The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, James Weldon Johnson [best books to read in life .TXT] 📗

the controversy narrowed itself down to an argument between the old soldier and the Texan. The latter maintained hotly that the Civil War was a criminal mistake on the part of the North, and that the humiliation which the South suffered during Reconstruction could never be forgotten. The Union man retorted just as hotly that the South was responsible for the war and that the spirit of unforgetfulness on its part was the greatest cause of present friction; that it seemed to be the one great aim of the South to convince the North that the latter made a mistake in fighting to preserve the Union and liberate the slaves. “Can you imagine,” he went on to say, “what would have been the condition of things eventually if there had been no war, and the South had been allowed to follow its course? Instead of one great, prosperous country with nothing before it but the conquests of peace, a score of petty republics, as in Central and South America, wasting their energies in war with each other or in revolutions.”

“Well,” replied the Texan, “anything⁠—no country at all⁠—is better than having niggers over you. But anyhow, the war was fought and the niggers were freed; for it’s no use beating around the bush: the niggers, and not the Union, was the cause of it; and now do you believe that all the niggers on earth are worth the good white blood that was spilt? You freed the nigger and you gave him the ballot, but you couldn’t make a citizen out of him. He don’t know what he’s voting for, and we buy ’em like so many hogs. You’re giving ’em education, but that only makes slick rascals out of ’em.”

“Don’t fancy for a moment,” said the Northern man, “that you have any monopoly in buying ignorant votes. The same thing is done on a larger scale in New York and Boston, and in Chicago and San Francisco; and they are not black votes either. As to education’s making the Negro worse, you might just as well tell me that religion does the same thing. And, by the way, how many educated colored men do you know personally?”

The Texan admitted that he knew only one, and added that he was in the penitentiary. “But,” he said, “do you mean to claim, ballot or no ballot, education or no education, that niggers are the equals of white men?”

“That’s not the question,” answered the other, “but if the Negro is so distinctly inferior, it is a strange thing to me that it takes such tremendous effort on the part of the white man to make him realize it, and to keep him in the same place into which inferior men naturally fall. However, let us grant for sake of argument that the Negro is inferior in every respect to the white man; that fact only increases our moral responsibility in regard to our actions toward him. Inequalities of numbers, wealth, and power, even of intelligence and morals, should make no difference in the essential rights of men.”

“If he’s inferior and weaker, and is shoved to the wall, that’s his own lookout,” said the Texan. “That’s the law of nature; and he’s bound to go to the wall; for no race in the world has ever been able to stand competition with the Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxon race has always been and always will be the masters of the world, and the niggers in the South ain’t going to change all the records of history.”

“My friend,” said the old soldier slowly, “if you have studied history, will you tell me, as confidentially between white men, what the Anglo-Saxon has ever done?”

The Texan was too much astonished by the question to venture any reply.

His opponent continued: “Can you name a single one of the great fundamental and original intellectual achievements which have raised man in the scale of civilization that may be credited to the Anglo-Saxon? The art of letters, of poetry, of music, of sculpture, of painting, of the drama, of architecture; the science of mathematics, of astronomy, of philosophy, of logic, of physics, of chemistry, the use of the metals, and the principles of mechanics, were all invented or discovered by darker and what we now call inferior races and nations. We have carried many of these to their highest point of perfection, but the foundation was laid by others. Do you know the only original contribution to civilization we can claim is what we have done in steam and electricity and in making implements of war more deadly? And there we worked largely on principles which we did not discover. Why, we didn’t even originate the religion we use. We are a great race, the greatest in the world today, but we ought to remember that we are standing on a pile of past races, and enjoy our position with a little less show of arrogance. We are simply having our turn at the game, and we were a long time getting to it. After all, racial supremacy is merely a matter of dates in history. The man here who belongs to what is, all in all, the greatest race the world ever produced, is almost ashamed to own it. If the Anglo-Saxon is the source of everything good and great in the human race from the beginning, why wasn’t the German forest the birthplace of civilization?”

The Texan was somewhat disconcerted, for the argument had passed a little beyond his limits, but he swung it back to where he was sure of his ground by saying: “All that may be true, but it hasn’t got much to do with us and the niggers here in the South. We’ve got ’em here, and we’ve got ’em to live with, and it’s a question of white man or nigger, no middle ground. You want us to treat niggers as equals. Do you want to see ’em sitting around in our parlors? Do you want to