defer action with the unwarranted statement that the suggested remedy is impracticable. Gigantic as the outlined task may appear, with time, resolution and a liberal expenditure of money it can be undertaken and successfully accomplished. Once the removal of the negro race should be effected, the marvel of the nations would be that the previous condition of affairs had been allowed to remain so long without remedy, and that an intelligent and resourceful people should have endured even for a day such an impediment to its continued progress.

CHAPTER V

THE TESTIMONY OF THE EXPERTS

The spirit of caste drives the negro out of churches, theatres, hotels,

rail cars and steamboats, or assigns to him in them a place apart. It drives him into the cellars, dens and alleys of towns, into hovels in the country; and it does all this without laws, without concert or design, without unkindness or cruelty; but unconsciously, simply because it cannot help doing it, obeying this instinctive impulse and the immutable, eternal laws by which races of men are kept apart and are preserved throughout countless ages without change. These laws are divine. They execute themselves in spite of party combinations or fanatical legislatures or philanthropic enthusiasts or visionary dreamers about human perfectability and the rights of man.-Fisher's Laws of Race, page

A

21-3.

THING which in itself appeals to our reasoning faculties as standing squarely with the eternal verities does not require to be buttressed by the citation of authorities. But however well we may be assured in our own thought that our judgment concerning a proposition is founded upon principles of correct reasoning, our advocacy is reinforced to greater certainty when we find that others, eminently qualified by judgment and experience to pass upon the question, have in the past entertained like views, and that in the present those surveying the situation from a disinterested standpoint are similarly of our mind as to the remedy to be applied to an existing evil.

In the administration of justice, where the subject under

Views of

Statesmen

examination in court is one demanding knowledge of unusual character, those qualified by reason of training and experience to express their opinions upon Early the subject and deemed capable of enlightening the tribunal, may be summoned to court to give their testimony as experts, and so, while the problem which is the subject of this discussion is one requiring for its solution only the application of the simplest principles of sound governmental policy, it may be enlightening to turn back for a moment to examine what have been the expressions of those statesmen of former periods best qualified to discuss the solution of the ever-present negro problem.

Recalling, as presented in a former chapter of this work, that the question has passed through four distinct stages of discussion, it is confidently asserted that in no instance occurring prior to the period of reconstruction following the Civil War can it be found that any American statesman of practical knowledge and constructive ability entertained or expressed the belief that the negro would ever be fitted to form an element in our nationality. A volume might be compiled from the written opinions of the practical men who founded and developed this government, to the effect that the negro was by his inherent traits disqualified from participation in the government or social institutions of our land. This proposition cannot be too strenuously insisted upon, and unless the experience of the past fortyfive years has given us increased wisdom upon the subject, and as a matter of rational judgment has demonstrated the capacity of the negro to develop himself into a valuable citizen, it is incumbent upon us to be satisfied that we have acted wisely in departing from the path marked out by those who have preceded us in the consideration of this perplexing problem.

Let us now consider for a moment the recorded opinions upon the subject of those eminent men to whose labor, abilities, and sacrifices the enduring foundation of the prosperity of this country is so largely to be attributed, and also those of the later generation who labored to preserve our nationality when threatened by the dangers originating in the presence of the negro.

Washington

and Franklin.

Mr. George S. Merriam begins his instructive and entertaining work entitled The Negro and the Nation with an anecdote of George Washington, describing him as condemning, in conversation with an English guest, the prevailing system of human slavery. After pointing out that the vicious practice was a legacy from English cupidity, the Father of his Country is represented as saying:

I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our Union by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.

As noted in the second chapter of this work, Washington, in common with Franklin and many of the statesmen of the time, considered the presence of the negro a thing of ephemeral character, and believed that with the abolition of slavery the evils attendant upon the introduction of the black man would pass away. In a letter to Governor Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, March 17, 1793, Washington, then President, regrets the failure of that State to prohibit the importation of negroes, and predicts “direful results" from their coming in numbers. Franklin was ardent in his opposition to slavery, and deprecated the introduction of the negro, declaring him unfit for American citizenship.

Thomas Jefferson, philosopher, scholar, statesman, writer,

Thomas

and student of the negro problem, in his voluminous works from time to time devoted much attention to the character and prospects of the negro race. Pages might be Jefferson. quoted from his philosophic discussion of the subject. The great Virginian, regarding the question from many points of view, and in a series of articles between 1782 and the time of his death in 1826, frequently announced his conclusion that the white and the black cannot inhabit this country in harmony, and that the only possible solution of the great question, which even in his day was beginning to darken the national horizon, was the complete separation of the races.

We find him writing in his autobiography in 1821 (Jefferson's Works, volume i., page 48):

The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future and general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment, however, were agreed on; that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition; nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. NOTHING IS MORE CERTAINLY WRITTEN

IN THE BOOK OF FATE THAN THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE TO BE FREE; NOR IS IT LESS CERTAIN THAT THE TWO RACES, EQUALLY FREE, CANNOT LIVE IN THE SAME GOVERNMENT.

Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degree, as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers.