Kitabı oku: «The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921», sayfa 16
CORRESPONDENCE
245 West 139th St.,New York City,January 11, 1920.
Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D.,
Editor, The Journal of Negro History,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir:
In the January, 1920, number of The Journal of Negro History there is an affidavit of Kelly Miller and Whitefield McKinlay to the effect that Mr. Cardoza, at one time secretary of State for South Carolina, stated to them that a number of colored men met and appointed a committee which was sent to Washington to get the advice of Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens concerning the formation of the political organization for the newly enfranchised Negro shortly after the adoption of the 14th Amendment, pains being taken to keep the plans from both the native whites and the so-called carpet-baggers from the North, and that both Mr. Sumner and Mr. Stevens advised the committee to tender the leadership to native whites of the master class of conservative views, but that the plan was frustrated because they were unable to secure the consent of desired representatives of the former class to assume the proffered leadership.
I accept the fact that Mr. Cardoza made the statement as sworn to by Prof. Miller and Mr. McKinlay, but I must state with all of the emphasis that is possible that it is inconceivable to me how Mr. Sumner or Mr. Stevens could give such advice that would give the leadership of the newly enfranchised Negroes to native whites of the master class, however conservative. All rebels were alike to Mr. Sumner and Mr. Stevens. No reference to conservative men of the master class will be found in the speeches or writings of either one.
I have read the speeches of both men on the Reconstruction measures as published in the Congressional Globe and I have failed to find one word uttered by either one that would lead me to believe that they would give the advice as stated in the affidavit. Both men held radical views as to reconstruction plans for the rebel States and were chiefly instrumental in having the Reconstruction Acts and the 14th Amendment passed. If it had not been for their untiring and persistent efforts, especially of Mr. Stevens, who practically dominated the House of Representatives from 1861 to the date of his death, I venture the assertion that the Reconstruction Acts and the 14th Amendment as passed could not have been passed.
It is possible that there were Negroes in South Carolina who had never felt the lash of the master class who were willing to curry favor with that class, regardless of the gratitude due the Northern men, white and colored, but I do not believe that the Northern Negroes (R. B. Elliott, Judge Wright, Judge Whipper, Henry W. Purvis, S. A. Swails, Dr. B. A. Bosemon, R. H. Gleaves, B. F. Randolph and others) would have deserted their Northern brethren, nor do I believe that the great men of the Republican Party (Conkling, Fessenden, Wade, Morton, Weed, Seward, Stanton, Chase, Boutwell, Washburne, Blaine, Sherman, Schurz, Phelps, Morrill, Bingham, Henry Wilson, Hoar and others) would have stood for the consummation of such a plan. I am sure, from what I knew of the Negroes of South Carolina, that they would have rebelled against the plan. If any committee went on to Washington it is possible that the members suggested the plan to Mr. Sumner and Mr. Stevens, but for them to advise along that line, a thousand times, no.
Everything done by Mr. Sumner and Mr. Stevens was done openly and above board and if they had given the advice as stated in the affidavit they would have had the courage of their convictions to have stated so publicly. It was not in their nature to play the cards from under the table.
Mr. Stevens, who was the author of the Reconstruction Act and most of the Reconstruction measures, ranking next to Alexander Hamilton as a constructive statesman, had embodied in the Act an oath that would have precluded men of the former master class, radical or conservative, from having anything to do with the Reconstruction legislation for the former rebel States. They could not register; therefore, they could not vote nor hold office until all of the provisions of the Reconstruction Acts, including the ratification of the 14th Amendment, were complied with, and their political disabilities removed. Practically all of the "cracker" element or "poor buckra" as designated by the Negroes could vote but the statement does not include that element.
The Republican Party was organized in South Carolina in July, 1867, and Northern men, white and colored, took an active part in the deliberations, R. H. Gleaves, a Northern Negro, being the President of the convention.
The Constitutional Convention met in Charleston, January 14, 1868, the Northern men practically dominating the proceedings, and before adjournment a State ticket was nominated. R. K. Scott, a Northern white man, was nominated for Governor. There were other white men (Northern) on the ticket. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor were elected for two years and the other State officers for four years. This would indicate that the Northern men held the situation well in hand.
The South Carolina legislature under the Constitution of 1865, refused to ratify the proposed 14th Amendment on December 20, 1866. This legislature was composed of Democrats, all of the master class, conservative and radical, and in view of this it is incomprehensible to me how intelligent Negroes could have thought of tendering the leadership to any men of the master class. The conditions were such that men of the master class could not have accepted the leadership had they so desired after repudiating the 14th Amendment.
I have read Rhodes, Dunning, Burgess, Hart, Hollis, Pike, and Schouler, on Reconstruction, also S. W. McCall's Biography of Thaddeus Stevens, E. B. Callender's Thaddeus Stevens, the Commoner, and E. L. Pierce's Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner, and cannot find anything that would indicate that either Mr. Sumner or Mr. Stevens would give the advice as stated in the affidavit.
When Mr. Stevens introduced the proposed 14th Amendment it contained the following section:
Section 3.—Until July 4, 1870, all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and comfort, shall be excluded from the right to vote for Representatives in Congress and for Electors for President and Vice-President.
This section was defeated but relative to it Mr. Stevens in a speech said:
"The 3rd section may encounter more difference here. Among the people I believe it will be the most popular of all the provisions; it prohibits rebels from voting for members of Congress and electors of President until 1870. My only objection to it is that it is too lenient.
I would be glad to see it extended to 1878, and to include all State and municipal as well as national elections."
There are two things about the advice that seem incongruous. First that intelligent Negroes would think that any men of the master class would join hands with them, some of whom had probably been their slaves, to govern the State. In the second place it is hard to believe that Sumner and Stevens, men of brilliant legal minds, would give advice that could not be carried out, even if practicable.
No man of the master class in South Carolina, however conservative, would stand for being called a scalawag.
There were practically no Union men in South Carolina. There were a few men who opposed secession at the time but when the ordinance of secession was passed a man who did not go with the State was considered a traitor. South Carolina was not considered a safe place for a white man who was opposed to secession after the ordinance was passed. This probably accounts for the statement in the last part of the affidavit relative to the frustration of the plans.
I regard the statement in reference to Messrs. Sumner and Stevens as a reflection on the memory of two of the greatest friends of the Negro.
History, unless it is based on facts, incontrovertible facts, is worthless.
If there are any readers of The Journal of Negro History who can produce "irrefragable evidence" relative to this matter I would be glad if they would do so. Truth is supreme and everlasting.
Prof. R. T. Greener, now of Chicago, Harvard's first Negro graduate, and the first and only Negro who occupied a chair in one of the old Southern universities, delivered on Public Day, June 29, 1874, in the historic South Carolina University, a most eloquent and scholarly address on "Charles Sumner, the Idealist, Statesman and Scholar." It made such an impression on the members of the faculty that they requested Prof. Greener to allow them to have it published and distributed. Professor Greener was the only Negro on the faculty. He occupied the chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy. Professor Greener was closer to Mr. Sumner than any other colored man, although very much younger, and enjoyed a friendship with the Senator vouchsafed to very few white men. It is possible that he may be able to throw some light on the subject in so far as Mr. Sumner is concerned.
Letters from scholars in this field will help us to learn the truth. A copy of a letter from J. F. Rhodes follows:
Ravenscleft, Seal Harbor, Maine,Sept. 27, 1920.
Henry A. Wallace,
Dear Sir:
I have your valued favor of 23 with enclosure. It is now about fourteen years since I made my study of Reconstruction, and on some details my memory is not fresh, but I have no hesitation in saying that I never found anything that would lead me to believe that either Sumner or Stevens was in favor of the scheme outlined. The story told by the affidavit "does not fit into the situation" as Samuel R. Gardiner used to say. Nothing but irrefragible evidence could lead one to such a view. Your examination of the subject seems to have been thorough and I thank you for giving me the results of it.
Very truly yours,
enc. returned
Signed. James F. Rhodes.
A Copy of a Letter from Samuel W. McCall
24 Mt. Vernon St., September 13, 1920.
Mr. Henry A. Wallace,
245 West 139th St.,
New York, N. Y.
Dear Sir:
In reply to your favor of the 3rd inst., with enclosed copy of the affidavit concerning the position of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner upon the proposed policy of organization for the negroes, I would say that I do not remember ever having come across anything of the kind in my researches concerning Mr. Stevens, nor have I ever heard of it about Mr. Sumner.
Very truly yours,Signed. Saml. W. McCall.
A Copy of a Letter from Hon. H. C. Lodge
Nahant, Mass.,September 8, 1920.
My dear Sir:
I have received your letter of the 6th. I have never heard before of the point which you raise in regard to Mr. Sumner and really know nothing about it. As I am separated from my library, which is in Washington, I am sorry that I can give you no information about it, but if you would examine the Life of Charles Sumner by Edward L. Pierce, which is very elaborate and thorough, you would find something about it there, if anywhere.
Very truly yours,Signed. H. C. Lodge.
Henry A. Wallace, Esq.,
245 West 139th St.,
New York, N. Y.
As the native white men of the master class were ineligible to hold office until the new Constitution and the 14th Amendment were ratified and their political disabilities were removed, even had they acted in an advisory capacity to the newly enfranchised Negroes, the Northern men being eliminated, only Negroes and white men of the "cracker" element could have held office and have been elected delegates to the Constitutional Convention.
There were some native white men of the "cracker" element in the Constitutional Convention and also in the first legislature elected.
Very respectfully,Henry A. Wallace.245 West 139th St.,New York City,January 16, 1921.
Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D.,
Editor, The Journal of Negro History,
1216 You St., N. W., Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir:
In connection with my letter to you of the 11th instant, pertaining to the affidavit of Messrs. Miller and McKinlay relative to the statement made by Mr. Francis Cardoza to them concerning Mr. Sumner and Mr. Stevens, as published in The Journal of Negro History for January, 1920, I respectfully invite your attention to a copy of a letter from Dr. J. W. Burgess, formerly of Columbia University. You will find him listed in "Who's Who in America."
Dr. Burgess is the author of two books covering the Civil War and the Reconstruction period, The Civil War and the Constitution and Reconstruction and the Constitution, and evidently made a thorough research in collecting the data for publication.
I regard this as a very important matter and the truth or falsity of the statement should be established. It is only by publicity that the facts can be established.
The names of Stevens and Sumner should be imperishable to the Negro race and any reflection on their attitude during the Reconstruction period should not go unchallenged.
A copy of letter from John W. Burgess follows:
Brookline, Mass.,January 14, 1921.Mr. Henry A. Wallace:
Your favor of January 12, forwarded to me here, interests me highly, and I thank you most sincerely for it. I am obliged to reply, however, that the affidavit of Messrs Miller and McKinlay astonished me very much. I cannot remember to have ever read anything of the kind anywhere and like you, I am very skeptical about it. I was in the world and a student at Amherst College in the year 1867, and was even then collecting the material for my history. I am pretty sure that I should have known of anything of this kind had it existed. I am going to try to run this assertion down, as I am here among the acquaintances and relatives of Sumner.
Very sincerely yours,Signed. John W. Burgess.
I have written to Dr. Burgess to inform me as to the result of his investigation and will let you know what he reports.
Yours very truly,Henry A. Wallace.
BOOK REVIEWS
Rachel. By Angelina W. Grimké. Boston, Mass., The Cornhill Company, 1920. Pp. 96. Price, $1.25.
Miss Grimké's drama of Rachel is a beautiful and poetic creation. She has produced this effect by a literary instinct which is fine and mainly cultivated. Its native vigor carries the reader past an occasional crudity, which it would seem to be hypocritical to notice. The sweep of passion in the drama is elemental. She has connected the story of a girl-woman with the most woeful of earthly tragedies, namely the crime of a great nation against one of its component parts.
The feelings expressed in the drama, though elemental, are uttered in the terms of modernity. The structure of the drama is modern, and yet there is something in the figure and movement of Rachel herself which reminds the present writer of Antigone. We do not see Antigone before the hour when she has chosen to meet the doom that man's law has decreed should she perform the task that human love and religious faith have enjoined upon her. Antigone goes to the death of her body declaring that in the Infinite there is a longer time for love than there is on earth.
But we do see Rachel before the ultimate choice has come to her. She is a gay and happy girl. The drama proceeds to the hour when she too must choose between the issues of earthly love and those which reach into eternity. She learns from her mother, Mrs. Loving, that ten years before, they all lived in the South and her father and her half brother were lynched. Briefly summarized, this is Mrs. Loving's story. As a young widow with a boy seven years old, she had married an educated man of color. She was a person of color herself. Mr. Loving owned and edited a paper in which he wrote on behalf of the people of color. A Negro innocent of all crime was murdered by a mob in that region. Mr. Loving denounced the murder and the murderers in his paper. He received an anonymous letter apparently written by an educated person, threatening him with death, if he did not retract what he had said. In the next issue of his paper he published an equally stern arraignment of the lynchers and their crime.
That night a dozen masked men broke into his house. Mr. Loving had a revolver. He defended his life and his home. Mrs. Loving tried to close her eyes. She could not. She saw all that happened in her bedroom. Four of the masked assailants fell. "They did not move any more … after a little while." Then she saw her husband dragged out of the room. Her older boy, George, tried to help his stepfather. He was dragged out also. She went to the bedside of her two younger children. They were asleep. Rachel was smiling. The mother knelt down and covered her ears. When at last she let herself listen, she heard only the tapping of the branch of a pine tree against the side of the house. She did not know at first that it was the tree.
She fled with her two little children to the North. Those children had never before this day of revelation known how their father had died. The shadow of white cruelty to the body and souls of black folks had darkened somewhat over their lives in the North, but still they had been frolicsome and loving young creatures. Now they begin to realize the full significance of "race prejudice."
Rachel speaks to her mother: "Then, everywhere, everywhere throughout the South, there are hundreds of dark mothers who live in fear, terrible, suffocating fear, … whose joy in their babies … is three parts pain.... The South is full of … thousands of little boys who one day may be, and some of whom will be lynched." "And the babies, the dear, little, helpless babies … have that sooner or later to look to. They will laugh and play and sing and grow up, and perhaps be ambitious,—just for that."
"Yes, Rachel," answers her mother. The girl is one of those rare, feminine creatures whose soul and body are framed for maternity. In one swift rush of realization and of premonition, she comprehends all that the doom upon her race must eventually mean to her; she utters the cry of Africa's heart in America. "It would be more merciful to strangle the little things at birth.... This white Christian nation has set its curse upon the most beautiful, … the most holy thing on earth … motherhood."
Let us consider the historic background forth from which Miss Grimké has drawn her story. How do its incidents compare with known facts? In 1844, Massachusetts sent Judge Hoar to South Carolina to look after the interests of Massachusetts citizens of color there. The mob spirit showed itself so violently that this father of the future Senator was obliged to leave the South. More careful investigation into hidden causes for lynching would doubtless disclose more cases when educated men have been threatened or actually murdered. The rope with which to hang Wendell Phillips was actually carried into the hall where he was to speak. And the concerted plan had been to hang him on Boston Common.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has investigated and published statistics showing that from 1889 to 1918 in the United States, 702 whites and 2522 blacks have been lynched, and that 11 of these victims were white women and 50 were women and girls of color. 6 whites and 142 Negroes were lynched for "no crime."
A few instances may well be cited. After some race riots in 1894 in which crimes had been committed on both sides, MacBride, "a respectable Negro of Portal, Georgia, was beaten, kicked, and shot to death for trying to defend from a whipping at the hands of a crowd of white men, his wife who was confined with a baby three days old." No offence on the part of the wife or the three days old baby is recorded, but the one of that helpless couple who could speak may have made about the riots remarks which disturbed the delicate sensibilities of these southerners who are so discriminating in their "chivalrous treatment" of women.
In 1895 a Negro in Texas was killed by a mob because he was accused of riding over a little white girl and seriously injuring her. "Later developments proved that the mob murdered the wrong negro." In 1899 in Louisiana "an attempt had been made to assault a white woman." Afterwards one Michael Curry saw a large Negro wandering in a field. For no reason whatever he decided that that man had been the assailant. Some white would-be murderers were quickly got together and shot the black man to death. Then it was discovered that he was an escaped lunatic, whose recent history did not square with the theory that he was the assailant.
In Georgia there was in 1911 a Negro woman described as "a good reliable servant" in her normal condition, but who was subject to attacks of violent mania. She killed a white woman in such an attack, as many years ago poor English Mary Lamb killed her own mother. The world knows with what chivalry her brother Charles shielded her through life. This Negro native of Georgia had once been adjudged to be a fit subject for an insane asylum; but the State institution was crowded and she was not then or now taken into it. Georgia took care of her in an easier way. Its lynchers put her into an automobile and placed a rope around her neck, fastened it to a tree, and started the car from under her, and left her to die. No arrests followed. But why mention that fact in this case? There are very few instances of mob murder when white murderers have ever been arrested.
In Oklahoma in 1914, two white men assaulted a seventeen-year-old girl of color. Her screams brought her brother to the rescue. There was a fight. He killed one of the men. The next day a mob came to the house in search of the brother. They could not find him so they killed the girl. In 1915 a sheriff in Georgia was murdered, and straightway five Negroes were killed. About a year later it was learned that all five were innocent. Sometimes "race prejudice" is given as the reason why certain Negroes were lynched. That probably means that in no such instance had the lynched Negro committed any offence, or at most none deserving the death penalty by any legal process.
The next historical question, which Miss Grimké's drama raises, was pertinently put to the present writer: "Was an educated, high-toned man like Loving ever lynched?" The answer as to probabilities is easily made. The American impulse towards mob-murder has always been strong whenever and wherever the rise of the Negro, either free or enslaved, has been considered vitally obnoxious to the community. In the slavery days, Northern mobs prepared often to kill William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and other Abolitionists, but they were foiled every time except when, in 1836, the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a white Northerner, was killed in Alton, Illinois, for denouncing, in his own paper, the burning to death of a Negro in Missouri. It was supposed, however, that the men who shot Lovejoy were Missourians and not Illinoisans.
The southern temper as to the educated Negroes was certainly voiced to a large extent, when in the eighties, the librarian of a large library in a southern town made answer to a question asked by a northern visitor: "Oh, no, the colored people don't come here to take out books. We don't believe in social equality, you know." And the Negro teacher in that town answered thus another Northerner's question: "Why don't you go there and ask for a book?" "I shouldn't like to do that, if I am going on living here."
In 1898 there were some terrible race riots in North Carolina. Two well educated Negroes owned and edited a small paper. Like the black Loving in Miss Grimké's drama, like the white historical Lovejoy, sixty-two years before, they printed editorials on the side of the Negroes. They were threatened. They fled and escaped pursuit. It is safe to assume that, had they been caught, they would have been lynched.
About a year ago, John R. Shillady, a white man, was engaged on a peaceful mission in Texas on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose agent he was. Prominent white citizens assaulted and beat him severely. It has always been the same story; white or black, educated or ignorant, in every part of this country the defenders of the Negroes have been liable to the decree or the abuse of the mob.
Still fresh is the memory of that shameful day when a white mob fired the Omaha jail where a Negro, still unconvicted of crime, was confined. He helped several of the other prisoners to get in line to leave the prison in safety, and then went down the steps himself to the mob which grabbed him and killed him. Meanwhile the ruffians had seized the Mayor of the town as he was on his way to try to enforce law and order. They hanged him, but somebody cut the rope before he was quite dead. There was strong evidence to show that the murdered Negro was innocent.
We come next to the question: What sort of men are they who make up these murderous mobs? Wendell Phillips once said, as to the North, that he had faced many mobs between the seaboard and the Mississippi, and that he never saw one that did not show that it was inspired if not actually led by "respectability and what called itself education." It is harder to know exactly what is the personnel of southern lynching parties. But a close study of known facts shows that "respectability and what calls itself education" has countenanced, approved, and participated in a large proportion of these orgies of horror. And the southern approval has developed in the South a most abhorrent type of white woman who holds up her babies to see a black man cut and burned to death. Miss Grimké's historical accuracy is unimpeachable when she allows "church members" to lynch Loving and his stepson.
George W. Cable said to the present writer in the winter of 1888-89, "You are right, the southerners do not want the Negroes to be educated." Miss Grimké, inferentially, dates her lynching somewhere in the decade of the nineties. The mass of black, brown, and olive-tinted ignorance at that time in the South, was appalling. It is appalling now—largely through the governing white man's fault. But still there were in the South at that time and before then many colored people who had obtained the rudiments of education and some who might be truthfully called well educated. Some of these became known to the whole country; but there might easily have been obscure ones like Loving scattered in many communities.
Now ordinary critics are sure to cry out against my analysis of the historical situation and remind me of Booker Washington. They will say, "He was not lynched. He was accepted. Any Negro like him is safe, if he behaves himself." I answer that I have no fancy for mob murder or torture of any human being, ignorant or wise, good or bad. There are, moreover, other answers to the riddle of that great constructive educator's career. One is creditable to the white southerners. They are not all eager for Negro blood. There is yet another solution. Booker Washington surrendered many of the Negro's rights to southern prejudices. The South liked that surrender. Northern philanthropists occasionally liked it well enough to give money for purposes which would tend to make the Negro useful in the ways the whites wanted him to be, and yet to insure him a little intellectual comfort in his life.
To return to the direct consideration of Miss Grimké's Rachel; we see the girl, from the hour that she learns what things are done, and may be done, in the South to the dusky sons and daughters of America, she lives under a cloud—a sense of doom. Yet the cloud breaks now and then. She loves so much, and especially she loves so many little children, that she cannot fail to be happy sometimes. She also comes to love a man, and all the possibilities of marriage and motherhood open radiantly before her. But the shadow falls denser than ever upon her. She sees, even in the North, the grown men of her race, no matter how well educated, seldom able to get work befitting their ability. All this sort of thing would not happen in every northern town but every careful observer knows that such things do happen in many northern villages and cities.
Little children flock around her, drawn by the magic of her incarnated motherliness. She sees them ill-treated by their white school mates. She has adopted a little boy, Jimmy, and she sees him suffer. She sees a little girl, very black and ugly, but still a child, who has been frightened almost into idiocy by white children. Finally Rachel's ears are so filled with the sound of real wailing that her brain reels with the thought of the crying children all over the land, and at last voices come to her from the infinite spaces. Voices of unborn babies, the little babies who were meant to be born unto her.... They were begging her never to bring them into earthly existence. Now, like Antigone, she makes her choice; to soothe a ghostly pain no matter what may be her earthly doom.
Her lover leaves her. She cries after him once, as if to call him back. Then she ceases that cry, knowing that her fate is fixed, and her vow never to be a mother on earth is irrevocable. She begins to talk as to the pre-existent ghosts of her unborn children, and all the while the crying of her adopted child mingles fitfully with the wailing that seems to come to her from the caverns of the unknown regions.
The drama would probably have to be remoulded for use in the regular theatre, yet it is the present writer's opinion that to create the part of Rachel on the stage might well allure any actress who possesses the most delicate and passionate genius.
Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman.
Songs and Tales from the Dark Continent, recorded from the Singing and Sayings of C. Kamba Simango, Ndau Tribe, Portuguese East Africa and Madikane Cele, Zulu Tribe, Natal, Zululand, South Africa. By Natalie Curtis Burlin. New York, G. Schirmer, 1921. Pp. 170.
This work as its title imports does not cover a wide field of investigation and it was not done in Africa. The object of the author is to introduce Europeans and Americans to the soul of the African, who has too long been regarded merely as an object for exploitation. Believing that in the folk-music of a people is imaged the real soul, the author has made in this field researches, the results of which have been herein set forth. The aim finally is to show that the human family is near of kin and that basic emotions of love, of sorrow, of rejoicing and of prayer, whether men be primitive or advanced, white, yellow, red or black, are the same root-feelings planted in us all.
