Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/275

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THE NEGRO
251

ure to emphasize our separate convictions of his destiny. And yet as the crimson tide rolls away into the years, we realize that all this blood and treasure and travail was spent in vain, and that the negro, whom a million Americans died to free, is in present bond and future promise still a slave, whipped by circumstance, trodden under foot by iron and ineradicable prejudice; shut out forever from the opportunities which are the heritage of liberty, and holding m his black hand the hollow parchment of his franchise as a freeman looks through a slave's eyes at the impassable barriers which imprison him forever within the progress and achieve- ment of a dominant and all-conquering race. " Separation of the races is the way — the only way. Is the expense appalling? Is the cost prohibitive? England again offers an example. England, our mother country — England, next to ourselves, the greatest and most enlightened Government under the sun — England has just put its hand into its pocket to expend $500,000,000 in order to buy out the Irish land- lords and to heal the otherwise incurable running sore of Irish discontent. " It may be that the islands of the sea were placed by Providence in our keeping to furnish an answer to the problem of the times. " No reasonable or considerate plan would call for the wholesale or summary deportation of the negro. With his consent, and with Governmental aid, the movement might proceed slowly and with considera- tion. If only the vessels that brought foreigners to our shores from 1880 to 1885 had carried back to Africa as many negroes as they brought immigrants to us, not a single black man, woman, or child would have been left in the country in 1885 ! " The superb inducement to the negro would be found in the freedom, the individuality, and the op- portunity of an independent commonwealth, in which he would be freed from the unequal competition of a