The Indianapolis leader. (Indianapolis, Ind.) 1879-1890, 1880-05-29
The Shadow of the Negro.

4 L
criminate those who were responsible for
uating the system of bondage that grew
out OF it. Many of them were conscien-
tious, Christian men, who worked without
a thought OF the wrong they were doing.
Some of them, as we know. really believed
| they were benefiting the Negro, by bring
| ing him out of condition of barbarism
into the enlightening and purifying in
/ fiuences of Christianity. For many years
Negro slavery prevailed in this country,
and greatly modified the institutions and
the civilization of large portion of it. 1t
became, at least, the exciting cause of the
greatest civil war known in the history of
the world; and when that war brought
abolition, it gave to the black race in
America not only freedom but citizenship.
The question as to what all these centuries
of wrong and of servitude have done for
the Negro is not difficult one to answer,
but what they have done for the enslaving
race is not 30 evident without an exami-
nation. The black man has been menial
20 long that he has lost, in great. degree,
his sense of manhood and his power to
assert it. The Negro carries within him
the sense that his blood is tainted--that
he is something less than man, in conse-
quence of the blackness of his skin. He
may be whitened out, so that only the most
practiced eye can detect trace of the
African in him, but the consciousness of
the possession of this trace haunts him
like the memory of crime, and to charge
it upon him is to abase him and cover
him with burning shame. The readi-
ness of the Negro in all the States to be
content with menial offices in the service
of the white man, comes undoubtedly
from the fact that such offices relieve him
from all antagonism. They put him in
position free from the pretension to quail
ity, where he is atpeace. We hear it said
that the Negro is natural menial "a nat
ural servant,-but the truth is that if the
Negro were only relieved from the burden
of contempt in which his blood is held, his
special adaptation to menial work would
disappear at once.
The harm that slavery did to the white
man was one that touched him internally
and externally, at most important points
1t vitiated bis sense OF right and wrong.
| Through its appeal to his interests it made
| a system based in inhumanity and stand
| ing and working in direct contravention
| of the Golden Rule, seem to be humane
ana Christian institution, to be maintained
| by argument, by appeal to the authority of
the Bible, and by the sword. This, of
course, was an immeasurable harm, from
which only slow recovery can be reached.
Another evil result of slavery to the white
man was the disgrace that came to labor
| through its long years of association with
servitude. No people can be prosperous
who despise labor, and who look upon it
as something that belongs only to servile
class. Any people that, for any cause,
have lost the sense of the supreme respec-
tibility of labor-any people that, for any
cause, have come to regard an unproduc-
tive idleness as desirable and respectable,
have met with an Unreasonable misfor-
tune. The shadow of the Negro not only
rests upon the white mans sense of right,
not only on the white mans idea of labor,
but upon his love of fair play. There is
something most unmanly in the DISPOSE
ton to deny any man who has not harmed
! us a fair chance in the world. Are we, all
over this Nation, giving the Negro a fair
chance? 1t was not his fault that he was
| born to slavery. 1t was not his act that
released him from it. Notwithstanding all
his years of servitude and wrong, he did
not revolt when his opportunity came, but
bore his yoke with patience until it was
lifted from his shoulders. He did not
wrest from unwilling hands his boon of
citizenship. Now, however, as we look
into our hearts, we find that political rights
were conferred upon him rather from an
abstract sense of justice than for any love
OF the Negro, or any equal place that we
heads as he stands by our side. The North,
to-day, is true to the Negro rather in its
convictions than in its sympathies. 1t
never in its heart has admitted the Negro
to equality with the white man. 1t may
consent to see the white man beaten by
the Negro in a walking match at Gilmores
Garden, but at West Point she smallest
measure of African blood places its pos
SCISSOR under the cruellest and most inn
placable social ban. So long as this fact
exists-so long as the Northern white man
utterly excludes the Negro from his social
sympathies and refuses to give him a fair
chance in the world to secure respectibil-
ity and influence, it poorly becomes him
to rail OF his Southern brothers who do the
same thing, and are only little more log
ical and extreme in their expressions OF
contempt. The shadow of the Negro lies
upon the North as upon the South. 1t has
obscured or blotted out our love of fair
play. We do not give the Negro chance
1t was recently stated in one of our metro
politan pulpits, by minister of wide ex.
perience and observation, that he had
made than were recently made in this city
by four colored men, who spoke on behalf
OF the freedmen. Hes gave them the highest
place in all the powers and
qualities that go into the
making of eloquence. AT Hampton
the negro is proving himself to be not only
most susceptible to cultivation, but to be
possessed OF high spirit of self-devotion
Under the charm of this most useful in
stitution the African ceases to be "nigger'
and achieves a self-respect and sense O
manhood that prepare him for the grea
missionary work of elevating his race. l
cannot be disputed that the great obstacl,
that stands to-day in the way of the Negr,
is the white man. North and South. Tn,
white man in this country is not yet read,
to treat the Negro as man. The preju
dice OF race is still dominant in every par
OF the land. We are quite ready in Ney
York City to invite Indians in paint an,
feathers into social circles, from which tn