The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-09-03

icle one Frank K. Warren makes this statement:
 Instead of this Government making a mis- take of commission in clothing the negro with citizenship 1t made a stupendous mistake of omission in not providing the negro with land with which to maintain himself in his sup posed independent citizenship. Had this been done the race question would have long since ery' very efficient school of industry and economy, he was then much better prepared to use both land and ballot than he Is today after being buffeted about for thirty-nve years with no place to lay his head
 MT. Warren was combating the asser- ton of The Chronicle that the enfran- chisement of the ex-slaves was a great mistake, and takes the peculiar position given above. He fails to say where the government was to get the land upon which to settle these negroes except by confiscation, but in another part of his letter he declares that Tn Africa lies the only hope of the American negro." and counsels a general exodus to that coun- try.
 ~ Whether it would be possible to obtain in Africa the land necessary to colonize any large portion of the American me- groes is question we need not discuss, but we are pretty certain that no scheme for such colonization Is likely to succeed So many attempts have been made, and the failures have been so invariable, that little hope or probability exists that an- other effort would meet with better suc- cess. The negroes. generally, have no disposition to leave their old homes vol untarily and it would neither be right nor possible to deport them against their wills.
 But the singular portion of this letter Is the assertion that the negro was bet ter prepared, immediately after obtaining his freedom, to exercise the elective fran chise than he is now What qualifications he then had for voting intelligently we do not know. Not one in a thousand could read .and the mass of the mknew no more about the ballot box. or about vot- ing, than they knew about the science of navigation. MT. Warren certainly knows that when the negroes were made voters they were at the same time made puppets for the whites to use as they saw proper, and he must also know that a major part of the trouble that has existed in the South since the waR sprang from the ease with which negroes could be manip- ulated and from the character of the men who assumed control of them.
 Nor is MT, Warren nearer the truth, in our opinion, when he claims that the negro was better prepared to use land than he is now. If each negro had been given land as soon as he was freed from slavery at least ninety per cent. of them would have starved. Without a white man to direct and control him the aver oo xxyn. ,nt horr dA thraa crops. Either he would have starved or his land would have gone into possession of the whites and he would have become tenant. It is our belief that if all the ex-slaves had been at once placed in pos session of farms of their own not ten per cent. of them would have owned those homes at the. expiration of five years. They would have been sold to their white neishbors or would have been abandoned and sold for taxes. The negro had no more fitness for landholding than he had for voting
 But If MT. Warren really believes what he says, what a commentary he makes on the negro character! It amounts to saying that in spite of the millions spent for his education, in spite or the contin- ued efforts for his elevation and better ment, in spite of all that has been done for him during more than one-third of a century, he has actually retrograded and is now less intelligent and less qualified to be his own master than he was when he emerged from slavery. And we agree with him so far as to admit that the average negro of today is not fitted for independent citizenship or for exercising the right of an elector.