THE NEGRO IN THE NORTHERN STATES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—You have an editorial article, in your issue of October 26th, based upon a New York letter published in the Man- chester Examiner, which gives as credible, a series of extra- ordinary stories in reference to the treatment of the Negro in the Northern States, for which there is scarcely a particle of basis. It would not be worth while to traverse the statements made, one by one ; the following may suffice to illustrate their incorrectness. You say :— " President Harrison's Administration lately appointed as Minister at Hayti the well-known half-bred [sic] Negro, Mr. Fred. Douglass, famous before the war as an Emancipation lecturer, and from 1876 to 1881 United States Marshal to the District of Columbia. Politically, the appointment gave, as far as we can gather, no offence whatever. When, however, it became necessary for the new Diplomatic Agent to proceed to his post, the greatest possible difficulties were encountered. The ordinary mail steamers to the West Indies were out of the question as a means of trans- port, as their rules are so strict in regard to coloured passengers that they would have only been able to give deck-passages to the Minister and his party. At first, too, it seemed as if even the officers of the United States Navy could not be relied on to obey orders in such a case. No fewer than three Captains in succession had to be deprived of their commands, before an officer willing to take Mr. Douglass to Port-au-Prince was discovered. That is, rather than submit to what they considered the degradation of having to receive a black man on terms of equality in their ships, three separate officers chose to close their careers."
This has the basis of gossip, and nothing more. It is common to send Ministers to neighbouring ports in a United States vessel. Not a single Captain refused to take him as passenger, and not one resigned. The story reported in the papers was denied by the Secretary of the Navy.
The statement that " the Young Men's Christian Association will nowhere in America admit coloured youths to member- ship " is untrue. There are coloured men in the New York Association, and in many others. It is equally untrue that " most of the Conventions of the Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist Churches refuse to allow coloured clergymen to take part in their deliberations." The Presby- terian General Assembly, held last May, had a dozen coloured members who took part in the deliberations. The Episcopal Convention, held a month ago, had two coloured members who took part ; and the Congregational Council, held last month, had half-a-dozen coloured members who took prominent. parts. The Methodist Episcopal General Conference last year had a large number of coloured members. There is no denomination in the Northern States from whose Conventions coloured members would be excluded. The statement that. Negroes " may not even aspire to the proud position of a barber except in so far as scraping the coloured cheeks and chins is concerned," is ridiculously untrue. I have seen scores of such barbers, and they are entirely acceptable to everybody.
You say, on the authority of the Manchester Examiner :- " The restrictions as to Negro railway travelling, and the- refusal of the Whites to allow Negro children to be educated along with their own, are too well known to need description."
So far from this being true in the North, there is not a State which allows any restriction upon Negroes travelling, either on the railways or in the horse-cars ; and in some of these States such discrimination against colour is made a mis- demeanour. The schools do not refuse to allow coloured children to be educated along with the Whites. There is not a. College or University in the North that would refuse Negro. students. The senior class in Harvard University has just elected a coloured man for Class Orator at Commencement, an honour more eagerly desired than any other ; Cornell Univer- sity has elected a coloured student as Prize Orator ; and at.
Yale University a coloured student has just been put on the football team. I myself went to school with coloured children in the public schools of Massachusetts, forty years ago ; and this morning I met a company of coloured children on their way to a large public school in the best portion of Newark, N.J.
These illustrations of the perversity of the letter to the Manchester Examiner might suffice, but one more must be quoted :-
"Most remarkable of all, General Sherman, the hero of the march to Richmond, in addressing a meeting of his former army at Cincinnati, expressed himself prepared to admit the disfran- chisement of the Negro provided that the Congressional repre- sentation of the South was reduced in proportion to the number of coloured persons deprived of the vote. This manifesto is. declared by the correspondent of the Manchester Examiner to repre- sent the unanimous popular opinion of the North. That this, however, is an exaggeration, we can hardly doubt. Still, the fact remains that a man in General Sherman's position actually advo- cates the disfranchisement of the entire Negro race."
Truly, this is " most remarkable of all." General Sherman,. who is not known in this country as "the hero of the march
to Richmond," would be astonished at such a representation of his language. He is not only an earnest believer in the enfranchisement of the Negro, but vigorously and persistently a foe to all restrictions upon his liberty of exercising that. franchise. This was the point of his Cincinnati speech; he declared that the offences against free ballot, of which the Negro is made the victim in some parts of the South, must be- stopped, and that if they are not stopped, the basis of repre- sentation ought, in such States, to be reduced. He was cheered to the echo, and the veteran soldiers to whom he was speaking,.
flung their hats to the ceiling in their enthusiasm. He was followed by General 0. 0. Howard, who spoke in the same vein and who was similarly applauded.
I do not pretend that there is not a great deal of prejudice against colour existing both in the North and in the South..
In the North, it is chiefly a prejudice against personal contact, and has nothing to do with civil or political rights and privi- leges; in the South, it is a prejudice which does not interfere with personal contact, but stands in the way of social recogni tion, and often of the enjoyment of political and civil rights..
The Independent, 251 Broadway, New York, November 6th.
[We gave our authority, and imagine the facts differ widely in different districts.—En. Spectator.]
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