Black and White - American Negro Author:T. Thomas Fortune Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE NEGRO AND THE NATION. The war of the Rebellion settled only one question: It forever settled the question of chattel slavery in this coun... more »try. It forever choked the life out of the infamy of the Constitutional right of one man to rob another, by purchase of his person, or of his honest share of the the produce of his own labor. But this was the only question permanently and irrevocably settled. Nor was this textit{the all-absorbing question involved. The right of a State to secede from the so-called textit{Union remains where it was when the treasonable shot upon Fort Sumter aroused the people to all the horrors of internecine war. And the measure of protection which the National government owes the individual members of States, a right imposed upon it by the adoptionof the XlVth Amendment to the Constitution, remains still to be affirmed. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have heeu duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.—Art. XIII. Sec. 1 of the Constitution. It was not sufficient that the Federal government should expend its blood and treasure to unfetter the limbs of four millions of people. There can be a slavery more odious, more galling, than mere chattel slavery. It has been declared to be an act of charity to enforce ignorance upon the slave, since to inform his intelligence would simply be to make his unnatural lot all the more unbearable. Instance the miserable existence of JEsop, the great black moralist. But this is just what the manumission of the black people of this country has accomplished. They are more absolutely under the control of the Southern whites; they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they...« less
ISBN-13: 9780714623450 ISBN-10: 0714623458 Publication Date: 10/4/1968 Pages:1 Edition:New issue of 1884 ed Rating: