The Post and the Negro
June 11, 1898
Summary
John Mitchell, Jr. pokes holes in the Washington Post's offensive articles
Transcription
The Washington Post is as yet suffering from a severe attack of hysteria. It is no longer in its incipient stage, but has become so violent as to seriously impair its energies for further usefulness.
Such symptoms of Negro phobia are no uncommon in these localities.
Our neighbor, the Richmond Dispatch has well-night recovered from the disease, but now the Richmond Times has it in its mild form.
But to the discussion. The Post says:
“We have very little time to waste on Negro newspapers and so-called leaders who do not approve of the Post. It is of absolutely no consequence to us whether they approve or disapprove.”
The above is gratuitous information for which we return thanks. It says:
“Their ridiculous claims to ‘recognition’ are only tiresome. Their criticisms and denunciations of this paper affect us or intelligent public opinion as much as the idle summer zephyr sways the Washington Monument.”
But the “idle Summer zephyr” doesn’t tire you and its seems that we do. And again:
“All this nonsensical uproar has risen over the demands of certain Negro military organizations to be accepted intact, with their officers, &c., and made part of the army without question, and the ground upon which they base the preposterous assumption is their alleged ability, training, fitness, patriotism and all the rest of it. As we say, this is too absurd for argument.”
Ah indeed! So the official report made to the Adjutant General of this state by the Inspector General relative to the ability, training and fitness of colored officers and all the rest of it is too absurd for argument.
It seems to us that the absurdities may be found in the lines form the Post which we have quoted. It says:
“The white militia regiments have not been accepted on such terms—why the Negro regiments?”
It seems to us that they have been. We know of none of the white military regiments being mustered in with colored officers, and yet you ask that colored militia regiments be mustered in with white officers.
What was “sauce for the goose” should certainly be “sauce for the gander.”
The Post says:
“The truth of the matter is that these noisy complainants do not represent even their own race, excepting, perhaps, the impudent and troublesome element of it, and are entitled to no more consideration than we propose to give them now.”
That is a very plain way of stating that you represent the colored people instead of ourselves. The joke is good enough to provoke a laugh.
Well, so far as Virginia is concerned you will see to what extent we represent them when you attempt to muster in she colored troops under white officers. It says:
“The Negroes can enter the army as the whites do—leaving the government to appoint the officers—or they can stay out of it.”
Of course, we can, and that’s just where the satisfaction comes in. We’ll wait. We’re not wanted yet. Land the white troops in Cuba, if you can. Storm the earthworks. Bake a few more thousand white marines on the deck of a ship by the aid of a hot tropical sun, and Mr. Editor, try some of it yourself.
Upon your return, pride will have disappeared, and race prejudice melted away. You’ll be willing to muster in Malays, Indians, Esquimaux or China men under their own officers in order to cool off the front part of the American army which will then be very hot and still heating.
It says:
“The only people who are drawing the color-line are the Negroes themselves.”
Of course. You want all officers appointed to be white, and we wish the officers appointed to be both of the white and colored race, and yet you charge us with drawing the color-line.
This logic is enough to make a brass monkey smile, for it is all “brass.”
The Post says:
“The whites are content to be treated as Individuals. The Negro leader insists that his race must be treated as a whole.”
If we are ostracized and organized into companies as a whole, why should we not be treated as a whole>
But we will accept the same basis as laid down for the whites.
Throw open your white companies to Negro privates, remove the discriminations at Annapolis and West Point, and all talk about Negro officers for Negro companies, battalions and regiments will cease. Dare you accept the challenge!
It says:
“If there is a color-line to-day, they are to blame for it.”
Of course we are. We are to blame for the Dutch steamer’s bringing our forefathers to this country and landing them at Jamestown, Va., in 1620.
We are to blame for the two hundred and fifty years of slavery which the white folks inflicted upon us.
We are to blame for taking a part in the War of Independence, and dying at Bunker Hill.
We are to blame for being with Commodore Perry on Lake Eerie during the War of 1812.
We are to blame for being with the white folks of this country in the Mexican War.
We are to blame for helping to save the government in the late Civil War, and sending tens of thousands of the best able-bodied men we had to a carnage of death.
We are to blame for taking care of the wives and children of southern soldiers while they wrre away fighting to keep us in slavery.
We are to blame for standing by the government after the war.
We are to blame for submitting to the hanging, burning, shooting, strangling, butchering of sixty-thousand of our innocent people since the war.
And now we are to blame for offering organized bodies of Negro troops under Negro officers to fight for the United States government as against Spain.
“Poor, mortals we!” “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.” Will our trials never end?
The Post makes the following remarks which we of course will carefully consider:
“If the authorities decline to admit their claims, it is because those claims are impudent and silly. There is just one result the Negro organs and leaders can accomplish by all this pestiferous uproar, and that is to convince the whites that they are impracticable and malapropos.”
And again:
“When they finally succeed in implanting that conviction in the nation’s mind they will discover that this is the white man’s country, which the white man intends to govern in his own way and for his own behoove. They can then stay here or go elsewhere as they prefer but in neither even will they affect the destiny of the United States or change the fixed purpose of those who rule it.”
It is very kind of you to inform us of your version of the matter. But unfortunately, sir, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights of Virginia [two instruments by which was are guided] do not says so.
Hon. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and Hon. George Washington who was at one time President of the United States, and the Hon. Alexander Hamilton, who was said to be one of the leading statesmen of his day did not seem to know anything about this being a white man’s country.
They labored under the impression that this was a country of the people, and statesmen since that time have conservatively held to the same opinion
Mr. Jefferson was “rash” enough to write: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” And the Constitution begins “We, the people of the United States do ordain and establish, etc.”
But then it is impudence to quote an extract from the Declaration of Independence to the Post or to intimate that we have certain “unalienable rights.”
We would remind our contemporary that the Indians have fought under their own chiefs, even when allies of this nation or any other. Strange reasoning this which would deny to the Negro the right to do the same thing!
But some one wrote the Bill of Rights of Virginia, and said, “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights,” etc.
Article I. Section 2 “That this state shall ever remain a member of the United States of America and that the people thereof are part of the American Nation.” Etc.
The Post is the first reputable journal to virtually assert that “people” means “white,” and that “a government of people” means “a government of whites.”
The editor who wrote that article on “Negro Organs and Leaders,” deserves a chromo. He is a curiosity and the managers of Barnum’s menagerie could not engage in a more profitable undertaking than to “rig” up a brass cage and carry him around to be exhibited to the waiting multitudes as the most astounding example of journalistic folly that was ever permitted to edit a reputable daily journal at the capital of any nation. No officers; no fight!
“But man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured. His glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep.”
Such symptoms of Negro phobia are no uncommon in these localities.
Our neighbor, the Richmond Dispatch has well-night recovered from the disease, but now the Richmond Times has it in its mild form.
But to the discussion. The Post says:
“We have very little time to waste on Negro newspapers and so-called leaders who do not approve of the Post. It is of absolutely no consequence to us whether they approve or disapprove.”
The above is gratuitous information for which we return thanks. It says:
“Their ridiculous claims to ‘recognition’ are only tiresome. Their criticisms and denunciations of this paper affect us or intelligent public opinion as much as the idle summer zephyr sways the Washington Monument.”
But the “idle Summer zephyr” doesn’t tire you and its seems that we do. And again:
“All this nonsensical uproar has risen over the demands of certain Negro military organizations to be accepted intact, with their officers, &c., and made part of the army without question, and the ground upon which they base the preposterous assumption is their alleged ability, training, fitness, patriotism and all the rest of it. As we say, this is too absurd for argument.”
Ah indeed! So the official report made to the Adjutant General of this state by the Inspector General relative to the ability, training and fitness of colored officers and all the rest of it is too absurd for argument.
It seems to us that the absurdities may be found in the lines form the Post which we have quoted. It says:
“The white militia regiments have not been accepted on such terms—why the Negro regiments?”
It seems to us that they have been. We know of none of the white military regiments being mustered in with colored officers, and yet you ask that colored militia regiments be mustered in with white officers.
What was “sauce for the goose” should certainly be “sauce for the gander.”
The Post says:
“The truth of the matter is that these noisy complainants do not represent even their own race, excepting, perhaps, the impudent and troublesome element of it, and are entitled to no more consideration than we propose to give them now.”
That is a very plain way of stating that you represent the colored people instead of ourselves. The joke is good enough to provoke a laugh.
Well, so far as Virginia is concerned you will see to what extent we represent them when you attempt to muster in she colored troops under white officers. It says:
“The Negroes can enter the army as the whites do—leaving the government to appoint the officers—or they can stay out of it.”
Of course, we can, and that’s just where the satisfaction comes in. We’ll wait. We’re not wanted yet. Land the white troops in Cuba, if you can. Storm the earthworks. Bake a few more thousand white marines on the deck of a ship by the aid of a hot tropical sun, and Mr. Editor, try some of it yourself.
Upon your return, pride will have disappeared, and race prejudice melted away. You’ll be willing to muster in Malays, Indians, Esquimaux or China men under their own officers in order to cool off the front part of the American army which will then be very hot and still heating.
It says:
“The only people who are drawing the color-line are the Negroes themselves.”
Of course. You want all officers appointed to be white, and we wish the officers appointed to be both of the white and colored race, and yet you charge us with drawing the color-line.
This logic is enough to make a brass monkey smile, for it is all “brass.”
The Post says:
“The whites are content to be treated as Individuals. The Negro leader insists that his race must be treated as a whole.”
If we are ostracized and organized into companies as a whole, why should we not be treated as a whole>
But we will accept the same basis as laid down for the whites.
Throw open your white companies to Negro privates, remove the discriminations at Annapolis and West Point, and all talk about Negro officers for Negro companies, battalions and regiments will cease. Dare you accept the challenge!
It says:
“If there is a color-line to-day, they are to blame for it.”
Of course we are. We are to blame for the Dutch steamer’s bringing our forefathers to this country and landing them at Jamestown, Va., in 1620.
We are to blame for the two hundred and fifty years of slavery which the white folks inflicted upon us.
We are to blame for taking a part in the War of Independence, and dying at Bunker Hill.
We are to blame for being with Commodore Perry on Lake Eerie during the War of 1812.
We are to blame for being with the white folks of this country in the Mexican War.
We are to blame for helping to save the government in the late Civil War, and sending tens of thousands of the best able-bodied men we had to a carnage of death.
We are to blame for taking care of the wives and children of southern soldiers while they wrre away fighting to keep us in slavery.
We are to blame for standing by the government after the war.
We are to blame for submitting to the hanging, burning, shooting, strangling, butchering of sixty-thousand of our innocent people since the war.
And now we are to blame for offering organized bodies of Negro troops under Negro officers to fight for the United States government as against Spain.
“Poor, mortals we!” “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.” Will our trials never end?
The Post makes the following remarks which we of course will carefully consider:
“If the authorities decline to admit their claims, it is because those claims are impudent and silly. There is just one result the Negro organs and leaders can accomplish by all this pestiferous uproar, and that is to convince the whites that they are impracticable and malapropos.”
And again:
“When they finally succeed in implanting that conviction in the nation’s mind they will discover that this is the white man’s country, which the white man intends to govern in his own way and for his own behoove. They can then stay here or go elsewhere as they prefer but in neither even will they affect the destiny of the United States or change the fixed purpose of those who rule it.”
It is very kind of you to inform us of your version of the matter. But unfortunately, sir, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights of Virginia [two instruments by which was are guided] do not says so.
Hon. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and Hon. George Washington who was at one time President of the United States, and the Hon. Alexander Hamilton, who was said to be one of the leading statesmen of his day did not seem to know anything about this being a white man’s country.
They labored under the impression that this was a country of the people, and statesmen since that time have conservatively held to the same opinion
Mr. Jefferson was “rash” enough to write: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” And the Constitution begins “We, the people of the United States do ordain and establish, etc.”
But then it is impudence to quote an extract from the Declaration of Independence to the Post or to intimate that we have certain “unalienable rights.”
We would remind our contemporary that the Indians have fought under their own chiefs, even when allies of this nation or any other. Strange reasoning this which would deny to the Negro the right to do the same thing!
But some one wrote the Bill of Rights of Virginia, and said, “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights,” etc.
Article I. Section 2 “That this state shall ever remain a member of the United States of America and that the people thereof are part of the American Nation.” Etc.
The Post is the first reputable journal to virtually assert that “people” means “white,” and that “a government of people” means “a government of whites.”
The editor who wrote that article on “Negro Organs and Leaders,” deserves a chromo. He is a curiosity and the managers of Barnum’s menagerie could not engage in a more profitable undertaking than to “rig” up a brass cage and carry him around to be exhibited to the waiting multitudes as the most astounding example of journalistic folly that was ever permitted to edit a reputable daily journal at the capital of any nation. No officers; no fight!
“But man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured. His glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep.”
About this article
Source
Location on Page
Lower Right Quadrant
Topic
Contributed By
Cali Hughes
Citation
“The Post and the Negro,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed October 9, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1406.