Part 5 (1/2)
In each of the late rebellious states the ballotbox has been closed against the black man. To reach it he is compelled to brave the muzzles of a thousand rifles in the hands of silent sentinels who esteem a human life as no more sacred than the serpent that drags his tortuous length among the gra.s.ses of the field, and whose head mankind is enjoined to crush.
The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Federal const.i.tution which grew out of the public sentiment created by thirty long years of agitation of the abolitionists and of the ”emanc.i.p.ation proclamation”--issued as a war measure by President Lincoln--are no longer regarded as fundamental by the South. The beneficiaries of those amendments have failed in every instance to enjoy the benefits that were, presumably, intended to be conferred.
These laws--having pa.s.sed both branches of the Federal legislature, having received the approval and signature of the Chief Executive of the nation, and having been ratified by a majority of the states composing the sisterhood of states--these laws are no longer binding upon the people of the South, who fought long and desperately to prevent the possibility of their enactment; and they no longer benefit, if they ever did, the people in whose interest they were incorporated in the _Magna Charta_ of American liberty; _while the Central authority which originated them, has, through the Supreme Court, declared nugatory, null and void all supplementary legislation based upon those laws, as far as the government of the United States is concerned!_ The whole question has been remanded to the legislatures of the several states! The Federal Union has left to the usurped governments of the South the adjudication of rights which the South fought four years in honorable warfare to make impossible, and which it has since the war exhausted the catalogue of infamy and lawlessness to make of no force or effect. The fate of the lamb has been left to the mercy of the lion and the tiger.
The ”party of great moral ideas,” having emanc.i.p.ated the slave, and enfranchised disorganized ignorance and poverty, finally finished its mission, relinquished its right to the respect and confidence of mankind when, in 1876, it abandoned all effort to enforce the provisions of the war amendments. That party stands today for organized corruption, while its opponent stands for organized brigandage. The black man, who was betrayed by his party and murdered by the opponents of his party, is absolved from all allegiance which _grat.i.tude_ may have dictated, and is to-day free to make conditions the best possible with any faction which will insure him in his right to ”life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The black men of the United States are, today, free to form whatever alliances wisdom dictates, to make sure their position in the social and civil system of which, in the wise providence of a just G.o.d, they are a factor, for better or for worse.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] ”Southerners fire up terribly, as has been noted in these columns again and again, when the subject of intermarriage between whites and negroes is discussed. But the terrible state of immorality which exists there, involving white men and colored women, is something upon which the papers of that region are silent as a rule. Not so the grand jury that met recently at Madison, Ga., which thus spoke out in its presentment with all plainness of the Old Testament:
”After several days of laborious investigation we have found the moral state of our country in a fair condition, and the freedom of our community from any great criminal offenses is a subject for congratulation to our people. But the open and shameless cohabitation of white men with negro women in our community cries to heaven for abatement. This crime in its nature has been such as to elude our grasp owing to the limited time of our session. It is poisoning the fountains of our social life; it is ruining and degrading our young men, men who would scorn to have imputation put on them of equalization with negroes, but who have, nevertheless, found the lowest depths of moral depravity in this unnatural shame of their lives.”
”The despatch chronicling the presentment adds: 'The reading of this presentment in court aroused a great feeling of indignation among men who declare that the private affairs of the people should not be intruded upon.' It strikes the Northern mind that until these 'private affairs' do not need to be 'intruded upon,' Southern newspapers and Southern clergymen would with better grace bottle up their indignation upon the terrible evils likely to result from the legitimate intermarriage of the two races.”--_Newspaper waif._
CHAPTER IX
_Political Independence of the Negro_
The following chapter is, in the main, a reproduction of an address delivered by me before the Colored Press a.s.sociation, in the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, June 27, 1882:--
In addressing myself to a consideration of the subject: ”The colored man as an Independent Force in our Politics,” I come at once to one of the vital principles underlying American citizens.h.i.+p of the colored man in a peculiar manner. Upon this question hang all the conditions of man as a free moral agent, as an intelligent reasoning being; as a man thoughtful for the best interests of his country, of his individual interests, and of the interests of those who must take up the work of republican government when the present generation has pa.s.sed away. When I say that this question is of a most complex and perplexing nature, I only a.s.sert what is known of all men.
I would not forget that the arguments for and against independent action on our part are based upon two parties or sets of principles.
Principles are inherent in government by the people, and parties are engines created by the people through which to voice the principles they espouse. Parties have divided on one line in this country from the beginning of our national existence to the present time. All other issues merge into two distinct ones--the question of a strong Federal Government, as enunciated by Alexander Hamilton, and maintained by the present Republican party, and the question of the rights and powers of the States, as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, and as maintained by the present Democratic party,--called the ”party of the people,” but in fact the party of oligarchy, bloodshed, violence and oppression.
The Republican party won its first great victory on the inherent weakness of the Democratic party on the question of Human Rights and the right of the Federal Government to protect itself from the a.s.sumption, the aggression, the attempted usurpation, of the States, and it has maintained its supremacy for so long a time as to lead to the supposition that it will rule until such time as it shall fall to pieces of itself because of internal decay and exterior cancers. There does not appear to exist sufficient vitality outside of the Republican party to keep its members loyal to the people or honest to the government. The loyal legislation which would be occasioned by dread of loss of power, and the administration of the government in the most economical form, are wanting, because of the absence of an honest, healthy opposing party.
But it is not my purpose to dwell upon the mechanism of parties, but rather to show why colored Americans should be independent voters, independent citizens, independent men. To this end I am led to lay it down: (1.) That an independent voter must be intelligent, must comprehend the science of government, and be versed in the history of governments and of men; (2.) That an independent voter must be not only a citizen versed in government, but one loyal to his country, and generous and forbearing with his fellow-citizens, not looking always to the word and the act, but looking sometimes to the undercurrent which actuates these--to the presence of immediate interest, which is always strong in human nature, to the love of race, and to the love of section, which comes next to the love of country.
Our country is great not only in mineral and cereal resources, in numbers, and in acc.u.mulated wealth, but great in extent of territory, and in multiplicity of interests, out-growing from peculiarities of locality, race, and the education of the people. Thus the people of the North and East and West are given to farming, manufacturing, and speculation, making politics a subordinate, not a leading interest; they are consequently wealthy, thrifty and contented: while the people of the South, still in the shadow of defeat in the bloodiest and most tremendous conflict since the Napoleonic wars, are divided sharply into two cla.s.ses, and given almost exclusively to the pursuits of agriculture and hatred of one another. The existence of this state of things is most disastrous in its nature, and deplorable in its results. It is a barrier against the progress of that section and alien to the spirit and subversive of the principles of our free inst.i.tutions.
It is in the South that the largest number of our people live; it is there that they encounter the greatest hards.h.i.+ps; it is there the problem of their future usefulness as American citizens must have full and satisfactory, or disastrous and disheartening demonstration.
Consequently, the colored statesman and the colored editor must turn their attention to the South and make that field the center of speculation, deduction and practical application. We all understand the conditions of society in that section and the causes which have produced them, and, while not forgetting the causes, it is a common purpose to alter the existing conditions, so that they may conform to the logic of the great Rebellion and the spirit and letter of the Federal Const.i.tution. It is not surprising, therefore, that, as an humble worker in the interest of my race and the common good, I have decided views as to the course best to be pursued by our people in that section, and the fruits likely to spring from a consistent advocacy of such views.
I may stand alone in the opinion that the best interests of the race and the best interests of the country will be conserved by building up a bond of union between the white people and the negroes of the South--advocating the doctrine that the interests of the white and the interests of the colored people are one and the same; that the legislation which affects the one will affect the other; that the good which comes to the one should come to the other, and that, as one people, the evils which blight the hopes of the one blight the hopes of the other; I say, I may stand alone among colored men in the belief that harmony of sentiment between the blacks and whites of the country, in so far forth as it tends to honest division and healthy opposition, is natural and necessary, but I speak that which is a conviction as strong as the Stalwart idea of diversity between Black and White, which has so crystallized the opinion of the race.
It is not safe in a republican form of government that clannishness should exist, either by compulsory or voluntary reason; it is not good for the government, it is not good for the individual. A government like ours is like unto a household. Difference of opinion on non-essentials is wholesome and natural, but upon the fundamental idea incorporated in the Declaration of Independence and re-affirmed in the Federal Const.i.tution the utmost unanimity should prevail. That all men are born equal, so far as the benefits of government extend; that each and every man is justly ent.i.tled to the enjoyment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so long as these benign benefits be not forfeited by infraction upon the rights of others; that freedom of thought and unmolested expression of honest conviction and the right to make these effective through the sacred medium of a fair vote and an honest count, are G.o.d-given and not to be curtailed--these are the foundations of republican government; these are the foundations of our inst.i.tutions; these are the birthright of every American citizen; these are the guarantees which make men free and independent and great.
The colored man must rise to a full conception of his citizens.h.i.+p before he can make his citizens.h.i.+p effective. It is a fatality to create or foster clannishness in a government like ours. a.s.similation of sentiment must be the property of the German, the Irish, the English, the Anglo-African, and all other racial elements that contribute to the formation of the American type of citizen. The moment you create a caste standard, the moment you recognize the existence of such, that moment republican government stands beneath the sword of Damocles, the vitality of its being becomes vitiated and endangered. If this be true, the American people have grave cause for apprehension. The Anglo-African element of our population is cla.s.sed off by popular sentiment, and kept so. It is for the thoughtful, the honest, the calm but resolute men of the race to mould the sentiment of the ma.s.ses, lift them up into the broad sunlight of freedom.
Ignorance, superst.i.tion, prejudice, and intolerance are elements in our nature born of the malign inst.i.tution of servitude. No fiat of government can eradicate these. As they were the slow growth, the gradual development of long years of inhuman conditions, so they must be eliminated by the slow growth of years of favorable conditions. Let us recognize these facts as facts, and labor honestly to supplant them with more wholesome, more cheering realities. The Independent colored man, like the Independent white man, is an American citizen who does his own thinking. When some one else thinks for him he ceases to be an intelligent citizen and becomes a dangerous dupe--dangerous to himself, dangerous to the State.
It is not to be expected now that the colored voters will continue to maintain that unanimity of idea and action characteristic of them when the legislative halls of States resounded with the clamor of law-makers of their creation, and when their breath flooded or depleted State treasuries. The conditions are different now. They find themselves citizens without a voice in the shapement of legislation; tax-payers without representation; men without leaders.h.i.+p masterful enough to force respect from inferior numbers in some States, or to hold the balance of power in others. They find themselves at the mercy of a relentless public opinion which tolerates but does not respect their existence as a voting force; but which, on the contrary, while recognizing their right to the free exercise of the suffrage, forbids such exercise at the point of the shotgun of the a.s.sa.s.sin, whom it not only nerves but s.h.i.+elds in the perpetration of his lawless and infamous crimes. And why is this? Why is it that the one hundred and twenty thousand black voters of South Carolina allow the eighty thousand white voters of that State to grind the life out of them by laws more odious, more infamous, more tyrannical and subversive of manhood than any which depopulate the governments of the old world? Is it because the white man is the created viceregent of government? The Scriptures affirm that all are sprung from one parental stem. Is it because he is the const.i.tutionally invested oligarch of government?
The magna charta of our liberties affirms that ”all men are created equal.” Is it because the law of the land reserves unto him the dominance of power? The preamble of the Federal Const.i.tution declares that ”We” and not ”I,” const.i.tute ”the people of the United States.”