THE RACE PROBLEM AT THE SOUTH 273 



which he was at homo, and surmised that intermarriage would 

 hereafter become common in the south. If this surmise should 

 be correct, then there would follow, as he had proven, the 

 destruction of a large portion of the finest race upon earth, the 

 whites of the south. To prevent this result he argued that 

 the government could well afford, whatever might be the cost, 

 to deport all the negroes from the south. This admixture of 

 the races, let us hope, will not take place, and deportation is 

 impossible. 



If these articles had been written and published in 1860 

 who can estimate the opprobium that would have been heaped 

 upon Professor Cope and the University of Pennsylvania. But 

 in the nineties the publication excited no comment. It was 

 simply a scientific contribution to the discussion of the negro 

 question. The day of free thought and free speech even on 

 our race problem had come. 



So I am free to say that in my opinion the granting of 

 universal suffrage to the negro was the mistake of the nine- 

 teenth century. I say that, believing myself to be a friend to 

 the negro, willing and anxious that he shall have fair play and 

 the fullest opportunity under the law to develop himself to 

 his utmost capacity. Suffrage wronged the negro, because 

 he could only develop by practicing industry and economy, 

 while learning frugality. It was a mistake to tempt him away 

 from the field of labor into the field of politics, where, as a rule, 

 he could understand nothing that was taught him except the 

 color line. Negro suffrage was a wrong to the white man of 

 the south, for it brought him face to face with a situation in 

 which he concluded, after some years of trial, that in order to 

 preserve his civilization he must resort to fraud in elections; 

 and fraud in elections, wherever it may be practiced, is like the 

 deadly upas tree — it scatters its poisons in every direction. 

 Universal suffrage in the south has demoralized our politics 

 there. It has created a bitterness between the present genera- 

 tions of whites and blacks that had never existed between the 

 ex-slave and his former master. Another crying evil that has 

 resulted to the people of the south and of the whole union is 

 that we now have an absolutely solid south, where the neces- 

 sity for white supremacy is so dominant that no political ques- 



Vol. 10—18 



