Nevertheless, the negro question is by no means a problem for the South alone; the North has its interests, and it becomes clearer all the time that the solution of the problem will depend in large part on the co-operation of the North. In the first place it was the North which set the negro free, and which, therefore, is partly responsible for what he is to-day; and it must lie with the North to decide whether the great dangers which to-day threaten can in any way be obviated. Europe has so far considered only one feature of the negro question—that of slavery. All Europe read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and thought the difficulty solved as soon as the negro was freed from his chains and the poorest negro came into his human right of freedom. Europe was not aware that in this *wise still greater problems were created, and that greater springs of misery and misfortune for the negro there took their origin. Nor does Europe realize that opposition between whites and blacks has never been in the history of America so sharp and bitter and full of hatred as it is to-day. Just in the last few years the hatred has grown on both sides, so that no friend of the country can look into the future without misgivings. “Das eben ist die Frucht der bösen Tat.”
Yet where did the sin begin? Shall the blame fall on the English Parliament, which countenanced and even encouraged the trade in human bodies, or shall it fall on the Southern States, which kept the slaves in ignorance, and even threatened to punish any one who should instruct them? Or shall it fall on the Northern States, which were chiefly responsible for immediately granting to the freedmen, for the sake of party politics, all prerogatives of fellow-citizenship? Or shall the fault be put on the negro himself, who saw in his freedom from slavery an open door to idleness and worthlessness?
For generations the white man has regarded the black man as merchandise, has forcibly dragged him from his African jungles to make him work in ignorance and oppression on the cotton, rice, and tobacco fields of a white master. Then all at once he was made free and became an equal citizen in a country which, in its abilities, its feelings, its laws, and its Constitution, had the culture of two thousand years behind it. How has this emancipation worked on these millions? The first decade was a period of unrest and of almost frightened awakening to the consciousness of physical freedom, in the midst of all the after-effects of the fearful war. The negro was terrified by Southern secret societies which were planning vengeance, and confused by the dogmas of unscrupulous politicians who canvassed the states which had been so savagely shaken by the war, in order to gather up whatever might be found; and he was confused by a thousand other contradictions in public sentiment. Nowhere was there a secure refuge. Then followed the time in which the negroes hoped to employ their political power to advantage; the negroes were to be prospered by their ballot. But they found this to be a hopeless mistake. Then they believed a better way was to be found in the public schools and books. But the negro was again turned back; he needed not knowledge but the power to do, not books but a trade. So his rallying-cry has shifted. The blacks have never lost heart, and in a certain sense it must in justice be added the whites have never lacked good-will. And yet, after forty years of freedom, the results are highly discouraging.