Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-01-17
EXPORTING THE NEGRO.
Senator Butler Supports Mr.. M0rgnn's
PrOposiuOn-Mr. HOar Replies to
Both Gentlemen-ArRumeuta
on Both sides Of
the Question.


WASHINGTON, January 16.-The Senate
to-day took up the bill introduced by Mr..
Butler on December II, to provide for the
emigration of persons of color from the
Southern States and other States. Mr..
Butler proceeded to address the Senate
This, he said, was too grave a subject to be
distorted by party considerations, or con-
fined within the narrow boundaries and
limits of party lines. 1t rose above party
cabal, and deserved to be held above Sec
tions. He spoke of the granting of suffrage
to colored men as a craze which had come
on the hem of battle, bnt as having been
neither wise nor judicious. But the act was
done, and he could not see now how it was
to be undone.
Would the colored people in the United
States, he asked, be able to maintain them
selves on an equal footing with white men,
and so as not to jeopardiZe the well-being of
American institutions? The opinion ap-
peared to be growing that an honest effort
should be made to ascertain why not, and to
determine what was best to be done.
Mr.. Butler referred to the absence of col
ored people from all high positions in this
country, and saw in that fact the proof of
anybody. he said, had predicted, before the
war, that Southern States would, within
few years, be represented in both Houses of
Congress by men who were then slaves,
he would have been laughed at and
derided as negro Nihilist. And after many
negroes were in Congress, if it had been pre-
dlcted that, In ten years, not one negro
would be sitting in either House, the pre-
diction would have had few believers. And
so, if anyone predicted to-day that, within
half century, not full-bloodeG, genuine
negro would be found in the United States,
he would not be believed; and yet there
were men who expected that very thing.
The bill, Mr.. Butler said. contemplated
gradual, orderly, voluntary movement of
the coIored people out of the Southern
States, and provided Government aid to
enable them to do so.
seemed to him that this proposition was the
most astonishing that he had ever heard in
the legislative history of the Senate, or IN
the legislative history of any free, civilized
and prosperous people. From all climes
under the sun the laborers were thronging
all one way-to share our national
harvest of national prosperity and ma
tional glory. And yet, in the Senate
of the United States, a proposition
was made that, by the force of the nation,
aided by its treasury, 100000 of laborers
born on American soil, every one of them
entitled to every right, were to be deported
to what the Senator had Justly styled the
dark region of the Dark Continent, and
which, in spite of the recent explorations of
their illustrious fellow-citizens, was less
known to the readers of history to-day than
it was when the father of history attempted
the description of it, 800 years before the
birth of Christ.
Instead of exporting 5000 900 colored
people, if there were 10000 white people
exported to Africa, and kept there, said
Mr.. Hoar, the whole difficulty would be
settled. The difficulties of the race prob
lem existed in the excited imaginations and
ineradicable prejudice of few white men,
not between the races themselves.