Southern States -- Social conditions; United States -- Race relations
Is there any likelihood of a private propaganda in behalf of the Negro
like that of the abolitionists? A considerable class of Northern people
have a warm sense of resentment at what they think the injustice and
cruelty of the superior race, especially in the withdrawal of the
suffrage by state constitutional amendments; and there is a lively
interest in the education of Negroes and in work among the Poor Whites. A
propaganda, with societies, public meetings, journals, and a literature
is, however, no longer possible--the North has too much on its own hands
in curing the political diseases of its cities, in absorbing the
foreigners; like Congress, it recognizes that the South is sincere, even
if somewhat exaggerated, in its nervousness about the Negroes. The most
that can be expected of Northern individuals in the way of bettering
Southern conditions is attempts like that of this volume to get into the
real nature of the problems and to offer good advice.
Notwithstanding the horror felt toward amalgamation, from time to time in
unexpected Southern quarters reappears the suggestion that it is
impossible for the two races to live alongside each other separate, and
that the logical and unavoidable outcome is fusion; that the relentless
force of juxtaposition is too much for law or prejudice or race instinct.
Over and over again one is told that nowhere in history is there an
example of two races living side by side indefinitely without uniting.
This is not historically true; Mohammedans and Hindoos (originally of the
same race) have lived separate hundreds of years in India; Boers and
Kaffirs have been side by side for near a century; the English colonists
and the American Indians were little intermixed. Amalgamation could only
be accomplished by a change in white sentiment about as probable as the
Mormonization of the Northern Whites; and if it were possible, it would
lead to a new and worse race question, the rivalry of a mixed race
occupying the whole South against a white race in the rest of the country,
which would make all present troubles seem a pleasant interlude.
Amalgamation as a remedy welcomed by the Southern Whites is unthinkable;
as a remedy against their convictions, brought about by time, it is highly
unlikely.
At the other extremity is the idea, now more than a century old, that the
way to get rid of the race question is to remove one of the races
altogether. This notion of curing the patient by sending him to a hospital
for incurables goes back to 1775. Jefferson favored it; the Colonization
Society organized it in 1816, and in the forty years from 1820 to 1860
succeeded in sending about ten thousand Negroes to Liberia. Abraham
Lincoln favored it. It is often suggested nowadays. This plan, if it could
be carried out, would so completely relieve the immediate difficulties
that it deserves the most careful consideration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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