slave race by a master race in the history of the world—they let their terrible opportunity for revenge pass them by and seized instead the noble one to feed and cherish the helpless women and children of masters who were fighting to rivet the chains of slavery on them and on their children forever. This behavior of the slaves is the supreme example which American Christianity has yet given of the vital presence of the spirit of its divine founder in its midst. No other act in its whole history approaches it in simple grandeur of forgiveness and service. And it came literally out of the humble lives of a much oppressed and long suffering race.

This simple and kindly black folk issued then out of their two and a half centuries of bondage without malice toward the whites, without any of the violent emotions which lead to the commission of great crimes. The only violent emotion which stirred their child-like minds, which filled almost to bursting their kindly hearts was deep thankfulness to God and to Mr. Lincoln for their deliverance—an emotion which no pen can describe and no tongue can put into words. Out of such kindly hearts, out of such deep and holy emotions crime does not come and it would not have come had there been no injection into the race soul of the Negro of new and bitter experiences of wrong at the hands of the whites. But this is exactly what actually took place. On the simple and kindly hearts of the new freedmen the old master class might have graven large the law of peace and goodwill. All that this child-like race needed at this initial stage of their education and forming character were wise and sympathetic guidance and treatment on the part of the whites in order to convert all their deep and holy emotions into moral and civic values, into social and industrial service to the South and to the nation at one and the same time. Did the blacks get this wise and sympathetic guidance and treatment at the hands of the whites? To answer this question is to open up the whole subject of the causation of Negro crime during the last fifty years. And this I will try to do as concisely and clearly as possible.

The first act of the South after the war was most unfriendly to the blacks. For it was state legislation which remanded them to a new species of bondage. Southern slaves they had been but by the new labor legislation they were transformed into Southern[Pg 6] serfs, chained to the soil by cunningly devised laws to regulate their labor and movement. Force and violence toward the blacks were relied upon to put through this legislative and administrative program. This program was the cause of Northern interference in the Southern situation at 

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