Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/197

Rh and when sufficiently agitated, it or some kindred measure will protect us from the error of our fathers in bringing the African to America. "Benjamin W. Hunt."

Eatonton, Ga., Sept. 18, 1903.

Thus it goes, we see. Through the greed of gain our ancestors permxitted large numbers of the savage and cannibalistic blacks to be landed on the shores of a country that eventually came to be a great Republic. They were slaves and remained slaves until a fearful and prolonged war, costing thousands upon thousands of lives and millions of money, freed them. That war was an endless chapter of untold misery, but, with justice, it must be said here that the black man, imported to the shores of America against his will, was not responsible for it.

During the days of slavery, untold thousands of hybrids were produced, due to a crossing of the black and the white races, and this took place principally in the South, though by no means altogether confined to that region. When they gained their liberty, after the Civil War, much was brought to bear, from a great variety of sources and diverse influences that profoundly affected their history. In the forty years that followed, however, it has been amply proven that hybridization with a certain class of the Indo-Europeans of the United States is still actively going on; that the typical negro remains very much the same kind of a being that he was on his having been brought here from Africa; that the dozen and odd who have risen to prominence in the black race of this country are not typical negroes, but have from sixty to