Believing as did Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Clay, Webster,
Douglas, Lincoln, Grant and many others less known to fame, "that there is
a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid
the two races living together on terms of social and political equality,"
(Lincoln) and that "there is nothing more certainly written in the book of
fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two
races, equally free, cannot live in the same government (Jefferson), we are
confronted by the queries: to what place shall we remove the Negro and by what
means? The purpose of this chapter is to answer the former query, the
succeeding Chapter will answer the latter.
Lincoln attempted to arrange with certain Latin American countries to take
our Negroes, thinking that the absence of a color line there would prove
favorable to such a move. But the Latin American people, when approached,
quickly resented this implication. They proved to have a color line in theory,
if not in practice, and would not consent to increase their Negro population.
Grant sought to induce Congress to acquire Santo Domingo (Haiti) for the
purpose of removing the Negroes to that island, but was unable to bring about
its acquisition. Webster had always stood in readiness to support any measure
initiated by Congress to remove the Negro to any place, if the place selected
was outside the United States. Later and less farseeing advocates of
segregation of the races have suggested setting apart a portion of the Union
for the exclusive use of the Negro.
Would local segregation be satisfactory solution of the problem? The
expanding white population will soon need every acre of American territory. We
have much to learn from our three centuries of experiments in moving and
removing the Indians. Nor should we fail to grasp the principle enunciated by
Stephen A. Douglas that "this government was made by white men for the
benefit of white men and their posterity forever."
The logical place to segregate the Negro, if segregation is to be within the
Union, is in the Gulf and south Atlantic states. To do this would deprive the
white race of the most desirable portion of the Union. Segregation within the
Union cannot be a solution of the Negro problem, for the time will come when
both races will overflow their borders.
Far-seeing Caucasian statesmen will not remove our Negroes to Latin America,
including the West Indies, even though such measure were feasible, for the
Western World may eventually became a Caucasian world. The white man has it in
his power to make it such, and if the Eastern World is dedicated to the
Caucasian and his institutions forever, it will become the source and center of
civilization.
We must settle the Negro problem once for all, and to do this we have no
recourse other than to return the Negro to his homeland. We of this generation
have thought but little upon this, the sole possibility of solving the Negro
problem. But we shall see that the removal of the American Negro to the home of
his ancestors will work to the advantage of the Negro as well as be in keeping
with the necessity of the Caucasian. By this process of removing the burden
from ourselves and our posterity we shall have served Negro posterity, in a
manner and measure highly satisfactory to every well-wisher of the Negro race.
Segregation means everything to the Negro. In the previous chapters we have
not sought the Negro's viewpoint, for we have had in mind the necessities of
the white man only. But when contemplating the Negro and his striving for
advancement in a country where his presence does not retard our cultural
progress, we can see the Negro's problems as he sees them and sympathize with
his aspirations.
If the Negro remains in the United States, and does not amalgamate with the
Caucasian, he is to be submitted to an increasing intensity of competition
before which he cannot hold his own. His leaders are daily bewailing the fact
that the Negro has lost his former economic position in the North, and lost, as
well, that powerful sympathy of the North which freed him and placed him upon
his feet, but which hesitates at continually holding him in a position to which
he is, by nature, unadapted.
The late Dr. Booker T. Washington seems to have realized the Negro's social
and economic loss in the North better than the other mulatto leaders of the
race have realized it, or perhaps he was more honest than those of his race who
still seek to contrast the North and South in their treatment of the Negro. The
Negroid leaders and the white negrophilists know that the Negro's artificial
position in Caucasian civilization is not due to Negro initiative or to Negro
ability, but to conflicts of rival groups of Caucasians over the Negro and his
rightful place in nature and civilization. To keep the Caucasian divided upon
the Negro race question, the Negroid writers and the white negrophilists still
contrast North and South. Sir Harry Johnston, a Casabianca of the now dwindling
negrophilism, contrasts the "Christian North" with the brutal South.
This learned, but sometimes self-contradictory authority was in America
gathering material for his work, The Negro in the New World, at or about
the time of the Springfield, Illinois, race riots in 1908. Regardless of the
fact that the capital of Illinois, the home-place of Lincoln, was in the throes
of a bloody race conflict by reason of which several regiments of state troops
were called out to protect the Negroes, this English negrophilist contrasted
North and South on the Negro race question to the; in his mind, eternal
disgrace of the latter. The economic exclusion is extending southward, and the
Negro will eventually be driven from the field of skilled labor in the South as
he has been in the North; and from the better remunerated unskilled employment
as well. White labor is eventually to dominate the labor market throughout the
Union, and the white laborer will see that the defective and less capable of
his own race is provided with the means of subsistence before these means are
placed at the disposal of the members of another race. The time will come
when white men will need every job from street sweeper to corporation manager.
The next stage of the economic conflict between African and Caucasian in the
Southern States will be marked by a further lowering of the relative
remuneration paid to the Negro for his labor. To secure employment, the Negro
will work for such compensation as will barely keep body and soul together. The
less capable of the white race, if they are to compete with the Negro, will
have to adjust themselves to the Negro's standards of living as determined by
the stress of the Negro's situation. This much is certain, the Negro is to sink
lower and lower if the white race remains white. Caucasian purity is, of
course, the national ideal, and it is upon this basis that the analysis of the
future Negro problem is made.
Unable to compete with the white man, save by drawing the white man to his
own level, the Negro will become an outcast in America, as the inferior tribes
are in India. That the United States will reach a status of races analogous to
that of India is a belief which has been expressed by more than one American
writer. If the white race retains race purity, economic competition will compel
the Negro to prey upon the white race for the necessities of life. "The
war of races is no longer a sectional war; it is a bitter in the State of Chase
and Giddings as it is in the State of Arkansas. If the Negro who is in our
midst can be denied the right to work and must live on the outskirts of
civilization, he will become more dangerous than the wild beasts, because he
has a higher intelligence than the most intelligent beast. He will become an
outcast lurking about the borders and living by depredation." (From the
brief of the Attorney-General of the United States in the case of Hodges vs.
U.S., 203 U.S. 14. Quoted in The Negro Problem: Abraham Lincoln's
Solution, William F. Pickett, p. 87.)
In America the good that is in the Negro is to be controlled and repressed,
but beyond the seas from whence he came, there is hope. In the home of his
ancestors he will escape that intensity of competition before which he cannot
stand, and be placed in an environment where his competitive inferiority will
not inhibit initiative.
The question of the repatriation of the Negro should not be left to the
Negro's adverse decision, any more than the question of the removal of the
Indian was left to the choice of the Indian. Some of the Indian tribes wished
to remain east of the Mississippi River; others wished to go to the lands
allotted to them if they were assured of a stable government in their new
homes. The Indian was in the way of the advancement of civilization; those who
did not wish to move were made to move. Their consolidation was primarily for
the purpose of leaving the Caucasian unhindered in his progress. Can anyone
believe that American civilization was endangered by the Indian as it is by the
Negro? But the Indian was not segregated until the Federal Government undertook
the measure with force and decision. (Read the exhaustive thesis upon Indian
Consolidation, by Annie Heloise Abel, Ph.D., in the Annual Report of the
American Historical Association, Vol. 1, 1906.) Nor will the Negro be
repatriated until the Federal Government turns itself seriously to the task.
In the later stages of repatriation a system of draft could be applied to
timid youths who do not volunteer to aid in building a nation of their own
people.
The Negro resides here among a people who have lately subjugated a continent
and are seeking wider activities. If the Negro is not of a mettle to redeem
a wilderness, surely he is not a fit associate for that race which, within
recent generations, has discovered and peopled the New World and extended race
and civilizations to large and important portions of the Old World.
America's foremost authority on tropical diseases tells us that the
Anglo-Saxon may, if he wish, permanently inhabit the tropic. (The late William
C. Gorgas, Surgeon-General U.S. Army.) The most remarkable revelations arising
from the experiments at Panama and elsewhere in the torrid zone are those which
have revealed that instead of the Caucasian being unable to display physical
and mental energy in the tropics, he cannot live in health there without so
doing. Heretofore the Caucasian dwelling in the tropics has relied upon the
labor of backward races. In consequence, he has suffered atrophy of the organs,
the activity of which is essential to health. Tropical diseases are not
generally climatic disease as such, but are usually those transmitted by
bloodsucking insects. As the white man invades the tropics, cultivates the land
and drains the stagnant pool, breeder of the mosquito, we may expect to see the
jungle give place to permanent civilization.
The tropics are but awaiting the healing hand of the Caucasian. America is
to make habitable the home of its repatriated blacks. This measure will not be
left to the Negro and should not give the Negro's well wishers undue disturbance.
Throughout Africa, the diseases of both blacks and whites have declined much in
recent years. The suppression there of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic
liquors, the elimination of bloodsucking insects, together with the growth of
industries, will render Africa as habitable as America.
Ten times as many Negroes are living in Africa at the present time as in the
United States. Under European control, their death rate is declining and their
material and spiritual culture rising. May not our Negroes take place beside
their brethren now there and share with the latter in the redemption of the
continent from the jungle and savagery? Our Negroes will go to Africa fitted in
every way to lead their race. They will take natural leadership in the brining
of the blessings of civilization to the Dark Continent.
The idea that the American Negro would be of signal aid in implanting
civilization in Africa was ever before the American founders of Liberia. On the
death of Clay, a memorial service was held in the State House at Springfield,
Illinois, in which Lincoln was the principal speaker. In the course of his
address, Lincoln, quoting from a speech of Clay, said: "There is a moral
fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors have
been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence. Transplanted in
a foreign land, they will carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of
religion, civilization, law and liberty. May it not be one of the great designs
of the Ruler of the universe, whose ways are often inscrutable to short-sighted
morals, thus to transform an original crime into a signal blessing to that most
unfortunate portion of the globe?" Continuing his address, Lincoln said:
"This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race
and African continent was made twenty-five years ago. Every succeeding year has
added strength to the hope of its realization. May it indeed be realized."
The Negroes need a black Moses to lead them to the land of promise. When such a
leader arises, he will be the foremost individual in the annals of Negro
history.
Our mixbreeds, transferred to Africa, could become a social aristocracy,
such as the Fula of Nigeria, the Hima of Uganda, and the Zulu of the South; all
of whom have Caucasian blood coursing through their veins, and all of whom are
above the true Negro in culture. The mixbreed would be an ethnic and culture
link connecting the Negro of Africa with the whites of Europe and America.
It should give the Caucasian hope and energy to realize that the only
solution of the Negro problem that he is willing to promote is at the same time
the only satisfactory solution for the black as well as for the white. Repatriation
will settle our Negro problem forever and will give the Negro a future.
Many will say, "Repatriation is the only satisfactory solution of the
problem, but Africa has been partitioned by the European powers, and though we
wish to return our Negroes there, have we the possibility of doing so? Are we
not cut off in this direction even as Lincoln was prevented from sending the
Negroes to Latin America?" No, we are not cut off from the possibility of
sending the Negroes to Africa, and no well-informed individual will affirm that
there is insurmountable or even doubtful difficulty in the way. Africa is
woefully underpopulated and there is an unlimited demand for labor to further
the European development of the continent. The whole of Africa is subject to
white nations.
There is much land expressly reserved for American Negro colonists in
Liberia, which, in the opinion of a leading American authority (Dr. Starr of
the University of Chicago), and of England's foremost authority upon the
African Negro problem (Sir Harry Johnston), will support a population of twenty
millions. We have seen that the Liberian Republic was founded by white
Americans who returned freed slaves to Africa. Descendants of these ex-slaves
and the natives over whom they rule number but little more than two million. If
we return our Negroes to Liberia and see to it that they are properly provided
with means to support themselves, there will still be room in this American
colony for some seven million souls.
We would not return our Negroes en masse, but only those of breeding age,
and be as much as a generation in placing them in their new homes, making it
possible by this slow process to fill up their gap in the United States and to
provide them with the certainties of subsistence in Liberia.
Again, there is no necessity for confining our Negroes to the present limits
of Liberia. We should widen, by purchase, that country's borders. If not this,
we should acquire the Belgian Congo, which is the richest and most inviting
portion of the world yet awaiting the light of civilization. If not the Belgian
Congo; then Portuguese West Africa; or part of the French possessions; or
German Togoland, or the Kamerun. These latter having passed from German hands
as a result of the recent war, there is an added hope of their acquisition. We
may rest well assured that England, with her present understanding of the Negro
problem, her need of civilized labor in her vast African possessions, and, not
least, her consciousness that she played the dominant role in fastening the
Negro and Negro slavery upon her former American possessions, will do anything
in her power to aid in returning them to Africa. With her sympathetic and
practical aid there is not need to look further.
Economically, America is entering upon imperialism. Not only is there hope
merely, but there is substantial prospect of our economic imperialism, as
directed toward the second greatest continent, being realized in good measure
if we follow up present advantage and widen the borders of Liberia or acquire
additional territory elsewhere on the West Coast. Liberia offers the
possibility of a splendid naval base, which may not only dominate the western
coast of Africa but be within a comparatively short distance of South America.
Circumstance determined by the result of the World War placed the German
African possessions in the hands of nations associated with the United States
in that struggle (Great Britain and France). Let us not forget that the
explorations of the past five decades have revealed Africa to be wonderfully
rich in material resources and possessed of, in most places, good climatic
conditions. A glance at the map of Africa will show the position of the German
Cameroons with reference to the French Congo. These two, if obtained by the
United States would afford ample room for our Negroes and would facilitate American
exploitation throughout Central Africa. France is not only favorable to the
United States, but is possessed of much land, having sovereignty over large
portions of Africa. It is certain that the United States can make satisfactory
arrangements with France for the acquirement of the French Congo. But the
Belgian Congo is more valuable for economic development, the richest
unexploited portion of the world. The Portuguese colony of Angora would be
ample for our purpose, and this colony also might be acquired. It is not likely
that every again will there be such favorable opportunity for the United States
to secure African territory. It is an opportunity which our statesmen cannot
fail to see. The European nations lately associated with the United States in
the World War own almost the total of Africa. Suffering more than the United
States and sacrificing more, these nations, through necessity, have accumulated
staggering national debts. They owe to the Untied States more than ten billion
dollars exclusive of accumulated interest on this amount. A portion of this
debt could be paid by the cession to the United States of African possessions,
thus giving to the Untied States vast natural resources, providing a home for
the Negro in which his wealth could be made a hundred fold greater than it is
possible for him to accumulate in America, and relieving the nation, or
nations, which sell the territory, of a great financial obligation.
But let us omit for the present the prospect of the United States acquiring additional
territory in Africa. Liberia, or Liberia with its former borders, peopled by
our Negroes, will mean the opening of the riches of Equatorial Africa to our
trade in such measure as will not be possible otherwise. From Liberia, our
influence, if not our control, will permeate far inland, extend the culture of
civilization to the inhabitants, offer opportunity to Christianize the
Mohammedan and savage peoples, and give great economic opportunity.
Let our economic experts calculate the return from such a possible venture
upon our part and they will tell you that in a predeterminable time this source
of profit will defray the national expenditure incurred in repatriating the
Negro. At home, as the whites take the place of the Negroes, the increase in productivity
of the whites over the Negroes whom they have replaced will also, in a
predeterinable time, meet the national outlay in settling the Negro problem in
the only way it can be settled. If the various States, or the Federal
Government, should take up the Negro's holdings of land and buildings and sell
these holdings to the highest bidder, their increased value based upon white,
rather than Negro surroundings, will in great measure compensate for the
expense of repatriating the Negro. By repatriating the Negro, we shall,
without question, increase our wealth both at home and abroad.
We have sought to show the necessity, the value, and the possibility of
repatriating the Negro. Let us assume that this is done, with its attendant
effects upon the white race in the United States.
We will now consider more minutely the necessity and the value of
repatriation to the Negro. This latter can best be done by briefly summarizing
the historical attitude of the white man towards the black.
For the past ten thousand years the white race has been in contact with the
Negro, first in restricted localities in Africa and Asia, then in an ever
widening contact until at the present time the white man has actual or nominal
control over every individual of the entire Negro race in both the Old and the
New World. This contact has saved the Negro from a groveling, brute-like
condition. It has given to the Negro all his possessions; the food that he
eats, the clothes that he wears, the implements that he uses, the domesticated animals,
fowls, and plants that he possesses, the knowledge that he has.
During these centuries of contact it is possible that not any portion of the
white race has treated the Negro in a rational way. The Negro has profited by
contact with the white man, but he has paid a great price of human agony. The
white man has not treated the Negro as a human, but as a thing. A thing the
existence of which is not justified save by its servitude to its white master.
The Caucasian has never enslaved the Negro when slavery was not profitable, and
has never freed the Negro while slavery was profitable. The whites who have
freed their slaves have been those who ceased to profit by slavery. (We saw in Chapter 10 that
during the early decades of last century abolition theories were popular in the
Southern States because slavery had become unprofitable. But abolition theories
there were revoked when the cotton gin became effective.)
During the centuries of contact, the white man has looked upon the Negro
either as a case of hardened degeneracy or he has gone wild in the other
extreme of expecting the Negro to assume equal rank with the Caucasian. Both
theories are wrong. Possibly equally so. To deny the Negro the right to develop
according to natural laws is unjust; to expect him to develop as a Caucasian is
a species of sentimental insanity. The one overlooks that he is human, the
other ignores that he is a race. He is human and should not be denied the right
to work out his own salvation. He is a fully constituted race and like other
races, is possessed of ineradicable race instincts and tendencies, and may work
out his salvation along race lines only. This understanding of the Negro and
the Negro problem will be at the bottom of any rational dealing with the Negro
and the problem he constitutes to civilization.
In the Ideal Negro State the Negro will develop as a Negro, in accord with
his race instincts and capacities; but he may need white guidance in the first
stages of his independence. Heretofore the white man has made the Negro work
for the white man's advantage. In the ideal Negro State, the white man, if
there be need, may direct the Negro's work for the Negro's welfare. Heretofore
the white man has received chief profit from the Negro's labor; under a
rational system of developing the Negro the latter alone will profit from his
toil.
Transplanted to Africa, the Negro, under the temporary tuition of the United
States, will be able to work out his own destiny. Our knowledge of his history
shows us that his future is to be as a Negro.
When we recognize that the Negro is to develop as a Negro, we are but
accrediting to this race specialized human endowments. The Negro, In common
with the white man, is human, but the white man is highly specialized in those
endowments which express themselves in civilized culture, while on the other
hand, the Negro's specialized endowments do not, in any high degree, express
themselves in civilized culture as we define such.
It may not hinder the progress of the white man if he give the advantage of
his superior attainments to the other races, if these latter dwell separate
from the former, but the white man is not to make such contribution if by so
doing his racial status or his cultural progress is endangered. The presence of
numerous colored progress is endangered. The presence of numerous colored
peoples within the white groups cannot but qualify, by restriction, white
attainments, but the white man may well aid the colored in territories set
apart for the colored. Let the white American repatriate the black, leaving the
white to continue his progress at home and making politic his advancement of
the black abroad.
A program of rational dealing with the Negro will consider that the present
status of the Negro is not immutable. There are no breeds of man or brute but
that may be improved by selective matings and by opportunity for initiative.
With regard to cultural initiative, the Negro suffers and is humiliated, by
contrast with the Caucasian, in his every effort to take part in a white
civilization. On every hand there are such evidences of his inferiority that
the Negro ceases to aspire. The material and spiritual splendors of America are
not the Negro's.
Though the white man be changed into a more helpful friend of the Negro,
that race will still be, by consciousness of cultural inferiority, deprived of
the initiative which is necessary for race advancement. What the Negro needs is
an environment that will engender initiative, and such environment is
impossible while he dwells with the Caucasian. The type of state which the
Negro requires is the organized society of his peers. This state will make
possible the encouragement of his every aspiration. It will free the Negro from
hopeless competition with the Caucasian and from consciousness of racial
inferiority. Let us not forever close the door of hope. Situate the Negro so
that the attainment of his aspirations is possible according to his inherent
ability, and you will have conferred upon him the greatest service. Add to this
the white man's helpful influence and encouragement until the Negro nation has
acquired strength, and if the Negro does not advance, you may not find fault
with the Caucasian, but be left alone in the presence of Him "who with
Eden, didst devise the snake."
The Ideal Negro State will be radically different from other Negro policies
of the white man. The white man will encourage always, and, in some instances,
may enforce beneficial measures upon the Negro; but the white man will divorce
himself in fact as well as in theory from the economic and sexual spoilation of
the black. The white power responsible for the Ideal Negro State will not
directly or indirectly derive profit from the Negro State, save to defray necessary
expenditure in control of the State, and through the channels of legitimate
trade. The sovereign white power, in conjunction with the Negro government,
will provide work for all, gifts for none. The dignity of labor is not fully
apprehended by the white man; with the Negro dignity is incompatible with
labor. Intelligence and toil have given world-supremacy to the Caucasian; all
humanity, regardless of race, is conditioned to development by the same method.
If the Negro will not work, he could be made to work. To work, not for the
white man's profit, but for his own welfare. The male Negro will be taught that
the female properly has an economic function, but that such function does not
include the sum total of economic effort. The position of the Negro is due in
large measure to his unwillingness to engage in sustained economic effort. His
predilection for the shade is in some degree responsible for his lack of a
place in the sun." But in the Negro's development, though the white man,
for a time, direct his toil, the white man is not to profit by the toil. (That
the white man is not to profit by the labor of the black must be repeated again
and again. If the Negro is removed from the United States to Africa, such
repatriation will be effected by the Federal Government. Federal direction of
repatriation would insure that the repatriated blacks will be protected from
the avaricious Caucasian, whatever the nationality of the latter may chance to
be.)
The United States, in temporary control of the government of the repatriated
Negro, will be possessed of executive as well as advisory status. The white
sovereign power may enforce beneficial measures. Such sovereign acts may not
prove to be necessary. If not, then so much the better. The Negro will be
encouraged to look after his health in such manner as will lower his high death
rate. Though it violate all precedent, he will not delegate sanitation to the
maggot, the fly, the jackal, and the hyena. As sovereign power, the United
States, with its knowledge of the tropics and its great material advancement,
will be in a position to promote the welfare of its repatriated blacks to such
an extent that the ideal Negro State, from the beginning, will be a compelling
example to the native millions of Africa.
At first, there should be a white supervisor of education, and education
should be confined to those lines which promote material well-being. Education
would be compulsory and universal. The leaders, both white and black, would
instruct the Negro that peace is prolific of national greatness, and the Negro
be led to keep the peace. Justice dispensed should have proper regard for the
weak. The Negro will be free to accept any religion, so long as his choice does
not imperil the advancement of the State. Thus, under sane leaders, and
universal education, there would be no danger of the Negro reverting to
voodooism, as in Haiti.
The conditions inhering in the Ideal Negro State will serve to make the
Negro a better Negro. There is no other way to give him a chance in the world
at present. He is not fitted for cultural competition with the more creative
Caucasian, his presence among the peoples of that race has invariably resulted
in amalgamation of his race with the Caucasian, leaving a mongrel offspring
unfitted to carry on the culture they received from their white ancestors.
There has been no exception to long continued race contact ending in race
amalgamation. We in America are still white, but countless centuries are before
us. It is civilization's imperative that the Negro be repatriated. It will be
to the Negro's advantage to be aided by the white man in establishing his new
home on a sure foundation. If the white man of America owes a debt to the
Negro, he cannot repay it so well as by empowering the Negro to work out his
own salvation in keeping with the instincts and capacities with which the
Creator has endowed him.