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ence of the republic did not fail to leave a great impression. upon the negro race as well. Notwithstanding the efforts to supress all intellectual growth of the negro, such growth was taking place nevertheless. It is true, that it was very unequally distributed, being mainly limited to the domestic slaves. Unconsciously the civilization of the masters, such as it was, permeated the surrounding negroes. Notwithstanding all the restrictions, some negroes learned to read. The intense religious feeling, which was brought over from Africa, helped the development of high moral virtues in some individuals, and the cases of deep affection towards the owner were not exceptional. But on the other hand, neither were the cases of deep hatred, and the consciousness of the injustices of the slavery system. The preachings of the christian ministers. about the justice of slavery, about the lower race and so forth, undoubtedly had a deep effect upon the crude mass of the field negro, and a great many of the negroes probably did not even dream of freedom. But it would be a mistake to suppose that that was the attitude of the entire negro population. Mr. Booker Washington tells us in his autobiography, that even the most ignorant of the negroes watched with deep concern the fortunes of the war and dreamed of freedom. Annually thousands of negroes escaped from the plantation, and the cases were especially frequent among the slaves of the cruel masters. This longing for freedom in the fifties was stronger among the younger generation, than among the old men, was stronger among the educated than among the illiterate, and it was the general observation, that it was stronger with the increased admixture of white blood. For one thing, that admixture decreased the physical difference between master and slaves. And to convince a pretty octorroon, perhaps favored by the caresses of her master, that she was a lower creature intended for a life of slavery, was not an easy task even for a clergyman.

Small wonder, then, that a "literate nigger" became the equivalent of a "bad nigger”, a point of view that has survived until the present day in a considerable part of the southern population. The "free nigger" was another disturbing factor in the idyllic relations of the plantation. In the treatment of the latter may be discovered the first traces of the modern phase of the negro problem in distinction to the slavery. problem of earlier days.

For many reasons, the number of freed negroes rapidly grew in face of the opposition of the law and public opinion. For notwithstanding all the talk of the natural condition of slavery for the black man, as well as the advantages derived by him from the system, the good southern slaveowner,

whether at death, or at other solemn occasions, knew no better reward for the good and faithful negro than to grant him his liberty. In 1790 there were 37,357 free negroes in the south, and in 1860 261,918, while in the north the number grew from 22,109 to 226,152. This increase may be explained partly by the natural increase, as well as by the liberation of new slaves. Thus the free negroes in the south included in 1860 about 10 per cent of the total negro population and in some states a much greater share.

This freedman was always a sore in the eyes of the slaveowner. He stood there as a living contradiction of all formulas in regard to the natural state of slavery, was a living and dangerous example for each and every intelligent and thoughtful negro who was trying to solve the riddle of his peculiar position. The slaveowner hated the free negro, and he treated him, if possible, worse than he treated his slave. In these relations there was no room for the personal affections, which often softened the severity of the legal position of the negro slave.

"Laws are necessary... to protect society from even the benevolence of slave owners, in throwing upon the community a great number of stupid, ignorant, and vicious persons, to disturb its peace and endanger its permanency", was the opinion of a prominent southern jurist. Nevertheless, the effort to do away with this ignorance, stupidity and viciousness by means of education was strictly prohibited in some states and narrowly restricted in others. The social intercourse of slaves and free negroes could prove a source of temptation, and was greatly objected to by the slaveowners. And since a free negro was a harmful, dangerous or at least a suspicious man, it was natural for each southern state to make efforts to restrict the number of such negroes in its territory. With this purpose in view, most southern states prohibited the entrance of free negroes from other states under penalty of being sold into slavery again. Furthermore, in many states the right to set a slave free, was conditioned by the removal of a freedman into another state, so that many negroes were thus forced into the northern states. With the approaching crisis, when the relations between the races were becoming somewhat strained, several southern states passed laws requiring all free negroes to leave the state, under the penalty of being sold into slavery for disobedience.

Under the circumstances there could be no suggestion at actual equality of the freedman and the white man before the law. In most southern states they were, equally with the slaves, subject to the special black code until the very epoch of emancipation. A great many professions and occupations

were closed to them, the right of free assembly and speach was denied to them.

F. L. Olmstead, in his Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, tells a very interesting story of the arrest of 24 negroes in Washington in 1855, (i. e., almost on the eve of the civil war), charged with having held a secret meeting. At the time of the arrest were found: a Bible, Seneca's Morals, and the constitution of the secret society, showing that the object of the society was assistance to the sick, and burial of the dead. For this awful crime, a slave member of the society was publicly whipped, four free negroes were committed to the workhouse, and the remaining offenders fined.

It is hardly necessary to add, that the free negroes did not enjoy the most important civil right, the right of voting. Now, the basic law of the English colonies which conferred the franchise upon the entire population, did not include any race discriminations. Therefore the colonies began to pass. special laws restricting the voting rights of the negroes as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century. During the fundamental constitutional changes, which were caused by the upheaval of the revolutionary era, some southern states as South Carolina, Tennessee, granted the right to vote to the free negroes. But in the twenties and the thirties of the past century there arose a violent opposition to any participation of the negroes in the political life. By the end of the thirties, this right of the free negro had been abolished throughout the south.

Still less could any social equality be expected for the freed negro. Whether a slave or free, he remained a pariah all the same. As Von Halle very appropriately remarks, the southern planter was bent upon convincing the slaves, that by regaining their personal liberty they could not in any way improve their actual condition. Therefore they took all measures to make the existence of the free negro a very unenviable one. And as a natural consequence thereto, the free negro seldom had those kind feelings towards his employer which often lived in the breast of the slave, no matter how unreasonable they seemed to a foreign observer.

On the other hand the southern planters loved to picture the condition of the free negroes in the north in very dark colors, so as to impeach the sincerity of the northern abolition sentiment. It must be admitted that notwithstanding all the agitation in favor of the black brother, the conditions of existence of the free negro even in the north was far from an enviable one.

One of the greatest American jurists of that period, Kent, has stated that only in the state of Maine where the number

of the negroes was very small, were there a few of them, who de facto enjoyed the franchise and civil rights, although as far as the written law was concerned, all the New England states, with the exception of Connecticut, did not recognize any race distinction in the political rights. At various times between 1810 and 1838 the middle Atlantic states deprived the negroes of the rights to vote; and perhaps most significant is the fact that of eighteen western states and central states, which took the part of the north during the war of the rebellion there was not even one which had granted political rights to the negroes before 1861, while two states were even absolutely closed to negroes. Foreign travelers in United States could notice that even in the north the attitude towards the negro was one of mixed contempt and dislike, which did not interfere with the perfectly sincere feeling of pity. Thus Olmstead tells of a negro he had met in Louisiana, who had previously lived in the north, and preferred the South, since in the south he came into closer contact with the white man, since in the north the enforced distance between the races was greater, and insults because of his race more frequent.

What the law aimed at in the South, uncompromising public opinion accomplished just as successfully in the north, and many professions and occupations remained closed to the negroes. All this does not at all contradict the general impression of the sincerity of the Northerners in their demand for the abolition of slavery. But it must be clearly understood, that this demand was caused rather by the economic fear of the extension of the system of slavery, than by any consideration for the humane and civil rights of the negroes.

No doubt, there were many individuals in the north who sincerely treated the negroes as their equals. More than that, as a natural reaction against the unjust treatment of the negroes, the northern abolitionists showed a tendency towards idealizing the negro, and exaggerating his moral virtues. John Brown, Lovejoy, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Wendell Phillips, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and dozens of other earnest men and women who stood at the head of the small abolitionist party, with its few thousands of votes, these were surely moved by the pure feelings of humanity, and learned to look upon the negro as a human being.

"To scorn, insult, brutalize and enslave human beings solely on account of the hye of the skin which it has pleased God to bestow on them; to pronounce them accursed, for no crime on their part, to treat them substantially alike, whether they are virtuous or vicious, refined or vulgar, rich or poor, aspiring or groveling; to be inflamed with madness against

them in proportion as they rise in selfrespect, this is an act so unnatural that it throws into the shade all other distinctions known among mankind", wrote W. L. Garrison. In the declaration of the sentiments of the "American Antislavery Convention," which he had written, he demanded not only the abolition of slavery, but also the full civic emancipation of the "We further believe and affirm, that all persons of color, who possess the qualifications which are demanded of others, ought to be admitted forthwith to the enjoyment of the same privileges and the exercise of the same prerogatives, as others, and that the paths of preferment, of wealth, and of intelligence should be opened as widely to them as to persons of a white complexion."

But then it must not be forgotten that Garrison began his violent struggle against slavery when he was scarcely twenty years old, and even his friends and supporters protested against his over-heated tirades. Senator Charles Sumner, who took Daniel Webster's place in the United States Senate, when the latter tired the state of Massachusetts with his vacillating attitude on the problem of slavery, was much more of a politician than most of his associates in the cause of abolition. His brilliant His brilliant discourses were directed mainly against the institution of slavery, and he but seldom touched upon the broader problem of the relation between the two races. And he was not at all ready to preach, or even to admit, the legal and general equality of the races. The brilliant Wendell Phillips was a great deal more explicit on the subject. Thus in his lecutre devoted to the great founder of the Republic of St. Domingo, the full blood negro Toussaint L'Ouverture, Phillips spoke as follows: "I am engaged to-night in what you will think the absurd effort to convince you that the negro race, instead of being the object of pity or contempt with which we usually consider it, is entitled, judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side of the Saxon. Now, races love to be judged in two ways, by the great men they produce, and by the average merit of the mass of the race...... In the hour you lend me to-night, I attempt the Quixotic effort to convince you that the negro blood, instead of standing at the bottom of the list, is entitled, if judged either by its great men or its masses, either by its courage, its purpose or its endurance, to a place as near ours, as any other blood known in history".

Horace Greeley, whose enthusiasm for the cause of abolition moved him to write a very big history of the Civil war, nevertheless admitted his hope, "that a day will ultimately dawn, wherein the rudely transplanted children of Africa. might either be restored to her soil, or established, under a

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