7. RESULTS AND LATER CONDITIONS The Negro's Heritage from the Carpetbaggers [1885] Wallace, Carpet Bag Rule in Florida, p. 345. ALTHOUGH the carpet-bag Government was overthrown in 1876, a certain property was bequeathed to the colored people by the carpet-baggers which has been and still is to a certain extent very damaging and burdensome to them. They left upon the minds of thousands of our people the impression that the drunkard, the thief or the most ignorant were as fit to represent them in the government as the most intelligent and upright men of the race. They impressed upon the minds of thousands of our people the idea that the great privilege of the suffrage is a purchasable merchandise; that political meetings and conventions must be run and controlled by mobs, . . . that the best way to accumulate money and acquire an education was to spend their time in gossiping in politics. The demoralization in which our people were left by the carpet-baggers is gradually being wiped out by the labors of the best men and women and by the colored press of the State. Our people are becoming fully awakened to the necessity of the proper education of their children. The greater portion of them, who heretofore spent their time in going around electioneering for the purpose of pulling carpet-baggers into office to the neglect of legitimate and profitable occupation, now turn their attention to acquiring property and education. "A Hole in the Ballot-box" [1883] Senate Report on Labor and Capital, testimony, vol. iv, p. 618. Senate committee (1883). Statement of a Georgia negro. WHILST these bad politicians had possession of us, and while we hadn't been educated enough to understand how those men were doing, we were in trouble, but we came to look . . for ourselves. We thought we wouldn't vote just as we were told, but we would search a man and see if he was a reasonable man, 433 whether he was a Democrat or a Republican. Now many of us sometimes support the Democratic candidates as well as the Republican candidates, because we believe that a man who is a Democrat here is more honest than a Republican... We don't mind party lines at all now. We are looking out for the best interests of our people, and we are standing in the field and looking for the party that will do us the most justice. What we want is equal rights before the law. . . Some of them are good men, and they proved better men than the Republicans, but still we don't put the whole hog on them. . . And, again, we picked out some men and sent them to the legislature, and those men deceived us, and they made us hewers of wood and drawers of water to ride on. . . Still we are deprived of juries and various things. . . We elected one tax-collector and sent one to the legislature, and he staid there awhile, but the Democrats was in the majority, . . and he never came back any more. . . You see the Democrats was in a majority, and they passed a resolution to tie him up, and he didn't exactly understand the resolution, and some of them voted for the resolution, and whilst they done that it voted him out. . . We are in a majority here, but you may vote till your eyes drop out or your tongue drops out, and you can't count your colored man in out of them boxes; there's a hole gets in the bottom of the boxes some way and lets out our votes. Now, in other ways, we have been getting along very well. There was times when the days was dark; . . Now, when the Democrats get hold of the polls, all the votes are counted, and so we shall ask the Senator to sympathize with us, that we can all step up to the polls and vote without men using violence; they don't do it now, but they used to do it. "Citizenship Made the Negro a Man" Talbot, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, p. 260. Letter of S. C. Armstrong. Used by permission of Mrs. Talbot and Doubleday, Page and Company. [1887] AFTER all, being a citizen and a voter has more than anything else made the Negro a man. has done much to create it. The recognition of his manhood sword which may cut both ways and do as much harm as good. In the main, it has, I believe, been the chief developing force in the progress of the race. It is, however, probable that this would not have been so had it not been for the support of a surrounding white civilization which, though not always kind, has prevented the evils which would have resulted from an unrestricted black vote. The political experience of the Negro has been a great education to him. In spite of his many blunders and unintentional crimes against civilization, he is to-day more of a man than he would have been had he not been a voter. . . Manhood is best brought out by recognition of it. Citizenship, together with the common school, is the great developing force in this country. It compels attention to the danger which it creates. There is nothing like faith in man to bring out the manly qualities. Suffrage furnished him (the Negro) with a stimulus which was terribly misused, but it has reacted and given him a training which it was out of the power of churches and schools to impart. The source of American intelligence is not so much the pedagogue as the system which gives each man a share in the conduct of affairs, leading him to think, discuss and act, and thus educating him quite as much by his failure as by his success. Negro and White Artisans Used by per P. A. Bruce, Plantation Negro as a Freedman, ch. xv. [1889] BEFORE slavery was abolished, every plantation . . was supplied with mechanics from the ranks of the negroes attached to it... No slaves played a more useful part in the economy of the plantation than the black mechanics. . . Emancipation had the same general effect on the mechanics as upon every distinct class of the negroes. . . Their desertion of the localities where they had always dwelt virtually meant, in most instances, the abandonment of the trades to which they had been trained by so many years of experience. . . The shops of the carpenters and wheelwrights (which are always similarly situated) are usually occupied by white men . . one of the most discour aging features of the character of the negroes who have grown up since the war is their extreme aversion to the mechanical trades. . such pursuits constrain them to conform more closely than they like to a steady routine of work which is most arduous and trying, on the whole. . . The places of a few of the mechanics who were trained under the old regime, have been taken by young negroes who have been trained in industrial schools. Negroes who have been educated in industrial schools are, however, very rare. In consequence of this, as well as of the fact that the individuals of the race are not inclined to adopt mechanical pursuits, these pursuits, as the mechanics among the freedmen die, are in rural districts gradually falling into the hands of the whites. [1888] The Abodes of the Blacks in Cities Twenty-first Report, Freedmen's Aid Society, p. 45. THEY live in low, damp basements or crowded attics, situated on narrow alleys reeking with filth and moral and physical pol lution. Their miserable abodes are exposed to the chilly blasts of winter, with leaky roofs that offer but slight protection from the snow and rain. If they were able to do If they were able to do so, in many places they cannot, on account of their color, rent good houses in respectable localities. They often suffer from insufficient clothing, and children may be seen in their bare feet even in the midst of winter. Their food is often of poor quality and lacking in quantity, corn-bread, bacon, coffee, and molasses being the standard diet. They are obliged to labor early and late, wet or dry, cold or hot; and this, with their insufficient clothing, is frequently a prolific cause of disease. Their ignorance concerning the laws of health is appalling. Their churches are usually crowded, and ventilation is almost unknown. In one of the largest churches in Nashville, in the basement of which services were held for several years, there was only about fifty cubic feet of air-space to each person, only one-tenth of what is necessary; and during protracted meetings they would remain in this poisonous atmosphere for hours. Agriculture, 1860-1893 Report of Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, on Cotton Production, vol. i, pp. 308-371, passim. The first and second selections are from Alabama planters' letters; the third is from Gen. Stephen D. Lee, then president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi. [1893] [1] THE Southern half of Henry and all of Geneva and Coffee counties are in the great pine belt [white districts], a comparatively newly-settled section. The farmers in this section of the district, as a rule, live on their farms and do their own work, and work with their hired help when they have any, and, as a rule, they raise their own supplies of meat and forage and some horses and mules, consequently are in better condition as cotton raisers than in any other portion of the district if not in the State... The State legislature is largely responsible for the credit system, and the present odious negro tenant system, which has fastened the all-cotton system in all the black belt, which embraces what is known as the great cotton belt of the State. Soon after the war . . in a mistaken effort to assist the land-poor . farmer, the legislature enacted what is known as the "crop lien law," making it legal to mortgage an unplanted crop to enable the cotton-raiser. . to borrow money . to borrow money and get advances. to make a crop. Unfortunately this law had too wide a scope. It opened up the flood gates of the credit system and turned over the fairest portion of the State to negro tenants, who up to that time was content on the wage or share system to cultivate the lands under the intelligent direction of the land owner or his agent. . . The negro refused to be controlled or to work under the direction of the owner of the farm or an agent, as under this law he could get advances in mules, implements, and supplies as a tenant. The cotton-raisers were forced to rent to the labor on their lands or turn it out to the commons. The whole labor system was completely demoralized. All farm animals, cattle, and hogs, and forage soon changed hands or disappeared, and the farmers generally in this great cotton belt moved to the towns. The tenants relying upon the advancing merchant for food and forage and supplies, raised but little of |