xt7v154dp353 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7v154dp353/data/mets.xml Page, Thomas Nelson, 1853-1922. 1904  books b97-24-37872756 English Scribner, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. African Americans. United States Race relations. Negro  : the southerner's problem / by Thomas Nelson Page. text Negro  : the southerner's problem / by Thomas Nelson Page. 1904 2002 true xt7v154dp353 section xt7v154dp353 









      THE NEGRO:
THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM
 
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               TO

ALL THOSE WHO TRULY WISH TO HELP

  SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM, THESE

     STUDIES ARE RESPECTFULLY

            DEDICATED
 
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INTRODUCTORY



IN this volume of essays relating to one of
      the most vital and pressing problems
      which has ever confronted a people, no
pretence is made that the subject has been fully
discussed. All that is claimed is that an attempt
is made, after years of study and of more or
less familiarity with some phases of the Prob-
lem, to present them plainly, candidly and, as
far as possible, temperately.  It is not even
claimed that this is wholly possible. No man
can entirely dissociate himself from the con-
ditions amid which he grew up, or free him-
self from the influences which surrounded him
in his youth. The most he can do is to strive
earnestly for an open and enlarged mind and
try to look at everything from the highest and
soundest standpoint he can reach. If he does
this and tries to tell the truth absolutely as he
sees it, though he may not have given the exact
truth, he will, possibly, have done his part to
help others find it.
                     vii

 

INTRODUCTORY



  It is not claimed that the author is absolutely
correct in all of his propositions. Sometimes
the information on which they are based is,
possibly, incorrect; the classification of facts in-
complete or inexact; and, no doubt, his deduc-
tions are occasionally erroneous; but no proposi-
tion has been advanced for which he does not
believe he has sound authority; no fact has been
stated without what appears to him convincing
proof, and whatever error his deductions con-
tain may readily be detected, as they are plainly
stated.
  Although it has appeared at one time or an-
other that the race question was in process of
settlement, yet always, just when that hope
seemed brightest, it has been dashed to the
ground, and the Question has reappeared in
some new form as menacing as ever. In fact,
it is much too weighty and far-reaching to be
disposed of in a short time. Where ten millions
of one race, which increases at a rate that dou-
bles its numbers every forty years, confront
within the borders of one country another race,
the most opposite to it on earth, there must
exist a question grave enough in the present and
likely to become stupendous in the future. Next
to Representative Government, this is to-day the



viii

 

INTRODUCTORY



most tremendous question which faces directly
one-third of the people of the United States, and
only less immediately all of them. It includes
the labor question of the South, and must, in
time, affect that of the whole country. It does
more; it affects all those conditions which make
life endurable and, perhaps, even possible in a
dozen States of the Union. Wherever it ex-
ists, it is so vital that it absorbs for the time
being all the energies of the people, and ex-
cludes due consideration of every other question
whatsover.
  In dealing with this Question in the past,
nearly every mistake that could possibly be
made has been made, and to-day, after more
than thirty-five years of peace and of material
prosperity, the Question is apparently as live
as it was over a generation ago, when national
passion was allowed to usurp the province of
deliberation, and the Negro was taught two
fundamental errors: first, that the Southern
white was inherently his enemy, and, secondly,
that his race could be legislated into equality
with the white.
  One unfortunate fact is that that portion of
the white race living at a distance from the re-
gion where the Problem is most vital have been



ix


 

INTRODUCTORY



trained to hold almost universally one theory
as to the Question, while the portion who face
the problem every day of their lives have quite
solidly held a view absolutely the opposite.
  A singular feature of this difference in the
views held by the two sections is that whatever
Southerners have said about conditions at the
South relating to the Negroes has usually been
received incredulously at the North, and it is
only when some Northerner has seen those con-
ditions for himself and found the views of the
Southerners to be sound that those views were
accepted. Thus, we have had exhibited the
curious fact that evidence upon a most vital
matter has been accepted rather with reference
to the sectional status of the witness than to his
opportunity for exact knowledge.
  A Southerner may be a high-minded and phil-
anthropic gentleman, whose views would be
sought and whose word would be taken on
every other subject; he may be carrying his old
slaves as pensioners; he may treat the weakest
and worst of them with that mingled considera-
tion and indulgence which is so commonly to
be found in the South; but if he expresses the
results of a lifetime of knowledge of the Ne-
gro's character, it counts for nothing with a


 
x



INTRODUCTORY



large class who fancy themselves the only
friends of the Negro.
  The reason for this has, undoubtedly, been
the belief held by many Northerners that the
Southerners were inherently incapable of doing
justice to the negroes.  Happily for the proper
solution of the question, except with that por-
tion of the people who belong to the generation
to whom the Baptist cried in the wilderness, this
state of mind is more or less passing away, and
men of all sections are awakening to the need
for a proper solution.
  In this discussion, one thing must be borne
in mind: In characterizing the Negroes gener-
ally, it is not meant to include the respectable
element among them, except where this is
plainly intended. Throughout the South there
is such an element, an element not only respect-
able, but universally respected.  To say that
Negroes furnish the great body of rapists, is
not to charge that all Negroes are ravishers.
To say that they are ignorant and lack the first
element of morality, is not to assert that they
all are so. The race question, however, as it
exists in the South, is caused by the great body
of the race, and after forty years in which money
and care have been given unstintedly to uplift


 

Xi





INTRODUCTORY



them, those who possess knowledge and virtue
are not sufficient in number and influence to
prevent the race question from growing rather
than diminishing.
  De Tocqueville, more than a century ago,
declared that he was obliged to confess that he
did not regard the abolition of slavery as a
means of warding off the struggle of the two
races in the Southern States. Thomas Jeff erson
pronounced the same view, and declared that
they must be separated. In the light of mod-
em conditions, it would appear as though, un-
less conditions change, these views may be veri-
fied. It may even be possibly true, as some
believe, that, with the present increase of the
two races going on, whether the Negro race
be educated and enlightened or not, the most
dangerous phases of the problem would still
exist in the mere continuance together of the
two races.
  It is with the hope of throwing some light
on this great Question that these studies have
been made.



xii








 




               CONTENTS

CEAFl=                                   PAu
   I. SLAVERY AND THE OLD RELATION BETWEEN
        THE SOUTHERN WHITES AND BLACKS .  3

  II. SOME OF ITS DIFFICULTIES AND FALLACIES 29

  III. ITS PRESENT CONDITION AND ASPECT, AS

        SHOWN BY STATISTICS. . . . . . 56

 IV. THE LYNCHING OF NEGROES-ITS CAUSE

        AND ITS PREVENTION . . . . . . 86

  V. THE PARTIAL DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE

        NEGRO . . . . . . . . . . . 120

 VI. THE OLD-TIME NEGRO . . . . . . . 163

 VII. THE RACE QUESTION  . . . . . . . 205

VIII. OF THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION . . 286

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      THE NEGRO:

THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM

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THE NEGRO:



THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM


              CHAPTER I

 SLAVERY AND THE OLD RELATION BE-
    TWEEN THE SOUTHERN WHITES
               AND BLACKS

                    I
 At MONG the chief problems which have
 A     vexed the country for the last century
        and threaten to give yet more trouble
in the future, is what is usually termed " The
Negro Question." To the South, it has been
for nearly forty years the chief public question,
overshadowing all others, and withdrawing her
from due participation in the direction and
benefit of the National Government.  It has
kept alive sectional feeling; has inflamed parti-
sanship; distorted party policies; barred com-
plete reconciliation; cost hundreds of millions
                    3

 

THE NEGRO:



of money, and hundreds if not thousands of
lives, and stands ever ready, like Banquo's
ghost, to burst forth even at the feast.
  For the last few years it has appeared to
be in process of being settled, and settled along
the lines which the more conservative element
of the white race at the South has deemed for
the permanent good of both races, a view in
which the best informed element at the North
apparently acquiesced. The States which the
greater part of the most ignorant element of
the Negro race inhabited had substantially
eliminated this element from the participation
in political government, but had provided qual-
ifications for suffrage which would admit to
participation therein any element of the race
sufficiently educated to meet what might to an
impartial man appear a reasonable require-
ment.   Meantime, the whites were taxing
themselves heavily and were doing all in their
power to give the entire race the education
which would enable them to meet this require-
ment.
  Those whites who know the race best and
hold the most far-reaching conception of the
subject maintain that this disfranchisement was
 See chapter on "I The Disfranchisement of the Negro."  



4


 
THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



necessary, and, even of the Negro race, those
who are wisest and hold the highest ideal for
their people acquiesced in this-at least, to the
extent of recognizing that the Negroes at large
needed a more substantial foundation for full
citizenship than they had yet attained-and
were preaching and teaching the imperative
necessity of the race's applying its chief energies
to building itself up industrially.
  The South, indeed, after years of struggle,
considered that the question which had con-
fronted it and largely affected its policy for
more than a third of a century was sufficiently
settled for the whites to divide once more on
the great economic questions on which hang the
welfare and progress of the people. Suddenly,
however, there has been a recrudescence of the
whole question, and it might appear to those
who base their opinion wholly on the public
prints as though nothing had been accomplished
toward its definite settlement in the last gen-
eration.
  Only the other day, the President extended
a casual social invitation to the most distin-
guished educator of the colored race: one who
is possibly esteemed at the South the wisest and
sanest man of color in the country, and who



5

 

THE NEGRO:



has, perhaps, done more than any other to
carry out the ideas that the Southern well-
wishers of his race believe to be the soundest
and most promising of good results. And the
effect was so unexpected and so far-reaching
that it astonished and perplexed the whole
country.  On the other hand, this educator,
speaking in Boston to his race in a reasonable
manner on matters as to which he is a high au-
thority, was insulted by an element, the leaders
of which were not the ignorant members of his
race, but rather the more enlightened-college-
bred men and editors-and a riot took place in
the church in which he spoke, in which red pep-
per and razors were used quite as if the occa-
sion had been a " craps-game " in a Southern
Negro settlement. The riot was quelled by
the police; but, had it been in a small town,
murder might easily have been done.
  In view of these facts, it is apparent that the
matter is more complicated than appears at first
thought, and must be dealt with carefully.
  One great trouble is the different way in
which the body of the people at the North and
at the South regard this problem. We have
presented to us the singular fact that two sec-
tions of the same race, with the same manners



6

 

THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



and customs, the same traits of character, the
same history and, until within a time so recent
that the divergence is within the memory of
living men, the same historical relation to the
Negro race, should regard so vital a question
from such opposite points; the one esteeming
the question to be merely as to the legal equality
of the races, and the other passionately hold-
ing it to be a matter that goes to the very foun-
dation of race-domination and race-integrity.
What adds to the anomaly is the pregnant fact
that the future of these two sections must here-
after run on together; their interests become
ever more and more identified, and if the one
is right in holding that its position is founded
on a racial instinct, the other, in opposing it, is
fighting against a position which it must eventu-
ally assume. Yet, their views have up to the
present been so divergent-they have, indeed,
been so diametrically opposed to each other,
that if one is right, the other must be radically
wrong.
  Another difficulty in the way of a sound solu'
tion of the problem is the blind bigotry of the
doctrinaire, which infects so many worthy per-
sons. An estimable gentleman from Boston,
of quite national reputation, observed a short



7


 

THE NEGRO:



time ago that it was singular that the Southern-
ers who had lived all their lives among the
Negroes should understand them so little, while
they of the North who knew them so slightly
should yet comprehend them so fully. He
spoke seriously and this was without doubt his
sincere belief. This would be amusing enough
were it not productive of such unhappy conse-
quences. It represents the conviction of a con-
siderable element.  Because they have been
thrown at times with a few well-behaved, self-
respecting Negroes, or have had in their employ
well-trained colored servants, they think they
know the whole subject better than those who,
having lived all their life in touch with its most
vital problems, have come to feel in every fibre
of their being the deep significance of its mani-
festations. Such a spirit is the most depressing
augury that confronts those who sincerely wish
to settle the question on sound principles.
  With a Negro population which has in-
creased in the last forty years from four and
a half millions to nine millions, of whom eight
millions inhabit the South and four and a half
millions inhabit the six Southern Atlantic and
Gulf States, where in large sections they out-
number the whites two and three to one, and in



8

 

THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



some parishes ten to one;  with this popula-
tion owning less than 4 per cent. of the
property and furnishing from 85 to 93 per
cent. of the total number of criminals; with
the two races drifting further and further
apart, race-feeling growing, and with ravish-
ing and lynching spreading like a pestilence
over the country, it is time that all sensible
men should endeavor as far as possible to dis-
pel preconceived theories and look at the sub-
ject frankly and rationally.
  It must appear to all except the doctrinaire
and those to whose eyes, seared by the red-hot
passions of the war and the yet more angry
passions of the Reconstruction period, no ray
of light can ever come, that it is of vital im-
portance that a sound solution of the problem
should be reached. It behooves all who dis-
cuss it to do so in the most dispassionate and
catholic spirit possible. The time has passed
for dealing with the matter either in a spirit
of passion or of cocksure conceit. Well-mean-
ing theorists, and what Hawthorne termed
" those steel machines of the devil's own make,
 The Negro population in i86o was, in the Slave States,
4,215,614; in the other States it was 226,216, a total of 4,-
44I,83o. In igoo the Negro population in the Southern
States and the District of Columbia was 8,081,270.



9


 


THE NEGRO:



philanthropists," have with the best intentions
"confused counsel" and made a mess of the
matter. And after nearly forty years, in which
money, brains, philanthropy, and unceasing
effort have been poured out lavishly, the most
that we have gotten out of it is the experience
that forty years have given, and a sad experi-
ence it is. The best-informed, the most clear-
sighted and straight-thinking men of the North
admit sadly that the experiment of Negro suf-
frage, entered into with so much enthusiasm and
sustained at so frightful a cost, has proved a
failure, as those who alone knew the Negro
when the experiment was undertaken prophesied
it must, in the nature of things, prove. Only
those who, having eyes, see not, and ears, but
will not hear, still shut up their senses and, re-
fusing to take in the plain evidences before
them, babble of outworn measures-measures
that never had a shred of economic truth for
their foundation, and, based originally upon
passion, have brought only disaster to the whites
and little better to those whom they were in-
tended to uplift.



10

 

THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



                      II
  Two principles may be laid down to which,
perhaps, all will assent. First, it is absolutely
essential that a correct understanding of the
question should be had; and, secondly, the only
proper settlement of it is one that shall be
founded on justice and wisdom-a justice which
shall embrace all concerned.
  It is important that, at the very outset, we
should start with proper bearings. Therefore,
though it would hardly appear necessary to
advert to the historical side of the question, yet
so much ignorance is displayed about it in the
discussion that goes on, that, perhaps, the state-
ment of a few simple historical facts will serve
to throw light on the subject and start us
aright.

  Until a recent period, slavery existed as an
institution almost all over the world. Chris-
tianity, while it modified its status, recognized
it, and, up to the time of the abolition of the
institution, those who defended it drew their
strongest arguments from the sacred writings.
Pious Puritans sent their ships to ply along
the middle passage, and deemed that they were
doing God and man a service to transport be-



11


 

THE NEGRO:



nighted savages to serve an enlightened and
Christian people.  Pious and philanthropic
churchmen bought these slaves as they might
have bought any other chattels.
  The abolition of slavery came about gradu-
ally, and was due rather to economic than to
moral reasons. When, in 1790, slavery was
abolished, by a more or less gradual system, in
the Northern States, it was chiefly because of
economic conditions. There were at that time
less than 42,000 slaves in all the Northern
States, and the system was not profitable there;
whereas there were over 700,000 slaves in the
Southern States, and it appeared that the sys-
tem there was profitable. But the balance had
not then been struck.
  Though a respectable party of the represen-
tatives of the Southern States advocated its
abolition at that time, it was retained because
of economic conditions.   From  these facts,
which are elementary, one cannot avoid the con-
clusion that whatever difference existed in the
relation of the races in various sections was
due to economic causes rather than to moral or
religious feeling. In fact, during the Colonial
period, so far from slavery having any moral
aspect to the great body of the people, it was



1 2


 

THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



generally regarded as a beneficent institution.
The Quakers, a sect who, having known oppres-
sion themselves, knew how to feel for the op-
pressed, and a small proportion of the most
far-seeing in both sections, were exceptions.
Thomas Jefferson, for instance, was as strong
an advocate of emancipation as James Otis and
a much stronger advocate than John Adams.
  When the principle that all men are created
equal was enunciated in the Declaration of In-
dependence, a great majority of those who
signed it had no idea of embracing within its
category the enslaved Africans. To have done
so would have been to stultify themselves. And
whether or not Thomas Jefferson at heart felt
the far-reaching scope of his enunciation, he
gave no evidence of it at the time.
  The Negro was discussed and legislated
about as a chattel by the very men who issued
that great charter. The whites had conquered
this country from the savage and the wild, and
they had no misgivings about their rights.
  The inclusion of three-fifths of the Negroes
in the representation of the several States was
stated by Jefferson to have grown out of the
 By the census of 178i, there were in Virginia i2,866
free Negroes.



13

 

THE NEGRO:



claim made by Adams and certain other North-
ern representatives that they should be taxed
just as the whites were taxed, every slave be-
ing counted for this purpose just as every white
laborer was counted. This view the Southern-
ers opposed and the matter was adjusted by a
compromise which reckoned only three out of
every five slaves.  Representation naturally
followed.
  It was, however, impossible that the spirit
of liberty should be so all-pervading and not
in time be felt to extend to all men-even to
the slaves; but the growth of the idea was slow,
and it was so inextricably bound up with party
questions that it was difficult to consider it on
its own merits. To show this, it is only neces-
sary to recall that, in i832, Virginia, through
her Legislature, came within one vote of abol-
ishing slavery within her borders, and that, in
i835, William Lloyd Garrison was dragged
through the streets of Boston by a mob-an
outrage which he says was planned and exe-
cuted, not by the rabble or workingmen, but
" by gentlemen of property and standing from
all parts of the city." t
 See Randolph's "Life of Jefferson," Vol. I, pp. 22-24.
t "Life of William Lloyd Garrison," Vol. II, p. 35, and
Liberator, No. 5, p. 197.



14

 


THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



  Fugitive-slave laws found their first exam-
ples in the colonial treaties of Massachusetts;
yet in time fugitive-slave laws and the attempt
to enforce them against the sentiment of com-
munities where slavery had passed away played
their part in fostering a sentiment of cham-
pionship of the Negro race.
  Then came " Uncle Tom's Cabin," which
was the nail that, in the hands of a woman,
fastened Sisera to the ground.   It presented
only one side of the question and did more,
perhaps, than any one thing that ever occurred
to precipitate the war. It aroused and crystal-
lized feeling against the South throughout the
world. For the first time, the world had the
imaginable horrors of slavery presented in a
manner that appealed alike to old and young,
the learned and the ignorant, the high-born
and the lowly. It blackened the fame of the
Southern people in the eyes of the North and
fixed in the mind of the North a concept
not only of the institution of slavery, but of
the Southern people, which lasted for more than
a generation, and has only begun of late, in the
light of a fuller knowledge, to be dislodged.
 An illustration of this may be found in T. W. Dwight's
paper on the Dred Scott case in Johnson's Universal Cyclo-



I 5



 
THE NEGRO:



                       III
  MR. LINCOLN has been so generally declared
to be the emancipator of the Negro race that it
is probable the facts in all their significance will
never be generally received. The abolition of
slavery was no doubt his desire; but the preser-
vation of the Union was his passion. And,
whatever Mr. Lincoln may have felt on the sub-
ject of emancipation, he was too good a lawyer
and too sound a statesman to act with the incon-
siderate haste that has usually been accredited
him. It was rather what he might do than
what he actually did that alarmed the South
and brought about secession. And the menace
of destruction of the Union soon demanded all
his energies and forced him to relegate to the
background even the emancipation of the
slaves.
pedia, where he refers to the fact that, in the Dred Scott case,
Chief Justice Taney's learned opinion, reviewing historically
the attitude of the people toward the African race at the time
of the adoption of the Constitution, has been generally taken
as giving his own opinion. Even the late senior Senator
from Massachusetts was recently reported as quoting this
as Chief Justice Taney's opinion. But see Tyler's "Life
of Chief Justice Taney."
 Horace Greeley's old paper, the New York Tribune, has
recently, in commenting on a statement made by the suc-
cessor of Henry Ward Beecher, felt compelled to declare that


 
THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



  On the 22d of December, i86o, after South
Carolina had seceded, he declared that the
South would be in no more danger of being
interfered with as to slavery by a Republican
administration than it was in the days of Wash-
ington. In his inaugural address he declared:
" I have no more purpose, directly or indirectly,
to interfere with the institution of slavery in
the States where it now   exists.  I believe I
have no right to do so and I have no inclina-
tion to do so." This declaration he had already
made before. Indeed, he expressly declared in
favor of the enforcement of the fugitive-slave
law.
  Congress, in July, I86I, adopted a resolu-
tion, which Lincoln signed, declaring that war
was not waged for any " purpose of overthrow-
ing or interfering with the rights or established
institutions " of the Southern States, " but to
defend and maintain the supremacy of the
Constitution and to preserve the Union with
all the dignity, equality, and rights of the sev-
eral States unimpaired," etc. As late as March,
i862, he declared: " In my judgment, gradual

the war was primarily undertaken to save the Union and
not to emancipate slaves. But the strongest single piece of
testimony is Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley of Aug. 22,



1 7

 

THE NEGRO:



and not sudden emancipation is best for all."
The special message to Congress on this subject
Thaddeus Stevens stigmatized as " about the
most diluted milk-and-water gruel proposition
that has ever been given to the American peo-
ple." The war had been going on more than
a year before a bill was passed providing that
all " slaves of persistent rebels, found in any
place occupied or commanded by the forces of
the Union, should not be returned to their mas-
ters (as had hitherto been done under the law),
and they might be enlisted to fight for the
Union." Mr. Lincoln's Emancipation Procla-
mation of January i, i 863, expresses on its face
that it was issued on " military necessity."
  In fact, this proclamation did not really
emancipate at all, for it applied only to those
slaves who were held in those States and " parts
of States " then " in rebellion," and by express
exception did not extend to Negroes within the
territory under control of the Federal Govern-
ment.
  It is of record that, in some instances, own-
ers near the Federal lines sent their servants
1862. Lincoln's paramount object, as he boldly avowed in
this letter of August 22, i862, to Horace Greeley, was "to
save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery."-
Cong. Globe, 2d Session, 37th Congress, Pt. II, p. i154.



 
THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



into the territory occupied by the Federal troops
to evade the proclamation.
   A story is told of an officer under General
Butler, on the James River, who, having a Ne-
gro baby left on his hands by a refugee mother
who had returned to her home, sent the child
back to her. Someone reported that he was
sending refugee Negroes back and the matter
was investigated. His defence was that he had
sent the baby back to the only place where he
was free, to wit: within the region occupied by
the rebels.
   Meantime, there was much reflection and no
little discussion as to the subject among the
Southern people. The loyalty of the Negroes
had made a deep impression on them, and they
were beginning to recognize the feeling of the
European countries touching slavery.
 General R. E. Lee emancipated his servants within
eight days after the proclamation was issued. On the 8th
of January, 1863, he wrote from his camp that he had exe-
cuted and returned to his lawyer a deed of manumission
which he had had prepared by him. He had discovered
the omission of certain names and had inserted them. And
he added that if any other names had been omitted, he wished
a supplementary deed drawn up containing all that had been
so omitted. "They are all entitled to their freedom," he
writes, " and I wish to give it to them. Those that have been
carried away, I hope, are free and happy. I cannot get
their papers to them and they do not require them. I will



19

 

THE NEGRO:



  The Thirteenth Amendment (abolishing
slavery) failed to pass in the spring of 1864
and was not passed until January 31, i865,
when all the Republicans and thirteen Demo-
crats voted for it. Slavery, however, was abol-
ished by the final conquest of the South and
the enforced acquiescence of the Southern peo-
ple, who recognized that the collapse of the
Confederacy had effected what legal enact-
ments had not been able to accomplish. Re-
turning soldiers brought their body-servants
home with them, and on arrival informed them
that they were free; in some instances giving
them the horses they had ridden, or dividing
with them whatever money they had.
Throughout the South, the Negroes were told
by their owners that they were free, in some
cases receiving regular papers of manumission.
give them if they call for them." See " Life of General R. E.
Lee," by Fitzhugh Lee.
General Henry A. Wise, one of the most ultra-Democratic
leaders in the South, states that, had the South succeeded
in its struggle, he had intended to set his slaves free and
canvass Virginia for the abolition of slavery. See Report
of Joint Commission on Reconstruction, ist Session, 39th
Congress, p. 70.
 The writer recalls vividly one such case when his father
returned from Appomattox: "Ralph," he said, as he dis-
mounted at his door, "you are free. You have been a good
servant. Turn the horses out." Ralph is still living.



20

 

THE SOUTHERNER'S PROBLEM



                      IV
  No race ever behaved better than the Ne-
groes behaved during the war. Not only were
there no massacres and no outbreaks, but even
the amount of defection was not large. While
the number who entered the Northern Army
was considerable, it was not as great as
might have been expected when all the facts are
taken  into  account.  A   respectable number
came from the North, while most of the others
came from the sections of the South which had
already been overrun by the armies of the
Union and where mingled persuasion and com-
pulsion were brought to bear.t Certainly no
one could properly blame them for yielding to
the arguments used. Their homes were more
or less broken up; organization and discipline
were relaxed, and the very means of subsistence
had become precarious; while on the other hand
they were offered bounties and glittering re-

 The total number of colored troops enlisted during the
war was i86,097.-" Statistical Records of the Armies of the
United States," by Frederick Phisterer, late Captain, U. S. A.
t There was a growing sentiment in favor of enlisting the
Negroes to fight the Confederacy, and a number of regiments
were enlisted. One of these was enlisted in New Orleans;
two were enlisted in Virginia.



21

 

THE NEGRO:



wards that drew into the armies hundreds of
thousands of other nationalities. The number
that must be credited to refugees who left
home in the first instance for the purpose of
volunteering to fight for freedom is believed
by the writer to be not large; personally, he
never knew of one. However large the num-
ber was, the number of those who might have
gone, and yet threw in their lot wit