Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/366

 day could have been sent to the whipping post. It is not easy for a planter who has not enough to eat to rejoice over the fact that the servant who once washed his beard is now his ruler of the State. But, whatever the motive of the feeling, the negro in South Carolina is at the feet of Moses and Whipper, because he was driven there. The old master has as yet made no sign of sympathy or friendship. I am profoundly convinced that if, instead of mourning over the lost cause, as in the past they were wont to bluster about the Yankees and slavery, these people had dealt wisely with the negro and generously with the Northern immigrant, these States, and South Carolina especially, would be free and powerful. I hail the Chamberlain movement in one of its aspects as the opening of a new era. The support which that officer receives from the leading journal in the State, and one of the leading journals in the South—The News and Courier—shows the awakening of a new spirit. This paper thoroughly Democratic, its editors gentlemen who were in the Confederacy through the whole war and firm in their devotion to the lost cause, sees that the only hope for South Carolina is supporting the honest, intelligent New England Governor, who says he is Republican from conviction and never … a Democrat; that he has no sympathy for Democracy or desire to be in its councils … that as Governor he means to give … honest government. The news … takes the Governor at his word and … him on, while newspapers over the border in Georgia mock and deride. If Chamberlain succeeds he will divide the colored vote, and for the first time array parties upon some other dividing line than that laid down by Jefferson Davis when he founded his Confederacy.

Hope for Carolina

But whether he succeeds or not the movement which he began a year ago, and which is now almost national in its extent, must go on. There is no way for South Carolina to win a good government except on this basis. Here the negroes are and in a large majority. They cannot be driven away, they cannot be slain, they cannot be disfranchised. They must be asked to take part in government, to unite with honest men in punishing crime. Education makes this more and more easy, and amid all this sorrow and strife and tumult the work of education goes on. The negro pants for the primer and the speller as the hart for the water of the brook. I have taken