274 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL. 



disturbance of any kind in the rural districts of the South, except two 

 or three instances that occurred soon after the war, in what is called the 

 Black Belt of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 



For partisan political purposes, these riots among the worthless whites 

 and blacks about the towns have been paraded in the partisan press of 

 the ..country for the purpose of keeping the old fire of sectional hate 

 fanned into a flame. Such things have been used in the North by the 

 politician, in the press and on the stump, to continue a solid Republi- 

 can North, pretendedly that the Southern brigadier might be kepi 

 under; while the same class of politicians in the South has used the 

 same thing to keep a solid Democratic South, pretendedly that negro 

 supremacy might be kept down. The people of the North and South 

 have listened to these politicians, while plutocracy has done its perfect 

 work in robbing both. 



The politician in the South has seemingly been in mortal fear of the 

 negro in politics, all the while, but has so managed as to keep the negro 

 in a solid political phalanx. If the negro was such a menace to good 

 government, and the inferior race mentally, morally, socially, and natu- 

 rally, why have such tactics always been used as would keep them in one 

 solid political party? 



The true answer to this question will perhaps shed more light upon 

 this subject than a great many are willing to admit is true. It is admit- 

 ting a thing that the evidence will not sustain, if we should claim that a 

 superior race, that has enjoyed the blessings of civilization, education, 

 and culture for ages, is unable to persuade an inferior race ; and if per- 

 suasion were not the thing to use, there were various other expedients to 

 which easy access could have been had, to divide their vote so that 

 negro supremacy would have forever been out of the question. 



To convince the reader that the negro vote could have been divided 

 long ago, and will be divided in the near future, I will make a short 

 quotation from a newspaper article, written last February, by Rev. J. L. 

 Moore, a colored Methodist minister of Crescent City, Florida, who was 

 a delegate to the meeting of the Colored National Farmers' Alliance and 

 Co-operative Union, which met at Ocala, Florida, at the same time the 

 National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union met there. The arti- 

 cle quoted from was written in reply to an editorial that appeared in one 

 of the partisan newspapers of Jacksonville, Florida, on the race question. 

 It is as follows : 



" According to our privileges, I think we have helped the white men all they 

 could expect under our condition; and we are not clamoring for social relations 

 with the whites either. We do not want to eat at their tables, sleep in their beds, 



