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In speaking again of the South in Harper’s Monthly, after an interval of about two years, and as before at the request of the editor, I said, I shrink a good deal from the appearance of forwardness which a second paper may seem to give to observations which have the single purpose of contributing my mite towards making the present spirit of the Southern people, their progress in industries and in education, their aspirations, better known. On the other hand, I have no desire to escape the imputation of a warm interest in the South, and of a belief that its development and prosperity are essential to the greatness and glory of the nation. Indeed, no one can go through the South, with his eyes open, without having his patriotic fervor quickened and broadened, and without increased pride in the republic.

We are one people. Different traditions, different education or the lack of it, the demoralizing curse of slavery, different prejudices, made us look at life from irreconcilable points of view; but the prominent common feature, after all, is our Americanism. In any assembly of gentlemen from the two sections the resemblances are greater than the differences. A score of times I have heard it said, “We look alike, talk alike, feel alike; how strange it is we should have fought!” Personal contact always tends to remove prejudices, and to bring into prominence the national feeling, the race feeling, the human nature common to all of us.

I wish to give as succinctly as I can the general impressions of a recent six weeks’ tour, made by a company of artists and writers, which became known as the “Harper party,” through a considerable portion of the South, including the cities of Lynchburg, Richmond, Danville, Atlanta, Augusta (with a brief call at Charleston and Columbia, for it was not intended to take in the eastern seaboard on this trip), Knoxville, Chattanooga, South Pittsburg, Nashville, Birmingham, Montgomery, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, Memphis, Louisville. Points of great interest were necessarily omitted in a tour which could only include representatives of the industrial and educational development of the New South. Naturally we were thrown more with business men and with educators than with others; that is, with those who are actually making the New South; but we saw something of social life, something of the homes and mode of living of every class, and we had abundant opportunities of conversation with whites and blacks of every social grade and political affinity. The Southern people were anxious to show us what they were doing, and they expressed their sentiments with entire frankness; if we were misled, it is our own fault. It must be noted, however, in estimating the value of our observations, that they were mainly made in cities and large villages, and little in the country districts.

Inquiries in the South as to the feeling of the North show that there is still left some misapprehension of the spirit in which the North sent out its armies, though it is beginning to be widely understood that the North was not animated by hatred of the South, but by intense love of the Union. On the other hand, I have no doubt there still lingers in the North a little misapprehension of the present feeling of the Southern people about the Union. It arises from a confusion of two facts which it is best to speak of plainly. Everybody knows that the South is heartily glad that slavery is gone, and that a new era of freedom has set in. Everybody who knows the South at all is aware that any idea of any renewal of the strife, now or at any time, is nowhere entertained, even as a speculation, and that to the women especially, who are said to be first in war, last in peace, and first in the hearts of their countrymen, the idea of war is a subject of utter loathing. The two facts to which I refer are the loyalty of the Southern whites to the Union, and their determination to rule in domestic affairs. Naturally there are here and there soreness and some bitterness over personal loss and ruin, life-long grief, maybe, over lost illusions—the observer who remembers what human nature is wonders that so little of this is left—but the great fact is that the South is politically loyal to the Union of the States, that the sentiment for its symbol is growing into a deep reality which would flame out in passion under any foreign insult, and that nationality, pride in the republic, is everywhere strong and prominent. It is hardly necessary to say this, but it needs to be emphasized when the other fact is dwelt on, namely, the denial of free suffrage to the colored man. These two things are confused, and this confusion is the source of much political misunderstanding. Often when a Southern election “outrage” is telegraphed, when intimidation or fraud is revealed, it is said in print, “So that is Southern loyalty!” In short, the political treatment of the negro is taken to be a sign of surviving war feeling, if not of a renewed purpose of rebellion. In this year of grace 1887 the two things have no isolation to each other. It would be as true to say that election frauds and violence to individuals and on the ballot-box in Cincinnati are signs of hatred of the Union and of Union men, as that a suppressed negro vote at the South, by adroit management or otherwise, is indication of remaining hostility to the Union. In the South it is sometimes due to the same depraved party spirit that causes frauds in the North—the determination of a party to get or keep the upper-hand at all hazards; but it is, in its origin and generally, simply the result of the resolution of the majority of the brains and property of the South to govern the cities and the States, and in the Southern mind this is perfectly consistent with entire allegiance to the Government. I could name men who were abettors of what is called the “shotgun policy” whose national patriotism is beyond question, and who are warm promoters of negro education and the improvement of the condition of the colored people.

We might as well go to the bottom of this state of things, and look it squarely in the face. Under reconstruction, sometimes owing to a tardy acceptance of the new conditions by the ruling class, the State governments and the municipalities fell under the control of ignorant colored people, guided by unscrupulous white adventurers. States and cities were prostrate under the heel of ignorance and fraud, crushed with taxes, and no improvements to show for them. It was ruin on the way to universal bankruptcy. The regaining of power by the intelligent and the property owners was a question of civilization. The situation was intolerable. There is no Northern community that would have submitted to it; if it could not have been changed by legal process, it would have been upset by revolution, as it was at the South. Recognizing as we must the existence of race prejudice and pride, it was nevertheless a struggle for existence. The methods resorted to were often violent, and being sweeping, carried injustice. To be a Republican, in the eyes of those smarting under carpet-bag government and the rule of the ignorant lately enfranchised, was to be identified with the detested carpetbag government and with negro rule. The Southern Unionist and the Northern emigrant, who justly regarded the name Republican as the proudest they could bear, identified as it was with the preservation of the Union and the national credit, could not show their Republican principles at the polls without personal danger in the country and social ostracism in the cities. Social ostracism on account of politics even outran social ostracism on account of participation in the education of the negroes. The very men who would say, “I respect a man who fought for the Union more than a Northern Copperhead, and if I had lived North, no doubt I should have gone with my section,” would at the same time say, or think, “But you cannot be a Republican down here now, for to be that is to identify yourself with the party here that is hostile to everything in life that is dear to us.” This feeling was intensified by the memories of the war, but it was in a measure distinct from the war feeling, and it lived on when the latter grew weak, and it still survives in communities perfectly loyal to the Union, glad that slavery is ended, and sincerely desirous of the establishment and improvement of public education for colored and white alike.

Any tampering with the freedom of the ballot-box in a republic, no matter what the provocation, is dangerous; the methods used to regain white ascendancy were speedily adopted for purely party purposes and factional purposes; the chicanery, even the violence, employed to render powerless the negro and “carpetbag” vote were freely used by partisans in local elections against each other, and in time became means of preserving party and ring ascendancy. Thoughtful men South as well as North recognize the vital danger to popular government if voting and the ballot-box are not sacredly protected. In a recent election in Texas, in a district where, I am told, the majority of the inhabitants are white, and the majority of the whites are Republicans, and the majority of the colored voters voted the Republican ticket, and greatly the larger proportion of the wealth and business of the district are in Republican hands, there was an election row; ballot-boxes were destroyed in several precincts, persons killed on both sides, and leading Republicans driven out of the State. This is barbarism. If the case is substantiated as stated, that in the district it was not a question of race ascendancy, but of party ascendancy, no fair-minded man in the Sooth can do otherwise than condemn it, for under such conditions not only is a republican form of government impossible, but development and prosperity are impossible.

For this reason, and because separation of voters on class lines is always a peril, it is my decided impression that throughout the South, though not by everybody, a breaking up of the solidarity of the South would be welcome; that is to say, a breaking up of both the negro and the white vote, and the reforming upon lines of national and economic policy, as in the old days of Whig and Democrat, and liberty of free action in all local affairs, without regard to color or previous party relations. There are politicians who would preserve a solid South, or as a counterpart a solid North, for party purposes. But the sense of the country, the perception of business men North and South, is that this condition of politics interferes with the free play of industrial development, with emigration, investment of capital, and with that untrammelled agitation and movement in society which are the life of prosperous States.

Let us come a little closer to the subject, dealing altogether with facts, and not with opinions. The Republicans of the North protest against the injustice of an increased power in the Lower House and in the Electoral College based upon a vote which is not represented. It is a valid protest in law; there is no answer to it. What is the reply to it? The substance of hundreds of replies to it is that “we dare not let go so long as the negroes all vote together, regardless of local considerations or any economic problems whatever; we are in danger of a return to a rule of ignorance that was intolerable, and as long as you wave the bloody shirt at the North, which means to us a return to that rule, the South will be solid.” The remark made by one man of political prominence was perhaps typical: “The waving of the bloody shirt suits me exactly as a political game; we should have hard work to keep our State Democratic if you did not wave it.” So the case stands. The Republican party will always insist on freedom, not only of political opinion, but of action, in every part of the Union; and the South will keep “solid” so long as it fears, or so long as politicians can persuade it to fear, the return of the late disastrous domination. And recognizing this fact, and speaking in the interest of no party, but only in that of better understanding and of the prosperity of the whole country, I cannot doubt that the way out of most of our complications is in letting the past drop absolutely, and addressing ourselves with sympathy and good-will all around to the great economical problems and national issues. And I believe that in this way also lies the speediest and most permanent good to the colored as well as the white population of the South.

There has been a great change in the aspect of the South and in its sentiment within two years; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the change maturing for fifteen years is more apparent in a period of comparative rest from race or sectional agitation. The educational development is not more marvellous than the industrial, and both are unparalleled in history. Let us begin by an illustration.

I stood one day before an assembly of four hundred pupils of a colored college—called a college, but with a necessary preparatory department—children and well-grown young women and men. The buildings are fine, spacious, not inferior to the best modern educational buildings either in architectural appearance or in interior furnishing, with scientific apparatus, a library, the appliances approved by recent experience in teaching, with admirable methods and discipline, and an accomplished corps of instructors. The scholars were neat, orderly, intelligent in appearance. As I stood for a moment or two looking at their bright expectant faces the profound significance of the spectacle and the situation came over me, and I said: “I wonder if you know what you are doing, if you realize what this means. Here you are in a school the equal of any of its grade in the land, with better methods of instruction than prevailed anywhere when I was a boy, with the gates of all knowledge opened as freely to you as to any youth in the land—here, in this State, where only about twenty years ago it was a misdemeanor, punishable with fine and imprisonment, to teach a colored person to read and write. And I am brought here to see this fine school, as one of the best things he can show me in the city, by a Confederate colonel. Not in all history is there any instance of a change like this in a quarter of a century: no, not in one nor in two hundred years. It seems incredible.”

This is one of the schools instituted and sustained by Northern friends of the South; but while it exhibits the capacity of the colored people for education, it is not so significant in the view we are now taking of the New South as the public schools. Indeed, next to the amazing industrial change in the South, nothing is so striking as the interest and progress in the matter of public schools. In all the cities we visited the people were enthusiastic about their common schools. It was a common remark, “I suppose we have one of the best school systems in the country.” There is a wholesome rivalry to have the best. We found everywhere the graded system and the newest methods of teaching in vogue. In many of the primary rooms in both white and colored schools, when I asked if these little children knew the alphabet when they came to school, the reply was, “Not generally we prefer they should not; we use the new method of teaching words.” In many schools the youngest pupils were taught to read music by sight, and to understand its notation by exercises on the blackboard. In the higher classes generally, the instruction in arithmetic, in reading, In geography, in history, and in literature was wholly in the modern method. In some of the geography classes and in the language classes I was reminded of the drill in the German schools. In all the cities, as far as I could learn, the public money was equally distributed to the colored and to the white schools, and the number of schools bore a just proportion to the number of the two races. When the town was equally divided in population, the number of pupils in the colored schools was about the same as the number in the white schools. There was this exception: though provision was made for a high-school to terminate the graded for both colors, the number in the colored high-school department was usually very small; and the reason given by colored and white teachers was that the colored children had not yet worked up to it. The colored people prefer teachers of their own race, and they are quite generally employed; but many of the colored schools have white teachers, and generally, I think, with better results, although I saw many thoroughly good colored teachers, and one or two colored classes under them that compared favorably with any white classes of the same grade.

The great fact, however, is that the common-school system has become a part of Southern life, is everywhere accepted as a necessity, and usually money is freely voted to sustain it. But practically, as an efficient factor in civilization, the system is yet undeveloped in the country districts. I can only speak from personal observation of the cities, but the universal testimony was that the common schools in the country for both whites and blacks are poor. Three months’ schooling in the year is about the rule, and that of a slack and inferior sort, under incompetent teachers. In some places the colored people complain that ignorant teachers are put over them, who are chosen simply on political considerations. More than one respectable colored man told me that he would not send his children to such schools, but combined with a few others to get them private instruction. The colored people are more dependent on public schools than the whites, for while there are vast masses of colored people in city and country who have neither the money nor the disposition to sustain schools, in all the large places the whites are able to have excellent private schools, and do have them. Scarcely anywhere can the colored people as yet have a private school without white aid from somewhere. At the present rate of progress, and even of the increase of tax-paying ability, it must be a long time before the ignorant masses, white and black, in the country districts, scattered over a wide area, can have public schools at all efficient. The necessity is great. The danger to the State of ignorance is more and more apprehended; and it is upon this that many of the best men of the South base their urgent appeal for temporary aid from the Federal Government for public schools. It is seen that a State cannot soundly prosper unless its laborers are to some degree intelligent. This opinion is shown in little things. One of the great planters of the Yazoo Delta told me that he used to have no end of trouble in settling with his hands. But now that numbers of them can read and cipher, and explain the accounts to the others, lie never has the least trouble.

One cannot speak too highly of the private schools in the South, especially of those for young women. I do not know what they were before the war, probably mainly devoted to “accomplishments,” as most of girls’ schools in the North were. Now most of them are wider in range, thorough in discipline, excellent in all the modern methods. Some of them, under accomplished women, are entirely in line with the best in the country. Before leaving this general subject of education, it is necessary to say that the advisability of industrial training, as supplementary to book-learning, is growing in favor, and that in some colored schools it is tried with good results.

When we come to the New Industrial South the change is marvellous, and so vast and various that I scarcely know where to begin in a short paper that cannot go much into details. Instead of a South devoted to agriculture and politics, we find a South wide awake to business, excited and even astonished at the development of its own immense resources in metals, marbles, coal, timber, fertilizers, eagerly laying lines of communication, rapidly opening mines, building furnaces, founderies, and all sorts of shops for utilizing the native riches. It is like the discovery of a new world. When the Northerner finds great founderies in Virginia using only (with slight exceptions) the products of Virginia iron and coal mines; when he finds Alabama and Tennessee making iron so good and so cheap that it finds ready market in Pennsylvania, and founderies multiplying near the great furnaces for supplying Northern markets; when he finds cotton-mills running to full capacity on grades of cheap cottons universally in demand throughout the South and South-west; when he finds small industries, such as paper-box factories and wooden bucket and tub factories, sending all they can make into the North and widely over the West; when he sees the loads of most beautiful marbles shipped North; when he learns that some of the largest and most important engines and mill machinery were made in Southern shops; when he finds in Richmond a “pole locomotive,” made to run on logs laid end to end, and drag out from Michigan forests and Southern swamps lumber hitherto inaccessible; when he sees worn-out highlands in Georgia and Carolina bear more cotton than ever before by help of a fertilizer the base of which is the cotton-seed itself (worth more as a fertilizer than it was before the oil was extracted from it); when he sees a multitude of small shops giving employment to men, women, and children who never had any work of that sort to do before; and when he sees Roanoke iron cast in Richmond into car-irons, and returned to a car-factory in Roanoke which last year sold three hundred cars to the New York and New England Railroad—he begins to open his eyes. The South is manufacturing a great variety of things needed in the house, on the farm, and in the shops, for home consumption, and already sends to the North and West several manufactured products. With iron, coal, timber contiguous and easily obtained, the amount sent out is certain to increase as the labor becomes more skilful. The most striking industrial development today is in iron, coal, lumber, and marbles; the more encouraging for the self-sustaining life of the Southern people is the multiplication of small industries in nearly every city I visited.

When I have been asked what impressed me most in this hasty tour, I have always said that the most notable thing was that everybody was at work. In many cities this was literally true: every man, woman, and child was actively employed, and in most there were fewer idlers than in many Northern towns. There are, of course, slow places, antiquated methods, easy-going ways, a-hundred-years-behind-the-time makeshifts, but the spirit in all the centres, and leavening the whole country, is work. Perhaps the greatest revolution of all in Southern sentiment is in regard to the dignity of labor. Labor is honorable, made so by the example of the best in the land. There are, no doubt, fossils or Bourbons, sitting in the midst of the ruins of their estates, martyrs to an ancient pride; but usually the leaders in business and enterprise bear names well known in politics and society. The nonsense that it is beneath the dignity of any man or woman to work for a living is pretty much eliminated from the Southern mind. It still remains true that the Anglo-Saxon type is prevalent in the South; but in all the cities the business sign-boards show that the enterprising Hebrew is increasingly prominent as merchant and trader, and he is becoming a plantation owner as well.

It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the public mind that the South, to use a comprehensible phrase, “has joined the procession.” Its mind is turned to the development of its resources, to business, to enterprise, to education, to economic problems; it is marching with the North in the same purpose of wealth by industry. It is true that the railways, mines, and furnaces could not have been without enormous investments of Northern capital, but I was continually surprised to find so many and important local industries the result solely of home capital, made and saved since the war.

In this industrial change, in the growth of manufactures, the Southern people are necessarily divided on the national economic problems. Speaking of it purely from the side of political economy and not of politics, great sections of the South—whole States, in fact—are becoming more in favor of “protection” every day. All theories aside, whenever a man begins to work up the raw material at hand into manufactured articles for the market, he thinks that the revenue should be so adjusted as to help and not to hinder him.

Underlying everything else is the negro problem. It is the most difficult ever given to a people to solve.

It must, under our Constitution, be left to the States concerned, and there is a general hopefulness that time and patience will solve it to the advantage of both races. The negro is generally regarded as the best laborer in the world, and there is generally goodwill towards him, desire that he shall be educated and become thrifty. The negro has more confidence now than formerly in the white man, and he will go to him for aid and advice in everything except politics. Again and again colored men said to me, “If anybody tells you that any considerable number of colored men are Democrats, don’t you believe him; it is not so.” The philanthropist who goes South will find many things to encourage him, but if he knows the colored people thoroughly, he will lose many illusions. But to speak of things hopeful, the progress in education, in industry, in ability to earn money, is extraordinary—much greater than ought to have been expected in twenty years even by their most sanguine friends, and it is greater now than at any other period. They are generally well paid, according to the class of work they do. Usually I found the same wages for the same class of work as whites received. I cannot say how this is in remote country districts. The treatment of laborers depends, I have no doubt, as elsewhere, upon the nature of the employer. In some districts I heard that the negroes never got out of debt, never could lay up anything, and were in a very bad condition. But on some plantations certainly, and generally in the cities, there is an improvement in thrift shown in the ownership of bits of land and houses, and in the possession of neat and pretty homes. As to morals, the gain is slower, but it is discernible, and exhibited in a growing public opinion against immorality and lax family relations. He is no friend to the colored people who blinks this subject, and does not plainly say to them that their position as citizens in the enjoyment of all civil rights depends quite as much upon their personal virtue and their acquiring habits of thrift as it does upon school privileges.

I had many interesting talks with representative colored men in different sections. While it is undoubtedly true that more are indifferent to politics than formerly, owing to causes already named and to the unfulfilled promises of wheedling politicians, it would be untrue to say that there is not great soreness over the present situation. At Nashville I had an interview with eight or ten of the best colored citizens, men of all shades of color. One of them was a trusted clerk in the post-office; another was a mail agent, who had saved money, and made more by an investment in Birmingham; another was a lawyer of good practice in the courts, a man of decided refinement and cultivation; another was at the head of one of the leading transportation lines in the city, and another had the largest provision establishment in town, and both were men of considerable property; and another, a slave when the war ended, was a large furniture dealer, and reputed worth a hundred thousand dollars. They were all solid, sensible business men, and all respected as citizens. They talked most intelligently of politics, and freely about social conditions. In regard to voting in Tennessee there was little to complain of; but in regard to Mississippi, as an illustration, it was an outrage that the dominant party had increased power in Congress and in the election of President, while the colored Republican vote did not count. What could they do? Some said that probably nothing could be done; time must be left to cure the wrong. Others wanted the Federal Government to interfere, at least to the extent of making a test case on some member of Congress that his election was illegal. They did not think that need excite anew any race prejudice. As to exciting race and sectional agitation, we discussed this question: whether the present marvellous improvement of the colored people, with general good-will, or at least a truce everywhere, would not be hindered by anything like a race or class agitation; that is to say, whether under the present conditions of education and thrift the colored people (whatever injustice they felt) were not going on faster towards the realization of all they wanted than would be possible under any circumstances of adverse agitation. As a matter of policy most of them assented to this. I put this question: “In the first reconstruction days, how many colored men were there in the State of Mississippi fitted either by knowledge of letters, law, political economy, history, or politics to make laws for the State?” Very few. Well then, it was unfortunate that they should have attempted it. There are more to-day, and with education and the accumulation of property the number will constantly increase. In a republic, power usually goes with intelligence and property.

Finally I asked this intelligent company, every man of which stood upon his own ability in perfect self-respect, “What do you want here in the way of civil rights that you have not?” The reply from one was that he got the respect of the whites just as he was able to command it by his ability and by making money, and, with a touch of a sense of injustice, he said he had ceased to expect that the colored race would get it in any other way. Another reply was—and this was evidently the deep feeling of all: “We want to be treated like men, like anybody else, regardless of color. We don’t mean by this social equality at all; that is a matter that regulates itself among whites and colored people everywhere. We want the public conveyances open to us according to the fare we pay; we want privilege to go to hotels and to theatres, operas and places of amusement. We wish you could see our families and the way we live; you would then understand that we cannot go to the places assigned us in concerts and theatres without loss of self-respect.” I might have said, but I did not, that the question raised by this last observation is not a local one, but as wide as the world.

If I tried to put in a single sentence the most widespread and active sentiment in the South to-day, it would be this: The past is put behind us; we are one with the North in business and national ambition: we want a sympathetic recognition of this fact.