i8z POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



soil, the varied products, the hospitable welcome, the territory occu- 

 pied by the negro is persistently avoided. By the census of 1880 the 

 proportion of foreign-born in all the former slave States was 3.5 per 

 cent; in the Northern States about twenty per cent; in eight South- 

 ern States, where the negroes abound, there was in 1880 only one 

 and a third per cent who were of foreign birth. Mr. Lincoln, in 

 1858, in accounting for the repulsion, said: "There is a physical 

 difference between the two races which will probably forbid their 

 living together upon the footing of perfect equality. ... I am not, 

 or ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor 

 of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarrying with white 

 people." Absorption, assimilation, is not to be dreamed of. The 

 negro is no nearer common fellowship, equality of association, than 

 he was in 1865. Reconstruction measures, constitutional amend- 

 ments, sword and bayonet, ecclesiastical anathemas, fulminations of 

 press and pulpit, all power of church and state and public opinion, 

 have not altered, can not alter, what seems ineradicable. Race an- 

 tagonism reaches deeper than political affiliation. If every negro 

 at the South were to vote the Democratic ticket in every subsequent 

 election, the race division would remain the same. 



Can these differences be effaced, alienations be healed, and over- 

 shadowing perils be averted? What concerns the patriot is to find 

 a solution for this gigantic and appalling problem. The statesman 

 has not yet arisen, disposed to grapple with the problem, or capable 

 of suggesting a feasible and efficacious remedy. With the least hard- 

 ship to the negro, proper recognition of his rights as a man, due 

 regard to the just ends of our Government, and the purposes of its 

 founders, some scheme, if possible, wise, adequate, and comprehen- 

 sive, should be devised. Whatever hitherto has been suggested has 

 been met with opposition and is justly liable to criticism. The most 

 obvious remedy, and which has been tried with some success, is to 

 uplift the race by means of public schools and proper religious in- 

 struction. All honor to the schools that train the youth into self- 

 respecting manhood and womanhood ! All honor for the efforts that 

 are making to correct the debasement of slavery, to unite faith and 

 practice, to infuse religious life with an ethical Christianity, and 

 to form a moral basis for life and character! The crimes of both 

 races in the South, pushed within the last few years to most brutal 

 atrocities, show that there can be no safety for free institutions, no 

 guarding against savage degradation, if either race be kept in crass 

 ignorance. Both must suffer. It would be some relief from ballot- 

 box evils and perils if the examples of New England and of Louisiana, 

 Mississippi, and South Carolina were followed by all the States. As 

 " universal suffrage has no anchorage except in the people's intelli- 



