XXVI
Open Questions
In the evening Robert and Rev. Carmicle called on Dr. Gresham, and found Dr. Latrobe, the Southerner, and a young doctor by the name of Latimer, already there. Dr. Gresham introduced Dr. Latrobe, but it was a new experience to receive colored men socially. His wits, however, did not forsake him, and he received the introduction and survived it.
“Permit me, now,” said Dr. Gresham, “to introduce you to my friend, Dr. Latimer, who is attending our convention. He expects to go South and labor among the colored people. Don’t you think that there is a large field of usefulness before him?”
“Yes,” replied Dr. Latrobe, “if he will let politics alone.”
“And why let politics alone?” asked Dr. Gresham.
“Because,” replied Dr. Latrobe, “we Southerners will never submit to negro supremacy. We will never abandon our Caucasian civilization to an inferior race.”
“Have you any reason,” inquired Rev. Carmicle, “to dread that a race which has behind it the heathenism of Africa and the slavery of America, with its inheritance of ignorance and poverty, will be able, in less than one generation, to domineer over a race which has behind it ages of dominion, freedom, education, and Christianity?”
A slight shade of vexation and astonishment passed over the face of Dr. Latrobe. He hesitated a moment, then replied:—
“I am not afraid of the negro as he stands alone, but what I dread is that in some closely-contested election ambitious men will use him to hold the balance of power and make him an element of danger. He is ignorant, poor, and clannish, and they may impact him as their policy would direct.”
“Any more,” asked Robert, “than the leaders of the Rebellion did the ignorant, poor whites during our late conflict?”
“Ignorance, poverty, and clannishness,” said Dr. Gresham, “are more social than racial conditions, which may be outgrown.”
“And I think,” said Rev. Carmicle, “that we are outgrowing them as fast as any other people would have done under the same conditions.”
“The negro,” replied Dr. Latrobe, “always has been and always will be an element of discord in our country.”
“What, then, is your remedy?” asked Dr. Gresham.
“I would eliminate him from the politics of the country.”
“As disfranchisement is a punishment for crime, is it just to punish a man before he transgresses the law?” asked Dr. Gresham.
“If,” said Dr. Latimer, “the negro is ignorant, poor, and clannish, let us remember that in part of our land it was once a crime to teach him to read. If he is poor, for ages he was forced to bend to unrequited toil. If he is clannish, society has segregated him to himself.”
“And even,” said Robert, “has given him a negro pew in your churches and a negro seat at your communion table.”
“Wisely, or unwisely,” said Dr. Gresham, “the Government has put the ballot in his hands. It is better to teach him to use that ballot aright than to intimidate him by violence or vitiate his vote by fraud.”
“Today,” said Dr. Latimer, “the negro is not plotting in beer-saloons against the peace and order of society. His fingers are not dripping with dynamite, neither is he spitting upon your flag, nor flaunting the red banner of anarchy in your face.”
“Power,” said Dr. Gresham, “naturally gravitates into the strongest hands. The class who have the best brain and most wealth can strike with the heaviest hand. I have too much faith in the inherent power of the white race to dread the competition of any other people under heaven.”
“I think you Northerners fail to do us justice,” said Dr. Latrobe. “The men into whose hands you put the ballot were our slaves, and we would rather die than submit to them. Look at the carpetbag governments the wicked policy of the Government inflicted upon us. It was only done to humiliate us.”
“Oh, no!” said Dr. Gresham, flushing, and rising to his feet. “We had no other alternative than putting the ballot in their hands.”
“I will not deny,” said Rev. Carmicle, “that we have made woeful mistakes, but with our antecedents it would have been miraculous if we had never committed any mistakes or made any blunders.”
“They were allies in war,” continued Dr. Gresham, “and I am sorry that we have not done more to protect them in peace.”
“Protect them in peace!” said Robert, bitterly. “What protection does the colored man receive from the hands of the Government? I know of no civilized country outside of America where men are still burned for real or supposed crimes.”
“Johnson,” said Dr. Gresham, compassionately, “it is impossible to have a policeman at the back of each colored man’s chair, and a squad of soldiers at each crossroad, to detect with certainty, and punish with celerity, each invasion of his rights. We tried provisional governments and found them a failure. It seemed like leaving our former allies to be mocked with the name of freedom and tortured with the essence of slavery. The ballot is our weapon of defense, and we gave it to them for theirs.”
“And there,” said Dr. Latrobe, emphatically, “is where you signally failed. We are numerically stronger in Congress today than when we went out. You made the law, but the administration of it is in our hands, and we are a unit.”
“But, Doctor,” said Rev. Carmicle, “you cannot willfully deprive the negro of a single right as a citizen without sending demoralization through your own ranks.”
“I think,” said Dr. Latrobe, “that we are right in suppressing the negro’s vote. This is a white man’s government, and a white man’s country. We own nineteen-twentieths of the land, and have about the same ratio of intelligence. I am a white man, and, right or wrong, I go with my race.”
“But, Doctor,” said Rev. Carmicle, “there are rights more sacred than the rights of property and superior intelligence.”
“What are they?” asked Dr. Latrobe.
“The rights of life and liberty,” replied Rev. Carmicle.
“That is true,” said Dr. Gresham; “and your Southern civilization will be inferior until you shall have placed protection to those rights at its base, not in theory but in fact.”
“But, Dr. Gresham, we have to live with these people, and the North is constantly irritating us by its criticisms.”
“The world,” said Dr. Gresham, “is fast becoming a vast whispering gallery, and lips once sealed can now state their own grievances and appeal to the conscience of the nation, and, as long as a sense of justice and mercy retains a hold upon the heart of our nation, you cannot practice violence and injustice without rousing a spirit of remonstrance. And if it were not so I would be ashamed of my country and of my race.”
“You speak,” said Dr. Latrobe, “as if we had wronged the negro by enslaving him and being unwilling to share citizenship with him. I think that slavery has been of incalculable value to the negro. It has lifted him out of barbarism and fetish worship, given him a language of civilization, and introduced him to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and what he is in America!”
“The negro,” said Dr. Gresham, thoughtfully, “is not the only branch of the human race which has been low down in the scale of civilization and freedom, and which has outgrown the measure of his chains. Slavery, polygamy, and human sacrifices have been practiced among Europeans in bygone days; and when Tyndall tells us that out of savages unable to count to the number of their fingers and speaking only a language of nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons and Shakespeares, I do not see that the negro could not have learned our language and received our religion without the intervention of ages of slavery.”
“If,” said Rev. Carmicle, “Mohammedanism, with its imperfect creed, is successful in gathering large numbers of negroes beneath the Crescent, could not a legitimate commerce and the teachings of a pure Christianity have done as much to plant the standard of the Cross over the ramparts of sin and idolatry in Africa? Surely we cannot concede that the light of the Crescent is greater than the glory of the Cross, that there is less constraining power in the Christ of Calvary than in the Prophet of Arabia? I do not think that I underrate the difficulties in your way when I say that you young men are holding in your hands golden opportunities which it would be madness and folly to throw away. It is your grand opportunity to help build up a new South, not on the shifting sands of policy and expediency, but on the broad basis of equal justice and universal freedom. Do this and you will be blessed, and will make your life a blessing.”
After Robert and Rev. Carmicle had left the hotel, Drs. Latimer, Gresham, and Latrobe sat silent and thoughtful awhile, when Dr. Gresham broke the silence by asking Dr. Latrobe how he had enjoyed the evening.
“Very pleasantly,” he replied. “I was quite interested in that parson. Where was he educated?”
“In Oxford, I believe. I was pleased to hear him say that he had no white blood in his veins.”
“I should think not,” replied Dr. Latrobe, “from his looks. But one swallow does not make a summer. It is the exceptions which prove the rule.”
“Don’t you think,” asked Dr. Gresham, “that we have been too hasty in our judgment of the negro? He has come handicapped into life, and is now on trial before the world. But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man. I believe that there are possibilities of growth in the race which we have never comprehended.”
“The negro,” said Dr. Latrobe, “is perfectly comprehensible to me. The only way to get along with him is to let him know his place, and make him keep it.”
“I think,” replied Dr. Gresham, “every man’s place is the one he is best fitted for.”
“Why,” asked Dr. Latimer, “should any place be assigned to the negro more than to the French, Irish, or German?”
“Oh,” replied Dr. Latrobe, “they are all Caucasians.”
“Well,” said Dr. Gresham, “is all excellence summed up in that branch of the human race?”
“I think,” said Dr. Latrobe, proudly, “that we belong to the highest race on earth and the negro to the lowest.”
“And yet,” said Dr. Latimer, “you have consorted with them till you have bleached their faces to the whiteness of your own. Your children nestle in their bosoms; they are around you as body servants, and yet if one of them should attempt to associate with you your bitterest scorn and indignation would be visited upon them.”
“I think,” said Dr. Latrobe, “that feeling grows out of our Anglo-Saxon regard for the marriage relation. These white negroes are of illegitimate origin, and we would scorn to share our social life with them. Their blood is tainted.”
“Who tainted it?” asked Dr. Latimer, bitterly. “You give absolution to the fathers, and visit the misfortunes of the mothers upon the children.”
“But, Doctor, what kind of society would we have if we put down the bars and admitted everybody to social equality?”
“This idea of social equality,” said Dr. Latimer, “is only a bugbear which frightens well-meaning people from dealing justly with the negro. I know of no place on earth where there is perfect social equality, and I doubt if there is such a thing in heaven. The sinner who repents on his deathbed cannot be the equal of St. Paul or the Beloved Disciple.”
“Doctor,” said Dr. Gresham, “I sometimes think that the final solution of this question will be the absorption of the negro into our race.”
“Never! never!” exclaimed Dr. Latrobe, vehemently. “It would be a death blow to American civilization.”
“Why, Doctor,” said Dr. Latimer, “you Southerners began this absorption before the war. I understand that in one decade the mixed bloods rose from one-ninth to one-eighth of the population, and that as early as 1663 a law was passed in Maryland to prevent English women from intermarrying with slaves; and, even now, your laws against miscegenation presuppose that you apprehend danger from that source.”
“Doctor, it is no use talking,” replied Dr. Latrobe, wearily. “There are niggers who are as white as I am, but the taint of blood is there and we always exclude it.”
“How do you know it is there?” asked Dr. Gresham.
“Oh, there are tricks of blood which always betray them. My eyes are more practiced than yours. I can always tell them. Now, that Johnson is as white as any man; but I knew he was a nigger the moment I saw him. I saw it in his eye.”
Dr. Latimer smiled at Dr. Latrobe’s assertion, but did not attempt to refute it; and bade him good night.
“I think,” said Dr. Latrobe, “that our war was the great mistake of the nineteenth century. It has left us very serious complications. We cannot amalgamate with the negroes. We cannot expatriate them. Now, what are we to do with them?”
“Deal justly with them,” said Dr. Gresham, “and let them alone. Try to create a moral sentiment in the nation, which will consider a wrong done to the weakest of them as a wrong done to the whole community. Whenever you find ministers too righteous to be faithless, cowardly, and time serving; women too Christly to be scornful; and public men too noble to be tricky and too honest to pander to the prejudices of the people, stand by them and give them your moral support.”
“Doctor,” said Latrobe, “with your views you ought to be a preacher striving to usher in the millennium.”
“It can’t come too soon,” replied Dr. Gresham.