ADDRESS.

Mr. Chairman: —

I cannot forbear to express to you my full appreciation of the honor conveyed by the invitation to address so cultured an assemblage, on so important a subject as the one you have assigned me.

I was put quite at ease, for this discussion, because of a statement accompanying the invitation, to the effect that the people at the East had grown to believe that the people at the South knew more about their relations and duties to the negro than the East had, heretofore, given them credit for.

The people at the South have certainly had all possible opportunities to learn what these relations are, and I am quite sure I have authority for saying that they are righteous and just enough to appreciate and make the best of them, for both races. If duty and humanity should fail, certainly personal or self-interest would awaken the white people at the South to see that the very best relations possible shall be maintained between the races, consistent with the good order and thrift of the community.

No people ever met more bravely so serious a condition as confronts the South or sought more righteously an equitable adjustment of a difficult problem than the people at the South have undertaken in the negro problem.

In coming to the discussion of so important a problem as is involved in the relations of the negro at the South, although somewhat relieved by what I am sure will be your sympathy and your courteous consideration, I must confess to a degree of embarrassment, because of the violent denunciations of the South that have appeared, from time to time, in the Northern press, of which your own city has furnished a large part; and the severe criticisms that have been made upon our civilization, or what is called the lack of it, both in this country and abroad, because of what is said to be our treatment of the negro.

May I add that I am still further embarrassed by the fact, as I understand it, that the story of the South, told by a Southern man or by a visitor, who sees the conditions as the peope of the South know them to be, is always discredited, while any incendiary and violent statements, denunciatory of the South, are always believed and trumpeted abroad with righteous indignation and horrible disgust.

Take your own Dr. Nehemiah Adams, a man of high character and unquestioned veracity before he wrote “South Side View of Slavery,” and whose name thereafter became a by-word and a stench. While Ida Wells, a mulatto woman, can electrify two continents with incendiary statements made from the lecture platform, at fifty cents a night, grossly misrepresenting the South.

Hon Miss Murray, Maid of Honor to the Queen, was dismissed from the Royal Presence and the Queen's Court simply because she told the truth about the South, as she saw it.

The Christian World (God save the mark!), speaking of the treatment of the negroes at the South, says: “Women and girls are whipped, in a nude state, by men in the presence of men and boys. Of course, there is immorality. Children are born and grow up in the prisons, and know no other home. Some of the States make a regular thing of breeding people, just as in the old slavery days, This is specially the case in Georgia, Florida and Texas.”

Such statements are scattered over the land, and all the people in England who read these pious remarks believe them to be true, and nothing I could say to the contrary would weigh one feather against them.

Will the day ever come when the South can be heard without prejudice and her people accorded a fair audience before the world?

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I am not here to apologize for the South. The South has her ills, her sins and her crimes. What section has not? The South has had and will have violent shocks to her civilization. What section has not? The South has had her sorrows. God knows they have been grevious and hard to be endured.

Whenever the South finds an ideal government without sin; a people perfect in law and perfect in its enforcement, the South will do its respectful obeisance and ask to be led into its broader civilization and its better power. 'Till then, and not till then, we shall stand abreast of all other sections, claiming as broad a civilization as any, and challenging those without sin to cast the first stone at us.

So much I desired to say for the white people of the South. For the negroes of that section, I cannot decline to say that, taken as a mass, I would not exchange them for any I have ever seen in any other parts of the United States without tremendous money boot in the exchange. I am the friend of the negro in my State, and they recognize in me one of their strongest defenders. I am not here to defame them. God forbid. I am here to speak their worth, when they deserve it, and to condemn them when their wickedness so demands.

Lest I may not be understood, I desire to say, with emphasis, that I shall not speak to you in any sectional or partizan spirit. Let us thank God that sectionalism is, or ought to be, dead.

With a grandson of Grant on the staff of Lee; with Fighting Joe Wheeler, clad in the uniform of an American soldier, rallying the charge under the floating folds of the American flag; with brave young Bagley, giving his life blood to cement into eternal brotherhood a divided nation; with Brumby, carrying amid the shouts of his applauding comrades the flag of the Union first planted in the Philippines; with Hobson, brave and heroic, a spectacle for God and for men, as he stood upon the bridge of the Merrimac, the embodiment of the South's loyalty to the Union; surely, surely, the South will now be heard without prejudice and with due consideration for what she may say.

The subject I am to discuss, by your courtesy, is “The White Man's View of the Relations of the Negro at the South”

All history shows that two races, approaching in any degree equality in numbers cannot live together, unless intermarriage takes place or the one is dependent and in some sense subject to the other.

The Sabine women prepared the way for the admission of the Sabines to Rome and gave the former place among the conscript fathers. Alexander, having conquered Persia married the Persian Roxana, and thus lessened the social distance between the new provinces and the original empire. Alaric, Clovis, Henry I. of England, in Italy, Gaul and among the Saxons, respectively, resorted to the same policy of intermarriage and for the same purpose. The long dissensions between the Normans and Saxons, under William, Duke of Normandy, and William Rufus, disappeared when the two races followed the example of Henry.

On the other hand, Israel and Egypt, the Hebrew nation and the people conquerred by them and others prove the impossibility of two races living together without the dependence of the one upon the other or they intermarry.

Miscegenation by law will never take place in the South. That may be accepted as an established fact and settled beyond question. Inter-marriage at the South need not be argued a moment. Unless the South breaks the record of all history, there is only one alternative left, and that is that the negro must be dependent, in a measure at least, upon the white man, as he cannot hope to dominate him.

The status of the negro in American civilization is a problem of a vast deal more import than many are inclined to believe. The problem is national and not sectional. The sin of slavery, whatever that may have been, was the sin of the Nation and not the sin of the South. Whatever may be its present title—the negro problem; the race question; the white man's burden; the South's shame, or the Nation's sin—call it what you may, the thing is here, full of peril and danger to the whole people.

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If I were asked to discuss the relations or the environments of Jonah, during the days he spent in the stomach of the great fish, I think it would be quite in point to tell how Jonah happened to occupy that unusual place for even so short a time. If, therefore, I discuss for a moment, how the negro ever happened in the South as a slave, I hope I will not be considered outside the scope of the duty assigned me to discuss his present status as a freedman.

So far as I know, the first African slaves sold upon the soil of the South, were brought by a Dutch slave-trading ship and landed at Jamestown, Virginia. I do not believe it is anywhere charged that the South brought these negroes or that the South, specially, cared to receive them.

I do not know that any State preceded Massachusetts in building and fitting out a ship for the purpose of traffic in human beings as slaves. Of course, many of the best people in Massachusetts were shocked at such horrors, just as many of the best people in Georgia are shocked by the brutal things that occur in my State. Yet, Massachusetts and Georgia, it seems, are held responsible for all the evil things that happen within their borders.

Moore, in his History of Slavery in Massachusetts, page 18, after speaking of the results of the State law authorizing slavery, says: “Based on the Mosaic Code, it is an absolute recognition of slavery as a legitimate status and of the right of one man to sell himself, as well as that of another man to buy him. It sanctions the slave trade and the perpetual bondage of Indians and negroes, their children and their children's children, and entitled Massachusetts to precedence over all other colonies in similar legislation.”

“It anticipates, by many years, everything of the sort to be found in the statutes of Virginia and Maryland and South New England.”

I know this was a long time ago, but my purpose, as announced, is to show how Jonah got into the stomach of the fish. We read this scripture story to-day with interest and a degree of curiosity, but Jonah and his fish had their entanglement many centuries before negroes were put into the South, through the agency of the good people of New England. How the negro happened in the South is somewhat modern in comparison.

To further localize this matter, my own State, Georgia, became a slave State about the same time as Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The colony settling New Jersey was so intense in getting their share of the traffic that a land bounty of seventy-five acres was offered for every slave introduced there.

The West India Company supplied the Dutch settlers of New York.

In 1680 Governor Bradstreet stated that there were about 120 African slaves in Massachusetts. At the end of one hundred years from the settlement of Plymouth, there were about two thousand.

In 1787, the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, learning that vessels were surreptitiously fitted out, in that State, for the furtherance of the slave trade, petitioned the legislature for a supplementary law to prevent it. The same society was forced to look after lawlessness of the same kind in Rhode Island, and in 1790 sent a memorial to Congress imploring interference.

Up to this time I have no knowledge of the introduction of the slave trade at the South, certainly no information as to the construction of vessels to engage in the iniquitous traffic.

Whilst Georgia became a slave State about the same time as Pennsylvania and New Jersey, this condition in the South was made possible because of the traffic in slaves by the States at the North, and not by any original efforts made by Georgia or any sister State at the South.

These statements would seem to indicate that the South was not in at the beginning, however much she may have borne the curse of her sins, later on, as well as the sins of those who preceded her in the iniquity.

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The story of America by Mabie, page 282, tells us: “All the Northern States abolished slavery, beginning with Vermont, in 1777, and ending with New Jersey, in 1804. It should be added, however, that many of the Northern slaves were not freed, but sold to the South. The agricultural and commercial conditions in the North were such as to make slave labor less and less profitable, while in the South the social order of things, agricultural conditions and the climate were gradually making it seemingly indispensable. Economical conditions caused a gradual gravitation of the negroes toward the South, until, eventually, the people of the North were rid of such as they could dispose of at financial profit, while some others were set at liberty, in various ways, and remained upon the soil of their original homes.”

Moore tells us, page 58: “Aged and infirm slaves were set free, to relieve the master from the charge of supporting them.”

This, I dare say, is enough to show that the South was not, originally, responsible for the presence of the negro within her territory.”

The next point to be considered is the relation of the white man and the negro during slavery.

If the story of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe is to be credited, slavery at the South was the abomination of iniquities. This story has been accepted as the truth throughout the civilized world and, because of it, the South has been vilified, maligned and abused, to the absolute forgetfulness of equal and greater sins found in the homes of the very people who have been so piously holy in their pharasaic assumption of personal purity.

Of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Dr. Nehemiah Adams, in “South Side View of Slavery,” says: “At the North I partook fully in the general effect of the book upon our feelings, as the author knows full well: but at the South, even after seeing or hearing things like the many which are related in the story, I found that still the whole impression of the book on my mind was that of a falsehood. I suppose that, generally, a black child was, as Topsy said of herself, ‘nothing but a nigger,’ in its own esteem and that of the whites. I was angry with myself to find how I had suffered poor Topsy to form my notions of childhood and youth among the slaves. I found myself frequently stopping to talk with the black children for the pleasure of hearing them talk, and secretly feeling that I owed them some atonement for the injustice which I had done them in my thoughts.”

“I did not suppose Mrs. St. Clair was a true picture of Southern women, for I knew better; at the same time, when I saw the women of the South, in their families, on their plantations, in their Sabbath-schools, and heard them speak of their servants, and found them making the garments worn by field hands, superintending the distribution of food, nursing the sick and enduring toils for them to which Northern ladies are generally strangers, I felt that that miserable woman was out of place, in any prominent connection, with descriptions of Southern character.”

“If the people, as far as possible from the seaboard, should ask me for a book giving the true picture of a sailor's experience, it would be as fair to give them Robinson Crusoe, as to put Uncle Tom's Cabin into the hands of a foreigner, who wished to learn what American slavery is.”

Of the same book, Dr. Henry M. Field says, page 109: “Certainly, the pictures of slavery that were drawn with such power and took such hold of the imagination that they even haunted us in our dreams, were very different from the milder form of servitude known to most Southern people, to whom it was a part of their domestic life. The relations of the two races were the closest. The negroes were not only a part of the community, but members of every household. Though they stood in the relation of servants to their white masters, yet they belonged to the family and were the objects of a degree of family affection. White children, almost as soon as they were born, were placed in the arms of 0007 5 black nurses, who cared for them in babyhood and childhood. This constant intimacy naturally led to the warmest attachments, which often continued when the children had grown to be men and women.”

“Whoever has known the Southern people must have been struck with the way in which not only women, but strong men not given to sentiment, speak of the old ‘Aunties’ and ‘Mammies,’ who cared for them in the years of childhood.”

Possibly one of the most thoroughly abused of those who have spoken and written kindly of the slave-holder at the South is the Hon. Amelia M. Murray, at the time Maid of Honor to the Queen of England. Miss Murray came to this country and visited the South for the purpose of inquiring into the relations of the white man to the negro, and published her views in 1856.

Because of her conservative statements, contradicting, as they did, the preconceived opinions of her people, she lost her place at court, and was dismissed by the Queen. Of Mrs. Stowe's story Miss Murray says: “I feel sure that, as a whole, the story, however ingeniously worked up, is an unfair picture—a libel upon the slave-holders as a body. I very much doubt if a real Uncle Tom can often be found in the whole negro race.

“Had Mrs. Stowe lived for some months among the institutions and the people which in Uncle Tom she thoughtlessly, perhaps, not intentionally, vilified, she would have used, not misused, her undoubted talents; and as it is she ought to have blushed at the fulsome flattery which called her novel “ The genuine application of the sacred Word of God to the several branches of her subject. ”

Miss Murray quotes from a letter addressed to her by Right Reverend Bishop Elliot, Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia, than whom a better man never lived in any nation.

To Miss Murray the bishop wrote: “At this very moment there are from three to four millions of Africans educating for earth and for heaven, in the so vilified Southern States—educating in our nurseries, in our chambers, in our parlors, in our workshops, and in our fields, as well as in our churches—learning the very best lessons of a semi-barbarous people—lessons of self-control, of obedience, of perseverance, of adaptation of means to ends—learning, above all things, where their weakness lies, and how they may acquire strength for the battle of life.

“So far from the institution being guilty of degrading the negro, and keeping him in degradation, it has elevated him in the scale of being much above his nature and race, and it is continuing to do so. Place an imported African side by side with one of the third or fourth generation, and the difference is so marked that they look almost like distinct races, not only in mind and knowledge, but in physical structure. A man has been made out of a barbarian—an intelligent and useful laborer out of an ignorant savage; a Christian and a child of God out of a heathen.”

If never a word had been written in defense of slavery at the South the conduct of the negroes during the entire four years of our civil war is enough to belie all that has ever been spoken or written about the villainy of the slave master and the iniquities practiced upon the slaves at the South.

Whilst almost the entire male population of the South was absent from home in war, the women and children were left without protection except as it was furnished by the strong arm of the negroes who were slaves upon the plantations of the Southern States. It never occurred for a moment, that there might be an uprising or an insurrection of slaves to destroy our homes and slaughter our loved ones. We knew their attachments and their loyalty.

The South has made one great mistake, attributable, I am sure, to poverty and the bitterness engendered by reconstruction, in failing to rear a monument to the slaves of 1860 to 1865 for their unceasing devotion to our homes and the gallant protection they gave the women and children of 0008 6 the South all during the dark days of our bloody civil strife. If anything like it has occurred in the history of nations, I have never read it. All honor and gratitude to the old-time negro, as we knew him before and during the war.

It is quite pertinent to ask how this devotion was so suddenly and radically changed into such unfortunate antagonism. This brings me to the discussion of the immediate question before me, and involves, first, the negroe's relation to citizenship and politics.

Before issuing his proclamation, in September, 1862, threatening the emancipation of the slaves the following January, it is a matter of record that Mr. Lincoln hesitated most seriously upon taking so important a step. After repeated urging by his party and as frequent refusals, he finally said: “My paramount object is to save the Union and not to save or destroy slavery. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do to save the Union.”

Wells, in his “Lincoln and Seward,” pages 210–212, speaking of the emancipation proclamation, says: To Mr. Seward and myself, the President communicated his purpose on the 18th of July, 1862, and asked our views.

“It was the day succeeding his last unsuccessful and hopeless conference with the representatives in Congress from the border slave states; at a gloomy period of our affairs, just after the reverses of our armies, under McClellan, before Richmond. The time, he said, had arrived when we must determine whether the slave element should be for us or against us.” Mark the words: “Mr. Seward was appalled and not prepared for this decisive step When Mr. Lincoln made known to us that he contemplated, by an executive order, to emancipate the slaves, startled with so broad and radical a proposition, Mr. Seward informed the President that the consequences of such an act were so momentous that he was not prepared to advise on the subject without further reflection. While Mr. Seward hesitated and had the subject under consideration, the President deliberately prepared his preliminary proclamation, which met the approval or, at least, the acquiescence of the whole cabinet, though there were phases of opinions not entirely in accord with the proceedings. Mr. Blair, an original emancipationist and committed to the principle, thought the time to issue the order inopportune, and Mr. Bates desired that deportation of the colored race should be coincident with emancipation. Aware that there were shades of differences among his counsellors and hesitation and doubt with some, in view of the vast responsibility and its consequences, the President devised his own scheme; held himself alone accountable for the act, and unaided and unassisted, prepared each of the proclamations of freedom.”

Mr. Seward had lived in the South and he knew the conditions that afforded fearful opportunity for massacre and blood, with the women and children exposed to the maddening fury of four millions of angered slaves, if Mr. Lincoln's proclamation should stir them to insurrection. This really seemed the only way in Which “the slave element should be for us,” as Mr. Lincoln expressed it. No wonder Mr. Seward was appalled. No wonder Mr. Blair thought the order inopportune, and Mr. Bates insisted that the slaves should be taken out of the country before such cruel slaughter as he evidently apprehended began.

The proclamation, however, was issued; the civilized world listened in strained and painful silence for slaughter and butchery, the like of which history had never recorded; horror hung upon the face of humanity. And yet not an assault was made, not a child was slain, nor a residence burned. Every negro slave at the South stood true to the trust committed to him, and our homes, our mothers, our wives and our sisters were saved in the midst of dangers that never before were made possible in civilized warfare.

The people of the South stand, all the time, ready to serve, in any way they may, the old-time negro of slave memories and slave devotion. No people in the world were ever more heroic in duty and loyal in attachments.

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It is not my purpose, here or anywhere, to defend human slavery. I myself owned slaves. We at the South are glad, more than we can tell, that we are rid of the burden and the responsibility.

Whilst we had strong attachments for the negroes of those days, the bonds were all finally broken, bitterness ensued, and we became literally two people. Steadfast as they stood during the war, the pressure became too great, under reconstruction.

To the people of the South, war, as Sherman says, had been hell. If there is anything worse in the diabolism of cruelty, reconstruction was that thing.

After the war, the negroes were promptly made citizens. They were enfranchised, and not only made equal with their former masters, but they were taught that liberty meant license, and that the domination of the white man was the one thing for them to strive for and attain. The people of the South looked not only upon abandonment by the negross, but upon absolute treachery among her own people. Many men who had been true to their colors during the war, now, broken down in fortune and without hope for the future, believed they saw political elevation for themselves, in the use of the negro's vote. Uniting themselves to the carpet-baggers and scalawags, who flocked to the South, like vultures over a dying carcass, they eat carrion together, as, in all the shame of Union leagues and midnight political marauding, they planned for the negroe's antagonism towards the white people, that has proved the bane of the negro and the white man at the South. Here began the separation between the negroes and the white people at the South. The breach was widened by the presence of the military all over the South, not only encouraging the schemes of division and domination concocted in the Union leagues, but offering support and defence by such arms as might be needed.

Our legislatures were composed of negroes and carpet-baggers; our laws were made, on the one hand, by those absolutely ignorant of our institutions and our government, and, on the other, by those who had no sympathy with our interests and not a dollar in our business.

Since that day, the negro at the South has been determined to oppose everything, politically, that he believes the white man wants. He is a Republican, an Independent, or a what-not, just so he may oppose and fight against anything he believes the white man wants.

Upon this subject, Prof. H. M. Browne, a negro and a member of the faculty of Hampton Institute, one among the best schools for negroes at the South, says: “The greatest enemy to the negro and the greatest obstacle to his progress is the politician, and the negro politician is the worst of all. The politician uses the negro for his selfish purposes and does not care a rap what becomes of him, after his ends are served. In the South, such designing men have played upon the weakness of the negro and have, in many instances, arrayed the members of the negro race against their best friends, the Southern white men. They have been taught that they are asserting their independence by voting against the interests of the very men to whom they go in time of trouble, and they have not been able to see or to realize that their interests lie closest to the interests of those whom they oppose at the polls, and this idea is kept alive (mark these words from an intelligent negro) by abundant promises and the occasional bestowal of political offices.”

“I have always regarded it as exceedingly unfortunate that reconstruction engendered antagonism between the white and colored people of the South. I know, and every colored man of common sense knows, that the best white blood of the South cherishes for us a friendship which no other class of white people can understand, much less feel.”

To show the extreme of the negroes' political antagonism, I beg to read to you a letter from Hon. Warner Hill, a leading lawyer in my State.

During the time that Mr. Hill was a member of the lower house of our General Assembly he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He introduced, and had passed, unanimously, a bill looking to the prevention 0010 8 of mob violence in the State. The whole thing, of course, looked to the protection of negroes against lawlessness. I read you part of his letter, addressed to me recently:

“The bill, which subsequently became the law to which you refer, was introduced by me in accordance with a recommendation made by you, as Governor of Georgia, to the General Assembly upon that subject. The bill was passed by the General Assembly, and approved by you, as Governor, on December 20th, 1893. (See Georgia Laws, 1893, page 128.”)

“The year following the passage of the above recited act (1894) I was again unanimously renominated by the Democratic party for the House of Representatives. The Republican party had no ticket in the field. The contest was between the Democrats and the Populists. There was no sort of natural affiliation between the negro Republican and white Populists. While in the Legislature I had earnestly advocated the public school system, to which the negroes were enthusiastically attached. This fact, and the ‘anti-lynch law’ to which you allude, were discussed publicly before mixed audiences of white and colored people during the campaign. There was no question as to the public and private character of the Democratic candidate; not against the political or professional record of either; nor as being unfriendly or antagonistic to the negro or his interests. On the contrary, the writer had volunteered, without fee or reward, to defend in the courts, and did defend, to final acquital, at least three negroes, on separate occasions, charged with murder, besides many others of lesser offenses. They were the happiest mortals I ever saw, or expect to see, when the verdicts of ‘not guilty’ were rendered, and apparently the most grateful. They all voluntarily promised, after acquital, to remunerate me for securing their liberty. One said he would go home, see his people, return and live with me for life, or until I was satisfied. I have never laid eyes on but one of them since, and that by chance; nor have I been remunerated to the extent of one penny.”

“All these facts, above recited, were known to the voters during the campaign. The negro and white vote in the county was about equal. The former, therefore, held the balance of power, and this vote (negro) was cast almost solidly against me for the Populists, thus defeating me for the House. A large majority of the white vote was cast for me.”

“You are, therefore, entirely correct when you say that “the negroes voted largely against me in my subsequent race for re-election to the General Assembly, after I had introduced and fought to a successful termination a bill entitled “An Act to prevent mob violence in this State,' to prescribe punishment for same, etc.”

This is a fair presentation of what may be expected from negroes, when politics are involved. They vote against the white man, regardless of what he may have done to protect and advance them. They have been so instructed to use their ballot. The South is not responsible for these results.

Your attention is asked to the following dispatch from Albany, my State, a city of about six thousand population, showing the spirit of the white people towards negroes who behave themselves:

Albany, Ga., May 10th.—“Frank W. McCarthy, one of the most prominent negroes in Southwest Georgia, died at his home in this city last night, after an illness of two months, with bright's disease His funeral occurred from the African Methodist Episcopal church this afternoon, and was attended by an immense concourse of both whites and blacks. For the first time in the history of Albany, every store and office in the city was closed in honor of a negro, no business being transacted while the funeral was in progress. McCarthy never dabbled in politics, but was probably the most influential negro in his county. His death is deplored alike by white and colored people.”

It may be well to consider next the relations of the negro to business.

From the very beginning, even during the earliest days of reconstruction. the negroes had no means for support or for accumulation, except 0011 9 through the favor of the Southern white people. The negroes were, practically, penniless. Notwithstanding the poverty of the white people and the bitterness of the negroes, the white people gave them shelter and food and employment. I do not believe there are five hundred negroes in my State to-day out of employment, who could not get work if they wanted it.

Negroes have access to all the trades and all the professions, as barbers, mechanics, artisans, masons, lawyers, dentists, etc. They are not prevented by Labor Unions from work. Such distinction would not be approved by our people.

Starting in 1865 without a home and without a penny, the negroes in Georgia pay tax on one-sixth as much as the whole State was worth at the end of the war, and for the entire South, they pay one-half as much as the entire State of Georgia paid the year before the war began. From this it would seem that a negro has some business chances at the South.

A few years since, when the Eagle & Phœnix Cotton Mill Company, in Columbus, my State, was constructing Mill No. 3, there was employed upon the building a number of masons from the North. One morning there was an incipient strike, and a delegation from the Northern white masons called on the mechanical engineer and said they could not work under a negro foreman.

The engineer had placed a negro man on one corner of the building, and had given him a little authority, as he appeared to be much the best mechanic in the lot. He was a native Columbus negro. Rather than delay the work, and with the idea of pacifying these Northern masons, the engineer told them that if they could pick out a man from their own number who could take the place of the negro, he was ready to make the change. They selected one of their number, and, after twenty-four hours' experience, the engineer sent for the committee and told them he was not pleased or satisfied with their selection, and he wished a candid expression from them as to whether or not he had made a better selection for foreman in the negro than they had given him in the white man. After some little parleying, they agreed to resume with the Columbus negro carrying up the corner. Several of these Northern masons, after admitting the negro was the better mechanic, said they would never work under a negro. They left. All the white men who left were from the Northern States. No white man from the South abandoned the job.

Next, let us consider the negro's relation to education.

Hon. W. T. Harris, U. S. Commissioner of Education, in a pamphlet published in 1896, “Education in the Various States,” page 1331, says:

“Since 1876, the Southern States have expended $383,000,000 for public schools, and it is fair to estimate that between $75,000,000 and $80,000,000 of this sum have been expended for the education of colored children. In 1895, the enrollment of colored pupils was a little more than 27 per cent. of the public school enrollment in the Southern States. It is not claimed that they received the benefit of 27 per cent. of the school fund, and perhaps no one would say they received less than 20 per cent. It is a fact well known that almost the entire burden of educating the colored children of the South falls upon the white property owners of the former slave States. Of the more than $75,000,000 expended in the past twenty years for the instruction of colored children in Southern public schools, but a small percentage was contributed by the negroes themselves, in the form of taxes. This vast sum has not been given grudgingly. The white people of the South believe that the State should place a common school education within the reach of every child, and they have done this much to give all citizens, white and black, an even start in life.”

“What have the negroes themselves accomplished to justify the generosity of the white people of the South and the benevolence of the people of the North?”

“It may be said that in 1860 the colored race was totally illiterate. In 1870 more than 85 per cent. of the colored population of the South, ten 0012 10 years of age and over, could not read nor write. In 1880 the per cent. of illiterates had been reduced to 75 per cent., and in 1890 the illiterates comprised about sixty per cent. of the colored population ten years of age and over. In several of the Southern States the percentage is even below fifty per cent.”

“In thirty years 40 per cent. of the illiteracy of the colored race had disappeared. In education and industrial progress, this race had accomplished more than it could have achieved in centuries in a different environment, without the aid of the whites. The negro has needed the example as well as the aid of the white man. In sections where the colored population is massed and removed from contact with the whites, the progress of the negro has been retarded. He believes in educating his children, because he can see that an increase of knowledge will enable them to better their condition. But segregate the colored population and you take away the object lesson.”

“Where the colored population is greatest in proportion to the total population, or where such colored population is massed, as in the black belt of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, there the per cent. of illiteracy is highest.”

“There are, in the United States, so far as known to this bureau, 162 institutions for the secondary and higher education of the colored race. Six of these schools are not located within the boundaries of the former slave States. Of the 162 institutions, 32 are of the grade of colleges, 73 are classed as normal schools, and the remaining 57 are of secondary or high school grade. While all these schools teach pupils in the elementary studies, they also carry instruction beyond the common school branches.”

“State aid is extended to 35 of the 162 institutions, and 18 of these are wholly supported by the States in which they are established. The remaining schools are supported wholly or in part by benevolent societies and from tuition.”

“In these schools were employed 1,549 teachers, 711 males and 838 females. The total number of students was 37,102. Of these 23,420 were in the elementary grades, 11,724 in secondary grades, and 1,958 were pursuing collegiate studies.”

“Of the 13,682 students in secondary and higher grades, there were 990 in classical courses, 811 in scientific courses, 295 in business courses, and 9,331 in English courses.”

“There were 4,513 colored students studying to become teachers, 1,902 males and 2,612 females. Many of these students were included among those pursuing the English and other courses noted above.”

“The number of students graduating from high school courses was 649, the number of males being 282 and the females 367. There were 844 graduates from normal courses, 367 males and 487 females. The number of college graduates was 186, males 151 and females 35.”

“There are 1,166 colored students studying learned professions—1,028 males and 138 females. Of the professional students, 585 were studying theology; 310 medicine; 55 law; 45 pharmacy; 25 dentistry, and 8 engineering. The 138 female students were receiving professional training for nurses. There were 42 graduates in theology; 67 in medicine; 21 in law; 2 in dentistry; 16 in pharmacy, and 25 in nurse training.”

Next, let us consider the negro's relation to law. Just as is the case with his franchise, so the negro is absolutely protected in his life, liberty and property, as is the white man. Violence is meted out to the negro for only such crimes as would bring a white man to the same torturing end.

To show the spirit of the white people of the South towards the rights of the negro, I need mention only two cases, fully representative of the conditions, both of which occurred during my administration as the Executive of the State:

In the city of Atlanta, Peter Daniel, a negro, had brutally slain a negro woman. He was brought before the courts and promptly convicted of murder. For some reason, I have never been able to explain, general 0013 11 sympathy for this man was aroused all over the State among the white people. Scores and scores of letters came to the Executive office, earnestly asking executive clemency. So general and pronounced was sympathy for the man, that I was waited upon by five of the leading white ministers of the city of Atlanta in Daniel's interest. Finally the man of largest wealth in the city came to my office to say that he feared the negro had not had proper defence, and agreeing, if I would give Daniel sufficient respite he would, himself, employ counsel and give him another chance for his life. This I did, in deference to the generous sympathy expressed, but the man was returned to me under the same sentence and executed; not for the lack of untiring efforts on the part of the white people in his behalf, but because the stern demands of the law so ordered.

Again, in the county of Henry (one of the best in the State), a negro was charged and convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to be hanged. Under appointment by the court, he was defended by two of the most prominent lawyers in the county. After sentence was pronounced his attorneys called at my office, asking executive clemency. The scene enacted at the close of the last interview did great credit to a noble nature and should put to shame every baseless slander against the white people of the South for their alleged disregard of the status of the negro at the South before the law.

Taking me by the hand, one of the attorneys said: “Now, Governor, I have made my last appeal for an unfortunate and, I candidly believe, an innocent man. I am working in the interest of humanity and right, as I see it. I will not receive one penny for the service I have rendered. I have not asked it, nor will I.” The tears started down his face as he grasped my hand the more warmly and said: “For God's sake do not let this man die, until you satisfy yourself, beyond a doubt, that he is guilty of the charge of which he has, in my judgment, been improperly convicted.”

This man was not executed, but the scene in my office was worthy lasting commemoration in marble, as a tribute to Southern devotion to the rights of these people for whom it had become our duty to care. Next, the relation of the negro to religion:

The negro, at the South, as I take it, and at the North as well, is nothing if not religious. Before the war, they belonged to the same churches, in all denominations, as the whites. I am sure you would be interested if you should read the church records, recognizing these people as of equal right, religiously with the white brethren. It was only after the negroes themselves broke the bond of union that we became two peoples. Whilst they have their own and separate churches for their services, every Christian denomination at the South expends fair proportion of their general contributions for religious purposes for the religious development of the negroes They will never suffer along these lines, as long as their brethren in white are able to aid them.

It may be well to say that a negro's religion is patterned very much after his own ideals, and, possibly, has more of what he calls religion and less of what we know as morals than is found in the standard endorsed by most men.

Next, his relations to society:

I heard a very admirable speech from a very intelligent negro, before the Southern Baptist Convention, during its session at Birmingham, Ala. The negro preacher was discussing the race problem, and when he reached this feature of his subject he remarked that many people seemed afraid the negro would at no distant day demand social equality. He then said there need be no fear on this point, as he knew many white men he would not allow to sleep in his bed. And so, we are pretty well agreed on both sides down South that social equality is not desired by either race, and, in my candid judgment, it will never obtain. Social equality would beget amalgamation, and amalgamation would result in miscegenation, and miscegenation would be an open violation of the law of God. God made one a negro and the other a white man. It is the 0014 12 opinion of the people at the South that he intended them so to remain. We call them negroes at the South, not as an offensive term, but to distinguish them from what you know as colored people at the North, because of the greater mixture of blood.

To show the difference in morals, along this line, in favor of the negroes at the South, as against the colored people of other sections, we may note that in the several divisions of States the blacks and mulattoes are distributed as follows:

Blacks. Mulattoes. North Atlantic States 207,175 62,731 Western Division 16,477 10,504 North Central States 297,331 133,781 South Atlantic 2,823,905 438,785 South Central 2,993,092 486,169

Of the whole African population in the North Atlantic States, 23 per cent. are mulattoes. Of those in the Western Division, 62 per cent are mulattoes. Of those in the North Central States, 31 per cent. are mulattoes. Of those in the South Atlantic States, 10 per cent. are mulattoes, and of those in the South Central States, 13 per cent. are mulattoes. In the three Northern divisions, there were, in 1890, 728,099 persons of African descent. Of this number 28 per cent. were mulattoes. The Southern divisions had, at this time, 6,741,941 persons of African descent. Thirteen per cent. of this number were mulattoes.

Intermarriage at the South not only makes the union void, but subjects the officiating clergyman to punishment in the chain-gang, the penitentiary, or heavy money fine, in the discretion of the judge.

If the people of the North see fit to differ with us on this point, we will not have any dispute over the matter, as the people at the South are not much given to the effort at control of other men's matters We are in perfect harmony with the old Latin adage—“ De gustibus, non dispuntandum. ”

Next, and finally, the negro's relation to crime:

We are gratified to find, in this as in morals, the negroes at the South, having enjoyed their freedom for only a generation, have decided advantage over the colored people at the North, who have had the benefits of freedom and the attendant advantages for more than three times that period of time.

Examination into the United States Census will show the records of crime for different sections, according to population, as made up of whites and negroes, to be as follows:

POPULATION. PRISONERS. DIVISION. Whites. Negroes. Whites. Negroes. North Atlantic 17,121.981 269,906 21,18?-1 to 653 2,037- 1 to 134 South Atlantic 5,592,179 3,262,690 12,544-1 to 2,198 8,863- 1 to 369 North Central 21,911,927 431,112 17,024-1 to 1,286 2,738- 1 to 157 South Central 7,487,576 3,479,251 5,604-1 to 1,336 10,381- 1 to 335 Western 2,870,257 27,081 5,953-1 to 498 258- 1 to 105

The homicides for same Divisions, in same order are—

Negroes 1 to 2,176

“ 1 to 4,167

“ 1 to 1,667

“ 1 to 2,277

“ 1 to 677

This is no mean showing for the negroes of the South, as compared with the colored people at the North, with their one hundred years of freedom.

0015 13

If these figures are true, I am asked, why are negroes so frequently lynched at the South? I reply, for the same reason they are lynched at the North. I repeat, with emphasis, that violence for crime is administered without distinction as to race, when the crime is the same. It is not the color of the skin that brings the punishment, but the nature of the crime committed.

Let it be distinctly understood that, personally, I am absolutely opposed to mob law for any and all offenses. I shall not take your time here to give you my reasons. Personally and officially, I have done everything known to me to suppress it in my State. But there is an unwritten law, not peculiar to Georgia or the South, but dominating conditions in every State in the Union, where the circumstances are the same, that demands the quickest execution, in the quickest way, of the fiend who robs a virtuous woman of her honor to gratify his hellish diabolism. Human nature is the same throughout the civilized world, and say what you may, Massachusetts will not be one whit behind Georgia, when you make Mrs. Cranford the wife of a farmer in your State and Sam Holt a brutal fiend, in human shape, a neighbor near her home.

I repeat, again, mob law is terrible. You know its blood and slaughter in your own State. Georgia can no more suppress it than Massachusetts or New York. Until Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and other States can control the wild fury of a mob, let us be done with denunciations upon Georgia, when she fails. Georgia and the South ask nothing but to be given the same consideration as other States and other sections.

You need not ask me, then, if I approve the horrible enactment that occurred within forty miles of my home, a few weeks ago. God forbid that I should. “Do you condemn the burning as strongly as it was condemned through the Northern press?” I answer emphatically—just as strongly. “Then you approve the course taken by the Northern press in the matters of lynchings at the South?” Pardon me, if, in reply, I say that I condemn the course of the Northern press upon lynchings at the South with all the vehemence of an offended nature. It is incendiary, unfair and cruel in the extreme.

Now, hear me! What was the policy of the press at the North, with only two exceptions, so far as I know, in the lynching of that villainous fiend, Sam Holt, at Newnan, my State? Great scare heads— Another negro lynched at the South. Fiendish brutality on the part of the whites towards an unfortunate and defenseless negro. Human devils burn a colored man within fifty miles of the Capital of Georgia, and gloat over his tortures like demons. Surely these people have been remanded to barbarism and become savages in a civilized land.

Not one word of sympathy for a pure and virtuous woman; her honor gone; her husband murdered in her presence, she and her little children dragged in the fresh, warm blood of the dying man, and not one word said about this doubly horrible outrage. Surely, in all the North, is there no smpathy except for a negro? No kindly feeling and no tender word for the defenseless women of the South, who carry with them a living shame, in a living death, in a life all too long for its miseries, if it lasts but for a day.

I submit: The policy of the press at the North, in condemning simply the lynchings, while they maintain an ominous and painful silence about the crimes that provoke them, is incendiary in the extreme, as it encourages negroes to a repetition. It is worse than cruel to the broken-hearted victim and the community that has suffered death in its tenderest relations.

The policy is unfair, as between lynchings at the North and lynchings at the South, making always fish of one and fowl of the other. Let us be fair, and we will sooner be brethren.

Harper's Weekly, a paper popular over the country, has found great pleasure, from time to time, in maligning the South.

It is due to say that the editor is beginning to see the South through clearer glasses. In the issue of May 13th, I find the following: “To 0016 14 read the story of Sam Hose's crime, as our Georgia. correspondent has written it, begets absolute indifference to that negro's sufferings or fate. It fills the mind with horror, and makes one feel that any means that is effectual to prevent such crimea is justified. One forgets the monstrousness of the Sam Hose lynching, and only wonders whether it was expedient.”

In addition to the denunciations by the press, our colored brethren of the North have assumed dictatorship over the white people at the South. In a recent issue of the Herald, of this city, appeared an account of a meeting, I suppose, of colored people, described to be most enthusiastic, in which it was said, referring to the recent lynching in Georgia: “The climax of the evening was reached, however, when Capt. Williams and Lieut. Jackson said that every negro should carry a Winchester, and wherever a negro was killed, their brethren should go out on the highways and byways, and the first white man they saw should be shot down.”

This is one way to settle it, according to the colored people of Boston. Not one word about the villainous scoundrel who did the double tragedy—a human fiend. Kill every white man you meet, who dares defend the women of the South against such iniquitous outrage, and the race problem will be settled at the South.

The colored people of New York met about the same time, and banded together to invoke the vengeance of God upon Georgia and the South for the lynching of Sam Holt, and not one word of sympathy for the home destroyed, the man murdered, the wife outraged, and the children besmeared with the blood and brains of their murdered father.

May I say to my friends, the colored people of the North, if they will look after their own business and attend to the lawlessness that occurs in their own bailiwick, they will possibly have quite as much as they can profitably manage. I would be glad to know what they said about the mob of 150 men that strung up Bradley, near New York, charged with stealing Martin Kelley's pocketbook, as reported in the New York World, April 21st. There it is said some of the mob wanted to burn Bradley, and that women fainted while the deed of horror was being enacted. There is a difference, a great difference, every one knows, between “tweedle-dum” and “tweedle-dee.”

Make the case your own: (Will you pardon me if in this presence, I tell a part of this horrible tale of woe and misery and loathesome wretchedness, that you may, somewhat, understand?) Let it be your daughter, sitting at tea with husband and little children, happily enjoying an evening meal. A bloody murderer stealthily approaches, and with the blow of a fiend, buries an axe to the eye in the husband's head; he fells him; beats his brains till they spread in sickening horror over the floor. He raises his devilish hand and strikes a stunning blow upon the face of a little child—your grandchild, can you imagine? He drags it across the bleeding, dying body of its father—your daughter's husband, and leaves it senseless, its father's blood dripping from its little skirts. See him as he takes another child, your grandchild, by the heels in one hand and his axe in the other, while he demands of the mother her consent or the cruel murder of her child. Be present in your thought at that supreme moment, and hear her saying, “Save my child.” See him then as he confronts, in all the appalling horror of fiendish glare, with uplifted axe, the trembling form of the wife—your daughter (can you imagine) curses as only a demon from hell can swear; jerks her down—your daughter, (can you imagine) and rolls her in the warm blood of the only one she had hoped to defend her from such awful, awful, awful cruelty and shame! Hear her piteous cries as she writhes, for two long, long hours in the embrace of a villian, and then see her as she falls at her father's gate—your gate (can you imagine), half clad and in a death swoon, to tell her horrible, sickening, disgusting, loathesome story (a story I cannot tell here, and which has not yet been told because of its loathesomeness). Hear her tell it into her loving mother's ears, and tell me, would you not feel that the punisment of the nethermost hell, whether administered here or hereafter, was not too much for such a human fiend? What would you do? What would your neighbors do? What would a mob in Massachusetts do? I am not asking what ought to have 0017 15 been done. As to that, you and I are fully agreed. I am asking what was done, under similar conditions, in Ohio, Oregon, New Jersey, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oklohoma, Kansas, Illinois, New York and other States that have had similar or even less offences. No State claims greater or more advanced civilization than New York, and yet, it is only a few years since a wild and frenzied mob cruelly murdered eleven innocent negroes, whose only offence was that they were negroes, then burned the negro orphan asylum over the heads of three hundred little helpless negro children, simply because they were negroes, and the little ones barely escaped by the back-door, while the maddened mob beat down an entrance at the front. Why did not the great State of New York control the mob better than Georgia did?

Is the State of the President lacking in civilization? If not, how did it happen that an unhindered mob seized the rape fiend, Seymour Newland, and lynched him upon a tree near by, because of an outrage upon a respectable white woman of eighty-one years?

Is the State of Illniois without civilization, when her State Attorney says they have had half dozen lynchings in the last few years, and the world knows how the mob shot down negroes with the approval of the Governor, for no other reason than that they had entered the State in search of work. In the presence of all this, the pious press of Chicago points to Georgia and thanks God that they are not as that publican.

Do you ask me how these lynchings can be stopped at the South? I answer promptly—just as they can be stopped at the North, and in no other way. Stop the outrages and the lynchings will cease. Continue the outrages, and the lynchings will always follow, regardless of threats by the law, whether in Georgia, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, or other States.

Is it forgotten that the people of Massachusetts, themselves, burned a negro woman at the stake, who had been simply suspected, and not convicted, of poisoning a white man and his wife? We can't tell what is going to happen, even in the best regulated families.

Negro politics, in my judgment, as taught during reconstruction and continued to the present day, seeking to dominate the white people of the South, are responsible for most of the blood that has been spilt, the outrages that have been perpetrated, and the sorrows that have come to the whites and negroes of the South. The course of the Northern press is responsible for much of the remainder. The South is a white man's country, and it will never be delivered over to negroes, whatever the power and influence brought to bear to force this fearful end.

In his recent charge to the jury, the court sitting in Charleston, S. C., to try certain citizens charged with lynching a negro in that State, Judge Brawley said: “If it be true that this postmaster was an incompetent negro, a stranger and resident of another county, the community that he was appointed to serve had grave and just grounds of complaint, and those who are responsible for his appointment cannot escape the condemnation of fair-minded men everywhere for the wrong done to that community. Every lawful effort of the people of Lake City to redress their grievance would have had the sympathy and support of all lovers of order.”

How much did the appointment of a negro postomaster, over the protest of the people of Hogansville, a town within the neighborhood of Sam Holt's residence, and the closing of the mail cars, to force white people to patronize the negro's postoffice have to do with the awful tragedies that have been enacted in my State? Let Judge Brawley answer.

Hon. Charles Bartlett, representing the Macon district in the present Congress, upon application, secured rural mail delivery for the County of Bibb. Mr. Gaitree, the presentative of the Postoffice Department, went to Macon, and together with the Macon postmaster, investigated the matter and located the routes. Mr. Bartlett was assured that such carriers would be selected as were acceptable to the people. Quite a number of good white people made application, and on Mr. Gaitree's recommendation, two were selected. Their bonds were sent to the postmaster at Macon with instructions to have them filled out, and the carriers to commence service May 1st. A day or two after, the postmaster received a telegram from the Chief of the Free Mail Delivery Department, 0018 16 asking him to hold up the bonds of the persons appointed. Next day a telegram came, stating the free delivery would be established, provided the bonds of two negroes, naming them, who had been appointed in the place of the white men, were filled out and returned. Mr. Bartlett went to Washington and protested that the farmers did not want negro carriers to deliver their mails, in the absence of all but the women of the families from home. Two days later, a telegram announced that the free delivery had been postponed. It must be a negro or nothing, says the Government to the South.

When the Government appoints a Minister to Austra, and the cablegram comes—“persona non grata”—the name is recalled and another substituted at once. Why Austria and not the South? Why dominate the South with an appointee who is “persona non grata”—when Austria can get what she wants? Why dominate a section whose people, as a section, are more thoroughly American than any other section of the continent; a section more devoted to American institutions than any other section as such, because of its more American citizenship; a section that defends the American flag with as loyal hearts, as heroic daring, and as patriotic devotion as ever characterized a liberty-loving citizen of the Nation? Let the North answer me, why?

Now, then, if the slave trade, the promoter of slavery in America, was a sin, whose sin was it? Not the sin of the South, but the sin of England, the Dutch, and New England.

If the conferring of citizenship and the ballot upon four millions of people, absolutely untaught in the simplest elements of government, was a mistake, whose mistake was it? Not the mistake of the South, but the mistake of the North.

If the avenues to division and hate and blood and carnage, outrages and lynchings and violence and mobs have been opened up, at the South, through the ballot given to the negro and the politics taught him to pursue in the destruction of the white man were a sin, whose sin was it? Not the sin of the South, but the sin of the North.

If the people in the South sheltered the negro in his absolute poverty, fed him when he was hungry, furnished him means to accumulate property and money; educated his children to prepare them for usefulness in life, whose honor is it but the honor of the men who have borne, for a generation, his burdens, while he gave marked ingratitude in return through his votes.

What are we going to do about it?

The negro problem at the South will not be settled in a day. Step by step, as it marches into the future of the Nation, it must be met by the conditions best suited to the detail of its solution. It will never be settled by abuse of the South, and the North had as well understand that fact now as later. What is needed now is, at least, toleration and non-interference, if the South is to become responsible for results.

Let me say, in conclusion, that the relations between the races at the South are, in no sense, alarming. Under God we will work out the problem in righteous settlement for both races, if we are left alone.

Negroes are employed upon our farms, in preference to white people. They are used as coachmen, mechanics, and in all the trades. They never suffer for lack of work, if they want a job. We provide for them good schools, that are superintended by the same Boards as control the white schools. Their religious training is carefully guarded by the churches in all the religious denominations. Confidence is constantly strengthened, as the negroes are beginning to know the white people at the South are their best friends.

Sam Holt is, by no means, a representative of his race It is only a very small per cent. of negroes that are malicious, criminal and mean. The race should not suffer in reputation because of the bad character of a few.

The better part of the negroes, and this is by far the larger part, are beginning to co-operate with the white people for better conditions.

Recognizing the tremendous demands that await us in the future, we shall trust in God, do our best, and wait. The gospel of the living God is sufficient for all human ills and human woes. The Gospel's best analysis is: “Faith, Hope and Charity.” the greatest of these is, Charity.