The guns of war have been silenced and we stand today together, citizens
of the United States of America. Not Northerners, not Southerners,
but Americans. As such we must work for a future that will ultimately
strengthen our union. We must put aside feelings of rancor and revenge
as well as discard fanciful dreams of utopia. We are charged with
the responsibility of dealing with the realities of life as we know them
in our time. Distinguished senators, we cannot confiscate plantation
land owned by confederates and redistribute that land to the former slaves
who once worked it.
A
strong economy makes a strong America. Can we forget that cotton
exports in 1860 accounted for $191,000,000 of the $333,000,000 of our total
exports? Can we ignore that this year, 1870, the amount of cotton
produced is approximately half the 1860 total? An important part
of our economy consists of the readily marketable cash crops of the south
which include cotton, tobacco, and sugar. These crops have been traditionally
produced on the large tracts of land run by the experienced, managerial
agriculturalist of the South. To take these lands and carve them
into a hodge podge of parcels and have them run by inexperienced farm workers
would hold back the economy of the United States, and particularly the
South, to a disastrous degree. For those of you who would tell me
that the land of which we speak was cultivated by the same men who will
be its new owners, I would like to remind you that a free Negro farm worker
produces approximately one half as much as he did as a slave. I do
not, of course, suggest that slavery is an acceptable institution on any
count, but I do maintain that plantation –sized tracts run by experienced
agriculturalists can be expected to yield more than dozens of tiny farms
run by individuals inexperienced in management. The redistribution
of land would relegate our southern brothers to lives of perpetual poverty.
Similarly I would like to point out to you that handing anyone a piece
of land without furnishing him with the seed, agricultural implements,
draft animals, and other supplies necessary for successful farming would
amount to a cruel joke. Can a bird fly on one wing? Can we
honestly say that we are prepared to provide the necessities for the flourishing
agronomy we seek to every Negro head of a family?
A key element
in our drive to repair our beleaguered economic situation is to encourage
investment from the North. Such investment will bring in much needed
capital, create jobs and stimulate the economy. It would be difficult,
however, to convince entrepreneurs that their investments are safe in the
South if we confiscate the agricultural lands of the former supporters
of the Confederacy. An editorial in the March 1, 1867 New York Times
written by Carl Benson suggests that the biggest obstacle to investment
is “fear of confiscation.” What guarantees exist that would assure
capitalist interests that their investments would not disappear with the
stroke of a pen? Did we not witness such an occasion when General
William T. Sherman issued his “Special Field Orders, No.15” which confiscated
lands along the southern coast and ceded them to Negro families?
There are some, like Henry Martyn Dexter, of the Berkley Street Church
in Boston, who believe that generosity towards former slaves need only
come from Southerners since the “frigid climate” of the North is intolerable
to blacks. He insists that Negroes should have a “home” and “soil
to till” and is equally insistent that these homes and lands should be
in the South. Neither Dexter, nor any other northerner, nor indeed
any citizen of the United States should suggest that confiscation and redistribution
of land is an acceptable solution for settling former slaves. As
the honorable representative William Fink reminded us in a speech before
the House of Representatives in February of 1867, the South was neither
a distinct nor a foreign nation. The rules of conquest do not apply.
The federal government has no right to usurp the land and belongings of
southerners. The same laws apply to all citizens of the United States,
Northerners and Southerners.
The most compelling reason to oppose the confiscation of land in the South
is the danger it brings to both the people of the southern states, and
to the nation as a whole. The memories and hardships of the war and
its aftermath still burn brightly in the minds of southerners.
White resentment towards Negroes is widespread. The institutionalization
of slavery over the years has led most southern whites to believe that
they are racially superior, and as a consequence, infinitely more deserving
than their black neighbors. In testimony given to the Congress in
1865 Samuel Thomas stated that southern whites do not believe that Negroes
have human rights. Whites often cheat and kill Negroes, he says,
without feeling “a single tinge of honor.” The South’s defeat did
not erase bigotry and racism, if anything it exacerbated it. In addition
to losses that whites have already sustained, the idea that they will lose
their land o their former slaves will lead to a blood bath. The lives
of innocent Negroes will be on our hands. We should also keep in
mind the words of Colonel Whittlesey who testified before the Joint Committee
of Reconstruction that in the South, “the spirit of secession is as rampant
as ever in the hearts of the majority of the people.” Can we, North
or South, afford to open wounds so newly mended? Are you prepared
to shed even more blood on the battlefield?
Distinguished senators, I stand before you as an American whose sole interest
is the well-being and prosperity of this great nation. The confiscation
of land once owned by supporters of the Confederacy is morally wrong, politically
incorrect, and economically disastrous. I too sympathize with the
Negroes who find themselves homeless, placeless. It is largely because
of my concern for them that I cannot support giving them other men’s lands.
To do so would invite genocide. To do so would invite the return
of the Civil War. May God forbid it.
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