tions in his letter that gen1 green has appointed Commissioner to settle Indian Business Desires I may Consult with them I expect they are the same that was to hold the Treaty last-I have sent this Day to Colo. Savier to appoint a place to meet Colo. Shelbey and myself at which time if they think of Giving Chickamogga Terms Shall send for you and Colo. Christian tho I hardly think they will listen to anything as I am informed the officers of Washington met on friday last to appoint the Day they should Start I wish you Could Come Down yourself Immediately as I am well assured it would answer a great purpose if you Cant Come please to write to me Immediately-I have much more to Say but must reserve it for another letter

am as usual your very humble Sevt. Jos. MARTIN.1

'Col. Arthur Campbell in commenting on this letter to Gov. Harrison, July 27, 1782, says: "Whilst Col. Martin seems assiduous to promote a conciliatory plan with the Indians, a force is raising, I understand, by order of the Executive of North Carolina to attack all the Cherokee Indians that do not submit to certain terms, low in their nature such as removing to certain spots near our frontier settlement, and live in future by agriculture. Should your Excellency disapprove of such measures in a sister State, of which not only me but the Union may be interested, your representation and influence no doubt, will produce such a revision of the order of North Carolina as may alter its most exceptional parts."

SOME RECENT RACE PROBLEM LITERATURE.1

BY ALFRED HOLT STONE.

Greenville, Miss.

These six titles below are fairly typical contributions to the already appalling mass of "race problem" literature. They represent a wide range of discussion, and cover a field broad enough to embrace such extremes as the purely historical little book of Professor Collins, and the verbose "proceedings" of the "National Sociological Society."

The smallest of these publications is one of the most interesting, and it is also important by reason of its contributors: The Work and Influence of Hampton. For a general outpouring of sentiment, commingled with a display of much more or less excusable ignorance, one does not usually look in vain to the speeches of philanthropists engaged in the pleasing task of "helping the South solve the race prob

'The Freedmen's Bureau. A Chapter in the History of Reconstruction. By Paul Skeels Peirce, Ph. D., Instructor in History. Bulletin of the State University of Iowa. Vol. III, No. 1. Published by the University, Iowa City, Iowa. 1904. pp. VII, 200.

The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States. By Winfield H. Collins, M. A., Professor of History and English in Claremont College. Broadway Publishing Co., New York, pp. 154.

The Negroes of Columbia, Missouri. A Concrete Study of the Race Problem. By William Wilson Elwang, M. A., Published by Department of Sociology, University of Missouri. 1904. pp. VII, 69.

The Work and Influence of Hampton. Proceedings of a Meeting Held in New York City, February 12, 1904, under the direction of the Armstrong Association. With the Addresses of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Chairman, President Charles W. Eliot, Dr. H. B. Frissell and Dr. Booker T. Washington, pp. 38.

The Negro Church. A Social Study. Made under the Direction of Atlanta University by the Eighth Atlanta Conference. The Atlanta University Press. Atlanta, Ga., 1903. pp. VIII, 212.

How to solve the Race Problem. The Proceedings of the Washington Conference on the Race Problem in the United States. Under the Auspices of the National Sociological Society. Washington, D. C., 1904. pp. 286.

lem." This gathering was far from being an exception to the rule. Every address delivered abundantly breathed brotherly and sectional love,-and also contained evidences of ignorance. Perhaps "ignorance" is too harsh a term,— it might be fairer to call it a failure to apprehend the true attitude of the Southern white man on certain mooted questions. President Eliot's remarks were by far the most important utterance at the meeting, solely because of the personality of the speaker. They were also the most widely quoted. His tone was kindly throughout,—almost offensively so in places, and occasionally decidedly patronizing. With what calm assurance did he enlighten his auditors upon the resemblances and differences between Northern and Southern opinion concerning the negro! And how crude and offensive, how almost puerile, were some of his statements of Southern attitude!

President Eliot frankly stated that the "differences of practical behavior" toward the negro, as between Northern and Southern people, were attributable simply to the difference in the number of negroes in the two sections. But when he essayed to discuss another "difference" between the sections, he misstated the case in the first instance. It is beyond my ability to understand how an assertion at once so ridiculous and indefensible as the following could have emanated from such a source:

"At the North nobody connects political equality—that is, the possession of the ballot and eligibility to public office— with social equality,—that is, free social intercourse on equal terms in the people's homes. At the South the white population seems to think unanimously that there is a close connection between the two questions following-shall a negro vote or be a letter carrier? And shall he sit with a white man at dinner or marry a white man's sister?"

There can be no question as to the speaker's honesty and sincerity, and the occasion was not one justifying a display

of levity. This statement was unquestionably intended for serious consumption, yet its author could not have better displayed, by any other possible arrangement of words, his utter inability to grasp one of the fundamental elements in the grave situation he was so easily and soothingly discussjug.

How great a difference, indeed, is wrought in the sectional points of view by the simple fact of numerical inequality in the distribution of our negro population!

Every letter carrier in my town is a negro and a voter; in my county sits a negro justice of the peace, elected term after term by white voters. Is the head of Harvard indeed so ignorant of the real sentiment underlying the alleged prejudices of several millions of his white fellow citizens as really to imagine that they among whom these negro officials live think as he says they think? It is difficult to believe, yet he so writes himself down. To begin with, the term "social equality," when used by Southern people in discussing phases of the negro question, has no such significance as is here sought to be given it. It is rather loosely used, and may be said to carry with it a conception of any form, or even appearance, of "equality" between the two races, or between individual members of the two. There are but two kinds of "equality" which the Southern white man concedes to the negro: equality of economic opportunity, and equality before the law, but even here he intends that the framing and administration of the law shall be in his own hands. Opposition to negro voting or office-holding has no basis in any such ridiculous fear as is here alleged,-that the "social" status of such negro will thereby be altered. Where there is such opposition it is based upon an instinctive unwillingness to even share government with the negro. Theoretically, however, it may be remarked, President Eliot to the contrary notwithstanding, there is a certain sort of social

and official relationship. We see it in the recognition of certain official circles as coincident with social "sets"; we see it in the social recognition accorded by the head of our government to the various other branches, in the way of official receptions; we see it in the social standing accorded officers in the naval and military branches of all governments. But we have not space in which to pursue this phase of the

matter.

President Eliot goes further, however, and makes an unworthy suggestion when he says: "The Southern white sees a race danger in eating at the same table with a negro: The Northern white sees nothing of the kind. * * His pride of race does not permit him to entertain such an idea. * * * The Northern white's race feeling seems to be really much more robust than that of the Southern white's. The Northerner's is simply impregnable, like the self respect of a gentleman."

Why this unveiled slur? The determination of the Southern people to keep the two races absolutely separate is grounded in no such feeling as can be dismissed with a sneer. It is based upon the high consideration of the general welfare of the State, and rises to the dignity of a fixed canon of public policy, which even the unwilling, if any, are compelled by law and custom to observe for the good of the whole body politic. The individual is required to surrender some measure of his personal freedom to the good of the community. The thirty-odd white men and women who last year in Boston married negroes would not have been permitted to do so in Mississippi. Would President Eliot say that the men who framed the Mississippi statute were afraid lest their daughters became enamored of negro men? The State decrees that there shall be no intermixture of blood sanctioned by the law or the church; that such intermixture shall be placed under the ban, and the stamp of illegitimacy be written upon the brow of an impure offspring; that no