Part 18 (1/2)
”Politics and philanthropy are a grind; only when one is at the post of duty and knows it, there is a sensation of being lifted and lifting (_et teneo et teneor_) which sometimes comes gradually over one. Detail is grinding, the whole inspiring. G.o.d's kings and priests must drudge in seedy clothes before they can wear the purple.”
”From the deep human heart to the infinite heart there is a line along which will pa.s.s the real cry and the sympathetic answer--a double flash from the moral magnetism that fills the universe. Its conditions are not found in theological belief, but in the spirit of a little child. We can no more understand our human brother than our Father in heaven without bringing faith--the evidence of things unseen, the substance of things hoped for--to our aid.”
”All progress of strong hearts is by action and reaction. Human life is too weak to be an incessant eagle flight toward the Sun of Righteousness. Wings will be sometimes folded because they are wings....
The earthly struggle must be enduring--that is all. There must be no surrenders; we can't expect much of victory here.”
”The longer I live, the less I think and fear about what the world calls success; the more I tremble for true success, for the purity and sanct.i.ty of the soul, which is as a temple.”
”Doing what can't be done is the glory of living.”
”What are Christians put into the world for but to do the impossible in the strength of G.o.d?”
In the contemplation of such a spirit we rest for a little from the turmoils of politics, the mixture of motives, the half-successes. Here is what glorified the whole business,--the development of souls like this; and in such is the promise of the future. Fitly to Armstrong belongs what Matthew Arnold has written of his father, a kindred soul:--
Servants of G.o.d!--or sons Shall I not call you? because Not as servants ye knew Your Father's innermost mind, His, who unwillingly sees One of his little ones lost-- Yours is the praise, if mankind Hath not as yet in its march Fainted, and fallen, and died!
See! In the rocks of the world Marches the host of mankind A feeble, wavering line.
Where are they tending?--A G.o.d Marshal'd them, gave them their goal-- Ah, but the way is so long!
Years they have been in the wild!
Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks, Rising all round, overawe; Factions divide them, their host Threatens to break, to dissolve-- Ah, keep, keep them combined!
Else, of the myriads who fill That army, not one shall arrive; Sole they shall stray; on the rocks Batter forever in vain, Die one by one in the waste.
Then, in such hour of need Of your fainting, dispirited race, Ye, like angels, appear, Radiant with ardor divine.
Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow.
Ye alight in our van! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away.
Ye move through the ranks, recall The stragglers, refresh the outworn, Praise, re-inspire the brave.
Order, courage, return; Eyes rekindling, and prayers, Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files, Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march, On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of G.o.d!
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII
EVOLUTION
The story of slavery merges in the stories of the white man and the black man, to which there is no end. As the main period to the present study we have taken the beginning of President Hayes's administration in 1877, when the withdrawal of Federal troops from the South marked the return of the States of the Union to their normal relations, and also marked the disappearance of the negro problem as the central feature in national politics. From that time to the present we shall take but a bird's-eye view of the fortunes and the mutual relation of the two races.
The people of the Southern States realized gradually but at last fully that the conduct of their affairs was left in their own hands. From this time there was no important Federal legislation directed specially at the South. The restrictive laws left over from the reconstruction period were in some cases set aside by the Supreme Court and in general pa.s.sed into abeyance. There was rare and brief discussion of a renewal of Federal supervision of elections. But the Northern people, partly from rational conviction and partly from absorption in new issues, were wholly indisposed to any further interference. Without such interference there was no slightest chance of any restoration of political preponderance of the negroes over the whites. The specter of ”negro domination” haunted the Southern imagination long after it had become an impossibility. Then it was used as a bogy by small politicians. But the only serious attempt at national legislation for the South has been of a wholly different character. It was the plan of Senator Blair of New Hamps.h.i.+re, long urged upon Congress, and sometimes with good hope of success, for national a.s.sistance to local education, on the basis of existing illiteracy, for a term of ten years, to a total amount of $100,000,000. That is the only kind of special legislation for the South that has had any chance of enactment for almost thirty years.
Through the twelve years of political reconstruction, 1865-77, the Southern people were gradually adapting themselves to the new industrial and social conditions. Then the body of the whites, finding themselves fully restored to political mastery, grasped the entire situation with new clearness and vigor. They thrust the freedmen not only out of legislative majorities and the State offices, but out of all and any effective exercise of the suffrage. The means were various, consisting largely of indirect and technical hindrances, ”tissue-paper ballots” and the like. The intelligent cla.s.s ma.s.sed against the ignorant found no serious difficulty in having their own way at all points. A considerable number of negroes still voted, and had their votes counted, but their party was always somehow put in the minority; almost all offices pa.s.sed out of their hands; their representatives speedily disappeared from Congress, and before long from the Legislatures. Negro suffrage was almost nullified, and that, too, before the legislation of the last decade.
But, in a.s.serting their complete political superiority, the whites also recognized a large responsibility for the race they controlled. A degree of civil rights was secured to them, short of a perfect equality with the whites, but far beyond the status intended by the ”black codes” of 1865-6. The fundamental rights, of liberty to dispose of their labor and earnings in their own way, and protection of person and property by the law and the courts, were substantially secured. And, very notably, the common school education of blacks as well as whites was undertaken with fidelity, energy and new success. This great and vital advance, inaugurated by the Southern Republican governments, was accepted and carried on, loyally and at heavy cost, by the succeeding Democratic governments. The figures show a great advance from 1875 to 1880 in the number of schools and scholars of both races throughout the South.
Political inferiority for the negroes, but civil rights, industrial freedom, and rudimentary education,--that was the theory and largely the practice of their white neighbors.
One clause they added with emphatic affirmation: ”I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.” Social superiority, indicated by separation in all the familiar and courteous intercourse of daily life, was a.s.serted by the whites with a rigor beyond that of the days of slavery. When humiliated and stung by the political ascendency of their former bondmen, they wrapped themselves in their social superiority with a new haughtiness. The pride of race, of color, of the owner above the serf, stripped of its old power and insignia, but no whit weakened in root and core, set an adamantine wall along the line of social familiarity. Let the black man have his own place--in school and church, in street and market and hotel; but the same place, never! Separate schools, churches, cars. And as in a hospitable country the social meal is the special occasion and symbol of good fellows.h.i.+p and equal comrades.h.i.+p, right there let the line be fixed,--no black man or woman shall sit at table with whites.