Part 5

_TABLE_ 1 ---------------------------------------- ADULT MALE OR COLORED VOTING POPULATION, 1900, ESTIMATED AT 1 IN 4.3. ---------------------------------------- Virginia 660,722 / 46,122. 4.3 = ---------------------------------------- Nor. Car. 624,469 / 127,114. 4.3 = ---------------------------------------- South Car. 782,321 / 152,860. 4.3 = ---------------------------------------- Alabama 827,307 / 181,471. 4.3 = ---------------------------------------- Mississippi 907,630 / 197,936. 4.3 = ---------------------------------------- Louisiana 650,804 / 147,348. 4.3 = ---------------------------------------- Total 4,453,251. ----------------------------------------

_TABLE_ 2 ------------------------------------------------------ CENSUS OF NEGROES BEFORE PASSAGE OF REVISED CONSTITUTIONS. ------------------------------------------------------ Virginia 1900 115,865 (T.Al.) ------------------------------------------------------ Nor. Car. " 133,081 " ------------------------------------------------------ South Car. 1892 13,384 " ------------------------------------------------------ Alabama 1900 55,512 Pres. ------------------------------------------------------ Mississippi 1888 30,096 ------------------------------------------------------ Louisiana 1888 30,701 ------------------------------------------------------

_TABLE_ 3 ------------------------------------------------------ CENSUS OF NEGROES AFTER PASSAGE OF REVISED CONSTITUTIONS. ------------------------------------------------------ Virginia 1904 47,880 (W. Al.) ------------------------------------------------------ Nor. Car. " 82,442 " ------------------------------------------------------ So. Car. 1900 3,579 Pres. (T.) ------------------------------------------------------ So. Car. 1904 2,554 Pres. (W. Al.) ------------------------------------------------------ Alabama 1904 22,472 (W. Al.) ------------------------------------------------------ Miss. 1900 5,753 Pres. (T. Al.) ------------------------------------------------------ Miss. 1904 3,189 Pres. (W. Al.) ------------------------------------------------------ Louisiana 1900 14,234 Pres. (T. Al.) ------------------------------------------------------ Louisiana 1904 5,205 Pres. (W. Al.) ------------------------------------------------------

_TABLE_ 4 ---------------------------------------------------- REGISTRATION OF COLORED VOTERS. (Newspaper estimate.) ---------------------------------------------------- State Literate _Registered_ ---------------------------------------------------- Virginia equal 69,358 ---------------------------------------------------- North Carolina 59,625 _"Less than 6,000"_ ---------------------------------------------------- South Carolina 69,242 ---------------------------------------------------- Alabama 73,474 _"Hardly 2,500"_ ---------------------------------------------------- Mississippi 92,605 ---------------------------------------------------- Louisiana 57,086 _"1,147"_ ----------------------------------------------------

_TABLE_ 5 -------------------------------------------------------------------- REPUBLICAN VOTE IN THE SIX STATES; VOTE AFTER DISFRANCHISEMENT SCORED. (World Almanac of 1904.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- YEAR VA. NORTH SOUTH ALA. MISS. LA. CAR. CAR. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1872 93,468 94,783 72,290 90,272 82,175 59,975 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1876 76,093 108,419 92,081 68,230 52,605 75,315 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1880 83,639 115,874 58,071 56,178 34,854 38,016 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1884 139,356 125,068 21,733 59,144 43,509 46,347 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1888 150,438 134,784 13,736 57,197 30,096 30,701 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1892 113,217 100,846 13,384 9,197 1,406 26,563 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1900 115,865 133,081 3,579 55,512 5,753 14,234 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1904 47,880 82,442 2,554 22,472 3,189 5,205 --------------------------------------------------------------------

1872, 1876, Va., N.C., S.C., Ala. (Tribune Almanac of 1896.) 1872, Louisiana (World Almanac.) 1892, Louisiana (Republican and Populists.) 1892, N.C.; 1900, 1904 (Due to Populists.)

Every fresh barrier erected in the South simply publishes to the world the weakness and inefficiency of those already raised. Each time dishonest methods are newly justified, and violent declarations, applauded, fresh evidence is given that these Southern men cannot on its merits win their case. The policy of white domination is stripped to unblushing nakedness, and confident of the fear of those who remained for two hundred years enslaved, the South narrows the issue to one of physical courage, inviting the Negro to wrest from her the power, which stands between him and justice, freedom, happiness. _It is not then in the ignorance, laziness, and vice of the Negro, that the white South trusts, for the continuance of her policy, but in his defencelessness._

_To these Southern men, we can make but one reply. Unmistakably our courage is the issue._ But before considering how best to treat their sinister challenge, let us answer to the Republican party the question: What does justice to the Negro demand? Our reply is simple,--the fulfillment of the promise, which was treasured up in the hearts of four million men as they passed through the doors of slavery into the light of freedom;--the promise, which they have left to their children as their one priceless inheritance: "The guarantee by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men at the South was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude and of justice, and must be maintained"--this was the promise of the Republican party in 1868. The freedman appeals to the creator of his political rights, as Tennyson to the Creator of his being:--

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; Thou madest man, he _knows_ not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And Thou hast made him,--Thou art just.

Is it then fair to leave to us the vindication of the Reconstruction policy against men of the South, the North and even influential members of the party's own councils? Must we meet the charge that the Republican party was moved by revenge and folly, and prove that there was no other way to secure the foundation of freedom, which hundreds of thousands had died to win? Were those terrible years of death a mere night over the gaming table, with two haggard players, 'breaking even' at dawn? Is it left to us to rescue from their own sons the fame of the heroes of the war against slavery and restore the honorable inscriptions recorded on their tombs? When men talk of 'the greatest error of Reconstruction,' has the murder of Lincoln no claim to the place? Does not John Wilkes Booth better merit derisive canonizing than "Saint" John Brown? If it was irony for the "Reconstruction" legislatures to impose heavy taxes upon a people who had just emerged from a ruinous war and by bonded indebtedness extend the obligation to future generations, was it not also irony to punish and re-enslave by vagrancy laws the men who without an acre or a dollar were now _called_ free?

And if it _was_ hate, and revenge, and folly, which brought about the 'War Amendments,' can they be honorably withdrawn now? Is there no doctrine in law, which forbids one's renouncing an act after he has profited by it? But could the elections have been won and the policies maintained without the aid of the colored voter? Is there need of a statute of limitations to stop a political party from withdrawing the promises upon which it has encouraged millions of trusting people to build for forty years? Can it be honestly claimed that three-fourths of the States of the Union gave the ballot to the slave just out of the slave pen, with the implied condition that if he failed to prove himself able from the outset to resist temptation to childish indulgence and childish dishonesty, seduced as he was by the Northern men whom gratitude bade him trust and follow, he should lose it forever? Is this the Eden where we met our "fall?" A sober Anglo-Saxon definition of justice is given by Sidgwick: "Justice is realized (1) in the observance of law, and contracts, and definite understandings, and in the enforcement of such penalties for the violation of these as have been legally determined and announced; and (2) in the fulfilment of natural and normal expectations." That the nation's laws will be upheld is the first requirement of justice.[6]

[6] Here is an instance of a President's devotion to existing laws: *With the Confederate government fully installed two weeks before*,--Lincoln said in his inaugural address, that "he had no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery." Is a manual needed in the United States to tell for what purposes and under what circumstances the law will be enforced?

But yet again are we brought back to the ignorance, shiftlessness and criminality of the Negro. Their fathers, so say these wiser Northern sons, could not know of these evils, which to them have been revealed. No, they could not: had their lives been spared till now there had been no such evils to reveal. Under freedom's blaze ignorance was sucked up as the stagnant waters from a pool. With nearly the entire number of slaves illiterate, with no schools yet built, and only those large hearted teachers to face the enormous educational work whose ministrations to the needy were their only pay, more was done in the years just after the liberation of the slaves, to remove, their ignorance, than twenty-five thousand teachers in hundreds of schools have done in the last decade since.[7] Progress in earning and saving corresponded. And there was little increase of crime. A few years more of the sunlight and who doubts that these charges could never have been brought against us! And by whom are we charged with being criminal? Surely not by the South?

[7] Per cent. of illiteracy.

Colored population in 1860 4,441,830.

Of this about 9 per cent. (488,070) was free--perhaps 1/2 of this was literate, i.e., about 5 per cent. of the whole.

Equal 95 per cent. or higher.

Colored population above 10 years in 1870 equal whole population, 4,880,009, less 28.7 per cent. equals under 10 leaving 3,464,806. Above 10, unable to write, 2,789,689.

Equal 80 per cent.

Colored population above 10 years in 1880 4,601,207. Above 10, unable to write, 3,220,878.

Equal 70 per cent.

Colored population above 10 years in 1890 5,328,972. Above 10, unable to write, 3,042,668.

Equal 57.1 per cent.

Colored population above 10 years in 1900 6,415,581. Above 10, unable to write, 2,853,194.

Equal 44.5 per cent.

Is it credible that our millions lived under the benign influence of slavery, almost without crime and continued even after the Emancipation Act to live peacefully and honestly:--and then, upon the passage of the 14th Amendment dropped suddenly from this moral zenith? Such sudden transformations are not natural: either slavery made the criminality of the African: or held it in a grip barely strong enough to prevent its issue in acts of violence: or, else this record of crime is false. One of these three explanations, we cannot choose but accept. The South at least, cannot admit the first, for slavery, they declared, even before God at His Altar, to be a benign institution; neither can they admit the second, for it, too, is inconsistent with the gentleness and benignity of slavery. But will they admit the third? "Nine tenths of the illicit gains," says James Bryce, speaking of Reconstruction, "went to the whites." Into like parts, Woodrow Wilson divides the responsibility and the discredit. "Negroes," he writes, constituted the majority of their electorates, but political power gave them no advantage of their own. Adventurers swarmed out of the North, to cozen, beguile and use them.... They gained the confidence of the Negroes, obtained for themselves the more lucrative offices, and lived upon the public treasury, public contracts and their easy control of affairs. For the Negroes there was nothing but occasional allotments of abandoned or forfeited land, the pay of petty offices, a per-diem allowance as members of the conventions, and the state legislatures, which their new masters made business for, or the wages of servants in the various offices of administration. Their ignorance and credulity made them easy dupes. A petty favor, a slender stipend, a trifling perquisite, a bit of poor land, a piece of money satisfied, or silenced them." This is the record of crime until the quickly passing day of freedom was ended. And if crime has increased since, so presently will ignorance increase and idleness unless their growth is checked by the restoration of freedom and justice and hope. Punishment will fail to stop the growth of idleness, vice and crime, as it has always failed, and if brutal punishments are next resorted to when milder ones have failed, one sickens at the prospect. Can Southern, abetted by Northern men strew the earth with the seeds of accursed slavery, bastardy and treason, secret conspiracy, callous, sneering fraud and the brutality of the mob, and think to stop by lynching the harvest of black duplicity, bred of fear, and black criminality, bred of misery and hate,--when they have gathered enough of the fruits to make an exhibit of Negro vice? The departure of lynching waits for two events: the breeding of the animal out the most wretched Negroes until they find greater satisfaction in something higher than sensuality and revenge; and the breeding of savage cruelty out of the white man until he can find pleasure in something more humane than torture by fire. As our counsellors bid us turn our attention to the dark side of our life, we bid them turn theirs from it. Your boasted civilization on its under side is but a progress from rape to adultery, from brute to devil. The savage honors the brute and tortures the devil; the civilized man tortures or crushes the brute and honors the devil. There is a pitcher plant of California, which is so described: Above a funnel shaped stem, it flaunts a crimson banner. The hood of the flower is transparent, so that the wary are caught even in their efforts to flee. From the mouth downwards the walls exude intoxicating sweets but multitudinous hairs, all pointing downward, lower the victim farther with every struggle. At its bottom a charnel heap, poisoning the air. Such plants flourish amidst civilization, and millions are their victims, who debauch their appetites until their intellects shrink to the size of their already shrunken consciences, and they are helpless to do anything but die. Liberty _is_ perilous, a very 'valley of the shadow of death,' but the history of every nation which has lived and died teaches us that the danger of a false step is even greater near the end of the journey than at the beginning. Egypt, Assyria, Judea, Greece, Rome--the history of every nation is a light-house marking a _reef_ in the harbor of humanity.

When Cain had killed Abel, he hid the body, and when God called, replied, "Am I my brother's keeper?" A chill foreboding comes over us with these Northern doubts of the wisdom of Reconstruction, and we cannot refrain from wondering if the North still retains the sense of duty of 61; if the North can do, can even will to do justice. And here let us turn from our first question: What does justice to the Negro demand? To the second: What can the Negro do to get justice? My end has been reached if there is felt more than before the need of answering the latter question.

Underlying the civil laws of the nation are certain high ideals. The fidelity of the nation to these is measured by the quality and the force of public opinion. Just as long therefore as the republic endures, the executive, legislative and judicial powers will obey the people's will. To this oracle the rulers have again appealed, and its answer has been an expression of renewed and increased confidence in the Republican party. The hour of the new administration has almost come, and the message may be now on its way to the country that the party pledges are to be redeemed. It may be that there are brighter days before us; but if, as in the past, we stand on no securer footing than two men wrestling on a steep and icy hill-side, where both roll over and over, and there is no chance between throwing and being thrown,--then it matters not whether we appeal to President, or Congress, or Supreme Court; to the 14th or 15th amendment, for the righting of our wrongs.

Congress is empowered to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments by appropriate legislation. Such legislation has been enacted and by one President, at least, enforced. But, now, it is held that it must be shown that the amendments are being violated, and this cannot be done until the Supreme Court fully interprets them. What a mockery it has all become! Insolently, sneeringly, the violators of the plain intent of the law rise from their seats in Congress and demand how far they are going to be obliged to walk around these Amendments instead of kicking them aside. By law, or by force, colored men are being deprived of the right to hold office; by law or by force excluded from the jury; by law or by force sent into slavery for crimes of which they were convicted by these juries from which they are excluded; by law or by force, they are being disfranchised. The alternative is clear. Southern men do not evade it. The revised Constitutions stand boldly for disqualification by law. Southern Congressmen in debate as boldly proclaim the force. More cautiously Mr. Murphy testifies to the same effect, denying that "the abuse of discretionary power by the registrars of elections,--an abuse which the State permits, but which the State does not necessitate or prescribe, brings the State within reach of the penalties of the Constitution."

If not by law then the Constitution is nullified by force, and it becomes the duty of Congress to maintain it. But is Congress so near the performance of this obligation that we can profitably advise as to the method? Shall we say that candidates for Congress, by force or fraud elected, shall be refused their seats or that an election bill shall be passed, guaranteeing just laws; or that the penalty clause of the 14th Amendment shall be first enforced? At least, we had better wait until the House has reversed the policy outlined by its Committee on Elections, whose concluding words in the Dantzler-Lever case follow:--

"However desirable it may be for a legislative body to retain control of the decision as to the election and qualification of its members, it is quite certain that a legislative body is not the ideal body to pass judicially upon the constitutionality of the enactments of other bodies. We have in this country a proper forum for the decision of constitutional and other judicial questions. If any citizen of South Carolina who was entitled to vote under the constitution of that State in 1868 is now deprived by the provisions of the present constitution, he has the right to tender himself for registration and for voting, and in case his right is denied, to bring suit in a proper court for the purpose of enforcing his right or recovering damages for its denial.

"That suit can be carried by him, if necessary, to the Supreme Court of the United States. If the United States Supreme Court shall declare in such case that the "fundamental conditions" in the reconstruction acts were valid and constitutional and that the State constitutions are in violation of those acts, and hence invalid and unconstitutional every state will be compelled to immediately bow in submission to the decision. The decision of the Supreme Court would be binding and would be a positive declaration of the law of the land which could not be denied or challenged.

"On the contrary, the decision of the House of Representatives upon this grave judicial question would not be considered as binding or effective in any case except the one acted upon or as a precedent for future action in the House itself.

"A majority of the Committee on Elections No. v doubt the propriety in any event of denying these Southern States representation in the House of Representatives pending a final settlement of the whole question in proper proceedings by the Supreme Court of the United States. Some of the members of the committee believe the "fundamental conditions" set forth in the reconstruction acts to be valid and the constitutions and election laws of these States to be in conflict with such conditions, and hence to be invalid.

"Some of the members of the committee believe the "fundamental conditions" set forth in the reconstruction acts to be invalid and the constitutions and election laws of the States claimed to be in conflict with such conditions to be valid. Some members of the committee have formed no opinion and express no belief upon the subject.

"Your Committee on Elections No. i therefore respectively recommend the adoption of the following resolution: