CHAPTER I.

THE EARLY DAYS OF FREEDOM
pg. 003

     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,

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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:

Children, we all shall be free,
Children, we all shall be free,
Children, we all shall be free,
When the Lord shall appear.

     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:

We'll soon be free,
We'll soon be free,
When de Lord will call us home.

     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

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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

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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 Jan. 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

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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

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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 pre vent 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

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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.
     Mar. 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

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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

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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, Sept. 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

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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

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Amendment.* 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 them selves.  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

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     * The Freedmen's Bureau went out of existence Jan. 1, 1869, with the exception of its educational work, which was continued to 1872.  The Fifteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress Feb. 27, 1869.  It was ratified by twenty-nine states, Mar. 30, 1870 . . . . See "The Freedmen's Bureau," W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1901.

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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 Nov. 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

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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, Apr. 5, 1867, adopted among others the following resolutions:

     Resolved, That we do not desire to be an element of discord in the community in which we live; that to seek to unite the coloured

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race against the white, or the poor against the rich, would only bring trouble; that we believe the common good of both depends on the spirit of harmony and justice of each toward the other.
     Resolved, That, believing the spirit and tendencies of radicalism are unfavourable to these aims, we take our stand with the true Union Conservatives of Tennessee and invite our race throughout the state to do the same.
     Resolved, That our right to vote involves the right to hold office, that its denial is unjust, and that our interests and rights as free men require also that we should have the right to sit upon juries.

     The year before, Oct. 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

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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."*
     On Oct. 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

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     * Appleton's Annual Encyclopedia, 1864, p. 842.

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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 Feb. 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.

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     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 Feb. 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.*  Texas was re presented 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

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     * Rhodes's "History of the United States,"  1890-1877, Vol. VI., p. 88.

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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 Con federate 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, Apr. 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

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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

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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

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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

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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 11, 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

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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 Aug. 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 Haral son 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

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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:

     Our ratio of representation is poor.  We are taunted with being uppish;  we are told to be still, to keep quiet.  How long must we keep quiet?  We have kept quiet while numerically and justly we are entitled to fifty-one members of this House; and I am the only one left.  We have kept quiet when numerically we are entitled to a member of the Supreme Court.  We have never had a member and probably never will; but we have kept quiet.  We have kept quiet while numerically and justly, according to our population as compared with all other races of the world, so far as the United States are concerned, we should have the recognition of a place in the President's Cabinet; but we have not had it.  Still we have kept quiet, and are making no noise about it.
     We are entitled to thirteen United States Senators, according to justice and according to our numerical strength, but we have not one and, though we have had two, possibly never will get another;

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and yet we keep quiet.  We have kept quiet while hundreds and thousands of our race have been strung up by the neck unjustly by mobs of murderers.  If a man commits a crime he will never find an apologist in me because his face is black.  He ought to be punished, but he ought to be punished according to the law as administered in a court of justice.  But we keep quiet; do not say it, do not talk about it.  How long must we keep quiet, constantly sitting down and seeing our rights one by one taken away from us?  As slaves it was to be expected, as slaves we were docile and easily managed; but as citizens we want and we have a right to expect all that the law guarantees to us.

     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:

     We are passing, as we trust, from ignorance to intelligence.  The process may be slow; we may be impatient; you may be discouraged; public sentiment may be against us because we have not done better, but we are making progress.  Do you recollect in history any race of people placed in like circumstances who have done any better than we have?  Give us a chance and we will do more.  We plead to all of those who are here legislating for the nation that while your sympathy goes out to Cuba — and we are legislating for Cuba — while your hearts burst forth with great love for humanity abroad, remember those who are at our own door.  Remember those who have worked for you; remember those who have loved you, have held up your hands, who have felled your forests, have digged your ditches, who have filled up your valleys and have lowered the mountains, and have helped to make the great Southland what it is to-day.  We are entitled to

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your recognition.  We do not ask for domination.  We ask and expect a chance in legislation, and we will be content with nothing else.

     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 trans formed 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 and Industrial Institute.

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     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.

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