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Timothy Thomas Fortune - Black and White

T >> Timothy Thomas Fortune >> Black and White




The colored man must rise to a full conception of his citizenship
before he can make his citizenship effective. It is a fatality to
create or foster clannishness in a government like ours. Assimilation
of sentiment must be the property of the German, the Irish, the
English, the Anglo-African, and all other racial elements that
contribute to the formation of the American type of citizen. The
moment you create a caste standard, the moment you recognize the
existence of such, that moment republican government stands beneath
the sword of Damocles, the vitality of its being becomes vitiated and
endangered. If this be true, the American people have grave cause for
apprehension. The Anglo-African element of our population is classed
off by popular sentiment, and kept so. It is for the thoughtful, the
honest, the calm but resolute men of the race to mould the sentiment
of the masses, lift them up into the broad sunlight of freedom.
Ignorance, superstition, prejudice, and intolerance are elements in
our nature born of the malign institution of servitude. No fiat of
government can eradicate these. As they were the slow growth, the
gradual development of long years of inhuman conditions, so they must
be eliminated by the slow growth of years of favorable conditions. Let
us recognize these facts as facts, and labor honestly to supplant them
with more wholesome, more cheering realities. The Independent colored
man, like the Independent white man, is an American citizen who does
his own thinking. When some one else thinks for him he ceases to be an
intelligent citizen and becomes a dangerous dupe--dangerous to
himself, dangerous to the State.

It is not to be expected now that the colored voters will continue to
maintain that unanimity of idea and action characteristic of them when
the legislative halls of States resounded with the clamor of
law-makers of their creation, and when their breath flooded or
depleted State treasuries. The conditions are different now. They find
themselves citizens without a voice in the shapement of legislation;
tax-payers without representation; men without leadership masterful
enough to force respect from inferior numbers in some States, or to
hold the balance of power in others. They find themselves at the mercy
of a relentless public opinion which tolerates but does not respect
their existence as a voting force; but which, on the contrary, while
recognizing their right to the free exercise of the suffrage, forbids
such exercise at the point of the shotgun of the assassin, whom it not
only nerves but shields in the perpetration of his lawless and
infamous crimes. And why is this? Why is it that the one hundred and
twenty thousand black voters of South Carolina allow the eighty
thousand white voters of that State to grind the life out of them by
laws more odious, more infamous, more tyrannical and subversive of
manhood than any which depopulate the governments of the old world? Is
it because the white man is the created viceregent of government? The
Scriptures affirm that all are sprung from one parental stem. Is it
because he is the constitutionally invested oligarch of government?
The magna charta of our liberties affirms that "all men are created
equal." Is it because the law of the land reserves unto him the
dominance of power? The preamble of the Federal Constitution declares
that "We" and not "I," constitute "the people of the United States."
If the law of God and the law of man agree in the equality of right of
man, explain to me the cause which keeps a superior force in
subjection to a minority. Look to the misgovernment of the
Reconstruction period for the answer--misgovernment by white men and
black men who were lifted into a "little brief authority" by a mighty
but unwieldy voting force. That black man who connived at and shared
in the corruption in the South which resulted in the subversion of the
majority rule, is a traitor to his race and his country, wherever he
may now be eking out a precarious and inglorious existence, and I have
nothing to heap upon his head but the curses, the execrations of an
injured people. Like Benedict Arnold he should seek a garret in the
desert of population, living unnoticed and without respect, where he
might die without arousing the contempt of his people.

The love of Liberty carries with it the courage to preserve it from
encroachments from without and from contempt from within. A people in
whom the love of liberty is in-born cannot be enslaved, though they
may be exterminated by superior force and intelligence, as in the case
of the poor Indian of our own land--a people who, two hundred years
ago, spread their untamed hordes from the icebergs of Maine to the
balmy sunland of Florida. But to-day where are they? Their love of
freedom and valorous defense of priority of ownership of our domain
have caused them to be swept from the face of the earth. Had they
possessed intelligence with their more than Spartan courage, the wave
of extermination could never have rolled over them forever. As a man I
admire the unconquerable heroism and fortitude of the Indian. So brave
a race of people were worthy a nobler and a happier destiny. As an
American citizen, I feel it born in my nature to share in fullest
measure all that is American. I sympathize in all the hopes,
aspirations and fruitions of my country. There is no pulsation in the
animated frame of my native land which does not thrill my nature.
There is no height of glory we may reach as a government in which I
should not feel myself individually lifted; and there is no depth of
degradation to which we may fall to which I should not feel myself
individually dragged. In a word, I am an American citizen. I have a
heritage in each and every provision incorporated in the Constitution
of my country, and should this heritage be attempted to be filched
from me by any man or body of men, I should deem the provocation
sufficiently grievous to stake even life in defense of it. I would
plant every colored man in this country on a platform of this
nature--to think for himself, to speak for himself, to act for
himself. This is the ideal citizen of an ideal government such as ours
is modelled to become. This is my conception of the colored man as an
independent force in our politics. To aid in lifting our people to
this standard, is one of the missions which I have mapped out for my
life-work. I may be sowing the seed that will ripen into disastrous
results, but I don't think so. My conception of republican government
does not lead me to a conclusion so inconsistent with my hopes, my
love of my country and of my race.

I look upon my race in the South and I see that they are helplessly at
the mercy of a popular prejudice outgrowing from a previous condition
of servitude; I find them clothed in the garments of citizenship by
the Federal Government and opposed in the enjoyment of it by their
equals, not their superiors, in the benefits of government; I find
that the government which conferred the right of citizenship is
powerless, or indisposed, to force respect for its own enactments; I
find that these people, left to the mercy of their enemies, alone and
defenseless, and without judicious leadership, are urged to preserve
themselves loyal to the men and to the party which have shown
themselves unable to extend to them substantial protection; I find
that these people, alone in their struggles of doubt and of prejudice,
are surrounded by a public opinion powerful to create and powerful to
destroy; I find them poor in culture and poor in worldly substance,
and dependent for the bread they eat upon those they antagonize
politically. As a consequence, though having magnificent majorities,
they have no voice in shaping the legislation which is too often made
an engine to oppress them; though performing the greatest amount of
labor, they suffer from overwork and insufficient remuneration; though
having the greater number of children, the facilities of education are
not as ample or as good as those provided for the whites out of the
common fund, nor have they means to supply from private avenues the
benefits of education denied them by the State. Now, what is the
solution of this manifold and grievous state of things? Will it come
by standing solidly opposed to the sentiment, the culture, the
statesmanship, and the possession of the soil and wealth of the South?
Let the history of the past be spread before the eyes of a candid and
thoughtful people; let the bulky roll of misgovernment, incompetence,
and blind folly be enrolled on the one hand, and then turn to the
terrors of the midnight assassin and the lawless deeds which desecrate
the sunlight of noontide, walking abroad as a phantom armed with the
desperation of the damned!

I maintain the idea that the preservation of our liberties, the
consummation of our citizenship, must be conserved and matured, not by
standing alone and apart, sullen as the melancholy Dane, but by
imbibing all that is American, entering into the life and spirit of
our institutions, spreading abroad in sentiment, feeling the full
force of the fact that while we are classed as Africans, just as the
Germans are classed as Germans we are in all things American citizens,
American freemen. Since we have tried the idea of political unanimity
let us now try other ideas, ideas more in consonance with the spirit
of our institution. There is no strength in a union that enfeebles.
Assimilation, a melting into the corporate body, having no distinction
from others, equally the recipients of government--this is to be the
independent man, be his skin tanned by the torrid heat of Africa, or
bleached by the eternal snows of the Caucasus. To preach the
independence of the colored man is to preach his Americanization. The
shackles of slavery have been torn from his limbs by the stern
arbitrament of arms; the shackles of political enslavement, of
ignorance, and of popular prejudice must be broken on the wheels of
ceaseless study and the facility with which he becomes absorbed into
the body of the people. To aid himself is his first duty if he
believes that he is here to stay, and not a probationer for the land
of his forefathers--a land upon which he has no other claim than one
of sentiment.

What vital principle affecting our citizenship is championed by the
National Republican party of to-day? Is it a fair vote and an honest
count? Measure our strength in the South and gaze upon the solitary
expression of our citizenship in the halls of the National
Legislature. The fair vote which we cast for Rutherford B. Hayes
seemed to have incurred the enmity of that chief Executive, and he and
his advisers turned the colored voters of the South over to the
bloodthirsty minority of that section.

The Republican party has degenerated into an ignoble scramble for
place and power. It has forgotten the principles for which Sumner
contended, and for which Lincoln died. It betrayed the cause for which
Douglass, Garrison and others labored, in the blind policy it pursued
in reconstructing the rebellious States. It made slaves freemen and
freemen slaves in the same breath by conferring the franchise and
withholding the guarantees to insure its exercise; it betrayed its
trust in permitting thousands of innocent men to be slaughtered
without declaring the South in rebellion, and in pardoning murders,
whom tardy justice had consigned to a felon's dungeon. It is even now
powerless to insure an honest expression of the vote of the colored
citizen. For these things, I do not deem it binding upon colored men
further to support the Republican party when other more advantageous
affiliations can be formed. And what of the Bourbon Democratic party?
There has not been, there is not now, nor will there ever be, any good
thing in it for the colored man. Bourbon Democracy is a curse to our
land. Any party is a curse which arrays itself in opposition to human
freedom, to the universal brotherhood of man. No colored man can ever
claim truthfully to be a Bourbon Democrat. It is a fundamental
impossibility. But he can be an independent, a progressive Democrat.

The hour has arrived when thoughtful colored men should cease to put
their faith upon broken straws; when they should cease to be the
willing tools of a treacherous and corrupt party; when they should
cease to support men and measures which do not benefit them or the
race; when they should cease to be duped by one faction and shot by
the other. The time has fully arrived when they should have their
position in parties more fully defined, and when, by the ballot which
they hold, they should force more respect for the rights of life and
property.

To do this, they must adjust themselves to the altered condition which
surrounds them. They must make for themselves a place to stand. In the
politics of the country the colored vote must be made as uncertain a
quantity as the German and Irish vote. The color of their skin must
cease to be an index to their political creed. They must think less of
"the party" and more of themselves; give less heed to a name and more
heed to principles.

The black men and white men of the South have a common destiny.
Circumstances have brought them together and so interwoven their
interests that nothing but a miracle can dissolve the link that binds
them. It is, therefore, to their mutual disadvantage that anything but
sympathy and good will should prevail. A reign of terror means a
stagnation of all the energies of the people and a corruption of the
fountains of law and justice.

The colored men of the South must cultivate more cordial relations
with the white men of the South. They must, by a wise policy, hasten
the day when politics shall cease to be the shibboleth that creates
perpetual warfare. The citizen of a State is far more sovereign than
the citizen of the United States. The State is a real, tangible
reality; a thing of life and power; while the United States is,
purely, an abstraction--a thing that no man has successfully defined,
although many, wise in their way and in their own conceit, have
philosophized upon it to their own satisfaction. The metaphysical
polemics of men learned in the science of republican government,
covering volume upon volume of "debates," the legislation of
ignoramuses, styled statesmen, and the "strict" and "liberal"
construction placed upon their work by the judicial _magi_, together
with a long and disastrous rebellion, to the cruel arbitrament of
which the question had been, as was finally hoped, in the last resort,
submitted, have failed, all and each, to define that visionary thing
the so-called Federal government, and its just rights and powers. As
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson left it, so it is to-day, a
bone of contention, a red flag in the hands of the political matadors
of one party to infuriate those of the other parties.

No: it is time that the colored voter learned to leave his powerless
"protectors" and take care of himself. Let every one read, listen,
think, reform his own ideas of affairs in his own locality; let him be
less interested in the continual wars of national politics than in the
interests of his own town and county and state; let him make friends
of the mammon of unrighteousness of his own neighborhood, so far as to
take an intelligent part among his neighbors, white and black, and
vote for the men and for the party that will do the best for him and
his race, and best conserve the interest of his vicinity. Let there be
no aim of _solidifying_ the colored vote; the massing of black means
the massing of white by contrast. Individual colored men--and many of
them--have done wonders in self-elevation; but there can be no general
elevation of the colored men of the South until they use their voting
power in independent local affairs with some discrimination more
reasonable than an obstinate clinging to a party name. When the
colored voters differ among themselves and are to be found on _both
sides_ of local political contests, they will begin to find themselves
of some political importance; their votes will be sought, cast, _and
counted_.

And this is the key to the whole situation; let them make themselves a
part of the people. It will take time, patience, intelligence,
courage; but it can be done: and until it is done their path will lie
in darkness and perhaps in blood.




CHAPTER X

_Solution of the Political Problem_


I have no faith in parties. In monarchical and imperial governments
they are always manipulated by royal boobies, who are in turn
manipulated by their empty-pated favorites and their women of
soporific virtue; while in republics they are always manipulated by
demagogues, tricksters, and corruptionists, who figure in the
newspapers as "bosses," "heelers" and "sluggers," and in history as
statesmen, senators and representatives. These gentlemen, who _rule_
our government and _ruin_ our people, comprise what Mr. Matthew Arnold
recently termed the "remnant" which should be permitted to run things
to suit themselves, the people, the great mass, being incapable of
taking care of themselves and the complex machinery of government. Of
course, Mr. Arnold, who is necessarily very British in his ideas of
government, intended that the "remnant" he had in his "mind's eye,"
should comprise men of the most exalted character and intelligence,
the very things which keep them out of the gutters of politics. Men of
exalted character are expected in our country to attend to their own
concerns, not the concerns of the people, and to give the "boys" a
chance; while the men of exalted intelligence are, by reason of the
great industry and seclusiveness necessary to their work, too much
wedded to their books and their quiet modes of life to rush into ward
meetings and contend for political preferment with the "Mikes" and
"Jakes" who make their bread and butter out of the spoils and
peculations of office. A Clay or Webster, a Seward or Sumner,
sometimes gets into politics, but it is by accident. There is not
enough money in our politics to cause honest men to make it an object,
while the corruption frequently necessary to maintain a political
position, is so disgusting as to deter honest men from making it a
business.

A love of power easily degenerates from patriotism into treason or
tyranny, or both. As it is easier to fall from virtue to vice than it
is to rise from vice to virtue, so it is easier to fall from
patriotism than to rise to it.

Before the war the men of the South engaged, at first, in politics as
an elegant pastime. They had plenty of leisure and plenty of money.
They did not take to literature and science, because these pursuits
require severe work and more or less of a strong bias, for a thorough
exposition of their profound penetralia. It may be, too, that their
assumed patrician sensitiveness shrank from entering into competition
with the plebeian fellows who had to study hard and write voluminously
for a few pennies to keep soul and body together. And your Southern
grandees, before the war, were not compelled to drudge for a
subsistence; they had to take little thought for the morrow. Their
vast landed estates and black slaves were things that did not
fluctuate; under the effective supervision of the viperous
slave-driver the black Samson rose before the coming of the sun, and
the land, nature's own flower garden and man's inalienable heritage,
brought forth golden corn and snowy cotton in their season. Southern
intelligence expended its odors in the avenues where brilliance, not
profundity, was the passport to popularity. Hence, Southern
hospitality (giving to others that which had been deliberately stolen)
became almost as proverbial in the _polite_ circles of America and
Europe as the long established suavity and condescension of the
French. And even unto the present time the hospitality of the South,
shorn of its profuseness and grandiloquence, is frequently the theme
of newspaper hacks and magazine penny-a-liners. But the shadow alone
remains; the substance has departed--"There are no birds in last
year's nest."

If the literary reputation of the United States had been rated, up to
the close of the Rebellion, on the contributions of Southern
men--fiction, prose and poetry, science, art, and invention--the
polite nations of the world would have regarded us as a nation of
semi-barbarians. But, happily, the rugged genius of New England made
up then and makes up now for the poverty of literary effort on the
part of the South. True, a few men since the war have placed the
South in a better light; but even their work, as an index of Southern
genius, is regarded as highly precocious and tentative.

The South has yet to demonstrate that she has capacity for high
literary effort. In the process of that demonstration, I am fully
persuaded that the Anglo-African--with his brilliant wit and humor,
his highly imaginative disposition and his innate fondness for
literary pursuits--will contribute largely to give the South an
enviable and honorable position.

What the South lacked in literary effort before the war she made up in
a magnificent galaxy of meteoric statesmen, who rushed into politics
with the instinct of ducks taking to water, and who were forgotten, in
the majority of cases, before they had run out their ephemeral career.
A few names have survived the earthquake, and are remembered for their
cleverness rather than their depth. A few more decades, and they will
be remembered only by the curious student who plods his weary way
through the labyrinth of Congressional records and the musty archives
of States, seeking for data of times which long ago passed into the
hazy vista of history and romance. Before the war the Southern man of
leisure took to politics more as a pastime than as a serious business.
But as the pastime was agreeable, and as it gave additional weight and
distinction, all those who could, strived to make it appear that they
were men of importance in the Nation. They were largely a nation of
politicians, always brilliant, shallow, bellicose and dogmatic, as
ready to decide an argument with the shotgun or saber as with reason
and logic.

This was the temper of the people who rushed into the war with the
confidence of a schoolboy and who limped out like a man overtaken in
his gymnastic exercise by a paralytic stroke. The war taught the South
a very useful lesson, but did not sufficiently convince it that it was
preeminently a supercilious, arrogant people, who did not and do not
possess all the virtue, intelligence, and courage of the country;
that its stock of these prime elements is woefully small considering
the long years it had posed as America's own patrician class.

But when the war was over, and the Southern nobility turned its
thoughts once more to social arrogance and political dominion, it
found that Othello's occupation was entirely gone. A revolution had
swept over the country more iconoclastic and merciless than that which
followed in the wake of the French revolution nearly a hundred years
before. The bottom rail had been violently placed upon the top;
industrial adjustments had been so completely metamorphosed as to defy
detection; while the basis and the method of political representation
and administration had been so altered as to confound both the old and
the new forces.

Aside from the ignorance of the black citizens and the insatiate greed
and unscrupulousness of their carpet-bag leaders--a band of vultures
more voracious and depraved than any which ever before imposed upon
and abused the confidence of a credulous people--the white men of the
South had been educated to regard themselves as, naturally, the
factors of power and the colored people as, naturally, the subject
class, no factor at all. It was these two things which produced that
exhibition of barbarity on the part of the South and impotence on the
part of the government which make us go to Roumania and the Byzantine
court for fit parallel.

But, as I have said, a love of power easily degenerates into treason.
If we may not call the violence, the assassinations, which have
disgraced the South, _treason_ by what fitter name, pray, shall we
call it? If the nullification of the letter and spirit of the
amendments of the Federal Constitution by the conquered South was not
renewed _treason_, what was it? What is it?

The white men of the South, to the "manor born," having shown their
superiority in the superlative excellencies of murder, usurpation and
robbery (and I maintain they have gone further in the execution of
these infamies than was true of the Negro-Carpet-bag _bacchanalia_);
having made majorities dwindle into iotas and vaulted themselves into
power at the point of the shot gun and dagger (regular bandit style);
having made laws which discriminate odiously against one class while
giving the utmost immunity to the other; having, after doing these
things, modeled the government they rule upon the pro-slavery doctrine
that it is a "white man's government"--having had time to become
sobered, the white men of the South should be open to reason, if not
to conviction.

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