 |
John Spencer
Bassett
1867-1928
When John Spencer Bassett is mentioned it is
almost always in reference to the Bassett
Affair in 1903, the cornerstone of the university's
policy of academic freedom |
John
Spencer Bassett of Trinity College Describes Booker T. Washington
the Greatest Man Born in the South in a Century, with the
Exception of Robert E. Lee, and Starts Violent Controversy,
1903
The
development of the negro since the war has been calculated to
intensify this natural race feeling. Singularly enough both his
progress and his regression under the regime of freedom have
brought down on him the hostility of the whites. His regression
might well do this because it has stood for his lapse into a lower
state after the removal of the supporting hand of the white man.
This lapse has not occurred in all sections of the race--perhaps it
has not occurred with a majority of the race--but there can be no
denial that some negroes today are more worthless than any negroes
in slavery.
The master was always a restraining hand on the negro,
holding back at both extremes. He kept the slave man from going
into the higher fields of intellectual development; he confirmed
his lack of high moral purpose and he weighed down his
self-respect and his individuality, all of
which were checks on the best negroes. On the other hand the
master was a check on the lowest tendencies of the negro. He
restrained his dissipations; he sought to save him from disease;
he tried to make him honest and peaceable; and he was very careful
that he should not he an idler. The removal of the master's
authority has produced a marked change on each of these extremes.
The upper class negro has seized with surprising readiness his new
opportunity. No sensible man in the North or in the South who is
not blinded by passion will deny that the better negroes of the
country have made a remarkable record since the days of
emancipation. In the same way the lower class have also made a
rapid progress. Among them idleness and shiftlessness have
increased; petty crimes and quarrels have increased; coarse ideas
have found greater sway; and viciousness has augmented. These good
and these bad habits are the fruits of his freedom.
. . . . A man whose mind runs
away into
baseless optimism is apt to point to Booker T. Washington as a
product of the negro race. Now Washington is a great and good man,
a Christian statesman, and take him all in all the greatest man,
save General Lee, born in the South in a hundred years; but he is
not a typical negro. He does not even represent the better class
of negroes. He is an exceptional man; and, endowed as he is, it is
probable that he would have remained uneducated but for the
philanthropic intervention of white men. The race, even the best
of them, are so far behind him that we cannot in reason look for
his reproduction in the present generation. It is, therefore, too
much to hope, for a continued appearance of such men in the near
future. It is also too much to set his development up as a
standard for his race. To expect it is to insure disappointment.
"Stirring up the Fires of Race
Antipathy," The South Atlantic Quarterly, II (October,
903), 298~99. In this article Bassett tried to give a calm and
sane discussion of the "Negro Problem" but in doing so
presented some views that sharply clashed with those commonly held
in the South and led to considerable excitement.
Most of the press condemned Bassett, editor of
the magazine, and also President Kilgo and Trinity College; while
favorable editorials appeared in papers in Boston, New York, and
Omaha which gave the little college more than a local reputation. The
Omaha Daily Bee (December 6, t953) called the outcome of the
case "A Victory for Free Speech," The Independent
(December 15, 1903) called it "A Southern Victory," and The
Brooklyn Daily Fade (December 3, 1903) gave to its editorial
the title "Free Speech in the South," The Boston
Herald to its "Free Speech in the Universities," and
The New York Evening Post "College Freedom, South and
North." Josephus Daniels, editor of The News and Observer
(Raleigh) spelled Bassett's name "bASSett."
The trustees of Trinity College met from 7 P.M.
to 3 A.M., heard the case of Bassett's resignation, voted 18 to 7
not to accept it. and then witnessed or soon read about the
burning of the editor of The News and Observer in effigy by
the students of the college who generally stood up for their very
scholarly and popular teacher.
When Kilgo appeared before the trustees and
made a powerful plea for academic freedom he had (in his
possession his own resignation and the resignations of the members
of the faculty; and if Bassett's resignation had been accepted
Trinity College (now Duke University) would have been without a
president or a faculty. See Paul N. Garber, John Carlisle Kilgo:
President of Trinity College, 1894.1910 (Durham, N. C., Duke
University Press, 1937), pp. 239.86; Virginias Dabney, Liberalism
in the South (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press,
1932), pp. 339-41.
This was the first time The South Atlantic
Quarterly had discussed racial issues. In the same issue of
the magazine President Kilgo had an article on "Our Duty to
the Negro." (The statement in high praise of Booker T.
Washington, which set off the controversy, was set in the original
draft of the article. Bassett inserted it in the proof after wide
and somewhat wild newspaper accounts of the serving of breakfast,
by a hotel of the Seaboard Air Line Railway in Hamlet, North
Carolina, to a group of Negro business men including
Washington.)
For further discussion of cases involving
freedom of speech in the South see Dabney, op. cit.; and for cases
involving conflicts between religious orthodoxy and heterodoxy,
fundamentalism and modernism, science and theology, and over
Darwinism see Arthur M. Schlesinger, "A Critical Period in
American Religion," Proceedings of the Masachusetts
Historical Society, LXIV, pp. 32348.
To The Board of Trustees of
Trinity College
HONORABLE SIRS:
With due respect, and I trust
with becoming dignity, I herewith hand you my resignation as
President of Trinity College. This action is taken in the full
light and sacred appreciation of cordial relations which have
existed between us during the entire period of my occupancy of the
administrative office of Trinity College,-a period now far into
the tenth year. It is not worth while to recount any of the
successes of these years. The record is before the eyes of men.
However, it is becoming of me to express my thanks for all
courtesies and confidences received from your honorable
Board. It is also due you as
well as myself to place on record the reasons which have
influenced me to present you my resignation.
First, as an American citizen,
striving to cherish a genuine love of his nation, and having an
abiding faith in the principles of freedom, I Cannot consistently,
for the sake of punishing a foolish and needless act in a
fellow-citizen, do violence to my faith in and love of my
country's principles, which were born Out of the holiest and
intensest wish to found in the earth a nation resting on the
spirit of human tolerance.
Second, having been born in the
South, I openly confess a love of Southern life and the deepest
sympathies with its traditions, and therefore cannot approve, and
do not approve, any rash disregard of the feelings which belong to
true Southern character. This spirit of loyalty to the South makes
it impossible for me to consent to co-operate with any idea which
seems to say that Southern people have nothing of a forgiving
tolerance and a patient courage. The record of the noblest
Southern spirits established just the opposite.
Third, from childhood I was
taught the doctrines which belong to Methodism, a Church seemingly
ordained to proclaim the doctrine of human tolerance and freedom,
at a time when ecclesiastical, civic, and social intolerance was
arrogant and tyrannical, and I Cannot have any part in an act
which in the slightest way seems to repudiate the Church whose
doctrines and principles I came, as a child, to believe and love.
Fourth, conscious of parental
duties to those of my own home, and to the generations to come, I
am unwilling for the sake of personal comfort, or any other
temporal consideration, to make a record which may cause doubt of
my faith in my country's ideals, and the noblest virtues of the
Christian religion.
Fifth, with a claim to a modest
love of learning, I stand pledged for the defense of academic
freedom. I assert, with due emphasis, and positiveness, that
academic freedom is not set for the defense of academic folly.
However, I cannot believe that academic folly should be punished
with banishment and exile. It is nobler to forgive academic folly
than it is--to banish men for it. I cannot consent to have the
most foreign Connection with any act which enslaves thought, shuts
any gate to truth and virtue, and intimidates the mind in its
efforts to gain helpful knowledge.
Sixth, amid all the struggle of
history, the chief struggle has been the incoming of an eternal
kingdom founded upon truth and right and tolerance and love and
freedom. This kingdom was born of blood; it is acquainted with the
severest persecutions; but as the Centuries have multiplied it has
grown. Having an unshaken faith in it, I am bound to its
principles, and prefer to suffer in adherence to its spirit of
tolerance than to escape any pain by the slightest denials of the
spirit of the Christian religion.
In conclusion, I ask you to
regard this act as being born Out of those impulses which carry in
them permanent destiny.
Assuring you of love, I am,
Yours sincerely,
John. C. Kilgo
Source: Paul N. Gueber. John Carlisle
Kilgo: President of Trinity College, 1894-1915 (Durhurm, N. C.,
Duke University Press, 1937), pp. 274.75.
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Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina
By John Spencer Bassett
CONTENTS.
- THE HOME OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT . . . . 7.
- HINTON ROWAN HELPER . . . .11 .
- BENJAMIN SHERWOOD HEDRICK . . . .29 .
- DANIEL REAVES GOODLOE . . . .47 .
- ELI WASHINGTON CARUTHERS . . . .56 .
- LUNSFORD LANE . . . .60 .
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/bassett98/bassett98.html
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updated 22 July 2008 |
