The following pages were written in South Carolina, during the session of the Legislature, in the months of February and March, 1873. They take their coloring from the scenes by which the writer was surrounded. This explanation is necessary, to account for the form in which a portion of the contents is presented.
I have no positive theory in regard to the future of South Carolina. Fifteen years ago, when emancipation seemed distant, I ventured the prediction that the Gulf States would finally have to be surrendered to the blacks; but the abolition of slavery having been suddenly precipitated, the conditions of the problem have become changed. Yet there are those who believe such is now the inevitable fate of several of the Southern States, South Carolina included. In the following pages I have combated this sentiment as regards South Carolina, and have pointed out the method by which it seems to me its Africanization can be prevented, and suggested some of the considerations which should inspire an effort to prevent such a result. But it may turn out that there is a wide difference between what can be done and what will be done. The white people of South Carolina may permit what they might prevent. The decision of the case rests mainly with them. But their course in the present crisis of their fortunes is not a matter of interest to themselves alone; it deeply concerns the people of the other States, and it is their attention that I invoke to the following exposition. The facts challenge the thoughtful consideration of every man who does not believe that our political system can stand any thing and defy any thing.
New York, Oct., 1873.
A Black Parliament. — Humiliation of The Whites. — Society bottom-side up. — An Extraordinary Spectacle.
Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, is charmingly situated in the heart of the upland country, near the geographical centre of the State. It has broad, open streets, regularly laid out, and fine, shady residences in and about the town. The opportunity for rides and drives can hardly be surpassed. There are good animals and good turnouts to be seen on the streets at all times; and now, in midwinter, the weather invites to such displays. It seems there was a little real winter here at Christmas and New Year's, when the whole country suffered such an excess of sudden cold. There was even skating and sleighing for a week. But now there is no frost, and the recollection of it is dispelled by the genial spring weather that prevails.
Yesterday, about 4 p.m., the assembled wisdom of the State, whose achievements are illustrated on that theatre, issued forth from the State-House. About three-quarters of the crowd belonged to the African race. They were of every hue, from the light octoroon to the deep black. They were such a looking body of men as might pour out of a market-house or a court-house at random in any Southern State. Every negro type and physiognomy was here to be seen, from the genteel serving-man to the rough-hewn customer from the rice or cotton field. Their dress was as varied as their countenances. There was the second-hand black frock-coat of infirm gentility, glossy and threadbare. There was the stove-pipe hat of many ironings and departed styles. There was also to be seen a total disregard of the proprieties of costume in the coarse and dirty garments of the field; the stub-jackets and slouch hats of soiling labor. In some instances, rough woolen comforters embraced the neck and hid the absence of linen. Heavy brogans, and short, torn trousers, it was impossible to hide. The dusky tide flowed out into the littered and barren grounds, and, issuing through the coarse wooden fence of the inclosure, melted away into the street beyond. These were the legislators of South Carolina.
In conspicuous bass-relief over the door of exit, on the panels of the stately edifice, the marble visages of George McDuffie and Robert Y. Hayne overlooked the scene. Could they veritably witness it from their dread abode? What then? "I tremble," wrote Jefferson, when depicting the character of Southern slavery, "I tremble when I reflect that God is just." But did any of that old band of Southern Revolutionary patriots who wrestled in their souls with the curse of slavery ever contemplate such a descent into barbarism as this spectacle implied and typified? "My God, look at this!" was the unbidden ejaculation of a low-country planter, clad in homespun, as he leaned over the rail inside the House, gazing excitedly upon the body in session. "This is the first time I have been here. I thought I knew what we were doing when we consented to emancipation. I knew the negro, and I predicted much that has happened, but I never thought it would come to this. Let me go."
Here, then, is the outcome, the ripe, perfected fruit of the boasted civilization of the South, after two hundred years of experience. A white community, that had gradually risen from small beginnings, till it grew into wealth, culture, and refinement, and became accomplished in all the arts of civilization; that successfully asserted its resistance to a foreign tyranny by deeds of conspicuous valor, which achieved liberty and independence through the fire and tempest of civil war, and illustrated itself in the councils of the nation by orators and statesmen worthy of any age or nation — such a community is then reduced to this. It lies prostrate in the dust, ruled over by this strange conglomerate, gathered from the ranks of its own servile population. It is the spectacle of a society suddenly turned bottom-side up. The wealth, the intelligence, the culture, the wisdom of the State, have broken through the crust of that social volcano on which they were contentedly reposing, and have sunk out of sight, consumed by the subterranean fires they had with such temerity braved and defied.
In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the functions of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated in the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them the rule of ignorance and corruption, through the inexorable machinery of a majority of numbers. It is barbarism overwhelming civilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of his master, and putting that master under his feet. And, though it is done without malice and without vengeance, it is nevertheless none the less completely and absolutely done. Let us approach nearer and take a closer view. We will enter the House of Representatives. Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Of these, twenty-three are white men, representing the remains of the old civilization. These are good-looking, substantial citizens. They are men of weight and standing in the communities they represent. They are all from the hill country. The frosts of sixty and seventy winters whiten the heads of some among them. There they sit, grim and silent. They feel themselves to be but loose stones, thrown in to partially obstruct a current they are powerless to resist. They say little and do little as the days go by. They simply watch the rising tide, and mark the progressive steps of the inundation. They hold their places reluctantly. They feel themselves to be in some sort martyrs, bound stoically to suffer in behalf of that still great element in the State whose prostrate fortunes are becoming the sport of an unpitying Fate. Grouped in a corner of the commodious and well-furnished chamber, they stolidly survey the noisy riot that goes on in the great black Left and Centre, where the business and debates of the House are conducted, and where sit the strange and extraordinary guides of the fortunes of a once proud and haughty State. In this crucial trial of his pride, his manhood, his prejudices, his spirit, it must be said of the Southern Bourbon of the Legislature that he comports himself with a dignity, a reserve, and a decorum, that command admiration. He feels that the iron hand of Destiny is upon him. He is gloomy, disconsolate, hopeless. The gray heads of this generation openly profess that they look for no relief. They see no way of escape. The recovery of influence, of position, of control in the State, is felt by them to be impossible. They accept their position with a stoicism that promises no reward here or hereafter. They are the types of a conquered race. They staked all and lost all. Their lives remain, their property and their children do not. War, emancipation, and grinding taxation, have consumed them. Their struggle now is against complete confiscation. They endure, and wait for the night.
This dense negro crowd they confront do the debating, the squabbling, the law-making, and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. These twenty-three white men are but the observers, the enforced auditors of the dull and clumsy imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearance in their present capacity is at once a wonder and a shame to modern civilization.
Deducting the twenty-three members referred to, who comprise the entire strength of the opposition, we find one hundred and one remaining. Of this one hundred and one, ninety-four are colored, and seven are their white allies. Thus the blacks outnumber the whole body of whites in the House more than three to one. On the mere basis of numbers in the State the injustice of this disproportion is manifest, since the black population h relatively four to three of the whites. A just rectification of the disproportion, on the basis of population merely, would give fifty-four whites to seventy black members. And the line of race very nearly marks the line of hostile politics. As things stand, the body is almost literally a Black Parliament, and it is the only one on the face of the earth which is the representative of a white constituency and the professed exponent of an advanced type of modern civilization. But the reader will find almost any portraiture inadequate to give a vivid idea of the body, and enable him to comprehend the complete metamorphosis of the South Carolina Legislature, without observing its details. The Speaker is black, the Clerk is black, the door-keepers are black, the little pages are black, the chairman of the Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal-black. At some of the desks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to find outside of Congo; whose costume, visages, attitudes, and expression, only befit the forecastle of a buccaneer. It must be remembered, also, that these men, with not more than half a dozen exceptions, have been themselves slaves, and that their ancestors were slaves for generations. Recollecting the report of the famous schooner Wanderer, fitted out by a Southern slave-holder twelve or fifteen years ago, in ostentatious defiance of the laws against the slave-trade, and whose owner and master boasted of having brought a cargo of slaves from Africa and safely landed them in South Carolina and Georgia, one thinks it must be true, and that some of these representatives are the very men then stolen from their African homes. If this be so, we will not now quarrel over their presence. It would be one of those extraordinary coincidences that would of itself almost seem to justify the belief of the direct interference of the hand of Providence in the affairs of men.
The Negro as a Legislator. — His Fluency in Debate. — Earnestness and Good-Humor his Characteristics. — The Future of the State.
One of the things that first strike a casual observer in this negro assembly is the fluency of debate, if the endless chatter that goes on there can be dignified with this term. The leading topics of discussion are all well understood by the members, as they are of a practical character, and appeal directly to the personal interests of every legislator, as well as to those of his constituents. "When an appropriation bill is up to raise money to catch and punish the Ku-klux, they know exactly what it means. They feel it in their bones. So, too, with educational measures. The free school comes right home to them; then the business of arming and drilling the black militia. They are eager on this point. Sambo can talk on these topics and those of a kindred character, and their endless ramifications, day in and day out. There is no end to his gash and babble. The intellectual level is that of a bevy of fresh converts at a negro camp-meeting. Of course this kind of talk can be extended indefinitely. It is the doggerel of debate, and not beyond the reach of the lowest parts. Then the negro is imitative in the extreme. He can copy like a parrot or a monkey, and he is always ready for a trial of his skill. He believes he can do any thing, and never loses a chance to try, and is just as ready to be laughed at for his failure as applauded for his success. He is more vivacious than the white, and, being more volatile and good-natured, he is correspondingly more irrepressible. His misuse of language in his imitations is at times ludicrous beyond measure. He notoriously loves a joke or an anecdote, and will burst into a broad guffaw on the smallest provocation. He breaks out into an incoherent harangue on the floor just as easily, and being without practice, discipline, or experience, and wholly oblivious of Lindley Murray, or any other restraint on composition, he will go on repeating himself, dancing as it were to the music of his own voice, forever. He will speak half a dozen times on one question, and every time say the same things without knowing it. He answers completely to the description of a stupid speaker in Parliament, given by Lord Derby on one occasion. It was said of him that he did not know what he was going to say when he got up; he did not know what he was saying while he was speaking, and he did not know what he had said when he sat down.
But the old stagers admit that the colored brethren have a wonderful aptness at legislative proceedings. They are "quick as lightning" at detecting points of order, and they certainly make incessant and extraordinary use of their knowledge. No one is allowed to talk five minutes without interruption, and one interruption is the signal for another and another, until the original speaker is smothered under an avalanche of them. Forty questions of privilege will be raised in a day. At times, nothing goes on but alternating questions of order and of privilege. The inefficient colored friend who sits in the Speaker's chair cannot suppress this extraordinary element of the debate. Some of the blackest members exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising these points of order and questions of privilege that few white men can equal. Their struggles to get the floor, their bellowings and physical contortions, baffle description. The Speaker's hammer plays a perpetual tattoo all to no purpose. The talking and the interruptions from all quarters go on with the utmost license. Every one esteems himself as good as his neighbor, and puts in his oar, apparently as often for love of riot and confusion as for any thing else. It is easy to imagine what are his ideas of propriety and dignity among a crowd of his own color, and these are illustrated without reserve. The Speaker orders a member whom he has discovered to be particularly unruly to take his seat. The member obeys, and with the same motion that he sits down, throws his feet on to his desk, hiding himself from the Speaker by the soles of his boots. In an instant he appears again on the floor. After a few experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a laugh, to call "the gemman" to order. This is considered a capital joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh goes round, and then the peanuts are cracked and munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd is a great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens cackle — one begins and all follow.
But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings, we most not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the business of the assembly which we are bound to recognize and respect, unless we would be accounted shallow critics. They have an earnest purpose, born of a conviction that their position and condition are not fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their proceedings. The barbarous, animated jargon in which they so often indulge is on occasion seen to be transparently sincere and weighty in their own minds that sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is a wonderful novelty to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago these men were raising corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer. To-day they are raising points of order and questions of privilege. They find they can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. It is easier, and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplished result. It means escape and defense from old oppressors. It means liberty. It means the destruction of prison-walls only too real to them. It is the sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is their long-promised vision of the Lord God Almighty.
Shall we, then, be too critical over the spectacle? Perhaps we might more wisely wonder that they can do so well in so short a time. The barbarians overran Rome. The dark ages followed. But then the day finally broke, and civilization followed. The days were long and weary; but they came to an end at last. Now we have the printing-press, the railroad, the telegraph; and these denote an utter revolution in the affairs of mankind. Years may now accomplish what it formerly took ages to achieve. Under the new lights and influences shall not the black man speedily emerge? Who knows? We may fear, but we may hope. Nothing in our day is impossible. Take the contested supposition that South Carolina is to be Africanized. We have a Federal Union of great and growing States. It is incontestably white at the centre. We know it to possess vital powers. It is well abreast of all modern progress in ideas and improvements. Its influence is all-pervading. How can a State of the Union escape it? South Carolina alone, if left to herself, might fall into midnight darkness. Can she do it while she remains an integral part of the nation?
But will South Carolina be Africanized? That depends. Let us hear the judgment of an intelligent foreigner who has long lived in the South, and who was here when the war began. He dees not believe it. White people from abroad are drifting in, bad as things are. Under freedom the blacks do not multiply as in slavery. The pickaninnies die off from want of care. Some blacks are coming in from North Carolina and Virginia, but others are going off farther South, The white young men who were growing into manhood did not seem inclined to leave their homes and migrate to foreign parts. There was an exodus after the war, but it has stopped, and many have come back. The old slave-holders still hold their lands. The negroes were poor and unable to buy, even if the land-owners would sell, This was a powerful impediment to the development of the negro into a controlling force in the State. His whole power was in his numbers. The present disproportion of four blacks to three whites in the State he believed was already decreasing. The whites seemed likely to more than hold their own, while the blacks would fall off. Cumulative voting would encourage the growth and add to the political power of the whites in the Legislature, where they were at present overslaughed.
Then the manufacturing industry was growing in magnitude and vitality. This spread various new employments over the State, and, every one became a centre to invite white immigration. This influence was already felt. Trade was increased in the towns, and this meant increase of white population. High taxes were a detriment and a drag. But the trader put them on to his goods, and the manufacturer on to his products, and made the consumer pay.
But this important question cannot be dismissed in a paragraph. It requires further treatment. It involves the fortunes of the State far too deeply, and the duties of the white people and the interests of the property-holder, are too intimate]y connected with a just decision of it, to excuse a hasty or shallow judgment. We must defer its further consideration to another occasion. It is the question which is all in all to South Carolina.
Villainies of the State Government. — The Present Government no Improvement on the Last. — The Treasury drained by the Thieves. — Venality of the Press.
The corruption of the State government of South Carolina is a topic that has grown thread-bare in the handling. The last administration stole right hand and left with a recklessness and audacity without parallel. The robbers under it embraced all grades of people. The thieves had to combine to aid one another. It took a combination of the principal authorities to get at the Treasury, and they had to share the plunder alike. All the smaller fry had their proportions, the legislators and lobbymen included. The principal men of the Scott administration are living in Columbia, and nobody undertakes to call them to account. They do not attempt even to conceal their plunder. If everybody was not implicated in the robberies of the Treasury, some way would be found to bring them to light. All that people know is, that the State bonded debt has been increased from five to fifteen millions, and that, besides this, there are all sorts of current obligations to pay afloat, issued by State officers who had authority to bind the Treasury. They are all tinctured with fraud, and some of them are such scandalous swindles that the courts have been able temporarily to stop their payment.
The whole of the late administration, which terminated its existence in November, 1872, was a morass of rottenness, and the present administration was born of the corruptions of that; but for the exhaustion of the State, there is no good reason to believe it would steal less than its predecessor. There seems to be no hope, therefore, that the villainies of the past will be speedily uncovered. The present Governor was Speaker of the last House, and he is credited with having issued during his term in office over $400,000 of pay "certificates" which are still unredeemed and for which there is no appropriation, but which must be saddled on the tax-payers sooner or later. The Blue Ridge Railroad scrip is another scandal embracing several millions of pure stealings. The case is briefly this: Some years ago a charter was obtained for a railroad across the southern end of the Blue Ridge from South Carolina into Kentucky. It was a difficult work, and the State promised it aid on certain conditions. The road was never made, and these conditions were never fulfilled, but since the restoration the State obligations were authorized to be issued. But this was not the worst of it. The sum authorized was $1,800,000. It turns out that on the strength of this authority over $5,000,000 of the scrip has been issued. It was rendered available to the holders by being made receivable for taxes, and in this way has got spread abroad. The whole scheme has been for the moment frustrated by a decision of the courts that the entire transaction is fraudulent and void from the start. With $5,000,000 of this stuff afloat, which the Legislature can legalize if the members are paid enough, what hope is there that the State will escape liability for the emission?
These are sample items of the corruptions of the late government outside of the increase of the bonded debt. The iniquity laps over into this administration, for the old Speaker has been chosen Governor, and the present Legislature has chosen Patterson Senator.
Yet the last canvass was carried on under the sting of the charges of corruption against the Scott administration, and it was hoped that the present would be an improvement upon that. The election of Patterson soon after the assembling of the Legislature, and the manner in which he was chosen, gave a sudden dash to those hopes. Then it has been found that some of the most unscrupulous white and black robbers who have, as members or lobbyists, long plied their nefarious trade at the capital, still disfigure and disgrace the present Assembly. So tainted is the atmosphere with corruption, so universally implicated is everybody about the government, of such a character are the ornaments of society at the capital, that there is no such thing as an influential local opinion to be brought against the scamps. They plunder, and glory in it. They steal, and defy you to prove it. The legalization of fraudulent scrip is regarded simply as a smart operation. The purchase of a senatorship is considered only a profitable trade. Those who make the most out of the operation are the best fellows. "How did you get your money?" was asked of a prominent legislator and lobbyist. "I stole it," was the prompt reply. The same man pursues his trade to-day, openly and unabashed. A leading member of the last administration was told he had the credit of having robbed the State of his large fortune. "Let them prove it," was his only answer. Meanwhile, both of them openly revel in their riches under the very shadow of the lean and hungry Treasury whence their ill-gotten gains were filched. As has been already said, it is believed that the lank impoverishment of the Treasury and the total abasement and destruction of the State credit alone prevent the continuance of robbery on the old scale. As it is, taxation is not in the least diminished, and nearly two millions per annum are raised for State expenses where $400,000 formerly sufficed. This affords succulent pasturage for a large crowd. For it must be remembered that not a dollar of it goes for interest on the State debt. The barter and sale of the offices in which the finances of the State are manipulated, which are divided among the numerous small counties under a system offering unusual facilities for the business, go on with as much activity as ever. The new Governor has the reputation of spending $30,000 or $40,000 a year on a salary of $3,500, bot his financial operations are taken as a matter of course, and only referred to with a slight shrug of the shoulders.
Not only are the residences of the white thieves who have stolen their half a million or more apiece, pointed out in Columbia, but here and there a comfortable abode of some sable ally, whose sole business is politics. But while the colored brother has had to be content hitherto with smaller sums than the white, which of itself would account for want of relative show, he is also more prodigal in his expenditures. Still his savings are not to be despised. Sambo takes naturally to stealing, for he is used to it. It was his notorious weakness in slavery, and in his nnregenerate state he is far less culpable than the white. The only way he ever had to possess himself of any thing, was to steal it from somebody else. The white man is really the responsible party for his thefts. He may well turn and say to his former master, "The villainy you teach, I will execute." The narration I have given sufficiently shows how things have gone and are going in this State, but its effect would be much heightened if there were time and room for details. Here is one: The total amount of the stationery bill of the House for the twenty years preceding 1861 averaged $400 per annum. Last year it was $16,000. But the meanness of these legislative robberies is not less significant of the character of the legislation than their magnitude. Last year the Treasury was in great straits on one or two occasions for money to anticipate the taxes. Some of the banks came to its aid and advanced about $60,000. They were this year compelled to go before the Committee of Claims to get reimbursed. The shameless rascals refused to pay the claim unless they were allowed to bag some 15 or 20 per cent, of it for their share! Another class of men who are allowed to rob the State freely, comprises those who control the printing-offices. The influence of a free press is well understood in South Carolina. It was understood and dreaded under the old régime, and was muzzled accordingly. Nearly all the newspapers in the State are now subsidized. The State government employs and pays them ad libitum. One installment of $75,000 lately went to about twenty-five papers in sums ranging from $1,000 to $7,000 apiece, a list of which was published by order of a vote of the Legislature a short time ago. Down here these small weekly sheets can be pretty nearly kept going on these subsidies. Of course, none of the deviltry of the State government is likely to be exposed through them. The whole amount of the printing bills of the State last year, it is computed (for every thing here has to be in part, guesswork), aggregated the immense sum of $600,000.
The Pure Blacks the Ruling Power. — Rivalries of Blacks and Yellows. — Carpet-bag Role wellnigh over. — The State governed by its own Citizens.
It is something more than a question of mere ouriosity, "Who rules this Legislature?" It is, to an overwhelming extent, as we have already seen, composed of colored men. They are of every hue, running from coal-black through all the intermediate shades, out to what seems pure white. There appears to be scarcely any limit to the variety of shades of the colored population of the State, and their representatives in the Legislature are hardly less various. There is really no way of knowing whether any given individual in South Carolina has black blood in his veins, except by tracing his descent. The specimens of the whitened-out colored men in the Legislature demonstrate this. But who leads among this assembly of blacks and yellows? Is it the white men? By no means; Sambo has already outgrown that.
There is a strong disposition, among the old whites of the State, to say and believe that it is the white blood in the negro race which is managing affairs in the new régime. The pure blacks have been set so low in the scale, that it would show great want of penetration or great misrepresentation on the part of the old masters for them to admit the capacity of the black to conduct civic affairs, even as well as they are conducted here. Hence, all credit is apt to be denied them, and given to the element of white blood that courses in the veins of their lighter-colored brethren. Let us look about the Legislature and see how this is. The man who uniformly discharges his duties in the most unassuming manner and in the best taste, is the chaplain of the House. He is coal-black. In the dignities and proprieties of his office, in what he says, and still better, in what he omits to say, he might be profitably studied as a model by the white political parsons who so often officiate in Congress. Take the chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means. He is another full-black man. By his position, he has charge of the most important business of the House. He was selected for his solid qualities, and he seems always to conduct himself with discretion. Two of the best speakers in the House are quite black. Their abilities are about eqnal. Their moral qualities differ. One appears to be honest, and the other to be a rascal. They are both leaders rather than led. Go into the Senate. It is not too much to say that the leading man of the Republican party in that body is Beverly Nash, a man wholly black. He is apparently consulted more and appealed to more, in the business of the body, than any man in it. It is admitted by his white opposition colleagues that he has more native ability than half the white men in the Senate. There is the Senator from Georgetown. He boasts of being a negro, and of having no fear of the white man in any respect. He evidently has no love for him. He is truculent and audacious, and has as much force and ability as any of the lighter-colored members of his race about him. He appears to be also one of the leading "strikers," and is not led, except through his interests. To say the least, none of the lighter-colored members of the race command any more consideration, or possess any more marked influence or talent, than these and other specimen blacks who might be named. So that there seems to be no reason for the conclusion that it is the white element in the negro race that is enabling this body of former slaves to discharge the functions of legislators. The full blacks are just as much entitled to the credit of what is done as the mulattoes.
The future results of this are yet to be developed in affairs here. History indicates that there is nearly as great an antagonism, when disputes of race begin, between blacks and yellows as between blacks and whites. The germs of this antagonism already begin to show themselves here. The white blood often takes on airs when it is commingled as well as when it is unmingled. The negro begins, as he did in Hayti, by getting rid of the white man. After he is disposed of, the mulatto may be pursued with equal persistonce. If South Carolina should be Africanized, the same tendency to make it a pure black government would, it is likely, manifest itself here as in Hayti. So far, however, the tendency has only been to get rid of white local leaders; and, as they have been hitherto mostly carpet-baggers, there should be nobody to complain. It is such a merit to drive them out, that nobody stops to ask or care who follows them and fills their places. Wherever those places have been filled by colored men, the change has been advantageous to the State. This is notably the case in the important office of State Treasurer, who is a colored man educated abroad by a rich father, who lived in Charleston. But, as the Treasury of South Carolina has been so thoroughly gutted by the thieves who have hitherto had possession of the State government, there is nothing left to steal. The note of any negro in the State is worth as much on the market as a South Carolina bond. It would puzzle even a Yankee carpet-bagger to make any thing out of the office of State Treasurer under such circumstances.
Three of these old carpet-bag leaders, now out of place, remain in Columbia; each, it is said, rolling in wealth. They, with a few remaining greedy legislative comrades, whom Sambo has not yet dismissed, together with the present Governor, constitute the chief ornaments of that privileged society. Speaking generally, then, we may say that the State government of South Carolina is no longer in the hands of the carpet-baggers. It is in the possession of her own people. The present State officers, legislative and executive, are all, or nearly all, South Carolinians. The Governor is a South Carolina white man, the Lieutenant-Governor, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, the Treasurer, and other State officers, are all of the sable tint, and all are alike natives. South Carolina has, therefore, to all intents and purposes, the charge of her own affairs. The evils she suffers from the character of her rulers grow out of the nature of the constituency which chooses them.
That the State has been victimized, plundered, and robbed by audacious scoundrels from abroad is not to be denied. But at home she is mainly rescued from their clutches, and it is not they whom the people of the State will have much longer to contend with. Those who would reform South Carolina in the future, will have chiefly its native population only to deal with. The black man of the Legislature feels his oats, and considers that the time has already arrived when he can take care of himself. He is not going to throw away, however, his party relationships, or his party advantages. He will use these in the future as he is now using them, to advance his own purposes. He is familiar with the uses of the caucus and the league, and he feels strongly the advantages of combination and concentration, and he has learned the trick of using them as well as his white brethren. It is sometimes said that, in these caucuses and leagues, all legislative affairs are shaped, and that here the white man bears sway. The action of the Legislature does not bear out this view. There was a measure up for consideration the other day in the House, in which the negroes broke away and voted alone. It was a bill for a railroad very much needed, and to which there could be and was no honest objection. But some of the corrupt negro leaders thought the corporation could be forced to pay for the charter, and if the members opposed it they could get pay for their votes. Accordingly, the great body of the blacks combined, and the bill was refused a passage by a decisive majority, who chuckled over their achievement as they would have done if they had cornered a rabbit in a cotton-field. The opposition was so evidently corrupt and scandalous, that not a single white man on either side in the body would allow himself to be caught in opposing the measure, and not one white vote was given against it. This is one instance among many to show that Sambo is fast getting out of leading-strings, and is already his own leader in the Legislature.
Sambo as a Critic of the White Man. — Beverly Nash the Negro. — Views of a Carpet-Bagger declining Business.
A large, well-built, showy kind of white man, with a good voice and fluent speech, was addressing the House yesterday. Standing beside me on the floor, near the Speaker's chair, was a snug-built, round-headed, young black man, of perhaps one-quarter white blood. He had full eyes, thick lips, and woolly hair, and was brusque and lively. I asked who was the speaker. "Oh," replied he, with a toss of the head and a scornful air, "that is a chuckle-head from —. He has got about as much brains as you can hold in your hand." My pride of race was incontinently shocked. Here was a new view. It was no longer the white man deriding the incapacity of the negro. The tables were emphatically turned. It was Sambo proclaiming the white man's inferiority. Here, then, is something suggestive. "Soho! my friend," I said, "you know these people, then; give us your judgment of them."
He replied: "We have all sorts here, good, bad, and indifferent." "Parsons among them?" "No, only a few. Not so many as formerly. When I was on the stump at the last election, I advised the people not to send the parsons. They gave us a great deal of trouble. They had been the most corrupt rascals we had in the Legislature. Now they are less plenty. We are improving. But see that darkey now talking. Isn't it ridiculous that people should send such representatives. They don't know any thing, and haven't even decent manners. There is another big fool, sitting there. Look at him. Why don't they keep such chaps at home? They are a disgrace to the colored people." It was my snug-built, thick-lipped, woolly-headed, small-brained, black friend, you see, who was making these fruitful comments. The scene grew interesting. "How about this Senator Patterson business?" "Well, we sha'n't know any thing certain about it till it is investigated. A member was boasting the other day at a public table, before twenty fellowboarders and members, of his intentions. He said that, where there was money going, a member was a fool who did not get his share. For his part, he intended to make all he could. He was here for that purpose. A while after Patterson's election, this man was flash of money. He deposited $250 in bank, and displayed $150 more, which he said he must, reserve for current expenses. Where he got his money nobody knows. All we know is this, that he had none when he came here." Then our colored friend added, with great naiveté, "Everybody is aware that the senatorial election is the only money measure that has been before the legislature at this session."
"Who is this Whittemore, just elected by the Legislature as one of the trustees of the State Agricultural College?" "Oh, he is that white member of Congress who was turned out for selling his cadetship. He may do well enough for a place like that, but I should not vote for him if I had a seat here. I am a young man, just entered on a political career, and have a record to make, and I don't want to be mixed up with such fellows as Whittemore."
Here, again, we have virtuous Sambo on the corrupt white man. This is even more edifying. Whittemore is a white parson. Our friend is a black layman. We cordially sympathize in his youthful, praiseworthy resolutions. Who knows he will not hold to them steadfastly to the end? Let us hope. There is need he should. He bears one of the most honored nnmes in South Carolina, and there is a good sprinkling of white blood in his veins. May he live long and illustrate the virtues of both races!
He continued: "You have heard of Beverly Nash? There he sits. A full-blooded black man, six feet high. He is a good-looking man, with pleasing manners. He was formerly a slave of "W.C. Preston, and afterward a bootblack at one of our hotels. He is now a substantial citizen, and a prominent leader in the Senate and in the State. He handles them all. The lawyers and the white chivalry, as they call themselves, have learned to let him alone. They know more of law and some other things than he does; but he studies them all up, and then comes down on them with a good story or an anecdote, and you better believe he carries the audience right along with him. All the laugh and all the ridicule is on his side. And when he undertakes a thing, he generally puts it through, I tell you. No, sir, there is now nobody who cares to attack Beverly Nash. They let him alone right smart."
"They were mostly slaves, these people in the Legislature?" "Yes, nearly all, including the Speaker of the House; not more than five or six were freeborn." "And you?" "No, sir, I never was a slave. I was raised in Charleston. My parents were free and my grandparents before them."
"You have United States troops in Columbia." "Yes, but we don't need them. The Ku-klux did not bother anybody down here. We can take care of ourselves. Things are in rather a bad fix in the State, financially, but they will all come out right in the end. This town has suffered greatly, but it is fast recovering. Sherman's troops burnt the city. There is no doubt about that. I myself lost a house, and I ought to be paid for it; for if ever the sun shone on a loyal man I am one. It cost $600 or $700, and could not be rebuilt for twice the money. I am sure I ought to be paid." It was evident our bright belligerent black friend was not only bent on a political "career," but also had a thrifty eye to the main chance. But why not? Who shall reproach him for that? "There were many black mercenaries in the Legislature. Nobody could dispute that. But the same thing existed elsewhere, didn't it, where things were whiter?" I declined to contest that view of the case.
Turning to a solitary white man on my way out of the crowd, he replied, to some remark, that "to take the State of South Carolina away from the intelligent white men and hand it over bodily to ignorant negroes just escaped from slavery, because there happened to be four blacks to three whites throughout the State, was nothing less than flat burglary on the theory and practice of representative government." I suggested, in reply, that the system of cumulative voting might very much relieve the problem. If the whites had their fair proportion of the representation, say three to four, would not energy, talent, and resolution, do the rest? But he was disinclined to any hopeful view of the case. He said "the darkey was not going to let up on any of the advantages he had. He was more inclined to be aggressive than yielding. He was improving, but he was already getting too big for his breeches. Instead of giving the whites a show,he was rather thinking of Africanizing the State, He felt he could go alone. He was beginning to show the cold shoulder to the white man. What did he want of the white man? The white man put on airs. He would not associate socially with the colored brethren, neither would he introduce them to his daughters. This thing could not last. Genuine political equality means social equality with the governing classes. If the white man could not fraternize with them, then the white man may go hang. Sambo will go it alone. Why not? The white walking-stick will be dispensed with. The white figure-head will be removed. Congo is sufficient unto itself. Every thing was tending that way. It appeared like ingratitude to their white emancipators, and perhaps this consideration would operate to retard the movement. But look at the evidence. Here were 101 Republicans in the Legislature. Out of the whole number only seven were white men; 94 were colored. Did not this look like Africanizing things? In the executive government, to be sure, the Governor was white. He got his place by dancing at negro balls and speculating in negro delegates. But the Lieutenant-Governor was colored, and the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House, and the Treasurer of the State, and nearly all the rest of the officials. Here was Columbia. Half the population was white, but its Senator was colored, and its Representatives in the Legislature and in the city government were nearly all colored men. So were its policemen and its market-men. Everybody in office was a darkey. As for the white carpet-baggers, they were getting shoved out all round." My informant was undoubtedly well informed. He was more alive to the facts than another less interested might have been. For he was an office-holder and a carpet-bagger. His species have had their day in South Carolina. This he foresees, and naturally quakes in his shoes. His track in the State has been one of robbery and desolation, and there is none to lament his final expulsion, whoever follows.
The Raw Negro as a Legislator. — His Qualities and Qualifications. — His Ignorance and Corruption.
The highest style of legislative spoliation is as well understood in the South Carolina Legislature as in any Tammany conclave that ever existed. The whites were the original teachers, but the blacks have shown themselves to be great adepts as scholars. If any one will take the trouble to watch the votes of the colored Representatives in Congress from South Carolina, he will not have to come down into this State to see the fact illustrated. Messrs. Elliott and Rainey had no scruples about marching with the white thieving phalanx and voting double back pay to themselves.
We may be surprised at the imitative capacity of the negro in his new functions, and even at his occasional exhibition of sense and shrewdness. When we expect nothing it is a surprise to get something. In viewing him in his new relations it is, however, easy to fall into error both in underrating him and in overrating him.
No one will dispute the proposition that the rude and unlettered black man is no better than the raw and untrained white man, either morally or intellectually. It is not necessary to assume the old slave's inferiority to the ignorant white man to canvass his fitness as a legislator.
It is sometimes said he showed great magnanimity and forbearance in not cutting the throats of the masters' families when he was emancipated. His forbearance is a fact that is very generally recognized with gratitude throughout the South. Yet it must not be forgotten that he did not even then know if he himself was fairly out of prison. He has and had long been in the habit of feeling the presence of an iron authority over him, and he knew it still existed somewhere, when he saw his master flee and fall before it. Sambo is to have credit only for that salutary fear that restrains violence from apprehension of its consequences. It is not necessary nor just, however, to take away such credit as fairly belongs to him for his conduct in the great day of emancipation. But we must beware of being carried away by sentimental imaginings.
The ignorant, thievish, immoral, stupid, degraded black man, is then no better than the white man of the same description. The one is just as much of a barbarian as the other. The black savage is as degraded as the white savage. If he has not been, while in slavery, as much of a criminal as the corresponding class in the old free States, it is because he has been under stricter surveillance and more rigid control.
While we concede the existence of much that is good and even intelligent in the dense masses of the black population of South Carolina, and thoroughly sympathize with its rejoicings over its happy issue from a cruel bondage, and its hopes of a better future, it is impossible not to recognize the immense proportion of ignorance and vice that permeates the mass. It is fearful to contemplate the thick-coming issues that result from emancipation and enfranchisement, which are now barely in the bud and in the blossom. The ignorance manifested is black with its denseness. And it is not too much too say that, as the negro, in slavery had absolutely no morale, he comes out of it entirely without morale. It is in the unpremeditated language of the leading Republican newspaper of Columbia, in advocating compulsory education, that the negroes are termed "ignorant, narrow-minded, vicious, worthless animals." This is the spontaneous criticism of an editor who is a child and a champion of black rule, betrayed accidentally into the expression of his real sentiments through the urgency of his advocacy of compulsory education. Yet the blacks where he lives are among the best in the State, and altogether more advanced in enlightenment than the inhabitants of the purely black counties in the lower part of the State.
With a constituency thus degraded, what are we to expect of its representatives?
The existing Legislature is already furnishing the answer. The black constituency of Charleston itself is to-day represented by men who belong in the penitentiary. The best that can be said is that the worst of these representatives are not black. But some of the lower counties have legislative specimens of black rascality that it would be hard to match in any white assembly.
The black men who led the colored forces the other day against a railroad charter, because their votes had not been purchased, were models of hardihood in legislative immorality. They were not so wily nor so expert, perhaps, as the one white man who was their ally in debate, but who dodged the vote from fear of his constituency; but they exhibited on that, as they have on other occasions, an entire want of moral tone, and a brazen effrontery in pursuing their venal purposes that could not be surpassed by the most accomplished "striker" of Tweed's old gang. I have before alluded to the fact that on this occasion the blacks voted alone, not one white man going with them in opposing the measure they had conspired to defeat in order to extort money from the corporators.
This mass of black representatives, however ignorant in other respects, were here seen to be well schooled in the arts of corruption. They knew precisely what they were about and just what they wanted, and they knew the same when they voted for Patterson for Senator.
This is the kind of moral education the ignorant blacks of the State are getting by being made legislators. The first lessons were, to be sure, given by whites from abroad. But the success of the carpet-baggers has stimulated the growth of knavish native demagogues, who bid fair to surpass their instructors. The imitative powers of the blacks and their destitution of morale put them already in the front ranks of the men who are robbing and disgracing the State, and cheating the gallows of its due.
It is bad enough to have the decency and intelligence and property of the State subjected to the domination of its ignorant black pauper multitude, but it becomes unendurable when to that ignorance the worst vices are superadded.
It was only a short time before the adjournment of the Legislature that the following occurrence took place: Some of the notorious plunderers had, a year or two before, obtained a charter to furnish the city of Charleston with pure water. They refused to execute the work, in order to extort a bonus from the city itself for the charter. The city declined to he robbed in this way, and went to the last Legislature for a now charter. Everybody was in favor of giving it except those interested in the old one. The knaves, by their boldness, were able to defeat the city and prevent the passage of its bill. This was accomplished in the Senate by a black man, who declared his purpose to defeat the measure by obstructive proceedings. The Senate was a unit for it, with the exception of three or four interested in the old charter, whom this sable legislator led. After a wearisome contest, in which all the arts of legislative obstruction were practised, this Senator finally moved an amendment providing for the introduction of hot water, and on this absurd proposition talked several hours in a night session, and threatened to talk all night. In this way the patience of the Senate was finally exhausted, and, with an overwhelming majority in favor of the measure, gave up the contest with the black filibuster, and allowed him to defeat the bill. Who shall say, after this, that Sambo any longer needs carpet-baggers to lead him?
Humiliation of the White Minority. — Hostility of the Blacks to Immigration. — Promise of the Future.
In viewing the condition of South Carolina, one naturally is led to inquire into the political situation of its chief city, Charleston. An examination shows that the city is a mere cipher, with neither representation nor influence in State affairs, and plays no part therein. The last remaining privilege of counting and recording its own vote has been taken away from it by the last Legislature, apparently for the reason that a majority of its citizens are opposed to the ruling dynasty. That body has passed an act giving to the Governor the appointment of commissioners and sub-commissioners, who are to take entire charge of the city elections, control the ballotboxes, count the votes, and of course manipulate the electors in such way as they please. "With such wholly unscrupulous persona as they have in Charleston to manage elections, this scheme is equivalent to subverting the right of election altogether. Even under the present system, the conservative and property interests of the city have no representative in the Legislature. With its 50,000 inhabitants and $30,000,000 of taxable values, the city proper is literally unrepresented in the politics of the State. Its vote is merged in that of the county, which chooses all its Representatives on general ticket. The majority vote of the city is thus extinguished in the preponderating numbers of the swamp negroes for thirty miles around, who choose the city's representatives. It thus turns out that, of the whole eighteen members of the county, nearly all are negroes, and the few who are not are the lowest and worst sort of white men.
But, as if this injustice were not enough for Charleston to endure, the present Legislature has passed the act referred to, by which the city is to be robbed of the poor privilege of purifying her own ballot-box and counting her own votes!
The question often naturally arises, whether the two races cannot agree to a partnership rule. Philanthropy and patriotism unite in the earnest desire for such an experiment, but the character of the present dynasty destroys all chances for the trial of it. Natural jealousies, instead of being abated, as they might be, by honesty and fair play, are aggravated and widened by the conduct of the dominant power. Instead of there being any disposition to remedy the injustice that prevails, there is exhibited a purpose to aggravate it, as we see in the example before us. An incident has just occurred which, though not much in itself, also shows the drift of things: A good white Republican, serving, as postmaster at Charleston, to the satisfaction of everybody, has just been removed by the Federal Government at Washington, and a black man put in his place.
On this subject, William Cullen Bryant, a man as distinguished in the political as he is eminent in the literary world, and a stanch supporter of General Grant, thus speaks of the President: "We wish, for example, that he would turn out the person whom he has just appointed Postmaster of Charleston, and restore to office the man whom he unwisely, and contrary to the wish of the people of Charleston, removed."
With this disposition everywhere to crowd the white man and humiliate the minority, it is wellnigh impossible to initiate such reforms as the situation demands. One of the methods by which the minority have proposed to restore to themselves some power in the government of the State, is by adopting the system now prevailing in Illinois of minority representation, or cumulative voting; but, with the spirit that prevails in the State at present, this reform seems almost hopeless, and no echoes of the debates held in the Tax-payers' Convention on that question are any longer heard in the State.
And so in the matter of immigration. The material interests of the State clearly demand it. But the blacks are against it, as they fear its political consequences. A late debate in the Senate illustrated this. A bill was up to exempt new railroad enterprises and various enumerated kinds of manufactures from taxation. A black leader debated it, and in the course of his remarks took occasion to say he had heard, or overheard, a good deal from the class of people whom this legislation was designed to benefit; that it was intended to overslaugh and crowd out the blacks by foreign immigrants, to be introduced into the State by wholesale. Now, he wanted everybody to understand that the blacks did not intend to be crowded out, but that they proposed to stand their ground and "fight this thing out to the bitter end." He said they might bring on their immigrants, and they would find the blacks ready for them.
It was thus incidentally shown on that, as it often has been on other occasions, that the jealousy of the blacks is constant against the white man, and that they do not favor any influential participation by him in the government of the State. And, as in the case of Charleston, they are willing to perpetrate the greatest injustice to prevent it.
On the question of immigration, the present Governor is both for and against the measure. He knows the interest of the State requires it, and he knows his negro supporters are opposed to it. In his last annual message he thus declares himself in favor of immigration, but against immigrant foreigners. He admits the need of immigration in the abstract, but declares that the State wants no immigrants except from the Northern States. These he thinks would make excellent agriculturists. In a word, he is very eager in his invitations to a class of people whom he knows will not come, and turns his back upon and rebuffs those who would be glad to come.
This is all dear enough evidence as to the policy of the blacks and their corrupt white allies in regard to South Carolina. They desire to bind her down in her present degradation. Looking at the majorities they wield in the dense negro counties, they believe they can do it.
But, when we rise to a contemplation of those higher laws which govern the progress of humanity, we reach a belief that amounts to an assurance that Honesty and Intelligence will in the end be more than a match for Ignorance and Corruption; and that even South Carolina, reduced, beleaguered and prostrate as she is, will not always remain a prey to the influences which now rule the State. Looking at her situation and resources, and the invincible qualities that mark the Anglo-Saxon race, we cannot admit that she is going to be arrested in her progress, and least of all to recede and relapse into barbarism, because of her present abnormal condition. The State must burst its bonds. The energy of the American race, the nature of things, the demands of modern civilization, the pulsations of trade, commerce, public intelligence, and mechanic industry, throbbing through the intercourse by railroad and telegraph, and cooperating with the vital and pervading resources of the State, all seem to warrant the conclusion that a change must come. Although revolutions do not go backward, we feel that a state of things at once unequal and unnatural cannot endure. The whites must have in one way or another their relative weight in public affairs, not only in respect to the claim of numbers, but of the still weightier claims of property, intelligence, and enterprise. While the laws of the universe remain, these claims must in the end successfully assert themselves. Not even governments can prevent it. And it is about time for the Federal Administration to take this reflection to heart.
The Rule of the Negro in South Carolina. — What it is, what it portends. — Education.
The rule of South Carolina should not be dignified with the name of government. It is the installation of a huge system of brigandage. The men who have had it in control, and who now have it in control, are the picked villains of the community. They are the highwaymen of the State. They are professional legislative robbers. They are men who have studied and practised the art of legalized theft. They are in no sense different from, or better than, the men who fill the prisons and penitentiaries of the world. They are, in fact, of precisely that class, only more daring and audacious. They pick your pockets by law. They rob the poor and the rich alike, by law. They confiscate your estate by law. They do none of these things even under the tyrant's plea of the public good or the public necessity. They do all simply to enrich themselves personally. The sole, base object is, to gorge the individual with public plunder. Having done it, they turn around and buy immunity for their acts by sharing their gains with the ignorant, pauperized, besotted crowd who have chosen them to the stations they fill, and which enable them thus to rob and plunder.
Are we to be told that these things are inevitable because they are the results of our theory of government, and that that theory must be sound? Is not the true reasoning quite in the other direction? If these are the legitimate results of it, then the theory is at false, and its application must somehow be changed or modified. What the world is after is results — sound, wholesome, just results. These every intelligent and resolute community will have, sooner or later, in one way or another. They will not forever endure tyrannies, and oppressions, and outrages. It is the corruptions and the abuses of authority that stimulate revolutions, rupture kingdoms, and overturn empires. This is as true now and will be as true in the future as it has been in the past. Fraud, injustice, misrule in government, whatever their protean shapes, whether lofty or low, whether noble or ignoble in their aspects, will breed a temper that will seek to accomplish their overthrow. Especially must this be so in our times. Does anybody suppose that such a condition of things as exists to-day in South Carolina is to last? Such a supposition is to ignore the history and the character of mankind. Suppose the men, or a large portion of the white men, of South Carolina who have gone through the War of the Rebellion are cowed and demoralized by its results; how is it with the individuals of the rising generation who are fast taking their places? Is not the hot blood of the South in their veins? They have the ardor of youth. They have the stimulus of young ambition; they have the pride of ancestry; they have the inherited valor of successive generations. Have they no part to play in the future? We may rest assured that no depressing circumstances of the present are going to destroy or repress the natural development that comes of race and of blood. Opportunity alone is wanting; and that, we know, is always found by the bold and aspiring.
In pointing to those dangers, which the future has in store, we take the same conservative part that we did in warning the Northern Democracy and the rabid slave-holder against the daring attempt to force slavery into the Free Territories. We then pleaded for the rights of freemen and the demand of justice. We do the same now. We opposed oppression then, we oppose oppression now. The circumstances are different, the elements of the case are different, but the fundamental principle underlying the action then and the action now is identical. It is the true function of conservatism in government to recognize present and to foresee future danger and guard against it. It was true conservatism to expose the evils of slavery and aim to prevent its spread. It is true conservatism now to expose the frightful results of the rule of ignorance, barbarism, and vice, and to visit with unsparing condemnation a condition of affairs as perilous and as threatening to the future peace and prosperity of the country as any that ever preceded it in our history. Those who suppose that any thing short of a good government in the State of South Carolina, and, we may add, of any other State similarly situated in the South, is going to long stand, or be tolerated, may well take heed, if their judgments are ever to find expression in action. The history of Hungary is before us. The history of Poland is before us. The history of Ireland is before us. Where there is actual injustice, or radical wrong in the government, it breeds resistance. That wrong may be even in part sentimental. It is none the less real for that. The present government of South Carolina is not only corrupt and oppressive, it is insulting. It denies the exercise of the rights of white communities, because they are white. The city of Charleston is an example, as we have heretofore shown. The black government of the State denies it the right to superintend its own voting, or to count its own votes.
There is always a calm after a rebellion is quelled. There is always a time when "order reigns in Warsaw." But, unless justice is established, a storm follows. The revolutionary spirit is a catching disorder. It is even more — it is hereditary. In these later times wise rulers have been taught a lesson. They have learned to remove just causes of complaint. We are just having our first trials in this line reach the ear of the Federal Government. They already come in trumpet-tones from at least two States in the Union. Have the men who are in temporary charge of our national affairs the ability, the skill, or the perception of the situation that is requisite to deal with them?
These remarks are not intended to perpetuate discontent or hostility. They are plain, frank words, addressed to the good sense and the intelligence of the reader. They speak to the judgment only. If they have any force, it comes of their truth and justice alone. They are but an exposition and a warning. They have no object beyond that of attracting public attention to existing scenes, circumstances, and events that are alike full of interest and full of peril to the country.
The question is often asked if education is not the remedy for the blackness of darkness that prevails in South Carolina. Yes, indeed, if that were possible. Make it compulsory then. But what is education? Is it the glib recitation of the alphabet, or the multiplication-table? Is it the knowledge of reading and writing? This is all that compulsory education can give, in its most successful forms. But here is a race to be educated in the very elements of manhood. They have to be taught positively and negatively. The education they require is the formation of a race the opposite of the existing race. They have to be taught not to lie, not to steal, not to be unchaste. To educate them properly is to revolutionize their whole moral nature. The groundwork of that education which will make them fit rulers of a republic will not even have been laid when they shall be taught reading and writing. It is the reading and writing negroes of the South Carolina Legislature who lead in its most infamous venalities and corruptions. This sort of education merely lends a cutting edge to their moral obtuseness. Education, to be what it ought to be with the existing race of negroes in the South, means to educate them out of themselves, means to undo the habits and practices and modes of thought and want of thought engendered by centuries of slavery. It means the moral enlightenment and regeneration of a whole people debauched and imbruted for ages. Such is the gigantic task demanded of an education suited to existing circumstances.
We do not mean to say that all this is necessary to entitle the colored man to the privileges of citizenship, but only mean it as a reply to the glib suggestion of compulsory education as a ready remedy for the existing disorders and crimes that disgrace republican government and menace its future. Neither is it any answer to say that other people are ignorant, and superstitious, and degraded. When the ignorant and superstitious and degraded subjects of other nationalities have shown themselves capable of governing the better classes of society, it will be time to plead their example and their qualifications for the functions of rulers. But they are the classes who have never yet in history exercised the functions of government. And thus the fact that they exist from age to age, and that their presence does not destroy governments, proves nothing. They have lived as pupils in the State, and not as its masters, as they now live in South Carolina. Let us not be misunderstood. We are not talking about denying rights of citizenship. We are denouncing governments of ignorance and vice, and demanding a remedy.
Again, there is no parallel to be drawn between the exceptional venality of Northern Legislatures and the corruptions of South Carolina government. They do not spring from the same causes. The former can be promptly remedied by exposure and by an appeal to the intelligence and virtue of the constituency; in the other case there is no such tribunal to appeal to. It is a moral morass in which there is neither standing nor holding ground.
The Character of the Negro, morally and intellectually.
Southern thinking minds have always been deeply exercised over the problem of the black population, from Mr. Jefferson down. They strive to master it. They try hard to elucidate it. They have an unconquerable desire to find holding-ground for their speculations. They look backward, and around them, and forward to the future, to try and discover a philosophy and a theory which shall explain the various and curious facts brought to their knowledge, and guide them out of the smoky labyrinth wherein they grope. But that full solution they so much desire always eludes their grasp. Africa rises always to their view. There the negro has had sway through unnumbered centuries. There he is a barbarian still. Give him sway elsewhere, will his condition be different? What ground is there for the supposition? When the white element exists in him, it modifies but does not improve him.
It is the uniform testimony of experience and observation that the pure black is the best man. The admixture of white blood does no good, but the contrary. The half-breed is more treacherous, more passionate, more vicious, more delicate in constitution. But the black is a child of vice and ignorance and superstition in South Carolina as well as in Africa. What he might have been capable of, under different conditions than those in which he has ever existed, it is useless to inquire. Races of men exhibit the same general characteristics from age to age. The question which concerns us is, not what might he, or what in some remote future may be, but what now is. The negro is suddenly thrust into conspicuous prominence in our political system, and it is his present condition, qualities, habits, propensities, that we have to deal with, and we are now all alike deeply interested with his former masters in considering the problem of his character. He is certainly not the kind of man, and his race is not the race, for whom our political institutions were originally made; and it is already a serious question whether he is the man, or his the race, for which they are adapted. We have but barely entered upon the experience which is to furnish a solution of this question. It is one we need to study and try to master. The overshadowing mass of black barbarism at the South hangs like a portentous cloud upon the horizon. The country boldly confronted the question of slavery and as boldly destroyed it. It is gone, and gone forever. No man wishes to restore it. Not even in South Carolina is that man to be found. The best thinkers of the South to-day tell us they bless God for the war. It was necessary to get rid of slavery. But for slavery, they believe, the original slave States of the South would be among the greatest and most nourishing of all our commonwealths. It is the negro who has been the innocent cause of their despoliation. It is the negro that rests like an incubus upon them. Their vital forces pulsate under ribs of iron which will not give them play. It is the man from Africa who today bestrides them like a colossus. He came in helplessness, he has risen in strength. He was the servant of South Carolina; he has become her master. These are the appalling facts that make it important and necessary that the negro should be studied and understood by the whole country. It is not a question for South Carolina merely; it is a question for the nation. For it is a question of the predominance and antagonism of races. If it be true that this is not a white man's government, is it true of any State that it shall be a black man's government? It is a question for statesmanship to answer whether it can be expected that the white man will long stand passively by and see all the power of legislation wielded by the inferior race. And more: whether he can be expected to witness patiently the still more exasperating spectacle of the ignorance and venality of the blacks, bearing sway over the intelligence, probity, and honest manhood of the State. There is a moral element in every State. There is its conscience, its sense of right, its hatred of wrong. These are its genuine and unconquerable revolutionary forces. Once roused, and we have a State on fire, and a fire which politics and politicians are always powerless to quench. It is the fanaticism of justice, which the stars in their courses sustain, and against which no attribute of the Almighty takes part.
We only disposed of one phase of the negro question in abolishing slavery. The great perplexity of establishing just relations between the races in the negro States is yet to be encountered. And it comes upon the country under a cloud of embarrassments. It has to be settled under the growing urgency and doubtful solution of the question whether the great mass of the black population at the South is not now mentally and morally unfit for self-government, and whether the prog- ress of events will not force a modification of the original reconstruction acts — not based upon race or color or previous condition, but upon other considerations yet to be evolved and elucidated.
Fancy the moral condition of a State in which a large majority of all its voting citizens are habitually guilty of thieving and of concubinage. Yet such is the condition, of South Carolina. Are we to be told that the civilization of the nineteenth century has nothing better to propose than this for the government of one of the oldest and proudest States of the American Union?
As it is morally, so it is intellectually. These same rulers of a great State, speaking of them as a whole, neither read nor write. They are as ignorant and as irresponsible in the exercise of their political functions as would be the Bedouin Arab of the desert, or the roving Comanches of the plains, if called upon to choose the rulers of New York or Massachusetts. Is this the self-government for which a war of seven years was waged, in which the best blood of a nation was shed, and to secure the results of which a written Constitution was painfully elaborated by its wisest and most conscientious men, in order that justice and liberty might forever be maintained in the States of the model American Republic? Tell us what government of any civilized state of the Old World, if imported into South Carolina, would be as oppressive upon, and as unfitted for, the 300,000 white people of that State, as that which now curses it under the name of republican!
The South as it is, and not as it seems. — The Demands of Justice and Statesmanship.
It was not the whole Southern people that were fools or criminals, in the matter of secession, by any means. It was really but a handful of leaders, not one of whom was of sound mind, that precipitated the insane attempt to take the slave-holding States out of the Union. But for half a dozen men, who never made any figure in the real work of the rebellion afterward, there would have been no secession and no war. It was Toombs, and Slidell, and Rhett, and Mason, and Jeff Davis, who were the malignant spirits of the contest, and without whom the war would not have been made. The men who commanded the Southern armies, like Lee and the Johnstons, and Stonewall Jackson, and Longstreet; and the more eminent of the civilians who carried on the rebel government, as R.M.T. Hunter, Alexander H. Stephens, and Benjamin, would never have moved hand or foot to initiate secession. They, and even such men as Governor Wise, were hurried along by a popular current, set in motion by the radicals of the slave-holding party, which they found themselves powerless to resist. Wise was one of the most fiery of the slave-holders, but even he was against secession. There was thus no unanimity even among the dominant party of the South, who had acquired ascendency from their loud protestation of their peculiar devotion to the interests of the South, and signalized it repeatedly in Congress by their furious denunciations of everybody who would not worship the offensive god of their own idolatry. Much of what they said and did was purely dramatic and designed to advance personal and political ends. They played the part of the demagogue with the objects of the demagogue, and with no serious intention of rupturing the Union, or bringing on a bloody war. We say, without fear of contradiction, that, during the ten years that preceded the breaking out of the rebellion, not one in ten of the members from the slave States favored disunion in any event. The inflammatory speeches in behalf of slavery, and against those who opposed its spread, were generally made by those engaged in a race for popular favor at home. They were for bunkum. And some of the most distinguished of the surviving actors in those efforts have to-day no hesitation in avowing it. The only excuse for their criminality is to be found in their ignorance of the mischief they were committing. They helped to fill the magazine with materials, which a few others, more bold and more reckless, exploded. They helped to "fire the Southern heart," and to popularize the sentiment that to oppose the extension of slavery into territory where it did not exist, was in some way an aggression upon Southern rights, which ought to be resisted. This sentiment was spread by these dramatic and demagogical efforts, and enabled the handful of secession leaders to excite the sudden ebullition of popular fervor, which finally carried the secession conventions without any majority behind them.
Outside the ranks of the slave-holders themselves, whose own divisions were such as we have depicted, there was a vast body of moderate, conservative men, who had no part or lot in agitating the slavery question. They were men who, finding slavery as a birthright and an inheritance, aimed to make the best of their situation. They deprecated agitation, and desired to remove it from the field of political discussion. They held to no extremes of opinion either in regard to its spread or its abolition. They were beset by no mad conceits of a slave empire, and their moral sense had not been so corrupted that they desired its unending perpetuation. They viewed slavery as an evil, but an evil to be endured, till a way, yet unseen by them, was opened for its extinction. They saw it was a question of an inflammable character, easily made the stepping-stone of ambition, and requiring constant efforts to allay strife and contention in regard to it. These they patriotically andd devotedly made, opposing rampant abolitionism on the one hand, and slave-mongering and slave-spreading on the other. A vast proportion of substantial citizens of the South were of this way of thinking always. It was this class who kept many of the best men of the South in Congress as their representatives, for long years, and who went under at last, as the banks of a river go under during a destructive rise of its waters. That body of men in the South were submerged by the rebellion, but they were not converted and not wholly destroyed. They and their descendants exist to-day, a large, growing, powerful, upright phalanx of worthy citizens. They are the men, and the descendants of men, who sent such representatives to Congress as John Bell, of Tennessee, and Berrien, of Georgia, and Governor Aiken, Edward Stanley, and Willie P. Mangum, of the Carolinas, and a host of others of kindred virtues and talents, whose wisdom and moderation were the pride of the nation.
There is another view of the case that should not be overlooked. Notwithstanding the vigor with which the rebellion was sustained by the Confederate troops in the field, there is abundant testimony to show that, after the first sudden voluntary rush to arms which marked the opening of the contest, the heart of the people was never in the war. The idea had been sedulously inculcated that it was to be a mere holiday affair. Ex-Senator Chesnut, of South Carolina, proclaimed in the secession convention of that State, that he would drink all the blood that would be shed in consequence of secession. But, when it was found that earnest war was to be the result, the mass of the people were wholly averse to remaining in the army. As fast as their first short terms expired they hastened to return to their homes, and they never left them except as they were dragged out by the strong arm of military power. It was only by exercising despotic authority, and by being utterly callous and conscienceless in its exercise, that the Confederate authorities recruited the rebel armies. And, notwithstanding all the exertion made, the losses by desertion were so great at times as to threaten the absolute dissolution of the army. In one of the incautious speeches in which President Davis indulged himself in a tour through South Carolina during the war, he substantially admitted this. The testimony now is uniform in the South that, as the war progressed, the troops made use of every excuse and opportunity to flee from the ranks and go to their starving households. A little handful of self-styled chivalry clung to the Confederate standard, urged thereto by the stimulants of personal pride and female pique, which urged them on, but these sentiments and influences had no weight with the mass.
It is only on this theory that we can account for the sudden and, at the time, almost inexplicable collapse of the Southern armies after Lee was driven from Richmond. They disappeared like the mist under the morning sun, while friends and allies both in this country and Europe were confidently predicting a fresh and strenuous guerrilla resistance in detail.
Little did those allies know of the sufferings the rank and file had endured in fighting battles in which they had no interest, or how they had skulked, deserted, hid, and been hunted by bloodhounds, and torn from their suffering families under the most heartless and cruel circumstances. Thus oppressed, they only too willingly threw away their arms and returned to the welcome avocations of peace. They were men without a grievance or a complaint. They had never been oppressed, and they knew it. They had never been denied a personal nor a political right enjoyed by the most favored citizen of the republic. Why should they voluntarily continue a war against such a Government? The answer was found in their subsequent action. They never did. They never raised a Land to prolong the contest a day. This striking fact is the testimony of the rank and file in regard to the character of the wrongs the Confederate Government were professedly attempting to right.
We think there is full justification for the statement that a vast majority of the Southern people were entrapped by a handful of ambitious leaders, destitute of the first elements of sound statesmanship, into a war for which there was no provocation, and which they would never have deliberately confronted. But, war once begun, they were in a vise. A despotic military government was thenceforth their master. To that is to be imputed all that followed.
Considerations like these may lead us to inquire whether the South of our imagination, as seen through the smoke and the blood and the fire of civil war, is not something very different from the real South that was dragged into secession, or the actual South of to-day.
The war, the events of the war, the men of the war, hang like a thick, impenetrable curtain before the eyes of the present generation of Northern, people, hiding from view a past history, and existing facts, and apresent situation, all of which are profoundly essential to a proper understanding of the problem with which the statesmanship of the country has now to deal. There is in the South to-day an enormous mass of inherited worth, and virtue, and capacity, and wisdom, and every solid element of citizenship, that has an indefeasible right to demand recognition, and justice, and fraternal consideration. The commonest sentiments of humanity require it. The ties of a common lineage and a common government demand it. It is no more than we extend to the most worthless specimens of humanity of foreign birth that are annually landing upon our shores. Every generous impulse prompts it. The dictates of a wise statesmanship imperiously exact it. Nothing stands in the way of such recognition, but a blind, selfish, partisan hostility, that is as undying in its revenges as it is merciless in its judgments.
It is necessary to awake to the necessity of exterminating this hateful obstacle. It is time prejudice and enmity were put aside. In an eager desire to secure the natural rights of one set of people we have quite overlooked the claims of another. In carelessness of the sufferings of the guilty, the heavy hand of injustice has been laid upon the innocent.
United States Troops in Carolina. — Destruction of the South Carolina University. — A Bastard Government. — Reform demanded.
Among the significant peculiarities to be observed in Columbia is the presence of United States troops. They occupy barracks on the outskirts of the town, in a pleasant quarter, where they drill daily, where the flag always floats, and where military music is heard at sunset. Among the airs often played is that which refers to the late John Brown, of Ossawattomie. The gentle reminder contained in that piece of music seems to be particularly superfluous during the sessions of the present South Carolina Legislature. For if any thing would demonstrate the fact that the soul of that immortal person is marching on, it would be the living presence of that body of legislators. But the music seems to create no ripple of discontent. It is a favorite pastime of the "Gig Society" of Columbia to drive every evening to the parade-grounds and listen to such strains as the band chooses to discourse. Out of the multitude no one runs away at the sound of John Brown's name. The military have no terrors for this community, and their presence is welcomed rather than deprecated. They are not regarded in the light of an offensive symbol of authority; the money they spend and the music they make are considered a good deal more than an offset for any sentimental objections that it might be fancied their presence would excite.
Near by the parade-grounds are the college buildings of the University of South Carolina. Before the war their walls sheltered some two hundred students. Their young blood was fired by the first tap of the drum, and they all rushed to the field. They have not come back. What was to be a pastime proved a stern reality. The buildings look worn and desolate, and only a handful of scholars and a few poorly-paid professors remain. In execution of the steady purpose of putting the blacks on an equality with the whites, a measure was passed at this session to throw open the library to the colored students of the Normal School, and to take one of the college buildings for its uses. And in pursuance of the same purpose a majority of the trustees of the college were recently chosen by the same Legislature from the ranks of the blacks. In this case it was color rather than qualification for the post that was sought. This destroys the usefulness of the college so far as the white youth are concerned, as the young aristocratic blood of the State will decline the proposed amalgamation. The movement will eventuate in the substantial destruction of the university, as the black population will afford an inadequate supply of students. It is a damaging blow to the interests of education in the State, and a significant step in the process of Africanization. But, even if the college could be allowed to remain in the hands of the whites, such is their stripped condition that it would be difficult to maintain its former prosperity. Still, it would have afforded to the youth of the State a sort of domestic intellectual holding-ground, of great service during the present transition stage. Its capture by the blacks is a useless humiliation to the whites, since its advantages will now be lost to both races. It does great evil and it does no good. It is an attack upon the prejudices of the whites from no other motive than desire of domination. Rather than relinquish the opportunity to control the college, the blacks are willing to destroy it. The class of whites that support institutions of learning naturally decline enforced intellectual association with the new masters of South Carolina, and we judge will not be accounted particularly fastidious for this peculiarity.
In whatever direction we turn our eyes, we find such details of the operation of this anomalous government confronting us that we are provoked to speculations and comparisons impossible to repress. We know that changes of government often shove one set of men from their stools in order that their seats may be occupied by rivals. Thus the Huguenots, after Henry IV. of France; thus the Stuarts of England; thus the elder and the later Bourbons of St.-Germain, were overthrown. The philosophical student of history sympathizes comparatively little with the lamentations over such and like mutations. The successful and the vanquished stand upon the same general plane of equality. At the worst, it is but hereditary rank giving way to plebeian energy and intellect. It is no worse than the genuine force of Nature in any instance, that conquers and assumes control. But it does this by virtue of its own intrinsic power. It does it through the God-given prerogative of capacity and strength of character. Above all, it does it of its own motion, and by dint of its own exertion. And when the result is accomplished, civilization has received no backward set. In all modern history there has been no substitution of ignorance for knowledge, of barbarism for cultivation, of stolidity for intelligence, of incapacity for skill, of vice and corruption for probity and virtue, in the revolutions and changes that have taken place. The transitions, however trying to individuals and dynasties, have been on the same general plane of equality to the eye of history, have been in the general interest of civilization, and they do not startle us by offensive or shocking peculiarities or degradations. But it is altogether otherwise in the case of South Carolina. Here is one to which all modern history does not furnish a parallel. The changes here experienced have been accomplished by outside forces. The result has not been produced by a wrestle between two powers, in which the stronger has thrown and taken the place of the weaker. The strong has put the weak under foot, but has withdrawn itself after placing upon the neck of its prostrate foe the yoke of an ignoble and an incompetent crowd. They reign and rule by virtue of no merit, no intelligence, no prowess, no capacity of their own, but by means of an alien and borrowed authority only. Obedience is enforced by a power foreign to the instrument that inflicts the humiliation. It is not the rule of intrinsic strength; it is the compulsive power of the Federal authority at Washington. But for that, the forces of civilization would readjust themselves and overturn the present artificial arrangement.
The State really bears a foreign yoke; not one imposed by its own people, or by an authority which has arisen of itself among themselves. And this is the anomaly of the situation. It is a so-called democracy sustained by external force. In other words, it is a government that the intelligent public opinion of the State would overthrow if left to itself. It may be called self-government, or republican or democratic government, but in no just sense is it either. It is a government which in the very nature of things could never rise to control, of itself, in any community. It is not an outgrowth of power and authority in the regular order. It is a hybrid horn of unnatural connections, offensive alike to God and man; and, wherever the retributive responsibility of it fairly belongs, it is clear that it does not belong to the generation now rising upon the stage of action in the South, and who alone will be in the near future the sole victims of its oppressions. And this is the class whose just rights must be considered, whose hardships must be mitigated and removed by the power which holds the actual control of the situation, or another and yet another political and social convulsion will inevitably ensue, till disorder and revolution become chronic in our affairs. Not till absolute justice is established can we look for peace and tranquillity in our political system anywhere.
The Redemption of the State possible — What the National Government might do. — The State deprived of External Aid.
The Federal Government could do much, if it would take the necessary pains, toward correcting some of the worst practices of this corrupt travesty of a government. It did something in the appointment of Governor Orr as minister to Russia. It was at least an expression of sympathy with those who made an effort at reform at the last election. But it accomplished nothing of real value. In fact, by sending a leading supporter of the Administration, who was an opponent of corruption, 5,000 miles out of the country, it took away an influence which might, on occasion, deter the rogues from some of their more nefarious acts.
The only authority to which these miscreants pay the least deference is the Federal Governinent; for its power and its countenance are requisite to the success of many of their own operations. It makes large appropriations for new public edifices in the State, as is attested by those which are now going up in Charleston and Columbia. It appoints to office the large body of revenue officers, both internal and external, the numerous postmasters, the Federal judges, attorneys, and special agents, and it keeps bodies of Federal troops in the State, winch are everywhere welcome for the money they disburse. Through these and kindred influences, the Federal Government holds vast sway over the State. That for some reason it has not exercised its influence to any appreciable extent in the interest of good government, is evident. It might do much toward repressing many corrupt practices and raising the moral tone of the State government. It has not done this. And yet it would seem to be its interest to do it. Why should the Republican party of the country, composed so largely as it is of its best and most conscientious citizens, be compelled to endure the foul stain inflicted by the robberies and outrages of caitiffs, who deserve the State-prison? Some of the leaders of affairs are men who have merely adopted Republicanism as a cloak for their villainies. South Carolina to-day rejoices in a Republican Representative in Congress who once made a formal proposition in the State Legislature to reduce all the free blacks to slavery, and it has a republican Governor who tore down the American flag from Fort Sumter, and, treading it under foot, hoisted the Confederate ensign in its place. Dancing at negro balls and issuing "pay certificates" as Speaker is said to have been the means whereby he has condoned his offenses. One turns with inexpressible loathing and disgust from such wretched demagogues. They cover Republicanism with reproach, and, what is worse, they depress and extinguish the hopes of philanthropic men who wish to see the capacity and better qualities of the black man fairly tested in the bold experiment of his sudden emancipation and enfranchisement.
It is of no service to the colored man or his cause to disguise the exact facts of the situation, or to paint things otherwise than as they are. If what is now failure could have been made even a partial success through faithful effort and honest endeavor, what denunciation is too severe and what punishment too great for those who have disgraced a cause, and imperiled if not sacrificed it by their unscrupulous greed? These dusky children of the Legislature greet with a loving embrace the reports of congressional corruption, of the practices of the various criminals whose hidden deeds have been brought to light by the recent investigations. The bribed and thricebought negroes roll these reports as sweet morsels under their tongues. It is one of the worst features of these great corruptions at the centre that they strengthen, increase, and keep in countenance those of the outskirts. Their reflective action is even more mischievous than their direct consequences. The crimes of high places are used to excuse and justify those of remoter regions. Pollution at the centre becomes the source of a thousand infectious streams flowing in every direction toward the circumference. It discourages the criticism and cripples the influence of the honest indignation of the country, when it can no longer lean upon a solid body of honesty and probity among the chosen few who publicly represent the nation. One known public dishonesty in Washington is the parent of a hundred in South Carolina. The external aids to this State to enable her to extricate herself from the Slough of Despond in which she is at present stalled, it is thus readily seen, are much weakened by the condition of things outside. The Federal Government may plead it has its hands full nearer home. Nevertheless, as we began by saying, it ought to do, and it might do, a great deal for the State, if it would. If it would drive partisan politics into the sea, and undertake to administer Federal affairs here strictly on the basis of honesty and integrity, it might at least begin a breakwater to the general torrent of corruption that pervades the State.
But the whites must rely mainly upon themselves, and mainly upon action quite outside and independent of politics, to redeem the State, if it is to he redeemed. This is the real serious work they should set about. The old historic and really important city of Charleston, with its fifty thousand inhabitants and thirty millions of taxable values, is not to be lightly surrendered, however threatened. It is the same with the various other towns of less consequence, but still of importance, throughout the State. Then the extraordinary magnitude of its agricultural and other resources, always great, and capable of still further development, is a living and standing protest against a pusillanimous yielding to adverse circumstances. It would be a violent presumption against the manliness, the courage, and the energy of South Carolina white men, to allow the State to remain in the permanent keeping of her present rulers. It would be a testimony against the claims of Anglo-Saxon blood, and it would be an emphatic testimony to the decline of public virtue that would be worse than all. These considerations alone should be sufficient to inspire every white man in South Carolina with a resolution to achieve a reform that will bring the State back to its ancient respectability. The feeling that most oppresses the whites, arises from the great apparent majority of colored voters as shown in the elections. This majority is reckoned to be about 30,000. But this arises from the fact that all the blacks vote, while the whites do not. There is no such majority as appears on the record, as the relative black and white population by the census clearly shows. The blacks are 400,000, the whites are over 300,000. The actual majority, then, cannot be over 20,000.
But a comparison of the population of 1860 with that of 1870 shows some encouraging featnres. The black population of the State during that decade, though they did not enter the army, increased but by the small number of 3,500; while the whites, who were all in arms during the war, and who lost 12,000 fighting men, besides the loss of increase thereby entailed, managed to hold their own within the trifle of about 1,600. On the basis of the general law of population the expectation is encouraging. But the period might be greatly shortened by powerful and concentrated effort to the same end. The fact of the State being so completely in possession of the blacks, it is supposed, will and does attract the colored people of other States. But the black population is everywhere poor and immobile, and though there is a movement toward the towns, it does not appear in the agricultural districts. In these there are blacks enough. The class there wanted is of immigrants who have a little money, and who buy land, and farm on their own account. And such do come, and will be more and more encouraged to come. It is their thrift and their energy and their money that are going to play an important part in overcoming the predominance of the black population. Where the white man can live and prosper, and enjoy good health, as he can all over the upper country or bluff-lands of South Carolina, he is bound to supplant the weaker and poorer race. So that the restoration of the predominance of the white population in the State seems to be only a question of time, which can be much abbreviated by suitable effort.
Immigration its Greatest Need. — A Naked and Desolate State. — Prejudices against White Immigrants still existing. — Greater Political Tolerance demanded.
The experience of South Carolina during and since the war is one of the most tragic episodes in history. When before did mankind behold the spectacle of a rich, high-spirited, cultivated, self-governed people suddenly cast down, bereft of their possessions, and put under the feet of the slaves they had held in bondage for centuries? It was a severe blow to the people of South Carolina, to have their slaves emancipated without compensation. It was as great a shock as society is often called to endure, to have the masters and their families, brought up in luxury and idleness, suddenly thrown back upon themselves, and compelled in suffering and destitution to get on as they best might, without aptitude and without experience.
They lost every thing they possessed in the shape of property, except the soil of the State and the buildings thereon spared from the desolation of war. The banks were mined. The railroads were destroyed. Their few manufactories were desolated. Their vessels had been swept from the seas and the rivers. The live-stock was consumed. Notes, bonds, mortgages, all the money in circulation, debts, became alike worthless. The community were without clothes and without food. Every thing had gone into the rapacious maw of the Confederate Government; vast estates had crumbled like paper in a fire. While the shape was not wholly destroyed, the substance had turned to ashes. Never was there greater nakedness and desolation in a civilized community. Added to all this was the loss of 12,000 of the best blood of the State out of a voting population of 60,000 — the pride of families and the hope of the State. They had gone to their graves, hurried thither by the hot blast of war. Individual examples of suffering among the oldest and wealthiest families of the State could be given to any extent — each a tragedy. But this is not all. The white citizen, dazed with a sudden appreciation of his stripped and bereft condition, when the end came, turned only to behold the extraordinary transformation of his bondmen. The slave had suddenly acquired his freedom, and with that the right to vote and hold office. The enfranchised negroes were a majority in three-quarters of the counties in the State. They all at once gathered at the polls, chose themselves to office, and under slight guidance became its rulers and governors. Amazed at the sudden change, stunned by this blow at their pride and power, the whites looked around to see if all was a hideous dream. They found the movement backed by United States bayonets, and then they knew it was a ghastly reality. The civilized and educated white race was under foot, prostrate and powerless, and the black barbarian reigned in its stead. He reigns to-day in the full plenitude of an overwhelming majority, and at every point with unabridged authority. There is not a white minority at the State-House large enough to check legislation in any of its stages, or modify it in any of its phases. The handful of white representatives in the Legislature sit mute spectators of its proceedings, and seem only to exist to witness the tight grip and relentless hold the emancipated slaves keep upon the throats of their old masters. It is the great political novelty of the age, the most conspicuous fact of the slave-holders' rebellion; a tragedy and a fate more strange than any fiction.
The great and all-important question for South Carolina to canvass and decide is this: What can its substantial, land-holding, honest white citizens do, in the existing emergency, to put an end to the present infamous rule of the State? Our answer would be: Let them first fix their eyes upon the great continuous stream of foreign immigration which lands 300,000 people, seeking new homes, annually on our shores — a body self-impelled, and almost wholly self-directed, as yet, but which is capable of being turned, deflected, and changed to a most considerable degree, by efficient measures taken toward that end. No experiment has ever been made to see what strong concerted action might accomplish in this direction. But with such an enormous mass of malleable material to work upon, it is fair to suppose that wise and concerted efforts would be crowned with success. This is the first point to be considered. The second step is to disabuse the South Carolina mind of some erroneous ideas entertained by it in regard to white immigrants. The State having suffered so much from carpetbaggers, it is no wonder the native population look upon strangers with suspicion. But the white immigrant of the future is to recompense her for the carpet-baggers' frauds and spoliations. There is no fear that he will not be on the side of justice and economy, and good government; for it is his interest to be so, as much as it is for the resident white citizen. Only let the white immigrants from all quarters be encouraged to come. Let no man bother himself about the immigrants' opinions. It has been too much the habit of the old South Carolinian to feel that the State, in all its franchises, potentialities, and future possibilities, belongs to him and to him alone, and that it is for him to exercise a sort of surveillance over the character and opinions of those who would come and share his opportunities. It used to be said in the old days of slavery, and there is a feeble echo of the sentiment still left, that South Carolinians will welcome all who come to the State, provided they come to promote its industrial prosperity, and leave politics alone. But we all see that this is all out of place now. South Carolina must grow in the future, if she is to be redeemed and keep pace with her sister States, as those States grow, by the introduction of numbers, and of wealth and enterprise from without, and they must come enjoying the same absolute freedom from surveillance and criticism that is enjoyed everywhere else. In these days of mental activity, the emigrant carries with him, among his other possessions, a good stock of opinions, and it is absurd to ask him to lay them down at the frontier of any State which he proposes to make his future residence. In this respect South Carolina cannot be permitted to enjoy an exemption granted to no other civilized community on this continent, and it is preposterous to advance a suggestion of such a character. If South Carolina is to grow and flourish as other States grow and flourish, she must obey the law of their growth and cheerfully accept its conditions. The fundamental one of all is entire individual independence, and entire individual irresponsibility to others, and to society, as to his conduct and opinions, so long as he is guiltless of all infractions of the law.
It has long been the doctrine of the old slave States that a man should be held personally responsible for the expression of adverse opinions on certain social and political questions. This intolerance of opinion had its roots in the practice of slavery. It survives still in a modified degree, although emancipation has destroyed all apology for it. Any assertion of this spirit in the present changed condition of things is absurd. Every man, in our day, in South Carolina and everywhere else, must be permitted the exercise of his right to the untrammeled expression of his opinion, in decorous terms, on any subject whatever, without rendering himself obnoxious to anybody, or subjecting himself to the rebuke of anybody. This is the one new thing which South Carolina people of high and low degree must be prompt to learn. It is the very first condition of her regeneration and extrication. Nothing short of unreserved submission to this law of all our growing communities will secure the end and objects of her salvation. Immigrants here must be like immigrants everywhere, free, unconstrained, independent. Every invitation to them to come must be conceived in this spirit, and expressed in these terms. They must not be expected to bend to the old ways of an old society, but to proceed by such methods and walk in such paths as shall seem best in their own eyes, however strange and new to all others. There is no alternative for her white population and property-holders but heartily to second these views, or continue to hold their present humiliating position, which means further declension and final ruin to them and their posterity. There is no longer any law of entail for opinions in this country. The war ended that. And it behooves South Carolina to recognize it quickly. She is at the meeting of the waters. She has a great opportunity to retrieve her fortunes. But the chance is equally good to sacrifice them. Those whose duty and business it is to act in this great emergency, may by their inaction, their inertia, let the State slide into ruin, and thus make its future a standing blot on our existing civilization. But, on the other hand, they may avert this result, and give to it a future which shall eclipse all its former glories.
Inducements to Immigrants. — Cheap Lands and a Salubrious Climate. — The Profitableness of Cotton Culture. — An Agricultural Paradise. — The History of Previous Migrations.
South Carolina affords great enticements, to the agricultural immigrant. Portions of half a dozen of the lower counties toward the seaboard are unhealthy. But two-thirds, or more, of the State is otherwise. This two-thirds embraces a large portion of the cotton-lands, and all the grain-growing and grazing regions. Columbia is very near the geographical centre of the State. Here, the statistics show that the greatest mortality is hetween November and April, and that the summer heats thus engender no maladies. This rule holds good in all the State north and west of Columbia, and, on the sonth and east, half-way down to the coast. Several of the towns directly on the seaboard are equally healthy. Charleston claims a smaller mortality than any city of the North, with the single exception of Portland, in Maine.
In addition to this general salubrity, the State enjoys the inestimable advantage, for an agricultural country, of having no winter. Plowing may be, and is, carried on in every month of the year. The average mean temperature of Columbia for the month of February, 1873, at 8 a.m., was over 48°, and at 3 p.m. it was a fraction over 60°. I suppose the month of April would not make as good a showing as this in New England or the Northwest. But the number of trees and plants that grow out-of-doors in Columbia, and give such an exceptional air of verdure to the winter landscape, affords proof enough of the mild character of the climate. Here grow and flourish in the open air, the Camellia Japonica, the Laurustinus, the Cape jasmine, the English and Spanish laurel, the Chinese hawthorn, so called, the holly, the Chinese and Australian pines, the live-oaks, the tree-box, the mock-orange, and the magnificent magnolia, besides various others. None of the plants or trees I have enumerated shed their leaves during the winter, and there need be no finer shade-trees than the mock-orange and the massive and graceful live-oak. Columbia is the heart of a great cotton-region. This crop is cultivated to the exclusion of others that can be raised with equal facility, though not with equal profit. There is nothing like cotton for profit. Land that will not bring ten bushels of corn to the acre will produce half a bale of cotton, worth forty to fifty dollars. Nobody can be long in a cotton-growing country without sharing in the fascinations of its culture, and, as an agriculturist, abjuring all climates where it will not grow. There is no labor in raising it that is not easy and enticing, and it exhausts the land no more than the thistle-down, if you but return the seed to the ground. Corn can be produced as well here as in Pennsylvania. It has been worth all winter in Columbia over one dollar a bushel; and hay, which is more difficult to raise, but which an experienced English gardener here says he can raise, and has raised, at the rate of two tons to the acre, simply by heavy topdressing, is steadily worth forty-five to fifty dollars a ton in the same market. But it ought to be said that, except on river-bottoms, grass does not naturally flourish in a climate where cotton grows. The summer heats parch and wither it.
There is plenty of old plantation-land in the market at extremely low prices. Lands that were held before the war at twenty-five and thirty dollars an acre, and cheap enough at that, can now be had at two, three, four, five, and ten dollars an acre. These lands are all in working order, and need only good farming to make them more profitable than they ever were. The old planters were nearly all ruined or greatly embarrassed by the war, and those who survive cannot readily adapt themselves to the changes that emancipation has brought. But labor is plenty, and there seems to be no serious obstacle to a revival of the agriculture of the State on the new basis. The transition is naturally attended by difficulties, but none great enough to conquer ordinary enterprise. With every facility for making such sure and profitable crops as corn and cotton, the temptation to an agriculturist would appear to be very much greater than is offered on the Western prairie-lands. Let any man take a price-current of Western agricultural products at the point where they are raised, and he will be amazed at the comparatively unremunerating figures they show, contrasted with those in South Carolina: Hay six dollars a ton, corn twenty-five cents a bushel, pork four dollars a hundred pounds, and other things in proportion. Let him compare these prices with those of the products of a South Carolina upland plantation, where every thing is as cheerful and healthy as on the best rolling prairies, to say the least; and where there is no winter of sufficient rigor to necessitate either extra clothing or extra fuel, and no weather to impede agricultural occupation at all times of the year. The "middling" or standard grade of South Carolina cotton is at present worth at any rail road-station in the State about eighteen cents a pound. An acre of land will produce from three hundred to five hundred pounds, according to the character of the cultivation, and the crop is as sure and the price as steady, in the long-run, as that of any crop that grows; while no other is so imperishable, or so easily handled, or requires so little room or attention. A crop worth a thousand dollars may be put in a cow-stall. Once gathered and put into bale,