THE RACE PROBLEM AT THE SOUTH. 



BY HILARY A. HERBERT. 



[Hilary Abner Herbert, ex-secretary of the navy; bom Laurensville, S. C, March 12, 

 1834; educated in the universities of Alabama and Virginia; admitted to the bar and 

 practiced at Greenville, Ala.; captain and colonel of the 8th Alabama volunteers 

 U.S.A.'; located in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1872, and resumed law practice; mem- 

 ber of congress, 1877-93; secretary of navy, 1893-7.] 



This is a land of free speech. Americans may now discuss 

 any where, north or south, even their negro question in all 

 its bearings. This it has not always been easy to do, even in 

 the historic city which claims the proud distinction of being 

 the birthplace of American liberties. In 1859 George William 

 Curtis became temporarily a hero by an antislavery speech 

 in Philadelphia. A mob had gathered to prevent him, but the 

 mayor of the city, backed by the police, succeeded in protect- 

 ing the speaker, who delivered his address in spite of the mis- 

 siles that were hurled into the room where he spoke. The next 

 year, however, so violent were the passions of the day that the 

 friends of that great orator could not hire a hall in that city 

 for Mr. Curtis to lecture in, even on a subject totally discon- 

 nected with the negro, or with politics. 



In those days the negro question was full of dynamite, 

 because we then had in this country two systems, I might al- 

 most say two civilizations, one founded on free and the other 

 intimately interwoven with and largely dependent upon slave 

 labor. They were in sharp conflict with each other, and there- 

 fore it was that free discussion of the slavery question, or 

 negro problem, was then sometimes difficult at the north, 

 while it was every where impossible in the south. Abolition 

 sentiment was proclaiming in the north that slavery must go, 

 no matter at what cost. In the south, therefore, the stern law 

 of self preservation demanded the rigid suppression of free 

 speech on this question, lest discussion should incite insurrec- 

 tion, and light the midnight torch of the incendiary. In the 

 north the motive of the mobs which, like those who gathered 

 around Mr. Curtis here in 1859, and who called themselves 



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