Part 1 (1/2)

Froe President

by Godfrey Holden Pike

CHAPTER I

WANTED: A MAN--THE MAN FOUND

Just at the most severe crisis of the war between France and Ger the situation, reeneration which followed after the close of the gigantic and sanguinary conflict between the Northern and Southern States of the American Republic, a similar reh no in the wrong direction altogether, or ht have e personality in their ive the word and lead the way There see with a rapidity which inspiredThe race seeth the much-needed chief or leader was found in Booker T

Washi+ngton, whose distinguished work on behalf of the race at the great institution which he has founded at Tuskegee has given hiro, his mission is to the ard to thispersonality, the _International Monthly_ of New York says:--”At the present tinised as the foreht after as a speaker Whatever he chooses to write iy declares him to be a remarkable orator He is often spoken of as of solid, and even brilliant, intellectual attainue and of this unusual reputation is based upon the fact that he is a negro, and how ard to any other consideration whatsoever? Has he, in fact, done that which, had he been a white iven him a solid and substantial claim to the esteem that he now enjoys?”

Mr Harry T Peck, rites thus, ventures the opinion that the estierated

”There is no evidence that his mind is in any way exceptional,” he adds ”Were he a white led out for eminence He is not an orator; he is not a writer; he is not a thinker He is so icalto be done, and which no one else has yet accoenuine criticise a tree by its fruits, so we enerally acknowledged to be the case, Booker Washi+ngton has practically solved that Race Problem which American politicians have hardly dared to face since the close of the Civil War, it is only fair that we accord hiinal shrewdness which enius When an idea of exceptional value is given forth, one that is all the greater on account of its simplicity, people seeave it utterance

Booker Washi+ngtonin the footsteps of Adaro population as an evil or a grievance, he prescribes that their labour, as a source of vast wealth, be utilised for the national advancement Viewed from any other standpoint, there can be no doubt that the rapidly-increasing negroes inspire so apprehensions as a possible source of inconvenience or of actual danger Once get the coloured race well under control, however, and the result would be all-round satisfaction

Thus Booker Washi+ngton is not only the man of the hour to his own people; in him the Man who has been wanted for forty years has been found Being soe, he was born in those portentous times towards the end of the sixth decade of the last century when the political horizon of the Republic was darkening and showing syinia, his native State, was the inal thirteen, which, as colonies, separated from Great Britain after the War of Independence In the days of his childhood, before the Civil War actually broke out, his surroundings were those of the cabin standing amid the squalor of slavery All the sad, as well as the comic, phases of life on the Southern plantations, as they then existed, are vividly reton Of course, to the slaves themselves very much depended on the disposition of their owners, or on the character of the overseers which those planters eton hat e one It was not so bad as that of ood as the exceptional experience of the feere born as It was, of course, a sad childhood, unrelieved by anything like e should in Great Britain call the comforts of life He was a keen-witted lad; but the shrewdest of seers could not have foreseen that he would develop into theemancipation, would most sorely need

At the tio--the exact place or tiard to ereat advances, and this had been effected chiefly through the diffusion of millions of copies of Mrs H B Stowe's _Uncle To those in this country who believed the descriptions in that work to be exaggerated, and that Legree was a non-existent character, we have to include Charles dickens At the same time, that famous novelist, in common with some others, probably clearly saw that the days of slavery were numbered ”In truth, it must be so,” remarked one journalist at the time when _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was the most popular book both in the Old and the New World ”In truth, it must be so, for the very laws of population forbid the permanence of slavery in America The black e of this very rereat part accounts for the dislike to the coloured population which is everywhere expressed in the United States” The social inequality of the negroes and the whites struck people then, as it does to-day in this country, as being one of the most marked features of American society There is probably no reh his recognising this fact, and knowing that the negroes must continue to be a race by theton's success has been what it is

Meanwhile, what kind of existence was the everyday life on a plantation ”down South” in the days of Booker Washi+ngton's childhood? By way of reply, take this vivid word-picture from Mr Casey's _Two Years on the Farm of Uncle Sam_, which was published in the decade of our hero's birth:--

”The slaves are all that I had i up to the dark outline of fancy with a terrible precision We put in to wood at one of these places, and for the first time I saw these hewers of wood and drawers of water A party of us went on shore to shoot; some distance in the e found two men, three women and two boys; there were twenty in all on this fararment, buttoned at the back, with a sort of trousers of the saar nearly to the ankle; a kind of cloth, like a dirty toound round the head One of the woe and powerful whip, hich, and a surprising strength, she belaboured and tugged the unwieldy teareat dexterity The other wo the wood; the younger, about sixteen years of age, had one child, and appeared to do nothing The women, it seemed to me, worked harder than the men I observed the almost complete absence of memory in the elder woman; she could not reh but a fewon that labour-crooked group, I felt a dislike, strong and definite, to that syste down the principle of self-esteem in the man, until it reaches the passive and una on those woh they were, so unnaturally masculine, so completely unsexed, so far removed from all those attributes hich the name of woman is associated, I felt that no reason based on an asserted right, no fiction of argument but as dust in the balance when the question is whether a hu--no matter of what colour, whether an Indian or an African sun ht of securing his own happiness to the extent of his ability Then their state, their look, bodies, ainst the system, which no representations, however plausible, could refute; and all that I had listened to froossa picture of wretchedness presented by that group”

Brought up as, one would not know ave no ree of his slaves than he did to that of his cattle; all alike were bought and sold in the open hts or privileges apart from the will of their owners The cabin of the slave family was, in a very literal sense, what its na more The household was not supposed to need more than one room; the furniture was, of course, as rude as the hovel itself, and, though the apartlass ere not considered necessary A pallet on the earthern floor was the only sleeping accommodation It was one-room life under one of its worst phases; and, in addition to other drawbacks, the inhts in winter and from heat in summer It is almost needless to say that under such conditions and aton fared neither better nor worse than tens of thousands of his fellows; his earliest days were not cheered by any of the sunshi+ne of childhood As a rule, the children of the slave-cabin knew nothing of those ordinary sports and pastiive variety to the early days of the young under happier circumstances Of course, he was not more than a child when slavery came to an end, but in the case of such a child slave, at a very early age indeed, his possible service was found to be coether dispensed with He could do duty as a reat house--a sumptuous palace in comparison with the slave-cabins--and the fields where his elders were at work With a horse he could also go onlonely roads, were not unattended with danger Thus the dense, dark woods through which he round at a distant inary spectres; and, besides, there were said to be deserters from the Confederate Army hidden in those recesses who, by way of sport, would relieve any negro lad of his ears if they chanced to meet with him Such were the last repellent phases of that phase of that now obsolete world of slavery in Old Virginia as Booker Washi+ngton remembers them

In our common, everyday talk we are accustoht precedes the dawn of day It was so in this instance The titon's birth, and for some years after, was apparently the darkest period in the history of the slaves of the Southern States For long the negroes of the plantations not only grew up quite illiterate--it was a punishable offence for them to make any endeavour to learn to read, or for anyone to atteitive Slave Law had found a place in the Statute Book of the Republic, and this Act itive slave to find either shelter or aid in any State of the Union Then, just about the same time, the American Chief-Justice had, in his official capacity, declared that nowhere in any one of the States had a slave any rights of citizenshi+p In a word, the slaves on a plantation were sial sense, with the cattle they tended or used in their everyday work For exaular s; and there was little or nothing of e should recognise as family life Thus when, after the era of eton ca in an ordinary bed and sitting down at table to partake of a family meal, both were a revelation of civilised existence which were quite new to him

In a sense the very denial to the slave population of their educational rights would see their wits, until they beca around thens of the titon ran hen he was not engaged in his custolish alphabet But this conorance seee which was part of his nature Ao to a schoolhouse where coed over their books, and he was naturally much affected by what he saw and heard Why was not he privileged in a siro boys enerations that preceded him, and in every instance the ansould be the same--schools are forbidden to the slave The coloured population was fast increasing, and the planters believed that the public safety could only be guaranteed by co them to remain illiterate

In point of fact, however, the slaves on the plantations were not as ignorant as their too sanguine owners supposed them to be In a secret way one here and there oing on in the outside world, they were oftentimes hardly less well inforton remembers it, the time of his childhood was a wonderful era of transition None more fully realised than the slaves themselves that the bone of contention which occasioned the Civil War was the question of slavery Thus, to them, the period of conflict was a time of wild, but still subdued, excitement, for fear their sentiments should be detected and be followed by pains and penalties The traffic on ”the underground railroad” was probably for the tiraph” was in full operation, and on every plantation and in every planter's palatial es with that ardent interest which cannot be described They could not read newspapers, and would have been forbidden to do so had they been able, but whenever a er about the post-office, or elsewhere where persons conversed on the current news, and everything that entered the coloured enerally known to every soul on the plantation There were ht for theratulated one another on every Northern victory, while they prayed with pathetic ardour for the success of Lincoln and his armies

At the same time, when they were tolerably well used by their owners, there was a good deal of syether the coloured race and the white people Booker Washi+ngton does not think that his race have ever betrayed any trust that has been reposed in the acquainted with any other condition of life, so that it must have appeared quite natural to thereat house and for theers, to herd in the cabins But while they never undervalued freedoed for it, there were certain things which exercised influence over therievance of hard bondage and its occasional cruel hardshi+ps

For exae, undertook such service as he could perform in his master's house; and it was not only a possibility, it frequently happened, that a young servant, whether a lad or a girl, becaer white people would soot into trouble, and thus soenuine affection would be kindled in the hearts of the subject race What anireat arton would hear at histhe rooetting the current news by those who did not fore of the newspaper constituency Then, of course, there was the constant occurrence of the usual casualties of war Bitter sorrow and els of darkness, would steal into the luxurious homes of the planters when the master himself, or a son of the household, was returned invalided or so sorely wounded as to be maimed for life It was still worse when, as it actually happened, one or another of these chief people of the Southern Confederacy was killed There was then the anguish ofin the household akin to that which afflicted the people of Egypt when the first-born of each family was slain Into the older or the younger generation, the slaves themselves were touched by the affliction of the faood deeds of those who had befriended theton that, in any case, if, as trusted servants, they had been left in charge of a house by night or day, they would never have surrendered to the eneht have beenfor the freedoood reason that both the white and the coloured races were losers by slavery As was inevitable, it turned out that one race cannot oppress another without being affected for the worse Over the best of the plantations there see to make the prosperity complete, ealth was a a pleasure and honourable, labour was looked upon as soradation associated with it The planters and their fae of slavery The slaves theed to their condition of bondage

As it has been shown, slavery reached its darkest phase in the years which i Booker Washi+ngton's childhood Many telling illustrations iven to show that this was actually the fact I am personally well acquainted with an ex-slave, who is also a native of Virginia, who vividly remembers those days At the time of his birth his e; but, notwithstanding, this girl had already tasted enough of the anguish and bitterness of slavery whichlifetihly treated by her owner that for so her child's birth she re wood, where the only diet procurable was berries or wild fruit In this case the painful anoirl's husband was a freehis wife and child, made strenuous efforts to purchase them, but did so quite unsuccessfully The master even moved away to another place, where thethis tiaiety of childhood while playing in the yard with coloured juveniles of his own age, who, like hi up for a sad destiny

In those days, as Booker Washi+ngton himself would be aware, slave-ia, or going ”down South,” in order to inspire terror Going to Georgia meant to pass on into a land without hope, of darkness and death Occasionally a hard-featured stranger would appear on the scene, and, while leaning on the fence with folded arms, he would watch the boys at play in the yard with the interested glances of a trader Then, as must have appeared one away, one or another of the boys would be h so boy had been taken ”down South”--into Georgia

Booker Washi+ngton is certainly one of the most extraordinary exae under difficulties; but there have beenthis mettle My ex-slave friend, to whom reference has been made, is certainly to be reckoned as one of these It is probable that histhat she knew the English alphabet and was able to count a hundred Be this as it enuine Christian mother, she determined that, in spite of planters and their laws, her child should learn whatever she could teach hi desire to learn By dint of reot ahead of hiswas carried on in secret, there had rarely been found aasked, he succeeded in purchasing a copy-book and spelling primer, which ell used on all possible occasions He actually went through the whole of the Bible when he could not ht of the words This e education in England, so that his case is worthy of being ton Both instances alike show that negroes ood intellectual endow energy and perseverance

At length the era of freedoton was still too young to realise what all the excitement and commotion portended, those who looked upon him saw the child ould develop into a benefactor of his race and the ro of his time The Man anted was found