The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-02-27
NEGROES And THE SOUTH
REASON FOR STUBBORN FIGHT OVER
CRUMs CONFIRMATION.
Person or Ofiice-SOuthern-
er's Violence.


lighting on both sides over the appoint
ment of DIR. Crum collector of customs
at Charleston is due to the appreciation,
by all concerned, of the real significance of
the episode. The matter has reached such
stage that it is no longer a question of
whether a negro shall have a 81, 100 place in
the public service, or even whether this
particular negro shall have this particular
place; but it is a question of whether the
animosities and possibly the outrages of
the reconstruction period shall be revived
in tenfold their former bitterness, and this
time not as temporary and passing phase
of local disorder, but as a permanent dam
age to the South and eventually to the
country at large. 1t is this that makes
thoughtful citizens. who have seen some
thing of the world outside of the boundaries
of their own little parish, who have studied
history and human nature, deplore the
blunder some of the Charlestonians are
making. No one whose memory goes back
far enough can help recalling the fact that
it was this same city which fired the first
shot in a war foreordained to disaster for
the whole South. Then, as now, local feel
ing made the aggressors blind to the hurt
they were infiicting on their own people;
while more enlightened men on both sides
OF the sectional line realized too keenly the
punishment in store for the many, provoked
by the follies Of the few.
The negroes the South will always have
with it. What will 1t do with them? To
leave the mass of them ignorant and besot-
ted means, of course, to encourage steady
increase of the most dangerous and ire
sponsible human element in any community
this side of the bandit-ridden mountains of
southern Europe To offer them the means
of an education and then deny them the OPP
portunities which fall to men of all other
races is an absurdity. The instant this
view of the subject is preached the outcry
goes UP from our Southern friends: You
are proposing to revolutionize our social
| system. You are trying to eliminate the dis
JUNCTION which nature has fixed between
| the white man and the black" No in
| telligent person need be told that such a
| protest is false and childish.
THE PRESIDENTS POSITION
| The Republican President against whom
this demonstration is made with most I'M
reasoning violence is perhaps the single
one in the long line who has never, in all
he has written or spoken, said a word
which could be construed as regarding the
negro the equal of the Caucasian. His
critics may search his voluminous contri-
buttons to American literature in vain for
4
cussed the question in any of it's phases
He has pronounced belief in his own
race as the most intense Southron between
| Mason and Dixon's line and the Gulf of
Mexico. His whole offending consists in
! the fact that, instead of throwing the
| patronage of the government broadcast to
| the negro politicians of the South, to be
scrambled for, he has actually cut down
| the number of negro appointees and Sc
| lected only a few, who, by the admission
| of their white neighbors, stand far above
! the common level in all those qualities
which make for responsibility, thrift and
good citizenship, and has said to the rest
| of the negroes: Here are the men oil
whom you must model yourselves If you
are ever going to be anybody and do any
thing. There is not an educated, thinking
! white Southerner who will deny this, or
who will not cheerfully admit that, If all
the negroes in the South were like these
| few, the entire section would be richer and
| happier and better off in every sense.
The fight now making upon the Crum
| nomination pushes this consideration aside,
and serves warning that the quality of any
individual negro has nothing TO do with
the case, but that the South wishes no
negro in office at ALL What, then, will fol-
low If this fight is successful?
Mr.. Roosevelt is not the last President
who will sit in the White House. Other
men are going to compete for possession OF
control of the place of power he now holds
Ten million negroes-one-eightho of the pop
ulation-are not going to disappear with the
fall of Crum. Ambitious politicians, strug'
RlnS IOr the presidency, are not gong &c
ignore the negro; they cannot afford to dc
so, whether they would like to do so or not
when in twenty States and two Territories
outside of the solid South the coloreG voters
range In number from Zoo in little Rhode
Island to nearly $1,000 in Pennsylvania anC
5000 in Kentucky. No constitutions
no statute made so iron-bound, in any
Southern State as to preclude the POSSIBLE
ity that some patronage will go TO the ne
groes by way, at least, of impressing the
| ne TN he iS m
plain that the choice of colored men to b'
thus honored will not be from the bes
class because the Southern white people
will not tolerate such recognition of per
sonal merit. the human scum which rose t
the surface under reconstruction will sure
ly rise again. Meanwhile, the opportunit,
for heading off the worst evils heretOfor,
charged against negro office-holding will
have gone by and the South will have onl.
itself to blame for letting it slip.
But the Southern agitator retOrts: "Thei
shall resort once more to the shotgun
the torch and the midnight whip Grant
ed and with what result?
THE SOUTH SHOULD BEWARE.
All that has prevented the execution o
the threat repeatedly made during the las
few years of cutting down the representa-
ton of Southern States in Congress to cor
respond with the changed civic conditions
locally, has been lack of the pressure o
public sentiment in the dominant party
That lack has in turn been due to a dreat
on the part of the Northern people of re
awakening the animosities of genera
ton ago. The North, whose better ele
ment has sympathized with the feeling o
the South against the political outrages O
the carpet-baggers, is slow to move, blu
its inertia must not be mistaken for sleel
now, any more than in the later ffties
Let the aggressions of the South pass
a certain point, and there will be re
Re ira N
1t is the Northern friends of the Soutl
who most dread 10 see this come; TO
hand-in-hand with such measures as tn
Crumpacker resolution, aimed at thos
States of the South which have boldl
effaced the negros civic rights unde
the forms of law, will come measures TO
, the federal control of elections, aimed a
those States in which personal intimida
tion still remains the chief weapon for tn
\ defense of white supremacy
Forecasts like this are not mere fruits O
! the imagination. The rumblngs are alread
heard under the surface in Congress. Tn
strong desire of most of the Northern mem
bers has for years been that the Sout
might have chance to recover by norma
| and rational means from the excuses @
that period when the state government
there were upheld only by federal bayonets
Had the Southern people grasped warml
| the hand held out TO them, and been a
| ready to make concessions TO Northern ser
| timent the North was to leave them un
disturbed I'm their endeavor to maintai
| white supremacy by every righteous mean.
| there would have been no occasion for sue
!, | words of caution. AS negro domination |
= politics gave way to mere participation. an
the trend OF events was steadily toward