New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1875-09-16
RACE RELATIONS.

country. These two races exist in suct
nu mbers, and the superior tendencies o
negro migration are such as to render thu
supremacy of one race over the other
save by absolute military power, impossi
bic. The supposition that the coloret
race will dwindle and disappear, would
be to wait, like the simpleton in the
Roman joke, for the river to run dry.
The two races are of infinite use to each
other, but i'll this climate, heavy soil and
exuberant vegetation the negro is indis
pensable. The colony of Louisiana was
not prosperous. For more than half a
century after its settlement it imported
its provisions, or the great portion.
The colony vas leased in effect on two
| occasions, to Crozat and to John Law.
| On both occasions, but especially on the
last, the lessee felt the necessity of a
labor adequate TO the soil and climate,
Slavers were employed to bring negroes
from Africa, and the slaves were distributed
at nominal rates among the colonists
This importation was continued as long
| as it was lawful and then Louisiana drew
| by immigration of slave owners and slaves
| from the Eastern slave States the labor
| which experience had shown to be best
adapted to the agricultural exigencies Of
| the country.
What has this pc cular labor done!
Look at line of perhaps seven or eight
hundred miles of levee. See the clearing
of heavy timber, the ditching and drain
ing Of so many millions of acres. Re-
member the comparative exemption of
the negro from the epidamics which the
white man breads SO much, and from the
malarial fevers incident to alluvial forma-
tons. The domestic services which the
colored people are thus enabled to per-
form, and the especial social aid which
they render in signal cases of epidemic,
render their value as an industrial ele-
ment still more palpable, and would seem
to give them-with their fidelity in war
involving their emancipation high
claim on the confidence Of the whites.
The contentment and docility of these
people is in itself an element of great
value. In a period when the industrial
interest is elsewhere at war with capital,
the industry and productive force of the
negro is shown by increased crops and
perfect accord with the employers.
We have said there is little probability
that the numerical relations between the
races in this State will be changed. The
tendencies of both races are toward the
climate of their ancestry. The youth of
Bangor Maine, lands from schooner in
New Orleans; he is naturalized by recov-
ering from yellow fever, goes to Maine for
wife, realizes a fortune, sends his wife
to spend the summer in Maine, sends his
children to school in Maine, and at last
invests his wealth in Maine. He never
liked this climate; he preferred that which
was native to him. The negro tends
to the tropics The migration of
negro labor TO the South and from
the North-called before the war
the domestic slave trade-was in
obedience to this law of nature. That
this migration has continued since eman-
cipation is.a still stronger proof Of the
peculiar adaptable lily of the negro to the
Southern climate, and of the necessity
which compels his importation. How
else can we comprehend that the most
vehement White League planter will come
home from drill, or from an indignation
meeting, held in horror of ''negro rule"
and join with others in an order for the
importation of a hundred negro voters to
plant or save his crop? So long as land
worth two hundred dollars an acre may be
bought for ten or twenty dollars, so long
as only one cleared and arabic acre out of
every twelve is in cultivation, so long as
the negro prefers warm climate and
abundant food to hard winter, and
the scanty supplies of worn out
country, will the migration of the
negro to Louisiana continue. He is
tending to the tropics, and when asleep
at the switch in the noisome car that con-
veys him from Carolina, the cleaning
train that shot past him in the darkness
conveyed Mr.. Bangor, of Maine, dreaming
in the luxurious Pullman of the happy
scenes which awaited him in the land of
his nativity. Each of these persons
cbeyed law of whose nature they were,
perhaps. equally unconscious. The same
climatic condition which attracted the
one repealed the other.
We make this essay to prove that the
agricultural and social necessities of Lou
isiana demand the services of the negro
race, and that this, with the physical ten
denotes of that race to a warmer climate
and more abundant food, render it i'm
possible that there be material change
in the numerical relations of the races in
Louisiana.
There is but one circumstance which
disturbs this harmony between capital and
industry. 1t is the right of the laboring
masses to vote in the choice of those who
are to administer the trusts of govern
ment. To deprive them of this would re-
quire to convene tie twenty-seven States