Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1882-11-24
The Negro i'm Politics.


the rights of citizenship and political
equality, are worthy of careful consdera-
ton. Mr.. Freeman visited the United
States during she past summer, and spent
several months IN careful observation of
the manners and customs of the American
people and the popularity of our institu-
lions. Upon his return, he contributed an
article to the Fortnightly Recieto, an English
publication, in which he dwells at length
upon the status of the negro race in this
country. After referring to the question
presented by Irish citizenship in America,
and the dangers which, in his Judgment,
it involves, he concludes that owing to
the gradual assimilation of the Irish race
with the masses of our people, the Irish
problem is not likely to last forever; but"
he. continues, 'the negro difficulty must
last either till the way has been found by
which the Ethiopian may change his skin,
or till either the white man or the black
departs out of the land" No such pro-
blem as that which the people of this
continent must grapple with was, he
says, ever before presented to man, and
no precedents to guide to its solution are
offered in the history of either modern or
ancient nations. Rome admitted vast
hordes of treemen and strangers to citizen
ship; but they were substantially of one
race and blood, and the process never ex
tended till the later days of the empire to
native Egyptians, and then only slightly.
Returning to his country the writer says:
The bestowal of citizenship on the negro is
one of these cases which show what law Can do
and what it cannot. The law may declare the
negro to be the equal Of the White man; il can
not make him his equal. To the cd question,
Am not \ man and brother? | venture TO
answer: No. He NAV be a man and broth
er in some secondary sense; he is not mar
and brother in the same full sense in which
every Western Aryan is man and brother.-
He cannot be aSsimilatsd the laws Of nature
forbid it. and it is surely a dangerous expert
ment to have in any commonwealth an interior
race, legally equal to the superior, but which
nature keeps down below the level 10 which
law has raised it.
Mr.. Freeman sees ,css danger in the
present case because the negroes are. on
the who'e, peaceable and easily satisfied
creatures, with no very lofty ambition and
for the mos part contcnted to imitae tbs
ways of white men but were they 4 high
spirited people, he sees that their si;ua-
ton might make them very dangerous
element lie does not appear 10 have
learned how dangerous. even as they are,
they have shown themse YES to be where
evil leadership has had sway amongst
them, protected by outside Federal power
from the vengeance of the whites, who
have seen civilization overthrewn, moral
ity trampled under foot, law detied and
al the safeguards which government offers
to life and properly trampled down in
States in which they had lived from boy
hood. .ha; is substantially what has
been experienced In most of the Southern
States for many years, siace the SO called
Reconstruction, until within he past few
years. The~Anglo Saxon blood in those
States has, however, finally asserted its
inherent superiority, and that degrading
misrule has been thrown off in all OF those
never again to be reinstltld;
but in this inert and spirit'ess section of
Maryland the traditions Of the Anglo
Saxon race have been so far forgot en-, that
this monstrous degradation is still erdur-
ed and tolerated.
Continuing the discussion Mr. Freeman
says:
There is, allow, difficulty and danger In the /
position of class enjoying civil but not poll
teal rights, placed under protection of the law.
but having no share in making the law or
in choosing its makers. But surely there is .
greater difficulty and danger in the existence !
Of class ct citizens who at the polling booths
are equal to other citizens, but who ar. no:
their equals anywhere else.
He has heard men say that education /
will solve the problem but education,
be answers, cannot wipe out the eternal
distinction that has been drawn by the
hand of nature. No teaching can turn
black man into white one" The old
question, Would you like
your daughter TO marry q niger after
all, he says, went to the root of the mat
;" for where the closest of human con-
noctions cannot exist in any lawful form
there is no real brotherhood, no real fell
lowship," and, he adds, 1.-THE artificial tie
Of citizenship is in such cases 4 mockery."
He even goes so far as to declare his be
lief that the most Jealous of abolitionists
would contemplate with shuGder the
thought of negro lin the seat of Wash
ington and Garfield"
The negro could never have found his
way into this country except as a slave
Had this uncivilized and barbarous race
sought ingress into this country by means
of immigration as freemen, public opidion
in every section of the country would have
promptly and UNANIMOUS y repealed them
and even the Democratic party, always
liberal in its immigration policy and hu-
name in its sympathy with the oppressed |
foreigner, would never have dared to coun-
tenance negro immigration.
These people, brought here as slaves AMI
held as such under the constitution of the |
Republic, were, by the vicissitudes of
civil war; Suddenly emancipated and fresh
from the bonds of personal servitude and
without any preliminary qualification
were, by the policy of the reconstruction,
legislation, invested with all the privile
yes of equal citizenship. While the intel
igent and enlightened foreign immigrant
is kept upon probation for several years
before receiving the rights of naturaliza-
ton, those people were, without any pre-
iminary qualification whatever, admitted