Some Republican Views of the Negro
Thomas Allen
On pages 265–267, in Facts and Falsehoods Concerning the War on the South 1861-1865 (Memphis, Tennessee: A. R. Taylor & Co., 1904), George Edmonds gives the views of several leading Republicans on the Negro during Lincoln’s War.
He writes, “It is known to all that the Creator has implanted in the very atoms of the human being, as well as in the being of animals, certain instincts for the preservation of life and the perpetuity of the race. Among these instincts is that of kinship. Our affections first go out to our parents, our children, our relatives. Next they go out to the people of our own country, our own color and blood. The white race loves white people more than it does the yellow, the red or the black. Negroes prefer their own color; they naturally affiliate with negroes in preference to whites, Chinese or Japanese. This is the law of kinship. [This law of kinship, most Whites today have forgotten or condemned. Most Blacks believe and accept this law.] Any reverse of this law is perversion — perversion is species of insanity. We have shown that in the year 1796 certain New England Federalists, to attain a certain object they had in view, set themselves to work to promulgate the gospel of hate toward the people of the South. By dint of teaching hate the teachers developed that feeling in their own hearts. As the teaching went on, the feeling increased in intensity until it became an insanity, a monomania utterly beyond the control or the influence of reason. Finally it came to pass that from this insanity of hate there sprung an insanity of love. The former was directed toward the white people of the South, the latter toward the negroes. Without evidence from the papers and publications of that day, the white men of this generation will not be able to believe that New England, as well as large numbers of the Republican party, came to admire and respect the negro race as morally and mentally superior to the white. At first this strange insanity only held that the negroes in the South were far superior in every way to Southern whites; but as time passed the insanity took on a more violent form, and those so afflicted believed and taught that as a race the negro was greatly superior, morally and mentally, to the whole Caucasian race, and not only this, they came to admire every peculiar quality of the negro, the blackness of their skins, their woolly hair. Their whole makeup New England orators and writers dwelt on with a sort of worshiping rapture and urged intermarriage between blacks and whites, not to elevate the former, but the latter.” (pp. 265-266.) The only thing that has changed since Edmonds wrote his book is that many Southerners have become inflected with this Negrophilic-Dixiephobic perversion.
To support his claim, Edmonds quotes several New England Republicans. First, he quotes Wendell Phillips, a leading abolitionist. Edmonds writes, “In the early stages of his insanity Wendell Phillips was fond of announcing to his audiences that ‘negroes are our acknowledged equals. They are our brothers and sisters.’ As time went on Mr. Phillips’ distemper became more heated. He was not satisfied with asserting that ‘negroes are our equals;’ he made the startling announcement that — ‘Negroes are our Nobility!’ And began to clamor that special privileges be granted to ‘our nobility.’ He wanted all the land in the Southern States divided and bestowed on ‘our nobility’ and their heirs forever. What ‘our nobility’ had done to deserve this rich reward Mr. Phillips did not explain. Perhaps he thought the fact that negroes had been brought from Africa in a savage state, and had acquired in the hard school of slavery some of the arts of civilization, fitted them to become a noble class.” (p. 266.)
Next, Edmonds quotes Governor Stone of Iowa. Edmonds writes “in a speech made at Keokuk, August 3, 1863, [Stone] was certainly in the first stages of this insanity when he said to his audience, ‘I hold the Democracy in the utmost contempt. I would rather eat with a negro, drink with a negro, and sleep with a negro than with a Copperhead’ (meaning a Democrat).” (pp. 266-267.)
Then, he turns to Morrow Lowry. Edmonds writes, “The disease certainly had struck Mr. Morrow B. Lowry, State Senator of Pennsylvania, when at a large meeting in Philadelphia, in 1863, he said to his audience: ‘For all I know the Napoleon of this war may be done up in a black package. We have no evidence of his being done up in a white one. The man who talks of elevating a negro would not have to elevate him very much to make him equal to himself.’” (p. 267.)
Next, Edmonds cites the New York Independent. He writes, “The faithful old New York Independent sorrowfully wailed over the long delayed coming of the Black Napoleon, which all the insane negro-worshipers confidently looked for. ‘God and negroes,’ said the Independent, ‘are to save the country. For two years the white soldiers of this country have been trying to find a path to victory. The negroes are the final reliance of our Government. Negroes are the keepers and the saviors of our cause. Negroes are the forlorn hope of our Republican party.’” [One primary reason that Republicans promoted the Negro in the South was to establish Republican dominance in the South through the Negro. Now Republican racial nihilists complain that Blacks have double-crossed the Republican Party by supporting the Democratic Party. Another primary reason for promoting the Negro in the South was to genocide the Southerner.]
Then, Edmonds quotes James Parton. He writes, “James Parton, the noted biographer, was strongly touched with the prevailing disease — insane love of negroes. ‘Many a negro,’ wrote James Parton, in 1863, ‘stands in the same kind of moral relation to his master as that in which Jesus Christ stood to the Jews, and not morally only, for he stands above his master at a height which the master can neither see nor understand.’”
Finally, he cites General Phelps. He writes, “J.W. Phelps, General in the Republican army, thought the negro race much better adapted to receive Christianity than the white. ‘Christianity,’ said Phelps, ‘is planted in the dark rich soil of the African nature. Negroes are as intelligent and far more moral than the whites. The slaves appeal to the moral law, clinging to it as to the very horns of the altar; he bears no resentment, he asks for no punishment for his master.’” (p. 267.)
If the people cited by Edmonds believed what they said, they had not spent much time around Blacks. To disprove their assertions, they needed only to look at Haiti.
Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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