THE NEGRO QUESTION. 183 



gence," Massachusetts requires of voters a prepayment of taxes, and 

 voting and office-holding are limited to those who can read the Con- 

 stitution in the English language and write their names. What has 

 been done by States, denominations, and individuals through schools 

 is not discouraging to larger and better efforts, but is a stimulus to 

 and an assurance of excellent results. The plantation system of the 

 South, when land was in the hands of a few territorial magnates, was 

 of very doubtful utility. A bold peasantry is a country's pride, and 

 a small farmer should take the place of the large landed proprietor. 

 If the negroes should acquire and hold more real estate, they would 

 be of more value as citizens, and would have increased interest in the 

 stability of laws, enforcing of contracts, and the preservation of 

 State honor. An enlargement of the number of those who have a 

 solid stake in the well-being of the country would be adding to the 

 ranks of natural supporters of law and honor, and strengthening the 

 true foundations on which the stability of a republican government 

 must rest. 



The congestion of the negroes aggravates the difficulties and dan- 

 gers of the problem. The area of the States holding slaves in 1860 

 was 901,740 square miles, and of the Northern States, excluding 

 Alaska, 2,123,860 square miles. By the census of 1890, the total 

 population of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mis- 

 sissippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, 

 and West Virginia, was 37.3 per cent of negroes and 62.7 per cent 

 of whites; or, including Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Mis- 

 souri, 30.7 per cent of negroes and 69.3 per cent of whites. The 

 African citizens are localized within a narrow area. A French 

 statesman said, " Cross the Pyrenees and Africa begins." Cross 

 Mason and Dixon's line, or the Ohio and Potomac Rivers, and in a 

 truer sense Africa begins, for south of that line the negroes are 

 massed. It has been nearly forty years since slavery existed, for 

 no one born since 1860 was ever practically a slave, and yet freedom 

 has not diffused the seven million and a half of Africans. Despite 

 all the traditions of bondage, all the misrepresentations of modern 

 literature, all the exaggerated accounts of intimidation and cruelty, 

 the South remains the home of the negro. When he is told that 

 equality, friendship, political sympathy, and good wages may be se- 

 cured by passing an invisible geographical line, he persistently refuses 

 to be seduced across. Senator Windom, of Minnesota, advocated a 

 plan for distributing by assisted emigration, but nothing came of 

 it. Senator Edmunds, in discussing the Chinese question, said: 

 " The people of Massachusetts would not be hungry for an eruption 

 of a million of the inhabitants t)f Africa, . . . because they believe, 

 either by instinct or education, that it is not good for the two races 



