History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 Volume II Part 58

In Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, and in Maryland, Colored men have possessed themselves of excellent farms and moderate fortunes. In Baltimore a company of Colored men own a s.h.i.+p dock, and transact a large business. Some of the largest orange plantations in Florida are owned by Colored men. On most of the plantations, and in many of the large towns and cities Colored mechanics are quite numerous. The Montgomeries who own the plantation, once the property of Jefferson Davis, extending for miles along the Mississippi, are probably the best business men in the South. In Louisiana, P. P. Deslonde, A. Dubuclet, Hon. T. T. Allain, and State Senator Young are men who, although taking a lively interest in politics, have acc.u.mulated property and saved it.

There is nothing vicious in the character of the Southern Negro. He is gentle, affectionate, and faithful. If it has appeared, through false figures, that he is a criminal, there is room for satisfactory explanation. In 1870, out of a population, of persons of color, in all the States and Territories, of 4,880,009, there were only 9,400 who were receiving aid on the 1st of June, 1870; and only 8,056 in all the prisons of America. Nine tenths of these were South, and could neither read nor write.

During the Rebellion, when every white male from fifteen to seventy was out fighting to sustain the Confederacy--when the Southern Government was robbing the cradle and the grave for soldiers--the wives and children of the Confederates were committed to the care and keeping of their slaves. And what is the verdict of history? That these women were outraged and their children brained? No! But that during all those years of painful anxiety, of hope and fear, of fiery trial and severe privation, those faithful Negroes toiled, not only to support the wives and children of the men who were fighting to make slavery national and perpetual, but fed the entire rebel army, and never laid the weight of a finger upon the head of any of the women or children entrusted to their care! To this virtue of fidelity to their worst enemies they added still another, loyalty to the Union flag and escaping Union soldiers. All night long they would direct the lonely, famis.h.i.+ng, fainting, and almost delirious Union soldier in a safe way, and then when the night and morning met they would point their pilgrim friends to the North Star, hide them and feed them during the day, and then return to the plantation to care for the loved ones of the men who starved Union soldiers and hunted them down with bloodhounds! This is the brightest gem that history can place upon the brow of the Negro; and in conferring it there is no one found to object.

Since the war the crime among Colored people is to be accounted for upon two grounds, viz.: ignorance, and a combination of circ.u.mstances over which they had no control. It was one thing for the Negro to understand the cruel laws of slavery, but when he found himself a freeman he was not able to know what was an infraction of the law.

They did not know what in law const.i.tuted a _tort_, or a civil action from a sled. The violent pa.s.sions pampered in slavery, the destruction of the home, the promiscuous mingling of the s.e.xes, a conscience enfeebled by disuse, made them easy transgressors. The Negro is not a criminal generically; he is an accidental criminal. The judiciary and juries of the South are responsible for the alarming prison statistics which stand against the Negro. It takes generations for men to overcome their prejudices. With a white judge and a white jury a Negro is guilty the moment he makes his appearance in court. It is seldom that a Negro can get judgment against a white person under the most favorable circ.u.mstances. The Negroes who appear in courts are of the poorer and more ignorant cla.s.s. They have no funds with which to employ counsel, and have but few intelligent lawyers to come to their rescue. In cases of theft, especially of poultry, pigs, sheep, fruit, etc., it is next to impossible to convince a white judge or jury that the defendant is not guilty. They reason that because the half-fed, overworked slave appropriated articles of food, as a freeman the Negro was not changed. They ascribed a general habit, growing out of trying circ.u.mstances, to the Negro as a slave that he soon learned to regard as morally wrong when a freeman.

But the most effective agency in filling Southern prisons with Negroes has been, and is, the chain-gang system--the farming out of convict labor. Just as great railway, oil, and telegraph companies in the North have been capable of controlling legislation, so the corporations at the South which take the prisoners of the State off of the hands of the Government, and then speculate upon the labor of the prisoners, are able to control both court and jury. It has been the practice, and is now, in some of the Southern States, to p.r.o.nounce long sentences upon able-bodied young Colored men, whose offences, in a Northern court, could not be visited with more than a few months'

confinement and a trifling fine. The object in giving Negro men a long term of years, is to make sure the tenure of the soulless corporations upon the convicts whose unhappy lot it is to fall into their iron grasp. In some of the Southern States a strong and healthy Negro convict brings thirty-seven cents a day to the State, while he earns a dollar for the corporations above his expenses. The convicts are cruelly treated--especially in Georgia and Kentucky;--their food is poor, their quarters miserable, and their morals next to the brute creation. In many of these camps men and women are compelled to sleep in the same bunks together, with chains upon their limbs, in a promiscuous manner too sickening and disgusting to mention. When a prisoner escapes he is hunted down by fiery dogs and cruel guards; and often the poor prisoner is torn to pieces by the dogs or beaten to death by the guards. No system of slavery was ever equal in its cruel and dehumanizing details to this convict system, which, taking advantage of race prejudice on the one hand and race ignorance on the other, with cupidity and avarice as its chief characteristics, has done more to curse the South than all things else since the war.

It was predicted by persons hostile to the rights and citizens.h.i.+p of the Negro, that a condition of freedom would not be in harmony with his character; that it would destroy him, and that he would destroy the country and party which tried to make him agree to a state of independent life; that having been used to the "kind treatment"(?) of his master he would find himself unequal to the responsibilities of freedom; and that his migratory disposition would lead him into a climate too cold for him, where he would be welcomed to an inhospitable grave.

It is true that a great many Negroes died during the first years of their new life. The joy of emanc.i.p.ation and the excitement that disturbed business swept the Negroes into the large cities. Like the shepherds who left their flocks on the plains and went into Bethlehem to see the promised redemption, these people sought the centres of excitement. The large cities were overrun with them. The demand for unskilled labor was not great. From mere spectators they became idlers, helpless and offensive to industrious society. Ignorant of sanitary laws, imprudent in their daily living, changing from the pure air and plain diet of farm life to the poisonous atmosphere and rich, fateful food of the city, many fell victims to the sudden change from bondage to freedom, from darkness to light, and from the fleshpots, garlic, and onions of their Egyptian bondage to the milk and honey of the Canaan of their deliverance.

But this was in accordance with an immutable law of nature. Every year a large number of birds perish in an attempt to change their home; every spring-time many flowers die at their birth. The law of the survival of the fittest is impartial and inexorable. The Creator said centuries ago "the soul that sinneth shall surely die," and the law has remained until the present time. Those who sinned ignorantly or knowingly died the death; but those who obeyed the laws of health, of man, and of G.o.d, lived to be useful members of society.

But this was the exception to the rule. The Negro race in America is not dying out. The charge is false. The wish was father to the thought, while no doubt many honest people have been misled by false figures. Nearly all white communities at the South had more than enough of physicians; and science and culture were summoned to the aid of the white mother in the hour of childbirth. The record of births was preserved with pride and official accuracy; and thus there was a record upon which to calculate the increase. But, on the contary, among the Negroes there were no physicians and no record of births.

The venerable system of midwifery prevailed. In burying their dead, however, this people were compelled to obtain a burial permit from the Board of Health. Thus the statistics were all on one side--all deaths and no births. Looking at these statistics it did seem that the race was dying out. But the Government steps in and takes the census every decade, and, thereby, the world is enabled, upon reliable figures, to estimate the increase or decrease of the Colored race. The subjoined table exhibits the increase of the Colored people for nine decades.

Colored gain Year. Colored. per cent.

----- --------- ------------ 1st census. 1790 757,208 2d " 1800 1,002,037 32.3 1st decade.

3d " 1810 1,377,808 37.5 2d "

4th " 1820 1,771,656 28.6 3d "

5th " 1830 2,328,642 31.5 4th "

6th " 1840 2,873,648 23.4 5th "

7th " 1850 3,638,808 26.6 6th "

8th " 1860 4,441,830 22.1 7th "

9th " 1870 4,880,009 9.9[122] 8th "

10th " 1880 6,580,793 34.8 9th "

So here is a remarkable fact, that from 757,208 in 1790 the Negro race has grown to be 6,580,793 in 1880! The theory that the race was dying out under the influences of civilization at a greater ratio than under the annihilating influences of slavery was at war with common-sense and the efficient laws of Christian society. Emanc.i.p.ation has taken the mother from field-work to house-work. The slave hut has been supplanted by a pleasant house; the mud floor is done away with; and now, with carpets on the floor, pictures on the wall, a better quality of food properly prepared, the influence of books and papers, and the blessings of a preached Gospel, the Negro mother is more prolific, and the mortality of her children reduced to a minimum. The Negro is not dying out. On the contrary he has shown the greatest recuperative powers, and against the white population of the United States as it stands to-day--if it were not fed by European immigrants,--within the next hundred years the Negroes would outnumber the whites 12,000,000!

Or at an increase of 33-1/3 per cent. the Negro population in 1980 would be 117,000,000! providing the ratio of increase continues the same between the races.

And in addition to the fact that the Negro, like the Irishman, is prolific, is able to reproduce his species, it should be recorded that the Negro intellect is growing and expanding at a wonderful rate. The children of ten and twelve years of age are more apt to-day than those of the same age ten years ago. And the children of the next generation will have no superiors in any of the schools of the country.

FOOTNOTES:

[117] For an account of this problem, see the Appendix to this volume.

[118] See the annual reports of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Virginia. There were more than 18,234 Colored children in the schools of this State in 1870.

[119] Annual Report of the Hon. W. H. Ruffner, for 1874.

[120] For an account of the John F. Slater Bequest of $1,000.000 for the education of the freedmen, see the Appendix to this volume.

[121] See report of the Commissioner.

[122] There is no disguising the fact that the ninth census was incorrect. No doubt it was the worst we have ever had.

CHAPTER XXIII.

REPRESENTATIVE COLORED MEN.

THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSt.i.tUTION.--THE LEGAL DESTRUCTION OF SLAVERY AND A CONSt.i.tUTIONAL PROHIBITION.--FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT GRANTING MANHOOD SUFFRAGE TO THE AMERICAN NEGRO.--PRESIDENT GRANT'S SPECIAL MESSAGE UPON THE SUBJECT.--UNIVERSAL REJOICING AMONG THE COLORED PEOPLE.--THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.--THE NEGRO IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE OF THE COUNTRY.--FREDERICK DOUGLa.s.s.--HIS BIRTH, ENSLAVEMENT, ESCAPE TO THE NORTH, AND LIFE AS A FREEMAN.--BECOMES AN ANTI-SLAVERY ORATOR.--GOES TO GREAT BRITAIN.--RETURNS TO AMERICA.--ESTABLISHES THE "NORTH STAR."--HIS ELOQUENCE, INFLUENCE, AND BRILLIANT CAREER.--RICHARD THEODORE GREENER.--HIS EARLY LIFE, EDUCATION, AND SUCCESSFUL LITERARY CAREER.--JOHN P.

GREEN.--HIS EARLY STRUGGLES TO OBTAIN AN EDUCATION.--A SUCCESSFUL ORATOR, LAWYER, AND USEFUL LEGISLATOR.--OTHER REPRESENTATIVE COLORED MEN.--REPRESENTATIVE COLORED WOMEN.

The Government could not escape the logic of the position it took when it made the Negro a soldier, and invoked his aid in putting down the slave-holders' Rebellion. As a soldier he stood in line of promotion: the Government destroyed the Confederacy when it placed muskets in the hands of the slaves; and at the close of the war had to legally render slavery forever impossible in the United States. The b.l.o.o.d.y deduction of the great struggle had to be made a living, legal verity in the Const.i.tution, and hence the Thirteenth Amendment.

"ARTICLE XIII.

"SECTION 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

"SECTION 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

This was the consummation of the ordinance of 1787, carried to its last a.n.a.lysis, applied in its broadest sense. It drove the last nail in the coffin of slavery, and blighted the fondest hope of the friends of secession.

But there was need for another amendment to the Const.i.tution conferring upon the Colored people manhood suffrage. On the 27th of February, 1869, the Congress pa.s.sed a resolution recommending the Fifteenth Amendment for ratification by the Legislatures of the several States. On the 30th of March, 1870, President U. S. Grant sent a special message to Congress, calling the attention of that body to the proclamation of the Secretary of State in reference to the ratification of the Amendment by twenty-nine of the States.

SPECIAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT GRANT ON RATIFICATION OF THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT:

"_To the Senate and House of Representatives:_

"It is unusual to notify the two houses of Congress, by message, of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the ratification of a const.i.tutional amendment. In view, however, of the vast importance of the XVth Amendment to the Const.i.tution, this day declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable.

A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, who were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so, (with the a.s.sertion that, 'at the time of the Declaration of Independence, the opinion was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race, regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, that black men had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,') is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free government to the present day.

"Inst.i.tutions like ours, in which all power is derived directly from the people, must depend mainly upon their intelligence, patriotism, and industry. I call the attention, therefore, of the newly-enfranchised race to the importance of their striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws I would say, withhold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizen. The framers of our Const.i.tution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people. The 'Father of his Country,' in his farewell address, uses this language: 'Promote, then, as a matter of primary importance, inst.i.tutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of the government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.' In his first annual message to Congress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message.

"I repeat that the adaption of the XVth Amendment to the Const.i.tution completes the greatest civil change and const.i.tutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life. The change will be beneficial in proportion to the heed that is given to the urgent recommendations of Was.h.i.+ngton.

If these recommendations were important then, with a population of but a few millions, how much more important now, with a population of forty millions, and increasing in a rapid ratio.

"I would therefore call upon Congress to take all the means within their const.i.tutional powers to promote and encourage popular education throughout the country; and upon the people everywhere to see to it that all who possess and exercise political rights shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the government a blessing and not a danger. By such means only can the benefits contemplated by this amendment to the Const.i.tution be secured.

"U. S. GRANT.

"EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 30, 1870."

CERTIFICATE OF MR. SECRETARY FISH RESPECTING THE RATIFICATION OF THE XVTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSt.i.tUTION, MARCH 30, 1870.

"HAMILTON FISH, SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

"_To all to whom these presents may come, greeting_: