The slave trade : $b Slavery and colorJervey, Theodore D. (Theodore Dehon)
History
The slave trade : $b Slavery and color
Jervey, Theodore D. (Theodore Dehon)
African Americans; Slave trade -- United States; Slavery -- United States; United States -- Race relations
Finally, not to prolong the discussion, when we note that the servant
was not liable civilly or criminally for any act done by the command
of the master, for any tort on the master’s premises[336] and that the
former slave holder was not permitted to dispossess the non paying
helpless former slave, for a year and a month from the occupancy of
dwellings belonging to the former master, but occupied without any
return by the former slave,[337] and what elaborate provisions in
detail were made for the care of such in his or her helpless condition,
we will find that we look in vain in England, old or New, for such
humanitarian legislation, at this date. Why then were the Codes
overthrown? Dr. DuBois is prejudiced and naturally so. He is not as
well informed as he deems himself to be; but he desires to be fair and
just; and so we have from this, the most cultured member of the colored
race in the United States, the real reason for “Reconstruction and its
Benefits.”
“The difficulties that stared Reconstruction politicians in the face
were these: (a) They must act quickly. (b) Emancipation had increased
the political power of the South by one sixth; could this increased
political power be put in the hands of those, who in defense of
slavery had disrupted the Union?”[338]
So, the terrific losses, which he himself itemizes were not enough. The
beaten South was to be manacled. And how does he picture the victors in
that dreadful hour?
“There might have been less stealing in the South during
Reconstruction without negro suffrage but it is certainly highly
instructive to remember that the mark of the thief which dragged its
slime across nearly every great Northern state and almost up to the
Presidential chair could not certainly in those cases be charged
against the vote of black men. This was the day when a national
secretary of war was caught stealing, a Vice President presumably took
bribes, a private Secretary of the President, a chief clerk of the
Treasury and eighty-six government officials stole millions in the
whisky frauds, while the Credit Mobilier filched fifty millions and
bribed the government to an extent never revealed; not to mention less
distinguished thieves like Tweed.”[339]
Remember this is not a Southerner, black or white; but the most
cultured of Northern colored men, who so describes the conquering East
from which he sprang.
It is scarcely possible to state more comprehensively in less space
than that in which Dr. DuBois describes the effects of Congressional
Reconstruction:
“When incompetency gains political power in an extravagant age the
result is widespread dishonesty.”[340]
But he palliates this with the following:
“The dishonesty in the Reconstruction of the South was helped on by
three circumstances:
1. The former dishonesty of the political South.
2. The presence of many dishonest Northern politicians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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