William Cabell Bruce

“ No matter what the negro is capable of becoming, or may become, not wilder
or guiltier was the phantasy that man can hold property in man than the phantasy that the
negro, as he is to-day, is the equal of the white man and has as much right to political
supremacy as he. A Northern emigrant never comes South, and buys a plantation, and acts
upon that idea that he does not introduce hopeless demoralization into his operations. The
long experience, which is the parent of all wise conduct, has taught the Southern whites
better. ”

“ Sexual intercourse between a negro man and a white woman,
against the will of the latter, is avenged by the surest, the fleetest and the most absolutely
pitiless nemesis that ever silently and irresistibly sped to its mark. Sexual intercourse between
a negro man and a white woman, with the consent of the latter, is as rare as buggery and
when it does occur awakens very much the same sensations in the superior race as that
unnatural crime. A negro never enters the house of a white person except as a menial. ”

“ With the termination of slavery, however, and the mad legislative
attempt to shuffle up the blacks and the whites together, it became impossible for the whites
to allow themselves the same liberty without running the risk of having their race
susceptibilities irritated in many different modes. On the other hand, the blacks, endowed
with full political equality, have naturally become less and less disposed to accept personal
intercourse with the whites on any terms that do not recognize their full social equality also. ”

“ Black policemen and firemen are not unknown in Southern cities.
How many are there in Northern? It is a common thing for Southern whites to work side by
side with the negro in the cotton and tobacco fields. How is this companionship relished
when a Pittsburgh manufacturer undertakes to introduce blacks into his rolling mill? These
and a thousand other questions of like character might be put, and there is not one of them
that can be honestly answered without sustaining the truth of what we have said with
reference to the existence of race prejudice at the North. ”

“ These are the two races that constitute the population of the South. It is important to
bear in mind that they are not simply distinguished from each other by vivid contrasts,
physical, moral and intellectual, but are jealously divided from each other in all the personal
relations of life by a relentless caste, founded upon the contrasts. This is true even of the
North, although nowhere in that section is the negro sufficient in numbers to be a source of
immediate political danger, or to make the friction of his presence generally felt in the
ordinary round of daily existence. ”

“ The consequence is that finding themselves debarred from denying one
form of equality beyond their control, they have all the more jealously denied others within
their control. What the negro has gained in political privileges, he has lost twice over in
social. The freer his access to the polls, the more difficult has become his access to all the
human relations that law cannot reach. ”

“ Relieved from the fear of
negro domination, the whites would be more generous, more just, more forbearing. Taught
to look entirely to himself and to the whites at his own doors for the amelioration of his
condition, the negro would be less presumptuous, less hostile to the other race, and more
disposed to substitute the claims of solid attainment for the claims of empty mimicry.
Concession would follow concession, each one leading naturally to the next because the
preceding one was a normal stage in an orderly and logical progression. ”

“ The Southern negro votes a republican ballot because it is the race prejudices of the
Southern whites, which he heartily reciprocates, and not the race prejudices of the Northern
whites, that bear directly upon his daily life, and because he knows that the Republican party
is still numerously composed of partisans whose feelings towards the Southern whites are such
that they would not hesitate to use even him as an agency for their degradation. ”

“ If there were no
negroes at the South, and the Republican party were to adjust its necessities to that fact, as
it would then, despite every lingering incentive of the past, unquestionably soon do, the white
race would, in the briefest period, split up into party divisions along the same general lines
as the North. The clashing of individual ambitions, and the natural diversity of human
antipathies and convictions would, in any event, guarantee that. ”

“ But not more impotent to restrain the
waves of the Hellespont were the chains of Xerxes than were these agencies to produce a real
equality between the former master and the former slave, and to transfer to ignorance and
barbarism and landlessness the same share of influence that naturally and rightfully attaches
to intelligence and civilization, and property. ”

“ In some of these States they and their increase now hold the balance of
political power. How comes it, then, we may ask the sublime moralists of the Senate chamber,
who so generously maintain that God made of one blood all nations of men except the
Mongolian, that no one of these negroes is ever sent to Congress by a Northern constituency?
How many negro governors, members of State legislatures, mayors, aldermen, judges,
prosecuting attorneys, sheriffs, court clerks, bank presidents, railroad presidents, bookkeepers,
or railroad conductors are there in the Northern States? ”

“ Everywhere at the South, except in cities where, for obvious reasons, sexual
commerce between whites and blacks is not followed by the same social penalties, the negro
is unmistakably breeding back to the original African physiognomy, and, unless this process
of retroversion is checked, the event must be most disastrous to the average intelligence of
the black race. ”

“ This growing separation is manifesting itself in the very physical aspect of the negro. It
is impossible to defend the illicit commerce between white men and negro women, that has
so palpably qualified the strict African type, but it is undeniable that one of the effects of this
commerce was to enhance the intellectual capabilities of the lower race by producing cross
products superior to the unqualified African. ”

“ Without the exaggeration of local pride, it may
be said that the simile of Lucas in the verses so dear to every Southern heart, “as violets our
virgins pure and tender,” simply expresses in a poetic form the deep-seated deference for
womanhood, that only less than the virtue of its objects, renders crimes against female
chastity exceptionally rare at the South among the whites. ”

“ But it is just outside interference that the negro always has invited, and to all
appearances always will invite, so long as the population of the South continues to be dual
as it is to-day. He has not been the active and efficient auxiliary in curtailing the political
strength of his former masters that he was expected by the Republican party to be when it
made him a citizen. ”

“ To this statement it will, of course, be replied that, if the only lines of separation between
the negro and the white man are physical, such prepossessions are capricious merely and
should not be countenanced by the enlightened spirit of to-day. ”

“ More and more
the tendency in modern times, especially since the reign of the abstractions, that conspire to
swell the warnings of the French Revolution, has been to regard Government as a practical
science that should seek to accommodate itself not only to the virtues but the weaknesses of
the human beings upon which it operates. ”

“ One of the most cogent causes of the rapid pace, at which Hayti is reverting to
barbarism, is the jealousy with which the lighter section of its population is regarded by the
darker. The negro leaders of the Reconstruction Period were principally men of color. It is
a matter of every day occurrence that, in all the employments, open to the negro, that call
for the exercise of something more than mere muscular vigor, the preference is given to the
mulatto. ”

“ It might have been supposed that the inability of the Republican party, demonstrated
over and over again, to prop up the negro in such a way as to qualify him to cope on equal
terms with the white man would have induced it to let race relations at the South alone. ”