Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/53

Rh Much has been written of late years concerning the condition of morality among the emancipated people, but little in extenuation thereof. During the existence of slavery, the status of married life among the blacks, especially among those of the rural districts, was much higher and more respectable than it is now. Slave-owners for sanitary and police reasons required a certain amount of conjugal fidelity. In all cases masters were consulted as to marriage alliances, and in most cases insisted that the ceremony should be performed in a public manner either by a magistrate or a minister of the gospel with all the formality that obtained among the whites. Conjugal fidelity was insisted on and enforced, if need be, by punishment. Man and wife finding themselves bound together by an indissoluble tie, did as the more intelligent of other races do, made the best of their bonds and lived harmoniously. This is all changed. After the war, the highest courts of the country decided that as matrimony is a civil contract and as slaves could not make legal contracts, ergo, no marriage entered into in a state of bondage was valid or could be enforced. The result of this correct but unfortunate decision was, that every former slave who lusted after a new and younger wife put aside the old one. The young married negroes, seeing this free-and-easy way of upsetting domestic arrangements, and without caring for the reason thereof, availed themselves of the first domestic quarrel to separate and select new partners. The newly separated, if continuing in the same neighborhood, did not of course marry other wives, but lived in concubinage; but, if they removed to other States, they did not hesitate to marry again. If the crime of bigamy were followed by sure punishment, there would not be penitentiaries enough in the South to hold the guilty of a single State. The colored people do not appear to see the viciousness of this condition of affairs; and the white people, grand juries included, do not care to take the matter up, and so it continues.

A great fault of the negro is a lack of veracity. It may be safely ventured that there is not a magistrate, judge, or lawyer in the South who will assert that the statements of negroes, especially of those out of cities, are to be relied upon. To be sure, there are many honorable exceptions, but it is a race characteristic. Many hesitate to tell a direct falsehood, but there are but few who will not lie constructively in concealing the truth. It is hard to condemn them. In times of slavery their only safety from deserved punishment was concealment and by lying out of the difficulty, assisted by the concurrent testimony of friends. The habit descends from father to child. The first lesson taught a colored child as soon as it is able to comprehend the lesson is, "If the white folks ask you anything, always answer, 'I don't know.'" Absolute ignorance, even if assumed, is safer than a manufactured lie. Often I have known a colored parent to chastise her child unmercifully for answering truthfully some simple question