Unfettered Part 20

"The solution of the Negro Problem involves the honor or dishonor, the glory or shame, the happiness or misery of the entire American people."--_Frederick Dougla.s.s_.

"I had rather see my people render back this question rightly solved than to see them gather all the spoils over which faction has contended since Cataline conspired and Caesar fought."--_Henry W. Grady_.

FOREWORD.

Prior to the coming of Dorlan Warth.e.l.l, there were many to be found in the United States who utterly despaired of a happy solution of the problem of adjusting the relations of the Anglo-Saxon and Negro races to each other on an honorable and mutually satisfactory basis, taking care the while to meet the highest demands of the present and of all future ages.

Others, while not despairing, confessed that in the horizon subject to their vision not a glimmer of light appeared; confessed that they were only sustained by their general knowledge of nature's power to solve, through tears and years, all her problems.

Thus, until the day when Dorlan came, Columbia sat chained on the one side by benumbing pessimism and on the other by deferred hope. Accepting the judgment of so sweet and true a soul as Morlene, it was he who solved the problem. In view of the complicated nature of the problem and the great interests involved, its solution must ever be regarded as a noteworthy achievement.

It occurred to us that the ages which now sleep in the womb of time would be pleased to ponder the achievement, hoping to find in the spirit and method of its undertaking, suggestions that would enable them to deal wisely with the problems of their day.

For the sake, therefore, of posterity we have concluded to place on record a copy of Dorlan's Plan by means of which he swept away the last barrier that stood between himself and the woman who had entered into his life to give color to the whole of his existence in this world and in such other worlds as may afford a dwelling place for the spirit of man.

Perhaps a majority of those who have read "Unfettered" and have learned to share Dorlan's exalted opinion of Morlene, will not care to read the Plan, being content to rest the whole matter upon Morlene's decision. Those who pay such a tribute to our heroine may thus escape the tedium of wading through the dry details of a plan by means of which a long suffering race was saved.

Others who may be disposed to question Morlene's judgment, who think that her love for Dorlan influenced her to decide in his favor, are hereby furnished with the Plan and ordered to read it as a befitting punishment for their temerity.

As these "doubting Thomases" wearily plod their way through the Plan we hope that they will have ever present with them to add to their torture, the thought that they would have escaped the punishment of reading all that Dorlan wrote had they meekly accepted Morlene's verdict. As wail after wail shall arise proclaiming what dull reading the Plan makes, we shall chuckle gleefully and rub our hands joyfully, happy that those who would not take the word of our heroine have come to the end so richly deserved.

Those who accepted Morlene's verdict and now read the Plan simply for the purpose of defending her from hypercritical personages are heroes indeed.

For, be it remembered, it often requires more courage to read some books than it does to fight a battle.

Such may be the case with Dorlan's Plan, and all have fair warning.

THE AUTHOR.

DORLAN'S PLAN.

WHERE THE TROUBLE ARISES.

The Negro is a human being. He has manifested every essential trait of human nature. The following words from Emerson, spoken of each individual member of the human family, may be specially affirmed with regard to the Negro: "What Plato has thought he may think; what a saint has felt he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand."

The general laws governing the physical and psychic natures of men; that unfold the workings of the human body and the mental, moral, religious, social and aesthetic processes of the soul--the general laws governing these operations may be applied with as much force to the Negro as to any other human being.

This has been an age of astounding discoveries; but the physiologist, the psychist, the ethical writer, the ecclesiastic, the sociologist, the investigator of aesthetic manifestations, the ethnologist, the philologist, the natural scientist, though searching eagerly, have discovered naught to controvert or in anywise impair the doctrine of the unity of the human race as set forth in the declaration of Paul, "that all nations of men"

have been "made of one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth."

Those who concede to the humanity of the Negro and hold to the theory that man is upon the earth through the direct, specific, creative fiat of G.o.d, are forced to admit that the Negro's certificate of members.h.i.+p in the human family is signed by the Deity, and by virtue of that fact must be received at face value.

He who holds with the evolutionist that man is the product of evolutionary forces, working incessantly through the countless ages that lie behind us, must perceive that, in that event, the Negro can point to the fact that his presence in the human family has the sanction of the multiplied myriads of experiences that, from one forge, out of one material, through the one process, made him along with other human beings. If G.o.d is represented as presiding over the forces of evolution, the Negro may claim that G.o.d and nature have fixed his status as a human being.

Being forever established by the Supreme Architect of the universe within the line drawn to encircle humanity to the exclusion of all things else, the Negro is ent.i.tled to every right that inheres in the fact of his humanity. He is ent.i.tled to all the benefits of the feeling of distinctive fellows.h.i.+p--that feeling which operates to bind ant to ant, bird to bird, and man to man, as apart from other orders of beings. He is ent.i.tled to the designation, Brother. The Negro has identically the same right to live as other human beings; the same right as they to tread unfettered any and all of the pathways that destiny has marked out for human feet.

It is this conception of the basic, inherent right of the Negro to share on equal terms with all other human beings all the rights and privileges appertaining to members.h.i.+p in the human family that gives rise to the Race Problem in the United States of America. For, while the claim is pa.s.sionately cherished by the Negroes and is espoused with varying degrees of warmth by one section of the American whites, it is most vigorously opposed by another.

OUR PROBLEM.

It is our task to so utilize the forces at our command as to nullify all artificial hindrances to the development of the Negro; to remove from his soul the man-imposed fetters; to so open the way that the man with a black skin shall have his opportunities limited solely by his capacity, as is the case with those not of his color. We are to inst.i.tute merit as the test of preferment; mind, as the measure of the man. To reverse the standard of measurement, to transfer it from color to culture, is our problem.

The plan to be submitted must take cognizance of all the factors in the situation; must be capable of being operated by the race const.i.tuted, environed and conditioned as it is. With this conception of our task we begin our labors.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE OPPOSITION.

It is well in every species of combat for a man to seek to know the exact nature of the opposing force. Knowing this, one understands the better how to gauge his efforts. With this aim in view, we shall make a reconnoitre to discover just what is arrayed against us.

Mr. Herbert Spencer says: "It has come to be a maxim of science that in the causes still at work, are to be identified the causes which, similarly at work during past times, have produced the state of things now existing."

We would expect, therefore, to find the past yet affecting the Negro, and such is indeed the case. From the year 1619 until the close of the civil war, the white people of the South held the Negroes in slavery.

It is the habit of nature to confer upon a man those equalities that the better fit him for his line of work. In order to successfully hold slaves, the Southern man fostered the belief that the Negro's humanity was somehow of a different brand from his own. Having satisfied himself that essential differences existed between himself and the Negro, he was the better prepared to mete out treatment which he would have deemed outrageous if applied to himself by another.

To prevent uprisings on the part of the slaves repressive measures were inst.i.tuted, and the Southern white man became an adept in the art of controlling others, and his nature became inured to the task. The traits of character acquired in one generation were transmitted to succeeding generations, so that notions of inherent superiority and the belief in the right of repression became ingrained in Southern character.

In confirmation of this conclusion, we again quote from Mr. Herbert Spencer, who says: "The emotional nature prompting the general mode of conduct is derived from ancestors--is a product of all ancestral activities. * * * The governing sentiment is, in short, mainly the acc.u.mulated and organized sentiment of the past."

In view of the foregoing, it becomes evident that the repression which the Negro encounters to-day is but the offspring of his repression of yesterday.

STILL IN THE BALANCES.

In Prof. Giddings' "a.n.a.lysis of the population of the United States according to race, he says that the English temperament is represented by about 33-1/3 per cent., the prevailing Irish by about 29 per cent., and the prevailing Scotch by about 19 per cent. The percentage, not of course precise, is, he thinks, indicative of the influence on the American life and character of these racial tendencies."

We are laboring to add the voice of the Negro to this national chorus. The giving of the Negro an opportunity for untrammeled activity in the National Government means that much of an addition to and consequent alteration of our characteristic Americanism.

It is evident that the Negro will bring into the national spirit the influence of his peculiar characteristics. Now this adding to and taking from the national spirit is a most grave matter. Often the characteristic spirit of a people is a sole remaining reliance; is often the only a.s.set that the fluctuations of capricious fortune has not swept away.

The great importance that attaches to the spirit that characterizes a nation is set forth by Napoleon Bonaparte in the following words: "Had I been in 1815 the choice of the English as I was of the French, I might have lost the battle of Waterloo without losing a vote in the legislature or a soldier from my ranks." Allusion is here made to that British tendency to persist in a given course and adhere to the standards of chosen leaders in the midst of circ.u.mstances adverse and even appalling. On the soil of England and on many another spot where the Englishman's foot has trod, from the dying embers, yea, the smouldering ashes of defeat, victory has so often sprung as the result of the spirit to which Napoleon Bonaparte paid tribute.

The English speaking race holds woman in high esteem, but she has thus far been denied the right of suffrage because of the uncertainty as to what would be the resultant blend arising from her more active partic.i.p.ation in the affairs of State.

Mr. Wm. E. Lecky, in opposing the granting of the right of suffrage to the women of England, gave it as his opinion that the emotional element in politics was already sufficiently great without the addition of the strongly developed emotionalism of woman. The same sentiment of conservatism that operates to cause woman's rejection is, beyond question, a factor in our problem.

The Negro has but lately entered civilization's parlor. He possesses an oriental nature called to service in an occidental civilization. Of remarkably quiescent tendencies he must play a part in a government born of a revolutionary spirit and so devised that revolutions may be effected whenever desired through means of the ballot box.

The remarkable manner in which we have responded to the quickening touch of civilization; the revelation of traits of a sublime nature unparalleled in the world's history (witness the keen sense of honor that led us to care for the helpless wives and children of those who were at the seat of war fighting for our continued enslavement); the successful meeting, where conditions were favorable, of every test that civilization has thus far imposed--these considerations influence us to believe that the grasping of the flagstaff by Negro hands but means that the flag will float the higher and flutter the prouder and diffuse through the earth even greater glory than before our coming.

Before we can take up the full place for which we aspire, we must meet and combat the timorous conservatism that has. .h.i.therto impeded our progress.