Black and White Part 4

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Judge Tourgee has for years been urgently and admirably writing in advocacy of National Aid in Southern Education.

CHAPTER VII

_How Not to Do It_

Revolutions are always the outgrowth of deepest wrongs, clearly defined by long and heated agitation, which inflame the mind of the people, and divide them into hostile factions. The field of battle is simply the theater upon which the hostile factions decide by superior prowess, or numbers, or sagacity, the questions at issue. In these conflicts, right usually, but not invariably, triumphs, as it should always do. Revolutions quicken the conscience and intelligence of the people, and wars purify the morals of the people by weeding out the surplus and desperate members of the population; just as a thunderstorm clarifies the atmosphere.

But the problems involved in the agitation which culminated in the War of the Rebellion are to-day as far from solution as if no shot had been fired upon Fort Sumter or as if no Lee had laid down traitorous arms four years thereafter.

The giant form of the slave-master, the tyrant, still rises superior to law, to awe and oppress the unorganized proletariat--the common people, the laboring cla.s.s. Even when slavery was first introduced into this country, Fate had written upon the walls of the nation that it "must go," and go it must, as the result of wise statesmans.h.i.+p or amid the smoke of battle and the awful "diapason of cannonade." No man can tell whether wisdom will dictate further argument of peaceful, or there must be found a violent, solution; but all men of pa.s.sable intelligence know and feel that justice will prevail. Progress goes forward ever, backward never.

That human intelligence has reached higher ground within the present century than it ever before attained, goes without saying. That we have marvelously improved upon all the mechanism of government is equally true. But whether we have improved upon the time-honored rules of dealing with rebels by extending to them general amnesty for all their sins of commission is seriously to be debated. If we may judge of the proper treatment of treason by the example which, according to Milton, High Heaven made of Lucifer, amnesty is a failure; if we may judge by the almost absolute failure of the results of the war of the Rebellion, we may emphatically p.r.o.nounce amnesty to be a noxious weed which should not be permitted to take too firm a rooting in our dealing with traitors. Human, it may be, to err, and to forgive Divine; but for man to extend forgiveness too far is positively fatal.

Examples are not wanting to show the truthfulness of the reasoning.

There is no error which has been productive of more disaster and death than the stupid plan adopted by the Federal government in what is known as the "Reconstruction policy." This _policy_, born out of expediency and nurtured in selfishness, was, in its inception, instinct with the elements of failure and of death. Perhaps no piece of legislation, no policy, was ever more fatuous in every detail. How could it be otherwise? How could the men who devised it expect for it anything more than a speedy, ignominous collapse? All the past history of the Southern states unmistakably pointed to the utter failure of any policy in which the whites were not made the masters; unless, indeed, they were subjected to that severe governmental control which their treason merited, until such time as the people were prepared for self-government by education, the oblivion of issues out of which the war grew, the pa.s.sing away by death of the old spirits, and the complete metamorphosis of the peculiar conditions predicated upon and fostered by the unnatural state of slavery.

At the close of the Rebellion, in 1865, the United States government completely transformed the social fabric of the Southern state governments; and, without resorting to the slow process of educating the people; without even preparing them by proper warnings; without taking into consideration the peculiar relations of the subject and dominant cla.s.ses--the slave cla.s.s and the master cla.s.s--instantly, as it were, the lamb and the lion were commanded to lie down together.

The master cla.s.s, fresh from the fields of a b.l.o.o.d.y war, with his musket strapped to his shoulder and the sharp thorn of ignominious defeat penetrating his breast; the master cla.s.s, educated for two hundred years to dominate in his home, in the councils of munic.i.p.al, state and Federal government; the master cla.s.s, who had been taught that slavery was a divine inst.i.tution and that the black man, the unfortunate progeny of Ham, was his lawful slave and property; and the slave cla.s.s, born to a state of slavery and obedience, educated in the school of improvidence, mendacity and the lowest vices--these two cla.s.ses of people, born to such widely dissimilar stations in life and educated in the most extreme schools, were declared to be _free, and equal before the law_, with the right to vote; to testify in courts of law; to sit upon jury and in the halls of legislation, munic.i.p.al and other; to sue and be sued; to buy and to sell; to marry and give in marriage. In short, these two cla.s.ses of people were made co-equal citizens, ent.i.tled alike to the protection of the laws and the benefits of government.

I know of no instance in the various history of mankind which equals in absurdity the presumption of the originators of our "Reconstruction policy" that the master cla.s.s would accept cordially the conditions forced upon them, or that the enfranchised cla.s.s would prove equal to the burden so unceremoniously forced upon them. On the one hand, a proud and haughty people, who had stubbornly contested the right of the government to interfere with the extension of slavery, not to say confiscation of slave property--a people rich in lands, in mental resources, in courage; on the other, a poor, despised people, without lands, without money, without mental resources, without moral character--these peoples _equal_, indeed! These peoples go peaceably to the ballot-box together to decide upon the destiny of government!

These peoples melt into an harmonious citizenry! These peoples have and exercise mutual confidence, esteem and appreciation of their common rights! These peoples _dissolve into one people!_ The bare statement of the case condemns it as impracticable, illusory, in the extreme. And, yet, these two peoples, so different in character, in education and material condition, were turned loose to enjoy the same benefits in common--to be one! And the _wise men_ of the nation--as, Tourgee's _Fool_ ironically names them--thought they were legislating for the best; thought they were doing their duty. And, so, having made the people free, and equal before the law, and given them the ballot with which to settle their disputes, the "_wise men_" left the people to live in peace if they could, and to cut each other's throats if they could not. That they should have proceeded to cut each other's throats was as natural as it is for day to follow night.

I do not desire to be understood as inveighing against the manumission of the slave or the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the new-made free man. To do so, would be most paradoxical on my part, who was born a slave and spent the first nine years of my life in that most unnatural condition. What I do inveigh against, is the unequal manner in which the colored people were pitted against the white people; the placing of these helpless people absolutely in the power of this hereditary foeman--more absolutely in their power, at their mercy, than under the merciless system of slavery, when sordid interest dictated a modic.u.m of humanity and care in treatment. And I arraign the "Reconstruction policy" as one of the hollowest pieces of perfidy ever perpetrated upon an innocent, helpless people; and in the treatment of the issues growing out of that policy, I arraign the dominant party of the time for base ingrat.i.tude, subterfuge and hypocrisy to its black partisan allies. With the whole power of the government at its back, and with a Const.i.tution so amended as to extend the amplest protection to the new-made citizen, it left him to the inhuman mercy of men whose uncurbed pa.s.sions, whose deeds of lawlessness and defiance, pale into virtues the ferocity of Cossack warfare. And, for this treachery, for leaving this people alone and single-handed, to fight an enemy born in the lap of self-confidence, and rocked in the cradle of arrogance and cruelty, the "party of great moral ideas" must go down to history amid the hisses and the execrations of honest men in spite of its good deeds. There is not one extenuating circ.u.mstance to temper the indignation of him who believes in justice and humanity.

As I stand before the thirteen bulky volumes, comprising the "Ku Klux Conspiracy," being the report of the "Joint Select Committee, to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late Insurrectionary States," on the part of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, reported February 19, 1872, my blood runs cold at the merciless chronicle of murder and outrage, of defiance, inhumanity and barbarity on the one hand, and usurpation and tyranny on the other.

If the shot upon Fort Sumter was treason, what shall we call the b.l.o.o.d.y conflict which the white men of the South have waged against the Const.i.tutional amendments from 1866 to the murder of innocent citizens at Danville, Virginia, in 1883--even unto the present time?

If the shot upon Fort Sumter drew down upon the South the indignation and the vengeance of the Federal government, putting father against son, and brother against brother, what shall we say the Federal Government should have done to put a period to the usurpation and the murders of these leagues of horror?

The entire adult male population of the South, though no longer in armed "Rebellion," appeared to be in league against the government of the United States. The arm of State authority was paralyzed, the operation of courts of justice was suspended, lawlessness and individual license walked abroad, and anarchy, pure and simple, prevailed. Under the name of the "Ku Klux Klan," the South was bound by the following oath, ironclad, paradoxical and enigmatical as it is:

I, [name] before the great immaculate Judge of heaven and earth, and upon the Holy Evangelists of Almighty G.o.d, do, of my own free will and accord, subscribe to the following sacred, binding obligation:

I. I am on the side of justice and humanity and const.i.tutional liberty, as bequeathed to us by our forefathers in its original purity.

II. I reject and oppose the principles of the radical party.

III. I pledge aid to a brother of the Ku-Klux Klan in sickness, distress, or pecuniary embarra.s.sments. Females, friends, widows, and their households shall be the special object of my care and protection.

IV. Should I ever divulge, or cause to be divulged, any of the secrets of this order, or any of the foregoing obligations, I must meet with the fearful punishment of death and traitor's doom, which is death, death, death, at the hands of the brethren.

Murderers, incendiaries, midnight raiders on the "side of justice, humanity and Const.i.tutional liberty"! Let us see what kind of "justice, humanity and Const.i.tutional liberty" is meant. In Volume I, page 21, I find the following:

Taking these statements from official sources, showing the prevalence of this organization in every one of the late insurrectionary States and in Kentucky, it is difficult now, with the light that has recently been thrown upon its history, to realize that even its existence has been for so long a mooted question in the public mind. Especially is this remarkable in view of the effects that are disclosed by some of this doc.u.mentary evidence to have been produced by it. That it was used as a means of intimidating and murdering negro voters during the presidential election of 1868, the testimony in the Louisiana and other contested-election cases already referred to clearly establishes.

Taking the results in Louisiana alone as an instance, the purpose of the organization at that time, whatever it may have been at its origin, could hardly be doubted.

A member of the committee which took that testimony thus sums it up:

The testimony shows that over 2,000 persons were killed, wounded, and otherwise injured in that State within a few weeks prior to the presidential election; that half the State was overrun by violence; midnight raids, secret murders, and open riot kept the people in constant terror until the Republicans surrendered all claims, and then the election was carried by the Democracy. The parish of Orleans contained 29,910 voters, 15,020 black. In the spring of 1868 that parish gave 13,973 republican votes. In the fall of 1868 it gave Grant 1,178, a falling off of 12,795 votes.

Riots prevailed for weeks, sweeping the city of New Orleans, and filling it with scenes of blood, and Ku-Klux notices were scattered through the city warning the colored men not to vote. In Caddo there were 2,987 Republicans. In the spring of 1868 they carried the parish. In the fall they gave Grant one vote. Here also there were b.l.o.o.d.y riots.

But the most remarkable case is that of St. Landry, a planting parish on the River Teche. Here the Republicans had a registered majority of 1,071 votes. In the spring of 1868 they carried the parish by 678. In the fall they gave Grant no vote, not one; while the democrats cast 4,787, the full vote of the parish, for Seymour and Blair.

Here occurred one of the bloodiest riots on record, in which the Ku-Klux killed and wounded over two hundred Republicans, hunting and chasing them for two days and nights through fields and swamps. Thirteen captives were taken from the jail and shot. A pile of twenty-five dead bodies was found half buried in the woods. Having conquered the Republicans, killed and driven off the white leaders, the Ku-Klux captured the ma.s.ses, marked them with badges of red flannel, enrolled them in clubs, led them to the polls, made them vote the Democratic ticket, and then gave them certificates of the fact.

It is not my purpose to weary the reader with tedious citations from the c.u.mbersome reports of the "Ku Klux conspiracy." Those reports are accessible to the reading public. They tell the b.l.o.o.d.y story of the terrible miscarriage of the "Reconstruction policy;" they show how cruel men can be under conditions favorable to unbridled license, undeterred by the strong arm of const.i.tuted authority; they show how helpless the freed people were; how ignorant, how easily led by unscrupulous adventurers _pretending to be friends_ and how easily murdered and overawed by veterans inured to the dangers and the toils of war; and, lastly, they show how powerless was the national government to protect its citizens' rights, specifically defined by the Federal const.i.tution. _Was_, do I say? It is as powerless to day!

In this brief review, then, of the history and present political condition of the American Negro I cannot omit, though I shall not detail, the horrors of the Ku Klux period. They are a link in the chain: and though today's links are different in form and guise, _the chain is the same_. Let the reader, then, be a little patient at being reminded of things which he has perhaps forgotten.

CHAPTER VIII

_The Nation Surrenders_

The mind sickens in contemplating the mistakes of the "Reconstruction policy;" and the revolting peculation and crime--which went hand in hand from 1867-8 to 1876, bankrupting and terrorizing those unfortunate States--plunging them into all but anarchy, pure and simple.

A parallel to the terror which walked abroad in the South from 1866, down to 1876, and which is largely dominant in that section even unto the present hour, must be sought for in other lands than our own, where the iron hand of the tyrant, seated upon a throne, cemented with a thousand years of usurpation and the blood of millions of innocent victims, presses hard upon the necks of the high and the backs of the low; we must turn to the dynastic villanies of the house of Orleans or of Stuart, or that prototype of all that is tyrannical, sordid and inhuman, the Czar of all the Russias. The "Invisible Empire," with its "Knights of the White Camelia," was as terrible as the "Empire" which Marat, Danton and Robespierre made for themselves, with this difference: the "Knights of the White Camelia" were a.s.sa.s.sins and marauders who murdered and terrorized in defiance of all laws, human or divine, though claiming allegiance to both; while the Frenchmen regarded themselves as the lawful authority of the land and rejected utterly the Divine or "higher law." The one murdered men as highwaymen do, while the other murdered them under the cover of law and in the name of _Liberty_, in whose name, as Madame Roland exclaimed on the scaffold of revolutionary vengeance, so many crimes are perpetrated!

The one murdered kings and aristocrats to unshackle the limbs of the proletariat of France; the other murdered the proletariat of the South to re-rivet their chains upon the wretched survivors. And each cla.s.s of murders proclaimed that it was actuated by the motive of _justice and humanity_. Liberty was the grand inspiration that steeled the arm and hardened the heart of each of the avengers!

And thus it has been in all the history of murder and plunder.

Liberty! the People! these are the sacred objects with which tyrants cloak their usurpations, and which a.s.sa.s.sins plead in extenuation of their brazen disregard of life, of virtue, of all that is dear and sacred to the race. The dagger of Brutus and the sword of Cromwell, were they not drawn in the name of Liberty--the People? The guillotine of the French Commune and the derringer of J. Wilkes Booth, were they not inspired by Liberty--the People?

The innocent blood which has been spilt in the name of liberty and the people, which has served the purposes of tyranny and riveted upon the people most galling chains, "would float a navy."

By the side of the robbery, the embezzlement, the depletion of the treasury of South Carolina, and the imposition of ruinous and unnecessary taxation upon the people of that state by the Carpet-Bag harpies, aided and abetted by the ignorant negroes whom our government had not given time to shake the dust of the cornfield from their feet before it invited them to seats in the chambers of legislature, we must place the heartless butcheries of Hamburgh and Ellenton.

By the side of the misgovernment, the honeycomb of corruption in which the Carpet-Bag government of Louisiana reveled, we must place the universal lawlessness which that state witnessed from 1867 to 1876.

The whole gamut of states could be run with the same deplorable, the same sickening conclusion.

The Federal authority had created the wildest confusion and retired to watch the fire-brand. The "wise men" of the nation had made possible a system of government in which robbery and murder were to contend for the mastery, in which organized ignorance and organized brigandage were to contend for the right to rule _and_ to ruin.

It is not complimentary to the white men of the South that their organized brigandage proved to be more stubborn, more far-sighted than was unorganized ignorance. In a warfare of this disreputable nature very little honor can be accorded to the victorious party, be he brigand or ignoramus. The warfare is absolutely devoid of principle, and, therefore, victory, any way it is twisted, is supremely dishonorable.

The South, therefore, although she rooted out the incubus of _carpet-baggism_ (one of the most noxious plants that ever blossomed in the garden of any nascent society), and stifled the liberties and immunities of a whole people, turning their new-found joy into sadness and mourning--although the South succeeded in accomplis.h.i.+ng these results, she lies prostrate to-day, feared by her fellow-citizens, who will not trust her with power, and shunned by the industrious aliens who seek our sh.o.r.es, because they will not become members of a society in which individualism and absolutism are the supreme law--for was it not to escape these parasites that they expatriated themselves from the sh.o.r.es of the Volga, the Danube and the Rhine? Men will not make their homes among people who, spurning the accepted canons of justice and the courts of law, make themselves a community of _banditti_.

Thus, the South lies prostrate, staggering beneath a load of illiteracy sufficient to paralyze the energies of any people; dwelling in the midst of usurpation, where law is suspended and individual license is the standard authority; where criminals and suspected criminals are turned over to the rude mercy of mobs, masked and irresponsible; where caste corrupts every rivulet that issues from the fountain of aspiration or of chast.i.ty;[13] where no man is allowed to think or act for himself who does not conform his thoughts and shape his actions to suit the censorious and haughty _dictum_ of the dominant cla.s.s.

"You must think as we think and act as we act, or you must go!" This is the law of the South.