Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 20. Underlying Factors - 1. The Negro in American Politics and as a Political Issue
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Chapter 20. Underlying Factors 431
has constituted an issue in national politics. The issue has, then, always
been the Negro’s status in the South or, earlier, the South’s struggle to
widen the area over which its concept of the Negro would prevail.
Once, and once only, did the Negro problem become the focus of
national attention: in the prolonged conflict with the South over slavery in
the Civil War and during Reconstruction. After the national compromise
of the 1870’s American historians have, by and large, adjusted to the
changed political situation and have satisfied the national demand for
historical rationalization and justification of the treatment of the Negro.
They have stressed that the North did not fight the Civil War to free the
Negro slaves. This is apparently correct as far as the Immediate political
origin of the conflict is concerned. The Emancipation Proclamation was
later issued, but only after one hundred days’ warning to the rebellious
states to lay down their arms, and In it Lincoln declared that the measure
was adopted “upon military necessity.” But the deeper reality is, never-
theless, that there would have been no Civil War had there been no
Negroes in the South, and had not Negro slavery stamped its entire social
fabric. The economic, ideological, and political rivalries between the two
regions all mainly derived from, or were greatly determined by, the
fact of slavery, as were also the peculiar agricultural structure and the
social stratification of the ante-bellum South.
As the War went on, this deeper cause, the Negro problem, simply had
to be brought to the surface in order to uphold Northern morale—in much
the same fashion as the notion of democracy and human liberty has had
similar functions in the present World War and in the earlier one. The
cause of liberating the Negroes and awarding them the status of manhood
and citizenship became, during the trials and tribulations of the long and
extremely perturbing War, a much-needed strengthening moral justifica-
tion to the North. It was almost as important as the aim of preserving the
Union.
For a decade after the War, the aim of protecting Negro freedom
retained its importance in Northern ideology. It gained strength by its
capacity to furnish a rationalization for Republican party interests. After
the national compromise of the 1 870’s, the Negro problem dropped out as a
national issue. The great majorityof Southerners have an interest in keeping
it out as long as possible. On the surface, there seem to be no signs that the
dominant North will break the compromise and start again trying to reform
the South. But it is well to defer judgment on this crucial point until we
The presence of European immig’rant groups, displaying similar problems, has, in any case,
hindered a focusing of such interests upon the Negroes. Negroes have only been one of
several problem groups. In regard to the Negroes, the Northerners could always console
their social conscience by reminding themselves that Negroes fared still worse in the South.
(See Chapter a, Section 8,)
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
