An Appeal to Caesar Volume 3

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ...fecundity, the Southern man, as a rule, not only regards the colored man as an inferior, but as so inferior in all the elements of effective manhood as to be politically unworthy of any consideration other than contempt. Because of this misconception of the real character of the negro as modified and developed by the harsh tuition of slavery and, in some sense, the still harsher tutelage of the Reconstruction era, there are two classes who fail, in about equal degrees, to appreciate his present situation or the possibilities and probabilities of his future. One of these classes is the Southern white who bases his estimate of the negro, as a man, solely upon his conception of him as a slave. This estimate is as naturally defective in its economic and personal as in its political / J The slave is never appreciated by the master. Pharaoh unquestionably despised Moses and his ' people, and had no idea that they were capable of individual autonomy or collective independence. Yet they became the most remarkable people in distinctive power, and in the inherited capacity of waiting and watching for remote opportunity, that the world has ever seen. It was a general belief among the white people of the South that if the slaves were even for a day thrown UPlOl'l_" their own resources they must inevitably perishlp /" ti Their willingness to labor, their vigor and fortitude,' / were all underestimated. They were considered ' incapable of civilization and development. The Southern white regards the freedman simply as the product of slavery. He looks upon his outward circumstances and material surroundings as the sole indications of progress or the want of it. He does not think of measuring the race with any other free people. He does...