The Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois

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1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts for freedmen.

2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen's best friend.

3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital.

4. To establish schools.

5. To furnish such institutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor relief
stations, etc.

How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedom
with less than this it is hard to see. Even with such tutelage extending
over a period of two or three decades, the ultimate end had to be
enfranchisement and political and social freedom for those freedmen who
attained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had neither
object nor guarantee. Precisely on this account the former masters opposed
the Freedmen's Bureau with all their influence. They did not want the
Negro trained or really freed, and they criticized mercilessly the many
mistakes of the new Bureau.

The North at first thought to pay for the main cost of the Freedmen's
Bureau by confiscating the property of former slave owners; but finding
this not in accordance with law, they realized that they were embarking on
an enterprise which bade fair to add many millions to the already
staggering cost of the war. When, therefore, they saw that the abolition
of slavery could not be left to the white South and could not be done by
the North without time and money, they determined to put the
responsibility on the Negro himself. This was without a doubt a tremendous
experiment, but with all its manifest mistakes it succeeded to an
astonishing degree. It made the immediate reestablishment of the old
slavery impossible, and it was probably the only quick method of doing
this. It gave the freedmen's sons a chance to begin their education. It
diverted the energy of the white South slavery to the recovery of
political power, and in this interval, small as it was, the Negro took his
first steps toward economic freedom.

The difficulties that stared reconstruction politicians in the face were
these: (1) They must act quickly. (2) Emancipation had increased the
political power of the South by one-sixth. Could this increased political
power be put in the hands of those who, in defense of slavery, had
disrupted the Union? (3) How was the abolition of slavery to be made
effective? (4) What was to be the political position of the freedmen?

The Freedmen's Bureau in its short life accomplished a great task. Carl
Schurz, in 1865, felt warranted in saying that "not half of the labor that
has been done in the South this year, or will be done there next year,
would have been or would be done but for the exertions of the Freedmen's
Bureau.... No other agency except one placed there by the national
government could have wielded that moral power whose interposition was so
necessary to prevent Southern society from falling at once into the chaos
of a general collision between its different elements."[99]
Notwithstanding this the Bureau was temporary, was regarded as a
makeshift, and soon abandoned.

Meantime partial Negro suffrage seemed not only just, but almost
inevitable. Lincoln, in 1864, "cautiously" suggested to Louisiana's
private consideration "whether some of the colored people may not be let
in as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who fought
gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in some trying time to
come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom." Indeed, the
"family of freedom" in Louisiana being somewhat small just then, who else
was to be intrusted with the "jewel"? Later and for different reasons
Johnson, in 1865, wrote to Mississippi, "If you could extend the elective
franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the
United States in English and write their name, and to all persons of color
who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars,
and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set
an example the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect
safety, and you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free
persons of color, upon the same basis with the free states. I hope and
trust your convention will do this."

The Negroes themselves began to ask for the suffrage. The Georgia
convention in Augusta (1866) advocated "a proposition to give those who
could write and read well and possessed a certain property qualification
the right of suffrage." The reply of the South to these suggestions was
decisive. In Tennessee alone was any action attempted that even suggested
possible Negro suffrage in the future, and that failed. In all other
states the "Black Codes" adopted were certainly not reassuring to the
friends of freedom. To be sure, it was not a time to look for calm, cool,
thoughtful action on the part of the white South. Their economic condition
was pitiable, their fear of Negro freedom genuine. Yet it was reasonable
to expect from them something less than repression and utter reaction
toward slavery. To some extent this expectation was fulfilled. The
abolition of slavery was recognized on the statute book, and the civil
rights of owning property and appearing as a witness in cases in which he
was a party were generally granted the Negro; yet with these in many cases
went harsh and unbearable regulations which largely neutralized the
concessions and certainly gave ground for an assumption that, once free,
the South would virtually reenslave the Negro. The colored people
themselves naturally feared this, protesting, as in Mississippi, "against
the reactionary policy prevailing and expressing the fear that the
legislature will pass such prescriptive laws as will drive the freedmen
from the state, or practically reenslave them."

The codes spoke for themselves. As Burgess says, "Almost every act, word,
or gesture of the Negro, not consonant with good taste and good manners as
well as good morals, was made a crime or misdemeanor for which he could
first be fined by the magistrates and then be consigned to a condition of
almost slavery for an indefinite time, if he could not pay the bill."[100]

All things considered, it seems probable that, if the South had been
permitted to have its way in 1865, the harshness of Negro slavery would
have been mitigated so as to make slave trading difficult, and so as to
make it possible for a Negro to hold property and appear in some cases in
court; but that in most other respects the blacks would have remained in
slavery.

What could prevent this? A Freedmen's Bureau established for ten, twenty,
or forty years, with a careful distribution of land and capital and a
system of education for the children, might have prevented such an
extension of slavery. But the country would not listen to such a
comprehensive plan. A restricted grant of the suffrage voluntarily made by
the states would have been a reassuring proof of a desire to treat the
freedmen fairly and would have balanced in part, at least, the increased
political power of the South. There was no such disposition evident.

In Louisiana, for instance, under the proposed reconstruction "not one
Negro was allowed to vote, though at that very time the wealthy
intelligent free colored people of the state paid taxes on property
assessed at fifteen million dollars and many of them were well known for
their patriotic zeal and love for the Union."[101]

Thus the arguments for universal Negro suffrage from the start were strong
and are still strong, and no one would question their strength were it not
for the assumption that the experiment failed. Frederick Douglass said to
President Johnson, "Your noble and humane predecessor placed in our hands
the sword to assist in saving the nation, and we do hope that you, his
able successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballot
with which to save ourselves."[102]

Carl Schurz wrote, "It is idle to say that it will be time to speak of
Negro suffrage when the whole colored race will be educated, for the
ballot may be necessary to him to secure his education."[103]

The granting of full Negro suffrage meant one of two alternatives to the
South: (1) The uplift of the Negro for sheer self-preservation. This is
what Schurz and the saner North expected. As one Southern school
superintendent said, "The elevation of this class is a matter of prime
importance, since a ballot in the hands of a black citizen is quite as
potent as in the hands of a white one." Or (2) Negro suffrage meant a
determined concentration of Southern effort by actual force to deprive the
Negro of the ballot or nullify its use. This last is what really happened.
But even in this case, so much energy was taken in keeping the Negro from
voting that the plan for keeping him in virtual slavery and denying him
education partially failed. It took ten years to nullify Negro suffrage in
part and twenty years to escape the fear of federal intervention. In these
twenty years a vast number of Negroes had arisen so far as to escape
slavery forever. Debt peonage could be fastened on part of the rural South
and was; but even here the new Negro landholder appeared. Thus despite
everything the Fifteenth Amendment, and that alone, struck the death knell
of slavery.

The steps toward the Fifteenth Amendment were taken slowly. First Negroes
were allowed to take part in reconstructing the state governments. This
was inevitable if loyal governments were to be obtained. Next the restored
state governments were directed to enfranchise all citizens, black or
white, or have their representation in Congress cut down proportionately.
Finally the United States said the last word of simple justice: the states
may regulate the suffrage, but no state may deprive a person of the right
to vote simply because he is a Negro or has been a slave.

For such reasons the Negro was enfranchised. What was the result? No
language has been spared to describe these results as the worst
imaginable. This is not true. There were bad results, and bad results
arising from Negro suffrage; but those results were not so bad as usually
painted, nor was Negro suffrage the prime cause of many of them. Let us
not forget that the white South believed it to be of vital interest to its
welfare that the experiment of Negro suffrage should fail ignominiously
and that almost to a man the whites were willing to insure this failure
either by active force or passive acquiescence; that besides this there
were, as might be expected, men, black and white, Northern and Southern,
only too eager to take advantage of such a situation for feathering their
own nests. Much evil must result in such case; but to charge the evil to
Negro suffrage is unfair. It may be charged to anger, poverty, venality,
and ignorance, but the anger and poverty were the almost inevitable
aftermath of war; the venality was much greater among whites than Negroes
both North and South, and while ignorance was the curse of Negroes, the
fault was not theirs and they took the initiative to correct it.

The chief charges against the Negro governments are extravagance, theft,
and incompetency of officials. There is no serious charge that these
governments threatened civilization or the foundations of social order.
The charge is that they threatened property and that they were
inefficient. These charges are in part undoubtedly true, but they are
often exaggerated. The South had been terribly impoverished and saddled
with new social burdens. In other words, states with smaller resources
were asked not only to do a work of restoration, but a larger social
work. The property holders were aghast. They not only demurred, but,
predicting ruin and revolution, they appealed to secret societies, to
intimidation, force, and murder. They refused to believe that these
novices in government and their friends were aught but scamps and fools.
Under the circumstances occurring directly after the war, the wisest
statesman would have been compelled to resort to increased taxation and
would have, in turn, been execrated as extravagant, dishonest, and
incompetent. It is easy, therefore, to see what flaming and incredible
stories of Reconstruction governments could gain wide currency and belief.
In fact the extravagance, although great, was not universal, and much of
it was due to the extravagant spirit pervading the whole country in a day
of inflated currency and speculation.

That the Negroes led by the astute thieves, became at first tools and
received some small share of the spoils is true. But two considerations
must be added: much of the legislation which resulted in fraud was
represented to the Negroes as good legislation, and thus their votes were
secured by deliberate misrepresentation. Take, for instance, the land
frauds of South Carolina. A wise Negro leader of that state, advocating
the state purchase of farm lands, said, "One of the greatest of slavery
bulwarks was the infernal plantation system, one man owning his thousand,
another his twenty, another fifty thousand acres of land. This is the only
way by which we will break up that system, and I maintain that our freedom
will be of no effect if we allow it to continue. What is the main cause of
the prosperity of the North? It is because every man has his own farm and
is free and independent. Let the lands of the South be similarly
divided."[104]

From such arguments the Negroes were induced to aid a scheme to buy land
and distribute it. Yet a large part of eight hundred thousand dollars
appropriated was wasted and went to the white landholders' pockets.

The most inexcusable cheating of the Negroes took place through the
Freedmen's Bank. This bank was incorporated by Congress in 1865 and had in
its list of incorporators some of the greatest names in America including
Peter Cooper, William Cullen Bryan and John Jay. Yet the bank was allowed
to fail in 1874 owing the freedmen their first savings of over three
millions of dollars. They have never been reimbursed.

Many Negroes were undoubtedly venal, but more were ignorant and deceived.
The question is: Did they show any signs of a disposition to learn to
better things? The theory of democratic government is not that the will of
the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average
intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by
bitter experience. This is precisely what the Negro voters showed
indubitable signs of doing. First they strove for schools to abolish
ignorance, and second, a large and growing number of them revolted against
the extravagance and stealing that marred the beginning of Reconstruction,
and joined with the best elements to institute reform. The greatest stigma
on the white South is not that it opposed Negro suffrage and resented
theft and incompetence, but that, when it saw the reform movements growing
and even in some cases triumphing, and a larger and larger number of black
voters learning to vote for honesty and ability, it still preferred a
Reign of Terror to a campaign of education and disfranchised Negroes
instead of punishing rascals.

No one has expressed this more convincingly than a Negro who was himself a
member of the Reconstruction legislature of South Carolina, and who spoke
at the convention which disfranchised him against one of the onslaughts of
Tillman. "We were eight years in power. We had built school houses,
established charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary
system, provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the jails
and court houses, rebuilt the bridges, and reestablished the ferries. In
short, we had reconstructed the state and placed it upon the road to
prosperity, and at the same time, by our acts of financial reform,
transmitted to the Hampton government an indebtedness not greater by more
than two and a half million dollars than was the bonded debt of the state
in 1868, before the Republican Negroes and their white allies came into
power."[105]

So, too, in Louisiana in 1872, and in Mississippi later, the better
element of the Republicans triumphed at the polls and, joining with the
Democrats, instituted reforms, repudiated the worst extravagance, and
started toward better things. Unfortunately there was one thing that the
white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and
incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.

In the midst of all these difficulties the Negro governments in the South
accomplished much of positive good. We may recognize three things which
Negro rule gave to the South: (1) democratic government, (2) free public
schools, (3) new social legislation.

In general, the words of Judge Albion W. Tourgee, a white "carpet bagger,"
are true when he says of the Negro governments, "They obeyed the
Constitution of the United States and annulled the bonds of states,
counties, and cities which had been issued to carry on the War of
Rebellion and maintain armies in the field against the Union. They
instituted a public school system in a realm where public schools had been
unknown. They opened the ballot box and the jury box to thousands of white
men who had been debarred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They
introduced home rule into the South. They abolished the whipping post, the
branding iron, the stocks, and other barbarous forms of punishment which
had up to that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about
twenty to two or three. In an age of extravagance they were extravagant in
the sums appropriated for public works. In all of that time no man's
rights of persons were invaded under the forms of law. Every Democrat's
life, home, fireside, and business were safe. No man obstructed any white
man's way to the ballot box, interfered with his freedom of speech, or
boycotted him on account of his political faith."[106]

A thorough study of the legislation accompanying these constitutions and
its changes since shows the comparatively small amount of change in law
and government which the overthrow of Negro rule brought about. There were
sharp and often hurtful economies introduced, marking the return of
property to power; there was a sweeping change of officials, but the main
body of Reconstruction legislation stood. The Reconstruction democracy
brought forth new leaders and definitely overthrew the old Southern
aristocracy. Among these new men were Negroes of worth and ability. John
R. Lynch, when Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, was
given a public testimonial by Republicans and Democrats, and the leading
white paper said, "His bearing in office had been so proper, and his
rulings in such marked contrasts to the partisan conduct of the ignoble
whites of his party who have aspired to be leaders of the blacks, that the
conservatives cheerfully joined in the testimonial."[107]

Of the colored treasurer of South Carolina the white Governor Chamberlain
said, "I have never heard one word or seen one act of Mr. Cardoza's which
did not confirm my confidence in his personal integrity and his political
honor and zeal for the honest administration of the state government. On
every occasion, and under all circumstances, he has been against fraud and
robbery and in favor of good measures and good men."[108]

Jonathan C. Gibbs, a colored man and the first state superintendent of
instruction in Florida, was a graduate of Dartmouth. He established the
system and brought it to success, dying in harness in 1874. Such men--and
there were others--ought not to be forgotten or confounded with other
types of colored and white Reconstruction leaders.

There is no doubt that the thirst of the black man for knowledge, a thirst
which has been too persistent and durable to be mere curiosity or whim,
gave birth to the public school system of the South. It was the question
upon which black voters and legislators insisted more than anything else,
and while it is possible to find some vestiges of free schools in some of
the Southern States before the war, yet a universal, well-established
system dates from the day that the black man got political power.

Finally, in legislation covering property, the wider functions of the
state, the punishment of crime and the like, it is sufficient to say that
the laws on these points established by Reconstruction legislatures were
not only different from and even revolutionary to the laws in the older
South, but they were so wise and so well suited to the needs of the new
South that, in spite of a retrogressive movement following the overthrow
of the Negro governments, the mass of this legislation, with elaborations
and development, still stands on the statute books of the South.[109]

The triumph of reaction in the South inaugurated a new era in which we may
distinguish three phases: the renewed attempt to reduce the Negroes to
serfdom, the rise of the Negro metayer, and the economic disfranchisement
of the Southern working class.

The attempt to replace individual slavery had been frustrated by the
Freedmen's Bureau and the Fifteenth Amendment. The disfranchisement of
1876 was followed by the widespread rise of "crime" peonage. Stringent
laws on vagrancy, guardianship, and labor contracts were enacted and large
discretion given judge and jury in cases of petty crime. As a result
Negroes were systematically arrested on the slightest pretext and the
labor of convicts leased to private parties. This "convict lease system"
was almost universal in the South until about 1890, when its outrageous
abuses and cruelties aroused the whole country. It still survives over
wide areas, and is not only responsible for the impression that the Negro
is a natural criminal, but also for the inability of the Southern courts
to perform their normal functions after so long a prostitution to ends far
removed from justice.

In more normal economic lines the employers began with the labor contract
system. Before the war they owned labor, land, and subsistence. After the
war they still held the land and subsistence. The laborer was hired and
the subsistence "advanced" to him while the crop was growing. The fall of
the Freedmen's Bureau hindered the transmutation of this system into a
modern wage system, and allowed the laborers to be cheated by high
interest charges on the subsistence advanced and actual cheating often in
book accounts.

The black laborers became deeply dissatisfied under this system and began
to migrate from the country to the cities, where there was an increasing
demand for labor. The employing farmers complained bitterly of the
scarcity of labor and of Negro "laziness," and secured the enactment of
harsher vagrancy and labor contract laws, and statutes against the
"enticement" of laborers. So severe were these laws that it was often
impossible for a laborer to stop work without committing a felony.
Nevertheless competition compelled the landholders to offer more
inducements to the farm hand. The result was the rise of the black share
tenant: the laborer securing better wages saved a little capital and began
to hire land in parcels of forty to eighty acres, furnishing his own tools
and seed and practically raising his own subsistence. In this way the
whole face of the labor contract in the South was, in the decade 1880-90,
in process of change from a nominal wage contract to a system of tenantry.
The great plantations were apparently broken up into forty and eighty acre
farms with black farmers. To many it seemed that emancipation was
accomplished, and the black folk were especially filled with joy and hope.

It soon was evident, however, that the change was only partial. The
landlord still held the land in large parcels. He rented this in small
farms to tenants, but retained direct control. In theory the laborer was
furnishing capital, but in the majority of cases he was borrowing at
least a part of this capital from some merchant.

The retail merchant in this way entered on the scene as middle man between
landlord and laborer. He guaranteed the landowner his rent and relieved
him of details by taking over the furnishing of supplies to the laborer.
He tempted the laborer by a larger stock of more attractive goods, made a
direct contract with him, and took a mortgage on the growing crop. Thus he
soon became the middle man to whom the profit of the transaction largely
flowed, and he began to get rich.

If the new system benefited the merchant and the landlord, it also brought
some benefits to the black laborers. Numbers of these were still held in
peonage, and the mass were laborers working for scant board and clothes;
but above these began to rise a large number of independent tenants and
farm owners.

In 1890, therefore, the South was faced by this question: Are we willing
to allow the Negro to advance as a free worker, peasant farmer, metayer,
and small capitalist, with only such handicaps as naturally impede the
poor and ignorant, or is it necessary to erect further artificial barriers
to restrain the advance of the Negroes? The answer was clear and
unmistakable. The advance of the freedmen had been too rapid and the South
feared it; every effort must be made to "keep the Negro in his place" as a
servile caste.

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