The Southern South Part 1

The Southern South.

by Albert Bushnell Hart.

INTRODUCTION

The keynote to which intelligent spirits respond most quickly in the United States is Americanism; no nation is more conscious of its own existence and its importance in the universe, more interested in the greatness, the strength, the pride, the influence, and the future of the common country. Nevertheless, any observer pa.s.sing through all the parts of the United States would discover that the Union is made up not only of many states but of several sections--an East, a Middle West, a Far West, and a South. Of these four regions the three which adhere most strongly to each other and have least consciousness of rivalry among themselves are often cla.s.sed together as "The North," and they are set in rivalry against "The South," because of a tradition of opposing interests, commercial and political, which culminated in the Civil War of 1861, and is still felt on both sides of the line.

That the South is now an integral and inseparable part of the Union is proved by a sense of a common blood, a common heritage, and a common purpose, which is as lively in the Southern as in the Northern part of the Union. The dominant English race stock is the same in both sections: in religion, in laws, in traditions, in expectation of the future, all sections of the United States are closer together than, for instance, the three components of the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Whatever the divergence between Southerners and Northerners at home, once outside the limits of their common country they are alike; the Frenchman may see more difference between a Bavarian and a Prussian than between a Georgian and a Vermonter.

It is not to the purpose of this book to describe those numerous common traits which belong to people in all sections of the United States, but to bring into relief some of the characteristics of the South which are not shared by the North. For it is certain that the physical and climatic conditions of the South are different from those of the North; and equally sure that as a community the South has certain temperamental peculiarities which affect its views of the world in general and also of its own problems. Slavery, which had little permanent effect on the society or inst.i.tutions of those parts of the North in which it existed up to the Revolution, was for two centuries a large factor in Southern life, and has left many marks upon both white and negro races. The existence of a formerly servile race now ten millions strong still influences the whole development of the South.

Unlike the North, which ever since the Civil War has felt disposed to consider itself the characteristic United States, the South looks upon itself, and is looked upon by its neighbors, as a unit within a larger unit; as set apart by its traditions, its history, and its commercial interests. The ex-president of the Southern Confederacy a few years ago at a public meeting declared that he appeared "In a defense of our Southland." A Southland there is, in the sense of a body of states which, while now yielding to none in loyalty to the Union and in partic.i.p.ation in its great career, adhere together with such a sense of peculiar life and standards as is not to be found in any group of Northern communities except perhaps New England.

The Northerner who addresses himself to these special conditions of the South must expect to be asked what claim he has to form or express a judgment upon his neighbors. The son of an Ohio abolitionist, accustomed from childhood to hear questions of slavery and of nationality discussed, I have for many years sought and accepted opportunities to learn something of these great problems at first hand. As a teacher I have come into contact with some of the brightest spirits of the South, and among former students count at least two of the foremost writers upon the subject--one a White and the other a Negro. For some years I have carried on an active correspondence with Southern people of every variety of sentiment. I have diligently read Southern newspapers and have been honored by their critical and sometimes unflattering attention. In the last twenty-five years I have made a dozen or more visits to various parts of the South ranging in length from a few days to four months, and therein have gained some personal acquaintance with the conditions of all the former slave-holding states except Missouri and Florida. In the winter of 1907-8 I took a journey of about a thousand miles through rural parts of the belt of states from Texas to North Carolina, with the special purpose of coming into closer personal touch with some phases of the problem upon which information was lacking.

There need be no illusions as to the extent of the knowledge thus acquired. These various journeys and points of contact with Southern people have shown how large is the Southern problem, and how hard it is to discover all the factors which make the problem difficult. Every year opens out some new unexplored field which must be taken into account if one is to hope for anything like a comprehensive view of the subject. How shall any Northerner coming into a slave-holding region set his impressions alongside the experience of men who have lived all their lives in that environment? What is seven months' residence by a visitor, a fly on the wheel, against seventy years' residence by men who are a part of the problem?

There are two sides to this question of the value of the observations of an outsider. Sometimes he is the only one who thinks investigation worth while; and too much caution in hazarding an opinion would put a stop to all criticism by anybody except the people criticised. The observer over the walls may see more than the dweller within. A Southerner coming up to make a study of the government in Ma.s.sachusetts would probably discover queer things about the Street Department of Boston that escape the attention of those who breathe the city's dust; he might learn more about the conditions of mill towns like Fall River than the citizen of Boston has ever acquired; he might attend a town meeting in villages like Barnstable, into the like of which the Fall River man never so much as sets his foot; he may find out more about the county commissioners of Bristol County than was ever dreamed by the taxpayers of Barnstable; he may inform the dairyman on Cape Cod of the conditions of the tobacco farms on the Connecticut; and hear complaints from the factory hands of New Bedford which never reach their employers. It is just so in the South, where many people know intimately some one phase of the race problem, while few have thought out its details, or followed it from state to state. A professor in the University of Louisiana might tell more about the race and labor conditions of his State than the writer shall ever learn; but perhaps he could not contribute to knowledge of the Sea Islands of South Carolina or the Texas truck farms or the mountains of North Carolina. The privilege of the outside visitor to the South is to range far afield, to compare conditions in various states, and to make generalizations, subject to the criticism of better qualified investigators who may go over the same area of printed book and open country, but which have a basis of personal acquaintance with the region.

If this book make any contribution toward the knowledge and appreciation of Southern conditions, it must be by observing throughout two principles.

The first is that no statement of fact be made without a basis in printed material, written memoranda, or personal memory of the testimony of people believed to speak the truth. The second is that in the discussion there be no animus against the South as a section or a people. I have found many friends there. I believe that the points of view of the reflective Northerner and the reflective Southerner are not so far apart as both have supposed; as a Union soldier's son I feel a personal warmth of admiration for the heroism of the rival army, and for the South as a whole; and I recognize the material growth, the intellectual uplift, and the moral fervor of the Southern people. In one sense I am a citizen of the Southland. When a few years ago at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner in Cambridge, the president of the University of North Carolina said: "I love North Carolina, I ought to love that State, because it is my native country!"

President Eliot replied, when his turn came: "President Winston says that North Carolina is his native country; gentlemen, it's _our_ native country."

For this reason has been chosen as the t.i.tle of this book, "The Southern South." Leaving out of account those parts of the South, such as the peninsula of Florida, which are really transplanted portions of the North; setting aside also the manifold national characteristics shared by both sections, I shall attempt to consider those conditions and problems which are in a measure peculiar to the South. The aim of the work is not to cavil but to describe, with full realization that many of the things upon which comment is pa.s.sed are criticised in the South, and have a counterpart in the North.

Properly to acknowledge the information and impressions gained from friends, and sometimes from persons not so friendly, would require mention of scores of names; but I cannot forbear to recognize the candor and courtesy which, with few exceptions, have met my inquiries even from those who had little sympathy with what they presumed to be my views. The ground covered by the book was traversed in somewhat different a.n.a.lysis and briefer form in a course of lectures which I delivered before the Lowell Inst.i.tute in Boston during February and March, 1908. Parts of the subject have also been summarized in a series of letters to the _Boston Transcript_, and an article in the _North American Review_, published in July, 1908. While a year's reflection and restatement in the light of additional evidence have not changed the essential conclusions, I have found myself continually infused with a stronger sense that the best will and effort of the best elements in the South are hampered and limited by the immense difficulties of those race relations which most contribute to keep alive a Southern South.

CHAPTER I

MATERIALS

For an understanding of the Southern South the materials are abundant but little systematized. In addition to the sources of direct information there is a literature of the Southern question beginning as far back as Samuel Sewall's pamphlet "Joseph Sold by His Brethren," published in 1700.

Down to the Civil War the greater part of this literature was a controversy over slavery, which has little application to present problems, except as showing the temper of the times and as furnishing evidence to test the validity of certain traditions of the slavery epoch.

The publications which are most helpful have appeared since 1880, and by far the greater number since 1900. Besides the formal books there is a shower of pamphlets and fugitive pieces; and newspapers and periodicals have lately given much s.p.a.ce to the discussion of these topics.

So multifarious is this literature that clues have become necessary, and there are three or four serviceable bibliographies, some on the negro problem and some on the Southern question as a whole. The earliest of these works is "Bibliography of the Negroes in America" (published in the "Reports" of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1894, vol. i).

More searching, and embracing the whole field of the Negro's life in America, are two bibliographies by W. E. Burghardt DuBois, the first being "A Select Bibliography of the American Negro" ("Atlanta University Publications," 1901), and "A Select Bibliography of the Negro American"

("Atlanta University Publications," No. 10, 1905). A. P. C. Griffin has also published through the library of Congress "Select List of References on the Negro Question" (2d ed., 1906) and "List of Discussions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments" (1906). One of the most useful select bibliographies is that of Walter L. Fleming in his "Reconstruction of the Seceded States, 1865-76" (1905). The author of this book, in his volume on "Slavery and Abolition" ("The American Nation," vol. xvi, 1908), has printed a bibliographical chapter upon the general question of negro servitude in America. The study of the Southern question would be much lightened were there a systematic general bibliography, with a critical discussion of the various works that may be listed.

A part of the problem is the spirit of those who write formal books, and a group of works may be enumerated which take an extreme anti-Negro view and seek to throw upon the African race the responsibility for whatever is wrong in the South. Dr. R. W. Shufeldt (late of the United States army) has published "The Negro a Menace to American Civilization" (1907), of which the theme is sufficiently set forth by the wearisome use of the term "hybrid" for mulatto; he ill.u.s.trates his book, supposed to be a logical argument on the inferiority of the Negro, with reproductions of photographs showing the torture and death of a Negro in process of lynching by a white mob; and he sums up his judgment of the negro race in the phrase "The Negro in fact has no morals, and it is therefore out of the question for him to be immoral."

The most misleading of all the Southern writers is Thomas Dixon, Jr., a man who is spending his life in the attempt to persuade his neighbors that the North is pa.s.sionately hostile to the South; that the black is bent on dishonoring the white race; and that the ultimate remedy is extermination.

In his three novels, "The Leopard's Spots" (1902), "The Clansman" (1905), and "The Traitor" (1907), he paints a lurid picture of Reconstruction, in which the high-toned Southern gentleman tells the white lady who wishes to endow a college for Negroes that he would like--"to box you up in a gla.s.s cage, such as are used for rattlesnakes, and ship you back to Boston." One of these novels, "The Clansman," has been dramatized, and its production, against the remonstrances of the respectable colored people in a Missouri town, led directly to a lynching. No reasonable being would hold the whole South responsible for such appeals to pa.s.sion; but unfortunately many well-meaning people accept that responsibility. In Charlotte, N. C., the most refined and respectable white people went to see "The Clansman"

played and showed every sign of approval, as appears to have been the case in Providence, R. I., in 1909. A recent writer, John C. Reed, in his "Brothers' War," brackets Thomas Dixon, Jr., with John C. Calhoun as exponents of Southern feeling and especially lauds Dixon as the "exalted glorification" of the Ku Klux.

The volume from Dixon's pen which has had most influence is "The Leopard's Spots," the accuracy of which is marked by such a.s.sertions as that Congress made a law which gave "to India and Egypt the mastery of the cotton markets of the world"; and that it cost $200,000,000 to pay the United States troops in the South in the year 1867. The book has been traversed with great skill by a negro writer. When Dixon asks: "Can you change the color of the Negro's skin, the kink of his hair, the bulge of his lip or the beat of his heart with a spelling-book or a machine?" Kelly Miller replies: "You need not be so frantic about the superiority of your race. Whatever superiority it may possess, inherent or acquired, will take care of itself without such rabid support.... Your loud protestations, backed up by such exclamatory outbursts of pa.s.sion, make upon the reflecting mind the impression that you entertain a sneaking suspicion of their validity."

Many Southern writers are disposed to put their problems into the form of novels, and there are half a dozen other stories nearly all having for their stock in trade the statutes of Reconstruction, the negro politician who wants to marry a white woman, and the vengeance inflicted on him by the Ku Klux. In the latest of these novels the President of the United States is pictured as dying of a broken heart because his daughter has married a man who is discovered to be a Negro.

A book very widely read and quoted in the South is Frederick L. Hoffman, "Race Traits and Tendencies" ("Am. Economic a.s.sociation Publications," xi, Nos. 1, 2, and 3, 1896). "Race Traits" is written by a man of foreign extraction who therefore feels that he is outside the currents of prejudice; it is well studied, scientifically arranged, and rests chiefly on statistical summaries carefully compiled. The thesis of the book is that the Africans in America are a dying race, but many of the generalizations are based upon statistics of too narrow a range to permit safe deductions, or upon the confessedly imperfect data of the Federal censuses.

Quite different in its tone is a book which is said to have been widely sold throughout the South, and which seems to be written for no other purpose but to arouse the hostility of the Whites against the Negroes. The t.i.tle page reads: "_The Negro a Beast or In the Image of G.o.d The Reasoner of the Age, the Revelator of the Century! The Bible as it is! The Negro and his Relation to the Human Family! The Negro a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of service to his master--the White man. The Negro not the Son of Ham, Neither can it be proven by the Bible, and the argument of the theologian who would claim such, melts to mist before the thunderous and convincing arguments of this masterful book._" This savage work quotes with approval an alleged statement of a Northern man that inside the next thirty years the South will be obliged to "Re-enslave, kill or export the bulk of its Negro population." It insists that the Negro is an ape, notwithstanding the fact that he has not four hands; he has no soul; the mulatto has no soul; the expression "The human race" is a false term invented by Plato "in the atheistic school of evolution." The serpent in the garden of Eden was a Negro. Cain was also mixed up in the detestable business of miscegenation, for the Bible says, "Sin lieth at thy door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." The writer has taken pains to point out that "The mere fact that the inspired writer refers to it in the masculine gender is no evidence that it was not a female." The mulatto being "doomed by Divine edict to instant death ... neither the mulatto nor his ultimate offspring can acquire the right to live. This being true, it follows that these monstrosities have no rights social, financial, political or religious that man need respect." Wherever you find the word beast in the Bible it means the Negro!

If such pa.s.sionate and rancorous books were all that sprang from the South, the problem would end in a race war; but as will be seen throughout this discussion, there are two camps of opinion and utterance among Southern white people. On one side the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force; on the other side there is a body of white writers who go deeper into the subject, who recognize the responsibility of the white race as the dominant element, and who preach and expect peace and uplift. Such a writer is A. H. Shannon in his "Racial Integrity and Other Features of the Negro Problem" (printed in Nashville and Dallas, 1907). In good temper and at much length he argues that the Negro owes to the white man a debt of grat.i.tude for bringing his ancestors out of African barbarism, though the princ.i.p.al evils of the negro question are due to the inferior race.

A widely read book of the same type is Thomas Nelson Page's "The Negro: the Southerner's Problem" (1904). Mr. Page accepts as a fact the existence of various cla.s.ses of Negroes self-respecting and worthy of the respect of others; and he believes, on the whole, that the colored race deserve commendation. "The Negro has not behaved unnaturally," he says; "he has, indeed, in the main behaved well." The main difficulty with Mr. Page's book is that it fails to go to the bottom of the causes which underlie the trouble; and that while admitting the fact that a considerable fraction of the negro race is improving, he sees no ultimate solution. He suggests but three alternatives: removal, which he admits to be impossible; amalgamation, which is equally unthinkable; and an absolute separation of social and apparently of economic life, which could be accomplished only by turning over definite regions for negro occupation. Starting out with undoubted good will to the black race, the writer ends with little hope of a distinct bettering of conditions.

Quite a different point of view is William Benjamin Smith's "The Color Line--A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn" (1905), which is based on the a.s.sertion that the Negro is no part of the human race and hence that amalgamation is a crime against nature. The general trend of Professor Smith's book is an argument, somewhat technical and not convincing, that the black man is physically, mentally, and morally so different from the white man that he may be set outside the community. This was of course the argument for slavery, and if it be true, is still an argument for peonage or some other recognized position of dependency. From this deduction, however, Smith sheers off; he uses the inferiority of the Negro chiefly as an argument against the mixture of the races, which he believes to be a danger; and he makes an ingenious distinction between the present mixture in which the fathers were Whites and a possible future amalgamation in which the fathers might be Negroes.

The most suggestive recent study of the negro question is Edgar Gardner Murphy's "Problems of the Present South" (1904). Mr. Murphy is an Alabamian, very familiar with Southern conditions. While not optimistic--n.o.body in the South is optimistic on the race question--he recognizes the possibility of a much better race feeling than the present one. It is interesting to see that this man who, as champion of the movement against child labor in the South, has been so successful in relieving children of a terrible burden, feels sure that the worst thing that can be done for the community is to keep the Negro ignorant. He is perfectly willing to face the issue that those who show the qualities of manhood should have the reward of manhood, namely, the right to partic.i.p.ate in politics; and the acknowledgment of that right he says does not imply race fusion. He gives up nothing of his Southern birthright, and courageously a.s.serts the ability of his section to work out its problem for itself.

Genial in tone, full of the ripe thought of an accomplished writer is William Garrott Brown, "The Lower South" (1902), which is not a discussion of the race question so much as of the character and point of view of the planter before the Civil War and the Southern gentleman since that time, a plea for a sympathetic understanding of the real difficulties of the South and its sense of responsibility.

These five books are proof not only that there is wide divergence of views, but also that genuine Southern men, strongly loyal to their own section, can set an example of moderation of speech, breadth of view, and willingness to accept and to promote a settlement of the Southern question through the elevation of the people, white and black, who have ultimate power over that question.

In slavery days almost all the discussion of race questions came from the Whites, Southern or Northern. Now, there is a school of negro controversialists and observers, several of whom have had the highest advantages of education and of a personal acquaintance with the problems which they discuss, and thus possess some advantages over many white writers. About twenty years ago George W. Williams published his "History of the Negro Race in America" (1883), which, though to a large degree a compilation, is a respectable and useful book. Another writer, William H.

Thomas, in his "The American Negro" (1901), has made admissions with regard to the moral qualities of his fellow Negroes which have been widely taken up and quoted by anti-Negro writers. Charles W. Chesnutt, in several books of collected stories, of which "The Conjure Woman" (1899) is the liveliest, and in two novels, "The House Behind the Cedars" (1900) and the "Marrow of Tradition" (1901), has criticised the rigid separation of races. No man feels more keenly the race distinctions than one like Chesnutt, more Caucasian than African in his make-up. One of the best of their writers is Kelly Miller, who has contributed nearly fifty articles to various periodicals upon the race problems; and in humor, good temper, and appreciation of the real issues, shows himself often superior to the writers whom he criticises. The most systematic discussion of the race by one of themselves is William A. Sinclair's "The Aftermath of Slavery"

(1905), which, though confused in arrangement and unscientific in form, is an excellent summary of the arguments in favor of the negro race and the Negroes' political privileges.

The most eminent man whom the African race in America has produced is Booker T. Washington, the well-known president of Tuskegee. In addition to his numerous addresses and his personal influence, he has contributed to the discussion several volumes, partly autobiographic and partly didactic.

His "Up from Slavery" (1901) is a remarkable story of his own rise from the deepest obscurity to a place of great influence. In three other volumes, "Character Building" (1902), "Working with the Hands" (1904), and "The Negro in Business" (1907), he has widened his moral influence upon his race. "The Future of the American Negro" (1899) is the only volume in which Washington discusses the race problem as a whole; and his advice here, as in all his public utterances, is for the Negro to show himself so thrifty and so useful that the community cannot get on without him.

Paul L. Dunbar, the late negro poet, contented himself with his irresistible fun and his pathos without deep discussions of problems. The most distinguished literary man of the race is W. E. Burghardt DuBois, an A.B. and Ph.D. of Harvard, who studied several years in Germany, and as Professor of Sociology in Atlanta University has had an unusual opportunity to study his people. Besides many addresses and numerous articles, he has contributed to the discussion his "Souls of Black Folk"

(1903), which, in a style that places him among the best writers of English to-day in America, pa.s.sionately speaks the suffering of the highly endowed and highly educated mulatto who is shut out of the kingdom of kindred spirits only by a shadow of color. Witness such phrases as these: "To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships"; or this, "The sincere and pa.s.sionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle, G.o.d created a _tertium quid_, and called it a Negro,--a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitation, but straitly fore ordained to walk within the Veil."

The three groups just sketched, the violent Southerners, moderate Southerners, and negro writers, each from its own point of view has aimed to study the complicated subject, to cla.s.sify and generalize. Nearly all the writers are sources, in that they are conversant with the South and have a personal acquaintance with its problems; but their books are discussions rather than materials. What is now most needed for a solid understanding of the question is monographic first-hand studies of limited scope in selected areas. Unfortunately that material is still scanty.

Professor DuBois has made a series of investigations as to the conditions of the Negro; first, his elaborate monograph, "The Philadelphia Negro"

(published by the University of Pennsylvania, 1899), then a series of sociological studies in the "Atlanta University Publications," and several "Bulletins" published by the United States Department of Labor, notably "Census Bulletin No. 8: Negroes in the United States" (1904). He has thus made himself a leading authority upon the actual conditions, particularly of the negro farmer. At Atlanta University and also at Hampton, Va., are held annual conferences, the proceedings of which are published every year, including a large amount of first-hand material on present conditions. One Northern white man, Carl Kelsey, has addressed himself to this problem in his "The Negro Farmer" (1903), which is a careful study of the conditions of the Negroes in tidewater, Virginia.

One practical Southern cotton planter has devoted much time and attention to the scientific study of the conditions on his own plantation and elsewhere as a contribution toward a judgment of the race problem. This is Alfred H. Stone, of Greenville, Miss., who has published half a dozen monographs, several of which are gathered into a volume, under the t.i.tle "Studies in the American Race Problem" (1908). He is now engaged, under the auspices of the Carnegie Inst.i.tution, on a study of the whole question. He has visited several Southern states and the West Indies, and brings to his inquiries the point of view of an employer of Negroes who wishes them well and sees the interest of his country in the improvement of negro labor. Perhaps his judgment is somewhat affected by the special conditions of Mississippi and of his own neighborhood, in which the Negroes are very numerous and perhaps more than usually disturbing. The results of his latest investigations will appear under the t.i.tle "Race Relations in America"; and may be expected to be the most thorough contribution to the subject made by any writer.

Among less formal publications are the negro periodicals, which are very numerous and include _Alexander's Magazine_ and a few other well-written and well-edited summaries of things of special interest to the race. The whole question has become so interesting that several of the great magazines have taken it up. The _World's Work_ devoted its number of June, 1907, almost wholly to the South; and the _American Magazine_ published in 1907-8 a series of articles by Ray Stannard Baker on the subject. In 1904 the _Outlook_ published a series of seven articles by Ernest H. Abbott based upon personal study. An interesting contribution is the so-called "Autobiography of a Southerner," by "Nicholas Worth," published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1906. Whoever Nicholas Worth may be, there can be no doubt as to his Southern birth, training, and understanding, nor of his excellent style, sense of humor, and power to make clear the growth of race feeling in the South since the Civil War.

All these and many other printed materials are at the service of the Northern as of the Southern investigator. Among their contradictory and controversial testimony may be discerned various cross currents of thought; and their statements of fact and the results of their researches form a body of material which may be a.n.a.lyzed as a basis for new deductions. But n.o.body can rely wholly on printed copy for knowledge of such complicated questions. Books cannot be cross-examined nor compelled to fill up gaps in their statements. The investigator of the South must learn the region and the people so as to take in his own impressions at first hand. Printed materials are the woof; but the warp of the fabric is the geography of the South, the distribution of soil, the character of the crops, the habits of the people, their thrift and unthrift, their own ideas as to their difficulties.

Yet let no one deceive himself as to what may be learned, even by wide acquaintance or long residence. It is not so long ago that a Southern lady who had lived for ten years in the neighborhood of Boston was amazed to be told that such Ma.s.sachusetts officers as Robert G. Shaw, during the Civil War, actually came from good families; she had always understood that people of position would not take commissions in the hireling Federal army. If such errors can be made as to the North, like misconceptions may arise as to the South. All that has ever been written about the Southern question must be read in the light of the environment, the habits of thought, and the daily life of the Southern people, white and black.

CHAPTER II

THE SOUTHLAND