I Will Give Him Political Equality,
But Not Social Equality, Says The Abolitionist.
But even in this he
is untrue.
A black man may vote in New York, but he cannot vote
under the same circumstances as a white man. He is subjected to
qualifications which in truth debar him from the poll. A white man
votes by manhood suffrage, providing he has been for one year an
inhabitant of his State; but a man of color must have been for three
years a citizen of the State, and must own a property qualification
of 50l. free of debt. But political equality is not what such men
want, nor indeed is it social equality. It is social tolerance and
social sympathy, and these are denied to the negro. An American
abolitionist would not sit at table with a negro. He might do so in
England at the house of an English duchess, but in his own country
the proposal of such a companion would be an insult to him. He will
not sit with him in a public carriage, if he can avoid it. In New
York I have seen special street cars for colored people. The
abolitionist is struck with horror when he thinks that a man and a
brother should be a slave; but when the man and the brother has been
made free, he is regarded with loathing and contempt. All this I
cannot see with equanimity. There is falsehood in it from the
beginning to the end. The slave, as a rule, is well treated - gets
all he wants and almost all he desires. The free negro, as a rule,
is ill treated, and does not get that consideration which alone
might put him in the worldly position for which his advocate
declares him to be fit. It is false throughout, this preaching.
The negro is not the white man's equal by nature. But to the free
negro in the Northern States this inequality is increased by the
white man's hardness to him.
In a former book which I wrote some few years since, I expressed an
opinion as to the probable destiny of this race in the West Indies.
I will not now go over that question again. I then divided the
inhabitants of those islands into three classes - the white, the
black, and the colored, taking a nomenclature which I found there
prevailing. By colored men I alluded to mulattoes, and all those of
mixed European and African blood. The word "colored," in the
States, seems to apply to the whole negro race, whether full-blooded
or half-blooded. I allude to this now because I wish to explain
that, in speaking of what I conceive to be the intellectual
inferiority of the negro race, I allude to those of pure negro
descent - or of descent so nearly pure as to make the negro element
manifestly predominant. In the West Indies, where I had more
opportunity of studying the subject, I always believed myself able
to tell a negro from a colored man. Indeed, the classes are to a
great degree distinct there, the greater portion of the retail trade
of the country being in the hands of the colored people. But in the
States I have been able to make no such distinction. One sees
generally neither the rich yellow of the West Indian mulatto nor the
deep oily black of the West Indian negro. The prevailing hue is a
dry, dingy brown - almost dusty in its dryness. I have observed but
little difference made between the negro and the half-caste - and no
difference in the actual treatment. I have never met in American
society any man or woman in whose veins there can have been presumed
to be any taint of African blood. In Jamaica they are daily to be
found in society.
Every Englishman probably looks forward to the accomplishment of
abolition of slavery at some future day. I feel as sure of it as I
do of the final judgment. When or how it shall come, I will not
attempt to foretell. The mode which seems to promise the surest
success and the least present or future inconvenience, would be an
edict enfranchising all female children born after a certain date,
and all their children. Under such an arrangement the negro
population would probably die out slowly - very slowly. What might
then be the fate of the cotton fields of the Gulf States, who shall
dare to say? It may be that coolies from India and from China will
then have taken the place of the negro there, as they probably will
have done also in Guiana and the West Indies.
CHAPTER IV.
WASHINGTON TO ST. LOUIS.
Though I had felt Washington to be disagreeable as a city, yet I was
almost sorry to leave it when the day of my departure came. I had
allowed myself a month for my sojourn in the capital, and I had
stayed a mouth to the day. Then came the trouble of packing up, the
necessity of calling on a long list of acquaintances one after
another, the feeling that, bad as Washington might be, I might be
going to places that were worse, a conviction that I should get
beyond the reach of my letters, and a sort of affection which I had
acquired for my rooms. My landlord, being a colored man, told me
that he was sorry I was going. Would I not remain? Would I come
back to him? Had I been comfortable? Only for so and so or so and
so, he would have done better for me. No white American citizen,
occupying the position of landlord, would have condescended to such
comfortable words. I knew the man did not in truth want me to stay,
as a lady and gentleman were waiting to go in the moment I went out;
but I did not the less value the assurance. One hungers and thirsts
after such civil words among American citizens of this class.
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