The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-06-15

him a voter, to also educate him and
qualify him for citizenship. While
not accepting some views he printed
in 1885. he was very earnest in his ad-
vocacy Of northern help to educate. In
a reply to Senator Eustis's paper in
the New York Forum, he said:
IF the northern people were minded
20 the south to work out this
problem unaided, they would be G, ulty
of an Unreasonable injustice, no. to
the negro alone, but to every southern
white man, woman and child-born
and to be born-as well, would be
guilty OF an objectionable sin against
the whole American nation, to say
nothing Of that which is supreme, the
Kingdom of Jesus Christ in the earth.
For. whoever brought the negroes to
this country, whoeyer held them in
slavery for shorter or longer times,
h northern people, under God, made
them free people and voters, and so
made the negro problem a matter OF
concern to the white American peo-
pie. While slavery endured there was
for the southern people-the white and
n black people-a mOduS vivendi,
though the negroes were ignorant.
But slavery gon forever, the negroes
not only free but voters, and perma-
nently ignorant n degraded through
ignorance and the moral evils inevita-
BILE to ignorance, there is no possible
mOdus vivendi in the long run of his
tory For the moment, and for
ment's sake, admitting that secession
was as wicked as the most devoted
and fierce unionist ever believed it to
be-that we of the south deserved very
great punishment for our unhappy re-
lation to slavery and our devotion to
the Confederacy-certainly no man
since Nero's time is cruel enough to
believe hat the southern white people
deserve the punishment that would be-
fall them if one-third of their popula-
ton were forever condemned to citi-
Zenship-and ignorance. In such a case
we would cry out with CAIN, branded
and banished: MY punishment is
greater than / a bear"
But the south in its desolation and
poverty, wrought by a war often con-
Quoted with vandalic destruction and
savagery, rose rapidly to it's proper
standard of duty and shouldering re-
sponsibility, began to give to the chill
dren of their but recently emanci-
pated negroes the benefit of education.
For thirty years or more this great
tax and burden has been borne by the
white men while ear after veal the
negro men voted against their bene-
factors interests and with their enc
mics and despoilers. The southern white
men have indeed done a noble, self
sacrificing work. The negroes, by
hundreds of thousands of them, have
had public schooling, the white tax
payer paying the money down for it.
Bishop ,Haygood, in 1889, said that
$780, 900, 900 had been expended in the
education of the negro by the southern
whites. 1t is quite probable that up to
now quite $40, 900, 600 have gone to ne
gro education put of the pockets of the
white men who mean henceforth to
govern the south and control it's des-
TIMES, or know the reason why
If the suffrage amendment becomes
the law governing in North Carolina
the schools for both races will steadily
improve. There will be larger appro-
priations for both races This will
give more and better schooling.
IAthe amendment is lost we have
no idea that the white men will longer
bear this annual drain upon their re-
sources, upon their charity. The negro
will "a in that event to school his
own children. The white schools will
be better sustained every way.