Who Owns This Land

Debow's Review "Designs of Radicalism"

In this excerpt the editor of Debow's Review attacks the Radical Republicans' idea that the races can live together peacefully. He argues that the Northerners would not be so eager to advocate equal rights if African-Americans were more numerous in the North.

Source: Debow's Review, November 1867, p. 536.

It is absurd to say that two races so dissimilar as the whites and blacks, when their numbers are equal, can live in peace where they enjoy equal political privileges, where they sit on the same juries, serve in the same legislature and hold similar offices. It is an impossibility. One race or the other must be subordinate. So it has always been and so it will always be. Does any one believe that the white people of Massachusetts or any Northern State would give the negroes the same political rights with the whites if they were equal or nearly equal in numbers? Where there are only a few negroes it makes but little difference, for then the white race will be the dominant and governing race. But it is not so in the Gulf States. If the negroes enjoy equal political privileges with the whites, one race or the other must leave the country.

The conduct of the New England radicals shows that it is their design to place the country in such a condition that not only will there be no immigration to the South, but even the whites that are now here will be under the necessity of leaving.

The Southern whites, as a general rule, are disposed to treat the blacks with kindness and liberality, and to protect them in the enjoyment of civil and personal rights. The white men of Mississippi and Alabama are giving the blacks one-fourth or one-third of the gross products of their farms. Are any Northern manufacturers giving their operatives one-fourth or one-third of the gross proceeds of their factories? It is to the interest of the land owner, when labor is high, to protect his laborers, so as to win their confidence and secure their services.