In the Southern States, and especially in the States which constitute the Black Belt, the Race Question has in recent years assumed far more serious proportions than is generally supposed. It has, in fact, assumed the proportions of a species of guerilla race war. Few people, even in America, thoroughly realise this. The leading newspapers of the country pay surprisingly little attention to occurrences outside the district in which they find the majority of their readers. There is, so far as I am aware, no neutral journal which busies itself exclusively with the problem, and, consequently, Americans and foreigners alike are without any mirror in which they may periodically see reflected all the aspects and all the incidents of the situation. To keep up with the history of the Race Question the student must read, not the great newspapers of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, or New Orleans, but rather the little county newspapers of the South—newspapers the very names of which are scarcely known in the North and wholly unknown in Europe. And even these rural newspapers must be read with discretion and discrimination, for all of them are partisans. Some make a point of dwelling at length upon accounts of outrages committed by negroes, and of almost ignoring accounts of outrages committed by whites; others—they are, it is true, in the minority—follow the opposite plan. A few only are fair; a few only would care to print so free a confession as the following, which I take from the Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle, of Jan. 5th, 1890:—

“Laws are powerless either to prevent the commission of crime or to punish criminals, unless public sentiment forbids the one and commands the other. Where there is little regard for human life, and we fear this is the case in many portions of our country, the courts are often to blame for not hanging those who slay their fellow-men. Is it not a fact that it is almost impossible to convict a man of the crime of murder who has any social position or means to defend himself? Fortunately, crimes of this sort do not often occur; but, if they did, public sentiment is so demoralised that the courts would fail of conviction. This is true as to white men who kill their equals. If a negro kills a white man, he is pretty sure either to be lynched or hung. But if a white man slays a negro, he is in no danger of being lynched, and as to his being hung for the crime there is not much probability.”

To understand, therefore, both sides of the question, and to fully appreciate the seriousness of the situation, one must be a far more omnivorous devourer of newspapers than the ordinary citizen of Great Britain or of America has time to be. I have had exceptional opportunities. While I was in the country I met the leading men of both sides, and had thrust upon me the newspapers, big and little, of both parties. Nay, many people who for years have made a study of the subject were so good as to place their notes and their volumes of illustrative newspaper clippings at my disposal. Thus I may pretend to have secured the broadest and most far-reaching view of the difficulties amid which the South stands; and I cannot hide from myself the conclusion that, as between the races, the situation throughout the Black Belt is veritably, as I have said, one of active though unprofessed guerilla warfare. In the last chapter I gave a number of examples, selected almost at hazard from a far larger number which I might have cited, of the manner in which this warfare is being waged by the whites against the blacks. In this I shall give examples, similarly selected to a great extent, of the manner in which this warfare is being waged by the blacks against the whites. I have, I think, amply demonstrated the existence of hostility on the white side. What I shall quote now may, in the opinion of many, provide good excuse for the existence of that hostility; but I would submit that it also proves the inherent and unconquerable mutual antipathy of the races and their hopeless unsuitability for life side by side and upon a level of approximate equality. The antipathy is not between individual blacks and whites. It is rather such an antipathy as used to exist between Turks and Slavs in the Balkan provinces in the days of the Bulgarian atrocities, although that antipathy was religious as well as racial and political.

And here let me say at once, deliberately and without hesitation, that if the racial crimes and outrages which are of daily occurrence in the Southern States were taking place in a semi-civilised part of Europe, and were only half as well advertised as the events in Bulgaria were, the public sentiment of Europe would at once insist upon, and would within six months secure, reform, even at the cost of war. Such a situation as sullies the South is a disgrace to the fair name of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. It is not for me to attempt to apportion the blame. Doubtless there are grave faults on both sides. As an unprejudiced observer, I can merely declare generally that the condition of affairs is not only a scandal so far as the United States are concerned, but also a matter of which all civilised humanity has cause to be ashamed.

It was my good fortune in the course of my tour to meet, and to confer very intimately with, the anonymous author of the most remarkable book that has yet appeared upon the Race Question. I mean “An Appeal to Pharaoh,” a volume published in the winter of 1889 in New York by Messrs. Fords, Howard, and Hulbert. To this volume I must make further allusion when I come to consider the difficult, but inevitable, problem—what is to be done? At present I mention it incidentally for the reason that I am anxious to repeat here something that its writer said to me, and for the reason that all who have read the work will, I am sure, extend due deference to any opinion expressed by so competent and unbiased an authority. My friend knows the South as few know it, and he has for the negro a genuine and kindly regard; yet, said he, “if the option were offered me of taking my wife and family into one of the black country districts of the South, or into a jungle full of wild beasts, and if I were obliged to leave them without proper protection, I would unhesitatingly choose the jungle.” I did not ask why. I knew that it was because no white woman is safe, from hour to hour, in those black country districts. It was because the race war on the black man’s side is waged largely, though not exclusively, against the whites who are least capable of self-protection, and whose safety is held most precious by those to whom they are near and dear. I am bound to produce evidence concerning this awful phase of the struggle; and, unfortunately, there is evidence in plenty ready to my hand. “Lynched for the usual crime” is a stereotyped heading in many scores of Southern newspapers. Nor, as a rule, is the brutality of the negro’s act much less conspicuous than the speed and cruelty with which the victim is avenged. On both sides it is a terrible and almost unparalleled state of affairs. I will restrict myself to the recital at length of one case only:—

“Louisville, Kentucky, September 2nd, 1889.—The Courier Journal has a special from Somerset, Kentucky, which states that news has reached there of a brutal outrage committed upon the twelve-year-old daughter of William Oates, a prominent and wealthy farmer residing a few miles from Montecello. Mr. Oates has two daughters, aged respectively twelve and fourteen years. Mr. and Mrs. Oates left home on business, and left the two young girls in charge of the house. Mr. Oates had in his employ a negro boy about grown. Knowing that the old folks were away, he entered the house, and, after locking the door upon the two girls, assaulted the younger. The elder girl escaped from the room, and, going to a neighbour’s house, gave the alarm. A posse was organised and started in pursuit. The negro was caught in the woods and tied to a stake. A rail pen was then built around him, coal oil was poured over him and upon the rails, matches were applied, and the negro was burnt to death.”

Similar outrages are, practically, of every-day occurrence. All of them do not get into the newspapers. Many families, unwilling to publish their disgrace and misfortune, bear their trouble in silence. Many of the criminals, too, are never caught: but here is proof of the commonness of such crimes as the above. All the cases alluded to took place during 1890, and, as will be seen, within a very short period, and all were chronicled in the newspapers.

On October 30th, near Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, a negro, named Lowe, assaulted a Miss Hardee. He was arrested, but taken from the officers the same night by a mob of whites, tied to a tree, and shot to death.

On November 1st, eight miles from Columbia, South Carolina, and a mile and a half from the Winnsboro Road, a negro attempted to assault and then murdered Miss Florence Hornsby, aged sixteen. A youth named Hagood was arrested for the crime. Six years before, this youth’s father had been lynched near Woodward’s store, at Rockton, for assaulting a lady of Fairfield County.

On November 3rd, in Twigg’s County, Georgia, a Miss Howell, aged seventeen, was assaulted by a negro named Owen Jones, who, having been caught and having confessed, was hung by citizens on a tree on the road from Hawkinsville to Allentown, fifty shots being then fired into his body.

On November 6th, Mrs. J. G. Bailey, of Arlington, Tennessee, was killed by a negro, who escaped, pursued by a posse of citizens intent upon lynching him.

On the night of November 8th, at Annapolis, Maryland, threats were made to lynch a coloured man named Forbes, who was in custody there for having assaulted a white girl. Revolvers were freely drawn, and a serious riot between whites and blacks was only prevented by the calling out of the Governor’s Guards.

On November 17th, a negro named Henry Smith, who a few days before had assaulted one Mrs. Calhoun, was lynched near Chin’s Trestle, Alabama. Another negro was lynched near Hillman, Alabama, on the same day.

Early in the morning of November 18th, a negro named William Singleton was lynched at Macon, Georgia, for an attempted assault upon the daughter of the late Chief Justice Lumpkin. Singleton was hanged, and two volleys of pistol-shots were fired into the body.

I might, if the topic were not so repulsive, cite hundreds of other examples. What I have written is, I imagine, quite sufficient to show that the situation of white women in many parts of the South is a very perilous one. Nor is this all. Throughout the South, and even elsewhere, the negro is as ready to kill the white man as the white man is to kill him. I have mentioned in the last chapter a number of cases in which, speaking generally, the whites were to blame. Here are some cases, all of recent occurrence, in most of which the initiative seems to have come, directly or indirectly, from the blacks, although the savagery displayed was often about equal on both sides:—

On October 18th, 1890, at Winston, North Carolina, a white gentleman named Silas Riggs was attacked in the street by a mob of negroes. He took refuge in a bar-room. The negroes followed and “dared” him to come out. A few whites who were in the room sallied forth, a fight ensued, Mr. Riggs was killed, and several other people were badly wounded.

On October 21st–22nd, 1890, in Ware County, Georgia, a dispute concerning land arose. Thomas Seers, one of the disputants, shot a negro. The negroes retaliated, killing B. E. M‘Lendon, F. Seers, and T. Seers, and wounding another white. The despatch announcing this to the Charleston World says:—“Much of the territory is covered with dense pine forests, the working of which for turpentine employs large numbers of both white and black. These are very illiterate, and there is much race prejudice, which frequently leads to conflicts.”

“Opelika, Alabama, October 26th, 1890.—Bob Redding, the notorious negro desperado, who has been sought for ten years, was shot and killed at three o’clock this morning by Policeman Gibson.”

On October 27th, 1890, at the Jing-a-Ling Saloon, North College Street, Nashville, Tennessee, a coloured man named Lee asked the bartender for a tin of oysters, and was refused. He left, but returned with a stone, which he attempted to throw. Before he could do so the white, whose name was William Young, shot him dead.

On November 1st, 1890, at Greenville, South Carolina, a negro named Sam Swinger struck with an axe a white man named P. M. Connelly, who died a few days afterwards from his injuries.

On November 4th, 1890, near Lexington, Georgia, at a negro “hot supper,” a negro, named Willis Collins, quarrelled with a white, named Wheless, who shot him with a pistol.

On November 4th, 1890, election day, at Irwine, Estill County, Kentucky, a white, named Dr. P. A. Lilly, brought up to the polls a negro, named Charles White. John Wilson, Commissioner of Schools for the county, challenged White’s right to vote. Upon this Lilly and Wilson quarrelled and drew their pistols. Wilson was hit twice, but was still able to fire twice, one of his bullets striking Lilly near the heart. Then William, a brother of John Wilson, intervened, and took away Lilly’s pistol. Lilly, however, drew a large knife and thrice stabbed John. A brother of Dr. Lilly also intervened, but John Wilson, lying in his blood, fired at and fatally wounded him, and, dragging himself across to where Dr. Lilly lay, dashed out Lilly’s brains with his pistol. Several bystanders were slightly wounded; the two Lillys and John Wilson died.

On November 8th, 1890, at Fairmount, near Marion, Indiana, on the occasion of a Democratic fête, a negro named Tom Uttley interfered in the proceedings. A white named W. H. Campbell defied him, and both drew their pistols and fired simultaneously. Each had fired two harmless shots, when a white named Con Paul flung a brick at the negro, who turned and shot him dead. Another negro, named Rayser, came to the assistance of Uttley, and was shot through the left leg and right arm. Uttley fled, but was captured. In the mêlée, besides Paul and Rayser, four men were seriously wounded.

It cannot, I think, be necessary to say much more in order to prove the existence in the United States of race prejudice of a very dangerous and inflammable sort. The Southern white may be as well off, as regards the negro, as he deserves to be; but, nevertheless, his position and the position of his womankind are not enviable; and it tends to—nay, a large body of the negroes intend that it shall—become worse. Here is what appeared in August, 1889, in a newspaper called the Independent, which was published in Selma, Alabama, under the editorship of a negro preacher, named Bryan:—

“Were you (the whites) to leave this Southland, in twenty years it would be one of the grandest sections of the globe. We would show you mossback-crackers how to run a country. You would never see convicts, half-starved, depriving honest working-men of an honest living. It is only a matter of time when throughout this whole State affairs will be changed, and, I hope, to your sorrow. We were never destined to be always servants, but, like all other races, will and must have our day. You now have yours. You have had your revolutionary and civil wars, and we here predict that at no very distant day we will have our war, and we hope, as God intends, that we will be strong enough to wipe you out of existence, or hardly leave enough of you to tell the story.”

And yet the armchair theorists of the North say:—“All is well; the race question in the South may now safely be left to settle itself.” It will never settle itself, unless by wholesale bloodshed.

One must have lived in the South to appreciate the ever-widening gap that exists between the races. One must have lived in the South to appreciate the strength of the passions that lie half slumbering there, but are always ready to awake. Here, by way of partial illustration, is a summary of a speech which was made in September, 1889, in the Georgia Senate by Senator Gibbs, in favour of the repeal of the law prohibiting emigration agents from working in the State, his idea being to facilitate coloured emigration. Senator Gibbs claimed that the State would not be ruined by the loss of a race of people who, in their emancipated condition, were unfit for labourers. The free negro, he said, was worthless as a labourer. Emancipated, he became useless and lapsed into barbarous Voodooism. He quoted figures to sustain the position that freedom had destroyed the negroes’ usefulness. Notwithstanding the great increase of blacks since the war, production had in Georgia suffered a loss of nearly one-half. This, to him, denoted the great demoralisation which had overtaken negro labour, and accounted for the enormous class of vagabond negroes whose presence in the State was a “continual menace to property, to peace, and to virtue.” It was highly necessary, he maintained, to get rid of this dangerous criminal element. The lives of Southern women were actually circumscribed and bound in, for fear of assault at the hands of these scoundrels. Unless something should be done to relieve the strain which owed its existence to the presence of these wretches, the time would come, before long, when the white people would rise as one man and demand emigration or extermination. “It has only been a short time since,” said he, “that one of the villains having suffered as he deserved at East Point, the negroes formed a plot to burn that town and kill the citizens. Nothing was said about that; but as soon as the whites rose to defend themselves, and castigated some of the plotters, the cry of ‘Outrage!’ was heard from one end of the land to the other. ‘Outrage on innocent negroes,’ to discourage them in their lawlessness! I care not what course the courts may take; when the white men strike for home and fireside I am with them. There is not room in this country for both the negro and the Yankee. Vast sums have been expended to educate negroes, who have never done and will never do the State the least good. On the contrary, they are always ready, at the call of the carpetbagger and his base Southern ally, to do her all the harm in their power.”

These extracts give no notion of the violence of the speaker’s language, but only of the tone of his speech, which admirably represented the blind intolerance of that section of Southern whites that refuses to see any good whatever in the negro, and that seems not even to recognise his humanity.

The very carelessness of the negroes on the subject of the white man’s most cherished creeds and principles has more than once gone near to provoke a dreadful outbreak. The article already cited from the Selma Independent narrowly escaped doing so, although it contained only vulgar threats. More dangerous was an article that was printed in August, 1887, in another negro paper, the Montgomery Herald. “Every day or so,” it said brutally, “we read of the lynching of some negro for outraging some white woman. Why is it that white women attract negro men more than in former days? There was a time when such a thing was unheard of. There is a secret to this thing, and we greatly suspect it is the growing appreciation of the white Juliet for the coloured Romeo as he becomes more and more intelligent and refined. If something is not done to break up these lynchings it will be so that after a while they will lynch every coloured man that looks at a white woman with a twinkle in his eye.”

The writer of that article, like many of his race, did not, one may charitably hope, realise the attitude of the Southern white women towards the negroes. If he did realise it, and if he knew that no Southern white for an instant admits the social equality of the races, he was guilty of something very much like playing with gunpowder. Surely the prevailing sentiment of the whites on the subject of social equality is sufficiently indicated by the existence in many States of laws forbidding mixed marriages, and by the existence in all of unwritten laws which oust the white makers of mixed unions from society, even of the humblest and least conventional character. The white man is blamable enough, but not the white woman. There was much truth in a speech of Dr. Fulton’s on the subject of “The Negro’s Redemption,” which I once listened to, although, I think, he ought not to have mentioned black women in his remarks. The chief sinners—if sinners they can be called in such connection—are the coloured, as distinct from the pure negro, women of the South. Dr. Fulton declared that the social relations of the whites and blacks in the South were on the same level to-day as when slavery existed; even men high in religious circles ran no risk of ostracisation when it became known they were the fathers of children by coloured concubines.

And while the armchair theorist of the North is easy in his mind with regard to the race question, concerning which he knows practically nothing, the Southern white man, who ought to know all the dangers of the situation, is, I am obliged to admit, strangely indifferent to them. His idea seems to be, “There are dangers in the future; but the present situation will probably last as long as I live, and so I have no need to greatly worry myself about it. I do not fear the negro; I do not believe in his power of organisation; and if he were to rise we could crush him into resignation.” He seems to be unmindful of the fact that the existence of the Black Belt in the South paralyses his material progress and fetters his whole action as a citizen. Capital does not go Southward in search of an investment, or, if it go, it goes seldom, and it goes with hesitation. It has no confidence in a country which may any day fall again under the rule of a black majority, and may then drift back into the anarchy of the Reconstruction period. And, although the white man does not personally fear the negro, he so much fears him corporately that all his political principles and leanings have vanished in face of the one great question, Shall the white rule or the black?

The Southern whites form to-day one political party. Their point of union is not the tariff, not civil service reform, not the pension system, but simply and solely the one question. The penalty is that now for years past one party has been continuously in power throughout the Solid South, and that it has had practically no opposition. This is an unwholesome state of public affairs; it would be undesirable anywhere. In America it is particularly dangerous, for it tends to corrupt. The Southern State Governments are, it must be admitted, better and purer than, in the circumstances, might be reasonably expected; but every intelligent Southerner sees and feels the bad influence.

The South, however, has a choice of two evils, and she has chosen the least. She is not responsible for the situation. She can only make the best of it. An illustration of what I mean was afforded during the 1890 elections in South Carolina. The two candidates for Governor were Haskell and Tillman. Haskell is an honoured veteran of the war, a tried statesman, a general favourite, and an upright and courteous gentleman. Tillman’s experience of arms is confined to participation in a race riot; he is new to politics; he is the favourite only of the lower and least reputable class of whites; and his election utterances betray him as glaringly deficient in tact and gravely lacking in conventional politeness. Both are Democrats. It was Tillman’s fortune, thanks to the influence of the Farmers’ Alliance, to be the nominee of the Democratic Convention; and on that point the whole contest turned. All the best men in the State wanted Haskell, and did not want Tillman; but Haskell had been offered Republican support, and so, rather than vote for Haskell, the best men either abstained or voted for Tillman. It would never do, they felt, to allow Haskell to come into power on a wave which was partially composed of negro and Republican votes. Party discipline, therefore, prevailed over personal preference, and the worse man won. But for the presence of a negro majority in South Carolina, Haskell would no doubt have been elected. How true it is, as Jefferson said, that American institutions are founded on jealousy and distrust, and not on confidence!

Yet, although the white resents the presence of the black, and forbids the black to fully exercise such rights as the Federal Government has conferred upon him, the white is, withal, more dependent to-day upon the negro than the negro is upon the white. There can be no question that the sudden removal to-morrow of every white man from the Black Belt would cause far less inconvenience to the negroes than the sudden removal of every black and coloured man would cause to the whites. The needs of the negro are small, and he can supply most of them by his own exertion. The needs of the white man are relatively large, and he has been for generations accustomed to have most of them supplied to him by the exertion of the negro—first as slave, and, for the last quarter of a century, as very lightly paid freedman. The result is that in certain spheres of labour the negro is supreme throughout the South. He has no white rivals, for the reason that the wages which content him would be scorned by the lowest and poorest white in the country. His disappearance, therefore, would leave those particular spheres—the cottonfield, the plantations, the domestic servants’ department, and many more—absolutely empty. In a word, without the negro, or without, at least, some substitute for the negro, the Southern white would for a time be in danger of starving.

Let me not be here understood to mean that upon the whole the South is unsuitable as the white man’s home. It is, on the contrary, a fit home and, in most parts, a healthy one for him. The death-rate per thousand inhabitants in the eight most distinctively Southern States is given in the 1880 census report as follows: Alabama, 14·20; Arkansas, 18·46; Florida, 11·72; Georgia, 13·97; Louisiana, 15·44; Mississippi, 12·89; North Carolina, 15·39; and South Carolina, 15·80. These are the swampy, malarial States, commonly accounted most pestilential in climate. Compare their death-rates with those of eight other States commonly accounted salubrious in climate: Indiana, 15·78; Kansas, 15·22; Massachusetts, 18·59; New Hampshire, 16·09; New Jersey, 16·33; New York, 17·38; Rhode Island, 17; and Illinois, 14·63. The comparison is not unfavourable to the South; and it must be borne in mind that the death-rates given for the Southern States named include negroes as well as whites, a fact which enormously swells the average, for the reason that the negro death-rate is much higher than the white, and in many cases more than doubles it.

The fact that the menial work of the South is done by the negro, combined with the fact that the black race is despised by the white, is responsible for the existence in the South of a class of whites such as is met with nowhere else in the United States; I mean the poor and idle and unashamed class. These people will not undertake menial work as we understand it. They believe that, if they did so, they would ipso facto place themselves on a level with the negroes.

The upshot is that the Southern white man is, as a rule, either a “boss,” (that is, an employer of labour) or a “loafer.” The “boss” is generally a good citizen; the “loafer” is uniformly a bad one, but he seems to be a necessary product of the situation. The presence of the negro has created him, and he is a very dangerous factor in the race problem. He is the man who preys upon the community, white as well as black. He deems it more worthy of his white manhood to be a gambler, a corrupt political adventurer, a haunter of low saloons, a braggart and a swaggerer, than to work for a poor but honest living. And even the white man who is not a “loafer,” but a “boss,” is often enough a very small “boss” indeed—the farmer of a few thin and infertile acres—a citizen who is only a “boss” because, for race reasons, he is too proud to accept employment. In one of the North-Western States he would naturally be a “farm-hand,” and would be much better off than he is, as his own master, in Georgia or Mississippi.

The result of this condition of affairs is that in the Black Belt wealth is less equally divided than it is elsewhere. There is the small class of white capitalists, there is the larger class of poor whites, and there is the still larger class of negroes, most of whom live literally from hand to mouth. The war is, of course, partially responsible for a certain amount of white poverty; but the main cause is, as I have said, the presence of the negro; and upon poverty and false pride follows ignorance. There is more white ignorance in the South than in any other part of the States. The average percentage of white illiteracy among people of ten years old and upwards in the Northern States in 1880 was 5·2; and it varied from 3·5 in Nebraska, 3·6 in Oregon, 3·7 in Kansas, and 3·8 in Iowa, to 7·0 in Indiana and 10·9—a wholly exceptional figure—in Rhode Island. But the average percentage of white illiteracy among people of ten years old and upwards in the States of the Black Belt in 1880 was 22·2, the percentage in the individual States being—Mississippi, 16·3; Virginia, 18·2; Louisiana, 18·4; Florida, 19·9; South Carolina, 21·9; Georgia, 22·9; Alabama, 24·7; and North Carolina, 31·5. And this comparison, significant as it is, does not show the whole extent of Southern white illiteracy, for the figures above given refer not merely to the native, but also to the foreign-born population. Putting aside the latter, one finds that while the average native white illiteracy in the North was but 3·2 per cent., that in the South was 24·7 per cent. Thus, of every four native-born whites in the Black Belt, three only even pretended to be able to read and write. The proportion of native white illiterates in the whole North was no more than one in thirty-one. In Massachusetts it was considerably less than one in a hundred. So much for the demoralising influence of the situation upon the white man. I have now to review some of the suggested solutions to the race problem.