Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
History
Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
Grady, Henry Woodfin, 1850-1889
It was the race instinct that spoke there. It spoke not with prejudice,
but against it. It spoke there as it speaks always and everywhere—as it
has spoken for two thousand years. And it spoke to the reason of each
race. Millaud, in voting in the French Convention for the beheading of
Louis XVI., said: “If death did not exist, it would be necessary to-day
to invent it.” So of this instinct. It is the pledge of the integrity of
each race, and of peace between the races. Without it, there might be a
breaking down of all lines of division and a thorough intermingling of
whites and blacks. This once accomplished, the lower and the weaker
elements of the races would begin to fuse and the process of
amalgamation would have begun. This would mean the disorganization of
society. An internecine war would be precipitated. The whites, at any
cost and at any hazard, would maintain the clear integrity and dominance
of the Anglo-Saxon blood. They understand perfectly that the debasement
of their own race would not profit the humble and sincere race with
which their lot is cast, and that the hybrid would not gain what either
race lost. Even if the vigor and the volume of the Anglo-Saxon blood
would enable it to absorb the African current, and after many
generations recover its own strength and purity, not all the powers of
earth could control the unspeakable horrors that would wait upon the
slow process of clarification. Easier far it would be to take the
population of central New York, intermingle with it an equal percentage
of Indians, and force amalgamation between the two. Let us review the
argument. If Mr. Cable is correct in assuming that there is no instinct
that keeps the two races separate in the South, then there is no reason
for doubting that if intermingled they would fuse. Mere prejudice would
not long survive perfect equality and social intermingling; and the
prejudice once gone, intermarrying would begin. Then, if there is a race
instinct in either race that resents intimate association with the
other, it would be unwise to force such association when there are easy
and just alternatives. If there is no such instinct, the mixing of the
races would mean amalgamation, to which the whites will never submit,
and to which neither race should submit. So that in either case, whether
the race feeling is instinct or prejudice, we come to but one
conclusion: The white and black races in the South must walk apart.
Concurrent their courses may go—ought to go—will go—but separate. If
instinct did not make this plain in a flash, reason would spell it out
letter by letter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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