ment. Nevertheless, it is obviously impossible for a fraction of regenerated negroes, with neither faith nor force behind them, not to mention a lack of other essential endowments, - to change the habits and ideals of those from whom they have emerged, and who, in consequence, are bound to regard them as not a whit better than themselves.

The duty of all serious promoters of negro enlightenment is to apply to racial viciousness such correctives as the soundest experience has demonstrated to be the most efficacious in promoting the social bettering of mankind. Present methods will not regenerate the negro race; neither sobriety nor stability is ever attained by a homeless people. The negro needs to be taught how to create and maintain a home in honor and purity, and to that end he requires the influence of wholesome example and the inspiration of supervising contact. But no substantial moral elevation of the negro is possible without the intervention and coöperation of highly qualified women, such as are thoroughly capable, painstaking, and God-fearing teachers of truth and righteousness. This is a common-sense suggestion, and it is in line with conditions of aid which now exist. Negroes are accustomed to industrial control, and have been for centuries in abject submission to the white people of the South, who know, as no others can, all their good and bad qualities. We are therefore constrained to believe that, were the best representatives of Southern white civilization to lay aside their

exclusive race arrogance, there is little doubt but that prodigious results would follow any candid and serious purpose on their part to accomplish the freedman's regeneration.

It ought, moreover, to be said that this duty is fairly incumbent upon those who have so interminably dominated an inferior race, and with whom, through vicious sexual alliance, they have become inextricably entangled in blood, lineage, speech, and habits. Candidly speaking, the white people of the South owe it to our civilization and Christianity, as well as to themselves and their posterity, to purify, by chaste speech and wholesome example, the homes of the blacks whom they and their ancestors have so wantonly debauched. It is no less a matter of moral preservation than their imperative duty, to arrest the degeneracy of that race with whom their future is inseparably bound up. But, whether or not this work is taken up by the white men and women of the South, the fetidness of negro sensuality must be eradicated. It can only be done, however, through an army of good and true women; and as no sufficient number of such women are to be found within the race itself, they must be sought from without. Where can such divinely consecrated teachers and exemplars of righteousness as this work requires be found? The only feasible hope for such a consummation centres in such white women of the North as may be aroused to a sense of the needs and wants of a degraded black sisterhood, and who, by going to its relief, shall train

the young negro women into abhorrence for immorality, and lead them to chaste living.

The freedmen require in this, as in other respects, not benevolent pandering nor lordly oversight, but genuine service unstintedly rendered for helpful and wholesome race improvement. To blunder in the face of such opportunities would be criminal, and it would be an unpardonable blunder to exploit any half-hearted measures for the freedman's redemption. The conscience of the negro is imperfectly developed, and he needs constant drill in moral endeavor, under such guidance and surrounded by such influences as will reduce the possibilities of immoral relapse to a minimum. Such training should begin at the cradle. Never, until this is done, shall we succeed in inculcating in this people such ideals as will develop characters grounded on integrity and consecrated to service and duty. Despite their vanity, sensuous follies, and instability of temperament, our freed men and women have within them an unfathomed wealth of sentiment, which only awaits the deft hand of moral tactfulness to be moulded into serious and steady response to the demands of life.

CHAPTER VIII

CRIMINAL INSTINCTS

EVERY social organism is founded on laws defining right and wrong. But, apart from any legal definition, a sense of right and wrong is grounded in the human understanding. Crimes are offences prohibited by municipal law. Crime is a menace to social order, an infringement upon individual rights, an assault on private property. Criminals are the open and avowed enemies of mankind, against whom society has a right to protect itself in every possible way. The crime instinct has its source in moral obtuseness and physical desire, and the criminal class may be divided into the congenital, the habitual, and the spasmodic, according to the proclivities evinced in each particular person.

The extent of the crime instinct in the negro is indeterminate for the reason that accurate data are unattainable. In so far as he has been held to an outward observance of moral restraints, it is obvious that fear of bodily harm has been the chief influence which has kept him in check. That his nature is surcharged with latent ferocity is shown by abundant evidence of atrociousness, committed on weak and

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defenceless objects. Indeed, there is good ground for believing that, were the negro once convincingly assured of personal security, all the malignity of his slumbering savagery would immediately find expression in the most revolting acts of physical lawlessness. His passions are easily excited, and his feelings readily inflamed to the point of reckless vindictiveness, though a natural unsteadiness of character renders him fickle and unstable in purpose.

For the commission of crime requiring forethought, coolness, sagacity, and persistency, the negro would be entirely wanting in the requisite courage. He can and does commit offences of horrible atrociousness, but rather as the sequence of impulse than as the outcome of deliberate preparation. At every step in his criminal career he is timid and cowardly, and, whether his victims be human or animal, he is never generous in treatment nor magnanimous in forbearance so long as he occupies the vantage ground. When detected and apprehended, he exhibits all the cravenness of a servile nature by confessing with verbose volubility every harrowing detail of his revolting misdeeds, and the more heinous the crime committed. the greater appears his self-heroism. Should he be adjudged guilty and sentenced to undergo capital punishment, he awaits the end with a seeming impatience and a serenity that betokens resignation and submission to a just award, though as a matter of fact his attitude is merely the result of moral obtuseness and apathetic indifference to an impending fate.

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