THE ARENA.

No. X.

SEPTEMBER, 1890.

THE RACE QUESTION IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY SENATOR JOHN T. MORGAN.

AFTER the ratification of the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, it was, in the opinion of the abolitionists, necessary to further amend it, so as to provide against the effect of race, color, and previous condition of servitude," upon the capacity of the negro race to rise to social and political equality with the white race in this country.

Something was needed, beyond any native virtues or powers of the negro, to lift him up to the full enjoyment of his liberty.

It was conceded by the measures that were adopted for this purpose that our negroes, trained and educated under the southern slave code, were well prepared for citizenship and the ballot in this great Republic.

This movement also ignored that declaration in the Constitution that this government was ordained "to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;" or else it was determined that the negro race should become the posterity of the white race.

The 14th and 15th amendments furnish a strong support for the contention of the negro race that it was the purpose of these amendments to give them higher and more definite security for their liberties than was provided for the white

race.

If that contention was true in theory, as it is in fact, it proves that it was considered necessary to save the negroes from the natural decay of their new-born liberties, which would result, necessarily, from their natural inability to preserve their freedom, and to enjoy its blessings.

If, as is asserted by some, the purpose of these amendments

was to protect the negro race from the active hostility of the white race, it is obvious, in either case, that a race question was recognized in the very language of those amendments. In the first proposition, the race question appeared in the admitted inferiority of the negroes, as a race; and, in the other case, it appeared in the admitted aversion between the races.

The stringent prohibition of the action of the States, in denying them the power to discriminate against the political privileges of the negroes, confessed the existence of race aversion and prejudice, in such degree, that it could only be held in check by the organic law of the land.

It was expected that the citizenship conferred upon the negroes by these amendments and the peculiar protection guaranteed to their political powers, would carry with it, as a necessary incident, an equality of social privileges with the white race.

It was impossible to express this incidental class of privileges in the body of these amendments, because it would have been impossible to define them, or to enjoin their enforcement in the courts, or to compel obedience to their commands in the social relations and conduct of the people. They were, therefore, left as mere incidents of political power, to be worked out through the influence the negro race would exert in the government of the country.

This fruitful cause of strife has invited constant but futile effort on the part of the negro race and their political masters to force them, by political pressure and by acts of Congress, upon the white race as equals and associates in

their domestic relations.

At whatever line their leaders may intend to fix the limits of this intrusion, the negroes have intended that the invasion shall not cease until the races become homogeneous through complete admixture. Not that the highest class of white people shall consort with the lowest class of negroes, but, that, where the conditions of wealth, education, culture, and position are equal, discriminations against the negro race shall cease.

The social and political questions connected with the African race, in the United States, all relate to and depend upon the essential differences between the negro and the white man, as they have been arranged by the hand of the Creator.

Amongst these differences, the color of the skin, while it distinguishes the races unmistakably, is the least important. The mental differences and differing traits, including the faculty of governing, forecast, enterprise, and the wide field of achievement in the arts and sciences, are accurately measured by the contrast of the civilization of the United States, with the barbarism of Central Africa.

If the negroes in the United States were not descended from a people who enslaved them and sold them into foreign bondage, and who are still engaged in the same traffic; if they had been invited to this country to become citizens and to contribute what talents and virtues they have to the conduct of our complex system of government, the race question would still be as much a vital and unvoidable issue, political and social, as it is under the existing and widely different conditions.

It is the presence of seven or eight millions of negroes in this country and the friction caused by their political power and their social aspirations, and not the fact that they were recently in slavery, that agitates and distresses the people of both races. If they were not in the United States, there would be perfect peace and harmony amongst the people.

There is a decided aversion between the white race and the Indian,- -a race who has never submitted to enslavement. The difference in color and in social traits sufficiently accounts for this aversion, which exists in spite of our admiration for them as a brave and independent race. Has it been long persistence in a course of injustice and ill usage that has caused this aversion, or is it the race aversion that has caused the ill usage and retaliations that have filled the fairest valleys of our country with massacre and havoc? Whether it was the one or the other, it was not slavery, nor the lack of manly independence or of fortitude, on the part of the Indians, that has engendered the constant collisions between the two races. In the history of the Indians we find the most conclusive proofs that no race, inferior in capacity and intelligence, can co-exist with the white race, in the same government, and preserve its distinctive traits, or social organization. If the two races cannot merge, and sink their individuality, by a commingling of blood, the inferior race will be crushed.

In some respects the North American Indians have a remarkable history which entitles them to great respect.

They are the only race of people known to history, who have never enslaved their own people.

They might, with a show of reason, despise a man who had been a slave, or had descended from a slave parentage; while such a pretension would be filial ingratitude in Britons, English, Irish, French, Germans, Russians, Romans, Greeks or Chinese, and in all Oriental nations, all of whom have enslaved and made merchandise of their own kindred, as well as of all strangers who have come within their power. In the introduction to the work of Mr. Cobb, on Slavery, that great lawyer and statesman says:

"A detailed and minute inquiry into the history of slavery would force us to trace the history of every nation of the earth; for the most enlightened have, at some period within their existence, adopted it as a system; and no organized government has been so barbarous as not to introduce it amongst its customs. It has been more universal than marriage, and more permanent than liberty."

The perishing of the Indian races in North America and the West India Islands, has been the result of their stubborn resistance to the dominance of races of superior knowledge and power. If they had yielded, as the negro has always done, to the vis major, they would have increased in numbers and in useful knowledge; and they would have taken the places that the white people have accorded to the negroes, in citizenship, with greatly superior endowment of intellect, and of every great virtue. But the Indians, while they eagerly acquired the ownership of negro slaves, refused the bondage of slavery for their race, and have perished, rather than submit to such humiliation. Our history is full of records to prove this fact, and, in one of the Spanish American Islands, then known as Hispanolia (Santo Domingo,) it is stated by eminent historians, that a population of 3,000,000 Indians shrunk to 1200 souls in the reign of Charles V. of Spain. This extermination was the result of the efforts of the white race to enslave them.

In Irving's "Columbus," it is stated that whole villages of Indians committed suicide to escape the bondage of slavery and invited other Indians to join them in that dreadful work.

As a slave, the Indian has always perished, while, in all other races, except the negroes, the slave has, at last,