Part 7

The American people have this lesson to learn: That where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. I deny that nature has made the negro a thief or a burglar. Look at these black criminals, as they are brought into your police courts; view and study their faces, their forms, and their features, as I have done for years as Marshal of this District, and you will see that their antecedents are written all over them. Two hundred and fifty years of grinding slavery has done its work upon them. They stand before you to-day physically and mentally maimed and mutilated men. Many of their mothers and grandmothers were lashed to agony before their birth by cruel overseers, and the children have inherited in their faces the anguish and resentment felt by their parents. Many of these poor creatures have not been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the lash on their backs, and the deeper marks on their souls. No, no! It is not nature that has erred in making the negro. That shame rests with slavery. It has twisted his limbs, deformed his body, flattened his feet, and distorted his features, and made him, though black, no longer comely. In infancy he slept on the cold clay floor of his cabin, with quick circulation on one side, and tardy circulation on the other. So that he has grown up unequal, unsymmetrical, and is no longer a vertical, well-rounded man, in body or in mind. Time, education, and training will restore him to natural proportions, for, though bruised and blasted, he is yet a man.

The school of the negro since leaving slavery has not been much of an improvement on his former condition. Individuals of the race have here and there enjoyed large benefits from emancipation, and the result is seen in their conduct, but the mass have had their liberty coupled with hardships which tend strongly to keep them a dwarfed and miserable class. A man who labors ten hours a day with pickaxe, crowbar, and shovel, and has a family to support and house rent to pay, and receives for his work but a dollar a day, and what is worse still, he is deprived of labor a large part of his time by reason of sickness and the weather, in his poverty, easily falls before the temptation to steal and rob. Hungry men will eat. Desperate men will commit crime. Outraged men will seek revenge. It is said to be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. I have sometimes thought it harder still for a poor man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Man is so constituted that if he cannot get a living honestly, he will get it dishonestly. “Skin for skin,” as the devil said of Job. “All that a man hath will he give for his life.” Oppression makes even wise men mad and reckless; for illustration I pray look at East St. Louis.

In the Southern States to-day a landlord system is in operation which keeps the negroes of that section in rags and wretchedness, almost to the point of starvation. As a rule, this system puts it out of the power of the negro to own land. There is, to be sure, no law forbidding the selling of land to the colored people, but there is an understanding which has the full effect of law. That understanding is that the land must be kept in the hands of the old master class. The colored people can rent land, it is true, and many of them do rent many acres, and find themselves poorer at the end of the year than at the beginning, because they are charged more a year for rent per acre than the land would bring at auction sale. The landlord and tenant system of Ireland, which has conducted that country to the jaws of ruin, bad as it is, is not worse than that which prevails at this hour at the South, and yet the colored people of the South are constantly reproached for their poverty. They are asked to make bricks without straw. Their hands are tied, and they are asked to work. They are forced to be poor, and laughed at for their destitution.

I am speaking mainly to colored men to-night, but I want my words to find their way to the eyes, ears, heads and hearts of my white fellow-countrymen, hoping that some among them may be made to think, some hearts among them will be made to feel, and some of their number will be made to act. I appeal to our white fellow-countrymen. The power to protect is in their hands. This is and must be practically the white man’s government. He has the numbers and the intelligence to control and direct. To him belongs the responsibility of its honor or dishonor, its glory or its shame, its salvation or its ruin. If they can protect the rights of white men they can protect the rights of black men; if they can defend the rights of American citizens abroad they can defend them at home; if they can use the army to protect the rights of Chinamen, they can use the army to protect the rights of colored men. The only trouble is the will! the will! the will! Here, as elsewhere, “Where there is a will there is a way.”

I have now said not all that could be said but enough to indicate the relations at present existing between the white and colored people of this country, especially the relations subsisting between the two classes of the late slave-holding States. Time would fail me to trace this relation in all its ramifications; but that labor is neither required by this audience nor by the country. The condition of the emancipated class is known alike to ourselves and to the Government, to pulpit and press, and to both of the great political parties. These have only to do their duty and all will be well.

One use of this annual celebration is to keep the subject of our grievances before the people and government, and to urge both to do their respective parts in the happy solution of the race problem. The weapons of our warfare for equal rights are not carnal but simple truth, addressed to the hearts and sense of justice of the American people. If this fails we are lost. We have no armies or generals, no swords or cannons to enforce our claims, and do not want any.

We are often asked with an air of reproach by white men at the North: “Why don’t your people fight their way to the ballot-box?” The question adds insult to injury. Whom are we called upon to fight? They are the men who held this nation, with all its tremendous resources of men and money, at bay during four long and bloody years. Whom are we to fight? I answer, not a few midnight assassins, not the rabble mob, but trained armies, skilled generals of the Confederate army, and in the last resort we should have to meet the Federal army. Though that army cannot now be employed to defend the weak against the strong, means would certainly be found for its employment to protect the strong against the weak. In such a case insurrection would be madness.

But there is another remedy proposed. These people are advised to make an exodus to the Pacific slope. With the best intentions they are told of the fertility of the soil and salubrity of the climate. If they should tell the same as existing in the moon, the simple question, How shall they get there? would knock the life out of it at once. Without money, without friends, without knowledge, and only gaining enough by daily toil to keep them above the starvation point, where they are, how can such a people rise and cross the continent? The measure on its face is no remedy at all. Besides, who does not know that should these people ever attempt such an exodus, that they would be met with shot-guns at every cross-road. Who does not know that the white landholders of the South would never consent to let that labor which alone gives value to their land march off without opposition? Who does not know that if the Federal Government is powerless to protect these people in staying that it would be equally powerless to protect them in going _en masse_? For one, I say away with such contrivances, such lame and impotent substitutes for the justice and protection due us. The first duty that the National Government owes to its citizens is protection.

While, however, I hold now, as I held years ago, that the South is the natural home of the colored race, and that there must the destiny of that race be mainly worked out, I still believe that means can be and ought to be adopted to assist in the emigration of such of their number as may wish to change their residence to parts of the country where their civil and political rights are better protected than at present they can be at the South.

I adopt the suggestion of the _National Republican_, of this city, that _diffusion_ is the true policy for the colored people of the South. All, of course, cannot leave that section, and ought not; but some can, and the condition of those who must remain will be better because of those who go. Men, like trees, may be too thickly planted to thrive. If the labor market of Mississippi were to-day not over-loaded and over supplied, the laborers would be more fully appreciated; but this work of diffusion and distribution cannot be carried on by the emancipated class alone. They need, and ought to have, the material aid of both white and colored people of the free states. A million of dollars devoted to this purpose would do more for the colored people of the South than the same amount expended in any other way. There is no degradation, no loss of self-respect, in asking this aid, considering the circumstances of these people. The white people of this nation owe them this help and a great deal more. The keynote of the future should not be concentration, but diffusion--distribution. This may not be a remedy for all evils now uncured, but it certainly will be a help in the right direction.

A word now in respect of another remedy for the black man’s ills. It calls itself independent political action. This has, during the past few years, been advocated with much zeal and spirit by several of our leading colored men, and also with much ability, though I am happy to say not with much success. First, their plan, if I understand it, is to separate the colored people of the country from the Republican party. This, with them, is the primary and essential condition of making the colored vote independent. Hence all their artillery is directed to making that party odious in the eyes of the colored voters. Colored men who adhere to the Republican party are vilified as slaves, office-seekers, serviles, “knuckle-close” Republicans, as tools of white men, traitors to their race, and much more of the same sort. Perhaps no one has been a more prominent target for such denunciation than your humble speaker.

Now, the position to which these gentlemen invite us is one of neutrality between the two great political parties, and to vote with either, or against either, according to the prevailing motive when the time for action shall arrive. In the interval we are to have no standing with either party, and have no active influence in shaping the policy of either, but we are to stand alone, and hold ourselves ready to serve one or to serve the other, or both, as we may incline at the moment.

With all respect to these political doctors, I must say that their remedy is no remedy at all. No man can serve two masters in politics any more than in religion. If there is one position in life more despicable in the eyes of man, and more condemned by nature than another, it is that of neutrality. Besides, if there is one thing more impossible than another, it is a position of perfect neutrality in politics. Our friends, Fortune, Downing, and others, flatter themselves that they have reached this perfection, but they are utterly mistaken. No man can read their utterances without seeing their animus of hate to the Republican party, and their preference for the Democratic party. The fault is not so much in their intention, as in their position. They can neither act with nor against the two parties impartially. They are compelled by their position to either serve the one and oppose the other, and they cannot serve or oppose both alike. Independence, like neutrality, is also impossible. If the colored man does not depend upon the Republican party, he will depend upon the Democratic party, and if he does neither, he becomes a nonentity in American politics. But these gentlemen do, in effect, ask us to break down the power of the Republican party, when to do it is to put the Government in the hands of the Democratic party. Colored men are already in the Republican party, and to come out of it is to defeat it.

For one, I must say that the Democratic party has as yet given me no sufficient reasons for doing it any such service, nor has the Republican party sunk so low that I must abandon it for its great rival. With all its faults it is the best party now in existence. In it are the best elements of the American people, and if any good is to come to us politically it will be through that party.

I must cease to remember a great many things and must forget a great many things before I can counsel any man, colored or white, to join the Democratic party, or to occupy a position of neutrality between that party and the Republican party. Such a position of the colored people of this country will prove about as comfortable as between the upper and nether millstone. Those of our number now posing as Independents are doing better service to the Democratic party under the Independent mask than they could do if they came out honestly for the Democratic party.

I am charged with commending the inaugural address of President Cleveland. I am not ashamed of that charge. I said at the time that no better words for the colored citizen had dropped from the east portico of the Capitol since the days of Lincoln and Grant, and I say so still. I did not say, as my traducer lyingly asserts, that Mr. Cleveland said better words than Lincoln or Grant. But it would not have suited the man who left Washington with malice in his heart and falsehood in his throat to be more truthful in Petersburg than in Washington. This malcontent accuser seeks to make the impression that those who thought and spoke well of the inaugural address did so from selfish motives, and from a desire to get or retain office. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” “With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, the same shall be measured to you again.” He ought to remember, however, that a serpent without a fang, a scorpion without a sting, has no more ability to poison than a lie which has lost its ability to deceive has to injure. It so happens that we had two Presidents and one Vice-President prior to President Cleveland, and I challenge my ambitious and envious accuser to find any better word for the colored citizens of this country in the inaugural addresses of either than is found in the inaugural address of President Cleveland. I also beg my accuser to remember that I gave no pledge that Mr. Cleveland would be able to live up to the sentiments of that address, but, on the contrary I doubted even the probability of his success in doing so. I gave him credit, however, for an honest purpose, and expressed a hope that he might be able to do as well and better than he promised. But I saw him in the rapids and predicted that they would be too strong for him. Did this look like seeking favor? He did a brave thing in removing from office an abettor of murder in Mississippi. He has expressed in a private way, to Messrs. Bruce and Lynch, his reprobation of the recent massacres at Carrollton, and for this we thank him. But he has done nothing in his position as Commander-in-chief of the army and navy to put a stop to such horrors. I am quite sure that he abhors violence and bloodshed. He has shown this in his publicly spoken words in behalf of persecuted and murdered Chinamen; he should do the same for the persecuted and murdered black citizens of Mississippi. He could threaten the law-breakers and murderers of the West with the sword of the nation, why not the South? If it was right to protect and defend the Chinese, why not the negro? If in the days of slavery the army could be used to hunt slaves, and suppress slave insurrections, why, in the days of liberty, may it not be used to enforce rights guaranteed by the Constitution? Alas! fellow-citizens, there is no right so neglected as the negro’s right. There is no flesh so despised as the negro’s flesh. There is no blood so cheap as the negro’s blood. I have been saying these things to the American people for nearly fifty years. In the order of nature I cannot say them much longer; but, as was said by another, “though time himself should confront me, and shake his hoary locks at my persistence, I shall not cease while life is left me, and our wrongs are unredressed, to thus cry aloud and spare not.”

Fellow-citizens, I am disappointed. The accession of the Democratic party to power has not been followed by the results I expected. When the tiger has quenched his thirst in blood, and when the anaconda has swallowed his prey, they cease to pursue their trembling game and sink to rest; so I thought when the Democratic party came into power, when the solid South gave law to the land, when there could no longer be any pretence for the fear of negro ascendency in the councils of the nation, persecution, violence, and murder would cease, and the negro would be left in peace; but the bloody scenes at Carrollton, and the daily reports of lynch law in the South, have destroyed this cherished hope and told me that the end of our sufferings is not yet.

But, fellow-citizens, I do not despair, and no power that I know of can make me despair of the ultimate triumph of justice and liberty in this country. I have seen too many abuses outgrown, too many evils removed, too many moral and physical improvements made, to doubt that the wheels of progress will still roll on. We have but to toil and trust, throw away whiskey and tobacco, improve the opportunities that we have, put away all extravagance, learn to live within our means, lay up our earnings, educate our children, live industrious and virtuous lives, establish a character for sobriety, punctuality, and general uprightness, and we shall raise up powerful friends who shall stand by us in our struggle for an equal chance in the race of life. The white people of this country are asleep, but not dead. In other days we had a potent voice in the Senate which awoke the nation.

Ireland now has an advocate in the British Senate who has arrested the eye and ear of the civilized world in championing the cause of Ireland. There is to-day in the American Senate an opportunity for an American Gladstone; one whose voice shall have power to awake this nation to the stupendous wrongs inflicted upon our newly-made citizens and move the Government to a vindication of our constitutional rights. We have in other days had a Sumner, a Wilson, a Chase, a Conkling, a Thaddeus Stevens, and a Morton. These did not exhaust the justice and humanity of American statesmanship. There is heart and eloquence still left in the councils of the nation, and these will, I trust, yet make themselves potent in having both the Constitution of 1789 and the Constitution with the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments made practically the law of the land for all the people thereof.