THE NEGRO IS HERE TO STAY.

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so extreme and so cruel. The two races are necessary to each other, and any policy which would divide them and separate them, would entail untold misery on succeeding generations; and therefore I protest against all schemes. of banishing the negroes from the soil on which they were born. A race that has been here for two hundred and seventy years, and that has multiplied till it has become like the stars of heaven for multitude, is not to be driven off the continent into the sea, or beyond it, at the bidding of any power. When I hear the politician casting words of contempt and of ignominy upon the negro, and predicting that he will "die out," and perish from off the New World in which he has lived so long, I see a dusky figure rising up in the gloom of the Southern forests, and hear the voice of one who believes in his race, and in Almighty God as its Protector, making answer, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord!"

Is it not time to drop these visionary projects, and to recognize the hard fact, however unpleasant it may be, that the negro is here, and here to stay? He has as good a right to be here as we have. He was born on this side of the Atlantic. He knows no more of Africa than we do, nor half as much. The only country he knows under the broad canopy of heaven, is America. Has he not a right to say, "Here my fathers have lived for many generations; here was I born; here were my children born; and here, by God's help, will we live, and here will we die"?

Recognizing this fact as one that cannot be changed by any amount of agitation or of legislation, the only question is, Whether the two races, white and black, can live side by side without constant collision? Some will tell us that it is simply impossible; that the juxtaposition of two races, alien to each other in nature as in blood, yet living on the same soil and having the same political rights,

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CANNOT THE TWO RACES LIVE TOGETHER? means perpetual war-a war like that between the Spaniard and the Moor, which lasted for eight hundred years, to end, like that, only in the extermination of the one or the other. Is this the inevitable doom of the black race? Or is it possible that the two races should live through all the coming generations, not only the closest of neighbors, but the best of friends? This is the Race Problem which confronts us to-day-the most difficult and perplexing problem that ever stood across the ascending path of a great nation. We are making a tremendous experiment, and one, some tell us, foredoomed to failure. If so, then civilization is a failure; and, what is worse, Christianity is a failure. But we shall not fail. Our faith is in God and in the American people. He who guided our fathers in all the crises of their history, will not forget us in this supreme moment of anxiety and of fear. He will still lead us on through this last great danger, to the end that our government may be "settled upon the best and surest foundations; that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all generations.”

CHAPTER XIII.

LOOKING FORWARD.

From the dark background of a gloomy past, it is a relief to turn our eyes towards a brighter future. It is a quarter of a century since the negro received his freedom. Since then he has been, as it were, on trial, to prove whether he was worthy of the liberty that was given him, or whether it were better that he had been kept in slavery. And with all his imperfections, I think he has stood the test pretty well. He has proved himself, not only a good hand at his old business of the shovel and the hoe, but has shown a good deal of "grit" and "staying power." He has not died out, as some of his kind friends were sure that he would do as soon as he was left to himself; but, on the contrary, his descendants have multiplied like the children of Israel in the land of Egypt. Nor has he shown himself the indolent creature that we were told he would be as soon as the pressure of servitude was taken off. True, there are numbers of idle, shiftless, worthless negroes, lying about the streets of every city and large town in the South, just as there are numbers of idle, shiftless, and worthless white men in our Northern cities, that could be spared without a loss to civilization. Those who prophesied

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THE NEGRO INDUSTRIOUS.

his helpless and hopeless indolence as soon as he was set free, forgot that he would come under another pressure the moment that he had to take care of himself. In the old days, when "Master" provided everything, he could lie about, and feign sickness, and shirk his day's task; but when it came to this, that "if he did not work, neither should he eat," he began to stir himself, and has worked to some purpose, in proof of which it is necessary to give but one single fact that in Georgia the negroes are taxed on property to the amount of ten millions of dollars! As the property subject to taxation is generally estimated at little more than half its real value, this would indicate that the negroes of one Southern State are to-day worth twenty millions of dollars! This does not look like idleness and waste in the years that they have been free.

It is not to be supposed that all these well-to-do blacks are mere laborers on the old plantations. Many of them are mechanics, wherein they have an advantage over their brethren at the North. In New York city there are few colored mechanics, and these work in a very small way. General Armstrong recently said to me: "Northern competition is harder on the negro than Southern prejudice." Colored men here complain bitterly of the way in which they are driven out of all the better class of trades. They say that not one of them can find employment in any store or shop; nor be an apprentice to learn a trade; indeed that they cannot do anything except the most menial labor. The cases recently given us by Mr. Grimké would show that it is somewhat better in New England; yet even The Congregationalist of Boston says:

"The difficulties in the way of just treatment of the negro are not confined to the South. In some respects he is not so well off in the Northern States. It is affirmed that even in Boston hardly a single colored boy can be found learning a trade,

COLORED SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH.

167 because, except hotel-waiting, boot-blacking, and barbering, the trades are all closed against him. No negroes, with a single exception, were observed in the ranks of the processions representing the different trades on Labor Day. In the South they are shut out of hotels, and compelled to ride in inferior railwaycars; but they can learn trades without hindrance. Such a state of things is not a credit to Northern civilization."

In Georgia the negroes find no such barriers in their way. They can enter any trade, and, if they become skilled mechanics, can find plenty to do. Their old masters, instead of a feeling of resentment at their being free, seem to like to have them about, and encourage them in every way. This is greatly to their honor. When we think how many of these old masters were themselves impoverished, and some of them literally beggared, by the war, it shows a generous disposition that they take so kindly to the new situation; and it may be in part ascribed to their friendly counsel, as well as to the industry of the blacks, that so many of the latter have got along so well, and been able to make themselves comfortable and independent.

But the brightest light on the Southern horizon, is the education of the colored race. Before the war this was unknown. A few house-servants might be taught to read and write, to make them more useful in the business of their masters; but anything like a general education of the blacks, would have been viewed with alarm. Indeed a school for teaching them, however small, even if it were on a plantation, and conducted by members of the planter's own family, was an object of suspicion. A servile race must not be allowed to become intelligent. Ideas are explosive. For this reason schools for the blacks were forbidden by law. But when the war was over, this was one of the first things that engaged the attention of philanthropic people at the North; and teachers were sent