Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/176

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154
THE NEGRO

race that has come here from the Old World, can, as far as they can trace their pedigree back, meet with no such stigma attaching to their history. For my- self, I can say at this writing, that, thank Fortune, there were no black cannibals among my ancestors ! No negro, no negro half-caste in this country is in favor of leaving it. You may be well-assured of that fact. On a few occasions within the past few years, small parties of them have made the feint to go, but such ruses have not deceived us. This lazy, ignorant, criminal race have altogether too good a thing in America to think seriously for a moment of returning to their own people in Africa or, in fact, of going anywhere else. It is their intention to stay right here and do all the harm to our race they can. They have been a curse to us ever since our ances- tors brought them to these shores; they have given rise to all manner of national and individual troubles since ; and, in my estimation, we, the white population of this country, have no problem of higher import to consider today than this very negro problem. . For all the ample reasons I have given in the fore- going pages, I am, for one, most emphatically in favor of the adoption of any rational scheme on the part of the Federal government for transporting them out of the country. This has been my opinion for many years past, but I am sorely afraid at the present time, that it is not at all feasible, though, of course, if laws were duly enacted by the general government that they should go, — why, go they would. But governments have never been known to act in this way ; they recog- nize the presence of the parasite; they recognize the discomforts, dangers and diseases it is setting up, but,