The sun., 1919-06-15
Cecil Chestertons Review of American History

baggers during the period of reconstruc-
ton which followed the civil war. In a
sehapter entitled The Black Terror he ex-
plains the reasonable policy of recon
struction which had been planned by Lin
coin and would probably have been car
ried out if he had lived; the iniquitous
scheme which was substituted for it, and
the evils arising therefrom, under which
the South suffered for period of at least
ten years. The following extract from
Bryee'S american Commonwealth will
give an idea Of Mr.. Chesterton's black
terror:
"The lowest point was reached in some
of the Southern States shortly after the
war, when, the negroes having received
the suffrage, the white inhabitants were
still excluded as rebels and the executive
government was conducted by Northern
carpetbaggers under the protection of
Federal troops South Carolina,
for example, was perfect Tartarus of
corruption. . In its Legislature
there was an old darby, jet black and
with venerable white hair, a Methodist
preacher and influential among his
brother statesmen, who kept a stall for
legislation, where he dealt in statutes at
prices varying from 500 to $400p
In this condition of things the Ku-
Klux-Klan was organized to protect the
Southern States against wrongs which the
national Government would neither re-
press nor punish. This secret organiza-
tion Of white men "unoficially tried and
executed those criminals whom the off
cial Government refused to suppress.
These executions" says Mr.. Chesterton,
chad under the circumstances a clear
moral justification"
We can hardly go as far as that; but
we are glad to have an English writer
point out, as plainly as he has done, the
wrongs which have naturally brought
about the existing attitude Of the people
of the South toward the lawless element
of the negro population. Truly does be
assert that the treatment Of the negroes
in the Southern States, 50 often phari-
saieally censured in England, can be fully
explained by expounding the history Of
reconstruction
Notwithstanding his strong feeling in
regard to reconstruction, Cecil Chesterton
disclaims any purpose to write contemp-
tuously concerning the negroes.
6Tf a.. aoxnn Co-kL,--,-r ..,I
gro understood by freedom mainly that be
need not work, there was truth behind his
idea, for the right to be idle if and when
you choose without reason given or per-
mission sought is really what makes the
essential difference between freedom and
slavery. But it is quite another thing"
says the author, when we come to COM
pick national and historical product like
American citizenship"
In Chesterton we find no trace of that
personal antipathy toward the blacks
which Freeman, the famous English his
torian, felt when he visited this country
in 1881. "The really queer thing is the
niggers who swarm here" he wrote to
Prof. Dawkins; "my Aryan prejudices go
against them, specially when they rebuke
you and order you about. And the
women and children are yet stranger than
the men. Are you sure that they are
menf I find it hard to feel that they are
men acting seriously: tits easier to believe
that they are big monkeys dressed up for
a game" In another letter, speaking of
the colored population of St Louis, Free
man called them 'hideous apes whom
Darwin has clearly left unfinished"
The thought that such persons were
legally eligible to the Presidency led him