A I 







































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THE NEGRO 


A MENACE TO 
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 




jf 


BY 


R: W. SHUFELDT, M.D. 


MAJOR, MEDICAL DEPARTMENT, UNITED STATES ARMY (RETIRED). 
Member the National Geographic Society ; Cor. Membr. Societa Italiana d' Antro- 
pologia , Ethnologia, e Psicologia Comparata , Florence , Italy • 

Membr. VAlliance Scientijique Univer- 
salle de France , Etc., Etc. 


“ A mixed race ; a fatal stumbling-block that 
has cost more than one Latin race the crown 
of empire.” —John Cameron Grant . 



BOSTON 


RICHARD G. BADGER 

The Gorham Press 

I 9°7 































I THE NEW YORK 

public library: 

A I Or- 
IJL^uOO 

ASTCR, LcN'OX AMD 
T1LCEN F 1 'OAT’ONS. 

R t &07 L 


Copyright, 1907, 

By R. W. Shufeldt, M.D. 

All Rights Reserved. 


The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 






•* 


TO THE MEMORY 
OF MY 

LEARNED AND HONORED COLLEAGUE 

THE LATE 

EDWARD DRINKER COPE 

Gbts Xittle IDolume is Defctcateb 

AS A SLIGHT TRIBUTE TO THE NAME 
OF ONE OF AMERICA’S PROFOUNDEST PHILOSOPHERS, AND AS 
AN EXPRESSION OF MY HIGH APPRECIATION OF HIS 
VOLUMINOUS WORK IN BIOLOGY, AND OF THE 
SINCERE EFFORT HE ONCE MADE 
TO MAINTAIN THE PURITY OF THE RACE, OF 
WHICH HE WAS SO DISTINGUISHED 


A REPRESENTATIVE 





















































CONTENTS 


Chapter tage 

I. Man's Place in Nature front a Biological 

Standpoint . 15 

II The Ethnological Status of the Negro. . 27 

III . The Introduction of the Negro into the 

United States .— The African Slave 
Trade . 45 

IV. Biological Principles of Interbreeding in 

Man and Other Animals . 65 


V. Half breeds, Hybridization, Atavism, 
Heredity, Mental and Physical Char¬ 
acters of Race Hybrids . 84 


VI. The Effects of Fraternization between the 
Ethiopian and Anglo-Saxon Races upon 
Morals, upon Ethics, and upon the Ma¬ 
terial Progress of Mankind . 


105 


VII. Passion and Criminality in the Negro: 

Lynch Law and other Questions. . . 12u\ 


VIII. Discussion of Remedies, Opinions of 


Others . 152 

Appendix . 188 


(V) 
















LIST OF ILLUSTRATONS 


36 


48 


Facing Page 

Skull of Hybrid. [Negro and Indo-European'] 

From a Cadaver Dissected by the Author. 

From a Photo, by the Author. . . Frontispiece 

Fig. 1. Four Togo Women German Colonial 

Province of Togo , Slave Coast; West 
Africa. ( Courtesy of Dr. C. H. 
Stratz , The Hague , Holland.) . . 

Fig. 2. Type of Toung Male Negro (New York 

City). Photographed by the Author 
(1903) Anterior Aspect. The subject 
has tuberculosis of the lungs , so com¬ 
mon to the race in America . 

Pig . S. Type of Young Male Negro. Photo, by 

the Author. Same as Fig. 2. I.ateral 

view . 

Fig. 4■ Type of the northern Mulatto. Photo¬ 
graphed from life by the Author. 

Fig. 5. Type of the northern Mulatto. Photo¬ 
graphed from life by the Author. 

Fig. 6. Type of the northern Mulatto. Photo¬ 
graphed from life by the Author. 

Fig. 7. Types of Negro children in the United 

States. (From a recent photograph.) . 

Fig. 8. The Vance Family. The little girl in 

the father' 1 s arm was the negro Henry 
Smith’s victim. (Photo, by J. L. Mer- 
tins , Paris , Texas. Feb. 1,1893.) 

(VII) 


54 


62 


68 


78 


90 


118 




VIII 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Facing Page 

Fig. 9. Where the body of little Myrtle Vance 

'was found. [Mertins, photo.). . . . 124 

Fig. 10. Lynching of Henry Smith, [Paris, 

Texas, Feb. i, 1893). Exhibiting the 
negro J after his capture, by driving 
him in a wagon around the square at 
Paris. [Hudson, Photo., Paris, 

Texas ). 

11, General Scene of the Lynching of the Ne¬ 
gro, Henry Smith. [Pans, Texas, 

Feb. 1, 1893. Mertins, photo.) . . . UfO 
Fig. 12. Fastening the negro, Henry Smith, to the 

Stake on the Scaffold and Burning 
His Abdomen with a Red Hot Iron. 

[Mertins, photo.) . 156 

Fig. 13. Lynching of Henry Smith. The Tor¬ 
ture, Burning His Feet with a Red 
Hot Iron. [See Introduction a?id 
former figures. Mertins, photo. 

From a?i enlargement . ) 168 

Fig. 11+. Destruction of the Body of the Lynched 

Negro, Henry Smith, [Paris, Texas, 

Feb. 1, 1893. Mertins, photo.) . . . 178 



INTRODUCTION 


W hen one comes to write a book upon such a 

subject as is treated of in the pages of the 
present little volume, there is usually some 
very definite reason that inspires the un¬ 
dertaking. This was distinctly the case in the pres¬ 
ent instance, and apart from all other considera¬ 
tions, be their nature what they may, my object in 
publishing a book on the negro race as it is now 
represented in this country, has been for the sole 
purpose of pointing out, from a purely scientific view¬ 
point, the effect that these introduced Ethiopians have 
had upon our progress and civilization, in the past, 
and what their continued presence among us means 
in the future. In offering to my readers what I have 
in the following pages I desire above all else to state 
that, although anthropologically speaking, the negro 
race of the stock here treated is not by any means 
a favorite ethnic group of mine among the world’s 
peoples, either to study or to come in contact with, 
still I have no special prejudice against them, and in 
penning what is set forth in the ensuing chapters I 
have in no case or instance been actuated by any 
other motive than telling the truth, and telling the 
truth most plainly and fully. For nearly forty years 
past I have enjoyed unusually good opportunities to 
study the negro in the United States as well as in 
the West Indies, and that, too, in every phase of his 

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10 


THE NEGRO 


existence, and those opportunities have never been 
neglected. I have met with in my life-time any num¬ 
ber of people who have and are prejudiced against 
the negro purely on account of his color. This has 
never been the case with myself, though I confess, 
that, when taken as a race and as a whole, what that 
color represents is extremely repugnant to me — by 
which I mean that color in this particular group of 
people in the world’s anthropofauna. This I am the 
more certain of, for the reason that the representatives 
of other black or dark-skinned races do not affect me 
in a similar manner. 

There is another point — with negroes, as with 
everything else in the world — some are very much 
better than others. I have met with a good many 
very worthy negro men in my life; I have met with 
my full share of the much revered, old-fashioned 
southern “ mammies,” also the much venerated 
“ aunties ”; picturesque types of negro children, scores 
of “ piccaninies ” and the rest,— but I have yet to meet 
one of these people anywhere, or any of their hybrids, 
that have not been more or less deeply imbued with 
superstition, or had the general characters of the race 
still clinging to them,— characters and characteristics 
of a kind by no means to be envied or desirable. 
Superstition alone, whether religious or otherwise, will 
eventually cause the downfall of any people in the 
world, no matter what their civilization may be, or to 
what height they have risen. 

In so far as this aspect of my subject is concerned 
it is quite unnecessary for me to dilate upon it further, 
that is in a prefatory way, inasmuch as it is fully 
treated in several of the chapters of the present work. 




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THE NEGRO 


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The bringing of the negro to our shores requires 
no special comment other than what I have given in 
its proper place in the body of the work, beyond in¬ 
viting the attention of the reader to the fact which 
I desire to lay especial stress upon here as in all other 
places where the opportunity presents itself, and that 
is, the taking of Africans out of Africa and settling 
them in this country by no means makes Americans 
of them. It would be quite as reasonable to expect 
zebras to turn into horses when similarly transported. 
Nature cares not a straw for human laws and politics, 
and the passing of a race into any new political area 
makes not another race of it. Profound and com¬ 
paratively rapid changes can be effected only through 
crossing with other races and this is what is happen¬ 
ing, in the case of the African in the United States 
as I have elsewhere abundantly pointed out. It is, 
therefore, only to the hybrids thus produced that the 
recently much used appellation of “ Afro-American ” 
can be truthfully applied. The unmixed African in 
this country is just as much of a negro today as his 
^ancestors were before him in Africa. He simply stands 
upon our soil, in every such individual case, as a 
potential ethnic factor ready at any and at all times to 
do his share in debasing the blood of the white race 
in America. There is no greater danger assailing 
American civilization than this,— there can be no 
greater danger than anything which will effect the 
degradation of a race, and it is the presence of this 
danger which has impelled me to write this book. I 
desire to add my voice to the voices of others who 
have pointed out this danger before and doubtless 
more potently than I have here, as well as to lend 



12 


THE NEGRO 


encouragement to those who will surely raise their 
voices in a similar manner in the future, perhaps long 
after mine and those of others now living shall be 
stilled forever. It is extremely rare to have the peo¬ 
ple of any civilized nation listen to the warnings of 
science, much less to act upon them,— and, it is still 
less likely to have anything of that kind happen, 
when the danger, as it is in this matter, is so wide¬ 
spread, so insidious, insinuative and so subtle. 

In treating the question of lynching I have inten¬ 
tionally touched upon it only in a general way, and 
supported my remarks by accounts culled from various 
newspapers, and these latter I have personally collected 
for a period extending over ten years. The cases are 
by no means the most horrible known in the history 
of this country, nor did I deem it necessary to present 
more than I have on the subject. My illustrations give 
in a pictorial way one of the most terrible lynchings 
known to us, that is of the negro Henry Smith at 
Paris, Texas, on the first of February, 1893. The papers 
all over the country were filled with it at the time. The: 
New York Herald of the date mentioned gave it over 
a column, leading off in the following words : “ Henry 
Smith, a negro, was killed by slow torture here today 
[Paris, Texas]. He had committed a terrible crime, 
and every torment that the ingenuity of an angry 
mob could suggest was inflicted upon him. 

“ His agonies were long prolonged. Hot irons were: 
placed upon the soles of his feet, rolled over hi?i 
quivering body, poked into his eyes and down his 
throat. A scaffold upon which he lay was then set 
on fire. His clothes and fetters burned off and he: 
threw himself on the ground, he was tossed back into 


THE NEGRO 


13 


the flames again and again until death came to his 
relief. The murder of little Myrtle Vance, aged three 
years, had been horribly avenged. He had killed the 
child, after assaulting her, last Tuesday night.” But 
enough; as I have said, nothing would be gained here 
by recounting in full such ghastly horrors. It takes a 
negro to assault a pretty and winsome little girl less 
than four years of age; then catch her by her feet and 
tear her body in twain; and afterwards to be so in¬ 
different to the crime as to lie down and sleep by his 
mutilated little victim all night. Scores of similar cases 
might easily have been retold in the pages of this book, 
but for very obvious reasons I have refrained from do¬ 
ing so. It is scarcely necessary for me to say, that I am 
morally opposed to all forms of lynch law, but the negro 
is with us; savagery and barbarous acts beget savagery 
and barbarous acts; what some are pleased to call the 
Christian religion has no more to do with it, has no 
more control over it, than the bursting of a soap-bubble 
has to do with an earthquake,— and there you have it. 
Lynchings, in spite of everything, will continue to oc¬ 
cur in the United States of America just so long as 
there is a negro left here alive, and there is a white 
woman living for him to assault. He can no more help 
his instincts than he is responsible for the color of his 
skin. 

So far as transporting any considerable number, say 
a million or two of the most undesirable class, out of 
this country, I have little to add beyond what I have 
said in Chapter VIII at the end of this volume. The 
members of the National Academy of Sciences, a body 
supposed to be the advisers to Congress on questions 
affecting the weal of the country as a whole, might 

I 


14 


THE NEGRO 


recommend such a step to Congress, and the latter act 
upon it. But, the Academy, as a rule, do not make 
such use of its profound knowledge of ethnology, his¬ 
tory and the now well-understood laws of biology. 

Then there are plenty of people in this country of 
ours who would far rather see, were it possible for 
them to live long enough, the entire white race hete 
rotted by heroic injections into their veins of all the 
savagery and criminality there is in the negro, than 
have any number of the latter, however great or small, 
in any way inconvenienced by their being returned 
to the country from which their ancestors came. 

In closing this introduction there are a few to 
whom it affords me pleasure to express my profound 
thanks for their assistance in steering this book 
safely through the press. Two of these gentlemen 
I am not permitted to name, but my most sincere 
thanks are extended to them nevertheless, and none 
the less heartily upon that account, and had it not 
been for their prompt and substantial support this 
little volume may never have seen the light. I am 
responsible for everything that appears in it and it 
only remains for me to thank my friend Mr. W. F. 
Fleming, of Denison, Texas, who kindly went over 
the entire galley proof for me, thus giving it a re¬ 
vision which his long experience and great skill made 
of especial value, not to mention the labor it saved 
me at a time when other literary work was demand¬ 
ing nearly my entire attention. 

R. W. S. 

New York City. 


i 


CHAPTER I 

Man s Place in Nature, from a Biological Standpoint. 


T here never has been but one way to decide 
man’s position in the system of nature. It 
is the way of science, and consists in exam- 
ining man anatomically, physiologically, psy- 
chologically and otherwise, and comparing the infor¬ 
mation thus obtained with the corresponding data, 
secured through similar methods from other living 
forms now existing upon the earth. Man and his 
career in the world up to the present writing may also 
be examined historically, paleontologically and anthro- 
pologically as far as the discovered data will permit us 
to carry the investigation. In fact, in order to estab¬ 
lish correctly the place man holds in nature it be¬ 
comes necessary to compare and intercompare every 
possible thing we can find out about him, both in 
present and past time, with a similar knowledge, as 
far as we have mastered it, of all other animals in 
the world, and with especial care in regard to those 
forms which are universally conceded to, and do most 
resemble him. Such an investigation should, as far 
as possible, be exhaustive. Its result must be accepted, 
provided it bears the trade-mark of Truth. Science has 
done this and has come to a finding based upon the 
evidence secured. This evidence has been accumulat¬ 
ing since the dawn of history, and in amount and in 

(15) 



16 


THE NEGRO 


number of established facts, is absolutely overwhelm¬ 
ing. As a whole, as well as in part, it has passed 
through the test crucible of time; at each step in 
it's history its refinement has been secured through the 
most intense fire in the furnace of criticism; and, 
finally, clothed in truth we now have the solution of 
this long-debated question in our possession, and set¬ 
tled forever. The comments of the ignorant upon the 
finding of science in this matter are no longer regarded 
by the intelligent among us; the fire, the protest, and 
the ridicule of theology that followed this investiga¬ 
tion, step by step, throughout its entire course from 
its birth to its final decision, has died out and been 
suspended. Science no longer heeds the feeble and 
dogmatic expostulations that emanate from any such 
direction; she has more inportant things to do. Man’s 
place in nature is now as thoroughly known and estab¬ 
lished as is the fact that the earth is enveloped in the 
sea of its own atmosphere. And it was by no means 
altogether through the pen, the brains, and the philoso¬ 
phy of Charles Darwin that science was enabled to 
arrive at the truth of the question — and, as for the 
matter of that, his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, years 
before him had foreshadowed the finding (The Temple 
of Nature, 1804, pp, 67, 68). This finding has been 
the outcome of the labor and investigation of a great 
army of workers,— the minds, the scalpels, the micro¬ 
scopes, and the pens of the individual researchers of 
which have each and all, directly or indirectly, know¬ 
ingly or unconsciously, contributed to the result. As 
an anthropological fact it has passed out of the realm 
of mere hypothesis into the full blaze of established 
fact. A rational writer at the present day, in touching 


THE NEGRO 


17 


upon the question of man’s place in nature would no 
more think of introducing the subject to his readers 
in an argumentative way, than he would were 
he called upon to write about the atomic theory, the 
law of gravitation, or the form of the earth, for it is 
a fact far better established than any of these. More¬ 
over, we can actually handle the material upon which 
the evidence is based, and the new evidence that is 
coming to light in ever-increasing masses as each day 
rolls by, brings but solid confirmation to science’s 
verdict, not only as to the place occupied by man 
and mankind in nature, but exactly as to how he came 
to be there. 

One can enter any public or private library today and 
pick the works of the time where he will, from school- 
book to lexicon, from fact to fiction: history has but 
one thing to say on this particular point any more. 
We find it tersely epitomized for us in the great 
dictionaries of the time, as for example in the Century 
Dictionary we find “ man ” defined as “ a featherless 
plantigrade biped mammal of the genus Homo; Homo 
sapiens, a species of the family Hominidce or Anthropidce, 
order Primates, class Mammalia, of which there are 
several geographical races or varieties:” (Vol. V., p. 
3601). There is no question of what is meant by this 
definition, and again, in the same authoritative work, we 
find Hominidce defined in the following words, to wit: — 
“A family of mammals,represented by the single genus 
Homo, man, of the suborder Anthropoidca and order 
Primates; mankind. It is characterized by the complete 
withdrawal of the fore-limbs from the office of locomo¬ 
tion, and consequently the habitually erect attitude 
except in infancy; the perfection of the hand as a 
2 


18 


THE NEGRO 


prehensile organ, and the specialization of the foot 
as a locomotory organ; the regular curvature of the 
line of the teeth, which are of the same length and in 
uninterrupted series, without diastemata; the naked¬ 
ness of most of the body; and the large facial angle. 
These are the principal zoological characters by which 
the Hominidce are distinguished from the Simiidcz or 
anthropoid apes. Physiologically, mankind is peculiar 
chiefly in the capacity of civilization, or the ability to 
create progressive institutions (including the formation 
and use of speech). Psychologically, man is separated 
by a very wide interval from the nearest Shniidce. The 
family is the same as Antliropidce ; it is conterminous 
with its single genus Homo, with the order Bimana, 
and with the subclass Archencephala (Vol. IV., p. 
2866.) This is clear enough, and certainly amply good 
enough for a dictionary definition. However, as a 
generic diagnosis it offers us with numerous excep¬ 
tions. In the first place negroes are to be found that 
possess the upper and lower canines, especially the 
former, much lengthened. Again, both men and wo¬ 
men have been found, and exist at the present time, in 
whom the body (including the head sometimes) is 
completely covered with a thick and heavy growth of 
hair. In a Burmese family every member (eight or ten 
individuals) was so covered, even including the entire 
face. It is more frequently seen in the white than in 
the black-skinned races. Finally, there is great variance 
in the openness or the reverse, in the case of the facial 
angle. 

With these and a few other minor exceptions added, 
there is not a biologist in the world today who will 
not fully indorse the definition of man and the family 


THE NEGRO 


19 


Hominidce as quoted above from the Century Diction¬ 
ary. So far as man’s place in nature is concerned, 
it epitomizes the case as stated by anatomists the 
world over for the last half-century or more. It 
obviates the necessity of my pointing out what Sir 
Richard Owen has said on the subject, or Professor 
Huxley, or Darwin, or Gegenbaur, or hundreds of 
other biologists who have personally and exhaustively 
examined for years the material upon which such an 
opinion is based. It puts man and mankind squarely 
in the group Mammalia where he belongs, and classifies 
him accordingly. His speech, his civilization (what¬ 
ever that may mean), and his present progress (if 
in reality man is progressing mentally, morally and 
physically) and all that separates him from any other 
animal in general, and from the higher apes in par¬ 
ticular. Anatomically, structurally, he is no better 
fitted to do what he is doing in the world, than is the 
gorilla in the forests of darkest Africa physically 
qualified to lead its particular life. Furthermore, man 
is subject to the same diseases and injuries that the 
simians are, or even in some cases the mammals below 
them. He will eat and live upon anything that any 
other animal will eat, be it cooked or uncooked. He is 
insectivorous, carnivorous — indeed, omnivorous. He 
will thrive upon insects, snails, corn, the slain animals, 
young and old, of other genera than his own, as well 
as those of his own species. His young are born just 
as the young of many other mammals are, and for 
many weeks, in utero, they cannot be with certainty 
distinguished from foetal gorillas. In fact, and taken as 
a whole, man’s reproduction, from the time he courts 
the female, until the time the young shift for them- 


20 


THE NEGRO 


selves, offers nothing different from what we see 
among many other mammals, and there is considerable 
evidence to support the statement that the female chim¬ 
panzee can be impregnated by man, and vice versa, 
there is every reason to believe that any male adult 
of the gorilla or chimpanzee can successfully impreg¬ 
nate the female of the genus Homo. Man experiences 
pain and pleasure just as other mammals do, and the 
same may be said for all the other emotions and feel¬ 
ings, as anger, fear, hatred, selfishness, greed, coward¬ 
ice, bravery, and every other qualification of the kind 
known. The sensations experienced on the part of a 
frightened man and a frightened monkey are actually 
the same, identical in every particular, and in many in¬ 
stances the behavior is the same under the same circum¬ 
stances. So on for grief, for spite, and for treachery. 
I have seen dogs, monkeys and many other animals 
that possessed just as keen a sense of right and wrong, 
as the average of mankind does, and as for the refine¬ 
ments of cruelty of all kinds toward their fellow spe¬ 
cies, man outclasses any other group of animals in the 
known world. Indeed, man is the most cruel animal 
in existence and by no means, as a rule, always the 
most cleanly. Men steal and murder, so do other 
animals; men deceive others in no end of ways, and 
so do other animals; men slay their own fathers, moth¬ 
ers, mates, children and friends and relatives, and so 
do other animals, though, in proportion, not as fre¬ 
quently. Men cohabit with their own mothers, daugh¬ 
ters and sisters,— so do other animals. Auto-erotism 
in all its forms is practiced by both men and women 
all over the world. Other mammals usually confine 
themselves to some of the simpler forms of masturba- 


THE NEGRO 


21 


tion. Homosexuality is common in mankind, and far 
more so than it is among other animals. It is met with 
in both sexes. As a matter of fact, whether induced 
by disease, or indulged in by the normal man or wo¬ 
man, there is no animal or group of animals on earth, 
outside of man that practices a wider range of sex¬ 
ual perversions, psychopathia sexualis, and the most 
fiendish and inconceivable departures from normal 
coition to a natural end than does the genus Homo. He 
actually out-animals,—yes, out-beasts the bestiality 
of the very beasts themselves. Along these lines no 
other animal can compete with him, nor rival him in 
the contraction of venereal disease as a consequence. 
With respect to instinct and reason it does not differ 
m any respect whatever throughout the entire range of 
animated nature, it differs but in degree, while typical 
instinct and the instincts, are the same everywhere 
and in all organizations. Reason has been brought to 
a higher plane in the best of mankind, those enjoying 
the most exalted intellectual development, whereas 
thousands of men and women exist in all parts of the 
world in whom the reasoning faculties are no keener 
than in the most intelligent foxes, dogs, and elephants. 
Ethnologists have proven this fact over and over again. 

As for an existence beyond this life here on earth^ 
no man living knows one whit more of it, than does the 
bull-frog that croaks in the marshes. Many think 
that they do, and stoutly claim that they do, but in 
reality every reasoning man and woman in the world 
knows full well that it is the most deep-seated, uni¬ 
versal and notorious fallacy afloat.- It would make a 
good common-sense baboon smile to think of it, es¬ 
pecially as he is an honorable de facto representative 


22 


THE NEGRO 


of man’s own zoological order. If mankind be en¬ 
titled to a life in futurity, to be enjoyed either in 
eternal pleasure or in eternal pain, so then too are all 
the simians, and indeed, clear down the entire chain 
to include the very toad-stools and the amoebae,— pro¬ 
toplasm. The simplest inductive reasoning upon the 
evidence in hand carries us at once and directly to 
such a conclusion. Hope and faith, when combined, 
constitute one thing,— incontrovertible facts, and evi¬ 
dence, and inductive reasoning constitutes, when based 
in truth, quite another thing. Hope and faith may 
both fail us even in affairs of the most supreme im¬ 
port,— if it be of any importance to any one that there 
be a life hereafter,— while conclusions founded on facts 
and truth and drawn from evidence based upon the 
same, are unalterable, regardless of what men or 
mice think of it, -and will through all eternity remain 
immutable. 

Man is the most conceited being in the entire 
world’s menagerie,— and on what account, pray ? 
Surely not because of his shape or his anatomy. No, 
not that, but only in consequence of his higher 
reasoning powers, which in the course of his 
psychological evolution, and his morphological and 
physiological adaptation, have advanced him to a 
stage in which he is fitted to annihilate utterly every 
other animal on the face of the globe — an operation 
he is accomplishing with a varying rapidity and swift¬ 
ness truly interesting to contemplate. His civiliza¬ 
tion consists in replacing in nature much that for¬ 
merly existed there, with his machines, his habita¬ 
tions and places of pleasure, his improved passage¬ 
ways and contrivances that subserve the ends of 


THE NEGRO 


23 


education and the acquisition of knowledge. He is 
every inch a Primate nevertheless, and ever will be, 
with all that this word means. His place in nature is 

as fixed as is the fact that if his head be cut off it will 
kill him. 

That man has a place in nature there is no manner 
of a doubt and the truth has been told when we admit 
that it is, in reality, in nature, and that he has arisen 
to that place in time and along developmental lines 
in every way similar to those lines followed in their 
evolution by all other animals in nature, starting as 
they have, and we all have, in common, from the sim¬ 
plest animals known to us, and which existed in the 
world with the first manifestations of life of any kind. ' 

In commenting upon this forty years ago in his 
“ Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature ” Mr. Huxley 
said: Science has fulfilled her function when she has 

ascertained and enunciated truth; and were these pages 
^■dclrcssed to men of science only, I should now close 
this essay, knowing that my colleages have learned to 
respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their 
highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may 
jar against their inclinations. But desiring, as I do, to 
reach the wider circle of the intelligent public, it would 
be unworthy cowardice were I to ignore the repug¬ 
nance with which the majority of my readers are 
likely to meet the conclusions to which the most care¬ 
ful and conscientious study I have been able to give 
to this matter, has led me. 

On all sides I shall hear the cry —‘ we are men 
and women, and not a mere better sort of apes, a 
little longer in the leg, more compact in the foot, and 
bigger in brain than your brutal Chimpanzees and 

/) 


24 


THE NEGRO 


Gorillas. The power of knowledge — the conscious¬ 
ness of good and evil — the pitiful tenderness of human 
affections, raise us out of all real fellowship with the 
brutes, however closely they may seem to approxi¬ 
mate us. 

“ To this I can only reply that the exclamation 
would be most just and would have my own entire 
sympathy, if it were only relevant. But it is not I 
who seek to base Man’s dignity upon his great toe, or 
insinuate that we are lost if an Ape has a hippocampus 
minor. On the contrary, I have done my best to 
sweep away this vanity. I have endeavoured to show 
that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider 
than that between the animals which immediately suc¬ 
ceed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal 
world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of 
my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinc¬ 
tion is equally futile, and that even the highest fac¬ 
ulties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate 
in lower forms of life. At the same time no one is 
more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of 
the gulf between civilized man and the brutes; or is 
more certain that whether from them or not, he is 
assuredly not of them. No one is less disposed to 
think lightly of the present dignity, or despairingly of 
the future hopes, of the only consciously intelligent 
denizen of this world. 

“We are indeed told by those who assume authority 
in these matters, that the two sets of opinions are 
incompatible, and that the belief in the unity of origin 
of man and brutes involves the brutalization and de¬ 
gradation of the former. But is this really so? Could 
not a sensible child confute, by obvious arguments, 


THE NEGRO 


the shallow rhetoricians who would force this conclu¬ 
sion upon us? Is it, indeed, true, that the Poet, or 
the Philosopher, or Artist whose genius is the glory 
of his age, is degraded from his high estate by the 
undoubted historical probability, not to say certainty, 
that he is the direct descendant of some naked and 
bestial savage, whose intelligence was just sufficient to 
make him a little more cunning than the Fox, and 
so much more dangerous than the Tiger? Or is 
he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because of 
the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once an 
egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination could 
distinguish from that of a Dog? Or is the philanthro¬ 
pist or the saint to give up his endeavours to lead a 
noble life, because the simplest study of man’s nature 
reveals, at its foundations, all the selfish passions and 
fierce appetites of the merest quadruped? Is mother- 
love vile because a hen shows it, or fidelity base be¬ 
cause dogs possess it? ” 

In the work from which these rather long quo¬ 
tations have been taken, Professor Huxley answers 
these questions himself, and that too in a man¬ 
ner the conclusiveness of which leaves not the 
slightest doubt in the mind of any reasonable per¬ 
son as to their correctness. There are, however, still 
unnumbered thousands of people in the world who can 
afford to read these words with comfort and with 
decided advantage. They had their weight at the time, 
while today, inasmuch as the law of organic evolu¬ 
tion is established, they are as true and as logical as 
any of the demonstrations in Euclid’s geometry. 

No thoughtful, reading and intelligent man or wo¬ 
man today believes that in the beginning mankind saw 


26 


THE NEGRO 


its origin in a miraculously created pair in no way 
differing from representatives of the human race of 
the present day. That the man was the result of a 
separate act of creation, and the woman the outcome 
of a miracle. That fable has had its day, and those 
who still profess or say that they believe it are either 
simply hypocrites or are as crassly ignorant as a native 
Hottentot. 

In my opinion it is not at all necessary to enter 
further upon this question, the discussion of which 
savors so much of an argument advanced to prove that 
the earth is not flat, as the author of the Eden story 
undoubtedly believed it to be. As we shall soon see 
in a later chapter, there is no doubt as to the existence 
of vast differences that distinguish in many ways 
the various races of men now peopling the earth, yet 
this truth is no better established than is the fact 
that the entire family of mankind has in common with 
all other existing mammals descended from a common 
progenitor, and that at the present time the genus 
Homo and the various genera of the higher simians are 
all members of the same group. 


CHAPTER II 


The Ethnological Status of the Negro. 


I ndiscriminating people speak of the inhabitants 
of the great continent of Africa in the loosest 
possible manner, designating them collectively 
as negroes. This, however, as every well- 
informed person knows, is by no means the case. 
In the first place all the northern tier of countries 
bordering upon the Mediterranean are inhabited by 
races of an entirely different description and pos¬ 
sessing important histories. So it is with the most 
of the east side of the continent and southward for 
some considerable distance. In the extreme south¬ 
west, too, we have the Bosjesmen and the Hottentots, 
and neither of these belong to the negro or negroid 
races. Their stock is quite different. Apart from the 
inhabitants of Africa just indicated, as well as those 
who have made Africa their home coming from diverse 
countries, as Europe and other continents, there still re¬ 
main to be taken into consideration some one hundred 
and thirty-two millions of others, and there are the 
negro and negroid races, either composed of pure and 
original stock, or those produced by hybridization or in¬ 
ter-breeding with the foreigners or with other African 
nations. This enormous mass of people occupy four 
great regions on the continent, namely the region of 
West Soudan and Guinea; of Central Soudan and the 

( 27 ) 



THE NEGRO 


2g 

60 

Chad Basin; of East Soudan and Upper Nile; and of 
South Africa, where the Bantu family resides. These 
four regions contain from four to eight great groups 
of black or dark-colored people representing often very 
widely different races speaking dissimilar languages, 
entirely different in their appearances and customs, 
and finally, having altogether separate histories. Some 
of the races we know a good deal about, some of them 
we know but very little about and, of the great mass 
of them, many millions in number, we know absolutely 
nothing. We do know, however, that some twenty- 
five millions more of negroes and their descendants 
are living in other parts of the world besides Africa. 
Their descendants are either true negroes or else hy¬ 
brids resulting from the former’s crossing with the 
whites, with Indians, or other nationalities. Many of 
these negroes and half-castes are to be found in North 
and South America and the West Indies, having been 
forcibly introduced there through the slave-hunters of 
by-gone years. It is reckoned that there are some ten 
millions of negroes and half-breed descendants in the 
United States alone, and these in some sections are 
increasing with great rapidity, especially in the South¬ 
ern States where the climate, food, and other conditions 
are suitable to their propagation. As the book I am 
now writing is chiefly devoted to a consideration of the 
negroes and their descendants in this country I shall 
not attempt to pay any attention to the major part of 
the great hordes of those peoples to be found in Africa. 
I shall here only incidentally refer to those on the west 
coast, known as the Gold or Slave Coast of the African 
Continent, and only refer to the other tribes or races 
as occasion requires, and that for the purpose of draw- 


THE NEGRO 


29 


ing upon them for additional illustrations in the matter 
of their histories, their mental, moral, and physical 
characters or anything that may shed light upon the 
special subject with which I am dealing. In the next 
following chapter, or in Chapter III. it will be my 
aim to present a brief review of what we already know 
of the slave-trade that was carried on between the 
United States and the west coast of Africa prior 
to the Civil War. This will be merely for the 
purpose of reviving those incidents in the mind of the 
reader, and thus fill out the sociologic picture I have 
in hand for treatment. 

In the previous chapter or Chapter I., the position 
of the genus Homo — man and mankind,— in the 
animal world was briefly set forth. Man is an animal 
and belongs directly in the mammalian series. To this 
law there has never been an exception, a single de¬ 
parture, since the earth became a planet. It applies 
just as rigidly to the men and women of the present day 
as it did to the earliest forms of men that were evolved 
from the pristine simian stock thousands of years ago. 
It applies with just as much truth to one individual as 
another—to one race as another, and to the world’s an- 
thropofauna as a whole, both past and present. It is 
as true of Christ as it is of the blackest Ashantee that 
ever came into being; as true of any one of the Popes 
of Rome as it is of a groveling Hottentot idiot; it is 
as true of both the highest, and the lowest in every 
and all particulars of men everywhere; finally, it is 
as true of the population of Africa, severally and in¬ 
dividually, as it is of the population of the United 
States, severally and individually. But then when we 
come to the mental, moral, intellectual, and the psycho- 




30 THENEGRO 

logical attributes of man — of men, mankind,— the 
existing differences among various representatives of 
the genus Homo in these respects in all parts of the 
world, as applied to the individual or to the race or 
group, are simply immeasurable in many instances. 
Throughout the entire history of the world, dating as 
far back as we can follow it with certainty and ac¬ 
curacy, both men and women have exhibited differ¬ 
ences in regard to culture, refinement, knowledge and 
mental capacity. They have also exhibited differences 
with respect to their philosophical calibre, and the 
ability to employ the reasoning faculty in its varied 
fields as applied to logical ends and to the solutions 
of practical and theoretical questions of every imagina¬ 
ble character. Gauged thus, the plane occupied by the 
greatest individual in all spheres of activity in which 
men and women have engaged since the dawn of 
civilization, of the highest callings in life,— mankind 
upon that plane, I say,— is as much above the one 
occupied by the lowest savage races of the world 
throughout history, as the loftiest mountain-peak on 
the earth is above the bottom of the deepest part of 
its deepest ocean. Linnseas, Von Humboldt, Huxley, 
Darwin, and other great minds are just as much of the 
animal world as the lowest Yorubas, Bushmen or 
Australian natives. No one of the whole knows one 
whit more of the probabilities of a life beyond the pres¬ 
ent one than another, and were such a future existence 
possible in any form whatever, the greatest philosopher 
that ever lived would have no higher claim to it, than 
the most degraded savage that ever skulked through 
his native forests. Here all are upon the same plane, 
but intellectually and psychologically, using those 


THE NEGRO 


31 


terms in their broadest sense, the gap standing between 
such a philosopher as Darwin was, for example, and 
a cannibal of the West African Coast, is as profound a 
one as the best minds among us can conceive of or 
demonstrate. 

Granting all this we are now in a position to pass 
upon the mental, moral and physical characters of the 
negroes and negroids. A just consideration of these 
will furnish the necessary data to enable us to establish 
the ethnological status of these people. It must be 
understood that the negroes I am dealing with are 
those tribes found in the West Soudan, the Congo 
Basin, the Slave and Gold coasts of Africa, the stock 
in fact from which was derived the negroes that were 
brought to the United States as slaves. These are the 
negroes, and the descendants of these are of the race 
or races that interest us here in this country. It is 
they that we have upon our hands, and it is they that 
we have to deal with in the condition of affairs widely 
known as the “negro problem”. 

The word negro seems to be of Italian and Spanish 
origin, and is derived, originally from the Latin niger 
meaning black. Anthropologically, it distinctly char¬ 
acterizes the race of negroes to be described in the pres¬ 
ent volume,— those of the western Soudan, their true 
home. All others are of negroid or even sub-negroid 
blood, and it would appear that the original undiluted 
stock came from out the land of Lemuria, that hypo¬ 
thetical region now submerged beneath the waters of 
the Indian Ocean. They were the lands that con¬ 
stituted the cradle of the negro stock. They are found 
now only in a pure state in the Benua and Shari 
basins; in the Gaboon; on the coast of Guinea, and 


* 


32 THENEGRO 

along the lower Zambesi river. Here range or here 
are located the villages of the unnumbered hordes of 
blacks that occupy the lowest position in the scale of 
evolution of the genus Homo. Among them are the 
relatives of many of the negroes in the United States, 
and indeed large numbers of the latter are no further 
removed from the most degraded standard of savagery 
than they are. Typical representatives of these true 
negroes anywhere are markedly uniform with respect 
to their moral and physical characters. More so in fact 
than any other people of whatever nationality they 
may be. For this reason they offer us admirable 
material for comparison, morally, socially, and mor¬ 
phologically, with not only the higher forms of exist¬ 
ing apes and their allies, but also with human races 
standing in the evolutionary scale above them. 

Taking up first some of his external characters it 
will be seen that the hair is short, black and frizzly, 
in fact distinctly zvoolly. A single hair on section is 
elliptical or quite flat. In this particular negroes differ 
as compared with the simians, the latter having coats 
of true hair, and not wool as on the heads and other 
parts of the former. Keane states that P. U. Brown 
in his Classification of Mankind by the Hair “ shows con¬ 
clusively that, unlike true hair and like true wool, the 
negro hair is flat, issues from the epidermis at a right 
angle, is spirally twisted or crisped, has no central 
duct, the coloring matter being disseminated through 
the cortex and intermediate fibres, while the cortex it¬ 
self is covered with numerous rough, pointed filaments 
adhering loosely to the shaft; lastly the negro pile 
will felt, like wool, whereas true hair cannot be felted. 
Observing that the negro domain is also the habitat of 


\ 


THE NEGRO 


33 


the most anthropoid apes — gorilla and chimpanzee,— 
and that these bimanous and quadrumanous species 
are both of a pronounced dolichocephalic type (index 
nos. 72-75), some anthropologists have suggested 
the direct descent of the former from the latter. But 
against this view may be urged the different texture 
of the pile, which, although black in both, is woolly 
in the negro but true hair in the ape.” The negro has 
a large black eye, with the sclerotic coat tinged with 
yellow, a distinctive character, frequently noticed in 
the typical west coast negroes of the United States. 
The jaws exhibit decided prognathism, or projection 
forward, the facial angle being seventy degrees against 
the eighty-two of the average white man. Another 
marked feature is the nose, which is broad, flat, dilated 
nostrils, and with the ridge concaved often showing 
the red inner surface of the mucous membrane. The 
lips are very large, protruding, and heavy. The malar 
bones and zygomatic arches being prominent, the 
cheeks are made equally so. These full-blood negroes 
have black skins, or of a deep brownish tint. Climate 
has nothing whatever to do with this, nor has any 
special pigment. It is due, however, to a superabund¬ 
ance of coloring matter between the true and the scarf 
skins. Soft and velvety to the touch, the negro epider¬ 
mis is for the most part quite free of hair, and would 
be to many more or less attractive were it not for the 
outrageous odor it emits, especially under heat and 
excitement. This is sometimes so strong that I have 
known ladies of our own race brought almost to the 
stage of emesis when compelled to inhale it for any 
length of time. Usually the negro is of but average 
height, by no means always erect, presenting curves 
3 


34 


THE NEGRO 


due to the prominence of the back of the head, the 
shape of the spine and pelvis, and the general mor¬ 
phology of his frame. The anterior pair of limbs are 
long as in the apes (see figure 1), and frequently 
slender, while the pelvic extremities may be weak, 
deficient in calves, and with a low instep to the feet, 
which are broad and flat. The heel projects backward, 
and the hallux or big toe slightly independent and tends 
to become prehensile. Again, the hand of the typical 
negro, although human, often has much about it to 
remind us of the manus in the gorilla. In two in¬ 
stances I met with very black negroes in the South, 
both men, in whom the ears were conspicuously 
pointed at their upper margins as in many Quad- 
rumana. The projecting point on the helix, as 
described by Darwin, I have noticed far more fre¬ 
quently in negroes than in the white races. It is un¬ 
doubtedly a vestigial character indicating that man 
arose from a pointed-eared animal. The ear in the 
foetal orang is likewise pointed. Sometimes the ex¬ 
ternal genital organs are enormously developed in the 
negro, especially the penis in the man, and the clitoris.’ 
in the female. The hair on the pubis is coarse and 
kinky as it is on the head. It may be quite abundant. 
Many years ago I dissected an old negro man in Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., at the National Medical College. A? a 
subject he was particularly simian in his organization, 
and one thing I noticed about him more than any¬ 
thing else, in addition to his immense copulatory 
organ, was the structure of his toe-nails. These were, ' 
on all toes, but especially the great toes, marvelously 
thickened and curved, reminding one at once of the 
claws on certain animals. It has been one of the re- 


THE NEGRO 


35 


grets of my life that I did not save those peculiar 
structures; they were over twenty times as thick as 
the ordinary toe-nail, and evidently had not been 
trimmed for years. That same winter I dissected a 
rather light-colored negress who had double breasts, 
two upon each side, one above the other. All four 
were fully developed and, in life, functional. So far 
as my knowledge carries me, the development of a tail, 
that is, a free, movable caudal appendage, with rudi¬ 
mentary vertebrae in it, occurs quite as infrequently in 
the white race as it does in the negro. It is very rare 
in either. In the skull of the negro the cranial capac¬ 
ity and the brain itself is much under-sized. On the 
average, the former will hold thirty-five fluid ounces, 
as against forty-five for the Caucasian skull. In the 
negro the cranial bones are dense and unusually thick, 
converting his head into a veritable battering-ram. 
Moreover the cranial sutures unite firmly very early 
in life. This checks the development of the brain 
long before that takes place in other races, and this 
fact accounts to some extent for the more or less 
sudden stunting of the Ethiopian intellect shortly 
after arriving at puberty. Filippo Manetta has pointed 
out that “ the negro children [on the plantations in 
the South] were sharp, intelligent, and full of vivacity, 
but on approaching the adult period a gradual change 
set in. The intellect seems to become clouded, ani¬ 
mation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness 
yielding to indolence. We must necessarily suppose 
that the development of the Negro and White proceeds 
on different lines, while with the latter the volume of 
the brain grows with the expansion of the brain-pan, 
in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary 


36 


THE NEGRO 


arrested by the premature closing of the cranial 
sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone ” (La 
Razza Negra nel sno stato selvaggio, etc. Turin, 1864, 

p. 20). 

In his internal anatomy the negro exhibits a much 
closer approach to the anthropoid apes than any other 
race of the genus Homo. Perhaps it would be nearer 
the truth to say that he has not been so completely 
differentiated from the simian stock as the other races 
of mankind have. 

Many vestigial or rudimentary organs and struc¬ 
tures that are constant in the case of the animals be¬ 
low man appear far more frequently in the negro than 
in the white race. It will not be necessary to enu¬ 
merate all of these when a few will answer our pur¬ 
pose, especially when taken in connection with the ex¬ 
ternal characters already given above. I believe that 
it will be found that the supracondyloid foramen of 
the humerus (feline carnivora, gorilla) is more fre¬ 
quently present in the negro, and I am quite sure the 
psoas parvus muscle is. Dr. Edward A. Ballock 
was interested in this subject a number of years ago 
(September 1891), and read a paper upon it before 
the Washington Medical Society (D. C.), he being a 
resident of that city. He has sent me the original 
MS. of this paper, and as it is short and to the point, I 
find it useful to include in the present chapter. It is en¬ 
titled On the relative frequently of the psoas parvus 
muscle in the colored race, and I may say that what its 
author found to be the case is confirmed by my own 
experience, both on the dissecting-table as well as in 
my reading. Dr. Ballock said: — 

“ For a long time I have been impressed with the 




Fig. 1. Four Togo women: German Colonial Province 
of Togo; Slave Coast, West Africa. (Courtesy of Dr. C. 
H. Stratz, The Hague, Holland.) 























THE NEGRO 



fact that American anatomists were neglecting a field 
fertile in promise, rich in opportunity and certain to 
yield fruitful results to careful cultivation. I refer 
to the investigation of the anatomical peculiarities of 
the negro, including in that term both those of pure 
and mixed blood. This field is peculiarly our own and, 
from the necessity of the case, must long continue to 
be so. We owe it to ourselves not less than to our 
science to investigate it thoroughly. We should not 
let slip this opportunity to make and record careful 
observations. 

“ A recent search through the literature bearing on 
this point, made in another connection, enables me to 
say that, by the European anatomist, an opportunity to 
study a negro subject is regarded as an especial privi¬ 
lege. Each organ and structure is carefully examined 
and all anomalies noted. Thus Turner in England and 
Chudzinski in France have put on record detailed ac¬ 
counts of dissections of this character and evidently 
they are regarded as of high scientific value. With us 
the very abundance of such material leads to its 
neglect. Were negro subjects so much of a rarity 
with us as they are abroad we may easily imagine with 
what care each one would be dissected. 

“ It seems to me that we have here a remarkable 
chance to make solid additions to our science, par¬ 
ticularly in the line of comparative anatomy which, to 
my mind, is the only scientific anatomy. 

“ In isolated instances this has been done and the 
literature of-medicine and anthropology contains not a 
few allusions to this matter. Among others, Parker 
has noted important differences between negro and 
Caucasian brains and Baker has recorded many my- 


THE NEGRO 


ological differences, but, so far as I am aware, the 
matter has never received the careful and systematic 
investigation it deserves. 

“ I have thought it opportune to bring it to the notice 
of the Society at this time, in the hope of stimulating 
interest in it and leading to its further development. 
The isolated fact of today may become the general¬ 
ization of tomorrow and if each shall contribute his 
mite we shall soon have a body of facts sufficient to 
warrant us in deducing the laws of agreement and dif¬ 
ference, if such there be. 

“ During a somewhat extended service as demon¬ 
strator of anatomy in one of our local medical schools, 
using negro subjects entirely, one myological pecul¬ 
iarity of the race was forcibly impressed upon my at¬ 
tention. I refer to the almost invariable presence of 
the psoas parvus muscle, on both sides and well de¬ 
veloped. I regret that I kept no exact record but I 
feel warranted in saying that the presence of this 
muscle is the rule and its absence a noteworthy ex¬ 
ception. It was equally present in the two sexes. 

“ This muscle occurs constantly in the lower animals 
and serves an important purpose, but as we ascend in 
the scale it grows smaller and more rudimentary until 
in man it is generally stated to be absent or a mere 
fasciculus. 

“ Meckel is the only authority who regards this as a 
constantly present muscle. He states that it is some¬ 
times absent but that this is rare. Every other an¬ 
atomist is against him. Theile’s language is especially 
emphatic. He says: ‘ I consider the absence of the 
small psoas as the normal condition in man. In over 


THE NEGRO 


twenty bodies where I have searched especially for it I 
have only found it a single time.’ 

“ Holden gives its frequency of occurrence as once in 
eight or ten subjects, while Wilson, Quain, Cruoeilhier 
and others state in general terms that it is more fre¬ 
quently absent than present. Allen regards it as an 
accessory bundle to the great psoas. This may be 
true in the white but I hardly think it will hold true 
of the negro. The muscle is invariably fairly de¬ 
veloped, with entirely separate and well defined points 
of attachment and having its own aponeurosis. 

I am inclined to regard the presence of this muscle 
in the colored race as a reversion toward the lower 
type of mammals, especially when taken in connection 
with other equally striking myological peculiarities and 
I trust that I may be able, by this note, to cause some 
one, whose opportunities will permit, to study 
carefully the comparative myology of the two races. 
From my own limited experience I am positive that 
a mine of information lies awaiting the explorer who 
shall uncover it and I hope that its treasures may soon 
be added to the literature of our science.” 

Darwin has said that “ we have seen that the mental 
powers of the higher animals do not differ in kind, 
though greatly in degree, from the corresponding 
powers of man, especially of the lower and barbarous 
races; and it would appear that even their taste for 
the beautiful is not widely different from that of the 
Quadrumana. As the negro of Africa raises the flesh 
on his face into paralled ridges ‘ or cicatrices, high 
above the natural surface, which unsightly deformi- 
ties, are considered great personal attractions;”*—as 

* Sir Samuel Baker, “The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia” 



±0 


THE NEGRO 


negroes and savages in many parts of the world paint 
their faces with red, blue, white, or black bars, so the 
male mandrill of Africa appears to have acquired his 
deeply-furrowed and gaudily-colored face from hav¬ 
ing been thus rendered attractive to the female.” * 

And again “ In Regard to Colour, the new-born 
negro child is reddish nut-brown, which soon becomes 
slaty-grey; the black colour being fully developed 
within a year in the Soudan, but not until three years 
in Egypt. The eyes of the negro are at first blue, and 
the hair chestnut-brown rather than black, being curled 
only at the ends.” f 

In short, as has long been known, in his physical 
organization the typical West Coast negro, whether 
living in Africa or living in America is as near the 
anthropoid apes as any of the savage races of man¬ 
kind,— perhaps the nearest. He is untold ages nearer 
than is the typical representative of the best in the 
white race. Taken as a whole we may say the same 
thing of him, when we take his mental and moral 
qualifications into consideration. Further along in the 
present work I shall touch more fully upon these points 
than I intend to in the present chapter. Professor 
Keane has said some wise and true things illustrating 
this side of the negro character. He states that the 
mental differences between the negro and the white 
races are quite as well marked as the physical ones, 

* Darwin, Chas. “ The Descent of Man,” pp. 540, 541. The 
comparison made here is an especially good one, and will be 
appreciated by any one who has had the opportunity to 
see the native Africans paint up their faces as I have, and 
wrinkle them up in the manner above described, and also 
to study the face of the African mandrill, a most remarkable 
simian. 

f Loc. cit., p. 557. 



THE NEGRO 


4i 

“ and as both are the gradual outcome of external 
conditions, fixed by heredity, it follows that the at¬ 
tempt to suddenly transform the negro mind by foreign 
culture must be, as it has proved to be, as futile as 
the attempt would be to suddenly transform his physi¬ 
cal type.” This is really the point that the untutored 
masses in the United States fail to see. Sometimes, 
however, a witty politician will say something on this 
line, and I heard a republican Congressman, remark 
upon one occasion that “ the legislature could accom¬ 
plish a great deal but it could not legislate the woolly 
kink out of the hair on a negro’s head.” The negro in 
fact has no morals, and it is therefore out of the ques¬ 
tion for him to be immoral — in other words he is non- 
moral rather than immoral. In speaking of the condi¬ 
tion of the blacks in the Southern States in 1883 the 
Rev. Dr. Tucker is quoted as having said at the Ameri¬ 
can Church Congress for that year, that he knew of 
whole neighborhoods “ where there is not one single 
negro couple, whether legally married or not, who are 
faithful to each other beyond a few weeks. In the midst 
of a prayer-meeting I have known negroes to steal from 
each other, and on the way home they will rob any hen¬ 
roost that lies conveniently at hand. The most pious 
negro that I know is confined in a penitentiary for an 
atrocious murder, and he persists in saying he can see 
no offence against God in his crime, though he ac¬ 
knowledges an offence against man.” [I believe the 
negro to be correct on this point, although it makes the 
atrocity of the crime none the less.] 

Mention is further made of negro missionaries guilty 
of the grossest immorality, living in concubinage, ad¬ 
dicted to thieving, lying, and every imaginary crime, yet 


THE NEGRO 


all “ earnest and successful preachers, and wholly un¬ 
conscious of hypocrisy. Their sins, universally known, 
did not diminish their influence with their race. It 
was impossible to doubt their absolute sincerity.” 

“ A much darker picture,” says Keane in his work 
on the negro, “ is presented by the independent negro 
commonwealths of Hayti, for eighty years the scene of 
almost uninterrupted fratricidal strife.” 

Throughout the entire historic period of man's career 
upon earth the chapter on the negro is practically a 
record of the lowest savagery, soon lapsing back into 
mere tradition of wild and untutored tribes. People 
whose social institutions are at the lowest possible 
level, with an undiluted fetichism, with the worship of 
ancestors for a religion, coupled with torture, cruelty, 
slavery and cannibalism, and a common belief in sor¬ 
cery. Where not checked by the presence of the 
European in the middle Congo Basin the native sham¬ 
bles are still hung with the choice cuts of human 
bodies, and they continue to be sold in the open market 
place. (See Appendix, Note 1. Page 183.) Many of 
these people see their near relatives in the negroes of 
the United States. In Africa, they even barter their 
dead relatives, and those securing the corpses in this 
way eat them, and that with great relish (Stanley: 
Heart of Africa, Vol. II. pp. 18, 19). They will even 
disinter them for the same purpose, and eat them after 
decomposition has set in. Those negroes who still 
practice this in Africa are several millions in number, 
and are the close blood relations of the race as we have 
them represented in the United States. To quote 
Professor Keane once more on the state of the African 


negro, he says, “ When visited in 1879 by Dr. Buchver, 
this potentate, [the muata yanvo of Ulunda] to impress 
his guest with his power, caused one of his subjects 
to assume the part of a chief just arrived from a re¬ 
mote province of the empire. The sham cortege of 
soldiers and women advanced to the throne all thickly 
plastered with mud from head to foot, and the “ chief ” 
approaching on all fours deliberately rolled himself in 
the sand at his majesty’s feet. 

The administration of justice is regulated not 
by any sense of right or wrong, but by the ca¬ 
price of the king, who is himself often in the power 
of the navumbala, or witch-detector. Beyond what 
has been acquired from without, of letters there 
is absolutely no knowledge, unless an exception be 
made in favour of the invention or adaptation of a 
rude syllabic system some years ago by a native of the 
Vei tribe. Hence literature is purely oral, and limited 
to a few tribal legends, some folklore, proverbs, and 
songs of the simplest kind. The arts also are ex¬ 
clusively of an industrial character, and restricted 
mainly to coarse weaving, pottery, and the smelting 
and working of metals (chiefly copper and iron), agri¬ 
culture, and grazing. Architecture has no existence, 
nor are there any monumental ruins or stone struc¬ 
tures of any sort in the whole of Negroland except 
those erected in Soudan under Hamitic and Semitic in¬ 
fluences. No full-blooded negro has ever been distin¬ 
guished as a man of science, a poet, or an artist, and 
the fundamental equality claimed for him by ignorant 
philanthropists is belied by the whole history of the 
race throughout the historic period.” Mark you, 


THE NEGRO 


Professor Keane says here “ no full-blooded negro ” 
has ever thus distinguished himself, and this fact can¬ 
not be denied. From an ethnological standpoint then, 
the place occupied by the West Soudan negro, and his 
relatives in the United States is now well known and 
clearly defined. He has been carefully studied by 
many minds fully capable of undertaking the task, and 
his status is not difficult of comprehension, as I have 
attempted to show in this chapter. 


CHAPTER III 


The Introduction of the Negro Into the United 
States .— The African Slave Trade. 

P ersonally I know but little about the African 
Slave trade, though from my reading a number 
of very good and authoritative books on the sub¬ 
ject, I am about as familiar with it as if I had 
been thus engaged myself. Early in the 60’s my 
father was the American Consul General to the city of 
Havana, Cuba, and while there I not only saw and 
visited the African and coolie slavers in the harbor, but 
for two years had the opportunity of studying the 
treatment of the slaves on the island by their masters. 
The barracoons were a familiar sight to my eyes, and 
I have seen many a slave whipped both by the owner 
or by the government overseer. At Cape Haytien in 
Hayti, a year or so later I had the opportunity of study¬ 
ing what negro life was in a negro city — a city of 
Spanish and French building, but at that time, in its 
highly dilapidated condition, in the hands of the blacks 
who had previously gained it through an insurrection 
against their masters. During the Civil War I was 
in the South and have lived in a number of the 
Southern States of the United States since. I was 
a young warrant officer part of the time then, and in 
the service of the Federal Government. In fact, for 
forty years I have studied the African negro in Amer¬ 
ica, in every situation ever occupied by a representa- 

,45) 






THE NEGRO 


tive of the race, whether that representative was 
of pure African stock, a slave, a half or other fractional 
caste, or a freedman. I knoiv the genus, and I know 
both the species and the subspecies, if for the nonce 
we may apply those zoological terms to the true types 
and the various intergrades of this race of beings. 

Now, the existence of human slavery in one form or 
another in various parts of the world dates back to 
the very dawn of history. A list of all those who 
have been captured and forced into slavery in the 
career of mankind upon earth up to the present day 
would amount to many, many millions. An account of 
these untold millions of beings who have thus been 
enslaved, their histories, their lives, their deaths, and 
their fate afterwards would be one of the most awful 
descriptions imaginable. Filled to the brim and over¬ 
flowing with the rankest injustice, the most wholesale 
and dastardly murders, tortures unspeakable, fiendish 
cruelties, slaughter, deception, unbridled lust, tyranny, 
and indeed, every crime both petty and capital that the 
mind can conceive of, or that the hand of man has ever 
committed when guided by the very lowest instincts 
of depravity and degradation. Millions of our own 
species have been dealt with in this manner, and make 
up such a death-roll. No part of human history can 
in any manner compare with it. Even the record of 
the endless murders and tortures committed in the 
name of Christ and Christianity pale when compared 
with it, and, as a matter of fact, the so-called Christian 
nations have in history been the chief ones who both 
supported, countenanced, and directly engaged in the 
African slave-trade. 

England, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and many 


THE NEGRO 


47 


others were deeply engaged in it, but none of these 
countries more so than was America, and America’s 
record in the slave-trade is quite as foul, shameless and 
abominable as that of any other nation on earth, dur¬ 
ing the time it lasted. In the present volume I shall 
have nothing to say of the subject of slavery in the 
far East, where in many places it still exists, as it does 
in many parts of Africa among the negroes, nor shall I 
refer, except ever so lightly, to the slave-trade of Great 
Britain and other European Countries which plied 
it. My main object in introducing it at all is to picture 
with the greatest possible clearness to the reader, the 
character of the negroes that were brought over to 
America as slaves; their mental, moral and physical 
natures; their sex; their numbers; the treatment they 
received in the way of fitting them or unfitting them 
for colonization; and how the slave-trade was con¬ 
ducted and how it was brought to an end. Of all these 
questions the far most important one is, what kind 
of people; what kind of stock were these negroes? 
This point has been almost entirely ignored by the so- 
called twentieth-century leaders among the negroes in 
the United States. And, naturally so. This is seen 
both in their published works as well as in their ad¬ 
dresses and teachings. A few exceptions to this rule, 
however, occur, and these exceptions are met with in 
the writings of those with very little negro blood in 
them. Such works are by no means tasteful to the 
authors of deeper dye. 

So far as we can ascertain from recorded history the 
first African slaves landed in the United States, were 
brought there by the Dutch in August 1619. John 
Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, was in Jamestown 


I 


48 


THE NEGRO 


at the time, and a part of the account of the affair has 
been preserved. In his diary we read that “ a dutch 
man of warre that sold us twenty Negars touched at 
Jamestown this year.” Little more is known about it, 
and it is not even ascertained from what part of Africa 
these negroes came, or how they were captured. 

The history of the American slave-trade, however, 
dates from this historical event. The Dutchman came 
there because on the high seas when he had his slaves 
on board he met with a Virginia ship, the Treasurer, 
and those aboard of the latter told him that they 
wanted slaves in Jamestown. Afterwards the Treasurer 
brought negro slaves to Virginia, and indeed she was 
the first ship fitted out for the slave-trade in this 
country. She had quite a history afterwards, and it 
has been very well told in the Magazine of American 
History (November 1891) by a writer of authority. In 
the year 1636^we see in the ship Desire the first craft 
built in the United States for the very purpose of plying 
in this nefarious traffic. Still other vessels landed them 
along the coast at various points, yet in 1649 not over 
fifty negro slaves had been imported into Virginia. 
Booker T. Washington the negro president of the 
colored institute at Tuskegee, Alabama, in his book 
entitled The Future of the American Negro, utterly 
ignores the introduction of the thousands, yes, tens of 
thousands, of slaves that were landed in this country 
during the entire slave-trade period, and makes the 
foolish attempt to hoodwink his readers by having 
them believe that all the negroes in the United States 
at the present time are descended from those constitut¬ 
ing the first cargo brought to Virginia. He makes the 
statement thus: “ The first slaves were brought into 


THE NEGRO 


this country by the Dutch in 1619, and were landed at 
Jamestown, Virginia. The first cargo consisted of 
fourteen [Vc]. The census taken in 1890 shows that 
these fourteen slaves had increased to 7,638,360 ” (p. 4). 
That he meant this just exactly as it is said is proven 
by what he restates on pages 22 and 23 of the same 
book in the following words: “ I know that whether 

the Negroes are increasing or decreasing, whether they 
are growing better or worse, whether they are valuable 
or valueless, that a few years ago some fourteen of 
them were brought into this country, and that now 
those fourteen are nearly ten millions.” It is hardly 
worth while to say here that nothing of the kind oc¬ 
curred or has occurred. In the first place twenty of 
these African cannibals were first brought here up¬ 
wards of two and a half centuries ago, instead of “ a 
few years,” and many, many thousands were added to 
them from 1619 to 1862, and that of the ten millions 
of negroes he speaks of as now being in the United 
States, not more than half of them are negroes but 
are mulattoes, like Frederick Douglas, Du Bois, and 
others. 

I think William Hannibal Thomas in his excellent 
work on The American Negro, had good reason to say 
of him “ he lies with avidious readiness, and in all 
moods and degrees of enormity, without undergoing 
the slightest remorse, and often without any apparent 
sense of prevarication. He lies to please, to evade, to 
conceal, to excuse, to assert, to command. He lies to 
be heard, and will not be silent, though he has no 
truth to utter” (p. 118). And of him again on page 
121, “ There is a cunning astuteness about the nature 
of a negro which renders him an adept in deception, 
4 


THE NEGRO 


*8 

and consequently enables him to hide many of the 
shams of his life.” (The Macmillan Company, N. York 
and Lond. 1901). What I have quoted here from 
Thomas occurs in the chapter on “ Characteristic 
Traits ” of the American negro, one of the best, the 
truest and soundest descriptions of the character of 
the average American negro it has ever been my pleas¬ 
ure to peruse. I believe the negro blood preponderates 
in Booker T. Washington. 

Now, the colonists in first introducing the negroes 
into this country were to some extent inspired by re¬ 
ligious motives. The superannuated “ soul-saving ” 
proposition was at the bottom of it, but the cloak in 
the course of time soon became wofully threadbare, to 
be finally converted into a ghastly shroud in no way 
concealing the decomposed and emaciated black cada¬ 
ver, that might fitly stand for the emblem of the dis¬ 
gusting traffic from its inauguration to its death. 
Slaves, however, at first prospered in the colonies, and 
seeing this not a few attempts were made to enslave 
the indigenous red-men, but it was an utter failure. 
They were in every way unfit for labor, perished under 
the ordeal like sheep, and finally the attempt was gen¬ 
erally abandoned. 

In 1562 the then Anglo-Saxons entered the field as 
slave traders and they succeeded in their undertakings 
from the very start. Royal Companies were formed, 
treaties were drawn and ratified, and British slave- 
trade soon became a powerful institution (1713). “ In 
those days,” says an authority at hand, “ the ship- 
chandlers of Liverpool made special displays in their 
windows of such things as hand-cuffs, leg-shackles, 
iron collars, short and long chains, and furnaces and 


THE NEGRO 


51 


copper kettles designed for slaver’s use. The news¬ 
papers were full of advertisements of slaves and slaver 
goods. The young bloods of the town deemed it fine 
amusement to circulate hand-bills in which negro gdrls 
were offered for sale. An artist of wide repute — 
Stothard — painted “ The voyage of the Sable Venus 
from Angola to the West Indies.” No doubt much of 
the same sort went on in the colonies, for New Eng¬ 
land soon took the lead in the slave-trade, and as it 
was a field full of adventure, cruelty, independence, 
chance for wealth, unlimited opportunity to gratify 
the sexual passions with a new and an enslaved race. 
To drink rum to one’s fill, no end of the colonial Yankee 
boys of all ages plunged into it with avidity. Moore 
in his History of Slavery in Massachusetts, says: “At 
the very birth of foreign commerce from New Eng¬ 
land the African slave-trade became a regular busi¬ 
ness, and Hopkins in his Reminiscences stated 

that in li 10 there were no less than 150 vessels be- 
longing to Rhode Island alone in the African slave- 
trade, and that State was responsible for enslaving 
more of them than any other one in all New England. 
Newport, in fact, was started and built up on the 
African slave-trade almost entirely. England’s wealth 
was largely involved in it, and beyond all peradventure, 
the slave-ship service brought to that country her re¬ 
nowned and hardy seamen. 

The famous Captain John Paul Jones, of the Ameri¬ 
can Colonial navy gained his experience and his rep¬ 
utation along the same lines. He served in the fore¬ 
castle of the slaver King George. It was thus that this 
vile traffic,— fatal, murderous, and beastly trade, bred 


52 


THE NEGRO 


sailors, merchants, priests, pirates, buccaneers, and 
every species of rascal and coward. 

An average slave-ship was in those days one of 
about 500 tons burden; she had a length between 60 
and 70 feet, and was built with due regard for speed 
and other qualities. Her storage capacity consisted in 
a capacious hold, in which rum, trinkets, powder, pro¬ 
visions, and slave truck were stowed away. There was 
an open upper deck, with a space between it and the 

hold, known as ’twixt decks. This space is where the 
slaves were quartered during the passage. It was less 
than four feet high, and in some slavers not much over 
two! In here,— this horrid death-pit, unventilated 

hole, rotten dungeon,— they packed away the poor 
negroes by the hundred. The men were usually 
forward, shackled together two and two. Negresses 
and children were aft and, though confined, were not 
chained. All of them were pushed along until they 
touched each other. In some instances they were 
rammed in, and compelled to lie spoon fashion during 
the entire trip of many weeks. In a little while the 
dead and the living were in there together,— linked to¬ 
gether in the dark. Often death claimed three-fourths 
of them; hunger, burning thirst, and unmitigated 
misery had them all the time. They wallowed in their 
own filth, breathing an air pestilential in the extreme; 
while the women were raped and ravished to the hearts’ 
content of the entire crew. Hundreds of such craft 
were at one time afloat, swarming the Slave Coast of 
Africa, taking all manner of chances, and conveying 
their human cargoes to the West Indies, to Europe, to 
the American Colonies, and to Brazil. Some fine ships 
were in the trade though but few of them steamers. Old 


THE NEGRO 


53 


whalers were pressed into the service; sloops, brigs 
and brigatines. It was the money-making scheme of 
the day. Men would clear thousands of dollars on one 
trip. Slaves were landed all along the American coast 
by the hundred. The Providencia put 4500 into 
Brazil in four voyages. She was a steamer. Plenty 
of small crafts were in it, hardly bigger than small 
oyster-sloops. Some were notorious for their great 
speed, and in tight places they could down masts and 
use sweeps. 

So far as the great slave-markets of the West were 
concerned during the entire time the slave-trade was 
considered legal, the chief and only source of supply 
was found, says a writer at hand “ along the Atlantic 
coast of Africa, between Cape Verde, at the North, and 
Benguela, or Cape St. Martha, at the South. The sea 
here makes a great scoop into the land, as if the 
Brazilian part of the South American continent had 
been broken out of the hollow in the African Coast. 
Two great rivers and a host of smaller streams come 
down to the sea within its limits, and its contour, as 
a whole, is that of a mighty gulf, but there is neither 
bay nor inlet throughout its whole extent that forms 
a good harbor for shipping. And the off-shore islands, 
too, are few in number and small in extent. The land 
at the beach is almost everywhere low, even though 
hills and mountains may be seen, flooded with a 
dreamy haze, in the distance. The rivers wind about 
through uncounted channels in low delta lands covered 
with masses of mangrove and palm-trees, and haunted 
by poisonous and vicious reptiles. The yellowish sand 
of the sea and the black sand-washings of the uplands 
mingle to form low, tawny beaches and dunes where 


I 


54 


THE NEGRO 


the river currents are beaten back by.the ever-present 
and ever-treacherous surf. Goree and Gambia, Sierra 
Leone and Liberia, the Bight of Benin and the Bight 
of Biafra, Bonny and Calabar, Anamabae and Ambriz, 
the Congo and St. Paul de Loango, are all familiar 
names to the student of slave-coast literature.” This 
was the field of operations on the African side,— a hot 
torrid sea; a practically unindented coast-line, washed 
by a most dangerous surf; an atmosphere reeking rvith 
disease; a dense, miry jungle and forest on landing, 
the very air of which was like breathing death itself; 
dangers from ferocious beasts and venomous reptiles, 
from hostile natives, in fact everything that places the 
life of man under such conditions and circumstances 
in jeopardy, while, beyond it all, lay the land of the 
vast unknown. More or less near in this latter lived 
the various races and tribes of black people, that 
furnished the slaves, the relatives and descendants 
of which are the close blood-relations of the negro 
stock, now commonly designated as the American 
negroes. 

They were, and are still, the most savage, supersti¬ 
tious, and cannibalistic people on the face of the earth. 
In their supernatural religion of fetishism they see 
their world peopled with evil and malevolent spirits, 
at a constant war with nature and with themselves. 
Lightning, thunder, rain, reptiles, witches, beasts and 
birds of prey, the cowards and the cunning among their 
own or other races, were one and all under the con¬ 
trol of malignant and antagonistic spirits. Hundreds 
of negroes in the southern States of North America, 
still believe in such things, and it is perfectly natural 
that they should, for, comparatively speaking, it is not 



ig. o. Type of young male negro. Lateral view, 
subject as Fig. 2. Photographed by the Author. 


Same 













THE IN EW YORK ' 

PUBLIC LIBRARY 


t 


ASTOR, LENOX AND 
TILDEN foundations. 








THE NEGRO 


55 


so many years ago that they left their human flesh¬ 
eating relatives in the western Soudan. 

As I have said before, these races of black people are 
not only superstitious and degraded to the last degree, 
but fearfully ignorant, non-progressive, and with a 
most meagre conception of the barest elementals in 
the science of civilization. Recorded history they have 
none, a fact that need no more surprise us, than that 
the great apes in their native forests about them have 
none, and for precisely the same reasons. This was 
the country and these were the people to which the 
slave-traders flocked and that furnished them their 
human freight to carry on their infernal, infamous 
traffic. The curse of rum had much to do with it. 
Both the slavers and the natives loved it, and by both 
it was gotten rid of and taken in large quantities. The 
whites drank it and they drank Madeira, too, when 
they could afford it, and moreover the rum was their 
medium of exchange, and the stuff that got the slaves 
for them, out of which the great fortunes were made. 

Slaves were few and hard to get at first, the slavers 
having to purchase them from such tribes as had 
them for sale on the coast. Everyone considered 
the trade perfectly legitimate and honorable in the 
highest degree. One coast tribe of blacks being more 
powerful than a neighboring one, it would, upon de¬ 
feating in battle the weaker one, capture a number of 
slaves, and these latter were disposed of to the slavers 
when they came for them. Not a few tribes were thus 
pitted against each other, and as time passed on and 
the victorious parties finding that they had a growing 
market for slaves, they began making their raids for 
no other purpose. 


56 


THE NEGRO 


Slaves were principally owned by the chief men of 
the tribe where they were to be found; when it was 
otherwise, they had become enslaved for various of¬ 
fences to individuals. Not a few negroes were made 
slaves for debt; for seducing the wives of their neigh¬ 
bors ; for handling a neighbor’s fetish; and for a few 
other causes. These slaves were very well treated as 
a rule by their owners,— almost as members of the 
family. It was only after the white man came upon 
the coast that they began to increase in number, to be 
kidnapped and treated with diabolical cruelty, and 
slain by the score when the danger of discovery was 
imminent or where they mutinied against their captors 
or owners. However, the negroes often killed and ate 
their captured enemies and their slaves; sometimes 
they were butchered, burned, disemboweled and other¬ 
wise used as “ sacrifices ” on gala-days, jubilees, fetes, 
the foundation of a juju-house, and similar festivals. 
If any one cares to read of the horrors of the customs 
and ceremonies of these black demons in their native 
land, and these customs are still in vogue, I can sug¬ 
gest no better book than The Ethiopian, by J. Cameron 
Grant (Chas. Carrington, Paris, 1900). This is a work 
that ought to interest any one and everyone in the 
United States who may be studying the negro prob¬ 
lem in this country and its solution; who desires to 
know from what kind of stock our negroes are de¬ 
rived ; and the length, breadth, and thickness of the 
terrible black stain we have soiled our racial record 
with,— a stain that unfortunately possesses innate 
properties for spreading. In a later chapter I shall 
touch upon this point. 

In 1645 slaves were becoming more difficult to ob- 


THE NEGRO 


57 


tain; the demand in the colonies for them was great 
and ever-growing; latent fortunes lay in the trade. 
Something must be done. So in that year when the 
Boston ship Rainbowe was on the Coast, she fell in with 
some London slavers that were there, and withal tired 
of waiting for a cargo. To enliven things the Lon¬ 
doners and the Yankees combined and on some pre¬ 
tence of a row with the blacks on shore, landed a 
howitzer called in those days “ a murderer,” and one 
Sunday morning raided a village, killing scores of 
the inhabitants and capturing some of them alive. 
Captain Smith of the Boston boat got two of these. He 
was an American ,— proud of the feat, and his brilliant 
slaughter of innocent men, women and children; and 
further that he had been the first to teach the world 
how to obtain slaves in Africa without waiting so long 
on the Coast for them. In Boston this captain was 
tried on his return home, but of course the courts had 
no jurisdiction over any acts he may have committed 
on the coast of Africa, and so the charges against 
him of Sabbath-breaking, kidnapping and murder were 
dismissed. Both the slaves were sent back to Africa. 

This case cleared the coast for all Americans who 
cared to go and do likewise. From a peaceful and 
orderly traffic,— as disgusting and as cruel as it was,— 
the slave-trade was soon enlarged by this added 
feature of open invasion of the negro territory with 
the view of slave capture. Shore stations were estab¬ 
lished soon thereafter, veritable hells of iniquity, so 
these shore attacks began to be far more frequent, and 
on an ever-increasing scale. Not only this, but the 
slavers instigated the coast tribes to make attacks 
themselves for the profit there was in it. Thus wars 


THE NEGRO 



were enkindled between the tribes of the coast and 
the tribes of the interior. Notwithstanding all this 
and the hundreds of slaves captured, the supply by no 
means yet met the demand. 

Captain Canot describes one of these raids in the fol¬ 
lowing words: — “ In my wanderings in Africa I have 
often seen the tiger pounce upon its prey, and with 
instinctive thirst satiate its appetite for blood and 
abandon the drained corpse; but these African ne- 
gresses [who were of the raiding party] were neither 
as decent nor as merciful as the beast of the wilder¬ 
ness. Their malignant pleasure seemed to consist 
in the invention of tortures that would agonize but 
not slay. A slow, lingering tormenting mutilation 
was practised on the living, * * * and in every 

instance the brutality of the women exceeded that of 
the men. I cannot picture their hellish joy, * * * 

while the queen of the harpies crept amid the butchery 
gathering the brains from each severed skull as a 
bonne bonche for the approaching feast.” 

Those that were captured alive were sold on the 
coast, and the stories of these raids undoubtedly 
amused the American colonists when they were re¬ 
cited to them on the return home of the slavers. His- 
tory goes to show that the United States was, at the 
time, quite familiar with all of these outrages. 

English slavers were quite as bad in such matters, as 
evinced by the chapter of treachery and murder done 
in 1767 on the slave-ships Indian Queen, Duke of York, 
Nancy, and the Concord, when they were up one of the 
rivers on the slave-coast. Scores of negroes were in¬ 
duced to come aboard these four vessels for a pow¬ 
wow. After they were made nearly crazy with rum, 


THE NEGRO 


59 


the crews armed themselves simultaneously for 
slaughter and capture. The scenes that followed al¬ 
most defy description, and I am rather glad my space 
here will not admit of my telling the story. 

Both American and English women engaged in the 
fascinating slave-trade upon their own account, and 
some even went to the Coast. Here they lived in the 
stations on shore or up the rivers,— those barbaric 
palaces of wealth, culture, ribaldry, sensuality, and 
blood-money mints. The home of Don Pedro was 
an example of these and his sister lived with him. 
He left the coast in 1839 with a cool million of money. 
Captain Philip Drake, in his Revelations of a Slave- 
Smuggler, describes another of these (January 5, 
1840). These are his words: — “Da Souza, or Cha- 
Chu, as everybody calls him, is apparently a reckless 
voluptuary, but the shrewdest slave-trader on the 
African coast. Whydah was built by his enterprise, 
and he lives the life of a prince. His mansion here is 
like a palace, and he has a harem filled with women 
from all parts of the world. He keeps up a continual 
round of dissipation, gambling, feasting, and indulging 
in every sensual pleasure with his women and vis¬ 
itors. * * * His house is the very abode of lux¬ 
ury. He must squander thousands. But what is 
money to a man who has a slave-mine in Dahomey, 
bringing hoards of wealth yearly by a hundred ves¬ 
sels. Da Souza enjoys almost a monopoly of the coast 
trade. Blanco has been his only rival of late years. 
* * * This morning Cha-Chu met me and pro¬ 
posed to supply me with a wife. ‘ You shall have 
French, Spanish, Greek, Circassian, English, Dutch, 


60 


THE NEGRO 


Italian, Asiatic, African or American, 5 he said, laugh¬ 
ing. 55 

In 1850 there were 244,985 slaves in the state of 
Louisiana alone, and Virginia was a breeding-place for 
many of them. Hundreds of them died because of the 
severity of slave-life; hundreds upon hundreds of them 
still continued to die on board the vessels that trans¬ 
ported them to our shores; and untold numbers of 
others were murdered, or as incidental to attempts at 
capture, were destroyed. 

The raids in Africa were carried a score of leagues 
inland, untold and unspeakable atrocities were perpe¬ 
trated upon the natives in thousands of cases. No 
end of cruelty, no end of bloodshed, no end of dia¬ 
bolical torture was the order of the day. Although 
growing side by side with America’s maiden efforts 
in a humane civilization, and the introduction of- all 
manner of anti-cruel methods, the treatment of the 
African slave, nevertheless, from start to finish has 
simply been a picture long drawn out of hellish bru¬ 
tality, unbridled sensuality, and demoniacal practices. 
No other kind of cattle have ever been thus dealt 
with in the world’s history. It is a panorama beastly 
of infamy. 

Sometimes the cargo of negroes aboard the slaver 
mutinied; rarely were they successful, however, and 
here is a case where they were not. It occurred in 
1844, aboard the American slaver Kentucky, which left 
the coast with 530 slaves aboard of her. They were 
in the hold and packed together as usual, chained two 
and two. The mutiny was quickly suppressed, but 
the captain decided to make an example of the ring¬ 
leaders, so he shot and hanged 46 of the men and a 


THE NEGRO 


61 


negress. " When they were hung, a rope was put 
round their necks and they drawn up to the yard¬ 
arm clear of the sail. This did not kill them, but only 
choked or strangled them. They were then shot in 
the breast and the bodies thrown overboard. If only 
one of two that were ironed together was to be hung, 
the rope was put around his neck and he was drawn 
up clear of the deck, and his leg laid across the rail 
and chopped off to save the irons and release him from 
his companion, who at the same time lifted up his leg 
till the other was chopped off as aforesaid, and he 
released. 

“ The bleeding negro was then drawn up, shot in 
the breast, and thrown overboard as aforesaid. The 
legs of about one dozen were chopped off in this way. 
When the feet fell on deck, they were picked up by 
.the crew and thrown overboard, and sometimes they 
shot at the body while it still hung living, and all 
kinds of sport was made of the business. When the 
woman was hung up and shot, the ball did not take 
effect, and she was thrown overboard living, and was 
seen to struggle some time in the water before she 
sunk.” And the deponent [one of the crew] further 
says that “ after this was over they brought up and 
flogged about twenty men and six women. The flesh 
of some of them, where they were flogged, putrefied 
and came off in some cases six or eight inches in 
diameter, and in places half an inch thick.” 

In those days Polk was President of the United 
States, and James Buchanan Secretary of State. They 
both were appealed to in the strongest possible lan- 
gauge to take a stand against the slave-trade, but, as 
Spears says in his work on The American Slave Trade, 


62 


THE NEGRO 


“ Neither James Buchanan nor James K. Polk, nor 
any other member of any administration from and 
including that of Andrew Jackson down to the Civil 
War, did anything that could in justice be called an 
effort to stop the use of the American flag for cover¬ 
ing such atrocities.” The slave-trade at that time 
had come to be the foulest, the rankest species of 
piracy, yet few there were who assailed it. 

The profits of the slave-trade were simply enor¬ 
mous, single trips clearing as much as from $20,000 
to over $40,000. These are net profits. In one case, 
the net profit made in six months by a small vessel 
amounted to $41,438.54, and she succeeded in getting 
only 217 living slaves over. 

In 1835, a Baltimore clipper, the Napoleon, made on 
one cargo a net profit of over one hundred thousand 
dollars; but such facts have but little to do with the 
object of the present work. They simply show the 
incentive that kept up the filthy enterprise, and made 
men blind to the trouble they were heaping up in this 
country for following generations to get out of the 
best way they could. 

That many of the colonists long foresaw the evils 
that would some day come from the interbreeding of 
the blacks and the whites in the United States, there 
can be no manner of a doubt. Even as early as 1705, 
Massachusetts imposed a tax of £4 on each slave 
that came within her jurisdiction, and this was dis¬ 
tinctly “ for the Better Preventing of a spurious or 
mixt Issue.” It was rather remarkable that the young 
Puritanic colonists of those days were so given to co¬ 
habiting with the captive black women and girls of a 
race of cannibals. They not only seemed to revel in 



Fig. 4. Type of the Northern Mulatto. Photographed from 

life by the Author. 








[THE NEW YORK 

(public library 

ASTOR, LENOX A.NO 
T1LDEN FOUND* TlONS. 








THE NEGRO 


63 


it, but those that sought such sable Venuses were so 
numerous, and so successful, that the cafe-au-lait 
progeny which began to appear in the population ex¬ 
cited the alarm of the legislators of the State. It is 
a wonder that some of the Southern States did not 
see this pending danger likewise, especially at a later 
date when it must have been still more evident,— 
for be it known, South Carolina, for example, had in 
1734 no fewer than 22,000 slaves against a short 8,000 
whites in her limits. Possibly altogether as many as 
400,000 negro slaves were, during the entire history 
of the slave-trade, brought to the United States from 
Africa. There may be 4,000,000 of pure, unmixed 
African negroes in this country at the present writing 
(1903), but of the remainder of the ten millions that 
writers on the subject talk about, they are half- 
castes,— hybrids produced by incessant crossing with 
the whites and chiefly in the Southern States. 

It is easy to be imagined that from the time that 
the slaves were first brought into the country, up to 
and to include the time they were set free as a result 
of the Civil War, they were the cause of the 
framing and enforcing of no end of laws; of start¬ 
ing all sorts of legislation; of the formation of parties 
for and against the trade; of exciting the Church to 
action; of strife of many kinds and outbreaks of pas¬ 
sion and speech. It is not the intention of the present 
w,ork to pass into the history of this part of the sub¬ 
ject. It is the darkest and most emphatically the 
dirtiest page in American history; and I must leave it 
to those who care to follow it along other lines. In¬ 
deed, enough would have been said in this chapter, 
had I stated the fact that the slave trade practically 



64 


THE NEGRO 


began when the Dutch brought twenty of them to Vir¬ 
ginia in 1619, and that upwards of four hundred thou¬ 
sand more of these black, benighted, densely ignorant, 
semi-simian, superstitious, lying and treacherous can¬ 
nibals, were, up to 1862, in blood, cruelty and infamy, 
landed upon our shores by a lot of the most heartless, 
cowardly, piratical, shameless and fiendishly cruel 
mercenaries that ever plied the sea. 

The entire traffic was horrid in the extreme and the 
injury it has done, and is still powerfully doing, those 
of Anglo-Saxon descent in these United States of 
America is, as proportionately compared with any 
benefit that has accrued from their introduction and 
subsequent propagation here, like unto a gentle morn¬ 
ing shower on the surface of the Pacific,— the ocean 
the injury, the shower the good. In fact, the injury 
so far outweighs the good that the latter can prac¬ 
tically be to a large extent ignored in the present vol¬ 
ume. Indeed, the former so far preponderates over 
the latter, is so profound in its nature, and demands 
such explicit clearness in its handling and presenta¬ 
tion, in all of its varied and scientific aspects, that I 
shall require every page of space I have remaining to 
in any way do it adequate justice. After another 
chapter or two that part of my task will be seriously 
entered upon. 


CHAPTER IV 


Biological Principles of Interbreeding in Man and 

Other Animals. 

N o well-informed and intelligent person will 
doubt for a moment, I think, much less ques¬ 
tion, anything I have thus far set forth in 
the three last chapters of the present volume. 
Man's place in nature and the ethnological status of 
the negro are facts that have been just as completely 
demonstrated and settled for all time, as has been the 
further fact that between the years 1619 and 1862 
many thousand negroes were imported into this 
country from the west coast of Africa; that some few 
of these are probably still living at the present writ¬ 
ing, that over three millions of their actual descend¬ 
ants are together with several millions more of half- 
castes produced chiefly by interbreeding with the 
white race. All this stock now inhabits various parts 
of the United States, though principally what is 
known as the “ black belt,” that is, an area extending 
through the Southern States westward, in which di¬ 
rection their numbers gradually decrease, as they do 
more markedly as we leave Philadelphia coming 
northward. In other words, and in brief, man is just 
as much an animal as is an ape, a bear, or a mouse, 
and he is in every way quite as much amenable to 
those laws controlling his evolution, development, 
physical well-being, metamorphoses in his morphol- 
5 ( 65 ) 



66 


THE NEGRO 


ogy, and other conditions and changes as they are. 
The negro races of the West Soudan are canni¬ 
bals, ignorant, superstitious, cruel, unreliable and non¬ 
progressive in every way, savages of the lowest types 
without a recorded history, and almost totally lacking 
in anything we refer to modern civilization, and it 
was from this stock that the negroes of the United 
States were derived within a comparatively brief space 
of time, so brief that it is highly probable that many 
of the near relatives of the negroes here in the United 
States are still living as cannibals in their own coun¬ 
try in Africa. For example, male negroes brought 
to this country in 1860, when they were twenty-five 
years old, might easily have left living children behind 
them in Africa. It would make the fathers here 
some seventy years old, while their children in Africa 
would be in the prime of life, or all less than forty-five 
years of age. So far as I am aware, no single negro 
in this country has ever made any attempt to hunt 
up, so to speak, his or her relatives left behind in 
Africa. No such thing would ever have happened in 
the case of a white race. Even if it had ever been pos¬ 
sible to enslave the latter, they would certainly have 
made a unanimous attempt to regain their relatives 
upon having been restored to liberty, and in all proba¬ 
bility returned en masse to their own country. That 
the negroes in the United States have never made any 
attempts of this nature is one of the best proofs in 
the world of the extremely low position they occupy, 
in any sort of a classification, of the genus Homo. 
However this may all be, the truth has been set forth 
in the first three chapters of this book, and we now 
have all these negroes with us, and it next devolves 


THE NEGRO 


4 


67 


upon me to set forth in the present chapter something 
about the biological laws of interbreeding in man and 
in other animals. Following my subject logically as 
well as naturally, it is evident that this is the next 
question that presents itself for our consideration. 

Within the last half-century or more so much light 
has been thrown upon all things that in any way relate 
to the origin of living forms upon this planet; their 
reproduction and multiplication; their development, 
growth, decadence and death; variation, the produc¬ 
tion of races, subspecies and species; natural selection, 
the survival of the fittest, and indeed, a score or more 
of other questions of the kind, that, with the abundant 
literature in the field upon such subjects, it would be 
quite superfluous to enter here in an argumentative 
way upon the discussion of any matters of this char¬ 
acter. Much of it has now far outgrown the stage of 
hypothesis, and been relegated to the realm of law. 
The old superannuated Asiatic myth of special and 
miraculous creation has been long ago passed into the 
scientific waste-basket, and the story of the original 
pair, were they mice or of mankind, now figures in 
the minds of all informed people simply as a dogmatic 
pun, or a theological witticism. There is much that is 
transcendingly beautiful in nature, and we see it 
throughout both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
as well as in the inorganic world, yet notwithstanding 
all this, and the surpassing beauties of the garden in 
which we live and die, there is much, indeed, nearly 
all in nature, that is ordered upon a scheme of the 
most fiendish and implacable cruelty. “ I have, also, 
often personified the word nature,” says Darwin, “ for 
I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity; but I 


68 


THE NEGRO 


mean by nature only the aggregate action and product 
of many natural laws,— and by laws only the ascer¬ 
tained sequence of events/’ * 

Some of the laws in nature, to which Darwin 
here refers are now as thoroughly appreciated and 
understood as are the facts in physics and astronomy. 
We no longer believe with the author of Genesis in 
the Christian bible that the earth is flat, and the sky 
a perforated crystal to allow the rain to come through, 
or that the rainbow was ever placed in the heavens for 
any reason whatever. We know much better than all 
this amounts to, and we know, too, that we have no 
power to alter any of the natural laws or the abso¬ 
lute conditions existing in life. We often hear it said 
that it is foolish for man to “ tamper with nature,” 
and thus cause variability in forms, or change in con¬ 
ditions that may militate against his interest or do 
harm in other ways. To this extent alone can man 
tamper or interfere with nature, but this by no means 
implies that he can either cause variability in animal 
or plant forms or check or prevent it in its operation. 
The struggle for existence commenced as a law 
with the first spark of life on earth, and it has never 
ceased since, nor will it cease in its operation until 
every evidence of life in the world is absolutely ex¬ 
tinct. So, too, with all the natural laws, as heredity, 
variability, natural selection, and others. They all 
came into force as life and form, however elementary, 
first appeared in the world, and they will never cease 
to act so long as living forms of any kind, either ani¬ 
mal or vegetable, are in existence through which they 
may be exemplified. All that man can accomplish is 

* Darwin, C., Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. 
1, p. 17. 




Fig\ 5. 1 ype of the Northern Mulatto. Photographed 

from life by the Author. Same subject as Fig. 4. 

























[the new yq<rk. 

PUBLIC LIBRARY 


I astor, lewox 

TtLT>EN 






THE NEGRO 


69 


to produce variability in form by a change of environ¬ 
ment and by crossing. But in doing this he cannot 
alter in the slightest degree any of the existing con¬ 
ditions, as climate, or any of the existing laws, as the 
laws controlling variability. Man may expose living 
forms of animals and plants to these existing condi¬ 
tions and laws, but beyond that his power ceases. He 
may cause, within certain limits, various forms of 
animals and plants to cross and reproduce other forms 
that differ in certain particulars from the parent ones, 
and so on down through successive generations. But 
his limitations here are equally exacting, for, in the first 
place, all animal forms, for example, are either not 
fertile inter se, or the copulatory act is impossible, as 
would be the case in a giraffe and a bat, or even when 
possible the two species cannot be induced to copulate, 
as would be the case in all probability in a wolf and a 
peccary. Let us consider a few examples to make my 
meaning still clearer. In the group of domestic 
pigeons we may select and cross certain varieties with 
the view of producing particular changes either in 
plumage or form, or both, and this selection and cross¬ 
ing may be persisted in until we have accomplished 
our object and produced the kind of birds we desired 
to manufacture. But we should have been absolutely 
powerless in our efforts here had it not been for the 
ceaseless operation of the natural law of variability 
and heredity to insure the gradual changes. I know 
of a variety of domestic pigeon which had been pro¬ 
duced by artificial selection extending through a num¬ 
ber of generations with the view, among other char¬ 
acters, of having the birds have as short bills as possi¬ 
ble. So successful was the breeder that he obtained 


70 


THE NEGRO 


pigeons with bills so short that they could not feed 
themselves, and the old ones actually had to be fed 
by hand, otherwise they would have soon starved. 
Again we have in this country certain aquatic ba- 
trachians called amblystomas; they are related to the 
tritons, salamanders and newts, and some people call 
them water-lizards, as they possess the general shape 
of a lizard and, in the case of the amblystomas, at 
least, they spend a certain part of their existence in 
the water. Now in New Mexico they have Amblysto- 
ma tigrinum, and when they are found in shallow 
water, or pools with light-colored clayey bottoms, 
the amblystomas themselves are of pale tints and this 
also may, to some extent, be due to their food. A 
number of years ago, when I was living in New Mex¬ 
ico, I captured a great many of these amblystomas, 
several hundred for the Smithsonian Institution, and 
others for a German lady who was experimenting with 
them in Berlin. I also experimented with them, as the 
amblystomas possess what may be termed very plas¬ 
tic organizations. I found that by keeping them in 
perfectly clear water in deep glass jars, and feeding 
them heartily for months on raw beef and nothing 
else, they changed very markedly in appearance, and 
besides they became of a deep black color, and in the 
course of time came to look totally unlike their kin in 
nature. This was a case where surroundings and food 
produced the variation, but the latter was due to laws 
over which I had no control, and, in fact, could not 
fully explain, yet I soon came to know that if I took 
from its natural environment in nature a pale brown 
amblystoma that was more or less slender and agile 
and desired to produce a stouter and more sluggish 


THE NEGRO 


71 


one, of nearly or quite dull black color, all I had to do 
was to expose him to the conditions, and feed him, as 
I have just described, and I was certain to get the re¬ 
sult. But the result responding to the treatment was 
always the same, and the variety produced was uni¬ 
form, that is, under the same conditions and treat¬ 
ment, the amblystomas never became more slender in 
form and yellow or pink in color. As is now so widely 
known, and has been known for a long, long time, the 
same thing can be accomplished with flowers and 
plants of all kinds, as what I have just exemplified in 
the case of animals. In both instances we here do 
quickly what nature takes a long time to do, and 
breeders all over the world have been doing this sort 
of a thing for many, many generations. A great va¬ 
riety of flowers have thus been dealt with, with the 
view of producing odd and extravagant forms, with 
brilliant and attractive colors; fruits have been 
crossed, grafted and bred to improve their size and 
flavor and other desirable qualities. In the domestic 
animals, all sorts of crossing and selection have been 
resorted to, to accomplish a great variety of ends. 
Horses have thus been treated to improve their speed 
and form; cows in order bred for their milk; sheep for 
their mutton and wool; dogs for hunting, running and 
guarding; pigs for pork; and so on for many, many 
other animals, they having been bred to meet our ends. 
Darwin says, “Man,therefore,may be said to have been 
trying an experiment on a gigantic scale; and it is 
an experiment which nature during the long lapse of 
time has incessantly tried. Hence it follows that the 
principles of domestication are important for us. The 
main result is that organic beings thus treated have 


72 


THE NEGRO 


varied largely, and the variations have been inherited. 
This has apparently been one chief cause of the belief 
long held by some few naturalists that species in a 
state of nature undergo change.” It is quite a num¬ 
ber of years ago since Darwin penned these words, 
and they are as true today as they were the time when 
they were written. All the intelligent naturalists of the 
present time not only believe that species in a state of 
nature undergo change, but they know that to be a 
fact. I desire the reader to ponder well upon the real 
significance of these facts, for a little further along I 
shall return to them again when I come to consider 
the question of their application in the case of man 
and the higher mammals. 

When different breeds of animals are crossed, the 
laws of inheritance are ever in operation, and the re¬ 
sults are seen in the morphology as well as in the 
traits, characters, and idiosyncrasies of the progenies 
of the succeeding generations. If too close inter¬ 
breeding is practiced, sterility is often the result, and 
this condition also follows sometimes when the breed¬ 
ing animals have been removed from their normal hab¬ 
itats and food, and placed in widely different environ¬ 
ments, climate, and subsisting upon other kinds of 
food. Having a sufficient number of animals to select 
from; and a knowledge of variability so far as we 
now comprehend it, with an understanding of the laws 
of inheritance, man can, if he chooses, produce great 
results. Nearly everything, however, in such experi¬ 
ments depends upon careful and scientific selection. 
Acting in this manner, we can, with greater or less cer¬ 
tainty, produce within limits the forms we desire. If 
you want black cats with winning and docile natures, 


• • 


THE NEGRO 73 


you surely would not breed from white cats with cross 
and ill-tempered natures to get them. And, if you 
wanted black cats with an area of white on the chest, 
you would certainly select parents so marked, a dozen 
or more individuals, and by careful selection and not 
too close interbreeding, the desired marking will be 
produced in an ever-increasing proportion of cases. 
The same thing would happen in nature were such 
cats left to themselves to breed, and the white area on 
the chest proved to be a strong sexual and attractive 
character; but in such a case it would take ever so 
much longer, the balance of the environment being 
the same, and food and climate favorable. After 
studying thousands of such cases, Darwin was again 
led to say that “ Man may select and preserve each 
successive variation, with the distinct intention of im¬ 
proving and altering a breed, in accordance with a 
preconceived idea; and by thus adding up variations, 
often so slight as to be imperceptible by an unedu¬ 
cated eye, he has effected wonderful changes and im¬ 
provements. It can, also, be clearly shown that man, 
without any intention or thought of improving the 
breed, by preserving in each successive generation 
the individuals which he prizes most, and by destroy¬ 
ing the worthless individuals, slowly, though surely, 
induces great changes. As the will of man thus comes 
into play, we can understand how it is that domesti¬ 
cated breeds show adaptation to his wants and pleas¬ 
ures. We can further understand how it is that do¬ 
mestic races of animals and cultivated races of plants 
often exhibit an abnormal character, as compared with 
natural species; for they have been modified, not for 
their own benefit, but for that of man.” 


74 


THE NEGRO 


Having now reviewed some of the better known 
principles or the laws of interbreeding in animals in 
general, we are in a position to apply these to the 
case of man. And, in the first place, it is well to note 
that every known biological or natural law having 
anything to do with organic evolution in its very 
widest sense, is just as applicable to man as it is to 
any other animal. This not only applies to normal 
growth, change and development, but to similar ab¬ 
normal conditions, and to disease. It has been, and 
is distinctly now, the overlooking of this fact that 
has been the cause of any amount of misery, crime, 
disease, and the production of highly undesirable in¬ 
dividuals in the human race the world over. Men and 
women can be bred by scientific, judicious selection 
and crossing with just as much care and quite as 
much advantage as are pigeons, chickens, dogs or 
horses, or indeed, as I say, any animal, ferine or do¬ 
mestic. Give me the proper material in the way of 
men and women, the absolute control of it, the time 
and the conditions, and with all the other necessary 
means to carry out the ends in view, and I can breed 
the stock to produce any kind of a man or any kind 
of a woman, within the laws of variability, heredity, 
and development. No single person could do this, for 
the reason that the time required would take all the 
way from three or four generations to a thousand, or 
even several thousand years, but nature cares nothing 
for time, and the same is true of artificial selection, 
breeding with the view of attaining a certain result. 
There may be simply hundreds upon hundreds of dif¬ 
ferent kinds of the latter. We may breed men and 
women for giants or for dwarfs; for any colored hair, 


THE NEGRO 


75 


eyes or skin; for long noses and flat feet; for immense 
buttocks, as the steatopygous Hottentot women; for 
flat heads; for a tail or the development of the caudal 
appendage beyond the general superficies of the body; 
for immense strength; for a complete covering of hair; 
for polydactylism; for enormous genital organs; for 
curiously shaped ears, and the elimination of all the 
teeth; in other words, make pointed-eared, edentate, 
wonderfully hairy, short-tailed, long-nosed bimanous 
vertebrates of them, presenting many other curious 
characters. By crossing them in various ways with the 
anthropoid apes, numerous other remarkable species 
could be evolved. Mankind, as I have intimated 
above, may be similarly dealt with, with the view of 
producing diseased individuals, and this may be car¬ 
ried so far, in the case of some diseases, that the viru¬ 
lence of the latter will wipe out the stock, and thus 
bring the experiments to a close. Again, we may. 
breed men and women to produce singers, musicians, 
artists, mathematicians, criminals, sexual perverts, 
liars, fiends and saints, intellectual giants or brainless 
dolts, anything, and just as we like. All it requires 
is scientific stirpiculture, close attention and time. 
Throughout mankind at present no such attempt, 
so far as I am aware, is being made to improve 
either mentally or physically a sex or a race in the 
manner indicated. In the lower races nature is 
having some play in the matter, but by no means 
always for the best. In the white races it is even 
far worse, and little or no heed is paid to careful 
mating with the view of race improvement or even 
with regard to the elimination of diseases and deformi¬ 
ties. Here the process is exceedingly slow, and in the 


76 


THE NEGRO 


vast majority of instances dame Nature blushes to 
look her growing progeny in the face. Brainless num¬ 
skulls cross with opium victims; mishapen dwarfs 
marry measly maids; insane idiots beget babies by 
besotted bums; in fact, it is all a purely haphazard per¬ 
formance, and done without any regard to giving fine 
physique, well-trained intellectual powers, and evenly- 
balanced, well-tempered characters any chance at all 
in the world. Much of the responsibility lies at the 
doors of priests and physicians, and they are traitors 
to the best and highest interests of the race. Upon 
the whole, the ancient Greeks were made of better 
stuff than the modern Americans, and the latter, of all 
the earth, have been the most disregardful of proper 
race-breeding. In fact, since the old colonial days, we 
have actually imported all sorts of stuff from all parts 
of the planet, and taken blood of all shades up into 
our veins by converting the United States into a kind 
of a procreation-pen, in which experimentation is 
going on, apparently with the view of observing how 
many different kinds of crazy creatures we can turn 
out! The criminal records in the courts of our large 
cities show the results; the grave-yards point to 
others; the hospitals, penitentiaries, insane-asylums, 
and no end of “ charitable institutions ” to scores of 
others. Still, it is not all bad. Improvements in san¬ 
itation, the rapidly growing interest taken in individ¬ 
ual improvement in physique, in health culture, in 
the marvelous spreading of all kinds of knowledge; 
and many other similar features are all combining to 
do something; but all combined they are as nothing 
when compared with what might be accomplished in 
such directions in a few generations. 


THE NEGRO 


77 


♦ ft 


I have now another question to bring forward more 
or less akin to the one we have just had under consid¬ 
eration. It is this: if, through any cause or causes 
whatever, large numbers of one race are introduced 
into a region already occupied by large numbers of 
a totally different race, and the environment, climatic 
conditions and food is favorable to the support and 
increase of both peoples, those races are certain to 
fraternize, react upon each other in various ways, and 
finally interbreed. It matters not a whit whether 
one of these races is highly developed in every 
way, and the other a savage, and superstitious and 
ignorant one, they will still continue to cross and 
produce hybrids. In many thousands of instances, 
out of any number, it will be the males of the domi¬ 
nant race who will couple with the females of the 
lower race, while it will prove the marked exception 
that the reverse of this will be the case. The males 
of the lower race may occasionally seduce a female 
of the higher race, or they may succeed, in rare in¬ 
stances, in raping them, but all such cases will not 
amount even to a few in several thousands, where the 
males of the advanced race will easily succeed in se¬ 
ducing the females of the lower or savage stock. The 
reason for this is not far to seek, for the females of 
the higher types are, as a rule, most refined, more sen¬ 
sitive, far less passionate, and the mere suggestion of 
receiving the carnal approaches of a barbarian or a 
cannibal would be repugnant in the highest degree to 
them. No such sentiments control the males of the 
dominant race or the advanced and cultured race, 
however, with respect to seeking the females of the 
savage people. The pressure or demand to satisfy the 


78 


THE NEGRO 


sexual appetite in the male, even if he be an individual 
endowed with great refinement and learning, often 
completely blinds him, renders him practically irre¬ 
sponsible in many cases, and the desire for variety 
coming into play, carries him over almost anything 
and he will have carnal intercourse with almost any¬ 
thing in the shape of a woman. Some women, too, are 
so constituted, or rather are similarly constituted, and 
when their passions are once aroused they are not in¬ 
clined to draw any line for race, color or condition. 

Black, brown, red or yellow skin make no difference 
whatever, and there will always be found plenty of 
representatives in the one race to cross with an equal 
number of representatives in the other. There will be 
large numbers of exceptions to this, of course,— the 
vast majority of the females of the advanced race will 
not interbreed with the males of the lower race, and 
in the case of the males of the former, many will be 
found who will likewise shun such intercourse, con¬ 
trolled either by the emotion of sentiment, the feeling 
of disgust, the domination of self-respect, or a feeble¬ 
ness of the passionate appetite, and for other reasons. 
Still the interbreeding will go on with marked in¬ 
crease during certain periods, and may largely fall 
off at other times. These fluctuations will be due 
to various causes, but it will nevertheless always be 
progressing in some degree or other, and a hybrid 
race be continually produced. War, social and polit¬ 
ical privileges and restrictions, the gradual degrada¬ 
tion of the morale of the higher stock, and the increas¬ 
ing push and effrontery of the lower, will, with several 
other reasons, all exert an influence, but, as I say, 
nothing will entirely check it. It very soon becomes 


79 



Fig. 6. Type of the Northern Mulatto. Photographed 
from life by the Author. Same subject as Figs. 4 and 5. 





pppjE NEW YO ftK 

I PUBLIC LIBRAP 
I 


ASTOR. LFNOX -wti 
TILDE N FOl) DAT' j .i 






THE NEGRO 


79 


impossible to separate the two races; a system of fines, 
however large the amount imposed in cases, would 
have but a slight deterrent effect; the whipping-post 
or other tortures would perhaps be more efficient; 
but I do not believe that even the death sentence as 
a penalty would be wholly effectual in preventing it. 
In fact, sometimes the very danger to be met lends 
a zest to the attempts to gratify the demands of the 
sexual appetite and men will seek it and attain it, even 
with their life in their hands. It is the nature of the 
animal, and it obtains throughout nature. What 
would be needed is a thorough comprehension of the 
entire subject in its wildest sense, and then action ac¬ 
cordingly. But a thorough as well as a far separa¬ 
tion is, as a matter of fact, the only preventive for 
interbreeding, when two races come to occupy the 
same area of country under the conditions I have 
above pointed out. This may be highly impracticable, 
but never impossible. 

It is clear from what has been said in the foregoing 
paragraphs of the present chapter that we have, in the 
case of the negroes in this country, a typical example 
on a very large scale of the introduction of a large 
number of representatives of one race into an area oc¬ 
cupied by a large population representing another and 
primarily distinct race. History furnishes nowhere a 
better example of the kind than this, and in so far as 
the two races are concerned, they were initially as dis¬ 
tinct as they could possibly be. As is well-known, one 
race, the imported one, was as black as black could be; 
they were as low and as superstitious a race of canni¬ 
bals as the world has ever known. Cruel and ignorant 
they, in their mental and physical organizations, came 


80 


THE NEGRO 


nearer the anthropoid apes than any other known 
group of people. The word civilization had no mean¬ 
ing for them; their unrecorded history reached far 
back into the hazy epochs of savagery. On the 
other hand, the advanced race, the preoccupiers of 
the soil upon which subsequently these two races 
fraternized, represented, in part at least, some of 
the best stock that had developed in the Old World. 
They were in reality the seeds of a coming nation, a 
nation destined to take its place later on as one of the 
most powerful, most advanced, and most highly civ¬ 
ilized nations on the face of the globe. Hundreds, 
nay, thousands of the former, the blacks from the 
West Soudan of Africa, were interspersed among these 
in a manner already described in a former chapter. 
The crossing of the two races commenced at the very 
outstart of the vile slavery trade that fetched them 
hither. Indeed, in those days many a negress was 
landed upon our shores by her captors already preg¬ 
nant by some one of the demoniac crew that made up 
the company of the slaver that brought her over. It 
is quite likely, too, that many of these negresses were 
pregnant by blacks in Africa at the time of their cap¬ 
ture ; some of them died in this state aboard the slav¬ 
ers ; others gave birth to their children on the passage 
across the Atlantic; many were murdered prior to the 
birth of their children, did the exigencies of the trade 
demand it. Some, upon being disposed of at the end 
of the passage, were also carrying unborn children, 
and, I dare say, were considered to be more valuable 
upon that account, just as a blooded mare is that has 
been successfully lined by a high-bred and pedigreed 
stallion. However this may all be, there is no question 


THE NEGRO 


in the world that from the earliest time that the negro 
slaves came into the United States, and during all 
their years of slavery, and during all their years of 
freedom, up to the present writing, the negresses of 
that race have borne untold thousands of children to 
representatives of the white race in this country; in 
a far, far less proportion of instances females of the 
white race have borne children to pure-blooded ne¬ 
groes, though a much greater number have to mu- 
lattoes or the hybrids of lighter tints. 

By far the vast majority of these births have oc¬ 
curred in the “ black belt ” of the Southern States, al¬ 
though in slave days, and even now in such cities as 
Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and a score of 
others to the northward, the males of the white race 
have not been behind-hand in increasing the vital sta¬ 
tistics along these lines. Many of the mulattoes thus 
produced had some of the very best white blood in 
the country in their veins, while, in many, many in¬ 
stances, the negro mothers adopted the name of the 
family that owned or employed them, and by some of 
the male members of which they had borne children. 
Cases are even on record where negresses in bearing 
twins, one of the children would be white and one 
black, an instance of the kind I have in my mind, the 
husband had first impregnated her, and a few hours 
afterwards, her master. (See Flint's Text-book of 
Human Physiology, p. 895.) 

As the years rolled by and time passed on, the ef¬ 
fects of all this became painfully visible. As nature 
never has and never will concern herself about man’s 
interests, however vital man himself may consider 
these interests to be, she did not in this matter of race 
6 


82 


THE NEGRO 


interbreeding, and every child that was born was born 
with every cell in its body occupying its position ac¬ 
cording to the immutable laws of heredity and varia¬ 
tion. Hence the features and entire organization of 
each and all of those children responded to the afore¬ 
said laws, just as they do in the case of any other 
animal, and each came to be the very kind of being, 
in all particulars, that the operation of those laws 
would produce, no other organisation in any particu¬ 
lar instance being possible. The same may be said 
for the innate mental and moral potentiality of any 
particular child. Of course, during the development 
and growth of any being from the moment of birth 
onwards to the close of its career, it fhay, to some ex¬ 
tent, in a certain proportion of cases, and more or less 
in others, from a variety of causes, be subject to being 
molded and changed both mentally, morally and 
physically. In other words, when a child is born to 
a pure negro mother by a white man of fine birth and 
qualities, that child is, according to certain fixed laws, 
prenatally stamped with certain morphological, psy¬ 
chological, mental and moral characters, no particle 
of which could possibly have been different under 
the particular parental combination, however that 
child may come to be molded afterwards, either for 
good or for bad. The knowledge we have of in¬ 
herited prenatal impressions of all kinds that children 
receive is extremely meagre and wonderfully hazy in 
its character. No one today can tell why a child re¬ 
sembles one parent more than another, or perhaps a 
grandparent more than either; or how it grows to be¬ 
come more or less like some member of the family, or 
perhaps some of its ancestors. Yet all such things 


THE NEGRO 


83 


are controlled by laws, by causes and effects, and by 
circumstances and conditions, the nature of which we 
hardly know anything about, though we do know that 
the produced organism, in the form of the particular 
child could not have been, even to the last atom in its 
composition, other than it was or turned out to be, 
from the various forces in operation to produce it. At 
any particular instant in the life and career of any 
adult there is always an exact reason why he or she 
has such and such features, such and such an organi¬ 
zation, such and such traits of mind and character, 
and so on to the ultimate composition of the entire 
being. There is no matter of chance in all this, we 
are all resultants at any instant of our lives of certain 
laws, causes and effects, and could not be otherwise 
than we are even if we tried ever so hard to be so. In 
the next chapter I shall touch more fully on this ques¬ 
tion as it bears upon hybridization, and point out a 
little more clearly why it is that in so many white 
people in our Southern States one can so frequently 
recognize a faint, subtle feature of the Ethiopian type 
in their faces and forms. 


CHAPTER V 


Half-breeds. Hybridization, Atavism, Heredity, Men¬ 
tal and Physical Characters of Race Hybrids. 

I N the present chapter it is my intention to deal 
quite fully with the question of hybridization, 
and race hybrids in nature, and discuss to some 
extent the little we know about them. Most of 
my remarks will be confined to hybridization as exem¬ 
plified in the human race in general as bearing par¬ 
ticularly upon the special subject with which the 
present volume is concerned, and that is, the hybridi¬ 
zation of the Africans and the whites in the United 
States of America. Very considerable attention has 
been paid to it in times past, and it is receiving a large 
share of attention at the present time, that is the 
whole matter of breeding in the domestic animals and 
in fruit, flowers and vegetables used by man. But as 
I have before remarked, little or no attention is being 
paid to the successful breeding of mankind. We know 
a good deal of the laws governing the production of 
hybrids, of artificial selection and evolution, develop¬ 
ment and the rest, but we take no effectual steps to 
utilize them in our own case. In other words, at the 
present time, race improvement with us is purely a 
matter of chance, and in some great movements in 
which it has been profoundly involved, we have been 
quite blind as to the results, and quite deaf to the 
teachings of nature. 

( 84 ) 




THE NEGRO 


85 


In the case of the human race, interbreeding be¬ 
tween different peoples is going on all over the world, 
as I write these lines. The crossing of species of men 
of all kinds is not only a fact of the present day, but 
it has taken place in various quarters of the globe as 
far back as history carries us. It was much rarer in 
early times than it is now, for the reason that the earth 
was not so thickly populated as it is now, nor were 
the means of general travel anything like as perfect as 
we have them today. When the various races and 
tribes of men were far more distinctly separated, and 
great stretches of uninhabited wildernesses or bodies 
of water were to be found isolating their habitats, and 
the means of communication were extremely slow 
and limited, the several stocks were far more pure 
and unmixed. It is ease and rapidity of communica¬ 
tion, and enormous increase of population, with the 
various habitats becoming overcrowded and thus 
crowding each other, that affords the constant oppor¬ 
tunity for race crossing, and the more pressing and 
evident that these conditions become, the greater is 
the amount of cross-breeding among the peoples so 
situated. Under such conditions it is certain to take 
place, and just as certain to be followed by the ap¬ 
pearance of half-breeds where it is going on. It mat¬ 
ters little what races are thus brought in juxtaposition, 
crossing to a greater or less extent will occur. This 
will the more frequently be done without the law of 
marriage than within it, although intermarriage, too, 
under such circumstances, will be far from uncom¬ 
mon. In the city of New York the Chinese men, here 
in this country from China, have often married white 
women of their own station in life, and the crossing 


86 


THE NEGRO 


of the Caucasians, using that term in its widest appli¬ 
cation, with the Japanese has been very frequent in 
times past, and constantly on the increase in this day 
and generation. I have had the opportunity to study 
a few of their half-breeds, and in one family I have at 
present in mind, some of the children were of the 
Anglo-Saxon type, more or less resembling the father, 
while one boy, at least, more strongly exhibited the 
Japanese in his general morphology and traits, or, as 
they say among breeders,— favored his mother, who 
was a pure-blooded individual of the latter nation. No 
one will suppose for a moment that of the enormous 
stock of people that have for years past been pouring 
into the United States from the Old World, and I 
mean from Europe especially, invariably remain dis¬ 
tinct, for by no means is such the case. They not 
only cross, whether through marriage or otherwise, 
with people who were born and bred in America, but 
they intercross among each other, and with the ne¬ 
groes, Indians, and Chinese if it takes their fancy. 
This is going on far more extensively than most peo¬ 
ple are aware, and but few people will admit. In con¬ 
versation with a very intelligent German gentleman 
the other day, a man of fine education, intelligence 
and family connections in Germany, where he was 
born, he informed me that he very much preferred 
congress with a fine, good-looking black negress, than 
with any white woman he had ever known, and from 
all accounts, he had not been backward in such mat¬ 
ters all his life. There are no end of half-breeds pro¬ 
duced by the crossing of the whites and the North 
American Indians on the plains. During the Indian 
campaigns in that country it was of very frequent oc- 


THE NEGRO 


8Y> 

currence for both men and officers to keep Indian 
squaws, and in not a few instances they married them. 
Of such progeny I have seen not a little, and it has 
always struck me that they made neither desirable 
men nor women, the poor qualities of the two races 
being intensified, and the good ones subordinated. So 
far as my observation has carried me, the white woman 
will submit to intercourse with a full-blooded Indian 
with far better grace than she will to coitus with a typ¬ 
ical negro,— there is something intensely repugnant 
in the very idea of the latter act, while it would appear 
that a species of romance enters into the first-named 
coupling. Indians possess, as a rule, strong sexual 
instincts, and I have seen many a young Sioux squaw 
that was by no means unattractive. 

In this country but a small per cent, of the half- 
breeds, the outcome of the crossing of whites and ne¬ 
groes, whites and Indians, and whites and Chinese, is 
through the institution of marriage. The great mass 
of them, especially in the case of the whites and the 
negroes, are the outcome of chance crossings, and the 
children are legally considered illegitimate. On the 
other hand, it is through intermarriage that we have 
a growing offspring in the United States from the in¬ 
termarriage of the representatives of the various Eu¬ 
ropean nations that have made America their home. 
Many checks, however, occur here, as for example, the 
Jews usually marry only within their own race, so, 
too, the Scandinavians, and some of the others. Re¬ 
ligion may have something to do with it, as Catholics 
are more or less clannish in this respect, and every¬ 
thing else being equal, Catholics select Catholics as 
mates in marrying. Still, it seems to me that, taking 


THE NEGRO 


08 

people the world over, the strong tendency is toward 
the unification of all the races, and the outcome in time 
will be complete amalgamation, and but a single, homo¬ 
geneous species of men will inhabit the earth. A few 
thousand years, fifteen or twenty, for instance, will be 
sufficient to effect this, while in the meantime many 
of the remnants of races still in existence will die out, 
others will become extinct in time, and war, inter¬ 
marriage, the struggle for existence, and extermina¬ 
tion will do the rest. Thousands of such changes have 
taken place in nature already, requiring an untold 
number of years, so the unification of the human race 
would be but a bagatelle as compared with similar de¬ 
velopments that have taken place on the globe in past 
time. In this connection, consider for a moment the 
evolution in that pedigree of now extinct animals that 
finally resulted in the production of the modern horse, 
—the earliest known ancestor of which was no bigger 
than a fox. Man’s career is surely tending toward 
unification for the very reasons I have given above, 
and it is only through what can be accomplished by 
artificial selection that we have remarkable and dis¬ 
tinct species resulting, as in the case of domestic dogs 
and pigeons. Many of the forms of either of these 
would be considered as belonging to distinct genera, 
and perhaps even distinct subfamilies, were we to meet 
with them in the wild state. . Surely no mammalogist 
of the school representing the biological division of the 
United States Department of Agriculture, would for a 
moment think of retaining a Scotch greyhound and a 
hairless dog of Mexico in the same genus, were they to 
encounter those two species in a ferine state. Both of 
them belong to the Canidce, of course, but I warrant 


THE NEGRO 


89 


that the “ hair-splitters ” would quickly make two dis¬ 
tinct genera of them. The fact that they are fertile 
inter se would constitute no barrier to such an arrange¬ 
ment, for we have no trouble in crossing jungle fowls 
( Gallns ) with Guinea hens ( Numida ), any more than 
we have in crossing the most refined and intelligent 
Anglo-Saxon in existence today with the most savage 
negress on the banks of the Congo, or, for anything 
we know to the contrary, with a female chimpanzee. 

I have seen the hybrids between Gallns and Numida, 
as well as the half-breeds from the latter crossing, bar¬ 
ring, however, the anthropoid last mentioned. 

In all such hybrids we can see with greater or less 
distinctness the laws of heredity carried out. Hybrids, 
the results of the crossing of individuals representing 
dififerent races of men, as in the case of whites and 
negroes, often exhibit hereditary characters and traits 
in the most interesting manner possible. Sometimes, 
however, where they are inherited from remote ances¬ 
tors, they may be very obscure as to their origin. 
Then, too, they may be so mixed and massed that we 
can tell very little about them. There is no trait, habit, 
organization, disposition, nature or anatomical or 
physiological character that may not be inherited down 
a line of related individuals from generation to gen¬ 
eration.' Pathological conditions or predispositions 
may likewise be passed down in a similar manner, as 
may also deformities or, at least, abnormalities. Cer¬ 
tain talents, gifts, abilities and inclinations, and idio¬ 
syncrasies often pass down through families with a 
similar certainty, and crop out in individuals in the 
most peculiar and unexpected way sometimes. In 
their main trend, however, all of these are governed by . 


90 


THE NEGRO 


laws as immutable in their operation as the most fixed 
laws in all nature. The matter of chance never enters 
the result in the case of any individual, be he black or 
white. In the main trend again men breed true to 
their race, their stock, and the lines of their family as¬ 
cent. In investigating the attainments, accomplish¬ 
ments and achievements of any line of pure-blooded 
and unmixed negro stock, we shall no more chance to 
find members in it who are, or have been, distinguished 
biologists, physicians, or artists, than we do, when we 
come to make similar researches in any first-class 
Anglo-Saxon pedigree, meet with semi-transformed 
cannibalistic savages, superstitious religionists, and 
natural criminals as we do in the case of the negroes. 

Any number of people can be found in this country 
today who will stoutly deny, and they believe what 
they say, too, that there is any interbreeding going on 
at all between the blacks and the whites, and that the 
numerous mulattoes we see are due to the effects of 
climate. Such people are, of course, absolutely blind 
as to what is going on directly about them; they are 
ignorant, and they do not care to see. Take the city 
of Washington, for instance, I can remember distinctly 
thirty-five years ago, when a mulatto in the streets of 
that place was, comparatively speaking, the rare ex¬ 
ception ; while they are to be seen there now simply in 
scores upon scores. Some of them are so white, that it 
takes a very keen eye to detect the Ethiopian blood in 
them. Some are wonderfully handsome creatures, 
with superb figures, but handsome and fine-physiqued 
only in the sense that our American skunk is likewise 
a beautiful creature. It is also a black animal with more 
or less of a white stripe in it, that is given to stealing 



(jM'oni a recent photu^Taph.) 


























the NEW YORK 

PUBLIC LIBRARY 


fcSTOR, L£NOX AND 1 
TILDES foundations. \ 


THE NEGRO 


91 


chickens, and can, when irritated, elevate its tail and 
raise the most outrageous stink, which is quite suffi¬ 
cient to check the progress of any Anglo-Saxon, how¬ 
ever robust and civilized he may be. But neither the 
mulatto nor the skunk are personally responsible for 
the kind of animals they are, or as to the odors they 
are capable of emitting. 

These half-breed negroes in the United States, or, in 
fact, all that class of people having any negro blood in 
them at all, are extremely objectionable factors to add 
to our nation or risk in the building up of our civiliza¬ 
tion. They often, indeed in a large proportion of in¬ 
stances, are worse than the typical negroes themselves, 
and certainly a large number of them are no better. 
They are dangerous from whatever point man may 
elect to view them, as they may possess all of the 
vicious and sensual traits of the negro, without the 
color of the latter’s skin as a warning flag to the un¬ 
wary. In any question at issue they will invariably 
choose sides with the colored race every time, and 
from their keener wits and higher intelligence are ca¬ 
pable of giving a greater amount of trouble. Mulat- 
toes, too, have better opportunities to contract white 
alliances in marriage, and thus insidiously pass the 
savage Ethiopian blood into the veins of the Anglo- 
Saxon or American. This is most deplorable, for, as 
I have frequently remarked, the negro has absolutely 
nothing in his organization that can be added to our 
own with the slightest value, while on the other hand, 
nearly everything about him, mentally, morally and 
physically, is undesirable in the highest degree. As 
has been shown, he is, as a rule, deeply imbued with 
criminal tendencies, and his hybrids are equally so. 


92 


THE NEGRO 


Mulattoes have no higher sense of our civilization 
than the black stock from which they are derived. 
They are, however, in speech, manners, dress and 
actions better mimics of the whites than most of the 
true negroes. Personally, I have found them equally 
superstitious, treacherous, mendacious, and unreliable. 
It is the better class of hybrids, however, that com¬ 
mand such place and position in this country that de¬ 
mand more than usual ability to fill. Many regard 
them as the colored doctors, the colored lawyers, colored 
clergymen, colored poets and authors, and so on, 
whereas, as a matter of fact, they are nothing of the 
kind. They are hybrids, nothing more nor less, and 
often with a very minute tincture of the African negro 
in them. Some of them are so like Caucasians in face 
and figure, that were they to go abroad, to Europe, 
for example, the average European would never for an 
instant suspect the negro blood in them, and it would 
only be that person well versed in the negro character 
and with a knowledge gained by long contact with the 
race, that could make the correct ethnical diagnosis. 
I refer distinctly to such specimens as Henry Ossawa 
Tanner (artist), Daniel H. Williams (surgeon), 
Charles Waddell Chesnutt (novelist), Francis James 
Grimke (clergyman), and likewise (W. E. Burghardt) 
Du Bois (sociologist). When the type is more pro¬ 
nounced, there is no mistaking them, as the negro then 
crops out with greater certainty. This is the case 
with such examples as Paul Lawrence Dunbar (poet), 
Kelly Miller (mathematician), Granville T. Woods 
(electrician), Edward H. Morris (lawyer), Booker T. 
Washington (teacher), and several others. Negroes 
claim one and all of these as representatives of their 


THE NEGRO 


i/\ 


race in America, and a man like Du Bois is continually 
howling about them one and all in the press as the 
Advance Guard of the Negro Race in America. 

Mendacity, thy name is negro, for surely these are 
not negroes, but they are very convenient types in 
this country for the great admirers among the whites 
of the negro race in the United States, as well as the 
negroes themselves, to juggle with and to deceive the 
thoughtless into believing that the negro is making 
such vast and rapid progress among us. As a matter 
of fact, what he is doing is only through hybridiza¬ 
tion and crossing with the whites whenever the op¬ 
portunity offers, with the view of furthering his own 
selfish ends and jeopardizing the nobility of the 
Anglo-Saxon and the civilization of which he is the 
author. (See Appendix, Note 2, p. 188.) 

Men like Thomas, who is about one-sixteenth part 
negro, prejudice this entire question in their published 
books and writings. I refer especially to this author’s 
last work, a most able production in many particulars. 

(1 he American Negro; wnat he was, what he is, and 
what he may become. A Critical and Practical Dis¬ 
cussion by William Hannibal Thomas. The Mac¬ 
millan Comp., Lond. and N. York, 1901.) He has 
shown the negro race in its true ethnological light. He 
supports all that I have said above in regard to the 
characteristics of hybrids; he deplores the presence of 
the negro and his kin in this country, he advocates his 
intellectual upraising and civilization with the same 
pen that he points out its utter futility and impossi¬ 
bility. These several inconsistencies and incongruities 
he clinches by the last, and perhaps most truthful para¬ 
graph in the book, when he gives it as his opinion that 


THE NEGRO 


9^ 

“ The future American negro will part, undoubtedly, 
with many of his racial characteristics as he approxi¬ 
mates in color and conduct the white race. Even now 
many persons of negroid ancestry are so fair in color 
that they readily pass for white people, and marry 
among that class without exciting the slightest sus¬ 
picion as to their mixed race identity. Furthermore, 
white American marriages are constantly contracted 
with every variety of the colored races, and the fruit 
of such unions is certain to exert, hereafter, a consid¬ 
erable influence upon many existing social perplexi¬ 
ties. The inevitable outcome of a perfect blending 
of our heterogeneous peoples would be the develop- * 
ment of a composite type of American people of in¬ 
comparable strength and beauty, who, if they clung 
fast to their best ethical instincts, would attain such 
heights as would make our country what it was or¬ 
dained to be,— the cradle of world-wide liberty, the 
citadel of human fraternity, and the seat and centre 
of universal righteousness.” 

Without exception, I think this is the most out¬ 
rageous and vilest proposition that has yet been made 
on the part of any one as a solution of the negro prob¬ 
lem in the United States. It is surely deplorable 
enough to know that this is without doubt what is 
actually now taking place, but to have a writer of Mr. 
Thomas’s ability arise and suggest that such a course 
be encouraged and sanctioned is absolutely heinous 
and damnable. I can conceive of no greater calamity 
that could happen to my people, to my race in this 
country than this. We have here at least a certain pro¬ 
portion of the population who can call themselves true 
Americans — a race that, although it came from the 


THE NEGRO 


95 


Old World, and is a composite stock of the Old 
World, has arrived at a stage of civilization unex¬ 
celled by any other nation in the entire range of his¬ 
tory. This civilization speaks for itself, and it is not 
necessary for me to dilate upon it here, and it is this 
civilization, the building up of which has taken thou¬ 
sands of years that Thomas would have now jeop¬ 
ardized by the injection into it of a poison so foul and 
so hopelessly stagnant that whenever or wherever it 
mixes with it, the rottenness of the result is only too 
apparent. I refer distinctly to the continued and sys¬ 
tematic crossing of the negroes and whites in the 
United States of America. 

Has Mr. Thomas ever seen a case of atavism in this 
country resulting from the very interbreeding he so 
extravagantly proposes? I have,— several of them. 
Permit me to give an account of one that a few years 
ago came under my personal notice. A young Amer¬ 
ican artisan of the better class and of excellent type, 
born of parents born in this country, and with blood 
untainted by any mixture with African blood, meets 
a young and very pretty girl in Virginia, and in due 
course marries her. At the end of a year a boy child 
is born to them, but, horror of horrors, it is found to 
be as black as a coal and with hair as kinky as the 
veriest young Congo that a negress of that race ever 
gave birth to in Africa. I imagine the state of mind 
this at once threw the unhappy husband into! His 
poor young wife pleaded with him that he was the only 
man on earth who had ever sexually embraced her, 
and that the very suggestion of receiving the carnal 
approaches of an African were most repugnant and 


96 


THE NEGRO 


disgusting to her. But the husband knew there must 
be a cause for it, as he was present in the room when 
the black child was delivered, and quietly he went 
to work to investigate the wife's antecedents. After 
no end of trouble and expense, he finally ascer¬ 
tained that her great grandmother was a plantation 
slave who had borne several children to her master. 

It was in this stock, then, through crossing and re¬ 
crossing with other whites, that this young wife saw 
her pedigree, and her first child was simply a rever¬ 
sion to the black ancestry on her maternal side, and 
had inherited the Ethiopian characters, and among 
them the black skin and kinky hair. I have heard 
of several other well-authenticated cases of this na¬ 
ture, and in one, after a most heart-rending experience, 
the couple were divorced. 

All this is what is happening now, and what Thomas 
would have made general throughout the country — 
that the descendants of the civilized races of Europe 
and elsewhere point the finger at the descendants 
of the American of the present time, and say, “ Go 
to, American, you have nigger in your blood, and you - 
come from a mixed race, a large part of which were 
formerly eaters of human flesh, thievish liars, and 
slaves. You talk to hear yourselves talk.” Those 
European descendants, moreover, could say to our de¬ 
scendants, and say with truth, the latter having 
Thomas’s prescription of black blood in them,— 

“ American, if you want to know something of your 
pedigree, your history, read J. Cameron Grant’s The 
Ethiopian, and read the ceremonies attending the erec¬ 
tion of the sacred Juju House in the kingdom of 


THE NEGRO 


97 


Gnongo, from whence your black blood came. It com¬ 
mences on page 33, and runs thus: “ The king of 
Gnongo ruled a small but very powerful and very 
populous country, and was the terror of all his neigh¬ 
bors to the North and West by reason of the number 
and ferocity of the slave-raids that started from his 
dominions, and were almost invariably successful. 
The whole religion of these people necessitated attacks 
upon their neighbors, for its basis was constant hu¬ 
man sacrifice, and the simple law of self-preservation 
taught the Gnongos, for their own safety, always to 
keep at hand a goodly supply of the necessary vic¬ 
tims. The true history of the place would be a dismal 
record of ruthless and brutal doing to death of human 
beings, often apparently for no reason whatever ex¬ 
cept to satisfy a ghoulish craving for the sight of 
human blood flowing fresh, or blackening, clotted and 
nasty in the open, in the town, in street, in square, in 

court-yard — nay, upon the very household utensils 
themselves. 

On this, the third day, were to be erected with all 
the proper ceremonies the six main uprights of the new 
Juju House. The reason, or even the simple mythology 
of these acts, it is hopeless to expect; one might as 
well hope to learn the mythology of monkeys; though 
verily, I believe, the daily annals of a collection of the 
higher quadrumana would be more sane and cleanly 

and far less bloodthirsty than those of the baser, lower 
bimana. 

But now it was time for things to begin, and as 
etiquette, dangerous to evade, constrained all to take 
part in the ceremonies fasting, so far as a solid meal 


7 


98 


THE NEGRO 


was concerned, all real eating and drinking had to be 
deferred till the proceedings of the day were con¬ 
cluded. 

“ ‘ There appeared to be no regular commencement, 
but, seemingly by a kind of general impulse, drums 
began to be beaten, horns blown, and trade muskets 
discharged in the air. Then cows’ horns, filled with 
powder and tamped with clay, were fired off with a 
thundering report and considerable danger to the 
neighbors, and, with the exception of the king, who 
practically never appeared in public, and of his imme¬ 
diate attendants, the whole population of the town 
flocked to the spot where the ghastly preparations 
were already well advanced. 

“ ‘ The priests and the warriors and women gathered 
in a great circle round the pits; the slaves who had 
carried the victims from the town, bound hand and 
foot to poles and rolled in cheap calico, at a sign came 
forward and laid them two and two beside each exca¬ 
vation, one man and one woman to each. Cutting the 
lashings that secured them to the poles, they took 
these away. Then one of the priests began a sort of 
exhortation to the people, telling them that the king 
had graciously given orders for the erection of a new 
Juju House, which would be for the general benefit; 
then, after animadverting upon the crucifixions of the 
young women that had taken place two days pre¬ 
viously for the prevention of famine and drought, he 
referred to the head-cutting of the day before, and de¬ 
clared that the auguries drawn from the positions in 
which the heads had fallen had been most favorable, 
that the posts of the Juju House were about to be set 
up in accordance with them, that the heads would be 


THE NEGRO 


99 


fixed upon the building, and would bring great luck, 
and, to prevent and minimize occurrences of such evil 
omen for the coming year, those women who had 
borne twins in his majesty’s dominions during the 
year gone by would now be buried alive in the hole 
in the centre of the house, over which, when a proper 
dwelling-place had been provided, a most powerful 
Juju would preside. He ended by saying that the 
king had given orders for a great feast to conclude 
the three days’ proceedings, and that his royal bounty 
had provided for his people a more than usually lib¬ 
eral dole of rum and palm wine. 

“ ‘ He finished amid the frantic applause of the 
crowd and more discharging of muskets and banging 
of drums. 

“ * Now the warriors got into some sort of order in 
front and began to chant a monotonous song or hymn, 
to which the women marked a rude time by grunting 
at regular intervals and slapping their arms, breasts 
and thighs. 

“ ‘ While this hideous anthem was being sung, the 
executioner and his assistants seized the victims two 
and two as they lay, male and female, and binding 
them face to face, pitched each couple into the long 
holes lying ready excavated beside them. This done, 
he and his daubed and painted assistants, in all their 
disgusting paraphernalia of charms and bones, began 
to dance about the pits, rattling hollow calabashes full 
of small nuts and seeds, and partially drowning the 
groans and screams of agony that proceeded from the 
wretched beings below. 

“ ‘ But now arose the cry of “ Rice-pounders! 
Women! O, women, bring your rice-pounders! Let 



100 


THE NEGRO 


the family be fruitful and the year give many slaves! 
Women! O, women, bring your rice-pounders!” 

“ ‘ These words were shouted and yelled by the 
warriors, but promptly taken up by the whole crowd, 
which, wild with excitement, began to stamp and 
dance with gyratory motion about the spot occupied 
by the executioner and his assistants. 

Several scores of women had rushed off to the 
town at the first words, and were now streaming back, 
each one armed with her rice-pounder, of hard, heavy 
wood, about three inches in diameter and six feet 
long, shod with iron at the lower end. As they came 
up they were speedily arranged in rows round the pits, 
and at a given cry from the warriors and the crowd 
of “ Now, O women, pound the sacred rice to feed the 
gods! ” they commenced pounding away with their 
formidable rammers at the wretched creatures below. 

“ ‘ The piercing shrieks that immediately rent the 
air soon ceased, and soon, save for a low groan or two, 
no sound rose from the blood-stained mortars except 
the monotonous beat-beat of the horrid pestles. 

“ ‘ But while the women pounded, the people and 
the executioners yelled and danced till the excitement 
attained a frantic pitch. Then, suddenly closing in, 
the crowd seized the great pillars lying on the ground, 
hoisted them up by main force of arm, and, planting 
each one in the centre of the gory mass below, filled 
in the loose earth and stones about them. 

“ ‘ Not till the earth was packed hard round the pil¬ 
lars and level with the surface of the surrounding soil 
did the women cease their ghastly labour. Then they 
stopped, exhausted, and rolled about, many of them 
apparently afflicted with a species of epileptic frenzy. 


THE NEGRO 


101 


[Just such a frenzy as we see the colored women ex¬ 
hibit at their religious camp-meetings and church 
services in the United States at the present day.] 

“ ‘ At once each became the centre of an admiring 
circle, for their frenzy was a sign of a good omen, a 
sign that the sacrifice had been accepted with pleasure 
by the gods, whose spokeswomen they had now be¬ 
come, for the time being, at least. 

After a while things quieted down; the crowd 
once more became attentive, for the final ceremony 
was at hand. As already mentioned, another pit had 
been excavated in the centre of the pillars, now so 
firmly erected. Alongside this centre hole, a dozen or 
more miserable women were dragged. These were 
the unfortunates who had given birth to twins dur¬ 
ing the previous year in the king’s dominions, and 
so brought evil upon it. One of the priests gave the 
people his views upon the subject, views that will 
hardly bear reproduction in these pages, and then the 
executioner, carrying an iron bar about two feet long, 
and followed by his assistants rolling a short thick log, 
threw the women down one after another, and, de¬ 
liberately smashing their arms and legs in two places, 
doubled them up behind them and flung the poor 
creatures into the hole. 

“ ‘ Not a sound broke the silence, save the screams 
of the unfortunate victims of this horrible cruelty, and 
as soon as the last of them had been pitched, shrieking, 
into the pit, the earth was filled in over them while 
they were still alive, and with a wild shout the whole 
body of spectators rushed in and commenced stamp¬ 
ing it flat with their feet. In a very short time all 
trace of the excavation had disappeared, and the 


103 


THE NEGRO 


whole space inclosed by the uprights, and even several 
feet beyond them, was tramped smooth and flat and 
as hard as a threshing floor. 

“ ‘ No one passing could have guessed at the terri¬ 
ble crimes which had been committed, for hardly a 
splash of blood upon the pillars gave evidence of 
them. 

“ ‘ With firing of muskets, blowing of horns, and 
general congratulations and jollity, with praises, yelled 
and chanted, of the goodness of their king and his lib¬ 
erality, the crowd returned to the town, the women to 
prepare the evening meal and make such festive ar¬ 
rangements as were demanded by the king’s orders, 
the men to talk over the day’s celebrations, plan fu¬ 
ture schemes of blood and rapine, and discuss the next 
slave-catching expedition, all separating later on to 
secure betimes the royal dole of drink. 

“ ‘I have described the day, the night I will leave 
to the reader’s imagination and to its fitting veil of 
darkness.’ ” (pp. 33-43.) 

It is perfectly possible that we still have in this coun¬ 
try a few negroes living who have taken part in just 
such ceremonies in Africa as is here briefly described; 
beyond all doubt we have hundreds of descendants 
living among us, whose near ancestors were negroes 
in Africa, who took part in the erection of Juju houses 
where such practices were indulged in. There are 
hundreds of hybrids of these people, crosses between 
the blacks and whites in this country, that upon the 
side of the former come from such stock. There are 
thousands upon thousands of negroes in the South 
who, if taken back into that country, would in a very 
short time revert to all these customs,— so superficial 


THE NEGRO 


103 


is the veneering of the results of their pseudo-civiliza¬ 
tion gained since their coming to America. 

This account of the erection of a Juju house given 
us by Mr. Grant is here so fully reproduced in order 
to acquaint the many who are totally unfamiliar with, 
and ignorant of, what kind of a being the African 
negro really is in his organization. Our white race 
has no such chapters in its history as far back as it 
can be traced, but if we are to assimilate by a general 
crossing with this savage, cannibal race we have on 
our hands, as has been proposed by such men as 
Thomas and others, their history becomes in time 
linked with our own noble record, and far in the future 
no American will be able to say that he has no such 
blood in his veins, for there will be no means of dis¬ 
tinguishing the mixture in inter-marriage. It has been 
stated that the hybrids became sterile in the second, 
third or fourth generation, but this, it is clear, would 
not affect the question, for assimilation once com¬ 
menced, the blood of the lesser and inferior race must 
all be taken up eventually in any event, and so great 
is the number of negroes in this country, that there 
is plenty of their blood to effect complete adultera¬ 
tion of the entire white population of the United 
States, and that adulteration would by no means be a 
slight one. By careful, extensive and direct personal 
examination, I have satisfied myself that not only is 
hybridization of the two races still in progress, but 
that cases of atavism occur all the time; and that not 
only is there a large class of degraded, sensuous white 
women in this country who prefer to copulate with 
black men, on account of the unusual length of time 
that the act commonly lasts in them, but also on ac- 


104 


THE NEGRO 


count of the immensity of their parts, while, finally, 
it is the aim and highest ambition of the greater pro¬ 
portion of pure-blooded negresses in the country to 
have children by the best white men they can induce 
to give them to them, for the reason that they know 
such children will be loyal to the black race, and by 
their superior inherited intelligence coming from their 
white fathers that they will command better positions 
when they grow up than the pure blacks can do, and 
in so doing will powerfully further the interests, po¬ 
litical and otherwise, of the African population in this 
country, for be it understood,— and well understood, 
that is the secret wish in every negro’s heart in Amer¬ 
ica,— the acquisition of political power if fortune ever 
throws it in his way. 


CHAPTER VI 


The Effects of Fraternization between the Ethiopian 
and Anglo-Saxon Races upon Morals, upon Ethics, 
and upon the Material Progress of Mankind. 

A nimals of all kinds are, through natural laws, 
invariably affected by their environments. 
Man forms no exception to this,—indeed, in 
the case of man, I am strongly inclined to 
believe he is more susceptible to what may influence or 
affect him in his surroundings than any other organ¬ 
ized being or class of beings. This is due, in the 
highest races, to the sensitiveness, plasticity and moral 
composition of his organization. As we descend 
through the scale, through the lower races, this be¬ 
comes less and less evident, being the least observable 
in those races, such as the negro race, most nearly 
related to the anthropoids or apes. Negroes are, of 
course, affected more or less by the environment in 
which they live, but more by the climatic conditions 
than they are by reactionary effects on their organiza¬ 
tions due to the presence of peoples more highly civil¬ 
ized than themselves. A -race without morals has it 
in its power but to mimic the qualifications and 
progress of the higher race, just as parrots mimic the 
human voice; they know neither the meaning of the 
words they utter, nor are they in any way mentally 
improved through the accomplishment. These condi- 

(105) 



106 


THE NEGRO 


tions are often much improved in hybrids, when those 
hybrids are produced by the crossing of the lowest 
races with representatives of either sex in the higher. 
This, however, is extremely objectionable and, in the 
long run, dangerous. 

In large parts of the United States, especially in 
the so-called “ black belt,” all these conditions, and 
various others which have been referred to in the 
previous chapters of this book, are in constant opera¬ 
tion. In some of the regions in this belt the two races 
are about in equal numbers; in others the whites are 
more or less in excess of the negroes; while, finally, in 
other districts, the latter may far outnumber the 
former. Where the blacks are in proportion compara¬ 
tively very few in numbers, the harm done to the 
higher race is comparatively insignificant, and the 
harm only increases in degree as they increase in num¬ 
bers. So far as I have been able to discover, however, 
the crossing of the two races goes on wherever they 
are brought in contact for any length of time. Com¬ 
paratively there are but few negroes in New York City, 
my present place of writing, and I know that the black 
wenches are constantly sought by white men of the 
various plains of society for carnal gratification. 
Lighter colored hybrids are produced and they are 
making their appearance in, the population. The 
coarser negresses, as I have before said, are well 
pleased to have children by white men, and for reasons 
already given. If they chance to be good-looking, 
cleanly in habit, and not especially repulsive in any 
way, they make better arrangements, and if light 
colored, of fine parts and figures, regular features, sen¬ 
suous and attractive, they are often selected by white 


THE NEGRO 


107 


men of fine position, family and standing - , as I know 
personally to be the case. Such matings are usually 
made where scandal is the least likely to flourish. 
Children may or may not follow, and I imagine very 
rarely between black men and white women,— where 
more certain means are adopted to prevent such ca¬ 
lamities. All this is very degrading, injurious, and 
harmful to both races, though in very different ways. 
In the case of the whites it aids in this community, 
the adulteration of the higher stock by a baser mate¬ 
rial, and such practice is harmful under any and all 
conditions; whereas in the case of the negroes, the 
majority of whom believe that procreation and nature’s 
method of insuring it, is about all that life means, it 
fosters in their minds the erroneous idea that they are 
ethnologically the whites’ equals, and consequently be¬ 
come dissatisfied with the social plane they are obliged 
to occupy, and are restive under what they deem to be 
intentional barriers the whites place in their road to 
wealth and political power. It is impossible for them 
to appreciate the fact that nature is the author of such 
restrictions and limitations and not their Anglo-Saxon 
superiors. Brains, ability, and the power of achieve¬ 
ment are the factors that are principally responsible 
for the status of the individual as well as the nation, 
and not that either simply possess human form and the 
power of speech,— a notion that appears to dominate 
the mind of the African in this country. 

As we pass southward to the mid-Atlantic States 
and the cities in them where the negroes are far more 
numerous in proportion to the number of whites 
in the population, as in Baltimore and Washington and 
such places, not only is the crossing between the two 


108 


THE NEGRO 


races seen to be more evident, but it actually is more 
frequent, and the results all the more disastrous, while 
there likewise exist harmful influences of a widely dif¬ 
ferent nature. In Washington, D. C., for example, 
where I studied the blacks and the hybrid types for 
many years, all the truth of Thomas’s observations in 
his work, cited above (The American Negro), become 
glaringly evident. Long contact with American civili¬ 
zation has had but the effect of making, of the better 
class of negroes, admirable mimics of the whites in the 
matters of dress, some of the social requirements, and 
in ordinary conversation, while it has in no way im¬ 
proved them morally, physically or in other respects. 
American civilization, indeed, has but endowed them 
with the most superficial veneering of apparent re¬ 
finement, while, as a matter of fact, the pure negro in 
this country is, in his real nature, just as much of a 
savage as he was three hundred years ago. Were 
the bulk of the blackest ones in the South taken back 
to their native haunts in Africa, they would, in my 
opinion, and in the opinion of other far-seeing an¬ 
thropologists, resume all of their savage practices and 
customs again within an incredibly brief space of time. 
This makes the ethnic argument all the more forcible 
for sending them there and giving them the oppor¬ 
tunity to work out their own destiny. Of the probabil¬ 
ity of this, however, more will be said further on. 

Coming back to Washington again, we find that if 
the negro has benefited but superficially through his 
long contact with our civilization, he has been by no 
means lacking in the harm he has worked with our 
own race in morals and good ethics. This harmful in¬ 
fluence has been of such an insidious nature, so varied 


THE NEGRO 


109 


in its character, that it is not always distinctly appar¬ 
ent to the unthinking observer. Moreover, it requires 
careful, just and far-reaching comparison in order to 
measure the moral standard of a race at well-separated 
intervals in its career, in order that we may ascertain 
the differences in it. So far as I am at present aware, 
no such comparisons have been made in the case of 
the unadulterated population of whites in the city of 
Washington. But it is as true now as it always has 
been, that the contact with a naturally criminal race, 
if constant and long-sustained, by a superior, sounder 
and better race, the latter in time will, morally, slowly 
but surely deteriorate through the sheer force of cir¬ 
cumstances, not to say example. The crime of the one 
people is almost, nay, quite certain, to involve the acts 
of the other, and transitory acts in time become habits, 
and habits define the characteristics of the whole peo¬ 
ple. As long ago as 1891, I pointed out that the ne¬ 
groes in Washington constituted but one-third of the 
population, yet they furnished the great bulk of the 
criminal cases of all kinds. The police report ending 
for June 25, 1890, exhibited the following terrible rec¬ 
ord sustaining what I have just stated: Assaults on 
policemen, 162, by whites 75, by colored 87; assaults 
on special officers, 25, by whites 9, by colored 16. Last 
year three policemen were killed by negroes, two 
when attempting to arrest them, and there is scarcely 
a year that this does not occur. The article to which 
I refer I published in Science (Vol. xviii, No. 445, New 
York, August 14, 1891; pp. 94, 95), and in it 
I further said that in The Star (a Washington 
newspaper), of December 24, 1888, it was shown that 
there were then in jail, awaiting trial or sentence for 


110 


THE NEGRO 


murder, 16 persons, 2 white and 14 colored. Two 
years after (March 26, 1890), there were on the calen¬ 
dar 18 murder trials, the greater proportion by far 
having been committed by negroes. I now read that 
brief article with considerable satisfaction, for it is 
more than prophetic in its statements, and now, many 
years later, hundreds of different newspapers all 
over the country are printing accounts of crime that 
sustain what I then stated, and further stated in 
the Washington Analostan Magazine for March, 1891, 
and The Daily Picayune of New Orleans, La. (Vol. 
LV., No. 23, February 16, 1891, p. 8), and elsewhere. 
In the New Orelans paper I remarked that “ In 1882 
I watched some several hundred negro children as at 
noon they poured out of one of the large colored pub¬ 
lic schools at Washington, D. C. The other day 
(1890) the same sight was presented to my eyes at 
exactly the same place, but a most marked change was 
perceptible. In the first case, the vast majority of the 
children were black, the mulatto being the exception; 
in the second instance, more than 50 per cent, were 
mulattoes, and many others so white that it would 
be difficult to pronounce with certainty upon them.” 
That article was entitled “ Foreign Races in the United 
States,” and when I published it, not one in forty who 
read it, believed in what I said, any more than they 
did in what I said on “ Hybridization of our Race with ■ 
the Negroes in the United States,” in The Religio- 
Philosophical Journal a month before (Vol. I., No. 34, 
Chicago, January 17, 1891, p. 533). What do those 
readers think now, if any of them chance to be in the 
land of the living? Was I in error? I am very sure 
I was not. Moreover, readers of the articles on this 


THE NEGRO 


111 


subject in the press at the present time, know that I 
was not. Is the situation any better today than it 
was years ago, when I ventured my predictions? 
No, they are infinitely worse. The “ problem ” is 
far graver; the number of negroes far greater; and 
the means of ridding ourselves of these black parasites 
immeasurably more difficult. At our nation’s capital, 
as they do everywhere else in the country, they still 
continue to furnish nine-tenths of the petty and major 
crimes on the court calendars; as an element they are 
more dangerous than ever in the matter of assaulting 
the female sex among the whites; their notions of na¬ 
tional and municipal politics are just as rotten and de¬ 
based as they always have been; they are just as much 
given to every species of mendacity as they were then; 
and they still pose as a race object-lesson before our 
growing generation, in all that is most lewd, most de¬ 
grading, most objectionable, most ignorant and super¬ 
stitious of the bestial side of the character of the genus 
Homo. There is no uncharitable intent in me when I 
judge them as I do as a whole, for the negro, the pure 
negro in this country, is no more responsible for his 
organization and character than any other animal is. 
A vulture will always eat carrion when surrounded 
on all hands by every kind of cleaner food. It is the 
nature of the bird. 

A number of years ago I was at the voting polls of 
a state election in the Southern part of Maryland. 
Negroes went up there in bunches to deposit their 
votes. Every vote they deposited had been bought for 
a mere trifle by some of the representatives of the in¬ 
terested political parties of the time. A most disgust¬ 
ing sight it was,— monstrous absolutely, and involving 


112 


THE NEGRO 


a danger of all dangers to clean and respectable gov¬ 
ernment. I shuddered as I witnessed the scene. The 
same scenes can be witnessed at any election at any 
time in that State today. (See Appendix, Note 3, 
p. 197.) 

There are those who say that the members of our 
own race are to blame for this, for they buy the votes, 
which is just as criminal as the fraudulent deposition 
of them, and even more so, for the higher race should 
set the better example. But this is simply illustrative 
of what I have already stated in a former paragraph. 
Were it not for the presence of the negro in such num¬ 
bers in such places, the whites would not have the in¬ 
ducement to resort to such criminal practices. One 
never sees scenes of that kind in New York City, 
where but comparatively few negroes appear at the 
polls, and the votes cast at a general election run far 
into the thousands. 

As a rule, the youth of the American negro are by 
nature great liars, they are nearly all predisposed to 
gambling; and the majority of them will steal. So 
far as example goes, they, in these respects, set a 
fiendish example to the coming generation of the youth 
of our own race in this country. Moreover, the young 
blacks are distinctly lewd and sensuous in their in¬ 
clinations, and at early stages develop a desire to car¬ 
nally possess white maidens and women, traits in 
reality they never outgrow, and which are a constant 
menace to the gentler sex of our people everywhere. 
This influence is extremely bad and the knowledge 
of it reacts disastrously upon the minds of our daugh¬ 
ters and wives throughout the country, as I shall pres¬ 
ently show. To have a fine, pure-minded, clean and 
cultured race grow, it is highly essential that it 


THE NEGRO 


113 


should ever have before it all that is refining and beau¬ 
tiful in the world, all that tends to elevate body and 
mind; all that inspires to cultivate art, science, litera¬ 
ture and learning, and certainly not be brought into 
the atmosphere of another people who have all the 
worse factors of degradation and ignorance in their 
organization. People may think that the latter may 
have no detrimental influence upon the higher race, 
but it does nevertheless, and most powerfully so. Any¬ 
thing and everything in the environment of any ani¬ 
mal is morally certain to afifect that animal in one way 
or another. The same axiom applies with equal truth 
to the race or the group. With respect to the superior 
people, their morals and ethics are bound to suffer. 
A dozen rotten apples have it in their power to spoil 
the entire barrel, and the greater the number of the 
rotten ones the sooner will general decay and cor¬ 
ruption take place. It is all nonsense to talk about the 
better race redeeming and eventually elevating the 
lower one to the plane of the former, for nature’s laws 
work in no such manner. In this country, the highest 
civilization, the cleanest and soundest white people 
flourish where the negro is not, or exists in compara¬ 
tively.few numbers. But to carry this argument fur¬ 
ther would be but to introduce odious comparisons, 
and that is something I certainly desire to avoid. 
Washington, our nation’s capital, has in these particu¬ 
lars a terrible load to carry, and the amount of black 
venom that has been injected into her veins requires 
all the force of her Caucasian constitution to tolerate, 
and as beautiful as that growing city is, it nevertheless 
could be far more so were it not for the presence, in its 
every place and thoroughfare, of the low African stock 
8 


114 


THE NEGRO 


that constantly attacks her very vitals. Baltimore is 
another city profoundly affected with the same malady, 
and Dr. Wm. Lee Howard has well said in an article 
he has published on the subject, entitled “ The Negro 
as a Distinct Ethnic Factor in Civilization ” ( Medicine , 
June, 1903) : The attitude of complacent moralists, 
the preaching of far distant ascetics, and the Sunday- 
school advice of the New England maiden who would 
take the African to her bosom, would be amusing were 
it not for the serious conditions underlying the mis¬ 
understood facts. 

“ The truth is that the negro of today, untrammeled 
and free from control, is rapidly showing atavistic 
tendencies. He is returning to a state of savagery, and 
in his frequent attacks of sexual madness, his religious 
emotionalism, superstition, and indolence, is himself 
again — a savage. This animalism, this innate char¬ 
acter of the African, will demonstrate itself more and 
more as he is allowed the liberty of his sway of ances¬ 
tral sexual impulses, and as long as moralists and soci¬ 
ologists of the ‘ suppressive school ’ continue to remain 
purblind to the negro’s dominant physiologic and psy¬ 
chologic organism ” (p. 423). 

And, further on, he very truly says: “ It is un¬ 
scientific to attempt to study the adjustment and laws 
of society without a thorough knowledge of the struc¬ 
ture of its individual parts. It is useless for philan¬ 
thropists, preachers, and editors in the North, or any 
other part of the country where the African is not 
understood or studied, to talk about school and college 
education controlling his hereditary racial instincts. 
His individual parts are not known to such people. 
Only he who knows life from the monad to cell com- 


THE NEGRO 


115 


plex man can intelligently discuss the negro question. 
To understand the ineradicable racial traits of the 
African, one must know the structural life and habits 
resulting from a certain biologic basis. We must pen¬ 
etrate beneath superficial ideas, throw aside prudish 
philosophy, and open our eyes to anatomical and phys¬ 
ical facts if we wish to render justice to civilization. 
Silence regarding sexual matters must give way to 
vocative statements, for it is by these unavoidable 
statements that we must be guided in dealing with the 
negro question.” 

The time has, or ought to have, arrived in the world 
when man, or the intelligent part of mankind, can 
largely control his, or its own environment. Nature 
has no pity, or so far as we know, no designs in such 
matters. With her the laws are simply operative in 
accordance with the conditions present and involved. 
Certain effects are bound to become evident if certain 
states and conditions exist, and nature would not care 
a rap were this planet to become as cold as an iceberg, 
solid to the core, and with a surface as smooth as a 
billiard-ball without so much as a grain of dust upon 
it. With her biologic law would then simply cease, 
and physical law alone would still remain active. In 
other words, it remains entirely with ourselves to con¬ 
trol our environment in such matters, and were there 
a consensus of opinion upon the point, followed by a 
consensus of action, we have it in our power to render 
the negro race extinct in the United States in very 
short order. Sociologic adjustment would follow quite 
as quickly, and natural laws would still continue as 
unceasingly in their action. That mankind in the long 
run would be enormously benefited, and the white race 


116 


THE NEGRO 


in this country be the distinct gainer, I, for one, do 
not for a moment doubt. 

But let us for a while pass still further south in this 
region, south of Washington and Baltimore, into our 
subtropical realm, into the so-called “ black belt ” re¬ 
gion, and see how our Caucasian brethren are faring 
in that quarter. The dangers, all of them, that I have 
attempted to portray in the leading paragraphs of this 
chapter are there vastly intensified and increased. 
The bulk of the white population throughout those 
states are slowly awakening to the horrors of the situ¬ 
ation that now confronts them. Negroes are massed 
everywhere, and being no longer under control, menace 
all that is decent in a developing nation — menace 
morals; menace progress and development; menace 
legal and political stability; and threaten, in no uncer¬ 
tain manner, the very existence and purity of the 
American race and its career. Ask any intelligent 
Southern man or woman and he or she will tell you 
something of the state of affairs there existing, even 
if such people do not grasp the danger in its fulness 
as the far-seeing and philosophic biologist and anthro¬ 
pologist does. Listen to some of the paragraphs that 
Ellen Barret Ligon, M. D., of Mobile, Alabama, has 
printed in her recent article on “ The White Woman 
and the Negro,” which appeared in the November, 
1903, issue of a Springfield, Massachusetts, magazine, 
called Good Housekeeping. After pointing out the nature 
of our American civilization in the South and our 
duties in preserving it; after touching upon the dire 
calamities which follow an attempt to inaugurate 
social equality between the negroes and the whites; 
after indicating the true attitude of the Southerner 


THE NEGRO 


117 


toward the colored race; after arraigning the negro 
hybrids for being proud of the white blood in their 
veins, and informing them that they are still negroes; 
after rejoicing that the negro in the South is free; 
this writer proceeds to say: “ Those at a distance 
cannot realize the situation the people of the South 
are facing, nor the conditions arising from living in 
the midst of hordes of negroes. One or two negroes 
may be to some tastes picturesque, spectacular, but 
to be in the midst of a whelming black flood, rolling 
its waves against the bulwarks of our civilization, 
overflowing our public highways and public convey¬ 
ances, threatening our homes, is the condition which 
the men and women of our own race should investi¬ 
gate and realize, before they devote themselves to that 
strange philanthropy which is so tender of heart for 
the black brother or sister, and criminally ignorant of, 
and careless about, the terrible dangers that threaten 
the women and children of their own race, and which 
they may be so largely instrumental in precipitating. 

“ The all-pervasiveness of the negro, not by ones 
and twos, but by the million, with his ‘ equality ’ in¬ 
solence, his odoriferous person, his criminal tenden¬ 
cies, is a factor for danger and discomfort that must 
be held in check by the most far-seeing intelligence. 
There is no community where the blacks exist in any 
numbers, that they have not made themselves offen¬ 
sive to the whites — Washington, for example — and 
there is no other part of the country where this of¬ 
fensiveness, when short of actual criminality, is borne 
so forgivingly as in the South. They put on extra 
police force that their daughters in going to and from 
school may be protected from infamous remarks made 


118 


THE NEGRO 


to them by passing negro men; city districts must 
have extra guards that negro fiends may not enter 
homes and knock sleeping women senseless that they 
may be violated afterward. This happened in the 
same city over and over again for two years, in spite 
of extra guards. Several of the women died. One 
wretch was at last caught, and the tolerant people 
decided that he was a degenerate and sent him to the 
insane asylum to be cared for by the State. Yet there 
are people at a distance, unknowing the conditions in 
the South, who throw all their sympathies with ‘ the 
poor, downtrodden negro.’ 

“ It is time that they knew better. Let all the world 
listen while the South calls on you to hear: The white 
woman is the coveted desire of the negro man. The 
despoiling of the white woman is his chosen venge¬ 
ance. 

“ The white woman must be saved! 

“ The vital point in the race question today is the 
safety of the Southern white woman, and all the help¬ 
lessness of womanhood appeals to the manhood of the 
world to protect her with every possible safeguard. 
‘Social equality’ is battering on the walls that pro¬ 
tect her, and for what purpose? To make a breach 
where the negro may climb up and over. And who 
is to be helped by this invasion? Not the negro, for 
it puts him in a false position, and the white race will 
certainly be no better for the mixture. 

“ All philanthropical claims can be fully met men¬ 
tally and morally without taking the negro, even the 
best negro, into the home circle. It makes no differ¬ 
ence that social equality is asked for only those who 
are worthy. The social recognition of one good negro 



\ 






























PUBLIC 


library 


*STOH, LENOX 

til-dew foundations. 


THE NEGRO 


119 


stimulates in thousands of black devils resentment at 
not being similarly treated, and rouses them to fresh 
insults and outrages aimed at the Southern white 
woman. Negro equality is a theory; negro outrages 
and insults resulting from the inculcation of the doc¬ 
trine of equality are hideous facts.” 

This lady knows whereof she speaks, and she pos¬ 
sesses the true courage of the heroine, putting her 
thoughts to paper and print without a spark of false 
shame or fear. I cannot sufficiently admire her can¬ 
dor and her appeal. Her words, her description of 
actual conditions, should be sounded throughout the 
length and breadth of this country, and with that view 
in mind, I take infinite pleasure in reproducing here 
still more from her admirable invocation. “ Behind 
the Southern adamantine resolve that the Southern 
white people shall forever be white people,” she says, 
“ is an instinct which few have analyzed — the instinct 
for the preservation of species. Preservation of 
species is one of the strongest laws of nature. The 
lion does not mate with the tiger. Race aversion is 
simply the unconscious recognition of this creational 
difference, and the normal attitude toward a mingling 
of the two races should be one of instinctive animal 
revolt.” In these words, we cannot concur, for as I 
have said and abundantly shown in previous chap¬ 
ters, nature cares nothing about the species, lions and 
tigers have mated and offspring hybrids have resulted; 
and, misfortunes of all misfortunes, the white and 
black races are interbreeding in the United States. 
She speaks with more truth when she comes back 
to the question again and says, “ Today, because the 
negro has been taught ‘ you are the social equal of 


120 


THE NEGRO 


the whites, you have the right to whatever the white 
man has a right to,’ the object most desired by him is 
the forbidden, the unattainable white woman. In that 
over-and-over repeated story of the outrages in the 
South, it is almost invariably a white woman or white 
child that has been the victim, and a negro the crim¬ 
inal. The Southern white man knows that his wife 
is not safe in her home, nor his child in her bed, ex¬ 
cept for the vigilance and the surveillance of the law.” 

It is as true as black is not white when she savs 

* 

that “ when one American woman was carried off by 
bandits the entire nation, even the government, was 
roused with indignation and anxiety. Almost daily 
in our own country beasts worse than bandits despoil 
the tender and the helpless. Good, conscientious, 
mistaken women are sympathizing with the black man, 
because they have not heard the little child's voice 
crying in the night and found their baby girl out of 
doors in her own blood, mangled and torn, nor seen 
some white woman’s body with skull crushed and 
bruised breast, nor even heard the obscene infamies 
that, in wanton insolence, are spoken to the white 
girl or woman by the passing black.” 

Proceeding, this Southern lady shows up the rec¬ 
ord for all kinds of crimes in the South, and the in¬ 
crease of certain diseases. Eighty-five per cent, of 
the crimes committed in the Southern States are com¬ 
mitted by negroes. Insanity is increasing among them 
to a fearful extent, and especially among the mulat- 
toes. Tuberculosis has a similar showing, and the 
blacks there are especially prone to that disease, form¬ 
ing an immense nidus to propagate the malady and 
pass it along to the most susceptible types among the 


THE NEGRO 


121 


whites. All this is a curse, adding death and disease 
to every other infliction brought upon us through the 
presence of this criminal semi-savage race in our midst. 

“ Within the past year or so,” says this courageous 
writer, “ the horror has crept across the line, and what 
the North once viewed with incredulity and indiffer¬ 
ence from afar has lately become visible from its very 
doors. It can no longer be dismissed as a fable from 
Louisiana or Texas, for it has manifested itself in 
Delaware, Kansas and Illinois. It has come too close 
to be ignored or pooh-poohed, or relegated to the 
limbo of malignant fiction. Suppose it were to be 
your daughter next?” 

“What are you going to do about it, Americans?” 
This is a very fitting question wherewith to close this 
burning appeal to our race, and it is the members of 
our own race,— Americans — who are the true, the 
real sufferers in this question. Yes, Americans, what 
are you going to do about it? We are not responsi¬ 
ble for the acts of our forefathers in this country, nor 
are we pledged to abide by, for a single instant, the 
results of any of the monumental blunders they made. 
It was an enormous mistake on the part of our ances¬ 
tors, the bringing of the African negroes to this coun¬ 
try, but the proposition is an entirely different one 
that confronts us now. They are here, and instead 
of being slaves under our control, they are free, free 
to pollute our entire country. Are we still to stand 
with our hands down at our sides and see them do it? 
Are we to allow this unavoidable miscegenation to go 
on? As far back as he can look into human history, 
the Anglo-Saxon has no record of cannibalism to con¬ 
ceal from his offspring; are we now to take up into our 


"X 


122 


THE NEGRO 


blood, which means the commingling of history, a 
race of human flesh eaters, and who would consume 
human flesh again with relish, were they returned to 
the country from whence they came? Are we to make 
a hatchery of this fair land of ours for unbridled crime 
and disease simply because we are afraid to act? 
Are we of the North to remain deaf to the earnest cry 
for our aid in this matter from the mothers and daugh¬ 
ters of our own race in the South? What in the 
name of all that is manly and brave and honorable 
has come over this American nation? Are we becom¬ 
ing so foully adulterated by the black scum of the 
earth that we can no longer be moved through the 
spirit of chivalry, through the dictates of honor, 
through the highest instincts of manliness, to listen 
to and to heed the distress and danger of thousands 
of our own women? 

Are we, as a nation, after all our effort, with all our 
civilization, with everything before us, to have no 
better record for the coming future, that after all, in 
the outcome, we proved a curse rather than a benefit 
to mankind? It is a nation’s highest duty so to acquit 
itself in its career that its national ethics will not only 
redound to its own credit, but that in the general 
trend of humanity’s progress, mankind will ever be 
improved and served. 

In this race question we are simply submitting to a 
mixing of the good and the bad, and that is reprehen¬ 
sible practice in anything, but I shall have more to 
say on this point in a later chapter. One thing cer¬ 
tain, our mothers and daughters in the South are 
becoming thoroughly awake to the dangerous side of 
the freed negro’s character so far as it concerns them. 


THE NEGRO 


123 


What I have quoted above demonstrates this fact. 
That is not altogether a bad thing, for to rid our¬ 
selves of what is criminal, we must first recognize 
beyond peradventure the source of the crime. With 
respect to the negro, this has been done. Again, to 
rid ourselves of disease and unsanitary conditions, we 
must first recognize the disease and the class of people 
who are giving rise to it, and whether it be curable 
or incurable. With respect to the negro, this has been 
done. Finally, to sustain a high standard of morals 
and refined ethics, we must rid ourselves of the source 
of the immorality, of the cause of our retrogradation 
in good conduct. With respect to the negro, this evi¬ 
dently remains for us to do. Suppression has never 
been known to eliminate or eradicate vice, or crime, 
therefore, we must, for the sake of mankind, resort to 
other means. 

We have through our experience, the safest of all 
teachers, come to know thoroughly the mental density 
of the negro; his ignorance and superstition; his men¬ 
dacity; his innate predisposition for every class of 
crime in the calendar; his bestiality and animal sensu¬ 
ality, and his savage and cannibalistic history,— a 
diagnosis has been made, every educated physician ap¬ 
preciates what is next to be done in the case. In the 
next following chapter this diagnosis will be discussed, 
and something will be said of the treatment that has 
thus far been instituted, and more about the latter will 
be said in my final chapter. 


CHAPTER VII 


Passion and Criminality in the Negro: Lynch Larv 

and Other Questions. 

A s the development of the body in man and all 
other animals has been a matter of evolution, 
so too has been the growth and development 
of all the psychological attributes in us, 
using the latter term in its most far-reaching sense. 
This being true, it at once becomes evident that the 
lower the position held by any particular race of man¬ 
kind in the scale of morphological development, the 
lower will all the passions, instincts, morals, emotions 
and aims be found to be as exemplified in that race. 
To this universal rule and all its variations and refine¬ 
ment, the typical negro forms no exception, and it is 
equally applicable to every grade of hybrid produced 
by crossing the negro with other races, however diffi¬ 
cult it may be sometimes for us to discern it. 

In the negro all passions, emotions and ambitions 
are almost wholly subservient to the sensual instinct, 
and that quite apart from the sexual or procreative 
instinct, for an individual of this race is yet to be 
found who has ever had congress with the opposite 
sex, having only in mind the making of a child. They 
copulate solely for the gratification of the passion — 
for the erotic pleasure it affords them. In other words, 
negroes are purely animal, that is, in the sense of 
(124) 



I 


THENEGRO 125 

quadrupedal animals, in this respect. Nor should we 
expect anything different from this; civilization and 
progressive civilization are altogether meaningless to 
them, consequently posterity has practically no in¬ 
terest for them. They live in the present, and being 
essentially without morals, and, as a rule, being 
equipped far above the average man for sensual in¬ 
dulgences, he gives that side of his nature full sway, 
when no restrictions of any kind whatever are present 
to hinder. 

Thomas says, in his above-quoted work: “ He [the 
negro] is regarded as a creature of lascivious habits, 
personal vanity, mental density, and physical laziness. 
All who know the negro recognize, however, that the 
chief and overpowering element in his make-up is an 
imperious sexual impulse, which, aroused at the 
slightest incentive, sweeps aside all restraints in the 
pursuit of physical gratification. We may say now 
that this element of negro character constitutes the 
main incitement to the degeneracy of the race, and 
is the chief hindrance to its social uplifting ” (pp. 176, 
177). My study and- questioning the average negro 
as he exists in the United States has convinced me that 
he is so bestial by nature that he holds in no regard 
whatever such virtue as may be present in the moth¬ 
ers, daughters, wives or sisters among them. They 
revel in lewd conversation, in erotic practices, and in 
unlimited sensual pursuits. Especially do they delight 
in encouraging the approaches of the whites among 
the women of their kind. 

Upon the other hand, negresses, although not al¬ 
together given to making advances of this character, 
readily accept the sensuous embraces of white men, 


126 


THE NEGRO 


with characteristic avidity, and glory in the congress. 
Along such lines, as I have already said, they often, 
yes, very often show no little foresight, for they well 
know that if they become pregnant by a white man, 
the child runs ten times the chance of success in its 
life than were it of pure negro blood. 

“ So lacking in moral rectitude are the men of the 
negro race/’ says Thomas again, “ that we have known 
them to take strange women into their homes and 
cohabit with them with the knowledge of, but without 
protest, from their wives and children. So great is 
their moral putridity that it is no uncommon thing for 
step-fathers to have children by their step-daughters, 
with the consent of the wife and mother of the girl. 
Nor do other ties of relationship interpose moral bar¬ 
riers, for fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, 
oblivious of decent social restrictions, abandon them¬ 
selves without attempt at self-restraint to sexual 
gratification whenever desire and opportunity arises. 
That such licentiousness is prevalent is not surprising, 
when we reflect that animal impulse is the sole master, 
to which both sexes yield unquestioned obedience. 
Not only is negro immorality without shame, remorse 
or contrition, but their unchaste men and women are 
perfidious, malevolent, and cowardly in their relations, 
and with reckless .obliviousness to consequences 
eagerly gloat over each other’s frailties and readily 
betray the indiscretions of their companions in guilt. 
Moreover, the contradictions of the freedman’s nature 
are such that, while imputations of personal impurity 
are resented by the known impure, there is a com¬ 
mon disposition to question each other’s morals, and 
rarely is either male or female accorded a clean bill 


L 


THENEGRO 127 

of approval. Soberly speaking, negro nature is so 
craven and sensuous in every fibre of its being that 
negro manhood with decent respect for chaste woman¬ 
hood does not exist. ” (The American Negro, pp. 179, 
180.) 

Utterly unscrupulous in other matters along the 
lines I have here been touching upon in this chapter, 
I may say that thirty years ago, at a time I was a 
medical student in college and called upon to examine 
microscopically every cell to be found in the human 
organization, by applying to a negro, I was never at 
a loss to secure for such a purpose an absolutely re¬ 
cent specimen of the human spermatic fluid. Ordi¬ 
narily it was furnished me by some sable representa¬ 
tive of the race within arm’s length of my microscope, 
for the very moderate sum of twenty-five cents. 

On another occasion, I desired to observe all the 
normal movements of a woman in the pangs of child¬ 
birth. There was no trouble in finding in Washington 
(D. C.) in those days a young negress with a slight 
dash of white blood in her composition about to give 
birth to her first child. Such a one I went, by her 
permission, to see one evening, and a most voluptuous 
creature she was, to be sure. With scarcely a word 
of persuasion, she was induced to remove every par¬ 
ticle of clothing she had on, and very shortly after¬ 
wards her labor commenced, the mother-to-be reclin¬ 
ing, at my suggestion, for the struggle upon a hard 
mattress simply covered with a thin india-rubber 
spread. She was instructed not to in any manner con¬ 
trol her expressions of pain either in her physical 
movements or her screams or mutterings. These in¬ 
structions were cheerfully complied with, and the 


128 


THE NEGRO 




scene which followed was one of the most extraordi¬ 
nary in my entire medical experience. Her contortions 
were superb and utterly natural; her groans and 
screams were unconfined and were poured out with¬ 
out the least restraint. Not one bit of assistance did 
I render her from the very first little indication she 
received that the child had started on its career for 
the outer world until everything was completely over, 
even to include the passage of the secundines. It 
would have been a worthy subject for the modern 
biograph, and the lesson was by no means lost upon 
me. I have never forgotten so much as a single part 
of it, and it is only briefly described here with the 
sole view of throwing a single ray of light,— a side¬ 
light— upon a certain phase of negro passion. No 
part of all that is here being set forth in regard to 
the peculiar sexual instincts of these people is in any 
way so done in a spirit of criticism, much less with 
reprehensory intent. Negroes are not responsible for 
the kind of men and women they are. It is their na¬ 
ture, and they cannot possibly rid themselves of that, 
any more than skunks and polecats can cast away 
their abominable scent glands and the outrageous 
odors they emit. It is not everybody who cares, how¬ 
ever, to have a large number of skunks and polecats 
in the community. 

With such freedom in the matter of sexual congress 
among the blacks, one would naturally be led to sup¬ 
pose that their lascivious instincts and proclivities 
would be satisfied through these practices. This, 
however, is by no means the case, and negroes 
of all ages and both sexes, commonly are prone to 
auto-erotic indulgences; in other words, masturbation 


THE NEGRO 


129 


in its various forms, especially among colored chil¬ 
dren, is characteristic of them. This, as they grow 
older, easily leads to congress between the sexes, 
with the results above pointed out. As a rule, 
negro women in this country are not naturally mod¬ 
est, and as the majority of the girls begin to in¬ 
dulge in carnal intercourse by the time they arrive 
at the age of puberty, what little they ever possessed 
is soon lost. To be sure, through their intense desire 
to imitate the whites in all matters, many negroes 
possess a mock modesty, but it is often only skin- 
deep, and where they exist in large numbers, and few 
whites reside, they are as devoid of anything of the 
kind, as are their relatives in the Soudan. As in so 
many other races, the sensuality of the negro in the 
United States goes hand in hand with his religious 
superstitions. The utter sexual abandonment among 
them is for this reason so commonly seen at their 
famous camp-meetings; their oft-repeated railroad ex¬ 
cursions given for the benefit of their churches, but 
more particularly enjoyed, for the reason that they 
are fraught with unbridled lust from first to last. 
And, as to their voodoo practices in the South and 
elsewhere, they simply reek in their history with every 
unnatural crime in the calendar of bestial sensuality. 
A voodoo dance at its height would soon convince one 
that it is not necessary to go to Africa to meet with 
..that species of negro moral degradation that passeth 
all understanding and of the depth of which there is 
no measuring. So, too, at many of their so-called 
literary clubs, where drunkenness, gambling and lewd 
dancing hold full sway. It has been stated upon 
good authority that the negroes of this country spend 
9 


130 


THE NEGRO 


J 


between sixty and seventy millions of dollars on rum 
and tobacco annually for their own consumption, and 
that within the last quarter of a century all of the sev¬ 
eral venereal diseases have enormously increased 
among them. The reason for this is well-known, but 
it is not necessary to dwell further upon it here. 

I have presented enough, I think, thus far in the 
present chapter to illustrate what an intensely sensu¬ 
ous and lascivious race the negro race is — utterly 
lacking in sexual chastity among themselves, and 
highly dangerous in all these particulars to the whites 
who chance to reside in the same region with them. 

The very important question now arises is there 
any remedy for all this, in so far as the redemption 
of the American negro is concerned? My firm con¬ 
viction is that there is none, absolutely none. It is 
impossible to improve the morals of a people when 
they have no morals to improve. Every one who 
knows anything of the typical negro, knows full well 
that he is an utterly non-moral being, and to endow 
the whole race of them in this country with a sound 
morality would be just as impossible as it would be 
to change the color of his skin and take the kink out 
of his hair. Few there are who realize this fact. 

Thomas proposes, as an expedient, that “ The only 
feasible hope for such a consummation centres in such 
white women of the North as may be aroused to a 
sense of the needs and wants of a degraded black 
sisterhood, and who, by going to its relief, shall train 
the young negro women into abhorrence for immoral¬ 
ity, and lead them to chaste living.” (The American 
Negro, pp. 206, 207.) 

Did any one ever hear of a more chimerical propo- 


THE NEGRO 


131 


sition than this? It far transcends the pale of ordinary- 
stupidity! In the United States, taking figures at the 
lowest estimate, there are now at least 200,000 negro 
girls and women who are licentious to the last degree 
and absolutely lacking in every moral sense. These 
are being continually recruited by the regular negro 
birth rate. It would require fully 10,000 “ white 
women of the North ” to take hold of this matter at 
all with any hope for success, and pray where are they 
to come from? Where are they to go to and com¬ 
mence? And what would it all avail? Absolutely 
nothing, and to discuss any such scheme merely means 
a dead loss of time, money, paper and ink, in this 
place, and the negro is altogether too well-known to 
me in this country for me to further entertain such an 
asinine suggestion in the present connection. 

It is a marvel to me that such a writer and such a 
keen and thoughtful observer as the author of The 
American Negro must be, could be so illogical in other 
directions, and especially one who says and who knows 
that “ The extent of the crime instinct in the negro 
is indeterminate for the reason that accurate data are 
unattainable. In so far as he has been held to an 
outward observance of moral restraints, it is obvious 
that fear of bodily harm has been the chief influence 
which has kept him in check. That his nature is sur¬ 
charged with latent ferocity is shown by abundant 
evidence of atrociousness, committed on weak and de¬ 
fenceless objects. Indeed, there is good ground for 
believing that, were the negro once convincingly as¬ 
sured of personal security, all the malignity of his 
slumbering savagery would immediately find expres¬ 
sion in the most revolting acts of physical lawlessness. 


V 


132 THE NEGRO 

His passions are easily excited, and his feelings 
readily inflamed to the point of reckless vindictiveness, 
though a natural unsteadiness of character renders 
him fickle and unstable in purpose " (pp. 208, 209). 

By nature, the negro is, in fact, capable of commit¬ 
ting any known crime in so far as his intelligence will 
permit him to be the author of it. For the lack of 
such intelligence and often for the lack of a sufficient 
amount of courage, there are fortunately limitations 
to some of the heinous criminal acts he might other¬ 
wise be guilty of, and be forever committing. But 
lacking in courage, intelligence, forethought, and the 
necessary staying powers, the criminal negro is per¬ 
force restricted to certain of the coarser and grosser 
crimes in the calendar, not requiring these several 
prerequisites. His murders are clumsy and brutal; his 
thefts of all kinds are usually paltry and liable to 
being easily detected; except for the purposes of spite 
or to cover other crimes, he rarely resorts to arson; 
while to the refinements of criminality in other direc¬ 
tions he is quite a stranger. 

However, all things considered, and notwithstanding 
the enormous amount of crime of all kinds committed 
by negroes in the United States, the one above all 
others for which he is held especially responsible by 
the American descendants of the Anglo-Saxon race, is 
that of his assaults upon white women. These 
heinous, devilish, fiendish cases of rape are often asso¬ 
ciated with the murder of the victim after the assault, 
and they have become so common in many parts of 
the country where negroes abound, that a fearful 
species of terror has come to prevail and haunt the 
minds of all the white women who for one reason or 



Fig. 10. Lynching of Henry Smith, Paris, Texas, Feb. 1, 1893. Exhibiting the negro, 
after his capture, by driving him in a wagon around the Square at Paris. 

(Hudson, photo.) 




































THE NEVf YOR.K 

PUBLIC LIBRARY 


ASTOH, LENOX AML 
TU-'DEN FOUNOA-nON^J 



THE NEGRO 


133 


another reside within the same region. Indeed, mat¬ 
ters have come to such a pass in these respects that no 
white woman, no white girl, and, in fact, no white 
child can, with any safety at all, venture out alone 
in those districts and places where negroes have more 
or less full sway. For, if not directly accosted, they 
may be subjected to all manner of glances from the 
negro men, or to insinuating remarks, or, if the oppor¬ 
tunity be still more favorable, to direct assault and 
violence. Such assaults may occur anywhere and at 
any time: city or country, night or day. Personally, 
I know of a case that took place many years ago on 
“ L ” street, in Washington, D. C., during the early 
part of the afternoon, in broad daylight. The child 
was a little girl not more than twelve or thirteen years 
of age, and her father was an officer in the military 
service of the United States. Her mother had sent 
her upon a little errand up the street, and, upon her 
way back, a great burly black negro accosted her, and 
said that he had just been talking to her mother at 
the house, and that she had said if he met her to take 
her to a candy-store before she came home and buy 
her some candy. The child believed the story, and 
followed him a few squares to where they crossed one 
of the city bridges (the Georgetown Tubular Bridge) 
in the very heart of the town. Here he suddenly 
seized her in his arms, and making a leap, was in¬ 
stantly in some shrubbery that grew beneath the 
bridge. Out came his great clasp-knife, at which the 
child screamed fearfully, and some men overhead 
hearing her cries landed by her on the jump, not how¬ 
ever, before the negro had ripped up her clothing 
in front with his knife, severely choked her and then 


134 


THE NEGRO 


making a dash for a nearby lumber yard, escaped 
amidst the high piles of timber before any one had 
realized what had happened. With the father I 
hunted for that negro until long after dark,* both of us 
being armed with revolvers. The father undoubtedly 
would have shot him on sight, as he frequently so ex¬ 
pressed himself, while, for my part, I should simply 
have halted him and allowed the people to take him. 
The would-be raper was never discovered in this case. 
Fortunately, he did not have the necessary time to mu¬ 
tilate the child — a most lovely little girl and a great 
favorite — by which I mean he did not have the time to 
increase the size of her genital fissure by an ugly up¬ 
ward rip of his knife, a common practice among ne¬ 
groes when they assault little white girls. Such is the 
class of cases which for years past have terrified South¬ 
ern mothers, which have filled fathers, husbands and 
brothers with apprehension throughout the great black 
belt in the South, and, owing to the peculiar nature of 
the knowledge, they cannot well communicate .to their 
little growing daughters or even those of maturer 
years, without putting ideas in their minds, which 
in many instances would be harmful. In other words, 
there is an ever-present danger for them, against which 
a warning becomes extremely necessary but highly un¬ 
desirable upon many accounts. It is this state of 
afTairs, which is so little appreciated by the people in 
the northern part of the United States, but which has 
induced so many of the finest women in the South, 
and those occupying the best positions in society, both 
as regards social requirements as well as by gentle 
birth, to represent this sad condition of affairs in the 
pages of our most widely-known serial magazines. 


THE NEGRO 


135 


But what has it availed? Nothing absolutely! The 
negro is neither responsible for his animal nature any 
more than he is for the opportunities he takes to grat¬ 
ify the normal impulses which are a part of him. 
It is not a case of changing the spots on the leopard, 
although some, indeed many, think this to be the case, 
as, for example, a party who in The New York Evening 
Telegram of January 28th, 1904, a paper of the widest 
circulation, claims to have discovered a treat¬ 
ment which, if adopted by the negro, will have the 
effect of turning his skin as white as the whitest Cau¬ 
casian that ever lived. Just as though all the savagery, 
cannibalistic tendencies, thievish propensities, men¬ 
dacity and the rest were in the skin of this benighted 
race! Such an expedient might, if effective, prove to 
be of some political value, but it would be worse than 
useless biologically, for, in many instances, the dan¬ 
ger sign would be removed and greater would be the 
opportunity for that semimetamorphosed race to mix 
its cannibalistic blood with that of the unsuspecting 
Anglo-Saxon in the United States. Whatever the in¬ 
ventor may think of the skin-bleaching properties of 
his invention, it can, of course, be nothing more than 
one of those cheap American nostrums now so fre¬ 
quently introduced into the market with the hope of 
gaining money, but absolutely valueless in so far 
as their being able to effect what their exploiters claim 
for them. 

Throughout the country, as a whole, I do not be¬ 
lieve that the number of assaults upon white women 
by negroes are in any way diminishing in number, or 
in their fiendish brutality as time goes on. Indeed, I 
believe in some sections they even seem to be on the 


136 


THE NEGRO 


increase, the number of such cases being greater each 
year. It seems to me that such cases now average at 
least one a day for the entire country over. They are 
well exemplified by the following one from The New 
York Herald: 

WOMAN AND CHILD A NEGRO’S VICTIMS 

Business Man Finds One with Throat Cut and the Other with 
Head Crushed — Mob Watches the Prison — Mayor of 
Virginia Town Orders the Military Company to be Ready 
for Lynchers. 

“ Roanoke, Va., Saturday.—When George J. Shields, 
a well-known young business man, reached his home, 
in the heart of the city, at the luncheon hour today, he 
found his three-year-old daughter Mildred lying on 
the reception hall floor with two ugly wounds in the 
head. Follotving blood-stains from the dining room 
to an upstairs chamber, he found his wife in a clothes 
closet with her throat cut from ear to ear and her head 
horribly hacked. Mrs. Shields managed to gasp: — 
‘ A large black negro man came through the kitchen 
and attacked me in the dining-room.’ 

“ Excepting this, there is no clew to the criminal. 
Mrs. Shields had been assaulted, after which her as¬ 
sailant dealt her several blows on the head with a 
hatchet, fracturing the skull, dragged her upstairs, 
where he cut her throat with a razor and threw her 
into a closet, fastening the door on the outside. 

“ The dining-room floor bore evidences of a terrible 
struggle. The physicians entertain little hope for the 
recovery of either the mother or child. 

“ Ever since the discovery of the tragedy, a large 




THE NEGRO 


lb. 


crowd of citizens has been in the vicinity of the city 
jail, watching to see if the police carry any one into 
the building. At eight o’clock tonight this crowd 
numbered more than a thousand men. Mayor Cutchin 
has ordered Captain Francis, of the Roanoke Blues mil¬ 
itary company, to assemble his men as a precaution¬ 
ary measure. 

“ By order of the Mayor, all the saloons were closed 
at eight o’clock tonight.” 

This was in the issue of Sunday, January 31, 1904 
(p. 4). The coolness with which this vile assault is 
related in the Herald stands in evidence of the fact 
that the people at large are becoming altogether too 
used to tales of this character, and, except at the place 
where the crime is committed, they fail to excite the 
universal sense of horror that they formerly did. 

In the Appendix to the present book, at the close 
of the volume, I have selected from various sources 
and newspapers quite a number of cases of this kind, 
so that the reader, by studying them, may become 
thoroughly informed as to their brutality, and the 
various circumstances under which they have oc¬ 
curred. (See Appendix, Note 4, p. 206, ct seq.) 

In a large proportion of cases if the negro assaulter 
and murderer is captured by the infuriated mob, a 
lynching takes place; in other words, the culprit is 
summarily taken out somewhere and is simply hung, 
or hung and shot, or hung, shot and tortured. I have 
taken occasion to illustrate fully by means of repro¬ 
ductions of actual photographs a typical example of 
one of these lynchings that took place some years 
ago in the state of Texas, in a town called Paris. 


M8 


THE NEGRO 


There are seven of these illustrations, and they were 
secured by me only after extreme difficulty. For this 
assistance I am primarily indebted to my young friend, 
Mr. S. Emmet Robertson of Haskel, Texas, who in¬ 
terested parties in his State in my behalf; also to Mr. 
W. E. Sherrill of the same city for securing the name 
and residence of the photographer who took them. 
This latter was Mr. J. L. Mertins of Wolfe City, Texas, 
who, with marked generosity, has presented me with 

the entire set of these pictures, one of which (the 

* 

parade) I see was taken by Mr. Hudson of Paris, 
Texas, who is unknown to me. Mr. Mertins, who 
still has photographs from these negatives for sale, 
has also, in my case, waived the copyright on 
them, so they could be employed as illustrations in 
the present work. To all these gentlemen my sincere 
thanks are herewith extended. 

The criminal in this case was an unusually black 
and brutal negro by the name of Henry Smith, and 
his victim was little Myrtle Vance (fet. three years, 
eight months and a day), whom he outraged and mur¬ 
dered at Paris, Texas, where the infuriated people of 
the place burned him on the 1st of February, 1893, the 
day of his crime. My illustrations show the Vance 
family; the sheriffs and others at the spot where the 
body was found; the parade in the streets of Paris, 
Texas, after the negro was captured, and were lead¬ 
ing him to the place of execution beyond the town 
limits; a general view of the crowd about the scaf¬ 
fold where Smith was burned alive; the party fasten¬ 
ing him to the stake on the scaffold; the tortures com¬ 
menced, showing a man engaged in burning his feet 
with red-hot irons; the same, showing the terrible 


THE NEGRO 


139 


writhings of the negro after the fagots were lighted; 
and, finally, the rekindling of the latter, in order to 
burn down the scaffold and cremate the lifeless body 
of Smith, now seen to be leaning over, having parted 
company with the stake to which he was originally 
fastened. 

In these pictures attention is especially invited to 
the large size and marked coolness and quietness 
of the mob; its typically Texan composition; and the 
methodical manner in which they are conducting the 
execution. It is said that the victim screamed and 
howled at a terrible rate, and that all this, from start 
to finish, was recorded by a graphophone, and that 
this has been used at various exhibitions to illustrate 
a full set of biographic pictures which were made at 
the same time. So far as I am concerned, however, 
all this is mere hear-say, and I have never seen any 
such exhibition, though I have friends who tell me that 
they have. Possibly this may have been accomplished 
at some other lynching, and not at Henry Smith’s; in 
any event, it matters but little, as cold-blooded as such 
a procedure would be. It is said that the man begged 
the crowd to kill him, — to shoot him, a dozen times 
before the burning fagots caused his death. (See Ap¬ 
pendix, Note 5, p. 232.) 

With respect to lynching, Thomas, in his work on 
The American Negro, says: “ It is not the number of 
negroes lynched that makes such acts execrable, for 
the annual summary executions are less than two 
hundred, but the fact that such lawless methods deny 
to the accused the exercise of his highest privilege,— 
a free and impartial trial before a legally-constituted 
tribunal. Were this phase of lawlessness directed 


140 


THE NEGRO 


solely against criminal assaults on women, it might 
have a color of justification; but while that is the of¬ 
fence for which negroes are mainly lynched, there are 
not infrequently summary executions of them for mur¬ 
der, arson and theft. Heinous and inexcusable bru¬ 
talities have also been perpetrated upon this people 
for no other reason than their affiliation with the Re¬ 
publican party. A carnival of injustice and cruelty 
drove them from the domain of politics. Demoraliza¬ 
tion followed; and then a retributive justice brought 
disaster to those who were the chief instigators of the 
forceful exclusion of the negro from the political field. 

“ Lynching may be correctly described as the in¬ 
fliction of summary punishments for alleged offences, 
without authority of law; and there is among sane 
minds common agreement that such lawless violence 
is an execrable usurpation of ordained legal functions. 
As a mode of punishment for the freedmen criminal 
class, there is never, under any circumstances, ex¬ 
cuse or justification for resorting to it. It cannot be 
said that it is to be approved by the best sentiment of 
any community, yet when inflicted upon negroes for 
the commission of certain crimes, the perpetrators are 
assured of absolute immunity from punishment. No 
negro is likely to be legally acquitted in the South 
of the charge of criminal assault, or, in fact, of any 
heinous offence, when a strong presumption of guilt 
exists. No negro charged with criminal assault upon 
a white woman ever has been acquitted. Hence, there 
is justification for the assertion that, so far as the 
white people are concerned, the impulse to indulge 
in mob brutalities arises from their low sense of ac¬ 
countability to law; that their lawlessness is the se- 











THE NEW YORK 

PUBLIC LIBRARY 


ASTOR, LCNOX AND 
TILDF-N rOU^DATIONS. 






THE NEGRO 


1*. 

quence of freedom from those restraints which obtain 
in law-abiding communities. 

“ Lynching is resorted to merely to appease and 
gratify an instinctive brutality on the part of a lawless 
element of the white race. No man can foresee the 
final results of such disorders. Nevertheless, it is evi¬ 
dent that, if current individual usurpations of author¬ 
ity continue, all legal morality and social obedience 
will cease, our civilization will be erased, and barbaric 
methods will take the place of law and order. What 
the South needs is an enforcement of equitable law. 
Its mobs now exercise a tremendous discretionary 
power, of such far-reaching consequences as should 
make men pause in their madness. 

“ The question has been raised again and again as 
to why the national government does not take cog¬ 
nizance of local disorders, and use its authority for 
the suppression of lynching. But one familiar with 
the genius of our social organism will readily under¬ 
stand that constitutional limitations effectually inter¬ 
vene. The Federal government is limited to national 
interests. It is inhibited from taking cognizance of 
the acts of individual citizens, except as they may be¬ 
come trespassers upon national rights. Under exist¬ 
ing conditions, then, national functions can neither 
deal with white lawlessness nor cope with black crim¬ 
inals, and no enactment by the Congress of the United 
States touching this matter would have the slightest 
standing in the Federal judiciary. (See Appendix, 
Note 5, for light on this point.) We do not doubt 
but that Congress has the constitutional right to enact 
a law for the trial and punishment of lynchers by 
United States courts, when the victims of mob vio- 


THE NEGRO 


.-±2 

lence are aliens or non-resident citizens. In such 
cases, the responsibility of the Federal government 
for individual protection seems to be established. On 
the other hand, the state is supreme within its own 
domain, and has full and complete control over its 
citizens. No writ nor process of law can issue, and no 
action can be begun in a Federal court against a citi¬ 
zen of a state unless the plaintiff is a resident of an¬ 
other state, or unless the alleged offence was com¬ 
mitted against the United States. Personal wrongs 
are to be corrected and personal rights defended by 
that state within whose jurisdiction cause of action 
lies. If that state will not act on the complaint of its 
citizens or is powerless to enforce its decrees, the in¬ 
dividual sufferer has no relief, so long as public senti¬ 
ment is against him.” 

Thomas continues along this line of his argument 
for another paragraph or so, into which I do not care 
to follow him, although I concur in much that he says, 
and, while I am, of course, morally opposed to the 
system of lynching, I predict that it will be practiced 
in the “ black belt ” as long as the blacks remain in this 
country, and continue to assault and murder our peo¬ 
ple, and this whether they are responsible for their 
natures and ignorance or not, and all the law to the 
contrary, in so far as the mob is concerned. 

Touching upon this point, Thomas continues: “ We 
are concerned chiefly with the cause which instigates 
sectional lawlessness, and our message to Southern 
civilization is to exterminate by law its lawless white 
element; at the same time, to exterminate, at all haz¬ 
ards and at any cost, the savage despoilers of maiden 
virtue or wifely honor, and do it so thoroughly that 


THE NEGRO 


143 


the inexorable, remorseless certitude of punishment . 
will make the lives and persons of the women of the 
South as safe in field, forest and public highway as in 
their private homes. Our interest in the public wel¬ 
fare has prompted us to draft a measure for the cor¬ 
rection of these evils, and one which we are gratified 
to know has received the approval of many of the 
leading publicists of the country. Its chief merits are 
the adequate safeguarding of all the rights of accused 
persons, the infliction of a penalty that would effect¬ 
ually deter others from committing like crimes, and 
the removal of all incitement to lawless usurpation of 
authority or justified excuse for its exercise. The 
punishment which we suggest for persons convicted 
by due process of law of criminal assaults upon women 
is an untried remedy, and the most that can be urged 
against it is that a heinous crime has a harsh punish¬ 
ment. Nevertheless, in the present abnormal condi¬ 
tion of public morality, a measure of this kind can¬ 
not do otherwise than exert a wholesome influence 
on white and black society. 

“ It is proposed that, when any male person of the 
age of fifteen or upward shall be charged with an at¬ 
tempt to commit an assault on a female person of any 
age or condition, with intent to violate her chastity and 
have carnal knowledge of her under duress and against 
her will, or upon the commission of such act, such 
person shall undergo an examination before a court 
of competent jurisdiction, and, upon conviction thereof, 
by due process of law, shall undergo emasculation, and 
be further subjected to such restraint as the nature 
of the case and the welfare of the community justifies. 

It will be observed that this proposition embraces de- 


144 


THE NEGRO 


terrent features, as well as punitive functions. One 
is as essential to the well-being of society as the other, 
and any measure which does not exert a restraining 
influence upon the vicious classes is of doubtful value ” 
(pp. 229-235). 

The propositions here made are simply too utterly 
puerile as to be worthy of sober consideration at 
my hands. They are simply senseless and idiotic, 
and to carry them out would be in the highest degree 
impossible. When a man talks about “ exterminating 
by law the lawless white element in the South,” he 
may just as well propose to submit the entire United 
States to a legal drag-net, and, having taken all the 
criminal and law-breaking class at one haul, they 
could by the courts be summarily executed right there. 
The hanging of all the real leaders of a mob that 
took part in a lynching anywhere would no more de¬ 
ter others from doing the same thing under similar 
conditions, than the execution of all the murderers we 
have executed in this country within the last two 
centuries, and they run up far into the hundreds, 
will prevent in the slightest degree the crime of mur¬ 
der among us. It is the most unmitigated nonsense to 
suggest the extermination of an element in society. 
As silly as this proposition is, however, it is not a cir¬ 
cumstance in comparison with the absurdity of the 
suggestion to emasculate the negro (or any one else) 
as a preventive of rape, or assaults upon white women. 
To be sure, if emasculation is thoroughly and properly 
done, it renders the man completely sterile, but, on the 
other hand, it by no means always renders him im¬ 
potent. The vulgar and lay belief is that it does, while 
in reality it does not. I have known several cases in 


THE NEGRO 


145 


my own experience where both the testicles had been 
removed in a man, and yet, it not only did not deprive 
him of the keen desire for carnal intercourse with 
women, but his copulatory organ had apparently lost 
none of its pristine virility. His erections were as 
firm and as lasting, and his pleasures as voluptuous 
as they were prior to the accident that deprived him 
of his testes. I have seen many different kinds of 
castrated animals that could also copulate, and there 
was especially a horse I have in mind that could com¬ 
pletely satisfy the most lustful little mare that was 
ever lined by the most vigorous of stallions,— and the 
said horse had been deprived of his testicles when a 
mere colt. 

It would doubtless be a capital thing, if it could be 
done, to emasculate the entire negro race and all of 
its descendants in this country, and effectually stop 
the breed right now, and thus prevent any further 
danger from them, and the horrors of their crossing 
continually with the Anglo-Saxon stock. What would 
Thomas think of this for a scheme? 

No, when a respectable white woman, in any plane 
of society, has been brutally assaulted and outraged 
by a negro, it will be of absolutely no satisfaction to 
her, or to any of her relatives, to know that the brutal 
raper had simply been carefully and kindly operated 
upon by a surgeon, and had his testicles removed. 
The fact that the bestial creature lives after he has 
accomplished the act is what neither the woman, or 
any of those who care for, or are connected with her, 
can possibly endure. Then say the duly emasculated 
brute is ever set at large again, what is to prevent 
him from wreaking his vengeance in time upon that 
10 


146 


THE NEGRO 


woman or some one of those who took part in his 
mutilation? The idea is simply ridiculous from what¬ 
ever view-point we may regard it. 

As an example of the way women feel upon this 
question, allow me to quote an account of a lynching 
that was published in The New York Evening Journal, 
in its issue of November 9, 1903. It was as follows: — 


OH, LET ME KILL THAT NEGRO BRUTE. 

Former New York Society Woman Wanted Her Assailant 

to Die — Tells Her Own Story. 

Pass Christian, Miss., Nov. 9.— “ Oh, kill him ! ” 
cried Mrs. Labouisse, when Sam Adams, the young 
negro who attacked her in the woods near her home, 
was brought before her for identification. “ Oh, let 
me kill him ! Let me kill that negro brute! ” 

It was this dramatic appeal to the men who had 
captured the negro that brought the feeling of rage 
against the crime to a white heat and determined a 
hundred men to hang Adams. His crime was the 
attempt at the usual one which results generally in 
lynching in the South, and in every home and every 
public place, there is but one opinion and that is that 
the negro met a deserved fate. 

For the first time since the crime and its terrible 
sequel, Mrs. Labouisse, who was formerly Mrs. S. 
Osgood Pell, of New York, and who, before her mar¬ 
riage, was Miss Isabel Audrey Townsend, was able 
today to tell her story of the crime. She has been 
confined to her home in a high state of nervous ex¬ 
citement, but in consequence of the publicity that the 



THE NEGRO 


147 


affair has received, she made the following statement 
to the press: 

“ I am glad that the negro was hanged,” she said. 
“ He deserved his fate. Until I knew that he was 
dead, I had no peace of mind. There was no mistake 
as to his identity or the crime that he attempted to 
commit. 

“ I went into the woods with my nurse-girl, Mar¬ 
garet, and my baby, to gather mushrooms. After a 
short time the young negro came to me and told me 
that my horse was loose. I told him to go get him, 
but the negro said that the horse would run away if 
a stranger approached him, and asked me to go with 
him. The nurse was suspicious, and begged me not 
to go, but I laughed at her, for the man's manner was 
perfectly respectful. When we reached the horse, I 
saw that the traces were cut, and then we started 
back. Suddenly he stopped and asked what he was 
going to get for his work. 

“ ‘ Come to the house tomorrow,’ I said, ‘ and Mr. 
Labouisse will reward you.’ 

“ ‘ I don’t want Mr. Labouisse,’ he said, ‘ I want 
you.’ 

“ As he said this the negro let go the bridle and 
turned toward me. I gathered up my skirts and 
dashed toward the road. He ran after me. I ran as 
fast as I could, but the thick brush and trees ob¬ 
structed my passage. 

“ Suddenly my foot caught on something and I fell. 
Before I could rise the negro had caught me. The 
moment I felt his grasp upon me I screamed as loudly 
as I could. I must have been a long way from the 


148 


THE NEGRO 


nurse, for she did not hear me, or at all events, did 
not come to my assistance. The negro still held me 
on the ground, and I was left alone to fight the des¬ 
perado. 

“ He drew a large knife and, holding it to my throat, 
threatened to kill me if I did not cease screaming 
and struggling. It was, of course, impossible for me 
to stop, so he drew down the knife and poised it above 
my heart. 

“ ‘ Stop ! ’ he cried, ‘ or I’ll kill you ! ’ 

“ How long we struggled after that I do not know, 
but I paid no heed to his threats and was strong 
enough to fight the wretch off. As soon as he went 
away, I hastened back to where I left baby and Mar¬ 
garet. The nurse became greatly excited and fright¬ 
ened when I told her. 

“ We had walked about three hundred yards when 
we came upon Louis Allen, an estimable old negro, 
chopping wood with his two sons, about fifteen years 
old. He brought his wagon, drove us home and then 
told the people what had occurred. When the negro 
was brought before me a short time afterward, there 
was not the slightest doubt in my mind as to his 
identity. After I recognized him, the men took' him 
away. I don’t see how they could possibly have acted 
otherwise than they did.” 

As soon as the news of the attempted crime became 
public, John H. Lang, a prominent real estate dealer, 
William Trautman and S. M. Thornton drove out to 
the Adams house. They saw Sam sitting on the fence. 
As they approached, he got down, went through the 
house and began to run into the woods. He had one 
hundred yards start, and, after emptying a magazine 


THE NEGRO 


149 


rifle and a shot gun at him, he was halted and taken 
to the Labouisse house. 

“ When we got there,” said Mr. Lang, “We took 
the negro before Mrs. Labouisse. 

“ ‘Do you know this negro?’ I asked. 

Yes,’ she answered; ‘ he is the one who attacked 
me an hour ago.’ 

“ ‘ Are you certain? ’ I asked her, for in Pass Chris¬ 
tian we are not given to lynching the wrong man. 

“‘Yes,’ replied Mrs. Labouisse; ‘I am certain that 
is he.’ Then she called out her nurse and old man 
Allen. They identified him, too. Mrs. Labouisse lost 
control of herself. 

Let me kill him! Oh, let me kill that negro 
brute! ’ she cried in a terrible voice that we who heard 
it shall never forget. We hurried Adams away to¬ 
ward the jail, and the servants calmed Mrs. La¬ 
bouisse.” 

A meeting was called at the Knights of Honor hall, 
in Pass Christian, and Adams was sentenced to death. 
The constable was advised to get Adams out of the 
county that night, and it was while he was being 
taken away that he was captured and strung up. 
When the rope was thrown around his neck, a voice 
said: “Adams, you have ten minutes in which to 
pray and repent.” 

“ I don’t want to pray none,” said the doomed man 
sullenly. 

For five minutes everybody waited, and then the 
same voice asked again: 

“What have you to say before you die?” 

Adams shifted his leg lazily from one leg to the 
other. By the light of a single lantern in the midst 


150 


THE NEGRO 


of a tragic group his face could be clearly discerned. 
His black forehead drew itself into a frown, as if he 
were thinking hard. Suddenly his face cleared, as if 
he had found what he sought. 

“ Ah wish,” he said simply, “ that when you all gets 
through with me you’d jes’ give my shoes to my pa! ” 

And with this anti-climax, absurd in spite of the 
tragedy, the negro was hanged. (See Appendix, 
Note 6, p. 246.) 

Now does anyone for a moment suppose that even 
in the event of emasculation rendering this negro im¬ 
potent, it would have a particle of influence in deter¬ 
ring thousands of other ignorant negroes, who, from 
their gross ignorance, would never hear of this case, 
living in widely separated districts all over the coun¬ 
try, from doing likewise? Not for one single instant 
when their passions have been aroused and the means 
of gratifying them is within their reach. 

With the surgeon’s knife actually pressing upon his 
scrotum; with the blazing fagots so near him that he 
could actually feel the heat of their flames, he would 
nevertheless seize his victim and outrage her if it 
lay within his power to do so. Ninety-nine times out 
of a hundred, in cases similar to the one just quoted, 
the negro having gotten his nearly-exhausted victim 
down in the brush, then by the threats with his mur¬ 
derous knife, deprived her by fright of nearly all the 
remaining strength she had left for a struggle with 
a brutal person of probably five times her strength, 
would, in the end, compel her to yield to his in¬ 
famous desires. And, in the case of any chaste 
woman, if she survived the terrors of the shock, the 
probable injuries inflicted, the scandal and other feel- 




THE NEGRO 


151 


ings more easily to be imagined than described, would 
very naturally cry out that her assaulter be deprived 
of his life at the shortest possible notice, and that she 
should have the satisfaction of at least not running 
any risk of ever seeing him again. Then too, we 
must consider the reluctance of white women and 
their relatives to testify as witnesses in examining 
trials, where they would be confronted with the brute 
(protected by the law) and be subjected to cross¬ 
questioning at the hands of the negro's “ attor¬ 
ney ” (!). 


CHAPTER VIII 


Discussion of Remedies, Opinions of Others, Proba¬ 
bilities in the Future. 

H aving now in the foregoing chapters of this 
book defined exactly what the genus Homo 
is from the only view-point from which we 
can consistently consider man,— that is the 
biological one; and having, in following chapters, 
studied the negro race along similar lines and demon¬ 
strated the extreme undesirability of permitting that 
race to interbreed with the white race in the United 
States of America, we come at last, in the present 
chapter, to a point where it appears it would seem 
fitting to discuss briefly some of the remedies that 
may now be suggested to solve, or as far as possible 
alleviate, what now has come to be so widely known 
as the “ negro problem ” in this country. 

All sorts of views have been taken of this matter 
and by all sorts of people. The uninformed layman, 
utterly lacking in a knowledge of the essential prin¬ 
ciples of general biology requisite to pass upon the 
dangers involved in permitting a mixture of the Anglo- 
Saxon and negro races to go on, naturally proposes the 
laissez-faire rule • and claims that the condition will 
solve itself, and that it does not involve any problem. 
Then we read the various views of the situation en¬ 
tertained by the maudlin Christian and humanitarian; 
those of the politician and of the Southern agricultur- 
( 152 ) 



THE NEGRO 


153 


ist, and the representatives of a number of other 
factions or classes. Finally, we hear and read of a 
great many kinds of opinions advanced on the state 
of affairs we are considering by the negroes them¬ 
selves, especially by such half-breeds as Booker T. 
Washington, Du Bois, and their ilk. Indeed, with 
respect to this last class, it is only those who have 
a great share of the dominant or white race in their 
composition who are at all capable or in any way 
fitted to express an opinion, or of saying anything 
worth the price of the ink it would take to print it. 

After all has been said, however, on this subject, 
all along the line, there remains but one remedy at all 
worthy of our consideration, and that is the complete 
segregation of the two races. (See Appendix, Note 
7, p. 247.) If they are left to occupy the same geo¬ 
graphical area, as they nod do, they will continue to 
interbreed, in spite of anything man can do to prevent 
the disaster, and it will simply result in the forma¬ 
tive white stock in this country taking up into its 
compound mixture, comprising of a variety of stocks 
from the Old World, all the negro stock now in the 
United States. So that, in the course of a few more 
centuries, the blacks will gradually be absorbed and 
all the evil effects resulting from such an amalgama¬ 
tion will have passed beyond the reach of any remedy. 
In time, and nature cares not a rap for time, any more 
than she does for results,— in time, I say, a people will 
be produced no single individual of which will be 
able to deny successfully that he or she, as the 
case may be, has not some of the blood of the 
Soudan cannibal in them. Pure Anglo-Saxons, or, 
more broadly speaking, the best mixture of the white 


154 


THE NEGRO 


race that has come here from the Old World, can, as 

ft 

far as they can trace their pedigree back, meet with 
no such stigma attaching to their history. For my¬ 
self, I can say at this writing, that, thank Fortune, 
there were no black cannibals among my ancestors! 

No negro, no negro half-caste in this country is in 
favor of leaving it. You may be well-assured of that 
fact. On a few occasions within the past few years, 
small parties of them have made the feint to go, but 
such ruses have not deceived us. This lazy, ignorant, 
criminal race have altogether too good a thing in 
America to think seriously for a moment of returning 
to their own people in Africa or, in fact, of going 
anywhere else. It is their intention to stay right here 
and do all the harm to our race they can. 

They have been a curse to us ever since our ances¬ 
tors brought them to these shores; they have given 
rise to all manner of national and individual troubles 
since; and, in my estimation, we, the white population 
of this country, have no problem of higher import to 
consider today than this very negro problem. 

. For all the ample reasons I have given in the fore¬ 
going pages, I am, for one, most emphatically in favor 
of the adoption of any rational scheme on the part of 
the Federal government for transporting them out of 
the country. This has been my opinion for many years 
past, but I am sorely afraid at the present time, that 
it is not at all feasible, though, of course, if laws were 
duly enacted by the general government that they 
should go,— why, go they would. But governments 
have never been known to act in this way; they recog¬ 
nize the presence of the parasite; they recognize the 
discomforts, dangers and diseases it is setting up, but, 


THE NEGRO 


* t*7 


although it is in its power to do so, the government, 
the people never actually undertake any measures that 
would radically relieve the condition. They come 
pretty near it sometimes, but they never seem to have 
the moral and intellectual strength to push the act or 
acts to a final accomplishment. 

As I say, I agitated this segregation, this expatria¬ 
tion, of the negro of this country to the best of my 
ability, long, long ago, when it was quite feasible to 
carry it out successfully. On that account many 
negroes were very bitter toward me, no more bitter, 
however, I suppose, than had I been among them in 
Africa, and ridiculed the cannibalistic ceremonies 
attending the erection of one of their Juju houses. 
They would have been equally provoked. Some of 
my published papers on this subject have been set 
forth in the early pages of this book, but the other day 
I came across the following unpublished manuscript 
of mine, stowed away among my personal archives. It 
is of some historical value, and I wrote it at Takoma, 
D. C., on the 16th day of January, 1893, and sub¬ 
mitted it to the then editor of Science, of New York, 
for publication. It was promptly rejected, whereupon 
I mailed it to Wm. P. Garrison, Esq., the editor of The 
Nation, and a son of the famous abolitionist, Wm. 
Lloyd Garrison. Mr. Garrison also rejected it, and I 
therefore here publish both his letter to me and the 
aforesaid MS. in the present connection. They read 
as follows: — 

LIBERIA AND THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION 

SOCIETY 

“ A year ago, when the present writer published in 
Science, of New York (No. 416), his views upon ‘The 


THE NEGRO 


J54 

Practicability of Transporting the Negro back to 
Africa,’ those views, when read, were characterized 
by a number of men of science in Washington, biolo¬ 
gists and anthropologists included, as ‘ chimerical,’ or 
‘ absurd,’ and the mildest epithet that was applied to 
them being that they were ‘ highly impracticable.’ 
To those reviewers I would now say a word, and 
kindly invite their attention to the November bulletin 
of the American Colonization Society for the present 
year, which announces a very radical change in the 
plans heretofore adopted by that Society. ‘ When the 
Society was first organized, domestic slavery in this 
country existed in its full vigor, but the foreign slave 
trade had been abolished by law. The leading pur¬ 
pose of the Society was to improve the condition of 
the comparatively few negroes who were then free 
or might thereafter be set free by their masters, and to 
provide for those recaptured from slave-vessels still 
pursuing their nefarious and at that time unlawful 
traffic. Various projects were deliberately considered, 
and it was finally decided to return them to their na¬ 
tive land and found a colony on the west coast of 
Africa. Hence came Liberia, with its eventful culmi¬ 
nation in an independent republic, as we find it today, 
and its seventy-five years of most interesting history.’ 

“ The Society has at last come to believe that ‘ no 
legislation can abolish race prejudice and social dis¬ 
crimination, and it is believed that the negro can have 
a freedom for development in Liberia which no laws, 
however just or favorable, will secure him in this 
country.’ 

“ And, after propounding numerous questions to the 
readers of its Bulletin, it further asks: Shall Liberia 


THE NEGRO 


157 


be pointed to as another evidence of the inferiority 
and incapacity of the negro?’ 'How can the mure 
intelligent negroes of the United States expect to over¬ 
come the prejudice here, of which they so bitterly com¬ 
plain, if the race everywhere else on the globe, and 
especially in Africa, its ancestral home for centuries, is 
forever to be in a state of barbarism, anarchy or serv¬ 
ile dependence on nations who claim racial superior¬ 
ity?’ Without answering any of these questions, 
which, by the way, are by no means difficult ones for 
the philosophic ethnologist to solve, the Society briefly 
states its plans for the future as follows: — 

“ ' 1. Colonists hereafter to be selected with special 
reference to the needs of Liberia, and to be located 
there with more care and to better advantage to them¬ 
selves. 

“ ‘ 2. Funds held in trust for education to be applied 
in ways to stimulate the Liberian government to more 
energetic action in establishing and fostering a sys¬ 
tem of public schools rather than to the support of in¬ 
dependent schools. 

“ ‘ 3. To aid in collecting and diffusing more full and 
reliable information about Liberia. 

“ ‘ 4. To promote in every possible way the estab¬ 
lishing of more direct, frequent and quicker communi¬ 
cation between the United States and Liberia. Direct 
steam communication is now the pressing need, and it 
is believed to be practicable solely from a commercial 
point of view. There are now steamers running to 
Africa from Hamburg, Havre, Marseilles, Cadiz and 
Lisbon, and two a week — some as large as 4,000 tons 
— leave Liverpool alone for the west coast of Africa. 


I 


158 


THE NEGRO 


Surely here is a field for commerce worth the atten¬ 
tion of commercial capitalists in the United States. 

“ ‘ 5. The chief end of the work of the Society to be 
in the line of enabling and stimulating Liberia to de¬ 
pend less and less upon others and more and more 
upon herself. 

“ ‘ Under the pressure of a disheartening and in¬ 
creasing competition the time is coming when, in 
obedience to one of the great laws of our nature, the 
more intelligent negroes of the United States, in larger 
numbers, “ will come under the efficient motive which 
propels man to all enterprises — the desire to better 
his condition ”— and they will turn their faces toward 
the land whence they came. When quicker and 
cheaper communication is accomplished, as it surely 
will be at no distant day, and the passage can be made 
in eight or ten days, instead of taking a month as it 
now does, and the people of the two countries can 
communicate back and forth at short intervals, coloni¬ 
zation will begin to take care of itself and Liberia will 
receive a fresh and powerful impulse. The great gain 
in time by direct steam communication with readily 
be seen from a statement of the following distances: 
“From New York to Liverpool, 3,115 miles; from 
Liverpool to Liberia, 3,250 miles — making the whole 
distance from New York to Liberia, by way of Liver¬ 
pool, 6,365 miles; direct distance from New York to 
Liberia, 3,720 miles, or only 605 miles greater than 
the distance from New York to Liverpool.” 

“ ‘ Bishop Henry C. Potter, of New York, is now 
president of the Society, and Mr. J. Ormond Wilson 
of this city, is acting as secretary, and Mr. Reginald 
Fendall, also of this city, as treasurer. The office of 


THE NEGRO 


159 


the Society still remains in the Colonization building, 
450 Pennsylvania avenue.’ (See Appendix, Note 8, 
p. 248.) 

“ We sincerely trust, for the mutual benefit of the 
two races, that Bishop Potter will succeed with his 
present plans of the American Colonization Society, 
and that when ‘ quicker and cheaper communication 
is accomplished ’ the negroes ‘ will turn their faces 
toward the land whence they came.’ Liberia most 
sorely needs the aid, the pecuniary aid, of some of the 
richer members of the race now sojourning with us, 
for in 1871 she borrowed the small sum of $500,000 
from Great Britain and has never been able to return 
a single dollar of it since, nor a ‘ ha’penny’s ’ interest 
on the same. “ R. W. Shufeldt.” 

Takoma, D. C., January 16, 1893. 

Mr. Garrison’s letter read thus : — 

The Nation, 208 Broadway (P. O. Box 794), 

New York, Jan. 18, 1893. 

“ Dear Dr. Shufeldt: It surprises me that you, an 
evolutionist, should be found attaching yourself to that 
‘ survival ’ known as the American Col. Society. It 
is a little more than 60 years ago since my father 
hit it the hardest whack it ever received, and ut¬ 
terly discredited it in the eyes of the real philan¬ 
thropists of this country. All the economic objections 
to it are as strong now as then; its reliance is the 
same, barring the pecuniary support of slaveholders, 
viz.— on the spirit of caste; and nothing astonishes 
me more than to see Bishop Potter accepting the 
presidency, when I know his opinion of my father 
after reading his Life. There is nothing new in the 


160 


THE NEGRO 


Society’s programme: — it is, to raise all the wind it 
can to afford a living for its officers. Its humbug 
colony has been a stench for seventy years, and is 
no place for any human being to go to to elevate him¬ 
self. The Congo Free State would be infinitely pref¬ 
erable. But the blacks will not go, and those who 
declared it to be the hand of Providence that brought 
them here to be slaves must view the same hand in 
the perseverence of their stay as freemen. 

“ Thanks for your interesting pamphlets. 

“ Sincerely yours, 

“W. P. Garrison.” 

(See Appendix, Note 9, p. 272.) 

To the best of my recollection, to this letter I made 
no reply. It needed no reply from me, for at that 
time the American Colonization Society, with Bishop 
Potter at its head, was doing all in its power to in¬ 
duce, by eminently peaceful means, the negro to re¬ 
turn to his native home in Africa. 

And here we are, fourteen years afterwards, after the 
above MS. and letter were written, still struggling 
with the same horrid problem. We are still in the 
coils of this great black snake Ave Avarmed at the coun¬ 
try’s hearthstone so many, many years ago. All the 
daily papers still discuss the propriety of shipping as 
many negroes as possible out of our country. Send 
them here, send them there, send them anywhere, but 
let us not tolerate them any longer. Africa has been 
proposed; Hayti has been suggested; the Philippines 
have been mentioned, yet nothing has been done. Still 
he remains, while a few half-breeds that have attained 


J 


THE NEGRO 


161 


to a little power of expressing their minds on the sub¬ 
ject, as in the case of Du Bois and the short dozen 
others, keeping howling for the negroes “ social uplift¬ 
ing,” and his remaining in the United States. None 
of these men dare tell the truth, as Thomas did in 
his book, The American Negro ,— still even the Ethi¬ 
opian cropped out, as it invariably will, in this last- 
named author, before he got through his last chapter. 

I am not going to enter upon the history of Liberia 
here, although I have collected not a little upon that 
subject. If the transportation of the negroes in this 
country could be effected, I, for one, would not care 
a straw whether the negroes liked it or not. I should 
be for sending them all the same, and keeping them 
out afterwards, just as the Federal government en¬ 
acted laws to keep the Chinese out of our territory. 
The Chinese are infinitely better than the negroes, 
although they, too, from the very nature of their non- 
progressiveness, are unsuited to the form of Indo- 
European civilization we are the active cultivators of 
in this country. But the black man with us is a very 
different proposition, as I have abundantly pointed out 
in the foregoing pages. No, were it possible, I should 
be in favor of shipping every living one of them back 
to the region they came from, whether it pleased 
them or not. I am so loyal to anything that will sus¬ 
tain the purity of the best of Indo-European blood in 
the United States; drain it of superstition of all kinds; 
purge it of crime and immorality; preserve its integ¬ 
rity,— that I would see every negro in America at 
the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, or howling in the 
heart of the Soudan, before I would allow them for 
any consideration whatever, to jeopardize by race in- 
11 


162 


THE NEGRO 


termixture the civilization it has taken us centuries to 
establish. 

As I have remarked before, it is not that I have 
anything against the black race in the United States, 
but I infinitely prefer to see all the elements of this 
great and growing Republic we are establishing here 
kept pure, on the same principle that were I building 
up a fine aviary, I certainly would not tolerate the 
presence of a lot of black, undesirable, unrefined, 
flesh-eating vultures among my sweet-singing, edu¬ 
cated and attractive bullfinches,— that is all. 

The talk is all humbug about the value of the negro 
vote. It has no value, because it can be bought by the 
barrel. So, too, it is all humbug to contend for the 
great value of the negro in the South as a laborer. 
Every living one of them might be wiped out of 
the South tomorrow, and whites would soon fill their 
room, and matters in time adjust themselves, and that 
with very decided profit to our civilization. 

Today, the best people, and the most far-seeing 
thinkers begin to realize the career upon which the 
black race is now launched here in the States. As 
fast as they take up in their composition the blood of 
the Indo-European, they still remain loyal in every 
single instance to their kind, and use their advantages 
simply to seek social equality with the dominant race. 
They crave political power and position, and were 
they sufficiently numerous, they would seize it every¬ 
where at all hazards. It is only their inferiority in 
numbers which prevents them from doing this. All 
this is becoming more and more evident to our people 
in the “ black belt,” and it is dawning even on the 
thinkers throughout the Northern States. 


THE NEGRO 


163 


Even education is a disadvantage to him, and in no 
way purges him of his superstitions, as has recently 
been so ably pointed out in The New York Times for 
Wednesday, January 20, 1904, on page 7, by no less 
a person and close observer of the negro character 
than the honorable Governor of the state of Missis¬ 
sippi, who, in the aforesaid issue of The Times, was 
pleased to bring the following before its readers: 

SCORES NEGRO EDUCATION 

Mississippi’s Governor Calls It the Black Man’s Curse — 
Says the Negro is Deteriorating Morally Every Day — 
Wants Fifteenth Amendment Repealed. 

‘‘ Jackson, Miss., Jan. 19.— In his inaugural ad¬ 
dress, delivered today before a joint session of the 
Mississippi Legislature, Gov. Vardaman declared that 
the growing tendency of the negro to commit crim¬ 
inal assault on white women was nothing more nor 
less than the manifestation of the racial desire for so¬ 
cial equality. In strong terms he declared that edu¬ 
cation was the curse of the negro race, and urged an 
amendment to the state Constitution that would place 
the distribution of the common school fund solely 
within the power of the Legislature. Continuing, 
Gov. Vardaman said of the negroes: 

“ ‘ As a race they are deteriorating morally every 
day. Time has demonstrated that they are more 
criminal as freemen than as slaves; that they are in¬ 
creasing in criminality with frightful rapidity, being 
one-third more criminal in 1890 than in 1880. 

“‘The startling facts revealed by the census show 
that those who can read and write are more criminal 



164 


THE NEGRO 


than the illiterates, which is true of no other element 
of our population. I am advised that the minimum 
illiteracy among the negroes is found in New England, 
where it is 21.7 per cent. The maximum was found in 
the “ black belt ”— Louisiana, Mississippi and South 
Carolina — where it is 65.7 per cent. And yet the 
negro in New England is four and one-half times more 
criminal, hundred for hundred, than he is in the “ black 
belt.” In the South, Mississippi particularly, I know he 
is growing worse every year. 

“ ‘ You can scarcely pick up a newspaper whose 
pages are not blackened with the account of an un¬ 
mentionable crime committed by a negro brute, and 
this crime, I want to impress upon you, is but the 
manifestation of the negro’s aspiration for social equal¬ 
ity, encouraged largely by the character of free edu¬ 
cation in vogue, which the state is levying tribute upon 
the white people to maintain. 

“ ‘ The better class of negroes are not responsible for 
this terrible condition, nor for the criminal tendency of 
their race. Nor do I wish to be understood as censur¬ 
ing them for it. I am not censuring anybody, nor am 
I inspired by ill-will for the negro, but I am simply 
calling attention to a most unfortunate and unen¬ 
durable condition of affairs. What shall be done 
about it? 

“ ‘ My own idea is that the character of the educa¬ 
tion for the negro ought to be changed. If, after years 
of earnest effort and the expenditure of fabulous sums 
of money to educate his head, we have only suc¬ 
ceeded in making a criminal out of him and imperiling 
his usefulness and efficiency as a laborer, wisdom 
would suggest that we make another experiment and 


THE NEGRO 


165 


see if we cannot improve him by educating his hand 
and his heart. There must be a moral substratum 
upon which to build or you cannot make a desirable 
citizen.’ 

“ The Government also declares that the people of 
the Nation should demand the repeal of the Fifteenth 
Amendment.” 

What is said here is undoubtedly true, but I contend, 

id others who have a large knowledge of the black 
man in America contend, that there is but one single 
remedy for it, and that is the separation of the two 
races. Here are some additional opinions of interest 
on this point which I clip from The New York Times 
of Monday, September 28, 1903, page 1, a news item 
that reads as follows: 

NEGRO COLONIZATION PLAN 

The President and B. T. Washington Said to Approve Scheme 

to Transport Families to Africa. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

“Tacoma, Wash., Sept. 27.— Leigh S. J. Hunt, a 
Korean millionaire mining man and ex-resident of this 
state, and Booker T. Washington have joined hands 
in a negro colonization scheme. Details of Hunt’s 
plans are supplied in letters recently received by his 
personal friends. They include the irrigation and 
colonization of several hundred thousand acres of land 
tributary to the River Nile by negroes who are to be 
taken from the United States. Mr. Hunt is now in 
Germany. In a few days, it is said, he will meet Mr. 
Washington in Africa, probably at Cairo, Egypt. 
They will there perfect plans. 



166 


THE NEGRO 


“ Letters from Hunt are to the further effect that 
President Roosevelt has approved his plans. These 
were revealed to the President when the latter enter¬ 
tained Hunt at dinner a few days prior to his departure 
for Africa. Before completing his plans Hunt, late 
in August, sought the advice of Booker T. Washing¬ 
ton, whom he met in New York. ‘ I can get you all 
the colored laborers you need,’ said Washington. 

“ Then came the colonization idea. Washington 
approved, saying that thousands of negro families in 
the South would gladly embrace a chance of going to 
the Soudan and making new homes. The growing of 
cotton and sugar-cane and kindred products would fur¬ 
nish negroes with employment well suited to them. 

“ Hunt has made millions out of Korean gold-mines 
during the last six years. He went to the Nile to re¬ 
cover his health, and became interested in his coloniza¬ 
tion project.” 


“ Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 27.— In an address before a 
mass meeting of negroes in this city, Bishop Henry H. 
Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church 
declared that the separation of the races was the only 
solution to the race problem. 

“ Bishop Turner urged that opportunities should be 
offered to negroes to settle in Africa by a reduction 
of rates on steamship lines, stating that ‘ this Nation 
or its aggregated people will either have to open a 
highway to Africa for the discontented black man or 
the negro question will Hinder this Government.’ 

“ Bishop Turner contended that by separation he did 
not mean that every one should go or must go, but 



THE NEGRO 


167 


that there should be an opportunity granted for the 
departure of ‘ such black men and women as are self- 
reliant and have those manhood aspirations that God 
planted in them and degrading laws will intensify.’ ” 

A few months ago, Mr. John Temple Graves of 
Georgia, a clear thinker and a very cogent writer on 
the negro question, expressed his views in public in 
the boldest possible manner, both on the matter of 
lynching and on the ultimate separation of the two 
races. He was reported in The New York Times of 
Wednesday, August 12, 1903, in the following man¬ 
ner: 


HE DEFENDS LYNCH LAW 

John Temple Graves of Georgia Says the Mob is Necessary 
— The Penalty Prescribed by Law, He Declares, Will 
Never Prevent Assaults by Negroes on White Women. 

“ Chautauqua, N. Y., Aug. 11.— Lynching was 
warmly defended by John Temple Graves of Atlanta, 
Ga., in an address at Chautauqua today. 

“ ‘ The problem of the hour,’ said Mr. Graves, ‘ is 
not how to prevent lynching in the South, but the 
larger question: How shall, we destroy the crime 
which always has and always will provoke lynching? 
The answer which the mob returns to this vital ques¬ 
tion is already known. The mob answers it with the 
rope, the bullet, and sometimes, God save us! with the 
torch. And the mob is practical; its theory is effective 
to a large degree. The mob is today the sternest, the 
strongest, and the most effective restraint that the age 
holds for the control of rape.’ 

“ The lyncher, he said, does not exterminate the 



168 


THE NEGRO 


rapist, but he holds him mightily in check. As a sheer, 
cold, patent fact, the mob stands today as the most 
potential bulwark between the women of the South 
and such a carnival of crime as would infuriate the 
world and precipitate the annihilation of the negro 
race. The masses of the negro, he held, are not afraid 
of death coming in a regular way. They love display 
and the spectacular element of a trial and execution 
to their imaginations. 

“ Expediting the processes of the law would not be 
adequate to eliminate lynching, said Mr. Graves. 
The repeal of the amendments and the establishment 
of the negro’s interiority in law and society, though 
desirable, are not sufficient, ‘ for the negro,’ he added, 

‘ is a thing of the senses, and with this race and with 
all similar races the desire of the senses must be re¬ 
strained by the terror of the senses, if possible under 
the law.’ 

“ But this, like curfew edicts, separate laws for white 
and black, or the treatment of the crime of criminal 
assault as separate and outside of all other codes, are 
but expedients, he maintained; there is no real remedy 
but one. No statute will permanently solve this prob¬ 
lem. Religion does not solve it, he said. Education 
complicates it. Politics complicates it. 

“ ‘ The truth, which lies beyond and above all these 
temporizing expedients,’ he concluded, ' is that separa¬ 
tion is the logical, the inevitable, the only solution of 
this great problem of the races.’ ” 

His words and address provoked very general dis¬ 
cussion throughout the country, and hundreds of dif- 


THE NEGRO 


169 


ferent newspapers took sides for and against what he 
said. 

In this chapter, however, I am dealing principally 
with the remedies that have been proposed to protect 
the civilization and the integrity of the Indo-European 
in the United States, and the separation of the two 
races is the one chiefly under discussion here. This 
being the case, it is quite to the point to introduce in 
this place the words of another writer, as an example 
of not only what the views of Mr. Graves brought out, 
but also to sustain what I have said above, that the 
proposition of transporting the black man and his 
kin out of the United States of America is by no means 
a dead issue. 

Here is the letter to which reference is made. It 
appeared in The New York Times for Sunday, Septem¬ 
ber 27, 1003: 

SEGREGATION OF THE NEGRO 

u To the Editor of The New York Times: 

“ Your editorial of the the 7th inst. fails to do full 
justice to John Temple Graves, who proposes to 
segregate and colonize the negro. I am a Northern 
man, and my view-point might have been like your 
own, had I remained a thousand miles removed from 
the South. A residence of twenty-seven years, how¬ 
ever, in the ‘ black belt/ where the negroes far out¬ 
number the whites, has given me unexceptionable 
opportunities for studying the race question, which is 
also a caste problem most imperfectly understood. 

“ Mr. Graves’s proposed solution, to remove the 
negro to some more congenial clime, does not neces- 



170 


THE NEGRO 


sarily mean the Philippines or Liberia, nor does it 
mean wholesale deportation of the race in our life¬ 
time, as most of his critics assert. Separation of the 
races for the highest development and happiness of 
both is the dominant idea of his scheme. Omitting the 
economic use of the negro, in the scantily supplied 
labor of the South, and judging from the moral side 
of life wholly, no thinking man could truthfully fail to 
agree with the school of John Temple Graves, that 
the separation of the races would advance the ethical 
conditions of the white race. 

“ Scholarly people, like the editor of The Times, fail 
to understand this caste problem from the point of 
view of the ‘ poor whites ’ of the South. These are 
laborers in full, unrestricted competition with the low- 
caste negroes. Every hour's work performed by a 
white carpenter, mason, miner, or mechanic, is paid 
according to the competition existing in the local labor 
market. The white workers of the South, desiring bet¬ 
ter homes, more varied food, educational advantages 
for their children, must compete with men satisfied 
with cabins, filth, rags and cornbread. The negro in 
the Southern States, and the Indian across the border 
in Mexico, can supply all his inherited cravings for 
half the wages of a civilized white man. 

“ What complicates the case of the negro is that the 
amount of the mechanic's wages, when paid to him, 
tends to lower his morality. The political economists 
have not treated this side of the question of wages. 
Philanthropists declare the low-caste laboring people 
of English India, Mexico and the United States are 
all underpaid by the dominant race. They do not re¬ 
member that work without wages, i. e., slavery, is the 


THE NEGRO 


171 


first step of the barbarian toward civilization. An in¬ 
creasing wage equalized to his moral development is 
doubtless the ideal condition for furthering ethical 
culture in the barbarian of any race. 

“ Liberal thinkers resident north of Mason and 
Dixon’s line, look to education and more universal 
schooling as the one thing needful to elevate the negro. 
Do they know what a school taught by negroes in¬ 
stills into the formative minds of the colored children? 
Do they realize that the friction between the races 
probably starts in this schoolroom? Young negroes 
in the South now are evidently trained to regard the 
white race as enemies, not as friends. There appears 
to be no endeavor to teach these colored children re¬ 
spect for the aged or for superiors, and no emulation 
for social position founded on morals. The money of 
the state spent for education should also carry an ob¬ 
ligation to teach civic duties to all children, white and 
black. In case of the colored schools the appearance 
goes far to justify a belief that the altruistic money 
of the white people is spent in teaching colored chil¬ 
dren anarchism. 

“ Affection does now exist, and has always existed, 
between the cultivated whites and the uneducated 
blacks of the South. Between these is no competition 
whatever, but the caste line is recognized by both 
parties as strictly as the division between Brahmans 
and Sudras in India. Hence caste instinct, instead of 
being an evil as generally taught, is a blessing to both 
high and low. If the primitive doctrine of caste were 
to be religiously observed, there would cease to be any 
race problem. A caste instinct divides the white peo¬ 
ple of the North by minor differences into many 


THE NEGRO 


172 

groups; but the great gulf between the high and low 
caste in the South obliterates all small variations of 
property, profession, or calling; dividing society prac¬ 
tically into two castes with an unchangeable division 
of color between them, half-breeds taking the caste of 
the mother. 

“ Prosperous negro mechanics trained in slavery are 
always respected by their white neighbors South. 
Their children, educated in modern negro schools, I 
have yet to find as industrious, as useful, or as worthy 
as their fathers. It would be true to say of my section 
not a colored pupil of an industrial school, boy or girl, 
is now following any trade or domestic service for 
which he or she was supposed to be trained. The in¬ 
dustrial schools do turn out ‘ preachers and teachers/ 
and thus may make the statistics they publish good 
by calling these ‘ preachers and teachers ’ followers of 
the professions for which they were trained, but in¬ 
dustrial training does not in white schools include 
‘ preaching and teaching.’ The negro schools of the 
South, however, are already beneficial in an unexpected 
way not intended by the Northern philanthropist. 
Educated (?) negroes are neither farm laborers nor 
domestic servants, nor do they follow mechanical 
trades. Hence they seek employment as porters and 
mail clerks on railroads all over the vast territory of 
the United States. While the most expensive hotels 
of the Northern and Eastern cities have discarded the 
black servants they formerly employed, as have the 
wealthy class of residents in those cities, the cheaper 
hotels and restaurants of the West are glad to obtain 
any service. Thus educating the negro, permanently 
removing him from the cotton-fields, has benefited the 


THE NEGRO 


173 


white farmers by raising the price of cotton. The in¬ 
creased production of this crop would far exceed con¬ 
sumption at his time had the negro remained a cotton- 
raiser instead of becoming a Pullman porter. 

"We read much of ‘Southern race prejudice.’ A 
prejudiced person is one who ‘ prejudices ’ or expresses 
anticipative judgment; one not properly informed. 
The Southern resident alone in this country possesses 
opportunities for judging the black race fairly. The 
evidence is before him, and is not presented to any 
other. ‘ Race prejudice ’ should not be charged against 
the English people in India, the American in the Phil¬ 
ippine Islands, or the white man in the South. ‘ Preju¬ 
dice ’ in favor of the Indian, the Filipino, or the negro 
may exist in those who have no experience gained by 
personal observation. Plence, race prejudice, if it 
exists for or against the negro, is not chargeable to 
those who ‘ post ’-judge, but to those only who ‘ pre ’- 
judge — not to those who live South, but to those who 
live North. The development of manufacturing in¬ 
dustries in the cotton states has been the greatest 
blessing to the impoverished whites. The taking of 
the women from exposed isolated rural homes to fac¬ 
tory villages removes the constant anxiety that was 
part of their daily burden. Since the abolition of the 
caste restraint of slavery, the crimes committed by 
negroes against the women and girls of this class has 
principally precipitated the race troubles in the South. 

“ The employment of white hands in factories bene¬ 
fits also by lessening the competition between white 
and black labor. Every negro finding employment 
north or west of the cotton states benefits himself and 
the South. If this gradual exodus continues, the race 


174 


THE NEGRO 


problem will become national instead of local, a bur¬ 
den to be borne by all of the citizens instead of by a 
few. Census statistics show as great or even a greater 
percentage of mulatto births in Northern states than 
in Southern. All history appears to prove that every 
slave-holding nation has finally absorbed its slaves by 
mixing the blood of master and slave. Such a solu¬ 
tion is only to be thought of in horror by him who 
reveres the morality of his ancestors and prizes above 
earthly possessions the unblemished caste distinction 
of a thousand years of Europe's best culture. Even in 
the absence of ethical caste instinct, it would be op¬ 
posing stirpiculture to advocate the absorption of 
eight millions of an inferior race by fifty millions of a 
superior people. What other solution except segre¬ 
gation can be seen by those who look into the future? 
The present observer counts nearly as many negroes 
carrying a percentage of white blood as pure African. 
When this crossing shall have progressed to show 
white-skinned, cross-bred people, with the absence of 
caste distinctions, who may then know the pedigree 
of his guests, his social acquaintances, or even his own 
future grandchildren? 

“ Of several measures I already see at work, all pal¬ 
liative, only one radical cure has been pointed out. It 
is the removal of the negroes to a negro territory. Not 
as the Creek and Cherokee Indians of Georgia were 
removed by force and en masse, but slowly, gently, 
and for the benefit of the dissatisfied negroes as well as 
for the betterment of the whites. Public opinion may 
now be against this desideratum, as it originally was 
against the abolition of the institution of slavery. It is 
a move that should win the support of every altruist, 


THE NEGRO 


175 


and when sufficiently agitated, it or some kindred 
measure will protect us from the error of our fathers 
in bringing the African to America. 

“ Benjamin W. Hunt.” 

Eatonton, Ga., Sept. 18, 1903. 

Thus it goes, we see. Through the greed of gain 
our ancestors permitted large numbers of the savage 
and cannibalistic blacks to be landed on the shores of 
a country that eventually came to be a great Republic. 
They were slaves and remained slaves until a fearful 
and prolonged war, costing thousands upon thousands 
of lives and millions of money, freed them. That war 
was an endless chapter of untold misery, but, with 
justice, it must be said here that the black man, im¬ 
ported to the shores of America against his will, was 
not responsible for it. 

During the days of slavery, untold thousands of hy¬ 
brids were produced, due to a crossing of the black and 
the white races, and this took place principally in the 
South, though by no means altogether confined to that 
region. When they gained their liberty, after the 
Civil War, much was brought to bear, from a 
great variety of sources and diverse influences that 
profoundly affected their history. In the forty years 
that followed, however, it has been amply proven that 
hybridization with a certain class of the Indo-Euro¬ 
peans of the United States is still actively going on; 
that the typical negro remains very much the same 
kind of a being that he was on his having been brought 
here from Africa; that the dozen and odd who have 
risen to prominence in the black race of this country 
are not typical negroes, but have from sixty to 


176 


THE NEGRO 


eighty per cent, of white blood in their composition, 
and that blood probably derived from the best class of 
educated Americans. It has further been shown, both 
physiologically and anatomically, that the bulk of them 
derive no benefit from educational measures of any 
kind, and as for the matter of that they have, even 
when crossed with the best of the white race, produced 
no man or woman in any way entitled to be recognized 
as a profound thinker or as one possessing skill in any 
of the crafts of sciences above the plane of mediocrity. 
And, as has been pointed out, this has been the case 
only when the individual exhibiting such prominence 
had a very large proportion of white blood in his 
composition. On the other hand, there is a very con¬ 
siderable amount of proof available toward estab¬ 
lishing the fact that in a very large proportion of 
cases modern education has been downright harmful 
to the negro, and had the sole effect of improving his 
opportunities for criminal practices of various kinds; 
of having him entertain entirely false notions of his 
worth, ability and real social status; and of furnishing 
thoroughly untrustworthy evidence of his value as a 
factor in modern civilization, which baseless testimony 
has been employed by the short-sighted, narrow¬ 
minded and uneducated supporters of this race in the 
United States to continue their attempts to force these 
savage and semi-simian creatures upon a long-suffer¬ 
ing and civilized community. 

It is equally clear that the criminality and savagery 
of the negro in this country has, in the case of the more 
criminally disposed whites, begotten both savagery 
and crime, as well as lawlessness. It is the presence 
of the negro among us that is responsible for lynch- 


THE NEGRO 


177 


law, and not the tastes of our people for such brutal 
horrors. Among a progressive race, such as the Indo- 
European in the United States is, it is the effect of 
their own higher and elevating civilization that as time 
goes on eliminates crime, bestiality, brutality and all 
else that is ethically and morally undesirable in man’s 
composition; but when a cultured, advancing, highly 
plastic and superior race of this kind has introduced 
among it another race in large numbers characterized 
by its lack of truthfulness, its bestial sensuality, its 
morbid criminal characteristics, its mental density 
and its religious and other superstitions, and its phys¬ 
ical repulsiveness, the influence of such an introduc¬ 
tion is bound to be felt. The case is precisely the same 
as though we were to introduce into a large boarding- 
school composed of refined, moral, educated, progres¬ 
sive and mentally and physically healthy boys and 
girls, a lot of new pupils largely given to lying, to 
thieving, to masturbating and other varieties of sexual 
looseness, to criminal propensities of various kinds, 
and other human frailties. It would be clearly due to 
that blindness which is the outcome of pseudo-philan¬ 
thropy which would induce any one to state candidly 
that the effect of such an introduction would be any¬ 
thing but a beneficial one. Many a barrel of sound and 
sweet apples has been rendered rotten and worthless 
by disregarding the few unsound ones injudiciously 
left among them, or thoughtlessly thrown among 
them, as the narrow-minded, greedy and short-sighted 
slave-trader of three centuries ago unloaded upon our 
shores the black men of Africa, with a similar result. 

Owing to his ever-present desire to ravish the white 
women of the dominant race, be their social position 
12 


178 


THE NEGRO 


what it may, he, the negro demonstrates to us every 
year that now goes by, by scores of successful assaults 
upon our womankind, often associated with their mur¬ 
der and mutilation, that, in spite of fire, hanging and 
lead, in spite of any kind of suasion, he intends, if pos¬ 
sible, in any number of individual cases, to gratify this 
heinous lust of his, be the consequences what they 
may. This seething mass of black sensual bestiality, 
ever ready to erupt in hundreds of isolated instances 
and in localities of every conceivable kind, has at last 
had the effect of terrorizing white women throughout 
very large sections of the country, to the detriment of 
the sex, both individually as well as collectively, and 
thus fostering a factor, at once disadvantageous to the 
community, and inimical to the progress of a true and 
advanced civilization. 

Of himself, either as an individual or a class, the 
negro is too grossly and hopelessly ignorant to 
recognize the ruin his very presence entails among 
us; too dastardly and too much of a moral cow¬ 
ard to inaugurate as a race any general movement 
along the lines of segregation that would relieve the 
people which has taken so many years to arrive at 
the state of perfection that it now enjoys, and which 
for humanity’s sake it is so important and essential it 
should at all hazards preserve. The negro is not that 
much of a practical and self-sacrificing humanitarian. 
These negroes would see the entire Indo-European 
race rot in its tracks before they would take a single 
step to prevent it, even if they recognized that they 
were the cause of the danger of the putridity. Many 
of them know enough to realize the fact that the po¬ 
tential elements of a successful growth and a clean 



























THE NEGRO 


civilization is not inherent in them, as a race; and that 
if with all their boasted improvements since they were 
liberated in this country, they were transported to 
any other country to work out their own destiny, a 
lapse back to savagery would be the inevitable re¬ 
sult,— a result, I may say, that would be of the most 
far-reaching advantage to the real civilizers of the 
world, and of the most superlative import to the world 
at large and to posterity. 

Plenty of uninformed people among us there are to 
say, “ Oh, but give this race a chance, an opportunity 
for its uplifting ” (its uplifting is a favorite expression 
of such people), “and you will soon see the wonders 
it will effect.” To such people it may be plainly said, 
that the black or Ethiopian race is probably many, 
many centuries older than our own, that is, older than 
the Indo-European stock, and yet what has it done 
for civilization? Nothing, except in the case of a 
corporal’s guard of hybrids, some dead and a few liv¬ 
ing, who have made a noise in the world, owing to the 
fact that the black mammies along the line of their 
ancestry, at various periods of its evolvement, lay to a 
white man, and the progeny at different times inher¬ 
ited its modicum of brains, and a certain degree of 
expansibility of the cranial sutures. That’s all, and 
that’s all there is to it. 

Nowhere in all history has such a state of affairs, as 
the one here presented, fallen to the lot of mankind. 
At no time have two such distinct races, each numbered 
by its millions, the one representing the highest stage 
of civilization and advancement, the other practically 
but a day removed from savagery and cannibalism and 
all that that means, been thrown together in the same 


dO 


THE NEGRO 


geographical region and not separated by any natural 
barriers. As a matter of fact, we have no examples 
in the history of man to guide us in our action or to 
point the way for us toward any effective and ra¬ 
tional solution. The state of affairs preeminently 
requires some very independent thinking, and the ex¬ 
ercise of more than usual judgment. Mixed races, we 
known from experience, however, rarely if ever suc¬ 
ceed in the world’s history and in mankind’s career. 
The blacks, for a long time past, have interbred with 
the Indo-Europeans along the shores of the Mediter¬ 
ranean Sea, and although those blacks are of an in¬ 
finitely better race than the stock we have with us 
in this country, it has been to the decided detriment of 
the whites, and resulted in distinctly retarding their 
progress. There is no reason whatever why we have 
any right to hope for any better results in the United 
States, and every reason to believe that they will be 
at all as good. 

The great question now is, What will the eventual 
outcome of it all be? That is not so difficult to see. 
Possibly in a few places in the present volume I may 
have termed the state of affairs under consideration — 
a problem, while, as a matter of fact, there really is 
no problem, and to my mind the outcome of it all 
can hardly even be considered problematical. From 
mice to monkeys, and from monkeys to men, the mix¬ 
ing of a low and undesirable stock with a high and 
cultured stock is sure to produce a mixed stock, which 
is almost invariably not as good as either of the others 
that produced it. As I have before remarked, many 
times, there is but one remedy available, inasmuch 
as we cannot utterly destroy all the inferior race, and 


THE NEGRO 


181 


that is complete and thorough separation. Will this 
ever be done in the case of the negroes and their 
hybrids in the United States? No, I think not. I 
fear matters have now gone altogether too far to 
have any hope of such a thing’s happening. Of 
course, we could do it, because we have the power, 
but it simply will not be done. Neither the gov¬ 
ernment or those in power, as a whole, possess the 
necessary foresight and intelligence to perceive the 
danger. Some few do, but the vast majority do not; 
and, therefore, there can be no consensus of opinion 
in the premises, and certainly no accord in the action. 
As a race, the negroes themselves are altogether too 
pusillanimous by nature to dream of doing anything 
of the kind, nor have they the qualifications of 
mind, character, ability or organization to effect any 
such common movement. They are only great when 
sustained by a high civilization; remove this from 
them and they would all soon return to savagery and 
the practices of their forefathers,— their black fore¬ 
fathers. 

What then? Just what I have said in print a dozen 
times during the last dozen years or more. Hybridi¬ 
zation, mixing of the two races, and all the horrors, 
all the set-backs, all the assaults and consequent lynch- 
ings, all the increase of crime and rot of every imag¬ 
inable nature which that entails. 

The placing of the race in this country has been 
and still is a most supreme piece of stupidity,— no 
one’s particular fault, in fact, perfectly natural, 
though none the less a glaring ethnological fiasco. 
Practically we exterminated the Indians occupying the 
country; we for years imported all the scum we could 


182 


THE NEGRO 


from Europe, Asia and Africa; we flooded the territory 
with black savages and cannibals; and we declared the 
Chinese could not land upon our soil. A combination 
of orders and exploits, apart from the natural migra¬ 
tory instincts of the human race, that has had its in¬ 
fluence, which will surely bear its fruit some day, but 
it will be so gradual that the race will never realize 
it at any period of its evolution and development. 


APPENDIX 


Note 1. Page 42. 

O ne of the best accounts of African cannibalism 
known to me is given in The Ethiopian, “ The 
Human Leopard Society,” by J. Cameron 
Grant. (Charles Carrington, publisher, 
Paris, 1900.) As further illustrating this point, I here 
insert a clipping from The Evening Star, of Washing¬ 
ton, D. C. (Thursday, December 5, 1895, p. 10), which 
reads as follows : — 

MEN WORSE THAN APES 

The Revolting Cruelties Practiced by Many of the Ferocious 

African Tribes. 

(From the London Saturday Review.) 

The cannibalism of the black secret society known 
as the Human Leopards, in the country near Sierra 
Leone, disclosed by the recent trial, brings forcibly 
before us the difference between the East African and 
the West African habits of eating human flesh. The 
Sherbro cannibals waylaid and killed their victims, 
and afterward feasted on their flesh. The cannibal¬ 
ism of the east coast is of a very different kind. The 
flesh of the old people — the grandfather and grand¬ 
mother of a family — is dried and mixed with condi¬ 
ments ; and a portion of this is offered, with a dim 
sort of sacramental meaning, to travelers who become 
guests of the family. To refuse it would be a deadly 
insult. To accept it is a passport to the privileged 
position of a friend of the house. Many of our trav¬ 
elers in East Africa have eaten thus sacramentally of 
the ancestors of some dark-skinned potentate. 

The cannibalism of the west coast is, as has just 

(183) 





184 


THE NEGRO 


been seen, of a more horrible kind. The Sherbro 
case seems to be connected with fetichism, the worst 
developments of which are peculiar to that country; 
but there is a hideously genuine appetite for fresh 
human flesh still existing among the negroes of West 
Africa. The cannibalism manifests itself in a refine¬ 
ment of gluttony which has its mild analogy in the 
tastes of Europeans. Young boys are bought from the 
dark interior, kept in pens, fattened upon bananas and 
finally killed and baked. To these Thyestean feasts 
come not only the savage chiefs of the interior, but 
also, it is whispered, black merchants from the coast. 

Men who appear at their places of business in Eng¬ 
lish territory in broadcloth and tall hats, who ape the 
manners of their white masters, are said to disappear 
annually into the interior, where, we are told, they 
might be seen, in naked savagery, taking part in the 
banquets on plump boys, in which they delight. Be 
this as it may, somehow the native of the west coast 
and its Hinterland is unlike the East or South African 
native in the deep-lying savagery and the extraor¬ 
dinary facility for returning to it, which are his leading 
and very unpleasant characteristics. The subject 
claims the attention of the anthropologist, and cer¬ 
tainly suggests a curious reason for questioning the 
relationship of the black man and the ape or gorilla, 
seeing that the race of monkeys seems to be singularly 
free from anything like cannibalism. 

Also another one from an earlier issue of the same 
paper (November 8, 1893, p. 5), which throws con¬ 
siderable light on this subject. It reads thus: — 

AMONG AFRICAN CANNIBALS 

Thrilling Experiences of Mr. Dorsey Mohun on a Recent 

Expedition. 

Mr. Dorsey Mohun, United States commercial 
agent at Boma, Congo Free State, has made a thrill¬ 
ing report to the State Department on the subject of 




THE NEGRO 


185 


the African slave trade, in which he gives details of 
cannibalism and other acts of barbarism. What gives 
his report a special interest in this vicinity is that the 
author is a life-long resident of this city. He is 
the only representative of this government in that 
part of the “ dark continent.” He was sent there with 
a view to advancing the commercial interests of the 
United States and incidentally to investigate the slave 
trade. 

In order to gain a clear insight into the whole mat¬ 
ter, Mr. Mohun attached himself to the expedition 
which was sent out by the Congo government last 
spring, under command of M. Chaltin. This expedi¬ 
tion, both in point of strength and from the results 
which it accomplished, was one of the most important 
ever sent against the Arabs and practically gave the 
slave trade in the Congo country its death blow. It 
penetrated the great Lomami river region, the strong¬ 
hold of the slave traders, and after considerable heavy 
fighting, and in the face of great mortality from small¬ 
pox and fever, succeeded in breaking up several of 
the most noted bands, whose operations had terror¬ 
ized the entire locality. 

The expedition started from Basoko, on the Congo 
river, in the Bruxelles, in a government steamer, and 
eventually reached Stanley Falls. The United States 
officer did not join it until after M. Chaltin, who had 
gone on ahead, had made one short excursion into the 
backlying country. He caught the steamer on its next 
trip down to Basoko, and later joined Commandant 
Chaltin. 

Completely Destroyed 

He found that the officer had been most successful, 
defeating the Arabs in an open fight, and completely 
destroying the village of Tchari, which consisted of 
1,200 houses. 

From that point the expedition sailed for Bena 
Kamba, where it was reorganized, and set out for 
Riba Riba, 555 strong. 


186 


THE NEGRO 


Then began the stirring and exciting adventures 
which lasted until the object of the expedition had 
been accomplished. Evidences of inhuman cruelty on 
the part of the slave traders were encountered. 

When the town of Ikamba was reached a gruesome 
sight greeted the expedition. The chief of that dis¬ 
trict, being an ally of the Arabs, had placed directly 
across the road a ghastly barricade of sixteen newly- 
severed heads. The natives had fled, however, and 
the town was deserted, save for these grisly warnings. 

Without heeding this fearful sight, the expedition 
pushed on, and on March 29, was stopped by an im¬ 
passable stream. Scouts were sent out to find a ford, 
and soon returned with the news that a large body of 
Arabs was preparing to cross the river at a point not 
far away. These were the first slave dealers who had 
been encountered, and the force was immediately 
placed in position for an attack. 

Surprised the Arabs 

The Arabs had not discovered the presence of the 
expedition, and the first warning they had was a shell 
from the field-piece, which dropped into their camp. 
After several hours of hot fighting across the river, the 
Arabs withdrew, and upon crossing over, the blood 
which spattered the ground and bushes showed the 
victors that some deadly work had been done. 

Only one dead Arab was found, as it is the custom of 
this people, Mr. Mohun says, to remove their dead, if 
possible. After the battle, 150 men succeeded in cross¬ 
ing the river, and were ordered to push on to Riba Riba, 
as it was desired to reach that town before the retreat¬ 
ing forces of the defeated Arabs could give warning 
of the approach of the expedition. 

This detachment Mr. Mohun accompanied, but on 
reaching the town they found the place deserted. The 
only thing they did find was another bit of Arab pleas¬ 
antry in the shape of two right hands of white men 
nailed to the flagstaff in front of the chief’s house. Mr. 
Mohun expresses the belief that they were those of 


THE NEGRO 


187 


Messrs. Michaels and Noblesse, who were murdered 
there the week before. It is the intention of M. Chal- 
tin to destroy these nests, and the detachment marched 
away in the light of the flames, which ascended from 
the burning village, and returned to the main force. 

Victims of Smallpox 

Smallpox had made its appearance among the men, 
and on the next day all of the sick were sent back to 
Benekamba, under guard. The expedition followed 
a few days later, and reached the steamer on May 5, 
taking three days to make the home journey, which 
had consumed nine days in going. The scenes on the 
road going back, according to Mr. Mohun’s descrip¬ 
tions, were appalling. The dead from the sick column 
lined the way, and occasionally a corpse would be 
stumbled over as it lay concealed in the high grass, 
and over all was the overpowering stench from the 
decomposing bodies. 

So great was the mortality, that upon reaching Bene¬ 
kamba, it was found that 104 persons had died in less 
than two weeks. 

The battle which ended the expedition was fought 
at Stanley Falls. The soldiers were in two detach¬ 
ments, under cover of fire from the cannon on the 
steamer. One detachment carried the factory at the 
point of the bayonet, and for a while there was hot 
work. The retreating Arabs were pursued to the 
village, which the soldiers took. The other detach¬ 
ment, on the right bank of the river, had gallantly 
captured another town, killing the chief and seventy- 
five of his men. The defeat and rout of the Arabs 
was complete, and the slaughter from the rifles of 
the soldiers was fearful. After this disastrous defeat 
many of the Arabs’ slaves, soldiers, women and other 
retainers gave themselves up. In all, about one hun¬ 
dred of these surrendered to the expedition. 

Revolting Sights 

There being no further danger from the Arabs after 
such a complete rout, the expedition left Stanley Falls 


188 


THE NEGRO 


and went to Romie, another Arab town, which they 
found had been already captured by a small force un¬ 
der the command of Mr. Five, the inspector of the 
Congo State, and an officer. Here Mr. Mohun saw 
some sights which were revolting in the extreme, sur¬ 
passing in savagery anything that he had imagined. 

The butchery of the Arabs in the fight which re¬ 
sulted in the capture of the village had been fearful, 
and the natives, who swarmed like vultures over the 
whole place, began cutting up and eating the bodies. 
Commandant Chaltin had given orders that this was 
not to be permitted, and any native caught with hu¬ 
man flesh in his possession was to be shot on the spot. 

Mr. Mohun says that he saw several natives carry¬ 
ing arms and legs down to the beach, preparatory to 
a feast, and laconically adds that a bullet soon put an 
end to this proceeding. The natives, he says, say they 
do not eat human flesh on account of a liking for it, 
but as the Arabs are their enemies, they gain all the 
strength possessed by them when they eat them. 


Note 2. Page 93. 

It is something remarkable to hear these advanced 
hybrids express their views of the future of the negro 
in the United States, and listen to the arrogant opin¬ 
ions they entertain. Very well do I remember listen¬ 
ing to that ignorant fellow, G. W. Murray, when he 
was a Congressman, address the House of Congress. 
It was a pitiable sight to see a man of that kind sit¬ 
ting up there and having a right to help frame the 
laws for the United States. Disgusting, one might 
truthfully say. Here is what they thought of them¬ 
selves, and their future, some ten years ago. I take it 
from The Evening Star of Washington, D. C. (Satur¬ 
day, October 28, 1893, p. 1) : — 




THE NEGRO 


189 


COLOR IN CONGRESS 


Mr. Murray of South Carolina on the Negro and His Future 

— From Slavery To Congress — He Predicts the Eventual 

Supremacy of the Negro — Mr. Douglass and Mr. Bruce. 

(Written for The Evening Star.) 

The only colored man in Congress comes from South 
Carolina. His name is George Washington Murray, 
and he represents 216,000 people. His district is the 
famous black district, which was represented by Gen. 
Robt. Smalls, and it is the biggest negro district of 
the Union. It is two hundred miles long, and it winds 
in and out like a snake, scalloping the Atlantic coast 
and cutting the State of South Carolina like a saw. 
It is the district set aside by the whites of that State 
for colored representation. It contains few towns, 
and only one-fifth of its population is white. 

There is no question about Geo. W. Murray’s an¬ 
cestry. Every feature of his cannon-ball head is 
modeled on African lines. His complexion is that of 
the ace of spades, and his features are of the pro¬ 
nounced negro type. He is by no means a bad-look¬ 
ing colored man. He stands about five feet eight 
inches in his stockings, and is broad-shouldered and 
strong-limbed. He has shown himself to be a man of 
nerve, and a politician of shrewdness. He talks well, 
but butchers the king’s English in many of his sen¬ 
tences. He has had to fight for all that he has and his 
education has been acquired in almost as remarkable 
a way as was that of Fred Douglass. I had a talk with 
him last night, about himself and questions relating 
to his race. 

How One Colored Man Was Educated 

I first asked him as to his history. He replied: “ I 
was born in the district in which I live, just about 
forty years ago. My parents were slaves, and when 
Abraham Lincoln freed the negroes I was just eleven 
years old. I had no money and no one to take care of 



190 


THE NEGRO 


me, but I decided at that time that I would have an edu¬ 
cation and went at it. I learned my A, B, C’s by ask¬ 
ing other children, who went to school, what the let¬ 
ters were, and by practicing on every person whom I 
met, I finally learned to read and write. I studied as 
best I could until I became able to read the news¬ 
papers, and I know that I could stumble my way 
through a congressional speech when I was fifteen. 
It was about this time that Geo. S. Boutwell, a Con¬ 
gressman from Maine or Massachusetts, made a 
speech, which I read. It made a great impression 
upon me, and I can quote one sentence from it now. 
It was on the Southern question, and I think it read 
as follows: ‘ I know that there is pro-slavery desire 
and always has been and always will be until we, the 
Republican party, grind it into powder, trample it 
under foot, and freedom blows the dust out with the 
healing of her wings.’ This sentence made an impres¬ 
sion on me, and 1 probably read it to some of our peo¬ 
ple, as the colored boys who could read always read 
the papers to the others. Well, in this way I learned to 
read and write. Arithmetic always came easy to me, 
and I could figure out sums in my head long before I 
knew how to make the figures. "W hen I was eighteen 
years old I had so far progressed that I began to teach 
school, and the first school I ever entered was as a 
teacher, and not as a scholar. After teaching several 
years, I went to the University of South Carolina, and 
remained there at school until the government of the 
State prohibited the co-education of the races, and 
forced me out. I then went back to teach in the pub¬ 
lic schools, and was engaged in teaching and farming 
until I was elected to Congress.” 

Farming Among the Negroes 

“ How about farming among the negroes, Mr. Mur¬ 
ray,” I asked, “are they gradually acquiring prop¬ 
erty?” 

“ They are, indeed,” emphatically replied the colored 
Congressman. “ The negro naturally wants a farm of 


i 



THE NEGRO 


191 


his own, and my people are buying lands on time and 
are improving them. Some of them own farms of 
from one to two thousand acres, and there is a colored 
man in Washington today who farms seven thousand 
acres of land in Georgia. He owns more than this, 
but he has this amount under cultivation. I own a 
little farm of my own, and there are thousands of 
colored men in the South who own land. We are 
advancing right along in the accumulation of property, 
and the time will come when our people will be a com¬ 
mercial and business factor in the United States. I 
believe that our success depends upon our education 
and enrichment, and I look for the time when the 
negro will stand even with the white man as a prop¬ 
erty-owner.” 

“ How about property rights in the South? Are 
those of the colored people respected?” 

“ Yes, I think so,” was the reply. “ The southern¬ 
ers are anxious that the negroes should own prop¬ 
erty, and they encourage them to save and invest their 
money. They treat them fairly so far as any of these 
things are concerned, but they do not give them a fair 
show in any political way.” 

The Ku Klux in the South 

“ How about the ku klux? ” 

“ There are no ku klux in the South, and there is 
very little terror arising at the polls. The whites are 
able to accomplish their ends without the use of shot¬ 
guns. They don’t need them.” 

“ How about the feeling between the negroes and 
the whites; will there ever be a war between the two 
races ? ” 

“ I think not. The negroes appreciate the fact that 
such a war would result in their destruction, and the 
fight that they intend to make is along business and 
educational lines. We propose to educate ourselves 
and to save our money, and when we become the 
equals of the whites in property and in business you 
will see that we have better recognition.” 


192 


THE NEGRO 


“ Do you think that the negro is the equal of the 
white in natural ability?” 

“ I do,” replied the African Congressman. “ History 
has shown that the sons of Ham are as strong as the 
sons of Shem and Japhet in every way. It was once 
thought that the' negro could not advance in learning 
beyond a certain point, but the colleges know that the 
negro is the equal of the white, and, in many cases, 
superior. I think that we will gradually equal and 
eventually distance the whites. The reason for this 
is that we have got to start from the bottom. We 
have nothing, and we must fight for every inch. We 
are very ambitious, and we will not stop until we get 
to the top.” 

A Mixed Race 

“ What will be the future of the two races? Will the 
negro ever unite with the whites?” 

“ I believe,” said Mr. Murray, “ that there will event¬ 
ually be a mixed race in this country, made up of 
negro and white blood. When the negro becomes 
rich and educated the objection to him will wear away, 
and there will be intermarriages between the two 
races. At present the negroes have no objections to 
such marriages. They think that the only ground of 
marriage should be that of love. The objection comes 
from the whites, and this will disappear as the negro 
equals them in property and other things.” 

“ Do not a large number of your people object to 
colored men marrying white women? You remem¬ 
ber the howl of indignation that went up from the 
colored people of this country when Fred Douglass 
married a white woman.” 

“Yes,” replied Mr. Murray, “I do, and the indig¬ 
nation against Mr. Douglass was so strong because he, 
to a large extent, represented the colored people of the 
United States, and the fact that he married a woman 
of white blood was considered by our people a slap 
at the women of his own race. They thought it meant 
that he could not find a colored woman good enough 
for him and hence had to take a white one.” 


THE NEGRO 


193 


The Colonization of the Negro 

“ How about negro colonization, Mr. Murray? Will 
such schemes ever succeed? ” 

“ No,” was the reply. “ The negroes have never 
been in favor of such colonization, nor have such 
schemes ever been engineered by people who have not 
wanted to make money out of it. There was a move¬ 
ment about fifteen years ago to take the colored people 
to Kansas, and there have been propositions to send 
them to Brazil and k other places. The negroes are in 
the United States to stay, and if they could have free 
transportation to Liberia, or to Africa, they would 
not take it. I do not think the people of the South 
want to get rid of the negro, and I think if we are 
let alone that we will work out our destiny to the sat¬ 
isfaction of every one.” 

A Look at Fred Douglass 

Speaking of the future of the colored race, Fred 
Douglass is one of those who believe that the two 
races will eventually come together. He says that the 
color line will eventually be obliterated, and that the 
only salvation for the negro is in union with the white. 
Douglass is about three-fourths colored himself, and 
his second wife is as white as any woman in the 
United States. She was his private secretary when he 
married her, and is, I am told, very fond of her hus¬ 
band. She is twenty years younger than he, and lives 
with her husband near Washington. Fred Douglass 
is rich. He is said to be worth in the neighborhood 
of $200,000. He got $7,000 annually as marshal of the 
District, and he has for a long time received $100 a 
night for his lectures. His books have paid him well, 
and he has so invested his money as to be well fixed. 
He is now seventy-six years old, and he has failed 
within the last three or four years. He has lost weight 
and strength, but intellectually he is now as strong as 
ever, and his last letter in reply to Senator Ingalls 
was as strong a paper as he has ever written. 

12 


194 


THE NEGRO 


Senator Bruce and His Mississippi Farm 

I saw Blanche K. Bruce on the floor of the U. 
S. Senate the other day. He looks hardly a day 
older than when he walked up to be sworn in, on the 
arm of Roscoe Conkling. He is now devoting his time 
to his estate in Mississippi, and to lecturing. He has 
made money in both pursuits, and he told me not long 
ago that he was dividing up his Mississippi property 
into small farms, and was selling it on installments 
to the colored people. He has built a church and 
school-house on the plantation, and he believes, with 
Mr. Murray, that the future of the negro lies in his 
education, and in the accumulation of property. 

Ex-Senator Bruce’s Marriage 

Ex-Senator Bruce now lives in Washington, in a 
fashionable part of the northwest. His wife is a beau¬ 
tiful woman, nearly as white in complexion as many 
of our Washington society ladies. He met her while 
the two were at college together at Oberlin. He mar¬ 
ried her while he was in the Senate, and the event was 
one of two senatorial weddings which took place at 
Cleveland, Ohio, one summer. Mrs. Bruce was a 
teacher in one of the Cleveland public schools. She 
had been very well educated, and she is, in fact, as 
accomplished a lady as you will find anywhere. She 
dresses well, looks well, and has great natural refine¬ 
ment. The last time I saw her was at one of Clara 
Barton’s receptions, and she was assisting Miss Bar¬ 
ton to receive her guests. The other wedding that 
took place that summer was that of Senator Don 
Cameron, who married Miss Lizzie Sherman, the 
daughter of Judge Sherman, of Cleveland, and a niece 
of the Senator. It was a grand affair, and its story 
took up many columns in the newspapers. Mrs. Cam¬ 
eron also lives in Washington, and her old-fashioned 
home, just above Blaine’s, is now being repaired for 
the coming season. Frank G. Carpenter. 


THE NEGRO 


195 


Before this contribution of Mr. Carpenter’s appeared 
in the Star, United States Senator John J. Ingalls had 
published a long article, on this subject, in The Chicago 
Tribune (Sunday, May 28, 1893, p. 27). The article 
was entitled “ Always a Problem,” and Senator In¬ 
galls sent me a marked copy of the same, inviting my 
attention to it. I very much regret that the contribu¬ 
tion is altogether too long to incorporate in this place, 
as it is pregnant with valuable facts on the history of 
the African negro in America, from various points of 
view. Senator Ingalls, however, did not believe that 
race union would ever take place, and in the afore¬ 
said article passed the following opinion upon it, to 
wit: — 


NO HOPE OF RACE UNION 

Frederick Douglass is perhaps the widest known 
and most distinguished representative of the negro 
race. He is an eloquent, accomplished, and dignified 
gentleman. His father was a white man and his 
mother a slave. It is perhaps not invidious nor un¬ 
civil to affirm that the distinction of Douglass is not 
on account of this African blood, but in spite of it. 
The intellectual traits, qualities, and characteristics 
which have given him renown are due to his Anglo- 
Saxon re-enforcement. He once said to me that he be¬ 
lieved the white and black races were not inherent but 
causal, and that there was a temporary prejudice that 
would be obliterated, so that they would eventually 
coalesce and the race question thus be effaced and dis¬ 
appear. There are no indications at present that this 
prophecy will be verified. Instead of vanishing the 
repugnance appears to be more distinct and emphatic. 
Mr. Douglass bravely acted upon his theory, but his 
example has not been followed nor seriously approved. 

Whether justly or unjustly, African blood is re¬ 
garded by the Caucasian as a taint to be abhorred. 
The discovery of an unsuspected negro strain by the 
heroine is the tragic motive of one of Howells’ most 



196 


THE NEGRO 


powerful novels. Whether this sense of degradation 
is peculiar to Americans and due to slavery is dis¬ 
puted. Certainly the revulsion in Europe is not so 
marked as here, but in the most cosmopolitan capitals 
the negro is not persona grata. Black is not a badge 
of inferiority, because Cubans, Brazilians, Spaniards, 
and Hindoos are of dusky hue, but the African is 
not considered an equal or kindred race. No white 
man ever wanted to be a negro. Probably every edu¬ 
cated and intelligent negro would prefer to be white. 

That the condition of the African has been improved 
in many respects by freedom and education needs no 
arguments, but his progress has been toward segre¬ 
gation. The great gulf fixed between the races has 
widened and deepened since emancipation. As de¬ 
pendents and subordinates the blacks were asso¬ 
ciates of the whites. As political equals they are 
strangers. Their children are no longer playmates. 
They are taught in separate schools, they worship 
in separate churches, they are buried in separate 
cemeteries. If possible, the barrier is more insupera¬ 
ble at the North than at the South, and the prescrip¬ 
tion more contemptuous and intolerant. Wherever the 
negro appears in considerable numbers the irritation 
is violent. Their settlement in any locality depresses 
the value of real estate and repels white occupation. 
Immigrants avoid .contact with them and shun the 
South as an infected region. Places of trust, honor, 
and emolument are shut against them inexorably. 
With confessed majorities in many districts and the 
balance of power in others they have no positions of 
high rank in the State or National governments. Al¬ 
though more than two hundred thousand enlisted in 
the Union armies no full-blood negro holds a commis¬ 
sion in the army or navy and in the militia their or¬ 
ganization is distinct. The learned professions, busi¬ 
ness, commerce, and manufactures, are open to all, 
but except with his own people the African has no 
function. His occupations are menial. In their em¬ 
ployments he finds toleration and is content. The 


THE NEGRO 


197 


rights and immunities conferred by the three consti¬ 
tutional amendments have given him no protection 
against the stronger edict of public opinion. Sur¬ 
rounded by opportunities which he cannot share and 
by advantages from which he is excluded, the future 
offers no prospect of release from a bondage whose im¬ 
perceptible manacles are forged and riveted by the 
tyranny of nature. 


Note 3. Page 112. 

Five years after the scene I had witnessed, or may 
be more, the same disgusting practice was being kept 
up, as will be seen from the following clipping taken 
from The Nezv York Times of August 17, 1903 (page 1), 
and which reads: — 

MARKET FOR NEGRO VOTES 


McComas and Mudd Fractions Bid Openly from $2 to $25 

a Head at Maryland Primaries. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Baltimore, Aug. 16.— In the Republican faction 
fight between Senator McComas and the anti-organi¬ 
zation combine at the primary election in the counties 
yesterday there was wholesale bartering in votes in 
Prince George County. About $25,000 was spent in 
this county alone in buying negro votes. 

At Upper Marlborough all kinds of ruses were 
worked by negroes to obtain funds from both factions, 
and they were for the most part successful. At least 
$2 each were paid for the black votes, but as a rule 
they brought from $5 to $25. One negro got $50 
extra for voting twelve members of his family. As 
soon as the polling window was raised, the colored 
voters made a rush for it, but refrained from voting 
until supplied with the “ long green.” 

The men with the cash stood opposite the window 





198 


THE NEGRO 


and offered the money. The scene has probably never 
been equaled in Maryland politics. 

In this connection, the following News Item is of 
interest. I clip it from The New York Times (Septem¬ 
ber 23, 1903, page 1) : — 

NEGRO MUST BE RECOGNIZED 

President Roosevelt Will Carry Into Effect His Plans for 

Colored Voters. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Birmingham, Ala., Sept. 22.— J. O. Thompson, Col¬ 
lector of Revenue for Alabama, and one of the Presi¬ 
dent’s referees in this State, said this afternoon, upon 
his return from a conference with the President at 
Oyster Bay, that Mr. Roosevelt was determined to 
carry out his plan of recognizing the negro as an ele¬ 
ment in the party. 

He pronounced as unjustifiable the report that the 
President was seeking reconciliation with the 
Vaughan and Bingham, or “ Lilywhite,” faction, which 
eliminated the negro from the last State convention. 
Vaughan and Bingham bear him out in the latter 
statement. 

The eight vacancies in Federal offices occurring in 
this State in December will be filled by the nominees 
of the referee, and the “ Lilywhites ” will seek conso¬ 
lation in trying to send an Alabama delegation op¬ 
posed to Roosevelt to the National convention. 

This Nezvs Item appeared shortly after the time, I 
think, that the notorious negro, Booker T. Washing¬ 
ton, had been entertained by the President at the 
White House. It called forth an enormous amount 
of criticism in the press, and among other articles 
and interviews, speeches, and addresses, the following 
from Senator Gorman, of Maryland (The Nezv York 

Times, Saturday, October 31, 1903, p. 1) : — 

\ 



THE NEGRO 


199 


GORMAN ON NEGRO ISSUE 

Calls on Maryland Voters to Rebuke the President — Charges 
Mr. Roosevelt with Interfering in State Politics and Mak¬ 
ing the Election National. 

Baltimore, Oct. 30.— At a Democratic mass-meeting 
held tonight, speeches were made by Edwin Warfield, 
the candidate for Governor, and a number of leading 
Democrats, including Senator Gorman. An immense 
crowd was present, and the speaking was preceded 
by stereopticon views illustrating the association of 
white and negro delegates at the late Republican State 
convention. 

Senator Gorman spoke, in part, as follows: 

“ Ordinarily the result of a State election concerns 
the people of the State alone. Its only bearing upon 
National politics is the fact that the Legislature to be 
elected will elect a Senator to represent this State in 
the Senate of the United States. 

“ But circumstances and occurrences, which have 
been forced upon us, make the result this year of more 
than local import. 

“ The extraordinary, unusual, and I think you will 
agree with me, unfortunate activity and interest dis¬ 
played by the President of the United States in partici¬ 
pating in his party’s councils by calling to Washington 
the prominent Republicans of this State, issue a chal¬ 
lenge for interference in our domestic affairs that must 
be met with no uncertain protest by our people. 

“ No State in the Union made greater sacrifices or 
contributed more to the establishment of the National 
Government than Maryland. In the formation of the 
Constitution of the L'nited States, the representatives 
of Maryland were the most pronounced of all in op¬ 
posing the granting to the Federal Government of any 
power which would enable it to interfere in the do¬ 
mestic affairs of the several States. And we must 
maintain the same position if we are to preserve our 
liberties. 



200 


THE NEGRO 


“ I have a great respect for the President. He ought 
not to be lightly or unjustly criticised. But lovers 
of liberty must enter their earnest protest whenever 
high officials of the Government exercise powers or 
commit acts which tend to restrict the rights of the 
people or unduly interfere with the matters of State 
concern. 

“ President Roosevelt is a man of fine attainments 
and of honest convictions. He is young in years, im¬ 
pulsive, ambitious; is a partisan and believes in his 
party. In his anxiety for its success, he is liable to 
make mistakes, and, in my judgment, he has committed 
a most grievous error in forcing to the front an issue 
which must be deplored by all the conservative men 
of the country. 

Warns President of Results 

“ In every country where the race issue has arisen 
it has always carried in its wake lamentable results 
and has been attended by evil consequences. I trust 
his earnestness and impetuosity may be restrained 
and that he may be prevailed upon to use wiser coun¬ 
sel in his treatment of the negro problem. 

“ From the day a cargo of Africans was landed and 
sold as slaves, until this hour the burden of the white 
men of this country has been greater than that borne 
by any people known to history. It was one of the 
causes which led to a most gigantic war, which 
drenched the country in blood, destroying fair homes 
and impoverishing a gallant people. 

“ Immediately after the close of the war came the 
adoption of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend¬ 
ments, which enfranchised the blacks for party pur¬ 
poses alone, and thus injected into the body politic a 
people unprepared and unfitted for self-government. 

“ The Anglo-Saxon has never, and will never, tol¬ 
erate the social equality or the political domination of 
the negro race. 

“ The South has passed through scenes of turbu¬ 
lence and disorder and rape and riot. By amendments 


THE NEGRO 


201 


to State Constitutions and by legislation, the whites 
have secured control, for the time being, of their own 
local governments, and the colored race is no longer 
a political factor in any State south of the Potomac. 

“ For more than thirty years this question has 
aroused sectional feeling and divided parties. It has 
threatened the peace of the States, put in jeopardy 
homes, and paralyzed industrial efforts. All thought¬ 
ful men realize that this canker upon the body of 
politic must be eliminated and the supremacy of white 
government assured. 

“ In 1896 William McKinley was elected President 
of the United States. During his service in Con¬ 
gress he had favored the most drastic legislation pro¬ 
posed by his party in their efforts to enforce the Con¬ 
stitutional provisions. As President of the United 
States he realized the responsibilities of his exalted 
position. 

“ He began his term when the country was emerg¬ 
ing from the throes of a great commercial panic. All 
the business interests of the North were depressed — 
the wheels of industry scarcely revolving. The South 
was struggling with its negro problem; its fields but 
half cultivated; its manufactures at the lowest ebb; 
its mines and forests undeveloped. 

“ These conditions were principally due to the great 
pall that hung over that section and made develop¬ 
ment and progress impossible. 

Mr. McKinley’s Attitude 

“ While President McKinley kept his party obliga¬ 
tions as fully as any man, he ceased making partisan 
war upon the people of the South. That people re¬ 
moved, at least temporarily, the incubus that depressed 
them. 

“ The action of the States was sustained by the 
courts and confidence was restored. The old and 
young men of the South took on new life. 

“ Development and progress resulted both North 
and South, until the stream of prosperity and enter- 



202 


THE NEGRO 


prise was flowing from one end of the land to the other. 

“ In the interest of humanity, the Government of 
the United States determined to free Cuba. War was 
declared, and in response to the President’s call the 
men of the South and North, the East and the West, 
volunteered. Sectionalism and party were obliterated. 
Our army was organized, and Gen. Miles of Massa¬ 
chusetts, Gen. Lee of Virginia, Gens. Shafter and 
Joe Wheeler were given important commands. Every 
section of the country was brought together in the 
interest of the Union — no North, no South, no East, 
no West. 

“ Success greeted our arms at every point. The 
navy under Dewey at Manila and under Schley at 
Santiago added new laurels to American valor. 

“ The army in Cuba under Shafter, with Col. Roose¬ 
velt holding an important command, and the army in 
Porto Rico under Miles, won new glory for the Nation. 

“ With returning peace, commerce and trade flour¬ 
ished as never before in the history of any people. 

“ A little more than two years have elapsed since 
that deplorable tragedy at Buffalo, which deprived 
the Nation of a great President. Mr. Roosevelt suc¬ 
ceeded to the Presidency. 

“ In his anxiety to be constantly doing something, 
he has made mistakes. 

“I believe of him,as I have believed of all Presidents, 
that he is sincere and patriotic. But every man in public 
position is liable to mistakes. None could be more 
serious than the one made by him in his attempt to 
force again » to the front the question of equality, 
social and political, of the negro race. 

Hints at a Play for Votes 

“ Thoughtful citizens, both North and South, regret 
such an issue. They dread, and will avoid it, if possi¬ 
ble. But if the President and his party drive the issue, 
it must be met, and the responsibility must rest upon 
them. 

“ The President is the leader of his party now, and 


203 


* 


THE NEGRO 

will be next year. The politicians of his party may 
advise him that the solid negro vote (for in voting 
they are indivisible) holds the balance of power in the 
great central States of the Union, and that in the 
States of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio, 
Indiana, and Illinois it is essential to his party’s 
success. 

“ In Maryland, where the negro vote constitutes 
two-thirds of the Republican party, it is an absolute 
necessity, for without it the State is hopelessly lost 
for the Republicans. 

“ Unless I mistake the temper of the people of this 
country, there will be the same revolution in public 
sentiment and the same protest that was recorded 
in 1892 by the white people of the entire Union 
against the administration of President Harrison for 
his attempt to force negro domination upon the 
South, and thus destroy that section and paralyze the 
industries of the whole United States. 

4< We are told that the President has declared to 
Senator McComas in unequivocal language that the 
forthcoming election in Maryland was not a local 
event, but one of National importance. In other 
words, the election of Mr. Williams as Governor of 
Maryland would be an indorsement of Mr. Roose¬ 
velt’s administration. 

“ So this issue is forced upon us by the President. 
He has made the gage of battle, and we must meet it 
as becomes Marylanders.” 


RACE QUESTION 1904’S ISSUE 


Chauncey F. Black of Pennsylvania Thinks North More In¬ 
terested Than Generally Supposed. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

« 

Baltimore, Oct. 30.— Chauncey F. Black, formerly 
Lieutenant-Governor of Pennsylvania, and lately 





204 


THE NEGRO 


President of the National Association of Democratic 
Clubs, was in Baltimore last evening. He stopped at 
the hotel where Senator Gorman is making his head¬ 
quarters and directing the State campaign. They are 
said to have had a conference on politics in general 
and the issues for next year. 

Before leaving the city, Mr. Black declared that the 
race issue may be a deciding one in the Presidential 
campaign. He agreed with Senator Gorman that 
President Roosevelt “ had identified himself with the 
question of negro equality.” 

Mr. Black further said he believed the undercurrent 
of thought upon the race question was deeper and 
more intense at present in the popular mind of the 
North than was generally supposed. 

The encouraging of the negro ambition for public 
office and colonizing them in the North under the 
patronage of monopolizing corporations was a grow¬ 
ing evil. 

“ Even in Pennsylvania,” continued Mr. Black, “ the 
75,000 negro voters, increasing annually by industrial 
colonization and party coddling, are more than enough 
to decide the fate of the State on anything like a fair 
vote. 

“ The threats by radical Republicans of cutting 
down the representation of States which have dis¬ 
franchised the illiterate negroes, concurring, as they 
do, with the course of the President, the official head 
and candidate of the party, seem to make this race 
issue inevitable, whether we will or not.” 


That there are people who are connected with the 
Federal government who will not dine with negroes 
may be seen from the following incident (The New 
York Times, August 25, 1903, p. 1): — 



THE NEGRO 


205 


WOULDN’T EAT WITH NEGROES 


Senator Bacon and Party Had No Breakfast, but Booker T. 

Washington and Party Ate. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Atlanta, Aug. 24.— United States Senator A. O. 
Bacon and a party of prominent Atlanta people went 
without breakfast today at Hamlet, N. C., while 
Booker T. Washington and a number of negroes ate 
in the dining-room at the station. 

The main dining-room was given over entirely to 
the negro delegation, while a smaller table in the side 
reading-room was cleared of books and papers and a 
few plates laid for Senator Bacon and friends. Under 
the circumstances, Senator Bacon and the Atlanta 
people refused to eat. 

Hamlet is the regular station where Seaboard Air 
Line trains stop for meals. Senator Bacon and friends, 
who were en route to Wilmington, had ordered their 
meals in advance. When the station was reached 
they went to the dining-room and were greatly as¬ 
tonished to find it occupied by Washington and his 
friends. 


The same feeling prevails everywhere, and hun¬ 
dreds of instances are reported in the daily papers 
all over the country every day. Here is a brief ex¬ 
ample of one of them, clipped by the author from the 
New York American and Journal (Sunday, October 4, 
1903, page 40). It reads thus: — 

PUPILS REBEL AT NEGRO TEACHER 


Chicago, Oct. 3.— A revolt of school children in the 
Oak Ridge public school followed the assignment of 
a colored woman as teacher in the sixth grade, in the 
absence of Miss Catherine Ralph, a white teacher. 

A number of pupils left the school at the noon hour, 
and a general defection was prevented by Principal 






206 


THE NEGRO 


W. E. Vanderwater, only by imprisoning the ring¬ 
leaders in the basement during recess. Miss Ralph 
was again placed in charge of the grade. 


Note 4. Page 137. 

In this note I give one or two more cases of lynch¬ 
ing, and others are described further on in the Ap¬ 
pendix. We find the following one reported in The 
Evening Telegram (New York, Friday, September 25, 
1903, p. 1):— 

MOB STORMS JAIL; LYNCHES NEGRO 

Sheriff Shot One Man in Effort to Protect Prisoner, but 

Was Overpowered. 

Lynchburg, Tenn., Friday.— Sheriff George R. 
Davidson, in attempting to save the life of a negro 
early today, fired into a mob which was assailing the 
jail, wounding a man whose name is unknown. The 
Sheriff summoned assistance, but he and his aides 
were overpowered, the jail entered and the much- 
wanted negro, Allen Small, shot to death in the cor¬ 
ridor. The mob was composed of about twenty-five 
persons. 

Sheriff Davidson was alone at the time. He refused 
to give up the keys and opened fire from a window. 
He wounded one of the members of the mob and then 
called for the police. Two officers and several citi¬ 
zens rushed to the jail, but despite their presence, the 
mob battered down the wooden door at the foot of the 
stairs leading to the corridor. 


Here is another instance in point, clipped by me 
from The New York Times (Tuesday, December 1, 
1903, p. 1): — 





THE NEGRO 


207 


THREE NEGROES LYNCHED 


They Shot Louisiana Man to Test Their New Weapons — All 
Confessed Their Crime — Shreveport Colored Men 
Helped the Whites to Capture and Hang the Culprits. 

Shreveport, La., Nov. 30.— In the presence of a 
crowd of about 1,200 whites and negroes, Phil Davis, 
Walter Carter, and Clint Thomas, all negroes, were 
lynched this afternoon about 1 o’clock, within a short 
distance of Belcher, which is twenty miles from 
Shreveport. 

The men were executed for participating in the fatal 
shooting of Robert Adger, one of the most popular 
business men in North Louisiana. 

The negroes confessed their crime. They stated 
that they were trying new guns, and when Adger 
appeared on the street, thought it quite natural to turn 
the guns on him. 

No shots were fired at the lynching, the negroes all 
being hanged to a single limb of a tree. Two of the 
negroes under arrest, Sam Lee and Peter Thomas, 
were released. Lee proved that he had attempted 
to prevent the negroes from shooting Adger, and 
Thomas established the fact that he was too frightened 
to shoot. 

Phil Davis and Walter Carter were captured yes¬ 
terday afternoon several miles from the scene of their 
crime. Clint Thomas was caught later about a mile 
and a half from Belcher. 

The negroes were taken before Adger and confessed 
their crime. They were held in concealment until 
shortly before 1 o’clock today, when they were taken 
out and hanged. 

Davis is said to be an ex-convict, and Walter Carter 
was forced to flee from Mansfield, La., about a year 
ago for insulting a white woman. 

The negroes of Belcher joined in the search for the 
men, and were apparently as eager to have them 
lynched as the whites. One negro was presented by 



208 


THE NEGRO 


the whites with a purse of $100 for the part he took 
in the pursuit. 

The negroes who were lynched were given an op¬ 
portunity to pray. 


One of the most disgusting and terrible lynchings 
recently done, took place only three days ago, and 
was reported in hundreds of papers. I give here a 
short account of it from The New York Times of Mon¬ 
day, February 8th, page 2. All the particulars are 
not furnished here. It is as follows : — 

WOMAN AND MAN BURNED AT STAKE 

Both Negroes Captured After Three-Day Chase Through 

Mississippi Swamps. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Memphis, Tenn., Feb. 7.— Luther Helbert and his 
wife, colored, who murdered James Eastland, a young 
planter at Doddsville, Miss., Wednesday morning, 
were captured after a three days’ chase in a swamp 
on the Yazoo River, Sunday morning at 3 o’clock. 

They were taken to Doddsville by a band of fifty 
men, and were burned at the stake, near the scene 
of their crime, at 3:30 this afternoon, before a large 
crowd of men from three counties. 

The two brothers of the murdered planter decided 
the form of punishment, and were present at the burn¬ 
ing. The crime for which the negroes died was one 
of the most horrible and cold-blooded ever committed 
in the State. 

The mob turned the sixteen-year-old son of the mur¬ 
derers loose. The boy had been forced to accompany 
them. The negroes were heavily armed when cap¬ 
tured, and were expected to make resistance, as they 
had sworn not to be taken alive, but they were sur¬ 
prised when asleep in the swamp. 

About 200 men altogether took part in the chase, 




THE NEGRO 


209 


and five of the best bloodhounds in the State were 
employed. 

Seven negroes, including the murderers and the 
negro who was killed in company with young East- 
land, have suffered death as the result of this crime. 
It is thought that the negro lodges in that section had 
much to do with the crime, and that they helped the 
murderers. 

It is said that while Helbert and his wife were 
burning, their screams were something terrific, and 
they could be heard for half a mile. Their son was 
nearly crazed with fear, and when he saw the flames 
consuming his tortured parents, and heard their 
frightful screams, and prayers for mercy, he threw 
himself face downward on the ground, closing his 
eyes, and putting his fingers in his ears, to shut the 
fearful scene out from sight and hearing. After the 
couple were dead and only partly consumed, the mob 
left them, and the boy took the blackened corpses of 
his parents, and laid them side by side in the brush, 
covering them over as best he could. 

These lynchings are not always confined to the 
Southern States. Less than a year ago, a typical case 
of burning a negro at the stake took place in the State 
of Delaware. The fellow’s name was George White. 
It happened on June 23, 1903, on which date he met 
the beautiful Miss Helen Bishop, a daughter of a well- 
known minister of Delaware, and worked his will 
with her, and then brutally murdered his outraged 
victim. The feeling in the community which followed 
upon this terrible crime was most passionate and in¬ 
tense. It was evident in all classes of people, and ap¬ 
parently could not be subdued or controlled. 

Miss Bishop was a great favorite with all who knew 
her. She was young, a girl of decided beauty, both 
of face and figure. She was alone at the time, and 
in a country district. 

I clip a few of the instances from the New York 
American of Wednesday, June 24, 1903, page 2. Hun- 
14 


210 


THE NEGRO 


dreds of other United States papers gave full accounts 
of this famous lynching: — 

CONFESSED AS HE STOOD AT STAKE 


Cool-Headed Leaders of Mob Protected the Wilmington 
Slayer from Attack While He Told All About His 
Deed — Story of How White Was Burned to Death. 

Wilmington, Del., June 23.— Here are the facts of 
the burning of George White at the stake: 

Word was passed around early yesterday morning 
that a lynching party would organize at Price’s Cor¬ 
ners at 8 o’clock last night, and move from there in a 
body to the New Castle County Workhouse, where 
White was imprisoned. Many who heard the rumor 
refused to take it seriously, but by 8 o’clock fully 
5,000 persons had gathered about the workhouse. 

The Police Department had been warned of the plot, 
and thirty policemen, under command of Chief Black 
and Captains Evans and Kane, went to reinforce the 
small number of guards inside the prison. The place 
was completely surrounded when they arrived, and 
they had scarcely entered the corridor of the west 
wing when the leaders of the mob made a rush for 
the door. 

Shots were exchanged, and the first to fall was 
Peter Smith, a twelve-year-old boy. Another young 
man was wounded, but the flying bullets failed to de¬ 
ter the mob. They pressed closer to the door and 
when it seemed certain that they would push it from 
its hinges, Chief Black appeared at the grating. 

Chief Shouted Warning 

“ I give you fair warning,” he shouted. “ that the 
first man who enters this corridor will be killed.” 

A tall man, wearing a wide-brimmed white hat, 
pushed forward, grasped one of the heavy sledges, 
and as he attacked the steel door exclaimed: “ Then 
you might as well kill me for the first one.” 



THE NEGRO 


211 


Another stranger was close behind. He drew a 
revolver and shot out the electric light bulbs one by 
one. In the darkness occasional shots were fired by 
both sides. It is known that several persons were 
slightly wounded, but they have succeeded in conceal¬ 
ing their identity. 

The steel door could not long withstand the de¬ 
termined blows of the mob, and within half an hour 
after the attack had begun the crowd was charging 
noisily into the corridor. 

The leaders carried out their plans with perfect 
coolness. Calling Chief Black and Warden Meserve 
to one side, they told the officials resistance would 
avail nothing, and that it would save expense and 
trouble if the warden would tell them in which cell 
White was imprisoned. 

Slayer Was in Cell No. 13 

The Warden told them White could be found in 
cell No. 13, in the front row of cells on the third floor. 
The mob charged up the stairways to the iron door, 
which opened into a corridor. On both sides of these 
corridors were cells in which White and other pris¬ 
oners were locked. The lynching party had provided 
cold chisels and sledges, and a few men went to work 
systematically to remove the rivet heads and open the 
way to the inner cells. 

The crowd at their back became impatient and 
crushed forward in such numbers that the work was 
delayed. The leaders appealed to the others to fall 
back. 

Twenty-two minutes before midnight the door was 
open. White was seized. He fought off his assailants, 
knocking the first man down, but his arms were 
gripped by a dozen hands and he was soon over¬ 
powered. 

The crowd became almost unmanageable at the first 
glimpse of the negro. They sought to tear him limb 
from limb, but again were held back by the handful 
of men who directed the whole affair. 


212 


THE NEGRO 


Leaders Gave Orders 

“ Everybody will have an opportunity to see him/' 
called out one of the leaders; “ put out all the lights 
and move toward Price's Corners.’' 

Scores of lanterns vanished and in the sudden gloom 
there was a swift movement, during which White and 
his captors were lost to sight. They were soon de¬ 
tected hastening toward the spot on which Helen 
Bishop had been murdered, and on which it had been 
decided to execute her assassin. 

As he was dragged swiftly along, the frightened 
prisoner begged for mercy. He offered to confess 
everything, but his captors would not give him an op¬ 
portunity to talk until they had brought him to the 
stake. There he was permitted to stand and make a 
confession in which he said he had killed Miss Bishop. 
He said he had asked her for money, promising to re¬ 
lease her if rewarded. 

“ She gave me 60 cents,” he said. “ Then I asked 
her if she was going to tell, and she said she was. I 
cut the back of her neck with a knife, and asked her 
again if she would tell. She said yes again, and then 
I cut her throat. If I was a white man you would 
not do this to me.” 

Confession Excited Mob 

The confession aroused the crowd to a high pitch 
of excitement, and the leaders prepared the stake and 
the fuel in haste, fearing their prisoner would be taken 
from them and shot down. 

One man split rails, while another, mounted on a 
white horse, rode at top speed to a farmyard and 
brought a bundle of straw. 

White continued to beg for mercy until the wood 
and straw were set afire. 

The flames burned away the thongs and he fell into 
the fire. Leaping to his feet, he attempted to run 
away. A member of the mob felled him with a rail, 
and he was again placed on the fire. Several times he 


THE NEGRO 


213 


rolled beyond the reach of the flames and ivas thrust 
back again. 

After life had become extinct, more fuel was piled 
over the corpse and it was almost entirely consumed. 
The mob then dispersed, leaving the fire still burning. 
Toward morning a drizzling rain began to fall, and 
the smouldering fire was extinguished. 

This lynching was incited apparently by a sermon 
that was preached at Wilmington, by the Rev. Robert 
A. Ellwood, a friend of the girl’s father, and a highly- 
respected man in the community. As this is a typical 
case, and of marked historical value, when taken in 
connection with what 1 have attempted to set forth in 
the present volume, I here reproduce other facts com¬ 
mented on by the New York American of above date. 
I do not now recall what happened to any of the 
mob after they had committed the deed. The State 
made a strong showing, however, to bring them to 
justice. This was printed in the American : — 

Wilmington, Del., June 23.— This old city is 
deeply stirred by the deplorable burning at the stake of 
George White, the negro who slew Helen Bishop, 
the pretty seventeen-year-old daughter of the Rev. 
E. A. Bishop. 

So intense is the interest in the tragic deed that 
today more than ten thousand men, women, and chil¬ 
dren journeyed for miles through rain and mud to the 
scene of the burning. 

Throngs of the fair sex surround the smoldering em¬ 
bers of the funeral pyre. Some hurled on more wood 
to keep the fires going so as to reduce to dust the 
remnants of the negro’s body, while boys and girls 
snatched pieces of fuel from the fire as souvenirs of 
the mob’s violence. 

It was learned today that the Governor received a 
telegram at 11:30 o’clock last night from J. Newlin 
Gawthrop, president of the trustees of the New Castle 



214 


THE NEGRO 


County Workhouse, and David J. Reinhardt, solicitor 
of the city of Wilmington. It read: 

“ Call militia out at once to protect workhouse prop¬ 
erty. Already entered by mob of 2,000.” 

It was then too late for the Governor to take such 
action, it is said, as the troops could not have reached 
the scene in time to prevent the deed of violence. 

Lynchers Talk Openly 

Men who took part in the extraordinary deed, only 
three hours from New York, are talking openly in the 
street of their acts, and the mob’s work is pointed out 
as a triumph of human justice over law. 

The Protestant ministers today denounced the 
lynchers, but in their resolutions no demand or desire 
is expressed for the authorities to take action against 
the executors of mob law. Neighbors know one an¬ 
other as members of that lawless band, and no con¬ 
cealment is made. 

A hundred names of the lynchers could be quoted 
now. 

County detectives marched with the mob to the jail. 
There are scores whom they must have recognized. 
Chief of Police George Black and Police Captain Evans 
faced the mob, and must have recognized many. Yet 
only one arrest has been made. 

And, while Mayor Fisher, the Chief of Police, and 
Captain Evans, Attorney-General Ward and his as¬ 
sistant, Richards, refuse to discuss the matter of the 
lynching or to disclose what plans, if any, they have 
for forcing an atonement for the shocking affair, boasts 
are openly made on the street that no jury will ever be 
found in Wilmington to convict any one charged with 
participating in the deed. 

Judges Made Scapegoats 

The Supreme Court is made the scapegoat for the 
remarkable outbreak of Northern revenge. The judges 
calmly refused to listen to the insistence of the com¬ 
munity, inflamed by the negro’s deed, that a speedy 


THE NEGRO 


215 


trial be given the wretch. But because the Grand 
Jury had adjourned for the term, and civil cases had 
been taken up for trial, Chief Justice Lore refused to 
act upon a suggestion that the Grand Jury be recalled, 
the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened and White 
placed on trial at once. 

This was the breaking point with the people. They 
could not dispassionately wait till September, three 
long months, for the due processes of law. 

Chief Justice Lore and Judges Grubb and Penniwell 
are maintaining a dignified silence under the shower 
of abuse to which they are being subjected. 

Ghastly Relics on Show 

Half a hundred persons are parading the streets, ex¬ 
hibiting ghastly relics of the dark deed. 

They were on the ground early this morning after 
the night’s revels, ahead of Deputy Coroner Kelmer, 
who proceeded leisurely to the smouldering pyre at 
about 11 o’clock and took charge of what remained 
of the victim of the mob’s frenzy. 

These are actual facts, and the scenes are laid in 
one of the centres of civilization, within three hours’ 
ride of New York and amid a people who outwardly 
are educated and humane. 

Crimes such as that for which White was so brutally 
put to death have been committed in Delaware before. 

In the very jail that the mob sacked last night an¬ 
other negro is undergoing imprisonment for a similar 
offence, yet he was not molested. 

Women, Too, in the Mob 

It is impossible that some of those who participated 
in the outrage were not recognized. Five thousand 
persons stood by and watched White writhe in his 
death agony. At least 500 of these assisted actively 
in the work of his destruction. It is not true that the 
leaders came masked and garbed in women’s attire. 
The act was committed boldly. Men and women faced 
one another frankly while they went about the work. 


216 


THE NEGRO 


Yet the only mention of any leader in the mob is 
that of an elusive Baker, said to be a Southerner. 

A most extraordinary circumstance in connection 
with the affair is the attitude of the clergy. 

A Sermon is Blamed 

To the sermon of the Rev. Robert A. Ellwood, pas¬ 
tor of the Mount Olivet Presbyterian Church, is at¬ 
tributed the stirring of the mob to the point of action. 

Last Sunday night, when public sentiment against 
White was reaching the boiling point, Mr. Ellwood 
preached a sermon on the topic “ Should the Murderer 
of Helen Bishop Be Lynched?” 

He advocated moderation, and then drew an agoniz¬ 
ing picture of the murder of Miss Bishop. He coun¬ 
selled patience, and then denounced the Supreme 
Court, declaring that by refusing to depart from its 
regular procedure to try White, it was setting an ex¬ 
ample in patience for the people. He drew a forecast 
of precisely what has happened, and sternly laid the 
blame at the feet of the judges of the court, and added 
a final appeal to the passions of his audience by dra¬ 
matically waving over his head blood-stained leaves 
from the thicket in which Helen Bishop was killed, 
gathered for the purpose, by an elder of his church. 

The people went away from the meeting livid with 
passion — and early this morning the deed was done. 

The Rev. Mr. Ellwood is a Princeton graduate. He 
is about 32 years old, well built, lithe, and possessed 
of advanced views. 


Does Not Retract 

“ I do not retract a word of what my sermon con¬ 
tained,” he said today. “ I did not preach lynching. 
On the contrary, I counselled against it. And I de¬ 
plore this affair as much as any man. It is too dread¬ 
ful to contemplate. 

“Yet my charge still holds good, that the Court 
should have satisfied the demand for a speedy trial for 




THE NEGRO 


217 


White, and having failed to do so, the awful respon¬ 
sibility for what has happened rests with the Judges.” 

‘‘ Do you feel po personal regret at the outcome?” 
was asked. 

“ None,” replied Mr. Ellwood. 

“ Besides, in this morning’s mail I have received a 
number of letters from eminent citizens indorsing the 
stand 1 took.” 

There was a story about Wilmington tonight that 
some official action would be taken against Mr. Ell¬ 
wood, but no verification of it could be had. The 
preacher was seen walking the streets undisturbed. 

Another representative of the cloth, the Rev. Robert 
Watt, a presiding elder, also maintains a remarkable 
attitude. He was quoted as having made a speech 
similar to that of Mr. Ellwood. 

“ I deny that,” he said to the American correspond¬ 
ent. “ I am keeping my own opinions on the affair 
to myself.” 

“ But you regard last night’s occurrences as bad, 
do you not? ” 

“ I am not prepared to say that.” 

Views of the Women 

Mrs. Watt, wife of the elder, a sweet, motherly lit¬ 
tle woman, went even further than her husband. Her 
views are startling illustrations of the attitude of the 
women of Wilmington toward the lynching. 

“ It is deplorable,” said Mrs. Watt, her pretty blue 
eyes flashing fire. “ But he got what he deserved. 
I would have been willing myself to help to do some¬ 
thing to put him out of the way.” 

Save for the natural excitement following such an 
unusual event, Wilmington is quiet and orderly to¬ 
night. 

Condemnation of the lynching would be much 
greater if it were not for the revolting nature of the 
confession made by White just before the funeral prye 
was lighted. 


218 


THE NEGRO 


One of the judges who has been severely criticised 
said privately to a friend: 

“ The public had no necessity to do this thing. In 
all such cases the courts for years and years have 
found the persons guilty when they were guilty, and 
there was no reason for such undue haste. 

“ The manner in which the community at large was 
stirred up over the awful crime would have rendered 
it impossible to get an impartial jury before Septem¬ 
ber.” 

“ Representative Citizens ” 

J. Frank Bell, one of the trustees of the workhouse, 
said: “ The affair, I do not think, could have been 
avoided. The crowd was composed of representative 
citizens, and it could easily be seen that there was 
somebody at the head of the movement who had per¬ 
fect control of the mob.” 

Chief of Police Black said he had discovered imme¬ 
diately on his arrival on the scene that he could not 
cope with the situation. He is authority for the state¬ 
ment that the mob had twenty pounds of dynamite 
with which to enforce their demands. 

Sheriff E. F. Stidham said he was powerless to stop 
the mob, since they had already left the workhouse 
with the prisoner when he arrived with his posse of 
fifty men, gathered along the way. 

Judge Bull, secretary of the Board of Trustees of 
the workhouse, who was in the jail when the mob 
approached, said they quickly decided after a hasty 
consultation to offer no resistance, since to have done 
so would have meant the useless sacrifice of many 
lives. 

“ Don’t Shoot,” Was Order 

Warden Meserve, of the workhouse, said today: 

“ We had instructions to shoot no one. All our guns 
were on the upper floors. 

“ The mob had a competent leader, and included 
skilled mechanics. The man who opened White’s 
cell, did it without damage to anything but the bolts.” 


THE NEGRO 


219 


Mr. and Mrs. Bishop, father and mother of the mur¬ 
dered girl, left Wilmington early today for their old 
home in Pennsylvania. 

Mrs. Bishop, who has been ill, was awakened last 
night by the light of the flames of the fire around 
White. She is on the verge of nervous prostration. 


Mob Always is in the Wrong 

By Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, Pastor of Plym¬ 
outh Church, Brooklyn : — “ The mob is always wrong. 
The mob should not be recognized at any time. 

“ We all deplore the tardiness of the law in such a 
case, but we have the power to alter this law. 

“ The crime was one that demanded prompt justice, 
but not the interference of the mob.” 


Pastor Ellwood is to be Pitied 

By Rev. Dr. J. M. Ludlow, noted Presbyterian 
preacher and writer: — “ Let us have a law as soon 
as possible that will render swift justice to every as¬ 
sailant of womanhood. 

“ The lynching at Wilmington has shown us what 
is demanded. We cannot have it any too soon. 

“ This was an infamous crime, enough to provoke 
mobs in the North. 

“ I am of the opinion that the mob’s work could have 
been prevented by a speedy justice that would have 
given the murderer what his crime deserved. 

“ I have no sympathy with the mob that has cast 
such a blot on our civilization.” 


Lynching Spirit is a Legacy of Slavery 

By Mrs. Russell Sage, wife of the famous finan¬ 
cier:— “These horrible lynchings are the few re¬ 
maining roots of the terrible wrong of slavery. 

“I cannot excuse a lynching — not even of such a 
beast as George White. 






220 


THE NEGRO 


“ Every human being has the desire to kill in his 
make-up. We see it even in children. To arouse it is 
dangerous. A lynching always leaves a community 
the worse for it. The good are embittered and hard¬ 
ened — the bad made worse. 

“ It is a terrible thing to me to think that that beau¬ 
tiful girl had no protection — no one to assist her in 
her fight for life and honor. It seems as though it 
might be well for every one to carry a revolver nowa¬ 
days. 

“ I do not see any particular significance in the fact 
that lynchings are occurring further North. The par¬ 
ticular danger of this fact is that it is reviving the old 
spirit. 

“ I fear there is lynching spirit latent right here in 
New York. I heard Mr. Sage tell today of seeing a 
negro orphan asylum looted and a negro hung on the 
streets of New York during the race riots years ago.” 


Girl’s Father is a True Christian 

By Rev. Father M. J. Lavelle, Rector of St. Patrick’s 
Cathedral: — “ It was a detestable crime. 

“ The father has my sympathy. He proved him¬ 
self a thorough Christian in trying to stay the mob. 

“ This lynching is a blot on our civilization that is 
to be regretted. Undoubtedly the law is slow — too 
slow in such cases — but we cannot expect the masses 
of the foreign element who flock to our shores to re¬ 
spect the laws if our own people take it in their hands. 

“ I have no sympathy with this lynch-law, and the 
sooner it is crushed out forever, the better for our 
country.” 


Only Americans Burn Their Victims 

By Judge J. W. Bookwalter, of Ohio, who is at the 
Holland House : — “ The Americans are the only peo¬ 
ple who BURN their victims. That is the point of 




THE NEGRO 


221 


particularly horrible significance to me in the recent 
ynchings on Northern soil. 

“ I am astonished at the brutality of our nation when 
it is aroused. No matter what other barbarous cruel¬ 
ties uncivilized nations may resort to, they do not 
burn people. Lynchings and killings by mobs of ex¬ 
cited people are not unknown in many countries. Our 
nation, however, seems to carry to terrible lengths its 
desire to do something new and novel. It becomes 
fiendish. 

“ It is also only too trite that the lynching spirit 
as connected with the negro is not confined to any 
particular section of our country. It appears all over 
the United States. We used to excuse it by saying 
that it only occurred far South, where the race preju¬ 
dice was extreme. We have no excuse today.” 


Barbarous Where Laws Are Equitable 

By Rev. Dr. Reginald Campbell, the celebrated 
London Preacher: — “I should hate to think, even for 
a moment, what I would have done had my daughter 
been the victim of such an inhuman crime. It is too 
bad, too bad. 

“ I admire the Christian manhood displayed by the 
father of the girl. 

“ There are some crimes that provoke all the in¬ 
human that is in a man, and this is one of them. Still, 
I cannot understand mob violence. 

“ Lynch-law is practically unknown to us abroad. 
It seems a bit barbarous where there are equitable 
laws to punish such a crime, even to the satisfaction 
of the most bitter-minded. 

“ No more can I account for the teaching of this 
minister of the gospel. It does seem decidedly unwise 
and unbecoming a minister to preach a lynch-law doc¬ 
trine from his pulpit. But, on the other hand, one 
must weigh such incidents in the American scale, not 
in an English one. So that, after all, my opinions may 
not be so valuable as you choose to think. 




222 


THE NEGRO 


“ All summed up, it was a heartless affair, and the 
law should have been permitted to take its course. 
No law, however, could bring justice too swift in such 
a case.” 


Southerner’s View of the Mob’s Deed 

By John C. Calhoun, former President of the South¬ 
ern Society: — “I do not believe in mob violence in 
any form. I always believe in letting the law take its 
course, and in Northern States this can be done, for 
there are very few cases of attacks on women by 
negroes as compared with the Southern States. 

“ I have read a great deal in the newspapers of the 
Wilmington tragedy, and I regret it deeply. 

“ There are certain cases I can recall where lynching 
has been justified, for in doing this, men of the South 
have protected their women. If some lynchings did 
not take place, there would be more attacks on South¬ 
ern women than there are by negroes.” 

The parents of the victim in this case were for the 
law taking its course, and were opposed to mob vio¬ 
lence. The father said: — 

“ Let us not try to atone for one crime, no matter 
how hellish, by committing another.” 

Mr. William Travers Jerome, the district-attorney 
for the City of New York, gave the following as his 
opinion: — 

“ I think the condition of white people in the midst 
of a vast population of colored people of a low grade 
in certain parts of the South is a trying one. It is 
difficult for us in the North to judge occurrences there 
altogether fairly. But these conditions do not exist 
in Delaware. 

“ I can think of nothing to say in palliation of the 
horror of the deed done by presumably intelligent 





THE NEGRO 


223 


citizens of Delaware in connection with the burning of 
this negro, George White. 

“ The case, however, seems to emphasize a feature 
of criminal law, and that is the evil that accompanies 
the delay in bringing offenders to speedy trial. 

“ Delays in trials of persons accused of crime when 
the offense is grave will always tend to create disorder 
and lead to individuals taking the law into their own 
hands, especially where great delay occurs. 

“ This spirit of vengeance may not be an estimable 
one, but it is a real one, and must be considered, es¬ 
pecially in communities where the authorities have no 
great force at their command, as is the case in most 
parts of the country. 

“ I think if a white girl was killed by a colored man 
even in staid old New England, the chances of a lynch¬ 
ing would be quite as great as in the South, unless the 
accused was at once removed to some important place 
of safety. It is the character of the offence rather 
than race prejudice, although, of course, the element of 
race prejudice does enter into it in certain parts of the 
South.” 

In my own opinion, I believe these lynchings will 
occur at the rate of from 200 to 300 annually just so 
long as the negro remains in the United States and is 
free, over a large area of it, to assault and murder 
women of every class of the white race. Nothing will 
prevent it, and all so-called remedies will only embitter 
the people and aggravate those who take an active part 
in these episodes of vengeance. 


In reference to this affair, the following clipping is 
from a Northern paper, the record of which has been 
mislaid by me. I am under the impression that it is 
from The Evening Star, of Washington, D. C., of a date 
in the first week of February, 1893 : — 




224 


THE NEGRO 


Proud of the Affair 

Everything is quiet at Paris, Tex. All who partici¬ 
pated in the horrible torture of the negro Smith 
Wednesday boldly proclaim the part they took in the 
affair and say that they have no fear of arrest. The 
ashes of the funeral pyre were raked over yesterday 
and many persons carried away buttons and bones, 
etc., as relics of the affair. 

On this subject, Senator J. J. Ingalls has said: — 

“ No one could read the ghastly and repulsive de¬ 
tails of the recent burning of the negro in Texas, the 
mutilation, the thrusting of hot irons into the eyes, 
the aggravation of the agony, without compassionate 
incredulity. It was a revelation of inconceivable de¬ 
pravity. The crime of which the victim was accused 
was inexpiable, but the vengeance was equally infer¬ 
nal.” (The Chicago Tribune, Sunday, May 28, 1893, 
p. 27.) 

As in the case of the lynching of the negro, George 
White, in Delaware, a year before this Texas affair, 
men raised their voices by the hundreds in denuncia¬ 
tion of this horrible practice. Sometimes it was done 
after this fashion, and if the reader will refer back to 
the last Note, the following from The New York Times 
(September 22, 1903, p. 3), will be found to illustrate 
my meaning: — 

DENUNCIATION OF LYNCHERS 


Chief Justice Lore, of Delaware Supreme Court, Urges Grand 

Jury to Bring Them to Justice. 

Wilmington, Del., Sept. 21.— Chief Justice Lore, of 
the Delaware Supreme Court, today delivered a strong 
charge to the Grand Jury, which is considering the 
criminal work of the county courts. After reciting 
the details of the murder on June 15, of Helen Bishop 



THE NEGRO 


225 


by George White, and the subsequent lynching of 
White by a mob, Justice Lore said : 

“ The crime of George White and his punishment 
are not before us. L T pon his body human vengeance 
has done its work. If the matter concerned George 
White alone, there would be nothing left for our con¬ 
sideration. But for the first time, the lawless and re¬ 
volting crime of lynching has invaded this State. 

“ In obedience to the oath you have taken and to 
your duty to your State, we ask you to so act that the 
crime of lynching may be suppressed in this State, 
so far as by your action that end may be attained, and 
that the perpetrators of this crime and the authors 
of the disgrace that has come upon us through their 
crime, shall be dealt with according to their just 
merits.” 

For my part, I do not think the State of Delaware 
has anything to boast of in the matter of the punish¬ 
ment of her criminals. Being burnt alive is one thing, 
to be sure, but there are other tortures equally dam¬ 
nable, as the following Delaware record will attest. 
I clip it from the New York American and Journal (Sun¬ 
day, September 27, 1903), and it appeared as fol¬ 
lows : — 

WHIPPING POST HAS 14 TORN VICTIMS TO EM¬ 
BRACE IT 


Punishment Which Spectators Turned from as Too Horrible 
to Witness Meted Out to Screaming Men in Delaware. 

Wilmington, Del., Sept. 26.— Punishment almost 
mediaeval in its severity was meted out to fourteen 
offenders in the City Prison here today, in the pres¬ 
ence of hundreds of the citizens of the city. 

Fourteen criminals were bound to the whipping 
post, and for more than an hour the stout-armed jailers 
sent the “ cat ” with its many thongs singing about 
the stripped bodies of the men. Many of those who 
15 



226 


THE NEGRO 


were witnesses of the punishment of the prisoners 
were unable to remain throughout the ordeal. 

Those who witnessed the lashing of the prisoners 
admitted that it was the severest form of punishment 
inflicted in the United States, and that it has so far 
been shown to be the most effective. There was no 
mercy shown any man who was tied to the post, al¬ 
though in the case of three of the men the lashes were 
heavier than in the cases of the others. 

Two notorious criminals received forty lashes each 
for highway robbery. One, for an attack upon a white 
woman, received thirty lashes; one, for larceny, re¬ 
ceived twenty lashes, and ten, for larceny, received ten 
lashes each. 


Heaviest Whip for Him 

Although Henry Pitts was only sentenced to receive 
thirty lashes, his was probably the heaviest punish¬ 
ment inflicted. Accused of an attack upon a white 
woman, he was whipped by the heaviest, brawniest 
jailer in the place, a man who made every cut of the 
whip raised a wale across the negroe’s back which was 
followed by blood. The man was almost cut into rib¬ 
bons by the “ cat,” and was nearly insensible when 
taken from the post. 

After his whipping he was placed in the pillory and 
kept there from 1 until 2 o'clock in the afternoon, with 
William Dorsey, who had received ten lashes for lar¬ 
ceny. When taken from the pillory, neither man could 
walk, and they were barely able to stand. 

Particularly severe was the punishment of Thomas, 
alias “ Whiskers ” Mullin, convicted of highway rob¬ 
bery. It was not his first offence, and he was treated 
as an habitual criminal. Forty times the lash sang 
across his back bringing the blood at each cut, but the 
man at the post took his punishment without a mur¬ 
mur. 

Albert Spencer, who was convicted with Mullin, of 
highway robbery, also received forty lashes, but did 
not bear his punishment as did his companion. While 


THE NEGRO 


227 


undergoing the ordeal, he fainted, and dropped as far 
as the ropes with which he was tied would permit. 
While he hung thus against the post, the jailer con¬ 
tinued to swing the “ cat ” across his shoulders until 
the full number of lashes had been given. Spencer was 
still unconscious when unbound and carried away into 
the jail. 

He Danced and Screamed 

A slight strain of comedy was injected into the affair 
by the action of Theodore Walcott and Albert Turner, 
two negroes convicted of larceny. Walcott had stolen 
a pair of shoes, and his outcries and pleadings for 
mercy continued from the moment he was led from 
the jail until the last lash had fallen across his bare 
body. He danced and screamed as the whip struck 
him, calling out all sorts of promises to the jailer who 
was handling the “ cat,” and making offers of number¬ 
less compromises. His whipping was fairly light, and 
he only received ten lashes, but from the protests and 
outcries of the man it might have been inferred that 
the heaviest punishment of the day was being given 
him. As the last stroke fell upon his shoulders, he 
yelled: 

“ I’ll never steal another pair of shoes, mister, as 
long as I live.” 

“ Well, see that you never steal anything as long 
as you live,” said the jailer, grimly. “ This post will 
be waiting for you all the time.” 

Albert Turner, who received twenty lashes for steal¬ 
ing, also showed that the punishment was effective. 
He danced around the post so quickly that in several 
cases the lashes missed him and struck the post. He 
danced away from the warden, who was whipping him, 
repeatedly, and had to be driven back with cuts upon 
the other side. He was crying bitterly when released 
from the post. 

Still there are those who say that the American 
negro is a long-suffering being and only rarely guilty 



228 


THE NEGRO 


of any criminal offence against the “ dominant race.” 
The following from The Nezv York Times (Wednesday, 
August 19, 1903, p. 3), does not seem to support this 
opinion: — 


NEGROES FIRE ON WHITES 


Kill One of a Party of Arkansas Farmers Who Had Come 

to Rescue a Kidnapped Child. 

Fort Smith, Ark., Aug. 18.— The kidnapping of a 
young white girl, and the killing of one of a posse that 
tried to rescue her, are the crimes charged against a 
party of eight negroes tonight fortified on Bruce’s 
Island, sixteen miles west of this city. It is feared 
their capture will lead to a bloody encounter. The 
negroes are said to be well armed. 

A few days ago two farmers, living near Wilson’s 
Rock, landed on Bruce’s Island in search of plums, 
and accidentally ran into a camp in which there were 
two negro men and a white girl about twelve years 
old. They made some inquiries about the girl, and 
the negroes said she was the daughter of a white man 
who was traveling with them, and who had gone to 
Fort Smith for provisions. 

The negroes would not let the girl take part in the 
conversation, and this aroused suspicion. A watch 
was kept on the negroes for two days, but no white 
man appeared. Monday afternoon a party of farmers 
decided to investigate the case, and as they neared the 
island were fired on by the negroes and one of the 
party, Roland by name, was killed. 

A sharp fight was kept up for some time, during 
which the girl escaped from the negroes and ran to the 
white men. She was so excited that she could not 
give any intelligent account of herself. She said, how¬ 
ever, that her father was not traveling with the ne¬ 
groes, but that she had been stolen from her home, 
near Fort Gibson, I. T. She has been taken to Mul- 
drew. 



THE NEGRO 


229 


Roland, the dead man, was a comparative stranger 
at Wilson’s Rock. Bruce’s Island is in the centre of 
the Arkansas River, contains about twenty-five acres, 
and is densely covered with timber and thick under¬ 
brush. 

Posses of citizens left today for the scene of the 
trouble from Fort Smith, Spiro, Muldrew, and Fort 
Gibson. There is much excitement around the island. 
One or two of the negroes are known to be desperate 
characters. 

Such lawlessness on the part of negroes and the 
rioting they incite may even occur in the very heart 
of any of the great Northern cities. What the papers 
please to call race riots are of frequent occurrence, and 
were the negroes out of the country, no such disgrace¬ 
ful scenes would be known to the country. Scores of 
them now occur at the National Capital (Washing¬ 
ton, D. C.), and I have been a witness to not a few of 
them. Here is a New York City example of the kind 
of trouble they give the people and the authorities. 
The Bronx is a part of the northeastern section of the 
city. (See the New York Daily Tribune , Sunday, 
August 16, 1903, p. 2, for the following news item) : — 

RACE WAR IN THE BRONX 


Negro Cuts White Man — Rioting Ensues, and Many Persons 

Are Hurt. 

In race rioting in The Bronx last night John Fin- 
nessy, forty years old, of No. 808 Jackson avenue, was 
stabbed in the abdomen, probably fatally, by a negro, 
who escaped. Fifty men with billiard cues and liquor 
bottles, and a dozen detectives, were chasing him at a 
late hour. The stabbing resulted in a race riot, and a 
hundred and fifty white men hunted negroes all night 
around the scene of the stabbing, at One Hundred 
and Fifty-fifth street and Washington avenue, bruis- 



230 


THE NEGRO 


ing and beating them and driving them into their 
homes or elsewhere, until the police became numerous 
enough to prevent further rioting. The reserves had 
to be turned out, as negroes and whites rushed to the 
scene to help their companions. 

Two unidentified negroes did some drinking in the 
saloon of Gustave Kanze, at the southwest corner of 
One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street and Washington 
avenue, about dusk last night, and had a quarrel with 
the proprietor about the payment of the last round. 
They settled, but were surly, and had to be put out. 
They threatened vengeance on the proprietor. They 
and a dozen other negroes were seen about 8:30 
o’clock opposite the saloon. Allen Price, of No. 10 
Weir Court, said he overheard threats to kill “ Gus,” 
which he believed to mean Kanze. One of the negroes 
went to the saloon door and called to Kanze to come 
outside. 


First Act of Violence 

Kanze was busy and did not leave, but Finnessy 
went to the sidewalk. The man who had called went 
back to the other negroes, and a knife was seen passed 
around among them. The first man took it and went 
back to Finnessy. He attacked the white man, stabbed 
him twice in the left arm, and then gave him a vicious 
dig in the abdomen, causing a wound six inches wide 
and two inches deep. Finnessy fell unconscious on 
the sidewalk, where he was left for a time, while fight¬ 
ing and rioting raged all about and around him. 

The men in the saloon felt that trouble was brew¬ 
ing when the negro called to Kanze to come out, and 
they seized billiard cues and glasses and bottles, and 
rushed to the street. The man who did the stabbing 
fled toward Jerome avenue, and a lot of the men went 
after him. 

“ Kill him ! Kill that nigger! Stone him ! Shoot 
him! ” were some of the shouts that went up from 
the pursuing crowd. 



THE NEGRO 


231 


Rioting Breaks Loose 

The dozen negroes who had accompanied Finnessy’s 
assailant were attacked by the mob of men, aided by 
a lot of white laborers of that neighborhood, who fled 
out of their homes with all sorts of weapons. They 
rushed at the negroes, beat them with stones, sticks, 
billiard-cues, glasses and bottles, cut a number of them 
and bruised all, and drove them into the darkness or 
to their homes. 

All the time women and children were fleeing to 
their own or neighbors’ homes, and whites and blacks 
were running out of their houses to help men of their 
own race. Many negroes live on One Hundred and 
Sixty-fifth street, near Washington avenue, and many 
of them ran out with knives and whatever they could 
use as weapons, the whites running out with similar 
weapons. None had revolvers, and no shots were 
fired, but this is believed to be caused by the fact that 
people about there are too poor to have pistols. 

The neighborhood was in a state of terror. Yells 
of brutal vengeance, of triumph, of terror, or pain, of 
anger and of command came from one side and the 
other as whites and negroes clashed and beat each 
other. Policeman Belton, of the Morrisania station, 
ran up with a club, but no one paid any attention to 
him, and he ran to a telephone, calling on his station 
for aid and the Lebanon Hospital for an ambulance 
and surgeon for Finnessy. Half a dozen detectives 
ran down from Morrisania station, but they saw such 
a hopeless riot before them that the reserves were 
asked for immediately, and the wagonful of men was 
run down as fast as the horses could draw it. 


Many Men Hurt Fighting 

Dozens of white and colored men were cut in the 
fight. Many cut negroes, with faces bleeding, were 
seen running into their homes near by. After a little 
time they found themselves so inferior in numbers that 
they retreated, and the white men, yelling triumph- 




232 


THE NEGRO 


antly, fell on them bodily and bruised and cut them 
until all fled in terror. 

Just as the last of the white men were returning 
from the chase, four negroes, who knew nothing of the 
trouble, walked into Kanze’s saloon. The white men 
rushed at the negroes, beating them with fists and 
clubs, and when they saw the police coming bolted the 
doors. The police broke in the door and rescued the 
colored men. They kept the white men off until they 
escorted the negroes out of sight. 

Captain Byrne, of the Morrisania station, sent out a 
squad of men to capture the man who stabbed Fin- 
nessy and prevent any harm coming to him. Finnessy 
was taken from the sidewalk, where he lay bleeding 
during the rioting, and taken to the Lebanon Hospital. 
He was at once placed on the operating table, but his 
chances were regarded as slim. 

Charles Jackson, alleged slayer of Charles Roxbury, 
the tea-taster, is supposed to have belonged to the 
same crowd of negroes which assailed Finnessy. 


Note 5. Page 139. 

All sorts of opinions, and all sorts of actions have 
been taken in the matter of lynching, and I feel that 
the value of the present volume will be greatly en¬ 
hanced by recording a few of the most important ones 
in this Appendix. Some of them will illustrate what 
Thomas has to say in his work, “ The American 
Negro.” 

The following is a cut-and-dried opinion by a mem¬ 
ber of the Supreme Court of the United States. Any 
ordinarily educated young man of twenty-five might 
have written it out, and expressed such an opinion quite 
as well. Lynching will go on in spite of such high legal 
hum-drum. I clip this from the New York Daily Trib¬ 
une of Monday, August 17, 1903, p. 7. It runs thus: — 



THE NEGRO 


233 


THE CRIME OF LYNCHING 


Plain Words by Justice Brewer of United States Supreme 

Court. 

The following article by Justice Brewer on the crime 
of lynching will appear in the current issue of Leslie’s 
Weekly. In it Justice Brewer sets forth more fully the 
views he has already made public in regard to lynch¬ 
ing as a blot on our civilization and what can be done 
to stay the epidemic of the crime. The full text of the 
article is as follows: 

“ Our government recently forwarded to Russia a 
petition in respect to alleged atrocities committed 
upon the Jews. That government, as might have been 
expected, unwilling to have its internal affairs a mat¬ 
ter of consideration by other governments, declined 
to receive the petition. If, instead of so doing, it had 
replied that it would put a stop to all such atrocities 
when this government put a stop to lynchings, what 
could we have said ? 

“ No one can be blind to the fact that lynching is 
becoming altogether too common, and presents a 
serious question for the consideration of thoughtful 
lovers of their country. There have been two kinds 
of lynch-law, and it is well to distinguish between the 
two. In San Francisco, for instance, many years ago 
the better citizens became convinced that the of¬ 
ficials were in league with gamblers and other wrong¬ 
doers — hence, crime was rampant, neither life nor 
property being sacred. Deliberately they came to¬ 
gether, organized, and in effect took possession of the 
government, administering law promptly and severely; 
with the results — as claimed — that crime was 
checked and order re-established. Whatever may be 
said of such a movement, it is not like the lynch-law 
that now prevails. It was more in the nature of a 
revolution, by which the regularly-elected officers 
were put out of office and a new government estab¬ 
lished. But the lynching which now attracts atten- 



234 


THE NEGRO 


tion is the temporary uprising of a mob, called into 
being by the commission of some terrible crime, the 
perpetrator of which it seeks to punish. 

Barbarity of Savage Torture 

“ It is well to look the matter fairly in the face. 
Many good men join in these uprisings, horrified at 
the atrocity of the crime and eager for swift and sum¬ 
mary punishment. Of course, they violate the law 
themselves, but rely on the public sentiment behind 
them for escape from punishment. Many of these 
lynchings are accompanied by the horrible barbarities 
of savage torture, and all that can be said in palliation 
is the atrocity of the offences which led up to them. 
For a time they were confined largely to the South, 
but that section of the country no longer has a mon¬ 
opoly. The chief offence which causes these lynch¬ 
ings has been the rape of white women by colored 
men. No words can be found too strong to describe 
the atrocity of such a crime. It is no wonder that the 
community is excited. Men would disgrace their man¬ 
hood if they were not. And if a few lynchings had 
put a stop to the offence, society might have condoned 
such breaches of its law; but the fact is, if we may 
credit the reports, the crime, instead of diminishing, 
is on the increase. The black beast (for only a beast 
would be guilty of such an offence) seems to be not 
deterred thereby. More than that, as might be ex¬ 
pected, lynching for such atrocious crimes is no longer 
confined to them, but is being resorted to for other 
offences. 

“ That lynching is a blot on our civilization no one 
questions, and European nations are pointing to it as 
evidence of a lower civilization. Shall we let this go 
on and thus practically admit that, in many respects, 
this is no longer a government of laws, but partly one 
of mobs? We seldom hear of lynchings across the 
waters; somehow or other it is an epidemic which pre¬ 
vails in America, but not in Europe. We all know 
that punishment of crime justly and promptly admin- 


THE NEGRO 


235 


istered by legal methods tells of a higher condition of 
society than the wild outcries and hasty judgment of 
mobs. Take the case of the assassin of our late much¬ 
loved President; how much more it speaks for our 
civilization that in an orderly way, before a legal tri¬ 
bunal, the assassin was tried, having the benefit of 
counsel, and thereafter put to death in accordance 
with the dictates of law, than if an angry mob had 
torn him from the officers of the law and tortured him 
to death. 


To Stay Epidemic of Crime 

“ What can be done to stay this epidemic of lynch¬ 
ing? One thing is the establishment of a greater con¬ 
fidence in the summary and certain punishment of the 
criminal. Men are afraid of the law’s delays and the 
uncertainty of its results. Not that they doubt the in¬ 
tegrity of the judges, but they know that the law 
abounds with technical rules, and that appellate courts 
will often reverse a judgment of conviction for a dis¬ 
regard of such rules, notwithstanding a full belief in 
the guilt of the accused. If all were certain that the 
guilty ones would be promptly tried and punished, the 
inducement to lynch would be largely taken away. In 
an address which I delivered before the American Bar 
Association at Detroit some years since, I advocated 
doing away with appeals in criminal cases. It did not 
meet the favor of the association, but I still believe in 
its wisdom. For nearly a hundred years there was 
no appeal from the judgment of conviction of criminal 
cases in our federal courts, and no review, except in a 
few cases in which, two judges sitting, a difference of 
opinion on a question of law was certified to the Su¬ 
preme Court. In England the rule has been that there 
was no appeal in criminal cases, although a question 
of doubt might be reserved by the presiding judge for 
the consideration of his brethren. The Hon. E. J. 
Phelps, who was Minister to England during Mr. 
Cleveland’s first administration, once told me that 
while he was there only two cases were so reserved. 


236 


THE NEGRO 


Does anyone doubt that justice was fully administered 
by the English courts? 

“ Opponents of this suggestion fall back on the an¬ 
cient maxim that ‘ It is better that ninety-nine guilty 
men escape than that one innocent man be punished.’ 
Maxims, like other things, are good in their places, 
but, like other things, may often be overworked. 
When criminal trials were conducted as they were in 
England a century and a half ago — defendant without 
counsel, trial with little publicity and the press an un¬ 
known factor — that maxim was good enough; but to¬ 
day, when a prisoner is guaranteed counsel, when 
trials are viewed by throngs of spectators, and the 
press makes public every detail, it seems well to as 
often consider President Grant’s direction, ‘ Let no 
guilty man escape.’ 

Prompt Action by Courts 

“ Further, laws have been passed requiring an im¬ 
mediate convening of courts and giving priority of 
hearing to certain civil cases deemed of public mo¬ 
ment. Why may not direction be given to the pre¬ 
siding judge of the proper court, when such an atro¬ 
cious crime has been committed as those giving rise 
to lynchings, to immediately convene that court and 
put the accused at once on trial? If this were done 
and no appeal were allowed, would not the community 
be more confident that full punishment would be 
promptly meted out? If it be said that under the haste 
of such a trial some innocent men might be punished, 
a sufficient reply would seem to be that justice will be 
more likely done than when a mob takes the law into 
its own hands. If it were deemed necessary to guard 
against even a possibility of injustice, the statute 
might require that the testimony be taken down by a 
stenographer and at once presented to the Supreme 
Court, and if, in its judgment, not that some technical 
rules of law have been disregarded, but that an inno¬ 
cent man has been convicted, authorize it to stay the 
execution and grant a new trial. 


THE NEGRO 


237 


“ It is said, in extenuation of lynching in case of 
rape, that it is an additional cruelty to the unfortu¬ 
nate victim to compel her to go upon the witness stand 
and in the presence of a mixed audience tell the story 
of her wrongs, especially when she may be subject to 
cross-examination by overzealous counsel. I do not 
belittle this matter, but it must be remembered that 
often the unfortunate victim never lives to tell the 
story of her wrongs; that if she does survive, she must 
tell it to some, and the whole community knows the 
fact. Even in the court-room any high-minded judge 
will stay counsel from any unnecessary cross-examina¬ 
tion ; and, finally, if any lawyer should attempt it, the 
community may treat him as an outcast. I can but 
think that if the community felt that the criminal 
would certainly receive the punishment he deserves, 
and receive it soon, the eagerness for lynching would 
disappear, and mobs, whose gatherings too often mean 
not merely the destruction of jails and other property, 
but also the loss of innocent lives, would greatly di¬ 
minish in number. 

“ One thing is certain — the tendency of lynching is 
to undermine respect for the law, and unless it be 
checked we need not be astonished if it be resorted 
to for all kinds of offences, and oftentimes innocent 
men suffer for wrongs committed by others.” 

Here is another (see The New York Evening Journal, 
Monday, August 10, 1903, p. 6) : — 

LYNCHING IS ANARCHY, SAYS ROOSEVELT 

President in Letter to Governor Durbin Praises Recent 

Action — Wants Quicker Justice. 

Hattiesburg, Miss., Aug. 10.— Amos Jones, a negro, 
was lynched by a mob for shooting and mortally 
wounding Jailer M. M. Sexton. 

President Roosevelt has sent the following letter to 
Governor Durbin, of Indiana: — 


0 






238 


THE NEGRO 


“ Permit me to thank you. as an American citizen, 
for the admirable way in which you have vindicated 
the majesty of the law by your recent action in ref¬ 
erence to lynching. 

“ Mob violence is simply one form of anarchy, and 
anarchy is now, as it always has been, the hand¬ 
maiden and forerunner of tyranny. 

“ All thoughtful men must feel the gravest alarm 
over the growth of lynching in this country, and es¬ 
pecially over the peculiarly hideous forms so often 
taken by mob violence when colored men are the vic¬ 
tims — on which occasions the mob seems to lay most 
weight, not on the crime, but on the color of the 
criminal. 


Criminal Forfeits Sympathy 

“ In a certain proportion of these cases the man 
lynched has been guilty of a crime horrible beyond 
description, a crime so horrible that as far as he him¬ 
self is concerned, he has forfeited the right to any 
kind of sympathy whatsoever. 

“ The feeling of all good citizens that such a hideous 
crime shall not be hideously punished by mob vio¬ 
lence is due not in the least to sympathy for the crim¬ 
inal, but to a very lively sense of the train of dreadful 
consequences which follow the course taken by the 
mob in exacting inhuman vengeance for an inhuman 
wrong. 

“ In such cases, moreover, it is well to remember 
that the criminal not merely sins against humanity 
in inexpiable and unpardonable fashion, but sins par¬ 
ticularly against his own race, and does them a wrong 
far greater than any white man can possibly do them. 
Therefore, in such cases the colored people through¬ 
out the land should in every possible way show their 
belief that they, more than all others in the commun¬ 
ity, are horrified at the commission of such a crime, 
and are peculiarly concerned in taking every possible 
measure to prevent its recurrence and to bring the 
criminal to immediate justice. The slightest lack of 



THE NEGRO 


239 


vigor, either in denunciation of the crime or in bring¬ 
ing the criminal to justice, is itself unpardonable. 

Swift Justice Required 

“ Every effort should be made under the law to ex¬ 
pedite the proceedings of justice in the case of such 
an awful crime. But it cannot be necessary in order 
to accomplish this to deprive any citizen of those 
fundamental rights to be heard in his own defence 
which are so dear to us all and which lie at the root 
of our liberty. 

“ It certainly ought to be possible by the proper 
administration of the laws to secure swift vengeance 
upon the criminal, and the best and immediate efforts 
of all legislators, judges and citizens should be ad¬ 
dressed to securing such reforms in our legal proce¬ 
dure as to leave no vestige of excuse for those mis¬ 
guided men who undertake to reap vengeance through 
violent methods. 

“We must show that the law is adequate to deal 
with crime by freeing it from every vestige of tech¬ 
nicality and delay. 

“It is, of course, inevitable that where vengeance 
is taken by a mob it should frequently light on inno¬ 
cent people; and the wrong done in such a case to 
the individual is one for which there is no remedy. 
But even where the real criminal is reached the wrong 
done by the mob to the community itself is well nigh 
as great. Especially is this true where the lynching 
is accompanied with torture. 

Participation Degrades 

“ There are certain hideous sights which when once 
seen can never be wholly erased from the mental 
retina. The mere fact of having seen them implies 
degradation. This is a thousandfold stronger when, in¬ 
stead of merely seeing the deed, the man has partici¬ 
pated in it. 

“ Whoever, in any part of our country, has ever 
taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by 



240 


THE NEGRO 


the dreadful torture of fire must forever after have 
the awful spectacle of his own handwork seared into 
his brain and soul. He can never again be the same 
man. 

“ Every violent man in the community is encour¬ 
aged by every case of lynching in which the lynchers 
go unpunished, to himself take the law into his own 
hands whenever it suits his own convenience. In the 
same way, the use of torture by the mob in certain 
cases is sure to spread until it is applied more or less 
indiscriminately in other cases. 

“ The spirit of lawlessness grows with what it feeds 
on, and when mobs, with impunity, lynch criminals 
for one crime, they are certain to begin to lynch real 
or alleged criminals for other causes. 

The Nation Will Suffer 

“ The nation, like the individual, cannot commit a 
crime with impunity. If we are guilty of lawlessness 
and brutal violence, whether our guilt consists in 
active participation therein or in mere connivance and 
encouragement, we shall assuredly suffer later. 

“ The corner-stone of this Republic, as of all free 
governments, is respect for and obedience to the law. 
Where we permit the law to be defied or evaded, 
whether by rich man or poor man, by black man or 
white, we are by just so much weakening the bonds 
of our civilization and increasing the chances of its 
overthrow, and of the substitution therefore of a sys¬ 
tem in which there shall be violent alternation of an¬ 
archy and tyranny. Sincerely yours, 

“Theodore Roosevelt. 

“ Hon. Winfield T. Durbin, Governor of Indiana, 
Indianapolis, Ind.” 

Six days after the above high opinion had been 
published in nearly every newspaper in the United 
States, and one would have thought that the practice 
of lynching would have been stayed for a week at least, 
the following encouraging news came to light, having 


THE NEGRO 


241 


been published in the New York Daily Tribune (Sun¬ 
day, August 16, 1903, p. 4). It was given to its read¬ 
ers in the following manner, to wit: — 

WANTS BLACKS KEPT OUT 
Indiana Editor Starts Movement Against Negroes. 

Laporte, Ind., Aug. 15.— To prevent the settlement 
of any negro in Northwestern Indiana is the object 
of a movement begun by A. J. Bowser, editor of The 
Chesterton Tribune, in which he is finding much sym¬ 
pathy and support. The county jail at Valparaiso was 
under heavy guard last Sunday, and the streets were 
filled with crowds of angry farmers and Normal School 
students clamoring for the life of a negro tramp who 
on the previous day had assaulted and dangerously 
injured the wife of a farmer in Porter County. The 
counsels of cool men prevailed, and no attack was 
made on the jail, but the intense excitement extended 
through the country districts, and did not subside for 
several days. This state of affairs led to the sug¬ 
gestion of Mr. Bowser. 

Had the negro never been in the country, no such 
practice as this would have come in vogue. 


A DOUBLE LYNCHING EXPECTED 


Mob in Wyoming Threatens Jail Where Two Murderers Are 

Confined. 

Cheyenne, Wyo., Aug. 15.— Advices from Lander 
this morning indicated that the town would probably 
be the scene of a double lynching, with James Keffer 
and James Dollard the victims. A large crowd of 
excited men gathered about the Lander jail last night, 
and for a time it looked as though the prison would 
be stormed at once. The mob was armed with rifles 
and revolvers, and two or three men carried ropes. 

After a brief consultation among the leaders, how¬ 
ever, the crowd apparently dispersed. Since then, 
16 





24 2 


THE NEGRO 


though, men have been seen lurking near the jail, and 
it is believed that the dispersing of the mob was only 
a ruse to throw the officers off their guard. It is 
feared an attempt will be made tonight to take Dollar 
and Keffer from jail and hang them. Only the regu¬ 
lar guard is at the jail. 

Dollard killed Frank Bryant in a saloon on Wednes¬ 
day night, after having brained Ross Stringer with a 
board in the street. He was a rough rider, and was 
“ shooting up ” the town at the time. Keffer was con¬ 
victed of murdering William Marrin, a stage tender 
on the Lander-Rawlins line, two years ago, and was 
sentenced to be hanged, but a stay of execution was 
granted pending an appeal to the Supreme Court. 


One Negro Lynched; After More 

Natchez, Miss., Aug. 15.— Bee Washington, a negro, 
who killed Stanley Wood, eighteen years old, a clerk 
at the Line Store, which divides this State from Loui¬ 
siana, last Monday, has been captured by a posse at 
Red River Landing, taken to Tarbert, a river point 
near the scene of the crime, and, it is reported, lynched. 
The posse is in pursuit of several negroes who sup¬ 
plied Washington with money, clothes and provisions. 

It is by no means difficult to find men holding the 
highest positions in the Christian Church who are in 
favor of lynching negroes, as the following clipping 
from the New York Times (September 18, 1903, page 1), 
will vouch for : — 

BISHOP’S VIEW OF LYNCHING 

Arkansas Ecclesiastic, Formerly an Ohioan, Thinks No Other 

Remedy Adequate to the Crime. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Cleveland, Sept. 17.— Bishop William M. Brown, of 
the Arkansas Diocese of the Episcopal Church, for- 




THE NEGRO 


243 


merly an Ohioan, was in the city today en route to 
Washington, D. C., to attend the Missionary Council 
of the Episcopal Church, and the convention of the 
American House of Bishops. Speaking of the race 
problem, he expressed himself quite plainly. 

“ While I do not justify lynching, I can find no other 
remedy adequate to suppress the crime for which this 
has been made a punishment by the people of the 
South,” he said. 

“ I am a Northern man, and used to look with hor¬ 
ror on lynching, but since I have been South, my eyes 
have been opened. Imprisonment does no good. 

“ I am of the opinion that it would be well to leave 
the solution of the negro question to the Southern 
people; they know best what to do. 

“ The enfranchisement of the negro has been a seri¬ 
ous mistake. Very few of them have any convictions 
and their votes are cast as a rule for the men who pay 
the most money.” 

Such opinions, coming from the Christian Church, 
stirred up all kinds of bad blood, especially as only 
a few days before another “ pastor ” had expressed 
himself to the same effect. The following from the 
same newspaper stands in evidence of this (Monday, 
September 7, 1903, p. 2) : — 

SCORE PRO-LYNCHING PASTOR 


The Rev. Mr. Hillyer of Macon Gets Letters Suggesting That 

He Ought to be Hanged. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Macon, Ga., Sept. 6.— The sermon of the Rev. J. I. 
Hillyer, a prominent Baptist minister, in which he at¬ 
tempted to show that there is Biblical authority for 
lynch-law, has resulted in his receiving abusive letters 
from the Northern and Western States. Some of these 
letters are couched in language that approaches a vio¬ 
lation of the postal laws. 



244 


THE NEGRO 


A Cincinnati man, who signs himself “ Reader,” 
writes: 

“ Inclosed find clipping from The Cincinnati Enquirer, 
which is the production of the very lowest type of 
a Southern man, and the producer is not worthy to 
be called reverend. I suppose it’s also God’s law for 
you dirty so-called ministers to go around breaking 
up families, as you have done for years, and are still 
doing. Any one who will mix God’s law with the 
law made by one of your type should not be allowed 
to preach to decent congregations.” 

K. D. Marshen, of Niles, Mich., writes: 

“ A man who will use the Bible to prove lynching 
is right should be himself lynched, and hell is now full 
of better men than the minister who would preach 
such a sermon.” 

Another, bearing a Houston, Ill., date, denounces 
Mr. Hillyer as a negro hater, and declares that his ser¬ 
mon is calculated to inspire mob law, not only 
throughout the South, but in every State in the Union. 

Referring to the letters, Dr. Hillyer says: “ There 
is no doubt of the truth of every declaration I made 
in that sermon, and I stand squarely upon every ut¬ 
terance in that pulpit that night.” 

Still the broil is kept up. Negroes here, negroes 
there, negroes everywhere. Wherever the}' - settle, 
trouble, turmoil and crime are all immediately in evi¬ 
dence. Their very presence will often depreciate 
property, even if they do not come to commit rape 
and murder, steal and lie. The following clipping, 
taken from the same paper and page as above, amply 
demonstrate this: — 

OBJECT TO NEGRO NEIGHBOR 
Residents of a Baltimore Street Plan to Force Him to Move. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Baltimore, Md., Sept. 6.— The white residents in a 
block in East Monument street were holding indig- 



THE NEGRO 


245 


nation conferences today to arrange for protesting 
against the occupation by a negro coachman of Charles 
E. McLane, Assistant Treasurer of the Mercantile 
Trust and Deposit Company, of a house in the block. 
The coachman and his family, a wife and seven chil¬ 
dren, have moved in, and the white property-owners 
are devising a plan to move the negroes out. 

A delegation will visit Mr. McLane to-morrow and 
demand the removal of the coachman to another neigh¬ 
borhood, and, should he refuse, a mass-meeting will 
be held to express publicly the indignation of the 
neighborhood, which is populated entirely by white 
people, most of whom own their houses. Mr. McLane 
recently bought the property occupied by the negro, 
who then moved in. 

It is likely that Mr. McLane will have the coach¬ 
man move. There has been considerable agitation in 
several sections of the city over the encroachments 
of the negroes which has greatly depreciated the value 
of property. 

Again, General Fitzhugh Lee, a typical Southern 
man, who fought for the Confederates during the 
Civil War, held an important command in the Spanish- 
American War, and after it, was American Consul at 
Havana, Cuba, has expressed a brief opinion on the 
point. It was published in the same paper as above 
on an earlier date (July 29, 1903, page 1), and reads 
thus:— 

FITZHUGH LEE ON LYNCHING 

Nobody Believes in it, He Says, but One of Its Objects Is 

Worth Considering. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Kansas City, Mo., July 28.— Gen. Fitzhugh Lee was 
in Kansas City today on his way to lecture in Beloit, 
Kan. 

“ I don’t believe in lynching,” said the General, 
when that subject was brought up. “ Nobody be- 



246 


THE NEGRO 


lieves in it. One of the objects attained by lynching, 
however, is seldom considered. If a man, say a negro, 
maltreats a woman, perhaps some very dear relative 
of yours, he has got to be killed or arrested. If this 
negro is arrested after his crime and is brought into 
the court-room, the woman, the one who has suffered 
already, is the principal witness. She must appear 
and, perhaps under the cross-examination of lawyers, 
she must relate even the details of the maltreatment, 
thus subjecting herself to great humiliation.” 


Note 6. Page 150. 

Women who have been assaulted by negroes are 
invariably in favor of their destruction, or even some¬ 
times the torture, of the assaulter. The following in 
connection with the case of Mrs. Labouisse, stands in 
evidence of this. It is from the New York Times of 
November 10, 1903, (p. 1). It was published thus: — 

WOMAN DEFENDS LYNCHERS 

Mrs. Labouisse Was Glad That Her Assailant Was Killed. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Pass Christian, Miss., Nov. 9.— Mrs. Peter La¬ 
bouisse, the young matron of New York, who was at¬ 
tacked last Thursday by Sam Adams, a negro, who 
was soon afterward lynched, spent today in this re¬ 
sort. Although not injured in the struggle, Mrs. La- 
bouisse’s nerves are still completely unstrung. She 
has remained in her room since the experience. 

“ It was only when I heard that that wretched crea¬ 
ture was hanged that I began to experience a feeling 
of relief,” said Mrs. Labouisse today. “ I was so glad 
that the people had taken the law into their own 
hands. There was no doubt as to his identity. I don’t 
see how they could possibly have acted otherwise than 
they did.” 




THE NEGRO 


247 


This case needs no further comment here. There 
is not one woman in five hundred who is strong 
enough to resist, in a lonely place, by herself, the per¬ 
sistent attack of a burly, brutal, powerful and persis¬ 
tent negro. Unless aid comes quickly, the damnable 
fiend is certain to be successful and overpower his in¬ 
tended victim, and consummate the rape. 


Note 7. Page 153. 

Over ten years ago (The Chicago Tribune, May 28, 
1893, p. 27), United States Senator John J. Ingalls 
was heartily in favor of compulsory expatriation of the 
negroes of this country. In the place cited he says: — 

DEPORTATION AT ANY PRICE 

If this condition is the inevitable consequence of the 
contact of the two races, separation, voluntary or com¬ 
pulsory, at whatever cost, is the dictate of wisdom, 
morality, and national safety. If reconciliation upon 
the basis of justice and equal rights is impossible, then 
migration to Africa should be the policy of the future. 
To that fertile continent from whence they came they 
would return, not as aliens and strangers, but to the 
manner born. To their savage kindred who still 
swarm in its solitudes they would bring the alphabet, 
the Declaration of Independence, and the Bible. 
Emancipated from the traditions of bondage, from the 
habit of obedience and imitation, from the knowledge 
of its vices, which is the only instruction of a strong 
race to a weaker, the African might develop along his 
axis of growth and Ethiopia stretch out her hand to 
God. 

The negro might not want to go. He is a native. 
He is a citizen. He has the right to stay. So he has 
the right to vote. He has the right to life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness. He has been deprived 
of them all. Only the right of domicile remains. He 



248 


THE NEGRO 


could, perhaps, submit to the loss of this with the same 
resignation which has accompanied his surrender of 
the rest. There are vague indications of cleavage. In 
some regions the inertia is being overcome. Com¬ 
munities are pervaded by aimless agitations like those 
which preceded the flight of the Tartar tribe across 
the desert. The “ exodus ” is an intimation of what 
may follow. The feasibility of this colonization of 
Africa, the cost and conditions of a migration so pro¬ 
digious, its effect upon the civilization of the two con¬ 
tinents and the destiny of the two races, are subjects 
too vast and momentous for consideration here. 

John J. Ingalls. 


Note 8. Page 159. 

Fortunately there are -many, many people in this 
country who entertain very different opinions than 
those held by Mr. W. P. Garrison. Hundreds upon 
hundreds of negroes in this country would leave it 
now, were the way only properly opened to them. 
Years after Senator Ingalls published what is here 
reprinted in Note 7, and years after Mr. Garrison 
wrote me the letter he did (Chapter VIII., p. 159), 
this question of deporting the negroes now in the 
United States is as warmly advocated as ever. In sup¬ 
port of this fact, I here reproduce the admirable ad¬ 
dress of Mr. John Temple Graves, as it was published 
in the Neiv York Times of Friday, September 4, 1903, 
(p. 3). It runs as follows : — 

FOR A NEGRO REPUBLIC 


John Temple Graves Advocates One in Philippines — Would 
Have No White Man Vote There — Hopeless to Solve 
Problem Here — Blacks Still Slaves. 

Chicago, Sept. 3.— In an address on “ The Problem 
of the Races ” before the forty-eighth convocation of 
the University of Chicago, John Temple Graves advo- 





THE NEGRO 


249 


cated as a solution of the race problem the establish¬ 
ment in the Philippines of a negro State, where no 
white man should be allowed to vote. He said in part: 

“ The experiment of political equality has had thirty- 
eight years of trial, backed by the power of the Fed¬ 
eral Government, and by the sympathy of the world. 
It has failed. From the beginning to the hour that 
holds us, it has failed. 

“ The races are wider apart and more antagonistic 
than they were in 18G5. There is less of sympathy, 
and more of tension than the races have known since 
the terrible days of reconstruction made chaos in the 
South. 

“ Four decades after his emancipation, the negro is 
in point of fact less a freeman and infinitely less a citi¬ 
zen than he was in 1868. The tumult of the times 
about us proclaims the continued existence and the 
unreconciled equations of the problem that he makes, 
and in the common judgment of mankind the legend 
failure is written large and lowering above the tot¬ 
tering fabric of his civil rights. 

“ A Chinese wall of prejudice shuts out the South 
on this question from the sympathy of the American 
people, and although fraternal platitudes may cross 
it, and political affiliations may scale it, and commer¬ 
cial interchange may run its electric wires under and 
above it, and although but recently military loyalty 
has seemed to shatter it, this wall stands, in the sight 
of God and of nations, and hedges in the South as a 
separate and peculiar people, hindered with misappre¬ 
hension, held aloof in prejudice, and fretted by a criti¬ 
cism which, if sometimes founded in philanthropy, is 
too often expressed in passion and answered in bit¬ 
terness. 

“ And so long as the problem stands the old slave 
States of the South, unwillingly, protestingly, despair¬ 
ingly, and yet inevitably, must be and will be the con¬ 
tinuing gap in the magnificent line of our National 
unity. 


250 


THE NEGRO 


“ It is a problem of moral decay. It demoralizes 
politics. Wherever a black supremacy is threatened 
through a black majority, the black ballot is strangled 
without reserve in the black hands that hold it against 
the safety of the State. This is wrong. It is illegal. 
It is monstrous. But it is true. 

“ Never, never in a thousand years will the negro, 
North or South, be allowed to govern in this Republic, 
even where his majorities are plain. We might as 
well fix that fact in our minds to stay. No statute 
can eradicate, no public opinion can remove, no armed 
force can overthrow the inherent, invincible, inde¬ 
structible, and, if you will, the unscrupulous capacity 
and determination of the Anglo-Saxon race to rule. 

“ In a land of light and liberty, in an age of enlight¬ 
enment and law, the women of the South are prisoners 
to danger and to fear. While your women may walk 
from suburb to suburb and from township to town¬ 
ship, without escort and without alarm, there is not 
a woman of the South, wife or daughter, who would 
be permitted or who would dare to walk at twilight 
unguarded through the residence streets of a populous 
town or to ride the outside highways at midday. 

“ The terror of the twilight deepens with the dark¬ 
ness, and in the rural regions every farmer leaves his 
home with apprehension in the morning and thanks 
God when he comes from the fields at evening to find 
all well with the women of his home. 

“Here, then, the issues — Unity of the Republic, 
material development, purity of politics, political inde¬ 
pendence, respect for the ballot, reverence for the 
Constitution, the safety of our homes, the sanctity of 
our women, the supremacy of law, the sacredness of 
justice, the integrity of race, and the unity of the 
Church. 

“ There he stands, that helpless and unfortunate in¬ 
ferior. For his sake, the one difference has widened 
between the sections of our common country. Over 
his black body we have shed rivers of blood and treas- 


THE NEGRO 


251 


P 


ure to emphasize our separate convictions of his 
destiny. 

“ And yet as the crimson tide rolls away into the 
years, we realize that all this blood and treasure and 
travail was spent in vain, and that the negro, whom 
a million Americans died to free, is in present bond and 
future promise still a slave, whipped by circumstance, 
trodden under foot by iron and ineradicable prejudice; 
shut out forever from the opportunities which are the 
heritage of liberty, and holding in his black hand the 
hollow parchment of his franchise as a freeman looks 
through a slave's eyes at the impassable barriers which 
imprison him forever within the progress and achieve¬ 
ment of a dominant and all-conquering race. 

“ Separation of the races is the way — the only way. 
Is the expense appalling? Is the cost prohibitive? 
England again offers an example. England, our 
mother country — England, next to ourselves, the 
greatest and most enlightened Government under the 
sun— England has just put its hand into its pocket to 
expend $500,000,000 in order to buy out the Irish land¬ 
lords and to heal the otherwise incurable running sore 
of Irish discontent. 

“ It may be that the islands of the sea were placed 
by Providence in our keeping to furnish an answer 
to the problem of the times. 

“ No reasonable or considerate plan would call for 
the wholesale or summary deportation of the negro. 
With his consent, and with Governmental aid, the 
movement might proceed slowly and with considera¬ 
tion. If only the vessels that brought foreigners to 
our shores from 1S80 to 1885 had carried back to 
Africa as many negroes as they brought immigrants 
to us, not a single black man, woman, or child would 
have been left in the country in 1885! 

“ The superb inducement to the negro would be 
found in the freedom, the individuality, and the op- 
oortunity of an independent commonwealth, in which 
le would be freed from the unequal competition of a 



252 


THE NEGRO 


superior people, and given a chance to develop a char¬ 
acter, and to demonstrate the merits of his leaders and 
the capacities of the race. Let no white man vote in 
the negro State to harass the negro's councils, and let 
no negro vote in any other State than his own. 

“ The chief opposition in the South would rest upon 
the misapprehension which you doubtless share, that 
the negro is indispensable to the agriculture and labor 
conditions of that section. That was once true. It 
is no longer true. 

“ I state here for the first time a fact which will be 
as surprising to the South as it is to you. The negro 
no longer makes the staple or cereal crops of the 
South! The cotton of Texas, of Louisiana, and of 
Mississippi is made chiefly by the white man, and not 
by the negro! The negro is no longer an industrial *■ 
necessity. This fact is from the census. 

“ For half a hundred years we have wrangled and 
fought and bled and died about this black man from 
Africa! Is the wrangle worth its fearful cost? Shall 
the great Northern section of our common country 
always turn its hand against the great Southern sec¬ 
tion of our country? Shall the young American of 
the North steel his heart against the young American 
of the South over an alien’s cause? 

“ I appeal for Caucasian unity. I appeal for the im¬ 
perial destiny of our mighty race. This is our coun¬ 
try. We made it. We molded it. We control it, and 
we always will. We have done great things. We have 
mighty things yet to do. 

“ The negro is an accident — an unwilling, a blame¬ 
less, but an unwholesome, unwelcome, helpless, un- 
assimilable element in our civilization. He is not 
made for our times. He is not framed to share in the 
duty and the destiny which he perplexes and beclouds. 

“ Let us put him kindly and humanely out of the 
way. Let us give him a better chance than he has 
ever had in history, and let us have done with him.” 


THE NEGRO 


253 


In January, 1890, and through several numbers of 
that year, The Open Court, of Chicago, published a con¬ 
tribution on this subject from the pen of a no less 
distinguished American philosopher and world-re¬ 
nowned biologist than the late Prof. E. D. Cope. It 
also published several rejoinders from his critics on 
the question. All of the contributions I have before me 
at the present writing, they having been kindly fur¬ 
nished by Dr. Paul Carus, the editor of The Open Court. 
So valuable do I consider these articles, that it would 
give me great pleasure materially to add to the value 
of my present work by reproducing them here. They 
are rather too long, however, so I must content my¬ 
self by giving only one of the replies of Professor 
Cope, and a reply from one of his critics. 

In the issue of February 20, 1890,— fourteen years 
ago — appeared the following two of the series to 
which I refer : — 

THE RETURN OF THE NEGROES TO AFRICA 

To the Editor of The Open Court: 

Mr. Frederick May Holland has replied to my article 
on the proposed removal of the African race, in the 
United States, to Africa, citing various objections to 
such a course. These objections are well known to the 
present writer. He is not a Democrat in politics, and 
was in the days of slavery, and still is, of anti-slavery 
opinions. He appreciates the amiable traits of the 
African, and, on the ground of personal convenience, 
prefers him as a servant to most representatives of 
the white race. He does not forget his great services 
during the war to both the South and the North. He 
is aware that no citizen can be banished under the Con¬ 
stitution on account of race or color, nor does he lay 
any stress on the matter of color. Many of the East¬ 
ern representatives of the Indo-European race are 
black, and some of the African negroes are very light. 
It is a question of race, and not of color. 

But all this is subordinate to two questions which 


254 


THE NEGRO 


are, as it seems to the present writer, of much greater 
importance, especially to a nation living under a re¬ 
publican form of government. These questions I have 
stated to be: 1st, that of negro rule; and 2d, that of 
negro mixture of race. 

When a man has a service to perform to his kind, it 
is essential that he shall observe the physical condi¬ 
tions which are necessary to the performance of it. 

A teacher or preacher who should so live as to be 
in continual ill health, could not be said to be per¬ 
forming his duty. A judge, attorney, or member of 
Congress who should eat or drink himself sick as a 
habit, would not long retain his position. 

The people of the United States have to show , 
mankind how order may be conserved consistently 
with the greatest amount of personal liberty. This 
we think is accomplished under our form of govern¬ 
ment. But all races are not equally capable of sus¬ 
taining this relation between order and freedom. In 
fact, what we know as the inferior races, the Mon¬ 
golian and African, have never made successful at¬ 
tempts to sustain republican forms of government. 
The negro has conspicuously failed in all but abso¬ 
lute governments, whatever they may be in name. It 
is not certain that all the white race are capable of 
self-government at present. The neighboring so-called 
republic of Mexico is really a military despotism, al¬ 
though I believe that the material for a republic is 
there, and that at some future day that country will 
be in fact what it is now only in name. 

The United States have made laws excluding the 
Chinese from our country. We have assumed the 
right to do this for our own protection. On the whole, 
the present writer approves of these laws, although 
some of the reasons assigned in support of them are 
not good, and the maltreatment of particular Chinese 
is a stain on the name of our country. 

Many nations have at different periods of history re- 
moved parts of their populations outside of their bor- 



THE NEGRO 


255 


ders for various reasons. It has seldom, if ever, 
occurred, so far as I know, that an equivalent for loss 
of property was granted in such cases, and as is pro¬ 
posed in the case of the removal of the American ne¬ 
groes to Africa. 

Whatever reasons may have existed, or do exist, for 
the removal of particular peoples, or the exclusion of 
particular races from any country, they exist with ten¬ 
fold force in the case of the negroes of the United 
States. In no country having a republican form of 
government, has the lowest race of mankind been 
found dwelling with the highest. The case is a new 
one, and demands some independence of thought for 
its treatment. So-called human rights appear to come 
into conflict with questions of physical fact or law. 
The pure idealist will sustain the former, in spite of 
the latter; but the wise man knows that he must bow 
to the latter, and acts accordingly. It seems hard to 
the idealist that inequalities between men exist, yet 
they do exist and appear to work injustice. But we 
cannot help it. 

I will not discuss again the mental status of the 
black race. It is well known except to those who will 
not see. The ability to weave and raise crops does 
not make a man just or rational, or free him from de¬ 
grading vices and maddening superstitions. As to race 
mixture, Mr. Holland is a trifle prejudiced in his re¬ 
marks. The inferior race has never been known to 
resist the attractions of the superior, to any great ex¬ 
tent, so far as I am aware; least of all, the negro. If 
Mr. Holland doubts the certainty of race-mixture, let 
him read history, or better, visit all countries where 
different races come in contact. The white race of 
the European coasts of the Mediterranean have not 
been benefited by their mixture with the African races, 
and these latter were and are superior to our negroes. 

The reasons why the American negroes object to 
being returned to Africa are self-evident. As bene¬ 
ficiaries of a civilized nation, they have their rights 


256 


THE NEGRO 


better protected than they would have under a govern¬ 
ment of their own race. It must not be forgotten that 
much of their orderly and “ peaceable ” conduct is due 
to this fact. When left to themselves they are not 
distinguished for those qualities. They enjoy here the 
use of the numberless inventions made by the white 
race. They have the advantage of intellectual and 
ethical instructions controlled by them. These ad¬ 
vantages are offset to a small degree by the out¬ 
rageous treatment they too often receive from a de¬ 
graded type of white men in the South, whom the 
Southern authorities are not sufficiently active in 
bringing to justice. 

I may be wrong, but I do not believe that our coun¬ 
try ought to incur the risks incident to the existence 
of such a body of such a race in its midst. It is sim¬ 
ply a question of self-preservation far more urgent than 
that presented by the Chinese question. The prefer¬ 
ences of the negroes themselves must be in this case 
disregarded. In fact, the only natural right they have 
in the matter is to demand to be returned to Africa, 
from which their ancestors were carried against their 
own consent. The supposition that the South is not 
adapted for white labor will not bear examination. 
The negroes can be spared, and their place will be 
speedily filled with whites. 

It is, however, difficult to convey to the general 
reader the seriousness of the difficulty as it appears 
to the student of species-characters in body and mind. 
The conclusion to be drawn from the facts is, that what¬ 
ever of future progress the negro may have before him, 
it will take so long before he has reached the capacity 
to stand alone as competent for self-government, that 
we cannot take the risk of his presence here. Let him 
work out his own salvation without risking the future 
of the Indo-European. If he is so capable as some 
persons believe, it will do him no harm. If he suc¬ 
ceeds no better in the future than he has in the past, 


THE NEGRO 


257 


* 


he will not surprise some who think they know him 
better. 

E. D. Cope. 

Philadelphia, February, 1890. 


THE NEGRO QUESTION 

To the Editor of The Open Court: 

The state of public opinion sixty years ago on the 
question of Negro Emigration is brought vividly to 
my mind by some remarks upon the subject in The 
Open Court of February 6th. 

The writer is mistaken when he says that the negro 
population of the country were largely opposed to emi¬ 
gration. The negro at the North had not at that 
time anv distinctive influence, either in number or 
opinions, upon the ideas of the day, but ranged them¬ 
selves in the lists of William Lloyd Garrison, at that 
time the editor of the Liberator, published in the city 
of Boston. 

Mr. Garrison, with whom I subsequently became 
well acquainted, was a mild-spoken gentleman in so¬ 
cial life, a trait that formed a great contrast to his ve¬ 
hement, vituperative editorials as they appeared week 
by week in the Liberator. 

At that time Liberia had for Governor John Russ- 
worm, a mulatto of superior intelligence, w r armly up¬ 
held by the Colonization Society, of which Mr. Gusney 
was president, and B. B. Thatcher, poet and lecturer, 
was secretary. The colored people, whatever they may 
have since become, were supinely indifferent to the 
movements made in relation to them, few attending 
meetings called together where their interests were at 
stake, and only one, Mr. Raymond (accent on last 
syllable), a half-breed, warmly supported by Wendell 
Phillips, ever pleading orally for his people. 

It was not the negro who was opposed to emigra¬ 
tion, but such men as Garrison and George Thomson, 
17 



258 


THE NEGRO 


of England. B. B. Thatcher presented the views of 
the Colonization Society and the growing value of the 
Liberian Colony, in eloquent and fervid oratory. He 
voiced the cultured and far-seeing ideas of statesmen 
and philanthropists, while the Abolitionists were 
looked upon as fanatics, and the negro stood between 
the two like the animal between the two bundles of 
hay. 

If we except a few members of their race, the 
negro has never wasted his abundant sensuality upon 
any questions of race improvement. Toussaint 
L’Ouverture was a great man, despite of race, and 
Count Timines, who was in this country just before 
the opening of the Civil War, was a man of elegant 
culture, educated in Paris, and holding brave hopes 
for the emancipation of Hayti, which was the limit of 
his world, and he wrote a history of it, describing the 
terrible war of races, which has deluged that lovely 
island with blood. 

The negro has never made endeavors to attain do¬ 
minion or power. The negro has never made a start 
for liberty. Liberty has been thrust upon him,— and 
he receives it without dignity, uttering complaints and 
making statements known to be false, with constant 
appeals to Northern sympathy. 

It may be Utopian to think of removing six millions 
of people to Africa, but once let emigration turn that 
way, and Africa will be remunerated for the wrong 
we have done her. We wrenched from her a sensual, 
ignorant, barbarous population, and we return thither 
a people with civilized instincts, and it is to be hoped 
with aspirations that may help the dark continent to 
wipe out her old pagan barbarism, cruelty, and sen¬ 
suality, by creating in them the hope of culture and 
the intimations of Empire. 

Elizabeth Oakes Smith. 

Hollywood, N. C., February 12, 1890. 


In the following contribution to The Open Court (Chi- 



THE NEGRO 


259 


cag°, June 12, 1890, p. 2331), Prof. Cope closed the dis¬ 
cussion : — 

THE RETURN OF THE NEGROES TO AFRICA 

(By Prof. E. D. Cope.) 

Criticism on my paper on this subject in The Open 
Court of January 23, 1890, having apparently ceased, I 
am disposed to recur to the subject for two reasons. 
One of these is that I wish to reply to my critics; and 
the other is that Mr. Henry M. Stanley is said to have 
taken up the subject, and to be prepared to place his 
knowledge of Central Africa at the disposal of the 
proper authorities when the project shall have been de¬ 
cided on. 

I am not surprised to find that the objectors to the 
project of transferring the negroes from this country 
to Africa have nothing but sentimental objections to 
urge against it. They call their objections ethical, and 
imagine that they have the support of justice in their 
position. Their understanding of the import of ethics 
and justice may differ from mine, but I suspect that 
their view chiefly results from an ignorance of some 
fundamental principles of biology, and their failure to 
perceive the bearings of these on the problem. 

In order to present a rational objection to the plan 
of separating the Ethiopian from the Indo-European 
race by 3,000 miles of water, its opponents should 
prove, first, that the negro and white races will not 
hybridize in the countries where they live together; 
or second, that the hybrid, if produced, possesses men¬ 
tal characteristics as good as those of the whites. 
Neither of my critics has done this, and until they do 
so, their objections are absolutely worthless. On the 
contrary, if the opposite of my position be proven, I 
will promptly abandon it. As to the question of injus¬ 
tice, we have to decide, if injustice there be, as to who 
shall be the sufferer. Shall we subject the higher race 
to deterioration; or shall we subject the lower to trans¬ 
portation without material loss to it. To do the former 


260 


THE NEGRO 


is to injure the entire human species. To do the latter 
is to continue the process which the abolition of slav¬ 
ery inaugurated, to teach the negro to stand on his 
own legs, a process which can be no more called in¬ 
justice than the exercise of the methods of education, 
which the world has for us all from childhood. 

The hardships of the transportation would be tri¬ 
fling, and not greater than those which thousands of 
immigrants to this country voluntarily undergo. I 
have lived in various parts of the world, and I could 
be happy in any of them, provided my family and 
friends were not too far removed. Now it is not pro¬ 
posed to separate families and friends in this exodus, 
so that the picture of sufferings from this cause, drawn 
by one of my critics, is quite imaginary. As to the 
country, Stanley states that parts of the Upper Congo 
region are admirable as places of residence, and free 
from the swamps of many of our Southern States. 

Abstract objections on the one side weigh little 
against facts on the other. Objections against com¬ 
pulsory education and against compulsory vaccination 
are of the same character, and are generally admitted 
to be valueless as against the important benefits ac¬ 
cruing to mankind from the enforcement of these 
provisions. 

I repeat again what appear to me to be the facts of 
the case. The characteristics of the negro-mind are 
of such a nature as to unfit him for citizenship in this 
country. He is thoroughly superstitious, and abso¬ 
lutely under the control of supernaturalism, in some 
generally degrading form, and the teachers of it. He 
is lacking in rationality and in morality. Without 
going further, these traits alone should exclude him 
from citizenship. Secondly, these peculiarities depend 
on an organic constitution which it will require ages 
to remove. Corresponding qualities in the lower strata 
of the white race, are modified or removed in a com¬ 
paratively short time, on account of superior natural 
mental endowment. Thirdly, if he remains in this 


THE NEGRO 


261 


country he will mix with the whites until in a half 
century or less, there will not be a person of pure negro 
blood in it. It follows from this that there will be, in 
accordance with the usual rate of increase, an im¬ 
mense population of mulattoes, where there should be 
an equal number of whites. The deterioration thus re¬ 
sulting would tell disastrously on our intellectual and 
moral, and consequently on our political, prosperity. 

In view of these facts, it appears to me that the sur¬ 
plus in the treasury could not be better spent, and the 
navy of the country be better employed, than in the 
transportation of these people to Africa, where they 
can work out their own destiny, whatever that may 
be. The necessity seems to me to be great and urgent, 
and nothing but an ignorance of the facts of the case 
can prevent its being felt to be such by every white 
citizen of this republic. 

It is not denied by me that the negro has various 
merits, and that in particular instances men of that 
race have risen to deserved prominence. But the gen¬ 
eral result is not altered by these exceptions. Senator 
Morgan’s bill, or something like it, should be passed 
promptly, and its provisions carried into effect before 
the burden becomes greater, and the material condi¬ 
tions beyond our control. 

These last words are prophetic in the extreme. Cope 
has been dead a number of years now, and it looks 
very much to me as though “ the burden ” had most 
decidedly become “ greater, and the material condi¬ 
tions beyond our control.” 

The negroes themselves are not nearly so much 
averse to their leaving this country as many would 
have us believe; indeed, a very large proportion of 
them are heartily in favor of some kind of an emigra¬ 
tion scheme. In support of this fact, I here publish 
some of their views on the subject set forth in the 
newspapers of the country for the past ten years or 
more. Thousands of them are ready to emigrate now. 



262 


THE NEGRO 


The issue of The Evening Star, of Washington, 
D. C., of Monday, October 23, 1893 (p. 2), printed an 
article on this subject. It ran thus: — 

TO SOUTH AMERICA 

A Plan to Deport the Negroes From the United States — A 
Systematic Plan — Engineered by Colored People Who 
Favor the Scheme — Details From Kansas. 

(Correspondence of The Evening Star.) 

Topeka, Kan., Oct. 20, 1893.— In 1885, fifty promi¬ 
nent negroes of Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky 
and other states met in Topeka and organized the 
“ Central and South American Immigration Associa¬ 
tion and Equal Rights League of the Western Conti¬ 
nent,” the object being to organize the colored people 
of the United States into colonies and send them to 
South or Central America, there to found a new em¬ 
pire, build new homes and in time solve the race prob¬ 
lem in this country by simply allowing the Anglo- 
Saxon to have full and unlimited sway. 

When this scheme was first advanced it was talked 
about all over the country, and discussed pro and con 
in the newspapers, several prominent statesmen, not¬ 
ably John J. Ingalls, taking a hand. But finally in¬ 
terest waned and effort ceased, until recently, when 
the association developed an entirely new plan, and 
announced that active efforts would soon be made 
toward the deportation of negroes to South America 
by the various states, and that influential negroes 
would be sent into the letcure field to explain fully 
the plan of operation. 

The Head of the Movement 

Col. John M. Brown, the negro county clerk of 
Shawnee County, Kan., is president of the association, 
and S. W. Wine, of Kansas City, secretary. Brown 
is one of the ablest colored men in the West, and has 
been a prominent candidate for State auditor. In po- 



THE NEGRO 


263 


litical campaigns he renders valuable service on the 
stump for the Republicans, and is recognized by the 
opposition as a forcible and convincing speaker. He 
came to Kansas twelve years ago at the head of an 
exodus from Mississippi, where he held a county of¬ 
fice. He lived in the “ black belt,” and the overwhelm¬ 
ing negro majority made it possible for him to secure 
a political position. He is thoroughly conversant with 
the negro problem in the South, and after twelve years 
of study and investigation he believes his plan the only 
one that will ever bring peace and happiness to his 
race. It will, he says, solve the vexing problem in the 
South, and at the same time deport these people to a 
country where there are no social distinctions, but 
where with the Latin races they would become ce¬ 
mented and a part of the whole. 

When Col. Brown first launched his colonization 
scheme on the public he was met with strong opposi¬ 
tion from leading colored men all over the country. 
They did not believe it practical, and declared that a 
wholesale emigration of negroes would tend to fasten 
upon them a greater servitude than that complained 
of on the cotton and sugar plantations of the South. 
Then the negroes were unacquainted with the social 
conditions existing in the South American countries; 
but since Col. Brown and his co-workers have, through 
printed matter and from the lecture platform, removed 
the prejudice which first existed, a wonderful change 
has taken place, and he is constantly receiving letters 
inquiring about the movement. Several years ago he 
laid his plans in detail before ex-Senator John J. In¬ 
galls. That gentleman scouted the idea of colonizing 
the negroes in South America, and advanced the opin¬ 
ion that his plan of sending them back to Africa, their 
natural home, was the only feasible one by which the 
race question would ever be eliminated from society 
and politics in this country. Col. Brown, however, 
caused Ingalls to weaken on his proposition when he 
showed him the disadvantages of the African scheme. 


264 


THE NEGRO 


He pointed out the fact that it would cost at least $100 
a head to transport the negroes to that country, and 
that the great vessels necessary in the shipment of 
them across the ocean would, of necessity, have to 
come back empty, for the reason that his country re¬ 
ceives nothing from Africa in the way of staple prod¬ 
ucts. On the other hand, to land them on the east¬ 
ern shore of South America, it would not cost over 
$15 a head, and on the return trips sugar, coffee and 
other South American products could be transported 
at a nominal cost. 

A New Plan Formulated 

Recently this association has formulated a new plan. 
Each State of the Union will be requested to organize 
a society for the purpose of pushing the scheme. 
Each State will be required to raise a fund sufficient 
to send from twenty-five to 100 families to South 
America as an experiment, and to provide for their 
wants for several years, in case they are unable to se¬ 
cure homes and make their own way. When these 
societies are formed among the negroes of the various 
states, during the coming winter, a board of directors 
will be chosen by each State association. Later, all 
these boards will come together and select a national 
board to go to Brazil, Bolivia, Argentine Republic and 
other South American countries and arrange with the 
government offering the best advantages for either the 
purchase or lease of lands for the American colonies. 
Each State board will have charge of the deportation 
from that State, and in order that the plan may be fa¬ 
vorably received by the Afro-Americans and finally 
accepted by them as the best and surest way to solve 
the race problem, only industrious, intelligent and 
thrifty negroes will be taken in the first shipment. If 
they have sufficient money to make the trip, they will 
be expected to pay their passage; if they have not the 
necessary means the society of the State from which 
they go will pay the expenses. None of the indolent 


THE NEGRO 


265 


and shiftless classes will be allowed in the first in¬ 
stallment. The success or failure of the movement de¬ 
pends upon the class of people who first go to the new 
country, and the leaders will see to it that a good 
report comes back to stimulate others. 

Each State Society a Stock Company 

It is proposed to make every State society a stock 
company and solicit from Afro-Americans sums of 
from $10 to $50, which will go into a common fund for 
advancing the movement. One of the plans on foot 
is to build several large vessels to ply between New 
Orleans and points on the eastern coast of South 
America to be paid for out of this fund. If a head of 
a family wishes to aid the enterprise and at some future 
time desires to cast his lot with his brethren in the 
new Eldorado, his subscription will be received, placed 
to his credit and when he is ready to go the amount 
will be applied on the passage of himself and family 
to his new home. These vessels, Col. Brown thinks, 
would be a profitable investment for the association, 
because they would bring in a good revenue for carry¬ 
ing to the United States on their return trips the 
products of South America, which this country must 
Save. Thus, while the deportation of the negroes 
from the United States to the new Southern home was 
going on, the association would reap a rich harvest in 
bringing back to this market the products of South 
American countries. 

Col. Brown says negroes can be transported from 
points between New Orleans and St. Louis for about 
$15 a head. He believes that after the first settlement 
is made, and the plan is proven a success, as he con¬ 
fidently believes it will be, that the association will 
not be able to take all who will want to go. He says 
there is ten times more vacant land in Brazil alone 
than all the negroes in the United States could prop¬ 
erly cultivate. He has received letters from that gov¬ 
ernment recently, saying that all the negroes who will 
may come and be assured of protection, homes and a 



266 


THE NEGRO 


competency. He also has letters from the Argentine 
Republic and Bolivia, offering very flattering induce¬ 
ments. He is favorable to Brazil, and if the present 
troubles do not disturb his plans, will undoubtedly 
favor negotiations with that government. The cli¬ 
matic conditions are favorable, and there is plenty of 
land at very low prices. Speaking of the social ques¬ 
tion as it relates to that country, he said: “ There the 
color line is obliterated and we would stand upon the 
same footing with the natives. Here we never can 
hope to enjoy that privilege.” 

Effect of the First Deportation 

He believes the first deportation of negroes for the 
new Eldorado would create great excitement among 
their brethren in the South, and that thousands would 
want to join the procession. On this line he said: 
“ Let a boatload of negroes, bound for the new country, 
leave St. Louis singing their old plantation songs as 
they floated down the Mississippi, and it would be 
almost impossible to hold the multitudes that cultivate 
and pick the cotton from the plantations along its 
banks. They would want to join the throng, because 
they would see beneath the lowering clouds that have 
shut out the light of freedom and independence, a sil¬ 
ver lining, and they would feel that a brighter era 
was dawning. They would realize that there was in 
store for them in their new home something better 
than a life of drudgery and ceaseless toil, from which 
they are barely able to live. And this is not all,” re¬ 
marked President Brown. “ For the first time in the 
history of this country the old ex-slave drivers and 
plantation magnates of the South would feel the sands 
slipping from under them. The cheap labor from 
which they have been able to amass fortunes would 
depart for a Southern clime in another country, and 
their plantations would grow up in weeds. The Win¬ 
chester rifle and shot-gun, potent factors in Southern 
elections, would rust in their racks, and the race prob¬ 
lem would be settled, and settled forever, in this coun- 


THE NEGRO 


267 


try. The public domain is exhausted and the restless 
young men crowding West would turn to the de¬ 
serted fields of the new South, where plantations 
would be divided and subdivided, until the Yankee 
had a voice in the politics of that section. All 
we ask is that Senator Ingalls and other statesmen 
who believe themselves burdened with the responsi¬ 
bility of settling the race problem will allow us to 
carve out our own destiny. We believe the South 
American emigration plan will solve the negro prob¬ 
lem in this country, and if it does these statesmen, 
who have been so solicitous about our welfare, ought 
to be satisfied.” 


Only a short time ago The World, of New York 
City, printed the following as a news item, bearing 
upon this question (November 29, 1903, page 8), and 
this is what was set forth : — 

NEGROES CALL FOR HELP TO EMIGRATE 

Liberian Colonization Society Wants Assistance to Send 
Colored People to Africa — They Think This is Their 
Only Refuge — Ship to Carry Five Hundred or More 
from Savannah to Liberia in February. 

To the Editor of The World: 

Birmingham, Ala., Nov. 25.— If the cause we repre¬ 
sent was less deserving of consideration at the hands 
of the people of America, we would hesitate to make 
this appeal on the eve of that day when we Americans 
are more than at any other time in the year appealed 
to to meet the demands made upon us by deserving 
humanity. We believe, however, that of all the obli¬ 
gations the American people owe to humanity the debt 
we owe the people that were once our slaves is possi¬ 
bly the greatest. 

It is true that the purses of the philanthropic people 
of this country have been and are always wide open 






268 


THE NEGRO 


when the real needs of the colored people are made ap¬ 
parent. Churches, schools, colleges and many other 
institutions of much importance to the race are prom¬ 
inent landmarks throughout the Southland, speaking 
eloquently of the generosity of the Anglo-Saxon to¬ 
ward these people, and more eloquent still are the in¬ 
telligent, educated men and women of the race who 
have been qualified by those means to lead their people 
out of the darkness thrown around them by long years 
of servitude. But with all this there has sprung up 
possibly a greater menace to the progress of these 
people. 

The colored people believe that they have been dis¬ 
criminated against, ostracized, disfranchised and other¬ 
wise oppressed to such an extent that emigration to 
Africa appears to be the only means that will afford 
them relief. This society will have by February, or 
probably sooner, a colony of from three to five hun¬ 
dred sturdy pioneers — men, women and children — 
ready to embark on a chartered steamer at Savannah, 
Ga., for their new homes in Africa. 

Many of these people, and in fact nearly all of them, 
are financially unable to undertake this venture with¬ 
out the moral support and some financial aid from 
their Anglo-Saxon friends. 

It is true that Liberia, the place where they are 
going, offers them every natural advantage and oppor¬ 
tunity for making a living and to establish themseives 
comfortably in a home of their own, but as a matter 
of fact, with but little means they would have a hard 
time for the first few months after landing there; 
therefore this appeal is made to the generous and 
philanthropic people of America to contribute at least 
a mite to assist these people for a short while after 
landing in Liberia. 

They will need, first, provisions, medicine and the 
immediate necessities of life. Then houses, household 
necessities, farm implements, seeds and things of that 
description will be needed to enable them to get an 



THE NEGRO 


269 


early and successful start. If only a few of their 
friends will contribute these things in kind, or the 
money with which to buy them, many souls will be 
made glad and a worthy cause aided very materially. 
Will not each one who reads this contribute a dime, a 
dollar or several dollars? You will be happier for 
doing so. 

Persons wishing to aid these colonists can receive 
further information by addressing the Liberian Coloni¬ 
zation Society, Birmingham, Ala., or donations can 
be sent direct to it. This appeal comes directly and 
indirectly from fully four million souls who are crying 
out for relief from what they believe to be unjust op¬ 
pression, and many hearts will be made glad and pray¬ 
ers go up to an all-wise God for every favor con¬ 
tributed. Lee Cowart, President. 


The following is the most sensible and feasible 
proposition they ever attempted. It was proposed 
in October, 1893 (The Evening Star, Washington, 
D. C., October 30, 1893, p. 4), and had the scheme been 
methodically carried out, and accomplished, the so- 
called negro problem would, in so far as this country 
is concerned, been settled a number of years ago. 
Here is the plan : — 

A BILLION FOR COLONIZATION 

A delegation of colored lawyers from the South is 
in the city to carry into effect a resolution of the recent 
Afro-American convention, held in Chattanooga, Tenn 
The delegation is composed of S. L. Hutchins, R. C. 
O. Benjamin, J. G. Burge, John E. Patton, M. C. 
Parker and Samuel R. Lowery. They are here to pre¬ 
sent to Congress a memorial asking for $1,000,000,000 
to be appropriated by Congress to colonize the colored 
race in some other country. 

The memorial will be presented to Congress by Rep- 



270 


THE NEGRO 


resentative Murray, the colored member from the 
Seventh South Carolina district, but Mr. Murray is 
not in sympathy with the colonization scheme; he be¬ 
lieves that the colored race will make better progress 
by remaining with the white race and emulating it and 
receiving the inspiration of a higher civilization. 

Such utterly chimerical plans as the following, al¬ 
though proposed by negroes, are noticed here only to 
show how ignorant these people are of the actual con¬ 
ditions existing about them. Of course, it is alto¬ 
gether nonsense, when we come to talk about setting 
two States aside for their exclusive occupancy, indeed, 
it is ridiculous. And, to ship them from one part of 
the country to another, is no solution at all, besides 
it is at once more than dangerous and harmful, and 
can be but a scheme to spread the existing trouble. 
The New York Times (Tuesday, November 10, 1903, 
p. 1), published the following: — 

TWO STATES FOR NEGROES 

Bishop Lucien Halsey of the African Church Favors Segrega¬ 
tion of His Race. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Washington, Nov. 9.— The first paper read at the 
opening meeting today of the National Sociological 
Society, in session in this city to consider “ The Race 
Problem in the United States,” came as a shock to 
many members of the society present. The author of 
the paper was Bishop Lucien Halsey, of the African 
Methodist Zion Church, who proposed to have the Na¬ 
tional Government set aside one or more States of the 
Union for the segregation of the negroes. 

A warm discussion followed the reading of the paper, 
but no resolutions on the matter were introduced. 

A permanent organization was made with ex-Rep- 
resentative White, of North Carolina, as Chairman, and 
a number of Vice Presidents. 



THE NEGRO 


271 


At the afternoon session an address of welcome was 
made by Commissioner MacFarland, and responded to 
by the Rev. I. L. Thomas, of Baltimore. 

And, a few months before (August 17, 1903), this,— 
which in reality means nothing more than the natural 
spread of the race, and the danger in the country: — 

NEGRO EMIGRATION SCHEME 


Plan is to Have Thousands Go from South to Northwest, and 

Twenty-five Have Gone Already. 

(Special to The New York Times.) 

Tacoma, Washington, Aug. 16.— The Rev. J. F. 
Davidson, pastor of the Mount Olivet Colored Baptist 
Church, arrived from New Orleans yesterday with a 
party of twenty-five colored men, whom he will colo¬ 
nize in Tacoma or in the vicinity. Mr. Davidson hopes 
to be able to purchase a large tract of land upon which 
he will establish a colored community somewhat co¬ 
operative in character. At present a certain part of the 
wages of the colored men will be set aside every month 
as a nucleus for a fund for buying this land. 

Mr. Davidson expects thousands of colored people 
will come North from time to time. He himself is 
one of the Western agents of a colored organization, 
with headquarters in Boston, the object of which is, if 
possible, to depopulate the South of negroes by in¬ 
ducing emigration on a monumental scale to favor¬ 
able regions of the Northwest. 

Mr. Davidson is enthusiastic over the prospects of 
those of his race who are transplanted to the Pacific 
Northwest, declaring that under favorable conditions 
they will become intelligent members of society and 
prove themselves capable of developing into important 
factors in civilization in this country. One result of 
this immense immigration of negroes will be to relieve 
the labor shortage along the entire coast. 



THE NEGRO 



Note 9. Page 160. 

In so far as Liberia is concerned, the principal ar¬ 
gument both of the negroes, as well as their short¬ 
sighted supporters of their continued sojourn in this 
country, has been that the climate of that region was 
deadly to everyone and any one who made the attempt 
to reside in it. This is by no means true, and those 
who claim that it is true, are simply not telling the 
truth. In my life-time 1 have known not a few people 
who have been, and even resided, upon that part of 
the western coast of Africa, and it has been found to 
be no more unhealthy than the Atlantic Coast of the 
United States in the latitude of the Carolinas and of 
Georgia. The following report will substantiate this 
statement. It was published in The Evening Star, of 
Washington, D. C., of Friday, March 10, 1893, and 
reads as follows: — 

THE CLIMATE OF LIBERIA 


A Man Who Went There Forty Years Ago Gives His Views 

of the Country. 

Gen. R. A. Sherman, a negro, was sent from Georgia 
to Liberia by the American Colonization Society about 
forty years ago, and he is now one of the most in¬ 
telligent, energetic and prosperous citizens of that re¬ 
public. He resides in Monrovia and is well known 
at home and abroad as a reliable and enterprising 
merchant and a man of means. His residence there 
is provided with all the comforts and even luxuries 
that are to be found in a well-to-do American or Eng¬ 
lish home. 

In a letter recently received by Mr. J. Ormond Wil¬ 
son he gives his views of the opportunities offered to 
the American negro of intelligence and character to 
provide himself a home in Liberia. 

He says: “ I came here with my father and family 
in the year 1853. There were eight of us in the fam- 



273 


•THE NEGRO 

V 

ily, and all passed safely through the process of accli¬ 
mation ; not one died of fever. My grandmother lived 
to the ripe old age of seventy-six and my mother died 
seven years ago, having reached the period of three 
score and seven years. My father met with an acci¬ 
dent while repairing the American Colonization So¬ 
ciety’s warehouse of this city by falling from the roof 
• of the building, which resulted in his death. One of 
my brothers contracted a cold while on his way to 
Liverpool and died of that. The rest of our family 
are living and enjoying excellent health. I was fifteen 
years old when I came to this country, have been here 
a little over thirty-nine years, and with the exception 
of an attack of rheumatism now and then, brought on 
by excessive exertion and exposure, I enjoy exceed¬ 
ingly good health. 

“ Nearly all of my associates and acquaintances 
whom I left in Savannah, Ga., in 1853, have yielded 
to the inexorable demands of death, while I, who live 
in the so-called ‘ inhospitable climate ’ of Liberia, enjoy 
good health, working six days out of seven, at my 
store from 6: 30 o’clock a. m. to 5 p. m., and then 
without feeling very much fatigued when evening 
comes on. 

“ There are foreigners, German, Dutch, Norwegians 
and Englishmen, living in all parts of Liberia, from 
Cape Mount to Cape Palmas, for the purpose of trade, 
and after a few months’ acclimation they enjoy very 
good health — many of them looking as well as when 
they first arrived from Europe. Persons who adopt 
cleanly, industrious and temperate habits need have 
no fear of the fever or climate. 

Lady Missionaries 

“ There are in this city today two white mission¬ 
ary ladies, one belonging to the M. E. Mission and the 
other to the Protestant Episcopal Mission; the former 
has been here over ten years and the latter seven. One 
has visited America twice during her stay of ten years 
and the other has not been outside of Liberia, yet both 
18 


274 


THE NEGRO 


enjoy exceptionally good health. The lady of the M. 
E. Mission remarked to me a few weeks ago that she 
has not been confined to bed from fever or any bad 
effects of the climate one day since she has been in 
the country. She has a large and thriving school at 
Krootown, about ten minutes’ walk from her residence, 
and she can be seen every day, Sunday not excepted, 
going to her post of duty. White foreigners who 
come here for the purpose of trade go to work at once, 
not thinking a moment about fever or the climate, and 
the consequence is that they invariably succeed in not 
only living in the climate, but in making money also. 

Why Some Are Dissatisfied 

“ On the other hand, many of the emigrants sent 
out by your society nowadays idle away their time 
while they have health and strength, making no prepa¬ 
ration whatever for the future, but seem to think that 
they are in a land where work is not necessary to com¬ 
fort and happiness. They continue in idleness until 
their six months’ supplies are exhausted, and the so¬ 
ciety declines to furnish them with more, then they 
become dissatisfied with the country and climate and 
seek to return to their former homes. 

“ We want you to send us stout-hearted and willing 
men possessing the spirit of the Pilgrims who settled 
the United States of North America — men who love 
freedom more than the ‘ flesh pots of Egypt,’ and who 
are willing to labor and endure all the hardships of a 
new and growing country that their posterity may be 
benefited and become a great nation in their ' father- 
land.’ 

“ The misrepresentations of the African climate 
have been as gross as those often made of the people, 
and you will find, when the so-called facts given by 
prejudiced and misguided persons are stripped of the 
fiction in which they are dressed, that no more and 
no less can be said of the Liberian climate than can 
be said of the climate of Georgia, my native State.” 

That the various countries of Europe and other 



THE NEGRO 


275 


parts of the world begin to see plainly the miserable 
plight we are in, there is not a shadow of a doubt. Mr. 
Charles Carrington has recently submitted me a clip¬ 
ping on the subject from one of the best-known and 
most widely-circulated newspapers of France, in evi¬ 
dence of this (Lc Journal, Dimanche le 26 e , Juillet, 
1903), and this contains so much of interest, and con¬ 
firms so many points that I have set forth in the pres¬ 
ent volume, that it affords me pleasure to reproduce 
here the contribution. It comes from the pen of 
Ludovic Naudeau, and reads as follows: 

LA HAINE DES NEGRES 


Le lynchage des negres en Amerique— Une guerre de 

races — La noir et la blanche — Statistiques significa- 
tives —- Que deviendront les Af ro-Americains ? 

Encore des recits de viols, de massacres, dattentats 
effrayants suivis de repressions plus epouvantables 
encore. La place qu’occupe la civilisation sur notre 
planete est encore tres petite : lhumanite devra par- 
courir de longs cycles avant de parvenir a un etat de 
perfection relative. 

11 y a de formidables ironies : Au moment merae ou 
la Russie adressait des representations a la Sublime 
Porte, au sujet des exces de la soldatesque turque en 
Macedoine, le rale des victimes de Kischineff faisait 
tressaillir le monde. Des citoyens humanitaires des 
Etats-Unis s’emouvaient, redigeaient une petition 
adressee au tsar. Mais cette petition n’etait pas en¬ 
core signee que plusieurs lynchages de negres survenus 
dans diverses villes des Etats americains, avec d’affreux 
raffinements de cruaute, obligeaient les habitants de 
la grande Republique a plus d'humilite. Et plusieurs 
revues americaines etaient obligees d’avouer qu’avant 
de chercher a policer les autres peuples, les Amer¬ 
icains avaient l’imperieux devoir d’essayer de faire 
regner l’ordre sur leur propre territoire. C’est moins 
facile ! 




276 


THE NEGRO 


Que la haine des negres soit arrivee, aux Etats- 
Unis, a un paroxysme effrayant, cela ne saurait plus 
faire de doute pour personne. Beaucoup dhommes 
eminents, des Etats du Sud annoncent ouvertement 
qu’une crise decisive est proche ; ils prevoient un grand 
bouleversement aboutissant a une veritable guerre de 
races. Les blancs et les noirs sont exasperes ; on pro- 
fere de part et d’autre d’horribles menaces. Le presi¬ 
dent Roosevelt, lui-meme, a compromis un instant sa 
popularity, en cherchant a prendre la defense des Afro- 
Americains et en exhortant ses compatriotes a mon- 
trer plus de moderation. Maintenant, plus de pitie, 
plus de quartier ! Tout negre arrete a la suite dun 
delit ou il a mis en peril la vie ou la propriete dun 
blanc, est arrache de sa prison par une foule furieuse 
et tue quelquefois apres des tortures prolongees. Sou- 
vent des noirs sont attaches a un poteau, imbibes de 
petrole, et, changes en torches, brulent vivants devant 
des milliers de spectateurs qui exultent. Notez que 
les organisateurs de ces executions ne sont point des 
hors-la-loi, des vagabonds, des malfaiteurs. Tres sou- 
vent les directeurs de ces holocaustes sont les citoyens 
les plus notables de leur localite et il advient que la 
population de toute une region afflue en masse pour 
assister a ces sacrifices. Quelquefois,— cela est a peine 
croyable, mais c’est vrai — des trains speciaux sont 
organises qui convergent vers le lieu de l’execution. 
Il y a peu de temps, un appareil telegraphique, installe 
provisoirement pour la circonstance, transmettait 
minute par minute aux habitants dune ville, situee a 
plus de soixante kilometres, le recit detaille des con¬ 
vulsions, des contorsions dun negre devore tout vif 
par les flammes. Le plus grave, c’est que la coutume 
de lynchage s’etend, et partie du Sud, s’implante dans 
les Etats du Nord. En 1892, 241 lynchings furent 
perpetres aux Etats-Unis ; en 1893, les sociologues 
americains en ont compte davantage encore, et au 
cours de l’annee 1899 plus de 500 negres furent mis a 
mort par le peuple furieux. Si on dresse la statistique 



THE NEGRO 


277 


pour 1902 et 1903, on fremira. Que peut faire auto¬ 
rite ? Quand des milliers d’hommes armes entourent 
a l’improviste une prison et en forcent les portes, quelle 
resistance sont capables de leur opposer quelques 
gardiens isoles ? Et, si la troupe requisitionnee arrive 
a temps, peut-elle, pour sauver un malfaiteur, ouvrir le 
feu sur toute une population de citoyens exasperes ? 
Aussi bien le lynching est tellement entre dans les 
mceurs, que ceux qui le pratiquent sont toujours surs 
de trouver dans toutes les classes de la societe, et 
meme parmi les fonctionnaires, des complices influents 
qui leur assurent l’impunite. Quand il s’agit de chatier 
un delinquant noir, il n’y a plus de legalite, plus de 
droit des gens, plus de pitie, plus de justice, plus meme 
de raisonnement; le coeur des hommes les plus doux et 
les plus pacifiques s’emplit de haine et de ferocite. 

Supposer que les Americains sont devenus sans 
raisons aussi implacables serait meconnaitre cet axi- 
ome, qu’il n’y a point d’effet sans causes. Les statis- 
tiques criminelles montrent que si l'humanite noire des 
Etats-Unis forme seulement 12 0/0 de la population 
totale, elie fournit cependant 30 0/0 des malfaiteurs de 
toutes categories. Encore, si les malfaiteurs a peau 
noire etaient repartis egalement dans tous les Etats, 
leurs mefaits paraitraient-ils moins nombreux, moins 
intolerables. Mais la race afro-americaine est massee 
dans les Etats du Sud et c’est la qu’elle commet la 
plupart de ses attentats ; c’est la qu’elle constitue un 
veritable fleau. Les Americains blancs eussent peut- 
etre pu s’accommoder de vivre au contact des negres, 
si les criminels de cette race n’eussent ete que des 
voleurs ou des meurtriers ordinaires. Mais les negres, 
du moins ceux qui appartiennent a la masse inculte, 
ont une insurmontable propension au viol. Dans les 
Etats du Sud, point de femme blanche, point de jeune 
fille qui soit sure de n’etre point, un jour, saisie par 
des faunes a peau noire et contrainte de subir l’odieux 
baiser cFetres libidineux, plus redoutes que des gorilles. 
Cette extraordinaire salacite, cette redoutable appe- 


278 


THE NEGRO 


tence qui enflamme le negre a la vue dune jeune 
femme blanche, ce rut qui subitement bouillonne en 
lui et le fait se ruer sur la proie convoitee, affole, 
insoucieux de payer par un chatiment terrible, par les 
tortures du lynching, les voluptes dune possession 
ephemere, voila veritablement le fleau des Etats du 
Sud. Oui, ce phenomene physiologique qui pousse 
vers la blanche dedaigneuse et inaccessible le negre 
lubrique, enflamme de convoitise, a engendre la haine 
farouche, irreductible des Americains blancs pour les 
Americains noirs. Dans le Sud, point de villages, point 
de hameaux ou des drames ne se passent quelquefois 
ou de jeunes vierges blanches ne succombent hurlan- 
tes de rage et de honte, sous lassaut brutal dun negre 
lascif, ou de vertueuses meres de famille, ne subissent 
parfois le contact deteste du noir triomphant. Quel- 
ques-unes se taisent, cachent leur honte et leur deses- 
poir ; les autres affolees pleurent, vociferent. Alors les 
hommes blancs s’assemblent, chargent leurs armes et 
malheur aux negres suspects ! Dans ces Etats du Sud, 
les Americaines ont tellement peur des negres, qu’une 
famille blanche ne s’installe point dans une demeure 
isolee, sans organiser maintes defenses preventives. 
Eagriculture dans les provinces du Sud est litterale- 
ment paralysee par la terreur noire. Songez qu’il y a 
cinq noirs pour sept blancs en Virginie ; cinq noirs 
pour six blancs dans l’Alabama, la Georgie et la 
Floride ; un blanc pour un noir, en Louisiane ; quatre 
noirs pour trois blancs, dans le Mississipi ; quatre noirs 
pour deux blancs dans les deux Carolines. Dans un 
groupe d’Etats contigus, comprenant la Caroline du 
Sud, la Georgie, la Floride, l’Alabama, le Mississipi et 
la Louisiane, il y a 4,433,605 noirs et 4,308,398 blancs. 
Dans tous les Etats-Unis, le dernier recensement a 
revele l’existence de 66,893,405 blancs et de 9,192,389 
noirs. II y a quinze villes contenant plus de 20,000 
negres. On en a compte 86,702 a Washington ; 79,259 
a Baltimore ; 77,714 a la Nouvelle-Orleans ; 62,613 a 
Philadelphie et 60,666 a New-York. C’est beaucoup ! 


THE NEGRO 


279 


Ainsi les descendants des esclaves africains eraan- 
cipes apres la guerre de Secession embarrassent con- 
siderablement maintenant leurs anciens maitres. Les 
Americains les plus impartiaux, les philanthropes les 
plus eclaires sont obliges d’admettre, quarante et un 
ans apres Faffranchissement memorable, que les hom¬ 
ines de couleur n’ont su faire qu’un detestable usage 
des droits politiques qu’on leur avait donnes. Une 
sorte de fatalite abaisse la race noire et la rend en 
quelque sorte incapable de vivre libre. II semble 
qu’elle soit en regression depuis Fabolition de Fescla- 
vage. La grande masse des coloured men est dominee 
par la paresse, le gout de la jouissance ; elle travaille 
seulement pour satisfaire ses gouts les plus grossiers, 
les plus bestiaux. 

Aussi, au cours des dernieres annees, dans plusieurs 
Etats du Sud, les blancs sont parvenus, par des actes 
legislates, a priver les negres de leur capacite elec- 
torale. La Louisiane, le Mississipi et la Caroline du 
Sud ont exige de tous les electeurs un certificat de¬ 
struction ou de possession. Les noirs, presque tous, 
ignorants ou indigents, se sont ainsi vu retrancher 
legalement du pays. Et cette decheance, ils Favaient 
meritee, car quand ils etaient electeurs et politiciens, 
ils montraient une incapacity, une outrecuidance qui 
n’etaient surpassees que par leur corruption et leur 
esprit d’oppression. Dans les villes du Sud, ou ils 
etaient en majorite, ils s’emparaient de toutes les 
fonctions, revoquaient tous les employes blancs et 
mettaient a leur place des negres illettres. Les per- 
cepteurs noirs exoneraient de Fimpot leurs semblables 
et faisaient payer double taxe aux blancs. Les negres 
mis aux prises avec les difficultes de l’administration 
semblaient n’avoir aucun instinct du droit ni de 
Fequite, ni meme de la logique. II etait fatal que ce 
peuple-enfant fut puni. Dans sa convoitise grossiere, 
il avait voulu tout prendre et on lui a tout retire. An- 
nihile politiquement dans le Sud, il Fa ete industrielle- 
ment dans le Nord ou les Syndicats ont refuse dad- 




280 


THE NEGRO 


mettre un seul negre, et ou les ouvriers n’acceptent 
jamais de travailler a cote d’un homme de couleur. 
Dans le Sud, le negre peut travailler, mais toutes sor- 
tes de trafiquants sans vergogne l’exploitent, abusent 
de sa credulite et de son ignorance pour lui faire con- 
tracter certaines dettes sous le fardeau desquelles il 
vegete plus malheureux que l'esclave du temps passe. 

Certes, une elite negre s’est formee ; elle est dirigee 
par Ieminent Booker Washington, etre extraordinaire, 
dont nous avons publie, ici meme, la biographie, le 28 
octobre 1901. La grande Universite de Tuskegee que 
dirige Booker Washington, compte maintenant 1,200 
eleves noirs. Malheureusement, cette elite peu nom- 
breuse n’a qu’une influence insuffisante sur les aspi¬ 
rations et la moralite de sa race. Plusieurs negres 
instruits des Etats-Unis avouent, avec infiniment de 
bonne foi, que la question negre est un embarrassant 
et redoutable probleme pour la Republique ameri- 
caine. 

Deja, prevoyant ces perils, Monroe, en 1822, avait 
fonde, sur la cote de Guinee, la Republique de Liberia, 
ou il avait transports 10,000 Afro-Americains. Mais 
cette tentative a lamentablement avorte. A Liberia, 
comme en Haiti, la masse negre, livree a elle-meme, a 
montre qu’elle etait incapable de se gouverner et elle 
est retournee aux pratiques des sauvages. Maintenant, 
plusieurs sociologues proposent cfinstaller les negres 
(fAmerique a Cuba ou aux Philippines. Lillustre ex- 
plorateur anglais, sir H. M. Stanley, conseille aux 
Americains de les exporter plutot vers l’Etat-Libre du 
Congo. Mais il est fort douteux que les Afro-Ameri- 
cains consentent maintenant a quitter le nouveau 
monde. Car, chose etrange, les descendants des an- 
ciens esclaves, malgre le mepris dont on les accable, 
bien qu’ils ne soient admis nulle part dans la societe 
des blancs, ni dans le monde, ni dans les cercles, ni au 
theatre, ni au restaurant, ni dans les trains, ni dans 
les hotels, ni meme chez les barbiers, bien qu’ils soient 
honnis, decries, maudits, vomis par la race dominatrice, 


THE NEGRO 


281 


sont fiers d’etre Americains et veulent rester Ameri- 
cains. En 1880, il n’y avait, aux Etats-Unis, que 30 
journaux entierement rediges et composes par des 
negres. II en parait maintenant 154. Et ces journaux 
ne se genent pas pour polemiquer, batailler, menacer 
et narguer les blancs, attiser les haines, exciter les 
jalousies, vanter les merveilleuses aptitudes des Afro- 
Americains ! Non ! Ceux-ci ne retourneront pas vers 
la terre brulante ou leurs ancetres couraient tout nus 
sous les lataniers. Et comme aucun croisement phy¬ 
sique, aucun compromis moral n’est possible entre les 
deux races, un formidable probleme anthropologique 
reste pose, aux Etats-Unis, chaque annee plus mena- 
<jant et plus insoluble, sinon par la violence. 

N’avons-nous pas lu dans un journal de negres, que 
les Afro-Americains feraient de grandes choses dans 
les Etats du Sud, le jour ou ils seraient debarrasses des 
Anglo-Saxons ! Les noirs de la Caroline, auront-ils un 
jour leur Toussaint Louverture ? 

Les Afro-Americains ont des ambitions, des aspira¬ 
tions immenses ! Deja, ils ont cree une grande chose, 
puisqu’ils ont invente le cake walk, qui a fait le tour 
du monde, propage par la badauerie universelle. Le 
jour du 14-Juillet, je rencontrai, pres des boulevards, 
une jeune negresse, professionnelle de la choregraphie, 
venue a Paris avec une troupe de ses compatriotes pour 
executer dans les cafes-concerts cette ridicule bam- 
boula. Je demandai a la vierge noire ce qu’elle pensait 
des honnetes citoyens qui, dans nos rues, s’efforgaient 
d’executer le cake walk, sous la pluie de sons des 
orchestres, pour celebrer la prise de la Bastille. 

Lenfant fit une moue, montra fivoire de sa bouche et 
me repondit: 

— I think they are disgusting ! 

Voila ce que pensait la jeune Afro-Americaine : « Les 
Parisiens qui dansaient le cake walk la degoutaient. » 

Ludovic Naudeau.