the american,once having made them citizens,cannot unmake them.
he says,in his newspapers,they ought to be elevated by education.he is trying this,but it is likely to be a long job,because black blood is much more adhesive than white,and throws back with annoying persistence.when the negro gets religion he returns directly as a hiving bee to the first instincts of his people.just now a wave of religion is sweeping over some of the southern states.
up to the present two messiahs and a daniel have appeared,and several human sacrifices have been offered up to these incarnations.the daniel managed to get three young men,who he insisted were shadrach,meshach,and abednego,to walk into a blast furnace,guaranteeing non-combustion.they did not return.
i have seen nothing of this kind,but i have attended a negro church.they pray,or are caused to pray by themselves in this country.the congregation were moved by the spirit to groans and tears,and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners'
bench.the motive may have been genuine.the movements of the shaken body were those of a zanzibar stick dance,such as you see at aden on the coal-boats,and even as i watched the people,the links that bound them to the white man snapped one by one,and isaw before me the hubshi (woolly hair)praying to a god he did not understand.those neatly dressed folk on the benches,and the gray-headed elder by the window,were savages,neither more nor less.
what will the american do with the negro?the south will not consort with him.in some states miscegenation is a penal offence.the north is every year less and less in need of his services.