The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States Read online

  What the negro is now suffering at the hands of his former masters, the white emancipated serfs of Russia are now suffering from the lords and nobles by whom they were formerly held as slaves. In form and appearance the emancipation of the latter was upon better terms than in the case of the negro. The Empire, unlike the Republic, gave her free serfs, or pretended to give them, three acres of land--a start in the world. But the selection and bestowment of this land was unhappily confided to the care of the nobles, their former lords and masters. Thus the lamb was committed to the care of the wolf, and hence the organized assassination now going on in that country; and it will be well for our Southern States if they escape a like fate. The world is slow to learn that no man can wrong his brother without doing a greater wrong to himself. Something may, however, be learned from the lessons of alarm and consternation which are now written all over Russia.

  But in contemplating this exodus, it should be kept in mind that the way of an oppressed people from bondage to freedom is never smooth. There is ever in such transition much to overcome on both sides. Neither the master nor the emancipated slave can at once shake off the habits and manners of a long-established past condition. The form may be abolished, but the spirit survives and lingers about the scenes of its former life. The slave brings into the new relation much of the dependence, improvidence and servility of slavery, and the master brings much of his pride, selfishness and love of power. The influence of feudalism has not yet disappeared from Europe. Norman pride is still visible even in England, though centuries have passed since the Saxon was the slave of the Norman; and long years must elapse before all traces of slavery shall disappear from our country. Suffering and hardship made the Saxon strong; and suffering and hardship will make the Anglo-African strong and ultimately successful on the soil of his birth and in the climate to which his color and origin as well as his labor adapt him.

  Very evidently there are to be asked and answered many important questions before the friends of humanity can be properly called upon to give their support to this emigration movement. A natural and primary inquiry is: What does it mean? How much ground is it meant to cover? Is the total removal of the whole five millions of colored people from the South contemplated? Or is it proposed to remove only a part? And, if only a part, why a part and not the whole? Is the protection of the rights of the many less important than the same of the few? If the few are to be removed because of the intolerable oppression which prevails in the South, why not the many also? If exodus is good for any, must it not be equally good for all? Then, if the whole five millions are to leave the South, as a doomed country--leave it as Lot left Sodom, or driven out as the Moors were driven out of Spain--then there is a question of ways and means to be considered. Has any definite estimate of the cost of this removal been made? How shall the one or two hundred millions of dollars, which such removal would require, be obtained? Shall it be appropriated by Congress, or voluntarily contributed by the public? Manifestly, with such a debt upon the nation as the war for the Union has created, Congress is not likely to be in a hurry to make any such appropriation. It would much more willingly and readily enact the necessary legislation to protect the freedmen where they are, than appropriate two hundred millions of dollars to help them away to Kansas or elsewhere in the North. The same amount of money and labor required to promote emigration, would, if applied to that end, protect the negro where he is. But suppose, as already suggested, the matter shall not be left at all to Congress, but remitted to the voluntary contributions from the people. Then a swarm of agents must be employed to circulate over the country, hat in hand, soliciting and collecting these contributions, representing to the people everywhere that the cause of the negro is lost in the South, that his only hope and deliverance from a condition of things worse than slavery is removal to Kansas, or to some country outside the Southern States. Then would such an arrangement, such an apostleship of despair be beneficial, or would it be prejudicial to the cause of the freedman? Precisely and plainly, this is a feature of the emigration movement which is open to serious objection.

  Voluntary, spontaneous, self-sustained emigration on the part of the freedmen may or may not be commendable. It is a matter with which they alone have to do. The public is not called upon to say or do anything for or against it; but when the public is called upon to take sides, to declare its views, to organize emigration societies, appoint and send out agents to make speeches and collect money to help the freedmen from the South, the public may very properly hesitate. it may not wish to be responsible for the measure, or for the disheartening doctrines by which the measure is supported.

  Objection may properly be made upon many grounds. It may well enough be said that the negro question is not so desperate as the advocates of exodus would have the public believe; that there is still reasonable ground of hope that the negro will ultimately have his rights as a man, and be fully protected in the South; that in several of the old slave States his citizenship and his right to vote are already respected and protected; that the same, in time, will be secured for the negro in the other States;

  that the world was not the work of a day; that even in free New England all the evils generated by slavery did not disappear in a century after the abolition of the system, if, indeed, they have yet entirely disappeared.

  Within the last forty years, a dark and shocking picture might be given of the persecution of the negro and his friends, even in the now pre-eminently free State of Massachusetts. It is not more than twenty years ago that Boston supplied a pistol club, if not a rifle club, to break up an abolition meeting, and that one of her most eminent citizens had to be guarded to and from his house, to escape the hand of mobocratic assassins, armed in the interest of slavery. The negro on the Sound between New York and Boston, though a respectable, educated gentleman, was not allowed abaft the wheel, and must sleep, if he slept at all, upon the naked deck, in the open air. Upon no condition, except that of a servant or slave, could he be permitted to go into a cabin. All the handicrafts of New England, too, were closed to him. The appearance of a black man in any workshop or shipyard, as a mechanic, there would have scattered the whole gang of white hands at once. The poor negro was not admitted into the factories to work, or as an apprentice to any trade. He was barber, waiter, whitewasher and wood-sawyer. All of what were considered respectable employments, by a power superior to legal enactments were denied him. But none of these things have moved the negro from New England, and it is well for him that he has remained there. In some respects, Massachusetts was then what the South is now, good missionary ground for anti-slavery writers and speakers. What has been accomplished there, may be accomplished elsewhere.

  Bad as is the condition of the negro to-day at the South, there was a time when it was flagrantly and incomparably worse. A few years ago he had nothing--he had not even himself. He belonged to somebody else, who could dispose of his person and his labor as he pleased. Now he has himself, his labor, and his right to dispose of one and the other, as shall best suit his own happiness. He has more. He has a standing in the supreme law of the land, in the Constitution of the United States--not to be changed or affected by any conjunction of circumstances likely to occur in the immediate or remote future. The Fourteenth Amendment makes him a citizen, and the Fifteenth makes him a voter. With power behind him, at work for him, and which cannot be taken from him, the negro of the South may wisely bide his time. The situation at the moment is exceptional and transient. The permanent powers of the Government are all on his side. What though, for the moment, the hand of violence strikes down the negro's rights in the South, those rights will revive, survive and flourish again. They are not the only people who have been in a moment of popular passion maltreated and driven from the polls. The Irish and Dutch have frequently been so treated--Boston, Baltimore and New York have been the scenes of this lawless violence; but those scenes have now disappeared. A Hebrew may even now be rudely repulsed from the door of a hotel; but he will not on that
account get up another exodus, as he did three thousand years ago, but will quietly "put money in his purse" and bide his time, knowing that the rising tide of civilization will eventually float him, as it floats all other varieties of the human family to whom floating in any condition is possible.

  Of one thing we may be certain, and it is a thing which is destined to be made very prominent not long hence--the negro will either be counted at the polls or not counted in the basis of representation. The South must let the negro vote, or surrender its power in Congress. The chosen horn of this dilemma will finally be to let the negro vote, and vote unmolested. Let us have all the indignant and fiery declamation which the warm hearts of our youthful orators can pour out against Southern meanness, "White Leagues," "Bulldozers," and other "Dark Lantern" organizations; but let us have a little calm, clear reason as well. The latter is a safer guide than the former. On this great question we want light rather than heat, thought rather than feeling, a comprehensive view and appreciation of what the negro has already on his side, as well as of the disadvantages against which he has thus far been compelled to struggle, and still has to struggle.

  Without abating one jot of our horror and indignation at the outrages committed in some parts of the Southern States against the negro, we cannot but regard the present agitation of an African exodus from the South as ill-timed, and, in some respects, hurtful. We stand to-day at the beginning of a grand and beneficent reaction. There is a growing recognition of the duty and obligation of the American people to guard, protect and defend the personal and political rights of all the people of all the States; to uphold the principles upon which rebellion was suppressed, slavery abolished, and the country saved from dismemberment and ruin.

  We see and feel to-day, as we have not seen and felt before, that the time for conciliation and trusting to the honor of the late rebels and slave-holders has passed. The President of the United States himself, while still liberal, just and generous toward the South, has yet sounded a halt in that direction, and has bravely, firmly and ably asserted the constitutional authority to maintain the public peace in every State in the Union, and upon every day in the year, and has maintained this ground against all the powers of House and Senate.

  We stand at the gateway of a marked and decided change in the statesmanship of our rulers. Every day brings fresh and increasing evidence that we are, and of right ought to be, a Nation; that Confederate notions of the nature and powers of our Government ought to have perished in the rebellion which they supported; that they are anachronisms and superstitions, and no longer fit to be above ground.

  National ideas are springing up all around us--the oppressor of the negro is seen to be the enemy of the peace, prosperity and honor of the country.

  The attempt to nullify the national Election Laws, to starve the officers where they could not destroy the offices, to attack the national credit when they could not prevent successful resumption, to paralyze the Constitution where they could neither pervert nor set it aside, has all worked against the old slave-holding element, and in the interest of the negro. They have made it evident that the sceptre of political power must soon pass from the party of reaction, revolution, rebellion and slavery to the party of Constitution, liberty and progress. At a time like this, so full of hope and courage, it is unfortunate that a cry of despair should be raised in behalf of the colored people of the South; unfortunate that men are going over the country begging in the name of the poor colored men of the South, and telling the people that the Government has no power to enforce the Constitution and laws in that section, and that there is no hope for the poor negro, but to plant him in the new soil of Kansas and Nebraska.

  These men do the colored people of the South a real damage. They give their enemies an advantage in the argument for their manhood and freedom. They assume the inability of the colored people of the South to take care of themselves--the country will be told of the hundreds who go to Kansas, but not of the thousands who stay in Mississippi and Louisiana.

  They will be told of the destitute who require material aid, but not of the multitude who are bravely sustaining themselves where they are.

  In Georgia the negroes are paying taxes upon six millions of dollars; in Louisiana upon forty or fifty millions; and upon unascertained sums elsewhere in the Southern States.

  Why should a people who have made such progress in the course of a few years, now be humiliated and scandalized by exodus agents, begging money to remove them from their homes? especially at a time when every indication favors the position that the wrongs and hardships which they suffer are soon to be redressed.

  Besides the objection thus stated, it is manifest that the public and noisy advocacy of a general stampede of the colored people from the South to the North is necessarily an abandonment of the great and paramount principle of protection to person and property in every State of the Union. It is an evasion of a solemn obligation and duty. The business of this nation is to protect its citizens where they are, not to transport them where they will not need protection. The best that can be said of this exodus in this respect is, that it is an attempt to climb up some other than the right way; it is an expedient, a half-way measure, and tends to weaken in the public mind a sense of the absolute right, power and duty of the Government, inasmuch as it concedes, by implication at least, that on the soil of the South the law of the land cannot command obedience, the ballot-box cannot be kept pure, peaceable elections cannot be held, the Constitution cannot be enforced, and the lives and liberties of loyal and peaceable citizens cannot be protected. It is a surrender, a premature, disheartening surrender, since it would secure freedom and free institutions by migration rather than by protection; by flight, rather than by right; by going into a strange land, rather than by staying in one's own. It leaves the whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open, and still to be settled, with the moral influence of exodus against us, since it is a confession of the utter impracticability of equal rights and equal protection in any State where those rights may be struck down by violence.

  It does not appear that the friends of freedom should spend either time or talent in furtherance of this exodus, as a desirable measure, either for the North or the South, for the blacks of the South or the whites of the North. If the people of this country cannot be protected in every State of this Union, the Government of the United States is shorn of its rightful dignity and power, the late rebellion has triumphed, the sovereignty of the nation is an empty name, and the power and authority in individual States is greater than the power and authority of the United States.

  Necessity often compels men to migrate, to leave their old homes and seek new ones, to sever old ties and create new ones; but to do this the necessity should be obvious and imperative. It should be a last resort, and only adopted after carefully considering what is against the measure, as well as what is in favor of it. There are prodigal sons everywhere, who are ready to demand the portion of goods that would fall to them, and betake themselves to a strange country. Something is ever lost in the process of migration, and much is sacrificed at home for what is gained abroad. A world of wisdom is in the saying of Mr. Emerson, that "those who made Rome worth going to see, stayed there." Five moves from house to house are said to be worse than a fire. That a rolling stone gathers no moss, has passed into the world's wisdom.

  The colored people of the South, just beginning to accumulate a little property, and to lay the foundation of family, should not be in haste to sell that little and be off to the banks of the Mississippi. The habit of roaming from place to place in pursuit of better conditions of existence is by no means a good one. A man should never leave his home for a new one till he has earnestly endeavored to make his immediate surroundings accord with his wishes. The time and energy expended in wandering about from place to place, if employed in making him a comfortable home where he is, will in nine cases out of ten, prove the best investment. No people ever did much for themselves or for the world wit
hout the sense and inspiration of native land, of a fixed home, of familiar neighborhood and common associations. The fact of being to the manor born has an elevating power upon the mind and heart of a man. It is a more cheerful thing to be able to say: I was born here, and know all the people, than to say: I am a stranger here, and know none of the people.

  It cannot be doubted that in so far as this exodus tends to promote restlessness in the colored people of the South, to unsettle their feeling of home and to sacrifice positive advantages where they are for fancied ones in Kansas or elsewhere, it is an evil. Some have sold their little homes, their chickens, mules and pigs, at a sacrifice, to follow the exodus. Let it be understood that you are going, and you advertise the fact that your mule has lost half his value--for your staying with him makes half his value. Let the colored people of Georgia offer their six millions' worth of property for sale, with the purpose to leave Georgia, and they will not realize half its value. Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.

  It may safely be asserted that, whether advocated and commended to favor on the ground that it will increase the political power of the Republican party, and thus help to make a solid North against a solid South; or upon the ground that it will increase the power and influence of the colored people as a political element, and enable them the better to protect their rights, and insure their moral and social elevation, the exodus will prove a disappointment, a mistake and a failure; because, as to strengthening the Republican party, the emigrants will go only to those States where the Republican party is strong and solid enough already without their votes; and in respect to the other part of the argument, it will fail because it takes colored voters from a section of the country where they are sufficiently numerous to elect some of their number to places of honor and profit, and places them in a country where their proportion to other classes will be so small as not to be recognized as a political element, or entitled to be represented by one of themselves. And, further, because, go where they will, they must for a time inevitably carry with them poverty, ignorance and other repulsive incidents, inherited from their former condition as slaves--a circumstance which is about as likely to make votes for Democrats as for Republicans, and to raise up bitter prejudices against them as to raise up friends for them.