John T Morgan's "The Race Question in the United States," (1890)
After the ratification of the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, it was, in the opinion of the abolitionists necessary to further amend it, so as to provide against the effect of “race, color, and previous condition of servitude,” upon the capacity of the negro race to rise to social and political equality with the white race in this country.
Something was needed, beyond any native virtues or powers of the negro, to lift him up to the full enjoyment of his liberty.
It was conceded by the measures that were adopted for this purpose that our negroes, trained and educated under the southern slave code, were prepared for citizenship and the ballot in this great Republic.
This movement also ignored the declaration in the Constitution that this government was ordained “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity;” or else it was determined that the negro race should become the posterity of the white race.
The 14th and 15th amendments furnish a strong support for the contention of the negro race that the was the purpose of these amendments to give them higher and more definite security for their liberties than was provided for the white race.
If that contention was true in theory, as it is in fact, it proves that it was considered necessary to save the negroes from the natural decay of their new-born liberties, which would result, necessarily, from their natural inability to preserve their freedom, and to enjoy its blessings.
If, as asserted by some, the purpose of these amendments was to protect the negro race from the active hostility of the white race, it is obvious, in either case, that a race question was recognized in the very language of those amendments. In the first proposition, the race questions appeared in the admitted inferiority of the negroes, as a race; and, in the other case, it appeared in the admitted aversion between the races.
The stringent prohibition of the action of the States, in denying them the power to discriminate against political privileges of the negroes, confessed the existence of race aversion and prejudice, in such degree, that it could only be held in check by the organic law of the land.
It was expected that the citizenship conferred upon the negroes by these amendments and the peculiar protection guaranteed to their political powers, would carry with it, as a necessary incident, an equality of social privileges with the white race.
It was impossible to express this incident class of privileges in the body of these amendments, because it would have been impossible to define them, or to enjoin their enforcement in the courts, or to compel obedience to their commands in the social relations and conduct of the people. They were, therefore, left as mere incidents of political power, to be worked out through the influence the negro race would exert in the government of the country.
This fruitful cause of strife has invited constant but futile effort on the part of the negro race and their political masters to force them, by political pressure and by acts of Congress, upon the white race as equals and associates in their domestic relations.
At whatever line their leaders may intend to fix the limits of this intrusion, the negroes have intended that the invasion shall not cease until the races become homogeneous through complete admixture. Not that the highest class of white people shall consort with the lowest class of negroes, but, that, where the conditions of wealth, education, culture, and position are equal, discrimination against the negro race shall cease.
The social and political questions connected with the African race in the United States, all relate to and depend on the essential differences between the negro and the white man, as they have been arranged by the hand of the Creator.
Amongst these differences, the color of the skin, while it distinguishes the races unmistakably, is the least important. The mental differences and differing traits, including the faculty of governing, forecast, enterprise, and the wide field of achievement in the arts and sciences, are accurately measured by the contrast of the civilization of the United States, with the barbarism of Central Africa.
If the negroes in the United States were not descended from a people who enslaved them and sold them into foreign bondage, and who are still engaged in the same traffic; if they had been invited to this country to become citizens and to contribute what talents and virtues they have to the conduct of our complex system of government, --- the race question would still be as much as a vital and unavoidable issue, political and social, as it is under the existing and widely different conditions.
It is the presence of seven or eight millions of negroes in this country and the friction caused by their political power and their social aspirations, and not the fact that they were recently in slavery, that agitates and distresses the people of both races. If they were not in the United States, there would be perfect peace and harmony amongst the people.
There is a decided aversion between the white race and the Indian,---a race who has never submitted to enslavement. The difference in color and in social traits sufficiently accounts for this aversion, which exists in spite of our admiration for them as a brace and independent race. Has it been long persistence in a course of injustice and ill usage that has caused this aversion, or is the race aversion that has caused the ill usage and retaliation that have filled the fairest valleys of our country with massacre and havoc? Whether it was the one or the other, it was not slavery, nor the lack of manly independence or of fortitude, on the part of the Indians, that has engendered the constant collisions between the two races. In the history of the Indians we find the most conclusive proofs that no race, inferior in capacity and intelligence, can co-exist with the white race, in the same government, and preserve its distinctive traits, or social organization. If the two races cannot merge, and sink their individuality, by a commingling of blood, the inferior race will be crushed.
In some respects the North American Indians have a remarkable history which entitles them to great respect. They are the only race of people known to history, who have never enslaved their own people.
They might, with a show of reason, despise a man who had been a slave, or had descended from a slave parentage; while such a pretension would be filial ingratitude in Britons, English, Irish, French, Germans, Russians, Romans, Greeks or Chinese, and in all Oriental nations, all of who have enslaved and made merchandise of their own kindred, as well as of all strangers who have come within their power. In the introduction to the work of Mr. Cobb, on Slavery, that great lawyer and statesman says:---
“A detailed and minute inquiry into the history of slavery would force us to trace the history of every nation of the earth; for the most enlightened have, at some period within their existence, adopted it as a system; and no organized government has been so barbarous as not to introduce it amongst its customs. It has been more universal than marriage, and more permanent than liberty.”
The perishing of the Indian races in North America and the West India Islands, has been the result of their stubborn resistance to the dominance of races of superior knowledge and power. If they have yielded, as the negro has always done, to the vis major, they would have increased in numbers and in useful knowledge; and they would have taken the places that the white people have accorded to the negroes, in citizenship, with greatly superior endowment of intellect, and of every great virtue. But the Indians, while they eagerly acquired the ownership of negro slaves, refused the bondage of slavery for their race, and have perished, rather than submit to such humiliation. Our history is full of records to prove this fact, and, in one of the Spanish American Islands, then known as Hispanolia (Santo Domingo,) it is stated by eminent historians, that a population of 3,000,000 Indians shrunk to 1200 souls in the reign of Charles V. of Spain. This extermination was the result of the efforts of the white race to enslave them.
In Irving’s “Columbus,” it is stated that the whole villages of Indians committed suicide to escape the bondage of slavery and invited other Indians to join them in that dreadful work.
As a slave, the Indian has always perished, while, in all other races, except the negroes, the slave has, at last, worked out his own deliverance. The African slaves have not yet made such an effort, either here or in Africa. Their emancipation has always resulted from the benevolence of white people. They still assist in the slave trade with Asia, despite the earnest endeavors of great nations to prevent that traffic.
Slavery continues in Africa without modification, or abatement. Slavery has always been the common law of the negro race in Africa, and its abolishment there as a domestic institution is a very remote expectation.
In the experience of all the great nations, slavery has been a rudimentary condition ---the first exercise of political government, after the family government, and no nation or race is to be despaired of because its government was first rooted in slavery. The organization of the Congo Free State has secured to the negro race the free and unobstructed opportunity, with the aid of all the great powers, to prove, if they can do so, that they are capable of breaking the chains of slavery riveted on their limbs, by their own kindred, under a slave code ordained by their own free will.
All the other nations have, with good cause, regarded the negroes as an inferior race, aside from all the physical distinctions by which they are separated from all other races of men. It was this estimate of their condition that led the great powers of Europe to enter into the Berlin Conference, which fixed the boundaries of the Congo Free State,---a vast and beautiful country abounding in natural resources,--and secure to the negro race immunity from foreign invasion, that they might become a civilized people. The negro race, in their native land, have never made a voluntary and concerted effort to rise above the plane of slavery; they have not contributed a thought, or a labor, except by compulsion, to aid the progress of civilization. Nothing has emanated from the negroes of Africa, in art, science, or enterprise that has been of the last service to mankind. Their own history, at home, demonstrates their inferior when compared with that of other peoples.
They have been, for ages, the possessors of a fertile country, where they have bred in myriads, and no foreign power has attempted to subjugate them. The result of their contributions to the wealth of the world is limited to slaves, and the natural productions of the forests. They have no agricultural implement, except a rude, iron hoe; no ships for the seas and no beasts of burden. Their social development has never rise so high as to repress human sacrifices and cannibalism; while their religion is a witchcraft that is attended with every brutal crime.
The inferiority of the negro race, as compared with the white race, is so essentially true, and so obvious, that, to assume it in argument, cannon be justly attributed to prejudice. If it is prejudice, it is rare prejudice, which affects nearly all of the white race, and proves the existence of a deep-seated race aversion. This aversion is not a result of slavery. If it were, we could not take pride in the race of English and Saxon masters and slaves from whom we are descended. Whether the law that created this aversion is natural, or contrary to nature; whether it is of human or divine origin; whether it is wicked, or good,---it equally affects and controls both races in all their relations, and it is immutable,---grounded in convictions and sentiments that neither race can yield.
The negro race has but a slight hold on other races through the marriage relation.
Marriages have seldom occurred between Chinese, or Malays, or Indians, and the negro race; and, by the universal decree of the white race, such marriages are prohibited. No expression of race aversion could be more distinct than this.
The race aversion has been greatly increased in this country by the abolition of slavery. The trust and confidence felt by the slaves towards their former masters has been supplanted by a feeling of resentment, which politicians are rapidly converting into hatred and revenge. This condition would not have been so pronounced, if the negro race had not been forced, unprepared and disqualified, into the exercise of the full rights and powers incident to citizenship. That unwise and unnecessary decree has caused the aversion between the races to infuse its virus into the social and political affairs of the country, where it will be, forever, a rankling poison. It has intensified into a race conflict all political questions, in localities where there are large negro populations. It is discussed and voted upon everywhere, from the national capital to the ballot box; exciting the most acrimonious debate and extreme measures of legislation. Politicians deny, in vain, that it is an open question, and demand the execution, to the letter, of the provisions of the constitutional amendments; while the people, in all parts of the country, continue its discussion and refuse to lend the support of public opinion to the enforcement of the organic law.
The race conflict in the United States is, essentially, a social controversy, aggravated by its union with the government of the country.
Race conflicts have attended the entire history of English-speaking people. Having, as they believe, a mission and leadership in the civilizations of barbarous people and in all the progress of mankind, they have not permitted the inferior races to check their movements.
Our North American history is filled with illustrations of this unrelenting progress. By the destruction of the implacable Indian, we have possessed ourselves of his inheritance, ---the fairest and richest in the world. He would not be a slave, and drove him out and filled his place with negroes found in bondage in their native land, and imported as slaves. The patient, thrifty Chinaman was found to be depraved. He was invited to come here under guarantees of full protection. When he became the successful rival of our laboring classes and encumbered our industries with a competition that starved the people who refused to admit him to their family circles as an equal, we summarily decreed his banishment.
It was alleged by great statesmen who were endeavoring to account for the evil of the presence of the negro in our country that there was “an irrepressible conflict between free and slave labor.” They demanded the abolition of slavery as the only remedy. This illogical conclusion was based on a thorough misconception of the truth, and the remedy was as mistaken as the supposed conflict of slave and free labor.
The alleged competition did not exist in any branch of human industry, except in servile and menial labor which the negro was alone fitted to perform and still monopolizes. The great body of negro slaves grew cotton and sugar in the South, while the producers of grain, provisions, wool, hemp, flax, and hand, occupied other latitudes. The South furnished them their nearest and best market for their supplies of food, draught animals, and machinery, and they were, in the aggregate, as much benefited by the labor of the negro slaves as their owners were.
Instead of there having been competition between slave and free labor, the two systems, separated by isothermal and commercial lines, but adjoining each other, were mutual contributors to the prosperity of the labors of both, and of the country at large. It was not labor competition, but political and sectional rivalry in the struggle for power, and deep seated race aversion, that caused the alleged “irreconcilable conflict.”
In the adjoining fields, in the South, where white men and negro slaves grew cotton, there as not conflict, competition, or rivalry, the reason being that there as never an overproduction of cotton. There was never a moment when cotton was not ready sale, for cash. The production, however great, was always in demand. The slave laws held the negro to his daily work; made him temperate; enforced subordination; repressed crime and misdemeanor; and made him a safe and harmless neighbor. There was no cause for social or political rivalry with the white people, who labored, or with any other class, and, while the slave did not aspire to such an attitude, the white man did not condescend to it. While the slaves were under the strict dominion of their masters, no class of people were better secured against interference, by other persons, with their rights, of any kind. The result was that there was neither rivalry nor friction between the laboring classes in the South.
There was instinctive race aversion between them, which nothing could prevent, or modify, except the inferior position of the negro, which neutralized all personal jealousies. This inferiority and dependence excited, in all classes of white people, that sort of Christian benevolence that compassionates, always, the poorest and least attractive of the human family. The Christian training of the negro race in the South is the undesirable proof of this state of sentiment towards them.
When this race aversion was excited by the apprehensions of the non-slaveholders, of the possibility of the future social equality, or union of the races, under political pressure, it flamed up into angry abhorrence, and has become a settled antagonism, as these apprehensions have been realized. It was this apprehension, and not any coercion, or other fear of consequences that, above all other considerations, incited, armed, fed with the bread earned by the toil of women in the fields, clothed with their skill, and sent to the Southern armies, the sturdiest and most resolute of that wonderful body of citizen soldiery. Knowing all that his political movement meant and fully comprehending its results, these men felt that any sacrifice they could make, to prevent race equality in the South, could not outweigh their duty to their families, their race, and their country.
This race question has been a football for politicians, and a stumbling block for statesman, since we began to organize into a federal union. In the beginning, the repression of the slave trade was obstinately resisted by northern and southern States interested in the profits, and a compromise, written into the constitution, was the necessary result. Another and more important compromise secured the enumeration of three fifths of the slave population in the basis of representation in Congress and the electoral colleges. Slavery and politics were thus linked in perpetual association and made the cause of perpetual strife.
Our fathers had more faith in our dutiful obedience to the constitution than we deserved, when they planted this temptation in the body of that instrument. There was inequality in that basis of representation; founded on a principle that warred against the theory of our government. It was not too much for the people of the free States to say that in part, a basis of representation, while their own property was denied that influence. Still, the South entered the Union upon that agreement, and it was not too much for them to say, that the sworn compact should be observed.
In this condition of the subject, political controversy was bound up with the question of slavery, so closely and inevitably, that it has clung to the negro race since their emancipation, and has become the leading and controlling influence in their destiny.
It was the hope and expectation of the abolitionists who, as humanitarians, were also enthusiasts, that the emancipation of the negro would cure the alleged conflict between free and slave labor; that freedom would quality the negro race for unobstructed social intercourse with the white race; and that the ballot would force them into such political influence as to compel the abolition, also, of race aversion and social discrimination. The ballot in the hands of the negro race has had just the contrary effect. It has been relied upon as a substitute for person worth, industry, and good conduct, to lift the inferior race to the same plane with the superior race; but it has constantly exposed the negro race to organized political opposition, and has chilled the hopes and balked the efforts of those who most desired to help the negroes to profit by their freedom.
The negroes have uniformly used the ballot as a means of inflicting the penalties of resentment and race animosity upon southern people. They seem incapable of conceiving that their political power has any other valuable use than as an expression of hatred and ill will towards their former owners. The history of Hayti and Jamaica, on the other hand, has not been forgotten in the southern States. The people there understand that prudence has restrained the excesses that destroyed, or drove out, the white race, from these and other islands of the West Indies, for the same reasons that now animate the negroes and united them, in solid political movement, in hostility to the white race. This strenuous and constant antagonism of the negro race towards the white people of the South, has compelled them, also, to unite on race lines for security.
The first movement of the negro party in the South, and of their white leaders there and in Congress, was directed to the vital point of securing race equality, in social as well as political privileges, by the compulsion of law. The negro race, flattered by this effort, with the hope, that is most keenly indulged by every negro of mixed blood, of being foisted into the white families, freely contributed its entire political power to assist in such robbery of States and people, as never before was practiced under the authority of law. The warnings of that experience cannot be ignored or forgotten. It is impossible to divide the negro race on any political question, and whatever measures they will support or oppose will first be tested by the race issue.
Natural race instinct and caste is the controlling force in this movement.
The negro race has reason to know that the great body of the white people, in the northern section of the country, oppose the influence of their political power, elsewhere than in “the States lately in rebellion.” Congress has stricken down all suffrage in the District of Columbia, for the sole purpose of disfranchising the negro voter; and in the northern States negroes are practically excluded from holding office, either under State or federal authority. Those who oppose negro influence in politics, in the States were small numbers of that race are found, can have no other reason than race aversion for their course. This feeling is quite as common in the northern States as in the South, where the people are brought into contact with the negroes in social intercourse, or into competition with their labor, or into party conflict with them in the elections.
With these facts, and many others in view, we must admit that there is a deep and immovable cause for the almost inflexible law of exclusion, that shuts out the negro race, through the pressure of public opinion, from all opportunity to rise to the level of the white race, in political and social affairs.
What is the cause of this condition of the negro race in the United States, which their power and political influence has not been able to remove, but has only aggravated? The answer is recorded in the home history of every white family in the United States. The negro race cannot be made homogeneous with the white race. It is the abhorrence that every white woman in our country feels towards the marriage of her son or daughter with a negro, that gives the final and conclusive answer to this question. Wealth, character, abilities, accomplishments and position, have no effect to modify this aversion of the white woman to a negro-marital alliance. Men may yield to such considerations, or to others of a baser sort; but the snows will fall from heaven in sooty blackness, sooner than the white women of the United States will consent to the maternity of negro families. It will become more and more the pride of the men of our race to resist any movement, social or political, that will promote the unwelcome intrusion of the negro race into the white family circle.
This is the central and vital point in the race question. If the negroes, being our equals in political privileges, could be absorbed into our race, as equals, there would be no obstacle to our harmonious and beneficent association, in this free country, but neither laws, nor any form of constraint, can force the doors to our homes and seat them at our firesides.
The voting power is the only reliance of the negro for lifting his race to the level of social union or equality with the white race. The race jealousy that the exertion of that power inflames, has united the white race on the color line, in every State where there is a dense negro population, and has moved other communities, that have no fear of negro domination, to feel for those who are threatened with this calamity, the warmest sympathy.
There is a reason for this condition of public sentiment, that is fatal to the movement for negro political domination in the southern States,---a reason existing in the very organism of our government; a feature that cannot be ignored.
Ours is a representative government, with sovereignty residing in the people; and those who exert the powers of sovereignty are chosen for that purposes, not by the people at large, but by qualified voters. One in about every five of our population is qualified by the law to represent himself and the four other persons in the group, in voting at elections. This arbitrary arrangement imposes no restraint upon the voter, as to how he will represent his group, except his sense of justice, his friendship for the race he represents, or his natural affections and love of country. He has no other than a remote, moral responsibility to his non-voting constituency: and he measures his duty to them by his more direct allegiance to his party. Four fifths of the people of the United States are thus arbitrarily represented in the ballot box, by the one fifth who are qualified voters.
This seemingly dangerous power of the voter is based upon the theory of representation in the ballot box that sacred relation which inspires the honest and intelligent voter with the most dutiful and quickened sense of trust and natural affection,---the family relation. Controlled by such influences, this voting power becomes the most conservative and the best element in a government for the people. But the danger of injecting into the voting power a feeling of race aversion, or class hostility, is obvious. It could scarcely be over-stated. It cannot be too carefully avoided in the government of the country. The family is the real unit of our power in free government.
While the families of the country are homogeneous, there is little danger that the voters who represent them will war upon their security, or fail to be loyal to their best interests. But where the voters, who represent one fifth of the political power of the entire country (and, in some of the States, have a majority), are excluded by reason or race, or caste, or their previous slavery, from family relationships with the minority, it is certain that resentment, prejudice, and hostility will animate them; and they will vote to humiliate and destroy that part of their constituency. Without extending the argument on this point over a wider field, it seems to be clear, that there is extreme danger, under existing conditions, in a confiding to negro voters the representation of white families in the ballot box.
This is the real race question, in politics, that has vexed our people from the beginning; that has afflicted the country with a terrible civil war; and still calls for the wisest statesmanship and the most patient forbearance, in its settlement.
If the emancipated slaves had been of our own race, as were the English villeins [sic], and as the Russian serfs and Mexican peons were of those races, they would have been clothed with the political powers of citizenship without any injurious consequences; because they would have been incorporated, without social disturbance, into the families of the country. It is this race difficulty that confronts the negro, and it will, while it continues, resist, and obstruct his political power.
The practical phase of the question is, whether the white race can be made to include the negro race in a free and honest welcome into their families, as “men and brethren.” There are some enthusiasts, claiming to be exalted humanitarians, who advocate the solution of this difficulty by raising the negro race to the social level of the white race through legislative expedients that look to the mingling of the blood of the races; but this is far from being the sentiment of the great body of the people of the United States. They understand the impossibility of such a result. The full-blooded negroes also understand it, and hesitate, if they do not refuse, to make this effort. “The Afro-Americans,” as the mulattoes describe themselves, believe that a precedent has been set, by their foremost man, which they can follow, with the aid of the politicians, that will secure their incorporation, by marriage, into the white families of the country. These vain expectations will be followed with the chagrin of utter disappointment, and will increase their discontent.
Every day the distance increases between these races, and they are becoming more jealous and intolerant of each other. This condition is disclosed in the schools, churches, and in every industrial pursuit. The field for negro labor, except in the heaviest drudgery and in menial occupations, is constantly narrowing, until their presence is not tolerated in the higher commercial pursuits, or in the use of important corporate franchises. This is more distinctly the result of race aversion than is the exclusion of the Chinese from our country. The political power given to the negro race, no matter how they may use it, only increases race antagonism. That power has, so far, greatly aggravated the opposition to them. It can never make their presence in this country, which has always been a cause of dissension, welcome to the white people.
The separate of the races under different governments will alone cure this flagrant evil, by giving to the negro race an opportunity for self government; and to the white race an unobstructed course in the accomplishment of their high destiny. The feeling of unrest among the negroes, which has made them homeless, and sweeps them in revolving eddies from one State to another, is a plain indication that they are preparing for a general exodus.
As soon as they have determined the way they would go, and have, in their own free will, concluded to depart to some other country, justice to them and ourselves, and the behests of peace and prosperity to both races, will call forth freely the financial aid of our people and government, for their deliverance.
For a great deliverance it will be!
Something was needed, beyond any native virtues or powers of the negro, to lift him up to the full enjoyment of his liberty.
It was conceded by the measures that were adopted for this purpose that our negroes, trained and educated under the southern slave code, were prepared for citizenship and the ballot in this great Republic.
This movement also ignored the declaration in the Constitution that this government was ordained “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity;” or else it was determined that the negro race should become the posterity of the white race.
The 14th and 15th amendments furnish a strong support for the contention of the negro race that the was the purpose of these amendments to give them higher and more definite security for their liberties than was provided for the white race.
If that contention was true in theory, as it is in fact, it proves that it was considered necessary to save the negroes from the natural decay of their new-born liberties, which would result, necessarily, from their natural inability to preserve their freedom, and to enjoy its blessings.
If, as asserted by some, the purpose of these amendments was to protect the negro race from the active hostility of the white race, it is obvious, in either case, that a race question was recognized in the very language of those amendments. In the first proposition, the race questions appeared in the admitted inferiority of the negroes, as a race; and, in the other case, it appeared in the admitted aversion between the races.
The stringent prohibition of the action of the States, in denying them the power to discriminate against political privileges of the negroes, confessed the existence of race aversion and prejudice, in such degree, that it could only be held in check by the organic law of the land.
It was expected that the citizenship conferred upon the negroes by these amendments and the peculiar protection guaranteed to their political powers, would carry with it, as a necessary incident, an equality of social privileges with the white race.
It was impossible to express this incident class of privileges in the body of these amendments, because it would have been impossible to define them, or to enjoin their enforcement in the courts, or to compel obedience to their commands in the social relations and conduct of the people. They were, therefore, left as mere incidents of political power, to be worked out through the influence the negro race would exert in the government of the country.
This fruitful cause of strife has invited constant but futile effort on the part of the negro race and their political masters to force them, by political pressure and by acts of Congress, upon the white race as equals and associates in their domestic relations.
At whatever line their leaders may intend to fix the limits of this intrusion, the negroes have intended that the invasion shall not cease until the races become homogeneous through complete admixture. Not that the highest class of white people shall consort with the lowest class of negroes, but, that, where the conditions of wealth, education, culture, and position are equal, discrimination against the negro race shall cease.
The social and political questions connected with the African race in the United States, all relate to and depend on the essential differences between the negro and the white man, as they have been arranged by the hand of the Creator.
Amongst these differences, the color of the skin, while it distinguishes the races unmistakably, is the least important. The mental differences and differing traits, including the faculty of governing, forecast, enterprise, and the wide field of achievement in the arts and sciences, are accurately measured by the contrast of the civilization of the United States, with the barbarism of Central Africa.
If the negroes in the United States were not descended from a people who enslaved them and sold them into foreign bondage, and who are still engaged in the same traffic; if they had been invited to this country to become citizens and to contribute what talents and virtues they have to the conduct of our complex system of government, --- the race question would still be as much as a vital and unavoidable issue, political and social, as it is under the existing and widely different conditions.
It is the presence of seven or eight millions of negroes in this country and the friction caused by their political power and their social aspirations, and not the fact that they were recently in slavery, that agitates and distresses the people of both races. If they were not in the United States, there would be perfect peace and harmony amongst the people.
There is a decided aversion between the white race and the Indian,---a race who has never submitted to enslavement. The difference in color and in social traits sufficiently accounts for this aversion, which exists in spite of our admiration for them as a brace and independent race. Has it been long persistence in a course of injustice and ill usage that has caused this aversion, or is the race aversion that has caused the ill usage and retaliation that have filled the fairest valleys of our country with massacre and havoc? Whether it was the one or the other, it was not slavery, nor the lack of manly independence or of fortitude, on the part of the Indians, that has engendered the constant collisions between the two races. In the history of the Indians we find the most conclusive proofs that no race, inferior in capacity and intelligence, can co-exist with the white race, in the same government, and preserve its distinctive traits, or social organization. If the two races cannot merge, and sink their individuality, by a commingling of blood, the inferior race will be crushed.
In some respects the North American Indians have a remarkable history which entitles them to great respect. They are the only race of people known to history, who have never enslaved their own people.
They might, with a show of reason, despise a man who had been a slave, or had descended from a slave parentage; while such a pretension would be filial ingratitude in Britons, English, Irish, French, Germans, Russians, Romans, Greeks or Chinese, and in all Oriental nations, all of who have enslaved and made merchandise of their own kindred, as well as of all strangers who have come within their power. In the introduction to the work of Mr. Cobb, on Slavery, that great lawyer and statesman says:---
“A detailed and minute inquiry into the history of slavery would force us to trace the history of every nation of the earth; for the most enlightened have, at some period within their existence, adopted it as a system; and no organized government has been so barbarous as not to introduce it amongst its customs. It has been more universal than marriage, and more permanent than liberty.”
The perishing of the Indian races in North America and the West India Islands, has been the result of their stubborn resistance to the dominance of races of superior knowledge and power. If they have yielded, as the negro has always done, to the vis major, they would have increased in numbers and in useful knowledge; and they would have taken the places that the white people have accorded to the negroes, in citizenship, with greatly superior endowment of intellect, and of every great virtue. But the Indians, while they eagerly acquired the ownership of negro slaves, refused the bondage of slavery for their race, and have perished, rather than submit to such humiliation. Our history is full of records to prove this fact, and, in one of the Spanish American Islands, then known as Hispanolia (Santo Domingo,) it is stated by eminent historians, that a population of 3,000,000 Indians shrunk to 1200 souls in the reign of Charles V. of Spain. This extermination was the result of the efforts of the white race to enslave them.
In Irving’s “Columbus,” it is stated that the whole villages of Indians committed suicide to escape the bondage of slavery and invited other Indians to join them in that dreadful work.
As a slave, the Indian has always perished, while, in all other races, except the negroes, the slave has, at last, worked out his own deliverance. The African slaves have not yet made such an effort, either here or in Africa. Their emancipation has always resulted from the benevolence of white people. They still assist in the slave trade with Asia, despite the earnest endeavors of great nations to prevent that traffic.
Slavery continues in Africa without modification, or abatement. Slavery has always been the common law of the negro race in Africa, and its abolishment there as a domestic institution is a very remote expectation.
In the experience of all the great nations, slavery has been a rudimentary condition ---the first exercise of political government, after the family government, and no nation or race is to be despaired of because its government was first rooted in slavery. The organization of the Congo Free State has secured to the negro race the free and unobstructed opportunity, with the aid of all the great powers, to prove, if they can do so, that they are capable of breaking the chains of slavery riveted on their limbs, by their own kindred, under a slave code ordained by their own free will.
All the other nations have, with good cause, regarded the negroes as an inferior race, aside from all the physical distinctions by which they are separated from all other races of men. It was this estimate of their condition that led the great powers of Europe to enter into the Berlin Conference, which fixed the boundaries of the Congo Free State,---a vast and beautiful country abounding in natural resources,--and secure to the negro race immunity from foreign invasion, that they might become a civilized people. The negro race, in their native land, have never made a voluntary and concerted effort to rise above the plane of slavery; they have not contributed a thought, or a labor, except by compulsion, to aid the progress of civilization. Nothing has emanated from the negroes of Africa, in art, science, or enterprise that has been of the last service to mankind. Their own history, at home, demonstrates their inferior when compared with that of other peoples.
They have been, for ages, the possessors of a fertile country, where they have bred in myriads, and no foreign power has attempted to subjugate them. The result of their contributions to the wealth of the world is limited to slaves, and the natural productions of the forests. They have no agricultural implement, except a rude, iron hoe; no ships for the seas and no beasts of burden. Their social development has never rise so high as to repress human sacrifices and cannibalism; while their religion is a witchcraft that is attended with every brutal crime.
The inferiority of the negro race, as compared with the white race, is so essentially true, and so obvious, that, to assume it in argument, cannon be justly attributed to prejudice. If it is prejudice, it is rare prejudice, which affects nearly all of the white race, and proves the existence of a deep-seated race aversion. This aversion is not a result of slavery. If it were, we could not take pride in the race of English and Saxon masters and slaves from whom we are descended. Whether the law that created this aversion is natural, or contrary to nature; whether it is of human or divine origin; whether it is wicked, or good,---it equally affects and controls both races in all their relations, and it is immutable,---grounded in convictions and sentiments that neither race can yield.
The negro race has but a slight hold on other races through the marriage relation.
Marriages have seldom occurred between Chinese, or Malays, or Indians, and the negro race; and, by the universal decree of the white race, such marriages are prohibited. No expression of race aversion could be more distinct than this.
The race aversion has been greatly increased in this country by the abolition of slavery. The trust and confidence felt by the slaves towards their former masters has been supplanted by a feeling of resentment, which politicians are rapidly converting into hatred and revenge. This condition would not have been so pronounced, if the negro race had not been forced, unprepared and disqualified, into the exercise of the full rights and powers incident to citizenship. That unwise and unnecessary decree has caused the aversion between the races to infuse its virus into the social and political affairs of the country, where it will be, forever, a rankling poison. It has intensified into a race conflict all political questions, in localities where there are large negro populations. It is discussed and voted upon everywhere, from the national capital to the ballot box; exciting the most acrimonious debate and extreme measures of legislation. Politicians deny, in vain, that it is an open question, and demand the execution, to the letter, of the provisions of the constitutional amendments; while the people, in all parts of the country, continue its discussion and refuse to lend the support of public opinion to the enforcement of the organic law.
The race conflict in the United States is, essentially, a social controversy, aggravated by its union with the government of the country.
Race conflicts have attended the entire history of English-speaking people. Having, as they believe, a mission and leadership in the civilizations of barbarous people and in all the progress of mankind, they have not permitted the inferior races to check their movements.
Our North American history is filled with illustrations of this unrelenting progress. By the destruction of the implacable Indian, we have possessed ourselves of his inheritance, ---the fairest and richest in the world. He would not be a slave, and drove him out and filled his place with negroes found in bondage in their native land, and imported as slaves. The patient, thrifty Chinaman was found to be depraved. He was invited to come here under guarantees of full protection. When he became the successful rival of our laboring classes and encumbered our industries with a competition that starved the people who refused to admit him to their family circles as an equal, we summarily decreed his banishment.
It was alleged by great statesmen who were endeavoring to account for the evil of the presence of the negro in our country that there was “an irrepressible conflict between free and slave labor.” They demanded the abolition of slavery as the only remedy. This illogical conclusion was based on a thorough misconception of the truth, and the remedy was as mistaken as the supposed conflict of slave and free labor.
The alleged competition did not exist in any branch of human industry, except in servile and menial labor which the negro was alone fitted to perform and still monopolizes. The great body of negro slaves grew cotton and sugar in the South, while the producers of grain, provisions, wool, hemp, flax, and hand, occupied other latitudes. The South furnished them their nearest and best market for their supplies of food, draught animals, and machinery, and they were, in the aggregate, as much benefited by the labor of the negro slaves as their owners were.
Instead of there having been competition between slave and free labor, the two systems, separated by isothermal and commercial lines, but adjoining each other, were mutual contributors to the prosperity of the labors of both, and of the country at large. It was not labor competition, but political and sectional rivalry in the struggle for power, and deep seated race aversion, that caused the alleged “irreconcilable conflict.”
In the adjoining fields, in the South, where white men and negro slaves grew cotton, there as not conflict, competition, or rivalry, the reason being that there as never an overproduction of cotton. There was never a moment when cotton was not ready sale, for cash. The production, however great, was always in demand. The slave laws held the negro to his daily work; made him temperate; enforced subordination; repressed crime and misdemeanor; and made him a safe and harmless neighbor. There was no cause for social or political rivalry with the white people, who labored, or with any other class, and, while the slave did not aspire to such an attitude, the white man did not condescend to it. While the slaves were under the strict dominion of their masters, no class of people were better secured against interference, by other persons, with their rights, of any kind. The result was that there was neither rivalry nor friction between the laboring classes in the South.
There was instinctive race aversion between them, which nothing could prevent, or modify, except the inferior position of the negro, which neutralized all personal jealousies. This inferiority and dependence excited, in all classes of white people, that sort of Christian benevolence that compassionates, always, the poorest and least attractive of the human family. The Christian training of the negro race in the South is the undesirable proof of this state of sentiment towards them.
When this race aversion was excited by the apprehensions of the non-slaveholders, of the possibility of the future social equality, or union of the races, under political pressure, it flamed up into angry abhorrence, and has become a settled antagonism, as these apprehensions have been realized. It was this apprehension, and not any coercion, or other fear of consequences that, above all other considerations, incited, armed, fed with the bread earned by the toil of women in the fields, clothed with their skill, and sent to the Southern armies, the sturdiest and most resolute of that wonderful body of citizen soldiery. Knowing all that his political movement meant and fully comprehending its results, these men felt that any sacrifice they could make, to prevent race equality in the South, could not outweigh their duty to their families, their race, and their country.
This race question has been a football for politicians, and a stumbling block for statesman, since we began to organize into a federal union. In the beginning, the repression of the slave trade was obstinately resisted by northern and southern States interested in the profits, and a compromise, written into the constitution, was the necessary result. Another and more important compromise secured the enumeration of three fifths of the slave population in the basis of representation in Congress and the electoral colleges. Slavery and politics were thus linked in perpetual association and made the cause of perpetual strife.
Our fathers had more faith in our dutiful obedience to the constitution than we deserved, when they planted this temptation in the body of that instrument. There was inequality in that basis of representation; founded on a principle that warred against the theory of our government. It was not too much for the people of the free States to say that in part, a basis of representation, while their own property was denied that influence. Still, the South entered the Union upon that agreement, and it was not too much for them to say, that the sworn compact should be observed.
In this condition of the subject, political controversy was bound up with the question of slavery, so closely and inevitably, that it has clung to the negro race since their emancipation, and has become the leading and controlling influence in their destiny.
It was the hope and expectation of the abolitionists who, as humanitarians, were also enthusiasts, that the emancipation of the negro would cure the alleged conflict between free and slave labor; that freedom would quality the negro race for unobstructed social intercourse with the white race; and that the ballot would force them into such political influence as to compel the abolition, also, of race aversion and social discrimination. The ballot in the hands of the negro race has had just the contrary effect. It has been relied upon as a substitute for person worth, industry, and good conduct, to lift the inferior race to the same plane with the superior race; but it has constantly exposed the negro race to organized political opposition, and has chilled the hopes and balked the efforts of those who most desired to help the negroes to profit by their freedom.
The negroes have uniformly used the ballot as a means of inflicting the penalties of resentment and race animosity upon southern people. They seem incapable of conceiving that their political power has any other valuable use than as an expression of hatred and ill will towards their former owners. The history of Hayti and Jamaica, on the other hand, has not been forgotten in the southern States. The people there understand that prudence has restrained the excesses that destroyed, or drove out, the white race, from these and other islands of the West Indies, for the same reasons that now animate the negroes and united them, in solid political movement, in hostility to the white race. This strenuous and constant antagonism of the negro race towards the white people of the South, has compelled them, also, to unite on race lines for security.
The first movement of the negro party in the South, and of their white leaders there and in Congress, was directed to the vital point of securing race equality, in social as well as political privileges, by the compulsion of law. The negro race, flattered by this effort, with the hope, that is most keenly indulged by every negro of mixed blood, of being foisted into the white families, freely contributed its entire political power to assist in such robbery of States and people, as never before was practiced under the authority of law. The warnings of that experience cannot be ignored or forgotten. It is impossible to divide the negro race on any political question, and whatever measures they will support or oppose will first be tested by the race issue.
Natural race instinct and caste is the controlling force in this movement.
The negro race has reason to know that the great body of the white people, in the northern section of the country, oppose the influence of their political power, elsewhere than in “the States lately in rebellion.” Congress has stricken down all suffrage in the District of Columbia, for the sole purpose of disfranchising the negro voter; and in the northern States negroes are practically excluded from holding office, either under State or federal authority. Those who oppose negro influence in politics, in the States were small numbers of that race are found, can have no other reason than race aversion for their course. This feeling is quite as common in the northern States as in the South, where the people are brought into contact with the negroes in social intercourse, or into competition with their labor, or into party conflict with them in the elections.
With these facts, and many others in view, we must admit that there is a deep and immovable cause for the almost inflexible law of exclusion, that shuts out the negro race, through the pressure of public opinion, from all opportunity to rise to the level of the white race, in political and social affairs.
What is the cause of this condition of the negro race in the United States, which their power and political influence has not been able to remove, but has only aggravated? The answer is recorded in the home history of every white family in the United States. The negro race cannot be made homogeneous with the white race. It is the abhorrence that every white woman in our country feels towards the marriage of her son or daughter with a negro, that gives the final and conclusive answer to this question. Wealth, character, abilities, accomplishments and position, have no effect to modify this aversion of the white woman to a negro-marital alliance. Men may yield to such considerations, or to others of a baser sort; but the snows will fall from heaven in sooty blackness, sooner than the white women of the United States will consent to the maternity of negro families. It will become more and more the pride of the men of our race to resist any movement, social or political, that will promote the unwelcome intrusion of the negro race into the white family circle.
This is the central and vital point in the race question. If the negroes, being our equals in political privileges, could be absorbed into our race, as equals, there would be no obstacle to our harmonious and beneficent association, in this free country, but neither laws, nor any form of constraint, can force the doors to our homes and seat them at our firesides.
The voting power is the only reliance of the negro for lifting his race to the level of social union or equality with the white race. The race jealousy that the exertion of that power inflames, has united the white race on the color line, in every State where there is a dense negro population, and has moved other communities, that have no fear of negro domination, to feel for those who are threatened with this calamity, the warmest sympathy.
There is a reason for this condition of public sentiment, that is fatal to the movement for negro political domination in the southern States,---a reason existing in the very organism of our government; a feature that cannot be ignored.
Ours is a representative government, with sovereignty residing in the people; and those who exert the powers of sovereignty are chosen for that purposes, not by the people at large, but by qualified voters. One in about every five of our population is qualified by the law to represent himself and the four other persons in the group, in voting at elections. This arbitrary arrangement imposes no restraint upon the voter, as to how he will represent his group, except his sense of justice, his friendship for the race he represents, or his natural affections and love of country. He has no other than a remote, moral responsibility to his non-voting constituency: and he measures his duty to them by his more direct allegiance to his party. Four fifths of the people of the United States are thus arbitrarily represented in the ballot box, by the one fifth who are qualified voters.
This seemingly dangerous power of the voter is based upon the theory of representation in the ballot box that sacred relation which inspires the honest and intelligent voter with the most dutiful and quickened sense of trust and natural affection,---the family relation. Controlled by such influences, this voting power becomes the most conservative and the best element in a government for the people. But the danger of injecting into the voting power a feeling of race aversion, or class hostility, is obvious. It could scarcely be over-stated. It cannot be too carefully avoided in the government of the country. The family is the real unit of our power in free government.
While the families of the country are homogeneous, there is little danger that the voters who represent them will war upon their security, or fail to be loyal to their best interests. But where the voters, who represent one fifth of the political power of the entire country (and, in some of the States, have a majority), are excluded by reason or race, or caste, or their previous slavery, from family relationships with the minority, it is certain that resentment, prejudice, and hostility will animate them; and they will vote to humiliate and destroy that part of their constituency. Without extending the argument on this point over a wider field, it seems to be clear, that there is extreme danger, under existing conditions, in a confiding to negro voters the representation of white families in the ballot box.
This is the real race question, in politics, that has vexed our people from the beginning; that has afflicted the country with a terrible civil war; and still calls for the wisest statesmanship and the most patient forbearance, in its settlement.
If the emancipated slaves had been of our own race, as were the English villeins [sic], and as the Russian serfs and Mexican peons were of those races, they would have been clothed with the political powers of citizenship without any injurious consequences; because they would have been incorporated, without social disturbance, into the families of the country. It is this race difficulty that confronts the negro, and it will, while it continues, resist, and obstruct his political power.
The practical phase of the question is, whether the white race can be made to include the negro race in a free and honest welcome into their families, as “men and brethren.” There are some enthusiasts, claiming to be exalted humanitarians, who advocate the solution of this difficulty by raising the negro race to the social level of the white race through legislative expedients that look to the mingling of the blood of the races; but this is far from being the sentiment of the great body of the people of the United States. They understand the impossibility of such a result. The full-blooded negroes also understand it, and hesitate, if they do not refuse, to make this effort. “The Afro-Americans,” as the mulattoes describe themselves, believe that a precedent has been set, by their foremost man, which they can follow, with the aid of the politicians, that will secure their incorporation, by marriage, into the white families of the country. These vain expectations will be followed with the chagrin of utter disappointment, and will increase their discontent.
Every day the distance increases between these races, and they are becoming more jealous and intolerant of each other. This condition is disclosed in the schools, churches, and in every industrial pursuit. The field for negro labor, except in the heaviest drudgery and in menial occupations, is constantly narrowing, until their presence is not tolerated in the higher commercial pursuits, or in the use of important corporate franchises. This is more distinctly the result of race aversion than is the exclusion of the Chinese from our country. The political power given to the negro race, no matter how they may use it, only increases race antagonism. That power has, so far, greatly aggravated the opposition to them. It can never make their presence in this country, which has always been a cause of dissension, welcome to the white people.
The separate of the races under different governments will alone cure this flagrant evil, by giving to the negro race an opportunity for self government; and to the white race an unobstructed course in the accomplishment of their high destiny. The feeling of unrest among the negroes, which has made them homeless, and sweeps them in revolving eddies from one State to another, is a plain indication that they are preparing for a general exodus.
As soon as they have determined the way they would go, and have, in their own free will, concluded to depart to some other country, justice to them and ourselves, and the behests of peace and prosperity to both races, will call forth freely the financial aid of our people and government, for their deliverance.
For a great deliverance it will be!
Source: John T. Morgan, “The Race Question in the United States,” The Arena 2, no. 10 (September 1890): 385-398.