The Ouachita telegraph. [volume] (Monroe, La.) 1865-1889, 1875-04-16
THF PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO'S
FUTURE.
TSt. Louis Republican,

[St. Louis Republican,
Why is it that all efforts to attract
immigration to the Southern States
no f;,irer regions on the continent than
Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee :;
there is no place i'll all the North where
an industrious white man can make
more money, with the same amount
of labor, than on the cotton lands of
Mississippi or in the sugar districts of
Louisiana. But, though choice lands
in Mississippi and Louisiana may be
had from 81 to $40 per acre, though
farms i'll Arkansas, Alabama and South
Carolina may be had for next to moth
ing, there is not, and has not been since
the war, any immigration whatever
into the negro States, with the eNcep-
ton of Missouri. Texas, it is true, is
filling up with new settlers, but they
come from other Southern States; and
all the migration that is seen in the
South is either u movement of whites
to the North, or Il transfer of whites
and blacks from one Southern State to
another; no influx of population from
the North or from abroad is observable
The conclusion which these singular
facts irresistibly force is that the inert,
imnlovabfe negro population III the
Southern States is an impossible barrier
to immigration. If the $4,000 blacks
now III Virginia could be transferred
to Iowa, the two States would change
places; migration would pour into
the white State of Virginia, and avoid
the black State of Iowa, and the North
ern position and character of the latter
State would not avail to change the
current. Indeed, the fact that whites
from the North and abroad refuse to
go into the South no less now than
before the emancipation, proves that it
was not slavery, but the presence of
the black race that has caused the infe-
riolity Of those States to their n orthcrn
sisters, in wealth and power. If the
blacks in the South were nssimilnblc
with our composite race, as other peO-
pie are, or if they were as insignificant
in numbers as they are in the n Northern
States, the force OF circumstances would
settle all difficulties. But when there
are ,00O, 900 blacks in the South when
there are five blacks to seven whites in
Virginia, one black to every white in
Louisiana, four blacks to three whites
in Mississippi, and four blacks to two
whites in South Carolina; and when it
is reflected that it is the nature of the
negro race to become 80 rooted i'll the
soil that nothing but force can dctach
him from 1.-THE future of our relations
with this separate and inferior race is
found to be enveloped in difficulty and
uncertainty. On one hand, logic and
abstract right require that, in a repub-
lie, all men should be equal but the
opposition which the Republican North
presents to the civil rights law, and its
manifest determination to overthrow
it, prove conclusively that whites and
blacks in this country are not equal
and that the whites are resolved they
shall not be. Whether the two races,
thus socially and legally separate,
should not be geographically separated
whether it will not become necessary
to surrender a portion of the South to
the negro to save the other portions
whether, indeed, the negro himself is
not now forcing things in this direction
are questions which, within ten
years, perhaps, we shall hay" to con-
slider and decide.