Elimination, therefore, became in Haskell's
belief a question of time only,--the law of the survival of the fittest
would assert itself. The time required may be long,--numbered by
centuries; but, however remotely, it nevertheless would come. God's mill
grinds slowly, but it grinds uncommon small; and, I will add, its
grinding is apt to be merciless.
The solution thus most pronouncedly laid down by Colonel Haskell may or
may not prove in this case correct and final. It certainly is not for
me, coming from the North, to undertake dogmatically to pass upon it. I
recur to it here as a plausible suggestion only, in connection with my
theme. As such, it unquestionably merits consideration. I am by no means
prepared to go the length of an English authority in recently saying
that "emancipation on two continents sacrificed the real welfare of the
slave and his intrinsic worth as a person, to the impatient vanity of
an immediate and theatrical triumph."[3] This length I say, I cannot go;
but so far as the present occasion is concerned, with such means of
observation as are within my reach, I find the conclusion difficult to
resist that the success of the abolitionists in effecting the
emancipation of the Afro-American, as unexpected and sweeping as it was
sudden, has led to phases of the race problem quite unanticipated at
least. For instance, as respects segregation. Instead of assimilating,
with a tendency to ultimate absorption, the movement in the opposite
direction since 1865 is pronounced.
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