University of Virginia Library

I. The Story of the Negro

CHAPTER I
THE EARLY DAYS OF FREEDOM

THE Negro slaves always believed that some
day they would be free. From the Bible—
the only book the masses of the people
knew anything about—they learned the story of
the children of Israel, of the house of bondage,
and of forty years of wandering in the wilderness,
and they easily learned to apply this story
to their own case. There was always a feeling
among them that some day, from somewhere
or other, a prophet would arise who would lead
them out of slavery. This faith was the source
of the old "freedom songs," which always had for
the slaves a double meaning. Interwoven with the
religious sentiment and meanings there was always
the expression of a desire and a hope, not alone
for freedom in the world to come, but of freedom
in this world as well.

In their religious meetings, through the medium
not only of these songs, but of their prayers as well,

the coloured people expressed their longing for freedom
and even prayed for deliverance from slavery,
without apparently arousing the suspicion that they
were thinking of freedom in anything but a spiritual
sense. The following chorus of the plantation song
will illustrate what I mean:

One of the indications that the slaves on the
plantation believed, near the close of the war, that
freedom was at hand, was the way in which they
began singing, with new fervour and energy, those
freedom songs to which I have referred.

There was one of them which ran this way:

The Negroes, in certain parts of South Carolina,
sang this song with so much fervour at the
beginning of the Civil War that the authorities
put them in jail, in order to stop it, fearing it might
have the effect of arousing the slaves to insurrection.

Another indication that the masses of the slaves
felt during the war that freedom was at hand was
the interest in which they took, particularly after
the emancipation proclamation had been issued,
in "Massa Linkum," as they called the President of

the United States, and in the movements of the
Union armies. In one way and another many of
the slaves of the plantations managed to keep
pretty good track of the movements of the different
armies and, after a while, it began to be whispered
that soon all the slaves were going to be free. It was
at this time that the slaves out in the cabins on the
plantations began to pray for the success of "Massa
Linkum's soldiers." I remember well a time when
I was awakened one morning, before the break of
day, by my mother bending over me, where I lay
on a bundle of rags in the corner of my master's
kitchen, and hearing her pray that Abraham Lincoln
and his soldiers might be successful and that she and
I might some day be free.

The plantation upon which my mother lived was
in a remote corner of Virginia, where we saw almost
nothing of the war, except when some of those who
had gone away as soldiers were brought home dead,
and it was not until the very close of the war that a
party of Union soldiers came through our part of
the country and carried off with them a few of the
slaves from our community. In other parts of
the country, however, freedom came much earlier.
Wherever the Union armies succeeded in penetrating
the South, work on the plantation ceased, and large
numbers of the slaves wandered off on the trail of
the army to find their freedom. I have frequently
heard older people of my race tell the story of how

freedom came to them, and of the sufferings which
so many of them endured, during this time.

One of the curious things about the Emancipation
Proclamation of January 1, 1863, was that it probably
did not immediately confer freedom on a single slave.
This was because it was limited in its application to
those territories over which the Federal armies had
no control. In the Border states and wherever the
Union armies were established the institution of
slavery remained, nominally at least, as it had been.

On the other hand, wherever the Federal armies
entered upon slave territories, no matter what theory
the Government held to, it was found impossible in
practice to maintain the slave system. The first
proclamation of emancipation was, as a matter of
fact, General Butler's ingenious phrase which termed
the Negro fugitives who came into the Union lines
"contraband of war." Theoretically, these fugitives
were still merely property of the enemy which had
fallen into the hands of the Federal army, but
actually to be "contraband" meant to be free, and
from that time on Federal officers were everywhere at
liberty to receive and protect fugitive slaves who
came into their hands.

The result of this was that wherever the Federal
armies went slavery ceased. As a consequence
thousands of these homeless and helpless people
fell into the hands of the Federal commanders.
When General Grant entered Northern Mississippi

the refugees became so numerous that he detailed
Chaplain John Eaton, of the Twenty-seventh Ohio
Infantry, afterward colonel of a Negro regiment, to
organise them and set them to work picking the
cotton which was then ripe in the fields.

In a somewhat similar manner at Fortress Monroe,
Virginia, Washington, District of Columbia, Beaufort
and Port Royal, South Carolina, Columbus, Kentucky,
and Cairo, Illinois, large numbers of the Freedmen
had been collected into camps and the problem
of dealing with the Negro in freedom was brought, in
this way, for the first time definitely before the Northern
people for solution. Freedmen were to be governed,
to be educated and, in general, to be started
in the new life of freedom which was now open to
them. The difficulties that presented themselves
were appalling, and immediately aroused the deepest
sympathy and concern among the people in the
Northern states.

As an indication of some of the unusual problems
that presented themselves to the Union officers, who
were in command at the points I have named, I may
refer to an incident which occurred in New Orleans.
A free Negro, by the name of John Montamal, had
married a woman who was a slave. From the savings
of a small business he had purchased his wife
for six hundred dollars, so that he stood to her in the
relation of owner as well as husband. As a consequence
his children were his slaves. At the time

the Union soldiers arrived in the city his only surviving
child was a bright little girl of eleven years of
age, who had had the advantages of a school training
and had become a member of the Catholic Church.
Owing to the troublous character of the times the
father had fallen into debt and, in an evil hour, had
mortgaged his daughter to his creditors, believing
that he would be able to redeem her in time to prevent
her being sold. The war prevented his carrying
out this plan, and, as a result, the mortgage was
foreclosed and the child sold at auction by the sheriff.
Under these circumstances the man came before
the Provost Court, which had been established by
General Butler, and sought the restoration of his
daughter. Under the laws of Louisiana, which were
nominally, at least, in force at that time, the girl
would have been doomed to slavery, but the Provost
Judge, Colonel Kinsman, promptly decided that
the law was no longer in force and that when
Louisiana went out of the Union she took her "black
laws" with her.

Another anecdote, which illustrates the way in
which Union generals ruthlessly disposed of the old
slave laws, is related by James Parton in his history,
"General Butler in New Orleans." When
the Union soldiers arrived in New Orleans they
found, in the State Prison at Baton Rouge, children
who had been born in the prison of female coloured
convicts. By the laws of Louisiana these children.

were the property of the State, and if General Butler
had carried out the law he would have sold them as
slaves. When the superintendent applied for orders
with regard to these children, General Butler
promptly decided that they should be taken care of
in the same way as other destitute children, saying
that "possibly the master might have some claim
upon them, but he did not see how the State could
have any."

Thus it was that the work of what was afterward
called "reconstruction "began in the South wherever
the Union forces obtained possession of the country.
In the Department of General Banks, Louisiana, there
were 90,000 coloured people; 50,000 were employed
as labourers under the direction of the officers of the
army. Under Colonel Eaton seven thousand acres
of cotton land in Tennessee and Arkansas were
leased and cultivated in order to furnish food for
the 10,000 people who were not able to take care
of themselves. In South Carolina General Rufus
Saxton organised Negro regiments, sold confiscated
estates, leased abandoned plantations and assisted
in the building up of the Negro schools that had been
started under Edward L. Pierce.

March 3, 1865, what was known as the Freedmen's
Bureau was organised under General Oliver
O. Howard, to carry on the work that had been begun
under the Federal generals at the different refugee
camps. For the next four years this Freedmen's

Bureau, so far as concerned the Freedman and his
relation to his former master, was in itself a pretty
complete sort of government. In 1868 there were
900 bureau officials scattered throughout the South,
ruling directly and indirectly several millions of men
and women. During that time 30,000 black men
were sent back from the refugee and relief stations
to the farms and plantations. In a single state
50,000 contracts for labour were signed under
the direction of the agents of the Bureau. The
total revenue of $400,000 was derived from the
coloured tenants who had leased lands under the
control of the Bureau.

It was under this Bureau that the Negro schools
were started in every part of the South. Fisk,
Atlanta and Howard universities were established
during this time and nearly $6,000,000 was expended
for educational work, $750,000 of which came from
the Freedmen themselves. Before all its departments
were finally closed something like $20,000,000
was expended by the Bureau in the different branches
of its service.

One of the results of the organisation of the
Freedmen's Bureau was to give employment to a
large number of ambitious coloured men, and many
representatives of the Negro race, who afterward
became prominent in politics, gained their first
training in this direction as agents of the Freedmen's
Bureau. Among others who went into politics

through this door were Hiram R. Revels, the first
coloured man to enter the United States Senate, and
Robert C. DeLarge, who was a member of the
Forty-second Congress from South Carolina.

Hiram R. Revels was born at Fayetteville, North
Carolina, September 1, 1822. His parents seem
to have been free Negroes. At any rate they had
been permitted to give him some education while
he was a boy. After he became of age he went
North, entered the Quaker Seminary in Union
County, Indiana, and finally, about the year 1847,
graduated from Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois.
He became a preacher and lecturer throughout
Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri and, at the
breaking out of the war, he was serving as pastor
of the Methodist Church in Baltimore. He assisted in
raising the first coloured regiment that was organised
in the State of Maryland, and afterward organised
a second coloured regiment in Missouri. In
1864 he was at Vicksburg, where he assisted the
Provost Marshal in managing the Freedmen's
affairs. He spent the next two years in Kansas and
Missouri, preaching and lecturing, and finally settled
at Natchez, Mississippi, where General Adelbert
Ames, the Military Governor, appointed him an
alderman of the city. In January, 1870, he was
chosen United States Senator and on February 25th,
took his seat in Congress.

The announcement that a coloured man had been

elected to the Senate of the United States created a
great deal of surprise and comment, and the appearance
of the new Senator from Mississippi, who was
to take the place that had been occupied by Jefferson
Davis, President of the Southern Confederacy,
was waited with great interest. Strenuous efforts
were made to resist, on the ground that it was unconstitutional
and unprecedented, the determination
of the Senate to allow him to take his seat. Charles
Sumner made a speech in favour of the admission
of the coloured Senator in which he said: "The
vote on this question will be an historical event,
marking the triumph of the great cause." Senator
Henry Wilson, the second Senator from Massachusetts,
accompanied Mr. Revels to the Vice-president's
chair where he took the oath. The
chamber and galleries were crowded with spectators
eager to witness the event, which was to give formal
notice to the world that the revolution, which
changed the Negro from a slave into a free man, had
been completed. In the same year two other
Negroes, Joseph H. Rainey from South Carolina
and Jefferson Long from Georgia, were admitted to
Congress. During the next few years coloured men
were representing, either in the Senate or in the House
of Representatives, every one of the seceding states
with the exception of Texas and Tennessee.

The Freedmen's Bureau went out of existence in
1869 with the proposal by Congress of the Fifteenth

Amendment.[1] When the bill bringing the Bureau
into existence was under discussion, in 1865, Senator
Davis, of Kentucky had described it as a measure
"to promote strife and conflict between the white
and black races . . . by a grant of unconstitutional
power." This puts in a sentence the objections
that were made to the organisation of the
Bureau in the first instance and the criticisms that
have been passed upon it since. It was unfortunate
that the Freedmen's Bureau did not succeed in gaining
the sympathy and support of the Southern people.
This was the more unfortunate because, during the
four years of its existence, the Freedmen had learned
to look to this Bureau and its representatives for
leading, support and protection. The whole South
has suffered from the fact that the former slaves were
first introduced into political life as the opponents,
instead of the political supporters, of their former
masters. No part of the South has suffered more
on this account, however, than the Negroes themselves.
I do not mean to say that this rupture could
have been avoided. It was one of the unfortunate
consequences of the manner in which slavery was
brought to an end in the Southern states.

In the early days of their freedom, in spite of the
rather harsh legislation of certain of the Southern

legislatures, the temper of the Southern Freedmen
was conciliatory. The first move to obtain some
part in the government was made by the Free Negroes
of New Orleans, On November 5, 1863, the free
coloured people of New Orleans held a meeting
and drew up an address to Brigadier-general Shepley
in which they refer to the fact that there are among
them "many of the descendants of those men whom
the illustrious Jackson styled 'his fellow-citizens,'
when he called upon them to take up arms to repel
the enemies of the country," adding that they were
at that time paying taxes on property of which the
assessed value was more than nine million dollars.
In consideration of these fact and others they ventured
to ask that they be permitted to assist in establishing,
in the new convention, a civil government for
the state.

The next year in that corner of the State of South
Carolina occupied by the Federal troops, of which
Beaufort is the centre, a mass State Convention was
held to which the people of the state were invited,
"without distinction of colour," to elect delegates
to the Baltimore Presidential Convention. These
delegates were not, however, allowed to take part in
the proceedings of the Convention. From this time
on, numerous meetings of the coloured people were
held in different parts of the South and of the North.
In 1865, a state convention of coloured people was
held in South Carolina "to confer together and to

deliberate on our intellectual, moral, industrial,
and political condition, particularly as affected
by the great changes in the state and country."
This convention issued an address to the white
people of the state in which they declared, among
other things, that "notwithstanding we have been
born and reared in your midst and were faithful while
your greatest trials were upon you, and have done
nothing since which could justly merit your disapprobation,"
that they had been denied the rights
of citizenship which are freely accorded to strangers.
The address concludes with the moderate request
that the provisions of the "black code," which have
denied them the opportunities of education, equal
rights before the court, and imposed burdensome regulations
upon their personal liberty may be repealed.

There were some such slight evidences in other
parts of the country of a disposition on the part of
an element of the coloured people and of the Southern
white people, to come to terms with each other in
order to establish a form of government which would
be fairly satisfactory to both races. For instance,
the coloured citizens of Tennessee were invited, in
1867, to take part in the political meetings of both
parties, and a convention of Coloured Conservatives
which met at Nashville, April 5, 1867, adopted among
others the following resolutions:

The year before, October 1, 1866, Governor Worth,
of North Carolina, had spoken in a conciliatory
manner to a convention of coloured people assembled
at Raleigh. He declared that he was ready to
protect them in all their rights and urged them to be
industrious, to educate their children, and to keep
out of politics, seeing, as he said, "the strife and
struggle in which party politics have involved the
whites." He added that the general feeling of the
men who had been their masters was kindly toward
them, and added that "the whites feel that they owe
you a debt of gratitude for your quiet and orderly
conduct during the war, and you should endeavour
to so act as to keep up this kindly feeling between
the two races."

Bishop James W. Hood of the A. M. E. Zion
Church, who had recently come to the South, was
chairman of this convention. Bishop Hood was
born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, May 30, 1831.
He entered the ministry in 1860, and is said to have
been the first regularly appointed missionary of the

Negro race sent to the Freedmen in the South where,
it is stated, he founded in North and South Carolina
and Virginia more than six hundred church organisations.

Among the Negroes of the Northern states who
had gotten their political education under the influence
of the Northern abolitionists, the trend of sentiment
was naturally much more radical than in the
Southern states.

June 15, 1863, a convention of coloured people was
held at Poughkeepsie, New York, at which J. W. C.
Pennington, a Presbyterian minister, presided. At
this convention resolutions were passed, pledging
the support of coloured soldiers to the Union cause
and expressing the confidence that the Negro soldiers
would receive the "protection and treatment due to
civilised men."[2]

On October 3, 1864, a national convention of
coloured people was held at Syracuse, New York,
to take into consideration the future of the coloured
race in America. This convention was the successor
of other national conventions of the coloured people
which had been held in different parts of America
since the first National convention held in Philadelphia,
June, 1831. The radical temper of this convention
is, perhaps, best represented in a letter written
by Frederick Douglass in accepting an invitation to
be present. In this letter he demanded "perfect

equality for the black man in every state before the
law, in the jury-box, at the ballot-box, and on the
battlefield"; and that, in the distribution of officers
and honours under the Government, "no discrimination
shall be made in favour of or against any class
of citizens, whether black or white, of native or foreign
birth."

On February 7, 1866, a delegation of coloured
men, including George T. Downing, Lewis H. Douglass,
William E. Matthews, John Jones, John F.
Cook, Joseph E. Otis, A. W. Ross, William Whipper,
John M. Brown, and Alexander Dunlop, headed by
Frederick Douglass, called upon President Johnson to
urge upon him the propriety and necessity of granting
to coloured people the rights and privileges of citizenship
that had hitherto been and was still denied them.

In reply to the President's statement that the
policy they proposed would lead to a race war, and
that he did not propose to make himself responsible
for more bloodshed, the committee drew up an
address to the country in which they brought forward
the argument that if the hostility of the two races
was actually as great as President Johnson had
stated the Negro must be given the ballot "as a
means of defence." This address gave public
expression to the theory upon which Congress acted
when in the following year Negroes were permitted
to vote for delegates to the constitutional conventions
in all the seceding states.

At this time the Fifteenth Amendment had not
been proposed to Congress and there were only six
Northern states which permitted the Negro to vote.
In Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, many of the provisions
of the "black code," were still in force. Only
a few weeks before this time on February 25, 1866,
Negroes voted for the first time in the District of
Columbia.

Meanwhile the progress of events in the South
had been hastened by what the newspapers called
a "race war," at Memphis in May, and another
and still more bloody riot in New Orleans in which
thirty-seven Negroes had been killed and one hundred
and nineteen wounded. All this helped to
bring into power in Congress the radical party in the
North, and this party now proceeded to impose its
Government upon the South with the aid of Negro
votes.

Negroes sent two hundred and seven delegates out
of eight hundred and thirty-four to the constitutional
conventions which met, in 1867 and 1868, in Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas.[3] Texas was represented
by the smallest number of Negroes. The
proportion was nine Negroes to eighty-one white
delegates. In South Carolina the Negroes were in
control, the proportion being seventy-six blacks to
forty-eight whites. Among the other members of

the South Carolina State Convention of 1867, was
Robert Smalls, who first became known during the
Civil War as the black pilot of the famous Confederate
ship, the Planter, which he boldly steered
out of the Charleston harbour and turned over to
the Federal fleet on the morning of May 13, 1862.
Robert Smalls was born a slave at Beaufort, South
Carolina, April 5, 1839. In 1851 he came to Charleston,
where he worked in the ship-yards as a "rigger,"
and thus became familiar with the life of a sailor.

In 1861, he was employed on the Confederate
transport, the Planter. I have more than once
heard Mr. Smalls tell the story of how he succeeded
in taking this ship out of the harbour under the
guns of the fort and at the same time managed to
carry his wife and family to freedom.

Up to this time the Planter was being used as the
special dispatch boat of General Ripley, the Confederate
Post Commander at Charleston. On the
night of May 12th, all the officers went ashore and
slept in the city, leaving on board a crew of eight men,
all coloured.

This was the opportunity Smalls had been looking
for. He spoke to the members of the crew and
found them willing to help him. Wood was taken
aboard, steam was put on, and, with a valuable
cargo of guns and ammunition intended for Fort
Ripley, the Planter moved from her dock about two
o'clock in the morning, steamed to the North Atlantic

wharf, where Small's wife and two children, together
with four women and one other child and three men,
were waiting to go on board. By this time it was
nearly 3:30 o'clock in the morning. The ship was
started on its voyage, carrying nine men, five women
and three children. Two of the men, who had first
agreed to go with the ship, at the last moment concluded
to remain behind.

The transport blew the usual salute in passing
Fort Johnson, and proceeded down the bay. When
approaching Fort Sumter, Smalls stood in the pilot
house leaning out the window with his arms folded
across his breast, and his head covered with a big
straw hat which the commander of the ship usually
wore. Here again the usual signal was given, and
the ship headed toward Morris Island, and passed
beyond the range of the guns of Fort Sumter
before any one suspected anything was wrong. The
Planter steered directly toward the Federal fleet, and
was nearly fired upon by one of the Federal ships
before the flag of truce was noticed.

As soon as the vessels came within hailing distance
of each other, Mr. Smalls explained who they were
and what was their errand. Captain Nichols, of the
ship Onward, boarded the vessel, and took possession.
Smalls was transferred to another ship; and was
employed for some time as a pilot in and about the
neighbouring waters, with which he was familiar.
Later, in the war, for meritorious conduct, he was

promoted to the rank of captain and was given charge
of the Planter, which he had so successfully carried
out of Charleston harbour. In September, 1866, he
carried this boat to Baltimore where it was put out
of commission and sold.

After the war Mr. Smalls was elected in 1868 to
the House of Representatives of the State Legislature.
In 1870 he was elected to the Senate of South Carolina,
and afterward served three terms in Congress.
He was appointed Collector of the Port of Beaufort,
by President Harrison, a position which he was still
holding in 1908.

One of the surprising results of the Reconstruction
Period was that there should spring from among the
members of a race that had been held so long in
slavery, so large a number of shrewd, resolute,
resourceful, and even brilliant men, who became,
during this brief period of storm and stress, the political
leaders of the newly enfranchised race. Among
them were sons of white planters by coloured mothers,
like John M. Langston, P. B. S. Pinchback, and
Josiah T. Settle, who had given their children the
advantages of an education in the Northern states.
Mr. Pinchback's father was Major William Pinchback,
of Holmes County, Mississippi. His mother,
Eliza Stewart, claimed to have Indian blood in her
veins. When he was nine years old young Pinchback
and his brother Napoleon were sent to Cincinnati by
their father to attend Gilmore's High School. After

his father died, Mr. Pinchback's mother came to
Cincinnati, and it was there he grew to manhood.

Josiah T. Settle's father was one of those men, of
whom there were considerable number in the South,
who brought their children by slave mothers North
in order to free them. In fact, in Mr. Settle's case,
his father not only freed him but married his
mother. Mr. Settle got his early education in Ohio,
and in 1868 entered Oberlin College. The following
year he went to Howard University, where he graduated
in 1872. Mr. Settle was active in politics in
Mississippi during a portion of the Reconstruction
Period, being engaged in the practice of law at
Sardis, Panola County, Mississippi. In 1885, he went
to Memphis; was appointed assistant prosecuting
attorney of the criminal court of Shelby County,
and is still practising law in that city, where he is one
of the directors of the Negro bank at that place, the
Solvent Savings Bank.

Blanche K. Bruce, senator from Mississippi from
1875 to 1881, was born a slave in 1841 in Prince
Edward County, Virginia. He received his early
education along with his master's son. After freedom
came he taught school for a time in Missouri, and
studied for a short time at Oberlin College. In
1869, he became a planter in Bolivar County, Mississippi,
where he held a number of offices, including
that of sheriff and superintendent of public schools.
In 1881, President Garfield appointed him Registrar

of the United States Treasury. His son, Roscoe
Conklin Bruce, graduated with honours from
Harvard University; was for a time head of the
Academic Department of Tuskegee Institute; and
afterward had charge of the coloured schools in
Washington, District of Columbia.

Perhaps the most brilliant and, I might add, the
most unfortunate of these men of the Reconstruction
Period was Robert Brown Elliott, who was born
in Boston, Massachusetts, August II, 1842. His
parents were from the West Indies and, while he
was still a young boy, they returned to their home in
Jamaica. There young Elliott had the advantage
of a good schooling. He was sent to England, and
in 1853 entered High Holborn Academy, London.
Three years later he went to Eton, from which he
graduated in 1859. He adopted law as his profession
and after some years of travel in South America
and the West Indies, settled in Charleston, South
Carolina, where he became editor of the Charleston
Leader, afterward known as the Missionary Record,
owned by Bishop Richard H. Cain. He soon entered
politics and was elected to the Lower House of the
State Legislature in 1868.

In 1869, Mr. Elliott was appointed Assistant
Adjutant-general of the State, which position he
held until he was elected to the Forty-second Congress.
He was a member of the Forty-third Congress,
but resigned that position to accept the office of

sheriff. In 1881, he was appointed special agent of
the United States Treasury, with headquarters at
Charleston. He was transferred from there to New
Orleans, Louisiana. But the fall of the Reconstruction
governments in the South carried disaster to
him, and he died August 9, 1884, in comparative
obscurity and poverty.

Frederick Douglass says of Robert Brown Elliott:
"I have known but one other black man to be
compared with Elliott, and that was Samuel R.
Ward, who, like Elliott, died in the midst of his
years." Samuel R. Ward was, in 1848, editor of
the Impartial Citizen, published in Syracuse,
New York.

Altogether, the Negro race has been represented
in Congress by two Senators and twenty Representatives.
In addition to those already mentioned,
Richard H. Cain served as a Representative of South
Carolina in the Forty-third and Forty-fifth Congress;
H. P. Cheatham represented North Carolina in the
Fifty-second and Fifty-third Congresses. Jere Haralson
represented Alabama in the Forty-fourth Congress.
Jefferson Long was the Representative of
Georgia in the Forty-first Congress. John Hyman
was a member of the Forty-fourth Congress for
North Carolina, and James E. O'Hara represented
the same state in the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth
Congresses. Thomas H. Miller was a member of
the Fifty-first Congress, and George W. Murray

of the Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Congresses. Both
these men were elected from South Carolina. James
T. Rapier was elected to the Forty-third United
States Congress from Alabama. Benjamin S. Turner
represented the same state in the Forty-second
Congress. Josiah T. Walls was elected to represent
Florida in the Forty-second, Forty-third, and Forty-fourth
Congresses. The last man to represent the
Negro race in Congress was George H. White, of
North Carolina.

In a speech on the subject of the Spanish-American
War, January 26, 1899, Mr. White made a sort of
valedictory address, which is in many respects so
interesting, and created so much comment at the
time it was delivered, that I am disposed to quote a
portion of it here. Referring to Negro Congressmen,
Mr. White said:

Speaking a little later of the progress which the
Negro race has made, Mr. White said some things
which seem to me to express very accurately the
sober second thought of the Negro people upon their
condition in this country, and give a just and proper
expression to the legitimate aspiration of the American
Negro. He said:

This speech of Mr. White marks the end of an
episode in the history of the American Negro. In
considering the relation of the Negro people to this
period it should be remembered that, outside of a
few leaders, Negroes had very little influence upon
the course of events. It was, to a very large extent,
a white man's quarrel, and the Negro was the tennis
ball which was batted backward and forward by
the opposing parties.

Even as a boy I can remember that all through the
days of Reconstruction I had a feeling that there was
something in the situation, into which the course of
events had pushed the Negro people that was unstable
and could not last. It did not seem possible that a
people who yesterday were slaves could be transformed
within a few days into citizens capable of
making laws for the government of the State or
the government of the Nation.

There were a good many others who felt as I did.

One of the best illustrations that I happen to
remember of the sanity of not a few coloured people
on the subject of Reconstruction is Lewis Adams, the
man who was more largely responsible, perhaps,
than any one else for the location at Tuskegee of the
Negro school which now bears the name of the
Tuskegee Normal arid Industrial Institute.

Lewis Adams lived in Macon County, Alabama,
during the days of Reconstruction, and there was no
coloured man in the state, I dare say, who had more
influence over the masses of the coloured people than
did he. During this period Mr. Adams could have
been elected a member of the Legislature and, I have
no doubt, could have been sent to Congress had he
made the slightest effort in that direction. He refused,
however, to be a candidate for any office, because, as
he told me, he saw the futility and the shallowness of
it all. He saw there was no logical foundation upon
which the political activity of the Negro could rest
and, for that reason, he preferred to devote himself
to furthering the education of his people and to
building up his own interests. The results show
that he was right. When he died, on April 28, 1905,
he was among the most honoured, respected, and
successful coloured men in Macon County. On the
other hand, men who had chosen to travel the
political road had not only failed to succeed but some
of them died unknown, forgotten, after passing their
later years in obscurity and poverty.