Battle for the State-House
South Carolina’s first Governor under her second reconstruction was General R. K. Scott, of Ohio, ex-Freedmen’s Bureau Chief. His successor was Franklin J. Moses, Jr., scalawag, licentiate and débauché, four years Speaker of the House, the “Robber Governor.” Moses’ successor was D. H. Chamberlain, a cultivated New Englander, who began his public career as Governor Scott’s Attorney General. A feature of the Scott-Moses administration was a black army 96,000 strong, enrollment and equipment alone costing over a half-million dollars, $10,000 of which, on Moses’ admission, went into his own pocket as commission on purchases. The State’s few white companies were ordered to surrender arms and disband.
The State House was refurnished on this scale: $5 clocks were replaced by $600 ones; $4 looking-glasses by $600 mirrors; $2 window curtains by $600 to $1,500 ones; $4 benches by $200 sofas; $1 chairs by $60 chairs; $4 tables by $80 tables; $10 desks, $175 desks; forty-cent spittoons, $14 cuspidors, etc. Chandeliers cost $1,500 to $2,500 each. Each legislator was provided with Webster’s Unabridged, a $25 calendar ink-stand, $10 gold pen; railroad passes and free use of the Western Union Telegraph were perquisites. As “Committee Rooms,” forty bed-rooms were furnished each session; legislators going home, carried the furniture. At restaurant and bar, open day and night in the State House, legislators refreshed themselves and friends atState expense with delicacies, wines, liquors, cigars, stuffing pockets with the last. Orders for outside entertainments, given through bar and restaurant, were paid by the State. An incident of Radical rule: “Hell Hole Swamp,” purchased by the Benevolent Land Commission as site for homes for homeless negroes. Another: Moses lost $1,000 on a horse race; next day the House of Representatives voted him $1,000 as “gratuity.” The order on the Treasurer, signed by Moses as Speaker, to pay this “gratuity” to Moses is on file in Columbia.
Bills made by officials and legislators and paid by the State, reveal a queer medley! Costly liquors, wines, cigars, baskets of champagne, hams, oysters, rice, flour, lard, coffee, tea, sugar, suspenders, linen-bosom shirts, cravats, collars, gloves (masculine and feminine, by the box), perfumes, bustles, corsets, palpitators, embroidered flannel, ginghams, silks, velvets, stockings, chignons, chemises, gowns, garters, fans, gold watches and chains, diamond finger-rings and ear-rings, Russia-leather work-boxes, hats, bonnets; in short, every article that can be worn by man, woman or infant; every article of furniture and house furnishing from a full parlour-set to a baby’s swinging cradle; not omitting a $100 metallic coffin.
Penitentiary bills display in abundant quantities fine liquors, wines, delicacies and plain provisions; yet convicts nearly starved; bills for the coloured Orphan Asylum, under coloured General Senator Beverly Nash’s direction, show silks, satins, corsets, kid gloves, all manners of delicacies and substantials for the table, yet it came out that orphans got at “breakfast, hominy, mackerel and bean coffee—no milk. At dinner, a little bacon or beef, cornbread and hominy, sometimes a little baker’s bread; at supper, a slice of baker’s bread andblack molasses, each child dipping a slice into a saucer passed around.” The State-paid gardener worked Senator Nash’s garden; coal and wood bought “for the Asylum” was delivered at Senator Nash’s; ditto lumber and other supplies. The matron sold dry goods and groceries. I have mentioned trifles. For big “steals” and “hauls,” Railroads, Bond and Printing Ring swindles, consult the Fraud Reports.
RADICAL MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
These are the photographs of sixty-three members of the “reconstructed” Legislature of South Carolina. Fifty of them were Negroes or Mulattos; thirteen were white men. Of the twenty-two among them who could read and write only eight used the vernacular grammatically. Forty-one made their mark with the help of an amanuensis. Nineteen were taxpayers to an aggregate of $146.10. The other forty-four paid no taxes, and yet this body was empowered to levy on the white people of the state taxes amounting to $4,000,000.
The State University was negroised, adult white and black men matriculating for the express purpose; its scholastic standard was reduced below that of an academy. Attempt to negroise the Deaf and Dumb Asylum closed it. At the Insane Asylum the tact and humanity of Dr. J. F. Ensor, Superintendent, made the situation possible to whites.[23]
South Carolinians beheld Franklin J. Moses, Jr., owner of the beautiful and historic Hampton-Preston home; at receptions and fêtes the carriages of a ring-streaked, striped and speckled host rolled up gaily to ancient gateways hitherto bars exclusive to all that was not aristocratic and refined. One-time serving-maids sat around little tables under the venerable trees and luxuriant vines and sipped wine in state. A Columbian tells me she used to receive a condescending bow from her whilom maid driving by in a fine landau. Another maid, driving in state past her ex-mistress’s door, turned her head in shame and confusion. One maid visited her ex-mistress regularly, leaving her carriage a square or two off; was her old, respectful, affectionate self, and said these hours were her happiest. “I’se jes myse’f den.” A citizen, wishing to aid his butler, secured letters of influence for him and sent him among rulers of the land. George returned: “Marster, I haveassociated with gentlemen all my life. I can’t keep comp’ny with these folks. I’d rather stay with you, I don’ care how poor we are.”
One night when Rev. William Martin’s family were asleep, there came a knocking at the door. Miss Isabella Martin answered. Maum Letty stood outside weeping: “Miss Isabella, Robert’s (her son) been killed. He went to a party at General Nash’s an’ dee all got to fightin’. I come to ax you to let me bring ’im here.” Permission was given. A stream of negroes flowed in and out of the basement rooms where the dead was laid. And it was, “The General says this,” “The General says that.” Presently the General came. “Good morning, Beverly,” said Miss Martin. “Good morning, Miss Isabella;” he had been a butler and had nice manners. “This is a sad business, Beverly.” “Yes, Miss Isabella. It happened at my house, but I am not responsible. There was a party there; all got to fighting—you know how coloured people will do—and this happened.” It is law for the coroner to see a corpse, where death has occurred from violence, before any removal or change is made. The coroner did not see Robert until noon. General Nash had gotten the body out of his house quickly as possible.
Belles of Columbia were Misses Rollins, mulattoes or quadroons. Their drawing-room was called “Republican Headquarters.” Thick carpets covered floors; handsome cabinets held costly bric-a-brac; a $1,000 piano stood in a corner; legislative documents bound in morocco reposed with big albums on expensive tables. Jewelers’ and other shops poured treasures at Misses Rollins’ feet. In their salon, mingling white and dusky statesmen wove the destinies of the old Commonwealth. Coloured courtezans swept into furniture emporiums, silk trains rustling in their wake, and gave orders for“committee rooms”; rode in fine carriages through the streets, stopped in front of this or that store; bareheaded white salesmen ran out to show goods or jewels. Judge M. (who went over to the Radicals for the loaves and fishes and ever afterward despised himself) was in Washington with a Black and Tan Committee, got drunk, and for a joke took a yellow demi-mondaine, a State official’s wife, on his arm and carried her up to President and Mrs. Grant and introduced her at a Presidential reception.
Black Speaker Elliott said (“Cincinnati Commercial,” Sept. 6, 1876): “If Chamberlain is nominated, I shall vote for Hampton.” A member of the Chamberlain Legislature tells me this is how the Chamberlain-Elliot split began. Mrs. Chamberlain was a beautiful woman, a perfect type of high-born, high-bred, Anglo-Saxon loveliness, noble in bearing, lily-like in fairness. She brought a Northern Governor, his wife, and other guests to the State House. They were standing near my informant in the “white part” of the House, when Elliott, black, thick-lipped, sprang down from the Speaker’s chair, came forward and asked a gentleman in attendance for introduction. This gentleman spoke to Alice Chamberlain. The lily-white lady lifted her eyes toward Elliott, shivered slightly, and said: “No!” Elliott did not forgive that.
If the incident were not on good authority, I should doubt it. At Chamberlain’s receptions, the black and tan tide poured in and out of his doors; he entertained black legislators, and presumably Elliott, at dinners and suppers. But all men knew Chamberlain’s rôle was repugnant to him and his exquisite wife. What she suffered during the hours of his political successes, who can tell? Tradition says she was cut to the quick when a black minister was called in by her husband toperform the last rites of the church over her child. Any white clergyman of the city would have responded on call. There were many to say Chamberlain turned to political account even so sacred a thing. Others to say that if white ministers had shown him scant attention he was right not to call upon them. And yet I cannot blame the white clergy for having stood aloof, courting no favours, of the foreigner who fraternised with and was one of the leaders of the State’s spoilers, whether he was a spoiler himself or no.
Governor Chamberlain was fitted for a better part than he had to play; he won sympathy and admiration of many good citizens. He was a gentleman; he desired to ally himself with gentlemen; and the connections into which ambition and the times forced him was one of the social tragedies of the period. He began his administration denouncing corruption within his own party and promising reforms. At first, he investigated and quieted race troubles, disbanding negro militia, and putting a stop to the drilling of negroes. He bestowed caustic criticisms on “negrophilists,” which Elliott brought against him later. He was at war with his legislature; when that body elected W. J. Whipper, an ignorant negro gambler, and ex-Governor Moses to high judicial positions, he refused to commission them.
Of that election he wrote General Grant: “It sends a thrill of horror through the State. It compels men of all parties who respect decency, virtue, or civilisation, to utter their loudest protests.” He prophesied immediate “reorganization of the Democratic Party as the only means left, in the judgment of its members, for opposing solid and reliable front to this terriblecrevasseof misgovernment and public debauchery.” There was then no Democratic party within the State; Democrats had been combining with better-class Republicans incompromise tickets. To an invitation from the New England Society of Charleston, to address them on “Forefathers’ Day,” he said: “If there was ever an hour when the spirit of the Puritans, the spirit of undying, unconquerable enmity and defiance to wrong ought to animate their sons, it is this hour, here, in South Carolina. The civilisation of the Puritan and the Cavalier, the Roundhead and the Huguenot, is in peril.”
A new campaign was at hand. Chamberlain’s name was heard as leader of a new compromise ticket. He had performed services that seemed inspired by genuine regard for the old State and pride in her history. He was instrumental in having the Washington Light Infantry, of Charleston, at Bunker Hill Centennial, and bringing the Old Guard, of New York, and the Boston Light Infantry to Fort Moultrie’s Centennial, when he presented a flag to the Washington Light Infantry and made a speech that pleased Carolinians mightily. He and Hampton spoke from the same platform and sat at the same banquet. He was alive to South Carolina’s interest at the Centennial in Philadelphia. The State began to honour him in invitations to make addresses at college commencements and on other public occasions.
A Democratic Convention in May came near nominating him. Another met in August. Between these he shook confidence in his sincerity. Yet men from the low country said: “Let’s nominate him. He has tried to give honest government.” Men from the up country: “He can not rule his party, his party may rule him.” Men from the low country: “We cannot elect a straight ticket.” Men from the up country: “We have voted compromise tickets the last time. We are not going to the polls unless we have a straight, clean white ticket.” They sent for Hampton and nominated him. His campaign reads like a tale of the oldCrusades. To his side came his men of war, General Butler, General Gary and Colonel Haskell. At his name the people lifted up their hearts in hope.
Governor Chamberlain had denounced the rascalities of Elliott, Whipper’s election in the list. He was nominated by the Blacks and Tans, on a ticket with R. H. Cleaves, mulatto; F. L. Cardoza, mulatto; Attorney General R. B. Elliott, black, etc. He walked into the convention arm in arm with Elliott. Soon he was calling for Federal troops to control elections, charging all racial disorders to whites; ruling harsh judgments against Red Shirts and Rifle Clubs; classing the Washington Light Infantry among disorderly bodies, though he had been worthily proud of this company when it held the place of honour in the Bunker Hill parade and, cheered to the echo, marched through Boston, carrying the battle-flag of Colonel William Washington of the Revolution.
That was a picturesque campaign, when every county had its “Hampton Day,” and the Red Shirts rode, and ladies and children raised arches of bloom and scattered flowers in front of the old cavalry captain’s curvetting steed. Barbecues were spread for coloured brethren, and engaging speakers tried to amuse, instruct and interest them.
The Red Shirts, like the Ku Klux, sprang into existence almost as by accident. General Hampton was to speak at Anderson. The Saturday before Colonel R. W. Simpson proposed to the Pendleton Club the adoption of a badge, suggesting a red shirt as cheap and conspicuous. Pickens men caught up the idea. Red store supplies ran out and another club donned white ones. The three clubs numbered a body of three hundred or more stalwart, fine-looking men of the hill-country, who had nearly all seen service on battlefields,and who rode like centaurs. Preceded by the Pendleton Brass Band, they made an imposing procession at the Fair Grounds on the day of the speaking, and were greeted with ringing cheers. The band-wagon was red; red flags floated from it and from the heads of four horses in red trappings; the musicians wore red garments; instruments were wrapped in red. The effect was electrical. In marching and countermarching military tactics were employed with the effect of magnifying numbers to the eyes of the negroes, who had had no idea that so many white men were alive.
The red shirt uniform idea spread; a great red-shirted army sprang into existence and was on hand at public meetings to see that speakers of the White Man’s Party had equal hearing with the Black Republicans. The Red Shirts rode openly by day and by night, and where they wound their scarlet ways women and children felt new sense of security. Many under its protection were negroes. Hampton strove hard to win the negro vote. He had been one of the first after the war to urge qualified suffrage for them. In public speeches he declared that, if elected, he would be “the governor of all the people of South Carolina, white and black.” He got a large black vote. Years after, when he lay dying, friends bending to catch his last words, heard him murmur: “God bless my people, white and black!”
Mrs. Henry Martin tells me of some fearful days following the pleasant ones when her father, Professor Holmes, entertained the Old Guard in his garden among the roses and oleanders. “One night, my brother, after seeing a young lady home from a party, was returning along King Street with Mr. Evaugh, when they encountered a crowd of negro rowdies and ran into a store and under a counter. The negroes threw cobble-stones—the street was in process of paving—onthem. My brother was brought home in a wagon. When our mother removed his shirt, the skin came wholly from his back with it; he lived several years, but never fully recovered from his injuries. My father cautioned us to stoop and crawl in passing the window on the stairway to his room. In other houses, people were stooping and crawling as they passed windows; a shadow on a curtain was a target for a rock or a bullet. Black women were in arms, carrying axes or hatchets in their hands hanging down at their sides, their aprons or dresses half-concealing the weapons.” “There are 80,000 black men in the State who can use Winchesters and 200,000 black women who can light a torch and use a knife,” said “Daddy Cain,” ex-Congressman and candidate for reëlection, in his paper, “The Missionary Record,” July, 1876, and in addressing a large negro gathering, when Rev. Mr. Adams said, “Amen!”
Northern papers were full of the Hamburg and Ellenton riots, some blaming whites, some blacks, some distributing blame impartially. Facts at Cainhoy blazed out the truth about that place, at least. The whites, unarmed except for pistols which everybody carried then, were holding peaceable meeting when fired into from ambush by negroes with muskets, who chased them, continuing to fire. A youth of eighteen fell, with thirty-three buckshot in him; another, dying, wrote his mother that he had been giving no trouble. A carpenter and a shoemaker from Massachusetts, and an aged crippled gentleman were victims.
“Kill them! Kill them all! Dis town is ours!” Old Charlestonians recall hearing a hoarse cry like this from negro throats (Sept. 6, 1876), recall seeing Mr. Milton Buckner killed while trying to protect negroes from negroes. They recall another night of unforgettable horror, when stillness was almost as awful astumult; frightened blacks were in-doors, but how long would they remain so? Rifle Clubs were protecting a meeting of black Democrats. Not a footfall was heard on the streets; not a sound broke the stillness save the chiming of St. Michael’s bells. Women and children and old men listened for the alarm that might ring out any moment that the negroes had risenen massefor slaughter. They thanked God when presently a sound of careless footsteps, of talk and laughter, broke upon the night; the Rifle Club men were returning in peace to their firesides.
General Hunt, U. S. A., reported on the Charleston riot, November, 1876, when white men, going quietly to places of business, were molested by blacks, and young Ellicott Walker was killed. The morning after the election General Hunt “walked through the city and saw numbers of negroes assembled at corners of Meeting and Broad Streets,” and was convinced there would be trouble, “though there was nothing in the manner of the whites gathered about the bulletin board to provoke it.” Surgeon De Witt, U. S. A., told him “things looked bad on King and other streets where negroes insisted on pushing ladies off the sidewalks.”
When Walker was killed, and the real trouble began, General Hunt hurried to the Station House; the Marshal asked him for assistance; reports came in that negroes were tearing up trees and fences, assailing whites, and demanding arms of the police. General Hunt found at the Station House “a number of gentlemen, young and old,” who offered aid. Marshal Wallace said, “But these are seditious Rifle Clubs.” Said General Hunt, “They are gentlemen whom I can trust and I am glad to have them.” Pending arrival of his troops, he placed them at the Marshal’s disposal. The general relates: “They fell in with his forces; as Iwas giving instructions, he interposed, saying the matter was in his hands. He then started off. I heard that police were firing upon and bayonetting quiet white people. My troops arrived and additional white armed citizens. One of the civil authorities said it was essential the latter be sent home. I declined sending these armed men on the streets, and directed them to take position behind my troops and remain there, which direction they obeyed implicitly.”
With the Mayor and other Radical leaders General Hunt held conference; the negro police was aggravating the trouble, he proposed that his troops patrol streets; the mayor objected. “Why cannot the negroes be prevailed upon to go quietly home?” the General asked. “A negro has as much right to be on the streets armed as a white man.” “But I am not here to discuss abstract rights. A bloody encounter is imminent. These negroes can be sent home without difficulty by you, their leaders.” “You should be able to guarantee whites against the negroes, if you can guarantee negroes against the whites.” “The cases are different. I have no control over the blacks through their reason or intelligence. They have been taught that a Democratic victory will remand them to slavery. Their excited fears, however unfounded, are beyond my control. You, their leaders, can quiet and send them home. The city’s safety is at stake.” The Mayor said he must direct General Hunt’s troops; Hunt said he was in command. The Mayor wired Chamberlain to disband the Rifle Clubs “which were causing all the mischief.” Hunt soon received orders to report at Washington.
“Hampton is elected!” the people rejoiced. “Chamberlain is elected!” the Radicals cried, and disputed returns. The Radical Returning Board threwout the Democratic vote in Laurens and Edgefield and made the House Radical. The State Supreme Court (Republican) ordered the Board to issue certificates to the Democratic members from these counties. The Board refused; the Court threw the Board in jail; the United States Court released the Board. The Supreme Court issued certificates to these members. November 28, 1876, Democrats organised in Carolina Hall, W. H. Wallace, Speaker; Radicals in the State House, with E. W. Mackey, Speaker, and counting in eight Radical members from Laurens and Edgefield. The Democratic House sent a message to the Radical Senate in the State House that it was ready for business. Senate took no notice. On Chamberlain’s call upon President Grant, General Ruger was in Columbia with a Federal regiment.
THE SOUTHERN CROSS
General Hampton, while Governor, built this, his residence, with his own hands and with theassistance of his faithful negroes. The men in the picture, from left to right, are: Hon. LeRoy F.Youmans, General Hampton, Judge McIver, Hon. Joseph D. Pope, General James McGowan.
Photograph by Reckling & Sons, Columbia, S. C.
November 29, the Wallace House marched to the State House, members from Edgefield and Laurens in front. A closed door, guarded by United States troops, confronted them. J. C. Sheppard, Edgefield, began to read from the State House steps a protest, addressed to the crowd around the building and to the Nation. The Radicals, fearful of its effect, gave hurried consent to admission. Each representative was asked for his pistol and handed it over. At the Hall of Representatives, another closed and guarded door confronted them. They saw that they had been tricked and quietly returned to Carolina Hall.
The people were deeply incensed. General Hampton was in town, doing his mightiest to keep popular indignation in bounds. He held public correspondence with General Ruger, who did not relish the charge that he was excluding the State’s representatives from the State House and promised that the Wallace House should not be barred from the outer door, over which he hadcontrol. But its members knew they took their lives in their hands when they started for the Hall. A committee or advance guard of seven passed Ruger’s guard at the outer door. Col. W. S. Simpson (now President of the Board of Directors of Clemson College), who was one of the seven, tells me:
“On the first floor was drawn up a regiment of United States troops with fixed bayonets; all outside doors were guarded by troops. Upstairs in the large lobby was a crowd of negro roughs. Committee-rooms were filled with Chamberlain’s State constables. General Dennis, from New Orleans, a character of unsavoury note, with a small army of assistants, was Doorkeeper of the Hall. Within the Hall, the Mackey House, with one hundred or more sergeants-at-arms, was assembled, waiting Mackey’s arrival to go into session.” The seven dashed upstairs and for the door of the Hall. The doorkeepers, lolling in the lobby, rushed between them and the door and formed in line; committee presented certificates; doorkeepers refused to open the door.
“Come, men, let’s get at it!” cried Col. Alex. Haskell, seizing the doorkeeper in front of him. Each man followed his example; a struggle began; the door parted in the middle; Col. Simpson, third to slip through, describes the Mackey House, “negroes chiefly, every man on his feet, staring at us with eyes big as saucers, mouths open, and nearly scared to death.” Meanwhile, the door, lifted off its hinges, fell with a crash. The full Democratic House marched in, headed by Speaker Wallace, who took possession of the Speaker’s chair. Members of his House took seats on the right of the aisle, negroes giving way and taking seats on the left.
Speaker Wallace raised the gavel and called theHouse to order. Speaker Mackey entered, marched up and ordered Speaker Wallace to vacate the chair. Speaker Wallace directed his sergeant-at-arms to escort Mr. Mackey to the floor where he belonged. Speaker Mackey directed his sergeant-at-arms to perform that office for General Wallace. Each sergeant-at-arms made feints. Speaker Mackey took another chair on the stand and called the House to order. There was bedlam, with two Speakers, two clerks, two legislative bodies, trying to conduct business simultaneously! The “lockout” lasted four days and nights. Democrats were practically prisoners, daring not go out, lest they might not get in. Radicals stayed in with them, individual members coming and going as they listed, a few at a time.
The first day, Democrats had no dinner or supper; no fire on their side of the House, and the weather bitterly cold. Through nights, negroes sang, danced and kept up wild junketings. The third night Democrats received blankets through windows; meals came thus from friends outside; and fruit, of which they made pyramids on their desks. Two negroes came over from the Mackey side; converts were welcomed joyously, and apples, oranges and bananas divided. The opposition was enraged at defection; shouting, yelling and rowdyism broke out anew. Both sides were armed. The House on the left and the House on the right were constantly springing to their feet, glaring at each other, hands on pistols. Wallace sat in his place, calm and undismayed; Mackey in his, brave enough to compel admiration; more than once he ran over to the Speaker’s stand, next to the Democratic side, and held down his head to receive bullets he was sure were coming. Yet between these armed camps, small human kindnesses and courtesies went on; and they joined inlaughter at the comedy of their positions. Between Speakers, though, there was war to the knife, there was also common bond of misery.
The third afternoon Democrats learned that their massacre was planned for that night. Negro roughs were congregating in the building; the Hunkidory Club, a noted gang of black desperadoes, were coming up from Charleston. A body of assassins were to be introduced into the gallery overlooking the floor of the Hall; here, even a small band could make short work its own way of any differences below. Chamberlain informed Mackey; Mackey informed Wallace. Hampton learned of the conspiracy through Ruger; he said: “If such a thing is carried out, I cannot insure the safety of your command, nor the life of a negro in the State.” The city seethed with repressed anxiety and excitement. Telegrams and runners were sent out; streets filled with newcomers, some in red shirts, some in old Confederate uniforms with trousers stuffed in boots, canteens slung over shoulders. Hampton’s soldiers had come.
Twenty young men of Columbia contrived, through General Ruger, it is said, to get into the gallery, thirty into the Hall, the former armed with sledge-hammers to break open doors at first intimation of collision. The Hook and Ladder Company prepared to scale the walls. The train bringing the Hunkidory Club broke down in a swamp, aided possibly by some peace-loving agency. The crowding of Red Shirt and Rifle Clubs into the city took effect. The night passed in intense anxiety, but in safety. Next day, Speaker Wallace read notification that at noon the Democrats, by order of President Grant, would be ejected by Federal troops if, before that time, they had not vacated the State House; in obedience to the Federal Government, he and theother Democratic members would go, protesting, however, against this Federal usurpation of authority. He adjourned the House to meet immediately in Carolina Hall. Blankets on their shoulders, they marched out. A tremendous crowd was waiting. Far as the eye could reach, Main Street was a mass of men, quiet and apparently unarmed.
I have heard one of Hampton’s old captains tell how things were outside the State House. “The young men of Columbia were fully armed. Clerks in our office had arms stowed away in desks and all around the rooms; we were ready to grab them and rush on the streets at a moment’s notice. It was worse than war times. We had two cannon, loaded with chips of iron, concealed in buildings, and trained on the State House windows and to rake the street. We marched to the State House in a body. General Hampton had gone inside. He had told us not to follow him. He and General Butler, his aide, had been doing everything to keep us quiet. He knew we had come to Columbia to fight if need be. ‘I will tell you,’ he said, ‘when it is time to fight. You have made me your governor, and, by Heaven, I will be your governor!’ Again and again he promised that. Usually, we obeyed him like lambs. But we followed him to the State House.
“Federal troops were stationed at the door. What right had they there? It was our State House! Why could roughs and toughs and the motley crowd of earth go in, on a pass from Doorkeeper Dennis, a Northern rascal imported by way of New Orleans, while we, the State’s own sons and taxpayers, could not enter? We pressed forward. We were told not to. We did not heed. We were ready not to heed even the crossed bayonets of the guard. Things are very serious when they reach that pass. The guard in blue used theutmost patience. Federal soldiers were in sympathy with us. Colonel Bomford,[24]their officer, ran up the State House steps, shouting: ‘General Hampton! General Hampton! For God’s sake come down and send your men back!’ In an instant General Hampton was on the steps, calmly waving back the multitude: ‘All of you go back up the street. I told you not to come here. Do not come into collision with the Federal troops. I advise all, white and black, who care for the public welfare to go home quietly. You have elected me your Governor, and by the eternal God, I will be your Governor! Trust me for that! Now, go back!’ We obeyed like children. On the other side of the State House a man ran frantically waving his hat and shouting: ‘Go back! go back! General Hampton says go back!’ This man was ex-Governor Scott, who a few years before had raised a black army for the intimidation and subjugation of South Carolina!”
The Wallace House sat, until final adjournment, in South Carolina Hall, the Mackey House in the State House. Governor Chamberlain, with the town full of Rifle Clubs supposed to be thirsting for his gore, rode back and forth in his open carriage to the State House and occupied the executive offices there, refusing to resign them to General Hampton. He was inaugurated inside the “Bayonet House”; General Hampton in the open streets. General Hampton conducted the business of the State in two office-rooms furnished with Spartan simplicity. The Wallace House said to the people: “Pay to tax collectors appointed by Governor Hampton, ten per cent of the tax rate you have been paying Governor Chamberlain’s tax collectors, and we will run your Government on it.” So the people paidtheir tax to Hampton’s collectors and to no others. Without money, the Chamberlain Government fell to pieces.
Northern sentiment had undergone change. Tourists had spread far and wide the fame of Black and Tan Legislatures. Mr. Pike, of Maine, had written “The Prostrate State.” In tableaux before a great mass-meeting and torchlight procession in New York, South Carolina had appeared kneeling in chains before the Goddess of Liberty. The North was protesting against misuse of Federal power in the South. General Sherman said: “I have always tried to save our soldiers from the dirty work. I have always thought it wrong to bolster up weak State Governments by our troops.” “Let the South alone!” was the cry. One of Grant’s last messages reflected this temper. President Hayes was exhibiting a spirit the South had not counted on. He sent for Hampton and Chamberlain to confer with him in Washington. The old hero’s journey to the National Capital and back was an ovation. Soon after his return, Chamberlain resigned the keys and offices of the State House. Chamberlain was bitter and felt that the Federal Government had played him false.
With Governor Nicholls established in Louisiana and Governor Hampton in South Carolina, the battle between the carpet-baggers and the native Southerners for their State Houses was over. The Federal soldiers packed up joyfully, and the Southerners cheered their departure.
Louisiana had been engaged in a struggle very similar to South Carolina’s. For three months she had two governors, two legislatures, two Supreme Courts. Again and again was her Capitol in a state of siege. Once two Republican parties faced each other in battle array for its possession—as two Republican partieshad faced each other in Little Rock contending for Arkansas’s Capitol. One morning, Louisianians woke to find the entrance commanded by United States Artillery posted on the “Midnight Order” of a drunken United States District Judge. Once a thousand negroes, impressed as soldiers, lived within the walls, eating, drinking, sleeping, until the place became unspeakably filthy and small-pox broke out. More than once for its possession there was warfare on the levees, bloodshed in barricaded streets. Once the citizens were marching joyfully to its occupation past the United States Custom House, and the United States soldiers crowded the windows, waved their caps and cheered. Once members were ejected by Federal force; Colonel de Trobriand regretting that he had the work to do and the Louisianans bearing him no grudge; it was, “Pardon me, gentlemen, I must put you out.” “Pardon us, that we give you the trouble.”
These corrupt governments had glamours. Officials had money to burn. New Orleans was like another Monte Carlo for one while. Gambling parlours stood open to women and minors. Then was its twenty-five-year charter granted the Louisiana State Lottery. At a garden party in Washington not long ago, a Justice of the Supreme Court said in response to some question I put: “It would take the pen of a Zola to describe reconstruction in Louisiana! It is so dark a chapter in our national history, I do not like to think of it.” A Zola might base a great novel on that life and death struggle between politicians and races in the land of cotton and sugar plantations, the swamps and bayous and the mighty Mississippi, where the Carpet-Bag Governments had a standing army, of blacks chiefly, with cavalry, infantry, artillery, and navy of warships going up and down waterways; where prominentcitizens were arrested on blank warrants, carried long distances, held for months; where women and children listened for the tramp, tramp, of black soldiers on piazzas, the crash of a musket on the door, the demand for the master or son of the house!
Dixie after the war is a mine for the romancer, historian, ethnologist. Never before in any age or place did such conditions exist. The sudden investiture of the uncivilised slave with full-fledged citizenship wrought tragedy and comedy not ready to Homer’s, Shakespeare’s or Cervantes’s pen. The strange and curious race-madness of the American Republic will be a study for centuries to come. That madness took a child-race out of a warm cradle, threw it into the ocean of politics—the stormiest and most treacherous we have known—and bade it swim for its own life and the life of the nation!
CRIME AGAINST WOMANHOOD
Crime Against Womanhood
The rapist is a product of the reconstruction period. In the beginning he commanded observation North less by reason of what he did than by reason of what was done unto him. His chrysalis was a uniform; as a soldier he could force his way into private homes, bullying and insulting white women; he was often commissioned to tasks involving these things. He came into life in the abnormal atmosphere of a time rife with discussions of social equality theories, contentions for coeducation and intermarriage.
General Weitzel, resigning his command, wrote from La Fourche and La Teche to Butler in New Orleans: “I can not command these negro regiments. Women and children are in terror. It is heartrending.”[25]General Halleck wrote, April, 1865, to General Grant of a negro corps: “A number of cases of atrocious rape by these men have already occurred. Their influence on the coloured people is reported bad. I hope you will remove it.” Similar reports were made by other Federal officers. Governor Perry, of South Carolina, says: “I continued remonstrances to Secretary Seward on the employment of negro troops, gave detail of their atrocious conduct. At Newberry ... (Crozier’s story). At Anderson, they protected andcarried off a negro who had wantonly murdered his master. At Greenville, they knocked down citizens in the streets without slightest provocation. At Pocotaligo, they entered a gentleman’s house, and after tying him, violated the ladies.” Mr. Seward wrote that Northern sentiment was sensitive about negro troops. When Governor Perry handed Generals Meade and Gillmore the Pocotaligo report, General Meade said he was opposed to negro troops and was trying to rid the army of them, but had to exercise great caution not to offend Northern sentiment. General Gillmore had some offenders executed. Federal commanders largely relieved the South of black troops, but carpet-bag officials restored them in the form of militia.
I have told elsewhere Crozier’s story. Let me contrast his slayers with a son of industry it was my honour to know, Uncle Dick, my father’s coachman. During the war, when my father had occasion to send a large sum in gold coin through the country, Uncle Dick carried it belted around his body under his shirt. My father’s ward was attending the Southern Female College in Danville when the President and his Cabinet, fleeing from Richmond, reached that place. Knowing that Danville might become a fighting center, Mr. Williams T. Davis, Principal, wrote my father to send for Sue. The way to reach Danville was by private conveyance, seventy miles or more. Uncle Dick, mounted high on his carriage-box, a white-headed, black-faced knight-errant of chivalry, set forth. Nobody knew where the armies were. He might have to cut his horses loose from his carriage, mount Sue on one, himself take the other, and bring her through the forest. In due time the carriage rolled into our yard, Uncle Dick proud and happy on his box, Sue inside wrappedin rugs, sound asleep, for it was midnight. That is the way we could trust our black men.
The following account by an ex-Confederate captain shows how General Schofield handled a case of the crime which is now under discussion: “A young white girl on her way to Sunday School was attacked by a negro; ‘attempted’ assault, the family said; it is usually put that way; ‘consummated’ nails the victim to a stake. Our people were in a state of terror; they seemed paralysed; they were inured to dispossession and outrage. No one seemed to know what to do. I picked up several young men and trailed down the ruffian. Then I sent a letter to General Schofield (with whom I had some acquaintance, as we had met each other hunting), asking instructions. He sent two detectives and a file of soldiers, requesting that I call for further assistance if occasion demanded. I wrote full statement of facts, had the girl’s testimony taken in private; evidence was laid before General Schofield; the negro was sent to the penitentiary for eighteen years. The promptness of his action inspired people here with hope. We had no Ku Klux in Virginia—one reason, I have always thought, was the swiftness with which punishment was meted out in that case.”
I have, as I believe, from Judge Lynch himself particulars of another case in which, the law being inactive, citizens took justice into their own hands:
“Two young girls, daughters of a worthy German settler, were out to bring up cows, when attacked by a negro tramp; they ran screaming, but were overtaken; he seized the older; the younger, about ten years old, continued to run. Some passers on the nearest road, a private and lonely one, rushed to the relief of the older girl, who was making such outcry as she could. Wefound her prostrate, the negro having her pinioned with one knee on either arm. His jack-knife open, was held between his teeth, and he was stuffing his handkerchief in her mouth to stifle her cries. We rescued her, took him prisoner, carried him to the nearest magistrate, a carpet-bag politician, who committed him to jail to await the action of the grand jury. He made his escape a few days afterward, was recaptured and relodged in jail. Ten days later a band was organised among respectable citizens in and around our town; a Northern settler was a member. One detachment set out about dark for the rendezvous where they met a score more of resolute, armed men, some with masks, some without. They effected entrance into the jail, but their way was arrested when they found the prisoner in a casemated cell, which other negroes readily pointed out, one offering a lamp; a railroad section hand procured crow-bars with which the casemate was crushed in; the prisoner was taken in charge. He stood mute; seemed calm and unmoved; was put in a close carriage, the purpose being to drive him to the exact spot of his crime, but it coming on day, the company thought best to execute him at once. He was placed upon a mule; a rope attached to his neck was tied to the limb of a tree about ten feet above. The leader now learned of an intention to riddle his body with bullets when the drop occurred. Each member had pledged obedience to orders; each had been pledged to take no liquor for hours before, or during this expedition—pledges so far rigidly observed. The leader addressed them: ‘We are here to avenge outrage on a helpless child, and to let it be well known that such crime shall not go unpunished in this community. But mutilation of this fiend’s remains will be a reflection upon ourselves and not a dispensation of justice.’
“The negro, seeing his end surely at hand, broke down, pleading for mercy; confessed that he had appreciated in advance the great peril in which his crime might place him, but had argued that, as a stranger, he would not be liable to identification, and that as the country was thickly wooded, he was sure of escape. ‘But, fo’ Gawd, gent’mun, ef a white man f’om de Norf hadn’t put’t in my hade dat a white ’oman warn’ none too good fuh—’
“Word was given, and he dropped into eternity. It was broad daylight when the party got back to town. They overtook several negro men going to work who knew full well what they had been about. But there was no sign of protest or demur. The Commonwealth’s Attorney made efforts to ascertain the perpetrators of the deed, but as the company entered the town and jail so quietly and left it with so little disturbance that only one person in the village had knowledge of their coming and going, no one was discovered who could name a single member of the party or who had any idea of whence they came or whither they went. So of course no indictment could be found.” This was in 1870; since then till now no similar crime has occurred in that community. Within the circumscribed radius of its influence, lynching seems to eradicate the evil for which administered.
The moderation marking this execution has not always accompanied lynching. Reading accounts of unnecessary tortures inflicted, of very orgies of vengeance, people remote from the scenes, Southerners no less than others, have shuddered with disgust, and trembled with concern for the dignity of their own race. Only people on the spot, writhing under the agony of provocation, comprehended the fury of response to the crime of crimes. Vigilants meant to make their awfulvengeance effective deterrent to the crime’s repetition. No other crime offers such problems to relatives and officers of justice and to the people among whom it occurs; it is so outside of civilisation that there seem no terms for dispassionate discussion, no fine adjustment of civil trial and legal penalty.
Listen to this out of the depths of one Southern woman’s experience: “I stood once with other friends, who were trying to nurse her back to life and reason, by the bedside of a girl—a beautiful, gentle, high-born creature—who had been outraged. We were using all the skill and tact and tenderness at our command. It seemed impossible for her to have one hour’s peaceful sleep. She would start from slumber with a shriek, look at us with dilated eyes, then clutch us and beg for help. But the most unspeakable pity of it all was her loathing for her own body; her prayers that she might die and her body be burned to ashes. I heard her physician say to an officer who came to take her deposition: ‘I would be signing that girl’s death warrant if I let you in there to make her tell that horrible story over again.’ When a grim group came with some negroes they wanted to bring before her for identification, her brothers and her lover said: ‘Only over our dead bodies.’”
Lynching is inexcusable, even for this crime, which is comparable to no other, and to which murder is a trifle. So we may coolly argue when the blow has not fallen upon ourselves or at our own door. When it has, we think there’s a wolf abroad and we have lambs. Those to whom the wrecked woman is dear are quiveringly alive to her irreparable wrong. The victim has rights, they argue; if, unhappily for herself, she survive the outrage, she is entitled to what poor remnants of reason may be left her; it is naturally their whole care topreserve her from memories that sear and craze, and from rehearsal before even the most private tribunal, of events that the merciful, even if not of her blood, must wish her to forget. Under such strain, men see as the one thing imperative the prompt and informal removal from existence of the offender, whom they look upon, not as man, but beast or fiend.
The “poor white” is the most frequent sufferer from assault; the wife of the small farmer attending household duties in her isolated home while her husband is in the fields or otherwise absent about his work; or the small farmer’s daughter when she goes to the spring for water, or to the meadow for the cows, or trudges a lonely road or pathway to school; these are more convenient material than the lady of larger means and higher station, who is more rarely unattended. In cases on record the ravished and slain were children, five, six, eight years old; in others, mothers with babies at their breasts, and the babies were slain with the mothers. Here is a case cited by Judge M. L. Dawson: A negro raped and slew a farmer’s five-year-old child. Arrested, tried, convicted, appealed, sentence reversed, reappealed (on insanity plea); people took him out and hung him.
In full-volumed indignation over lynching, the usual course of the Northern press was to almost lose sight of the crime provoking it. It was a minor fact that a woman was violated, that her skull was crushed or that she sustained other injuries from which she died or which made her a wreck for life—particulars too trivial to be noted by moulders of public opinion writing eloquent essays on “Crime in the South.” Picking up a paper with this glaring headline, one would have a right to expect some outburst of indignation over the ravishment and butchering of womanhood. But there wouldbe editorial after editorial rife with invectives against lynching and lynchers, righteous with indignation over “lawlessness in the South,” and not one word of sympathy or pity for the white victim of negro lust! The fact that there was such a victim seemed lost sight of; the crime for which the negro was executed would often escape everything but bare mention, sometimes that. What deductions were negroes to draw from such distinctions, except that lynching was monstrous crime, rape an affair of little moment, and strenuous objection to it only one feature of damnable “Race Prejudice in the South”?
“They do not care, the men and women of the North,” I have heard a Southern girl exclaim, “if we are raped. They do not care that we are prisoners of fear, that we fear to take a ramble in the woods alone, fear to go about the farms on necessary duties, fear to sit in our houses alone; fear, if we live in cities, to go alone on the streets at hours when a woman is safe anywhere in Boston or New York.”
From the Northern attitude as reflected in the press and in the pulpit, negroes drew their own conclusions. Violation of a white woman was no harm; indeed, as a leveler of social distinctions, it might almost be construed into an act of grace. The way to become a hero in the eyes of the white North and to win the crown of martyrdom for oneself and new outbursts of sympathy for one’s race was to assault a white woman of the South. This crime was a development of a period when the negro was dominated by political, religious and social advisers from the North and by the attitude of the Northern press and pulpit. It was practically unknown in wartime, when negroes were left on plantations as protectors and guardians of white women and children.
“There was only one case,[26]as far as the writer can ascertain, of the negro’s crime against womanhood during all the days of slavery,” said Professor Stratton in the “North American Review” a few years ago, “while his fidelity and simple discharge of duty during the Civil War when the white men were away fighting against his liberty have challenged the admiration of the world; but since he has been made free, his increase in crime and immorality has gone side by side with his educational advancement—and even in greater ratio.” The Professor gave figures, as others have done, which proved his case, if figures can prove anything. Considered with reference to the crime under discussion, it is difficult to see how purely intellectual training tends to its increase, if there is any truth in the doctrine that brain development effects a reduction of animal propensities. Only in moral education, however, rests any real security for conduct. Negroes educated and negroes uneducated, in a technical sense, have committed this crime.[27]
The rapist is not to be taken as literal index to race character; he is an excrescence of the times; his crime is a horror that must be wiped out for the honour ofthe land, the security of womanhood, the credit of our negro citizenhood. The weapon for its destruction is in the hands of Afro-Americans; overwhelming sentiment on their part would put an end to it; they should be the last to stand for the rapist’s protection; rather should they say to him: “You are none of us!” They should be quick to aid in his arrest, identification and deliverance to the law. Such attitude would be more effective than any other one force that can be brought to bear upon this crime and that of lynching. I chronicle here as worthy of record, that in June, 1870, William Stimson, rapist, was tried before a negro jury, convicted on negro evidence, and hung November 4. This happened in North Carolina during negro rule.
The negro guilty of this hideous offense has committed against his race a worse crime than lynching can ever be. By the brutish few the many are judged—particularly when the many in vociferous condemnation of the penalty visited upon the criminal seem to condone his awful iniquity against themselves. Black men who have been and will be womanhood’s protectors outnumber the beasts who wear like skins as many thousands to one; and it is not fair to themselves that they pursue any course, utter any sentiment, which causes them to be classed in any way whatever with these. Black men are seeing this and are setting their faces towards stamping out the crime which causes lynching. Utterances from some of their pulpits and resolutions passed by some of their religious bodies indicate this.
The occurrence of rapes, lynchings and burnings in the North and West has had beneficial influence upon the question at large. It has led white people of other sections to understand in some degree the Southern situation and to express condemnation of the crime that leads to lynching. The attitude of the Northern press hasundergone great change in recent years, change effective for reform, in that while lynching is as severely under the ban as ever—which it should be—the companion crime goes with it. Southern sentiment is against lynching; I recall seven governors—Aycock of North Carolina, Montague of Virginia, Heyward of South Carolina, Candler and Terrell of Georgia, Jelks of Alabama, Vardaman of Mississippi—who have so placed themselves conspicuously on record. All our newspapers have done so, I believe, from the “Times-Dispatch” of Richmond, the Charlotte “Observer,” the “Constitution” and the “Journal” of Atlanta, the “State” of Columbia, the Charleston “News-Courier,” the Savannah “News,” to the “Times-Democrat” of New Orleans, and “Times-Union” of Jacksonville.
One hope and promise of the new constitutions with which Southern States lately replaced the Black and Tan instruments is the eradication of this method of procedure. Soon after Virginia adopted hers, three negro rapists in that State received legal trial and conviction and not over hasty execution. On motion of District Attorney E. C. Goode, reprieve was granted after conviction that a case in Mecklenburg might be looked into more fully. Such deliberation has not been exceeded—if, indeed, it has been equaled—north of Mason & Dixon’s line. But as long as rapes are committed, so long will there be danger of lynchings, not only in the South, but anywhere else. In the presence of this worse than savage crime the white race suffers reversion to savagery.
RACE PREJUDICE
Race Prejudice
As late as 1890, Senator Ingalls said: “The use of the torch and dagger is advised. I deplore it, but as God is my judge, I say that no people on this earth have ever submitted to the wrongs and injustice which have been put upon the coloured men of the South without revolt and bloodshed.” Others spoke of the negro’s use of torch and sword as his only way to right himself in the South. When prominent men in Congressional and legislative halls and small stump speakers everywhere fulminated such sentiments, the marvel would have been if race prejudice had not come to birth and growth. Good men, whose homes were safe, and who in heat of oratory or passion for place, forgot that other men’s homes were not, had no realisation of the effect of their words upon Southern households, where inmates lay down at night trembling lest they wake in flames or with black men shooting or knifing them.
But for a rooted and grounded sympathy and affection between the races that fierce and newly awakened prejudice could not kill, the Sepoy massacres of India would have been duplicated in the South in the sixties and seventies. Under slavery, the black race held the heart of the white South in its hands. Second only in authority to the white mother on a Southern plantation, was the black mammy; hoary-headed white men and women, young men and maidens and little children, rendered her reverence and love. Little negroes and little white children grew up together, playing together and formingties of affection equal to almost any strain. The servant was dependent upon his master, the master upon his servant. Neither could afford to disregard the well-being of the other. No class of labour on earth today is as well cared for as were the negroes of the Old South. Age was pensioned, infancy sheltered. There was a state of mutual trust and confidence between employer and employee that has been seen nowhere else and at no time since between capital and labour.
Had the negro remained a few centuries longer the white man’s dependant, often an inmate of his home, and his close associate on terms not raising questions and conflicts, his development would have proceeded. Through the processes of slavery, the negro was peaceably evolving, as agriculturist, shepherd, blacksmith, mechanic, master and mistress of domestic science, towards citizenship—inevitable when he should be ready for it; citizenship all the saner, because those who were training him were unconscious of what they were doing and contemplated making no political use of him. They were intent only on his industrial and moral education. His evolution was set back by emancipation.
Yet, if destruction of race identity is advancement, the negro will advance. The education which he began to receive with other Greek gifts of freedom has taught him to despise his skin, to loath his race identity, to sacrifice all native dignity and nobility in crazy antics to become a white man. “Social equality!” those words are to be his doom. It is a pity that the phrase was ever coined. It is not to say that one is better than the other when we say of larks and robins, doves and crows, eagles and sparrows, that they do not flock together. They are different rather than unequal. Difference does not, of itself, imply inequality. Toignore a difference inherent in nature is a crime against nature and is punished accordingly by nature.
The negro race in America is to be wiped out by the dual process of elimination and absorption. The negro will not be eliminated as was the Indian—though the way a whole settlement of blacks was made to move on a few years ago in Illinois, looks as if history might repeat itself in special instances. Between lynchings and race riots in the North and West and those in the South there has usually been this difference: in the former, popular fury included entire settlements, punishing the innocent with the guilty; in the latter, it limited itself to the actual criminal. Another difference between sectional race problems. I was in New York during Subway construction when a strike was threatened, and overheard two gentlemen on the elevated road discussing the situation: “The company talks of bringing the blacks up here.” “If they do, the tunnel will run blood! These whites will never suffer the blacks to take their work.” I thought, “And negroes have had a monopoly of the South’s industries and have scorned it!” I thought of jealous white toilers in the slime of the tunnel; and of Dixie’s greening and golden fields, of swinging hoes and shining scythes and the songs of her black peasantry. And I thought of her stalwart black peasants again when I walked through sweat-shops and saw bent, wizened, white slaves.
The elimination of the negro will be in ratio to the reduction of his potentiality as an industrial factor. Evolutionary processes reject whatever has served its use. History shows the white man as the exponent of evolution. There were once more Indians here than there are now negroes. Yet the Indian has almost disappeared from the land that belonged to him when a little handful of palefaces came and found him in theirway. Had he been of use, convertible into a labourer, he would have been retained; he was not so convertible, and other disposition was made of him while we sent to Africa for what was required. The climate of the North did not agree with the negro; he was not a profitable labourer; he disappeared. He was a satisfactory labourer South; he throve and multiplied. He is not now a satisfactory labourer in any locality. What is the conclusion if we judge the white man’s future by his past?
The white man does not need the negro aslittérateur, statesman, ornament to society. Of these he has enough and to spare, and seeks to reduce surplus. What he needs is agricultural labour. The red man would not till the soil, and the red man went; if the black man will not, perhaps the yellow man will. Sporadic instances of exceptional negroid attainments may interest the white man—in circumscribed circle—for a time. But the deep claim, the strong claim, the commanding claim would be that the negro filled a want not otherwise supplied, that the negro could and would do for him that which he cannot well do for himself—for instance, work the rice and cotton lands where the negro thrives and the white man dies.
The American negro is passing. The mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, strike the first notes in the octave of his evolution—or his decadence, or extinction, or whatever you may call it. The black negro is rare North and South. Negroes go North, white Northerners come South. In States sanctioning intermarriage, irregular connections obtain as elsewhere between white men and black women; and, in addition, between black men and white women of most degraded type or foreigners who are without the saving American race prejudice. Recent exposure of the “White Slave Syndicate” in New Yorkwhich kidnapped white girls for negro bagnios, is fresh in the public mind.
Under slavery many negroes learned to value and to practice virtue; many value and practice it now; but the freedwoman has been on the whole less chaste than the bond. With emancipation the race suffered relapse in this as in other respects. The South did not do her whole duty in teaching chastity to the savage, though making more patient, persistent and heroic struggle than accredited with. The charge that under slavery miscegenation was the result of compulsion on the part of the superior race finds answer in its continuance since. Because he was white, the crying sin was the white man’s, but it is just to remember that the heaviest part of the white racial burden was the African woman, of strong sex instincts and devoid of a sexual conscience, at the white man’s door, in the white man’s dwelling.[28]
In 1900, negroes constituted 20.4 per cent. of the population of Texas, the lowest rate for the Southern States; in Mississippi, 58.6, the highest. In Massachusetts, they were less than two per cent. Questions of social intermingling can not be of such practical and poignant concern to Massachusetts as to Mississippi, where amalgamation would result in a population of mulatto degenerates. Prohibitions are protective to both races. Fortunately, miscegenation proceeds most slowly in the sections of negro concentration, the sugar and cotton lands of the lower South. In these, it is also said, there is lower percentage of negro crime of all kinds than where negroes are of lighter hue.
Thinkers of both races have declared amalgamation an improbable, undesirable conclusion of the racequestion; that it would be a propagation of the vices of both races and the virtues of neither. In a letter (March 30, 1865) to the Louisville “Courier-Journal,” recently reproduced in “The Outlook,” Mr. Beecher said: “I do not think it wise that whites and blacks should mix blood ... it is to be discouraged on grounds of humanity.” Senator Ingalls said: “Fred Douglas once said to me: ‘The races will blend, coalesce, and become homogeneous.’ I do not agree with him. There is no affinity between the races; this solution is impossible.... There is no blood-poison so fatal as the adulteration of race.”
At the Southern Educational Conference in Columbia, 1905, Mr. Abbott, in one of the clearest, frankest speeches yet heard from our Northern brotherhood, declared the thinking North and South now one upon these points: the sections were equally responsible for slavery; the South fought, not to perpetuate slavery, but on an issue “that had its beginning before the adoption of the Federal Constitution;” racial integrity should be preserved. In one of the broadest, sanest discussions of the negro problem to which the American public has been treated, Professor Eliot, of Harvard, has said recently: “Northern and Southern opinion are identical with regard to keeping the races pure—that is, without admixture of the one with the other ... inasmuch as the negroes hold the same view, this supposed danger of mutual racial impairment ought not to have much influence on practical measures. Admixture of the two races, so far as it proceeds, will be, as it has been, chiefly the result of sexual vice on the part of white men; it will not be a wide-spread evil, and it will not be advocated as a policy or method by anybody worthy of consideration.”
“It will not be a wide-spread evil!” The truth staresus in the face. Except in the lower South the black negro is now almost a curiosity. In any negro gathering the gamut of colour runs from ginger-cake to white rivaling the Anglo-Saxon’s; and according as he is more white, the negro esteems himself more honourable than his blacker fellow; though these gradations in colour which link him with the white man, were he to judge himself by the white man’s standard, would be, generally speaking, badges of bastardy and shame.
In Florida, a tourist remarked to an orange-woman: “They say Southerners do not believe in intermingling of the races. But look at all these half-white coons!” “Well, Marster,” she answered, “don’t you give Southern folks too much credit fuh dat. Rich Yankees in de winter-time; crap uh white nigger babies in de fall. Fus’ war we all had down here, mighty big crap uh yaller babies come up. Arter de war ’bout Cuba, ’nother big crap come ’long. Nigger gal ain’ nuvver gwi have a black chile ef she kin git a white one!” Blanch, my negro hand-maiden, is comely, well-formed, black; the descendant of a series of honest marriages, yet feels herself at a disadvantage with quadroons and octoroons not nearly her equals in point of good looks or principle. “I’d give five hundred dollars ef I had it, ef my ha’r was straight,” she tells me with pathetic earnestness; and “I wish I had been born white!” is her almost heart-broken moan.[29]She would rather be a mulatto bastard than the black product of honest wedlock.
The integrity of the races depends largely upon the virtue of white men and black women; also, it restson the negroid side upon the aspiration to become white, acknowledgment in itself of inferiority and self-loathing.The average negress will accept, invite, with every wile she may, the purely animal attention of a “no-count white man” in preference to marriage with a black. The average mulatto of either sex considers union with a black degradation. The rainbow of promise spanning this gloomy vista is the claim that the noble minority of black women who value virtue is on the increase as the race, in self-elevation, recognises more and more the demands of civilisation upon character, and that dignity of racehood which will not be ashamed of its own skin or covet the skin of another. The virtuous black woman is the Deborah and the Miriam of her people. She is found least often in crowded cities, North and South; most often in Southern rural districts. Wherever found, she commands the white man’s respect.
Hope should rest secure in the white man. If the faith of his fathers, the flag of his fathers, the Union of his fathers, are worthy of preservation, is not the blood of his fathers a sacred trust also? Besides, before womanhood, whatever its colour or condition, however ready to yield or appeal to his grosser senses, the white man should throw the ægis of his manhood and his brotherhood.
The recent framing of State Constitutions in the South to supersede the Black and Tan creations revived the charge of race prejudice because their suffrage restrictions would in great degree disfranchise the negro. As compared with discussion of any phase of the race issue some years ago, the spirit of comment was cool and fair. “The Outlook” led in justifying the South for protecting the franchise with moderate property and educational qualifications applying to both races, criticising, however, the provision for deciding upon educational fitness—a provision which Southerners admitneeds amendment. One effect of these restrictions will be to stimulate the negro’s efforts to acquire the necessary education or the necessary three hundred dollars’ worth of property. Another effect will be decrease of the white farmer’s scant supply of negro labour; this scarcity, in attracting white immigrants, provides antidote for Africanisation of the South.