The Negro and the white man

Contents

CHAPTER PA.QE

INTRODUCTION 7

I. THE NEGRO'S ETHNOLOGY..... 9

Introduction

the statement of my views, it has been with no purpose to wound or irritate. In the language of Dr. Samuel Johnson : u I would write down nothing which, in dying, I would wish to blot." I would close, rather than widen, the breach, if any there be, between the races. I would lift my voice always for harmony on the lines of justice and righteousness, as God has ordained them to exist between man and man. I deem him an enemy to his race, be he white or colored, who foments strife, who seeks to breed discontent, division'and hatred. No question can be settled finally and permanently, until it is settled right.

I would reach the great heart of my brother in white. I would assure him that I feel nothing but the sentiment of kindness toward him, and that I recognize that the destiny of the American negro is bound up for weal or woe with his destiny.

I would, in these pages, reach the heart and conscience of my own race, and help them to broader views, better living and nobler aspirations. If, in this desire I should fail, I would feel that my labor had been in vain.

I invoke the charitable criticism of all who may chance to read these pages. I cannot expect all to agree with me in the views I have expressed, or in the conclusions I have reached. But feeling that I have honestly sought to find the truth and to manfully and fearlessly, yet kindly and charitably, give it expression, I send this volume out to the world, earnestly praying that it may be a means of blessing to men.

Chapter I. The Negro Ethnologically Considered

THE word " negro' ' is of Latin origin, derived from niger, which means black. It is applied to the races of the African continent, and to their descendants in the Old and New world.

The Egyptians, Berbers, Abyssinians, and Nubians of Northern Africa are not classed as the negro, though there is a strong admixture of negro blood in most of these. The term negro is not a national appellation, but is applied generally to about one-half of the population of Africa, including the most fertile portion of that continent.

Prof. Willis Boughton, of the Ohio University, in an ably written article, which appeared in the Arena of September, 1896, says:

" The black race has a history. In fact, all history is full of traces of the black element. It is now usually recognized as the oldest race of which we have any knowledge. The wanderings of these people, since prehistoric history began, have not been confined to the African continent. In Paleolithic times the black man roamed at will over all the fairest portions of the Old World. Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, acknowledges his sway. No white man had as yet appeared to dispute his authority in the vine-clad valleys of France or Germany, or upon the classic hills of Greece or Rome. The black man preceded all others, and carried Paleolithic culture to its very height. But the history of all lands has been only a record of succeeding races. Old races have often been supplanted by those of inferior culture, but of superior energy. More often, however, by fusion of different racial types, and by the mingling of various tribes and peoples, have been evolved new races, superior to any of the original types.

" The blacks were a fundamental element in the origin, not only of the primitive races of Southern Europe, but of the civilized races of antiquity as well. History may be said to begin in ancient Egypt, and recede into the dim past, just as far as records and inscriptions lend us light. Still in the Nile valley we find a civilization that has drawn from all succeeding ages expressions of wonder and admiration. Surely these ancient Egyptians were a remarkable people; but who were they? The ruling tribes are called Hamites — the sun-burnt family, according to Dr. Winchell; of Nigritic origin, says Canon Rawlinson. But back of these ruling Hamites were a light-headed people — gay, good-natured, pleasant, sportive, witty, droll, amorous — such are the descriptive terms used in

THE NEGRO ETHNO LOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 11

telling the story of these primitive tribes, who, Dr. Taylor says, lived peaceably in those regions for two thousand years before the advent of the Asiatic invaders. Suggestive as they may seem, such terms are truly descriptive of the inhabitants whom we would expect to find in the Nile valley in ancient times. They were probably as purely Nigritic as are the great mass of our own Africo- Americans.

" When the Hamites and their children were at the height of their power, their influence extended to far greater limits than is ordinarily supposed. They pressed toward the confines of Europe, they entered and took possession of the land. 6 The Iberians/ says Dr. Winchell [North American Review), i entered by the pillars of Hercules. They came from Northern Africa, at a time when the Hamitic Berbers were gaining possession. They overran the Spanish peninsula, founded cities, built a navy, carried on commerce, extended their empire over Italy, as Sicanes, when Rome was founded, long before the sack of Troy, and from Italy passed into Sicily.' The Pelasgic empire was at its meridian as early as 2500 B.C. This people came from the islands of the iEgian, and more remotely from Asia Minor. They were originally a branch of the sun-burnt Hamitic stock, that laid the basis of civilization in Canaan and Mesopotamia, destined later to be Semitized. Rome itself was Pelasgian to 428 B.C. But in Greece and Italy the Hamitic stock was displaced by Aryan, as in Asia it had been by Semitic.

"The Hellenes were the Aryans first to be brought into contact with these sun-burnt Hamites, who, let it be remembered, though classed as whites, were probably as strongly Negritic as are the Afro- Americans. These Hellenes were savages or barbarians. But Aryan strength and energy were thus brought into contact with Hamitic culture. Then occurred that great struggle of centuries for social equality between the blond Aryan and the Pelasgian, the dark child of the soil. Had it not been for that mixture of dark blood in the Greek composition, that race of poets, artists, and philosophers would never have existed."

Thus it is shown that the negro has figured conspicuously in the earlier history of the world, that his blood entered strongly into that of the conquering Roman and the cultured Greek ; that even long before Rome was built or Greece flourished, the descendants of Ham in Egypt had given to the world the highest form of civilization it had then known.

How incredible then is it there should be found any who deny to the negro the possibility of high development. For two thousand years, under the repressive conditions of savage life in dark Africa,

THE NEGRO ETHNOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 13

it is true that he has made but little progress, but this does not show the want of racial capacity for evolution. Who could have foreseen the virile power and strength of the Aryan race? For thousands of years that race was as ignorant and barbarous as the African in the jungles of his native land, but when at length the proper conditions for its development were furnished by Providence, he sprang into splendid development and has since led his fellows in the race of progress and civilization.

When, in the order of God, the same favorable conditions and environments shall be supplied to the descendants of Ham, they too shall respond to the opportunities offered and develop into a gradually progressive race, worthy to stand shoulder to shoulder with their white brothers on any field of enterprise and achievement.

Chapter II. Slavery

AFRICAN slavery was comparatively a modern institution. Slavery, in some form, has existed from the earliest times of which history gives any record. In the first ages of Greece, before Homer sang or Hesiod wrote, it was already fully established. All the Grecian communities were a slave-holding people. In Athens, Corinth and Sparta the slaves constituted a large portion of the population.

The slaves of that day, however, were not negroes, except as now and then a Nubian or an Ethiopian was captured and sold into slavery, but they were whites, chiefly Thracians, Asiatics and even native Greeks. The sources through which the supply was furnished, were captures in wars, piracy, kidnapping and commerce through a systematic slave trade.

The Romans, according to Blair, were the leaders among the ancient peoples in extending the operations and methodizing the details of slavery. The patricians, who were the wealthy and ruling classes, owned thousands of slaves, whom they reduced to absolute serfdom. They were brought 14

SLAVERY.

mainly from Spain and Gaul and Asiatic countries. So numerous did they become in Italy that the proportion of slaves to freemen was as three to one. " The entire number of slaves would thus have been in the reign of Claudius, 20,832,000 ; that of the free population being 6,944,000." — Encyclopedia Britannica.

No single force, perhaps, . contributed more to the final fall and dismemberment of the Roman Empire than slavery. To this evil may be ascribed the degeneracy of the ruling classes who, through the luxury and idleness begotten of it, became sensual and effeminate, and lost that aggressive and warlike spirit which made Rome the mistress of the world.

With the rise of Christianity to controlling influence in the Roman commonwealth the institution began to wane. The Church protested against the multiplication of slaves and everywhere encouraged emancipation. The humanizing influences of religion were arrayed against the cruelty of man enslaving man, and the enlightened sentiment, wrought through a growing Christianity, worked its slow but final death. Theodosius and Justinian began the legislation which looked to the manumission of all slaves and incorporated laws into the Roman code which finally led to the overthrow of this great evil.

It is not the design of these pages to deal at

16 THE XEGRO AXD THE WHITE MAN.

length with the general history of slavery. It will be enough to say in this connection, that the slaves of the ancient world and of medieval times were chiefly whites, the negro constituting but a small proportion of the immense multitudes who pined and perished amid the cruelties of enforced servitude.

It is with African slavery, perhaps the most gigantic scheme of traffic in human beings known to the annals of the race, that we are chiefly concerned— an institution that was inaugurated and fostered by the Christian nations of the modern world, and that perished at last through the force of a moral opposition to its continuance, which culminated in one of the most sanguinary conflicts of modern times.

African slavery in North America had its beginning in 1620, when a Dutch ship from the coast of Guinea visited Jamestown and sold a cargo of slaves to the planters of Virginia. From this small beginning commenced a traffic that brought untold wealth to the slave-dealers, and finally resulted in locating millions of the African race on American shores.

England must ever bear a large portion of the odium which mankind will ever attach to the wretched slave traffic, although it is but just to say that she was the first to lead in the fight for its abolition. For centuries, however, she kept this

SLAVERY.

traffic alive by supplying the markets of her colonies and legalizing the traffic among her subjects. She chartered companies with exclusive rights to buy and sell slaves, and, in the reign of William and Mary, she no longer confined it to favored corporations, but authorized every subject of the crown likewise to engage in the inhuman business.

Bryan Edwards estimated that the total import of African slaves into all the British colonies of America and the West Indies between 1680 and 1786, to be 2,130,000, or an average of 20,095 per year for 106 years. It was not until the year 1833 that the English parliament, largely through the life-long efforts of William Wilberforce, passed what is known as the Emancipation bill, putting an end to slavery in the English domains. The bill abolishing the traffic in slaves was passed twenty-six years before, in 1807.

France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Holland must share with England the shame of the modern African slave-trade, and of fastening the institution of slavery upon America. In 1791 the number of European factories on the African coast for turning out slaves for the world was forty. Of these fourteen were English, three French, fifteen Dutch, four Portuguese and four Danish.

Thus it is seen that the hunting of human beings in Africa for the slave-markets of the world was legalized by the leading and most civilized nations of the globe less than one hundred j^ears ago. All that power and wealth could do to bring the traffic into existence, and to continue it for over two hundred years, was done. The native African chiefs were bribed by foreign money, and thus induced to capture the wild savages of the forests, sometimes making levies upon their own immediate subjects to exchange them for commodities supplied by European slave trafficers stationed along the coasts. We quote again from the " Britannica" these words: " They often set fire to a village by night and captured the inhabitants while trying to escape. Thus all that was shocking in the barbarism of Africa was multiplied and intensified by this foreign stimulation."

" To the miseries thus produced, and to those suffered by the captives in their removal to the coast, were added the horrors of the middle passage. Exclusive of the slaves who died before they sailed from Africa, twelve and one-half per cent, were lost during their passage to the West Indies, four and one-half per cent, while in harbors or before their sale, and one-third more in the seasoning. Thus, of every lot of one hundred shipped from Africa, seventeen died in about nine weeks, and not more than fifty lived to be effective laborers in the islands. The circumstances of their subsequent life on the plantations were not favorable to the increase of their num-

SLAVERY.

bers. In Jamaica there were, in 1690, forty thousand African slaves. From that year until 1820 there were imported 800,000, yet at the latter date there were only 340,000." The record does not show such great fatality with those cargoes shipped to what are now the United States, but it was a dark picture of suffering and cruelty.

I have thus briefly alluded to some general facts in the history of the introduction of African slavery into America, now happily abolished both as a traffic and an institution. It was born of the cupidity of mankind and kept alive for centuries for the ends of gain. That it was right, even those who once most heartily approved of and advocated it, would not now contend. It is, indeed, a painful page to look upon, and were it not, that through its dark lines we may now trace the mysterious guidings of Providence, it would be unrelieved by a single alleviating reflection.

The student of history, looking at it in the light of divine direction in the affairs of this world, may discover the purpose of God to accomplish his ends, overruling even the " wrath of man," and making it contribute to the consummation of his will.

The bondage of the Israelites in Egypt seemed a dark and inexplicable fate for the chosen children of God, but the outcome of it was the founding, forming and cementing of the Jewish nation, which was to play such an important part in all the subsequent history of the human race.

Who can tell, and the dawning light of the Divine purpose begins even now to reveal itself, but that it was to be, through this means, that the Almighty intends to work out the final redemption of the African race in these lands, and the far-off dark continent, which is now offering such fertile and inviting fields for missionary and evangelical effort and enterprise?

The Jewish nation, since its disintegration and scattering abroad, has passed through scarcely a less fiery baptism of suffering and cruelty than has fallen to the lot of the slave exiles from African shores. They have been hunted in all lands, despised, cast out and killed by the Gentiles, with whom they have been forced to dwell. It may be, too, that through their pathetic wanderings the golden thread of Providence runs, and that, redeemed and Christianized, they will some day return to their native land, and build up again the broken foundations of their once splendid kingdom which, in grandeur and glory, shall far surpass the greatness of the old Hebrew monarchy in its palmiest days, when the wealth and power of Solomon excited the admiration and wonder of the queen of Sheba.

At least while we may not approve, but even condemn the cruelty and inhumanity which led to

SLAVERY.

the introduction of African slavery upon this continent, and which marked and marred its continuance, we may yet believe that it was permitted by the Almighty for wise and glorious purposes, and will issue at length in the elevation of the negro race to a condition of enlightened, Christian civilization he could not otherwise have attained. How else can he interpret that Providence, which permitted the existence of slavery so long, and which, at length, as strangely and signally, put an end to its existence, not only in the United States, but in every country of the globe?

Chapter III. The Evils Of African Slavery

IN considering this evil we are not to suppose that the negro was the only sufferer from it. The slave-holder was the victim of the indirect consequences of the system which was fraught with injury to all who were connected with it.

In what I am about to say I am free to admit that there were many humane masters — masters who were kind to their slaves, who afforded them every advantage and consideration possible under the system. But to preserve and perpetuate the system, it was necessary to keep the slave in ignorance and to ever remind him of his menial position. Laws were enacted prohibiting his learning to read or write, and his owner was authorized to inflict the most severe corporal punishment short of death. He could even delegate this authority to an agent, who, having no pecuniary interest in the slave, was often unspeakably cruel in the severity with which he exercised his delegated authority.

Such a system, practically placing no restraint upon the power and rights of the master, could but 22

THE EVILS OF AFRICAN SLA VER V. 23

be abused and to what extent only the secrets of the final day will reveal.

Before pointing out the evils of slavery as it affected the slave himself, let us mention briefly its indirect consequences to the slave-holders.

First, it developed a class of landed gentry in the South, who, while they were not titled, were more absolutely lords than the dukes and earls and barons of England. The immense wealth, wrought for them by slave labor, exempted them from the necessity of toil, and removed all incentives to enter upon those bold enterprises requiring individual effort and push, which have given such distinctive strength and success to the citizenship of the North and West. For them, it was a day of luxurious ease, whiled away in amusement and pleasure, an era of idleness and sensuality, second only to that which marked the Augustan age of Rome when that empire reached the zenith of its wealth and glory, and which was the beginning and the cause of the final downfall of that colossal power. The splendid mansions of the Southern gentry, adorned with Doric columns, majestic and imposing, their rich and fertile fields stretching away in the distance white with the fleecy staple, their hundreds of slaves felling the forests and toiling on the old plantations, present a picture of lordly wealth and splendid ease, without a parallel in the history of the world. The

Roman patrician and the English lord were paupers beside this landed aristocracy of the South.

The consequence to these wealthy slave-holders was the dwarfing of the spirit of enterprise and genuine, robust manhood, of that strong self-assertive individuality which is the first requisite of a freeman. The Southern planter grew to be a pleasure lover, a dreamy epicurean, a worshipper at the shrine of ease and sensuality. His children grew up in the same atmosphere — strangers to toil and self-reliance. In tranquil languor they passed their lives, never having to strike one blow in the struggle for existence. For this condition slavery was responsible, and they reaped from it the harvest of a dwarfed physical development, and of a deadening industrial paralysis from which their descendants have not recovered to this day.

Even the poor whites, who owned no slaves, had to pay the penalty of their proximity to slavery. The slave-holder bought up as rapidly as he could the lands of the South, and the landless white denizen was elbowed off to the barren sections, or else forced to remain where the competition with slave labor was so sharp that he could scarcely find employment, or if he did, the wages he received were so scanty that he could barely subsist. In the race of life he had the smallest chance of success, and was doomed to live and die where the

THE E VILS OF AFRICAN SLA VER K 25

conditions of his environment were well-nigh fatal to his betterment.

Under the institution of slavery, the South was limited in her industrial development to the single line of agriculture. Slave labor was most profitable in the cotton fields and on the sugar plantations. Here no skilled artisans, no trained mechanics were needed; only muscle and brawn were required to till the soil, and gather its products. As fast as wealth grew it was converted into more slaves, and thus the industry and capital of the South were confined to agriculture. But few factories were built. Manufacturing was at a discount. No great cities were founded and populated. Commerce was neglected, shops, furnaces, mills, and, indeed, every branch of industrial enterprise was largely, if not wholly, neglected. These establishments were left to Northern money and Northern enterprise. And, as history has not furnished a single instance of a people, devoted solely to agricultural pursuits, rising to commanding and permanent place and power, the logical inference is that, under slavery, the South would have been eventually the least prosperous section of the Union, if the abolition of slavery had never been effected. This fact made the South almost helpless at the close of the war between the States. She will rise to industrial prosperity, now, only as she diversifies her enterprises. This she is doing rapidly, and this is one of the good results flowing from the abolition of slavery.

Time would fail us to enumerate the evils resulting to the moral character and social well-being of the Southern people from the presence of African slavery in their midst. The influence of this institution, in every moral view of it, was bad, and only bad. It developed a race of masters — a relation out of place in a world the Almighty intended to be free. Ownership in flesh and blood was never a right designed by God to be conferred on any man. It is fatal to him who exercises it, as well as to him upon whom it is exercised It creates a spirit of authority and of imperious haughtiness that destroys that brotherhood of men, which the Almighty made to be the relation of men.

The violence done to himself by the ownership of his human brother was one of the greatest evils the Southern slave-holders reaped from slavery. The involuntary servitude of the man whom God made as free himself, the groans and cries of human beings evoked by the lash in hands that wielded it only by the right of power, the appropriation of the products of toil not his own, the abasement and degradation of human souls for selfish aggrandizement — this was the spectacle the Southern slave-holder had daily to behold, and it was enough to blight his sense of moral responsi-

THE E VILS OF AFRICAN SLA VER Y. 27

bility, and destroy the God-given instinct of right as between man and man.

We might allude to the evil of miscegenation, an evil which began in slavery, and which is still going on with shameful flagrancy. It is not a matter of conjecture or supposition, but of history and fact, that the fairest and most comely negro girls were appropriated by the young white men of the South, and devoted to the ends of unholy lust; and to the family domestics thousands of mulatto children were born. This was bad enough, but, when to this was added the fact that these children were born slaves, and herded with slaves, and that these white fathers had to witness their own offspring growing up to lives of bondage, and subject to the whip of the overseer, it was enough to harden and blunt the sensibilities of their souls.

But why multiply arguments to show the evils of slavery upon the slave-holders themselves, when the white people of the South have long since seen and admitted them. Slavery, in its effects upon the white man, was scarcely less injurious than it was upon the slave himself.

The direct consequences of slavery upon the negro (none but God can estimate the ultimate outgrowth of it) were evil, and only evil.

First, in his case, as in the case of all slaves, it repressed all real manhood, and destroyed that individuality and aspiration of spirit, which are the first conditions of self-respecting character, either in an individual or in a race. Taught and compelled to obey, he could but walk in the markedout path of another's will, and, hence, all independence and self-active power were denied him. Pie was simply a machine, a mere automaton, a tethered ox in a tread-mill, going the weary rounds of an appointed path, which he could not leave or change.

The thought of a life in which volition played a part was foreign to him, chained as he was to the will of a master. History furnishes no instance of individual or race elevation without the boon of personal liberty. Moral and intellectual advancement is as impossible to the slave as the sight of the sun is to the man without eyes. This was one of the most potent, as well as one of the most pathetic, evils incident to slavery, and the memory of it still brings tears to the eyes of those to whom the benighting influences of the system left sensibility sufficient to estimate the force of such deprivation.

The evils of slavery were augmented further by the ignorance it entailed. Enlightenment of the slave meant menace to the institution, and the Southern slaveholder was consistent when he enacted legislation forbidding the instruction of his slaves in the rudimentary branches of education. And so his lot was not only that of absolute

THE E VILS OF AFRICAN SLA VER Y. 29

servitude, but also of absolute ignorance. What argument could be made for an institution, the strongest pillar of which was ignorance ? Is it possible that the Divine Being ever intended any of his creatures to live under conditions, the preservation of which demands the total and continual benightment of their minds and souls? The great mass of the negroes of the South grew up in dense ignorance, and the race to-day, though struggling up to some degree of knowledge, is suffering from the effects of that enforced ignorance.

It would be a work of unnecessary expense both of time and material, to enlarge upon the moral and religious injury the system of slavery inflicted upon the negro. In many instances, and we record it gratefully, religious instruction was afforded to the slave. Such men as Bishop Capers and Rev. William J. Sasnett, D.D., of the Southern Methodist Church, and Jesse Murcer and Dr. Mallory, of the Baptist Church, gave of their strength and money to preach and send the gospel to the benighted slaves of the South. But taking into the account all that was done by the pious ministers and laymen among the whites, the fact still remains that the multitudes of Southern negroes grew up, lived and died without adequate religious or moral instruction.

As a consequence, those moral principles and qualities which are the requisites of virtuous life, were dwarfed or wholly eradicated for the time. Many have harshly judged the colored race for the want of moral purity. They do not take into consideration their condition and environment for more than two hundred years. I believe it to be a fact, that no race, similarly situated, can show any better moral record than my own.

How could there be a moral atmosphere amidst the miasmatic surroundings of slavery? There could be no home in the true sense of that word, and hence no home instruction. There was no lawful wedlock. Husband and wife they were only in name, and these were separated at the caprice, cupidity or misfortune of their owner. Virtue was an impossibility when maternity in or out of wedlock was encouraged by the master and a premium put thereupon. The wonder is, that under such a system there could be found a single instance of moral purity among the whole race.

The physical evils of slavery were great. Punishment was meted out by the law of will, and stripes were the daily portion of the negro. No good can be accomplished by recalling the sufferings of that bondage time. Rather would we draw the veil of oblivion over it and forget it as we march on to the destiny of an enlightened, educated and useful citizenship.