THE INDIANDISPOSSESSEDBy SETH K. HUMPHREYWith sixteen full-page illustrations from photographs300 pages.12mo.Cloth, $1.50 net.Postpaid, $1.64.A plain,connected, carefully prepared narrative of the actual and proved dealings of the United States government with the subdued Indian—the Reservation Indian. The author’s account of governmental oppression and ill-faith, and of successive removals of the Indians from their homes to regions unattractive to white settlers, and of the confiscation of Indian property, are supported by extracts from official records. After chapters describing the experience of the Umatillas (with whom the government held to its treaty), the Flathead Indians of the Bitter Root, the Nez Perces, the Poncas, and the Mission Indians, comes an important chapter on “Dividing the Spoils,” with a graphic and moving description of the scenes at the opening of the Cherokee Strip, drawn from the author’s personal experiences. A chapter is devoted to an exposure of the Rosebud Reservation bill,—the latest example of governmental confiscation,—while the final chapter gives an original and convincing explanation of the remarkable persistence of vicious influences in our Indian system, in the face of the equally persistent desire of the American people to grant the Indian fair play. Helen Jackson’s “A Century of Dishonor” has received a valuable companion work in the present book.LITTLE, BROWN, & CO.,Publishers254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
THE INDIANDISPOSSESSED
By SETH K. HUMPHREY
With sixteen full-page illustrations from photographs
300 pages.12mo.Cloth, $1.50 net.Postpaid, $1.64.
A plain,connected, carefully prepared narrative of the actual and proved dealings of the United States government with the subdued Indian—the Reservation Indian. The author’s account of governmental oppression and ill-faith, and of successive removals of the Indians from their homes to regions unattractive to white settlers, and of the confiscation of Indian property, are supported by extracts from official records. After chapters describing the experience of the Umatillas (with whom the government held to its treaty), the Flathead Indians of the Bitter Root, the Nez Perces, the Poncas, and the Mission Indians, comes an important chapter on “Dividing the Spoils,” with a graphic and moving description of the scenes at the opening of the Cherokee Strip, drawn from the author’s personal experiences. A chapter is devoted to an exposure of the Rosebud Reservation bill,—the latest example of governmental confiscation,—while the final chapter gives an original and convincing explanation of the remarkable persistence of vicious influences in our Indian system, in the face of the equally persistent desire of the American people to grant the Indian fair play. Helen Jackson’s “A Century of Dishonor” has received a valuable companion work in the present book.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO.,Publishers254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
Footnotes:
[1]“Where Black Rules White,” article by Hugo Erichsen, inThe Pilgrimfor July, 1905.
[2]De Officiis, 1, § 89.
[3]Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 579-583.
[4]Gettysburg, 164, 165.
[5]Quoted by himself in his Charleston speech, mentioned later on.
[6]Speech at the banquet of the New England Society of Charleston, S. C.
[7]A Literary History of America, 345.
[8]Id.346.
[9]Id.489.
[10]A Literary History of America, 494, 495.
[11]Major Joseph B. Cumming, speaking to the toast, “New Ideas, New Departures, New South,” at fourteenth annual dinner of New England Society of Charleston, S. C., December 22, 1893.
[12]See Cobb, Slavery, xcvii, xcviii, for relevant citations. Chaps. V. and VI. of the Historical Sketch, the former entitled “Slavery in Greece,” and the latter, “Slavery among the Romans” (pp. lix-xcviii), are very readable, learned, and adequate treatments of their respective subjects.
[13]Cobb, Slavery, cxii.
[14]Id.
[15]Aristotle maintained the justice of wars undertaken to procure slaves. See Cobb, Slavery, xii, foot-note 3, for references.
[16]“Pliny compares them to the drones among the bees, to be forced to labor, even as the drones are compelled.”Id.xcviii.
[17]In his chapter entitled “Slavery among the Jews” Mr. Cobb cites most of the important passages.Id.xxxviiisq.
[18]Twenty Years in Congress, vol. i. I.
[19]1, 2, 2.
[20]Id.1, 3, 1-2.
[21]Dig. 1, 1, 4, where, in an excerpt from Ulpian, it is said that all human beings arejure naturali(that is, by the law of nature) born free.
We of to-day must not regard the last three passages cited from the Corpus Juris Civilis as particularly reprehending the property of the master in his slave. Cicero asserts that there is no private property whatever according to the law of nature; that according to that law all things are common property. He details some of the ways by which private appropriation is made, such as long holding, entry into vacant lands, capture in war, acquisition by contract, etc. According to this, a prisoner of war stood on the same footing as a horse captured from the enemy. By the law of nature there could be private property in neither. But this law of nature was really repealed by thejus gentium, under which both horse and prisoner alike became private property. If another took either the horse or slave away from the owner, he would—to use Cicero’s language—violate the law of human society. De Officiis Lib. 1. cap. 7, §§ 20, 21.
[22]Inst. 1, 8, 1. When Mr. Cobb says that there is “but one voice in the Digest and Code,” book cited, xcviii, meaning that they give no countenance to slavery, the statement is misleading.
[23]In the first chapter of his History of England Macaulay ascribes this result to moral causes, and to religion as chief agent. He is only one of many acute historians who overlook the play of economical forces.
[24]Cobb, Slavery, ccxviii (foot-note).
[25]See p. 437infra, where I have compared the struggle of Ireland for autonomy during the last half of the eighteenth century with that of the south narrated in this book.
[26]Charleston Address mentioned above, 15.
[27]Hist. of Fed. Gov., 2d ed., 59.
[28]Id.2.
[29]See the Republic of Republics, 4th ed. The references in the copious index, under the names Dane, Henry, Story, Webster (Daniel, not Noah), will suffice to put the student in the way to finding ample support of the statements in the text.
[30]See Republic of Republics, 204-212 (chap. viii. of Part III.) entitled “Daniel Webster’s Masterpiece of Criticism,” for copious proofs of the statements made in the text. Hamilton, Madison, John Jay, and Franklin are cited, and some eight or nine quotations from Washington are made. The chapter is also instructive in showing State-rights utterances of Webster made before and after the speech.
[31]See Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 388, 389-392, 397-8; and Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 207-211.
[32]War between the States, two volumes.
[33]The Republic of Republics; or, American Federal Liberty. By P. C. Centz, Barrister, 4th ed., Boston, 1881. See what I said of it in 1882, Am. Law Studies, §§ 943, 944. Subsequent examination and comparison have given me a still higher opinion of this book; which in its well-digested presentation of evidence exhaustively collected, and complete demonstration of its main proposition, to wit, that in the opinion of the draftsmen, also of all the advocates of the constitution, and of the people ratifying, the States were sovereign before adoption and would so remain afterwards, is unique, and far foremost, in the literature of the subject. Compare this strong statement of Henry Cabot Lodge, uttered in 1883:
“When the constitution was adopted by the votes of States at Philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of States in popular conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment by the States and from which each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised.” Daniel Webster, 176.
[34]Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 23. The entire chapter entitled “Secession and Coercion,”id.22-27, will repay consideration, setting forth as it does what according to the author the brothers on each side ought to have done under the law of nations.
[35]Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, 103.
[36]Morgan, Ancient Society, 132.
[37]“It used to be a remark often made by Chief Justice Lumpkin, who was a man himself of wonderful genius, profound learning, and the first of his State, that Webster was always foremost amongst those with whom he acted on any question, and that even in books of selected pieces, whenever selections were made from Webster, these were the best in the book.” A. H. Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 336.
[38]Ransy Sniffles is a character in Georgia Scenes, who has long been a proverb in the south for one who habitually provokes personal encounters among his neighbors.
[39]Seeinfra, p. 436.
[40]See what he said February 20, 1860, in the United States senate, to Clark, repeating the charge, as reported in the “Globe.”
[41]W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun’s Early Life, Calhoun Correspondence, 69.
[42]The inscription on her tombstone states—so I have been informed—that she died in May, 1802. In a short while afterwards he put the mother of his future wife in her place and bestowed on her the highest filial love.
[43]W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun’s Early Life, Calhoun Correspondence, 78.
[44]Starke’s Account of Calhoun’s Early Life, Calhoun Correspondence, 87.
[45]Life of John C. Calhoun. By Gutasvus M. Pinkney, of the Charleston, S. C., Bar, Charleston, S. C., 1903.
[46]Calhoun Correspondence, 88.
[47]Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 41.
[48]War between the States, vol. i. 341.
[49]A Disquisition on Government, and A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, Works, vol. i.
[50]Works, vol. i. (A Disquisition on Government) 72.
[51]They were made in the United States Senate, one, September 19, 1837, on the bill authorizing issue of treasury notes; the other, October 3, 1837, on his amendment of the bill just mentioned.
[52]His “Barbara Villiers” and his “History of Money in America” are very important. But his most valuable addition to the few books which have taught true monetary doctrine is his “Science of Money.” While in this he does not state the fundamental principle of good money as clearly as Calhoun does, yet he assumes it most accurately and builds upon it everywhere.
[53]“Rational Money,” published by C. F. Taylor, 1520 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. The author does not show the deep insight and genial originality of Calhoun and Del Mar; but he has presented the entire subject with a judgment so sane in accepting the true and rejecting the false in the belonging theory, that the book is the very best of existing compilations.
[54]To be nominated in the South Carolina primary, a candidate for governor or any other State place must receive a majority in the whole State, one for congress a majority in the district, one for a county place a majority in the county. Where no candidate receives a majority a new primary is held only to decide between the two who got the largest vote. The primary first mentioned is a State primary, held on the last Tuesday of August. At this date, the crop—to use planting parlance—having been laid by for some six weeks, the voters have had ample opportunity from reading the papers, talks with one another, and hearing speeches to inform themselves fully. Just across the Savannah in Georgia, the State democratic executive committee, so called, being the faithful organ of the railroads, has since 1898 put the primary in the early days of June, in busiest crop-time. This precludes any real canvass. It also keeps thousands from voting; and so the always full turnout of railroad regulars and workers—which is but a relatively small portion of the body of electors—wins a plurality. The committee allows a plurality to nominate, as of course a plurality can be had more easily than a majority. To be sure of the State senate, nominations to it are made by a convention instead of a primary. And conventions in the congressional districts nominate candidates for the lower house.
Contrasting the results—in South Carolina nomination is really the voice of the people; in Georgia the people seem to get, while the railroads really get, the governor, and, as everybody now expects, the railroads and liquor men always have at least twenty-three of the forty-four senators.
I believe that the Swiss-like grip of the people of South Carolina upon their liberties, shaming Georgia so greatly as it does, is mainly due to the influence of Calhoun. That influence is still benignly powerful, even where unrecognized.
I think that if the dispensary law were so altered as to give each county the purchase of its liquor by, say, its supervisor, nominated by this primary, the opportunity of graft, now discrediting the administration of the law with many, would be effectually closed. There would then be everywhere a trustworthy official, of their own election, to keep the people advised as to proper prices and cost. It would be to lose all chance of re-election for the official to cheat the public by colluding with the liquor sellers.
[55]Life of John C. Calhoun, 225-229.
[56]Id.
[57]Heyward thus translates: “Reason and good sense express themselves with little art. And when you are seriously intent on saying something, is it necessary to hunt for words?”
[58]Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 133.
[59]Id.141.
[60]Von Holst, John C. Calhoun, 148.
[61]As illustrating his anti-tariff progress, see what he says in his letter of July, 1828, to James Monroe, Correspondence, 266; what in that to his relative, Noble, of January, 1829,id.269, 270; in that to Samuel L. Gouvernour, of February, 1832,id.310, 311; and what as to benefit from having concentrated opinions in south, in that to his brother-in-law,id.313, 314.
[62]Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, Works, vol. i. 392.
[63]Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, Works, vol. i. 393.
[64]Ancient Society, 147, 148.
[65]A Disquisition on Government, Works, vol. i. 92-96. Compare for Calhoun’s treatment Benton’s report of his conversations, and the pertinent excerpts he gives from Calhoun’s speech in the United States Senate of February 15 and 16, 1833, Thirty Years’ View, vol. i. 335sq.
[66]Daniel Webster, 50.
[67]Id.45, 46.
[68]Id.46.
[69]Id.48.
[70]In hisEncyclopedia Americanaarticle Mr. Carl Schurz strains as hard as Mr. Lodge does in his biography to conceal the real position of Webster. I commend the homespun reasoning of this paragraph to all such.
[71]Daniel Webster, 59.
[72]McMaster, Daniel Webster, 88.
[73]Daniel Webster, 52.
[74]Dartmouth College Causes.—Mr. Lodge’s narrative, Daniel Webster, 74-98—is a very helpful introduction to the book just mentioned.
[75]Lodge, Daniel Webster, 22.
[76]Id.22.
[77]The twelve words meant are, “The congress shall have power to regulate commerce among the several States.”
[78]Huschke ought to have stated this fact at page 19 of his edition of Gaius, in order to give the latter his full posthumous glory.
[79]We support our statement in this sentence by quoting below in this footnote two passages which stand a page or two apart in the Plymouth oration, italicizing one word in the former, and one word and a clause in the other, which, if Webster had taken accurate note of the intellectual ferment then active throughout all New England, he would have made much stronger:
“We may flatter ourselves that the means of education at present enjoyed in New England are not only adequate to the diffusion of the elements of knowledge among all classes, but sufficient also forrespectableattainments in literature and the sciences.”
“With nothing in our past history to discourage us, and withsomethingin our present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, that, as it is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonderful advancement of the country in all its other great interests,we may see also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters.”
[80]Daniel Webster, 318-321.
[81]Ante, 28-30.
[82]Literary History of America, 354.
[83]Id.
[84]Consider his virtual confession when Mrs. Davis good humoredly taxes him with saying in his speeches hard things of slavery which he knew from actual observation to be fictions. Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 581.
[85]Lecture in Tremont Temple, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 637, 638 (Appendix G).
[86]The Negro in Africa and America, by Alexander Tillinghast, M. A., N. Y., 1902.
This really scientific work, very complete though very brief, is as indispensable to whomsoever would enlighten the country upon the race question, as is the latest and best text-book to the lawyer considering a case under the law treated therein.
Mr. Page’s “The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem,” N. Y., 1904, has not the scientific merit of the last. But it most ably advocates the side generally taken by the south.
Both books are free from blinding passion and prejudice.
[87]Book cited, 88. The italics are mine.
[88]Id.88.
[89]The Negro in Africa and America, 88, 89. Italics mine, again.
[90]Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. xviii.
[91]These quotations from The Author’s Introduction, Riverside ed., lviii, lix. The last sentence italicized by me.
[92]Tremont Temple Lecture, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 641. The italics are mine.
[93]Professor DuBois, born in 1868, in New England, whose writings show that his mind has been soaked to saturation in abolition misstatement and bitterness, and that consequently he is utterly unfamiliar with either the average negro slave of the south and the conditions and effects of slavery in the section, attributes the present unchastity of the negroes to the frequent separation of man and wife by the master. Here is what he says:
“The plague-spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. This is no sudden development, nor the fruit of emancipation. It is the plain heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his master’s consent, took up with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in the busy life of the great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually dispensed with. If now the master needed Sam’s work in another part of the same plantation, or if he took a notion to sell the slave, Sam’s married life with Mary was usually unceremoniously broken, and then it was clearly to the master’s interest to have both of them take new mates. This widespread custom of two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty years.” The Souls of Black Folk, 142.
This statement is utterly untrue, as Professor DuBois can easily find out from thousands of most credible witnesses. I never knew of a single such separation. Of course, I will not say that there were none at all. But I do say, in contradiction of his assertion, as flat as contradiction can be, that the separations which he describes were not common. Every impartial investigator who has formed his opinion from the actual evidence knows that the unchastity of the negro slave of America was an inheritance from Africa. I do not dispute the assertion often made that there were and are still chaste negro tribes of that continent. But our negroes did not come from them. They came from the West Africans, accurately described above in citations from Mr. Tillinghast.
[94]Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. lxxxixsq.
[95]Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. ii. 273.
[96]Georgians, 128.
[97]The Life of Robert Toombs, 29-49 (New York, Cassell Pub. Co.).
[98]Bethany, A Story of the Old South, 10sq.
[99]Johnston and Browne’s Life of A. H. Stephens, 218.
[100]Toombs thus anticipates the trenchant but kindly criticism by Woodrow Wilson of congressional ways of governing. Congressional Gov. 58-192, and in other places.
[101]What he says July 29, 1857, on death of Preston S. Brooks is a good example of the forced and labored style of his set speeches. Stephens often said that his set speeches were failures. And unless they were made, as that on the invasion of States, that on the duty of congress to protect slavery in the Territories, and his justification of secession, January 7, 1861, under the excitement of a great cause, working the same effect upon him as the ardor of extemporaneous effort, his set speeches are below the mark. And I wish he had more carefully revised the three just mentioned, following the example of Cicero, Erskine and Webster, who habitually corrected and improved their words after they had been spoken. He does not seem to have given his good speeches—the extemporaneous ones—any systematic correction. Of all speakers and orators I ever knew or heard of, he has used the file the least. It is my belief that he did not know how to use it. Had he but polished just some of his best unpremeditated efforts; as for instances his first speech for the retired naval officers; his most important utterances under various heads of internal improvements; his humorous anti-pension harangues; and his titanic struggle in vain with his own party to keep Harlan seated—what a find they would be for the school speech books of the future! His lecture on slavery, delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24, 1859,—a good copy of which is given by Stephens (The War between the States, vol. i. 625-647)—is the best specimen extant, within my knowledge, of his deliberate style. If I may make such a distinction, it was carefully revised, but never corrected. The reader will find it, I believe, the very ablest of all the many defences of slavery in the south.
Mrs. Davis states that during the times of excitement concerning the compromise of 1850, “He [Toombs] would sit with one hand full of the reporter’s notes of his speeches, for correction,” with a French play in the other, over which he was roaring with laughter. (Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 411.) As his speech of December 13, 1849, and the Hamilcar speech of June next following, need very little correction, I incline to believe that he did at least try to revise them. Naturally leading such a novel movement as he then was—it will be fully explained a little later on—he would desire to send forth his views in only carefully considered words, and probably he corrected the proofs of the two speeches just mentioned with something like diligence. In his pleadings, law-briefs, sketches of proposed statutes, letters, etc., of which I saw much in his last years, he was so palpably indifferent towards improving his first draft that one might know it came from lifelong habit.
[102]Third Session, 240-244.
[103]Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 360 (I am thus particular in giving this reference, from a sense of justice to the memory of George W. Crawford, which is now and then ignorantly aspersed because of the Galphin claim).
[104]See his argument, May 25, 1858, for putting duties on the home valuation of imports; note also how familiar he is with trade, the motive of smuggling, the relation of exchange; also what he says of the tariff of 1857,Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 466, 467, 470. For his mastery of trade and commerce, see what he says June 9, 1858, especially pp. 2832-2834.
[105]Stephens, War between the States, vol. ii. 338.
[106]War between the States, vol. ii. 186.
[107]Address in the Supreme Court of Georgia, March 9, 1886.
[108]War between the States, vol. ii. 217.
[109]Waddell, Life of Linton Stephens, 237.
[110]The rare perfection of Catullus’s spontaneous poetic expression is something like adequately represented in two quotations made by Baehrens, one from Niebuhr, and the other from Macaulay, especially in the former. Catulli Veronensis, Liber II. 42.
[111]War Between the States, vol. ii. 329-333.
[112]Pleasant A. Stovall, The Life of Robert Toombs, 218.
[113]The War between the States, vol. ii. 781 (Appendix).
[114]The supplies for the Confederate Army, How they were obtained in Europe and How paid for.—Personal Reminiscences and Unpublished history. By Caleb Huse, Major and Purchasing Agent, C. S. A. Boston, Press of T. R. Marvin & Son, 1904.
I commend this narrative to Professor Brown. Should he study it he will have cause to retract what he has written (The Lower South in American History, 164) in disparagement of this resource. Had Toombs, or Stephens, or Cobb been president and represented by such an extraordinarily able agent, the Confederate States would have got ironclads, broken the blockade, kept out invaders, and had a money that would have held its own much better than the greenbacks unsustained by cotton or anything like it. From what I know of these men I am sure the right agent would have been found.
[115]Book cited, 164, 165.
[116]Stovall, Life of Robert Toombs, 226.
[117]Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 268, 269.
[118]Id.271.
[119]See his 14th chapter.
[120]“I see a vision of awful shapes—mighty presences of gods arrayed against Troy.”Æneid, II. 622-23, Transl. byJohn Conington,Writings, II., Longmans, Green & Co. (1872).
[121]In six consecutive numbers of thePilgrim, beginning with that of October, 1903. This is a monthly, edited by Willis J. Abbot, and published by the Pilgrim Magazine Co.,Ltd., Battle Creek, Mich.
[122]Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 59.
[123]Memoir, vol. i. 86.
[124]Id.52, 53.
[125]Memoir,Id.vol. i. 59, 60.
[126]Mrs. Davis tells all the details most delightfully; Memoir, vol. i. 207-212.
[127]Memoir, vol. i. 214, 215. Compare what Stephens says of the speech made by President Davis at the African church in Richmond in February, 1865, just after the return of our Commissioners who had sought in vain for terms of peace which the south could consider. We give the part of the passage pertinent here.
“The newspaper sketches of that speech were meagre, as well as inaccurate ... and ... came far short of so presenting its substance even, as to give those who did not hear it anything like an adequate conception of its full force and power. It was not only bold, undaunted, and confident in tone, but had that loftiness of sentiment and rare form of expression, as well as magnetic influence in its delivery, by which the passions of the people are moved to their profoundest depths, and roused to the highest pitch of excitement. Many who had heard this Master of Oratory in his most brilliant displays in the senate and on the hustings, said they never before saw him so really majestic. The occasion, and the effects of the speech, as well as all the circumstances under which it was made, caused the minds of not a few to revert to like appeals by Rienzi and Demosthenes.” War between the States, vol. ii. 623, 824.
[128]Memoir, vol. i. 146, 147.
[129]Landon Knight, “The Real Jefferson Davis,” already cited.
[130]Landon Knight, “The Real Jefferson Davis.”
[131]Mrs. Davis’s Memoir, vol. i. 392.
[132]In his fourth chapter.
[133]Memoir, vol. ii. 18.
[134]Id.32, 33.
[135]Memoir, vol. ii. 180-183.
[136]Mr. Landon Knight is happy in showing the fidelity, diligence, courage, and unsurpassed conscientiousness, of Mr. Davis in his presidency, and especially how he bore himself amid the multiplying disasters of the last two years.
[137]“We embraced the cause [i. e., of the Confederate States] in the spirit of lovers. True lovers all were we—and what true lover ever loved less because the grave had closed over the dear and radiant form?—And so we—we, at least, who as men and women inhaled the true spirit of that momentous time—come together on these occasions not only with the fresh new flowers in our hands, but with the old memories in our thoughts and the old, but ever fresh, lover spirit in our hearts, and seek to make these occasions not unworthy of the cause we loved unselfishly and of these its sleeping defenders.” Major Joseph B. Cumming, in introducing General Butler, orator of the day, when the Confederate soldiers’ graves were decorated at the Augusta (Ga.) cemetery in 1895.
[138]The celebration at Covington, Georgia, April 26, 1866, was complete. My friend Hon. J. M. Pace has just shown me a copy of the local newspaper issued the next day, containing an account of the ceremony and the rarely appropriate address which he made as part thereof. The fact is that the observance of Memorial Day commenced everywhere in the south at the time just mentioned.
[139]Encyc. Americana, article “Ant.”
[140]Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key, vol. i. 206 (Riverside ed.).
[141]Says John Mitchell: “The Southern States, which have made rapid progress, especially in cotton manufacturing, have, as a general rule, not responded to the demand for a shorter working-day—the south lacking effective labor organizations to compel such legislation.” (Organized Labor, 122.) He might have said the same as to the desired prohibition of child labor.
[142]Infra, pp. 431-438.
[143]The Souls of Black Folk, 254.
[144]In an address mentioned in the next footnote Major Joseph B. Cumming rightly insists that this is the proper name for what is called “the American Civil War” with some show of justification, and “the war of rebellion” without any justification whatever.
[145]Address of Major Joseph B. Cumming, entitled “The Great War,” before Camp 435 of United Confederate Veterans, Augusta, Ga., Memorial Day, 1902.
[146]I Timothy vi. 1-4. I have quoted the Twentieth Century Testament because of its extremely faithful version. Of course the italics are mine.
[147]“Where Black Rules White,” by Hugo Erichsen, in thePilgrimfor July, 1905, deserves the title “Hayti As It Is.” The Americana article ought to be conspicuously labelled “Hayti Whitewashed.”
[148]Bureau of Labor Bulletin, No. 48, September, 1903, pp. 1006, 1013, 1019.
[149]Id.1020.
[150]Bishop Lucius H. Holsey, D.D., of the colored M. E. Church, is much more in touch and sympathy with the negro masses than Professor DuBois. Here is something recently said by him:
“As long as the two races live in the same territory in immediate contact, their relations will be such as to intermingle in that degree that half-bloods, quarter-bloods and a mongrel progeny will result.This is not only going on now, but is destined to annihilate the true typical ante-bellum negro type, and put in his place a stronger, a longer lived, and a more Anglo-Saxon-like homogeneous race. In other words, the negro to come will not be the negro of the emancipation proclamation, but he will be the Anglo-Saxonized Afro-American. It seems true, as has been said, ‘No race can look the Anglo-Saxon in the face and live.’ Certainly no other race can hold its own in his immediate presence. Being in immediate contact and underrating the mental and moral virtues of others and exercising a sovereignty over them, his opportunities are enlarged to make other races his own in consanguinity. This he never fails to do.” Address before the National Sociological Society at the Lincoln Temple Congregational Church, The Possibilities of the Negro in Symposium, 107 (Atlanta, Ga.).
In the same address, just a little above the quotation just made, this occurs: “Legal intermarriage in the south, although not wrong in its consummation, is a matter as yet undebatable, and belongs only to the future.”Id.107.
These words of Bishop Holsey are weighty proof that the negroes strongly desire and expect amalgamation.
[151]Edward B. Taylor,The Outlook, July 16, 1904, p. 670.
[152]The Souls of Black Folk, 106.
[153]See Exodus xxii. 16.
[154]The Souls of Black Folk, 106.
[155]May 6, 1905. Having finished my work I read two days ago, “The Color Line. A Brief in behalf of the Unborn.” By William Benjamin Smith, N. Y., 1905. It ably and vividly explains the transcendent importance of keeping the blood of Caucasians in America uncontaminated with that of the African, and demonstrates that to do this the color line must be rigidly maintained between negroid as well as coal-black, on one side, and white on the other. The utter impossibility of making the man of a particular race like the man of another extremely remote one by even the most careful education is shown with startling effect. The inability of the black to hold his own against white competition, and his gradual and sure expulsion is proved by overwhelming evidence. The book is useful as an introduction to all the literature of the subject. The only fault that I note is its excessive warmth and combativeness—especially in the first half. With the dispassionate serenity of Mr. Tillinghast, it would have been perfect.
[156]The quotations which immediately follow are from a letter of J. B. A. Walker, dated Tuskegee, Ala., July 27, 1904, written to S. H. Comings, who has kindly permitted me to make use of it.
[157]Lower South in Am. Hist. 223. When Professor Brown read “The Clansman” doubtless his hesitation ended.
[158]Clyattv.United States, March 13, 1905.
[159]Possibly this is the village of Boley, mentioned in the next chapter.
[160]They are Stephen, a slave,v.State, 2 Ga. 225; Jesse, a slave,v.State, 20 Ga. 161.
[161]See Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, 10-14.
[162]New Encyc. Britan., Article, “Jamaica.”
[163]Working with the Hands, 40.
[164]Tillinghast, book cited above, 180, 181. Consider the quotation there made from Thurston, the negro manager, in which he asserts that it is only by this means that negro operatives can be made to do good work.
[165]Souls of Black Folk, 9.
[166]During the years after the war until the end of 1881, when I came to Atlanta, I kept my eye upon the negro preachers in the country. Whenever I could closely observe one and had opportunity of sifting members of his congregation, I generally found him to bevir gregis. My acquaintances tell me that there has been no perceptible change. Compare what Mr. Edward B. Taylor, a northern man, now residing in Columbia, S. C., says of “the immoral negro preacher” inThe Outlookof July 16, 1904.
[167]William Hannibal Thomas, a negro of Massachusetts, says the same as to the early corruption of children and “marital immoralities” both of the poor, the ignorant, and the degraded among the freed people, and also of those who assume to be educated and refined. Quoted by Mr. Page, The Negro; The Southerner’s Problem, 82-84.
[168]Encyc. Am. Article, “Negro in America.”
[169]Noticing Mr. Page’s book just mentioned, Professor DuBois treats William Hannibal Thomas as utterly unworthy of credit. All of us in the south familiar with negroes know that Thomas’s statement quoted by Mr. Page is unqualifiedly true.
[170]That part of Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau Census, Bulletin 8, called “The Negro Farmer,” is by him. Consider the extravagant claims made therein for the magnitude of negro farming in the United States in the comment on Table xxxv. p. 92. Professor DuBois is also author of the “Negro Landholder of Georgia,” Bulletin of Department of Labor, No. 35, July, 1901.
[171]Bulletin 8, before cited, 75.
[172]Article, “Negro Education,” Encyclopedia Americana.
[173]Professor DuBois, Bulletin 8, cited above, 73.
[174]Id.77.
[175]Book cited, 183-185.
[176]Id.184.
[177]Book cited, 184.
[178]Id.184.
[179]Bureau of Statistics—Bulletin No. 28, p. 71.
[180]Id.72.
[181]Extract from a letter of Hon. James M. Smith to the author. He is, I believe, the largest planter in Georgia. His lands lie in the adjoining edges of Oglethorpe county, which is in the Black Belt, and of Madison county, which is outside. From his experience, and because of the great accuracy of his observation, which I have noted for nearly forty years, I regard him as better qualified than any one else who can be suggested, to give a correct opinion on the subjects he deals with in the quotation. Especially do I emphasize his exceptional advantages for comparing whites and negroes as farmers, tenants, croppers, and laborers for standing wages, in making cotton.
[182]Book cited above, 121, 122.
[183]The Voice of the Negro, September, 1904 (Atlanta, Ga.)—Consider picture of “Board of Directors of the True Reformers’ Bank, Richmond, Va.,” in number of same magazine for November, 1904. These directors are nine in all, and there is but one who is decidedly black. Six of them look to be more than three-quarters white. The number for March, 1905, contains a sketch of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Ph.D., stating that the Professor’s ancestry is largely white and his color a rich brown. The picture of his mother shows her hair to be straight and her complexion bright.
[184]Book cited above, 213-215.
[185]The Voice of the Negro, October, 1904, p. 435.
[186]Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau of the Census, Bulletin 8, Negroes in the United States, p. 13.
[187]I have in mind his late articles in theOutlook.
[188]See his “Problems of the Present South.”
[189]Autobiography of Seventy Years, vol. ii. 60-62.
[190]By Anne Scribner, and copied in thePublicof September 17, 1904, from the ChicagoEvening Post.
[191]The passage with the context quoted by Dr. Booker Washington, “Working with the Hands,” 238.
[192]Issue of October 15, 1904.
[193]Encyclopedia Americana, Article “Negro Education.”
[194]But the most drastic provisions to keep the greedy whites from preying upon the negroes as they did upon the Indians most be adopted, such as permitting the negro State to tax without limit whites owning property or doing business therein. This will prevent the result anticipated by Booker Washington.
[195]The best thing upon the joint education of hand and brain known to me is “Paganvs.Christian Civilization,” by S. H. Comings (Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago). The title does not indicate, as it ought to do, the special purpose of the book to show that to give the scholar expertness with his hands at the first and thus develop his self-supporting ability is far better than to cram his memory. What the author says in maintenance of his proposition, that our industrial schools should be operated upon a plan that will make the scholar pay as he goes, out of his own work, for his subsistence and expense of education during the entire course, deserves respectful and thoughtful consideration. In its brevity, and at the same time variety and fulness, coming as it does at the beginning of a new era, it reminds me of Sullivan’s tract which some years ago started the American agitation for direct legislation, with store of examples and exposition almost sufficient for its entire needs.
The above had been written when Booker Washington’s “Working with the Hands” came along. The well-chosen title informs accurately as to the subject of the book. Its scope covers working with the hands from its beginning in childhood to the close of life. As illustration of his principles Dr. Washington circumstantially tells of the beneficent industrial and moral training given at Tuskegee, in all its many departments, to children, youth, and adults, in everything which it is important that a negro of either sex should know how to do. Besides its wisdom, its attention-commanding and interest-exciting style deserves high commendation. Any reader longing for the day of real education to dawn who opens the book will go to the end, without skipping, in a delightful gallop. It is my conviction that it will be of far more advantage to the white industrial and technological schools than to those for which it is specially intended by the author.
[196]Book cited, 119.
[197]See Collier’s Weekly for November 26, 1904.
[198]The English translation of the first volume of Von Holst’s “Constitutional and Political History of the United States” has just been published. The titles of the ninth and tenth chapters, to wit, “The Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States,” and “Development of the Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States,” are very apt and striking, and the contents of the chapters are profoundly original and instructive. Having ample space, the author has, among other merits, well handled the following incidents and consequences of slavery:
1. Implacable hostility of slave and non-slave labor.
2. Self-protecting necessity to slavery of continuous expansion, and, to insure this expansion, necessity that the south keep political mastery of the country.
3. Economic importance to south of invention of cotton-gin in 1793.
4. Exclusive possession by north of wholesale trade.
5. Greater immigration to north.
6. Missouri Compromise, and rise therefrom of geographical parties.
7. Internal improvements and tariff passing inter-geographical question.
8. Economic decay of south due to slavery, and not to tariff.
9. Opposition of slavery to the spirit of the age.
The following is a brief statement of the chief demerits of the two chapters:
1. Misstatement that there were different circles of slaveholders; overstatement of inhumanity of masters; and unjust disparagement of character of smaller slaveholders.
2. Failure to note the great absorbing energy of slave property.
3. Failure to note the lack of a population of free workers.
But the work, considering the short time the clouds of battle have had to clear away, recollecting, too, that the author is a foreigner, is, excepting a little heated partisanship here and there, a most valuable contribution to the history of our country.
[199]I see now—in 1905—that the statement in the text was a great mistake; and that nadir was not reached until some fifteen or twenty years later.