Timothy Thomas Fortune - Black and White

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BLACK AND WHITE

_LAND, LABOR, and POLITICS in the SOUTH_

By

TIMOTHY THOMAS FORTUNE

1884

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

In discussing the political and industrial problems of the South, I
base my conclusions upon a personal knowledge of the condition of
classes in the South, as well as upon the ample data furnished by
writers who have pursued, in their way, the question before me. That
the colored people of the country will yet achieve an honorable status
in the national industries of thought and activity, I believe, and try
to make plain.

In discussion of the land and labor problem I but pursue the theories
advocated by more able and experienced men, in the attempt to show
that the laboring classes of any country pay all the taxes, in the
last analysis, and that they are systematically victimized by
legislators, corporations and syndicates.

Wealth, unduly centralized, endangers the efficient workings of the
machinery of government. Land monopoly--in the hands of individuals,
corporations or syndicates--is at bottom the prime cause of the
inequalities which obtain; which desolate fertile acres turned over to
vast ranches and into bonanza farms of a thousand acres, where not one
family finds a habitation, where muscle and brain are supplanted by
machinery, and the small farmer is swallowed up and turned into a
tenant or slave. While in large cities thousands upon thousands of
human beings are crowded into narrow quarters where vice festers,
where crime flourishes undeterred, and where death is the most welcome
of all visitors.

The primal purpose in publishing this work is to show that the social
problems in the South are, in the main, the same as those which
afflict every civilized country on the globe; and that the future
conflict in that section will not be racial or political in character,
but between capital on the one hand and labor on the other, with the
odds largely in favor of nonproductive wealth because of the undue
advantage given the latter by the pernicious monopoly in land which
limits production and forces population disastrously upon subsistence.
My purpose is to show that poverty and misfortune make no invidious
distinctions of "race, color, or previous condition," but that wealth
unduly centralized oppresses all alike; therefore, that the labor
elements of the whole United States should sympathize with the same
elements in the South, and in some favorable contingency effect some
unity of organization and action, which shall subserve the common
interest of the common class.

T. THOMAS FORTUNE.
New York City, July 20, 1884.

CONTENTS

I--Black 1
II--White 6
III--The Negro and the Nation 13
IV--The Triumph of the Vanquished 19
V--Illiteracy--Its Causes 28
VI--Education--Professional or Industrial 38
VII---How Not to Do It 55
VIII--The Nation Surrenders 62
IX--Political Independence of the Negro 67
X--Solution of the Political Problem 79
XI--Land and Labor 89
XII--Civilization Degrades the Masses 96
XIII--Conditions of Labor in the South 107
XIV--Classes in the South 120
XV--The Land Problem 133
XVI--Conclusion 145
Appendix 151

On a summer day, when the great heat induced a general thirst, a Lion
and a Boar came at the same moment to a small well to drink. They
fiercely disputed which of them should drink first, and were soon
engaged in the agonies of a mortal combat. On their suddenly stopping
to take breath for the fiercer renewal of the strife, they saw some
vultures in the distance, waiting to feast on the one which should
fall. They at once made up their quarrel, saying, "It is better
for us to be friends, than to become the food of crows or
vultures."--_AEsop's Fables_.

CHAPTER I

_Black_

There is no question to-day in American politics more unsettled than
the negro question; nor has there been a time since the adoption of
the Federal Constitution when this question has not, in one shape or
another, been a disturbing element, a deep-rooted cancer, upon the
body of our society, frequently occupying public attention to the
exclusion of all other questions. It appears to possess, as no other
question, the elements of perennial vitality.

The introduction of African slaves into the colony of Virginia in
August, 1619, was the beginning of an agitation, a problem, the
solution of which no man, even at this late date, can predict,
although many wise men have prophesied.

History--the record of human error, cruelty and misdirected
zeal--furnishes no more striking anomaly than the British Puritan
fleeing from princely rule and tyranny and dragging at his heels the
African savage, bound in servile chains; praying to a just God for
freedom, and at the same time riveting upon his fellow-man the gyves
of most unjust and cruel slavery. A parallel for such hypocrisy, such
sacrilegious invocation, is not matched in the various history of
peoples.

It did not matter to the early settlers of the American colonies that,
in the memorable struggle for the right to be represented if taxed, a
black man--Crispus Attucks, a full-blooded Negro--died upon the soil
of Massachusetts, in the Boston massacre of 1770, in common with other
loyal, earnest men, as the first armed protest against an odious
tyranny; it did not matter that in the armies of the colonies, in
rebellion against Great Britain, there were (according to the report
of Adjutant General Scammell), on the 24th day of August, 1778, 755
regularly enlisted negro troops; it did not matter that in the second
war with Great Britain, General Andrew Jackson, on the 21st day of
September, 1814, appealed to the "free colored people of Louisiana" as
"sons of freedom," who were "called upon to defend _our_ most
inestimable blessing," the right to be free and sovereign, and to
"rally around the standard of the eagle, to defend all which is dear
in existence;" it did not matter that in each of these memorable
struggles the black man was called upon, and responded nobly, to the
call for volunteers to drive out the minions of the British tyrant.
When the smoke of battle had dissolved into thin air; when the
precious right to be free and sovereign had been stubbornly fought for
and reluctantly conceded; when the bloody memories of Yorktown and New
Orleans had passed into glorious history, the black man, who had
assisted by his courage to establish the free and independent States
of America, was doomed to sweat and groan that others might revel in
idleness and luxury. Allured, in each instance, into the conflict for
National independence by the hope held out of generous reward and an
honest consideration of his manhood rights, he received as his portion
chains and contempt. The spirit of injustice, inborn in the Caucasian
nature, asserted itself in each instance. Selfishness and greed rode
roughshod over the promptings of a generous, humane, Christian nature,
as they have always done in this country, not only in the case of the
African but of the Indian as well, each of whom has in turn felt the
pernicious influence of that heartless greed which overleaps honesty
and fair play, in the unmanly grasp after perishable gain.

The books which have been written in this country--the books which
have molded and controlled intelligent public opinion--during the
past one hundred and fifty years have been written by white men, in
justification of the white man's domineering selfishness, cruelty and
tyranny. Beginning with Thomas Jefferson's _Notes on Virginia_, down
to the present time, the same key has been struck, the same song as
been sung, with here and there a rare exception--as in the case of
Mrs. Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, Judge Tourgee's _A Fool's Errand_,
Dr. Haygood's _Our Brother in Black_, and some others of less note.
The white man's story has been told over and over again, until the
reader actually tires of the monotonous repetition, so like the
ten-cent novels in which the white hunter always triumphs over the red
man. The honest reader has longed in vain for a glimpse at the other
side of the picture so studiously turned to the wall.

Even in books written expressly to picture the black man's side of the
story, the author has been compelled to palliate, by interjecting
extenuating, often irrelevant circumstances, the ferocity and
insatiate lust of greed of his race. He has been unable to tell the
story as it was, because his nature, his love of race, his inborn,
prejudices and narrowness made him a lurking coward.

And so it has been with the newspapers, which have ever been the
obsequious reflex of distempered public opinion, siding always with
the strong and powerful; so that in 1831, when the "Liberator"
(published in Boston by the intrepid and patriotic Garrison) made its
appearance, it was a lone David among a swarm of Goliaths, any one of
which was willing and anxious to serve the cause of the devil by
crushing the little angel in the service of the Lord. So it is to-day.
The great newspapers, which should plead the cause of the oppressed
and the down-trodden, which should be the palladiums of the people's
rights, are all on the side of the oppressor, or by silence preserve a
dignified but ignominious neutrality. Day after day they weave a false
picture of facts--facts which must measurably influence the future
historian of the times in the composition of impartial history. The
wrongs of the masses are referred to sneeringly or apologetically.

The vast army of laborers--men, women, and even tender children--find
no favor in the eyes of these Knights of the Quill. The Negro and the
Indian, the footballs of slippery politicians and the helpless victims
of sharpers and thieves, are wantonly misrepresented--held up to the
eyes of the world as beings incapable of imbibing the distorted
civilization in the midst of which they live and have their being.
They are placed in the attic, only to be aired when somebody wants an
"issue" or an "appropriation."

There are no "Liberators" to-day, and the William Lloyd Garrisons have
nearly all of them gone the way of all the world.

The part played by the ministry of Christ in the early conflict
against human slavery in this country would be enigmatical in the
extreme, utterly beyond apprehension, if it were not matter of history
that the representatives of the Christian Church, in conflicts with
every giant wrong, have always been the strongest supporters, the most
obsequious tools of money power and the political sharpers who have
imposed their vile tyrannies upon mankind. They have alternately
supplicated and domineered, crawled in the dust or mounted the
house-top, as occasion served, from Gregory to the Smiths and Joneses
of the present time. So that it has passed into a proverb, that the
ministers of the gospel may be always counted upon to take sides with
the strongest party--always seeking to conciliate "King Cotton," "King
Corporation," "King Monopoly," and all the other "Kings" of modern
growth--swaying, like the reed in the wind, to the powers that be,
whether of tyranny reared upon a thousand years of usurpation,
military despotism of a day's growth, or presumptuous wealth
accumulated by robbery, hypocrisy and insidious assassination. Instead
of leading in the reformation of leviathan wrongs, the ministry waits
for the rabble to applaud before it commends.[1] It was not in this
manner that the great Christ set the world in motion, sowed broadcast
the dynamite which uprooted long-established infamies, and prepared
the way for the ultimate redemption of the world from sin and error.

If the Christian ministry of the United States did at last recognize
the demoralization and iniquity of slavery, it was because the heroic
band, headed by William Lloyd Garrison, first fired the heart of the
people and forced the ministry to take sides with the righteous cause.
I speak not of the few heroic exceptions, but of the mass of the
American clergy. If in the evangelization of the black man since the
rebellion, the ministry have largely furthered the work, they have
done so because there were hundreds and thousands of brave men and
women ready to give their time and money to the upbuilding of outraged
humanity and the cause of Christ. They have simply put in operation
movements conceived and nurtured by the genius and philanthropy of
others, and no one of them will claim that he has not reaped an
abundant pecuniary harvest for his labors. Yet, I would accord to the
ministry of the United States full meed of praise for all that they
have done as the agents of the humane, intelligent and philanthropic
opinions of the times; and, too, there have been good men who fought
the good fight simply because the cause was just.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Be thou the first true merit to befriend,
His praise is lost who waits till all commend._
_Pope's_ Essay on Man.

CHAPTER II

_White_

It is my purpose in writing this work to show that the American
Government has always construed people of African parentage to be
aliens, not only when the Constitution was tortured by narrow-minded
men to shield the cruel, murderous slave-holder in the possession of
his human property, but even now, when the panoply of citizenship is,
presumably, all-sufficient to insure to the late slave the enjoyment
of full manhood rights as a sovereign citizen.

The conflict of law and the moral sentiment of the country has been
long and bloody, and the end is not yet. Political parties in this
country do not lead, but follow, public opinion. They hang upon the
applause of the rabble, and succeed or fail in their efforts to
administer the affairs of Government in proportion as they interpret
the wishes of the rabble. Not alone do parties defer to the wishes of
the illiterate, the "great unwashed" majority, but individuals as
well, who prefer to ride upon the wave of success as the champions of
great wrongs rather than to go into retirement as the champions of
just principles. The voice of the Charmer is all too powerful to be
successfully resisted.

Republics have always been fruitful of demagogues. Such vermin find
the soil of democratic government the most fertile and congenial for
their operations, because the audiences to which they speak, the
passions to which they appeal, are not always of the most reflective,
humane or enlightened. Demagogues are the parasites of republics; and
that our country is afflicted with an abnormal number of them is to be
expected from the tentative nature of our institutions, the extent of
our territory and the heterogeneity of our vast population.

Under our government all the peoples of the world find shelter and
protection--save the African (who was formerly used as a beast of
burden and now as a football, to be kicked by one faction and kicked
back by the other) and the industrious Chinaman, who was barred out by
the over-obsequiousness of the Congress of the nation, in deference to
the Sand-Lot demagogues of the Pacific coast, headed by Denis Kearney,
because it was desirable to conciliate their votes, even at the
expense of consistency and the unity of the Constitution. That great
document, while constantly affirmed to be the most broad and liberal
compact ever devised for the governance of man, has always been found
to be narrow enough to serve the purposes of the slave oligarch and
the make-shifts of the party in power; and has always afforded ample
shelter and protection to the lazzaroni of Italy, the paupers of
Ireland, and the incendiary spirits of other countries, but yet cannot
shield a black man, a citizen and to the manor born, in any common,
civil or political right which usually attaches to citizenship.

A putative citizen of the United States commits murder in the
jurisdiction of a friendly power, and the Chief Executive of fifty
millions of people deems it incumbent upon him as the head of the
faction to which he belongs to "call the attention of Congress" to the
fact, ostensibly in the interest of justice and fair-play, but
obviously to court the good will of the American sympathizers of the
assassin. While on the contrary, within a few hundred miles of the
National capital, an armed mob of citizens shoot down in cold blood a
dozen of their fellow-citizens, but the Chief of the Nation did not
deem it at all pertinent or necessary to "call the attention of
Congress" to the matter. And why? Because, forsooth, the newspapers,
voicing the wishes of the rabble and the cormorants of trade, cry down
the "Bloody Shirt," proclaiming, with brazen effrontery, that each
State is "_sovereign_," and that its citizens have a _perfect right_
to terrorize and murder one another, if they so desire. The Bible
declares that "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach
to any people." God save the Union!

But such argument is indicative, not only of American politics but of
Caucasian human nature as well--that human nature which seldom rises
above self-interest in business or politics. If you have abundance of
money, the merchant is all accommodation, the lawyer all smiles; if
you have votes that count, politicians cannot be too obsequious, too
affable, too anxious to serve you. But if you simply have common
humanity, clothed in the awful majesty of a just cause, you appeal in
vain to the cormorants of trade, the harpies of law, or the demagogues
of power. Unless you are of the salt salty, unless you are clothed in
broadcloth and fine linen, you cannot obtain even a respectful
hearing.

It took the Abolitionists full thirty years to convince the American
people, the ministry of Christ included, that slavery was, pure and
simple, a "Covenant with death and an agreement with hell;" and then,
sad to say, they were convinced against their wills. Their sense of
justice had become so obtuse as to wholly blunt the sense of reason,
the brotherly sympathy of a common race-feeling, and the broad,
liberal and just inculcations of Jesus Christ. The nation was sunk to
the moral turpitude of Constantinople; and not even a John crying in
the wilderness could arouse it to a sense of the exceeding foulness in
the midst of which it grovelled, or of the storm gathering on the
distant horizon.

Although the abolition of slavery had been agitated for more than
thirty years, the nation, which was ruled by politicians of the usual
mental caliber, was startled at the defiant shot upon Fort
Sumter--the shot that echoed the downfall of the foulest institution
which has sapped the vitality of any modern government, and that
aroused the people to a sorrowful realization that the power which
defied them was strong enough and desperate enough to stop at nothing
short of the disintegration of the American Union. So the nation,
still sympathizing with slavery, still playing with a coal of fire,
grappled with the monster, feeling itself powerful to crush it in a
few short months.

It was not because the people of the nation hated slavery and
oppression that they rushed upon the field of battle; no such
righteousness moved them: it was because the slave-power, which had
for so long dictated legislation and the interpretation of the laws,
would tolerate no adverse criticism or legislation upon the foul
institution it championed, and appealed from the forum of reason to
the forum of treasonable rebellion to enforce the right so long and (I
blush to say it!) _constitutionally_ conceded to it.

I do not believe that, in 1860, a majority (or even a respectable
minority) of the American people desired the manumission of the slave;
it is evident, from the temper of the political discussions of that
time, that the combination of parties out of which, in 1856, the
Republican party was formed, desired to do no more than to confine the
institution of slavery within the territory then occupied. There was
certainly very little comfort for the black man in this position of
the "party of great moral ideas."

The overtures[2] made by President Lincoln to the slave-power during
the first year of the war were all made in the interest of the
perpetuation of the Union, and not in the interest of the slave.

His reply to Mr. Horace Greeley, who urged upon him the importance of
issuing an emancipation proclamation is conclusive that he was more
concerned about the Union than about the slave:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
_August 22, 1862_

HON. HORACE GREELEY:--Dear Sir: I have just read yours of
the 19th, addressed to myself through the _New York
Tribune_. If there be in it any statements or assumptions of
facts which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and
here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences
which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and
here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an
imperious and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to
an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be
right.

As to the policy I seem to be pursuing, as you say, I have
not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way
under the constitution. The sooner the national authority
can be restored, the nearer the Union will be the Union it
was.

* * * If there be those who would not save the Union,
unless they could at the same time _destroy slavery, I do
not agree with them_. My paramount object in this struggle
_is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to
destroy slavery_. If I could save the Union _without_
freeing _any_ slave _I would do it_, and if I could save it
by freeing _all_ the slaves I would do it; and if I could
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would
also do that. _What I do about slavery and the colored race,
I do because I believe it helps to save the Union_; and what
I forbear I forbear because I do not believe it would help
to save the Union. I shall do _less_ whenever I shall
believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do
_more_ whenever I shall believe doing more will help the
cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be
errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall
appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purposes according to my view of
_official_ duty; and I intend no modification of my
oft-expressed _personal_ wish that all men, everywhere,
should be free.

Yours,
A. LINCOLN

Everything--humanity, justice, posterity--was placed upon the
sacrificial altar of the Union, and the slave-power was repeatedly and
earnestly invited to lay down its traitorous arms, be forgiven, and
keep its slaves. With Mr. Lincoln, as President, it was the Union,
first, last, and all the time. And he but echoed the prevailing
opinions of his time. I do not question or criticise his _personal_
attitude; but what he himself called his "view of official duty" was
to execute the will of the people, and that was _not_ to abolish
slavery, at that time.

As the politicians only took hold of the great question when they
thought it would advance their selfish interests, they were prepared
to abandon it or immolate it upon the altar of "expediency," when the
great clouds of treason burst upon them in the form of gigantic
rebellion. The politicians of that time, like the politicians of all
times, were incapable of appreciating the magnitude of the questions
involved in the conflict.

But the slave-power had been aroused. It was not to be appeased by
overtures; it wanted no compromise. It would brook no interference
inimical to its "peculiar institution." In the Congress of the nation,
in the high places of power, it had so long been permitted to dictate
the policy to be pursued towards slavery, it had so inoculated the
institutions of the government with the virus of its vicious opinions,
that, to be interfered with, to be dictated to, was out of the
question. It was Ephraim and his idol repeated.

The South forced the issue upon the people of the country. The
Southerners marched off under the banner of "States Rights"--a
doctrine they have always championed. They cared nothing for the Union
_then_; they care less for the Union _now_. The State to them is
sovereign; the nation a magnificent combination of nothingness. The
State has in its keeping all option over life, individual rights, and
property. The spirit of Hayne and Calhoun is still the star that
lights the pathway of the Southern man in his duty to the government.
He recognizes no sovereignty more potential than that of his State.

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