The Continental Monthly/Volume 1/Issue 1/What to Do with the Darkies. A New and Original Plan for Saving the Union on Southern Principles

There can be no question that the overwhelming difficulty of the present day, is the proper disposal of the Negro.

The writer of these lines takes the liberty of believing that the war is virtually a settled affair. There has been, there is, no diminution of Northern determination to push on and keep pushing until the wings of the eagle again stretch from Maine to the Rio Grande. The administration is sustained, as from the first, by ever increasing majorities. The daily defeats of those politicians who are known to sympathize with secession, the wreck of the peace party, and the growing indignation of the country, as manifested against all halfway men and measures, are becoming what in sober seriousness can not be regarded as other than a tremendous moral spectacle. In medio non tutissimus ibis.

Yet at the bottom of this foaming cup of joy remain the black dregs. I would not invidiously compare the unfortunate black to the 'dregs of the populace,' since labor in any form must not be lightly spoken of. But it would be the weakest of euphuisms to affect ignorance of the social position which he occupies, and which, not to increase the misery of his position, is indubitably 'at the bottom of the ladder.' But that which is at the bottom of the ladder may seriously affect its position and standing. There is a fearful and thrilling illustration of this, to be found in a popular cut graphically described in these words:

A negro on the top of a high ladder, whitewashing, a hog lifting it up from beneath. 'G'way dar,—you'm makin' mischief.'

President Lincoln is understood to favor emigration. This looks well. Carry the blacks away to Liberia. Unfortunately I am informed that eight and a half Great Easterns, each making one trip per month, could only export the annual increase of our Southern slaves. This speaks in thunder tones, even to the welkin, and provokes a scream from the eagle. It is impossible.

But what shall we do with our blacks, since it is really impossible, then, to export the dark, industrial, productive, proletarian, operative, laboring element from our midst?

I suggest as a remedy that they continue in our midst, with this amendment, that they be concentrated in that same 'midst' and the 'midst' be removed a little to one side. In other words, let us centre them all in one State, that State to be South Carolina.

The justice of this arrangement must be apparent to every one. It is evident that if the present occupation by our troops continue much longer, there will be no white men left in South Carolina, neither is it likely that they will ever return. Terror and pride combined must ever keep the native whites from repopulating that region. And, as South Carolina was especially the State which brought about this war, for the express purpose of making the black man the basis of its society, there would be a wonderful and fearful propriety in carrying out that theory, or 'sociology,' even to perfection; making the negro not only the basis of society, but all society there whatever,—top, bottom, and sides.

It is true that this absolute perfection of their theory was never contemplated even by the celebrated Hammond. But truth compels the deduction, and reason admits it. Verus in uno, verus in omnibus.

I trust that the reader will not be startled, nor accuse the writer of these lines of lacking patriotism, when he avows that since the Southern social philosophers have boldly started a tremendous and original theory, he should be very sorry not to see it fairly tested, tried, and worked out. Every great doctrine or idea, be it for good or evil, must and will work itself out, that of mudsill-ism and negro labor among the rest. Only I claim that it should be complete in its elements, eliminated of what the African, with a fine intuition of the truth, ingenuously terms 'de wite trash,'—yes, in the Southern social scheme the whites are trash,—and they only find their place as a sort of useless ornament, non-productive and inoperative, even according to their own ideas. Therefore the 'wite trash' must be eliminated.

There is yet another and a very beautiful argument to be adduced in favor of colonizing South Carolina with 'contrabands.' It must be apparent to the blindest eye that the negro inclines idiosyncratically to Southern institutions far more zealously than even Mr. Jefferson Davis can be presumed to do. He is the most driving of drivers, the severest of overseers, the most aristocratic of aristocrats, the most Southern of Southerners. The planter despises poverty, but what is his contempt of a poor white man compared to that of his slave for such wretchedness? What indeed is the negro but an intensified Creole? His very color reflects that of his swarthy lord. The planter is tanned, but the negro is 'black and tanned,'—tanned always on the face, and not unfrequently on the back!

The black, left to his own instincts in Africa, develops the Southern sociology to a degree which casts entirely into pitiable pettiness the puling despotism of the calaboose and slave market. Witness Dah9mey, where all lives, all fortunes, all persons, are coördinated in one perfect 'system' of subjugation to one sable Jefferson Davis Gezo, who is de jure divino husband by a sublime fiction of law to every woman on the sacred soil of Africa, and master of the lives of all of both sexes. What to this stupendous and perfect theory is the impotent and imperfect scheme so lamely announced by the sociologists of the C.S.A.?

I claim that by every law of logic the Southern philosophers have proclaimed themselves inferior to the negro, and worthy to be swept away to make place for him. They have claimed for him the most important place in the body politic, and as, ex uno disce omnes, the whole should be homogeneous with a part, especially the main part, it follows that the negro, and the negro alone, should be allowed to rule in a land where, as Southerners declare, 'God clearly intended him to live.' Now if God clearly intended him to live there, it must follow that he did not intend white men to reside in those regions. It may be observed in this connection that the Bible forms the great basis of all Southern argument. If a Northern writer advances any of the ignorant and impious doctrines, so common among his kind, against slavery, he is promptly and properly met with the query, 'Do you believe in the Bible?' Now the Bible endorses slavery past, and 'of course' slavery present. But the Bible also insists that the curse of labor was laid on man by the eating of the apple. On all men, be it observed, without distinction of color. But the Southerners have claimed, time and again, that 'only the black can work in the South.' Therefore it logically results, on Southern grounds, that the white man has no business whatever in the South, since he must work somewhere, and it can not be in the land of rice and cotton. Who then should inhabit that sunny clime save the 'contraband'—who should there claim the respect due to the lord of the soil if not he?

     'Yo que soy contrabandista
     Y campo à mé respeto.'

The more I study this subject the more does my soul expand in awe as I watch the fearful unfoldings of the terrible moral law which governs the actions of humanity. Ah, Heaven! it is fearful, it is awful to consider how ignorantly we begin our beginnings without anticipating the marvelous endings to which they rise, even as a match ignorantly lighted may explode the dusky grain which sends a city skyward! The South has toiled to elaborate a philosophy and an empire on the Nigger—and, lo! at the end thereof looms up the tremendous Afreet realm of a perfect Niggerdom, in which the white element, which first started it into life, must logically be swept away, like the worthless exuviœ of a shell from the head of a young dragon.

As one who boldly claims respect for the 'system' of the Southern Confederacy, but who wishes for its perfect development, I therefore suggest that South Carolina be set aside for the great experiment. Let the negro be there allowed to congregate and expand even to his utmost capacity. Let all the poetry and beauty of Southern institutions be concentrated in that happy realm, where, amid the groans of endless labor and the swinging of countless whips, he may show the world what he may become. Already the South has proved his capacity to work sixteen hours a day and dance all night—perhaps under black rulers he may be brought to work twenty hours a day, and give up dancing altogether. I claim, as one holding advanced Southern views, that this proposition be allowed a fair trial. If not, I shall at least have the satisfaction of having put my views before the world to bide their time. A truth never dies. Coming ages will at least do me justice. Magna est Veritas et prevalebit.