was in the past, and he wasted few regrets in that direction; he lived in the present while the lash was laid on and that was soon over with. Slavery accompanied with the lash would kill an Anglo-Saxon, but it was a very different thing with the African. Abolition oratory always made good Yankees out of the slaves except in color. If this oratory had represented facts as they saw it, the negroes would have about all been dead by 1860. If our Yankee brethren understood the negro's nature, his want of gratitude and malice, his incapacity, his contented nature, his want of elevated manhood, as we of the South understand him. I think they would be willing again to kidnap him and sell him into slavery.

Senator Ingalls once wanted to know by what process the negroes in the South, in whose care our wives and daughters were left during the war, and who proved almost universally faithful, have since been transformed into demons of murder and rape?

I must answer that they have never been so transformed, but they have raised a rakish and rapish lot of children. It is the difference between the raising and training in slavery and that in freedom. In slavery the negro was trained and partly raised by white folks; in freedom he is raised by negroes and trained by nobody; in slavery he was raised partly with white children; in freedom, wholly with colored; raised in slavery in close contact with the whites, he learned to be polite and respect white people; in freedom his manners and morals receive little training; in slavery he acquired tribal patriotism of plautian nationality; in freedom he acquires the selfishness of an individual without a tribe; he grows up without culture and refinement and without high esteem for the white race. In slavery he looked to his white folks as protectors in all matters; in freedom, gulled by the Republicans, he looks upon white folks as his political enemies, and is no longer under their restraining influence. As some of them live in laziness, idleness nurses the strongest passion of their natures, and when one of these negroes strolls forth from his uncivilized cabin, and meets a white girl upon the highway, his brutish nature is fired by opportunity and the presence of elevated female attraction; his untutored intellect reckons no consequences, and his lust knows no law but gratification.

Likewise the friends of the outraged consider no law in the execution of their fiery vengeance. All the preaching and editorials and special laws against lynching will no more check the lynching proclivities of the white man, in the case of outraged female chastity, than they will check the negro's propensity to gratify his unlawful lust. True, the race produces only a few of such lustful brutes, but we can not put up with one in a thousand. All races produce some bad characters, and these are the product of the colored race.


CHAPTER X

THE ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE FOLLY


The negro was promoted to the elective franchise on an equality with the white man; no, for the vast majority of the intelligence and wealth of the South was disfranchised. So the former slaves, uniting with the carpetbaggers and a few others, most of whom were of the most ignorant class, ruled the State governments. Not since the writing of history has such folly and political outrage been recorded.

Thousands of years in the jungles of Africa, raised in superstition and cannibalism, under despotic chiefs, and one to two centuries in Southern slavery—such were the qualifications of the negroes for the ballot—the right not to rule themselves but to rule over the Anglo-Saxon race. This political folly was doubtless done to secure a Republican majority in the Southern States. They ought to have known that the white man could be dominated by the negroes in this way only in the presence of an army. And it so turned out. It increased the number of representatives in the South, and the first effect after the withdrawal of the troops was to elect a Democratic President. The second effect was to solidify the South and by the Australian ballot system, to disfranchise practically the negroes. The third effect was to turn the head of the negro and greatly alienate the good will and kindly feelings between the two races. The negroes knew a little of plantation lines and government, but nothing of geography, of State lines and national government. Nothing but blind fanaticism gone crazy over an idea could have induced the intelligent North to perpetrate such political folly.

If it were done to embitter our woes and humiliate our pride, our Northern brethren succeeded in gratifying their unbrotherly hearts. It was fivefold worse than their freeing our slaves, burning our houses, laying waste our lands, and conquering our people. It was torturing the lion fighting in defense of his family, after he had been wounded and caged. Since our Northern friends have quieted their fanaticism and laid aside some of their prejudices, they acknowledge that their reconstruction policy was a "mistake"—not the word by which the South calls it.

But the cry was, "Educate the negro and he will make a good citizen." We have tried that for nearly a half century, and the contrary is the result. He has exchanged common sense for a small quantity of parrot book-learning; energy for laziness; efficiency, for shiftlessness—with a moderate number of good exceptions. The lands have declined most where there are the most negroes.

The American people may as well look the problem square in the face. The negro, as he is, is an incumbrance to the South. Without him, immigration from the old free States and from Europe would pour in, the great plantations would be cut up into small farms, cities would take the place of villages, improved methods of farming would double the value of land, the waste lands would be enriched, and machinery would drive out the one-horse plow.

But it is said the negro is here to stay. That is true if he behaves himself. But think of the black belts where there are many negroes to one white man. When most of these get a smattering of education and begin to want to hold the county offices, and to possess the lands; stirred up by one of their own number or some bad white man, they may organize on a large scale and start out to kill and possess. I will give an instance of this in another chapter. I am of the opinion that it is only a question of time when such attempts will be made, and so are some others. If the attempt should be extensive and succeed somewhat at first, it would be an end of the negro, and the solution of the problem would be crimsoned with more blood than was required to break the bonds of slavery.

At present the negroes are satisfied and peaceable, as much so as at any time since 1865. But times are prosperous and living is easy. What changes may take place in the course of time we know not.

In a former chapter, we gave one side of the crowding-out process,—how the negroes were being crowded out of the trades,—we will now give the other side. The colored people are gregarious. They were so in Africa, they were so in slavery, and are now so in freedom. They have taken whole localities. In many sections of the country one can travel five to ten or sometimes twenty miles without seeing a residence of white occupants. In other sections the white people still live, and employ negro labor. These places are usually near some city. It comes about in this way: some well-to-do person moves to some city or town to engage in business more profitable than farming, or to school his children. Then, when a few have moved out for various causes, the remainder, having only a few neighbors, will soon move for more social advantages and for safety to his females; then all go. And, as no white family wishes to settle in such a neighborhood, negroes flock there for society, or to get cheap rents, and some to buy land.

In every city, certain sections are given up to negroes, in other sections no negroes live. Their residences are nowhere found mixed except on landed estates where the white owners still live and have cabins for those who work their lands. There is a gradual drifting to the rich alluvial and to the prairie lands. They get better wages there, but little or no opportunity to buy land. In such sections the few white people live in the villages, and scarcely any live in the country districts except the bosses of the estates. This separating of the two races continually goes on, the negroes crowding out the white settlers. The class of negroes living where the white people still reside are usually more thrifty and intelligent than where all are blacks. This crowding out of the white people by the negroes in certain sections takes the latter from under the influence of the whites, and there will be found in the later generations a tendency to relapse into the habits of the African negroes.

The race war is already upon us. A few years ago, carloads of negroes seeking work, were driven out of Illinois by State authority. Later the Springfield riots in the same State resulted in many deaths and in many negro homes being burned, and in most of the colored people being driven away. These facts, with many others of the same sort, prophesy evil of a direful nature.

The first thing a young negro spends his surplus for is a pistol; nearly every young negro has one, and when he is drinking, he has no sense, gets mad at nothing, and shoots without cause. Street car and railway conductors often meet with such, sometimes have a shooting match and a death, the negro oftener getting the worst of it. John Barleycorn tells secrets, and here is what he says, both by actions and hints: "The colored race is ready for war whenever they feel equal to it." The white people know and feel that if the black race is not dominated and kept down, bad ones among them will keep the whites terrorized. We will give one instance out of multitudes of such.

A gentleman of one of the first and most intelligent families in the South lived on a country plantation in one of the best parts of the country. He had built himself a fine residence, had raised a family, and was well prepared for comfortable and luxurious living for the remainder of his days. His children all had married and left him and his wife alone. His neighbors were occasionally moving away, but still he was not without white neighbors. They advised him to move to town, that it was dangerous to live as he was. After trying it a few years and feeling uneasy for his wife every time he was out of sight of home, he moved to town, leaving the home he loved, lessening his income and doubling his expenses. He was practically living in a siege. But they say there is no race question. There are like cases by the thousands all over the South. Families everywhere are constantly leaving the country and moving into cities and villages for the same reason. The dread of the colored despoiler of one's home is on the increase, and the cause of it is on the increase. Where it will end the future alone will reveal.

Notwithstanding the encouraging reports of our good missionaries, we must doubt the ability of any of the inferior races to rise to the elevation of the Europeans, or even near to it. The inferior races that have accepted civilization and Christianity have declined. The people of the Hawaiian Islands furnish a mournful example. They live in the crossroads of the Pacific Ocean, accepted Christianity and sought enlightenment, decreased in numbers and efficiency. The foreign residents seized the government and turned it over to the United States.

Many of the Pacific islands, especially those of the South Seas, have been converted to Christianity, and the glowing reports of the missionaries have been read with gladness and joy by the religious world. I have read of none that have increased in numbers or morals, but all I have read of are traveling down grade. The Indians of America furnish another sad example. Missionaries have worked zealously among them from the first settlements to the present day, and civilization is still rapidly pushing them to extinction. To whatsoever people God gives the Bible, the devil gives the bottle. Opportunities and seductions to evil increase, and keep equal step with opportunities and inducements for good. If the tribe turns to the evil more than to the good, it goes down. The bottle kills the body before the Bible saves the soul.

The natives of Australia, Tasmania, and the New Zealand Islands are going like the Indians of America. Civilization and missionaries so far have left no tracks among the natives of Africa. Hayti and Santo Domingo are deplorable examples of freedom and independence. The world has had time to try many of the low grade tribes and races, and in every instance with bad effect.

With great nations, such as China and Japan, sufficient time has not yet passed to be considered test cases. So far, progress seems favorable, but when European civilization and religion shall have become generally recognized and adopted, they may have a very different effect from what we now anticipate—may affect the head only and not the heart. We do not believe that Christianity causes the bad effect, but that the race is not able to stand the corrupting influence of civilized life. This is not strange, when we see so many of our own people, in the enlightened twentieth century, raised under the Gospel, not able to withstand the alluring temptations of civilized life. We should not be surprised at the fall of an inferior race when subjected to the many evils which thin rank after rank of the gallant youths of proud America.

Hugh Miller's opinion of the inferior races was that they would be driven to extinction. The nations of Europe have carved up Africa, and are now colonizing it, and future generations will see whether or not the black men will go, as have the red men of America.

In all I write I wish it considered that I am writing about the negroes as a race, not as individuals. I repeat what Senator Money said in a speech in the Senate: "Our Northern friends like the negroes as a race and despise them as individuals; while we of the South dislike them as a race, but like them as individuals." This is an important distinction, and Senator Money is the first to notice it. I have never employed any white servants, and I greatly prefer colored ones with all their weaknesses. There is still a very kindly feeling among the white people for negroes as individuals. If the Southern people were allowed to make suitable laws and distinctions, they could manage the race as well as they now do the individuals in their employ. Laws suitable to the white man's progress spoil the negro, and laws suitable for the negro would produce a revolution among white people. What restraint would our laws have upon the Tartars, the Moors, or the Hottentots?


CHAPTER XI

THE CARPETBAGGERS AND RIOTS


In this chapter we can speak but briefly of the carpetbaggers, and that only to show the gullibility of the colored race. If one wishes a good history of the terrible days of reconstruction he is referred to the history of those times by that admirable writer, Gen. Stephen D. Lee.

It was through the influence of the carpetbaggers that the negro riots of the South were gotten up. The meanest and dirtiest class of human beings that were ever in the South were these cormorants, and we may add to them many of the scalawags amongst us, the meanest of the negroes not excepted. They were at the bottom of the riots and were encouraged in their diabolical work by the misguided press of the North, by Congress and by the military authority of the Southern divisions, and when we think of the pulpit, we must say, "Et tu Brute!"

Every riot resulted in the killing of a few negroes as a matter of necessity—to quell the riot and insure self-protection. Our Northern friends were opposed to this method and advised us to refer such cases to the courts. When a mob comes and threatens the burning of your home, the taking of your life and your children's lives, and the deflowering of your females, it would be a genteel course to wait till your family is killed, and then appeal to the courts! And to carpetbag courts! Yet this very thing is what we were often punished for not doing.

The carpetbaggers who gulled their dupes into these atrocities, would write blood-curdling stories of such affairs to Congress and to Northern editors, whose gullibility was never surpassed by any people, except by the poor deluded negroes themselves, beside whose woes their tear-shedding editorials pictured the white people of the South as most cruel, and as untamable as savages. In this way the carpetbaggers flourished twelve years till the beginning of President Hayes's administration. They gulled the poor negroes with death traps, and gulled the North,—even Congress and President Grant,—into the belief that Democrats were murdering innocent negroes.

If one of these carpetbaggers was killed or run out of the country, a fearful accusation reverberated through the Northern States. The cry was that an awful outrage had been committed, and that a Northern man's life was not safe in the South. The more the Southern press would explain and correct such statements the more was the Southern press abused for defending such atrocities. Out of many riots that occurred in those days, I will give the particulars of a typical one, and one that I was in the midst of.

On Saturday night, June 22, 1874, the negroes near Humboldt, Tenn., got together in large numbers and made their way to Milan, about ten miles north of that place. They arrived near Milan, and waited for two other like companies from near the latter town to meet them. Their purpose was to kill all the white men, old women and children, then take all the large girls, young ladies and youthful wives for themselves. Accomplishing this, they were next to take possession of all the farms, stock, stores and other property and divide it among themselves. To all of which confession was made by those afterwards arrested and tried. Many of them had their wives and farms already picked out.

Two white men rode along near this company about dusk. Some of the negroes thought this a good time to begin their work, so they fired on the two horsemen, who made their escape by dismounting and dashing through the woods. The alarm was given, white men collected, quickly dispersed the colored company, arrested, and tried many of them before a magistrate, and committed sixteen of the most guilty to the county jail at Trenton. But other companies continued to collect and organize during the next three days for carrying out their designs. All the white men, and especially the white women, were alarmed beyond measure. Now add to these well-established facts the thousand rumors of multitudes of negroes gathering here and there, of attempts, of burnings, of attacks, of threats, and you will have a faint idea of the excitement and alarm of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, for there were many negroes in that section.

I was in the midst of it, though I was not a resident of that place. About five o'clock in the afternoon I stopped at a widow's house who had several daughters—special friends of mine. Her son was out with the white men looking after the negroes. The lady and her daughters had just come up from the woods where they had been hiding during the day, all badly frightened, and so was I. I had heard enough that day, and seen enough frightened folks to frighten anybody. She asked me to stay all night, and said that she was badly alarmed. I had urgent business to go on and saw no good I could do, for if the negroes should come I would only lose my life. Besides, I was afraid to stay. Yet I did not have the heart to leave them. Let come what would, I decided to stay. What made the matter worse, the son had the only gun with him. I should not fail to mention that a faithful old plantation negro of the lady's was still out with the horses hiding in the woods.

However, nothing happened to us that night. The next morning the son came in, having heard many reports. I left and drove into Milan, and on arriving there, I learned that masked men had gone to Trenton Tuesday night, had taken the sixteen negroes out of jail, had shot five or six of them to death, and that the remainder had gotten away amid heavy firing. The effect was electrical. By daylight the negroes all over the country knew it. On Tuesday scarcely a negro could be found at anyone's house; by nine on Wednesday morning, scarcely a residence of a white person could be found without negroes; they had gone to those whose land they had been working or to their old masters and asked protection, declaring they had not been in the riot. They told the story of the killing at Trenton and said they were afraid. Thus ended the rising and the riot.

The people well understood the most effectual and the quickest way to put down this rising, extensive in its ramifications, appalling in its designs, and in the imminence of its horrifying execution. No community ever felt more relief in their escape from the scalping knife of an Indian raid than did the Milanese, especially the women, when all was quiet again.

The people knew that to save themselves they must kill a few negroes. Would they go out and begin to shoot indiscriminately, or shoot only those whom they knew to be guilty? There was no time to wait. They chose the latter. They shot some and pretended to shoot at the others, but purposely let them escape to spread the news. No other arrests were made, although many of the guilty ones were known. No innocent negro was hurt, but many guilty ones escaped. The negroes taken from the jail confessed that they had organized three companies in the county for the purpose of killing the whites and taking possession of all they desired, as we have just stated. They had bought all the buckshot and ammunition in several of the stores, and were evidently prepared for war.

The people of Milan and of the South were fully persuaded that this and other riots were gotten up for the special purposes of "waving the bloody shirt" and of prolonging carpetbag and military rule in the South. The instigators of this riot were tenfold meaner than the deluded negroes who attempted it. They knew about how it would terminate. They were the most selfish and hell-inspired men in the United States, either in the penitentiary or out.

The potent carpetbagger touched it off to suit his Republican friends in the North who wielded the sword at the time. The Northern press took it up, and tales of fiends, of brutal savagery, and the wailings of dusky innocence reverberated along the lands of our government saviors and national plunderers and warmed up the hearts of the sword-bearers who threatened to plunge their steely blades into the brutal blood of the negro killers.

The Southern press became demoralized and condemned the lynching and the religious press held up its pious hands in horror. And well they might, for military discipline still prevailed in the South. Federal soldiers or ex-Federal soldiers could shoot down a Southern man with impunity. To attempt to defend these lynchers was almost as much as one's life was worth.

I wrote an account of the affair and sent it to the Milan paper, explaining and justifying the course of the Milanese, but did not charge it on the carpetbaggers or in any way berate the Northern press. I asked the editor to advise with the leading men of the place, and if they thought it prudent to insert the article in his paper, to do so. They thought it not prudent; that it would be unsafe for me and for them, and I would be arrested as one of the lynchers and would probably be condemned, as the prosecution could prove anything they wished, and that it would likely provoke the Federal government to make many arrests and bring on much trouble.

This bit of history, I think, is worthy of being preserved, as showing the spirit of the North at the time the extremity to which the South was
reduced, the unparalleled wickedness of the carpetbagger, and the gullibility of the negro. The negroes were "as 'fraid as death" of Northern authority and Federal soldiers. Why did they not fear the authority and soldiers in this instance? There can be no question but that they had permission and were told that the lands and property belonged to them and that they were fools if they did not take it.

In such times brave men reck not the gory wailings of misguided philanthropists, nor the gnashing teeth of relentless victors, but strike at once for the relief of their families. The Milanese acted with prudence and the easiest way for safety. They shed no innocent blood. The time is now come when the good men of the North read with shame the history of their ancestors trying to force negro equality on the South, as they are now ashamed of their earlier New England ancestors putting witches to death. I cannot see that the negroes were so much to blame in this riot. They were deluded, and were persuaded by those who gave them freedom. Even then they loved their former owners and were good friends of the white people, but they were considering their rights and relations with the whites as a race question. This is an illustration of Senator Money's dictum about the individual and the race.


CHAPTER XII

A NEGRO AUDIENCE


The negro is a great admirer of oratory and is easily influenced by oratory that is on the side of the majority, but it must be of a particular kind. To establish any point before a colored audience, if it is on their side of the question, the orator must make a few statements, coherent or incoherent, pertinent or impertinent, and then wind up with a kind of assertatory ridicule, giving a peculiar twang to his voice, and his point is proved beyond a doubt, and responded to with stormy applause. One well-arranged effort in a few short sentences will down pages of fine logic and elevated oratory. I will narrate one oratorical duel of this kind to illustrate my meaning.

When prohibition was before the people of Tennessee, some time in the early eighties of the nineteenth century, a debate was arranged for between ex-Governor Hawkins, a Republican, and Col. Thos. Richardson, at Ripley, both able lawyers. The Governor was a popular man even with the Democrats, having been elected governor in a strong Democratic State. Colonel Richardson was a crafty lawyer and well understood the negro's nature and capacity. I listened to their speeches and studied them and their effects. I did not well see how Governor Hawkins's speech could have been improved. It was full of plain common sense, and brought down to the comprehension of the negroes; and I thought it had a fine effect. Much pains had been taken by the prohibitionists to gather a large crowd of negroes and to have them up near the speakers, while the white audience took back seats. The Governor, to make his speech impressive, quoted largely from Mr. Blaine, who at that time was at the height of Republican popularity. To excite prejudice of the other side he handled without gloves ex-President Jefferson Davis, who had just written his Texas letter against State prohibition.

Colonel Richardson was a Democrat, so all the advantages were with Governor Hawkins. In a single sentence he ruined Mr. Blaine and all the good things Governor Hawkins had said about him. He said, "And here is Jim Blaine with his striped breeches on, that stole the Little Rock Railroad, and he says poor white folks and niggers mustn't be allowed to have whiskey," winding up with a peculiar twang on what Jim Blaine had said. The shock was electric and accomplished its work. It can not be surpassed for tactical oratory. It was suited to the hearers and carried them by storm. It was the kind of ridicule exactly to their liking and spoken in a style they appreciated and on the side of the question to which they leaned.

They very highly respected Mr. Blaine, but when Colonel Richardson called him "Jim Blaine," they lost respect for him; when he put striped breeches on him, they had a contempt for him; when the Colonel made him steal the Little Rock Railroad, they felt like putting him in the penitentiary; but when this "Jim Blaine" was represented as connecting poor white folks and "niggers" together, giving their race the offensive epithet of "niggers," it was more than they could stand. "Poor white folks" meant what is sometimes called "poor white trash," a class for which the negroes have a profound contempt. The peculiar twang which the speaker put into "Jim" Blaine's mouth carried the whole sentence red hot, burning its impress upon the negroes' minds. No previously stated facts or arguments on earth could have stood against this thrust. "Down with Jim Blaine with his striped breeches!" was the cry, in their stormy voices, and the work was done. Blaine was ruined, Hawkins was ruined, and prohibition was killed with that audience by that single sentence.

Having finished Mr. Blaine, the speaker next turned his attention to Jefferson Davis, a name often used in those days by Republicans to conjure up goblins to frighten negroes. Having won the admiration of the audience, it was easier for the speaker to remove their prejudice against Mr. Davis. But with whiskey on his side and Mr. Blaine on the other side, he succeeded astonishingly well. The sentence he used was about this: "Here is honest old Jeff Davis who used to own many negroes and knew how to treat them. He says, 'A negro has as much right to drink whiskey as his rich master ever had.'" This was the end of a climax about Mr. Davis; it went home, and they hurrahed for "honest old Jeff Davis! He's my man!" This is the only occasion on which I ever heard any negro saying anything in favor of Mr. Davis.

If there ever was a character a negro admired, it was a rich slave owner; if there ever was one he had a contempt for, it was "poor white folks." Colonel Richardson proved Mr. Davis was honest and fair because he was for the negroes having whiskey as well as rich white folks; he clinched it by connecting together the negroes and their rich masters; he proved Mr. Davis was a great man because he once owned many slaves, and that he was a good man because he treated them well,—and they had the speaker's word for it. I have given the two important points in one speech, one to ruin a character that stood the fairest and very highest in the colored man's opinion; and the other, to raise a character from the very lowest depths to the highest position of true greatness. No speaker ever more thoroughly accomplished his purpose and with less seeming effort. The reader can judge for himself of the amount of logic used.
 
CHAPTER XIII

SINGING, CORNSHUCKINGS, AND RELIGIOUS REVIVALS


The negroes are the finest natural singers of all races. They can sing their lives away without wearing out their throats. They can sing as loud as they can holler and that without strain of voice, while the white man can not do half so well. Often in revival meetings the words of their songs can be distinguished a quarter of a mile away, while the white man's words in song can rarely be distinguished at any distance. The cultured voices of white people are nearly all strained, a condition easily observed by the throat sound. Their organs of speech when singing seem to sit in a sort of artificial arrangement which prevents the clear articulation of words; the negroes' are loose and in a natural position and capable of the best articulation. Of all places where words are useless because not heard is in our fine church choirs, whose jaws and tongues seem stiff and throat lessened and cramped—all capable of throwing out sounds—fine musical sounds—without words. The long high-toned scream seems to be the only note that comes out in its native dress; and of this, women singers are usually very proud. The song of a company of white singers is a concord of pleasing harmony; in a company of negroes it is the same, with a spirit doubling the sentiment of clearly pronounced words, lifting the soul to the highest degree of ecstasy.

There was a time when this wild and heavenly spirit was heard in our camp-meetings and other religious revivals, but since the organ, the horn and the fiddle have been introduced to accompany the voice, congregational singing has ceased and the song is turned over to instruments and voices without words or spirit—fine music though!

One ought to be able to sing as loud as he can holler and to be understood as clearly; and when one can not, it is because the organs of speech are in some way cramped—a fact of which the singer is usually unconscious and he will invariably deny it. The test I have given is fully reliable. I can lecture by the hour without tiring my voice, but I can not read twenty minutes without a breakdown, yet I am unconscious of the strain and can not correct the defect.

If I were going to attempt a high order of cultured song voice I would frequently sing with negro congregations to acquire an uncramped use of the organs of speech and to catch the art of putting spirit into the music and sentiment into the words. But one of these cultured singers would disdain to stoop to learn of negroes whose voices were never trained. To illustrate: Once there was a great picture on exhibition in Philadelphia, a picture of pigs eating out of a trough, well arranged and beautifully in order. A teamster came up, his pants stuffed in his boots, and his long driving whip in hand, and after looking at the picture a while, he said that wouldn't do for pigs. The bystanders ridiculed him for not knowing a fine picture, but the author of the picture followed him to one side and asked him what was the matter with the picture. He replied about this: "I know nothing about painting, but I do know about pigs eating in a trough, and I never saw them stand to the trough like drilled soldiers at a table. Some of them always had one or both forefeet in the trough and often one was standing in the trough." The painter thanked him and painted his picture over. The negroes may know nothing of scientific choir singing, but they have a flexibility of voice, a clear articulation, and a spirit of song that are rarely found in any well trained white singer; and the latter would do well to learn a lesson from the pig painter, and go to the negroes and learn. A negro can sing all day and never tire.

The cornshucking was the negroes' great time for song. To get up a big cornshucking it was only necessary to invite one's neighbors who would give the negroes permission to attend. No one would miss an opportunity. The corn to be shucked was thrown in a pile by the side of the crib, and the crib uncovered, or the cover tilted high on one side, for many cribs were constructed so that this could be done. From fifty to two hundred negro men would come in and gather around the pile, shuck and talk for a while, then raise a song, call for the jug, which, being passed around, two captains would choose hands, divide the pile by a pole or rope stretched from the crib across the middle of the pile. Then each captain with his party to his own side started in for a race. Some big song leader would strike up a corn song, all would join in the chorus, and then the corn would fly. Two hundred hands would keep more than one hundred ears all the time in the air on the way to the crib. The little boys would push back the shucks (our Northern friends say "husks" and "cornhusking," but the husks are the skins of the grain, called "bran") and carry them off and put them in rail pens.

The song would move up, the jug would pass round, all drinking from the mouth of the jug, corn would fly faster and the negroes get happier. The song leader would often make his own words. The chorus was generally a prolonged haloo of several notes and vowels but no consonants—sometimes it was "Round up the corn," sometimes the song leader would sing, "Ole master, I's mighty dry;" then came the chorus, "Ole master sen' roun' the jug!" or the chorus, "Oh, dat whiskey's mighty good!" But the jug would answer the song. The time would occasionally change, and sometimes another song leader would take it up, but the song would scarcely stop till the pile was finished.

While all this was going on at the crib, the women at the house were in a great stir getting up a big supper, bountiful for both white and black, for usually a moderate number of white men took part, and a large number of white boys; and often a number of young ladies were present, and quite a number of colored feminines.

When the corn was all "rounded up," the proprietor was demanded by the negroes, and two negroes from the winning side were honored by lifting the proprietor on their two shoulders, one leg resting on the shoulder of the one to his left, and the other on the shoulder of the one to his right. He usually steadied himself by grasping his two hands into the wooly heads of the two negroes. The negroes would allow no proprietor to back out of this process of honoring him. They then marched to the proprietor's house and several times around it, all the hands following with the corn song in full blast. He was at last set down at his door, and the jug passed around again. The whites and blacks then separated, the whites going to the "big house" to supper and the negroes to the kitchen, which was usually too small for their numbers, in which case the table was set out of doors. After supper the negroes spent some time in music and dancing. The banjo, tambourine, and fiddle were most commonly the instruments, and the dance was no kin to anything white folks ever try. Many went out, each to him or herself, remaining in one place, and beating time by striking the heel and the toes upon the ground with varying whirls of the legs and steps, all of which had names. "To cut the pigeon wing" was the common and the most admired. Sometimes the instruments would cease, and an expert at patting would keep the time for the dancers. He would do this by clapping his hands, beating on his knees and patting his foot—all of it delightfully indescribable.

These dances would lift their souls to ecstasy; their faces would beam with joy, and the clumsiest negro would dance with a suppleness and wild grace that one would judge impossible on seeing his movements at other times. The dissipation, however, was not allowed to be continued too late, and as often as the jug went round I never saw a negro drunk on such an occasion. Their jollity I suppose greatly helped to eliminate the effects of the whiskey. These cornshucking dances, in peculiar attractiveness of movements, as far excel the dances of the ballroom of the elite white people as congregational singing of the blacks surpasses the cultured whites. The young ladies and young men had their amusements in "the big house," but the boys stayed out and watched the negroes, and sometimes all others would go out and look on a while.

Nowadays the negroes sing and dance very little compared with what they did in the days of slavery. They now turn their attention more to religious revivals. They often continue a meeting many weeks. I knew one revival to run many weeks without stopping day or night; some were coming and some were going all the time. I do not wish to be understood as intimating that there is no reality in their religion, but so many of them shout because others do, and because of hypocrisy, and because they think it is their duty to shout and hurrah for the Lord, that their revivals sometimes appear farcical. A negro woman was once asked if she shouted the night previous, and she replied, "No, it was my night to hold, but I won't have to hold to-night and I can shout." When the shouters are not held, they are likely to hurt themselves by springing high in the air and falling over backwards. They have great faith in the holders catching them as they fall, so they lunge and plunge as much as they are inclined. Some have suggested that the negro's idea of religion is to shout, and that he does not comprehend the spirituality of it. The idea with a few is this: "I's been a bad nigger dis week; ef I don' git up and shout for de Lord to-night He'll git me, so I'm gwine do my best for Him." But with all this there seem to be many good and true Christians in their churches.

Their singing at these revivals is grand and is admired by everybody. They are fond of chorus singing and sometimes the leader makes his own words, the same as he used to do sometimes in their corn songs. Some of these are far fetched; here is one:

"The fore wheels run by the grace of God
And the hind wheels run by glory!"​

Chorus

"Hallelujah!"​

There is no question in my mind but that they far excel white people in congregational singing. They are better natural vocalists every way than the whites. Every one who can ought to attend a few live negro revivals, for the negroes become wholly absorbed in the swelling volume of vocal strains that can be heard a mile, forget the sins of the past and the gaunt and hungry to-morrow, and their souls are enraptured in the glories of heaven-born song.


CHAPTER XIV

PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE


Under this heading we shall be very brief, as we have written a separate volume with the same title.

"And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." Too early for separate nations or tribes of Adam's children, "The sons of God," or "the angels of God" in the Septuagint, were strangers to the Adamites, an alien race, mentioned not by name but by description. "The Sent of God" or "Sons of God" simply meant "Comers," another race of men that migrated to Adam's Territory,—and when they saw the fair white daughters of Adam, being a powerful race, they took them wives from these.

"And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh [same as sons of God]. Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." (As short lived as the Sons of God.)

"There were giants in the earth in those days." "Giants" did not originally signify men of huge stature, but meant "earthborn," an appellation in antiquity for tribes or people when their origin was unknown and when the best account that could be given of them was that they were born from the earth where found. "The giants," then, in the sixth of Genesis, must refer to people living as Adam's neighbors, and "the angels" as a people who came there after the Adamites settled the country.

"And also after that the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men [of the Adamites] and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men, men of old [high antiquity to the Antediluvians], men of renown." "And God saw that the wickedness of men was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man." ... "The earth [people] was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with violence ... for all flesh [all races] had corrupted his way"—intermarried, that is.

This mongrel race of Adamites and the sons of God were violent, revolutionary, and incapable of self-government, as all mixed races from that day to this have been. "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. [According to all God's laws.] And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." Noah was a just man—did not corrupt his flesh with an alien wife "and perfect in his generations." There was no alien blood in any of his three sons, all were pure blooded, registered Adamites. So the Lord destroys the mixed races of that day together with all Adamites except the eight pure-blooded ones saved in the Ark.

In the fourth chapter of Genesis we find the history of Cain. It has never been settled as to what Cain's sin was that caused his offering to be rejected. It has been suggested by J. W. Minnick, of Grand Isle, Louisiana, that he had married an alien wife, and there is some reason for it. He was driven out from the face of the earth and from all his people; God had determined there should be no corrupt marriages. Cain was not afraid Adam or Eve would slay him. God talked with Cain and urged him to give up his alien wife. "And the Lord said, why art thou wroth?" "If thou doest well shalt not thou be accepted?" "If thou doest not well sin lieth at the door," for the reception of an alien wife—send her away and it will all be right. Seeing that if he retained this wife his brother would supplant him in the birthright, he slew his brother. The Lord, "And unto thee shall be his desire and thou shalt rule over him," provided you give up your alien wife. This seems to explain the trouble there was about the birthright.

Cain said "My punishment is greater than I can bear, for those savage people amongst whom you send me will slay me," for there was no one else to slay him. But when God promised him that these people should not kill him, his punishment was not greater than he could bear. So he went out and perhaps lived amongst his wife's people. Then he raised a family and builded a city. At any rate Cain must have married an alien wife either before he was exiled or after. The people he was afraid would kill him were certainly not of Adam's line.

"They were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage and knew not till the flood came and took them all away" (Mat. 24, 38). This is significant language, if intermarrying was their great sin on which account the Flood was sent upon them.

St. Jude, in referring to Genesis, says: "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation He hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the day of judgment. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh [alien wives] .... Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain." Cain's being mentioned here with the angels of God carries the reference to the angels in the vi. of Genesis, and seems to confirm the explanation we have given of the sons or angels of God that they were immigrants to the land of the Adamites. And this reference to the Sodomites and others being guilty of unlawful lusts and saying they had gone in the way of Cain, explain's Cain's sin in not having his offering respected, which we must think was the sin of bringing an alien woman in his door.

"On the day of Pentecost there were Jews dwelling at Jerusalem, out of every nation under heaven," yet only the leading Caucasian nations were mentioned. Universal terms in scripture have certain limitations. Out of every Adamic or Caucasian nation under heaven he gives the limitation.

Our Saviour said, "The Gospel must be published among all nations" before the fall of Jerusalem. St. Paul said that this Gospel had been preached to all nations in his time, yet we have no account of its having been preached to any but the Caucasians. "The Gospel which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature [of Adam's race] under the sun, whereof I, Paul, am a minister" (Cor. 1-25). And this Gospel shall be preached to all the world for a witness, and then shall the end be" (Mat. xxiv. 14-16).

Moses, when he was old, prophesied much good to the Israelites if they would continue obedient in the ordinances of the Lord but dire calamities if they should not. Here are some of them: "Thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead thee." ... "And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people from one end of the earth even to the other; and among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot find rest; but the Lord shall give thee a trembling heart and failing eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy wife shall hang in doubt and thou shalt fear day and night and shalt have none assurance of thy life."

No prophecy has ever been more literally fulfilled than this. It seems that from the days of Christ that killing, persecuting, and expelling Jews and confiscating their property has been the business of all Caucasian nations and the bloody work in Eastern Europe and in much of Western Asia still goes on. The persecution of Christians under pagan Rome or of the Protestants during the inquisition never equalled in cruelty or universality the persecution of the Jews. The most remarkable part of their history is that any were left. But a remnant were to be preserved. Note this well. They were to be "scattered among every nation from one end of the earth even to the other." The fulfillment is, they are scattered only among the white or Caucasian nations and none other—outside of these and those mixed with Caucasian, no Jews can be found, but wherever there is a Caucasian settlement, there will Jews be found. Among the Indians of America, the negroes of Africa, the Pacific Islands, Australia, China, Japan, Sumatra, none are found except where the white race has made settlements. All nations, then, "from one end of the earth even unto the other," must refer only to all Adamite or white nations, otherwise the prophecy is not fulfilled.

The Eunuch of Ethiopia was a white man and so were the Ethiopians. The Manchus were once called Tartars, and so they were, but settling among the Mongolians they have been so completely absorbed by that race that their Tartar origin cannot now be detected. At one time blue eyes were occasionally seen among them and so were Jews; but blue eyes and Jews are now among them no longer. The Tartars of Western Asia are almost pure Caucasians.

Why is it that all these white nations have at various times tried with most persistent efforts to rid their respective nations of every Jew in it, and yet none has ever succeeded? Why is it that to this day they are among all these nations "an astonishment and a by-word."

"And hath made of one blood all the nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation" (Acts, 17-29). This chapter is often referred to as evidence of the unity of the human race, but it doubtless means only all Caucasian nations. It clearly refers to the tenth chapter of Genesis and in substance is a quotation from it. We quote from the tenth chapter as evidence that Paul alluded to this, and that he meant no inspiration of his own.

"These are the sons of Shem after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations." The same language is used with reference to the sons of Ham and Japheth. The writer then sums up all together: "These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations, and by these were the nations divided after the Flood." Of course all these were of one blood. All were strictly of the Causacian race, white race, Adamites. And the same lands are all inhabited by Adamites to this day. But since the writing of the book of Genesis some of these nations have become a little mixed with negroid, and with Mongolian races.

The old idea that the Hamites were negroes was a far-fetched conclusion to start with, and has been proved false. The sons of Ham were the great leaders in civilization and empire, as in Egypt and Babylon.

The word "Ham" with its derivatives is doubtless the most universally distributed word in Caucasian languages, but not in others is it found. It means home, father, chief, king, wisdom, empire, heaven, light, sun, God and hundreds of other things. In only one sense does it mean
black; it means "charred," the effect of fire, the sun, or Ham. Char itself is derivative of Ham, cham or cham. We get one meaning of Ham when it is added to Abram's name, making it Abra-Ham, because he was to be the father of nations.

All Caucasian races can be traced to Noah by history, mythology, customs, language, and tradition. No other races can be traced to Noah by any one of these methods.


CHAPTER XV

MISCEGENATION AND MIXED RACES


Some have suggested that miscegenation would solve the negro problem. This will never be tried in the South. The prejudice against it is increasing, and the number of mulatto children is decreasing. I do not say white men are getting more virtuous, but they are getting more cautious. Mulattos, it is generally conceded, have less physical endurance, and less procreative ability than either the negroes or the whites. This is a slow elimination of the less fit to maintain the struggle for life. The mulatto is quicker and brighter and often has all the aspiration of a white man, and he is dissatisfied with his place in nature. Being made up of unlike and discordant elements of character, he has a nature warring with itself, restless and discontented. It is so with all mixed races and breeds of men and beasts.

Men who advocate the mixing policy are certainly not acquainted with the history of mixed races.

By distinct races we mean such as the Aryan or Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Malayan, the Australian, the American Indian, and the Negro. Jews, Turks, Russians, French, English, are all the same. The most unlike of these races are the Aryan and the Negro.

All mixed races are violent, incoherent, incapable of national government, revolutionary, and are on the down grade of civilization. If this statement is correct we must conclude that miscegenation is a sin against God and a violation of the laws of nature.

In Mexico the Spanish, Indians and negroes are mixed. The Spanish ruled for a long while, till the mixed classes became numerous and revolutionary. From the day of mixing of considerable numbers enlightenment declined, and from the day Mexico gained her independence till the rule of Diaz, her people increased in violence, cruelty, revolution; and retrograded in light and learning. Now, that ablest of all modern rulers, President Diaz, by pursuing a wise, generous, and strong course has made life safe in his dominions. Immigration of the Caucasian type has poured into the country, giving the government to the white man; the negro and mulatto have disappeared (so said Bishop Keiner) and the Mistizos (Spanish and Indian) and pure Indians are taking "back seats." But it was thought the negro was in Mexico to stay, for there were many there. I suppose revolution killed him out. If he did not stay in Mexico and the Indians are not staying in the United States, will the negro stay here? But we are not having revolutions, and he may stay.

The history of Mexico is the history of all Spanish America and of Brazil, except that the negroes have not yet everywhere disappeared.

All north and northeast Africa was settled by white people. Egypt, Ethiopia, now called Nubia, the Barbary States along the Mediterranean coast in some way, mostly through negro slavery, smutted their color, and have been going down since the fall of Carthage.

The Aryans settled in Northern India and in their advancement south they met with a negro race with straight hair, the most degraded of all human beings, except, perhaps, the Bosjemens of Africa. They lived without clothes, without marriage, and without shame. From these a mongrel breed sprang up, and afterward was mingled with Mongolians, and two thousand years of retrogression, revolutions, and misgovernment have resulted.

Syria, Persia, and all Western Asia from the Indies to the Balkans in Europe, mingled with Mongolians and some mixed tribes from the North, have passed from being the most enlightened and progressive portion of the world, many parts being as densely settled as Belgium or Holland of to-day. They have been sinking for twenty-five hundred years, and if they have yet checked their downward course, we are not aware of it. The mixed blood in most of these is now nearly eliminated and we may hope for reformation, for repeopling the country and again cultivating the waste lands.

Professor E. D. Blyden, late president of Liberia College, a full-blooded negro, wrote a gloomy account of the mulattos of Liberia. He said, "They are inefficient, die early, are easy to take cold, and of many mulattos sent to Liberia to tone up the blood about all have disappeared."

The following statistics are taken from The Issue, collated by Mr. A. H. Stone of Mississippi:

"By the census of 1900 there were 8,833,994 negroes in the United States, 87.4 per cent. of which are in the 13 Southern States. In the State of Mississippi there are over 800,000 negroes; this is more than all free States and Territories, including West Virginia, together. If the New England States had as large a percent. of their population negroes, they would have 7,737,836 of the African race. The Northern States have not enough of the colored population to consider a race problem, yet they dictate the policy to the States that have practically all the negroes. In Mississippi 141 per cent. are negroes (I suppose he means 141 to 100 whites, or about 71 per cent.), and in New York 1.1 per cent. There are more negroes in Mississippi than there are in Cape Colony or Natal, even with the great Zulu land annexed to the latter; more than in the Transvaal, more than in Jamaica and the Barbadoes combined, more than in Cuba and Porto Rico combined, more than in Hayti or Santo Domingo.

"In 1890 the negroes and mulattos were listed separately in the census reports. It was found that where there are the fewest colored people, the largest per cent. of mulattos were found. In the South Central States, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, the mulattos were but 14 per cent. of the negro population, while in the New England group, they were 32.7 per cent., in Mississippi 11.5 per cent., in Massachusetts 36.3 per cent., in Maine 53.8 per cent., in Michigan 53.8 per cent., in Georgia 9.9 per cent., in South Carolina 9.7 per cent."

We in the South have often been berated for our rakishness with the negroes, but it seems the strongest abolition States believe in trying the miscegenation solution of the race problem.

With the history of the mixed races before us, think how deplorable the consequences in the South would have become if the philanthropists of the North could have succeeded in forcing social equality for the negro upon the South and the miscegenation of the races. The mixture of fiery blood and the hellish lust of opposing natures would soon have wrought the ruin of one of the most moral, polished and cultured people on earth, and caused a shudder of horror to thrill the world.

We must now add a few words about the Far Eastern question. It has been suggested that if China should wake up and she and Japan should unite, their hordes might overrun almost any part of the world. I am not afraid of this, but we stand in greater danger than from the armies of the Mongolians.

If we do not protect our Pacific coast from the yellow immigrants, in twenty years or less a million of these Orientals will come to America annually. European immigration to our Atlantic coast will be a small affair in comparison with it. It will then require only a few decades to people the Pacific States with more yellow inhabitants than white. Miscegenation will do the rest. The apathy of the Far East with the wild enlightenment and aggressive spirit of the West will produce an ungovernable, revolutionary, independent, self-loving people, which will cost the United States ten times more to keep them under than the whole Pacific Coast will be worth. Next their migrations would roll over the Rocky Mountains and inundate the Mississippi Valley and corrupt the blood of a majority of the people—and perhaps bring about the great battle in which "the blood shall flow to the bridle bits of the horses." Think of four hundred million of half-starving people on the move to the land of plenty and not checked. How long would it take to overrun it?

[* * *]​

I quote the following from the May number of the Century Magazine of 1908, written by Prof. Booker T. Washington on "Negro Homes":

"The first negro home that I remember was a log-cabin about fourteen by sixteen feet. It had a narrow door which hung on rusty worn-out hinges. The windows were mere openings in the wall, protected by a rickety shutter [shutters] which was closed in winter, but which usually hung dejectedly on uncertain hinges against the walls of the house.

"Such a thing as a glass window was unknown to this house. There was no floor, or rather, there was a floor, but it was nothing more than the naked earth. There was only one room, which served as kitchen, parlor and bedroom for a family of five, which consisted of my mother, my brother, my sister, myself and the cat. In this cabin we all slept and ate, my mother being the cook on the place. My own bed was a pile of rags on the floor in one corner of the room next to the fire place. It was not until after the emancipation that I enjoyed for the first time in my life the luxury of sleeping on a bed. It was at times, I suppose, somewhat crowded in those narrow quarters, though I do not remember having suffered on that account, especially as the cabin was pretty thoroughly ventilated, particularly in the winter, through the wide openings between the logs in the walls.

"I mention these facts here because the little slaves' cabin in which I lived as a child, and which is associated with all my earliest memories is typical of the places in which the great mass of the negro people lived a little more than forty years ago; and there are thousands of negro men and women living to-day in comfortable and well-kept homes who will recognize what I have written as a good description of the homes in which they were born and reared. Probably there is no single object that so accurately represents and typifies the mental and moral condition of the larger proportion of the members of any race fifty years ago as this same little slave cabin."

With regard to Prof. Booker T. Washington's statement about his own cabin and raising I have nothing to say, but as to his remarkable assertion that this is typical of the manner in which slaves in the South were generally raised and treated, he will not find any believers among the white population of the South now living who were raised before 1860. I have stated his language to quote a number of old men and they have pronounced it false in no unqualified terms. I was raised in a section where the negroes were about equal to the white people. I was among negroes, played with them, wrestled with them, fought with them, worked with them, owned them; but never ate with them or slept with them. I loved my negroes and they loved me and would have fought for me.

White boys were fond of going out to negro cabins after supper to hear the negroes talk and tell tales, witch stories, ghost stories—Joel Chandler Harris has told you of many such. Many of his stories I heard when a boy long before they were ever put in book form. In those days country school boys were fond of going home with one another and in this way I visited more than one hundred negro cabins, and among all these I never saw one without a floor, I never saw one akin to the cabin in which Booker T. Washington says he was reared. I traveled over nearly all the counties in West Tennessee and saw much of Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas; I saw thousands of cabins and never saw one with a dirt floor or a negro cabin akin to Prof. Booker T. Washington's. I have never found any person who did see one. It is a fact that in the Gulf States the cabins were better than farther north where there were fewer negroes. If a man owned negroes he was able to build good cabins. I occasionally find such cabins now as Prof. Booker T. Washington's. The worst cabins I knew before 1865 were inhabited by "poor white people"—negroes never say "poor white trash," the white man put that in his mouth.

Wherever one would find a man owning many negroes, he would find a row of good cabins, usually framed with brick chimneys and glass windows; sometimes they were built of logs with stick and mud chimneys, but were always comfortable and had good floors, and the inmates were required to keep their premises in a good sanitary condition. Slaves were valuable and their good keeping was well looked after. It was quite common in the house-wife's room to see a little sick negro sitting in the corner by the fire in the winter time, or lying on a pallet; this was done that the child might have better nursing than it could get in the cabin. It was often remarked that miserly, hard-fisted men were better to their negroes than to their children. I knew some of these myself.

One indubitable evidence that the slaves were well treated before the war, is that the negroes increased much faster than the white people—now the white people increase faster than the negroes. They were more cheerful in slavery than in freedom and much more moral—consumption was scarcely known among them: they were immune from the yellow fever, and I think they were the healthiest people on earth and had less to trouble them. They are now no longer immune from yellow fever, and consumption is making fearful ravages among them.

There never was any large body of people but had some cruel and unreasonable individuals among them. The slave owners were not an exception; there were some cruel masters and some that worked their negroes too hard. I knew one so cruel that his negroes were in the woods a good part of the time, and his neighbors seeing the run-aways would not report them to their master. The man was held in contempt by all who knew him—and so was every man that was cruel to his slaves, or worked them too hard, or fed and clothed them too scantily. But such cases were rare, because, as before said, the stingiest and the most selfish men often made the best of masters, as it was their interest to be such. I challenge the world and all the ages to find a nobler and more humane set of men than the old slave holders of the South. The slaves dreaded no master as much as they did being hired or sold to a Yankee—meaning by this term any man from the free States. The reason was not that the Yankee was a bad man, but that he expected as much from the negro as he had been accustomed to see hired labor in the North perform.

Prof. Booker T. Washington gave pictures of twenty-two fine negro homes scattered over the United States showing what the negroes could do. But he failed to tell us how many of these belonged to negroes and how many to mixed breeds. The latter class represents the white man as much as it does the negro, so they are not to be taken into account in reporting negro prosperity. But they were all written up as if they were of pure African descent. Washington uses the phrase, "my race," when he must mean the mixed breeds only. I mention this to correct the false reports of negro prosperity, for all colors are classed as Africans, yet only the pure African possesses the pure African character, and what the mulattos are doing and how they are progressing have nothing to do with the question, for they display the white man's enterprise as much as they do the negro's.

If I am not mistaken Prof. Booker T. Washington was too young in 1861 to have any extensive knowledge of the condition of the slaves. I doubt whether any reliable man of the South of mature years in 1861 but what will give an emphatic denial of Prof. Booker T. Washington's statement of the condition of the homes of the slaves, and of their general treatment.
 
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