A THE RACE PROBLEM.* NONYMOUSLY, as if apparently ashamed of its paternity, appears a very interesting and suggestive volume. Why its author should have hesitated to attach his name to the book is quite incomprehensible since it is an indisputable fact that the subject treated of is one rapidly becoming an important one in the public estimation, so much so as to attract general attention. Whether the author of this book has discussed the question wisely or unwisely the fact still remains the same that looming up in our political sky, as a cloud promising trouble, is this question of, "What shall be done with the Negro?" Doubtless this anonymous little volume has come and gone, read by few, and with its radical suggestions heeded by none, and despite its timely warning of impending danger to the Republic, the large mass of our citizens engrossed in the struggle for wealth, are content to leave the settlement of the momentous question to the arbitrament of chance. Politicians with their usual cowardice talk all around the question, never directly at it, using the unfortunate negro only as a stepping stone to their own advancement, one set ranging themselves upon the side of his disfranchisement, the other upon the side of his *"An Appeal to Pharaoh," (By an Anonymous Author.) enfranchisement, the first, the favorite hobby of the South, the second, the popular hobby of the North. Useful, therefore, as this negro question really is as a political factor merely, the question of what really shall be done with it seems one that has come into our politics to stay. Upon such soil, the sowing of such seed as has been done by this little book under review, seems to be not wholly vain. We pass over as quite irrelevant to the real issue the many pages of the book that tells us, and tells us well, what an endless source of trouble to both sections was the negro in slavery. To keep him there the Southern States inaugurated and waged war upon the Nation, and carried it on until they were practically, in the great contest, ruined and overthrown. Emancipated as a war necessity, when the conflict ceased the Southern people were compelled as a condition of peace to accept their former slaves as political equals, entitled to all rights guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution. "Universal Amnesty and Impartial Suffrage" was the shibboleth of reconstruction, and the successful and exultant North in its hour of victory probably never entertained a doubt but that the ignorant mass of emancipated humanity thus lifted to the exalted plane of American citizenship would and could in the coming strife for existence be able to take care of itself. To insure beyond a peradventure this outcome it seemed eminently wise and proper that for a time at least, the new-born black citizen should be assisted by the Nation in the discharge of his newly acquired function. Thus as an adviser, counsellor, friend and teacher appeared upon the scene the carpet-bagger. How he performed his mission and duty to his pupil is upon record in so many nefarious schemes of plunder that the name carpet-bagger has gone into history to remain there forever a synonym of infamy. Ye gods! those reconstruction days, So that the crime gave chance for plunder; |