The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1903-04-14

OF Inc White pOpIIdA4OA- "Ho
after the war before such men as Mere
dith Gentry were permitted TO vote.
whilst their former slaves were march
ed III droves TO the ballot-box by pOliti-
cal adventurers sure to misgovern when
intrusted with power. Even these things
might have passed out OF mind except
that, whenever the chance has arisen,
the old agitation has been revived by
the menace of Force bills TO regulate
elections by Federal statute, and meas
ures TO reduce the Southern represen-
tation in Congress: all, under the shadow
by reason Of the shadoW-cast by the
unconsenting, u~noffending black man
athwart the whole track OF American
politics from Maine to Texas. This
brings me to the only apparent cause
OF present disturbance-the bee in our
bonnet-the fly in our ointment-the
everlasting, ever-present ques-
ton.
THE BLACK PROBLEM.
grew I'D to regard the institution Of
African slavery as a monstrous evil.
With a gray jacket on my back | abated
no part Of my adherence of it. The war
over, l fully realized thai the negro
could not be suspended, like Mahomet's
coffin. in the neither air, neither fish,
flesh nor fowl; that he must be made a
freeman in fact, as he was in name; that
he must be habilitated to his new be-
longings, and l promptly accepted the
three last amendments to the Constitu-
ton as the treaty OF peace between the
North and the South, and went to work
in good faith to help carry them out. l
fought to remove the old black laws
from the statute book in Kentucky. j
fought the Ku-Klux Khan from start to
finish. | fought in all possible ways to
give the black man an opportunity to
achieve the hopes which, in common
with many other Of his friends, l had
formed of him.
After thirty years of observation, eX-
perience and re1ection-always directed
from a sympathetic point of view am
forced to agree with the Secretary of
is a failure because the Southern blacks
are not equal to it. 1t is a failure be-
cause the Southern whites VIII not
have it.
If, making a hot answer to this, some
over-Zealous, and, as [ must think, some
mistaken partisan should say, We have
the power, We have the numbers, and
we Will compel the whites of the South,
my answer shall be, you did, and be-
hold what came of it," And then, il
my warm-blooded friend should throw
up his hands in despair and with a kind
of digust turn YEARLY away, [ should
continue-'may you not have been from
the first upon the wrong track? Is there
not another outlet to these p~erplexities,
another solution of this problem? After
all, is not your disQuietude based upon
the idea that there are one set Of moral
conditions at the North and another set
at the South, to which the Whole racial
trouble is referable2 Believe me, there
is no such difference. Remove every
white Democrat today living in the South
and replace him with a Northern Repub-
lican, and twelve months hence the con-
ditions Will be the same, may be worse,
since the Northern Republican would not
be likely to have either the patience or
the personal sympathy and knowledge,
possessed by the native Southerner."
THE ONLY SOLUTION.
Gentlemen, l appeal to you as Repub-
licans, and through you l appeal to the
Republicans of the United States, to
IdNG OOuc Will Tic COIC6il lHdl, uIlcSS
you stand by the black man, that, unless
you continue him as an issue in partisan
politics, injustice will be lone him. In
the lettering of his condition., and in the
acquisition Of property, staring with
nothing, he has made wondrOus progress
the last five and thirty years; and, re-
latively, greater progress at the South
than at the North. He could not have
done this without the sympathy and CO.
operation of the Southern whites. He
has made little progress in the arts of
self-government either North or South,
because of the agitation which has kept
him in a state of perpetual excitement,
with nc healthful public opinion to
moderate it, and has been made the
sport and prey of political exigency, al
ways selfish, and with respect to him
more or less visionary and needless.
The negro can never become in any
benefcent, or genuine sense, an integral
and recognized part of the body polite
except through the forces of evolution.
which are undoubtedly at work, but
| which in the nature of the case must
needs go exceedingly slow. Where there
is one negro fit for citizenship, there are
myriads Of negroes wholly Unfit. The
III houoS piOCCoo q bCIh Z anu
it has failed. If, invested with every
right enjoyed by the whites. the
blacks, gaining in all things else. have
brought corruption into the suffrage and
discredit upon themselves, is it not a
kline of madness further to press artifi-
cial methods, which, however justified
theoretically from educational look-outs
in Michigan, Iowa and Wisconsin. fall
helpless to the ground in their practical
application to the -barbarous toiiers
in the cottOn-ields and corn-lanGs of
Albania, Georgia and South Carolina?
appeal to you equally in what l con
aelve the true interest of the black peo-
pie along with the white people of the
South; nay, and of the North as Well.
Tor all our interests are indissolublo. in
terchangeab1e, and that can never be
good or bad for one section which is net
good or bad for the other section.
Modern invention, which has already
a~nnlhllated time and space, is surely
eraslng sectional lines. 1t ought not to
nave so much as a reminiscence of sec