Cbe Sacrifice cf a Race THE SACRIFICE OF A RACE By Dr. P. B. Barringer, M.D., LL.D. An address delivered by him before the Race Conference at Montgomery, Ala., May ioth, 1900. Copies of this address may be had, for twenty cents each, at Anderson Bros., Charlottesville, Va. RALEIGH, N. C. Edwards & Broughton, Printers and Binders Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/sacrificeofraceOObarr PREFACE. The history of the negro, as a race, is one of profound pathos. From time immemorial and in all places he has been the burden-bearer, the plaything, the tool and the dis- carded dupe of his more fortunate brothers. Where are the fifteen thousand negroes imported into Great Britain before the “trade” was abolished ? Gone ! Where are those taken to Portugal and Spain by pious ( ?) Prince Henry “in order that they might be made Christians?” Gone ! Xot a trace. Where are the thousands which Car- thage, before the Punic wars, furnished Rome? An occa- sional suspicious excess in the richness of Neapolitan tint is seemingly the sole remainder. Yet he has always served well. lie served us here in the South long and faithfully, but, in view of what is now seen, can it be claimed that we worked the negro harder or more effectually than the aboli- tionists unwittingly “worked” him? The effect of their working was seen in the war, the hardness of it in his pres- ent condition. W ell may belated philanthropy pour out its gold, but if they paid till the very soil of the South could be worked as an ore, they could not atone to him. Can millions save him ? I am afraid not — it is full late. Few appreciate how far he has already gone back to original racial tendencies. Here is an intelligent, upright, honest negro, and there another, but they, as a rule, were bom slaves; few indeed are the men of promise under thirty 4 years of age and fewer under twenty ; and so strong is the downward current that most of them who stand fast are destroyed by attrition. If the young negro can be taught to work he can be saved. Will industrial training do this? It may if sim- plified or limited to agriculture. The present system of industrial education gives too little industry and too much education. We might as well, moreover, be frank and con- fess that the trades unions, fast coming into the South, will not let a negro work at a trade. Here, as well as North, when it comes to a fight, industrial or otherwise, between white and black, the whites are for the whites. What then ? Compassion, charity and mercy ; missionaries, churches and hospitals — i. e., euthanasia. But there can be no euthanasia for him who knows the symptoms of his disease and the physiological effects of the anodyne. Educate then, henceforth, the soul and the hand — more than the mind. “THE SACRIFICE OF A RACE.” In the summer of 1619 there sailed into Chesapeake Bay an English privateer, cruising under foreign letters of marque (Savoyan), which had on board what remained of a hundred negroes captured from a Spanish vessel in the West Indies. This privateer*, “The Treasurer,” was com- manded by Captain Daniel Elfrith, and leaving twenty of these negroes at Jamestown, he sailed for Bermuda, where he placed the remainder on the Earl of Warwick’s planta- tion on that island. Of these twenty negroes two became the property of William Tucker (“gentleman”), of Eliza- beth City County. These, a man and a woman, he named respectively, Anthony and Isabel!, and to them was born a child, “baptized” William, seemingly the first American of African descent born on this continent. [Brown’s “Genesis of the United States,” Vol. II, pp. 886, 1034.] The birth of this child inaugurated a new race, and 'one whose history I am here to-day to recall and whose end I am here to predict. The salient features of the history of this race up to the present are about as follows : A race of savage blacks, with one exception — the original tribes of Australia — the lowest of human kind, with fifty centuries of unbroken bar- barism behind them, were torn from their native tropical land and transported to a republic founded as an asylum for those seeking to be free. But these blacks came not here for freedom ; they were brought against their will, and to be slaves. It was not alone against their own will that they came. They came against the general wish of the Southern colonists, for while the pious clergy of New England were hailing the arrival of a slaver with praver- * Privateers at this time were called “ Dutch men of war." 6 fill thanks, “because a gracious and over-ruling Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gos- pel dispensation,” [Curry’s “Southern States of American Union,” p. 163] the colonies of Virginia and South Caro- lina were petitioning the mother country to stop the slave trade. But the stock of the Guinea Company was owned in high places, [Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 981,] and the colonists continued to be tempted, while the daily demonstrated fitness of the blacks for hard labor in this sunny clime caused a gradual change in the colonial sentiment. In a virgin land of incomparable fertility strong laborers were, of course, extremely useful, and hence much valued. Being valuable they were allowed to multiply, but this under a careful selective process of breeding that outstripped nature itself. Docility, de- cency, fealty and vigor were desired, and the slave man having these attributes, with his master’s “pass,” scorned the rural “paterroller” and roamed at will to replenish the earth. This selective propagation in which intelligence made use, in order, of animal desire, infant hygiene, race tendency to mimicry, the glamour of feudalism, and even religion itself, not only caused the negro to increase in numbers, but also to improve in kind. In a few genera- tions the spindle-shanked and pot-bellied Ibo (Eboi) im- proved in shape as well as feature. The vigorous blue- black Wolof, the blackest but the finest of the West Coast negroes, and of whom not over a thousand a year were im- ported, became the type and the ideal. Mandingans, Ashantis, Fans, Yorubas, one and all, were made to con- form, for the large were tempted with the small and the weak with the strong. The laws of breeding obtained through centuries of experience with the lower animals had here found a wider and a higher field. American slavery has been described, and rightly, as “the greatest missionary effort in human, history,” but, in its early stages, it was more than this : it was the first and only application of intelligent hygiene to a special race, and that it should have been successful in improving it was natural, for the intelli- gence which was most potent in the upbuilding of this republic, then and afterwards, in fair measure divided its time with the abstruse problem of slave propagation. But under this intelligent stimulus the increase was so great that the plantations of the East were quickly stocked and the westward migration of younger sons with young fami- lies of slaves necessarily inaugurated that separation of families which was the first thing to influence the senti- ment of the South against slavery. From this time ofl the multiplication of the negro steadily declined, for its neces- sary evils and dangers were now seen. But by this time, under artificial conditions, the vigor and prepotency of this lace of exotics had been established. They increased so rapidly that it alarmed the whites and forced the transpor- tation of slaves to more southern and western territories to avoid a dangerous local predominance. The first stage of the slave problem now faced them. It must be clearly understood that the sentiment of the age favored slavery and any feeling against it in any quar- ter was influenced solely by local conditions. To-day there is not a State in Xew England that can maintain its negro population without importation,* and tve can well imagine what must have been the state of affairs with the crude hygiene of colonial days. Being unprofitable in Xew England, slavery there naturally became unpopular, but * Dr. Fisher, for many years registrar of vital statistics for Rhode Island says: “We must conclude, however reluctantly, that the race negro) is not self-sustaining in this climate.'’ The registrar of Massachusetts reluctantly admits the same thing. — Hoffman's Ameri- can Negro , p. 36. 8 not until long after it had become a problem of danger in the South. In 1780, when Massachusetts, the first to act, freed her remaining handful of slaves, the four States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, had almost a half million. It was then too late to let go ; the South could only hold on and make the best of it It was soon seen that the American-bred negro was so much better than the “salt-water black” that this, coupled with the alarming increase in the Southern colonies, made the South demand the abolition of the trade. In this she was out-voted by the North, whose interests now lay in slave transport rather than in slave labor. This demand ultimately became so strong on the part of the South that the government was forced to stop the trade, but only after twenty years lease of life had been added, [As the result of what Washington called a “dirty bargain” South Carolina and Georgia voted with the North and permitted this. North Carolina met this by putting a tax of £5 on every negro imported after 1788,] carrying it to 1808. If the rate of negro increase for the first hundred years of slavery had been maintained to the present day, there would be nearly 26,000,000 negroes in the United States. [Dar- by’s table, “View of the United States,” p. 439.] But this was not to be, and it never will be ; America will never see 26,000,000 negroes within its limits. The reason that, it was not to be was that there was early abroad in parts of this land, as one of its characteristic features, a spirit of sentimental altruism which was founded on the glittering generalities of the Declaration of Independence, a campaign document, rather than on the cold, logical and business-like statements of the consti- tution. This new cult placed itself above religion, above Christianity, and demanded a new Bible and a new Christ, because Christ and the old Bible [Exodus 21 :6] both 9 recognized slavery. It has been charged that this high and holy altruism was tinctured with the baser motives of pol- icy, sectional jealousy, and even with the remains of an old Puritan-Cavalier hatred; but we of the South are of necessity biased judges. At any rate, the logical and inev- itable result of such a spirit of universal brotherhood as then prevailed was the demand, sooner or later, on the part of the Xorth, where this epidemic was prevalent, for the abolition of slavery. The South, knowing that the negro could never be main- tained within its borders as a freedman, refused. Tor years the fight went on, various compromises and plans being suggested, but none being satisfactory. From the beginning of this century up to 1860, the political history of this country consisted of a long parliamentary fight for and against slavery. The great men of the South and of the Union, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Ran- dolph, Macon, Clay, Calhoun and others, were all slave owners, but all equally abhorred the evil practices of slavery. Xot one of these ever dared urge general eman- cipation for the South where the negroes were numerous ; and whenever any of them manumitted their own slaves they endeavored to send them out of the South. Randolph even bought land in Ohio and there set up his slaves in freedom, but they were not allowed to remain. [Mrs. A. Dixon’s History of the Missouri Compromise, p. 249.] The reason of all this was that these men, as slave owners, knew the negro and knew that underneath his dusky skin the simple intelligence of a child was combined with the in- stincts of a veritable savage. They felt and knew that the negro as a freedman could not exist in America. They had seen and were familiar with the original cannibal African from which their loyal and affectionate slaves had sprung, and they knew that force, unobtrusive but steady 2 10 and persistent force, was necessary to the continuance in well-doing of this race of pagans but recently reclaimed. But in 1860 compromise failed, and though disguised in other forms,* the demand for the abolition of slavery became urgent ; then came thewar. For our present purpose the most remarkable thing about that war was the fact that while its initial act con- sisted in the uprising of a few slaves on the border, under the influence of white persuasion, the slaves of the true South could not be induced to rise against their masters. Had the Southern man not known the negro, he would have thought as the North thought, that he was fighting with foes behind him as well as in front ; but he knew, as he alone coidd know, that the negro was contented and happy in slavery. Had they been but let alone they would have remained contented. At all events when put to the test, the negro did not turn against the wife and children of his absent master, when everything possible favored an uprising. Negro regiments were organized, armed, and paraded up and down the border; brass bands were played, incendiary speeches made and altruism preached with a whoop, but the negroes did not rise. As Professor Shaler, of Harvard, well says: “If the accepted account of the negro had been true, if he had been for generations groaning in servitude while he passionately longed for lib- erty, the South should have flamed in insurrection at the first touch of war. We should have seen a repetition of the horrors of many a civil insurrection. It is a most notable fact that during the four years of the great contention * After the war Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, said : “ Waged ostensi- bly to maintain the integrity of the Union and in denial of the dogma of State sovereignty, the future historian will not fail to note that the three amendments” which he calls the “trophies of the victors,” chiefly “relate to the freedom, citizenship and suffrage of the negro race.” — Curry's South, p. 219. 11 when the blacks had every opportunity to rise, there was no real mark of a disposition to turn upon their masters. On thousands of Southern farms the fighting men left their women and children in the keeping of their slaves while they fought for a cause whose success meant that those slaves could never be free.” [Popular Science Monthly, March, 1900, p. 520.] They were happy and did not wish to be free. On this historic fact the South takes her stand, and all the theories of the world will not prevail against it. To the people of the South the war of secession was prac- tical annihilation. When that contest and its results are compared with others of similar condition and circum- stances, it will be seen that no people ever came nearer the giving of their absolute all to a cause than did the people of the South to the Southern Confederacy. Notwithstanding this I have yet to meet the man of Southern lineage who does not say with me that all the blood and all the treasure given to that cause would have been well spent had it effectually and for all time freed America from the negro. But this it has not yet done as the people of the South well know. Accustomed as they were to the presence of the negro, the people of the South were, after the war, slow to appre- ciate the fact that although the negro was gone as a slave, he was in no sense removed as a burden. As they gath- ered around their broken hearthstones and desolate altars, trying to keep alive and restore to flame the embers of a civilization that they swore in their hearts should never perish, they had little time for thought as to the future of the negro as a freedman, for they looked beyond the negro as the source of their then present evils. As time passed on the Southern people began to see that the war with all its losses had so far solved nothing, and 12 the white man’s burden was still upon them and upon them alone. The savage, which their own insane folly had allowed them to buy and to breed, was, without other re- straint than the law, henceforth to be their close associate and neighbor. Of necessity they tided to make the best of their condition, and they endeavored to explain to him the law, and then for the first time were reminded that for the negro there was neither the concept nor the word for law, as we know it. Could anything else have been expected? Where was the negro when our ancestors wrung from halt- ing royalty Magna Charta ? Where was he when the Peti- tion of Right, Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights gave to us and to our children forever these benefits for which our fathers fought? "Where was he? He was an unal- loyed pagan in a tropical jungle, savage, brutal and igno- rant — a cannibal and a trader in human flesh — two women for a “plug” hat, a man for a handkerchief and a child for a Jew’s harp. In his racial history from pagan to citizen he had never felt the emotions which called into existence our bulwarks of human right and liberty; stripes and shackles he had known, but neither the law nor the reason thereof ; force, brutal force in his own land, and unobtrusive but unabat- ing force in America. Ho appeal had ever been made to his sense of right, and the only appeal for which he had ear was the emphatic demand of power. The people of the South next tried to instruct the negro in the economics ; they tried to teach him how and to make him provide for the morrow, and again without a thought as to his racial history. They should have recalled the fact that for over fifty centuries [Erman in his “Ancient Egypt” puts the negro as a slave in Egypt as early as 2500-3500 B. C.,] of recorded history the negro had lived in tropical Africa where every law of nature conspired to 13 make him improvident and thoughtless of the future. They should have recalled that as the slave of a slave mas- ter, who was, in turn, the slave of some petty chieftain whose only title to royalty was his superlative savagery, he had lived without guarantee of the morrow, feeling that his life might be demanded at any instant. He thus of neces- sity lived for the pleasures of the hour until it grew into' a racial attribute, and the happy, thoughtless, goodnatured negro of days agone was true to his phylogenv. This was the alarming condition that faced the South at the close of the war. The old slave was, in the main, loyal and faithful, but as he was rapidly becoming a knave’s dupe as a voter, what would the next generation be ? In their per- plexity the South thought that the education of the negro would solve their problem, so they divided in fair measure their own taxes with him (he had nothing) and began. For thirty years, ever increasing, never diminishing, they have poured out their hard-earned cash for him at the expense of the poor among their own people. What this has done for him, we shall see later, but first let us see what he and his friends did for the South. For more than a decade after the war the South had what in popular speech is called “a hard time.” A de- graded and alien race, but recently slaves, had, by con- gvi ssional enactment, been placed in control of eleven once sovereign Southern States. Men of this race whose grandfathers had decided between guilt and innocence through the chance of direct or reversed peristalsis with the “ordeal bean,”* sat in judgment over men whose fore- fathers had fought at Yorktown, Guilford, Kings Moun- * Calabar bean (Physostigma venenosum) a poison of purgative- emetic properties, used on the Niger to determine guilt or inno- cence. If the accused vomits and recovers he is adjudged innocent, while if he does not vomit and dies, he is considered as having been guilty. 14 tain and New Orleans. Negro men who would turn back from any journey however needful if “a cat crossed the road behind them,” boldly launched public enterprises that obligated the State for millions. I have myself heard the “Speaker” of a Southern Legislature addressed from the floor as “Marse Robert.” Happy indeed in that day were those possessed of a sense of humor, for the explosions of mirth alone prevented the explosions of wrath. But these things passed. Amendments to the constitution count as naught when pitted against the inexorable laws of nature, and in time the white man came to his own. The Southern people now simply laugh at these episodes ; they, as before stated, looked beyond the negro and were content to wait. But while they waited they worked. For twenty long years they strained and yet it seemed the South would never move. It was not that their land was ravaged and laid bare — their people had reclaimed this same land when a primal wilderness. It was not the burden of negro education — they thought that a good in- vestment ; nor was it that temporary negro domination had imposed colossal financial burdens ($293,000,000) — they had faced greater odds. [It should not be forgotten that two and one-half thousand million dollars worth of prop- erty was wiped out of existence in the South by the procla- mation of emancipation.] It was without lament, but rather with a grim pride in their handiwork that they paid their share of the Federal pensions and voluntarily sup- ported, as best they could, their own veterans. But new evils came as old evils grew. The eternal vigilance re- quired to keep down and repress the negro vote wore upon them, for this necessity always bore more harshly upon the conscience and morale of the white man than it did upon the hide of the black. They were weary, weary to the very 15 core, but unbroken in spirit, when at last they began to feel that the burden moved — the South was rising. It was not until the load was well lifted that the South began to see the burden that had held her down — an ani- mate, living, growing burden, the negro — the negro to 0whom the South had hitherto always looked as a source of profit. It was their first intimation that the negro had changed, but he has changed, and the next generation will change more. This, however, I wish to recall — that when the “carpet bagger” had departed with the profits of the “Freedman’s Bureau” in his pocket, the poor, wasted, stricken South, from a spirit of true altruism, spent hundreds of millions in an honest effort to improve the negro. That slavery had inherent evils no man can deny, but under Southern slavery this much can be said — the negro improved both physically and morally, and, as a race, he was content. The Southern slave owner made a man of the savage; by intelligent and self-sacrificing care he over- came the natural tendency of a tropical race to decline in other climes, and he even, as we shall see later, reversed the law and made negro mortality in the South less than the white. (See table, page 23.) Slavery as it existed here was designed to shield and protect the negro at every point, and this it did, but of necessity the more it protected the more helpless it left him when its guardianship was with- drawn. And who withdrew this guardianship ? The fine Italian hand which before the war bedecked the pagan with a “halo,” and after the war mocked the ex-slave with the ballot, and which now black-balls the “coon” in the trades union, is the same which loosed him for the sacrifice. But God is not mocked, and when France recovers from the 16 influence of the altruistic* cry of 17133, then may the aristocracy of culture and refinement in the Northern States of America see the dawn of deliverance. Their walking delegate of to-day with all that he implies is the mixed product of false altruism and the true anarchy bom of it. i There is much use in this day and generation of the term “survival of the fittest,” but few who use it ever stop to think of the complemental axiom, “the death of the unfit.” Yet that truth has sounded the death knell of untold mil- lions. Where is the Tasmanian, the Carib, the Hawaiian, the Iroquois and others of the American tribes that first met the white man ? Their doom was sealed when “the fittest” first set foot on their shores. They perished as wild animals perish before man. But all wild animals do not so perish. If man needs them they survive. Here in the Sunny South my little boys have a dozen English rabbits which they breed to any demand, but if I were to force them to turn them loose in this land of orchards, shotguns, cur-dogs and cats not one of them would survive. No! Subjected to natural law they would go like snow before the sun, and so, in due time, will the negro go. He is liv- ing even now on the stamina and morality of slavery days. Now it must be clearly understood that during slavery the negro, as a race, was not subjected to natural law; his existence here from the beginning, was absolutely arti- ficial. Coming to us as an hereditary pagan, he was for over two centuries a slave in whom the functions of nutri- tion, muscular activity and reproduction were cultivated and given full play, and every function that tended to ♦“Liberte, egalite, fraternite,” was the cry of the Bastile. Such a cry could not appeal to the gentle and the respectable, but only to the slums. It was the cry of the proletariat for an assault upon aristocracy, as here. 17 make him inimical to the interests of his master, i. e., independent, was repressed. He was consequently fitted only for slavery. With the proclamation of emancipation there began for the negro a new existence. For the first time since com- ing to America he was under the remorseless laws of nature, and being unfit to meet their demands here, he from that day, began to fall, and these are the signs of his fall. (I will say before giving figures, that the simplest method of estimating the progress of a race or people is to compare that race 'with some other race under similar en- vironment or with their own people at some other (earlier) period of time. The inherent diversity of the two races here compared, and the necessary difference in conditions in the times compared, render the problem difficult, but the results are so extremely one-sided as to banish doubt. ) First, we will consider material prosperity. There are but three States in the South that list white and colored property separately, these being Virginia, FTorth Carolina and Georgia. [Hoffman’s “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Xegro,” p. 298.] In these the per capita wealth of the negroes was in 1891 as follows: Virginia, $18.90; Xorth Carolina, $14.10; Georgia, $14.30; aver- age per capita, $15.70 as compared with an average of $322.30 for the whites of the same three States. The rela- tively high per capita of $18.90 for the Virginia negroes demonstrates what all must have noticed — that the negroes there are physically and mentally superior to any in the South. Virginia was a slave-breeding State, and here naturally the best were kept and only the “culls” sold, but nevertheless throughout the South it is still a boast to be an “ole \ irginny nigger.” But if these are the best negroes 18 what must be the wealth of the negroes of the general South when the taxable property of the Virginia negro is but 3.1 per cent of the whole ? In Virginia moreover, the State expends on the negro annually [report of State Auditor, quoted by Hoffman, p. 301,] For criminal expenses. ; $204,018 For education 324,364 For lunatics 80, 000 Total negro expenses 608, 382 Total negro taxes 103, 565 Annual loss to Virginia, account of negro 504, 817 It will be seen from the above that the annual net loss on the negro population of this State is over half a million dollars, and that the total negro taxes paid is even less by one hundred thousand dollars than the sum annually ex- pended by the whites to repress negro crime. If this from the best, what of the “culls ?” It must also be mentioned here that the larger part of the taxable property of the negroes throughout the South consists of small rural or suburban “patches” of real estate either given them by their old masters or else sold for a song, and that even the “un- earned increment” of appreciation is due also to the whites who have built up the town and enhanced the value of the previous gift, pure or quasi. Secondly, let us consider the negro from the standpoint of criminality. In Virginia (where I now live) there are now (census 1890) 1,020,000 whites to 635,000 blacks, but by the report of the superintendent of the Virginia peni- tentiary for 1899, there were among the State convicts only 404 whites as against 1,694 blacks, giving on the basis of population, negro criminality as 7.4 times greater than the white. The latest reports of the State penitentiaries from Maryland to Texas show about the same results, ris- 19 ing to 9.4 and 8.0 in Georgia, where progressive municipal administration draws the negro to town, and falling as low as 5.4 in Mississippi where the negroes live in the country and where white domination and negro disfranchisement are most complete. It will be understood that State con- victs represent chiefly serious crime, hut the jails and the chain gangs which, in the South, teem with additional thousands, are blacker still in proportion, for the Southern country negro as yet, thank God, figures chiefly in the minor crimes. In the cities he is, as a race, fast throwing off every vestige of moral restraint, as we see from the Washington Police Department report, quoted by the Bal- timore Sun of March 30, last, which says of a city where the negro does not constitute one-third of the population, as follows: “According to one of the recent annual reports of the metropolitan police department there were, in the year, 10,587 arrests of whites and 11,975 of blacks. More than twice as many negroes as whites were arrested for carrying concealed weapons, more than twice as many for disorderly conduct, more than twice as many for assault and for assault and battery, more than twice as many for petty larceny and thirteen more for grand larceny, twice as many for profanity, seven times as many for criminal assault, and more than five times as many for housebreak- ing at night. Seven murders were committed by negroes to two by whites. In all the most heinous offenses known to criminology the negroes were largely in the excess. A very large proportion of all crimes were committed by young negro toughs under 25 years of age.” And this from the “Mecca” where rather than repeal the fifteenth amendment and confess its folly, this government annually commits the outrage which brought on the revolution of ’76. But lest some “altruist” may think that his one-time 20 brother in black has suffered at Southern hands, I will quote elsewhere: In a recent paper on “Negro Criminal- ity,” [Address before American Social Science Associa- tion, September, 1899,] by Prof. Walter F. Wilcox, of Cornell University, a native of New England, and now statistician of the Census Office, we find that “in the South- ern States there were six white prisoners to every 10,000 whites and twenty-nine negro prisoners to every 10,000 negroes.” As Mr. Wilcox himself says, this difference might at first glance be ascribed to sectional prejudice, and he proceeds to combat this by making the declaration that “in the Northern States in 1890 there were twelve white prisoners to every 10,000 whites and 69 negro prisoners to every 10,000 negroes.” In other words, if prejudice plays any part it is most pronounced at the North. This crimi- nality of the negro, moreover, is not standing fast, for, as Mr. Wilcox further says, “The negro prisoners in the Southern States to 10,000 negroes increased between 1880 and 1890, 29 per cent, while the white prisoners to 10,000 whites increased only 8 per cent” In other words, crime among the American negro is, since the war, increasing with alarming rapidity because the negro, racially feeble in the power of conscience, is unable to meet the, to him, idealistic demands of the law. The short, quick shrift of the cowhide which he has always known, he can connect with the crime and abstain, but the slow procedure of Saxon jurisprudence makes the offense and the punish- ment as far apart in his mind as his religion and morality often are in fact. But he is not only increasing in crime ; he is developing what seems at first glance for him, a new form of crime. In a recent paper of rare candor and merit on the “Recent Erotic Tendency of the Southern Negro,” [Carolina Med- ical Journal, March, 1900, p. 2,] Dr. S. C. Baker, of Sum- 21 ter, S. C., savs, in speaking of this new crime for the negro : “Prior to their emancipation the crime of rape was almost unheard of. I have been able to learn of but one instance of even attempted rape, in this State (South Carolina), and that was unsuccessful.” But speaking of the present he says: “The report of the Attorney-General of South Carolina for 1899 shows that there have been thirteen con- victions for rape, and for assault with intent to ravish, twelve convictions during that year. All of them except one w'ere cases of negro men against white women, the exception being the case of a negro man against a negro woman.” Next, he confirms the views I have previously expressed in “The American Negro: His Past and Fu- ture,” which were that it is the young negro of the South (the generation of negro with the one hundred million dollar education) that most shows the evidence of a rever- sion to barbarism and savagery, by the following: “The court stenographer of the third judicial circuit of this State furnished me the following information on the sub- ject for the past ten years, as applying to his circuit: It may be remarked that the third circuit is about an average of the circuits of the State as to the density of population and its complexion, as to urban and rural inhabitants, in- telligence and education of negroes, and so forth, and South Carolina is possibly about an average of the Southern States in these particulars. He says : “About twenty-five cases have come up for trial in this circuit during the past ten years, besides about five others which did not come up for trial because of the lynching of the accused. In all of these, with one exception, the negroes implicated were under thirty years of age. In the excepted case there were several negroes implicated, one being an older man who seemed to have been led on by the younger ones. For the crime of assault with intent to ravish I recall about ten 22 cases, and all by negroes under thirty years of age. I am of opinion that 95 per cent of all crime in the third circuit is committed by the negro, and of this 95 per cent 90 per cent is committed by the free-born negro. It is very rare that you see an old slave charged with any crime. . The majority of negro criminals are from fifteen to thirty years of age.” This, as figures go, seems to indicate a new form of crime for the negro, but I know, as you know, that it does not mean this. Did our prognathic, dolichocephalic can- nibal come to us with brutal instincts moulded by centuries of crime on every lineament of his visage and yet clothed in the beatitude of sexual purity? Ho! When I see the leopard change bis spots then will I believe it. It is a reversion pure and simple and these figures simply point again to the superb moral influence of slavery. In the hands of a gentle people the negro came quite near the gentleman, illiterate perhaps, but not ignorant, for mark you, there is a difference, as the history of some of our great men can testify. But the question with us to-day is, can a race keep up this rapid criminal decline and live ? Both the experience of the past and the present testify that it can not. Old as it is the saying “The wages of sin is death” might well have been taken from some modem work of hygiene. Thirdly, I will take up the question of negro vital sta- tistics, and here I must pay my respects to the work of Frederick L. Hoffman, from whose “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Hegro” [The MacMillan Company, Hew York,] most of these statistics are taken. An able, careful statistician, he brings an unbiased Ger- man mind to the solution of the greatest problem America has ever known. This book should be in the bands of every man who has at heart the future of bis country. 23 • These figures obtained from official reports are amply cor- roborated by private observation. Let me first take statis- tics bearing on the period before the war. I have before spoken of the fact that in slavery the negro increased beyond measure. He was at that time really more prolific than the general white population of the South. This was owing chiefly to the fact that the negroes were owned by the wealthy and, being valuable, every care, hygienic and moral, was exercised, not only to see that they increased, but to rear them strong and healthy when bona. The following statistics of four of the great cities of the South before and after the war will show, first, that there was a greater death rate among the whites before the war than among the negroes, and, sec- ondly, that the mortality among the negroes since the war has largely increased : ANNUAL MORTALITY PER THOUSAND.* Charleston, S. C., from 1822-1894. Before the War. After the War. White 25.98 White 26.77 Negro 24. 05 Negro 43. 29 Savannah, Ga., from 1856-1894. Before the War. After the War. White 37.19 White 32.51 Negro 34. 07 Negro 44. 37 Mobile, Ala., from 1843-1894. Before the War. After the War. White 47.58 White 24.02 Negro 29.66 Negro 35.23 New Orleans, La., from 1849-1894. Before the War. After the War. White 59.60 White 26.71 Negro 52.10 Negro 42.56 Average of four Southern cities : Before the War. After the War. White 42.59 White 27.70 Negro 34.97 Negro. 41.31 •Hoffman’s "Race Traits and Tendencies of American Negro,” pages 53-54. 24 (Parenthetically, observe that the whites are bestowing some care on their own health since relieved of the negro.) The next stage of this subject will be the mortality of the negro since the war, and I will begin with the unborn child. It is known to everyone, especially to the physi- cian, that children begotten out of wedlock are less apt to be reared than those begotten in legal matrimony. In ap- proaching this subject I will first take a city where the negro is as favorably circumstanced as at any spot within the United States, viz: the capital city, Washington. The average for the sixteen years extending from 1879 to 1894, shows that while 2.9 per cent of the white children bom were illegitimate, 22.5 per cent of all the negroes bom in that city were out of wedlock. But that is far from being the worst of it. In the sixteen years extending from 1879 to 1894, the per cent of negro children bora out of wedlock in this free city has risen from 17.6 per cent to the astound- ing figure of 26.5 per annum. Hext, let me consider death from still-birth in two cities of fairly representative type: *DEATH FROM STILL-BIRTH PER 100,000 POPULATION UNDER ONE YEAR. Washington, D. C. Baltimore, Md. White 6,528 White 7,024 Negro 20, 152 Negro 16,988 The negro certainly leads in not being bom, but now let us see how the infants of this once strong and virile race are meeting the straggle for existence under natural law : DEATH FROM DEBILITY, INANITION, ETC., PER 100,000 POPULATION UNDER ONE YEAR. Washington, D. C. Baltimore, Md. White 4,181 White 4,800 Negro 10,045 Negro .11,884 * “ Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,” pages 65-66. 25 The rate of increase in licentiousness, etc., (for these figures point to syphilis) in these cities is fully borne out by the reports from other cities. Next, I will consider the comparative (white and negro) mortality in childhood. For this I am able to present the statistics of three of the largest cities in the South for the year 1890 : In the city of New Orleans for every thousand white children born, there died within the first year 269 ; of negro children born, there died 430. In the city of Oharlestoi? for every thousand white children born, there died the first year 200 ; of negro children 461. In the city of Richmond for every thousand white children born, there died the first year 187, and of negro children born, there died 530 — over one-half. And yet they tell us there is no race problem! For the years after infancy the statistics are not so complete as regards age, and I must turn from the child statistics to those of general mortality. In the five years extending from 1890 to 1894 inclusive, the general death rate in the population of the cities of Washington, Baltimore, Richmond, Memphis, Louisville, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, Mobile and New Orleans gave a general death rate for the whites of 20.12 per an- num per thousand, and for the negroes, 32.61 per annum per thousand. [Hoffman’s “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 39.] These figures speak for themselves. The negro, at least in the cities of the South, is already dying much more rap- idly than the white. The question now to be asked is, is this true of the rural population ? To that I answer, in less extent, yes. Moreover it must be understood there is a general drift of the negro to the cities and towns, and once there the negro seldom returns. The temptations of the cities appeal wonderfully to the negro; there is more excitement, more opportunity for “picking up a living,” 26 and the gregarious tendencies of this race, cultivated through ages in Africa, which is a land of small villages rather than of peasant homes, is gratified. It is a fact, however, that notwithstanding this high death rate, the negro population in the cities continues to increase. This is not because the negro birth rate exceeds the death rate, for it does not; it is because the negroes continue to flock to the cities and increase the population despite the terri- bly high death rate. Xo increase in the rural districts can ever offset this terrible annual drain. In the destruction of the race the city is to play a most important part and it is a thing which nothing in the negro’s racial experience will enable him to meet. In explanation of this terrible death rate, let us look and see what has caused it. From all that I can gather from the medical men of the South interested in this matter, the three great influencing diseases of the negro population are tuberculosis, syphilis and enteric (typhoid) fever. Of course cancer and everything else (except property) is on the increase with a markedly criminal race, but these are the great three. With regard to tuberculosis the first thing I will show is that fourteen American cities, extending from Boston to Xew Orleans, but chiefly Southern, give for every 100,000 population, an annual death rate from tuberculosis of 280 for the whites and 591 for the negro population. These statistics are based upon the census of 1890 and the health reports of the cities. Xow, for the sake of comparison with ante-bellum days, compare these figures with the sta- tistics based upon the health reports for Charleston, S. C., from 1822 to 1894 inclusive, and we will find that from 1822 to 1848 the annual death rate for 100,000 population from tuberculosis among the whites was 347 ; among the nesroes 342, that is, fewer negroes died from tuberculosis ♦ 27 than whites; but from 1865 to 1894 the annual death rate from tuberculosis among the whites per 100,000 popula- tion was only 213, while for the negToes it bad already risen to 576. Xow, let us turn to the next of the three chief diseases from which this race is suffering — syphilis. I will say here first, that syphilis rarely kills directly ; it is with the adult, rather a predisposing cause of death, though a direct cause of foetal and infant death. (See table, p. 24.) But if you have ever studied the cause of the taking off of our American Indian, the Hawaiian, the Maori, the Australian, the Tasmanian, etc., it will be seen that syphilis has played the principal part. A most in- teresting table is found on page 325 of Hoffman’s work, comparing the Indian tribes of the United States, which have held their own, with those which have decreased, be- tween the years 1882 and 1895. Tribes which have been isolated and thus held aloof from syphilitic infection have held their own, while those which have broken up their tribal relations, have accepted ‘‘squaw men” and have had free intercourse with whites of a criminal class, have almost perished. So it is with the negro. The breaking up of the plantation home; migration to thp city, the crowding and temptations to vice incident to city life, are all working to his detriment. An impure home is an unusually unprolific home; copulation is not all that is needful. Tf this alone were necessary to fecundity, the French problem would long since have been solved, which it is not. Lastly, typhoid fever. Around nearly every city and village in the South there is an irregular zone of negro habitations. These usually are in the “hollows” and val- leys and they are almost invariably supplied with drinking water from shallow wells, whether the central village have waterworks or not. The condition of this low-lying popu- 28 lation is, for typhoid fever, infinitely less favorable than that of the whites, who usually use “city water” or, if not, own better and more salubrious sites. The suburban spring and the low-lying well are the bane of this people. Within certain limits, the conditions here given apply in the country. A negro digs his well where he will reach water easiest, i. e., on low ground, while his shanty and “out-houses” are perched above. In slavery days the large negro quarters were, for the age, models of hygiene because an epidemic in the “quarters” was a financial crisis for the owner. But who now looks after the “ward of the nation ?” Beyond the facts here set forth I may state that as a Southerner and a physician, I am familiar with the physi- cians of the South, and it is the almost universal opinion of these men, who should and do know more of the negro than all other classes combined, that the negro, as a race, is steadily degenerating both morally and physically. The last census showed a decrease in gain as compared with the preceding and when the tide once turns the end will be in sight. [The Maori decreased from 142,000 in 1823 to 34,000 in 1890.] In conclusion, all things point to the fact that the negro as a race is reverting to barbarism with the inordinate criminality and degradation of that state. It seems, moreover, that he is doomed at no distant day, to raciai extinction. If reproduction ceases eight million will die out about as rapidly as eight hundred, as the outlook for this people is black indeed. What brought about this condition ? In my opinion emancipation — the negro feels that this was a dies irae. He has no enthusiasm for “Emancipation Day” — sounded the death knell of the negro, but it did not of necessity decree his speedy end. Something else was needed and 29 fate supplied the need, the negro was duly crowned with the ballot and given control of the South. That settled it. Enmity was deliberately put between the son of the mas- ter, the only man wdio ever really loved the slave, and the son of the slave. The only sincerely friendly hand the negro ever knew was perforce turned against him, and without it he is falling. What will save him ? Will edu- cation ? The South has given him the best she had, and we see the result. Will industrial education prove a pana- cea ? The report of the Bureau of Education [G. R. Stet- son “The White Wan’s Problem,” p. 6] for 1889-90, shows that of 1,243 graduates of seventeen colored industrial schools, three only pursued the trade for which educated, twelve were farming, 693 teaching academic schools, and the rest had joined the non-producing professions and pur- suits. The wealth of the Indies could not give this entire race technical training any more than it could satiate the appetite of those thriving on the brokerage of philanthropy. Industrial training should be reserved for a more indus- trious people. In my opinion nothing is more certain than that the negro will go as the Tasmanian and the Carib have gone, but till then he is our problem. I say our because the New South, child of the Old, young, strong and undaunted, proposes to deal with this matter as she sees best. The future of the negro surely prompts com- passion, charity and mercy — these he will get in full measure — but the white man of the South should not and will not re-enslave himself for the benefit of the black. Slavery is forever gone — and with it went the bonds which for two centuries fettered the master, and also every iota of his responsibility for this grand but ghastly tragedy — The Sacrifice of a Race. 30 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Report of Superintendent of Public Instruction of Virginia,’’ 1900. “ Dietary Studies of Negroes in Eastern Virginia,” Bulletin 71, United States Department of Agriculture. “The Southern States of the American Union,” J. L. M. Currv. ‘ ■ Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,” Fred L. Hoffman. “The Negro Population of the South,” P. A. Bruce, Conservative Review, November, 1899. “ The Transplantation of a Race,” Prof. N. S. Shaler, Popular Science Monthly, March, 1900. “ The Negro.” Dr. J. H. Claiborne. Virginia Medical Semi-Monthly, April, 1900. “The Earth and Its Inhabitants.” Africa. Elisee Recluse, Vols. I and III. “The White Man’s Problem,” George R. Stetson. “ Negro Criminality,” Walter L. Wilcox. “The Genesis of the United States,” Alexander Brown, Vol. II. “The Uncivilized Races of Men in All Countries of the World,” Rev. J. G. Wood, Vol. I. “The Negro in Maryland,” Jeffrey R. Brockett. “Carolina Medical Journal,” March, 1900. I I