CHAPTER II

White

It is my purpose in writing this work to show that the American Government has always construed people of African parentage to be aliens, not only when the Constitution was tortured by narrow-minded men to shield the cruel, murderous slave-holder in the possession of his human property, but even now, when the panoply of citizenship is, presumably, all-sufficient to insure to the late slave the enjoyment of full manhood rights as a sovereign citizen.

The conflict of law and the moral sentiment of the country has been long and bloody, and the end is not yet.  Political parties in this country do not lead, but follow, public opinion.  They hang upon the applause of the rabble, and succeed or fail in their efforts to administer the affairs of Government in proportion as they interpret the wishes of the rabble.  Not alone do parties defer to the wishes of the illiterate, the “great unwashed” majority, but individuals as well, who prefer to ride upon the wave of success as the champions of great wrongs rather than to go into retirement as the champions of just principles.  The voice of the Charmer is all too powerful to be successfully resisted.

Republics have always been fruitful of demagogues.  Such vermin find the soil of democratic government the most fertile and congenial for their operations, because the audiences to which they speak, the passions to which they appeal, are not always of the most reflective, humane or enlightened.  Demagogues are the parasites of republics; and that our country is afflicted with an abnormal number of them is to be expected from the tentative nature of our institutions, the extent of our territory and the heterogeneity of our vast population.

Under our government all the peoples of the world find shelter and protection—­save the African (who was formerly used as a beast of burden and now as a football, to be kicked by one faction and kicked back by the other) and the industrious Chinaman, who was barred out by the over-obsequiousness of the Congress of the nation, in deference to the Sand-Lot demagogues of the Pacific coast, headed by Denis Kearney, because it was desirable to conciliate their votes, even at the expense of consistency and the unity of the Constitution.  That great document, while constantly affirmed to be the most broad and liberal compact ever devised for the governance of man, has always been found to be narrow enough to serve the purposes of the slave oligarch and the make-shifts of the party in power; and has always afforded ample shelter and protection to the lazzaroni of Italy, the paupers of Ireland, and the incendiary spirits of other countries, but yet cannot shield a black man, a citizen and to the manor born, in any common, civil or political right which usually attaches to citizenship.