Chapter XV: Weighed in the Balance (2)

“Important as manual labor is everywhere, it is nowhere more
important and absolutely indispensable to the existence of society
than in the more southern of the United States. Machinery may
continue to do, as it has done, much of the work of the North,
but the work of the South requires bone, sinew, and muscle of the
strongest and most enduring kind for its performance. Labor in that
section must know no pause. Her soil is pregnant and prolific with
life and energy. All the forces of nature within her borders are
wonderfully vigorous, persistent, and active. Aided by an almost
perpetual summer abundantly supplied with heat and moisture, her
soil readily and rapidly covers itself with noxious weeds, dense
forests, and impenetrable jungles. Only a few years of non-tillage
would be needed to give the sunny and fruitful South to the bats
and owls of a desolate wilderness. From this condition, shocking
for a southern man to contemplate, it is now seen that nothing less
powerful than the naked iron arm of the negro, can save her. For
him as a Southern laborer, there is no competitor or substitute.
The thought of filling his place by any other variety of the human
family, will be found delusive and utterly impracticable. Neither
Chinaman, German, Norwegian, nor Swede can drive him from the
sugar and cotton fields of Louisiana and Mississippi. They would
certainly perish in the black bottoms of these states if they could
be induced, which they cannot, to try the experiment.

“Nature itself, in those States, comes to the rescue of the negro,
fights his battles, and enables him to exact conditions from those
who would unfairly treat and oppress him. Besides being dependent
upon the roughest and flintiest kind of labor, the climate of
the South makes such labor uninviting and harshly repulsive to
the white man. He dreads it, shrinks from it, and refuses it. He
shuns the burning sun of the fields and seeks the shade of the
verandas. On the contrary, the negro walks, labors, and sleeps in
the sunlight unharmed. The standing apology for slavery was based
upon a knowledge of this fact. It was said that the world must have
cotton and sugar, and that only the negro could supply this want;
and that he could be induced to do it only under the “beneficent
whip” of some bloodthirsty _Legree_. The last part of this argument
has been happily disproved by the large crops of these productions
since Emancipation; but the first part of it stands firm,
unassailed and unassailable.

“Even if climate and other natural causes did not protect the negro
from all competition in the labor-market of the South, inevitable
social causes would probably effect the same result. The slave
system of that section has left behind it, as in the nature of the
case it must, manners, customs, and conditions to which free white
laboring men will be in no haste to submit themselves and their
families. They do not emigrate from the free North, where labor
is respected, to a lately enslaved South, where labor has been
whipped, chained, and degraded for centuries. Naturally enough such
emigration follows the lines of latitude in which they who compose
it were born. Not from South to North, but from East to West ‘the
Star of Empire takes its way.’

“Hence it is seen that the dependence of the planters, land-owners,
and old master-class of the South upon the negro, however galling
and humiliating to Southern pride and power, is nearly complete
and perfect. There is only one mode of escape for them, and that
mode they will certainly not adopt. It is to take off their own
coats, cease to whittle sticks and talk politics at cross-roads,
and go themselves to work in their broad and sunny fields of
cotton and sugar. An invitation to do this is about as harsh and
distasteful to all their inclinations as would be an invitation to
step down into their graves. With the negro, all this is different.
Neither natural, artificial, or traditional causes stand in the
way of the freedman to labor in the South. Neither the heat
nor the fever-demon which lurks in her tangled and oozy swamps
affright him, and he stands to-day the admitted author of whatever
prosperity, beauty, and civilization are now possessed by the
South, and the admitted arbiter of her destiny.

“This then, is the high vantage ground of the negro; he has labor;
the South wants it, and must have it or perish. Since he is free
he can now give it or withhold it, use it where he is, or take it
elsewhere as he pleases. His labor made him a slave, and his labor
can, if he will, make him free, comfortable, and independent. It
is more to him than fire, swords, ballot-boxes, or bayonets. It
touches the heart of the South through its pocket. This power
served him well years ago, when in the bitterest extremity of
destitution. But for it, he would have perished when he dropped
out of slavery. It saved him then, and it will save him again.
Emancipation came to him, surrounded by extremely unfriendly
circumstances. It was not the choice or consent of the people
among whom he lived, but against their will, and a death struggle
on their part to prevent it. His chains were broken in the tempest
and whirlwind of civil war. Without food, without shelter, without
land, without money, and without friends, he with his children,
his sick, his aged and helpless ones, were turned loose and naked
to the open sky. The announcement of his freedom was instantly
followed by an order from his master to quit his old quarters, and
to seek bread thereafter from the hands of those who had given him
his freedom. A desperate extremity was thus forced upon him at the
outset of his freedom, and the world watched with humane anxiety,
to see what would become of him. His peril was imminent. Starvation
and death stared him in the face and marked him for their victim.

“It will not soon be forgotten that at the close of a five hours’
speech by the late Senator Sumner, in which he advocated with
unequaled learning and eloquence the enfranchisement of the
freedmen, the best argument with which he was met in the Senate,
was that legislation at that point would be utterly superfluous;
that the negro was rapidly dying out, and must inevitably and
speedily disappear and become extinct.

“Inhuman and shocking as was this consignment of millions of human
beings to extinction, the extremity of the negro, at that date,
did not contradict, but favored, the prophecy. The policy of the
old master-class dictated by passion, pride, and revenge, was then
to make the freedom of the negro, a greater calamity to him, if
possible, than had been his slavery. But happily, both for the old
master-class, and for the recently emancipated, there came then, as
there will come now, the sober second thought. The old master-class
then found it had made a great mistake. It had driven away the
means of its own support. It had destroyed the hands, and left the
mouths. It had starved the negro, and starved itself. Not even to
gratify its own anger and resentment could it afford to allow its
fields to go uncultivated, and its tables unsupplied with food.
Hence the freedman, less from humanity than cupidity, less from
choice than necessity, was speedily called back to labor and life.

“But now, after fourteen years of service, and fourteen years of
separation from the visible presence of slavery, during which he
has shown both disposition and ability to supply the labor market
of the South, and that he could do so far better as a freedman than
he ever did as a slave; that more cotton and sugar can be raised by
the same hands, under the inspiration of liberty and hope, than can
be raised under the influence of bondage and the whip, he is again,
alas! in the deepest trouble; again without a home, out under
the open sky, with his wife and little ones. He lines the Sunny
banks of the Mississippi, fluttering in rags and wretchedness,
mournfully imploring hard-hearted Steamboat Captains to take him on
board; while the friends of the emigration movement are diligently
soliciting funds all over the North to help him away from his old
home to the new Canaan of Kansas.”

I am sorry to be obliged to omit the statement which here follows, of the reasons given for the Exodus movement, and my explanation of them, but from want of space I can present only such portions of the paper as express most vividly and in fewest words, my position in regard to the question. I go on to say:

“Bad as is the condition of the negro to-day at the South, there
was a time when it was flagrantly and incomparably worse. A few
years ago he had nothing--he had not even himself. He belonged
to somebody else, who could dispose of his person and his labor
as he pleased. Now he has himself, his labor, and his right to
dispose of one and the other as shall best suit his own happiness.
He has more. He has a standing in the supreme law of the land--
in the Constitution of the United States--not to be changed or
affected by any conjunction of circumstances likely to occur in the
immediate or remote future. The Fourteenth Amendment makes him a
citizen and the Fifteenth makes him a voter. With power behind him,
at work for him, and which cannot be taken from him, the negro of
the South may wisely bide his time. The situation at the moment is
exceptional and transient. The permanent powers of the government
are all on his side. What though for the moment the hand of
violence strikes down the negro’s rights in the South, those rights
will revive, survive, and flourish again. They are not the only
people who have been, in a moment of popular passion, maltreated
and driven from the polls. The Irish and Dutch have frequently been
so treated. Boston, Baltimore, and New York have been the scenes
of lawless violence; but those scenes have now disappeared....
Without abating one jot of our horror and indignation at the
outrages committed in some parts of the Southern States against the
negro, we cannot but regard the present agitation of an African
exodus from the South as ill-timed and in some respects hurtful. We
stand to-day at the beginning of a grand and beneficent reaction.
There is a growing recognition of the duty and obligation of the
American people to guard, protect, and defend the personal and
political rights of all the people of all the States; to uphold the
principles upon which rebellion was suppressed, slavery abolished,
and the country saved from dismemberment and ruin.

“We see and feel to-day, as we have not seen and felt before, that
the time for conciliation and trusting to the honor of the late
rebels and slaveholders has passed. The President of the United
States himself, while still liberal, just, and generous toward the
South, has yet sounded a halt in that direction, and has bravely,
firmly, and ably asserted the constitutional authority to maintain
the public peace in every State in the Union, and upon every day in
the year, and has maintained this ground against all the powers of
House and Senate.

“We stand at the gateway of a marked and decided change in the
statesmanship of our rulers. Every day brings fresh and increasing
evidence that we are, and of right ought to be, a nation; that
Confederate notions of the nature and powers of our government
ought to have perished in the rebellion which they supported; that
they are anachronisms and superstitions and no longer fit to be
above ground....

“At a time like this, so full of hope and courage, it is
unfortunate that a cry of despair should be raised in behalf of
the colored people of the South; unfortunate that men are going
over the country begging in the name of the poor colored man of the
South, and telling the people that the government has no power to
enforce the Constitution and laws in that section, and that there
is no hope for the poor negro but to plant him in the new soil of
Kansas or Nebraska.

“These men do the colored people of the South a real damage.
They give their enemies an advantage in the argument for their
manhood and freedom. They assume their inability to take care
of themselves. The country will be told of the hundreds who go
to Kansas, but not of the thousands who stay in Mississippi and
Louisiana.

“It will be told of the destitute who require material aid, but not
of the multitude who are bravely sustaining themselves where they
are.

“In Georgia the negroes are paying taxes upon six millions of
dollars; in Louisiana upon forty or fifty millions; and upon
unascertained sums elsewhere in the Southern States.

“Why should a people who have made such progress in the course of a
few years be humiliated and scandalized by exodus agents, begging
money to remove them from their homes? especially at a time when
every indication favors the position that the wrongs and hardships
which they suffer are soon to be redressed?

“Besides the objection thus stated, it is manifest that the
public and noisy advocacy of a general stampede of the colored
people from the South to the North is necessarily an abandonment
of the great and paramount principle of protection to person and
property in every State in the Union. It is an evasion of a solemn
obligation and duty. The business of this nation is to protect
its citizens _where they are_, not to transport them where they
will not need protection. The best that can be said of this exodus
in this respect is, that it is an attempt to climb up some other
way; it is an expedient, a half-way measure, and tends to weaken
in the public mind a sense of absolute right, power, and duty of
the government, inasmuch as it concedes by implication at least,
that on the soil of the South the law of the land cannot command
obedience, the ballot-box cannot be kept pure, peaceable elections
cannot be held, the Constitution cannot be enforced, and the lives
and liberties of loyal and peaceable citizens cannot be protected.
It is a surrender, a premature disheartening surrender, since it
would secure freedom and free institutions by migration rather
than by protection; by flight rather than by right; by going into
a strange land rather than by staying in one’s own. It leaves the
whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open and
still to be settled, with the moral influence of exodus against us;
since it is a confession of the utter impracticability of equal
rights and equal protection in any State where those rights may be
struck down by violence.

“It does not appear that the friends of freedom should spend either
time or talent in furtherance of this exodus, as a desirable
measure, either for the North or the South. If the people of this
country cannot be protected in every State of the Union, the
government of the United States is shorn of its rightful dignity
and power, the late rebellion has triumphed, the sovereignty of the
nation is an empty name, and the power and authority in individual
States is greater than the power and authority of the United
States....

“The colored people of the South, just beginning to accumulate a
little property, and to lay the foundation of family, should not
be in haste to sell that little and be off to the banks of the
Mississippi. The habit of roaming from place to place in pursuit of
better conditions of existence is never a good one. A man should
never leave his home for a new one till he has earnestly endeavored
to make his immediate surroundings accord with his wishes. The time
and energy expended in wandering from place to place, if employed
in making him a comfortable home where he is, will, in nine cases
out of ten, prove the best investment. No people ever did much for
themselves or for the world without the sense and inspiration of
native land, of a fixed home, of familiar neighborhood and common
associations. The fact of being to the manner born has an elevating
power upon the mind and heart of a man. It is a more cheerful thing
to be able to say I was born here and know all the people, than to
say I am a stranger here and know none of the people.

“It cannot be doubted that in so far as this exodus tends to
promote restlessness in the colored people of the South, to
unsettle their feeling of home, and to sacrifice positive
advantages where they are, for fancied ones in Kansas or elsewhere,
it is an evil. Some have sold their little homes, their chickens,
mules, and pigs, at a sacrifice, to follow the exodus. Let it be
understood that you are going, and you advertise the fact that
your mule has lost half its value; for your staying with him makes
half his value. Let the colored people of Georgia offer their six
millions’ worth of property for sale, with the purpose to leave
Georgia, and they will not realize half its value. Land is not
worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is
not worth much where there is no one to drive him.

“It may be safely asserted that whether advocated and commended to
favor on the ground that it will increase the political power of
the Republican party, and thus help to make a solid North against
a solid South, or upon the ground that it will increase the power
and influence of the colored people as a political element, and
enable them the better to protect their rights, and insure their
moral and social elevation, the exodus will prove a disappointment,
a mistake, and a failure; because, as to strengthening the
Republican party, the emigrants will go only to those States where
the Republican party is strong and solid enough already with their
votes; and in respect to the other part of the argument, it will
fail because it takes colored voters from a section of the country
where they are sufficiently numerous to elect some of their number
to places of honor and profit, and places them in a country where
their proportion to other classes will be so small as not to be
recognized as a political element or entitled to be represented by
one of themselves. And further, because go where they will, they
must for a time inevitably carry with them poverty, ignorance, and
other repulsive incidents, inherited from their former condition
as slaves--a circumstance which is about as likely to make votes
for Democrats as for Republicans, and to raise up bitter prejudice
against them as to raise up friends for them....

“Plainly enough, the exodus is less harmful as a measure than are
the arguments by which it is supported. The one is the result of
a feeling of outrage and despair; but the other comes of cool,
selfish calculation. One is the result of honest despair, and
appeals powerfully to the sympathies of men; the other is an appeal
to our selfishness, which shrinks from doing right because the way
is difficult.

“Not only is the South the best locality for the negro, on the
ground of his political powers and possibilities, but it is best
for him as a field of labor. He is there, as he is nowhere else,
an absolute necessity. He has a monopoly of the labor market. His
labor is the only labor which can successfully offer itself for
sale in that market. This fact, with a little wisdom and firmness,
will enable him to sell his labor there on terms more favorable
to himself than he can elsewhere. As there are no competitors or
substitutes he can demand living prices with the certainty that
the demand will be complied with. Exodus would deprive him of this
advantage....

“The negro, as already intimated, is preëminently a Southern man.
He is so both in constitution and habits, in body as well as mind.
He will not only take with him to the North, southern modes of
labor, but southern modes of life. The careless and improvident
habits of the South cannot be set aside in a generation. If they
are adhered to in the North, in the fierce winds and snows of
Kansas and Nebraska, the emigration must be large to keep up their
numbers....

“As an assertion of power by a people hitherto held in bitter
contempt, as an emphatic and stinging protest against high-handed,
greedy, and shameless injustice to the weak and defenceless, as
a means of opening the blind eyes of oppressors to their folly
and peril, the exodus has done valuable service. Whether it has
accomplished all of which it is capable in this direction, for the
present is a question which may well be considered. With a moderate
degree of intelligent leadership among the laboring class of the
South, properly handling the justice of their cause, and wisely
using the exodus example, they can easily exact better terms for
their labor than ever before. Exodus is medicine, not food; it is
for disease, not health; it is not to be taken from choice, but
necessity. In anything like a normal condition of things, the South
is the best place for the negro. Nowhere else is there for him a
promise of a happier future. Let him stay there if he can, and save
both the South and himself to civilization. While, however, it may
be the highest wisdom in the circumstances for the freedmen to stay
where they are, no encouragement should be given to any measures
of coercion to keep them there. The American people are bound, if
they are or can be bound to anything, to keep the north gate of the
South open to black and white and to all the people. The time to
assert a right, Webster says, is when it is called in question. If
it is attempted, by force or fraud to compel the colored people to
stay there, they should by all means go--go quickly, and die if
need be in the attempt.”...