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The Brothers' War, by John Calvin Reed
Title: The Brothers' War
Author: John Calvin Reed
Release Date: October 31, 2011 [EBook #37890] Language: English
*** THE BROTHERS' WAR ***
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THE BROTHERS' WAR
THE BROTHERS' WAR
BY
JOHN C. REED OF GEORGIA
AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN LAW STUDIES," "CONDUCT OF LAWSUITS" "THE OLD AND NEW SOUTH"
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1905
1
Copyright, 1905,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published October, 1905
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
[Pg v] PREFACE
I WOULD explain the real causes and greater consequences of the bloody brothers' war. I pray that all of us be delivered, as far as
may be, from bias and prejudice. The return of old affection between the sections showed gracious beginning in the centennial year. In the war with Spain southerners rallied to the stars and stripes as enthusiastically as northerners. Reconcilement has accelerated its pace every hour since. But it is not yet complete. The south has these things to learn:
1. A providence, protecting the American union, hallucinated Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Stowe, Sumner, and other radical abolitionists, as to the negro and the effect of southern slavery upon him, its purpose being to destroy slavery because it was the
sine qua non of southern nationalization, the only serious menace ever made to that union. This nationalization was stirring strongly before the federal constitution was adopted. The abolitionists, as is the case with all forerunners of great occurrences, were trained and educated by the powers directing evolution, and they were constrained to do not their own will but that of these mighty powers.
2. The cruel cotton tax; the constitution amended to prevent repentance of uncompensated emancipation, which is the greatest confiscation on record; the resolute effort to put the southern whites under the[Pg vi] negroes; and other such measures; were but natural outcome of the frenzied intersectional struggle of twenty-five years and the resulting terrible war. Had there been another event, who can be sure that the south would not have committed misdeeds of vengeance against citizens of the north?
3. We of the south ought to tolerate the freest discussion of every phase of the race question. We should ungrudgingly recognize that the difference of the northern masses from us in opinion is natural and honest. Let us hear their expressions with civility, and then without warmth and show of disrespect give the reasons for our contrary faith. This is the only way for us to get what we need so much, that is, audience from our brothers across the line. Consider some great southerners who have handled most exciting sectional themes without giving offence. There is no invective in Calhoun's speech, of March 4, 1850, though he clearly discerned that abolition was forcing the south into revolution. Stephens, who had been vice-president of the Confederate States, reviewed in detail soon after the brothers' war the conflict of opinion which caused it, and yet in his two large volumes he spoke not a word of rancor. When congress was doing memorial honor to Charles Sumner, it was Lamar, a southerner of southerners, that made the most touching panegyric of the dead. And the other day was Dixon's masterly effort to prove that the real, even if unconscious, purpose of the training at Tuskegee is ultimately to promote fusion, which the southern whites deem the greatest of evils. His language is entirely free from passion or asperity. He wonders in admiration at the marvellous rise of Booker Washington from lowest estate to unique greatness. And he[Pg vii] gives genuine sympathy to Professor DuBois, in whose book, "The Souls of Black Folk," as he says, "for
the first time we see the naked soul of a negro beating itself to death against the bars in which Aryan society has caged him."
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These examples of Calhoun, Stephens, Lamar, and Dixon should be the emulation of every southerner speaking to the nation upon any subject that divides north and south. This done, we will get the audience we seek. It was this which not long ago gave Clark Howell's strong paper opposing negro appointments to office in the south prominent place in Collier's, and which last month obtained for Dixon's article just mentioned the first pages of the Saturday Evening Post. When we get full audience, other such
discussions as those of Howell and Dixon, and that in which Tom Watson, in the June number of his magazine, showed Dr. Booker
Washington a thing or two, will be digested by the northern public, to the great advantage of the whole country.
The last I have to say here is as to differing opinions upon social recognition of prominent negroes. We of the south give them great honor and respect. Could not Mr. Roosevelt have said to us of Georgia protesting against his entertainment of Booker Washington, "Have I done worse than you did when you had him to make that address at the opening of your Exposition in 1895, and applauded it to the echo?" Suppose, as is true, that hardly a man in the south would eat at the same table with Dr. Washington or Professor DuBois, how can that justify us in heaping opprobrium upon a northern man who does otherwise because he has been taught to believe it right? What has been said in denunciation of the president and Mr. Wanamaker for[Pg viii] their conduct towards Booker Washington seems to me rather a hullabaloo of antediluvian moss-backs than the voice of the best and wisest southerners.
Amid all her gettings let the south get complete calmness upon everything connected with the race question--complete deliverance
from morbid sensitiveness and intemperate speech in its discussion.
Now here is what the north should learn:
1. Slavery in America was the greatest benefit that any large part of the negro race ever received; and sudden and unqualified emancipation was woe inexpressible to nearly all the freedmen. The counter doctrine of the abolitionists who taught that the negro is equal to the Caucasian worked beneficently to save the union, but it ought now to be rejected by all who would understand him
well enough to give him the best possible development. The fifteenth amendment was a stupendous blunder. It took for granted that the southern negroes were as ready for the ballot as the whites. The fact is that they were as a race in a far lower stage of evolution. Consider the collective achievement of this race, not in savage West Africa, but where it has been long in contact with civilization, in Hayti, and the south. Hayti has been independent for more than a hundred years. "Sir Spencer St. John ... formerly British Minister Resident in Hayti, after personally knowing the country for over twenty years, claims that it is ... in rapid decadence, and regards
the political future of the Haytians as utterly hopeless. At the termination of his service on the island, he said: 'I now quite agree
with those who deny that the negro can ever originate a civilization, and who assert that with the best of educations he remains an
inferior type of man.'
[Pg ix]"According to Sir Spencer, Hayti is sunk in misery, bloodshed, cannibalism, and superstition of the most sensual and degrading character. Ever since the republic has been established Haytians have been opposed to progress, but of recent years retrogression has been particularly rapid."[1]
In the south, where reversion to West African society has been checked by white government, this is a full catalogue of the main institutions evolved by the freedmen. They have provided themselves with cheaply built churches, in which their frequent and long worship is mainly sound and fury. In the pinch of crop cultivation or gathering they flock away from the fields to excursion trains and "protracted meetings." Perhaps their most noticeable institutions