Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1890 — THE NEGRO QUESTION. [ARTICLE]

THE NEGRO QUESTION.

Senator Ingalls Belles** That Oppression i— — win ii—ii in m Senator Ingalls, ostensibly in reply to Senator Butler’s negro emigration proposition, delivered a speech in the Senate, Thursday, on the negro question in the South. We make extracts from the address: The race to which we belong is the most arrogant and rapacious, the most exolusive and indomitable in history.. It is the Conquering and unconquerable race, through which alone man has taken possession of the physical ana moral world. To our race humanity is indebted for religion, for literature, for civilization. It has a genius for conquest, for politics, for jurisprudence and for administration. The home and» the family are its contributions to society. Individualism, fraternity, liberty and equality have been its contributions to the state. All other races have been its enemies and its victims. This is not the time, nor is it .the occasion, to consider the profoundly interesting question of the unity of races. It. is sufficient to say .that, either by instinct or design, the Caucasian race, at every step of its progress from barbarism to enlightenment, has refused to mingle its blood, or to assimilate with the two other great human families—the Mongolian and the African—and has persistently rejected adult?ration.” Under the shield of the American government, he stud, every faitn had found its shelter, every creed a sanctuary, every wrong a redress. It had resisted the rancor of party spirit, the violence of faction, the perils of foreign immigration, the collisions of civil war and the Jealous menace of foreign and hostile, nations. He quoted from Mr. John Bright’s speeeh (during the civil war,) in which Mr. Bright said: “I see another and a brighter vision before my gaze. It may be a vision, but I cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen north to the glowing south, and from the wild Dillows of the Atlantic to the calmer waters of the Pacifio main;

and I see one people, one. language, one law and one faithand all over that wide continent the home of freedom and arefuge. for the oppressed of every race and every climate.” Mr. Ingalls proceeded: “On the threshold of our second, century we are confronnted with the most formidable and portentious problem ever submitted to a free people for solution—complex, unprecedented —involving social, moral and political considerations, party supremacy, and in the estimation of many, though not to my own, the existence of our system of government- Its solution will demand all the resources and statesmanship of the future, to prevent a crisis that may become a catastrophe. It should be approached with candor, with solemnity,witn patriotic purposes, with fearless scrutiny, without subterfuge and without reserve. He said the census reports had been manipulated to hide the exact figures as to 'the negro’s strength in the United States; that before the end of the century thei-e would be 15,000,000 negroes in this country. He spoke of the negro’s fidelity to his master during the war and said gratitude for this should have protected him from ill-treatment since. The negroes, he said, adhered to the party of Lincoln and Grant and by so doing stuck by their friends. Then he charged that at the recent elections in Jack Son, Miss., the negroes were practically disfranchised. Then he said the wrongs of the negro had all come from the idea that his race is inferior to the white and to the negro’s disfranchisment the North had consented. The npgroes have been abandoned to their fate. “There are undoubtedly some thoughtful men in the South,” he said, “who apprehend coming events and would willingly relinquish the right to representation if the States could be permitted to impose the race condition upon suffrage. But this is impossible. I warn those who are perpetrating these wrongs upon the suffrage that the North and the West and the Northwest will not consent to have their institutions, their industries, their wealth and their civilization changed, modified or destroyed by a government resting upon deliberate and habitual suppression of the colored vote or any other vote, by foroe or by fraud. Sooner or later there will be armed collision between the races. The South is

standing upon a volcano.” The South is sitting on the safety valve. They are breeding innumerable John Browns and , Nat Turners. Already mutterings of discontent by hostile organizations are heard. The use of the torch and the dagger is advised, I deplore it; but, as God is my judge I say that no other people on the face of the earth have ever submitted to the wrongs and injustice which have been for twenty-five years put upon the colored men of the South without revolution and blood. Mr. Tngaiiis went on to warn the South of the natural consequences of its course to ward the colored people. “Despotism,” he said, “makes Nihilists. Injustice is the great manufactory of dynamite. A man who is a thief robs himself. An adulterer pollutes himself. A murderer inflicts a deeper wound on himself than that which slays his victim. The South in Imposing chains on the African race, lays heavier manacles on itself than those with which ft burdens the helpless slave; and those who are denying to American citizens the privileges oi freedom should remember that there is nothing so unprofitable as injustice, and that God is an unrelenting creditor. Silent it may be, tardy and slow it may be; but inexorable and relentness. . Behind the wrong doer stalks the menaoing specter vengeance and of retribution.” He went onto say that race antagonism I applied only to the colored man in the | South when he desired to vote the Republican ticket. If the colored men there were all Democrats the race question I would be over. “Four solutions of the problem,” be said, “had been suggested—emigration, extermination, absorption and disfranchisement—but there was still a fifth solution, which had never been tried: and that solution was, justice. I appeal to the South,” he exclaimed, “to try the experiment of justice! Stack your guns. Open your ballot boxes. Register your voters, black and white. And if, after the experiment has been fairly and honestly tried, it appears that the African race is incapable of civilization —if it appears that the complexion burnt upon him by an Indian sun is Incompatible with freedom—l will pledge myself to consult with you about some measure of solving the race problem; but until then nothing can be done. The citizenship of the negro must be absolutely recognized. His right to vote must be admitted and the ballots that he casts must be honestly counted. These are the essential preliminaries —the conditions precedent to any consideration of the ulterior and fundamental questions of race supremacy or race equality in the United States, North or South. Those who freed the slaves ask nothing more; they will be content with nothing less. The experiment must be fairly tried. This is the starting' point and this is tue goal. The longer it is deferred the greater will be the exasperation and the more doubtful ; the final result.” {