Questions of the Day
"The Leopard's Spots" and the Negro Problem
By H. S. Lyman
The recent novel by Thomas Dixon, Jr., entitled "The Leopard's Spots," abundantly repays perusal, and even study. To one who has followed the daily news, and magazine literature, and political speeches, it has little, if anything, new in the discussion of the race problem in America; but it is a collection in one place of what one would otherwise find scattered through many detached leaves, or else retain only as a series of mental impressions more or less mixed in memory. As a story, it presents these facts in the light of human feeling and daily relations, thus heightening their effect, or at least compelling the reader to dwell for some hours, or perhaps days, upon circumstances that might otherwise occupy but a moment's attention. This is skillfully done, and it must be allowed that the story carries the sympathies of the reader; although in a literary point of view the work is not above that of Roe or Sheldon.
The value of the information is not in the well known incidents narrated, but as throwing light upon the extreme Southern feeling. It might be called a study in the psychology of the present day Southerner—far as the book is itself from the psychological. The mentality that it reveals is an important element in the American life, and this book shows it to be persistent from generation to generation, and apparently insusceptible of modification. It seems, indeed, to be the boast of this volume that the white Southerner has not changed from the days of Washington, and never will change, but that long after the American of the North has ceased to exist that of the white of the South will remain pure and unpolluted, and with him is bound up the hope of Anglo-Saxon civilization. One cannot but admire this exclusive claim, and also the proud character behind it; though in fact he may see in it only the American form of European aristocracy of blood and birth, or even Pharisaic race-confidence.
To gain anything like a clear or unbiased view of the race problem itself, this book should be read along with two others—A Fool's Errand, by Judge Tourgee, and the Autobiography of Booker T. Washington. With the three a very fair and calm idea of the days and years succeeding the war period in the South may be obtained. The Leopard's Spots has been called the voice of the South—though in fact the books of George W. Cable, especially John March, Southerner, may be as truly so considered as this. It has also been styled the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the South, and the author does not scruple to introduce characters from that masterpiece of the gifted Northern novelist to point his moral or work his revenge; but it is in no respect the antithesis of Mrs. Stowe's book. It does, however, cover the same period and deal with the same problems as the works of Tourgee and Booker T. Washington. The Fool's Errand was by one of the fools, and gives the personal impressions of a Northern man who was at the South and went through the reconstruction period. The autobiographical sketches of the founder and president of the Tuskeegee Industrial Institute is by one of the interdicted race itself, who, although a mulatto, would be reckoned in this work as a negro, since one drop of negro blood makes a negro.
Very early in the pages of The Leopard's Spots, if not in the title itself, we find that the story needs the balance of
