Thus it might be said that peace is advanced to-day chiefly by the increasing exertions for the technical industrial education of the black workman. But it is not to be forgotten that the negro himself, and with him many philanthropists of the North, comprehends the whole situation very differently from the Southern supporters of the movement. These latter are contented with recent tendencies, because the negro’s vote is curtailed in the political sphere, and because he comes to be classed socially with the day-labourer and artisan. The negro, however, looks on this as a temporary stage in his development, and hopes in good time to outgrow it. He is glad that the election returns are no longer falsified on his account, and that legal means have been resorted to. But of course he hopes that he will soon grow beyond these conditions, and be finally favoured once more with the suffrage, just as any white man is.
It is much the same in the social sphere. He may be satisfied for the present that the advantages of manual training and farm labour are brought to the fore, but this must only be to lead his race up step by step until it has developed from a mere working class to entire social equality. That which the negro approves for the moment is what any white man in the Southern States would fix as a permanent condition. And so it appears that even in this wise no real solution of the problem has been reached, although a cessation of hostilities has been declared. But all these efforts on the part of leaders and philanthropists, these deliberations of the best whites and blacks in both the North and South, are still far from carrying weight with the general public; and thus, although the beginnings toward improvement are good, it remains that on the outside the situation looks to-day darker than ever before.
Whoever frees himself from theoretical doctrines will hardly doubt that the leading whites of the Southern States have to-day once more the better insight, since they know the negro better than the Northerners do. They demand that this limitation of the negro in his political rights and in his daily occupation shall be permanent, and that thus an organic situation shall come about in which the negro, although far removed from an undeserved slavery, shall be equally far from the complete enjoyment of that civilization which his own race has not worked out. That is, he is to be politically, economically, and socially dependent. If this had happened at the outset, the mutual hatred which now exists would never have been so fierce; and if the African succeeds materially he will hardly notice the difference, while the white man will feel with satisfaction that his superiority has been vindicated. The condition of the island of Jamaica is a good instance in point. Its inhabitants are strikingly superior to the debased negroes of the Republic of Hayti.