, ;696 The Ntgro Problem. [November,
f juig-time, also, is in June). There are inspection of the barns ; nor is it
fray-scales in hiX mind, and such calcu- ways necessary tc/see the interior. 'Ar
lation in his eye\that he can foretell you rode swifjjy by one of these old
with considerable accuracy and very harvest storehouses, you saw the setting
definite cheer what will be the yield of sun shoot arrows of gold through the
this or that " piece," -—whether a ton, building irom side to side between the
warped/boards. That was an evening
in spring; now, in autumn, the garri-
son/is quite impervious to all such arch-
ery, every chink and cranny being
caulked with the hay, which reaches
en to the high beam on which the
swaNows had their nests.
The^vield of the summer meadows
has not alKbeen stored under roof. In
the midst oiHhe field where sunburnt
Labor conquerecKwith scythe, rake, and
fork is raised a monument of the vic-
tory. The great cone^af the haystack,
rightly viewed, is no less^Hpteresting
than are the pyramids themselves. If
I mistake not, clear -seeing Morning
" opes with haste her lids," to gaze upon
this record of human enterprise, lifted
from the home plains.
Edith M. Thomas.
L~l *?
. C I
THE' NEGRO PROBLEM. , 5 <-/£
or at the polling booths. But those who
by their eagerness to bid the negro
welcome to his new place in the state
did so much credit to the spirit of hope
ton and a half, or two tons to the
acre.
Lovely and pleasant all its lifeMt fol-
lows that the grass rejoices in a fra-
grant memory. Whether curing for haj
.iu the field, or already gathered, tho''
u goodliuess thereof " goes never JLo
waste. I think sleeping on the haymow
will yet be recommended as therapeutic
for any that may be " sick or/rnelan-
<jholious ; " the breath of the hay being
every whit as efficacious as/that Chau-
cerian tree whose leaves were " so very
good and vertuous." Needless to gath-
er those special herbs so much esteemed
as remedies, when the barn is full of
more excellent simples that cure with
jtheir aroma.
You can tell the time of year by an
h
THE' NEGRO PROBLEM
3rh%io«d-'b
When the civil war deterrauj*#-Dy
its result the political position of the
black people in the Southern States,
,there was a general belief among their
friends that the race had thereby re- and friendship of our time could not see
— peived a complete enfranchisement as the gravity of this problem. 1 Never be-
American citizens ; that they were made
tree to all our national inheritances ;
that all the problems of their future in-
volved only questions of a detached na-
ture, — such slight matters as their rights
fore in the history of peoples had so
grave an experiment been tried as was
then set about with a joyous confidence
of success. Only their great military
triumph could have given to our hard-
en hotels and railways, in fields of labor, minded, practical people such rash con-
D. H. Chamberlain, formerly governor of South
Carolina: their comments appear as foot-notes.
The editor regrets that, while Southern statesmen
and others of distinction wrote with more or less
freedom upon the subject of the article, their com-
munications were confidential, and he is obliged to
adopt their opinions as his own, when adding an.
occasional note. — Editor Atlantic Monthly.
1 This article was sent in advance of publication
to several gentlemen whose position and experience
^especially qualify them to comment upon the as-
sertions made and the suggestions offered. Among
these correspondents were General S.C. Armstrong,
At the head of the Normal and Agricultural Insti-
tute, Hampton, Va. ; Colonel T. W. Higginson, au-
thor of Army Life in a Black Regiment; and Hon.
1884.]
Grass : A Rumination.
695
Says Thoreau, in TValden, " It grows
as steadily as the rill oozes out of the
ground. It is almost identical with that ;
for in the growing days of June, when
the rills are dry, the grass blades are
their channels, and from year to year
the herds drink at this perennial green
stream." Although it is so dry to the
touch, the veins of the grass are not
scanted. A drop of moisture collects at
the base of a culm, on its being pressed
between thumb and finger ; and children,
for sport, pit one such stem against an-
other, to see which will carry away its
own and the other's glistening bead, —
drbps of the life-blood of the grass.
But here I have a good calendar to
advise me whether the year runs high
or low ; to indicate not only the season,
but the month also. It is March. I
should not mistake the time, seeing those
piebald locks which the earth wears :
here a thread or tress of forward green,
there a shock of the old dead gray or
brown. It is April, — witnessed by the
wild mob-rule conduct of the grass, its
pushing emulousness, in which, for no
plain reason, one blade outstrips by
half its nearest neighbor, and no two
blades show the same length. It is
May (the Anglo-Saxon Mouth of Three
Milkings), and the grass moves on, a
banded strength, the inequalities it had
in April having disappeared. Now, who
are you, so light and expeditious, that
you boast you '11 not let the grass grow
under your feet ? Let it ! Take care,
for it grows between your steps, silently
mirthful, triumphant without vaunting.
On a summer morning, with copious
dew, the grass has its exultation. In-
numerable caps of liquid hyaline I see,
poised aloft on the points of innumera-
ble bayonets. Some sudden, wild en-
thusiasm has seized these bladed myrmi-
dons ; what this may be I have to fancy,
( and also what rallying word or note of
huzza would best match with spirited
sound a sight so thrilling.
June, the Month of Roses, Meadow
Month, — which shall it be? The lat-
ter, if respect be had to numbers ; since
what are all the roses of all the world
as compared with the infinite flowerage
of the grasses, which this month ful-
fills? Think what bloom is represented
by one panicle of June grass, or by one
stately spire of timothy or herd's grass,
with its delicate purple anthers flung
out each way, like so many pennons
from the windows of a tower ! To the
flower of the grass was given a recon-
dite loveliness, — prize only of the faith-
ful, refined, and loving eye, patient to
investigate. Fair Science takes her lit-
tle learners out into the open, and there
teaches them by a parable : " Consider
the lilies of the field." " But," return
the little learners, " we can't see any lil-
ies." Then says smiling Science, " They
are all around you ; " and, gathering
a stalk of blossoming grass, or, yet bet-
ter, of wheat, she proceeds to divulge
in its obscure and curious inflorescence
vanishing traces of an ancient lily-re-
sembling type, from which the grasses
have descended. 1 It appears that while
one branch of a great botanical family
rose to vie with Solomon (by their
bright colors winning the admiration
and friendly offices of the insect world),
another branch of the family eschewed
such ambitions, and obtained the wind
as a lover. Science dissects the unre-
membering flower, and shows us by
what crowding together of its parts and
gradual suppressions the liliaceous form
has been lost save to the nice eye of the
specialist. Had not the grasses prac-
ticed humility, or had they not stooped
to conquer, it might have come to pass
that man had asked for bread and been
given a lily.
In much the same way as he forecasts
the profit he will have from the woolly
flock does the farmer count upon the
fleeces grown by his fields (whose shear-
1 See the admirable essay The Origin of Wheat,
is Mr. Grant Allen's Flowers and Their Pedi-
grees.
1884.]
The Negro Problem.
697
fidence. Here, on the one hand, was a
people, whose written history shows that
the way to the self-government on which
alone a state can be founded is through
slowly and toilfully gained lessons, hand-
ed from father to sou, — lessons learned
on hard tilled and often hard fought
fields. The least knowledge of the way
in which their own position in the world
had been won would have made it clear
that such a national character as theirs
could be formed only by marvelous toil
of generations after generations, and an
almost equally marvelous good fortune
that brought fruit to their labor. There,
on the other hand, was a folk, bred first
in a savagery that had never been broken
by the least effort towards a higher state,
and then iu a slavery that tended almost
as little to fit them for a place in the
structure of a self-controlling society.
Surely, the effort to blend these two peo-
ples by a proclamation and a constitu-
tional amendment will sound strangely
in the time to come, when men see that
they are what their fathers have made
them, and that resolutions cannot help
this rooted nature of man.
But the evident novelty of this un-
dertaking and the natural doubt of its
success do not diminish the interest which
it has as an experiment in human na-
ture : far from it, for this trial of the
African as an American citizen is the
most wonderful social endeavor that has
ever been made by our own or any
other race. If it succeeds, even in the
faintest approach to a fair measure ; if
these men, bred in immemorial savagery
and slavery, can blossom out into self-
upholding citizens, fit to stand alone in
the battle with the world, then indeed
* The planters and people of the South never
feared their household servants, but they did fear
their 6eld hands. Insurrection with them was the
standing bugaboo, the mere suspicion of which
would throw a whole community into terror, dur-
ing which the masters often perpetrated cruelties,
honestly supposing them preventives. The civil
war drew into the Southern army first only such
whites as could be spared, yet when the exigencv
drove almost every available man into the army
we must confess that human nature is a
thing apart from the laws of inheritance,
— that man is more of a miracle in the
world than we deemed him to be.
Although this experiment of mak-
ing a citizen of the negro grew out of
a civil war, and necessarily led to the
awakening of much hatred among the
people where it was undertaken, there
is no reason to doubt that it is being
very fairly tried, and that if ever 6uch
changes are possible they will be here.
There was no deep antagonism between
these two diverse peoples, such as would
have existed if either had been the con-
queror of the other; on the contrary, a
century or two of close relations had
served to develop a curious bond of mu-
tual likings and dependencies between
the two races. 2 It was only through slav-
ery that it could have been possible to
make the trial at all.
American slavery, though it had the
faults inherent in any system of subju-
gation and mastery among men, was in-
finitely the mildest and most decent sys-
tem of slavery that ever existed. When
the bonds of the slave were broken,
master and servant stayed beside each
other, without much sign of fear or any
very wide sundering of the old relations
of service and support. 8 As soon as the
old order of relations was at an end,
the two races settled into a new accord,
not differing in most regards from the
old. External force during the period
of disturbance prevented this natural
social order from asserting itself in all
the South ; but in the States that were
not " reconstructed," as in Kentucky, it
might have been possible for any one
who had known the conditions of 1860
there was no insurrection. On the contrary, I have
yet to learn of a single instance where a family
servant or a field hand abused his opportunitv. —
Ed.
a There were two kinds of American slavery
before the war, domestic and agricultural. The
former was probably the most gentle slavery prac-
ticed on earth ; the latter was the reverse. No
punishment was more dreaded by the house-ser-
vant than to be sent to the negro quarters. — Ed.
698
The Negro Problem.
[November,
to live in 1870 for weeks, in sight of
the contact of whites and blacks, with-
out seeing anything to show that a great
revolution had been effected. 4
The important relations between men
are not matters that can be mauaged by
legislative enactments, so the black soon
found his way back to the plantations
as a freeman, and hoed the rows of corn
or cotton in the same fields with as
much sweat of brow and far more care
than awaited him of old. In place of
the old lash, his master had the crueller
whip of wages and account books. He
could not be sold, but he could be turned
off; his family could not be severed at
the auction block, but they were more
often parted by the death that came from
the want of the watchful eye of a fore-
sightful master, or by poverty. He was
no longer crushed, but he was left with-
out help to rise. 5
To the mass of those born in slavery
the change was one of no profit. When
the excitement of the change was over
they seemed to feel like children lost in
a wood, needing the old protection of the
stronger mastering hand. It was clear
to even the best wishers of the newly
freed slaves that the generation that
first saw the dawn of freedom must pass
away before it would be known just
how the race would meet the new life.
The forecast of the unprejudiced ob-
server was exceedingly unfavorable.
Every experiment of freeing blacks on
this continent has in the end resulted
in even worse conditions than slavery
brought to them. The trial in Hayti,
where freemen of the third generation
from slaves possess the land to the ex-
clusion of all whites, has been utterly
disastrous to the best interests of the
* This is true because freedom was a change in
relations rather than in the practical realities of life.
The destruction of the buffalo is a more serious
fact to the Indian than emancipation was to the
negro. In the altered relations of the whites and
negroes there was little visible change, because in
six generations the two races had become adjusted
to each other. — S. C. A.
negro. In that island, one of the most
fertile lands of the world, where Afri-
cans in the relatively mild slavery of res-
ident proprietors had created great in-
dustries in sugar and coffee culture, the
black race has fallen through its free-
dom to a state that is but savagery
with a little veneer of European cus-
toms. There is now in Hayti a govern-
ment that is but a succession of petty
plundering despotisms, a tillage that
cannot make headway against the con-
stant encroachments of the tropical for-
ests, a people that is without a single
trace of promise except that of extinc-
tion through the diseases of sloth and
vice.
In Jamaica the history, though briefer,
is almost equally ominous. The emanci-
pation of the negro was peaceable, and
was not attended, as in Hayti, by the
murder or expulsion of the whites. Yet
that garden land of the tropics, that land
which our ancestors hoped to see the
Britain of the South, has been settling
down toward barbarism, and there is
nothing left but the grip of the British
rule to keep it from falling to the state
of the sister isle. Nor is the case much
better where, as in the Spanish and Por-
tuguese settlements, the negro blood has
to a great extent blended with that of
the whites. There the white blood has
served for a little leaven, but the min-
gling of the races has brought with it
a fatal degradation of the whole popula-
tion that puts those peoples almost out
of the sphere of hope.
Such are the facts of experience in
the effort to bring together the races of
Africa and of Europe on American
ground. They may be summed up in
brief words, — uniform hopeless failure,
* Does not this rather mean that after two hun-
dred years or more of labor drill he was thrown
on himself? And was he not better off plui this
labor drill than was his whilom master who had
succeeded in evading it V Consider the increase
of wealth in the South ; count the negro paupers;
ask who is caring for the majority of the negro
blind and infirm. — S- C. A.
1884.]
The Negro Problem.
699
a sinking towards the moral conditions
of the Congo and the Guinea coast. 8 I
am not criticising the policy that en-
franchised the blacks when their free-
dom came. I am not deploring the free-
ing of these Africans of America: that
was the least of evils. These people
were here in such numbers that any ef-
fort for their deportation was futile. It
was their presence here that was the
evil, and for this none of the men of our
century are responsible. Whatever the
dangers they might give rise to, they
would be less if the Africans were free-
men than if they were slaves. The bur-
den lies on the souls of our dull, greedy
ancestors of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, who were too stupid to
see or too careless to consider anything
but immediate gains. There can be no
sort of doubt that, judged by the light of
all experience, these people are a dan-
ger to America greater and more insuper-
able than any of those that menace the
other great civilized states of the world.
The armies of the Old World, the inher-
itances of mediajvalism in its govern-
ments, the chance evils of Ireland and
Sicily, are all light burdens when com-
pared with this load of African negro
blood that an evil past has imposed upon
us. The European evils are indigenous ;
this African life is an exotic, and on
that account infinitely hard to grapple
with. 7
The twenty years that have passed
since the Emancipation Proclamation
gave the name of freedraen to this folk
have removed the freedmen into the past
and put their children in their place.
More than half the blacks who are liv-
6 The cases cited are hardly parallel. The con-
ditions of climate and surrounding civilization
were very different in Hayti, Jamaica, and else-
where. American slavery was a great educator of
its chattels, and their gain by emancipation was
the loss of the whites. The experience of our
Southern States has no analogue. — Ed.
7 I have always felt, as the result of my contact
with and observation of the negro, that he did
suffer from the want of support afforded bv ances-
tral virtue and experience in the ways of freedom.
This will probably make his progress less sure and
ing — certainly the larger part of those
who are now of vigorous body — have
never felt the influence of actual bond-
age ; though perhaps the greater part
of them were born during the days of
slavery, they were but children when the
war came, and never were sensible of
the old system.
The economic history of these years
since the war, though still too brief for
any very sound opinions, seems to point
to the conclusion that we may for the
present, at least, escape the sloth which
fell upon Jamaica and Hayti with the
overthrow of slavery. The South has
advanced in every branch of material
wealth, though without much immigra-
tion to swell its activities. All its im-
portant staples except rice, especially
those which are the result of negro la-
bor, have increased in quantity much be-
yond the measure of the days of slavery.
Even if we allow that the increase in
the number of blacks has been as great
as appears from the comparison of the
census of 1870 with that of 1880, it is
clear that the negro laborer is doing as
much work as a freeman as he did when
a slave, and is probably doing more. 8
That he is doing it contentedly is clear
from the general absence of disorder,
even throughout the regions where the
blacks are the most numerous. This is.
as far as it goes a matter of great en-
couragement and hope. It should not,
however, blind our eyes to the danger
which still lies before us. At present
the negro population still feels the strong
stimulus of the greatest inspiration that
can be given to human beings. The
very novel experience of a passage from
rapid than that of the white race; but that the ten-
dency stated by Professor Shaler exists in the case
of the negro in any different sense from what is
true of other races, even our own, I do not believe.
— D. H. C.
8 This statejnent appears to me to refute the spe-
cial conclusion as to the negro's tendency to revert
to his ancestral conditions. The race is industrious,
and if it is, it seems to me there can be no tendency
to reversion to lower states, but rather an impetus
toward higher. — D. H. C.
700
The Negro Problem.
[November,
slavery to freedom affected this sensi-
tive people as by an electric shock. The
ideas of advance in life, of education,
of property, have yet something of the
keenness that novelty brings. Let us
hope that they will wear until the hab-
its of thrift and labor are firmly bred
in them.
The real dangers that this African
blood brings to our state lie deeper than
the labor problem ; they can be ap-
preciated only by those who know the
negro folk by long and large experience,
— such as comes to none who have not
lived among them in youth, and after-
wards had a chance to compare them
with the laboring classes of our own
race in other regions. Those who study
this people after their tests of human
kind are all made up and fixed by habit
easily overlook the peculiarities of na-
ture which belong to the negroes as a
race. They are confounded by the es-
sential manhood of the colored man ;
they are charmed by his admirable and
appealing qualities, and so make haste
to assume that he is in all respects like
themselves. But if they have the pa-
tience and the opportunity to search
closely into the nature of this race they
will perceive that the inner man is real-
ly as singular, as different in motives
from themselves, as his outward aspect
indicates.
The important characteristics of the
negro nature are not those that mark
themselves in any of the features which
appear in casual intercourse. Human
relations are so stereotyped that we
never see the deeper and more impor-
tant qualities of any men through such
'means. The negro nature, charming in
many respects, is most favorably seen in
9 True. " Intensely human " was General Sax-
ton's brief answer to a long list of inquiries. —
T. W. H.
10 I lived nearly two years on the Sea Inlands,
in the most intimate intercourse with the very
subdivision of the negroes described, and felt- a
constant sense of mental kinship with them at the
thne. — T. W. H.
11 My attention was first called to this fact by
what we may call the phenomena of
human contact : quick sensibilities and a
mind that takes a firm hold of the pres-
ent is characteristic of the race. Even
if we watch them for a long time we
find that the esseutial structure of their
minds is very like our own. 9 . I believe
that one feels closer akin to them than
to the Indians of this country or to the
peasants of Southern Italy. The funda-
mental, or at least the most important,
differences between them and our own
race are in the proportions of the hered-
itary motives and the balance of native
impulses within their minds.
This sense of close kinship felt with
the negro may be due to the fact that
for many generations his mind has been
externally moulded in those of our own
race. I fancy there would be none of it
with native Africans ; indeed, I have
found little trace of it in intercourse
with the blacks of the Sea Islands, 10 who
represent a people nearer to Africa
by several generations, and deprived of
that close contact with the whites which
would give their minds an external
resemblance to those of our own race.
When we know the negro well, we
recognize that he differs from our own
race in the following respects : —
The passage from childhood to adult ,
age brings in the negro a more marked
and important change in the tone of the
mind than it does in the white. In
youth the black children are surprising-
ly quick, — their quickness can be appre-
ciated only by those who have taught
them ; but in the pure blacks, with the
maturing of the body the animal nature
generally settles down like a cloud on
that promise. 11 In our own race inher-
itance has brought about a correlation
my late master, Louis Agassiz. He had excellent
opportunities of observation upon this point during
his residence in Charleston and his frequent visits
to the South. Personal observations and many
questionings of persons who had a right to an
opinion have served onlv to corroborate it. — N.
S. S.
In the main, I find Mr. Shaler's statements
iu regard to negro characteristics and distinctive
1884.]
The Negro Problem.
701
between the completion of development
and the expansion of the mental powers;
so that, unless one of our youth distinct-
ly reverts towards some old savagery,
the imagination and the reasoning facul-
ties receive a stimulus from the change
that this period brings. But, with rare
exceptions, the reverse is the case with
the negro: at this stage of life he be-
comes less intellectual than he was be-
fore ; the passions cloud and do not irra-
diate the mind. The inspiratioual power
of the sexual impulses is the greatest
gain our race has made out of all its past.
We can hardly hope to impose this fea-
ture upon a people ; such treasures can-
not be given, however good the will to
give them.
Next we notice that the negro has lit-
tle power of associated action, — that
subordination of individual impulse to
conjoint action which is the basis of all
modern labor of a high grade. I have
never seen among them anything ap-
proaching a partnership in their busi-
ness affairs. They are so little capable
of a consensus that they never act to-
gether, even in a mob, except for some
momentary deed. 12 This ability to coop-
erate with their fellow men is a capacity
which is probably only slowly to be ac-
quired by any people ; it is indeed one
of the richest fruits of a civilization. In
this point most negroes in Africa as well
features admirable, but from the above mv own
and my associates' experience leads me to differ.
After careful study, each year for fifteen years, of
three hundred negro children of from five to thir-
teen years of age in our primary department, and
of four hundred adults of from fourteen to twenty-
five in our Normal School, our deductions are not
those of Mr. Shaler. We have not found a lack
or a "clouding" of brain power to be the chief
difficulty of the maturing negro, though we admit,
of course, a decided race difference in intellectual
development. I consider that where on an average
from twelve to fifteen out of every hundred boys
of our own race are able to receive a college educa-
tion, not more than two or three negroes would be
similarly capable. As to the differences between
mulattoes and pure blacks, we find the former
usually quicker, the latter simpler, stronger, with
more definite characteristics; and this is also the
case among our Indians. — S. C. A.
as in America are below the American
Indian. They show us in their native
lands as well as here no trace of large
combining ability ; they do not build any
semblance of empires. Combining power
seems to have been particularly low
among the West Coast tribes that fur-
nished the most of our American- Afri-
can blood.
Along with these defects goes another,
which is less clearly manifest in casual
intercourse, but which is in fact a more
radical want. It is the lack of a power
of continuous will. Few of us can see
how much we owe to this power, the
most precious of our inheritances. It is
the power of continuous will, of will that
goes beyond the impulse of passion or
excitement, that most distinctly separates
the mind of man from that of the lower
animals. The gradations of this power
mark the limits between savage and civ-
ilized man. In the negro the ability
to maintain the will power beyond the
stimulus of excitement is on the whole
much lower than in the lowest whites.
They are as a class incapable of firm
resolve. 18
At first sight it might be supposed
that slavery has weakened this capacity,
but it seems to me that the enforced
consecutive labor which it gave must
have accustomed the race to a continuity
of effort that they knew nothing of in
18 What I should say is that their impulse of
organization is very strong, but that through ig-
norance thev cannot keep together, like whites. —
T. W. H.
18 The negro is certainly lacking in the capacity
for associated action. From the debating society
to the general convention, the assembled negro
demonstrates this. But the individual negro has
remarkable resource. I am tempted to sav that in
a tight place, under familiar conditions, I should
prefer the instinct of the black to the thought of
the white man. After all, the best product of civ-
ilization is what we call "common sense;" and as
the chief want of the negro I should put "level
heads" in place of "continuous will" or "firm
resolve," in which we do not find them lacking.
Our labor system at Hampton furnishes a severe
ordeal, and while many fail, many also endure it
successfully, and the test seems a fair one. — S.
C. A.
702
The Negro Problem.
[November,
their lower state. So that they have
gained rather than lost in cousecutive-
ness, through slavery. Lastly, we may
notice the relatively feeble nature of all
the ties that bind the family together
among these African people. The pe-
culiar monogamic instinct which in our
own race has been slowly, century by
century, developing itself in the old
tangle of passions has yet to be fixed in
this people. In the negro this motive,
more than any other the key to our so-
ciety, is very weak, if indeed it exists
at all as an indigenous impulse. 14 It is a
well-known fact that we may find among
them a high development of the relig-
ious impulse with a very low morality.
Along with this and closely linked with
it goes the love of cliildren. This mo-
tive is fairly strong among the negroes ;
it gives reason to hope that out of it may
come a better sense of the marital rela-
tion.
Although these defects may not at
first sight seem in themselves very seri-
ous differences between the two races,
yet they are really the most vital points
that part the men who make states from
those who cannot rise above savagery.
The modern state is but a roof built to
shelter the lesser associations of men.
Chief of these is the family, which rests
on a certain order of alliance of the sex-
ual instincts with the higher and more
human faculties. Next come the various
degrees of human cooperation in various
forms of business life ; and then this
power of will, that gives the continuity
to effort which is the key to all profit-
able labor ; and last, but not least, the
impulse to sexual morality. If the black
is weak in these things, he is in so far
unfit for an independent place in a civ-
ilized state. Without them the frame-
work of a state, however beautiful, is a
mere empty shell that must soon fall
to pieces. Like all other mechanisms,
the state has only the strength of it3
weakest part.
It is my belief that the negro as a
race is weak in the above mentioned
qualities of mind. Conspicuous excep-
tions may be found, but exceptio probat.
Here and there cases of higher-minded
black men give us hope, but no security.
The occurrence of Miltons and Shake-
speares makes us hope that to those ele-
vations of mind all men may in time at-
tain, but it is a hope that is very near
despair.
Let no one suppose that these opin-
ions are born of a dislike for the black
race ; on the contrary, I am conscious of
a great liking for this people. They
seem to me full of charming traits, but
unhappily they are not the hard-mind-
ed attributes that sustain a state. The
negro has, on the whole, greater social
sensibilities than any other uneducated
man. He is singularly ready to respond
to any confidence that may be placed
in him. He acquires the motives and
actions of social intercourse with notice-
able readiness. He has within a cer-
tain range a quick constructive imagi-
nation and therefore reads character re-
markably well. He has a very quick,
instinctive sympathy, and is in a discon-
tinuous way affectionate. When he neg-
lects his wife or his children, the fault
generally arises from the lack of consec-
utive will, and not from want of feeling.
His emotions are easily aroused through
the stimulus of music or motion, and the
tide of life that then fills him is free and
unrestrained. The religious sense, that
capacity for a sense of awe before the
great mystery of religion, is also fairly
his, though its expression is often crude
and its feelings are readily confounded
with the lower passions.
I have now set forth the fear that must
come upon any one who will see what
a wonderful thing our modern Teutonic
M Is it not too soon after slavery to justify this after escaping from slavery have gone back int©
statement ? Slavery necessarily discouraged mo- danger to bring away their wives indicates an in-
Dogamy ; but the multitude of cases in which slaves digenous impulse. — T. W. H.
1884.]
The Negro Problem.
703
society is ; how slowly it has won its
treasures, and at what a price of vigi-
lance and toil it must keep them ; and
therefore how dangerous it must be to
have a large part of the state separated
in motives from the people who have
brought it into existence. I cannot ex-
pect to find many to share this fear
with me, for there are very few who
have had any chance to see the problem
fairly. But to those who do feel with
me that the African question is a very
serious matter, I should like to propose
the following statement of the prime
nature of the dangers, and the means
whereby they may be minimized, if not
avoided.
First, I hold it to be clear that the in-
herited qualities of the negroes to a great
degree unfit them to carry the burden
of our own civilization ; that their pres-
ent Americanized shape is due in large
part to the strong coutrol to which they
have been subjected since the enslave-
ment of their blood ; that there will nat-
urally be a strong tendency, for many
generations to come, for them to revert
to their ancestral conditions. If their
present comparative elevation had been
due to self-culture in a state of freedom,
we might confide in it ; but as it is the
result of an external compulsion issuing
from the will of a dominant race, we
cannot trust it. 15 Next, I hold it to be
almost equally clear that they cannot as
a race, for many generations, be brought
to the level of our own people. There
will always be a danger that by falling
15 True, unless that external force shall be in
some shape continued. There is serious danger of
a proletariat class, especially in the Gulf States,
where an Anglo- African population is massed to-
gether, but the outlook is not hopeless. Why may
not these people continue to improve in the future,
as they have improved in the past fifteen years, and
from the same causes, nainelv, their own efforts,
aided by the directly educative forces, by com-
mercial activity, and by the general steady ten-
dency towards an orderlv social state? It cannot
be too strongly urged that the most willing outride
aid is the wise training of their best young men
and women, who, as teachers and examples, min-
gle with and leaven the whole lump. So long as
ignorant leaders, either religious or political, can
to the bottom of society they will form
a proletariat class, separated by blood as
as well as by estate from the superior
classes ; thus bringing about a measure
of the evils of the slavery system, —
evils that would curse both the races
that were brought together in a relation
so unfit for modern society.
The great evil of slavery was not to
be found in the fact that a certain num-
ber of people were compelled to labor
for their masters and were sometimes
beaten. It lay in the states of mind of
the master and of the slave : in the es-
sential evil to the master of this rela-
tion of absolute personal control over
others untempered by the affection of
parent for child ; and to the slave in the
subjugation of the will that destroyed
the very basis of all spiritual growth.
The mere smart of the lash was relative-
ly of small account : if every slave had
been beaten every day it would have
been a small matter compared with this
arrest of all advancement in will power
that his bonds put upon him. It is clear
that the best interests of the negro re-
quire that these dangers should be rec-
ognized, and as far as may be provided
against by the action of the governmen-
tal and private forces of the state. It
seems to me that the following course
of action may serve to minimize the dan-
gers : —
In the first place, the gathering of the
negroes into large unmixed settlements
should be avoided in every way possi-
ble : u the result of such aggregations is
keep control there is undoubtedly danger. — S.
C. A.
16 Where these aggregations exist in the South,
the establishment of well-taught schools in their
midst is immediately remedial. We can cite coun-
ties in Virginia, peopled mostly by blacks, where
the influence of a single teacher has practically
changed the social condition. Our graduates who
go out into these neighl>orhoods show ns results
which are most encouraging; not only is there an
increase of intelligence, but a decrease of vice. It
is on the testimony of Southern whites that we
rely, and they do not hesitate to tell us that the
work of one strong man or woman can and does
change the standard of a whole community. — 3.
C. A.
704
The Negro Problem.
[November,
the immediate degradation of this people.
Where such aggregations exist, we see
at once the risk of the return of this
people to their old ancestral conditions,
and it is from a study of these negroes,
who are limited in their association to
their own people, that I have become
so fully satisfied that they tend to fall
away from the position which their in-
tercourse with the whites has given them.
Of course this separation of the negro
from his kind cannot be accomplished
by any direct legislation. Such action
is not in the possibilities of the situa-
tion nor in the system of our govern-
ment But where there are such ag-
gregations, the force of public and pri-
vate action should be brought to bear
to diminish the evils that they entail,
and as far as possible to break up the
communities. The founding of public
schools in such communities, with teach-
ers of the best quality, affords the sim-
plest and perhaps the only method by
which these .tendencies can be combated.
To educate a people is to scatter them.
There are now many devoted teachers
in the South who are working to this
end. These schools should give more
than the elements of a literary educa-
tion, for such teaching is of even less
value to the black youth than it is to
the children of our race : the schools
should give the foundations of a tech-
nical education, in order that the life of
the people be lifted above the dull rou-
tine of Southern cotton-farming, and
that the probability of migration may be
increased.
When there is a chance to do it, the
regions where the negroes have gath-
17 This has been curiously tested in Florida,
and with results which contradict this view.
About 1770 a large colony of Greeks, Italians, and
Minorcanswas brought to St. Augustine. Their
descendants, known generally as Minorcans, are
far inferior mentally, morally, and physically to
the Florida negroes. I have seen many of them.
— T. W. H.
18 I think the destiny and the best hold of the
large majority of blacks is to become cultivators
of small farms, and their progress in this direc-
tion is rapid and hopeful. In the breaking up of
ered in dense unmixed communities
should be interspersed with settlements
of whites. Fortunately, there is only a
small part of the South where the ne-
groes show much tendency to gather by
themselves. These are mainly in the
shore regions of the Atlantic and the
Gulf States, where the climate is toler-
able to the African, but difficult for those
of European blood to endure. Any col-
onies of whites in these districts should
be drawn from Southern Europe, from
peoples accustomed to a hot climate and
miasmatic conditions. 17 Elsewhere in the
South the negroes show a commendable
preference for association with their
white fellow citizens. There is no trace
of a tendency to seclusion. In the cities
they are gathered into a quarter which
becomes given up to them ; but this is
owing rather to their poverty and to the
exclusiveness of the whites than to any
desire of the blacks to escape from con-
tact with the superior race ; so that this
people is still in very favorable condi-
tions for benefiting by social intercourse
with the whites.
There is clearly a tendency for the
negro to fall into the position of an ag-
ricultural laborer, or a household ser-
vant. 18 Neither of these positions affords
the best chance for development. It is
very much to be desired that there
should be a better chance for him to find
his way into the mechanical employ-
ments. Negroes make good blacksmiths
and joiners; they can be used to advan-
tage in mill work of all kinds, provided
they are mingled with white laborers, to
which the prejudice of race now offers no
material barrier. 19 The immediate need
the old estates, the negro and his almost equally
emancipated brother, the poor white, get their full
share. Their landed wealth to-day is surprising,
and they are moving with the general movement
about them. — S. C. A.
19 In my judgment, the persons who most influ-
ence the Southern blacks are not the whites, but
the colored preachers, — a class whose ignorance
forms a very great obstacle, and who particularly
need "academies, high schools, and colleges." —
T. W. H.
1884.]
The Negro Problem.
705
of the Soutli is not for academies, high
schools, or colleges which shall he open
to the negro, — he is yet very far from
being in a shape to need this form of
education, — hut for technical schools
which will give a thorough training in
craft work of varied kinds. Every well-
trained craftsman won Id he a missionary
in his field. As a race they are capahle
of taking pride in handiwork, that first
condition of success in mechanical lahor.
Such occupations tend to hreed fore-
thought, independence, and will power.
There is no hetter work for a henevolent
society than to take up this task of im-
proving the technical education of the
negro as a means for his temporal and
especially his political salvation. Tech-
nical schools are not costly to start com-
pared with good literary colleges. Three
or four teachers can do valuahle work,
in an establishment that need not be
very costly, and might be partly self-
sustaining. At present there are de-
plorably few opportunities for negroes
to learn craft work in an effective way ;
a few schools have made some essay to-
wards it, but none of them have pro-
posed it as their main object.
The federal government would do
well to found a number of technical
schools, in the Southern States, under
state control, but perhaps with federal
supervision. These schools need not
cost over twenty thousand dollars per
annum, beyond the value of their prod-
ucts. They should train young men for
trade work alone, requiring for admis-
sion the simplest elements of an educa-
tion. The expense of teaching and feed-
ing the students might be borne by the
government. The pupils should be
trained for the commoner departments
of manual labor. I would suggest the
following occupations as well fitted to
20 The most manifest solution of this great ne-
gro problem is in the education of the race. The
technical education on which Professor Shaler
lays such stress is a part of it. Some negroes have
very fair mechanical talents and take to the work
naturally. They vary, like other people. Educa-
vol. liv. — no. 325. 45
give useful employment and as easily
taught: smithing, turning, furniture mak-
ing, carpentering, wheelwright work,
management of steam engines, the art
of the potter.
The desired results might be attained
by a method of apprentice labor, the
government paying competent masters
for the instruction of youths by placing
several of these together in large shops.
The price of their indentures need not
be more than one hundred dollars per
annum. Of course this system would
require supervision, but it seems clear
that the cost of maintaining ten thou-
sand such apprentices need not exceed
about a million dollars per annum. While
the effect of such education in lifting the
negro would be immense, it would in
time give one trained mechanic in about
each fifty a good practical education.
One of the best results that would fol-
low from this method of technical in-
struction would be the wider diffusion of
the negro over the country. Under the
present system it is not possible to scat-
ter the six millions of negroes in the
South throughout the country, though
it is from a national point of view very
important that it should be done. The
risk of degeneration in the communities
where they are now gathered together
would then be much reduced. If, on
the closing of the war, we had begun to ;
educate ten thousand negroes each year
in technical work, we should perhaps
have spent somewhere near thirty mill-
ion dollars on the work, and should have
brought up near two hundred thousand
black men to occupations that would
have bettered their physical and moral
conditions. 20
I confess a dislike to seeing this work
done by means of the federal govern-
ment, for there are many risks of abuse
tion must be effected by environme: t. A redistri-
bution of the negro population must precede any
high development. To this end technical training
is of preat value, since it loosens the negro's hold
on a particular spot. — Ed.
706
The Negro Problem.
[November,
attendant on it. But the difficulty is a
vast one ; it is indeed a form of war
against a national danger, and requires
national resources for effective action ;
and the need justifies the trespass upon
the usual principles that should regu-
late governmental interference with the
course of society.' 21
Even if all possible means be taken
to keep the negro in the course of prog-
ress that his previous conditions have
imposed upon him, success will depend
ou the rate of increase of the two races
in the Southern States. The last census
• shows an apparent relative increase of
the blacks. It is probable that this cen-
sus was the first that gave a true ac-
count of the numerical relations of the
races in the South ; that the desire to
avoid taxation during the slaveholdino-
days led to a general understating of
the numbers of slaves on most planta-
tions. These numbers were not taken
by actual count, but by questioning the
owners. The census of 1870 was of
the most viciously imperfect nature in
some of the Southern States, its result
being to underestimate the population
in regions where the negroes were most
abundant. The very high death-rate
among the negroes in all the large cities
where statistics are obtained, and the
evident want of care of young children
in negro families in the country districts,
21 I find myself heartily in accord with Pro-
fessor Shalcr in his practical considerations. Our
duty and interest must lead us to aid the negro,
and this aid will best come in the way of some
special agencies such as Professor Shalcr suggests,
though I cannot favor the plan of putting this
work or burden to any extent on the federal gov-
ernment instead of the States. Such a course is
contrary to our scheme of division of duties and
powers between the State and the nation, and will
be attended by results likely to deprive such ef-
forts of much of their usefulness. — D. II. C.
22 There seems to be no doubt as to the decrease
in the mulatto clement, although, as a rule, the
young blacks prefer the lighter shades; they do
not like to "marry back into Africa." The color
feeling, though quiet, is deep and strong, but the
white man as a factor is le=s potent than formerly.
To-day, in the more northerly of the Southern
States, the pure-blooded negro is the exception
tiu. rather than the rule.
make it most probable that the increase
of adults is not as rapid among the ne-
groes as among the whites.
From extended observations among
these people in almost every year since
the war, I am inclined to believe that
there are two important changes going
on in the negro population. First, we
have the very rapid reduction in the num-
ber of half-breed mulattoes. 22 It is now
rare indeed to see a child under fifteen
years that the practiced eve will recog-
nize as from a white father. This is an
immense gain. Once stop the constant
infusion of white blood, and the weakly,
mixed race will soon disappear, leaving
the pure African blood, which is far bet-
ter material for the uses of the state
than any admixture of black and white.
The half-breeds are more inclined to vice
and much shorter-lived (I never saw one
more than fifty years old), and are of
weaker mental power, than the pure
race. 23
The other change consists in a rapid
destruction by death, from want of care
and from vice, of the poorer strains of
negro blood. Any one who knows the
negroes well has remarked that there
was a much greater difference among
them than we perceive among the whites
of the same low position in England or
elsewhere. It is clear from the history
of the slave trade that this African blood
The difference in the origin?l strains of negro
blood is marked, but, personally, I have not been
able to make any trustworthy observations in re-
gard to the superiority of one over another. I
have often noticed the varied types among the
eight hundred youth who are taught at Hampton:
there are black skins with European features,
blonde or even auburn coloring with African
noses and lips, but neither color nor features seem
to be decisive. Of averages one can speak with
some certainty as to probable lines of develop-
ment; of individuals it is not safe to dogmatize.
There appears to be no " dead line " of progress
for the negro. The possibilities of some among
them are not to be limited to the level of the ma-
jority of the race, and it is too soon to generalize
as to distinctive types. — S. C. A.
28 The pure black in the former time always
had a larger monev value than a mulatto of tha
same age and general appearance. — Ed.
1884.]
The Negro Problem.
707
was drawn from widely different tribes.
Even the leveling influence of slavery
has not served to efface these aboriginal
differences. The most immediate result
of the struggles which this race is now
undergoing is the preservation of those
households where there is an element of
better blood or breeding, which secures
the family from the diseases incident to
thriftless and vicious lives. Thus we
have some compensation for the evils
that lead to this rapid death-rate.
Now and then, in studying a negro
population, we find some man or woman,
evidently of pure African blood, whose
face and form have a nobility denied to
the greater part of the race. 24 We often
find the character of these individuals
clear and strong, apparently affording
the basis for the truest citizenship.
Every such American-African is a bless-
ing to the state, and a source of hope to
all who see the dark side of the problem
that his race has brought to this conti-
nent. It is to be hoped that all such
strains of blood will live, and their in-
heritors come to be leaders among their
people.
I believe that the heavy death-rate
among the negroes is not altogether due
to vice or neglect. This is reallv a trop-
ical people; the greater part of the South
is as foreign to their blood as the equa-
torial regions to our own. Their decline
in the more northerly States of the
South could be predicted by experience,
24 Very marked among the Florida blacks, men
and women. — T. W. H.
25 While they indubitably are of the tropics,
they have a curious natural affiliation for the high-
er civilization into which they have been thrown,
and in spite of ignorance, disease, and intemper-
ance they multiply where the red man melts away.
They cling to the skirts of our civilization ; there
is a black fringe on the edge of most towns in this
country; the negroes are here to stay. Before the
vigorous pressure of immigration it is possible that
they may yield somewhat, fall back here and
there, but nothing more. — S. C. A.
2C All other foreign elements assimilate, and in
the third generation are fully Americanized. The
negro is the closest imitator of all : but in spite of
the oceans of white blood which have been poured
into his veins; in spite of the obliteration of the
for in no part of the world has a black
skin been indigenous in such high lat-
itudes. There is little doubt that the
tide of immigration which is rapidly fill-
ing the open lands of the Northern States
must soon turn to flow into the South.
This will tend further to break up the
negro population of that region, driv-
ing its weaker members to the wall. 26
Still, though these influences may
serve to minimize the danger arising
from the presence of this alien blood,
there can be no doubt that for centu-
ries to come the task of weaving these
African threads of life into our society
will be the greatest of all American
problems. Not only does it fix our at-
tention by its difficulty and its utter
novelty among national questions, but
it moves us by- the infinite pathos that
lies within it. The insensate greed of
our ancestors took this simple folk from
their dark land and placed them in our
fields and by our firesides. Here they
have multiplied to millions, and have
been forced without training into the
duties of a citizenship that often puzzles
the brains of those who were trained by
their ancestry to a sense of its obliga-
tions. Our race has placed these bur-
dens upon them, and we, as its repre-
sentatives, owe a duty to these black-
skinned folk a thousand times heavier
than that which binds us to the volun-
tary immigrants to our land. 26 If they
fall and perish without a trial of every
remembrance of his fatherland, its language and
its traditions; in spite of the closest of contact with
the race which enslaved him, he remains substan-
tially the most foreign of all our foreign elements.
The lines of his life are parallel with, and not con-
vergent to, our own. and here lie- the danger.
But what would the cotton mills of Christendom
do without him V Who would (it into our indus-
trial and household life as he does V We need him,
the nation needs what he can do; but his training
must be directed by ideas, and not by demagogues.
The work of the old taskmasters is still telling
tremendously, and the old "uncles" sometimes
shake their wise gray heads over the rising gener-
ation. It is a many-sided education that they need,
and the result of anything less seems to justify the
reply of the colored school-girl, who, on being criti-
cised for careless 6weeping, answered, "You can't
708
The Negro Problem.
.[November,
means that can lift and support them,
then our iniquitous share in their un-
happy fate will be as great as that of
our forefathers who brought them here.
If they pass away by natural laws, from
inability to maintain themselves in a
strange climate or utter unfitness to un-
derstand the ever - growing stress of
our modern life, it may be accepted as
the work of nature ; perhaps, by some
severe philosophers, as a beneficent end
of the most wonderful ethnic experi-
ment that the world has known. But
they cannot be allowed to perish with-
out the fullest effort in their behalf. So
much we owe to ourselves, to our time,
and to our place before the generations
that are to be.
If the negro is thoughtfully cared for,
if his training in civilization, begun in
slavery, is continued in his state of free-
dom, we may hope to find abundant room
for him in our society. He has a strong
spring of life within him, though his life
flows in channels foreign to our own.
Once fix in him the motives that are
necessary for citizenship in a republic,
and we may gain rather than lose from
his presence on our soil. The proper
beginning is to give him a chance to re-
ceive the benefits of the education that
comes from varied and skillful industry.
CONCLUDING NOTE.
I have read with great interest the
notes of the gentlemen who have per-
mitted their criticisms of this paper to
be published with it, as well as many
others which, to my regret, do not ap-
pear. The second note by the editor
needs qualification. It is true that there
was a wide difference between household
slavery and that of the large Southern
cotton, rice, and sugar plantations. But
by far the larger part of the Southern
slaves were held on places essentially
git clean corners and algebra into the same nig-
ger."
Technical training is important, wisely directed
mental work is essential, better ideas must some-
how be put into better men, but it is the spirit of
like the Northern farms, in a bondage
that was strongly affected by their near
relation to the master's family. The
sixth note denies the parallel between
the experiment in the United States and
in the West Indies. Undoubtedly there
is a diversity in the conditions, for the
results differ ; but to lay this diversity
on the climate "fetish " is to get out of
the path of inquiry. The " surrounding
civilization" in Jamaica did not differ
essentially from that of South Carolina.
Note seventeen, concerning the Mi-
norcau settlement of Florida, seems to
me not to militate against the opinion
that Southern Europeans, as a whole,
will make the best colonists for the Gulf
States. A discussion of the Minorcan
settlements would probably show plen-
ty of reasons for the decay of this peo-
dle, if they have decayed.
I cannot agree with Colonel Higgin-
son that the negro preacher has the in-
fluence which is so generally attributed
to him over the laymen of the black
race. The negro as by an instinct and
insensibly strives to simulate the white.
His religious advisers naturally have a
very great hold upon him, and their ed-
ucation is of importance; but the two
most important developing agents for
this race in their present general state
are free contacts with whites in the or-
dinary work of the world and a wide
and long-continued technical training;
of course not excluding the elements of
what is ordinarily called education. I
do not deny that now and then a negro
appears who justifies the highest educa-
tion, — men like Joseph Bannecker, for
instance.
I am very glad to find that in most
points I am so fortunate as to be of one
mind with General Armstrong, who has
done more than anyone else to help the
enfranchised blacks on their way towards
the Sermon on the Mount that must permeate it
all. Practical Christian education, without dogma
and without cant, is the great need of the negro, as
well as of most of bis brethren, of whatever shade
or type. — S. C. A.
1884.]
Knox's United States Notes.
709
a true citizenship. I regret to differ as a rule the little colored girl was
from him in my estimate of the value to right: " You can't get clean corners and
the negro of a high purely literary edu-
cation. The time may come when such
a training will bear the same relation to
their inheritances that it does to those
of the literate class of our own race, but
algebra into the same nigger." That
combination is with difficulty effected in
our own blood. The world demands the
clean corners ; it is not so particular
about the alyebra.
N. slShaler.
KNOX'S UNITED STATES NOTES.
The work of Mr. John Jay Knox,
lately comptroller of the currency, upon
United States Notes * is a useful mon-
ograph. The style is that of an official
report rather than that of a philosoph-
ical study of the subject, and the reader
must trace for himself the connection
between the -several events recorded,
and supply such reflections as seem to
him appropriate rmon the wisdom or the
folly of Congress ru the gradual devel-
opment of the system of " coining "
paper money. But Jvlr. Knox has fur-
nished all the facts whiteh are necessary
for a full understanding^ the subject,
in a concise and readable y)rm ; and as
we have now reached a poiKt in consti-
tutional interpretation, if notNjn legisla-
tive practice, where there is no\further
progress to be made in the direction
we have been going, Mr. Knox's tvork
may be accepted as the full history "of
a completed incident in constitutional
development. /'
It is a little remarkable that two
liberate omissions by the conventioi/of
1787 should have been followed by an
assertion in each case, by the Supreme
Court, of the right of Congress to do
what the Constitution, by it« ostenta-
tious silence, withheld the power to do ;
that in each case the financial necessi-
ties of the government/led to the pas-
sage of the acts, — certainly not author-
1 United States Notes. A History of the Va-
rious Issues of Paper Money by the Government
ized by the plain terms of the Consti-
tution, — the validity of which was so
sustained ; and that the two judicial de-
cisions relating to these laws have done
more in the past and are capable of do-
ing more in the future to make the
United States government sovereign and
supreme, in the' broadest sense, to the
fullest exteut, and in all its relations,
than any other event in our history,
with the possible exception of the civil
war. The first of the two acts referred
to was, of course, the charter of the sec-
ond bank. In the convention of 1787
it was proposed that Congress should
be allowed to grant incorporations, and
the power was expressly refused ; that
is to say, being urged thereto, the con-
vention deliberately declined to con- .
fer the privilege, on the ground that the
clause would empower Congress to char-
ter a bank. Yet the new government
/was hardly organized when a bank was
^chartered ; and, the exercise of the pow-
er having been called in question a quar-
ter- of a century later, it was affirmed
by Chief Justice Marshall in a decision
which Ultimately overthrew the school
of " striftt construction," and made the
United States a nation, with the power
to preserve\and protect itself, and to
enforce its oWn authority at home and
abroad. \
The authority to "emit bills of cred-
of the United States. By. John Jay Knox. New
York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1884.
«t
710
Knox's United States Notes.
it" was withheld from Congress in a
similar way, but the deuial was more
emphatic than it was in the case of cor-
porations. The men who framed the
Constitution had present before their
eyes the evils of government paper
money. They were substantially unan-
imous in holding that the States ought
not to be permitted to issue such cur-
rency ; and the prohibition upon them
in this regard was allowed to stand.
Some members, however, believed that,
great as the evil might be, the possibil-
ity of its becoming a necessary expedi-
ent required that the power to emit bills
of credit should be allowed to the gen-
eral government. After a long and care-
ful discussion of the subject the clausi
was struck out of the draft of the Const/
tution. Although no direct prohibition
of an issue of bills of credit was insett-
ed, the universal belief at the time/
based on the theory that no powers were
possessed by Congress except such as were
conferred in express terms — was that
the prohibition was absolute. Who could
have supposed that the first issue of
treasury notes, under the act of June
30, 1812, was to be the first step on a
road which we have followed to a point
where the ultimate goal of " fiat money "
is in sight? These notes were for not less
than $100 each, they were reimbursable
at a specified time, and they bore inter-
est. They were not a legal tender, and
no person needed to become the posses-
sor of one of them, save by his own
voluntary act. In principle the notes
differed in no important respect from
small government bonds to secure a short
loan.
One by one the differences between
such notes and " bills of credit," as they
were known in revolutionary and pre-
revolutionary times, disappeared. Notes
of as small denomination as five dollars
were issued under the act of 181-5, and
these were available as circulating notes
•
in the pockets of the people, as the largo
notes of 1812 had not been. The next
[November,
step was taken after. the financial imbe-
cility of Jackson and his followers, nota-
bly illustrated by the war upon the Bank,
which brought about the crisis of 1837;
The payment of interest on notes was
no longer promised, or, as there was a
lingering idea that non-interest bearing
notes might not be constitutional, the
fancied obstacle was overcome by prom-
ising ^interest at the rate of one mill
per annum on each one hundred dollars.
Then at the beginning of the civil war
noies were issued, bearing no interest
d payable at no definite time ; that is,
n demand. Finally the last step was
taken, and promises to pay which could
not be met, or which might legally be
met by other promises of the same sort,
were issued as a forced loan, and made
a legal tender between man and man.
Upon the series of enactments which
gave the country this currency for a
standard of value, there have been three
decisions by the Supreme Court of the
United States : first, that Congress could
not make such notes a legal tender. in
the payment of debts contracted before
their issue ; second, that, in time of war
and great financial necessity, Congress
might make such notes a legal tender in
the payment of debts contracted either
before or after their issue; third, that
Congress\may, at any time, and at its
own discretion, make whatever it pleases
a legal tender in the payment of all debts
whatsoever.
Mr. Knox, we\have already said, has
made his work a record of facts, and
not a philosophical \ treatise upon the
subject of government paper money.
But every observer of governments
knows that a tendency so pronounced as
that which has been briefly noted is not
arrested when the last barrier to the
free exercise of a right is removed.
There is no present temptation to emit
irredeemable paper money, stamped
" This is dollars," or even to in-
crease the issue of promises to pay
which are nominally redeemable. But
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