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Chapter 13: Black ascendancy.
in the relations of her
White people to the coloured race,
South Carolina is the most unlucky section of
America.
In
Louisiana the two colours are nearly balanced.
Nine or ten years may turn the scale; since the
European family increases while the
African falls away.
Even in
Mississippi the majority of coloured people is not great; not more than seven Blacks to six Whites.
Neither of these unhappy States is so far overweighted by her
African numbers as to make contention in the ballot-boxes hopeless.
In
South Carolina-called the Prostrate State-the case is otherwise.
Negro ascendancy is complete; the African and his bastard brother the Mulatto reign supreme.
The last census gives ten Africans to seven Europeans in the
State of South Carolina.
In seven
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counties the Whites have a good majority; in three others they have a slight majority; while in the remaining twenty-two counties the Negro majorities are large.
In Richland County and
Charleston County they number two to one.
Among the bayous and savannahs the dark people are almost separated from the fair.
In Beaufort County they are nearly six to one; in
Georgetown County they are nearly seven to one.
Greenville,
Anderson, and
Spartanburg counties may return scholars, advocates, and planters to the Legislature; but the voice of a Trenholm or a Russell counts for no more in the assembly than that of a Negro from the swamp; and for every
Trenholm or
Russell in the assembly of South Carolina there are three Negroes from the swamp.
Under a law of equality, enforced by a Federal army, what chance has the
European settler in such a State?
Dark as the prospect is, the Carolinians are not sure that they have reached their blackest point.
The great zone of swamp and savannah, stretching from
Cape Fear to the
Mississippi, and from the
Mississippi back to
St. Andrew's Sound, appears to be the
African's new home.
Within this zone
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he lives and thrives ; and if he has a preference within this zone it is for the hot and humid regions lying between
Columbia and the sea. Climate and produce suit him equally.
Squash is cheap, tobacco grows wild, and sugar canes abound.
Here, if anywhere, the Negro may hope to make a stand; and hither, it would seem, the Africans are tending, under the action of those mysterious laws of race which the
Emancipation Act has called into free and easy play.
In other zones the Africans are falling off. Above this sympathetic zone, yet still within the
Southern limits, runs a line of country from the
Chesapeake to the
Missouri and the
Arkansas, in which Negroes dwelt and multiplied in a state of servitude.
But from these great districts they are now retreating towards the
South and towards the sea.
Missouri and
Kentucky are casting out their Negro citizens, not by public edicts, but by agencies of which no record can be kept.
Maryland is following
Kentucky, and
Virginia following
Maryland.
Whether the whole displacement springs from a mere shifting of the Africans from North to
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South, is matter of dispute.
Who understands those movements which are common to man and beast, to bird and fish?
What sorcerer has probed the secret of the pilchard, the locust, and the springbok?
Who knows the true reasons which led the Goth in ancient days to leave his native seat, which drives the Mongol at this present hour to quit his sacred soil?
To say that the ancient Goth and modern Mongol break away from old associations in search of food and drink, is but to answer for a part of the material facts.
That theory would not cover the case of bird and fish, much less of man and beast.
Some creatures move in search of warmth and light, and some are led by instincts and emotions tending to the nurture of life.
Men are often swayed by higher instincts than the love of meat and warmth.
What forces drove the Crusaders to
Syria and the Pilgrims to
New England?
Not the want of food and drink.
What passion led the Jesuits to
Paraguay, the Franciscans to
Mexico?
Not the desire to lodge in huts and cover the body with antelope skins.
What impulse carries the Russ to Troitza, the Moor to
Mecca, and the
Mormon to
Salt Lake?
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“ You think the coloured people are moving from
Kentucky and
Virginia into
South Carolina?”
“Not a doubt of it,” says a journalist of whom we seek an answer.
“Always on the road, in my vocation, I see the files and squads, full-blood, mulattoes, and quadroons, all creeping from the
North.
Sickness thins the number; for the darkies are rotten sheep, and perish on the road.
More die than reach our soil.”
What are the facts?
Are
South Carolina,
Alabama, and
Mississippi, chiefly
South Carolina, taking in the whole drain from
Missouri and
Kentucky,
Maryland and
Virginia?
Or, beyond the change implied by exodus, is there a great margin of displacement, telling of decay?
Two tests may be employed.
Is the African family on the whole increasing in
America?
Are the members of this family better lodged and fed?
Opinions differ as to whether the Africans are increasing in
America.
The rate of increase has assuredly fallen off. Nobody fancies they are multiplying like the Europeans in
America.
Every statist owns that they are not growing under freedom as they grew under servitude.
Nor is there much
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difference as to whether Negroes and Mulattoes.
are better lodged and fed in freedom than they were in servitude.
Exceptions may occur, but as a rule the coloured people live in worse houses and eat less healthy food.
A man sucks more canes, and chews more quids; yet eats less wholesome food, and occupies less wholesome rooms.
Child murder, the vice of every savage tribe, has come to be a common crime.
Negroes are averse to rearing offspring.
Children give much trouble, cost much money, and involve much care.
In servitude the Negress was compelled to nurse her offspring, for her children were property.
In freedom, she is left to instinct; and the instinct of a Negress, like that of a Mongol and a Fijian, sometimes tempts her to this form of murder.
Papals and Bulloms slay their issue in
Africa; and American teaching has not rooted out this
African custom in
America.
In a state of freedom the original genius of a race is likely to return.
In
South Carolina, a Negro, living under freedom, has to feed and clothe his child, and every dollar spent on his baby's food and clothes, is so much loss to him in quids and drams.
Child murder, I
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am told, is now as common in the
Negro swamp, as in a Chinese street or on a Tartar steppe.
This is the true Negro Question; not such actual trifles as whether Blacks shall ride in the same cars and sit at the same tables as Whites: or such relative trifles as whether Blacks shall vote, make laws, and carry arms like Whites?
The true Negro Question in
South Carolina and elsewhere is whether, in the freedom of nature, the coloured man can live?
In servitude men are not allowed to roam.
The main step, perhaps, from savage licence into settled law, is that abridgment of personal liberty which converts a nomad into a citizen.
Some savages cannot take this step.
Can you confine an African?
In freedom everyone is master of his whim.
He comes and goes as fancy prompts-one week in
Missouri, next week in
Tennessee, a third week on the
Gulf.
Turkey is trying to settle some of her Arab tribes, but she has met so far with no success.
Russia's attempt to colonize her steppe led her into serfage, and three hundred years of iron discipline were needed ere her rulers thought the
Russ people broken of their ancient wandering
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habits.
Are the Africans yet prepared for settlement?
You cannot fix a free
Sioux, or a free
Apache on the soil.
A Red man cannot live in competition with a White neighbour.
Has the Negro strength enough to stand alone?
Under servitude the
Black men grew in numbers; under freedom the
Red men fell in numbers.
Will the
Black men under freedom fail as the
Red men fail?
Have the good and pious men who gave the Negro freedom, only issued, in their ignorance of nature's rules, an edict for his slow but sure extermination from the soil?
“Be sure of one thing,” says
Colonel Binfield, a Southern officer, who has studied the
Negro Question on the battle-field, in the tobacco grounds, and in the public schools, “we shall have no more disorder in the streets.
No local passion will dictate our course.
We made a great mistake in parting from our flag; but we have long since seen the error of our way, and we shall not commit that fault again.
Our trust is in the law of life.
The Negro had his day of power.
If he chafed us by his petulance and folly he never awed us by his strength.
Even now, when he has a ruler of his
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own opinions in
Columbia, a majority of friends in the Legislature, and the command of all the public forces, we have no fear of him. A European is too strong for any
African.
Unless he stabs you in the dark, or throws a brand into your room, a coloured man can hardly do you harm.
The tussle of a White man with a Negro is the tussle of a man with a woman.
It is the same in masses.
Plant me one of your Utopias on the
Santee or
Edisto; set me ten Europeans in the midst of ninety Africans; give each of your hundred settlers an equal share of soil, seeds, implements, and money; start them with a free code and equal rights, and leave them to till the ground, to make laws, and to rule themselves.
In ten years the
White men will own the soil, the granaries, and the money.
Nature has given the
White man brain and strength, invention, courage, and endurance of a higher quality, on a larger scale, than she has given these elements to the
Black.
In spite of accidents the
White man must be master on this continent.
Why, then, should we provoke an issue in the field?
No one but an enemy of
White civilization wants a second
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civil war. We only need to wait, certain to conquer if we wait.”
My friend is right.
A Negro cannot stand the impact of free life; the pressure rends and grinds him. All the vital forces of this world are relative, and for twenty centuries
Europe has been the nursery of living power.
Europe supplies the other continents with life-life in plants and animals, as well as in the higher forms of man. You bring a spruce from
Europe to
America.
That spruce will grow into a forest, and will kill the native trees all round.
Import a horse and cow, and they will drive out buffalo and elk. The lower forms give way in presence of a higher type.
Negro ascendancy, even though supported for a time by Federal troops, will fail before
White science, as surely as a forest of plants fades before an English spruce and a herd of game before an English horse.
