Imperium in Imperio - Lecture 2 (2024) PDF

“His body and feet fell into the water while his head buried itself in the soft clay bed…Covered from head to foot with red clay, the president-elect of Cadeville College walked down to the next station, two miles away.”(98) “This set Belton to studying the labor situation and the race question fr...

“His body and feet fell into the water while his head buried itself in the soft clay bed…Covered from head to foot with red clay, the president-elect of Cadeville College walked down to the next station, two miles away.”(98) “This set Belton to studying the labor situation and the race question from this point of view. He found scores of young men just in his predicament.” (90) “Belton viewed this state of affairs with alarm and asked himself, whither was the nation drifting. He might have joined the army of malcontents and insurrection breeders, but that a very remarkable and novel idea occurred to him. He decided to endeavor to find out just what view the white people were taking of the Negro and of the existing conditions. He saw that the nation was drifting toward a terrible cataract and he wished to find out what precautionary steps the white people were going to take.” (91)  “[Belton] found out that the white man was utterly ignorant of the nature of the Negro of to-day with whom he has to deal. And more than that, he was not bothering his brain thinking about the Negro. He felt that the Negro was easily ruled and was not an object for serious thought. The barbers, the nurses, cooks and washerwomen, the police column of the newspapers, comic stories and minstrels were the sources through which the white people gained their conception of the Negro. But the real controlling power of the race that was shaping its life and thought and preparing the race for action was unnoticed and in fact unseen by them. The element most bitterly antagonistic to the whites avoided them, through intense hatred; and the whites never dreamed of this powerful inner circle that was gradually but persistently working its way in every direction, solidifying the race for the momentous conflict of securing all the rights due to them according to the will of their heavenly father” (92) “He seemed so hard to reach, that they began to doubt his sex. A number of them decided to satisfy themselves at all hazards. They resorted to the bold and daring plan of kidnapping and overpowering Belton. After that eventful night Belton did no more nursing.” (93)men in the families in which Belton “The young worked seemed to have a poor opinion of the virtue of colored women” (92). “At Stowe University, Belton had learned to respect women. It was in these schools that the work of slavery in robbing the colored women of respect, was undone. Woman now occupied the same position in Belton’s eye as she did in the eye of the Anglo-Saxon. There is hope for that race or nation that respects its women. It was for the smile of a woman that the armored knight of old rode forth to deeds of daring… The Negro race had left the last relic of barbarism behind.” (59) “Belton bent forward to look at his infant son. A terrible shriek broke from his lips. He dropped the lamp upon the floor and fled out of the house and rushed madly through the city. The color of Antoinette was brown. The color of Belton was dark. But the child was white!” (94) “Just two years prior to my meeting you, a book entitled ‘White Supremacy and Negro Subordination,’ by the merest accident came into my possession. That book made a revelation to me of a most startling nature.” (118)  PREFACE. “This work, the result of many years of patient study and investigation of the normal order of American society … shows just what the census returns show, that negroes having multiplied from a half to four millions in less than a century, were of necessity in their normal condition in the South … that in “freedom” they died out, and therefore, of necessity, were in an abnormal condition in the North. Furthermore, it shows that amalgamation, as with varieties of our own race that come to us from the Old World, is impossible; and therefore, human governments cannot exist an hour anywhere where these widely different races are forced into legal equality in approximate proportions. Finally, it shows that even when both white and negro become so debauched, degraded, and sinful as to equalize and harmonize together, as we see with Portuguese and Spaniards on this Continent, and sometimes with individuals among ourselves, who mate and mix their blood, their progeny become sterile, diseased, rotten, and within a certain time, utterly perish from the earth. Nevertheless, the Northern States combined together in 1860 … to force the Southern States to practice their theories or ‘ideas’ on this subject, or, in other words, to doom the Southern people to a fate more horrible than death itself! They now rule the South by military force, and by the same force have torn four millions of negroes from their normal condition, and are striving to ‘reconstruct’ American society on a Mongrel basis… [E]very man, and woman too, in this broad land must accept the simple but stupendous truth of white supremacy and negro subordination, or consent to have it forced on them by years of social anarchy, horror, and misery!” (v-vii)  VIOLA’S INTERPRETATION “That book proved to me that the intermingling TO THE READER of the races in the sexual relationship was sapping the vitality of the Negro race and, in This work, if carefully and generally read, will fact, was slowly but surely exterminating the dispel that terrible delusion which plunged us into race. It demonstrated that the fourth generation Civil War … It presents in language that can be of the children born of intermarrying mulattoes easily understood … the true relation of the races were invariably sterile or woefully lacking in vital to each other, proving even beyond question or force. … cavil, that when the two races are in juxta-position, the negro should hold an inferior or subordinate This is a startling revelation. While this position to the white race, and that in such position intermingling was impairing the vital force of our only can the negro race be prosperous and happy. race and exterminating it, it was having no such It will show that the normal condition of the effect on the white race for the following reason. negro when in contact with the white man, is to be Every half-breed, or for that, every person guided and controlled socially and politically by having a tinge of Negro blood, the white people the white race. cast off. We receive the cast off with open arms and he comes to us with his devitalizing power. Thus the white man was slowly exterminating us and our total extinction was but a short period of time distant. I looked out upon our strong, tender hearted, manly race being swept from the face of the earth by immorality, and the very marrow Upon a matter of such tremendous importance to the American people as is the subject herein treated, it is perhaps due our readers to let them know how much of fact disports itself through these pages in the garb of fiction. We beg to say that in no part of the book has the author consciously done violence to conditions as he has been permitted to view them, amid which conditions he has spent his whole life, up to the present hour, as an intensely absorbed observer. If in any of these pages the reader comes across that which puts him in a mood to chide, may the author not hope that the wrath aroused be not wasted upon the inconsequential painter, but directed toward the landscape that forced the brush into his hand, stretched the canvas, and shouted in irresistible tones: “Write!” -- Griggs, Preface “Solemnly Attested,” to The Hindered Hand  VIOLA’S INTERPRETATION “That book proved to me that the intermingling of the races in the sexual relationship was sapping the vitality of the Negro race and, in fact, was slowly but surely exterminating the race. It demonstrated that the fourth generation of the children born of intermarrying mulattoes were invariably sterile or woefully lacking in vital force. … This is a startling revelation. While this intermingling was impairing the vital force of our race and exterminating it, it was having no such effect on the white race for the following reason. Every half-breed, or for that, every person having a tinge of Negro blood, the white people cast off. We receive the cast off with open arms and he comes to us with his devitalizing power. Thus the white man was slowly exterminating us and our total extinction was but a short period of time distant. I looked out upon our strong, tender hearted, manly race being swept from the face of the earth by immorality, and the very marrow in my bones seemed chilled at the thought thereof. I determined to spend my life fighting the evil. My first step was to solemnly pledge God