  Some of the Almost Insuperable Difficulties which Embarrassed Every Plan of Emancipation (Continued) Beyond all the difficulties mentioned, there loomed the more portentous problem of the effect upon the state's political and social well-being of the introduction into her free population of a great company of negroes, whether as citizens or suffragists, or mere tenants at the will of their white brethren. What should be the outcome of such an unparalleled experiment as universal emancipation under the conditions existing in Virginia? The results of emancipation in the free states furnished no assurance because there the number of negroes was so small as to constitute a negligible quantity. What were the voices of history which came from over-sea? In Spain, after centuries of conflict, the whites had finally driven the remnant of the Moors literally into the Mediterranean. In San Domingo, after the carnival of blood had spent its force, the blacks had expelled all the surviving whites from the island. "It is futile," said Mr. Jefferson, "to hope to retain and incorporate the blacks into the state. Deep-rooted prejudices of the whites, ten thousand recollections of the blacks, of injuries sustained, new provocations, the real distinction Nature has made, and many other circumstances will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race." But casting aside these tragic warnings, the question of what would be the result of the great experiment, stood unanswered. What place in the life of the commonwealth were these people to fill? Should they be trained for the obligations of freedom and then denied its privileges? Should they be accorded the right of suffrage? If not, how would its denial comport with the genius of our institutions and the aspirations of our people? If entrusted with the suffrage how was the well-being of communities to be assured where, having the majority, they would become political masters? Had negroes ever, in the world's history, ruled in peace and order a community largely populated by whites? Was the race to be kept in a state of quasi-dependence—beholden for their social and economic privileges to the very people with whom they must come in competition? What provision for the pauperism, the vagrancy, the lunacy and the crime which would certainly follow the removal of the restraints of slavery? What measure and character of education for the young and by whom provided? These and many more like them were the questions, which, from the close of the Revolution, had confronted the people of Virginia. What should be the relations, political and social, of the two races after emancipation? Speaking in September, 1850, in Congress, on the Wilmot Proviso, Gov. James McDowell, of Virginia, said: "Physical amalgamation? ... ruinous, if it were possible.... Political and civil amalgamation just as impossible.... Emancipation with rights of residence and property, but exclusion from social, civil and political equality, would conduce, sooner or later, to a war of colors." Speaking ten years later in the Peace Conference, at Washington, Ex-Senator William C. Rives, of Virginia, said: "It has occupied the attention of the wisest men of our time.... In fact, it is not a question of slavery at all. It is a question of race." These two great Virginians were strong anti-slavery men, yet they stood appalled before the problems of immediate emancipation without deportation or colonization. That their views were not the product of their environment, will appear from expressions of eminent men not so situated. M. de Tocqueville, whose work, Democracy in America, is the subject of the widest appreciation, has given to the world in his notable book, published in 1838, his conclusions with respect to this subject. "The most formidable of all the ills," he writes, "which threaten the future existence of the Union, arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory." Again he writes: "I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere." In conclusion, he says: "When I contemplate the condition of the South I can only discover the alternative which may be adopted by the white inhabitants of those states, namely, either to emancipate the negroes and to intermingle with them; or, remaining isolated from them, to keep them in a state of slavery as long as possible. All intermediate measures seem to me likely to terminate, and that shortly, in the most horrible of VIEWS OF DOUGLAS AND SHERMAN Stephen A. Douglas, speaking at Ottawa, Ill., August 21st, 1858, said: "For one I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. I believe this Government was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever; and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men,—men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians and other inferior races." General William T. Sherman, writing in July, 1860, said: "All the Congresses on earth can't make the negro anything else than what he is; he must be subject to the white man, or he must amalgamate or be destroyed. Two such races cannot live in harmony, save as master and slave. Mexico shows the result of general equality and amalgamation, and the Indians give a fair illustration of the fate of negroes if they are released from the control of the whites." William H. Seward, speaking at Detroit, Michigan, September 4th, 1860, said: "The great fact is now fully realized that the African race here is a foreign and feeble element, like the Indians, incapable of assimilation, ... and that it is a pitiful exotic, unwisely and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native vineyard." Let us turn to the more hopeful and yet halting conclusions of Abraham Lincoln. In his speech at Quincy, Illinois, October 15th, 1858, in the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, he said: "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, would probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position." In the same debate at Charleston, Ill., September 18th, 1858, he had said: "I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about, in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." How unsatisfactory would be the status of the two races in a state where such conditions obtained, Mr. Lincoln must have appreciated, and so, as we have seen, he turned to the colonization of the negroes as the real solution of the problem. Throughout the North as well as in Virginia there were thoughtful men who knew that here was the difficulty. Slavery might be abolished, but the presence of two non-assimilable races, separated by centuries in their stages of development, endeavoring to live in peace under a Republican form of government—these conditions presented the problem which would tax to the utmost their resourcefulness and patience. How strong was the sense of danger among the people of the free states, which would result from such conditions, may be read in the provisions of their constitutions and laws. Probably in New England the laws were more favorable to free negroes than in any other part of the North; but, even there, conditions were far from normal, and certainly not such as to encourage the immigration of the free blacks from Maryland and Virginia—where they were most numerous. LAWS AGAINST FREE NEGROES In 1833, the Legislature of Connecticut, endeavoring to prevent the establishment of schools in that state for non-resident negroes, enacted a law prohibiting such schools, except with the consent "of a majority of the civil authority and also of the selectmen of the town in which such school, &c.," "Spirit which everywhere at the North, either by statute or custom, denied to a dark skin, civil, social and educational equality,—which in Boston forbade any merchant or respectable mechanic to take a colored apprentice; kept the colored people out of most public conveyances; and permitted any common carrier by land or sea, on the objections of a white passenger, to violate his contract with 'a nigger' however cultivated or refined." The states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had by statutes deprived free negroes of many of the privileges enjoyed in the period immediately succeeding the Revolution. Thus, New Jersey in 1807, and Pennsylvania in 1838, deprived them of the right of suffrage, and New York in 1821 required of them as a prerequisite to voting a much higher property qualification than was required of the white citizens. But it was chiefly in those free states on the same lines of latitude as Virginia and Maryland, and in which the free negroes would therefore be most liable to settle, that the laws obstructing or forbidding their immigration were most pronounced. EXCLUDED FROM VARIOUS STATES Early in the century Ohio enacted laws inhibiting negroes from settling in that state, unless they produced certificates of their freedom, from a Court of Record, and executed bonds, with approved security, not to become Indiana at first permitted free negroes to settle in the state, provided they gave bonds, with approved security, not to become charges upon the counties where they lived; but, in 1851, a new constitution was adopted which specifically provided (Article XIII, Section 1) that "no negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the state after the adoption of this constitution." This clause in the constitution was adopted by over ninety thousand majority of the popular vote. In Illinois, following a series of laws of like import, an act was passed in 1853, "to prevent the immigration of free negroes into this state," the third section of which declared it a misdemeanor for a negro or mulatto, bond or free, to come into the state with the intention of residing. In 1862, in the Constitutional Convention then in session, the provisions of this statute were engrafted upon the organic law of the state. Article XVIII provided: This article of the constitution was submitted to the popular vote separately from the body of the constitution, and, though the latter was rejected by over 16,000 majority, the former was made a part of the organic law of Illinois by a majority of 100,590. This vote was taken in August, 1862, and thus, barely a month before Mr. Lincoln's first Proclamation of Emancipation, the people of his own state, by a vote approaching unanimity, placed in their constitution this clause preventing free negroes from coming into their commonwealth. By the constitution of Oregon, adopted on November 9th, 1857, it was provided that: "No free negro or mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside or be within this state ... and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state or employ or harbor them." This provision of the constitution was adopted by a popular vote of 8040 to 1081 against it. NORTHERN DREAD OF FREE NEGROES If the people of the North thus regarded their few negroes as a dangerous and perplexing element, how much more should the people of Virginia hesitate in face of the conditions and problems which confronted them? If Indiana and Illinois, with populations of over three million LINCOLN'S ESTIMATE OF THE DANGER This sense of danger to their political and social well-being arising from the threatened presence of negroes in large numbers was felt by the whites of the free states even after two years of civil war had wrought its changes in sentiment, and Mr. Lincoln's first Proclamation of Emancipation had been given to the world. In his message to Congress in December, 1862, the President, in urging his plan for national aid to facilitate emancipation and deportation, endeavored to meet and allay these fears. He said: "But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and cover the whole land. Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the one in any way disturb the seven?... "But why should emancipation South send the free people North? People of any color seldom run unless there be something to run from. Heretofore colored people to some extent have fled North from bondage and now perhaps from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted they will have neither to flee from.... And in any event cannot the North decide for itself whether to receive them?" These appealing words of Mr. Lincoln show that in the very hour when the inspiring vision of emancipation was being held up before the people of the free states, they "Cannot the North decide for itself whether to receive them?" were the reassuring words of Mr. Lincoln. Virginia had no such alternative.
|
|
