The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences Part 15

1893 200

1894 190

1895 171

1896 181

1897 166

1898 127

1899 107

1900 107

1901 185

1902 96

1903 104

1904 87

1905 66

1906 66

1907 68

1908 100

1909 87

1910 74

The general decrease, while population is increasing, is encouraging; but lynching itself is a horrible crime; and lynching for one crime begets lynching for another. Of the total number lynched last year, nine were whites; sixty-five were negroes, among them three women; and only twenty-two were for crimes of negroes against white women. The other crimes were murder, attempts to murder, robbery, arson, etc.

Census returns indicate that in the country at large the criminality of the negro, as compared with that of the white man, is nearly three times greater, and that the ratio of negro criminality is much higher North than South. Such returns also indicate that so far education has not lessened negro criminality,[99] but it is not known that any well-educated negro has been guilty of the crime against white women.

[99] "The Negro Problem," William Pickett, pp. 136-38. Rare Traits, etc., of the Negro, Statistician, Prudential Ins. Co. of America, p. 219 _et seq._

In the South the negro is excluded from many occupations for which the best of them are fitted, but in the North his industrial conditions are worse. Fewer occupations are open to him and the wisest members of his race are counselling him to remain in the more favorable industrial atmosphere of the South.

The dislike of negroes for whites has been increased South by the laws which separate them from whites in schools, public conveyances, etc. But it is to be remembered that these laws were intended to prevent intermarriage; they are in part the result of race antipathies. But the sound reason for them is that they tend to prevent intimacies which, at the points where the races are in closest touch with each other, might result in intermarriage. Professor E. D. Cope, of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the very highest of American authorities on the race question, in a powerful article published in 1890,[100] advocated the deportation of the negroes from the South, no matter at what cost.

Otherwise he predicted eventual amalgamation, which would be the destruction of a large portion of the finest race in the world.

[100] "Two Perils of the Indo-European," _The Open Court_, January 23, 1890, p. 2052.

This little study now comes to a close. An effort has been made to sketch briefly in this chapter the difficulties the South has encountered in dealing with the negro problem, and to outline the measure of success it has achieved. However imperfectly the author may have performed his task, it must be clear to the reader that no such problem as the present was ever before presented to a self-governing people. Never was there so much need of that culture from which alone can come a high sense of duty to others. The negro must be encouraged to be self-helpful and useful to the community. If he is to do all this and remain a separate race, he must have leaders.h.i.+p among his own people. In the Mississippi Black Belt there is now a town of some 4,000 negroes, Mound Bayou, completely organized and prospering. It may be that in the future negroes seeking among themselves the amenities of life may congregate into communities of their own, cultivating adjacent lands, as the French do in their agricultural villages. Wherever they may be, they must practise the civic virtues, honesty, and obedience to law. W.

H. Councill, a negro teacher, of Huntsville, Alabama, said some years since in a magazine article: "When the gray-haired veterans who followed Lee and Jackson pa.s.s away, the negro will have lost his best friends."

This is true, but it is hoped that time and culture, while not producing social equality, will allay race animosities and bring the negro other friends to take the place of the departing veterans.

The white man, with his pride of race, must more and more be made to feel that _n.o.blesse oblige_. His sense of duty to others must measure up to his responsibilities and opportunities. He must accord to the negro all his rights under the laws as they exist.

The South is exerting itself to better its common schools, but it cannot compete in this regard with the North. Northern philanthropists are quite properly contributing to education in the South. They should consider well the needs of both races. Any attempt to give to the negroes advantages superior to those of the whites, who are now treating the negro fairly in this respect, might look like another attempt to put, in negro language, "the bottom rail on top."

Looking over the whole field covered by this sketch, it is wonderful to note how the chain of causation stretches back into the past.

Reconstruction was a result of the war; secession and war resulted from a movement in the North, in 1831, against conditions then existing in the South. The negro, the cause of the old quarrel between the sections, is located now much as he was then. How full of lessons, for both the South and the North, is the history of the last eighty years!

There is even a chord that connects the burning of a negro at Coatesville, Pennsylvania, by an excited mob on the 13th of August, 1911, with the burning of the Federal Const.i.tution at Framingham, Ma.s.sachusetts, by that other excited mob of madmen, under Garrison, on the fourth day of July, 1854. One body of outlaws was defying the laws of Pennsylvania; the other was defying the fundamental laws of the nation.