I, Dynamo

A Review

Reconstruction:

Foner, Du Bois, Bowers

by

R.E. Prindle

Bowers, Claude:  The Tragic Era, 1929

Du Bois:  Black Reconstruction In America:  1860-1880, 1935

Foner, Eric:  Reconstruction:  America’s Unfinished Revolution 1988

     While race, or species, is the cental problem of Reconstruction none of the above writers bothers to really examine the issue.

     On the one hand the United States was settled by the highest exemplars of human development at that time.  The evolutionary nature of the European settlers was unfolding at a rapid rate that was to blossom in the nineteenth century although still at a relatively low stage of development.

     Added to his species of Homo Sapiens was the infusion of diverse African populations fresh from the jungles of Africa.  The African peoples are believed to be the first Homo Sapiens to evolve.  they had been in Africa for 150,000 years and had attained no indigenous level of civilization.

     Not all African peoples are the same age.  For instance, the Bantu peoples who came into existence in the Sahel near Ubang-Chari are an obvious Negro-Arab hybrid.  The hybrid developed about 1000AD spreading South and East across the continent.  The Bantus drove the indigenous Bushmen before them eventually forcing the remnant into the Kalihari.

     The West Africans may be tha stock on which the Arab was grafted.  Now, the anthropologists tell us that at some point the hominid strain evolved into Homo Sapiens I, which is to say the Black African.  But, they don’t tell us, nor are they capable of it, exactly what separates the Last Hominid Predecessor from Homo Sapiens.  We don’t know what those indicators are.  Either the Last Hominid Predecessor has disappeared without a trace or the Bushmen may be the LHP or even the West African.  Certainly there are marked differences between the African and the Semite, Caucasian and Mongolid.  The difference is of an intellectual character as well as a number of physical ones, which is to say, genetic.

     No one will deny the physical differences, they are maintained as merely cosmetic.  It is in the intellectual field we encounter resistance.

     Science has given ample proof that there is a difference in mental capacity between Africans and Caucasians, Mongolids and Semites.  There is an emotional problem with the Biblically oriented because the bible says God created man and The Declaration Of Independence of the United States says that:  ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…’

     So we have the statements of men against the scientific evidence of nature.  I opt for science.

     The European discovered Ameica and invaded it or settled it depending on how you choose to see it.  Following the scientific approach of Darwin I understand that the Europeans invaded the continent driving the earlier settlers before it in the exact same way that one species of bird, for insance, supplants another.

     The Europeans had not yet developed the notion of free labor the way they would in the nineteenth century so they brought indentured White ‘servants’ over who were in fact, slaves.  Shortly thereafter a sea captain unloaded a cargo of Africans as laborers who also became slaves.  Over a period of decades the Africans displaced the Europeans as slaves but not before extensive interbreeding as both species were used as field hands.

     In Darwinian terns then, as a competing human species Europeans displaced the Native Americans, or Indians, while at the same time introducing the African species which by the time of Reconstruction would enter into competition with the Caucasians for possession of the the continent.  The difference in species was an irreconcilable difference, an either-or situation.  This is the tragedy of the United States of America and the Western Hemisphere.

     Africans were always a signficant portion of the population of the United States, moreso in the South but they were not inknown in the North where they were treated little differently than in the South.  Edgar Allan Poe recors an instance of Negro slavery in Pennsylvania that was not all that unusual.

     Prior to 1793 the ratio of Black to White was much smaller but in that year Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.  This invention opened the black lands across the South from the coast through Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas to Texas to cotton cultivation.  Black lands does not refer to Negroes but to the soil.

     Thus from 1793 to 1860 the importation of Africans increased greatly.  The African population skyrocketed.  At the time of the Civil War Du Bois estimates that 10% were African born.  That is one in ten.  The percentage born to mothers from from Africa and first Generation Africans must therefore represent a full 25% of the African population.  Thus, at the time of Emancipation at least one in four can be said to be African in culture.

     Indeed, Mark Sullivan (1874-1952) in his wonderful multi-volume popular American history, Our Times, recalls the charm of the Africanisms of the Negro that had disappeared by the turn of the century.

      Contrary to common belief the number of slaveholders in the South was relatively small.  Non-slaveholders outnumbered slaveholder by a considerable margin.  Also contrary to common belief Whites, Blacks and Indians all owned slaves.  As one progressed from East to West conditions became more barbarous.  Relatively benign in the East by the time one reached Louisiana where the majority of Black slave owners domiciled according to Du Bois slaves were actually worked to death, the owners then buying replacements.  Although it was denied and covered up Kentucky bred Africans for sale to the Deep South.

     There are those who say that slavery was a dying institution that would have disappeared on its own.  Whether it would have or not I see little to indicate such a development.

     The plantations could huge affairs of a hundred thousand acres or more; self-contained cotton growing duchies.  Having the economic power the Planters controlled politics.  The much larger non-slave owning White majority was despised by both Planters aand Blacks while being bent to the will of the Planters.  It is interesting to watch Du Bois twist and turn trying to explain why it was right for the slaves to despise the ‘po’ white trash.’

     The Planters built up a very pleasant situation for themselves on the backs of both Blacks and Whites.  ‘Oh, Darkies, how my heart grows weary’, Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox and that sort of thing.  Disney’s Song Of The South really cranked out the Blacks.  The Planter-Black alliance against the Southern Whites has evolved today into the Liberal-Black alliance against ‘Whiteness.’

     At the time the Planters had abundant opportunity to study the Blacks.  They came to the conclusion, without using the term, that the Africans were a different species, since corroborated by science.

     Thus, when Reconstruction began we had a two species competing for the same territory.  The species were inherently unequal.  Equality of intellect could only be obtained by education, if at all.  In addition, as I noted, fully 25^ or, one in four, had but recently been removed from the African jungles.  The remaining three quarters had been in the state of slavery for generations.  They were thoroughly cowed.  Any hope of freedom they had was hundreds of years old.  They were in a body illiterate.  Indeed, it was against the law to school them.

     As Du Bois points out because of its hitorical relation to the French Caribbean Louisiana had the largest group of educated and cultured Blacks.  Indeed, the early cultural history of New Orleans is worth of study.  There were things going on there that weren’t going on in other places.

     At one stroke then in 1863 the bonds of the community were broken apart and this Black population nearly equal in size to the Whites, in some places exceeding it, was placed on a political parity by Northern bayonets.  Truly a secon Civil War in the South between Blacks and Whites was the only possible result.  The first result as Eric Foner says was the Unifinished American Revolution.

2.

         The argument of Du Bois depends on the character of the Negro.  That it is both wrong to enslave another and that the introduction of the Negro into the Americas as the greatest error of all goes without saying.  The point is that we have two Homo Sapiens species competing for the same land.  The dirrerences are irreconciable and can only be solved by the elimination of one or the other.  The problem as an evolutionary one is beyond reason.  No amount of good will can resolve it.  Tor those who haven’t thought this situation through the statement may sound strong but the current New Abolitionist movement is dedicated to the genocide of Whites.  That simple fact cannot be denied.

     Du Bois, who writes as a Black apologist and not an historian, has , or ast least displays absolutely no psychological understanding of the participants.  He believes he is an excellent historian but I’m not prepared to allow him that without a grasp of psychology.

     In his view which he shares with Liberals the Negro is by nature an inoffensive, happy-go-lucky fellow who wouldn’t harm a fly.  Why, during the war didn’t he stand by the Missus and the kids while the menfolk were off shooting the Negroes who had joined the Yankee war machine and made it work?  According to Du Bois the war couldn’t have been won if those Negro soldiers hadn’t joined up. 

     Supposing that Blacks in the heart of the South did remain quiescent?  Does that mean it was because they were happy and contented or does it mean they were waiting for the results before stirring? Actually the Southern states were the only place Africans in the world were so quiescent so we have to look for other reasons than good natured loyalty.

     Earlier in the century when a majority population of Africans revolted against a small minority of Whites in Haiti the Africans slaughtered the White males while retaining the White females as sex slaves. 

     In Jamaica where the small minority of Whites couldn’t control the large majority of Africans, Africans escaped to the hinterlands where they formed their own district and carried on guerilla warfare from there.

     Their earlier African heritage had been no different than the Africans of the South.  Tribal wars of extermination were the sole constant of African life.  Tribal centers rose and fell.  Livingstone and others discovered burnt over ruin after burnt over ruin, formerly populous lands entirely deserted. 

     In today’s Africa Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has completely demolished the civilization Whites had built up.  One of his first acts upon taking office was to attempt the extermination of the Matabele Zulu over a hundred and fifty year old grievance.

     Now that the Africans in South Africa have been granted power over the Whites they are committing genocide against them while dismantling the civilization the Whites built up.  They simply cannot sustain it.

     In the United States today the Blacks of New Abolitionism are calling for the disappearance of Whiteness now that the United States’ unfinished revolution, as Foner expresses it, is rushing to its conclusion.  Unless the Whites of America wake up Whiteness will disappear and the unfinished revolution conclude in their destruction.  In other words, in the Darwinian sense the African species of Homo Sapiens in competition with the White Homo Sapiens species will eliminate them completely.  Human abilities to speak and reason mean nothing compared to the forces of nature, especially when those forces go unrecognized.

     Thus the major weakness of Du Bois’ thesis is that he fails to understand, at least state, the causes of irreconcilable differences.  African people are not as he discribes them.  Nor are Whites.

     Bowers makes it more clear that from the White point of view the battle between Whites was the great tragedy.  From that point of view the whole purpose of Reconstruction was to reconcile the Whites without any reference to Africans.  The Africans were an unpleasant reality that cvould be disposed of in only one way and extermination was too horrible for the Whites to contemplate while, as we have seen, it wasn’t for the Africans of Haiti and isn’t for the Africans of today not only in Zimbabwe and South africa but in the United States of America.  New Abolitionism means the genocide of Whites.

     Bowers wrote in 1929 with popular success so that Du Bois’ volume seems to have been conceived in answer to Bowers.  Bowers takes a pessimistic view of the capabilities of Africans while Du Bois stoutly defends their abilities.  One is led to believe that there was no public edcuation in the South before the war while the bulk of the Whites were as illiterate as the Africans by Du Bois.  The Africans in their desire for learning then organized the entire public school system generously including Whites who promptly segregated the schools. 

     A.W. Tourgee in his novel Bricks Without Straw that Du Bois refers to constantly has an interesting passage in which this notion apparently began and persists to this day.  Bricks Without Straw p. 127:

     As they rode away the two representatives of antipodal thought discussed the scenes they had witnessed that day, which were equally new to them both, and naturally enough drew from them entirely different conclusions.  The Northern man enthusiastically prophesied the rapid rise and miraculous development of the colored race under the impetus of free schools and free thought.  The Southern man only saw in it a prospect of more “sassy niggers,” like Nimbus, who was “a good enough nigger, but mighty aggravating to the white folks.”

     With regard to the teachers, he ventured only this comment:  “Captain, it’s a mighty pity them gals are teaching a nigger school.  They’re too likely for such work- too likely by half.”

      The man whom he addressed only gave a low, quiet laugh at this remark, which the other found it difficult to interpret.

          Over the succeeding century and a half the Africans seem to have lost their zeal for education while being less cpable of it than the Northern man thought.  No miraculous development of Africans has ocurred.  The facts seem to be that the average intelligence as measured by IQ testing of the African species is fifteen or twenty points below that of the Whites while being even higher in Africa where the Africans have not come into direct contact with Western Civilization.

     That this fact is true can be seen by the institution of Affirmative Action.  Blacks have access to equal education but in order to get ‘equalization of results’ the Liberal reactionaries have essentially given Africans a fifteen to twenty point handicap and the declared results equal. 

     I wonder what Tiger Wood would thing about Affirmative Action in golf where his oppoents where given a ten or fifteen point handicap?

     The Liberals tacitly acknowledge the unbridgable gap in intellectual capabilites between the two species by the institution of Affirmative Action.

     Thus following the defeat of the South, Northern troops were garrisoned in the South to establish equality on the point of a bayonet which was the only way it could be done.

     Both Bowers and Du Bois point out the hyprocrisy of the North forcing recial equality on the South when they denied such equality to Africans in the North.  The hypocrisy was stifling.  While the North insisted on the enfranchisement of the Africans in the South there were very, very few places in the North where Africans were allowed to vote.

     Du Bois repeatedly refers to Tourgee’s (with a soft G) Bricks Without Straw in corroboration of his view.  I have since read Bricks Without Straw which I found a good novel and historically valuable but my reading of the story doesn’t produce the same results as does that of Du Bois.  It seems that there is more than one way to approach the story.

     Tourgee was a carpetbagger who went South to make his fortune.  While I have faith that his representation is accurate he still describes two different species, as in the above quote, competing for the same space within the framework of the recent past.  If he is speaking his own thoughts through the mouth of the Captain then if he were alive today he would have to admit his error.

     The Africans were still a freed people with a two hundred year history of subjection. There was no way they could function in a free society.  The situation was impossible.   Ante-bellum laws had made it a crime to school slaves so that according to Tourgee not one African in a thousand could read or write.  Du Bois in his depiction of the African’s eagerness for education places the figure much higher.  It is difficult in the circumstances to understand how the millions of African in the black belt of the Cotton Kingdom could have gotten even a smidgeon of education.  It was against the law.  Laws are wonderful things, watch out for them.

     Even freed it is impossible to believe that many adults could learn to read or write.  Education requires the pliable minds of the yung.  It takes real determination to learn to read and write as an adult which very few have.   To be law abiding can be criminal under certain laws.  Witness the lawful Naze society.

      Bowers gives a feel for the conflict between the species with atrocities on either side.  Du Bois takes theposition of the poor suffering amiable negro who was harassed and brutalized by the Whjites while patiently relying on the courts for justice.  Remember he believes this the Negro nature.

     Bowers is closer to the truth but that is irrelevant.  As Foner says this was the beginning of America’s  unfinished revolution.  Reconstruction was the first phase followed by the counter revolution of the Jim Crow period.  That period ended, to use a convenient date in 1954 with the Supreme Court decision in Brown Vs. The Board Of Education.

     Thus the African revolt began into the present time.  The candadicy of Barry Dunham-Obama signifies the completion of Foner’s unfinished revolution.  If elected the Liberal-African combine will begin in earnest to eliminate Whiteness in America.  The genocide of Whites which has already commenced and is fairly well advanced will be prosecuted in earnest. 

     Open your eyes and actually see what is happening.