BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
ofthe
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THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
VKW YORK • BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
ATLAMTA • SAH FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LmrrmD
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TOKONTO

THE SOUL OF
JOHN BROWN

BY
STEPHEN GRAHAM

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920
Jtt Riihls Reimed

COPTBIGHT, 1920,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and eleotiotyped. Published Ootobei, 1920.

CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I Thoughts on Slavei^ .... 3
n In Virginia  22
m Orators and Actors, Preachers
and Singers  70
rV In Tennessee  97
V Marching Through Georgia . . 119
VI Tramping to the Sea .... 152
vn After the War: the Vote ... 182
vm In Alabama: Color and Color
Prejudice  195
IX The Southern Point of View . . 211
X Exodus  232
XT In North Elorida and New Orleans 240
xn The New Negro Mmd .... 263
XTTT Negro Leadership ,  282
XTV The World Aspect ..... 291
XV Up the Mississippi .... 309
XVI At Vicksburg .  328

The Negro slaves were released in 1863. They
and their children number twelve millions out
of a total of a hundred millions of all races
blending in America. Where do the chUdren
of the slaves stand to-day?

THOUaHTS ON SLAVEEY
AxiTHOuGH Charles Lynch of Virginia used to
suspend British farmers by their thumbs until
they cried out Liberty for ever! and lynching
has continued ever since, America is neverthe
less at bottom free, or at least was intended to
be so by the idealists and pohticians who
brought her forth. America is a living reproof
of Europe, and it has been generally conceived
of as a land where men should suffer no
encroachment upon their personal liberty,
where they should reap duly the fruits of their
labors, where no man should sap their rugged
independence or infringe upon the sovereign
equality of their social rights, where govern
ment should be entirely by consent of the gov
erned, not handed down from above as from
superior beings or masters, but controlled from
below, from the broad base of toiling humanity.
The first discoverers were plunderers and
seekers after barbaric gold and gems, but her
real pioneers were God-fearing men who laid
the foundations of modern American civiliza
tion by honest work and a boundless belief in
the development of free democracy, The insti-

4 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
tution of slavery was therefore the thing which
in theory was most abhorrent to the American
mind. It is a curious anomaly that a very short
while after the Declaration of Independence the
land from which America separated became
free of slavery, and the British flag pre-emi
nently the flag of freedom. But America, freed
though she had become from political inter
ference on the part of Britain, nevertheless'
inherited Negro slavery; and the economic pros
perity of at least one-half of the country was
founded on the most hideous bondage in world
history. Those who had fled Europe to escape
tyrants had themselves, under force of circum
stances, become tyrants.
Not that anyone willed slavery in America or
designed to have it. It was an economic acci
dent. It was in America before most of the
Americans. The first Negro slaves were brought
up the James River in Virginia before tha
Mayflower arrived, and as Negro orators say
to-day, "If being a long whUe in this country
makes a good American, we are the best Ameri
cans that there are." Slavery had grown to
vast proportions by the thne of the war against
Britain. New America in 1783, standing on the
threshold of the modem era, inherited a most
terrible burden in her millions of slaves. It
was a burden that was growing into the live
flesh of America, and no one dared face at that
time the problem of getting free of it.

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 5
The actual American people as a whole were
httle responsible for the institution of slavery.
The pioneers hated and feared it. The planters
always condemned it in theory, and after the
Emancipation of 1863 no one of any sense in
the South has ever wished it back. Even in
those States where slavery took deepest root
and showed its worst characteristics, there was
throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth cen
turies a persistent resistance on the part of the
colonists against having black servile labor
introduced. To cite one colony as in a way characteristic
of the whole attitude of the colonists toward
slavery, Georgia might be taken. Georgia was
originally an asylum for the bad boys of too
respectable British families and for discharged
convicts and hopeless drunkards. Royal char
ter guaranteed freedom of religion (except
to Papists) ; an embargo was placed on West
Indian trade, so as to stop the inflow of rum;
and Negro slavery was forbidden. All for the
good of reprobates making a fresh start !
Invalids and merchants settled on the coast
and made the society of Savannah. The bad
boys proved to be too poor stuff with which to
found a colony, and a special body of a hundred
and thirty frugal and industrious Scots and a
hundred and seventy carefully chosen Germans
were brought in. Real work in Georgia com
menced at Ebenezer, ou the Savannah River,

6 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
and at New Inverness. The merchants strove to
get slavery introduced ; the Scots and the Ger
mans strove to keep it out. At Savannah every
night polite society toasted "The One Thing
Needful"— Slavery. The common talk of the
townsfolk was of the extra prosperity that
would come to Georgia if slaves were brought
in, the extra quantities of cotton, of rice, of
timber, and all that middlemen could re-sell.
The ministers of rehgion actually preached in
churches in favor of an institution sanctioned
by the Bible, and it was thought that a service
was done for Christ by bringing the black men
out of Africa, where they were somewhat inac
cessible, and throwing them into the bosom of
the Christian family in America. But the Scots
and the Germans remonstrated against the per
mission of an evil shocking to human nature
and Hkely to prove in time not a blessing but
a scourge. Over in South' Carolina slavery was in full
possession, and the wealth of the Carolinian
merchants was a soreness to the lean traders of
Georgia. Cupidity prompted underhand means
to achieve the desired end. Slaves were im
ported on life lease from owners in South Caro
lina. One could not purchase the freehold of a
Negro's liberty and energy, only a ninety-nine
years' lease of it, as it were, but that sufficed.
Freedom fell, the charter was abrogated, and
under the sway of a royal governor the flood-

THOUGHTS ON SLAVEEY 7
gates of slavery were opened wide. In due time
Georgia became one of the worst slave States of
the South. It remains to this day one of those
where in any case the contemporary record of
burning and lynching is most lurid. It would
not be unsafe to draw the conclusion that the
introduction of slavery did as much harm to the
souls of the original Germans, Scots, and Eng
lish and their descendants as to the Negroes
themselves. The settlers were, however, loath to employ
slaves, and for some years there was little
change. It was the rich immigrants from South
Carolina and elsewhere who embarked on large
enterprises of planting with a labor basis of
black slaves. The poor white laboring class was
gradually ruined by competition with slave
labor. And then it became generally under
stood that everyone had to employ slaves, and
it was tmbecoming for a white man to toil with
his hands. The poor Whites were if anything
more despised than the black slaves, and often
indeed actually despised, paradoxically enough,
by the latter. In some parts there sprang up
bands of white gypsies and robbers called
"pinelanders," who stole from Black and White
alike, and lived by their wits.
In Africa the Negro tribes strove with one
another in savagery, and sold their prisoners
to the Negro traders or White agents, who
dragged them to the coast, There they were

8 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
herded in the holds of noisome slaving vessels,
indiscriminately, nakedly, fortuitously, the vio
lent ones tied up or chained, the gentler ones
unloosed. None knew whither they were going,
and even those victorious tribes who sold them
to the white man knew nothing of the destina
tion of the victims they thus despatched. Hun
dreds of thousands, nay, millions of tribesmen
of all kinds and shades of black and brown were
thus exported to the Indies and the Colonies
and sold into bondage to the civilized world.
Arrived in America, the slaves were sold to
merchants or auctioned as common cattle and
sent up country to work. A healthy male slave
of good dimensions and in his prime would fetch
a thousand dollars " and young women eight
hundred dollars, and fair-sized girls five hun
dred. Olmsted gives a price list which was
handed him by a dealer; that was in 1853.* In
earlier years the price was considerably less,
and always varied according to the demand.
The raw, first-come Negro slaves were not sold
as retinue for the rich, but as colonial utilities
to be worked like cattle on the farms and plan-
*Best men, 18-25  $l,200-$l,30O
Fair men  950- 1,050
Boys  375- 950
Young women  800- 1,000
Girls, 5 ft  750- 850
4 ft. 9 ins  700- 750
" i ft.  350- 450
— "A Journey Through the Seaboard
Slave States," by F. L. Olmsted.

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 9
tations. Cotton was the staple, and in thinking
of the time the eye must range over a vast
expanse of cotton plantations and see all the
main work done by Negro gangs of men and
women in charge of slave drivers. As Olmsted
describes a gang of women in a characteristic
passage — ^*'The overseer rode about them on
a horse, carrying in his hand a rawhide whip
. . . but as often as he visited one end of the
line the hands at the other end would discon
tinue their labor until he turned to them again.
Clumsy, awkward, gross, elephantine in all their
movements; pouting, grinning, and leering at
us; sly, sensual, and shameless in all their ex
pression and demeanor; I never before had wit
nessed, I thought, anything more revolting ..."
In 1837 the whole of Georgia, and indeed of the
South, was worked by black slaves — the poor
white labor (chiefly Irish) had diminished
almost to disappearance. Slave labor was
founded on slave discipline, and the discipline
on punishment. There was no particular readi
ness on the part of the savages to do the work
given them or understand what they had to do.
Whether they could have been coaxed or per
suaded is problematical. Farmers have not the
time or the spirit for coaxing. The quickest
way was by inspiring terror or inflicting pain.
It might have been different if the Negro could
have begn given any positive incentive to work,
but iltere was none. He had therefore to be

10 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
flogged to it. The smallest gang had its driver
with his whip. The type who to-day has become
pohtely a "speeder up" was then the man with
the whip. He could have had more power by
using his whip infrequently and on the most
stubborn slaves, but that was not the common
man's way. He flogged hard and he flogged
often. On a typical Georgian plantation the
field driver had power to inflict twelve lashes
there and then when trouble occurred. The
head driver could give thirty-six and the over
seer fifty. Every moming there would be a
dozen or so special floggings by the overseer or
his assistant at the office. Women if anything
fared wor^e than men. On the slightest provo
cation their scanty clothes were thrown over
their heads and they were subjected to a beat
ing. Naked boys and girls were tied by their
wrists to boughs of trees so that their toes
barely touched the groimd, and lashed. The
overseer did it, the owner's son did it, upon
occasion the owner himself did it.
There were pleasant exceptional homes in
Virginia and the Carolinas and elsewhere where
there was no flogging and no cruelty whatso
ever, but instead a great mutual ajBfection.
Slavery may have been wrong there also, or it
may have been justifiable. But it was not on
account of the happy slaves that John Brown
sallied forth at Harper's Ferry, but because of
the many unhappy ones, As the whole intensity

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 11
of the Negro trouble is centered in the evils
of the institution of slavery, it is necessarily
on these that one must insist, though the excep
tions be not lost sight of.
It is. often said that the slaves were seldom
hurt because, since they were property, it be
hooved a master to take care of them and pre
serve them. But that is fallacious. Men got
pleasure out of beating their slaves as they
get pleasure out of chewing tobacco, drinking
spirits, and using bad language. It grew on
them; they liked it more and more. In many
cases no proficiency or industry could save the
slaves from a flogging. And, besides that, there
was current in Georgia and all the more com
mercial parts a theory that it was most profit
able to use up your slaves every seven years
and then re-stock.
Slaves of course were bred, and it is conceiv
able that it might have been generally more
profitable to have a breeding farm of Negroes
and seU the children than work them off in
seven years. But there was little method in the
minds of the planters. They tried to combine
the seven-years system and breeding at the
same time. Every girl of sixteen had children,
every woman of thirty had grandchildren. But
the women were worked up to the last moment
of pregnancy on the cotton fields and sent back
three weeks after delivery, and even flogged
then. The poor women lay on straw on earthen

12 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
floors in their torments, moaning in their ago
nies. When sent back to the fields too soon they
suffered horrible physical torment. They often
appealed to their masters: "Me make plenty
nigger for massa, me useful nigger." But more
than half of their offspring were allowed to die.
The mother would have been worth her keep as
a mother, but, no, she must fill her place in the
hoeing line instead of looking after her
children. There were few genuine Negro families. All
were herded or separated and sold off in
batches and re-herded with little or no regard
to family relationships, though these poor,
dark-minded slaves did form the most intimate
and precious attachments. The slaves' fervent
hope was that massa would marry and have
children, so that when he died they would not
be sold up, but remain in the family.
Illegitimacy in sexual relationships raged.
Almost every planter had besides his own
family a dusky brood of colored women. No
likely girl escaped the overseers. Poor whites
and pinelanders broke into black quarters and
ravished where they would. There seemed little
squeamishness, and there was little enough
effective resistance on the part of black girls.
The institution of slavery with its cruelties had
brutalized men's minds. As for the Negro
women, one can well understand how little femi-

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 13
nine shame would remain when the bare hips
were so commonly exposed and flogged.
"Oh, but don't you know — did nobody ever
tell or teach any of you that it is a sin to live
with men who are not your husbands?" asked
Fanny Kemble of a slave. The latter seized her
vehemently by the wrist and exclaimed :
"Oh, yes, missie, we know — we know all about
dat well enough ; but we do anything to get our
poor flesh some rest from the whip; when he
make me follow him into de bush, what use me
tell him no? He have strength to make me."*
Probably the slave drivers and other white
men obtained some sensual gratification from
flogging women. Brutality of this kind is often
associated with sexual perversity. The taking
of Negro women showed a will toward the
animal and was an act of greater depravity
than ordinary deflections from the straight and
moral way. Not that there was not pride in
pale babies and even a readiness on the part
of some Negresses to give themselves to white
men. As a plantation song said : "Twenty-four
black girls can't make one mulatto baby by
themselves." By flogging and rape and inhuman callous
ness did the white South express its reaction
to black slavery. There were also burnings,
* "Two Years on a Georgian Plantation," by Frances
Kemble.

14 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN .
demoniacal tortures, flogging to death, and
every imaginable human horror. It may well
be asked: Eow came it about that those who
protested so high-mindedly about the introduc
tion of slavery did not use the slaves kindly and
humanly when they were forced to have them?
The answer I think lies in the fact that no
man is good enough to have complete control
over any other man. No man can be trusted.
Give your best friend or neighbor power over
you, and you'll be surprised at the use he will
make of it. Even wives and children in this
respect are not safe in the hands of their hus
bands and parents if they are understood as
possessions. "She belongs to me and I'll Mil
her," Gorky makes a drunken cobbler say.
"Ah, no, she does not belong to you; she is a
woman, and a woman belongs to God," says tha
Russian friend.
There is indeed little more terrifying in
human experience than the situation which
occurs when one human being is entirely in the
power of another, when the prisoner in the
dungeon confronts his torturer, when the un
protected girl falls completely into the power
of a man, when Shylock has Antonio delivered
to him, and so forth.
Cruelty can be awakened in almost any man
and woman— it can be developed. A taste for
cruelty is hke a taste for drink or sexual desire
or dmgs. It is a lust. It is indeed one of the

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 15
worst of the lusts. One can forgive or excuse
a man the other lusts, but cruelty one cannot —
and indeed does not wish to forgive or excuse.
Yet how readily does it develop.
The incredible story is told of a young girl
lashed by the overseer, threatened with burn
ing. She runs away. It is a gala day on the
plantation. The white men hunt her to the
swamps with bloodhounds and she is torn to
bits before their eyes. They love the spectacle
of terror even more than the spectacle of pain.
The Negro, of nervous, excitable nature, ia
marked out by destiny to be a butt for cruelty.
It is so to-day, long after emancipation; the
Negro, in whom hysterical fear can be awak
ened, is the most hkely to be lynched or chased
by the mob or slowly burned for its delight.
More terrible than the act of cruelty is the state
of mind of those who can look on at it and gloat
over it. After all, a lynching is often roughly
excusable. A man commits a heinous crime
against a woman, scandalizing the community,
and the community takes the law into its own
hands. The rightness of the action can be
argued. But what of the state of heart of a
mob of a thousand, watching a Negro burning
to death, listening happily to his yells and cry
ing out to "make him die slow"? It is an ap
palling revelation of the devil in man.
And despite the fact that such cruelty ago
nizes the mind of the tender-hearted and sym-

16 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
pathetic, we must remain tolerant in judgment.
We must not tolerate intolerance; in all other
respects we must be tolerant.
Cruelty is in man. The planters did the nat
ural thing with the slaves who came into their
power. The white South would slip into the
same way of life again to-day if slavery could
be introduced. What is more, you and I, and
every man, unless he were of an exceptional
nature, would succumb to the system and dis
grace ourselves with similar cruelty. A demon
not altogether banished still lurks in most of us
and can easily be brought back. Lust lives on
lust and grows stronger; and cruelty, like other
cravings, is a desire of the flesh, and can easily
become devouring habit. We are greater brutes
after we have committed an act of cruelty or
lust than we were before we committed it, and
we are made ready to commit more or worse.
Concomitant with cruelty is callousness. An
indifference which is less than usual human
carelessness sets in with regard to creatures on
whom we have satisfied our lusts. Flogging
makes a heavy flogged type of human being who
looks as if he had always needed flogging. It
ceases to be piquant to flog him. The old Negress
with brutish human lusts written all over her
body is not even horrible or repulsive, elle
n'existe plus. The old, worn-out drudge lies
down to die in the dirty straw, the flies gather
ing about his mouth, and expires without one

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 17
Christian solace or one Christian sympathy.
Though ministers waxed eloquent on the Chris
tian advantages to the Blacks of being brought
from pagan Africa to Christian America, there
quickly sets in the belief that after all Negroes
are like animals and have no souls to save.
This callousness showed worst in the selling
of slaves, the separating of black husband and
wife, parents and children, family and family,
with the indifference with which a herdsman
separates and detaches sheep from his flock.
This, despite the manifest passionate tender
ness and attachment of slave to slave, and even
upon occasion slave to master and home.
The state of the slaves grew most forlorn, for
saken of man, imknown to God. A prison twi
light eclipsed the hght of the sun-flooded South
land. A consciousness of a sad, sad fate was
begotten among the slaves. All the tribes of
the Negroes became one in a community of suf
fering. And gradually they ceased to be mere
savages. They grew to something higher —
through suffering. It was a penal offense for
many a long year even to preach Christ to them.
Slaves were beaten when it was found out that
they had been baptized. But before the Blacks
were brought to Christ they must have got a
great deal nearer Him than had their masters.
It was illegal to teach a slave to read and write.
But the Negroes in a mysterious way learned
the white man's code and secretly obtained his

18 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Bible and plunged into the Old Testament and
the New. The white man rightly feared that the
spread of education among the slaves would
endanger the institution. They spoke of slavery
as the institution as if it were the only one in
the world. They also feared the spread of
Christian teaching.
As it happened, the Negro soul was very
thirsty for religion and drank very deeply of
the wells of God. The Negroes learned to sing
together, thus first of all expressing corporate
life. They drew from the story of Israel's suf
ferings a token of their own life, and they
formed their scarcely articulate hymns — ^which
survive to-day as the only folklore music of
America.
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egyp' Ian'.
Tell oie Pharaoh
Le' ma people go!
Israel was in Egyp' Ian',
Oppres' so hard dey could not stan'.
Le' ma people go!
or the infinitely pathetic and beautiful
In the valley
On my knees
With my burden
An' my Saviour
I couldn't hear nobody pray, O Lord,
Couldn't hear nobody pray.
O — way down yonder
By myself
I couldn't hear nobody pray.

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 19
Chilly waters
In the Jordan,
Crossing over
Into Canaan,
I couldn't hear nobody pray, O Lord,
Couldn't hear nobody pray.
O — way down yonder
By myself
I couldn't hear nobody pray.
Hallelujah!Troubles over
In the Kingdom
With my Jesus.
I couldn't hear nobody pray, O Lord,
Couldn't hear nobody pray.
O — way down yonder
By myself
I couldn't hear nobody pray.
The poor slave was very much — way down yon
der by himself, and he couldn't hear nobody
pray. Jesus seemed to have been specially born
for him — to love his soul when none other was
ready to love it, to comfort him in all his suf
ferings, and to promise him that happy heaven
where unabashed the old woolly-head can sit by
Mary and "play with the darling Son," as an
other "spiritual" expresses it.
The first Negro preachers and evangelists had
the inevitable persecution, and as inevitably the
persecution failed. The North grew very sym
pathetic, and Bibles grew as plentiful in the
South as dandelion blossoms. It became the
unique lesson book of the Negro^ It alone fed
his spiritual consciousness. He obtained at once
an appreciation of its worth to him that niade

20 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
it his greatest treasure, his only offset against
his bondage. He learned it by heart, and there
came to be a greater textual knowledge of the
Bible among the Black masses than among any
other people in the world. It is so to-day,
though it is fading. The spiritual life of the
Negro became as it were an answering beacon
to the fervor of the Abolitionists of the North,
most of whom were passionate Christians of
Puritan type.
The South grew sulky, grew infinitely sus
picious and restive, and irritated and fearful.
It began to fear a general slaves' rising. The
numerical superiority of the Negroes presented
itself to the mind as an ever-growing menace.
The idea of emancipation was fraught with the
economic ruin it implied. It is difficult now to
resurrect the mind of society preceding the
time of the great Civil War. I^ is the fashion
to emphasize the technical aspect of the quarrel
of North and South, and to say that the war was
fought in order that the Union might be pre
served. But it is truer to say that it was fought
because the South wanted to secede. And the
South wished to secede because it saw more
clearly every day that the institution of slavery
was in danger. Every month, every year, saw
its special occasions of irritation, premonitory
splashing out of flame, petty explosions and
threats. More slaves escaped every year. The
Underground Railway, so caUed, by which the

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 21
Friends succored the poor runaways and
brought them out of danger and distress into
the sanctuary of the North grew to be better
and better organized. On the other hand, the
pimishments of discovered runaways grew more
barbarous and more pubhc, and the rage of the
North was inflamed.
Heroic John Brown made his abortive bid to
light up a slaves' insurrection by his wild ex
ploit of Harper's Ferry. And then John
Brown, old man as he was, of apostolic aspect
and fervor, was tried and condemned. He did
not fear to die. But he wrote to his children
that they should "abhor with undying hatred
that sum of all villainies, slavery," and while
he was being led to the gallows he handed to a
bystander his last words and testament —
I, John Brown, am now quite certain that
the crimes of this guilty land will never be
purged away but with blood. I had as I
now thinJc vainly flattered myself that with
out very much bloodshed it might be
done. . . .
And in his ill-fitting suit and trousers and loose
carpet slippers John Brown was hanged silently
and solemnly, and all the troops watching him,
even stern Stonewall Jackson himself, were
stricken with a sort of premonitory terror.
Soon came the great war.
And the slaves were made free. That is their
story. Where do they stand to-day?

II
IN VIRGINIA
By the abolition of slavery mankind threw off
a great evil. The slave owner escaped as well
as the slave. For, although our human sympa
thy goes more readily to the slaves themselves,
it is nevertheless true that it was as bad for the
spirit and character of the owners as for those
of their chattels. To-day in America, and espe
cially in the South, there is a hereditary taint
in the mind derived from slavery and it is to be
observed in the descendants of the masters as
much as in the descendants of the slaves. It
would be a mistake to think of this American
problem as exclusively a Negro problem. It is
as necessary to study the white people as the
black. The children of the owners and the over
seers and the slave drivers are not the same as
the children of families where no slaves were
ever owned. Mastery of men and power over
men have been bred in their blood. That in
part explains the character of that section of
the United States where slaves were most
owned, and the brutality, cmelty, and sensual
ity which upon occasion disfigure the face of so
ciety in 1920, The old dead self leers out with
22

IN VIRGINIA 23
strange visage from the new self, which wishes
to be different.
If you see a white man in New Orleans roll
ing his quid and spitting out foul bmtality
against "niggers," you wiU often find that hia
father was a driver on a plantation. Or if in
that abnormal way so characteristic of the
South you hear foul sexual talk about the
Negroes rolling forth from a lowbrow in Vicks
burg, it is fairly hkely that he is full of strange
black lust himself, and that his father and
grandfather perchance assaulted promiscuously
Negro women and contributed to the writing of
racial shame in the vast bastardy of the South.
If you hear a man urging that the Negro is not
a human being, but an animal, you will often
find that he himself is nearer to the animal. His
fathers before him held that the Negroes were
animals and not humans. And, believing them
animals, they yet sinned with the animals, and
so brought themselves down to animal level.
You see a crowd of white men near Savannah.
They are mostly proud of their English origin.
Yet they are going to bum a Negro ahve for kill
ing a sheriff. How is it possible in this century?
It is possible because it is in the blood of the
children. They crave to see Uncle Tom's flesh
crackling in the flames and hear his hysterical
howls. Their fathers did. Their children's chil
dren will do the same unless it is stamped out
by the will of society as a whole,

24 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Of course the inheritance of evil is not the
same in all classes of society. Everyone inherits
something from the baleful institution, but not
everyone the same. The mind of the coarse
White is crude and terrible, and the mind of the
refined is certainly different. One should per
haps be more lenient to the poor, and more
urgent in criticism of the rich. For all stand
together, and the disease is one not merely of
individuals, but of the whole. The rich and cul
tured condone the brutality of the masses
because they have a point of view which is
incompatible with theirs.
Those whose ancestors treated the slaves well,
claim to be immune from all criticism. There
were in the old days many kind and considerate
masters to whom the Negroes were wonderfully
attached. But even these masters suffered from
the institution of slavery, as any rich man suf
fers from dependence on retainers and flunkeys
and servants whom he practically owns, as all
suffer who are divorced from the reality of earn
ing their living as equals with their neighbors.
And their children, brought up amidst the sub
missive servility of the Negroes, grew to be little
monarchs or chiefs, and always to expect other
people to do things for them. Where ordinary
white children learn to ask and say "please,"
they learned to order and command and to
threaten with punishment. The firm lip of the
educated Southerner has an expression which

IN VIRGINIA 25
is entirely military. In the army, one asks for
nothing of inferiors except courage on the day
of battle. All is ordered. And the power to
order and to be obeyed rapidly changes the ex
pression of the features. It has changed the
physiognomy of the aristocracy in the Southern
section of the United States. You can classify
all faces into those who say "please" and those
who do not, and the children of the slave owners
are mostly in the second category. Unqualified
mastership; indifference to dirt and misery in
the servant class; callous disregard of others'
pain, or pleasure taken in their pain ; slaves said
to be animals and not human beings, and the
superadded sin of bestiality, using a lower caste
to satiate coarse lusts which the upper caste
could not satisfy; the buying and selling of
creatures who could otherwise only belong to
God — all these terrible sins or sinful conditions
are visited on the third and fourth generation
of those who hate, though as must always be
said, God's mercy is shown to thousands of
them that love Him and keep His eternal com
mandments. The children of the slaves also inherit evil
from their slavery. The worst of these are re
sentment and a desire for revenge. Doubtless,
slavery sensualized the Negro. He was the pas
sive receptacle for the white man's lusts. Most
of the Negroes arrived in America more morally
pure than they are to-day. As savages, they

26 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
were nearer to nature. Mentally and spiritually
they are much higher now, but they have
learned more about sin, and sin is written in
most of their bodies. It is sharpest in the mulat-
toes and "near whites" — those whose ancestors
were longest in slavery have the worst marks
of it in them. The state of the last slaves to be
imported into America is much simpler and
happier than the rest. The moral character of
the black Negroes is also simpler than that of
the pallid ones. But this is anticipating my
story. I set off to study the ex-slave because
the civilized world is threatened by what may
be called a vast slaves' war. In Russia the
grand-children of the serfs have overthrown
those who were once their masters, and have
taken possession of the land and the state; in
Germany Spartacus has arisen to overthrow the
.military slavery of Prussianism; and the wage
slaves are rising in every land. There is a vast
resentment of lower orders against upper
orders, of the proletarians, who have, nothing
and are nothing, against those who through
inheritance or achievement have reached the rul
ing class. The Negroes are in no way to be com
pared to the Russians in intellectual or spiritual
capacity : they are racially so much more unde
veloped. Much less divided Russian serf from
Russian master than slave from planter. But it
is just because the contrast between the Ameri
can white man and American black man is so

IN VIRGINIA 27
sharp and the quarrel so elemental in charactei
that it has seemed worth while to explore the
American situation. And if the struggle is more
elemental, it can hardly be said that there is not
more at stake. American industriahsm is rav
aged by waves of violent revolutionary ferment.
If ill-treatment of the Blacks should at last force
the twelve millions of them to make common
cause with a revolutionary mob, polite America
might be overwhelmed and the larger portion
of the world be lost — ^if not of the world, at
least of that world we call civilization.
What, then, of the Negro ? What is he doing,
what does he look like, what does he feel to-day?
It is impossible to learn much from current
books, so, following the dictum: "What is re
markable, learn to look at it with your own
eyes," I went to America to see.
I chose Olmsted as my model. In 1853 Olm
sted made a famous journey through the sea
board States, holding up his mirror to the life
of the South in slavery days. The book which
records his impressions and reflections is one
of the most valuable in American literature.
This great student of nature went methodically
through Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia,
Alabama and Louisiana. A pilgrimage not un
like his has to be repeated to-day to ascertain
how the ex-slave is, what he is doing, how the
experiment of his liberation has prospered, and
what is his future iu the American Common-

28 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
wealth. But as America is so much more de
veloped in 1920, and more problematical in the
varied fields of her national life, it has been
necessary to make a broader, if more rapid,
survey of the whole South. I made the follow
ing journey in America: I went slowly south
from New York to Trenton, Philadelphia, Bal
timore, and Washington, staying some days at
each and seeing America grow darker as it vis
ibly does when you watch faces from trolley car
windows going from town to town southward.
I was on South Street, in Philadelphia ; watched
the well-paid artisans and laborers at the docks
of Baltimore, visited there the polite homes of
the colored working class, cleaner, richer, cozier
than that of the average British workman on
Tyneside or London Docks. I climbed the Lin
coln Heights to talk to Nanny Burroughs and
see her good training college for colored women
there; was at Howard University and talked
with black and gentle Professor Miller and with
the pale and intellectual Emmett Scott. I sailed
down the Potomac to Norfolk, Virginia, Uncle
Sam's great naval base, going to be the greatest
of its kind in the world; crossed to Newport
News and talked with black rivetters and chip-
pers and others in the shipbuilding yards ; then,
following the way of the first English colonists
and also the first Negro slaves, went up the
James River to Jamestown, and on to Rich
mond, the fine capital of the Old Dominion. I

IN VIRGINIA 29
traveled to Lynchburg and its tobacco indus
tries, went from thence to "sober" Knoxvihe,
investigating the race riot there and the atti
tude of Tennessee. From Knoxville I went to
Chattanooga and Birmingham, in each of which
great steel centers I met the leading Negroes
and investigated conditions. I was at Atlanta,
and walked across Georgia to the sea, following
Sherman. A three-hundred-mile walk through
the cotton fields and forests of Georgia was
necessary in order to get a broad section of the
mass of the people. The impression left behind
by Sherman's army which laid waste the coun
try and freed all the Negroes there gave also
something of the historical atmosphere of the
South. From Savannah, which was the point on
the sea to which General Sherman attained, I
went to Brunswick and Jacksonville, thence
to Pensacola, and on from Florida to New
Orleans and the Gulf plantations. I journeyed
up the Mississippi on a river steamer, stayed
at the Negro city of Mound Bayou, was at Vicks
burg and Greenville and Memphis, and then re
paired once more to the contrasting North.
Crossing the Mason-Dixon line was rather a
magical and wonderful event for me. Aft6r all,
the North, with its mighty cities and industrial
ized populations, is merely prose to one who
comes from England. Pennsylvania is a projec
tion of Lancashire and Yorkshire, New York is
a projection of London, and massive Washing-

30 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
ton has something of the oppressiveness of Eng
lish park drives and Wellingtonias. But south
ward one divines another and a better country.
It has a glamour; it lures. There the orange
grows and there are palms; there is a hotter
Sim and brighter flowers. Human beings there,
one surmises, have a more romantic disposition
and warmer imagination. Reposing on the vast
feudalism of Negro labor there is a more stately
way of living, life is more spacious. And at the
resorts on the coast of Florida and the Gulf of
Mexico a great number of people live for pleas
ure and happiness, and not for business and
ambition. I journeyed on a white-painted steamer in
the evening down the Potomac to Old Point
Comfort, leaving behind me the noise and glare
of Washington and the hustle of Northern
American civilization. It was the crossing of
a frontier — ^without show of passports or exam
ination of trunks, the passing to a new country,
with a different language and different ways.
The utter silence of the river was a great con
trast to the clangor of the streets of Philadel
phia and Baltimore and the string of towns I
had been passing through on my way South.
Sunset was reflected deep in the stream, and
mists crept over the surface of the water. Then
the moon silvered down on our course, my cabin
window was full open and the moon looked in.
I lay in a capacious sort of cottage bed and was

IN VIRGINIA 31
enchanted by the idea of going to *.* Dixie," of
which we had all sung so much; and the soft
Southern airs and night and the throbbing of
the river steamer gliding over the placid water
gave an assurance of some new refreshment of
spirit. With a quaint irrelevance the whole
British army, and indeed the nation, had been
singing "Dixie" songs throughout the war —
"Just try to picture me, way down in Ten
nessee" we were always asking of one another.
Now, behold, the war was over, and it might be
possible to go there and forget a little about all
that sordid and tumultuous European quarrel.
All night the river whispered its name and
lulled the boat to sleep. Dawn on the broad
serenity of the waters at Old Point Comfort
was utterly unlike the North, from which I had
come, and the last ten days of jangling trolley
cars hustling along shoppy streets. A morning
star shone in the pale-blue sky, lighting as it
were a vestal lamp over the coast, and we looked
upon Virginia. As the sun rose, vapor closed
in the scene. We made the port of Norfolk in a
mist which seemed each moment getting
warmer. The chUl winds of October were due
in the North, but Virginia was immune. Dur
ing the week I spent in the city of Norfolk and
on Hampton Roads it did not get less than 85
in the shade, even at night. The weather, how
ever, was hotter than is usual even in Eastern
Virginia at that time of the year.

32 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
I obtained the impression of a great city
rather cramped for want of space, and in this
I suppose I was right. By all accounts Norfolk
has trebled its population during the war, and
needs to have its center rebuilt spaciously and
worthily. When Olmsted came through in 1853
he records that Norfolk was a dirty, low, ill-
arranged town, having no lyceum or public
library, no gardens, no art galleries, and though
possessing two "Bethels" having no "Sea
men's Home" and no place of healthy amuse
ment. He rather makes fun of a Lieutenant
Maury, who in those days was having a vision
of the Norfolk of the future, and saw it one of
the greatest ports in the world, being midmost
point of the Atlantic coast and having an inner
and an outer harbor with perfect facilities of
ingress and egress in all weathers.
To-day Lieutenant Maury's vision has proved
prophetic. In the maps of the new America
which is coming, Norfolk is destined to be
printed in ever larger letters. The war showed
the way. The determination of America to be
worthily armed at sea made it certain, and the
future of Norfolk, with Hainpton Roads and
Newport News, is to be the primary naval base
of the Atlantic coast. The military and naval
activities of Norfolk during the war were very
important. Eastern Virginia was a great train
ing ground, and Norfolk the main port of em
barkation of troops for Europe. Shipbuilding

IN VIRGINIA 33
and naval construction also were in full swing.
Great numbers of laborers, especially Negroes,
seem to have been attracted. The number no
doubt is exaggerated, but the colored people
there number themselves now at one hundred
thousand. They have been attracted by the high
wages and the record of Norfolk for immunity
from mob violence. A lynching is not in any
one's remembrance. Trouble might have broken
out during the war, but Norfolk possessed an
excellent "City Manager" who was always
prepared. On one occasion some five hundred sailors set
out to "clean up colored town," but they were
met by an adequate force of armed police and
marines and changed their minds. On the other
hand, a mob of colored crews and troops started
an attack on the town jail, but a few armed
men quickly dispersed them.
I noticed at once that the Blacks of Norfolk
were very much more black than those of Wash
ington or New York. Their hair was more
matted. Their eyes were more goggly. They
were more odorous. When the black chamber
maid had been in my room for two minutes it
was filled with a pungent and sickening odor.
The elevator reeked with this odor. It was the
characteristic smell of my first Southern hotel.
I noticed it on the trolley cars. It was wafted
among the vegetables and fruit of the city

34 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
market. Indeed, the whole town had it. I grew
used to it after a while and was told by those
who were Hberal of mind that every race had
its smell. For instance, to certain tribes of
Indians there was said to be nothing so disgust
ing as the smell of a perfectly clean white man.
Even when a man who has a bath every day
and a change into perfectly fresh linen came
into his presence, the Indian felt sick. Negroes
were supposed to notice the smell of white men,
but were too subservient or polite to remark
upon it. There is, however, a good deal of doubt
about this point in human natural history. The
smell that we have is the smell of the animal in
us, and not of the more human or spiritual part
of us. One knows the smell of the bear and the
fox, and that the wolf has a stronger smell than
the dog, and the wild cat than the domestic cat.
Bloodhounds are said to follow the trail of the
Negro more readily than that of the white man,
and it might reasonably be argued that the ter
rible odor of the Blacks is due to their greater
proximity to an animal stage in development.
Be that as it may, I quite see that this odor is
something which the Negro will have difficulty
in hving down. I learned that he was very sen
sitive about it, as about his kinky hair, and that
the more educated and refined he became the
more he strove to get rid of these marks. That
explained to me why in all those happy streets
of prosperous Baltimore at every corner the're

IN VIRGINIA 35
was a "Beauty Parlor," where specialists plied
Mme. Walker's "Anti-Kink," and why the
prosperous Negro workingman demanded a
bathroom and hot water in his home. The rea
son why the Blacks seem blacker in the South
seems to be because they are segregated in
"Jim Crow" sections of the cars, and none of
the black comes off on white people, but is on
the contrary intensified by the shadow of black
looks. The colored folk here, moreover, seemed to
talk more in the way they are supposed to talk,
and are not mincing the American tongue, as in
the North. Outside my room one maid says:
"You's a fool, sister Ann." "Yas, sister Sue,
dat's 'zackly what I am," says the other, and
laughs and repeats it as if it were the greatest
joke — ^" Dat's 'zackly what I am."
I went into the streets to seek the Rev. B  ^
a leading colored preacher of Norfolk. I stood
in wonderment before a whitewashed chapel
with large china-blue stained-glass windows
luridly depicting our Lord's baptism and the
opening of the heavens over the Jordan. A
grizzled old Negro in a cotton shirt stopped
in front of me and exclaimed insinuatingly,
** You's looking at cuUud folks' church; ain't it
bewtiful?" I took the opportunity to ask for
the Rev. B^  . He led me along and pointed
up a flight of wooden steps to a sufficiently
handsome dwelling place.

36 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Rev. B  on seeing me had a gleam of doubt
on his face for perhaps one second, but only for
a second. One instinctively felt that here in
Virginia, where the color line is sharply drawn,
no white man is likely to present himself on
terms of equality to a black man without the
desire to patronize or some guile of some kind.
It is rare for any white man to call upon any
educated black man, and very rarely indeed that
he comes to him in a straightforward, honest,
and sincere manner. So the Rev. B  showed
doubt for a moment, and then suddenly, after a
few words, his doubt vanished. In my subse
quent journeying and adventures it was always
thus — doubt at first glance, and then, rapidly,
the awakening of imphcit trust and confidence.
I personally found the Negroes nearly always
friendly. Mr. B  was a sparely-colored, lean,
intellectual young man, a capable white man in;
a veil of dark skin. He was aU but white. I
looked at his webby hands — ^what a pity, it
seemed, that, being so near, he could not be
altogether. And yet I realized that in such men
and women, no matter how fair they be, the
psyche is different. There is something in
tensely and insolubly Negro in even the nearest
of near whites.
Rev. B  took me all over the city. He was
evidently extremely well known to the colored
people, for our conversation was intertwined
with a ceaseless 

IN VIRGINIA 37
"How do, Revrun?"
"How do?"
He showed me his charmingly built church
(not that with the china-blue windows), con
trived in graceful horseshoe style, with gradu
ated, sloping gallery, richly-stained windows,
and a vast array of red-cushioned seats. A
black organist was discoursing upon the organ,
and a voluminous, dusky charwoman with large
arms was cleaning and dusting among the pews
l>elow. There sat under Eev. B  every Sunday a
fair share of the quality colored folk of Norfolk.
"I am glad that you have come to me, because
I can show you an up-to-date and proper
church," said the pastor. "There are nine or
ten like this in Norfolk, but when a stranger
asks to see a Negro church he's usually taken to
some out-of-the-way tabernacle of the Holy
Folks or some queer sect where everyone is
shouting Hallelujah, and it all seems very
funny. But if you'll come to me on Sunday
moming you'll hear a service which for dig
nity and spiritual comeliness will compare with
any white man's service in any part of the
world. You mustn't think of us as still cotton
pickers and minstrels and nothing more. There
is a great deal of Negro wealth and refinement
in this city of Norfolk."
"How do you get on with white ministers?"
I asked. "Do you work together?"

38 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
"Oh, white ministers do not recognize black
ones on the street," said he. "My neighbor, for
instance, knows me well enough at the Baptist
Conference, and by his talk I see he knows all
about my church. But here in the city he can
not afford to know me. Yet he has not half so
many worshippers at his church, nor do they
pay him half the salary which my people pay
me. He dare not spend on his clothes what I
spend; he has not such a well-appointed home.
Yet if we meet on the street— -he doesn't know
me." This was evidently a sore point.
We went to Brown's Bank. Brown has gone
to Philadelphia to start a second Negro bank.
The first one has been in existence ten years.
Brown is a financier, and something more than
that. For he encourages the Negro theatres and
is greatly helping his people alon^ their way.
We also visited the polite edifice of the Tide
water Bank and Trust Company, which has been
built since the Armistice. "It was contracted
for by Negroes and built by Negroes alonoj"
said the treasurer proudly — ^a blunt, bullet-
headed, whimsical fellow, with an intense desire
to push business and to hustle. All the clerks
and stenographers were colored. Each teller
sat in his steel cage for which he alone held the
key. All the latest banking machinery was in
operation, including the coin separator and
counter and wrapper, and the adding machine.

IN VIRGINIA 39
I worked an imaginary account nnder colored
direction, using the adding machine, and gave
assent to its infallibility. They showed me their
strong room, and I peeped at their cash re
serves. The treasurer and "Revrun" then took
me up into a high mountain, namely, the Board
Eoom, which was in a gallery overlooking the
whole of the working part of the bank.
"My motto," said the treasurer, "is, 'Folks
who only work for us as long as they are paid
will find they are only paid for what they have
done.' We work here till we are through, be it
eleven ortwelve o'clock at night. The man who
isn't hard is not for us."
We talked about the Negro.
"He must win freedom," said the banker.
"It is never a bequest, but a conquest. You
can't have redemption without the shedding of
the Precious Blood, can you. Reverend? I am
fighting for the Negro by succeeding in business.
There's only one thing that can bring him re
spect, and that is achievement."
These were his most impressive words. We
walked out of the new bank.
"He has his knock-about car and his limou
sine and a finely appointed house and a gov
erness for his children," said Rev. B  , as
we footed it once more in the sun-bathed street.
"But of course you can be a millionaire to-day
and it won't help you to marry even the poor
est white girl. Or you can be a Negro heir-

40 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
ess, but no amount of wealth will induce a white
man to marry a colored girl. For the matter of
that, though, there are Negroes so white you
couldn't tell the difference, and we've got plenty
to choose from if our tastes lie that way. If a
Negro wants to marry a white, he can find plenty
within his own race."
Rev. B  was himself married to a woman
who could pass as white, in Southern Europe,
and his children were little white darlings with
curly hair. We hailed a heavy "F and D" car.
I will not mention the actual name of the build.
A young colored dandy was sitting in it. "You
see this car?" said Reverend. "It belongs to
Dr. R  . It's an 'F and D.' In many places
the agents will not sell this build of car to a
Negro, even for cash down."
"Why is that?"
"Well, it's a fine type of car, and rich white
men in a city don't care to see a colored man
going about in one exactly the same. An agent
would lose business if he sold them to Negroes.
What's more, whether he lost business or not,
he wouldn't do it. Here in Virginia, however,
there is not so much prejudice, but when you go
further South you'U find it."
We got into the car. The young dandy proved
to be a doctor's assistant, a sort of apprentice
to the great physician we were about to meet.
He had graduated at Fisk, which he called the
Negro Athens, He was dressed in a well-cut

IN VIRGINIA 41
suit of gray, a rich necktie, and a felt hat which
was in excellent taste. His complexion was of
the cocoa-brown, highly-polished type, and his
large eyes were quiet and reflective, as if un-
awakened to the joy of life. Politely chatting
to us, he guided the beautiful car along some of
the most terribly rutty and broken streets.
"We pay equal taxes," said he, "but because
colored people live in these streets the city
won't repair the roads. They are all rich
people living in these houses, all Negroes. Sev
eral of them own cars. . . . Now look on the
other hand at this street. It's a white street,
all smoothly repaired. What a beautiful sur
face; see the difference!" Rev. B  urged
this point also. It was a striking example of
inequality, and one that makes a strong appeal.
Dr. R  proved to be a rich practitioner
living in a delightful villa with polished floors
and a French neatness and charm in the furni
ture and decorations. The sun blinds were aU
down, and a pleasant creamy light was diffused
upon his books and pictures and silk-uphol
stered divan. He was very busy, but said he
could always spare a few moments from his
profession if it were a question of helping his
race, and he thought nothing could help the
Negroes more than a dispassionate review of
their situation by a white man who could bring
it not merely before America, but before the
world. He had more patients than he could

42 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
deal with, all Negroes, with the exception of a
few Jews. The Jews have no prejudice, and are
ready to be attended by a good doctor, whatever
the color of his skin, which is a point in any
case in favor of the JewS. For a long while the
Negroes distrusted their own doctors, and
thought that only a white man could possibly
have the skill to treat them. But a later genera
tion has discovered that their own folk have an
excellent grasp of medicine. My further ac
quaintance with a considerable number of col
ored doctors in the South has led me to the
conclusion that their temperament suits them
admirably. They make good doctors. What is
more, they naturally understand the Negro's
body and constitution and nervous system bet
ter than the white man, and the pathology of
the Negro is very different from that of the
white man. The white doctor as yet has not
given much separate study to the Negro's body
— though it is certainly very different from
ours in many ways. He ?s inclined perhaps to
be a little brutal and offhand with Negro
patients — and they certainly are tiresome, with
their superstitious fear of ill. health and evil
eyes, and what not. This impatience has helped
the colored practitioner. Negroes, like other
people, go where they are best treated, and the
medical attendance upon a hundred thousand
people could make many doctors rich.
In the old slavery days the Negroes were just

IN VIRGINIA 43
a broad base where all were equal. To-day the
"race" has lifted up an intelligent and pro
fessional class. The working Negro population
of Norfolk could lift up its intellectual apex
of minister, doctor, and banker, and make them
comparatively rich men, and give them all the
show of luxury and culture which would have
been the lot of white men in similar positions.
So the broad base of slavery grows to be a pyra
mid of freedom.
Dr. R  was a shrewd, capable, little human
mountain. He said, "I think the time has come
for the Negro to amass wealth; it's the only
thing that counts in America." He thought the
League of Nations might help the Negro if its
representatives ever met at Washington. There
would be Frenchmen and Englishmen and Ital
ians, and, being so near to the South, it would
be a shame to America if lynchings took place
while they were sitting. As it was, the Negro
South was a sort of skeleton cupboard which
must not be exposed.
From him I learned first that the Negro had
not access to the Carnegie libraries in the South.
I was surprised. Up at Baltimore, in the North,
I was talking to a librarian, and he averred
that the Negroes used the public library much
more than white people, and that there were so
many darkies that Whites did not care to go.
But I travel such a very short distance South,
and I find no Negro admitted at all.

44 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
"Surely that is contrary to the spirit of the
Carnegie grants," said I.
"Yes, for Carnegie was a good friend to the
Negro. But so it is," said Dr. R  . "And
I do not think Negroes should agitate about it.
It would be better for Negroes to build their
own libraries. We shall have to do so. But we
don't want to intrude where we're not wanted."
He told me what he considered the most thrill
ing moment of his life. He was out with a friend
at midnight watching the posting of election re
sults, when suddenly a "lewd woman" came
out of a house door, screaming and waving her
arms. She made right for them, and they were
in terror lest she should fall down at their feet
or start reviling them. Fortunately, they had
the presence of mind not to run away from her,
or they might have been lynched by the crowd.
The worthy doctor took us out and drove us
all over the city, heartily apologizing that he
could not ask me to have any meal with his
wife and himself. "For, although you may have
no prejudice, it would not be safe for either of
us if it were known." Which was indeed so.
Throughout the whole of the South it is impos
sible to eat or drink with a colored man or
woman. My chief way of finding people to whom I
had introductions was by reference to the city
directory. Here I found that all colored people
were marked with a star — as much aa to say,

IN VIRGINIA. 45
"Watch out; this party's colored." White
women were indicated as "Mrs." or "Miss,"
but colored women always as plain "Sarah
Jones" or "Betty Thompson," or whatever the
name might be, without any prefix. This I dis
covered 'to be one of many small grievances of
the Negro population, akin to that of not having
their roads mended though they pay taxes, and
being obliged to take back seats behind a straw
screen in the trolley cars.
It was a novel impression in the Negro church
on Sunday moming. I came rather early, and
found an adult Bible class discussing theology
in groups. One man near me exclaimed, "It
says 'He that believeth and is baptized shall
be saved,' doesn't it, brother? Well, then, I be
lieve, so why argufy? I an't a-goin' to take no
chances: No, sir, I an't a-goin' to do it" — a
serene black child of forty years or so.
In the full congregation were all types of
Negroes. The men were undistinguished, but
the women were very striking. One lady wore
a gilded skirt and a broad-brimmed, black straw
hat. Two Cleopatras sat in front of me — tall,
elegant, graceful, expensively dressed as in
Mayfair, one in chiffon, the other in soft gray
satin, tiny gold chains about their necks, pearl
earrings in their ears. They had smooth, fruit
like cheeks, curving outward to perfect bell
mouths. When they sang they lifted their full,
dusky throats like grand birds. They were

46 THE SOUL OF JOHN BEOWN
evidently of the elite of Norfolk. On the other
hand, there were numbers of baggy and volu
minous ladies with enormous bosoms, almost
visibly perspiring. Thej thronged and they
thronged, and all the red-cushioned seats filled
up. There were men of all types, from the per
fect West African Negro to the polished Ameri
can Arab, yellow men, brown men, lots with
large tortoise-shell spectacles, all with close-
cropped hair which showed the Runic lines of
their hard heads. Fans were provided for every
worshipper, and noisy religious and family talk
filled the whole chapel.
We began with some fine singing-r-not deep
and harmonious and complex as that of the Rus
sians, but hard, resonant, and breezy, followed
by conventional prayers and the reading of the
Scriptures. The pastor then sent someone to
ask me if I would come forward and give them
Christian greeting in a few words. I was much
astonished, as I did not know one ever broke
into the midst of Divine Service in that way.
However, I came forward and confronted the
strange sea of dusky, eager faces and the thou
sand waving paper fans, and I said: "Dear
brothers and sisters, I am an Englishman and
a white man, but before these I am a Christian.
In Christ, as you know, there is neither white
nor black, neither inferiority nor superiority of
race, unless it is that sometimes the first shall
be last and the last first. We know little about

IN VIRGINIA 47
the American Negro in England, but I have
come to find out. I have not been seni by any
body, but was just prompted by the Spirit to
come out here and make your acquaintance, and
BO bring tidings home to England. I hope you
will take that as an assurance of loving interest
in you, and a promise for the future. I am glad
to see you have made such progress since
slavery days and have in Norfolk fine houses
and churches and banks and a theatre and res
taurants andltusinesses, and that you have such
a large measure of happiness and freedom. I
believe you have great gifts to offer on the
altar of American civilization, and so far from
remaining a problem you will prove a treas
ure." And I told some touching words of my
friend Hugh Chapman, of the chapel of the
Savoy, in London: "Mankind is saved, not by
a white man, or by a black, but by one who com
bines both — the little brown Man of Nazareth."
It was a strange sensation, that of facing the
Negro congregation. I could find no touch, no
point of contact, could indeed take nothing from
them. The spiritual atmosphere was an entirely
different one from that of a gathering of Whites.
I should have been inclined to say that there
was no spiritual atmosphere whatever. For me
it was like speaking to an empty room and
a vast collection of empty seats. But I know
there was something there, though I could not
realize it,

48 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
After the service there came up to me a
purely delightful creature, full of an almost
dangerous ardor for what I had said. She was
the leading spirit at the Liberty Club for col
ored soldiers and jack tars. In the afternoon
I listened to some wonderful singing at another
church. The little black organist woman sang
at the top of her voice while she bent over the
keys, and waved the spirit into her choir by
eager movements Afith the back of her hand.
"Take me, shake me, don't let me sleep,"
they sang, and it was infinitely worth while.
I felt that in the great ultimate harmony we
could not do without this voice, the voice of the
praise of the dark children.
Next week I went over to Newport News.
On a wall in Norfolk I read : " T. Adkins, New
port News," and underneath someone had writ
ten, "You could not pay me to live there:
Robert Johnson, Norfolk."
That might possibly explain the relativity of
the two places. Newport News is a ramshackle
settlement on the sands across the water from
Norfolk. It has a nondescript, ill-dressed, well-
paid, wild, working-class population, with all
manner of cheap shops and low lodging houses.
On every fifth window seems to be scrawled in
whitewash, "HOT DOG 5 cents." It was ex
plained to me that this is sausage of a rather
poor quality. I had never seen the article so
frankly named elsewhere. For the rest, a good

IN VIRGINIA 49
deal of manifest immorality strolls the streets
at night or is voiced on dark verandas. The
police station is a place of considerable mystery
and glamour, and I shoidd say Newport News at
this season would have proved an interesting
research for the vice raker. I paid three dollars
for a room whose lock had been burst off, and
one of whose windows was broken, a mosquito-
infested hovel, but the only room obtainable.
A very interesting young colored trainer took
me over the shipbuilding yards the next day.
He was an enthusiastic boxer, and I asked him
the cause of Negro excellence in this sport. For
there are at least three Negro boxers whom no
white boxers have been able to beat, and this
excellence has caused the championship rules to
be altered so as to disqualify colored cham
pions. He said it was due to quicker eye and greater
aggressiveness, above all to greater aggressive
ness. The Negro is a bom fighter. It is true he
has greater endurance and a much harder skull,
but he has also remarkable aptitude.
"Has the Negro boxer more science?" I
asked. "No, perhaps not so much. He has fighting
blood, that's what it is. His ancestors fought
for thousands of years."
I remarked that the red Indians fought also,
but they were poor boxers. He put that down
to slight physique,

50 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
"I got tired of watching boxing matches in
the army," said I. "The bulkier and more
brutal types always seemed to get the better
of those who were merely skillful. I expect that
is why we don't like watching a Negro and a
white man boxing, it is too much a triumph of
body over mind."
"There's no finer sight than to watch two
Negroes well matched," said the trainer, with
a smile. I thought good boxing showed more the ani
mal side of a man, and I recalled a reported
saying of Jack Johnson — "I'se ready to fight
mos' any man that they is, an' if ye cahn find
any man, why, just send me down a great big
black Russian bear ..."
"It jarred the white folk terrible bad that
Jack Johnson was the real champion of the
world," said the trainer. "When the news came
through of Jack Johnson beating Jeffries so far
away as Denver, Colorado, the white folk began
pulling the Negroes off the street cars in Nor
folk, Virginia, and beating them, just to vent
their rage, they were so sore."
I thought that rather amusing, but the trainer
took a gloomy view. However, in we went to
the shipbuilding yard and looked at many great
vessels in dry dock. Out came a motley crowd of
men, blacker than their nature through the dirt
of their work. The ship painters were splashed
from head to foot with the characteristic red

IN VIRGINIA 51
paint of ships, and looked like some new tribe ;
the blue-shirted rivetters and chippers were all
frayed and ragged from contact with sharp
edges and iron. These Negro workers were very
happy and jolly. They seemed nearly all to be
on piecework and earned in most cases ten
dollars a day, and in some exceptional cases
and upon occasion twenty or twenty-five dollars.
The rivetters, according to the scale of pay,
seemed to be capable of earning huge wages,
and many of them were comparatively well off,
possessing their homes, and giving their chil
dren a good education. The trainer pointed out
to me his athletic pets. He was employed by the
company to organize competitions and races
and baseball teams and the like. The strongest
Negroes seemed among the gentlest. The heavy
weight champion was a large and beautiful
child. He never lost his temper in the ring, be
cause, as I was told, he never needed to. His
ears were not turned to "cauliflower" and his
nose was not flattened out — as yet.
The lunch hour was remarkable for the
swarms of men belched forth by the works. A
twenty-cent lunch was ready for all. Wives and
mothers also were allowed to come and bring
food to supplement what was served at the
stands. Lunch over, the men formed into
groups, and in some places there were Bible
discussions, in others sporting competitions.
Despite high wages, I noticed some Negroes

52 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
going about picking up crusts and putting them
into paper bags, presumably to feed the chick
ens with when they got home. My guide said
this was due to the "Save" propaganda which
had been carried on. Y. M. C. A. work was very
much to the fore, an industrial "Y" having
been financed by the owners of the yard. I was
told that a little while ago the company found
it difficult to keep the young Negro boys — the
heaters and passers, on whose work the rivetter
depends, for one boy heats the rivet and another
passes it, and the rivetter strikes it home. They
found so little in the place to interest them that
they drifted away from the works. It was this
that had determined the firm to embark on a
program of physical culture and games. There
was also a Y. M. C. A. hut and its usual appurte
nances. A long list of evening classes was being
arranged. A large building had been promised
to the " Y" if it made good.
I could not find any man who belonged to a
genuine trade-union affiliated to the American
Federation of Labor, though most belonged to
"Colored People's Brotherhoods." The Whites
with whom they worked, and with whom they
have upon occasion great rivetting competitions,
were presumably non-union ajso, but that is
common ; labor in America is poorly organized,
compared with labor in Great Britain. Almost
the whole of Negro labor is at present outside
the recognized imions, and for that reason can

IN VIRGINIA 53
almost always be used to break strikes. This is,
of course, unfortunate for the Negro, who is
thus branded as a "blackleg" in addition to
being black by nature, which was reproach
enough. I met a strange character in the evening,
one of the colored organizers, a friend of
the white men, and in with the bosses of
the yards. He was possibly a descendant
of the type of Negro who in slavery days
acted as agent for the slave merchants, and
was to be found on the West African
shore lording it over the batches of poor
savages who with hands tied up were being
hustled on to the slave ships. It used to be a
recognizable type. When they themselves were
brought over to America they became overseers
or field drivers, and brutal enough they were
to their fellow men of color. To-day they are
foremen or speeders up of Negro gangs, or you
find them under the auspices of "Welfare."
This was a lazy Negro, fat and heavy, with a
confused non-thinking mind, great sooty lips,
and bloodshot eyes. He told me he put on a
wig at night and prowled about the town, spy
ing on vice. The great numbers of black sol
diers embarking or disembarking had attracted
sharps and bad women of all kinds. The streets
were infested with sin, and he knew which
boarding houses were disreputable and which
were properly kept. He knew where there was

54 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
drink, and who was organizing the "bootleg
ging" business, and what graft the police took.
Though sluggish by nature, this gloomy soul
evidently got full of life at night — spying on the
people. He told me the richest colored man in New
port News was a dentist who charged as much
as six dollars an hour for stopping teeth. The
example of this dentist's success had caused
several fathers to educate their children for
dentistry rather than the Church or the Law.
"But we Negroes don't want to rise," said he.
"We want to show off. We are great imitators
of swagger. They'll come wearing a forty-dol
lar suit and a clean collar, and brandish a cigar
in your face when that is all they have in the
world. We're a crude people, sir."
There was on the one hand in Newport News
a nucleus of prosperous Negro families, and on
the other hand the many gambling places and
dancing dens where health and ambition and
money, and everything else which can help a
man to rise could be squandered. In time to
come, when society takes root, Newport News
should become a Negro stronghold. Already
there are so many Negroes no white man dare
start a riot.
Not far from Newport News is Hampton In
stitute, the "Negro Eton," which produces the
Curzons and the Cecils of the colored race, as
someone amusingly expressed it. It is the crown

IN VIRGINIA 55
of Northern effort to educate the Negro. En
dowment and instruction are mostly by Whites.
Everyone is engaged in vital self-support, and
the students plough the fields, make boots, build
wagons, print books, and learn all manner of
practical lessons in life. Above all, they are
made ready to teach and help others of their
race. It is the show place of the Negro world,
and rightly so, as most of those who lead Negro-
dom hail as yet from Hampton.
I did not myself visit Hampton, because it
has been adequately described in books, and
generally speaking I would rather study the
Negro in his unperfumed haunts, where he is
less disguised with Northern culture. Perhaps
one learns more of the needs and requirements
of the Negroes by visiting a poor school where
the ordinary routine of teaching is going on.
I visited a high school named after Booker T.
Washington, and talked to the students in the
classes. The young lady who took me to the
head master wore a low-cut, white blouse from
which her dainty neck and her head of kinky
hair grew like a palm tree. She had dog's teeth
for eardrops hanging from her ears, and large,
kind, questioning eyes. The head master was a
quiet young man from some Negro university,
full of pent-up enthusiasm for his race and for
learning. He had boundless enthusiasm for the
Negro people and their possibilities. Was not
the greatest French writer a colored man, and

56 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
the greatest Russian poet of Negro blood? We
went into the composition class. They were
doing "Argumentation," which is perhaps a
trifle dull, but we discussed brevity and the
principle of suspense. In the English class each
child had read "Silas Marner" and was taking
it in turn to re-tell the story when called upon
by the teacher. This was pretty well done,
though Americanisms were frequent, and the
two brothers were said to be "disagreeable"
when it was meant that they disagreed. In
French the whole class was standing around the
walls of the room, writing French sentences
on the blackboards fitted into the panelling.
French was very popular. Every child wanted
to go to France by and by. In the Latin class
we discussed the merits of Cassar, in the cookery
class whether they ate what they cooked, in the
needlework, invisible mending — ^when suddenly
the fire bell sotmded. Each class at once got up
and filed out in orderly manner. In one minute
the whole school of seven hundred black chil
dren was cleared. Th^n they marched back in
twos, shoulder to shoulder, in fine style, to the
rub-a-dub-dub of a kettledrum. It was a sur
prise alarm, called by a visiting fire inspector.
None, even of the teachers, had known whether
the alarm was real.
The teachers here were all black, and pos
sessed of the greatest enthusiasm ; the children
presented some hopeless types, but they were

IN VIRGINIA 57
mostly very eager and inteUigent. The methods
of teaching seemed to be advanced, but there
were many deficiencies, notably that of the
chemistry class, where all the apparatus was
in a tiny cupboard, and consisted of some bits
of tubing, a few old test tubes, and some empty
bottles. It was a grievance, and I thought a legitimate
'one, that whereas the white schools were given
good buildings with every latest convenience,
less was thought good enough for the Negro
children. Though white sympathizers with the
ex-slave had been very generous in endowing
Negro education, their good work was more than
neutralized by the Southern local authorities,
who held the point of view that education
spoiled the "nigger." If it were not for the
enthusiasm of the Negro teachers, who carry on
in any circumstances, it might easily have hap
pened that the colored people had a whole series
of well-endowed universities and colleges like
Fisk and Hampton, but no elementary or sec
ondary school education js^orth the name.
Lack of good will toward the Negro thus ex
presses itself in many ways; the failure to
repair his roads, the failure to give him equal
facilities for education and self-improvement,
and his exclusion from the public libraries. The
white man will not say " No " to grants of money
which give him handsome Carnegie library
buildings for nothing or wiU raise universities.

58 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
even Negro universities, but he will not fulfill
his part of the unwritten contract — and honor
all philanthropy by indiscriminate good will.
After visiting the school I saw glimpses of
Negro women at work in characteristic places
of earning a living. . The management was
always very sensitive about strangers being
present, so it was possible to find out little about
the conditions. One shop was full of girls sew
ing ready-cut trousers on machines run by elec
tricity. The trousers were cut in Baltimore and
sent down here to be sewn cheaply by local col
ored labor. A Jew was in charge. A Negro
woman was looking after the "welfare" of the
girls. Another was a tobacco factory, where
girls earned eleven dollars a week, working
from 7 :30 a. m. to 5 :30 p. m., stripping tobacco
leaf in airy and fragrant rooms. At piecework
they earned from six cents a pound.
I visited the publishing office of the Journal
and Guide, where the Negroes not only edit a
paper but manufacture their own type and do
everything themselves-^one of a hundred Negro
newspapers published in the United States.
The average number of spelling errors in many
of these sheets seemed to be about three a para
graph, but that in no wise renders them ridicu
lous or deters the pen of the ready writers.
Negroes have a passion for journalism which is
out of proportion to their present development
and capacity.

IN VIRGINIA 59
As I came out of the publishing office with the
editor we saw a hearse. It was drawn by a
motor, and it was a new idea to me, that of being
motored to one's grave. The editor made a
sign and the hearse stopped. "Just a moment,'*
said he, and a lugubriously cloaked Ethiopian
with large, shining teeth stepped down.
"This is Undertaker Brown," said the editor.
"Always at yo' seyvice, sar," said the under
taker. "Is yo' thinking of taking a ride with
me?" /
I said I was not meditating on that sad course
yet. "It's a fine hearse," said Brown — "and look,
they is steel clamps to keep the coffin steady (he
swung open the rear doors) and speshal reeep-
pacles fo' the flowers."
I thanked him, and we shook hands effu
sively. All the Negroes took charge of me. It was no
difficult task to see their ways of life. It was
impossible not to feel happy in the midst of
their childish vivacity and enthusiasm and
make-believe. Their grievances were almost
lost sight of in the sunshine of prosperity in
Eastern Virginia. Miss M  told me how in
the Red Cross drives during the war she "led
the cuUud folk over the top" and the vividness
of her story of Negro vying with Negro as to
who should subscribe most money, and how she
defied the white "crackers" to continue lynch-

60 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
ing and persecuting them in the face of such
patriotism as they had shown was not only in
structive but extraordinarily amusing, and also
touching ; how a large audience of white people
was listening to a combined "platform" of black
and white orators, and Negro choirs were sing
ing "spirituals" while the collection plates
rolled round, and Miss M  when she arrived
at the hall was so dead-beat with rushing round
the town all day that she fell in a faint and
she prayed, "Lord, if I gain strength I'll take
it for a sign that I am to speak. ' ' And she came
to herself and went on to the platform and told
the white folk straight — what she felt — ^how
nine-tenths of her people could not spell the
word Democracy and had indeed only just
heard of it, and yet they sent their children to
wounds and death, and they themselves sub
scribed their last dimes for patriotic causes.
But what did America give in return? And at
the end she overheard one of the worst "crack
ers" remark that he could not help admiring
her, she was "so durned sincere."
The last evening I spent in this corner of
Virginia was at a resort of colored soldiers and
sailors, and I had a talk with a boy who had
held a commission in the Ninety-second Divi
sion, a black unit which had covered itself with
glory in France. He was a lieutenant, and was
at the taking of St. Mihiel. The Negro marines
were also very interesting— eager, serious, and

IN VIRGINIA 61
sober fellows. They were proud of being in
Uncle Sam's navy, but wanted a chance of
advancement there, did not wish to remain
twenty years in the same grade, but hoped des
perately for a gold stripe in time, and the chance
to become petty officer. Soldiers and sailors
surged in and out of the hall, smoked cigarettes,
drank soda, and chatted. I heard no foul talk,
and I took much pleasure in their appearance.
I felt what a fine body of guardians of their
country could be made of them if once prejudice
were finally overcome. In this part of Eastern
Virginia, the apex of the South, the new black
world seemed very promising and had gone far
in its fifty-seven years of freedom.
The way from Norfolk to Richmond is up the
James River, and I continued my journey on a
boat that had evidently come from New York —
redolent as it was of long-distance passengers.
There was a seat, however, just under the cap
tain's lookout, and there was nothing before me
but the progressing prow and the silver expanse
of the river. A classical voyage this — for it was
up the James River, named after James the
First, that the first pioneers of Raleigh's vir
gin land made their way. It is felt to be ro
mantic, because they were not Roundheads nor
Quakers nor Plymouth Brethren nor other
sober-liveried folk, but gentlemen of sword and
ruff, courtier-sailors who upon occasion would
be ready to throw their cloaks in the mud for a

62 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Queen to tread upon. The tradition of courtier
survives, and a rich man of Virginia is to-day
a Virginian gentleman, though there is scarcely
another State in America where the landed pro
prietors claim to be gentry. The James River ia
significant for another reason. At little James
town, which never came to anything as a city,
the first Negro slaves were landed in America in
1618, and from the small beginning of one ship
load three hundred years ago nation-wide
Negrodom, with all its black millions, has arisen.
Virginia grew prosperous in the cultivation
of toliacco, which remains to-day the staple pro
duction of a comparatively poor State. It is too
far north for the cultivation of cotton, and
though doubtless possessing great mineral
wealth, industrial research has not gone so far
as in Pennsylvania. It is essentially a conserva
tive State. Slavery is said to have depressed its
economic life so that neighboring Northern
States, whose development began much later,
easily overtook it. A somewhat patriarchal set
tled state of hfe took possession of Virginia, a
new feudalism which was out of keeping with
hustling and radical America. It is remarkable,
however, how many lawmakers, administrators,
soldiers, and Presidents Virginia has given to
the United States. Starting with gentry, it has
bred gentry.
And with regard to the Negro, the State has

IN VIRGINIA 63
a good record. Despite the various inequalities
of treatment and Jim-Crowism noticeable by
anyone who is observant, there is little or no
brutality or nigger-baiting. Lynchmg is rare,
and it must be supposed the aUeged Negro at*
tacks upon white women must be rare also.
Such relatively good conditions prevail in Vir
ginia that the whole South takes shelter behind
her. And as the proud Virginian reckons him
self par excellence the Southerner, he is often
annoyed when he reads of the worse treatment
of the Negroes further south. Virginia should
remember she is not the whole South, and she
does not exert even a moral influence upon
Georgia and Mississippi. In that respect ahe
seems to be as helpless as New England and
the Puritans, to whom politically she has gener
ally been in opposition.
The old Virginian famihes bound the Negroes
to them with undying devotion. They became
part of the family, with all the hcense of pet
children. They fought for them and assisted
them in the Civil War with the creature-hke
devotion of clansmen for their chief. The
"veterans" who still survive, Negroes like Rob
ert E. Lee's cook, who was one of many pic
turesque personalities at the Atlanta retmion,
are of a different type from the Negroes of to
day. They identified themselves with their mas
ter and mistreas's estate and person in a way

64 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
that is truly touching. Surely of all beings the
Negro is capable of the strongest and most
pathetic human attachments.
Freedom, however, and the new ideas blew
autumnly over the Virginian summer. All
changed. The family retinues broke up. The
affections were alienated. The new race of
Negro individualists arose. The old ' ' mammies ' '
and "uncles" were a people apart, and are
dying out fast now. The new Negroes are with
and for themselves. They make shift to be
happy and to amuse themselves without the
white man. And they have now their schools,
their churches which are like religious clubs,
their political societies, theatres, and other
segregated interests.
These segregated interests Eave produced
and tend to produce an ever-increasing Negro
culture, and though that culture may be some
what despised because of its humble beginnings,
there seems no reason why it should not have a
future which will compare with that of white
America. But south of Richmond and south of
Virginia there is progressively less of this
Negro culture to be found. There are the oases
of Tuskegee Institute and Atlanta and Fisk
Universities, but white opinion is adverse to
Negro education, and the black masses have
been unable to over-crow their neighbors. In
Richmond and north of it, however^ the iblack

IN VIRGINIA 65
man has leave to breathe awhile, and there are
interesting developments.
Richmond, which in 1853 reminded Olmsted
of Edinburgh in its picturesqueness, has now
quintupled its population, and spread greatly.
It is still a handsome city, and its center of
Grecian Capitol and public gardens is very
pleasant. It is the third blackest city in the
United States, between thirty-five and forty per
cent of its population being colored. A certain
General Gabriel led an insurrection of Negro
slaves against Richmond in 1801, and the city
has always adopted itself as self-constituted
warden of the white man's safety. The city has,
however, been free enough from disturbance
since the Civil War. It has its well-endowed
Negro colleges, and on the other hand its less
satisfactorily placed elementary and secondary
schools. As in Norfolk, Negro business is thriv
ing, though it has deeper roots.
It is less promising west of Richmond. A
duller economic life prevails, and conditions are
more normal, less affected by the prosperity of
war industrialism. I traveled by train to Lynch
burg. As this was my first experience of trains
south of the Mason-Dixon line, I was interested
to observe the Jim Crow arrangements. The
Negroes are kept to separate waiting rooms, and
book their tickets at other booking windows,
and they are put into separate carriages in the

66 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
trains, and not allowed promiscuously with
white people, as in the North They have not
quite so good accommodation, though they pay
the same fare; sometimes there is less space,
sometimes there is no separate smoking com
partment. Drawing-room cars and "sleepers"
are generally unavailable. Colored people con
sider it a great grievance, but it is probably the
insult implied in their segregation that affects
them most. There is not an enormous disparity
in the comfort. Inability to obtain food on long
distance trains was often mentioned to me as
the chief injustice, but the personal aspect of
the matter was always to the fore: "We don't
want to mix in with white people, or with those
who don't want us. We can get on very well
by ourselves ... " they were always
protesting. In the North, promiscuously seated black and
white passengers all seem quite happy and at
ease. Mixing them works well. There is never
any hitch. In the South, however, segregation
seems to be for the Negro's good. The less
personal contact he has with the white man the
safer he is from sudden outbursts of racial feel
ing. Of course, the railway companies ought to
give the Negro equal accommodation for equal
fare, but that is another matter.
Lynchburg is a beautifully situated little city
beside the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is a great
market for dark tobacco. It manufactures iron

IN VIRGINIA 67
pipes, ploughs, boots and shoes, and a number
of otlier articles, and boasts of "ideal labor con
ditions and no strikes." It is named after the
original planter, Charles Lynch, an Irish boy,
who ran from home and married a Quaker. It
lapsed from Quakerism to a very sinful state,
and then is said to have been reformed by the
Methodists. Now there is nothing to trouble the
mind unpleasantly at Lynchburg.
The public library seemed to have paused
sick in 1905. It is called the Jones Memorial
Library, an impreaaive white building with an
array of white steps leading up to it. Jones
himself, who was a business man and served a
very short whUe in the war of North and South,
is shown in fuU martial attire drawing his
sword, halfway up the stone steps — as it were
in act of driving readers away. A cold cloister
like air pervaded the building. Negroes were
not permitted in, and white people did not enter
much. The librarian, however, was unusually
kind and obliging, and- lent me a book without
taking a deposit. This lady said she would
rather sit next to a decent black woman in a
train than to the average White.
"We all had our black mammies — they
treated us as if we were their own babies. Can
you blame us if sometimes we love them as our
own flesh and blood? All the trouble we have is
due to Northerners coming South. And if a
Negro gets lynched, what a fuss is made of it !"

68 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
I met the manager of a tobacco warehouse.
He was not willing that I should see his Negroes
at work and talk to them, but he assured me
in a bland way, cigar in hand, that his pickers
were a jolly crowd who knew they were well
paid and would never go on strike. He paid
thirty to thirty-five cents the hour for Negro
labor. "The war has played the devil with the nig
gers," said he. "It has spread about the idea
of high wages. The North has been especially
to blame, luring the niggers up there with the
bait of big money. It has caused a rise in wages
all over the South."
His employees were unskilled. In his opinion
no Negroes were ever used for skilled work.
What I had to tell him of Newport News and
its shipyards was beyond his comprehension.
As for Hampton Institute, he averred that he
had never heard that it produced capable
artisans. In his opinion there had been some
good Negro carpenters and wheelwrights in
slavery, but none since. Freedom had been very
bad for the Negro. Yes, he utterly approved
of lynching. It was always justified, and mis
takes were never made. He had a water-tight
mind. A mile or so away was Virginia College, a
red-brick structure in the woods, where in
happy seclusion a few hundred colored men and
women were beiog enfranchised of civUization

IN VIRGINIA 69
and culture. A student took me to his study-
bedroom, hung with portraits of John Brown
and Booker T. Washington. The Bible was still
the most important book, and it occupied the
pride of place, though it was interleaved with
pages of the Negro radical monthly, The
Crisis. The student was an intense and earnest
boy with all ^e extra seriousness of persecuted
race consciousness. He said, in a low voice, that
he would do anything at any cost for his people.
He said the present leaders of the Negro world
would fail, because of narrow outlook, but the
next leaders would win great victories for color.
And he would be ready to follow the new lead
ers. What a contrast they were! — the boss of
the tobacco factory, cigar in hand, "talking
wise" on the nigger, and the quiet Negro intel
lectual in his college, whetting daily the sword
of leaming and ambition.

Ill
ORATORS AND ACTORS, PREACHERS
AND SINGERS
The aspirations and convictions of the Negroes
of to-day were well voiced in a speech I heard
at Harlem. I had been warned that I ought to
hear the "red-hot orator of the Afro-American
race," and so I went to hear him. The orator
was Dean Pickens, of Morgan College, Balti
more. 'When he came to the platform the col
ored audience not only cheered him by clapping,
but stood up and cried aloud three times :
"Tea, Pickens!"
The chairman had said he would have to leave
about half after five, but the speaker must not
allow himself to be disturbed by that, but go
right on. Pickens, who was one of the very black
and very cheerful types of his race, turned to
the chairman and said:
"You won't disturb me, brother! But if
you're going at half after five, let's shake hands
right now, and then I can go straight ahead."
And they shook hands with great gusto, and
everyone laughed and felt at ease. Pickens was
going to speak; nothing could disturb Pickens;
70

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 71
they relaxed themselves to a joyful, anticipatory
calm. Just before the turn of Pickens to speak a
white lady joumaliat had rushed on to the plat
form and rushed off between two pressing
engagements, and had given the audience a
"heart-to-heart" talk on Bolsheviks and agi
tators, and had told them how thankful they
ought to be that they were in America and not
in the Congo still. She gained a good deal of
applause because she was a woman, and a White,
and was glib, but the thinking Negroes did not
care for her doctrine, and were sorry she could
not wait to hear it debated.
"Brothers, they're always telling us what we
ought to be," said the orator, with an engaging
smile. "But there are many different opimons
about what ought to be; it's what we are that
matters. As a colored pastor said to his flock
one day — ^'Brothers and sisters, it's not the
oughtness of this problem that we have to con
sider, but the isness!' I am going to speak about
the isness. Sister S  , who has just spoken,
has had to go to make a hurry call elsewhere,
but I am sorry she could not stay. I think she
might perhaps have heard something worth
whUe this afternoon. Sister S  warned us
against agitators and radicals. Now, I am not
againat or for agitators. The question is:
'What are they agitating about?' 'Show me the
agitator,* I say. President Wilson is a great

72 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
agitator; he is agitating a League of Nations.
Jesus Christ was a great agitator; He agitated
Christianity. The Pharisees and Sadducees
didn't like His agitating, and they fixed Him.
But He was a good agitator, and we're not
against Him. Then, again, the Irish are great
agitators; the Jews are great agitators; there
are good and bad agitators. (Applause.) But,
brothers, I'll tell you who is the greatest agi
tator in thia country . . . the greateat agitator
ia injustice. (Sensation.) When injustice dis
appears, I'll be against agitators, or I'll be
ready to aee them put in a limatic asylum. (Ap
plause.) "Sister S  was very hard on the radicals.
There, again, show me the radical, I say. A
man may be radically wrong, yes, but he may
also be radically right. (Laughter.)
"Aa for the Bolsheviks, it's injustice is mak
ing Bolshevism. It's injustice that changes
quiet, inoffensive school teachers and working-
men into Bolsheviks, just as it is injustice is
stirring up the colored people. Not that we
are Bolsheviks. I am not going to say anything
against Bolsheviks, either. Show me the Bol
shevik first, I say, and then I'll know whether
I'm against him. People are alarmed because
the number of Bolsheviks is increasing. But
what is making them increase? If America is
such a blessed country, why is she making all
these Bolsheviks? You know a tree by its fruits,

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 73
and so you may know a country by what it pro
duces. These Bolsheviks that we read of being
deported in the Soviet Ark weren't Bolshevik
when they came to this coimtry. It comes to
this: that we've raised a crop of Bolshevism
in this country and are exporting it to Europe,
and now we're busy sowing another crop. Stop
sowing injustice, and Bolshevism wUl cease
growing. (Applause again.)
"But there is lesa Bolaheviam among the col
ored people than among the white, becauae the
colored are more humble, more subservient,
more used to inequalities. We are always being
told that we are backward, and we believe it;
bad, and we believe it; untrustworthy, and we
believe it; immoral, and we believe it. We are
always being told what we ought to be. But
I'll come back to what we are.
"We may be immoral ; we may be a danger to
the white women. But has anyone ever honestly
compared the morality of Whites and Blacks?
They will tell you there is not sufficient evidence
to make a comparison, or they will bring you
pamphlets and paragraphs out of newspapers,
records of disgusting crimes ; and we know very
well that in twelve million Negroes there are
botmd to be some half-wits and criminals capa
ble of terrible breaches of morality. But at beat
it is a paper evidence against the Negro, while
there is flesh-and-blood evidence againat the
White. The moral standard of the Whites ia

74 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
written visibly in the flesh and blood of three
million of our race. (Another sensation.) Broth
ers, there's one standard for the white man,
and another for the colored man. (Sensation
redoubled.) A colored man's actions are not
judged in the same light as those of a white
man. "WeU, I'm not against that. It is giving us
a higher ideal. A colored man has got to be
much more careful in this country than a white
man. He'll be more heavily punished for the
same crime. If he gets into a dispute with a
white man he's bound to lose his case. So he
won't get into the dispute. (Laughter.) Where
a white man gets five years' imprisonment, the
Negro gets put in the electric chair. Where the
white man gets six days, he gets two years.
If a white man seduces a colored girl, she never
gets redress. If the other thing occurs, the
Negro is legally executed, or lynched. What is
the result of all that inequality? Why, it is
making us a more moral, less criminal, less vio
lent people than the Whites. Once at a mixed
school they were teaching the black and white
boys to jump. The white boys jumped and the
black boys jumped. But when it was the black
boy's turn the teacher always lifted the jump
ing stick a few inches. What was the conse
quence? Why, after a while every colored bdy
in that school could jump at least a foot higher
than any white boy. (Renewed sensation, in

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 75
which Pickens attempted several times to
resume.) "That is what is happening to the Negro
race in America. We are being taught to jump
a foot higher than the Whites. We will jump it,
or we will break our necks. (Laughter.)
"Of course a great difference separates the
Black from the White still. And I don't say that
the white man hasn't given us a chance. If our
positions had been transposed, and we had been
masters and the white folks had been the slaves,
I'm not sure that we wouldn't have treated them
worse than they have treated us. But the white
folk make a mistake when they think we 're not
taking the chances they give us. We are taking
them. We are covering the ground that aepa-
ratea Black from White. The white man is not
Dutatripping ua in the race. We are nearer to
him than we were — not farther away. We
haven't caught up, but we're touching. We are
alwaya doing things we never did before. (Ap
plause.) "We shaU not have cause to regret the time
of persecution and injuatice and the higher
standard of morality that haa been aet us.
Brothers, it's all worth while. Our boys here
have been to France and bled and suffered for
white civilization and white justice. We didn't
want to go. We didn't know anything about it.
But it's been good for us. We've made the
cause of universal justice our cause. We have

76 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
taken a share in world sufferings and world
politics. It's going to help raise ua out of our
obacurity. We have discovered the French, and
shall always be grateful to them. We didn't
know France before, but every colored soldier
is glad now that he fought for France. If there
is to be a League of Nations, we know France
will stand by us. And we shall have a share in
the councils of Humanity — ^with our colored
brethren in all parts of the world." (Sensation
again.) The orator spoke for two hours, and the above
ia only a personal remembrance put down after
wards. Hia actual apeech is therefore much
shortened. But that waa the sense and the
flavor of it. It was given in a voice of humor
and challenge, resonant, and yet everlastingly
whimsical. Laughter rippled the whole time.
I shook handa with him afterwards ; for he was
warm and eloquent and moving as few speakers
I have heard. He was utterly exhausted, for
he had drawn his words from his audience, and
two thousand people had been pulling at his
spirit for two hours.
It was delightful to listen to a race propa
gandist so devoid of hatred, malice, and unchar-
itableness. Some regard humor as the greatest
concomitant of wisdom, and this representative
Negro certainly had both. He never touched on
the tragedy of race hatred and racial injustice,
but he saw the humor of them also, And the

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 77
colored audience saw the humor also. With the
English there would have been anger, with the
French spontaneous insurrection, with the Jews
gnashing of teeth, but with the Negroes it was
humor. There was no collective hate or spite,
but, manifest always, a desire to be happy, even
in the worst circumstances.
It is curious, however, that the Negro has a
livelier sense of the humor of tragedy than the
white man. For two months I visited a Negro
theatre every week, and I was much struck by
the fact that where there was moat cauae to
weep or feel melancholy, the colored audience
waa moat provoked to mirth. Negro companies,
such aa the Lafayette Players, play "Broadway
successes," melodramas, classical dramas, mu
sical comedies, and indeed anything that would
be staged in a white man's theatre. But the
result is nearly always comedy. As upon occa
sion white men bum cork and make up as
Negroes, so the Negroes paint themselves white
and make up as white men and women. Watch
ing them is an entrancing study, because there
is not only the original drama and ita intereat,
but superadded the interpretation by Africans
of what they think the white man is and does
and says. Some of it is like the servants' hall
dreased up as master and mistress and their
friends, but has remarkable felicity in acting.
A large party, all in full evening dress, is very
striking — only the Negro women are on the aver-

78 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
age so huge that when painted white and expos
ing vast fronts of bosoms, they are somewhat
incredible. A typical evening party on the
stage, with villain and hero, looks very hand
some, but not in any way Anglo-Saxon, if con
ceivably foreign American. The hero may have
a perfectly villainous expression. One's mind is
taken away from America to the Mediterra
nean. Even when painted, it is impossible to
look other than children of the sun. The drama
is played with a great deal of noise. When the
moments of passion arrive, everyone lets him
self go, and the stage is swallowed up in a hurly-
burly of violent word and action". There ia never
any difficulty in hearing what is being said. But
even the minor characters, such as butler and
waiter, who should be practically mute, insist
on whistling and singing aa they go about, and
serve the gueats in a pas de danse. In one aeri-
ous melodrama the butler never appeared
but he hummed resonantly the popular air:
"Yakky, Yekky, Yikky, Yokky Doola." The
villain or villainess is likely to act the part
with great verve, and generally I remarked a
true aptitude for acting, an ability which noise
and violence could not hide. A white drama ia
literally transformed on the Negro stage. The
Negroes catch hold of any childishness or piece
of make-beheve and give it a sort of poetry.
Thus, for instance. Miss Elenor Porter's
"Polyanna," with its gospel of "Be glad/' is

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 79
a cloying sentimentalism in the hands of the
ordinary white company. But the Negroes make
it into a sort of "Alice in Wonderland," very
amusing, very sweet, and very touching — some
thing entirely delightful. The consciousness of
the white person sitting in the colored theater
is, however, continually disturbed by ripples of
tittering whenever on the atage there is a sug
gestion of calamity. When it is melodrama that
is being played, the audience laughs all the time
like a coUection of intellectuals who have visited
a popular theatre to watch "The Silver King"
or "The Girl's Crossroads." The very sug
gestion of disaster ia funny.
This is an indication of difference in soul.
There are many who would see in these white-
painted Negroes another instance of a passion
for the imitation of white people. But one could
hardly point to anything that shows more
readily the sheer difference of black and white
people than the Negro stage such as it is to-day.
There is not as yet a Negro drama, but it cer
tainly will arise. Ridgely Torrence's "Plays
for a Negro Theatre" is perhaps the nearest
approach so far to a genuine Negro drama, but
the author is white. The great success of these
plays when acted by Negroes only shows the
glory that awaits the awakening of a true Negro
dramatist. Every large city in America has its
Negro theatre or music hall or cinema shows.
The drama could become an organ of racial self-

80 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
expression, and could give voice to the hopes
and aspirations and sorrows of the colored
people in a very moving way. I think such a
drama would prove highly original. Comedy
would be conceived in a different spirit. So far
would be conceived in a different spirit. So far
from the Negro imitating the white man, we
should all be found imitating him — as we
already imitate him in our dances and music.
The new Negro humor would infect the whole
Western world.
It is generally called "the blues." We say
we have a fit of the blues when we are feeling
depressed. It is not at all a laughing matter,
but the Negro finds that state of mind to be
alwaya humorous. A hundred new comic songs
tell the humor of sorrows. All the gloomy for-
midas of everyday life have been set to music.
Telling one's hard fortune and howling over it
and drawing it out and infinitely bewailing it,
and adding circumstantial minor sorrows as
one goes along and infinitely bewailing them-r-
this is distinctively Negro humor.
I visited one evening a Negro theatre where a
musical comedy was going on — ^words and music
both by Negroes. It opened with the usual sing
ing and dancing chorus of Negro girls. They
were clad in yellow and crimson and mauve
combinations with white tapes on one side from
the lace edge of the knicker to their dusky arms.
They danced from the thigh rather than from

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 81
the knee, moving waist and bosom in unre
strained undulation, girls with large, startled
seeming eyes and uncontrollable masses of dark
hair. A dance of physical joy and abandon, with
no restraint in the toes or the knees, no veiling
of the eyes, no half shutting of the lips, no hold
ing in of the hair. Accustomed to the very
aesthetic presentment of the Bacchanalia in the
Russian Ballet, it might be difficult to call one of
those Negro dancers a Bacchante, and yet there
was one whom I remarked again and again, a
Queen of Sheba in her looks, a face like starry
night, and she was clad slightly in mauve, and
went into such ecstaaies during the many en
cores that her hair fell down about her bare
shoulders, and her cheeks and knees, glistening
with perspiration, outshone her eyes. Follow
ing this chorus a love story begins to be devel
oped — a humorous mother-in-law of tremendous
proportions and deep baaa voice, her black face
blackened further to the color of boots, repri
mands and pets her scapegrace son, who is the
comic loafer. He confers with his "buddy" as
to how to win "Baby," the belle of Dark City.
The "buddy" is the lugubriously stupid and
faithful and above all comic Negro friend who
in trying to help you always does you an ill
turn. "Baby" is the beautiful doll of the piece
— ^" Honey baby, sugar baby!" She is courted
also by the villain, who is plausible and well
dressed and polite, but still provocative of

82 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
mirth. The hero and the villain do a competitive
cake walk for the girl, posturizing, showing off,
approaching and retiring, almost squatting and
dancing, leaping and dancing, swimming
through the air, throwing everything away from
them and falling forward, and yet never fall
ing, blowing out their cheeks and dilating their
eyes, and, as it were, hoo-dooing and out-hoo
dooing one another, pseudo-enragement, mon
key-mocking of one another, feigned stage-
fright and pretended escapes. Seeing this done
on a first night, the whole theatre was jammed
and packed with Negro people, and they recalled
the couple nine times, and still they gave en
cores. One of them, the villain, gave up, but the
other, the hero, went on as if still matched,
his mouth open and panting, and perspiration
streaming through the black grease on his face
— for he also had blackened himself further for
fun. The wedding service was danced and sung
in a "scena" which would have enravished even
a Russian audience. I had seen nothing so
pretty or so amusing, so bewilderingly full of
life and color, since Sanine's production of the
"Fair of Sorochinsky," in Moscow.
The most characteristic parts of the comedy,
however, were to come. It was very lengthy,
for Negroes do not observe white conventions
regarding time.. It would be tedious to describe
in words what was wholly delightful tO see. But
there were two crises when the audience roared

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 83
with joy excessively. First, when the young
husband suspects his wife of flirting with the
vUlain, and second, when he wants to make it up
and every imaginable calamity descends upon
his head. He arrives at his home about mid
night, wearing a terribly tight pair of boots and
a suit of old, dusty clothes. There is a party at
the house; everyone is in evening dress. He
won't go in to the dance room. He has to sit
down and take his boots off, and henceforth
walks about holding them in his hands. He sees
his wife dancing with the villain, makes a scene,
and then dramatically leaves hia wife for ever.
Left behind, she stares a moment in silence, and
then throws herself full length on a low table,
kicks up her heels, and vents her unhappiness
in a series of prolonged howls and paroxysms
which put the audience into a heaven of delight.
The tight boots and the hmp they cause are
hlues; the wife's grief ia a blue; and for the
rest of the drama the melancholy husband is
seen tramping about in his socks, carrying his
wretched boots in his handa. His unhappiness
ia long-drawn-out, but when at last he decides
to forgive and comes back home, he is met by
the lugubrious "buddy" outside his house, who
tells him all his wife has suffered in his absence.
The repentant husband looks very miserable.
"And then a Uttle baby boy was born," says
Buddy. The repentant husband cheers up.

84 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
"So like you, such a beauty."
The husband waxes excited and happy, and
asks a flood of questions.
"But the baby died," says his lugubrious
companion. The poor hero yells with sorrow.
"How Baby wished you were there to see
little baby," says Buddy. "How she talked of
youi" "The little darling — and she has quite for
given me?"
"She forgave you, all right. Ah, she was a
fine woman. You never deserved such a woman
as she was, so beautiful, so loving, so tender,
so devoted — always saying your name, counting
the days you had been away from her and mop
ing and sighing. Ah, it ate into her heart!"
"Yes, Buddy, I am a worthless, miserable
nigger, that's what I am. I didn't deserve to
have her."
"She said: 'Oh, for One kiss; oh, for one
hug  ' "
"I'll go in to her at once."
"Stop!" says Buddy impressively.
"Wha's the matter?"
"She died day after baby was bom."
"No?""Yassir. Stone dead. Sure's I live."
The poor hero breaks down and sobs and
wails and howls and blubbers, distraction in his
aspect, his knees knock together, he throws his

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 85
hat in the dust — and all the while the audience
is convulsed with laughter. The Negro women
in the stalls find their chairs too small for them
and all but fall on to the floor; the smartly
dressed Negro youths in the boxes are guffaw
ing from wide-opened moutha and laughing as
much with their bodies as with their faces.
"Mother and I went to town to buy the cof
fin," says Buddy. "Poor old Mother!"
"Did Mother forgive me?"
"Oh, yes, she forgave you all right. Such a
mother as ahe was. She knew you were bad and
wrong and a disgrace, but she loved you. Ah,
how she loved you!"
"I am glad there's poor old Mother."
"Mother and I arranged for the funerals, but
we had to seU up the home. Yea, every atick."
More and more grief on the part of huaband.
"I'll go in and see her anyway," says he,
moving toward the door.
"Stop!" says Buddy.
"Wha's the matter?"
"She's dead > ;. . run over by a trolley car
aa we were going to the funeral ..." and so
on, the denouement of course being that when
he is about to go and hang himself he catches
a glimpse of Mother, larger, if possible, than
life, and he realizes it is all a hoax, and then
Baby appears with her little baby — and all is
joy. Of courae the play par excellence for a Negro

86 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
theatre is "OtheUo," or rather, for a Negro
actor in a mixed cast. Unfortunately, no white
company in the United States wUl allow a Negro
actor to take even a subordinate role. Even
"nigger" parts, humorous Negro parts, have to
be taken by white men. An anomaly to be reme
died ! The prof eaaion of acting is too noble a
one for color prejudice to lurk there. I fear,
however, that it will be long before mixed com
panies of white and colored actors perform on
the dramatic stage in the United States.
"Othello" apparently is seldom played, though
the old tragedy of Shakespeare is strangely of
the time and apropos. The tragedy of Othello
exhibits the same race prejudice existent in the
sixteenth century as now, and expresses itself
in similar terms. The white woman is not for
Moors or Negroes on any terms. It is almost
incredible that Desdemona should shun
The wealthy curled darlings of our nation, to incur a gen
eral mock,
Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom
Of such a thing as thou.
He must have used an enchantment on her.
Othello is the devil. He is a black man. He is a
Barbary horse —
You'll have your nephews neigh to you.
You'll have coursers for cousins and gennets for Germans.
There is httle doubt that by Othello Shake
speare intended a Negro, or, in any case, some-

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 87
one whom the white denizens of New Orleans
would caU a nigger. "Moor" or "Blackamoor"
was the common name for Negro, and the local
detail of the play confirms the impression of a
thick-lipped, black-bosomed, rather repulsive
physical type. The psychology of Othello is,
moreover, that of the modem Negro. His florid
and sentimental talk, with its romantic yearn
ing and its exaggerations, is very characteristic.
I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach.
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels' history:
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven.
It was my hint to speak, — such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat.
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
And are not his last noble words, with his dra
matic and romantic gesture, and his suicide, the
noble African set upon a pedestal!
Fanny Kemble in her diary tells how John
Quincy Adams thought "it served Desdemona
right for marrying a 'nigger,' " and she imag
ines the fine effect which some American actor
in the role of lago mig'ht obtain by substituting
for "I hate the Moor" "I hate the nigger,"
pronounced in proper Charleston or Savannah
fashion. "Only think," says Fanny Kemble,
"what a very new order of interest the whole
tragedy might receive acted from this stand-

88 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
point and called 'Amalgamation, or the Black
Bridal.' "
The sympathy of a Southern audience wonld
be almost exclusively with lago and Boderigo
and the father. But could they tolerate it with
out a lynching? No Negro company dare pro
duce it south of the Mason-Dixon line.
How the Negroes would perform tragedy in
the vein of tragedy I do not know. There is ao
much tragedy in their history, in their past, that
they have sought only comic relief. I believe
the characteristic Americanism of "Keep Smil
ing" or, as expressed in the song, "Smile,
Smile, Smile," comes fromthe Negro. The col
ored people as a whole seem to be serious only
in church or at musical gatherings. Even the
eloquent pastor has no easy task to gain the
attention of his congregation. He must walk
about and rage and flaah, and with crashing
reverberations explode the wrath of God like
the voice of the Almighty in the storm. He must
forget ordinary diction in forgetting himself,
and chant in ecstasy and rapture, lifting up his
whole soul to the Lord. If you talk to the Negro,
he merely laughs ; you must chant to him to be
taken seriously. In this possibly lies the vein
for Negro dramatic tragedy and prophetic
poetry. Perhaps, however, the emotional appeal
of such will be too strong for Whites.
It is a great ordeal for a sensitive white per
son to take part in a Negro revival or camp

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 89
meeting. The emotional strain is tremendous.
Though it is difficult to move the Negro, once he
is moved he can be rapidly brought to a frenzy
which surely has little enough to do with the
Christian religion. But even when he is not
greatly moved it is somewhat heart-searching
for a white person present.
One day I went in at a chapel door. The build
ing was full of Negroes; every seat seemed
taken. Perched high above the platform was a
black woman, aU in black, with a large jet cross
on her broad bosom. She was reading from the
Firat Book of Samuel in a great oracular voice
which never roae nor fell, but was like a pro
nouncement of eternal law. I was taken right
up to the front and given a seat under her
throne. I knew at once that there was likely to
be an emotional storm in the audience. It was
throbbing on the heartstrings even as I listened
to the reading, and I wondered how I should
combat it. After the Scripture the Lord's
Prayer was said by a portentous Negro who had
the frame of an African warrior. When he
went down on his knees he shook the beams of
wood and the seats. He prayed angrily, and
clapped as he prayed, and interjected remarks.
Thy will be done! Yes, Lord, that's it, that's
what we want, certainly.
Give us this day our daily bread! Yes, give
us it (clap, clap, clap). Give us our daily bread,
Lord. Feed us I Feed us. Lord!

90 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
The congregation also on all hands inter
jected its remarks and clapped and praised as
the Lord's Prayer went along.
The woman all in black was a famous mover
of souls, and her sermon was evidently the most
looked-for religious excitement of the morning.
She was a plain woman with a powerful will, a
great voice, and a rare knowledge of the Bible.
She preached from the text, "Saul hid himself
among the stuff. ' ' First she told the story in a
quiet voice and then began to make the appli
cation. It was no use hiding from God, for He
would find you out.
So rousing were her simple words, and such
was the atmosphere she was begetting in the
midst of her congregation, that I had to do
everything in my power to avoid breaking down
under the influence and sobbing like a child.
I went over in my mind the drama of "Mac
beth," and reconstructed "Richard the Third,"
and called to memory the speeches I had listened
to at the Bar dinner the night before, and what I
had been doing during the past week and month.
But all the while I registered also in my brain
the whole of what the black priesteas waa
saying. Next to me a feminine voice kept crying out :
"Help her, Lord, help her!" and I back-pedalled
for all I was worth. Presently the preacher was
lifted out of the ordinary, everyday voice into
a barbaric chant, which rose and fell and

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 91
acclaimed and declaimed in rhythmical grandeur
and music. I dared not look at the woman at
my side. But she now lisped out, "She's all
right now. Lord; she's all right now," and I
thought of the relief of the Welsh when their
preachers get into the strain they call the hwyl.
I then very cautiously peered round at the
woman. What was my astonishment to see a
girl of eighteen with a face like a huge, dusky
melon. Her jaws were perfectly relaxed, her
eyes half shut, and her upper lip, which was
raised, exposed her smiling teeth and a layer of
sweet chewing gum.
Meanwhile the Reverend Norah up above was
urging us all to come out from behind the stuff.
We were always hiding behind our business, be
hind our families, behind our bodies.
"They are hiding behind their bodies, O
Lord! "Yes, 0 Lord, they say that they are sick,
that they are ill,
"That they cannot do this and they cannot
do that becauae they are feeble in health.
"0 come out from behind the atuff I
"You saw Saul hide behind the baggage,
0 Lord.
"Our Negro brothers and sisters are hiding
there to-day.
"Hiding behind their wealth-

" Hiding behind their charity-

92 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
"Hiding behind their houses and their clothes
and their cars,
"Yes, and their wives and their husbands,
"And other peoples' opinions.
"But You see them, O Lord,
"You see them, and You'll bring them
out  "
"I'm hiding there right enough," broke out
from the congregation, and "Lord, save us!"
"Lord, help us!"
The whole mass of black humanity swayed
under the power of the emotion which the
woman had kindled. They were about to stand
in frenzy and give the great gospel shout of
repentance, when something happened; the
woman's strength gave way, and she slipped out
of the chant back into her ordinary voice. At
once the spell was broken.
The tiniest tots in the congregation then came
out carrying little jam jars which they bore
to each individual for his collection, and we
sang a rolling and clamorous hymn, and all went
home. One note further in the sermon, and there
would have been a great scene of conversion at
the close of the service, and everyone would
have decided to come out from behind his stuff,
as the preacher recommended. But it's better
for one's religion not to be converted every
Sunday.

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 93
Many white people would no doubt be so
greatly amused by a sermon of this kind that
they would find difficulty in containing their
laughter. One laugh from a white stranger
might have proved calamitous, and would cer
tainly have evoked hostility. On the other hand,
there are Whites who love psycho-physical reli
gious emotionalism. Such a type is the poet who
wrote —
We mourned all our terrible sins away,
And we all found Jesus at the break of the day.
Blessed Jesus!
I never met a Negro who thought it humorous
unless it were a member of one aect telling of
the "goinga-on" in another. Each different
race or people seems to have its different char
acteristic religious expression. When one haa
seen the exaltation of Copt and Arab in religion,
when one has heard the great choric voice of
Russia at church, and the splendid, purpoaeful
faith of Teutonic hymna, one knowa that a calm
singing of "Praise to the Hohest in the
Height!" is not the only mode of praise.
There are fifty thousand ways of praising God,
and every aingle one of them is right.
So there is no call to chide the Negro for his
excess. His ways are part of the natural and
Divine history of Man, and it ia infinitely worth
while to conaider them with an open and chari
table mind. The hysteria, the frenzy, of some
mppfirura T linvp nli.ssprvpfl i.c tint in iho -mhii-a

94 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
man. There is no use being appalled by it. It
is the third part which finishes the man down
ward, as St. John says in the desert.
"And after these emotional excitements they
commit so many murders," said a Southern
woman to me. i
"If so, one must be upon one's guard in the
presence of a converted man," said I.
The foundation of the Negro 's great religious
seriousness is to be found in the Negro hymn
or "spiritual." These spirituals were before
there were Negro churches, before Christianity
was actually allowed to the slaves. That is why
they are more often called plantation melodies.
They were sung in the twilight of the old planta
tions, and gave voice to a great human sorrow
and a great human need. They show that the
Negro has obtained access to the spiritual deeps,
that he has a soul as we have — a fact so often
denied — and that he is capable of penetrating
the sublime. I listened very often to theae
songa. In several places they were sung to
honor a white visitor. I heard them rendered
by the Hampton Singers and lectured upon by
Harry T. Burleigh, to whose efforts in re
search the preservation of several are due.
There is no question of the excellence of them.
They make a great appeal to all people who
have music in their aouls.
It is, however, a musical effect, not an Intel-

ORATORS, PREACHERS, SINGERS 95
lectual one. The words have often little rele
vance to anything profound, and at beat are
chUdiah. There is generally a keynote which
murmurs through the whole of the song, the
function of the basso-profundo who provides a
river of harmony like life itself, and the tenors
and baritones and the shriller voices move on
this flowing base like ships. On the rivers the
slaves loved to sing as they rowed their mas
ters, using most aptly the beat of the oars and
the swish of the water, while the man who
stood at the helm and steered was usually the
deep bass. One of the most unforgettable melo
dies is "0, Listen to the Lambs!" The tenors
seem to imitate flocks of innumerable sheep and
lambs all crying to one another, while the
basao-profundo is the irrelevance of "I want
to go to Heaven when I die," continually
repeated in subterranean mumbling and
whispers 
O listen to the la-ambs
All a-cry . . in'. All a-cry . . in'.
An' I wan' to go to Hebn w'en I die!
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "Go Down,
Moses," "Didn't Hear Nobody Pray," "The
WaUs of Jericho," and many others are as
suredly famous.
These and many other phenomena give indi
cations of a distinctive Negro point of view, and
of an incipient broad-based popular culture. A

96 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
sympathetic study will always give evidence
that can be set against the point of view that the
Negro is nothing, or an animal, or a scamp at
best, or a shame to the species. I was sitting
in the gardens at Baltimore in the shade of a
giant plane tree one day when out came a mixed
class of Negro boys and girls and a young
eager colored master of about twenty-five. The
girls were luxuriant "flappers" of every hue of
polished ebony; the boys were spindle-legged
and spry and bullet-headed. They all examined
plants and trees and caterpillars and flowers
nnder the informing tutelage of the master.
They were as noisy and vivacioua aa a flock of
birds that has suddenly lighted on a plain. They
minded no outsider. But a tall white man
passed them, and I saw on his face a look of
unutterable contempt.
"Leaming botany" said he to me in a stage
whisper. "They'll know as much about it to
morrow moming as pigs,"

IV
IN TENNESSEE
The South, they tell me, never alters. It is said
to be the least characteristic and most unin
teresting part of the United States. "You wUl
not care for it," I was told. "It has not changed
in fifty years." It ia certainly little visited. It
does not exemplify the hustle and efficiency of
the North. And then you cannot lecture down
there. It is not a literary domain. The conse
quence is that in Great Britain many people
confound the "Southern States" with the
Republica of South America. I was asked in
letters why I had gone South. It was thought
there must be lesa interest there. But that is a
mistake. The South is as vital as the West and
the East. On the whole it is more picturesque.
It is not so diversified, but the vast areas of cot
ton on the one hand and of sugar and corn and
rice on the other, and the forests, present well-
marked features and give the South a hand
some natural aspect. It is true that the South-
em point of view as regards the Negro does not
change very much, and that all vote one way,
but it does not follow that the Southern point
of view as regards the whole future of the

98 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
United States has not been modified and will not
change. The South has been very poor and is
becoming rich, will perhaps become very rich
and prosperous. It was almost deprived of
political power, and nbw it has, in an extraordi
nary way, regained political power. It ia well
known that the opinion of a poor and ruined
man changes when Fortune makes up to him for
the past. So also with the South.
Then, in considering a people as a whole, one
is bound to reckon character. Thus, in (jreat
Britain, what important factors are the rugged-
ness of -Yorkshire and Lancashire, the caution
of the Scots, the authority-loving of the south
ern counties, the enthusiasm and imaginative
ness of the Celts. And in America one has to
reckon, not only with the Puritan fervor of New
England, but with the determination and turbu
lence and group instinct of the more cavalier
spirit of the South. Though heat makes the
Southern women languid and the Southern men
fiery and quick of temper, it does not seem to
make them weaker. On the whole, the South
erner seems to have a stronger will than the
Northerner, and despite the exuberance of
North and West, and a flood of contrary ideaa
and aentiments, the Southerner remains, as it
were, etemaUy incapable of being suppreaaed.
Aa long as America speaks, the South will
always speak. Therefore, the South is very sig
nificant in American life,

IN TENNESSEE 99
After Virginia I went by rail to the neighbor
ing State of Tennessee. I came into KJioxville
one Friday night. The sight of it in the moon
light was impressive — the broad railway bridge,
the clock tower with luminous face, the main
street flocking with a Tennessee crowd, all shops
fully ablaze with light; bunting and wreaths
hung from house to house — for it was the week
of the Fair. A Salvation Army meeting bel
lowed forth musical offerings and hallelujahs
"thro' the flag-flUed air." Everywhere elec
tric signs were twinkling. Laughter and talk
walked arm in arm along the broad main way.
"It's a fine city, this Knoxville of yours," I
ventured to remark to a stranger. "No, not a
fine city," said he, "a fine people, but not a fine
city, a wretched city ; it needs pulling down and
rebuilding, but fine people, the fitnest people in
the world." This rare self -consciousness and
behef in self, this group feeling, I believe, one
would look in vain for in the North.
"Sober Knoxville" is one of the most respon
sible of Southern cities. Tennessee as a whole
is quiet and steady. Lynching is infrequent. It
was therefore considered very extraordinary
that a race riot should break out in the city.
The race riots in Chicago and Washington in
1919 were no doubt worse, but none caused more
perplexity than that which broke out at Knox
ville on August 30th of that year.
Deplorable and terrible as were those Negro

100 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
pogroms of the year after the war, I think they
were due to special conditions. They were the
expression of the frustrated ferocity that would
otherwise have gone into the war. Demobiliza
tion excitements had much to do with them —
the parades of Negro regiments, the idleness of
white troops and of the demobilized unem
ployed. When the complete transition to peace
conditions had been achieved, the danger of
these outbreaks was averted. The year 1920
remains freer from race riots. That is not to
say that they may not break out again, and on
a larger acale. In any time of social upheaval
and revolution they become possible. Those
that have occurred show an ugly animus againat
the Negro atill latent in the common people of
the cities.
As explained to me, the outbreak at Knoxville
seemed comparatively simple in origin. Mr.
Maures Mayes, a Negro, murdered Mrs. Lind
say, a white woman. He was arrested and sent
to a jail in another city. A mob formed to enter
Knoxville prison and lynch the Negro. But a
committee opened parley with the governor,
and was allowed to satisfy itself that the pris
oner was not there. Apparently, however, there
was a considerable amount of whisky stored in
the prison. The whisky attracted the mob also.
A general assault was commenced, the place
was stormed, and all prisoners were released.
Troops sent to disperse the mob joined it, and a

IN TENNESSEE 101
second purpose then appeared — to take revenge
on the colored population. Someone started a
rumor and it spread like wildfire, that thou
sands of Negroes were marching on the business
part of the city and that two soldiers had been
killed. The colored folk were taken by surprise
— there was a great deal of looting and destruc
tion and personal robbery, and a number of
Negroes were killed, while many were injured
It was the first race riot that had ever taken
place in Knoxville, and all reputable people
were sorry for it. I was told it all sprang from
the crime of one Negro. But one might just
as well say it all sprang from a desire to have
the whisky in the prison — 0 KJnoxville, 0 so
briety !
Because in general the Negroes are well
treated in Knoxville, this lapse has been dis
counted, and they are surprisingly free from
bitterness. I called at the Carnegie Library for
colored people, a quiet little building — not much
by comparison with the really grand public
library of the city, but still a provision, and
as such to be noted, in comparison with so many
other cities where the Negroes not only have
not access to the general public libraries, but
have no separate provision made for them. The
Knoxville library for colored people was, I be
lieve, opened by the mayor some years ago, and
the city felt proud of what it had done. It is
unfortunately very inadequate, but it is in the

102 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
charge of a capable colored lady who will per
haps help to "agitate" a bigger and better one.
The Negroes are very grateful in any case for
what they have.
I called on several representative Negroes.
They were much more friendly to the whites
than those I found in Virginia. * ' We get on very
well here," was a common remark. I visited the
colored lawyer H  , established in Knoxville
some eight years. He was in deshabille and was
sweeping out his office with a hard brush and
shovel. He turned out to be very lawyer-like in
conversation. I asked him a whole series of
questions, to which he answered "Yes" or
"No," without volunteering any information
or enlarging in any way. He called the race
riot a "circumstance." He said he had won
cases even in the Supreme Court, and was re
spected by the Bench for his grim determina
tion. After saying that, he went to the window
and spat violently into the street below and then
returned. I praised his probable skill in handling juries,
and he was moUified.
"I am practiced to read men's faces," said
he. "I pick out the man who is hkely to cause
trouble and address myself exclusively to him.
Judges here are absolutely devoid of color
prejudice." A seeming half-wit had just' been sentenced
to death at the city of Danville for accosting

IN TENNESSEE 103
a white girl. The trial waa of the briefest, and
the Negro's transit to the electric chair was
made the most rapid possible — so as to avoid a
lynching. The lawyer thought that the sentence
was harsh — ^but as long as lynching was so prev
alent, legal pimishment had to be severe.
"Did you ever hear of a white man being
convicted for assaulting a Negro?" I asked.
"No," aaid he, conatrainedly, "not unless it
were an offense against a child. ' '
He did not think Negroes showed much' enter
prise in Knoxville — there were no banks, no
large businesses, no drug stores, though there
were four colored lawyers and sixteen doctors.
After Lawyer H  I visited Mr. D  , a
successful colored dentist, with well-groomed
head and manicured hands. He was clad in a
white hospital coat which waa spotless, and by
the appurtenances of his cabinet he seemed to
be abreast of scientific progress as far as den
tistry was concerned. He had a good practice,
not only among the Blacks, but with the white
country population. He said the old settlers had
no prejudice against a colored dentist, though
the younger, newer men and women were dif
ferent. WhUe I was talking a colored girl came
in to have Mr. D  fill a hollow tooth. He said
the colored folk had suffered greatly with their
teeth in the past, but were taking more care of
them now. He loved putting gold crowns on
teeth, and most smart Negro young men felt

104 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
a little gold in the mouth was very chic — just
the thing. It is certainly a characteristic of the
modern Negro. Mr. D  watched the race riot
from his office window, and was much alarmed
at the time. But, like Lawyer H  , he felt
that there was good feeling in the city. He
thought it an accident. The soldiers had been
inflamed against the Negroes.
In lack of Negro enterprise what a contrast
Knoxville waa to places like Norfolk, Virginia !
I was soon to realize that the further South I
went the more stagnant would Negro life show
itself — ^until I reached the point when there
would be little scope for investigation. The
traveler going South from Washington is let
gradually downward into a sort of pit of degra
dation. Chattanooga is lower than Knoxville,
Birmingham lower than Chattanooga, rural
Georgia and Alabama lower than all of these.
This I think ought to be realized lest the glamour
of Negro progress in Virginia and the North
give a false impression of the whole.
At Khoxville it was Fair time. The time when
I was in the South was one of fairs and car
nivals. As the Russian goes on pUgrimage when
the harvest haa been gathered in, so the Ameri
can goes to the Fair in the fall. There is in
the South a vast network of the moving cara
vans of showmen, and a huge show business
quite novel to an Englishman. I arrived in
many towns at the time of their Fair, and had

IN TENNESSEE 105
the greatest difficulty in obtaining shelter for
the night, so crowded were they. The people
from the country round rolled in to the Fair
in their cars and choked every thoroughfare.
One blemish on the large State Fair is that,
except as servants, no Negroes are to be seen.
There is a great gathering of white people, but
no Blacks. It is therefore more polite, more
well dressed, more conventional, and there is
less of color and hfe than would fairly have
obtained had all been welcome. What is a Fair
if it be not an outing for the poor! It is re
duced to this in the South, that the Whites have
their Fairs and the Negroes have theirs
separately. I accompanied an Appalachian sportsman.
He told me he shot a big, black bear the day
the Armistice was signed. Sure as the first of
November came round he was out with gun and
haversack and Negro boys hunting the bear. He
hunted for the love of hunting, though bear's
flesh could be sold at a dollar a pound and was
worth it, every cent. He thought Tennessee did
"mighty well" in the war, and they gave the
boys a fine reception when they came back.
They'd had a drop of whisky in them in the
riot, but a few niggers less wasn't much matter.
He pointe'd out to me signs of Knoxville pros
perity — Chouses that cost ten to twenty thou
sand dollars to build — ^picturesque and wooden,
but very costly from a European point of view.

106 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
No cotton was grown in this district, and next
to no tobacco. Many people did not even know
what a stalk of cotton was like.
The Knoxville Fair was a wondrous exposi
tion of Southern hogs (each hog docketed with
personal weight and what it gains per day),
bnlls and chickens and pigeons and rabbits and
owls and what not, and there was a hall of auto
mobiles festooned in fiags. Caged lions and
tigers flanked the auditorium of the free vaude-
mWe entertainment. Negro boys flogged bony,
grunting camels round the grounds. The pop
corn stands vied with the ice-cream counters
stacked with cones. There was an astonishing
Uproar from the various revolving "golden
dreams" and of the jibbing metal horses; and
outside all manner of peep shows, men who had
sold their voices talked till they foamed at the
lips or went hoarse — of the freaks and wonders
within. Thus the two-headed child, the girl who
does not die though her half -naked body is
transfixed with darts; the "whole dam family"
'(apes dressed up as human beings) ; the ciga
rette fiend, a thin, yellow strip of humanity who
is slowly but surely smoking himself to death;
Bluey, the missing link between monkey and
man; the fire swallower from the South Sea
Islands; Zarelda, the girl with a million eyes
(dotted all over her body), who has baffled aU
scientists; the garden of Allah and the garden
of lovely girls; Leach, the human picture

IN TENNESSEE 107
gallery, with the world's masterpieces tattooed
all over his body; Dagmar, the living head
without a body . . .
And the owner of the show, and of the bought
voice which must not stop advertising it to the
passer by, stands at one side in shirt sleeves,
and rolls his quid and spits, and seems to medi
tate on dollars and cents, ever and anon signal
ing to the man with the voice not to let the
crowd get away without coming in. It was
pathetic to come upon the freaks, later, on the
road ; see Zarelda, demurely clad in black, grip
ping a suitcase, and realize that she had
"dates" all over the South, and showed her
mUlion eyes to-day in KnoxvUle, then in Macon,
then in Savannah, then Jacksonville and Mobile
and New Orleans and a score of other places,
sometimes for a day, sometimes for three days
or a week — ^not in any sense a music-hall artiste,
but a sort of gypsy by life and by profession.
How tired the freaka must get, knocking about
from State to State and listening to the loud
laugh that speaks the vacant mind.
One would expect as the accompaniment of
this show hfe a great number of strolling musi
cians and a poor folk wandering from town to
town. But there are practically none. Strolling
musicians now obtain polite employment at the
many cinema houses where senaational pictures
alternate with low vaudeviUe. Southern talent
meets with a boisterous reception from the

108 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
twenty-cent houses of Atlanta and New Orleans.
One hears very broad humor upon occasion,
frantic burlesques of the nervous hysteria and
half-witted ignorance of the "nigger" — ^when
the white man makes up as a Negro he always
shows something lower than the Negro. At one
show in New Orleans the whole audience roared
with mirth at a competition in what was called
"fizzing," the spitting of chewed tobacco in
one another's faces and the bandying of purely
Southern epithets and slang. Music ia little de
veloped among the Whites, though the singing
of "Dixie" choruses is hailed as almost na
tional. Musical instruments are now rare, even
among the Negroes, and seem to have been dis
placed by the gramophone. There is no "grid-
ling," no beggars singing hymns on the city
streets. In the country there are few tramps.
The ne'er-do-wells are to be found more in
the market places and the cheap streets. Pro
hibition has subterraneanized that part of the
drink traffic which it has not killed, and the
hitherto unemployed find a congenial occupa
tion leading the thirsty to the "blind tigers."
It is rare to come across a man on the road, and
Vachel Lindsay, tramping Georgia and reading
his poems to the farmers, must have been
unique, not only as a poet, but as a tramp. I
saw nothing resembling the grand procession of
"hoboes" that I met when tramping to Chicago
seven years ago. Perhaps it was becauae immi-

IN TENNESSEE 109
gration had ceased, and throughout the whole of
America there was a need for labor which ab
sorbed all men. Yet there could have been few
on the road even before the war : the vaat num
ber of Blacks makes it unfitting for a white man
to be tramping, and there is, moreover, less
chance for a white man to get work in any case.
Much is said against the "poor Whites" or
"poor white trash," as the white proletariat is
called by the black proletariat. They are said
to be the worst enemies of the Negro, and the
Negro is afraid of Bolaheviam or Socialism
because he knows the common white people,
"those who have nothing and are nothing," are
the last people likely to give him justice. As
one of the most popular of Negro leaders said
recently: "As long as Socialism is followed by
the lower classes of Whites, we can see there is
more danger coming from Socialism to the
Negro than from anything else, because below
the Mason and Dixon line the people who Ijmch
Negroes are the low-down Whites." Of course
those crowds who joyfully allow themselves to
be photographed around the charred remains of
the Negro t^ey have burnt, thus affording the
moat terrible means of propaganda to Negro
societies, are more of the dull, uneducated
masses than of the refined and rich. They hate
the Negro more because they are thrown more
in contact with him, and their women are more
nnnPHHiWo tn liim Thev rn-A in Rnmnpfi+inn -nritli

110 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
the Negro for work and wages, and would gladly
welcome a complete exodus to the North or to
Liberia, for then their wages would go up.
Physically, and man for man, they are afraid
of the Negro, and therefore they attack him in
mobs. Fortunately, there are not in the South
great numbers of poor Whites except in the
large cities and at the ports.
By contrast with the people of the North, the
people of the South are noisy, very polite in
doors, but brusque and rough without. They
wUl do a great deal for you as a friend, but
not much for you as a stranger. They have
sharp-cut features, thin hps, blank brows. The
women do not take on a fair fullness of flesh,
but are inclined to dry up and fade. There are
an enormous number of faded women every
where — a sign, perhaps, that the climate does
not suit the race. The accent seems to vary
with the State, and Tennessee speaks with far
more distinction than Georgia, where the "nig
ger brogue" prevails, and it is difficult to tell
White from Black by voice. Nearly all r's are
dropped. Moral character is said to be weak,
but there is nevertheless a very high standard,
at least in matters of sex. The Southern woman
is by no means as conscious of her charms as
th&JSTorthem woman, and an unusually suscept
ible male could spend a quiet time in these parts.
Men are not thinking of love and composing
poems, even though it is the South, but they are

IN TENNESSEE 111
if anything keener on business and money.
Most people seemed suspicious of strangers, not
communicative, but once they have taken the
stranger to their hearts they easily become
warm-heartedly effusive.
Aa a atranger I encountered a surprising
lack of civility at a "non-union" plough com
pany at Chattanooga. The employees were
mostly Negroes, and I called on the white super
intendent to obtain permission to go over the
works. A heavy- jowled fellow kept me wait
ing half an hour in an anteroom, and then not
only refused point-blank to let me see condi
tions in his factory, but was so brusque in his
manner that I was forced to give him my mind
roundly on his lack of courtesy, not to me per
sonally, but to a literary man. Aa a rich busi-
neaa man he seemed to conaider the profession
of letters aa dirt under hia feet. I muat aay I
felt shame to be so angry, and I was much
amused some weeks later to read in a Chatta
nooga newspaper picked up by accident that
BUly Simday had visited this city and had
preached in the said works, ahd at the close of
his address, the superintendent being present,
all the employees were en bloc converted to
Christ. Chattanooga is a larger city than Knoxville,
better built and more spacious. One has entered
the rayon of Southern steel and coal. Its many
factory chimneys and its sooty sky testify to

112 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
considerable industrialism. As in its sister city
of Birmingham, Alabama, there are many non
union shops. A great steel strike was in prog
ress in the United States, but while the workers
in the North stood their ground in a long and
bitter struggle, there was scarcely the sem
blance of a walkout in places like (Chattanooga
and Birmingham, Northern labor trouble
seemed to mean Southern capitalistic pros
perity. One reason why Southern labor remains to a
great extent unorganized is the Negro difficulty.
Unions are not ready to accept Negro member
ship. Therefore the Negro can always be
brought in to do the white man's work if the
latter goea on atrike. Whether union or non
union, the wages seem fairly high. I talked with
a Negro moulder who earned on an average six
dollars a day. That is over eighteen hundred
dollars American, and about five hundred
pounds British money a year. A non-union un
skilled man would, however, earn little more
than two dollars a day — which, with the cost of
food so high, is very little.
I noticed a difference in the attitude of the
colored population in Chattanooga. It was
much more depressed than that of Knoxville or
the Virginian cities. Nothing terrible had oc
curred in Chattanooga, but there was said to
be a bad mob, and what had happened at Knox
ville had frightened - them. The newspapers

IN TENNESSEE 113
contained intimidating news paragraphs. On
September 26th, at Omaha, Nebraska, the mob
had burned down the courthouse, lynched a
Negro, and tried to lynch also the mayor, E. P.
Smith, who was twice hoisted to a lamp-post
becauae he refused to hand over a prisoner to
the mob. "As I stood under that lamp-post with
the mob's rope necktie circling my neck and
listened to the yells 'Lynch him,' I took the
same courae any true American would have
taken," said the mayor. In the face of death
he refused to yield hia authority to Judge
Lynch. That was at Omaha, in the West. On
September 29th two Negroes were lynched by
twenty-five masked men at Montgomery, Ala
bama, for alleged assault of a white woman.
On October 1st the terrifying color riot broke
out at Elaine, Arkansas, on a dispute over cot
ton prices. On October Gth two Negroes were
burned at the stake and three were shot to
death at Waahtngton, Georgia, for supposed
comphcity in the murder of a deputy sheriff.
Next day, at Macon, Eugene Hamilton waa
lynched for attempted murder, and ao on.
Since the Civil War one could scarcely find a
more bloody and terrible period. And the poor
Whites of Chattanooga kept hinting that Chat
tanooga's turn would soon come. I was told
Negroes did not care to stray far from their
homes in the suburbs after dark. They were
,  x_j,  J  1 _ J  j.i_ .i__  1  j» 

114 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
church. The Jim Crow portion of the trolley
car was invaded by roughs trying to start
trouble. In some cities in the South the Negroes
have aU-black motor omnibuses and jitneys
running. These would obviate much of the dan
ger of the trolley car which has only a straw
screen between the races. But Negro enterprise
has not risen to motor omnibuses in depressed
Chattanooga. From a white point of view, the
city might be improved by more light. It is a
dark and extensive place. The great companies
do not want to lose their Negroes and might do
more to keep them. I found the Negroes scared,
and many were ready to seize the first oppor
tunity to go northward. Mr. T  said, ' ' They
might kill us all. " Mrs. W  said: "All who
have children want to go away. There'll be no
chance for our children here. Before the war
it was much better, but they seem to dislike us
more now. Perhaps it would have been better if
none of our men had gone to the war." I en
deavored to reassure most of those with whom
I talked, for they had an exaggerated idea of
their danger.
At Chattanooga there was no library for the
colored people. There seemed to be little Negro
business. I was at once introducd to the drug
gist and the undertaker. Undertaking and drug-
selling, which includes ice-cream-soda dispens
ing, seem the most popular business enter
prises among the Negroes. Wherever three or

IN TENNESSEE 115
four polite Negroes were gathered together and
I was talking to them someone would say,
"Permit me to introduce Undertaker So-and-
So, and the latter would smUe blandly and offer
his brown hand. At Chattanooga I visited a
sweU establishment and looked over a show
room of elegant coffins, and I was shown into
the parlor and the embalming room, where on
a stone slab the bodies were prepared. This
undertaker had started originally with one cof
fin, and had now become, as I saw, one of the
rich men of the city. Funerals cost between a
hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars, and
were usuaUy defrayed by the insurance com
panies. I found the large East Side drug store, kept
by a young man who had been in charge of the
pneumonia ward of the 92nd Divisional Hos
pital in France. He had aa many white cua-
tomers as colored. He did not sell much patent
medicine, aa he said the attitude of the United
States Government to patent medicines had be
come most severe. He was a fully qualified
chemist. Doctors prescribed and he dispensed
in the ordinary way. Yes, many were surprised
to find a Negro chemist in a position of authority
in a hospital, but that was due to white people's
ignorance of the progress made by colored stu
dents of medicine.
I greatly enjoyed "Joseph's Bondage," a

116 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Evidently the Negroes had composed the cantata
themselves, for the verbiage was very quaint
and simple. In a packed hall to be the only
Whites was for myself and the lady who was
with me a curious position. It caused a whole
row of seats to remain empty in the midst of a
crowded house. No Negro male dared sit down
next to the white woman for fear of what I
might do. However, when I left my place to
talk to a Negro I knew in another part of the
hall the empty line filled up mechanically.
The production of the cantata was quite
amusing. Potiphar's guards were the amarteat
poasible, being ex-soldiers from Pershing's
army, upright Negro boys in khaki. But Poti-
phar was in blue, and looked like a man in
charge of an elevator, and wore the slackest of
pants. Leva, his wife, pawed Joseph over and
yowled: "I love you, I love you." Pharaoh,
with glistening steel crown and steel slippers,
was impressive. Joseph as a slave waa the
Negro workingman in his shirt ; aa Vizier, how
ever, with the purple on him, he looked very
grand, and the jubilee chorua which he sang
when at length Pharaoh stepped down and he
sat in Pharaoh's seat, was very jolly, swaying
to one side of the crowd around him and sing
ing to them, swaying to the other side and sing
ing to them, and then to all and God 
I did not leave the city without attending
church, and I heard a little black Boanerges

ii'N XXLiiNiNlLiOiSlLiJli XX<
give a brilliant addreaa. He walked up and
down his rostrum with arms folded, and cooed
and wheedled, but ever and anon crouching and
exploding, lifting his hand to strike, bawling,
even yelhng to humanity and the Almighty. In
dumb show he pulled the rope of a poor fellow
being lynched — and sent straight to hell. He
spoke of the race riota, and then suddenly be
coming breathless, as if he were a messenger
just arrived with bad tidinga, he flung both
arma wide apart, dilated his eyeballs, and cried
in a terrorizing shriek — "there is riot and anar
chy in the land."
He had chosen a fine combination of texta
for hia sermon: "Can the Ethiopian change his
skin or the leopard his spots? That which is
born of the flesh is flesh and that which is bom
of the Spirit is Spirit."
Though a complete stranger, I was singled
out and brought to the front to give the congre
gation a Christian greeting. I told them I had
read in a Negro paper that "the Negro church
had failed. Prayer had been tried for fifty
years and had been proved to be no use." And
I said what I firmly believe to be true, that only
Christianity can save color.
The orator was much pleased and said to his
congregation: "See what God has sent us thia
Sunday morning," and he invited me to give
the address in the evening. We had an amus
ing altercation on the platform. "I do not know

118 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
what to call him, or who he is ; he may be any
body, a doctor, a professor, a  " he looked
at me inquiringly.
"Oh, plain Mr.," said I.
He hung on, however, to "Professor" till I
interrupted him again.
At the close of my address the deacons came
out to aaaeas the congregation in the matter of
collection. They looked it up and down and de
cided that twenty-two dollars was the amount
that could be raised. So with their solemn faces
they stared patiently at the congregation while
the plates went round. The collection was
counted, and was found to be considerably less.
So the deacons addressed themselves once more
to the congregation, averring that some of the
young men were holding back. Then for five
minutes individuals were moved to come up
singly and make additional offerings. Progress
was reported, and then more individuals came
up till the assessment had been realized.
Then the most touching thing occurred. The
pastor turned to me and offered to share the
collection with me.
* ' Oh, no ! " I whispered hurriedly, feeling, per
haps, rather shocked at the idea.
"He says 'Oh, no,' " said the pastor to the
congregation.

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA
Traveling from Chattanooga to Atlanta the
mind inevitably reverts to the American Civil
War, for in 1863 the victory of the North
marched from Chattanooga and the famous
battle of Lookout Mountain to the taking of
Atlanta and the discomfiture of Georgia. The
glorious Stars and Stripes came victoriously
out of the Northern horizon, climbed each hill,
dipped and climbed again, with a clamorous,
exultant Northern soldiery behind it. General
Sherman began to gather hia great fame, while
General Lee, the adventuresome Southern
leader, allowed himself to be cut off in Virginia.
The efforta of the South had been very pic-
tureaque, like the play of a gambler with amall
resources and enormous hopes, but the shades
of ruin gathered about her and began to nega
tive the charm of her beginnings. Lincoln had
proclaimed the freedom of the slaves. The
South pretended that in any case slavery could
not survive the war, and in token of this she
enlisted Negro aoldiers, making them free men
from the moment of enlistment. In mihtary
extremity policy promises much which after-

120 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
wards ingrate security wiU not ratify. The
Southern planter might have obtained some
measure of indemnification for the loaa of his
slaves had he come to terms in time. But he
hoped somehow he might win the right to man
age his Negroes as he wished without interfer
ence. There was the same violent state of mind
on the subject of the Negroes aa slaves as there
is now on the subject of the Negroes as free men.
All that was missing was the white-woman talk.
Though originally the colonists had been gener
ally opposed to the introduction of slavery, yet
slavery had taken captive and then poisoned
most men's minds. The South chose to fight
to the end rather than sacrifice the institution
prematurely. There was a pride, as of Lucifer,
in the Southerner, too, a belief in himself that
foredoomed him to be hurled into outer dark
ness and to fall through space for nine days.
Sherman's army, when it burned Atlanta and
marched through Georgia laying the country
waste, was inspired with something like the
wrath of God.
In order to see the ex-slave and ex-master
to-day, it ia neceasary to dwell not only in cities
but in the country, and I chose to walk across
the State of Georgia as the beat way to aacer-
tain what life in the country was like. And I
followed in the way Sherman had gone. There,
if anywhere, it seemed to me, the reactions of
the war and of slavery muat be apparent to-day.

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 121
Sherman waa something of a Prussian. He
was a capable and scientific soldier. From an
enemy's standpoint, he was not a humanitarian.
War to him was a trade of terror and blood,
and he was logical. "You cannot qualify war
in harsher terms than I will," said he. "War
is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. ' ' And when
he had captured Atlanta he ordered the whole
population to flee.
If they cared to go North, they would find
their enemies not unkind. If they thought there
waa aafety in the South — then let them go fur
ther south to whatever protection the beaten
Southern Army could afford.
So North and South they fled, the people of
Atlanta, but mostly South, for they were bit
ter; and the roads filled with the pitiful array
of thousands of men and women and children
with their old-fashioned coaches, with their bar
rows, with their servants, with those faithful
Blacks who stiU heeded not the fact that "the
day of liberation had arrived." All under safe-
conduct to Hood's army.
What complaints, what laments, as the proud
Southern population took the road. A lamenta
tion that is heard till now ! And when the people
had gone, the city of Atlanta was set on fire.
Sherman had decided to march to the sea, and
he could not afford to leave an enemy popula
tion in his rear, nor could he allow the chance
that secret arsenals might exist there after he

122 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
had gone. It was a never to be forgotten spec
tacle, "the heaven one expanse of lurid fire, the
air filled with flying, burning cinders." "We
were startled and awed," says a soldier who
marched with the rest, "seeing vast waves and
sheets of flames thrusting themselves heaven
ward, rolling and tossing in mighty billows — a
gigantic sea of fire." Small explosions arranged
by the engineers were punctuated by huge ex
plosions when hidden stores of ammunition
were located, and while these added ruin to
ruin in the city they sounded as lugubrious and
awful detonations to the soldiery on the road.
Depots, churches, shops, warehouses, homes
flared from every story and every window.
Those who remained in the town were few, but
it was impossible not to be stirred if not ap
palled. A brigade of New England soldiers was
the last to leave, and marched out by Decatur
Street, led by the band of the 33rd Massachu
setts regiment, playing
John Brown's body lies a-mould'ring in his grave
His soul is m.arching on —
the lurid glare of the fire gleaming upon their
bayonets and equipment, inflaming their vis
ages and their eyes which were already burn
ing with the war faith of the North.
That was m the faU of 1864, Years have
passed and healed many wounds. Now it is
Atlanta in the fall of 1919 and the crush of the

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 123
Fair time. All Georgia is at her capital city.
The automobiles are forced to a walking pace,
there are so many of them, and they vent their
displeasure in a multiform chorus of barking,
howling, and hooting. So great is the prosper
ity of the land that the little farmer and the
workingman have their cars, not mere "Ford
runabouts," but resplendently enameled, ca
pacious, smooth-running, swift-starting coaches
where wife and family disport themselves more
at home than at home. Atlanta's new hfe has
grown from the old ruins and hidden them, as
a young forest springs through the charred
stumps of a forest fire. On each side Atlanta's
skyscrapers climb heavenward in severe linear
and where heaven should be the sky signa
twinkle. Every volt that can be turned into
light is being used. The shops and the stores
and the cinemas are dazzling to show what they
are worth. The sidewalks are thronged with
Southern youth whose hilarious faces and gre
garious movements show a camaraderie one
would hardly observe in the colder North.
Jaunty Negro boys mingle with the crowd and
are mirthfid among themselves — as well
dreased as the Whites, sharing in the "record
trade" and the boom of the price of cotton.
They are not slaves to-day, but are lifted high
with racial pride and the consciousness of uni
versities and seminaries on Atlanta's hills,
and succeaaea in medicine, law, and business in

124 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
the city. They roU along in the joyous freedom
of their bodies, and make the South more South
ern than it is. How pale and ghostlike the
South would seem without its flocks of colored
chUdren, without those many men and women
with the sun shadows in their faces !
"We love our niggers and understand
them," say the Whites, repeating their formula,
and you'd think there was no racial problem
Whatever in the South, to see the great "Gate
City" given over to merriment unrestrained
and many a Negro colliding with many a White
youth and yet never a fight — ^nothing on the
crowded streets to exemplify the accepted hos
tility of one to the other. One has the thought
that perhaps Atlanta did not burn in vain, and
that the South as well as the North believes in
the immortality of the soul of John Brown.
The tobacco-chewing, smUing, guffawing
crowds of the street, and Peachtree Street
jammed with people and cars ! What a hubbub
the four jammed-up processions of automobiles
are making — ^like choruses of hoarse katydids
crying only for repetition's sake and the lust of
noise! But there is more noise and more joy
still a-coming! Skirling and shrieking, in
strange contrast to the Negroes and to the
clothed Whites and to the color of night itself,
comes the parade of college youths allin their
pajamas and nightshirts. Long queues of
some hundreds of lads in white shouting at the

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 125
top of their voices — ^they climb in and out of
the electric cars, rush into shops and thea
tres in a wUd game of "Follow my leader."
Rah, rah, rah, they cry, rah, rah, rah, and rush
into hotels, circle the foyer, and plunge among
the amazed diners in the dining rooms, thread
their way around tables and up the hotel bal
ustrade, invade bedrooms, go out at windows
and down fire escapes, and then once more file
along the packed streets amidst autos and
cars, raving all the while with pleasure and
excitement. It is good humor and boisterous-
ness and the jollity of the Fair time. Up above
all the flags and the bunting wave listlessly in
the night air. It seems impossible but that the
firing of Atlanta is forgotten, and the pitiful
exodus of its humiliated people — forgotten also
the exultancy of the soldiers of the North sing
ing while the city burned.
Sherman with 60,000 men and 2500 wagons
but only 60 guns marched out, and none knew
what his destination was. A retreat from
Atlanta comparable only to Napoleon's retreat
from Moscow was about to commence. The hos
tile farming population of Georgia and the
Carolinas should harass the Yankee army as the
Russian peasants had done the French in 1812.
That was the Southern belief and the substance
of Southern propaganda at the time. Not so the
Northern Army, which had the consciousness of
victory and a radiant belief in its cause and in

126 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
its general. "A feeling of exhilaration seemed
to pervade aU minds, a feeling of something
to come, vague and undefined, still full of
venture and intense interest. Even the common
soldiers caught the inspiration, and many a
group called out: 'Uncle Billy, I guess Grant
is waiting for us at Richmond.' The general
sentiment was that we were marching for Rich
mond and that there we should end the war, but
how and when they seemed to care not, nor did
they measure the distance, or count the coat in
life, or bother their braiaa about the great riv
ers to be crossed and the food required for man
and beast that had to be gathered by the way. ' '*
Sherman himself had not decided on what
point exactly he would march. But he never in
tended to march against Lee at Richmond,
though the South and his own soldiers believed
it. He always designed to reach the sea and re
open maritime communication with the North,
and kept in mind Savannah, Port Royal, and
even Pensacola in North Florida. So universal
was the belief that he was marching on Rich
mond by way of Augusta that in aU the coun
try districts of Georgia where the left wing
marched they wiU teU you stUl that the enemy
was marching on Augusta.
'You shall maintain discipline, patience, and
courage, said Sherman to his army. And I will
lead you to achievements equal to any of the
* "Sherman's Memoirs."

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 127
past. We are commencing a long and difficult
march to a new base, but all the chances of war
have been provided for. The habitual order of
march will be by four roads as nearly parallel
as possible. The columns will start habitually af
7 a. m. and make about 15 miles a day. The
army will forage liberally on the country dur
ing the march. Horses, mules, and wagons be
longing to the inhabitants may be appropriated
by the cavalry and artillery freely and without
limit, discriminating, however, between the rich,
who are usually hostile, and the poor and indus
trious, usually neutral or friendly. All foragers
will refrain from abusive or threatening
language, and they will endeavor to leave each
family reasonable means of sustenance. Ne
groes who are able-bodied and serviceable may
he taken along if supplies permit. All non-com-
hatants and refugees should go to the rear and
be discouraged from encumbering us. Some
other time we may be able to provide for the
poor Whites and Blacks seeking to escape the
bondage under which they are now suffering. To
corps commanders alone is entrusted the power
to destroy mills, houses, cotton gins, etc., buf
the measure of the inhabitants' hostility should
be the measure of the ruin which commanders
should enforce.*
There was much more said in those very
finely written and emphatic orders, but the sen-
* Field Orders 119 and 120. abbreviated.

128 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
tence that captured the imagination of the com
mon soldier was certainly "the army will forage
liberally on the country" which at once became
a common gag among the men. For it spelt
loot and fun and treasure trove and souvenirs
and everything else that stirs a soldier's mind.
There is a human note throughout the whole
of General Sherman's orders, but no softness,
rather an inexorable sternness. He had no
patience with the cause of the Rebels nor with
their waya of fighting. He and his staff were
not averse from the idea of reading the popula
tion of Georgia and South Carolina a terrible
lesson. While the march waa military it inev
itably became punitive. The cotton was de
stroyed, the farms pillaged, the slaves set free,
the land laid waste. It was over a compara
tively narrow strip of country, but Sherman
-was like the wrath of the Lord descending
upon it.
So out marched the four divisions (l4th,
15th, 17th, and 20th) joyously ainging as they
went the soldiers' songs of the war —
One and Free
and He who first the Flag would lower
SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOT.
and all manner of variants of John Brown to
the Glory Hallelujah chorus.
The way out from Atlanta is now a road of
cheap shops and Jewish pawnbrokers, Negro

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 129
beauty parlors, bag shops, gaudy cinema and
vaudeville sheds, fruit stalls and booths of
quack doctors and magic healers, vendors of the
Devil's com cure, fortune tellers, and what not.
A Negro skyscraper climbs upward. It is de
cidedly a "colored neighborhood," and rough
crowds of Negro laborers and poor Whites frolic
through the litter of the street. Painfully the
electric cars sound their alarms and budge and
stop, and budge again, threading their way
through the masses, glad to get clear after half
a mile of it and then plunge into the compara
tive spaciousness of villadom outside the city.
It is not as it was of yore. Where the bloody
July battle of Atlanta raged a complete peace
has now settled down amid the dignified habita
tions of the rich. Trees hide the view, and chil
dren play upon the lawns of pleasant houses
while the older folk rock to and fro upon the
chairs of shady verandas.
Dignified Decatur dwells on its hill by the
wayside, and has reared its pale monument to
the Confederate dead. On this white obelisk the
cause of the South is justified. Within sight of
it rises an impressive courthouse, which by its
size and grandeur protests the strength of the
law in a county of Georgia.
There was a gloomy sky with lowering
clouds, and a warm, clammy atmosphere as if
the air had been steamed over night and was
now cooling a little. The road leaving behind

130 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Decatur and the suburbs of Atlanta became
deep red, almost scarlet in hue, and ran between
broad fields of cotton where every pod was
bursting and puffing out in cotton wool. Men
with high spindle- wheeled vehicles came with
cotton bales done up in rough hempen netting.
Hooded buggies rolled sedately past with spec
tacled Negroes and their wives. Drummers in
Tord cars tooted and raced through the mud.
Thus to Ingleside, where a turn in the road re
veals the huge hump of Stone Mountain, shad
owy and mystical like imcleft Eildons. All the
soldiers as they bivouacked there or marched
past on that bright November day of '64 re
marked the mountain, and their gaze was
turned to it in the spirit of curiosity and adven
ture. I f eU in with a Mr. McCaulay who was a child
when Sherman marched through. He thought
the Germans in Belgium hardly equaled Sher
man. Not only did his troops bum Atlanta but
almost every house in the country. He pointed
out new houses that had sprung up on the mins
of former habitations.
... "A fence used to run right along here,
and there were crops growing. No, not cotton;
there was not the demand for cotton in those
days, and not nearly so much grown in the
State. Over on that side of the road there was
a huge encampment of soldiers, and I remem
ber stealing out to it to hsten to the band.

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 131
"The foragers came to the houses and took
every bit of food — ^left ua bone dry of food.
They alao took our horaes and our mules and
our cows and our chickens. Sometimes a fam
ily Would have a yoke of oxen hidden in the
wood, but that would be all that they had.
Everyone had to flee, and all were destitute. It
was a terrible time. But we all stood by one an
other and shared one another's sorrows and
helped one another as we could.
"All colored folk alao sto'od by us. I expect
you've read, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and 'The
Leopard's Spots,' but the picture is terribly
overdrawn there."
"I did not know these told the story of the
march," said I.
"They do not. But they give an accoimt of
the Negroes that is entirely misleading. The
North has queered the Negro situation by send
ing all manner of people down here to stir the
Negro up against us. Till we said, 'You and
your niggers can go to the devil' — and we left
them alone.
"But that was a mistake, and we are realiz
ing it now, and intend to take charge of the edu
cation of the Negro ourselves, and be respon
sible for him spiritually as well aa phyaically.
There never was a better relationship between
us than there is now.
"And I — ^I was brought up among them as a
child, as an equal, played with them, wallowed

132 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
with them in the dirt, slept with them. They're
as near to me as flesh and blood can be. ' '
It waa curious to receive this outpouring
when I had not mentioned the Negro to him at
all and seemed merely curious concerning Sher
man's march. It is, however, characteristic of
the South : the subject of the treatment of the
Negro recurs like idee fixe.
At Lithonia, after a meal of large yellow
yama and corn and chicken and biscuits and
cane syrup, I called on Old Mrs. Johnson, who
lived over the way from Mrs. Jones. Lithonia
was much visited by the cavalry. Decatur was
stripped of everything, and Lithonia fared as
badly in the end. Men came into tha farmyard
and there and then killed the hogs and threw
them on to waiting wagons. These were forag
ers from the camps outside Atlanta. But one day
someone came with the news — "Sherman has
set fire to the great city and he'll be here to
morrow. ' ' And sure enough on the morrow his
army began to appear on the road — the van
guard, and after that there seemed no end to
the procession. The army was all day march
ing past with its commissariat wagons and its
water wagons, its horses, its mules, and regi
ment after regiment. The despoiled farm wives
and old folk could not help being thrilled,
though they were enemies. General Slocum,
who commanded the left wing of the army,
wrote his name in pencil on granny's doorpost

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 133
when he stopped at her house with one or two
of his staff.
The Confederate soldiers were "Johnny
Eebs" and the Union soldiers were "Billy
Yanks." Neither side was known to have com
mitted any crimes against women or children,
and the latter were crazy to watch the Yanks
go by, though often their fathers were away in
the hard-pressed Rebel armies.
As I walked along the red road betwixt the
fluffy cotton fields from village to village and
from mansion to mansion, those stately farm
houses of the South, I was always on the look
out for the oldest folk along the way. The
young ones knew only of the war that was just
past, the middle-aged thought of the old Civil
War as somewhat of a joke, but the only thing
the old folks will never laugh over ia the great
strife which with its before and after made the
very passion of their lives. So whenever I saw
an old man or woman sitting on a veranda by
the wayside I made bold to approach and ask
what they knew of the great march, and how it
had affected them, and the Negroes.
They t-old of the methodical destruction of the
railways, and of the innumerable bonfires whose
flamea and smokes changed the look of the sky.
Every rail tie or sleeper was riven from its bed
of earth and burned, and the long steel raUs
were heated over the fires. To make the fires
biffsrer timber was brouarht from the woods, and

134 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
every rail was first made red-hot and then
twisted out of shape — the favorite plan being
for three or four soldiers to take the hot rail
from the fire, place it between two trunks of
standing pinea, and then push till it was bent
nigh double.
They told of the stillness after the army had
gone, and of the sense of ruin which was upon
them with their cotton destroyed, and all
their stores for the winter pillaged, and their
live stock driven off. An old dame told me how
the only live animal in her neighborhood was a
broken-down army horse left behind to die by
the enemy. The folk were starving, but a
woman resuscitated the horse and went off with
him to try and bring food to the village. She
walked by his side for fear he would drop down
dead — and first of all she sought a httle corn for
the horse, for "Old Yank" as she called him.
Many a weary mile they walked together, only
to find that "Sherman's bummers" had been
there before her. She slept the night in a Negro
hut (a thing no white woman would dream of
doing now) and the Negroes fed her and gave
com to the horse and sent her on her way. Out
of several old buggiea and derelict wheels a
"contrapahun" had been rigged out and tied to
the old horse, but it was not until beyond Cov
ington and Conyers that a place was found
which the foragers had missed, and the strange
buggy was loaded for home.

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 135
I spent a night in Conyers in beautiful coun
try, and was away early next morning on the
Covington road. The road was shadowy and san
guine. The heavy gossamer mist which closed
out the view of the hills clothed me also with
white rime. Warm, listless airs stole through
the miat. On my right, away over to the heavi-
neaa of the miat curtain, was a sea of dark green
spotted and flecked with white ; on my left waa
the wretched single track of the railway to Cov
ington rebuilt on the old levels where it was
destroyed in '64. Wooden carts full to the rim
with picked cotton rolled clumsily along the red
ruts of the road, and jolly-looking Negroes
sprawled on the top as on broad, old-fashioned
cottage feather beds. And ever and anon there
overtook me the inevitable "speed merchants,"
hooting and growhng and racketing from one
side to the other of the broken way. I sat down
on a stone in an old wayside cemetery, sun-
bleached and yet hoary also with mist. Such
places have a strange fascination, and I knew
some of those who lay beneath the turf had lain
unwitting also when the army went by. What
old-fashioned names — Sophronias and Simeons
and Claramonds and Nanciea ! On most of the
graves was the gate of heaven and a crown, and
on some were inscribed virtues, while on one
was written "He belonged to the Baptist
Church." The oldest atonea had all fallen and
been washed over with red mud. ATnoncf the

136 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
old were graves of slaves, I was told, but since
the war no Black has been buried with the
White. An old Negro in cotton rags, grizzled white
hair on his black, weather-beaten face, told me
where the colored folk lay buried half a mile
away, where he, too, would lay down his old back
and rest from cotton picking at last. "But on
de day ob Judgment dere be no two camps,"
said he. "No, sir . . . only black and white
souls." He remembered the joy night and the
jubilation after the army passed through, and
how all the colored boys danced and sang to be
free, and then the diaillusion and the famine and
the misery that followed. The old fellow was a
cotton picker, and had a large cotton bag like a
pillow caae slung from his shoulders — an ante
diluvian piece of Adamite material with only
God and cotton and maaaa and the Bible for hia
world. While sitting on this wayside stone I have
the feeling that Sherman's army has marched
past me. It has gone over the hill and out of
view. It has marched away to Milledgeville and
Millen and Ebenezer and Savannah, and not
stopped there. It has gone on and on till it be-
^ns marching into the earth itself. For all that
are left of Sherman's warriors are stepping in
ward into the quietness of earth to-day.
The mist lifts a little, and the hot sun streams
through. The crickets, content that it is no

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 137
longer twilight, have ceased chirping, and ex
quisite butterflies, hke living flames, are on the
wing. It is a beautiful part of the way, and
where there is a sunken, disused road by the aide
of the new one I take it for preference. For
probably it waa along that the soldiers went.
Now young pinea are springing from their foot
steps in the sand.
Here no cars have ever sped, and for a long
while no foot has trod. The surface is smooth
and unfooted like the seashore when the tide
has ebbed away, and bright flowers greet the
wanderer from unfarmed banks and gullies. So
to Ahnon, where an old gaffer told me how he
and some farm lada with shotguns had deter
mined they would "get" Sherman when he
came riding past with his staff, and how they
hid behind a bush, where the Methodist church
ia now standing, and let fly. Sherman they
missed, but hit someone else and they fled to
the woods. He lost both his hat and his gun in
the chase which followed, but nevertheless got
away. Not that I believed in its entirety the old
man's story. It waa hia pet atory, told for fifty
years, and had become true for him. I came
into Covington, a regular provincial town,
whose chief feature is its large sandy aquare
about which range ita shops with their scanty
wares. There I met another old man, a captain
who served under Lee, and indeed surrendered
with him. He had been beside Stonewall .Taelr-

138 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
son when the latter died. He was now eighty-
four years, haunting the Flowers Hotel.
"Thia world's a mighty empty place, believe
me," said he. "Eighty-four years . . .!"
He seemed appalled at his own age.
"Threescore and ten is the allotted span . . .
At seventeen I went gold digging . . . aeeking
gold ... it was the first rush of the digging
mania in California, but I only got six hundred
dollars worth."
"At seventeen years many their fortunes seek
But at fourscore it Is too late a week"
said I sotto voce.
"A mighty empty place," repeated the old
captain, rocking his chair in the dusk. "Yes,
Sherman marched through here. He burned all
the cotton in the bama. I was bom here, and
lived here mos' all my life, but I was with Lee
then. That war ought never to have been. No,
sir. It was all a mistake. We thought Abraham
Lincoln the devil incarnate, but knew after
wards he was a good friend to the South.
It's all forgotten now. We bear the North no
grudge except about the niggers  "
He interrupted himself to greet a pretty girl
paaaing by, and he aeemed offended if any
woman passed without smiling up at him. But
when he resumed conversation with me he re
verted to "The world 'a getting to be a mighty
empty place . . . eighty-four years . . . threescore
and ten is the allotted apan, but . . . "

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 139
I turn therefore to the witness of the time,
and the genius who conceived the march and
watched his soldiers go. Thus Sherman wrote
of Covington: "We passed through the hand
some town of Covington, the soldiers closing up
their ranks, the color bearers unfurling their
flags, and the bands striking up patriotic airs.
The white people came out of their houses to
behold the sight, spite of their deep hatred of
the invaders, and the Negroes were simply fran
tic with joy. Whenever they heard my name
they cluatered about my horse, shouted and
prayed in their peculiar style which had a natu
ral eloquence that wonld have moved a atone. I
have witnessed hundreds, if not thousands of
such scenes, and can see now a poor girl in the
very ecstasy of the Methodist 'shout,' hugging
the banner of one of the regiments and jump
ing to the 'feet of Jesus' ... I walked up to
a plantation house close by, where were assem
bled many Negroes, among them an old gray-
liaired man of as fine a head as I ever saw. I
asked him if he understood about the war and
its progress. He said he did ; that he had been
looking for the 'Angel of the Lord' ever since
he was knee-high, and though we professed to
be fighting for the Union he supposed that slav
ery was the cause, and that our success was to
be his freedom . . ."
That was the characteristic Negro point of

140 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Lord," the coming of the angel of deliverance.
Their only lore waa the Bible, and their especial
guide was the Old Testament. Despite all talk
of their masters, talk which would have been
dismissed as "eyewash" in the war of 1918, they
believed that God had sent to rescue them. They
waited the miraculous. Sherman was God's
messenger. So the glorious sixty thousand broke into
quiet Georgia — carrying salvation to the sea — ^in
an ever memorable way. The foe, stupefied by
defeat, was massing on the one hand at Augusta
and on the other at Macon, bluffed on the left
and on the right, while in the center the un-
probed purpose of the general reigned in secret
but supreme.
The Twentieth Corps on the extreme left went
by Madison, giving color to a proposed attack
on Augusta. The Fifteenth feinted at Macon,
the cavalry galloping right up to that city and
inviting a sortie. The Seventeenth Corps was in
close support of the Fifteenth, and the Four
teenth kept in the center. It was the route of the
Fourteenth that I decided to follow, and it was
also the way along which went Sherman himself.
It was generally understood by the Fourteenth
Corps that Milledgeville was its object at the
end of a week's marching. The order of march
for the morrow was issued overnight by army
commanders to corps commanders and then

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 141
paased on to all ranks. The men slept in the
open, and beside watch fires which burned all
night. Outposts and sentries kept guard, though
there were few alarms. The warm Southern
night with never a touch of frost, even in No
vember, paased over the sleeping army. Reveille
was early, commonly at four o'clock, when the
last watch of the night was relieved. The un
wanted clarion shrilled through men's slum
bers, blown by urgent drummer boys. The
bugles of the morning sounded, and then
slowly but immistakably the whole camp
began to rouse from its stertorouaneas, and
one man here, another there, would start up
to stir the smouldering embers of the fires and
make them all begin to blaze ; and then began
the hubbub of cleaning and the hubbub of cook
ing, the neighing of horses, the clatter of wagon-
packing and harnessing. Reveille waa made
eaaier by the proapects of wonderful breakfasts
—not mere army rations, the bully and hard
tack of a later war, but all that a rich country
side could be made to provide — "potatoes fry
ing nicely in a well-larded pan, the chicken
roasting delicately on the red-hot coals, the
grateful fumes of coffee," says one chronicler of
the time — fried slices of turkey, roast pig, sweet
yams, sorghum syrup, and corn fortified the sol
dier for the day's march. Horses and mules also
fared astonishingly well, and amid brajdng and
neiffhin« and pawing huge quantities of fodder

142 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
were provided. Then once more insistent bugles
called ; knapsacks and equipment were strapped
on, the horaea and mules were put in the traces,
the huge droves of cattle were marshaled into
the road, and the army with its officers and
sergeants and wagons and guns and pontoons
and impedimenta of every kind (did not Sher
man always carry two of everything?) moved
on. There was something about the aspect of the
army on the march that was like a great mov
ing show. The musical composition of "March
ing Thro' Georgia" has caught it:
Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee!
All hail the flag, the flag which sets you free!
So we brought salvation from Atlanta to the Sea,
When we were marching thro' Georgia.
The clangor of brass, the braying of mules,
the shouts of the soldiers, the ecstasy of the
Negroes, and then the proud starry flag of the
Union I
The procession has all long since gone by, and
men speak of the famous deeds "as half -forgot
ten things." It is a quiet road over the hill and
down into the vale with never a soldier or a
bugle hom. Cotton, cotton, cotton, and cotton
pickers and tiny cabins, and then maize stalks,
com from which long since the fruit has been
cut, now withered, warped, shrunken, half fallen
in every attitude of old age and despair. It is a

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 143
diversified country of hill and dale, with occa
sionally a huge gray wooden mansion with
broad veranda running round, and massive col
umns supporting overhanging roof. The col
umns, which are veritable pine trunks just
trimmed and planed or sawn, give quite a clas
sical air to the Southern home. Sometimes
there wUl be seven or eight of theae sun-bleached
columns on the frontage of a house, and the
first impreaaion is one of stone or marble.
The Southern white man builds large, has
great joy in hia home, and would love to live on
a grand scale with an army of retainers. The
Negro landowner does not imitate him, and
builds a less impressive type of home, neither
so large nor so inviting. Rich colored farmers
are, however, infrequent. The mass of the Negro
population ia of the laboring class, and even
those who rent land and farm it for themselves
are very poor and sunk in economic bondage.
Their houses are mostly one-roomed wooden
arks, mere windowless sheds resting on four
stones, a stone at each corner. Furniture, if any,
was of a rudimentary kind. "See how they
live," said a youth to me. "Just like animals,
and that's all they are."
* ' Why don 't you have any windows ? " I asked
of a girl sitting on the floor of her cabin.
"They jus' doan' make 'em with windows,"
she replied. "But we've got a window in this
side,"

144 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
"Yes, but without glass."
"Ah, no, no glass."
"Is it cold in winter?"
"Yea, mighty cold."
Some cabins were poverty-stricken in the ex
treme. But in others there were victrolas, and
in cases where the merest amenities of life were
lacking you would find a ramshackle Ford car.
On the road Negroes with cars were almost aa
common as white men, and some Negroes drove
very furiously and sometimes very skillfully.
There were no foot passengers on the road. I
went all the way to Milledgeville before I fell
in with a man on foot going a mile to a farm.
The current Americanism, Don't walk if you
can ride seemed to have been changed into. Don't
stir forth till you can get a lift, and white men
picked up Negroes and Negroes white men with
out prejudice, but with an accepted understand
ing of use and wont. I was looked upon with
some doubt, and scanned from hurrying cars
with puzzlement. Lonely Jaaper County had not
seen my like before. But saying "Good day!"
and "How d'ye do?" convinced most that the
strange foot traveler was an honest Christian.
Lifts were readily proffered by men going the
same way. Those who whirled past the other
way may have reflected that since I was on foot
I must have lost my car somewhere.
A common question put to me was, "What
are you selling?" and people were a Httle dumb-

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 145
founded when I said I was following in Sher
man's footsteps. That had not occurred to them
as a likely occupation on a hot afternoon. I felt
rather li&e a modern Rip Van Winkle who had
overslept reveiUe by half a century and was try
ing in vain to catch up with the army which had
long since turned the dusty comer of the road.
StiU, the Southerners were surprisingly
friendly. They said they knew nothing about it
themselves, and then took me to the old folk
who remembered. The old folk quavered forth
— "It's a long, long time ago now." It inter
ested them always that I had been in the Ger
man war and had marched to the Rhine, and
they were fuU of questions about that. ' ' Oh, but
this war was not a patch on that one," they
said. "I tell them they don't know what war is
yet — ^what we suffered then, what ruin there
was, how we had to work and toU and roughen
our white hands, and eat the bread of bitterness
like Cam  "
After the CivU War the initial struggle of the
settlers and pioneers in the founding of the col
ony had to be repeated. Everyone had to set to
and work. The help of the Negroes waa at first
diminished or entirely cut off. Even the necea
sary toola were lacking. Nevertheleaa there was
now a surprising absence of bitterness. "The
war had to be. Slavery waa bad for the South,
and it took the war to end it" waa an opinion on
all men's mouths. "When President McKinley

146 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
said that the character of Robert E. Lee was the
common inheritance of both North and South he
healed the division the war had made," I heard
someone say. Even of Sherman, though there
were bitter memories of him, there were not a
few ready to testify to his humaneness — for in
stance, this from a poor atore keeper:
"I suppose you're not old enough to remem
ber the Civil War?"
" 'Deed, sir, I do."
"Do you remember Sherman's march?"
"Yes, I was only a child, but it made a pow
erful impression on me. My father was killed
in the war. And we were scared to death when
we heard Sherman was coming. But he never
did me any harm. An officer came up, asked
where my father was, learned he waa dead.
And he made all the soldiers march past the
house, waited till the last one had gone, then sa
luted and left us. Captain Kelly was his name,
and I shall never forget his face, it was all
slashed about with old scars. He was a brave
man, I'm sure . . . No, they didn't do mucH
harm hereabout, except to those who had a lot
of slaves or to those who had treated their nig
gers badly. If they found out that a man had
been Ul-treating his niggers they stripped his
house and left him with not a thing  "
On the other hand the rich, the owners of
large plantations, remained in many cases still
virulent.

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 147
"I know Sherman is in hell," said a Mr.
R  of historic family. "When my mother
lay sick in bed the soldiers came and set fire to
our cotton gin and all our bams. They came
upon us like a tribe of Indians and burst into
every room, ransacking the place for jewelry
and valuable property. I was a small boy at the
time, but I ahall never forget it. They took the
bungs from all our barrels and let the syrup run
to waste in the yard because they themselves
wanted no more of it. They killed our hogs and
our cows before onr eyes and threw the meat to
the niggers. Yea, sir. A year or so back Sher
man's aon said he was going to make a tour
along the way his daddy had gone — to see what
a wonderful thing his daddy had done. Lucky
for him he changed his mind. We'd a strung
him to a pole, sure  "
Such sharp feeling was, however, certainly
exceptional. Near Eatonton was a Mr. Lynch of
Lynchburg', storekeeper, postmaster, wheel
wright, and blacksmith all in one. He averred
that they were "hugging and kissing the
Yankees now, just as they would be hugging and
kissing the Germans in a few years."
"There's mean fellows on every side," aaid
he. "You don't tell me that there 'a no mean
fellows among the English, the French, and the
Itahans. I don't believe all the stories about
the Germans. I remember what they used to
say about the Yankees. They get mighty mad

148 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
with me when I teU 'em, but there's plenty of
mean fellows on both sides."
The village was named after the old man's
grandfather — an Irish settler. It is just beside
the old Eatonton factory which Sherman burned
down. At the next turn in the road there ia a
roaring aa of many waters. A screen of pine
and rank grass undergrowth hides an impres
sive sight. A step inward takes you to the ro
mantic stone foundation of the old factory; you
lan climb up on one of the pillars and look out.
The interior of the factory is all young trees and
moss and tangles of evergreen, but beyond it
rushes a mighty stream over a partially
dammed broad course, red as blood, but wal
lowing forward in creamy billows and white
foam. The factory was used to weave coarse cotton
cloth, and had evidently been worked by water
power. Quite forgotten now, unvisited, it was
yet a picturesque memorial of the march, and I
was surprised to see no names of Visitors
scrawled on the walls of its massive old foun
dations. I walked into Eatonton by a long and pictur
esque wooden bridge over the crimson river, a
strange and wonderful structure completely
roofed, and shady as a tunnel. The evening sun
blazed on the old wood and on the red tide and
on the greenery beyond, making the scene look
like a colored illustration of a child's tale.

¦MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 149

»>

Eatonton, where Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox
were actually bom, is now a hustling "city
with bales of cotton fluff higglety-pigglety down
its streets, and again beautiful bales of extra
quality in the windows of its cotton brokers.
There are also modem mills where cotton is
being spun. The business men on the streets
talk of "spots" and "futures" — spot cotton
being apparently that which you have on the
spot and can sell now, and futures being crops
yet to be picked, which, presuming on kind
Providence, may be sold and re-sold many times
before being grown. What ia said of Eatonton
may be said of Milledgeville, twenty mUes fur
ther on. It is a cotton town. It is a gracious seat
as well, with a scent of history about its old
buildings, but it impresses one as a great cotton
center. The streets of Milledgeville were almost
blocked with cotton bales. It would have been
easy to fight a battle of barricades there. The
principal church looked as if it were fortified
with cotton bales, and it would have been pos
sible to walk fifty or a himdred yards stepping
on the tops of the bales. Bales were on the tidy
lawns of shady villas or stacked on the veran
das, and everywhere the hard-working gins
were roaring and grinding as they tore out the
cottonseed from the white fluff and left cotton
that could be spun. Wisps of cotton lint blew
about all over the streets, and cotton was entan-
Oflo/I in rlnofo' •Fni* nnrl aIii Iri Ton 'a liaiv Tn i-Vitx

150 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
porches of Negro cabins it was heaped high tUl
the entrance to the doorway itself was blocked.
Cotton was booming at Savannah and New
Orleans, and deapite talk of the weevil deatroy-
ing the pod, and of bad weather and bad crops,
it waa clear that Georgia waa very prosperous.
Men and women discusaed the price of cotton as
they might horae racea or State-lottery results
or raffles. Everyone wanted room to store hia
cotton and hold it till the maximum price waa
reached. My impreaaion of Georgia now waa
that it waa not nearly ao rich in live atock and
in food aa it had been in the time of Sherman.
In his day it grew its own food and was the sup
ply source of two armies. To-day it imports the
greater part of its food. It sells its cotton and
buys food from the more agricultural States of
the South. It might have been thought to be a
land overflowing with fruit and honey and milk,
but fruit and honey are cheaper in New York
than there, and there is no margin of milk to
give away. Meat is scarce and dear. There ia
no plenty on the table unleaa it be of sweet po
tatoes. I imagine that after Sherman's raid the
farmers felt discouraged, aud decided never to
be in a position to feed an enemy army again.
There are many always urging the Georgian to
grow corn and raise stock, and so make Georgia
economically independent, but the farmer al
ways meets the suggestion with the statement
that cotton gives the largest return on any given

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 151
outlay and takes least trouble. That ia true, but
it ia largely becauae the Negro cotton picker is
such a cheap laboring hand. A farm laborer
would automatically obtain more than a cotton
picker. The hypnotic effect of the slave past is
strong and binding upon the Negroes. Perhaps
it ia still the curse of Georgia. There are atill
plantera who drive their laborera with the whip
and the gun — though the shortage of labor dur
ing the war caused these to be put up. It is not
in money in the bank that one must reckon true
prosperity. However, in this material way,
Georgia has quite recovered from the Civil War.
But she has lost a good many of the compensa
tions of true agriculture ; cotton is so commer
cial a product that there is no glamour about it,
not even about the old plantations, unless it be
that of the patient melancholy of the cotton
pickers.

VI
TRAMPING TO THE SEA
I PASSED through two ancient capitals of
Georgia, first MiUedgeviUe, and then LouisvUle.
The relationship which Milledgeville bore to
Atlanta reminded me of the relationship of the
old Cossack capital of the Don country to the
modern industrial wilderness of South Russia
called Rostof-na-Donu. But business is busi
ness, and there is only business in this land.
Even aloug the way to the old capital it is al
ways so many miles to Goldstein's on the mile-
posts instead of so many miles to Milledgeville.
The old legislature sat at Milledgeville, but it
fled at the approach of Sherman. It was a day
of great astonishment when General Slocum
paused in his supposed march upon Augusta
and General Howard in his attack on Macon,
and one came south from Madison while the
other marched north from McDonough. There
was an extraordinary sauve qui peut. Panic
seized the politicians and the rich gentry of the
place, for the rumor of the terrible ways of
the foragers was flying ahead of the Union
Army. Everyone strove to carry off or hide his
treasures. They must have had terrible priva-
152

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 153
tions and some adventures on the road trying to
race the army, and they would have done bet
ter to remain to face the music, for no private
effects were destroyed in thia city. Similar
scenes were enacted as at Covington. The
darkies made a great day of jubilee, and hugged
and kissed the soldiers who had set them free.
The cotton was burned and made a great flare —
seventeen hxmdred bales of it even in those days.
The depots, magazines, arsenals, and factories
were blown up. Governor Brown had fled with
aU his furniture, and Sherman in the gover
nor's house slept on a roU of army blankets on
the bare floor.
There are many signs of ease and refinement
in the spacious streets of MUledgevUle, though
it has increased Uttle in size since the war. It
has large schools for the training of cadets and
the training of girls. Theae are model institu
tions and are very valuable in Georgia. The
place, however, seemed to lack the cultural sig
nificance it ought to have. But it is true that
churches and Sunday schools were full. No
shops of any kind were open on Sundays ; the
people had forgotten the taate of alcoholic drink
and were ready to crusade againat tobacco.
They are not given to lynching, though they
allowed aome wild men from Atlanta to break
open their jaU some years ago and take away a
Jew and hang him. But they are too content.
At fihurch on Sundav morninsr the nastor com-

154 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
plained that while all were willing to give
money to God none were willing to offer them
selves. He invited any who were ready to give
themaelvea unreservedly to God to step forth,
and none did. And it was an eloquent appeal by
a capable orator. I met an old recluse who was
at the back of the church. He had tried to give
himself to God but was now living at the asylum
where he had found shelter, being otherwise
without means. He had been a Baptist minister
at a church near Stone Mountain, but rheuma
tism had intervened after twenty years' work,
and he could no longer stoop to immerse the can
didates for baptism. He was an Englishman
who had listened to Carlyle 's and Ruskin's lec
tures, and he talked of Dean Farrar's sermons
and the good deeds of the Earl of Shaftesbury.
He spoke as no one speaks to-day, good old
measured Victorian English. He was a touching
type of the despised and rejected. He loved
talking to the Negro children in the "colored"
school till the townsfolk warned him againat it.
Hia hooka form the nucleus of the town library,
but the rata have gnawn all the bindings of hia
"Encyclopedia Britannica," and I formed the
opinion that poor R  living on sufferance in
the lunatic asylum waa probably the best read
man in Milledgeville.
It is a delightful walk to Sandersville, over
Buffalo Creek and over many atreama crossed

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 155
by the most fragile of bridges apparently never
properly rebuilt since Wheeler's cavalry de
stroyed them in the face of the oncoming army.
Georgia used to have many excellent bridges,
but it never really hindered the Yankee army by
destroying them. It seems rather characteristic
of the psychology of the people that they would
not replace what they had had to destroy. Now
at the foot of each long hill down which the au
tomobiles tear is a trap of mere planks and gaps
which chatters and indeed roars when passed
over. Many motorists get into the mud.
Sandersville is a busy town hung in gloomy
bunting which no one has had time to take down
since the last county fair. It has a large, dusty,
sandy square with a clock tower in the middle.
There are great numbers of cars and lorries
parked around. Cotton bales, old and new, fresh
and decayed, lie on every street. Huge gins are
working, and Negroes are busy shoveling oily-
looking cottonseed into barns ; cotton fluff is all
over the roadways in little clots ; every man is in
his shirt; the soda bars do a great trade even
in November. A atranger said to me ' ' Come and
have a drink" and we went in and had a "cherry
dope." There is an impressive-looking public
library, much larger than at Milledgeville, with
high frontal columns of unadorned old bricks
mortared and laid in diamond fashion, a barred
door, and an entrance so deep in cotton fluff.

156 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
doned for assuming that learning- was not now
in repute. On the other hand there is a fine, well-
kept cemetery with large mausoleums for the
rich and tiny stones for the poor.
Sandersville was the scene of one or two com
bats during the war. But when it is borne in
mind that only a hundred of Sherman's army
died from all causes on its march to the sea, it
will be underatood that the strife was not seri
ous. Sherman haa been called a Pruaaian, and
he certainly posseaaed military genius and un
derstood soldiering aa a mental acience, but he
always tried to save his men. He wished to win
victories with the smallest possible loss of men,
and he thought out his unorthodox plans of cam
paign with that in view. He could have lost half
hia army on thia adventurous march to the sea.
It was a most daring exploit, and if it had failed
the whole responsibility would have been laid at
Sherman's door. But Sherman had thought the
matter out, and he completely deceived hia
enemy. Once more after Milledgeville Slocum is
seen to be threatening Augusta in the north and
Howard is striking south. The cavalry ia driv
ing the enemy ahead and plunges northward to
Louisville and Waynesboro, well on the way to
Augusta. The enemy evacuates the central re
gions of Georgia, and Sherman's infantry moves
through unscathed. Foraging has become or
ganized and systematic. The wagons amount to
many thousands, and it ia curious that the pop-

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 157
ulation did not destroy all vehicles and so pre
vent the army from carrying away so much. The
doubt which General Sherman expressed at the
beginning of the march that supplies might
prove inadequate haa entirely vanished, and the
army haa a crowd of Negro camp foUowera al
most as big as itself. These eventually became
a great hindrance, but they were evidently en
couraged to join themselves to the soldiers in
the Milledgeville and Sandersville district. They
proved invaluable helps in the seeking out of
hidden treasure and the pillaging of farm-
houaea. They knew the likely spots where valu
ables would be buried, and the soldiers knew
how to worm out secrets even from the most
faithful black aervanta on the big estates. One
reason why Georgia bums and hangs more
Negroes than any other State is probably be
cauae of the bitterness caused by the unstinted
foraging and the "setting of the niggers against
ua" aa they say.
Be that as it may, the seeds of future hate are
always sown in present wara, and "Sherman's
hummers "in their quest of spoil took little heed
of any future reckoning. The Negroes led the
soldiers even to the deepest recesses of swamps
or forests, and showed the hollow tree or cave
or hole where lay deposited the precious family
plate and jewelry and money and even clothing.
It was common to take from the planter not only
hams, flour, meal, yams, sorghum molasses, but

158 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
above all things turkeys, so rare to-day along
the line of Sherman's march —
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissaries found,
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,
When we were marching thro' Georgia!
But the bummer did not stick at these. He
would borrow grandfather's dress coat and hat
surviving from the old colonial days, and his
mate would array himself in grandmother's fin
ery, and so attired would drive their wagon back
to camp, hailed by the jests of the whole army;
and if they met an officer on the way they would
cry out mirthfully the text of the army order —
The army will forage liberally on the country.
It is said that no forager would ever sell any
of his loot, that indeed it was a point of honor
not to sell. The veterans of the North must
therefore preserve many interesting mementoes
of the South. Both officers and men took many
tokens. There used to be an amusing euphemism
current in Sherman's army: it was^-"A South
ern lady gave me that for saving her house from
being burned" — and if anyone said, "That's a
nice gold watch; where did you get it?" the sol
dier replied, "Oh, a Southern lady gave it to
me," etc.
The army made camp by three o 'clock every
day, and it was after three that most of the un
authorized foraging expeditions took place.
They were gay afternoons spent in singing and

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 159
gambling, athletica and cock fighting. The
South waa found to be poaaesaed of a wonder
ful race of fighting cocks. The enthusiasts of
the sport ruahed from farm yard to farm yard
for aatonished chanticleer, and having captured
him fed him well and brought him up to a more
martial type of life than that which in domesti
cated bhss he had enjoyed with his hens. Every
company had its cock fighting tournament. Each
regiment, each brigade, each division, and in
deed each corps, had ita champion. The winners
of many bloody frays were soon nicknamed
"Bill Sherman" or "Johnny Logan," but the
losing bird which began to fear to face ita ad
versary would be hailed as Beauregard or Jeff
Davis. The cock fight finals were of aa great
interest as the combat of the Reds and White
Sox to-day, and perhaps more real.
Besides game cocks each regiment had a
great number of pets. These were mostly poor,
homeless creatures on which the soldier had
taken pity; dogs, singing birds, kids, who fol
lowed with the army and had the army's tender
ness lavished on them.
So they went, marching and camping by old
Louisville and the broad waters of the Ogeechee
down to Millen. The old farmers say what an
impressive sight it was to watch them go by on
the Millen road with seemingly more wagons
than men, with all the wagons bulging with spoil
 J J  1  n i-.j T  J  1  ;i.T-

160 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
long droves of cattle, and thousands of fren
zied Negroes so frantic with joy that they
seemed to have lost their heads and to be ex
pecting the end of the world.
Davisboro is a dust-swept settlement two
sides of a road at the foot of a hill. Doors stand
open, and the general stores in all their disor
der spread their wares. At one end of the little
town a large gin is hard at work steaming and
blowing, ravishing cotton seed from cotton fluff,
and many bales are waiting. Louisville, the old
capital, is a dozen miles further on beyond the
woods and swamps of a sparsely settled coun
try. It is now "the slowest town in Georgia."
It is, however, none the less pleasant for that.
There are many old houses, and in the midst
of the way stands the original wooden "Slave
Market" built in 1758, according to a notice
affixed, but now used as a fire station. In the old
colonial days when Louisville was the capital,
slaves used to be brought there in large batches
on market days. There was a little platform on
which the all-but-naked victims had to stand and
be exhibited and auctioned. As I sat on a bench
and considered the building a young townsman
joined himself to me and gave me a gleeful de
scription of the slaves — ' ' Their front teeth were
filed, they spoke no English ; when they saw our
big green grasahoppers they ran after them and
caught them and ate them. The men wore loin

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 161
cloths and the women cotton chemises halfway
to the knee. Lots of cows, hogs, mules, and nig
gers were put up and sold as cattle in a lump.
Animals, that's all they were and all they are
now  " And he laughed in a curious, aelf-
conscious way.
"It is strange to think of the history of
them," said I, "from the African waatea to the
slave ship, from the slave ship to the harbors
of the New World, then to these market places
and to the plantations, taught baby English and
hymn-singing, obtaining the Bible as an only
and all-comprehending book, petted and fondled
like wonderful strays from the forest in many
families, tortured in others, becoming eventu
ally a bone of fierce political contention though
innocent themselves, the cause of a great war,
and then released in that war and given the full
rights of white American citizens."
The young townsman's imagination was not
touched by the romance of the Negro. He was
full of the wrong done to the white South by
putting it under the dominance of a free Negro
majority. "You know we lynch them down here," said
he, with a smile. "They want social equality,
but they are not going to get it. The nigger
can't progreas any further."
"Well, there's a vast difference between the
Negro of 1860 and the Negro of to-day, ' ' said I.
"Hundreds of universities and coUeges have

162 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
arisen, thousands of schools and Negro organi
zations for self -education. The Negro has gone
a long way since in yelling crowds he followed
the banners of Sherman. I do not think he is
going to stop short, and I wonder where he is
going to and where at last he will arrive. "
I paased through Eatonton, the birthplace of
Joel Chandler Harris, on my way to the sea. He
taught us much about the Negro. In England
Brer Pox and Brer Rabbit have become aa cher-
iahed as the toys of the nursery. I think Uncle
Remus meant as much to us as "Uncle Tom's
Cabin. ' ' The genial point of view and the genial
books do as much to help humanity as the strong
and bitter ones. Both certainly have their place.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" stirred people out of a
lazy attitude of mind toward the Negro slaves,
but in America it aggravated a bitterness which
no other book has been able to allay. The very
intensity of the white man's thought about the
Negro bodes ill for the future. The White men
of the North deliberately have made the effort
to rear a Negro intelligentsia. The idealists of
the North said, "You shall go on"; others said,
"No, you shall stay as you were"; the clash of
the two wills lit up racial war, but the Negro has
sided with the idealists who sought to raise him,
with the Friends of Pennsylvania and the hu
manitarians of New England.
In the panic of Sherman's approach the
planters and their wives told their slaves that

TRAMf ING TO THE SEA 163
the Yanks would flog them and burn them or
put them in the front of the battle, and drown
the women and chUdren in the Ogeechee or the
Chattahoochee. Many believed and fled with
their masters ; others hid in the woods, but the
rumor of salvation was on the lips of most. The
Southerner has a saying, "The nigger is the
greatest union in the country." News indeed
travels faster among slaves and servants than
among employers and masters. There was not
much hesitation when the army arrived. The
Negroes saw and believed. The increduloua were
converted and the scared persuaded out of their
hiding places. All with one accord forgot their
fear and then went to the other extreme ; that is,
as far in credulity as their duU minds had
lodged in incredulity. The arrival of the victors
gave rise to the most extravagant hopes. The
Negro had never reasoned about anything in an
informed way. He knew nothing of the world
except the simplicity of the plantation. He had
on the one hand slavery, and on the other the
vague and vast idealism of Christian hymns;
the melancholy of bondage and the emotional
ism of Evangelical religion. He did not think of
New York, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, of
the workingmen's movement, of free thought,
of pohtical economy, but only of "de oie plan
tation, ' ' and then ' ' de ribber. ' ' From drab slav
ery he looked straight to Jordan and the golden
gates, and to a no-work, easy-going paradise

164 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
happy as the day is long, with God as Massa,
and Mary and the Son to play with. There were
no between stages to which to aspire. They ex
pected, as did the Puritan churches about them,
the huge combustion of the Last Day, and they
did not set much store by this world. Hence
their exalted state of mind following Sherman's
army. They were ready to shout Glory when
the world was afire, and they displayed all the
emotion which should have been saved for the
coming of the Lord.
At first Sherman's army was quite pleased,
and encouraged the emotion of the freed men.
But it got to be too much for the Yankee sol
diers, who felt at last that the Blacks were over
doing it and that in any case they were a nui
sance. The nearer they got to Savannah the
more impatient did they become. At last they
began to destroy bridges between themselves
and the Negroes, and put rivers between them.
Then, after leaving Millen for the pine forests
of the Savannah shore, they deliberately de
stroyed the bridge over Ebenezer Creek. There
was a wild panic, a stampede, and many, it is
said, were drowned in the stream. The splen
dor of the army went by, the brass bands,
the cheering and the singing of the soldiers
and the standard bearers of the North in the
midst of them, the wagons, the many wagons
laden with spoU, and the droves of cattle. But

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 165
for Georgia and the Negro there set in the twi
light of ruin and disillusion.
Rural Georgia is not very much better off to
day than it was in slavery days. The large tracts
of land which the Blacks thought would be given
them they neither could nor would farm. They
lacked experience and initiative. They could
be too easUy deceived by their white neighbors,
and were too subservient to their erstwhile mas
ters to make good in the race of human individ
uals striving one against another.
"No Negroes own land hereabout," said some
Negro renters to me between Shady Dale and
Eatonton. "They did, but got into debt and lost
it. We rent a thirty-acre farm and pay two bales
of cotton rent." At the current price of cotton,
38 cents a pound, that amounted to 380 dollars
in American currency, or 95 pounds in British
currency, but the tenants paid in cotton, and as
cotton boomed their rents advanced.
It seemed to be everywhere customary to
reckon rent in cotton bales, and it is easy to see
what an economic serf the Negro can become im-
der such terms. This system, known as "truck"
in England, was long since aboUshed, but its
evils were so notorious that truck has remained
a proverbial expression for chicane — Whence the
phrase ' * to have no truck with it. ' ' The Negro is
better off as a laborer on a white man's planta
tion than he is when having the responsibihty

166 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
of picking a crop for master before he picks one
for himself.
There are many features of life on the mod
ern plantation, be it of sugar or cotton, which
suggest slavery. Virtual slavery is called peon
age and many examples were given me by
Negroes. It is arranged ih some places that the
Negro handles as little money as possible. In
stead of money he has credit checks, metal or
cardboard disks, which he can use at the general
store to purchase his provisions. He is kept in
debt so that he can never get out, and so lives
with a halter round his neck. Especially dur
ing the war, when the rumor of war wages was
tempting the colored labor of the South to mi
grate North in huge numbers, efforts were made
to keep the Negro without the means of stray
ing from the locality where the labor of his
hands was the foundation of the life of the com
munity. Other forms of peonage prevalent iri
rural parts is the commuting of punishment for
forced labor, the hiring out of penal labor to
companies or public authorities. This resem*
bles the use made of prisoners during the re
cent world war, and is virtual slavery.
All inroads made on the liberty of the subject
might fittingly be classed as peonage — ^the de
nial of the vote to thoae legally enfranchised,
intimidation by lynch law, etc.
I talked with an old Negro after leaving Louis
ville and tramping south toward MidvUIe, He

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 167
was loUing in rags on his porch— very near
white. His father had been his black mother's
white master. He remembered Sherman's pass
ing when he was a boy. A remarkably inteUi
gent and tragic face, where an unhappy white
man looked out on the misery of abject poverty
and quaai-bondage. Cotton had proved bad this
year. The boll weevil had entered the pod early.
There were but three or four bales to the plow.
He did not know how he'd foot his bUls. The
rations given him in the spring had become ex
hausted. He had also hoped to buy clothes. He
said the traders came early in the year and sup
plied him with all sorts of things on the strength
of a large cotton crop, and he pointed to a toy
bicycle lying upside down in the grass. He let
his little boy stride it, and mother thought it fine.
Last year God had bleaaed them with a very
fine crop, and why should He not be as kind this
year? So he signed on for the toy bicycle and
for a gramophone as well. Now he complained
that they were cutting off his rations, mother
lay UI a-bed, the weather was getting cold, and
they had no clothes. The boss was coming pres
ently to turn them out of the cabin altogether,
and they did not know where to go. Even while
we were talking two bullet-headed young fel
lows, clean-shaven, frank, and surly, came up
in an automobile, stopped short, and rated the
old man from where they sat in the car. The
cabin and the little cotton plantation belonged

168 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
to them now, and the old fellow was reverting
from small proprietor to be laborer on a planta
tion, and to be laborer was httle better than to
be slave.
"We have to let down rope ladders to our
people to get them up here, ' ' said a colored dean
of a university to me. "We live in such abysses
down below, and there is no regular way out of
the pit."
I felt aa I was marching into Georgia as if I
were descending the rope ladder. What a con
trast there was between the bright, radiant-
faced girls at Atlanta studying science and lan
guages, and those whom I was meeting' now.
There was a regular sequence or gradation go
ing downward to filth and serfdom. The first
bathed twice a day, and spent hours working
"anti-kink" not only into their hair but into
their souls and minds. They were fresh and fit
and happy as morning itself. That was on the
Atlanta heights. I stepped down to the world of
business with its heavier, gloomier types, the
hard-faced, skillful, and acquisitive doctors, the
fire-delivering, shadowy-minded clergy, the ex
cited and eager yet heavy-footed poiltlcians. I
took the road and met the troubled landowners,
pathetically happy to exist, though drowning in
mortgage and debt ; from them I passed to the
farm laborers, with the jowl of the savage,
matted hair, bent backs, deformed with joyless
toil, exuding poisonous perspiration and foul

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 169
odor, herded like cattle or worae, nearer to the
beast than our domestic animals, feared by
women and weak men, as beasts are feared when
they come in the likeness of human beings.
There were, however, steps lower still in the
ladder which leads downward from the Atlanta
hills. Frequently along the road I saw men in
yellow-striped overalls, plodding together,
working together, overlooked by a white man
with a gun, and as they walked sounded the piti
ful clank-clank of the chains. It ia rather curi-
oua, kandali in Siberia are an atrocity, but in
sections of the United States they are quite
natural. "We do not keep 'em in jail, but make 'em
work," says the white man knowingly. "When
there's much work to do on the roads we aoon
find the labor." At Springfield I remarked the
terrible state of disrepair of the highway and
public buUdings. The reason was that instead
of aetting their eriminala to work on them they
handed them over to the State authorities. Other
towns knew better. But in the chain gang and
the striped convict so easily obtained at the
courts the ex-slave waa seen at his worst, and
the rope ladder stopped short before touching
bottom. There is not much to endear the ordinary
wooden cabins in which the mass of America's
black peasantry is found to live. They are
•nnnfaf ar\A Vio-i.a-1. +lian +Via ¦nrnrH+. vml XtTOnln See

170 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
in Russia. Ex-serf has fared better than ex-
slave. However, one detail of charm on this
Georgian way was the putting up of tiny stars
as a sign of boys serving in the army, a humble
star of hope and glory like some tiny flower
blossoming out of season in the wilds — one
white star for a boy in the army, a golden one
for a boy who had died. In their submerged
way the Negroes were proud of having helped
in the war. The glory, or the idea, or the par
rot cry of "making the world safe for democ
racy" had penetrated even into the most ob
scure abodes. The poor Negro had discovered
Europe at last, and was especially in love with
one nation — the French. The South generally
had not been very eager to see the Negro in
the war and has not reacted sympathetically to
the black man's war glory.
"There's no managing the neegahs now,
they's got so biggety since the war," said a
white woman at Shadydale. "Las' year we
white people jus' had to pick the cotton usselves,
men, women, and chillen." She told me she did
not think it a bit nice of the French girls to
walk out with Negro soldiers, and then told a
story of a French bride brought home by one
of the white boys. She tittered. "Yes ... she
had twins soon af ' she came, and would you
b'Ueve it, they were neegahs. Of course he sent
her right back." The French intimacy with the
Negro soldiers has cooled the Southerner's

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 171
regard for the best-loved nation of Europe. It
has also stirred up the racial fear concerning
Negroes and white women. Because the black
soldier was a favorite of the white girls in
France it is thought that his eye roves more
readily to the pure womanhood of the South.
Lynching seems often to be due to puritani
cal fervor, and is compatible with a type of
religiosity. Mob feeling against love is very dan
gerous. A pastor kisaes a girl of his congrega
tion, a deacon happens to see it, and his career
is ended. An old man on the road volunteered
the fact that he had never "sinned" with a
woman, black or white, his whole life. Certainly
there is a high standard of righteousness. Fam
Uy life is pure, and love-making is not the chief
interest in hfe as in aome European coimtries.
Men's minds are more on their business, and
women's on their homes. I am tempted to think
that if the white race which inhabits the South
were French or Russian or Polish or Greek
there would be no lynchings. The great num
ber of mixed relationships woiUd beget toler
ance for inter-racial attraction. I said to a
young Ploridan going through in hia car — "I
can well imagine a certain type of European
women oghng the Negro, making eyes at him
and luring him to his destruction. Have you
ever come across such a type?" He answered
"No, and if there were, we'd do away with her,
too."

172 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Of course this rigidly moral point of view
falls away when it is a matter of the white man
and the black girl or the mulatto. The morality
of the Negro woman was badly undermined in
slavery days, when slave children were bred
without any thought of sin or shame. But
though the moral standard has been low, it is
nothing like so low as it was. Pride of race has
been born, and the moral purity of the colored
woman as a whole is now comparatively higher.
Certainly even in the country districts, where the
Negro is nearest to his old state of being a chat
tel, there is a great decrease in the number of
half-bred children. The solution of the racial
problem by ultimate blending of color is not one
which seems likely to succeed here in the course
of nature. Black and White are far more sepa
rate and distinct in freedom than they were in
slavery. Even the black mammy is djdng out.
There are not so many of that type of colored
women. The white mother, moreover, has more
scruple against giving her child away from her
own breast. The Southern woman is as much
against promiscuous relationships with Negro
women as her manfolk is against the Negro's
roving eyes. One woman said, "You can under
stand the fondness of our young men for some
of the Negro girls when as babies they were
suckled by a Negro woman." There is much
psychological truth in that.
During these weeks on the roads of Georgia

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 173
three Negroes were burned in my neighborhood,
two near Savannah for supposed complicity in
the murder of a deputy sheriff, and a mob of
about a thousand white men took pleasure in the
auto-da-fe. A short whUe later near Macon a
Negro waa accuaed of making love to a woman
of fifty as she was coming home from church one
Sunday evening. Some one certainly attacked
her, though what was his object might be ques
tionable. The accused man fled for his life. He
was captured at midnight by certain well-known
citizens whose namea were publiahed in the
press. The sheriff argued with a crowd of about
four hundred in the public street for about an
hour and a half, and then, like PUate, washed his
hands of the matter and let the mob have ita
way. Paul Brooker, the Negro, lay on the
ground maltreated, but living; gasoUne was
poured over him, a lighted match was applied,
and he was burned to death. This waa not in
Cathohc Spain in the days of the Inquisition,
but in religious Georgia, sohd for Wilson and
the League of Nations. I was told I could not
understand why such things had to be done. No
Englishman and no Northerner could ever pen
etrate the secret of it. That seemed to put me in
the wrong when conversing with the Southern
people. It was a curious fact, however, that they
also for their part took no pains to understand
how such things made the blood boil in the veins
of one who lived elsewhere. It was not the exe-

174 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
cution nor the crime but the cruelty that seemed
to me unforgivable. I could understand killing
the Negro, but I could not and would not care to
imderstand the state of mind of the four hun
dred who enjoyed his torments.
Burnings and hangings and mob violence of
other kinds are frequent in most of the States
of the South, but even in such cases where the
names of citizens are given in the press no pros
ecution or inquiry seems to follow. Thus the
great flag is flouted, and it is possible to imagine
the cynical mirth with which the ecstasy of the
Negroes following the Army of Liberation in
1864 might be compared with the hilarity of tha
Southern mob in 1920 watching the ex-slave
slowly burning to death on their accusation and
yelling for mercy when there was no merciful
ear to hear.
I suppose nothing begets hate so readily as
cruelty. That is why in aU wars there is so
much mongering of atrocities : one side tries to
find out all the cruelties and barbarities com
mitted by the other just to stir up its own adher
ents. So in the CivU War all the brutalities of
the slave owners were made known, and the
Northern soldier's blood boiled because of
them. Although the quarrel is now healed, there
was, at the time, a deep hate of the Southerners
in the war. It was not only a martial conflict but
personal hatred and contempt. What was done

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 175
to the Blacks was aggravated by what was done
to the white prisoners. The North discovered a
cruelty and callousness in the South which must
have been a puzzle to those who reflected that
they were of the same race. For Georgia is pre
dominantly English by extraction, and atill
proud, as I found, of grandfathers and great
grandfathers bom in the old country. Some
ascribe the change of temperament to the hot
sun and to the southern latitude; more, to the
brutalizing influences of slavery itself.
When I was at MUlen, which once in the glare
of a burning railroad swarmed with Sherman's
troopers, I went out to the old Southern battery
at Lawton and saw the mounds and the fields
where the pen of Northern priaonera was kept.
It is waving with grass or corn to-day, and there
is a beautiful crystal spring in the midst of
serene, imtroubled nature. Here the prisoners
were concentrated in a space of ground three
hundred feet square, enclosed in a stockade and
without covering, exposed to all kinds of
weather. When any eacaped they were chased
with bloodhounds. Some seven hundred and
fifty died whUe in this concentration camp. No
wonder a soldier of the time wrote : "It fevered
the blood of our brave boys. . . . God certainly
wUl visit the authors of all this crime with a ter-
Vible judgment."
Sherman's soldiers destroyed every hound
thev could find in Georsia as they passed

176 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
through — so strongly did they resent the bar
barity of hunting men with dogs. For the South
had learned to hunt runaway slaves with blood
hounds, and it was a type of hunting which gave
a peculiar satisfaction to the lust of cruelty.
What they learned in the maltreatment of their
slaves they could put into practice against the
prisoners they obtained. There again, however,
the war has failed to bear fruit; for the hunt
ing of Negroes with bloodhounds has become
common once more.
The Northern soldiers did not become gentler
lo the Southern population as they advanced
further into the depths of the country. Rather
the reverse. They would have been even more
destructive than before had they not found the
country to be more and more sparsely settled.
The march from Millen to Savannah would have
resulted in the harshest treatment of the peo
ple, but happily the way lay through forests
and through the uncultivated wildernesses of
Nature herself. The army had only its prison
ers to vent its displeasure upon, and they cer
tainly did not pet the few hundred Confederate
soldiers and "civilian personages" whom they
had collected in bondage. The enemy was found
to have mined the road at one point. An officer
of the Union Army had his leg bloAvn off. Bight-
inch shells had been buried in the sand with fric
tion matches to explode them when trod on.
Sherman was very angry, and caUed it murder,

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 177
not war, in a way which reminds one of the in
dignation caused when in the late war the Ger
mans started anything novel. The answer to
this mining of the road was to make the rebel
prisoners march ahead of the colunm in close
formation ao aa to explode any more which
might be laid on the way. They were greatly
afraid, and begged hard to be let off — ^much to
the mirth of the auppoaed victims. It was not
until nearing one of the forts of Savannah that
another mine exploded — ^the hurt done to the
prisoners remains unrecorded.
The way is eastward to Sylvania and the
Savannah River, and then south to the rice fields
and the harbor. The road is deep in sand, and
on each aide is uncleared country with high yel
low reeds below and lofty pines above. Persim
mons, ripe and yellow, grow by the wayside, a
luscious fruit, good when just rotten and full of
softness and sun heat. Large bird-like butter
flies gracefully flitting down the long corridors
between the pines, and myriads of jumping
mantisea and graashoppers auggeat that it ia
not November. The golden fohage of an occa
sional beech reminda you that it ia. The woods
are deep and gloomy and melancholy. A poorer
population hves by pitch-boiling and lumbering.
Every pine tree is bearded with lichen. Moss
hangs in long festoons from the branches. The
great dark trunks are here and there sUvered

178 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
with congealed floods of sap. Trenches two
inches deep have been cut in the wood, and tin
gutters and pots have been fixed up to collect
the resin. Every other tree has a brown pot
tied to it, and each pot is half full of the pearly
liquid life of the trees. You emerge from the
forest to the pretty clearing of Rincom with a
Lutheran church which has a metal swan above
the spire — symbol of the fact that the first con
gregation, the one that built the church, had
come across the water from Europe. Six miles
from Rincom ia the oldeat church in all thia part
of Georgia, the Ebenezer Chapel, founded by
those firat German settlers who sailed up the
Savannah River, and in part founded the colony
of Georgia. It also ia a church of the swan. The
forest is very dense, and Negroes with shotguns
are potting at wild birds from the highway.
Wayside cottages and churches seem almost
overcome with the tillandsia, a subtropical
mossy growth that seems to grow downward
rather than upward. There is a slight clearing
and a cemetery in the depth of the forest, and
the hundreds of pines and cypresses and oaks
about it are weeping with this hanging moss.
The county is that of Effingham. Springfield,
the capital, without electric light, deep in yel
low sand, with a great public square where all
the many trees look like weeping willows be
cause of this gray-green tillandsia hair trailing
and waving ten or twenty feet to a tress, is an

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 179
obscure town. Guideposta for Florida begin to
appear, and heavy touring tears roll past on the
way to Miami and Palm Beach. There are some
charming wooden churches — the Negro ones
being poorer, looking better sacrifices unto God
than those of the Whites. But above the counter
in the chief store is written
In God we trust,
All others pay cash.
The sound of the axe clashes in the woods.
There are many f aUen trunks on which it is pos
sible to sit down and rest. Sea mistroUs in from
the Atlantic, and warm airs push through it,
feeding the marvelous tropical mosses. It's a
long way to Savannah — distance seems to be
intensified by the narrowness of the gray cor
ridor of the road through the vast, high forest.
There rises from the obstructed earth black oak
and sterUe vine and pahnettoes like ladies'
hands with opened fans. The surface whence
the forest grows is swampy, old, hchened,
mossy, springy. It's hard to find solid earth,
so many branches seem to be overgrown with
verdure and moss. In the heat long snakes glide
away from your approach, having seen you be
fore you saw them. And rat, rat, rat, the red-
poUed woodpeckers in their tree-top cities call
upon one another and seek their insect lunch
eons and then flit home and knock again. The
white people speak a "niffgrer brosrue" which is

180 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
almost indistinguishable from Negro talk, and
they never pronounce an r. The Negro seems
very poor and illiterate and afraid. "Hear
comes the OLD RELIABLE FRIND with the
LIFT of CHRIST" says a notice on an old
wooden church of colored folk.
I am overtaken by a Negro with a wagon and
twelve bales of cotton, and though he seems try
ing to race a huge touring car "heading for
Florida" with trunks on top and whole family
within, he slows down to pick me up. His is an
enormous lorry, ponderous and ramshackle,
shaking the bones out of your body as it takes
you along. The Negro boy held the steering
wheel nonchalantly with one hand and blun
dered along at top speed. After ten miles of
thia we entered one of the vast cotton ware
houses outside Savannah, passed the gateman
¦who would not have let me in but he thought I
was in charge, and we saw where a hundred
thousand bales were being housed and kept.
Scores of Negroes were at work manipulating
bales on trolley trains run by petrol engines all
over the asphalted way, and from shed to shed.
"Are you shipping much cotton?" I asked of
a white man who was giving us a receipt for the
cotton brought in, while a dozen husky fellows
were unloading the wagon. "Not much," said
he. ' * Holding for better prices, ' ' he added, and
smiled knowingly.
Then with the empty wagon we rolled off for

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 181
Savaimah, and the boy driver told me he was
going to work hia passage soon on a ship from
Savannah to New York. "We don't get a chance
down here."
And yet how much better off was he with his
wagon, and union wages, and life in a large city
than the poor ex-slave, on the land !
WhUe imlading, it had become dark. But an
hour more through the forest brought us to the
outlying slums of Savannah, and then to the
"red-light district" where were muaic and
dancing, and open doora and windowa, and the
red glow of the lamp luring colored youth to
lowest pleasures ; then to the grandeur and spa
ciousness of modern Savannah, and the white
man's civilization, up out of Georgia, up out of
the pit, through the veil of the forest and of
Nature to the serene heights of world civUiza
tion once more.

VII
AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE
The march to the sea, like John Brown's
soul marching to eternity, waa a moving aym-
bol of the faith of the war. Jden saw in it the
march of the cauae of humanity as a whole.
Sherman offered Savannah as a Christmas gift
to Abraham Lincoln, and the star of Bethle
hem shone anew over a ravaged land and rav
aged hearts. The news when it came was a sig
nal for great popular rejoicing and a prophetic
belief in the end of the war. Four months after
ward there was a general capitulation of the
South. It is true America's most innocent and
Christian man was destroyed by hate — another
Golgotha day in history, when on Good Friday
in a theatre in Washington Lincoln was
assassinated — ^but the fight had been fought
and the victory won. It became possible to rat
ify the abolition of slavery by the re-establiah-
ment of the Union and the common conaent of
all the Statea.
"In Sixty Three the slaves were free; In
Sixty Four the war was o'er," says a rhyme,
but in truth the Negroes were not free in the
South tiU the South had been conquered by the
182

AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 183
United States, and the war was not o'er tiU
AprU, 1865. It was on the 24th of May, 1865,
that the army marched past the White Houae
in its final grand review, bearing aloft its battle-
riven flags festooned with flowers. There was
glory in the North ; the twilight of confusion in
the South; and the Negroea were free. Peace
came once more, though not peace in men's
hearts. War hate still bred hate, and the lust
of cruelty called into being its monster prog
eny of revenge.
The fanatic who murdered Lincoln in doing
so struck the whole of his own people. The
planters who burned the runaway slaves, the
soldiers who during the war put to death the
Negro prisoners who fell into their hands, the
actions generally of the embittered, brought the
calamity of retaliatory spite not only upon
themselves but upon the innocent and the just
and the kind. A policy of punishment and not
of reconcUiation ruled at Washington, and the
white South suffered. The Negroes and the
Negro cause suffered also. The ex-slaves were
given votes and put on an electoral equality
with white men. This was a palpable injus
tice and indignity. The Negroes in 1863 were
not prepared in mind or in soul or in knowledge
for the exercise of the franchise. Neither were
they gifted with the power of will and physi
cal strength necessary to hold the suffrage

184 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
exaltation nationally when the victory was won
as there had been locally when Sherman
marched through, and the same disillusion and
the same destruction of bridges was to take
place also. Where the white man went the black
man could not follow. For a brief space of
time the ex-slave dominated the white South,
The black vote was exploited by political char
latans; Negroes did not vote, they were voted,
and then a way was made out of injustice to
put the white man and ex-master of slaves in
the right again. Por wrong though the South
had been, the war should still have left the edu
cated white man in authority and not put him
under the heel of the illiterate. The poor slaves
just freed, but not educated, not blown upon by
the winds of culture, not sunned in America's
bright moral sun, were in no position to vote
upon America's destiny or to take a directing
hand in her affairs. As is usual after a war,
the victors wanted a revolution in the land
where they had won. The white North revenged
itself on the white South. But a black revolu
tion was a thing that could not be. Racial in
stinct came to the help of the Whites, and
through general tacit understandings and or
ganized conspiracies the new black masters
were ousted from their places. Then fear of
what might be, and once more, revenge bom
of the brief black dominion, went as far the
other way in injustice. Nigger baiting arose,

AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 185
mob violence took the place of the justice of the
courts. The central authority was flouted, first
covertly and then openly. The Negro was hus
tled back to peonage and servihty, and one
might be tempted to think that the cause for
which all the blood of the CivU War had been
shed was lost. It would have been lost had not
slavery become a complete anachronism in
world society. The yoke coidd not - be reim-
posed upon the Negro's neck. His freedom has
persisted, it has grown.
The maximum of persecution of the Negro in
recent years does not equal the misery of slav
ery. Even if all the lynchings and burnings
and humiliations and disabilities be put to
gether they do not add up to one year of servi
tude. Most Negroes understand that. They
know that no matter what may be the vicissi
tudes they pass through they are stiU progres
sing to an ever fuller freedom.
In viewing the whole situation one is apt to
underestimate the unhappiness of slavery and
to magnify the unhappiness of the present era
of freedom. It is blessed to be free. Even to be
the worst possible peon is far removed from
slavery. The great significance of the Emanci
pation is that the Negro slaves were set free-^
free for anything and everything in the wide
world. In the prison house of a national insti
tution of slavery there was no hope, no sense
f\f +T10 nl+iTviQ-fzi v\rvooiVvili+ioa lof/an^ in q mnn

186 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
But with freedom every baby became a poten
tial Alexander.
In 1863 a new life began to germinate, began
to have promise. Some thought that it must
show forth at once. But that was fallacious. It
was bound to spend a long time underground
before the first modest shoots of the new should
appear. Many have argued that the Negro
would come to nothing in his freedom, and even
those who have believed in his destiny have
been impatient. Premature greetings have
been given time and oft to new Negro culture
and responsibility. The only criticism made
here is that they were premature. The greatest
of these was the suffrage.
I have said that the denial of the Negro his
legitimate vote is a part of peonage, and I have
also said that it was wrong to give the freed
men votes at once. I should like to explain how
Negro suffrage stands to-day.
In the first place, it was wrong to enfranchise
the ex-slaves, not because they were not entitled
to votes, but because they were not ready to be
intrusted with votes. In 1863 in England as well
as in America the world could be saved by the
ballot box alone. It was a rebellion against thia
belief that caused Carlyle to fulminate against
"Nigger Democracy." In talking with Dean
Brawley of Morehouse College at Atlanta, I
noticed a prejudice against Carlyle which is
very widespread among educated colored peo-

AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 187
pie. In the first place I should like to assure
them that the use by Carlyle of the expression
"nigger" has nothing in common with the bru
tal and contemptuous sense in which that word
is used in America. Thus we say "working like
a nigger," an expression derived from the life
of the slaves; "nigger diploma," a contemptu
ous English expression for a high degree such
as Doctor of Literature or Doctor of Divinity,
thought to have been purchased in America at
a Negro university; the ten little nigger boys,
the black boys who come so swiftly to bad
ends in the famihar rhyme of our childhood
"Nigger" is in England a playful word for a
Negro, and is used always in the nursery. It ia
the children's word for a black man, prefer
ably for one who has been thoroughly blacked.
Carlyle was one of the most reverent of men,
and not accustomed to speak contemptuously
of God's creatures. But he was contempt
uous of the suffrage. To him and to Ruskin and
to many another it seeme'd absurd that the
voice of the educated man and the iUiterate
should have the same value ; that the many who
are dull and ignorant should be allowed to out
vote the few who know. The enfranchisement
of the freed Negroes furnished Carlyle with an
example of carrying an absurdity to its logical
conclusion. The alternative to government by ballot has,
TintiroiTOT n-rnTro^ -tn he trnvemiTient. hv tlie finmi-

188 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
nation of a military caste, and mankind gener
ally in our time has shown that it prefers the
former. The ballot box with all its absurdity
seema nevertheless our only means of carrying
on in freedom. It would be wrong to grant the
suffrage to the millions of savages under Brit
ish rule in Africa, because they could not use
it. And it was wrong to enfranchise Negrodom
in America with a stroke of the pen after the
Civil War. It has done the Negroes more harm
than good.
To have such a grievance as to be legally en
franchised and yet physically denied the use of
the vote is, of course, great harm. It affects
the social mind. It makes bitterness and brews
agitation. To be conscripted and called upon to
fight for the country when this grievance is
in mind has aggravated the harm already done.
"We are not too low to fight the foe, but we're
too low to share in the spoil," as the story goes.
I heard a Negro comedian indulging in funni-
osities at a colored music hall win great
applause by a chansonette :
Cullud folk will be ready to flght
When cullud folk has equal right.
I a'nt so foolish as I seem to be.
And it is a reasonable sentiment.
The fact is, Negrodom has to a great extent
qualified to vote. Half the population is sunk
in economic bondage and illiteracy, but the

AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 189
other half has more than average capacity for
citizenship. Yet in spite of the Conatitution and
the Federal authority these many millions re
main practically without voice in all the South
ern Statea. Phyaical force is exerted to keep
them from the ballot box.
The Southerner affects to believe that the
educated Negro is even less fitted to have a
vote than the illiterate sort. But that is because
he hates to aee the Negro rise. He will tell you
that in certain States the Negroes outnumber
the Whites by ten to one. But that is a charac
teristic misstatement. It is hard to find a city
where the black vote exceeds the white. In
the last census the blackest cities were Bir
mingham and Memphis, where the Negroes
proved to be forty per cent, of the population,
whUe in Richmond it was  37%
Atlanta  34%
Nashville  34%
Washington  29%
New Orleans  27%
And there are only two States where the
Negro population exceeds that of the White;
namely, Mississippi and South Carolina, where
the Negroes were 57 per cent, and 55 per cent.
of the total population.
If, as seems only fair, an ilUteracy test were

190 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
white voters would, outnumber black by a large
margin. As for having anything to fear from the edu
cated Negro vote, there is of course one matter
of anxiety. The Negro would be bound to fight
for social justice, and violence would be done
to racial prejudice.
The South is, however, determined that the
Negro shaU never vote again. Year by year the
colored people as a whole grow in intelligence,
in capacity, and in the number of its intelli
gentsia, but the South is not moved. It sees no
explosion in the future, and makes no provision
for one — ^wUl not, till the explosion comea.
Racial fear, no doubt, plays a large part in
thia determination, but there is a further con
sideration. The Solid South votes Democratic
to a man. The Negro, if he had a chance, would
vote as solidly Republican. I remember being
present at a violent quarrel at a Negro meeting
in New Orleans — one Negro, though he had not
a vote, had actually called himself a Democrat.
A remedying of the defective suffrage would be
an enormous access of strength to the Repub
lican party. For this reason Democrats exag
gerate their racial fear. And also for that rea
son every Republican politician who gains
power is bound to make a bid to break the solid
South. Senator Lodge himself waa the author
of a "Force BUl" which came near enactment
some years ago, and it would have placed Fed-

AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 191
eral soldiers at every ballot box in the South,
to protect black voters.
The South defies anything which the Federal
Government may devise. Aa Senator Lamar,
of Mississippi, said to his colleagues in the
Senate :
"But there is one iaaue upon which the South
is solid, and upon which she will remain solid—
the protection of her civUization from subjec
tion to an ignorant and aervile race. And
neither Federal honors nor Federal bayonets
can shake that solidity."
President Wilson's administration has been
one which was dominated by Southern Demo
crats, and aa the Southern vote haa been be
hind him and them, there could hardly be any
help given to the Negroea. The Democratic
failure has nevertheless been a real disappoint
ment. Wilson's radical idealism; hia plunge to
the root of trouble wherever trouble waa, led
many to beheve that he would do something to
remedy the pitiable state of the Negroes. Some
legal palliative would come with a better grace
from Democrats than a forceful measure en
acted over their heads by Republicans. Per
haps with the downfall of the Democratic party
and the coming triumph of the Republicans
something practical will be done during the
next few years to help the Negro. The main
hope of color must lie in a Republican Presi
dent and a Republican Senate beinar in nower

192 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
together. November, 1920, and its elections will
be as fateful for the Negro as for the world.
Roosevelt gave his party a generous lead
when he received Booker T. Washington at the
White House, and I heard young Colonel
Roosevelt one evening, with his father's nerve
and pluck, promise a vast Negro audience a
"square deal" if they would have patience.
That square deal is the Negro's right, espe
cially in the matter of the vote. It is strange
that the movement for the "rights of man" in
augurated practically in the French Revolu
tion should have stopped short about 1870, and
the contrary ideal of the "privilege of individ
uals" begun to progress. As Sutton Griggs
very forcefully put it in his address to the
National Baptist Convention at Newark, New
Jersey :
"In 1792 a motion was carried in the English
House of Commons providing for the gradual
abolition of the slave traffic. In 1794 the
French Convention decreed that the rights of
French citizens should be granted to all slaves
in French colonies. In 1834 the British abol
ished slavery entirely within their dominions.
In 1848 French slaves were emancipated. In
1863 the Dutch set their slaves free. The South,
unmoved by world thought, clung to its slaves,
but they were violently torn from her grasp in
the Civil War. Under the impulse of the doc
trine of the native equality of all men the

AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 193
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States, forbidding the denial of the
right to vote because of race, color, or previ
ous condition of servitude, was adopted in the
year 1869. In the year 1870, bills were passed by
Congress providing fines and imprisonment for
anyone who even tried to prevent the Negro
from voting or to keep his vote from being
counted. "But aU of the forces that could be mar
shaled have not, up to the present time, been
able to move our nation or the world one inch
forward in a straight line from this point. The
action just mentioned atanda as the last re
corded national act designed to incorporate the
Negro race in the governmental structure with
out reservations. Further efforts were made
by powerful forces, but all have proved to be
abortive. In 1875 a very comprehensive bill in
tended to make the Negroes of the South
secure in their rights passed the lower house of
Congress but was defeated in the Senate. Some
years later, the Lodge Election Bill, having
the same purpose, passed the House but was
defeated in the Senate. The Republican party's
platform, upon which President Taft was
eTected, contained an unequivocal declaration
in favor of enforcing the Fifteenth Amend
ment in letter and in spirit, but no legislation
in that direction was attempted during his term
of office."

194 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
To-day, however, a world war and the great-
eat affirmation of the righta of nations if not
of man, has been made. There is an opportu
nity to resume the interrupted advance.

vin
IN ALABAMA: COLOR AND COLOR
PREJUDICE
I MADE an expedition into Alabama from
Atlanta, and again saw something of that State
when I got down to the Gulf of Mexico. In the
matter of Negro life it is first of all important
because of Tuskegee Institute, which, like the
college at Hampton, is sometimes called the
Mecca of the American Negro. It was founded
by Booker T. Washington, and is the visible
expression of the self-help idea. There, as at
Hampton, the ex-alave is taught to do some
thing as the end of hia schooling. The estab
lishment is now imder the guidance of the be
loved Dr. Moton, a wise and genial African
giant of pure Negro extraction: his father is
said to have been a prince who in selhng his
captives was himself lured on to a slaver, and
suddenly found himself in the position of hia
own captive enemies. This was during Civil
War time, and he came to America a slave but
to be made free. As a boy barely able to sign
his name young Moton first appeared at Hamp
ton, and the authorities were at first doubtful
about accepting him as a student. But what
they would have missed! Dr. Moton is the
very beat type of Negro teacher, the worthy

196 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
successor of Booker Washington. Tuskegee,
besides its educational work, does much to com
bat race hatred, and keeps public opinion in
America well informed on the lynchings that
take place. The presence of the institute in the
backward State of Alabama is, very important
for the future of the South.
At Birmingham, Alabama, I was presented to
a very charming yoimg widow who had been left
rather rich, a well-educated lady of leisure, who
lived well and dressed well, and was poaaeaaed
of a recognizable American chic. 1 met her in
town, and then in response to an invitation
caUed on her at her house. She was certainly
a Negro beauty, and I have no doubt was highly
desired in marriage. There was a clear five
thousand a year besides her charms, and it was
impossible not to feel some of the glamour of
that fact — The belle of the season is wasting
an hour upon you.
Mmmmmm she cooed to everything I said. She
was shy as a pedestal without its statue; her
eyes burned, and I could not help feeling all
the atmosphere of ' ' romance. ' ' If she had been
a shade lighter in complexion any white man
might have fallen in love with her.
Her children — or was it the children of one of
her black servants? — ^were playing with a family
of real Negro dolls, not "nigger dolls," the
stove black, red-lipped nigger of the nursery.

IN ALABAMA 197
but colored dolls, after Nature. This was very
charming, and I should have liked to see a baby
woolly head at the swelling bosom of my beau
tiful acquaintance. She would have made a de
lightful study for a black Madonna.
To have their own dolls is one of the new
racial triumphs of the colored people in Amer
ica. Formerly they had to put up with the pink
and white darlings with yellow hair and pale
blue eyes, thoae reflectiona of German babies,
which have hitherto held the market of dolls.
It has taken the Negroes half a century of free
dom before it occurred to them that the doll,
being the promise of baby-to-be, it was not
entirely good for morals, and for black racial
pride, that their little girls should love white
dollies. Perhaps it was mooted first as a busi
ness proposition. It might be a paying enter
prise to manufacture real colored folk's doUa,
brown dolls, mulatto dolls, near white dolls,
black and kinky ones, sad or pretty ones. The
year 1920 sees a lively doU industry in prog
ress. It is believed that in time the white dolly
will become a rarity in the Negro home. Whence
children may learn a lesson: Your pet doll
would not perhaps be another girl's pet doll.
It was also at Southern Brum that, calling on
Reverend Williams, I happened upon this sin
gular conversation:
"Now, isn't it absurd for us to have white
flTicels?"

198 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
"You surely would not like them black?"
"We give Sunday-school cards to our chil
dren with white angels on them. It's wrong."
"Black angels would be ugly."
"No more ugly than white."
I thought the whiteness of the angels was aa
the whiteness of white light which contained all
color. That, however, was lost on the rever
end, who happened to be a realist.
"Christ himself waa not white. He would
have had to travel in a Jim Crow car," said
he. "But put it to yourself: isn't it absurd for
us to be taught that the good are aU white, and
that sin itself is black?"
"It does seem to leave you in the shade,"
said I.
"Expressions such as 'black as sin' ought to
be deleted from the language. One might as well
say 'white as sin.' "
I ransacked my brain rapidly.
"We say 'pale as envy,' " said I.
" 'Black spite,' " he retorted. "Why should
it be black?"
I could not say.
"Then Adam and Eve in the Garden," he
went on, "are always shown as beautifully
white creatures, whereas, considering the cli
mate, they may well have been as dark-skinned
as any Negro couple in Alabama. Babylon
was built by Negroes."
"Would you have Adam and Eve painted
black?"

IN ALABAMA 199
"Why, yes, I would."
This struck me aa rather diverting, but it was
quite serious. Later, in New York one night
at Liberty Hall, before I was driven out as a
white interloper, I heard an orator say to an
admiring host of Negroea : "Why, I ask you, is
God always shown as white? It is becauae He
is the white man's God. It is the God of our
masters. (Yes, brothers, that's it.) It 'a the God
of thoae who persecute and despise the colored
people. Brothers, we've got to knock that white
God down and put up a black God. We've got
to rewrite the Old Testament and the New from
a black man's point of view. Our theologians
must get busy on a black God."
This was what we Whites call clap trap, and
irreverent as well. But it seemed to take weU
with the Harlem brothers. Once more a lesson
may be derived for older children  If you
make God in your own image, it does not fol
low that other children will agree that it is
like 
It reminded me of the enthusiasm of the sol
diers when they got home from the war and
took a good look at their own womenkind ; they
thought them so much more good looking than
French or German girls. Girls and dolls, angels
and Gods, we hke them to correspond to our
own complexion.
Birmingham at night glows to the sky with
furnaces. A hundred thousand black proletari-

200 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
up soot to heaven. Though I met there the
charming Mrs. J  , whom I have mentioned,
and also other educated Negroes, it is not to be
supposed that it is a place of culture, white or
black. It is a straggling city with an ugly, mis
shapen, ill-balanced interior or center part like
a table spread with small teacups and large
jam pots. It will not stand comparison with
Atlanta or New Orleans or Richmond. Strictly
speaking, it is not a city, but an agglomeration
of industrialism. Nevertheleaa, the factories
which surround it are owned by companies of
vaat reaources, and it ia claimed that in the steel
industry there are some of the most extensive
industrial plants in the world. Business ia little
disturbed by strikea. On the gates of the vast
factory estates is written : We do not want you
unless you are able to look after yourself. Care
less men are always liable to accident. Some
notices declare "Non-Union Shops," others
"Open Shops," but it does not seem to matter
much. The unions have little power. Wages are
high, though not as high as in the North, but
the cost of living is very much less, and there is
a lower standard of respectability. In some
cases the industrials are housed on the factory
grounds, and you see Negro dwellings which
amount to industrial barracks. Every gate has
its porter or civilian sentry, and in order to
reach your workingman you may have to show
what your business is with him. On the way to

IN ALABAMA 201
his door you are met by the notice that tres
passers will be prosecuted.
There is no encouragement to loiterers, but
you may see the Negro gangs at work, organized
squads of workers hard at it, with Negro fore
men or white foremen. A myriad-fold Negro in-
dustrialism straggles near mines and furnaces,
blacker than in Nature. The coaly black Negro
collier, the sooted face of steel worker and tar
operative are curious comments on whether it
ia good to be Black or to be White. Coke prod-
ucta flame and smoke at innumerable pipes,
whUe locomotives are panting and steaming
forward and back, and a platoon of chimney
stacks belches forth dense blackness, which,
enfolded in the breeze, wanders over the heav
ens and one's eyes.
I strayed in at the doors of some very dirty
Negro houaea. Here was little of the amour
propre of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Anti-
Mnk waa not being generally apphed, and as
far aa the little ones were concerned, mother's
little Alabama coon seemed to be getting a little
bit too much for mother. It is not difficult to
imderstand the disgust of people in the North
when in 1917 and 1918 Negro families rolled up
in their thousands from the South — the real
obscure, fuzzy-wuzzy, large-featured, smelly
Negro of submerged Alabama. The sight of
them was responsible for much of the feeling
which inspired the Northern riots. "We know

202 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
our Northern Negroes," they said in the North,
"but theae from the South were like no Negroes
we had ever aeen." There waa awakened much
prejudice againat these uncouth Africans, who
seemed so near to the savage and the beast. It
was natural, perhaps. But high wages and new
hopes and ideals quickly improve the black im
migrant. He is being absorbed into the gener
ality of black Negrodom, in ita established
worthiness and respectability, above the Mason-
Drxon line. It would be difficult after a few
years to pick out a Southern Negro in a crowd
in New York.
The little black children in the suburbs of Bir
mingham were alternately very confiding and
then suddenly scared and then confiding again
as I tried to talk to them. There was much fear
in their bodies. They seemed if anything to be
blacker than their parents, and I volunteered
the opinion that a good deal of their color would
come off in a course of hot baths. But washing
facilities were of a rudimentary kind, and the
passion for being fit and fresh could not readily
be developed.
The white South could improve its Negroea
infinitely if it cared to do ao. On the whole,
however, it doea not wish its Negroes to rise
and seema most happy when they can readily
be identified with the beasts that perish. But
if it thought more highly of the Negro, the
Negro would rise,

IN ALABAMA 203
I visited Professor K  in his three-storied
house. He had been one of the Negro Four-
Minute Men who had made popular addresses
to his people during the war fervor, inducing
them to be "patriotic" and subscribe their dol
lars to various funds. He said he was deeply
discouraged. He did not belong to Alabama
and would much rather live in a more civilized
part of the world, but he gave his life for the
uplift of the children. He was doing what he
could, but the Whites gave no co-operation. In
these factory areas the colored children outnum
bered the Whites five to one. Teaching was, of
course, segregated ; he had no objection to that,
but very, very little was done by comparison
for the black children. They had most need of
blessing — ^but they shared only in parsimony
and curses. He showed me his school — a
ramshackle building of old, faded wood. "Oh,
but our teachera have enthusiasm," said he.
"They're doing a work of God, and they love
it. Yes, sir."
I obtained an impression which I think is
sound, that there was more keenness to teach
on the part of the colored people of Alabama
than on the part of the Whites. White schools
find some difficulty in obtaining good teachera ;
colored schools find no auch difficulty. If col
ored students only go on in the way they have
begun, there is quite a good prospect of their

204 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
schools — ^not perhaps soon in Alabama, for it
ia strongly prejudiced, but elsewhere first, and
then in this State. To start off with, they would
be excellent with young children. There is a
broad road of conquest standing open there. As
Booker T. Washington very sagaciously pointed
out to his people, there ia no atronger argument
in their favor than personal attainment.
However, looking around the houses of the
industrialized masses here, one can only be ap
palled at the inadequacy of civilization. There
is nothing that is better than in the forlorn
mining villages of the Ruasian Ural. It makes
a sort of Negro little better than a nigger, and
it is surprising that he does not run amuck more
often than he does.
If the outlying settlements reminded of the
Ural, the center of the city reminded of nothing
better than Omsk. Here on the main street, at
Eighteenth Street, is a very "jazzy" comer,
resplendent with five times too much light at
night, vocal with noiay muaic, and swarming
with Negroes of all castes and colors. By day it
is like a web of gregarious larvse; by night it
is the entrance to wonderland. Here is massed
together the Negro enterprise of the city. Moat
of the charactera of Octavua Roy Cohen's clever
Negro stories are thought to be derived from
this comer — Mr. Florian Slappey, Lawyer
Evans Chew, and the rest. Do not their ways
and doings divert a vast number of readers to

IN ALABAMA 205
the Saturday Evening Post? I may have met
some of them. I cannot say. But I met their
hke. The chief establishment is the savings bank
building, a squat, six-story erection in red brick.
It ia flanked by places of amusement, but in
itself it is an ark of professionalism and learn
ing. It is a hive of many cells or cabinets, and
every cabinet has ita special occupant, a doctor
here, a dentist there, a lawyer in the other,
another doctor, a professor, an agent, and so
on. You may meet nearly all who count in Bir
mingham Negrodom here. By the way, the
local way of pronouncing the name of the city
is Bumming Ham ; if you say politely, Birming
ham, pronouncing with hps and teeth in the
front part of the mouth, no one will imderstand
what you mean. A Negro pastor whirled me
round to the hub of Bumming Ham in his brand-
new car. He had lately had a very successful
revival, of which the motor was an outward and
visible sign. And I called on many of the nota
bles. I met a short, scrubby Negro of fifty, whose
complexion seemed to have been drenched in
yellowness. He explained this by the statement
that the blood of Senator H  flowed in his
veins. The senator had taken a liberty with
his mother, who for her part was thoroughly
black. He thanked the senator, since probably
he had given him some brains; his mother's
side of the family was unusually hard-headed.

206 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
He had become a professor. His daughter was
a remarkable public speaker, and as Senator
H  was an orator, he used to tell his Sarah
that there was Senator H  coming out in her.
' ' The Negro has been mixed with the best blood
in the South," aaid he; "the blood of the maa-
tera, the Engliah aristocrats who came first to
the country."
I did not think there was much in that.
"Are mulattoes increasing or decreasing in
numbers?" I asked.
He thought they were increasing. But he did
not deny the fact that Negro children tend to
revert to type. When two mulattoes marry, the
chUdren are generally darker than the parents,
and often real Negro types. The white man's
strain is thrown out rapidly.
"How, then, is it that mulattoes and near
Whites are on the increase?" The professor
thought for one reason there was still much
illegitimacy, and for another the Negro race
under civilized conditions was getting a little
fairer on the whole. Some of the mulatto women
were extremely beautiful, and consequently
more attractive to white men. The white women
of the South hated the mulatto women because
they took their husbands away from them. He
thought a good deal of race hatred was fostered
by the white woman, who instinctively hated the
other race.
"Did you ever hear of a union between a

IN ALABAMA 207
Negro woman and a white man that was on
other than an animal plane?" I asked him.
Professor M  knew of several instances
where an infatuation for a Negro woman had
inspired a white man to make good in life. It
was generally a tragedy, for they could not
marry, and they were subject to coarse suspicion
and raillery and intrigue. It stood in the way of
the white man finding a white bride, and of the
Negro woman finding a Negro husband. Where
a white man had become intereated in a Negro
woman it was not good for the health of a Negro
man to pretend to her affections. The mob
feeling against Negroes was so readily aroused
that it was the easiest thing in Alabama for a
white man who had a grudge against a Negro
to "frame up" a crime or a scandal and make
him leave the neighborhood or remain con
stantly in danger of being roughly handled.
Alabama has a bad record for lynching. It
is about fifth in the list of bad States. I under
stood that lynching was on the increase. The
old folk, the people who had been slave owners,
the settled inhabitants of places like Anniston
and Montgomery, and of the country, knew all
the family history of their "niggers" from A
to Z, and what they might do, or could do, and
they were friendly, compared with the "new
sort." The poor Whites loved to be in mobs and feel
in mobs. Over their meals and at work and in

208 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
the trolley cars they loved to talk in the way
of the mob. Individually they don't understand
the Negro — they are afraid of him, like dogs
that will only attack when in numbers. They
mostly came to America after the Civil War
and the Emancipation found the Negroes in pos
session of land or of work or of houses. They
had their grievances, and instead of visiting
them upon God or the Devil or Society in gen
eral, found the Negro a convenient fetish and
visited their discontent on him. It soon became
a habit, then it became a sort of lust and brutal
sport. The older and more solid people have been
much annoyed by the growth of this brutahty,
and something definite is being done to combat
it in Alabama. Committees have been formed,
or were being formed in the fall of 1919, in
every county in the State, half white, half col
ored, to inquire into racial strife and see what
could be done for life and freedom.
An old Negro said to me : "We had two clocks
on the cabin wall, and one was very slow and
deliberate and always seemed to say:
" 'Take yo' time. Take yo' time!'
"But the other gabbled to us:
" 'Get together, get together, get together!'
That's what we got to do to-day, brothers —
get together."
The Negroes are fond of emphasizing the
triviality of color differences. They reprove the

iJN AiiA±5AMA 209
white man plasrfuUy. "Why get so excited about
difference in color? We believe in equality of
rights for all men," I heard a leader say, "for
all men of whatever color — white, black, brown,
or yellow, or blue. ' ' And his audience laughed.
"Two boys go into a shop; one buys a red toy,
the other a blue toy — ^but it is not very impor
tant which color — the toy's the same."
But of courae color prejudice or preference
is not auch a haphazard matter, and prejudice
against the Negro is prejudice against more
than color. The toy, so to speak, ia different.
It may be as good, but it is different. The body,
and especially the skull, of a Negro ia different
from that of the white man. The nervoua sys
tem, the brain, the mind and soul, are different.
I heard the theory put forward in the name of
Christian Science that in God's perfect plan
there were no Negroea. Their dark skins were
other men's evU thought about them. AU men
were really white, and the outward appearanee
of their skin could be made to correspond to the
white idea by concentrated true thought about
them. That is a charitable and beautiful faith
to live by. But what of the new line of Negroes
who are proud of being black, who abhor pallor
as nausea? There are many Negroes now who
have a religion of being black. The new gen
eration of chUdren is being brought up to glorify
Negro color. It is told of the princes and war
riors from which it is descended, learns with

210 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
the geography of the United States the geog
raphy of Africa, and delights in the cognomen
— Afro-American. The color issue will never
be settled by all Negroea becoming Whites. It
seems clear also that it cannot be solved by all
men becoming mulattoes. There seems to re
main just one obvious solution, and that is in
distinct and paraUel development, equality
before the law, and mutual understanding and'
tolerance.

IX
THE SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW
Shoemaker: No, my lord, they don't hurt you there.
Foppington: I tell thee, they pinch me execrably.
Shoemaker: Well, then, my lord, if those shoes pinch you,
I'U be d  d.
Foppington: Why, wilt thou undertake to persuade me I
cannot feel?
Shoemaker: Your lordship may please to feel what you
think fit; but that shoe does not hurt you.
— ("A Trip to Scarborough.")
The Southern point of view can be gathered to
gether in a very short chapter. Its expression
has so crystallized that it can be aet down in a
series of paragraphs and phrases. Whosoever
doth not believe, without doubt he shaU be
damned everlastingly. Wherever you meet a
Southerner, be it in the remotest corner of the
earth, it is the same as in native Alabama. I
was talking to the Mother Superior of a con
vent one day in a genial English countryside.
Although I did not know it, she derived from
Mississippi. I mentioned the subject of the
Negro, and from her quiet face, meager with
fasting and pale with meditation, there flashed
nevertheless the Southern flame — ^like lightning
across the room.
You have only to mention the Negro sympa-
theticaUy in a public meeting and some one of

212 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Southern extraction will be found opposing to
you a statement of the Southern creed. Thus,
after speaking one moming at Carnegie Hall,
some one came up to me and said very emphat
ically: If you had lived among the Negroes
you would not speak of them as you do — the
inevitable Southerner.
This is his creed :
1. We understand the niggers and they hke
us. When they go North they're crazy till they
get back to us. The North does not understand
the nigger, pets him and spoils him, and at last
dislikes him more than any Southerner.
2. We have occasionally race riots in the
South, but they are generally caused by Yan
kees who have come South. In any case the
worst riots in recent years have taken place in
the North — at Washington, right under the
President's nose, and at Chicago.
3. Few Northerners or Englishmen under
stand or can understand the Negro problem.
Those who understand, agree with us. Those
who do not agree, do not understand.
4. The nigger is all right as long as he is kept
in his place. You must make him keep his dis
tance. If once you are familiar with him, you
are lost. He will give himself such airs that it
will be impossible to get on with him.
5. The nigger is an animal. The male of the
species we generally call a "buck nigger." Like
the animals, he is full of lust. Like the animals,

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 213
also, he does not feel pain. When he is burned
it is not the same as a white man burning. Like
the animals, he has no soul either to lose or to
save, and Christianity and education are alike
wasted on him. The polished Negro ia merely
diagusting, like an ape in evening dress. You
clothe him and dress him and put him at table,
but he's an animal all the same and is bound
to behave like one. You can't trust him.
6. Under the influence of alcohol the Negro
becomes a wild beast. He goes out of control.
No fear of consequence can stop him. That is
why some of the Southern Statea have been so
ardently prohibitionist.
7. If you had to live with them you'd under
stand how terrible it is.
8. The nigger is a har. He will say anything
to your face to please you, or anything he thinks
you want him to say. He'll tell you stories of
lynchings that would make you think we lynched
a nigger every week, instead of it's being the
rarest occurrence.
9. When we lynch 'em it's for a very good
reason — to protect our white women. Ask any
of your English or Northern friends, who pity
the Negro, whether they'd be willing to let their
daughtera marry a Negro. It 'a a horrible
thought. But that is what the Negro is always
after — the white woman. His fancy runs to her,
and if it were not for the terror of being lynched
we shmilfl never be able to leave onr wives and

214 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
daughters in security. The R in the middle of
the Negro's name stands for his favorite pro
clivity. We burn 'em alive, yes, and do it slow,
because killing's too good for them, and we get
just so mad that everyone wants to be there, and
have his part in putting them to death. In the
North they do not lynch the Negro, but if one
commits a crime they blame the whole Negro
race. In the South we find the guilty man and
punish him.
10. When the white man goes to the Negro
^rl, it's different. He ought to be ashamed of
himself, but there, it's human nature, and you
can't be too stern with him.
11. The white man is master, and must re
main master. But you do not realize how pre
carious his position is, outnumbered as he is,
ten to one, in many districts. If the niggers
joined hands against us we might be all killed
in a night.
12. They have votes. By the greatest injus
tice ever committed in this country, the Consti
tution of the United States was amended to give
these people votes and give them power over us.
It is true we prevent them using their votes,
and override the Constitution at every election.
But political agitation goes on all the time.
Every Negro would vote Republican if he had
a chance, just because we vote Democrat. The
Republican party knows that, and is always con
spiring to restore to the Negro his lost power of

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 215
voting. It wiU never succeed, but you can see
the anxiety it causes us.
13. As for education, it's bad for the nigger
almost every way, and every new educated nig
ger makes it more difficult to keep 'em down.
But kept down they must be.
14. Justice? Well, you ask any nigger which
he'd prefer, a Southern court of justice and a
Southern judge, or a Northern one. He would
always prefer the Southern one, because in the
South we understand him. And we're very fond
of them and they of us. We get on verj well
together. Southern belief rarely strays out of this codi
fied expression of thought. Get into converse
with a Southerner on the subject of the Negroes,
and you will almost always be able to refer his
talk to 1 or 6 or 10 or some other paragraph
of the foregoing. It ia sufficiently pat and par
rot-like to be amusing at last. The Negro him
self is amused and pained by it. It amounts to
this: The Southerner has made the Negro a
pair of boots and he says they fit very well.
The Negro says they don't fit. But the South
erner says he'll risk his salvation on it — ^he
made the boots, and he knows his trade. The
Negro, however, has to wear them.
Perhaps if it were merely opinion, the idle
ness of the spoken word, the Southern point of
view would merit less attention. Talk might be

216 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
discounted, as mere talk is discounted by re
sponsible minds. But it has unfortunately a
remarkable counterpart in action. It is the con
comitant of mob murder and torture. It is ex
pressed not only in narrow and bitter phrase,
but in actual flesh twisting; not only in the
flames of fanaticism, but in real flames.
Lynching is a popular sport in the South. It
is perhaps popular in idea all over the world.
Even in Great Britain, where the policeman is
on a sort of moral pedestal, and is paid immense
respect, how often among the maaaea doea one
hear the sentiment that such and such a per
son should be put against a wall and shot. Even
in a nation that has such a phrase as "the
majesty of the law" the idea of taking the law
into one's own hands is generally popular. In
Russia, samosudi, as they are called, are fre
quent, and there is a short and terrible way
with pickpockets when the crowd finds them out.
France's passion for la lanterne does not need
to be enlarged upon.
It is said that in countries where the laws are
badly administered and the poUce held in little
respect, lynchings are the more frequent. This
is so. And while lynching can have a moral
sanction at first, it may, if unchecked, grow to
be a popular sport, a means of "national" holi
day, like the shows of Rome, the auto-da-fe's of
Spain, bullfights, and boxing competitions.
When sufficient cause for a lynching is lacking,

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 217
cause may have to be invented, just to let the
folk have some "fun." In the United States to
day there are not aufficient crimes committed
by the Negroes to satisfy the hunger of the
crowd for lynchings. So inevitably many inno
cent black men are sacrificed just for sport's
sake. Last year seventy-seven Negroea were lynched
in America; fourteen of them were burned
alive. Burning appears to be on the increase,
and is an obvious indication of growing mob
lust. This form of brutality has long ago ceased
in the Europe from which perhaps it was de
rived. Spaniards burned the Indians. Indians
burned the settlers. Settlers burned their run
away slaves. And atill to-day in comparatively
large nimibers the white Southern mob burns
ita Negro victims. It has its historical back
ground. The thought of burning supposed de
linquents alive is common in Southern minds.
"Make 'em die slow" is even a watchword.
The Southern half of the United States is
fond of sajdng that the North is now quite as
bad in its treatment of the Negro. Happily, that
ia untrue. Seventy-two out of the seventy-seven
lynchings occurred south of the Mason-Dixon
line, and the reat occurred in the Western
States. The North was immime. Unfortunately,
this good record was marred by some bad race
riots in Northern cities.

218 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
ord for Ijmching. During last year she lynched
twenty-two persons, almost twice aa many as
the next worst, Miaaiaaippi. Two of theae were
for alleged attacks on white women. The rest
were for a variety of crimes and misdemeanors.
Thus, in April, a soldier was beaten to death at
Blakely for wearing his uniform too long. In
May, at Warrenton, Benny Richards was
burned to death for murder. In the first week
in August a aoldier waa ahot for refusing to
yield the. road, and another was hanged for dis
cussing the Chicago race riots. At Pope City
another soldier was lynched for shooting. In
the belief that the Negroes were planning a ris
ing, Eli Cooper waa taken at Ocmulgee and pub
licly burned at the stake. On September 10th,
in the Georgian city of Athens, another Negro, '
Obe Cox, was burned for murder. In Americus,
in October, Ernest Glenwood was drowned
as a propagandist. On October 5th, Moses
Martin was shot for incautious remarks. Next
day, at Lincolnton, one Negro was shot for mis
leading the mob, and two others were burned
alive for committing murder. Next day another
was shot at Macon for attempted murder. Two
were hanged at Buena Vista for intimacy with
a white woman, and before the end of the month
three more met their end from the mob for
shooting and manslaughter.
As far as Georgia is concerned, this record
disposes of the theory that lynching only takes

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 219
place when white women have been attacked.
As a matter of fact, the commonest motive for
lynching of Negroes throughout the United
States has been shown to be mob condemnation,
of violence — ^not of lust. By far the greatest
number of lynchings are for supposed murder.
The mob lynches the Negro as a man shoots his
dog when the latter has turned on him. For
merly, attacks on women provided the greater
number of cases. If the Negro were fool enough
ever to make eyes at a white woman, he risked
his life. Many innocent admirations and mis
understandings have resulted in lynchings. As
for rape, the Negro who commits it is bound
lo come to a violent end. Very few escape
lynching, and the South claims that whatever
immunity it enjoys from Negro sexual crimes
is due to the deterrent of lynch law. It claims
that if the criminals were merely dealt with
according to the law, sexual crimes would
speedily multiply.
White people with the white-race instinct are
generally ready to condone lynching when il is
proved that it thus acts as a deterrent. Per
haps they are right, and they ought not to put
it to themselves from the black man's point
of view. But there is the other point of view,
and there is the collective opinion of the colored
people on the subject, and that opinion is being
organized and will make itself felt. It is worth
Q++Qn+inn nnrl sa^'STmnntlru'

220 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Granted that the black man is the un3er man
as far as the Whites are concerned, is he not
entitled to some protection for his own women?
One of these Georgia lynchings which occurred
last year was a characteristic affair. It occurred
at the town of Milan. Two young white fellows
tried to break into a house and seize two colored
girls living there with their mother. They ran
screaming to a neighbor's home. The Whites
tore down a door, ripped up flooring, fired a
gun, and made a great diaturbance. One old
Negro woman was so frightened she jumped
into a well, and a worthy Negro grandfather of
seventy-two years came out with a shotgun
and fired in defence of the women. One of the
white men fired on him. The Negro fired back
and killed him. The other white man fled. Now,
for that deed, instead of being honored as a
bravo man, the Negro was seized by the white
mob and hanged on a high post, and his old
body was shot to pieces. This man was a good
and quiet citizen who went to chapel every Sun
day, and had performed his duty at peace with
God and man for a hfetime. The man who led
the lynchers was a "Christian" preacher.
Sworn evidence on the matter was taken, but
the officers of the law in the county refused to
act. This lynching was by no means exceptional
in ita character. To cite an exceptional affair,
one might well take the happenings in Brooks

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 221
and Lowndes Counties, Georgia, in May, 1918.
Here a white bully with a pronounced spite
against Negroes had been in court and paid
the fine of thirty dollars for gambling which
had been pronounced against a certain colored
man caUed Sidney Johnson, and the latter had
been sent to his estate to work off the debt.
Thia ia an example of the abuse of the law for
keeping Negroes stUl in a state of slavery — a
characteristic example of peonage.
Johnson did the work to pay off the fine, but
the farmer held him to do a great deal more.
EventuaUy the Negro feigned sickness as an
excuae for not doing any more. The farmer
then came to hia house and flogged him. It must
be supposed this roused the devU in Johnson;
he threatened the farmer, and he paid a return
visit to the white man's house, fired on him
through the window, kUling the man himself
and dangerously wounding his wife. At once
the usual lynching committee was formed, and
for a whole week they hunted for Johnson, who
had gone into hiding. During that time they
lynched eleven Negroes, of whom one was a
woman. The white farmer had given cause for much
hatred. He had constantly ill-treated his col
ored laborers. On one occasion he had flogged a
Negro woman. Her husband had atood up for
her, and he had him arrested and sentenced to
a term of penal servitude in chains. The white

222 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
mob concluded that he must have shot the
farmer for revenge, and they accordingly
lynched him. He was shot to death. His wife
would not be quieted, but kept insisting that her
poor husband had been innocent. The mob
therefore seized her. It tied her upside down
by her ankles to a tree, poured petrol on her
clothing, and burned her to death. White Amer
ican women will perhaps take note that this col
ored sister of theirs was in her eighth month
with chUd. The mob around her was not angry
or insensate, but hysterical with brutal pleasure.
The clothes burned off her body. Her child,
prematurely born, was kicked to and fro by
the mob and then  Well, that is perhaps
sufficient. There are many details of this crime
which cannot be set down in print. But all these
facts were authenticated and submitted to the
governor of the State. The point that struck
me was the pleasure which was taken by the
mob in the sufferings which it was causing. It
was drunk with cruelty. Here was little idea
of a deterrent. Here was no question of racial
prudence. From the point of view of the natural
history of mankind, it put those white denizens
of Georgia on a lower level than cannibals.
It was America's glorious May, when she was
pouring troops into Europe and winning the
war; hundreds of thousands of Negroes were
clad in the uniform of the army and were fight-

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 223
ing for "freedom and justice" in Europe. The
moral eloquence of the President waa in all
men 'a minda. America had the chance to take
the moral leaderahip of the world.
But away back in Georgia the mob puraued
ita horrible way. ' At length it found the orig
inal Johnson who had committed the murder,
and he defended himself to the laat in a house
with gun and revolver, and died fighting. His
dead body was dragged at the back of a motor
car through the district, and then burned.
The facts were brought to the attention of
the governor, and he made a statement de
nouncing mob violence. But no one was ever
brought to justice, though the namea of the
ringleadera were ascertained. No committee of
inquiry was sent from Washington. In fact,
the people of Georgia were allowed thus to
smirch the glorious flag of the republic and
to lower the opinion of America in every cap
ital of the world; for the facts of thia story
have been printed in circular form and distrib
uted widely. It is undoubtedly a remarkable
example of lynching.
It seems rather strange that lynching crowds
allow themselves to be photographed. Men and
women and children in hundreds are to be seen
in horrible pictures. One sees the summer mob
all in straw hats, the men without coats or waist
coats, the women in white blouses, all eager.

224 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
aome mirthful, some facetious. You can upon
occasion buy these photographs as picture post
cards. The people are neither ashamed nor
afraid. Northern Negroea go down to investigate
lynchings, buy these photographs, bring them
back to safe New York, and then print them
off in circulars with details of the whole affair.
Southern newspapers, though reticent, cannot
forego giving descriptions of lynchings, every
one is so much intereated in them. Newspaper
reports are also reprinted. There is no need to
resort to hearsay in telling of the mob murders
of the South. They are heavily documented and
absolutely authenticated. The United States
Government cannot, for instance, prosecute
such a Negro association as the N. A. A. C. P.
for the pamphlets it iaauea on lynchings, be
cause it does no more than publish facts which
have been publicly authenticated. If prose
cuted, worse detaUs would see light. There
fore, these pamphlets go forth.
The first thing they do is tell the colored
people as a whole what has been happening.
The Negroes of Alabama and Tennessee hear
what has been happening in Georgia; the Ne
groes of Florida and Louisiana hear what has
taken place in Arkansas and Texas. Above all,
the educated Northern Negroes know of it. Ad
vanced papers such as the Crisis, the Chicago
DefendGV, and the Negro Messenger are giving

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 225
the Negro people as a whole a new conscious
ness. First of all in Christianity in the days of
slavery and in their melancholy plantation
music they obtained a collective race conscious
ness. And now, through persecution on the one
hand and newspapers on the other they are
strengthening and fulfilling that consciousness.
Destiny is being shaped in this race, and white
men are the instruments who are shaping it.
May it not emerge eventually as a sword, the
sword of the wrath of the Lord.
I met many Whites who boaated of having
taken part in a lynching, and I have met thoae
who possessed gruesome mementoes in the
shape of charred bones and gray, dry, Negro
sMn. I said they were fools. Actually to have
the signs upon them! Truly they were in the
state of mind in which moat men seem to be
when fate is going to overtake them. They were
proud of their "quick way with niggers," they
justified it, they felt the wisdom of lynching
could never be disproved. The matter to them
was not worth arguing. They assumed that any
one who wished to argue the point must have
sympathy with the "niggers," and that was
enough for them. It never occurred to them
that one who doubted the wisdom of lynching
might be actuated by sympathy or at least
apprehensive for them.
I felt sorry for the white women of the South ;
there wUl some day be a terrible reckoning

226 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
against them. Their honor and safety are being
made the pretext for terrible brutality and cru
elty. Revenge, when it gains its opportunity,
will therefore wreak itself upon the white
woman most. Because in the name of the white
woman they justify burning Negroes at the
stake to-day, white women may be burned by
black mobs by and by. There is no doubt that
almost any insurrection of Negroea could ulti
mately be put down by force, and that it would
be very bad for the Negroea and for their cauae,
but before it could be put down what might hap
pen? And should it synchronize with revolu
tionary disturbances among the Whites them
selves, or with a foreign war?
I do not believe that there are real conspira
cies of Negroes. But there is growing disaffec
tion. The colored people are a friendly, easy
going, fond-to-f ooliah folk by nature. But their
affection and devotion have been roughly re-
fuaed. It haa almoat disappeared. Now we have
the phenomenon of Negro mothers telling their
little children of the terrible things done by
the white folk, and every Negro chUd is learn
ing that the white man is his enemy. Every
lynching, every auto-da-fe is secreting hate and
the need for revenge in the Negro masses. Be
cause the Negroes are weak and helpless and
unorganized to-day, Uliterate often, stupid and
unbalanced often, clownish and funny and un
reliable, white folk think that it wiU always be

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 227
so. But they are wrong. While the industrial
ized masses of the Whites are certainly degener
ating, the masses of the Negroes are certainly
rising. Trouble ia bound to arise and retribu
tion terrible. What the lowbrows of the South
are teaching the Negro he will be found to have
learned, and aa Shylock said about revenge — ^it
will go hard but he betters the instruction.
It may be thought that this ia written with
too much emphasis, and that this statement on
the lynchings ia too immerciful to the white
South. But I beheve it ia abaolutely necessary.
There are those who would be ready to do again
the injustice which was done to the Whites in
the South after the CivU War. When discus
sing these matters in the North I have been hor
ror-struck by the opinions I have heard ex
pressed. This is written in no partisan spirit,
and I believe those who would rejoice in the
destruction or punishment of the Southern
white population are utterly wrong in heart.
Punishment and revenge wUl only perpetuate
the strife. But an eclair cissement, a flood of
dayhght on these matters, a thorough shaking
of these stupid people down below the line — a.
warning in such terrible terms as I have made,
might save Black and White for the religion of
love and a joy in God's creatures.
It may come from a stranger, a complete out
sider*, with more force than from an American.
I have, however, found a Southerner who con-

228 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
demned Georgia, the Roman Catholic Bishop,
Benjamin J. KeUey, who gave out a very serious
warning in Savannah on the 2nd of November
of last year. He said :
"It is hardly necessary to state that I am a
Southerner ... I warmly love the South ; and
her story, her traditions, and her ideals are very
dear to me . . . But I fully recognize the abso
lute justice of one charge which is made againat
her, and I look with grave apprehension to the
future, for no people that disregards justice
can ever have the blessing of God, and we are
guilty of great injustice to the Negro. The
Negro was brought here againat his will; he is
here and he will remain here, and he is not
treated with justice by us ; nay, I will say that
he is often not treated with ordinary humanity.
"Look at the statiatics in our own State.
Georgia stands first in the list of States in the
matter of lynching. Has there ever been a man
punished in this State for lynching a Negro?
"Lynching is murder, nothing else.
"Besides, is it not th? fact that fair and im
partial justice is not meted out to white and
colored men alike? The courta of thia State
either set the example, or follow the example
set them, and they make a great distinction be
tween the white and the black criminal brought
before them. The latter as a rule gets the full
limit of the law. Do you ever hear of a street
difficulty in which a Negro and a white man
were involved which was brought before a

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 229
judge, in which, no matter what were the real
facts of the case, the Negro did not get the
worst of it?
' ' Georgians boast of being a (Christian people,
and this year they are putting their hands into
their pockets to raise mUlions to bring the light
of Christianity, as underatood by them, to some
less favored peoples in Europe.
"I would like to know if it is entirely com
patible with Christian morality to treat the
Negro as he is treated here ? My belief is that
the Negro and the white man were redeemed
by the blood of Christ shed on the cross of Cal
vary, and that the Christian religion absolutely
condemns injustice to anyone and forbids the
taking of life.
"To me the murder of a Negro is as much
murder as the kiUing of a white man, and in
each case Christian civihzation demands that
the punishment of the crime should rest in the
hands of the lawfully constituted authorities.
"I have lived to see in Georgia an appeal
made to the highest authority in the State for
protection of the lives of colored men, women,
and children, answered by the statement that
the Negro should not commit crimes! The
people of Georgia vest in certain officiala the
execution of justice. Yet no lyncher haa ever
been punished here, and I regret to state that
public sentiment seema to justify the conduct of
the officials.

230 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
strange news of the race riots in the Northern
and Western cities. Thank God, we have had
none of these riots in the South, Do you know
the reason? The only reason is the forbearance
of the Negro. He has been treated with gross
injustice; he has not retaUated. In aU these
cases gross disregard for law and order are
either the cause or the direct consequence of
those disturbances.
"Are there not numbers of honest, law-abid
ing citizens of Georgia who know that I am
telling God's truth, and who will proteat against
this injustice to the Negro? Is there not a just
and fearless man on the bench in this State who
will have the courage to announce that there
shall be no difference in his court between the
white man and the colored man?
"Injustice and disregard of law and the law
ful conduct of affairs are the sure forerunners
of anarchy and the loss of our liberty, and we
are drifting in that direction.
"The Negro will not stand asking for justice
from Georgia laws or Georgia courts. He has
been patient, and I hope he will remain so, but
he well knows where the remedy lies, and he
will very soon be found knocking at the door of
the Federal Congress, asMng protection. And
Congress will hear him.
"If appeals to right, justice, to Christian
morality, do not avail to put a stop to this in
justice to the Negro and protect him against

THE SOUTHERN VIEWPOINT 231
the murderous lynchers, then Georgia wUl see
Federal bayonets giving him protection."
Such a voice is very rare. The warning is the
more worth heeding.

EXODUS
The Negro's refrain, "Let My People Go,"
continues to have a strong emotional appeal.
Though devoted to the Southland in an intense,
sentimental way, for the Negro has an infinitely
pathetic love of home, he has come sorrowfully
to the conclusion — he must go away from here.
It is strange, because homesickness ia almost
a mania with the Negro. He relates himself to
the white maater's house where he works, to the
rude cabin where his family live, to his church,
to the "home niggers," in an extravagant path
ological way which has nothing to do with grati
tude. Perhaps it is because as a people the
slaves were uprooted out of a home in Africa,
and they have a haunting melancholy in the hid
den depths of their souls. I believe their child
ish idealization of heaven in their hymns is
fundamentally a sort of homesickness. The
Negro is not a matural nomad or vagrant like
the Ruasian, the Jew, the Tartar. He must have
been as geographically fixed in his native haunts
in Africa. Judge, then, how great a disturbance
232

EXODUS 233
must take place before the Negro en masse
would be ready to emigrate. Yet so it is to-day.
With consternation in their aspect, whole fami
lies, whole communities, are waiting — to go
North. And himdreds of thousands of them
are on the move. Of course it is not a complete
change of scene. The North has its Negro
masses too. One rather loses sight of them
among the Whites, but they are there. And they
do not cease to invite their unhappy brothers
and slaters down South to throw up everything
and come North.
While it is commonly said that the Negro
cannot stand the colder climate of the North,
there is, however, not much evidence to that
effect. As their orators are proud to declaim —
the only civihzed man to accompany Peary to
the actual North Pole was his trusted servant.
Matt Henson, a Negro. To some dehcate
Negroes, no doubt, a severe climate would be
fatal, bnt that is true for Whites as weU aa
Negroes. On the whole, the Northern air seems
to be good for the Negro if he can stand it. The
Negroes of New York and Chicago and Boston,
and the Canadian Negroes, are firmer in flesh
and in will than thoae who live in the South.
And they are certainly more energetic. They
yield more hope for the race aa a whole than do
the others. Perhaps one ought to discount this
fact in the hght of the extra prosperity and hap
piness of the Northern Negroes, There is noth-

234 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
ing that will undermine the constitution more
than terror and nervous depression. Security
is the real Negro ozone.
There has been during the last three years a
steady migration of Negroes northward. This
has been primarily due to the stoppage of for
eign immigration and the consequent labor
shortage in the districts which depended on the
immigrant. The reasons why the Negro was
ready to leave his Southern habitat have been
summarized in the U. S. Department of Labor
Report :*
' ' General dissatisfaction with conditions, rav
ages of boll weevil, floods, change of crop sys
tem, low wages, poor houses on plantations,
poor school facilities, unsatisfactory crop set
tlements, rough treatment, cruelty of the law
officers, unfairness in courts, lynching, desire
for travel, labor agents, the Negro press, let
ters from friends in the North, and, finally,
advice of white friends in the Soutih Where
crops had failed."
It is impossible to calculate the numbers with
any likelihood of accuracy. Even the census of
1920 will hardly indicate what ,haa taken place
— for no one can say what allowance ought to
be made for natural increase in the last ten
years. But the insurance companies reckon
that between May, 1916, and September, 1917,
•"Negro Migration in 1916-17," Government Printing
Offlce, Washington, 1919.

EXODUS 235
between thirty-five and forty thousand Negroes
left Georgia. Perhaps the net loss to the South
has been a quarter of a million, the majority
young, single men and women. Some certainly
put the figure higher. The movement has slowed
down, owing to the after-the-war stagnancy in
trade, the very bad housing conditions in the
North, the race riot in Chicago, and other
retarding influences. With a revival of trade it
may go on more rapidly. Certainly whenever
a coimtryside in the South is visited by some
special act of violence there is a tendency for
the colored population to flee. Unfortimately,
the lot of migrants of the type of Negroea ia
always a hard one. It ia difficult to settle down
in a new community. Irregular habits bring
diaeaae. Provincial duUneaa makes it difficidt
to find a job or to evade sharpers. Unfortu
nately, also, Negroes are not by nature altruis
tic, not clannish like the Jewa. They do not help
one another in distress as much as poor Whites
do. So many who flee northward inevitably
come to grief.
It is urged in the South that the North is not
entirely appreciative of the influx of ao many
Negroes. But, on the other hand, it is alleged
that the large Northern companies sent their
agents into every State in the South seeking
labor. It was certainly useful to the companies.
And although the loose and nondescript unem
ployed immigrants were guUty of a number of

236 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
crimes, it is generally held that those who found
employment proved very steady and reliable.
The Negro proved a safe man in the munition
factory, and it was found he could do a white
man's job in a mine and in the steel works. The
employers of labor were well pleased. But there
Avaa a section of the community that was not
pleased, and that was the working class — the
l)oor Whites once more, who saw in Negro mi
gration an influx of non-union labor, depressing
wages, and lowering the standard of living.
The workingmen speedily quarreled with the
Negro — seeing in him the oft encountered
strike breaker. Those who have gone through
the Negro district of Chicago, with its filthy,
ramshackle frame buildings occupied by Negro
families, a family to a room, know how appalling
ia the aapect of the Negro there. In the old days
the white population took it aa a matter of
course, aa they did so many other things in
this evil industrial conglomeration so aptly
called the Jungle. But too much competition
and too many unfamiliar, gloomy Negro faces
on the streets caused the nervous shock which
accounted for the Chicago riots, begun strangely
enough not by a Negro attack, but by a white
youth knocking a Negro boy off a raft on the
lake and drowning him. The three days' free
fight which ensued waa one of the most disillu
sioning episodes in the history of Northern
friendship for the Negro.

EXODUS 237
Nevertheless, Negro leaders stUl cry "Come
North!" There have always been those who thought
that the Negro problem could be solved by en
couraging migration. The exodus to the North
was hailed as a partial liquidation of the South
ern trouble. Doubtless an even distribution of
Negroes over the whole of the country would
put them in the desired minority as regards
Whites. Outnumbered by ten to one, they
would never seem to threaten to grasp electoral
control or be in a position to use phyaical force
with a chance of success. But these are highly
theoretical suppositions. Even at the present
great rate of exodus it would take hundreds of
years to even them out, and there is no reason
to think that the emigrants would distribute
themselves easUy. They would probably crowd
more and more into the large cities like Chi
cago and Pittsburgh, and be as much involved
in evU conditions there as they were in the
South. Another popular misconception is that it is
possible to find a home for the Negro in Africa,
and get rid of him that way. Men say airily,
"Pack them all off to Liberia," as they used
to say, "Send the Jews back to Palestine." It
ia not a practical propoaal. Abraham Lincoln
held this view, and he opened negotiations with

238 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
territory for Negro colonization, but he gave up
the idea when General Butler, who investigated
the matter for him, convinced him that the
Negro birth rate waa greater than any possible
rate of transport.
What was true in 1865 ought to be more obvi-
oua to-day. It ia a physical impossibility to
transport those twelve millions and their
progeny to Africa. If a large instalment were
taken, would they not perish from starvation
and disease? The eyes of the world would be
on the United States doing such a thing, and
they would be involved in a terrible scandal.
But, indeed, the first to cry out ' ' Give us back
our niggers" would be the South; for her
whole prosperity has a foundation of Negro
labor. Take away the black population, and the
white farmers, and traders, and financiers
would be so impoverished that they also would
want to emigrate to Africa.
In a material way would not the whole con
tinent of America suffer greatly? You cannot
withdraw twelve million from the laboring
class and go on as before. It ia a ridiculous
solution. The only reason for giving it place in
serious criticism is that so many people nurse
the delusion that the problem can be solved by
deportation. It stands in the way when people
would otherwise face the facts honestly — our
forefathers introduced the Negro into our
midst, he is here to stay, and we have to find

EXODUS 239
out what is best for him and best for the White,
taking the facts as they are.
One good purpose has, however, been served
by the encouragement of Negro emigration back
to Africa. It has kept the Negro in touch with
his original home. It has broadened the Negro 's
outlook and started a Negro Zionism — a senti
ment for Africa. The Negro loves large con
ceptions — ^the universal tempts his mind aa it
tempta that of the Slav. In short, Liberianism
has possessed the Negro of a world movement.

XI
IN NORTH FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS
Lynching is more associated with the cotton-
growing districts than with others. It is not a
fact that the further south you go the more vio
lent the temper of the people. Southeastern
Georgia, where the main business is lumbering
and rice growing, has a better record than the
cotton-growing interior. The cotton planters
are aware of this, and it is not uncommon to
curse the cotton and wish they could turn to
something else. Cotton is not a popular indus
try. In the old days it bound slavery upon
planter and Negro — for cotton necessitates
cheap labor — and now it keeps the Negro down
and perpetuates an ungenerous type of hfe.
I worked down the Atlantic coast to Bruns
wick and Jacksonville, preparing in mind for
some sort of joyful surprise when I should enter
Florida. Brunswick is one of the oldest ports
in Georgia. As far as records go, it has never
been disgraced by a lynching. Its background
of industry is chiefly timber, and the eye looks
in vain for a cotton bale or a cotton blossom.
It is a peaceful little city, all sand and low palm
and scrub, with innumerable grasahoppers and
butterflies even in December. An open-streeted
240

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 241
port with placid, happy Negroes and no race
movement of any Mnd.
At JackaonvUle one experiences a complete
change of air. It is the climate of Florida, and
the difference between cotton and fruit. The
difference also between much sombre business
and some gUded pleasure. When the rich from
the North step out of their cars in Florida and
take their ease at Palm Beach, they naturally
would not care to be mixed up in the South 's
pet sport. Lynchings are bad business in Flor
ida, for if the things occurred there that take
place in the neighboring State of Georgia it
would certainly frighten away many polite and
wealthy visitors. As regards the white woman
also, the Floridians do not so aaaiduoualy libel
the Negro as do the Georgians. Ladies need not
be afraid to visit the watering places; the col
ored man is said to have his passions well under
control. Most of the trouble that does occur is
in more obscure places, and more in northern
than in southern Florida.
JacksonviUe is a large port with a population
bordering on a hundred thousand. Naturally,
there are masses of poor aa well aa numbers of
rich. There is employment for a great quantity
of Negro labor, and on the streets one may ob
serve the characteristics of a large maritime
city. What strikes an Englishman visiting these
Atlantic ports — Baltimore, Norfolk, Savannah,
.Jacksonville, when eomnared with Hull. Car-

242 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
diff, Liverpool, London Docks, etc. — ^is the
abaence of that somewhat agitating phenomenon
of black dock laborers walking out with poor
white girls. You may see them any evening in
England. As a natural and instinctive thing,
most Whites resent it, and street fights in Eng
land are the not uncommon result. In America,
walking out with Negroes either innocently or
otherwise is impossible. Riots and lynchings do
not arise from that reason, but from alleged;
individual assaults upon white women. It
should be remarked that womanhood in Amer
ica is practically idealized. The public as a
whole is disinclined to tolerate a woman smok
ing or drinking, or bathing in inadequate attire,
or even "spooning." It would not occur to a
poor white factory girl as even possible to walk
out with a Negro. Her moral self-esteem ia
higher than that of her English sister. The girls
who are seen walking out with Negroes in Lon
don belong more often to a class which is eco
nomically or morally submerged.
The Jacksonville Negroes were in a state of
considerable anxiety and ferment when I was
there. Not because of white-woman trouble, but
in anticipation of a riot breaking out on one plea
or another. A bad lynching had occurred in the
preceding September. A drunken White quar
reled with a Negro taxi driver, threatened him
and exasperated him, whereupon a conflict
ensued in which the White was kUled. The white

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 243
mob then rounded up every Negro chauffeur in
the city and terrified a great number of homes,
because the lyncher does not care whether he
lynches the right Negro or not, aa long as one
of them suffers. And in this case two paid the
penalty. Undoubtedly the horror and terror of
being taken by the mob ia the worat of an execu
tion of thia kind.
The Negroes were very suspicious of white
men, and I did not make much progress inquir
ing into their ways of life. I found, however,
a considerably inflated prosperity of churches,
due to the phUanthropy of Northern visitors,
and a well-to-do black proletariat working in
the shipbuilding yard and the docks. Nearly
all the work done by them was, however, un-
skUled, and they were only taken as substitutes
on akUled work. Substitutes earned aa much aa
seven dollars a day. There is a "Colored"
Bank and, as at Birmingham, a so-called "sky
scraper" of sis stories accommodating all and
sundry of trades and professions. Once more,
successful drug stores and burial parlors, and a
Mme. Nettie Price with beauty establishment.
I called at the War Camp Community Club for
colored soldiers and sailors — ^not so enterpris
ing as the one I visited at Norfolk — ^but the right
sort of institution, well used in a proper and
discreet way.
1 crossed the neck of land to Pensacola, pass
ing throuffh Tallahassee, a district where fine

244 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
leaves of tobacco for cigar wrapping are grown
under trellis. Orange groves hung in plenteous
fruit just ripe to pick, changing from green
to gold. Pensacola is a port with a great history
of ita own involving Spanish, British, French,
American hiatory. Its background ia of orange
grovea and pecan orcharda. The pecan nut, a.
refinement from the walnut, is so prized in the
rest of the United States that one can make
a good living and save money on a planting of
a hundred or so trees. The main street of Pen
sacola, leading down to the long pier, is very
picturesque, with its mariners ' grocers and ma
rine atores, A passenger vessel plies weekly to
Mobile, the great fruit port of southern Ala
bama, and it is possible to get a pasaage on
cargo boats going to New Orleans. Before the
war there was much maritime traffic, but few of
the vessels which sailed away to do transport
and other war duties have returned.
Pensacola claima to be the oldest white city
in the United States, disputing the matter with
St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and is taking the
question very seriously in view of any celebra
tion. It is not an important place, but is build
ing toward its own supposed greatness, haa a
fine new railway atation and huge, white stone
post office and mammoth hotel. These buildings
are puzzling in a town where life seems so
placid. Here was a bad lynching for rape a year ago.

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 245
and a Negro was burned to death. Repreaenta-
tions were made to the governor of Florida on
the matter. The governor, Sidney I. Catts, re
plied that he made every effort to keep down
lynching in the State, but he could not bring
the lynchers to trial, aa the citizenship of the
State would not stand for it. Apparently he
condoned the burning of the Negro, because it
was a clear case of sexual wantonneaa and vio
lence on the part of one of the Negro race. It
is somewhat surprising that the chief officer of
the law should thus fail to uphold the law. Who
is to uphold it if he do not? A contrast this,
to the heroic behavior of Mayor Smith of
Omaha! Nature did not intend the Gulf of Mexico as
a frame for lynching, nor that those happy, blue
sMes should look down on human candles. If
ever there waa a aerene and happy place in the
world it is here, and there is scope for all races
to hve and to let hve. Health is on the shoulder
of the winds that blow ; fish and fruit and grain
and sugar are abundant. Are not the harbors
bobbing with grapefruit; upon occasion does
not every boy suck the natural sugar from the
cane? The luscious canteloupe fills with the sun;
peaches and nectarines swell to double sizes of
lusciousness and sweetness. Visitors, more
over, bring a plenitude of dollars and scatter
them as they go. Jacksonville, Tallahassee,

246 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans — they are more
blest by Nature than other cities of the South.
Personally, I preferred New Orleans. It ia
the finest and most interesting city in which to
hve. It is by far the largest city of the South,
Atlanta coming second, and Birmingham, Ala
bama, third. It is the great port of the vaat Mis
sissippi River, and is the head of what was a
mighty river traffic. It faces south, and is more
related to France and Spain and the Indies
than to Britain and Scandinavia and the North
Atlantic. Like New York, it has alao a atrange
mixture of races, but they are southern races.
Of course it has been notorious as a city of
pleasure and fast living. Everyone saya to the
tourist, "When you get to New Orleans, you'll
see 'life,' " by which is meant the life-wasting
of the immoral. Its reputation in that respect
reaembled that of Cairo, and the curious, even
if they did not wish to taate, could pay to be
shown round and thus satisfy their eyes by
looking upon evil. The money which flows
southward from the pockets of the rich through
out the winter has no doubt helped to keep the
ried light burning. Now all haa changed, how
ever. The various vice crusades and the enact
ment of prohibition have combined to bring
New Orleans to the moral level of other cities
of America. There is a violent opposition to the
Puritan movement in many sections of the pop
ulation, and the law is flouted very often, but

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 247
New Orleans nevertheless has ceased to present
any particular interest to the low pleasure
aeeker or thoae of morbid imagination. The city
wUl be the better for it. It ia a wonderful place.
The inhabitanta, after all, were not mainly en
gaged in the buaineaa of pleasure, but in honest
trade, and they increaae ever. New Orleans is
the metropolis of the South, and has a vast and
growing commerce which is rendered pictur
esque by the glamour of that abundance of
Nature in the midst of which she is founded.
One pictures New Orleana aa a city of men in
white, with white hata aa well as white clothes,
men smoking heavy, black cigars, or saunter
ing idly in the company of exotic-looking ladies ;
a city of wide open streets and white houses,
of many open-air cafes and garden theatres and
luxuriant parks, a place certainly of fashion
and gayety and elegant living. But what I found
on my first impression was an unpainted city,
a mass of houses mostly wooden, but moulder
ing, pallid, and peeling, of every hue of decay.
Some walls seemed ready to fall out, some ready
to fall in. Man of the period 1920, European,
industrialized, diminutive, clad in sober garb,
pursued the common way of life. The cheap
lunch shop, hall-mark of American civilization,
identified the city as American. There were the
usual lofty, ramshackle caravanserai with
Negro bell boys and the clatter of ice water, the
iiQnal nnMifi o-Q-r^^ana e+T"oTi7n xcri+n file neTXTsna-

248 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
pers of the day. But though it was winter, the
weather was hot. The atmosphere was dense
and warm, and the closeness was not dissipated
even by the wind when it came. A gale blew in
from the Gulf. It scattered warm rain in the
city, it rushed through multitudes of palm trees
in the suburbs outside.
The American part of the city is vast and
residential and conventional. The business sec
tion expresses business; the home section is
uptown and removed from the life of the cen
ter. If there were only this "new" part, noth
ing would distinguish New Orleans from other
cities. But it has its vieux carree in which its
history is written, the old, or French, part of
the town. The American side is continually re
building itself, but the French remains as it
was. It has not torn itself down and got rebuUt
in modem style. Its great public place is Jack
son Square, flanked by the market, and that is
beautifully prim and French, but it is foiled by
ugly railings and municipal sheds. Neverthe
less, it holds one more than does the architec
tural grandeur of Lafayette Square, in the
American half, with its stupendously grand
Post Office and Town Hall; and the subdued
simplicity of Dauphine Street and Chartres and
Bienville and many others is better than any
quantity of the new and takes one back in mind
to Old Paris and Old London. With all its Cre
ole restaurants and cheap markets and French

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 249
churches, it reminded me forcibly of Soho, in
London, but of course it is larger and grander.
Once a tongue of the Mississippi divided the
old from the new, a long and narrow strip of
somewhat torpid water. Now it has been filled
up, though where the water waa it ia in aome
placea green with grass. Six hnes of electric
cars and four streams of other traffic go up and
down Canal Street, as it is now called. It is
a great highway, finer in some respects than
the Nevsky Prospect in Petrograd, certainly
broader. On one side of it and down to the
water edge it is definitely and undoubtedly old;
on the other, it is definitely and undoubtedly
new. On one side is reality and matter of fact,
on the other glamour and color ; on one you make
or lose money, on the other you have or miss
adventures; one is prose, the other poetry; and
it is well understood in New Orleans. You work
in one, you live a conventional home life in one,
but in the other you seek pleasure and adven
tures away from home. Not that you cannot
dine on the new side, where there are costly
and luxurious hotels, but an interesting and
characteriatic story might be written of a man
who stayed too long over his wine in the new
part, and then, late at night, strayed across this
broad, dark Lethe which divides old from new,
to lose himself on the farther side — an adven
ture and a dream.
The foreign streets are of red brick and

250 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
painted wood, with vine- wreathed verandas and
balconies. The houses are crowded within. Red
painted wood, with vine-wreathed verandas and
show a bed occupying half a tiny room, and per
haps a Creole lady in the bed. There is not much
squeamishness in the Creoles. French is spoken
everywhere, and often English is not under
stood. Most of the people are Catholic, and are
related spiritually to "Mother Church." Old
St. Louis Cathedral, with its spiky tower, is
full of people of a Sunday morning, and the
service is so perfimctory that it is clear it is
no mission church, but one long established and
sure. There are monastical inatitutiona, even
for the Negroea. While Irish Catholics do
not like Negroes, the French and Spanish do.
Specially interesting is the Convent of the
Sacred Heart, with its black Mother Superior
and its happy, placid Negro Catholicism. The
best of the Negroes call themselves Negro Cre
oles. The Creoles are the cross-breed of French
and Spaniard and their descendants. Strictly
speaking, no Negroes are Creoles, but the
descendants of the slaves of the Creoles and
in general the French and Spanish-speaking
Negroes call themselves Negro Creoles, and are
generally indulged in the appellation. Creoles
indeed have not much prejudice against color,
being much^ mixed themselves, and in any cas©
of French extraction, and the French have
never had much sense of racial distinction. To

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 251
speak French is a sign of belonging to society
in New Orleana. The opening of the opera sea
son at the French Opera House (lately burned
down) is the event of the winter, and everyone
of importance must be present. The next sign
of good taste is to know cuisine, and to be able
to differentiate the delicaces and the subtleties
of the famous Creole chefs.
I visited the mayor, Catholic, but of German
name. He could not easily have kept his mayor
alty with such a name in England. But here
he was very popular. He was a human pyramid
in long, voluminous morning coat, smoking a
cigar as he worked, but walking with a ponder
ous and poised walk, and exhibiting a front of
truly mayoral proportions. He said, concerning
the Negroes, "We have no trouble with them
here; we get on very well together. They are
outside politics; that makes it much easier. If
they had the power to vote, of course it would
be different." New Orleans is one of those
places where a Negro's grandfather must have
voted if he is to vote, and he must prove that
his grandfather voted. I demurred to the
mayor. ' ' The Negroes seem very suspicious of
the Whites, and hostile," said I. He thought
not. It waa evidently hia set policy to have that
point of view. Politically he could not afford to
be strongly interested in the Negro ferment.
For although the disenfranchised Negro popu
lation thouarht him friendly to them, the Whites

252 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
also thought him "sound on the nigger ques
tion." No white man who expreaaed aympathy
for the Negro could poaaibly succeed in Louisi
ana politics. There was proceeding while I waa
there a violent election campaign for the gov
ernorship of the State, and it was curious that,
though the Negro could take little personal part
in the choosing of the governor, he neverthe
less took almost first place in the political dis
cussions. Soundness on the Negro question
seemed to be the chief test of candidacy. A man
who might betray lynchers to justice or any
thing of that kind was evidently feared by the
white population. Nevertheless, as I have said,
the Creoles were on friendly terms with the
Negroes. It is the Anglo-Saxon and Irish- Ameri
can section of the population, the undifferenti
ated Southern Whites, who determine the way
of politics here, as elsewhere in the South. It
ia likely that if the Creoles were left to them
selves with the Negro population, they would
grant them full righta, not only in the courta
and in suffrage, but socially. The Negroes know
this, and are therefore on very good terms with
the French-speaking population.
Nevertheless, it must be said that but for a
handful of leaders the Negro population is more
dull, more impassive, and ignorant than else
where. A black proletariat of a hundred thou
sand ought to be able to raise on its broad base
a fine column of intelligence and business.

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 253
There ought to be large and flourishing groups
of doctors and lawyers and shopkeepers, but
here, as at Birmingham, there is the usual
Insurance Society's buUding, which is aU-in-all.
And Negro insurance is little more than the
organization of burying clubs, with the Negro
undertakers as prime beneficiaries. The biggest
Negro business throughout the South is con
nected with burying Negroes. It is sad, but it is
characteristic of this era of their development".
New Orleans has ita "Pythian BuUding," its
temple of the Knighta of Pythias, of which the
debonair Mr. Green ia Grand Master, not only
for the State of Louisiana, but for the world.
This is the civic center of the Negro's Hfe in
New Orleans, and, like the Penny Bank Bmld-
ing of Birmingham, and ita sister buUding at
Jacksonville, houses many activities. The Pyth
ian Temple of New Orleans is said to be the
finest Negro building in the United States. It
is a fine edifice, and in America buaineaa is
judged much more by the buUding it inhabits
than in Europe. An integral part of the temple
ia a very useful theatre, not a cinema haU,but
a genuine stage for the "legitimate" drama.
Here, no doubt, the Knighta of Pythiaa appear
in fuU regaUa and parade to do the paeudo
ritual of the society. But the theatre ia used
for all manner of purposes.
I was present one Simday afternoon at a local
meeting of the National Association. The South-

254 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
ern White is opposed to the Association, and
would do much to thwart it if he knew much
about it. But the Southern Whites do not mix
with Negro intellectuals, and are content to live
in that paradise indicated by the mayor — We
get on all right with them down here.
When, however, a bad lynching takes place
the local white population soon hears of the
National Association. It sends its representa
tives down from New York to investigate the
facts. In such cases facts are the last things
the white community wish brought to light, and
then the National Association is discovered and
roundly abused. Its representatives are some
times white, which makes them more dangerous
from a Southern point of view. Attempts are
made to "railroad" them — run them out of
town. The case of Mr. Shillady, in Texas, must be
mentioned here. He is the white secretary of
this militant association, and has done very
valuable work for his country by investigating
and authenticating the details of mob murders.
Texas has a bad record for lynching, rioting,
and lawlessness. The Texan people, however,
would not have him, and he was actually
thrashed publicly by a judge and a conatable.
It was done in front of the DriscoU Hotel, Aus
tin, where Shillady was staying. Having been
assaulted in this way, he was put on a Northern
train and told to leave it at his perU. The judge

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 255
remains still judge, the conatable remaina atill
a conatable — ^if he be not now a sergeant or in
spector. When we sing "Down Texas Way"
that is what it means.
The local meeting this Sunday afternoon was
of a quarrelsome character. A weU-known and
devoted Negro leader had been accused in a New
Orleans Negro paper of "selling out the col
ored folk" at St. Louis. There had been great
enthusiasm in the forming of what is called the
"American Legion," a national club of all who
had served or worn an American imiform in
the Great War. Negro membership of the
Legion was apparently being barred in the
South, and some wrong-headed Negro journal
ist had accuaed an old Creole Negro of attend
ing the St. Louia inaugural gathering of the
Legion and agreeing that Negro soldiers and
sailors should be excluded.
A violent personal quarrel banged from man
to man. As I was asked to speak, I told them
I thought they could iU afford to quarrel among
themselves. Nevertheless, I had noticed a
marked disposition to quarrel among the edu
cated Negroes. Loyalty to one another was not
one of their characteristics. No people could
do much who did not prize unity more than
discord. While so many were against them all,
how absurd to spend an afternoon quarreling
with one another!
This was warmlv applauded, though no doubt

256 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
one might as well sit in Canute's chair and "bid
the main flood bate its usual height," as bid
them cease to quarrel. They brought the fight
ing instinct out of Africa, and still longed to
wield the battle-axe.
Besides the Pythian Temple Block, New
Orleans has also a sort of South Street, a cheap
line of shops with "swell toggery" for Negroes.
Negro suit-pressing establishments, barbers,
and the like, pawnshops, and what not. Thia is
South Rampart, and on it is the People's Drug
Store, a hive of Negro life. Up above the store
Mrs. Camille Cohen-Bell operates an insurance
company, and her father, W. L. Cohen, runs
for what it is worth in opinion (it cannot coimt
much in votes), the Negro Republican party.
During a fortnight in New Orleans I visited
frequently this pleasant company of Negro
Creoles, the well-educated Mrs. Bell, who loved
to speak French, and her ebullient father. The
place was haunted by undertakers. It appeared
that when a Negro was insured in the company
he was allotted to an undertaker in case of
death. Undertakers therefore became very
anxious when clients moved out of their parish.
If any one fell sick away from home, and there
was the likelihood of his dying and being buried
by a stranger, the fret of the local buriers was
comical. I met here a very advanced Negro lady who
gave out very positive views on morahty. The

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 257
presence of a white man was perhaps a chal
lenge to her mind. Some white woman caUed
Jean Gordon had been making a missionary ad
dreaa to the Negroea on moral purity and proper
behavior at a large Baptiat church. I did not
hear Jean Gordon, but her black protagoniat
was so forceful I asked her to write a statement
of what she thought. This waa her answer to
Jean Gordon :
"... Jean Gordon states that every young
colored girl knows no white man may marry her
under the law, and if she brings into the world
an Ulegitimate chUd she is not fit to be a mother.
All very true. Now, I daresay that every young
colored girl is aware of this fact, but, judging
from the way the white men run after these
colored girls, either they (the white men) are
in ignorance of the law, or it is their object fla
grantly to disobey it. There is one thing I wish
all white men and women to bear in mind, when
they refer to Uhcit relations of white men and
black women, and vice versa — it is this: the
laws of this Southland are made by white men,
and no sooner have they made these laws than
they get busy finding ways to break them and
evading punishment for so doing. It is a well-
known fact that no Negro woman seeks the at
tentions of a white man — rather is the shoe on
the other foot, and Negro women have a very
hard time making Whites keep ia their places.
However, the attraction is not confined to the

258 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
men of the white race, for good-looking colored
men have as hard a time as the good-lookiig
colored women. So, it seems to me that if Jean
Gordon should address an audience of white
men and women, and plead with them to teach
their boys, husbands, brothers, and fathers the
necessity of respecting the laws, and the women
of aU racea, then colored young women would
have no trouble keeping their virtue and their
morala. All honor ia due to the Negro women,
for no one knows better than Jean Gordon her
self the terrible pressure brought against them
by white men who seek to force their attentions
on them. The wonder of it is that so many of
them are able to hold out againat auch odds, but
God is in His heaven and does not sleep. So,
I say, let the white women get busy and teach
morality and respect to their own, and we shall
see how that will work out. As for illegitimate
children, the bearing of these is not confined to
women of the Negro race by any means. The
white infant asylums will give ample proof of
this. We know full well that a white man may
not marry a colored girl in the South, but we
wonder just why it is he does not marry the
white girl whom he seduces? I am able to give
a partial reason— THE FORCE OF HABIT!
The white man has grown so accustomed to se
ducing Negro women and getting by with it,
that the virtue of his own women has come to
mean nothing to him.

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 259
"We now come to Jean Gordon's statement
relative to 'wild stories are being circulated
that the Negro won the great world war. . . . '
No intelligent Negro can claim that the Negro
won the world war, but every intelligent man,
woman, and child, in this country and on the
other side, ia aware that the Negro did hia ahare
in winning it over there, and did hia full share
over here. The Negro has participated in every
war in which this country has engaged, and at
no time did he retreat nor show the yellow
streak. No one can cite an instance where a
Negro protested against going to the front.
Against propaganda that was overwhelming,
the Negro remained loyal. The first Negroes to
set foot on French soil were from Louisiana —
longshoremen ; they were not soldiers, true, but
they did what they were sent to do, and did it
well. Very few white regiments from Louisiana
saw the firing line, yet they are all soldiers. No
doubt, had they been sent to the front, they
would have fought, but ao would every black
citizen of the United States. However, if it is
true that 'comparatively few of them fought
when the total of the millions of white men
who died in that struggle is considered,' the
reason for that is that the South did its level
best to keep the Negro out of the war aa a sol
dier. And it must be known that every white
man who fought and died was not an American I
Every black man who fought did his part credit-

260 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
ably, as has ever been the case. Whole Negrb
regiments were decorated by the French, and
bear in mind that among those who were the
first to be decorated by the French were Ameri
can Negroes! As for the fighting qualities of
the Negro, all I need do is to refer any 'doubt
ing Thomas' to Xon Hill. Nothing more need
be said. And I repeat for all concerned that
while the Negro did not win the world war, he
did his share in helping to win it over there,
and Ke and his women who remained over here
helped to win it by laboring and giving funds,
. . . The Negro dug trenches, he fought, he
died on the battlefield, he gave of his money and
his labor over here, and his women gave of their
money and labor. Did the Negro help win the
great world war? I'll say he did!!! Will any
one say he did not? If anyone has done more,
let him come forward.
"Before concluding, I wish to ask Jean Gor
don just why it is she and the women of the
South are sb bitterly opposed to giving suffrage
to Negro women? Do they fear us? Yea, they
need to fear us, for we have made up our minds
that we are going to help our men of the South
get their rights, and Jean Gordon, being a
woman, is fully aware that when a woman wills
a thing, it is as good as done. The Negro men
are going to come out on top, and their women
are going to see to it. The Negro men are going
to learn to protect their women from the snares

IN FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 261
of white men, and their women are going to help
them do this, too ... No longer does a Negro
woman conaider it an honor to have a white
man for a 'friend' — a lover; gradually have we
made her understand that it is an insult, and
she now tells her father, brother, or husband,
aa the caae may be, and it is up to this man to
defend the virtue of hia female relative, in the
same way the white man defenda hia. No more
do we hear nice-looking colored boya bragging
that auch and such a white woman is quite crazy
for him, for we have shown him that her affec
tion for him is likely to lead him into trouble,
so, having quite a variety of colors to choose
from in the women of his own race (thanks to
the white man for that), the Negro boy runs
along with the kind of girl who pleases him,
and keeps out of trouble. Very often, though,
the White does not let him stay out of trouble
— ^there are so many ways devised by these nice
white people to hurt the Negro who is peace
ably bent. The Negro has been patient, true,
but we all know there is an end to all patience.
I hope the time has come when the Whites of
thia section will take up more time in improving
themselves and less time in seeing the error of
our ways. We both of us have much to do, but
we Negroes are aware of it, and are anxious
to improve ourselves, but we are unable to take
pattern after those who are more in need of les-

262 THE SOUL OE JOHN BROWN
on top — even though he is in a hopeless minor
ity. Right will ever and always crush Might;
for reference, see William Hohenzollern!"
By this sulphurous httle smoke one may know
of subterranean fire. When the earthquake
comes the Jean Gordons will fall down and
the new Negro woman will stand forth. White
society in places like New Orleana may one day
be overthrown unleas it can live for ideals and
reform its institutions. Much dfepends on the
law which is corrupted and much on the
churches now in decay. Literature in New
Orleans is nigh dead, so I wUl not mention that.

xn
THE NEW MIND OP THE NEGRO
Resentment is the main characteriatic of the
Negro forward movement. In endeavoring to
underatand the Negro mind a maximum is
gained by answering the question: What does
it mean to have been a slave? Analysis of racial
conaciouaneaa at once bringa to light in the case
of the Negro a slave mentality. He has been
pre-dispositioned by slavery.
To have been a slave, or to be the child of a
slave, means to have an old impaid grudge in
the blood; to have, in fact, resentment either
smouldering or abeyant or militant. If it does
not develop in the slave it will develop in the
child of the slave or the chUd of the child. It
may not take a violent form. Certain circum
stances, such as prosperity, have power to neu-
trahze it. On the other hand, certain other cir
cumstances have power to bring it more rapidly
to a head. The virus feeds on grievances, will
even feed on imaginary grievances, but most
certainly wUl grow apace on real grievances.
In all seriousness, there is nothing like burning
people alive for bringing out active spite and
hate. Because of burning and lynching, the

264 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
whole of American Negrodom swells larger in
resentment, day by day, and moon by moon.
The character of ex-slave, and the child of
one who was a slave, is aptly shown by the way
the Negro treats animals, in the way also in
which he treats those Negroes who happen to
come under him.
It is appalling to hear a Negro say to a horse
struggling with a heavy load : "I'll take a stick
and beat you to death," and to realize that the
voice of the tyrannous master is being repeated
aa by a human phonograph. If the American
Negroea are more cruel to animals, though
quick to understand their ways, it is because
they conceive of themselves as masters and the
animals as their slaves.
For while a man ia a slave he ia leaming in
one way to be a maater. A slave's children are
more ready to be tyrannous than the children
of one who never has been a slave. When a
slave is being flogged he is learning racially how
to flog when he gets a chance. His children will
have a flogging spirit in them. When he is being
tortured he is learning how to torture.
The Anglo-Saxon looks upon animals as
friends and equals. He loves his horse and hia
dog, he honors the fox and the bear. Not ao the
Negro, the Russian peasant, the Jew. They
have an attitude toward the animals which is
quite other. And toward human beings in
iiieir power or employ Jiiey often have a point

THE NEGRO'S NEW MIND 265
of view which is hateful. The peasant workman
in the power of the Kulak peasant, the Jewiah
seamstress in the power of the Jew who owns
the "sweatshop," the Negro workman under
the Negro boss or foreman ! To be in the power
of a master is bad, but to be in the power of a
slave is so much worse !
In a land where the slave class is gaining
power there is therefore a great deal of resent
ment in the air. America has it ; Russia has it.
To-day aU the world has it. In the Great War
the youth of almost every country underwent
the yoke of military slavery, and what resent
ment there is against the masters ! In Germany,
where that slavery was worst, it raised Sparta
cus from death. And who was this Spartacus
who has suddenly become a type and given a
name to a movement? Himself a slave, he led
an insurrection of slaves against Rome. The
masters defeated him and killed him, and the
heads of hundreds of his followers were impaled
on spikes upon all roads which led to Rome — a
warning and a witness to all other slaves of
that and other times. Bitter and malignant
blood-stained faces stared at the passers-by
upon the Roman highway. They stare still in
history, and they stare to-day, not from pikes,
but from an infinite number of children of
slaves. Spartacus hves.
What is called the Spartacus movement in

266 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
shevism ia eminently a slave movement. The
children of the serfs have grasped everything.
Its first expression has been class war and re
venge on the master class. There is so much of
slave in the Ruasian that his racial name ia
Slav. Now comea out all the reaentment and
ill feeling of centuriea. Unlike the followers of
Spartacua, the Ruasian serf has triumphed, and
instead of having his head impaled he has been
able to impale the heads of his masters. Prom
his example all slaves and chUdren of slaves
throughout the world have taken courage. Rus
sian serfs and military slaves and wage slaves
and Negroes are finding an accord, and here we
have the foundation for a grand proletarian
revolutionary movement throughout the world.
It may be objected that the American Negroes
are not Bolshevik. They are not in name, but
,they are potentially of the same spirit. They
hate the white proletariat because the latter uses
them ill, but curiously enough they have a com
mon cause. The leaders of the Negro forward
movement are almost exclusively Bolshevik in
spirit. We cannot wonder at it. Persecution
haa developed a great resentment and class
hate. When the time comes. Dr. Du Bois and
Johnson and Walter White and Pickens and
the rest will know whose side they are on in the
great world struggle.
There are those who will say that if ever the
lynching mob become the victims of the enraged

THE NEGRO'S NEW MIND 267
Negroes no one will shed tears but the lynchers
themselves. They say the lyncher knows that he
is wrong and has been told so often enough.
Thus, in a pedagogic way, think the wiseheads
who do not stray out of doors when a Negro is
being killed. Thus think also the, governors of
the States, the sheriffs, the judges, the police,
and the law. But they are fond and foolish.
It is not the lynching crowd on whom vengeance
will ultimately be taken. The Negro mob, when
it rises, may easily join with the lynchers and
make common cause against those who should
have administered the law, and against those
who haye stood idly by. In those days we may
see the ugly crowd making its way to the Pilate
governors, who so often wash their hands, and
beating them to death and burning their wives.
That is the real movement. There is nothing
very reasonable in it, but the risen mob is not
guided by logic.
Resentment is the principal feeling of the
Negro soldiers returned from France. It is au
example of how modern life, undirected, uncon
trolled, and unadvised, is manufacturing ever
and ever more of the dangerous stuff of revo
lution. A policy as to the use of Negro citizens in the
Great War was not come to in the United
States. Once more the seemingly unworkable
theories of the Declaration of Independence and
tlio nnnati+nfinn werp niTnlief} eouallv to the

268 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
Negro as to the white man, as if the Negro were
only a white man with a dark skin. Negroes
were conscripted equally with white men,
drilled and equipped, and sent to France, with
out any regard to the two vital questions :
1, Is it fitting, and can America condone the
use ^f colored troops to fight white ene
mies?
2. When many white citizens have such a
violent animus against the Negro, is it
practicable to use the latter in the army?
The first of these questions was evaded by
America as it had been from the first by
France. There are many who think that the
use of "native" troops against the Germans
was more indefensible than the German use of
poison gas. Por, by using colored troops against
Whites in a white man's quarrel, the moral
leaderahip of the Whites is obviously thrown
away, and there are bound to be serious after
effects in the weakening of morale.
The second question was merely an important
practical detail that had been overlooked. Theo
retically, all American citizens are equal. The
laws apply without distinction of race or color.
In practice, equality ia denied. What more nat
ural than to continue in the theoretical aasump-
tion of equality, and hope that divergency in
practice might be overlooked. What more ab
surd, however, than to take a man who is being

THE NEGRO'S NEW MIND 269
illegally diafranchiaed by the community and
make him fight for that community?
The Northern white soldier did not, however,
feel ill disposed toward the black soldier, and I
have met those who saw deeds of heroism done
by Negroea, and many who aaw them wounded
and auffering in the common cause, and felt
drawn toward them, to help them and their
brothers. But whatever may have been the com
mon feeling about Negro soldiers in the United
States, it was defimitely hostile to them in the
camps in France. There emerged two charac
teristic points of view: (1) That it waa good
to Mil off aa many Negroea as possible, as that
helped to solve the Negro problem. (2) That the
Negro waa not worthy to fight for his country;
Not much for patriotism to feed on there!
There seems never to have been any resolve to
make first-class Negro regiments, and those
units who served in France were by no means
adequately trained. By all competent accounts
they were very slack, and it goes without say
ing that an almost superhuman effort of disci
pline was neceaaary to obtain complete steadi
ness in this terrible war. It was common to
endeavor to terrorize the Negroes by alarming
and exaggerated accounts of the horrors of bat
tle. Negroes were talked to by Whites in a very
unsoldiery way. Baiting them and scaring them
was thought to be better sport than dealing with

270 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
them sternly and seriously. There is no doubt
also that some white soldiers rejoiced to aee the
Negro put back into the alavery position and
forced to obey on pain of death. There are those
who cannot forgive the Negro having got free
from slavery, and for them the spectacle of the
Negro in the rank and file afforded much pleas
ure. Threating Negroes with a court-martial
and death sentence became a characteristic jest.
The white man, however, soon found that the
Negro fell into the humor of the war more
readily than into the tragedy of it. It agreed
with his own sense of humor. It was soon im
possible to scare the raw recruits with yams.
The idea of running away from a machine gun
became natural and hilarious. The dangers
from night-bombing raiders over the linea were
facetiously exaggerated. Hiding best became a
humorous point of honor, and one Negro would
vaunt against another how far he fled. Private
soldiers chaffed their officers on the subject of
death. Asked what ' ' going over the top ' ' meant,
the raw recruit would anawer: "I know; it
means Good mornin', Jesus." In short, in
nearly every Negro unit there, set in a humor-
esque attitude to the war.
Officer: The Germans are going to start
an offensive.
Negro Soldier: That so, cap? Then
we'se spread the news over France.
As the popular joke has it.

THE NEGRO'S NEW MIND 271
The Negro officer then began to receive the
white man's attention. Having trained many
colored officers, Negroes often of education and
means and refinement, and having given them
commission and uniform, the Staff came to the
conclusion that they had made a mistake. The
white Southern officer stirred up trouble, the
white ranker would not salute. There was the
usual sordid squabble in officers' messes. And
then the upshot — a great number of Negro offi
cers subjected to the humiliation of losing their
commissions and being placed in the ranks.
This discouragement neceaaarily set the Negro
officer thinking. It cultivated his resentment.
It sowed in his heart the seed of national
disaffection. The next serious trouble was that of the
French women and the Negro. The indifference
of white women whether the man they walked
with was black or brown or white was taken aa
an intolerable affront by Southernera. They felt
called upon to interfere and save the French
woman from herself. The rape legend was im
ported, and every effort was made to infect the
French male with race prejudice. Happily, the
propaganda failed. Por one thing, Puritanism
does not easily take root in a French heart, and
for another, the French have no instinctive hor
ror of Negroes. Possibly the rape legend even
made the Negro a httle ornamental from the

 2_i. _J!

272 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
troops in Prance have given rise to as many
complaints of attempted rape as all the rest of
the army 'Les troupes noires Americaines en
France ont donne lieu, a elle seules, a autant
de plaintes pour tentatives de viol, que tout le
reste de I'Armee,' " as an army order puts it.
Negro honor, however, demands that the
charge be rebutted, and the matter haa been
thoroughly investigated. There does not seem
to be much in it. As every one knows who
served in the ranks, women of easy virtue were
extremely plentiful and complaisant. The need
might easily have been to protect the Negro
from the women rather than the women from
the Negro.
The fact is simply that the Negro walking
with a white woman is to the Southern Ameri
can White as a red rag to a bull. And aa by
nature this White is unrestrained and imrea-
sonable, he seeks by all means, fair or foul, to
part them.
Finally, the culmination of the story of the
American Negro in the war is that the White
denied him any valor or prowess or military
virtue of any kind, said the Negro was a coward
and a runaway and utterly useless in the fight
ing line. Fighting units were taken off their
allotted duty and changed to labor units. Regi
ments were ordered home ; whole brigades were
given as a present to the grateful French, They

THE NEGRO'S NEW MIND 273
may have been rather inefficient. But, if so, that
was due to bad training. Negroes have fought
magnificently in America's wars of the past.
They are a great fighting race, and they are
capable pf discipline.
I listened when at New Orleans to a lecture
given by Sergeant Needham Roberts of the
369th U. S. Infantry, a handsome young Negro
warrior, twice wounded, the first American to
be decorated by the French Government. He
was entirely patriotic, and made the apathetic
Negro audience stand to sing the "Star-Span
gled Banner." He told how he ran away from
home to enlist, trained with a mass of black
strangers, went across the ocean — quite a terri
fying experience for some of these young sol
diers, who but for the war had never crossed
the sea. He gave his first impressions of France
and of the hne, the exaggerated fright of shell
explosions and night attacks and bombs from
the air. They were just getting used to the first
aapect of war when one day the newa flew
round — "We are aU ordered home again."
Official orders to that effect quickly followed.
They had all packed up and were marching to
entrain for Cherbourg when, according to the
sergeant, Foch intervened.
"Why are you sending them back?" said he.
"They are not wanted."
Foch seemed astonished.

274 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
"If you cannot use them, I can," said the
French marshal.
And then, hurray! — ^we were attached to the
French. It was no playground, the French front, but,
as ever, a sterner piece of reality than Ameri
can or British. The Negroes were hotly en
gaged and had many casualties. Roberts won
his Croix de Guerre for a feat which he per
formed with his chum, Pete Johnson. They had
been left at an advanced listening post and ap
parently overlooked — ^not relieved for three
days and three nights. The division had been
relieved. On the third night the Germans made
a raid which the two Negro soldiers repelled by
themselves, first throwing out their bombs, then
firing, and finishing with a remarkable bit of
butchery with the bayonet. The Germans whom
they did not put out of action they put to flight.
How many Germans lay dead it would be diffi
cult to say. The number probably grew like
those of Falstaff's men in buckram, but I did
hear twenty mentioned.
There was no doubt about the fact that Ser
geant Roberts was a jolly soldier — a "bonny
faechter" — and he made himself on good terms
with his audience very quickly. He came from
New York, and had swung along Fifth Avenue
with the heroes of New York's Fighting Fif
teenth. He was full of the faith of the North,
horribly depressed by the atmosphere of the

THJdJ iNJliU±CU'K JNJliW MIND 'lib
South, above all by the paaaivity and apathy of
the Negroes of New Orleans. He had better
keep north of the Mason-Dixon line, for he ia
evidently a bom fighter
If the war itaelf was a persistent educator of
the Negro, hia subsequent treatment after the
Armistice enforced very terribly what he
learned. It would be hardly worth while to en
large on thia in detaU. The fact which I wiahed
to iaolate is the growing reaentment of the col
ored people, the fact that some twelve millions
are becoming highly charged with resentment.
As illustration of thia reaentment one could
quote much from the spoken and the written
word of the Negroes. But a poem, or part of
a poem, may suffice. It is Archibald Grimke's
"Thirteen Black Soldiers." The 24th United
States Infantry, a Negro regiment, was sent to
Houston, Texas, and was received with lack of
sympathy and some hostility by the population.
A series of petty troubles culminated in a riot
and mutiny. Sixty-four Negroes were court-
martialled, and thirteen were sentenced to
death, and hanged. It seems to show a lack of
foresight to station a Negro regiment among
such a hostile people as the Texans. They are
more" the enemies of the Negroea than were the
Germans, and there was certainty of trouble.
Grimke's poem expresaea the boiling resent
ment to which I have referred.

276 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
She hanged them, her thirteen black soldiers,
She hanged them for mutiny and murder.
She hanged them after she had put on them her uniform,
After she had put on them her uniform, the uniform of her
soldiers.
She told them they were to be brave, to fight and, if needs
be, to die for her.
This was many years before she hanged them, her thirteen
black soldiers.
She told them to go there and they went,
To come here and they came, her brave black soldiers.
For her they went without food and water.
For her they suffered cold and heat.
For her they marched by day.
For her they watched by night.
For her in strange lands they stood fearless.
For her in strange lands they watched shelterless,
For her in strange lands they fought.
For her in strange lands they bled,
For her they faced fevers and fierce men.
For her they were always and everywhere ready to die.
And now she has hanged them, her thirteen black soldiers.
For murder and mutiny she hanged them in anger and hate.
Hanged them in secret and dark and disgrace.
In secret and dark she disowned them,
In secret and dark buried them and left them in nameless
disgrace.
Why did she hang them, her thirteen black soldiers?
What had they done to merit such fate?
She sent them to Houston, to Houston, in Texas,
She sent them in her uniform to this Southern city,
She sent them, her soldiers, her thirteen brave soldiers.
They went at her bidding to Houston,
They went where they were ordered.
They could not choose another place,
For they were soldiers and went where they were ordered.
They marched into Houston not knowing what awaited
them.
Insult awaited them and violence.
Insult and violence hissed at them from house windows and
struck at them in the streets,
American colorphobia hissed and struck at them as they
passed by on the streets.
In the street cars they met discrimination and insult,
"They are not soldiers, they and their uniforms,

THE NEGRO'S NEW MIND 277
They are but common niggers,
They must be treated like common niggers.
They and their uniform."
So hissed colorphobia, indigenous to Texas.
And then it squirted its venom on them,
Squirted its venom on them and on their uniform.
And what did she do, she who put that uniform on them.
And bade them to do and die if needs be for her?
Did she raise an arm to protect them?
Did she raise her voice to frighten away the reptilian
thing?
Did she lift a finger or say a word of rebuke at it?
Did she do anything In defence of her black soldiers?
She did nothing. She sat complacent, indifferent in her
seat of power.
She had eyes, but she refused to see what Houston was
doing to her black soldiers.
She had ears, but she stuffed them with cotton,
That she might not hear the murmured rage of her black
soldiers.
They suffered alone, they were defenceless against insult
and violence.
For she would not see them nor hear them nor protect
them.
Then in desperation tbey smote the reptilian thing.
They smote it as they had smitten before her enemies,
For was it not her enemy, the reptilian thing, as well as
their own?
They in an hour of madness smote it in battle furiously.
And it shrank back from their blows hysterical.
Terror and fear of death seized it, and it cried unto her to
help.
And she, who would not hear her black soldiers in their
dire need.
She, who put her uniform on them, heard their enemy.
She flew at Its call and hanged her brave black soldierg.
She hanged them for doing for themselves what she ought
to have done for them.
She hanged them for resenting insult to her uniform,
She hanged them for defending from violence her brave
black soldiers.
They marched with the dignity of brave men to the gallows.
With the souls of warriors they marched without a whim
per to their doom.
And so they were hanged, her thirteen black soldiers.

278 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Is the watchword of Dr. Du Bois to be won
dered?— We return.
We return from fighting.
We return fighting.
I met at Memphis, Tennessee, one of the few
Southern white men who are sympathetic to the
Negro and understand the gravity of the situa
tion. This was Mr. Bolton Smith, a rich busi
ness man, a member of the Rotary Club quand
meme. As one who among other activities ad
vances money on the security of real estate in
the Mississippi Delta, he necessarily has been
brought* a great deal into contact with the
Negro. Society in Memphis looked at him some
what askance because he did not share the cur
rent conventional view, but he was not black
balled, only indulgently laughed at as one who
had a weak spot in his mental armor. In placea
remote from Memphis, however, his views
receive weighty consideration.
If he had his way he would give the Negro
his right and his due, and stop lynching. He
does not believe the Negro wishes ' ' social equal
ity," the right to mix indiacriminately with
white people, in schools, in trains, in marriage.
He thinks the Negro prefers to be separate as
long as there is no implied dishonor. He made
a special study of the Frederick Douglass
School at Cincinnati, an all black school which
is admirably conducted, and found that by

THJli JNJiiliKU'K JNJdJW MIND 1^79
themselves the Negroes progress more than
when mixed with Whites. As Cincinnati is a
city on the northern fringe, with northern in
stitutions, the Negroes had the choice to go to
mixed schools with white children if they de
sired, but they preferred to be by themselves,
and indeed did better by themselves. As regards
Jim Crow cars. Smith said he would give
equal comfort and equal facihties in colored
cars and in colored waiting rooms. He doea not
think the Negro desires to be in a Pullman car
where there are white women. It works without
scandal in the North, but there ia too much riak
of the woman going into hysterics in the South,
and the Negro getting lynched at a wayside sta
tion. He believes in abandoning "the policy of
pin pricks," and, above all, in suppressing
lynching and race riot.
He was, however, strongly opposed to Du
Bois and the National Asaociation. He con
sidered that Du Boia waa leading the Negroes
wrongly, leading them in fact to a worse calam
ity, than any which had yet overtaken them. "If
the Negro resorts to force," said Mr. Smith to
me, "he will be destroyed. In peace and in
law the white man faUs to underatand how to
handle the Negro, but if it comea to force, the
issue becomes quite simple for the white man,
and the Negro stands little more chance than
a savage. Christianity alone can save the
Negro, and the leaders of the National Associa-

280 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
tion are leading the people away from Chris
tianity." He wished all Negroes could see how
fatal it is for them to abandon Christianity.
"If it were not for the lynchings, the National
Association and its newspaper would shrink to
very small proportions. Every time a Negro ia
lynched it adds a thousand to the circulation of
the Crisis, and a burning adds ten thousand,"
said he.
"Hell would soon lose its heat should sin ex
pire," said I. I was inclined to agree that the
only way was through Christianity. But there
is such a thing as the wrath of God, and it is
not incompatible with Divine Fatherhood and
all-merciful Providence. John Brown has been
greatly condemned, but he waa not outaide
Chriatianity — surely he was a child of God. He
used to think that without much shedding of
blood the crimes of this guilty land could be
purged away, but now . . .
I do not think the white South will be able
to avert the wrath of God by machine guns, nor
wUl it quell the Negro by force once the Negro
moves from the depths of his being. Better than
believe in meeting the great wrath is to be ad
vised betimes and mend one's ways. Was not
the CivU War a sufficient bloodletting? Could
not the lesson be learned?
It ia certainly in vain to work directly against
Du Boia when hia power aa a leader of revolt
could be removed utterly by stopping the lynch-

NEGRO LEADERSHIP 281
ing. The U. S. Postmaster General refused
postal facilities to one number of his newspaper
becauae it waa going too far in stirring up sedi
tion, but it was ineffectual, and was, on the con
trary, a useful advertisement' for the paper.
And then, ia it not known there are far more
advanced groups of Negroea than that of the
aasociation of which Dr. Du Bois is president?
There are those who laugh Du Bois to scorn
aa a Moderate. There are those who have aworn
that for every Negro done to death by the mob
two white men shaU somehow perish. An eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is the gospel
— or rather, two eyes for one. Something is
being started which will not cease with a recital
of the Beatitudes. If America does not cast out
the devil of class hate from the midst of her ahe
will again be ravished by the Angel of Death aa
in the CivU War. The eatabliahed peaceful rou
tine of a country hke America is very deceptive.
All seems so permanent, so unshakable. The
new refinement, the new politeness and well-
lined culture, and vast commercial organiza
tion and press suggest that no calamity could
overtake them. The force that makes for dis
ruption and anarchy ia generated silently and
secretly. It accumulates, accumulates, and one
day it must discharge itaelf. Its name is resent
ment, and its firat expression is revenge.

xni
NEGRO LEADERSHIP
Db. W. E. BuEGHAEDiT Dxj Bois, as the leader of
the militant movement, is the greateat force
among the Negroes to-day. Light of skin, short
of stature, square-headed, he would pass easily
in Southern Europe or in Russia as a white
man. He looks rather like a highly polished
Jewish professor. Considered carefully, how
ever, it will be realized that behind an impaaaive
mask-like face is an emotional and fiery nature.
There is a white heat of resentment in him, and
a decision not to forgive. Possibly his devotion
to the cause and the race drags him down a
little. For he ia poasessed of an unuaual literary
genius. The fire that ran in the veins of Dumas
and of Pushkin is in him also, and as a maater
of the written word he stands entirely without
rival in the American Negro world. In that re
spect he is altogether a greater man than
Booker T. Washington. The latter was a prac
tical genius, and what is gall and wormwood
in the bosom of Du Bois was the milk of human
kindness in his more sooty, natural breast. "I'm
going to shout ' Glory ! ' when this world is afire,
and I don't feel noways tired," he used always
282

NEGRO LEADERSHIP 283
to be saying. "Booker T.," as he is affection
ately called, was the wonderful colored baby of
the firat days of freedom. His, "Up from
Slavery," which he wrote, and the vocational
institute of Tuakegee, Alabama, are the chief
monumenta which he left behind him. But his
portrait ia almost as common in Negro cabins
as pictures of the Tsar used to be in Russian
isbas. "Our Booker T.," the .Negroes say lov
ingly and possessingly, looking upon the first
of their number who rose from the dark depths
of servitude, first fruita of them that alept.
Freedom and Hope raised Booker T. Washing
ton, but now he ia dead a new time needs a new
leader. Fain would the Whites have "Booker
T." back. The amenable Negro leader ia much
more to their taate than the mihtant one.
Many yeara ago Du Bois wrote "Souls of
Black Folk," which is a fascinating personal
study. It has a true literary quality which raises
it from the ruck of ephemeral publications to
an enduring place. It ia, however, immature.
There ia an emphaais of peraonal culture, and a
note of self-pity, which a more developed writer
would have been at pains to transmute. But
the gift is unmistakable. You perceive it again
and in better measure in "Darkwater," pub
hshed this year.
It has taken the war and the recent increased
persecution of the Negro people to bring out

284 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
said to me, "He is first of all a statesman and
a politician. .He is leading the Negroes. I won
der where he will lead them to ? "
Certainly no other Negro in the United Statea
is regarded by so many others as his leader. No
doubt moat of the quiet, cautious, and tradi
tionally religious Negroes fight shy of him. But
they, for their part, have no leader. Dr. Moton,
the lineal descendant of Booker Washington at
Tuskegee Institute, is only a leader in the aenae
that Dr. Arnold of Rugby might be considered a
leader. He is there in his place. He is a great
light, and is taken for granted.
Ih August, 1919, Dr. Moton wrote to ihe
President, warning him of the growing ten
sion: "I want eapecially to call your attention to
the intense feeling on the part of the colored
people throughout the country toward white
people, and the apparent revolutionary attitude
of many Negroes, which shows itself in a desire
to have justice at any cost. The riots in Wash
ington and Chicago and near riots in many other
cities have not surpriaed me in the least. I pre
dicted in an address several months ago, at the
fiftieth anniversary of the Hampton Institute,
on the aecond of May — ex-President Taft and
Mr. George Foster Peabody were present at the
time — that this would happen if the matter was
not taken hold of vigorously by the thoughtful
elements of both races.

NEGRO LEADERSHIP 285
"I think the time is at hand, and I think of
nothing that would have a more salutary effect
on the whole situation now than if you should
in your own wise way, as you did a year ago,
make a statement regarding mob law; laying
especial atress on lynching and every form of
injuatice and imfairnesa. You would loae noth
ing by specifically referring to the lynching rec
ord in the paat six months ; many of them have
been attended with unusual horrors, and it
would be easy to do it now because of the two
most recent riots in the North, notably, Wash
ington and Chicago. The South was never
more ready to listen than at present to that
kind of advice, and it would have a tremen
dously stabilizing effect, as I have said, on the
members of my race.
"You very probably saw the account of the
lynching in Georgia of an old colored man sev-
entyi years of age, who shot one of two intoxi
cated white men in his attempt to protect two
colored girls who had been commanded to come
out of their home in the night by theae two
men. The colored man killed the white man
after he had been ahot by one of the white men
because he had simply protested.
"I am enclosing the lynching record for the
paat six months and an editorial from the
Atlanta Constitution, which strongly denounces
mob violence.
"With all kind wishes, and aasurinsr vou of

286 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
no desire to add to your burdens, but simply
to call attention to what seems to me vital not
only for the interest of the twelve millions of
black people, but equally as important for the
welfare of the millions of Whites whom they
touch, I am,
"Very sincerely and gratefully,
"R. R. Moton."
In reply to this letter, President Wilson
wrote Dr. Moton as follows :
"My dear Dr. Moton:
"Thank you sincerely for your letter of Au
gust eighth. It conveys information and sug
gestions, the importance of which I fully realize
and for which I am sincerely obliged. I wiU
take the suggestions you make under very seri
ous consideration, becauae I realize how crit
ical the situation has become and how impor
tant it is to steady affairs in every possible way.
"Again thanking you for your public-spirited
co-operation, "Cordially and aincerely yours,
"WooDKOw Wilson."
With this conventional reply the matter
closes, and things in America became steadily
worae in the montha which followed. The twi-
Ught peace of Tuakegee haa been in contrast
with the loud, clamoroua denunciations from

NEGRO LEADERSHIP 287
!Dr. Du Bois. For Du Bois gives forth new
words of leadership each month. He has a voice
like a trumpet and must be heard. Therefore,
he is the leader.
Associated with him are many brilliant men
of whom the most powerful is the poet and
orator, Jamea Welldon Johnson, a darker man
than Du Bois, slender and taller. He is ener
getic, and may constantly be heard from plat-
forma in New York and elsewhere. I heard him
speak. I was not moved by him as by Dean
Pickens, but he is more intense and has the
reputation of extraordinary brilliance at times.
If the persecution were lifted from off the
Negro race there would doubtless be room for
quiet educational leadership, and flamboyancy
would fail. White sympathizers such as Mr.
Bolton Smith of Memphis emphasize the value
of the quieter, more unobtrusive work done in
places like Piney Woods School, the Frederick
Douglass School, by Laurence Jones and Prin
cipal Russell. But of course peaceful growth is
impossible until the mass of the people are
guaranteed against the present terrifying mob
violence and general social injuatice.
On the other hand, it does not follow that
Du Bois is a new Moses leading his people to a
Promised Land. He may be leading them to
terrific bloodshed and slaughter. He may be
leading them to a complete racial fiasco, not

 J _ « J.1 

288 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
but because perhaps that fiasco ia written on
the American Negro's card of destiny.
The Negroes are arming themselves. They
are more ready to retaliate — to quote a letter
from Memphis : ' ' There is an increased deter
mination on the part of great numbers of
Negroes to defend their rights by force. . . . The
Negro is emotional, and the maases of them are
quite ready to think they are oppressed in mat
ters in which they are not oppressed at all, and
therefore to use force on imjustifiable occasions.
This shows itself in the increased use of fire
arms by petty thievea againat the police. A
Negro was arrested here recently on the charge
of selling stolen chickens. Hia home waa known.
It was inconceivable that the ordinary white
petty thief would shoot officers of the law in
order to prevent an arrest which probably would
have resulted in a comparatively small punish
ment, but this man murdered an officer and ia
to be hung. The same thing haa occurred here
several times. Under these circumstancea it is
difficult to induce the police to hold the proper
attitude toward the Negro. They never know
when he is going to shoot, and so it is natural
that they should shoot a Negro much quicker
than they would a white man. This begets in
its turn a feeling of resentment which makes
the relations between the Negro and the police
more difficult. I cannot emphasize too strongly
the fact that when a minority tries to protect

THE WORLD ASPECT 289
itself — although it may use only the weapons
which the majority in the past has been accus
tomed to use in defending itself against tyranny,
the minority is apt to find itself condemned
in the eyes of the public. Take the attitude
which the mass of Americans are occupying
with reference to the Reds and their deporta
tion. ... A small number of the Reds have
appealed to force — the whole crowd are more
or less outlawed by American public opinion.
What I am apprehensive of if the Negroes con
tinue to follow Du Bois is just such an embit-
terment of relations between the two races. I
do not believe that the race relation in Chicago
is the better for the race riot. On the other
hand, in Europe, every revolution usually
resulted sooner or later in greater freedom
even where the revolution was suppressed. My
experience with Negro uprisings has been pre
cisely the reverse. Such progress as the Negro
has made has been by education and the awak
ening of the conscience of the white man.
"To put the matter in a few words, the prob
lem that I would like immensely to emphasize
to you, is the wholly abnormal position of the
minority seeking its rights. We are apt to
think that the Negro can achieve these rights in
the way that our ancestors achieved theirs
againat the ariatocracy, but unleas I am utterly
wrong, that view ia doomed to failure and if
foUowed will result in embittering the relations

290 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN '
between the races so that segregation dv
deportation or extermination must result. Per
sonally I do not believe that we will fail, bit if
we succeed it will be in apite of Du Bois a^d of
the attitude of armed resistance. Never was a
better illustration of the wisdom under certain
conditions of the Tolstoi attitude of non-resist
ance." That of course is nicely deduced, but events
are not ruled by wisdom and logic. It might
very well have been said to the Israelites dur
ing the long period of the Plagues. It is such
a period in the history of the Negroes.

XEV
THE WORLD ASPECT
The American Negroes are the aristocrats of
the Negro world. It may be a paradox to
assume that a proletariat can become an aristoc
racy, but an aristocracy is the best a race can
produce in culture and manners. No doubt Afri
can Negrodom is made up of a great number
of races, but all seem to have one common inter
est and to yield more homage to the name of
Africa itself than to any constituent part, king
dom, or state or pasture. The American Negro
is beginning to lead Africa as he is leading the
Indies. The reason is that the chUdren of the
American slaves have made the greatest cul
tural progress of all Negroes. Though perse
cution has been less in some parts of Africa
and on the West Indian islands, opportunity
has alao been less. In 1863 America committed
herself to the task of raising her millions of
black slaves to the cultural level of white citi
zenship. But no one has ever essayed to raise
the savage masses of Africa much higher than
the baptismal font. It is always pointed out to
the American Negro that his good fortune is
prodigious. The Negro retorts that if he has
291

292 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
good fortune his fathers paid for it in the suf
ferings of slavery, and he still pays in the price
of lynching. Yet, of course, the Negroes in
Africa have suffered greatly, and their fathera
suffered greatly. No Negro can deny that he
owes America much. And Africa owes, or will
owe, more still.
In America the door at least stands open for
Negro progress. In Africa, and especially in
South Africa, it is not quite certain that the
door is not closed. If the door remains ajar it
is not because the white man wills it, but
because the American Negro has got his foot in.
A low Commercial-Imperial idea reigns. The
native ia, "the labor on the spot." An unfail
ing supply of cheap native labor is considered
the great desideratum. Attempts on the Negro's
part to raiae himself by education or by
technical skill are looked upon with suspicion,
and one must remember that as far aa the Brit-
iah Empire or French or Belgian mandatorial
regiona are concerned there are no inatitutiona
in Africa comparable to Tuakegee and Hamp
ton. If the labor uniona in the United Statea
are fooliahly antagoniatic to the progreaa of
Negro skilled labor, they are twice more so in
South Africa. If there is peonage in America
there is an abundance of pseudo slavery in
Africa, and while the American trolley car has
its Jim Crow section the South African one
often has not even that, and the Negro must

THE WORLD ASPECT 293
walk unless accompanied by white employer. An
open hbstUity has arisen between Black and
White which much resembles that of the South
ern States of America. If it were not for the
leaderahip of the American Negroea it would
not be promiaing for Negrodom as a whole.
Of course there is a vital difference between
the British Empire and the United Statea ; the
people of the empire are aubjects, and of the
republic they are citizens. While Britain
technically rules her four hundred million col
ored subjects from above downward America
theoretically holds that all her people are free
and equal. The American ideal is higher, the
British more practical.
There ia another difference, and it ia that our
Blacka, except in the Indies, are mostly indige-
noua, and have not been transplanted from their
native wUds. They have not been slaves and
have not the slave psychology. In Africa the
white man is in contact with masses of natives
in a primitive condition; in the United States
the Negro has been definitely cut off from his
Mth and kin. The American Negro was set
free in a land rampant with democratic ideals
and possessed of a subhme belief in human
progress. But Africa has been and is increas
ingly a commercial domain whose only function
from the modem white man's point of view is
the making of material fortune. The white man
in Africa is much more exclusively a dollar

294 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
hunter than the American. And though Britain
has been much praised for letting South Africa
govern herself it does not seem as if the Union
was making much progress in ideals and cul
ture. The King of England waa a better friend
to the native than the local govemment ia prov
ing itself to be.
A blatant anti-nigger tendency is growing
throughout the British Empire, and it is very
vulgar, very undignified, and at the same time
disgraceful. It applies to India and Egypt as
much as to Africa. It is due perhaps to a gen
eral deterioration in education and training.
One may remark that those who complain of the
ways of their servants are generally unfitted to
have servants, and it is characteristic of par
venus to ill treat those beneath them, and I
would say if a white man cannot get on well
with a Negro it is a sign that he is not a gentle
man. But the genuine type of Engliah gentle
man ia paaaing. To think that the race of Liv
ingstone and Stanley and Harry Johnston
should be pitifully complaining about the
Negroes, as if God had not made them aright!
The British people used to be able to manage
native races well — in the age of the Victorian,
when the Englishman could treat his native
servant as if he were a gentleman also, never
doubting that in God's sight an equal dignity
invested both master and man. Read the
memoirs and letters of colonial people of time

THE WORLD ASPECT 295
past, and then compare with the current noisy
prejudice in India and Africa. The falling
away is appaUing. And the "natives" know
the change which has been coming about — the
new type of officer and employer, the man with
the whisky brain, the mind stocked with music-
hall funniosity and pseudo cynicism, the grum
bler, the man who expects everything to have
been arranged for his comfort and success be
forehand. Astonishing to hear young officers
calhng even Hindoos and Syrians and Arabs
niggers! The native instinctively knows the
man of restraint and good manners and human
dignity and properly trained unselfishness.
The lowest coolie can tell the difference between
a gentleman and a cad; and the educated col
ored man, while he respects in the deepest way
the nation of Shakespeare and Burke and Wel-
hngton and Gordon, is puzzled to find a com
mon spirit in the English-speaking people of
to-day. "I was reared in an atmosphere of admira
tion — almost of veneration — for England,"
says Dr. Du Bois. "I had always looked on
England as the best administrator of colored
peoples, and laid her success to her system of
justice," but he wavers in that faith now, hav
ing heard the new story of Hindoos and Arabs
and the Negroes of South Africa and Negroes
of West Africa.
In converse with Professor Hoffmann in New

296 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
Orleana, a British subject formerly in the serv
ice of the British Govemment in Northern
Nigeria, an extremely capable and enlightened
Negro, now head master of a colored school, I
found confirmation of this. His impression of
the change of spirit in the empire was similar
to that expressed by Du Bois, and I found ad
miration of British rule giving way to doubt in
many Negro minds. Indeed it has been pos
sible for American Anglophobes to do a good
deal of propaganda among the Negroes by rep
resenting how badly the natives now fare under
British rule. There ia some exaggeration in
thia respect, but it makes an important impres
sion on the mind of the American Negro. He
has begun to feel a care and an anxiety for the
condition of his brethren overseas. The edu
cated Negro of the United States now feels a
responaibility toward the African Negro, and
also toward all dark-skinned people whatso
ever. The assumption by the Negro of a common
ground with the natives of India is somewhat
surprising and amusing. There is no ethnolog
ical common ground. But the color bar of the
British Empire applies almoat aa atringently
to the Indiana aa to the Negroes. "We'll smash
them all to hell," says a bellicose Negro
stranger to a young Hindoo student at Wash
ington, much to the astonishment of the latter.

THE WORLD ASPECT 297
The advanced Negroes of America place the
liberation of the peoples of India and Egypt in
the very foreground of their world policy. They
say also that the natives of South Africa must
be dehvered from the Union of South Africa.
One thing is certain, and that ia that the Brit
ish Empire will not hold together for long un
less the Whites can manage the Blacka, and up
hold the standard of justice which was for
merly hved by. Votes are not neceasary, but
ordinary human righta of free exiatenee and op
portunity are neceaaary. The empire is at the
crossroads. It is a question whether it can be
held together by good will, or whether Britain
wUl be forced to inaugurate a rule of force and
obedience. The old conception of good will is
being tested in South Africa and Egypt and
India as it ia in Ireland. Possibly as a result of
the war, political circumstances may force it
back to the ideal of force and a paramount cen
tral authority. The behef of native races in
the King, and their hatred of the King's inter
mediaries, is characteristic of the time. The
American Negro is keeping a sharp lookout on
the lot of colored people within the British Em
pire. Aa he leads in intelligence, in ideals, and
in material wealth, he intends to missionarize
the native world in the name of civUization. The
miasionaries are called agitators; their press
seditious ; their ideals dangerous ; but words do

298 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
not alter the fact that the flag of Pan- African
unity has been raised, and the common needs of
all dark-skinned races have been mooted.
The Republic of Liberia has often been dis
missed as a failure, by the white man. But it is
destined to be America's advanced post in
Africa for Black civilizing Black. I was fortu
nate in meeting in America Bishop Lloyd, just
returned from Liberia, and. he gave a very inter
esting account of the positive side of develop
ment there. First of all the American Negro is
the elite, the ariatocracy of Liberia. He ia tak
ing upon himself the immense taak of educa
ting the Negro masses of the interior. In this
and in commerce and in the establishment of
law and order, Liberia is very succeaaful.
America and American ideals are a gospel to
the Liberian Negroes. Never a word is said of
the injustices and sufferings which attend
Negro life in the States, but on the contrary
America ia regarded as a Negro Paradise. When
America declared war on Germany it was the
joy of Liberia to declare war also, and her war
effort was remarkable.
It is somewhat curious that while British
difficulties with native races obtain large adver
tisement in the United Statea and elsewhere,
the lynchings and burnings and rac<^ riota of
America are in general aucceaafuUy hushed up
within the States where they occur. But of
course the American Negro is very proud of the

THE WORLD ASPECT 299
America which he feels he helped in no small
way to make. America has given the Negro an
ideal, and she is to him religion. All that is
new in the Negro movement, moreover, takes
its rise from America.
We have seen inaugurated in New York re
cently the so-called "Black Star Line," a line
of steamships owned by Negroes, and manned
by Negroes. Its object is to trade with Negro
communities, and advance the common inter
ests of the dark-skinned people throughout the
world. Whether it is destined to succeed de
pends on the soundness of its financial backing.
But it is an interesting adventure. Its first
ship out of New York carried out the laat cargo
of whiaky before "Prohibition" aet in. A
storm forced the vessel back to port after the
port had become legally "dry," and some
thought the cargo would be seized. It was said
there were many leaks to the ship, but after
many parleys and reconnaissances with white
officials the Yarmouth, afterwards named
Frederick Douglass, got away.
It is generally advertised under the caption
"OVER THE TOP— FOR WHAT?" and
was started by a Negro orator caUed the Hon.
Marcus Garvey. He founded a society known
aa The Universal Negro Improvement Asaocia
tion which boasts now a membership of over
two millions in America, Africa, and the Indies.
This is a mUitant organization, But its mem-

300 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
bership is evidently useful as a ready-to-hand
investing public who can be persuaded to put
its money into a whole series of Negro business
enterprises, such as "The Negro Factories
Corporation," "West Indies Trading Associa
tion of Canada," and, of course, the Black Star
Line. The association has its organ, "The
Negro World," and it meets, as far as New
York is concerned, at a place called popularly
"The Subway Church," between Seventh and
Lenox Avenues. Whites are not wanted, and
indeed not admitted, but the crowds are so huge
it is posaible to alip in. Musical features alter
nate with impassioned oratory. Whether, like
a bubble blown from the soap of commerce and
the water and air of humanitarianism, this will
burst and let the members down, or whether it
is sound and genuine, it is at least instructive
and interesting in its developments. The lec
turers and speakers choose the largest terms of
thought, and visualize alwaya some four hun
dred millions of colored brethren throughout
the world. A universal convention is even to
be called.
How the Yarmouth fared with the rest of
her "wet cargo" during its six months' trip
has not been made public, but the Negroes
hailed the progress of the vessel as a "diplo
matic triumph," and when it returned to New
York an accession of 25,000 new members was
announced, Five thousand in Cuba, two thou-

THE WORLD ASPECT 301
sand five hundred in Jamaica, eight thousand in
Panama, seven thousand in Bocas del Tore and
Port Limon; the staff of the ship and its "am
bassadors" were feted on their return. All made
speeches, and all were greeted with the greateat
enthuaiaam. Thua, at the "Star Casino" one
of the ambasaadors deacribed the arrival at
Jamaica :
"At last we came in sight of the emerald isle
of the Caribbean Sea — ^that beautiful island
that is ever green — that wonderfiU island
Jamaica; and dear indeed is the island of
Jamaica to me. With pleasure I saw the people
as they crowded along the docks to catch the
first view of our steamer, the "first ship of
the Black Star Line. I could hear the hurrahs
and the huzzahs as she majestically wended her
way up to Port Royal. We had taken on board
our Negro pilot, who piloted us into the harbor
of Kingston, one of the finest harbors of the
world. As she sped along, the people of Kings
ton were running down the streets in order that
they might catch a sight of the Yarmouth. We
steamed to the dock and they came on board.
They did not wait for invitation to the cap
tain's cabin, but came up to the wheelhouse,
they came into the chart room, they invaded
every portion of the ship. ... On the second
night after our arrival a grand reception was
arranged." The ship made a triumphal entry wherever

302 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
she arrived. At one port where the ropes were
thrown out from the ship, the Negroes seized
them, pulled her alongside the dock of a fruit
company, and then with their hands pulled the
vessel itaelf the entire length of the quay. No
one had ever seen the like, but the Blacka
T\ranted to feel it with their hands — their own
ship. This was strictly a new-world voyage, and a
comparatively easy one, with plenty of passen
gers and of freight. The cry is for more ships
and bigger enterprise, and if the company makes
good Africa will no doubt see Africa come rid
ing toward itself on the waves. . It ia poasible,
however, that the Whites of Africa may prove
more hostile than those of the easy-going States
of South America and the Indies. The news of
the Negro line is no doubt very rousing for all
intelligent colored people.
What in reality ia Black Internationalism is
hardly realized as yet, eapecially by Great Brit
ain. Anything said against the Negroes is
heard by a vast number of educated and intelli
gent colored people. Thus you find the words of
the Germanophile E. D. Morel used to atir the
masses against Britain. Says Morel, according
to the Negroes : ' ' The results of installing black
barbarians among European ,communities are
inevitable. . . . The African is the most de
veloped sexually of any. . . , Sexually, they are
unrestrained and unrestrainable. That is per-

THE WORLD ASPECT 303
fectly weU known. . . . For the working clasaes
the importation of Negro mercenaries by the
hundred thousand from the heart of Africa to
fight the battles and execute the lusts of capital-
iat governmenta in the heart of Europe is a
terrific portent. The workers alike of Britain,
France, and Italy wUl be iU adviaed if they
allow it to paaa in sUence. ' ' And when the Daily
Herald says that "Wherever there are black
troops who have been long distant from their
own womenfolk there follows a ghastly out
break of prostitution, rape, and syphilis" it is
necessarily treated as a slur by Negroes. A
Negro writer who protested in a well-written
and cogent letter to that newspaper fails to get
his letter printed, but he prints it all right in
the Negro press of America, and asks, "Why
this obscene maniacal outburst about the sex-
vitality of black men in a proletarian paper?"
If there ia a race riot aa at Cardiff or Liver
pool, or if a scheme is mooted to dispossess the
squatters of Rhodesia of more of their land, or
a General Dyer machine-guns a crowd of civil
ians in the name of keeping order in India — it
ia abaurd to think of the matter locally and
provincially. It ia diacuased throughout the
world. It ia impossible to act now aa if the aub-
ject races had no collective consciousness.
So much for the point of view of the world
outside America. There is another point of

304 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
view which is perhaps closer to those subjects
specially treated in this volume. What the
world does to the native and says of him are
known in America. America has power to help
the native races of dark color throughout the
world, and many Americans, white as weU as
dark, are willing to do so. But there is one very
serious difficulty, and that is the moral sanc
tion. WhUe those things occur; such as burning
Negroes at the stake and denying them the
equable justice of a true Court of Law, Amer
ica has no right to speak ; her truly grand ideal
ism is rendered almost wholly impotent. It was
the same in the promulgation of the League of
Nations and the idea of helping small nations ;
it is the same with regard to American inter
ference, in the name of human rights and
ideals, in the Irish question. It can always be
objected : Why do you not look after your own
subjects first, and save your Negroes? An
American said to me in Philadelphia: "I am
not overfond of the Bolsheviks, but of one thing
I am glad — The red hand of the Tsar will never
rule again."
No?
And another said: "Thank God the pogroms
are over."
Are they?
And a third said: "I am sorry America re
fused to take a mandate for Armenia."

THE WORLD ASPECT 305
But why not take a mandate for Georgia and
Miaaissippi? In 1919, when the question of American dele-
gationa to Ireland was being discusaed, a mem
ber in the British House of Commons aaked if
a British delegation could not be aent to Amer
ica to investigate conditions among the
Negroea. Mr. Bonar Law thought that a very humorous
suggestion. The very humor of it waa sufficient
answer to America. No need for Britain to
send investigators.
As long as America with her ideals waa
enough unto herself the Negro question was
strictly her affair. But when she takes the
moral leadership of the civUized world it be
comes to a certain extent every one 'a affair.
The point ia that America aa a whole cannot
afford to tolerate what ia done locally in par
ticular Statea. It is not a matter of non-inter
ference from Washington in the local affairs of
Georgia and Mississippi and the rest. The bale
ful happenings in these States rob Americans
in other Statea of their good name, and apoU
America's reputation in the world. The fact
that the terma of the Constitution are not car
ried out, decreases throughout the value of the
American citizenship. And the growing scan
dal causes America's opinions on world politics
to be seriously discounted.

306 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
Thus though America was antipathetic to the
old Tsarist regime, and still talks of the
"bloody Tsar," it is a fact growing daily more
obvious that compared with the present regime
of the great republic the rule of the Tsar over
his subject races was in some ways better. On
the other hand, the American press has lately
been flooded with the atrocities of the Bolshe
viks. The fact is, we, all of us, believe evil read
ily of a country which is far away, but are not
ready to face evils near at home when they
affect ourselves.
Thus the matter affects the world and Amer
ica. There is a third interest, and that is ex
clusively of the Negro himself. He needs a
guaranteed charter, an authenticated minimum.
If the vote cannot be given him, at least let him
have justice; if he cannot be admitted to labor
unions let his labor be adequately protected;
if an offense against a white woman is re
garded as specially heinous and dangerous let
the legal punishment be increased; afford his
women protection also. If the Whites have
changed their minds about slavery let them
state how much they sanction — ^what are its
limits. Let the American Republic and the
British Empire state their policy with regard
to their colored population. Make it clear and
manifest. The Negro's chief danger lies in a conaen-

THE WORLD ASPECT 307
sus oi evil opinion concerning hun. The South
rejoicea when a race riot disgraces some North-
em city and says: "They're beginning to find
out the Negro isn't an angel up there." When
a General Dyer uses the machine-gun argu^
ment, or a mob of dockers fall foul of Negro
immigrants at Cardiff or Liverpool, America
smiles and says, "You also?" When there are
reports of constant trouble in South Africa
someone else says, "So you cannot get on with
them either?" and when one ia burned to death
in Georgia, South Africa says, "So you bum
them to death, eh?"
Out of a cycle of happenings is derived the
thought : No one can afford to feel virtuous
about the Negro.
That fact no doubt helps the Negro press in
the chanting of ita sorrows, but it does not help
the Negro himself. In fact, it shuts out a good
deai of hope which might have been derived
from white sympathy, and it threatens the col
ored peoples as a whole with worse things to
be. These are the days of democraciea and
white proletariats, and both show themselves
less friendly toward Negroes and "natives"
than the old monarchies. Their hostility is
based on an old fashioned ignorant contempt;
competition in the labor market, and a sort of
fear. Probably it can be overcome in time, but
if so it will not be through white enlightenment,
but through a world organization and under-

308 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
standing on the part of the colored races. For
while throughout the world the Whites degener
ate somewhat,, these others rise. The gulf be
tween the two is being diminished, and there
may come a time not very far away when the
white hegemony will be lost.

XV
UP THE MISSISSIPPI
Feom New Orleans I traveled up the Missis
sippi; calling at such characteriatic pointa as
Beserve, Vicksburg, Greenville, Mound Bayou,
Memphis, accomplishing the journey partly by
rail and partly by boat. Reserve is a vast sugar
plantation owned by five brothers. It is only
thirty miles from the great city and the Whites
are mostly Creoles. The Mother of Rivers, clad
in brown silk, flows toward the green humps of
hundreds of levees and embankments. The
shores are low and level, and there grows
almost to the water edge a vaat, close, ten-feet-
high jungle of sugar cane. You walk along the
top of the levee till you see a lane running
across the plantation like a trench dug through
it. In the lane itself there is no view except the
erect, green wall of canes on either hand and
the blue sky above. Beneath your feet are cart
ruts and withered stalks of sugar gone purple
at the joints and straw-colored in the flanks.
Take a stalk and break it across, and it breaks
in shreds like a bamboo, revealing the inner
fatness of sweet pith which you can suck if you
will, for it is sugar. It has a dUute sweetness
309

310 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
which rapidly cloys an unaccustomed palate,
though the people of the countryside suck it
continuously, and many consider the natural
sugar the source of all health. The taste is re
produced very well in the pralines on which
New Orleans prides itself.
A long and novel sort of lane this through
the sugar! A Negro worker coming along the
road sees a white man, but does not want to meet
him, and he takes three steps into the dark-
green depths, clawing his way inside as through
many barely shut doors, and he is lost. You
would seek him in vain if he wished to hide.
The lane debouches into a sun-bathed, half-
cleared area which is covered with stricken
canes looking like warriors tumbled in death
after a great battle; for it is winter and the
time of the taking of the harvest. Negro gangs
with rough bills like meat choppers are slicing
the side leaves from the cane and then cutting,
slicing and cutting, aU over the plantation, with
joyous noise, and there are great numbers of
dark girls in straw hats working methodically
and rhythmically from the shoulder and the
bosom, striking, clipping, felling, as it were
automatically, unwaveringly. They break in
and cut in, strewing ever more extensively the
carpet of canes in their rear, but the wall they
attack is ten times as dense as the thickest field
of com and twice as high. The master or over
seer, on horseback, stands about and calls

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 311
sharply to the workers in French patois. He
may be white Creole, but is often as dark as
his gang. Where sugar is not rising, beyond
the plantations if you walk as far. Nature seema
sunk in swamp and swarming with snakes. The
low jungle over the Mississippi marshes has
many aUigators and a multitude of other
reptiles. In a clearing of the sugar harvest it is pos
sible to sit on a hummock of grass and see some
thing of a plantation as a whole. It is a cloud
less day with the faintest haze over the blue-
ness of the sky. The sun heat is tempered by a
delightful air which keeps on moving all the
time like an invisible river of health and vigor.
There is a whiapering in the myriads of the
canes, and you hear the slashing and the clump
ing of the cutting which ia going on all the while.
On one hand are the rudimentary huta of the
Negroes, like dressing rooms, on the other the
lofty refinery of white-painted corrugated
iron, with many chimneys and cranes. The re
finery, using electric power taken from the
river, works off all the local cane and alao im-
porta large quantities of raw sugar brought
from Cuba. PUe driving ia going on in the Mis
sissippi, and there wiU soon be a landing stage
to which the Cuban steamers themselves can
approach. The Louisiana cane is red and the
Cuban is yellow-green, and the latter is much
the sweeter. Qn the plantation, where a fair

312 THE SOUL OF JOHN BEOWN
stretch of ground has been cleared, the motor
plough is at work with huge spiked wheels, turn
ing the black soU over the sugar seed for next
year. The cane has an eye at each joint, the
eye is the seed, and from it sprouts next year's
plant, growing at right angles to the old cane
in the earth. "In February," says the young
Creole ploughman, "the young plants have to
be dug up and replanted. Work goes on stead
ily all the year round."
I reaumed my way up the Miaaissippi on an
old, broken-down steamer with a remarkably
high, wooden, dripping, splashing paddle wheel.
To go by boat used to be a favorite way of trav
eling, but the new railways on each side of the
great river have killed the water traffic by tak
ing away all large freight. It doea not aeem a
profitable enterprise to ply the Mississippi for
passengers alone. There are therefore only a
few river steamers left, and these have to call
at all the tiniest and obacureat waterside places
and lumber camps, and can seldom make more
than forty or fifty miles a day. Few people will
travel a week or ten days or a fortnight or any
thing you like to Memphis when a locomotive
will do it in twenty-four hours. The passengers
therefore sit in stuffy trains listening to the
vers libre of the man who offers in a low voice :
chewing gum, cigarettes, iced coco-col,a; and the
country whirls past them unprofitably. The cot
ton bales which used to go down stream in thou-

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 313
sands upon river steamers are now closely
packed in railway trucks ; and the molasses goes
no longer in barrels, but in huge, iron cisterns
on wheels. There is therefore little traffic on the
mighty river — she is happier and freer, more as
she was of yore, with few steamers, few barges,
few rafts — instead, only an occasional rowing
boat and a ferry. The water is brown and vast
and placid, and runs in many courses beyond
wooded islands, beyond vast, swampy forks and
tongues of the mainland. It is a sort of cafe-
au-lait color, and the shadows mantle softly
upon it deliciously. Willows grow in the water
on its shores and islands, and in shadow or sun
light the water laps gently the many tree trunka
or lies still under the green shade of the
branches. It is a great, intricate, unexplored
labyrinth of waters, and now you see it un
adorned and lovely, with no advertisements on
its banks and no shoddy reminder of our civi
lization on any hand — ^the Miasiaaippi aa ahe waa
when we firat saw her. I traveled on a boat
called Senator Cordill and we made barely
thirty mUes a day, so many were the stopping
places, so many the accidents. It cost a httle
over a dollar a day, including board, and was
the nearest approach to a gift. The ship had a
motley gang of colored laborers fetching freight
on their backs in intermittent procession, beat
ing out dust from the long, wooden gangway
up which they tramped with their burdens. The

314 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
wooden paddle wheel, which was ten feet high,
had got into disrepair, and at a riverside town
where we stopped some colored carpenters were
at work fitting new wooden parts into her while
close-cropped Negroes with coal-dusted skulls
shoveled coal aboard from a lighter. We had
three wooden decks rolling with small freight
for tiny places in Louisiana, Mississippi State,
and Arkansas. In the cabins were huge fanuly
bedsteads, and no locks on the doors. When the
wheel was repaired and the time came for de
parture the Negro crew deserted en masse, and
the captain, with the unlighted cigar which he
had rolled and bitten in his capacious mouth all
day, stood on the bank and accosted all and
sundry, begging them to come aboard and work
on the ship. Meanwhile in a quayside hut Negro
girls were "shimmying" as they brought in
food for their colored boys, and our erstwhUe
crew was heard singing and shouting. Only next
moming did we get enough hands, and at the
misty dawn, when the river was so still that it
looked like an unbroken sheet of ice, we raised
anchor and plimged outward again. In the main
current whole trees were seen to be floating,
and our wheel might easily strike one of them
and get broken again. We sat down to break
fast, the eight passengers: one was a judge,
another a district attorney, a third was an agent
for timber, and the rest were women. The china
at table was of different shapes and sizes, and

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 315
there were only three teaspoons — so the rest of
the passengers were served with tablespoons
for their coffee.
Judge T  insisted on having a teaspoon
from the colored girl who waited on us, but waa
obliged to content himaelf with the tablespoon
laid. "Teaspoons is sca'ce," said she.
We stop at various "landing places," points
and creeks and bends, the boat generally com
ing close to shore. A long plank is thrown out,
and then commences the cakewalk of the Negro
"rousters" carrjdng out all manner of goods —
in one place it ia materiala for the building of a
church — and bringing back cotton balea or
whatever else may be waiting for us. It is a
sight at which one coidd gaze spellbound for
hours; for the Negroes keep in step and seem
listening to an inaudible music. They lurch
with their shoulders, kick out with their flexible
knees, and whether taking long strides or mark
ing time they keep in unison with the whole,
their heads bent, their eyes half closed and
bleared with some inner preoccupation. They
are in all manner of ragged garments : one has
a lUac-covered hat, another an old dressing
gown, others are in sloppy blue overalls, some
wear shabby Cuban hats, and they go screech
ing and singing and dodging knocks on the head,
but alwaya keeping step with the dance. The
captain, with yesterday's unlit cigar stuck m

316 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
the side of his mouth, gives directions about
each bit of freight, using wonderful expressions
of abuse and otherwise "encouraging" the
"niggers." Looking at the "rousters" you can
easily underatand that dancing of a certain kind
ia innate with the Negro and springs from
him. He has an inborn sense of the beating of
time which we call rhythm. It is so exaggerated
that it tilts out ridiculously with his stomach
and controls inanely his bobbing head and nose
and dropping eyes. He looks a savage, but he
is spellbound. He is completely illiterate and
largely unintelligent, but he has solved the
problem of carrying huge cotton bales to the
ship, providing a rhythmical physical stream
for them to flow upon. It is not half the effort
that it would be to white people without rhythm.
One of the reasons why the Negroes box so
well is because they do it in the same rhythmi
cal way they shift these cottoh bales.
Presently they commence to sing while they
haul up the anchor, and a rowing boat passing
us with Negro oarsmen is also choric with
bright, hard, rhythmic music. These people
understand music and time in their bodies, not
in their minds. Their blood and their nerves
have consciousness of tempo.
The many stops in Mississippi State afford'
opportunities of going ashore, picking up wild
pecan nuts, talking to Negroea at tlieir cabin
doors. One never sees a white man, This along

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 317
the Mississippi is the real black belt. According
to the census, the Negro is in a clear majority.
This causes the Whites to be always apprehen
sive. The idea prevails that the Black can only
be kept in his place by terror. As regards this
point of view, the Whites prize above every
thing solidarity of opinion. They hold that
they cannot afford to discuss the matter, and
they wUl tolerate no cleavage. In politics all
are of course Democrats, and if the American
Democratic party is on the whole much less
liable to "splits" than the Repubhcan party, it
is largely due to the discipline of the black belt.
"They outnumber us ten to one," says the
agent for timber, exaggerating characteristi-
caUy. "It's come to such a point hereabout that
they're pulling the white women out of their
houses. It's done every day."
I could not believe that.
"But if a Black attacks a white woman here
abouts he is certain to be lynched, and knowa
it," said I.
"Yes, it's the only way."
"But there is not a lynching every day?"
"No.""So there are not really so many attacks on
the women."
But the day-moth of his thought refused to
be caught in a logical net.
"Did you ever see a man tarred and feath
ered?" I asked of the district attorney.

318 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
"No, but I've seen one lynched, and helped
to lynch him," said he.
"But lynching isn't very good for legal busi
ness," I hazarded.
He at once felt ruffled.
"It doesn't make any difference to the
Negro, " said he. "He hasn't got a soul. They
don't go to heaven or hell."
"How do you make that ont?"
"They're juat animals," said he. "They
were never in the Garden of Eden, for Adam
and Eve were white. Consequently, as they had
no part in original sin, they haive no share in
our salvation either. Christ did not come to
save those who never fell from grace."
"I never heard that before," said I, and was
so greatly amused I could not help showing it.
The attorney sought me out afterwards with
Biblical proof. The sons of Cain, it appears,
took themselves wives from the daughters of
men ; theae other men were not deacended from
Adam and were probably Negroes — the attor
ney was perfectly serious. The judge, however,
to whom we referred the matter, was of a cyn
ical turn of mind, and chuckled heartily. "I am
a subscriber to foreign missions," said he. "If
they have not Adam for their father, why do
we send missionaries to Africa?"
One of the chief places which I wished to visit
was the Negro city of Mound Bayou, in the
Mississippi Delta, In the blackest part of the

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 319
State of Mississippi this is a city which is en
tirely Negro, possesses a Negro mayor, Negro
policemen, and indeed is entirely without ac
commodation for white men. I stayed there a
night in a Negro hotel where the old wall paper
was in hundreds of peeling strips hanging on
the walls, and everything in the bedroom was
I broken. It is a musical sort of city, all a- jangle
'with the banjo and the brassy clamor of the
gramophone. Places of amusement are many
— the Lyceum, the Casino, the Bon-Ton cafe
(with jazzy music), the Luck Coles restaurant,
i etc. ; one sees many advertisements of minstrel
¦ shows. But it is a working city, and at present,
[ with the high cotton prices, it is tasting real
' prosperity. It is situated in the rich land of
the Delta, very malarial and snake-haunted, and
therefore not very suitable for white men, but
the district produces the highest quality of cot
ton in the United States. It is in a way a one-
man city, and owes most to Charles Banks, who
is one of those agreeable and talented African
giants, who, like Dr. Moton and others, seem
to have an unexpected capacity for greatness.
His energy and calm foresight and his money
guarantee the gins and the cottonseed-oil fac
tory and the Negro bank and probably the local
newspaper and one or other of the churches.
In Mound Bayou ia no aegregation and no
racial trouble, and the Negroea show how hap
pily they can live when unmolested. It is a type

320 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
of settlement weU worth encouraging. The chief
interest of the city just now is the building of a
"consohdated school." All the small schools
are to be pulled down, and the money has been
subscribed for the buUding of a handsome new
school on modern lines. It will be put up facing
the Carnegie Library Building. I was sorry to
see the latter devoid of books, and used as a
Sunday school, but the building was given be
fore the city was ready for the responsible
work of organizing and controlling a pubhc
library. I talked in the infants' school to a
strange array of children with heads like mar
bles, and found a common chord in intereat and
love for animals. We imitated together all the
animals we knew, and agreed that no one who
did not love animals ever came to anything in
this world. But if they loved their animals,
they must love teacher too. I talked in the
beautiful Wesleyan church on the difference be
tween E pluribus unum and E pluribus 'duo,
but that was to grown-ups — and they were ao
dull, compared with the children. The point
was, however, that though the United States
might fail to obtain unity of race, her peoples,
white and black and yellow, Teutonic and Slav
and the rest, could still be one in ideal.
"We are trying here to understand the beauty
of being black," said one of the audience edi-
fyingly. "Solomon's bride herself was black,"
said he.

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 321
Mound Bayou is the pride of Mississippi, as
far as the black part of it is concerned. The
crowds that appear when a train comes in re
mind one of similar pictures in Africa. America
seems to have disappeared and Africa to have
been substituted. An entirely black South, or
even one State entirely black, is, however, un
thinkable. The white man haa shed too much
blood for his ideals there. He can never eaaily
abandon any part of it. He muat rise to the
standard of his sacrifices. To my eyes, Mound
Bayou waa a little pathetic — like the aort of
small establishment of a woman who has
been separated from a rich husband through
estrangement or desertion. It is not quite in
the nature of things, and is more like a courage
ous protest than the beginning of something
new. It stands, however, as a symbol of incom
patibility of temperament.
There are many who say that when left to
himaelf the Negro slips back from civilization
into a primitive state of lazineaa or savagery,
and they instance Ufe in Haiti and the supposed
failure of Liberia. It ia said that he doea not
keep up the white man's standard, he is not so
strenuous, he is not a good organizer, nor de
pendable. That is not entirely true, but there
is aome truth in it. Mound Bayou ia situated
in a highly malarial region, unfitted for white
habitation, but being surrounded with the beat
cotton-growing land in America it ought to be

322 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
exceedingly prosperous. The best that can be
said is that the local planters are in a better
plight than their neighbors who are inter
mingled with Whites. Complete financial fail
ure haa threatened the little city in the paat,
and if it were not for the founder, Mr. Mont
gomery, and ita financier, Mr. Banka, moat of
the proprietorahip must have passed over into
white hands. To all appearances, the Negro
needs decent white co-operation in buaineaa,
and mixed commercial relationships are better
than segregated ones. The difficulty is to find
conscientious business Whites who realize that
the prosperity of the Negro is worth while. The
fixed idea of the white business man is to fool
the Negro and exploit him to the laat penny.
Mound Bayou haa its own Negro cotton buy
ers, who give a fair price for the cotton. But
it is with the greatest difficulty that a Negro
planter can obtain from a white buyer the true
market price, and it ia rare that a landlord who
receivea cotton balea aa rent wUl take into con
sideration the enhanced price of cotton, even
though the enhancement ia supposed to be pri
marily due to the smallness of the harvest.
Where the white man is in control it is true the
Negro produces more because he has to in order
to live, but he is nevertkeless the victim of a
systematized swindling, and he knows it. It is
causing a growing discontent among the black
peasantry, and I was continually told about it.

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 323
One of the worst riots of 1919 took place on
the other aide of the river — in the State of
Arkansas, at Elaine. It is also in this so-called
Delta region. The origin of the riot was rooted,
in the economic problem. The white buyers and •
landlords had been consistently defrauding the
Negro countryside by overlooHng the enhanced j
value of cotton. Cotton had risen in price from'
a pre-war average of ten cents a pound to
twenty-eight cents in 1917 and actually to forty
cents in the current year. Formerly it was gen-.
erally represented to the Negro that he was
always deep in debt for his "rations" or his
rent. The white policy waa to keep the Negro
in debt. It waa never the cuatom to render him
accounta or to argue with him when he claimed
more than waa handed him. j
"You had a fine crop — ^you're just about
straight," was a common greeting in the fall
of 1919.
But with the prolific Delta crop of cotton
and a quadruple price, the discontent of the
Negro can be imagined. It was intense, and.
waa growing.
There are two veraiona of the outcome of it.
One is that a firm of white lawyers approached
some of the Negro planters with an idea of tak
ing the matter to court and seeing what could
be obtained in redress. The other is that the
Negroes "got together," organized a body
caUed "The Farmers' Progressive Union,"

324 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
which then approached the firm of lawyers on
its own account. I incline to think that the for
mer is the more probable. The white firm
thought there waa money to be made from fight
ing Negro claima. Some of the Negroea were
actually agreed to take the matter to a Federal
Grand Jury, and charge the Whites with frus
tration of the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Constitution. The Negroes were undoubtedly daring, and
held public meetings and used sufficient bravado
to alarm the local white population. The rumor
flew from farm to farm that the Negroea were
plotting an inaurrection. Someone diacovered a
heap of rifles stacked where they had been left
and forgotten when the Armistice had inter
rupted drilling. Thia gave the neceaaary color
to the idea. Besides the rusty rifles, the Negroes
were seen to be not without firearms of one kind
or another. The Negro loves weapons, as an
Oriental loves jewelry. Shotguns and revolvers
in plenty are to be found in the cabins of the
colored country folk. The Whites put up a pro
vocateur as before a pogrom in Russia. He
started firing on Negroes at random in the
Elaine streets. Then two white officials attempted
to break into a Negro meeting, resorted
to arms, and were met by firing in return. One
of the Whites was killed, the other wounded.
This started the three daya of destruction in
Phillips County. The whole Negro population

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 325
was rounded up by white troops and farmers
with rifles. Machine guns were even brought
into play against an imaginary black army. A
great number of Negroes were put in a stockade
under mUitary arrest, many were killed, many
wounded. And three hundred were placed in
jaU and charged with riot and murder. No
Whites were arrested. The governor, a Mr.
Brough, was largely responsible for this method
of investigating the alleged conspiracy of the
Negroea to make an inaurrection. The whole
occurrence waa astonishingly ugly, and it was
foUowed by ten-minute trials before exclusively
white juries, and swift sentencea to electrocu
tion for some Negro prisoners, and to long
terms of penal servitude for others. The riot
and the trials so exasperated Negroea through
out the United Statea that there ia no doubt a
Federal Commission of impartial men might
well have been appointed to investigate the
w^hole affair, both aa regards its inception and
as regards its military culmination and its after
math of trial and punishment. As it is, though
Governor Brough says to the Negroes, "You
'did plan an insurrection," and though the
Whites of Elaine may feel happier and more
secure, it is an obvious truism that the white
population of other States cannot be feehng
more secure because of it, and that the Negroes
in other districts feel less secure — they feel the

326 THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN
need to arm. It has caused a great increase in
public insecurity. Perhaps becauae of thia the
riot has been more diacuaaed than other riots.
Somewhat shocked and fretfiU, the governor,
who is probably a brisk business man, and in no
way like one of those more neurotic governors
of Russian provinces which occur in Audrey ev's
tales, called a meeting. Some four hundred
Whites and tamed Negroes were brought to
gether to see what could be done to improve
race relationship. This was a month after theae
eventa. The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reports
the governor's remarks:
"This meeting has been called for the pur
pose of a heart-to-heart discussion of the rela
tions between the white people and the Negroea
of the State. These relations have become
strained, especially by the recent rebellion in
Phillips County. I say 'rebeUion' advisedly
and without qualifications, for it was an insur
rection, and a damnable one.
"And I want to say in the beginning that
Arkansas is going to handle her own problems.
I do not intend to go to New York City or to
Topeka, Kansas. When I want advice from
Negroes I shall ask it from Arkansas Negroes,
and whesn I want similar advice from white
people, I shall get it from ^e white people of
Arkansas.

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 327
"I also wish to say that I do not intend to be
intimidated by any publications or any letters
I may receive. I have already received several
letters which said that if I permitted the execu
tion of these twelve Negroes from Phillips
County to go through, I would be assassinated.
One of the letters contained a crude drawing of
a coffin, represented to be my own in case the
Negroes were electrocuted. I received one let
ter to-day which stated that the entire city of
Helena would be burned if these Negroea went
to their death. But I repeat that I will not be
intimidated by any outaide influence in thia
question. Our own questions must be settled
within the boundaries of our State, and I be
lieve that there are not enough representative
Negroea in the State to do this."
So said the governor, but it is rather a ques
tion whether in these days of Leagues of
Nations and Alliances and "sympathies" one
State like Arkansas, washed partly by a great
river, can live entirely within ita own boun-
dariea and without outside consideration.
The mighty Mississippi rolls onward, bearing
the spars and the sands of half the Statea of
America to the aea. And after the massacre at
Elaine, for aome daya, dead bodies of Negroes
were washed up on other shores. Doleful mes
sengers, these, on the river of Time,

XVI
AT VICKSBURG
I SXTPPOSB not many make the pilgrimage of
America; land in New England with the Puri
tans or sail up the James River with the Cava
liers, linger reflectively at Mt. Vernon, consider
Boston Harbor and the tax on tea, pause at
Bunker Hill, and so on — or visit Sumter, where
the Stars and Stripes were hauled down by the
South, and then make the tour of the war which
followed. It would be worth while — to think a
little at Gettysburg and think again in Georgia,
walking perchance to the sea after General
Sherman. No such pilgrimage wotdd be com
plete without riding the great mother river of
America, and it occurred to me that a fitting
place in which to end a pilgrimage, aa far as the
South is concerned, might be Vicksburg, with
its vast National Cemetery of the dead of the
CivU War. It is one of the most remarkable
war shrines in any land. But, more than that,
it is a solemn reminder of all the brothers'
blood that can be shed out of pride and vain
glory of heart, and an obstinate refusal on the
part of one section of a nation to follow the
guiding star of the whole. 328

AT VICKSBURG 329
Vicksburg is a beautiful city, built on a steep
cliff, continually in sight of the broad, brown,
passive streams of the Delta and the atripa of
forest which break up the waters. Above it all
are the beautiful lawns and terraces of the
National Cemetery rising from the Mississippi
shore, and the dead lie in view, as it were, of
the broad loveliness of the river. Sixteen thou
sand Americans hallow the soil. They are
mostly of Grant's army, but over and above
there is another burying ground with many of
his enemies. No vulgar notice warns you not to
pick the flowers. Pick them if you will. But
poema and prayers are scattered everywhere,
and stUl as you go you pause and read, and
pause and read again —
On Fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.
Tiny cubes of white marble give the soldiers'
numbers and names and regiments. It reminds
one now somehow of the great cemeteries of
France. The mighty troop, the flashing blade.
The bugle's stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade.
The din, the shout, are past,
says the next notice board. And yet, are they
past? Are they not always going on— -as long
as the cause for which the aoldiers fought
remains?

330 THE SOUL OP JOHN BROWN
They fought for unity. They fought also for
freedom. They had to do what fanatical old
John Brown set out to do at Harper's Ferry,
try to release the land from that which was
abominable in the sight of the Lord. They
strove ,to do it by righteous force. They were
martyrs on the altar of their country. And
there is no doubt their country loved them for
their devotion. No land honors more its heroic
dead than does America. It is no mean thing to
have died for. America. The smoke stUl rises
to heaven where her men were slain, and it will
rise until their cause is completely vindicated.
Down below in the city, at the corner of Clay
and Farmer Streets, last year they burned a
Negro to death, suspending him from a tree
over a slow fire. According to the evening
paper, ' ' The flesh on the body began to crinkle
and blister. The face of the Negro became hor
ribly distorted with pain. He assumed an atti
tude of prayer, raising his palms together."
When the victim was dead the leader of the
mob cried out: "Have you had enough fun,
boys?" And they cut him down.
That Negro is with John Brown and the re
pentant thief and many another such, in Para
dise. But those who did the deed are damned.
The Negroes have been fleeing from Vicksburg
ever since this terrible day. But the dead of
the old war remain in these great cemeteriea.

AT VICKSBURG 331
Something has been effected : the children of the
slaves are become free, but the chUdren of thoae
who used to be masters stUl take a Negro now;
and then and bum him to death,
I sat on a pyramid of lawn and looked down
to the river. There was a din of sawmUls. The
Memphis train went howling past, and then
with a petty rush on the road below an electric ^
troUey car from Vicksburg. The world went on
in seeming peace. A throng of Negro workmen
holding on to one another came singing along
the way. They were not slaves, anyway. They
had life, the beginnings of new life. Though
fraught with grave dangers, impeded by preju
dice and hate and a thousand difficulties —
nevertheless it was new life that they had. And
those who died to give it them lie in these quiet
graves whUe the river of life goes past. They
did not mean that the gift of freedom should
be tarnished. Most of them would be ready to
die again to complete the gift they gave. And
John Brown himself if he should reappear
would not be sweetened by what he saw happen
ing in the world. His soul goes marching on,
but it is stUl the soul of vengeance and wrath.

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