Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1875-01-08
The Southern Whites and Blacks


The Southern Whites and Blacks
The bulk of the Southern press and its
sympathizers North generally represent
the negro race as unwilling to work and
indeed, incapable of effective labor apart
from the continual stimulus of the over.
seer and the master. The injustice OK
this opinion can best be judged by the
fact that in the chief cotton producing
districts, where the labor of freedmen Is
absolutely essential to the crop, the
produce is as great as it was before the
outbreak of the war. They may work
under new conditions; but almost as
much is done, on the whole, as was done
under the system of slavery. The factis,
that the so-called social difficulty in
Louisiana and the Gulf States is the
evident resolve and ability Of the colored
race to hold their own. 1t was confident
~ pTedic ed that as soon as slavery was
bolished, the negro would die out that 81
million slaves had perished in the transi-
tion period; and that rapid decline of
the colored population had gone on ever
since. The truth, however, seems to be
that very few negroes perlshed in the
convulsion, and that as soon as it was
over they began to migrate toward the
cotton region. The consequence is that
they predominant in some of the Gulf
States, and, enjoying political equality
with the whites, the government-or at
least a certain share of it-falls into
their hands. 1t is the resistance of the
white minority which creates all the
difficulties and troubles that disturb the
country.
Now one thing is certain: The negro
must be reckoned with as a permanent
element in the South. There is some
thing almost portentous in the fig
ures of the census of 1870, which show
an increase of 10 per cent in the negro
population during the ten agitated and
disastrous years which preceded it. In
1860 the colored population consisted of
3i953, ,760 slaves and 4SS,G70 free men; in
1870 the free colored people numbered
4,SS0,000. This, it must be remembered,
had been the rate of increase in the
Southern States only during the very
years in which the world had been told
that the negroes had been decimated and
were fast dying out. If they have gone
on dying out at the same rate since 1870
there must now be at least 5000 900 of
colored people living in the States south
of the Potomac. They are distributed
somewhat unequally over the area, and
show a strong tendency TO gather toward
the Mississippi Valley. Indeed in many
parts of the State of Mississippi negro
middle class is gradually developing
itself in the shape of small landed pro-
prielors, shopkeepers, tenant-farmers,
teachers and overseers. The bulk of the
colored people, however, are and
must remain agricultural labOrers. On
the Southern soil and under the South
ern sun no other labor can compete with
theirs. White men can indeed work and
thrive even in the plantations; but they
are out of their natural habitat, and the
negro is in his. The large planters can
do nothing without negro labor. There
are no swarms of white people in the
cities of the South to do the cotton-pick-
ing when needed. The cotton grower Is
dependent upon the negroes who live
near or upon his estate. He keeps them
there all the year round by supplying
them with rations on credit. In Decem-
Der, when the cotton bolls open, he sends
them to pick the precious staple, and
gives them half the value of the crop.
Out of the proceeds of the picking they
pay back the cost of the years rations,
taking the balance, if there is any; but
If the balance is against them, the en-
ployer has to put up with the loss, This
| primitive arrangement is not one which
allows of the competition of white labor,
and it may therefore be taken for granted
that the cotton States must always be
agricultural, and that their agricultural
laborers will be of the negro race.
Under political system which gives
the colored people an equal weight with
the whites In the government of the
State this transition stage in the reorgan-
ization of Southern labor presents two
alternatives; 1t must either grow into
kind of industrial partnership or degen-
crate into partial serfdom. The South
eTn planters, as Il rule, wish to force the
social organization to develop in the lat
ter direction but they can only find the
way to order, freedom and prosperity by
adopting the former. By this time the
"colored person" has quite outgrown
his original condition of passive and
good od.humored subordinatlon. He has
seen himself voter, legislator, dig
nitary in office, the wearer of uniform
with shoulder-straps. He has been
obeyed as master and sued to as a pat
ron. He has helped to dispense State
salary and to elect Judges. In brief, he
has availed himself as white men would
have done, of the privileges which the
law conferred upon him; and his com
mon oflense is not that he has done this
thing or that, but that, being colored
man and not white, he has ventured to
do so. His only crime in Southern eyes
is having accepted in good faith the con-
stitutional amendments which declared
him the white mans equal in politics
and before the law,-Inter Ocean.
I'm length, Lake Ontario is 1s0 miles +;
greatest breadth, 50 miles; area, 7,19l