h could get along without the Negro.[4] Even newspapers like
the _Charleston News and Courier_, which denounced the persecution of
the Negroes, urged them to emigrate to Africa as they could not be
permitted to rule over the white people. The _Minneapolis Times_
wished the scheme success and Godspeed and believed that the sooner it was
carried out the better it would be for the Negroes.

Most of the influential newspapers of the country, however, urged the
contrary. Citing the progress of the Negroes since emancipation to show
that the blacks were doing their full share toward developing the wealth
of the South, the _Indianapolis Journal_ characterized as barbarism
the suggestion that the government should furnish them transportation to
Africa. "The ancestors of most of the Negroes now in this country," said
the editor, "have doubtless been here as long as those of Senator Morgan,
and their descendants are as thoroughly acclimated and have as good a
right here as the Senator himself."[5] This was the opinion of all useful
Negroes except Bishop H.M. Turner, who endorsed Morgan's plan by
advocating the emigration of one fourth of the blacks to Africa. The
editor of the _Chicago Record-Herald_ entreated Turner to temper his
enthusiasm with discretion before he involved in unspeakable disaster any
more of his trustful compatriots.

Speaking more plainly to the point, the editor of the _Philadelphia
North American_ said that the true interest of the South was to
accommodate itself to changed conditions and that the duty of the freedmen
lies in making themselves worth more in the development of the South than
they were as chattels. Although recognizing the disabilities and hardships
of the South both to the whites and the blacks, he could not believe that
the elimination of the Negroes would, if practicable, give relief.[6] The
_Boston Herald_ inquired whether it was worth while to send away a
laboring population in the absence of whites to take its place and
referred to the misfortunes of Spain which undertook to carry out such a
scheme. Speaking the real truth, _The Milwaukee Journal_ said that no
one needed to expect any appreciable decrease in the black population
through any possible emigration, no matter how successful it might be.
"The Negro," said the editor, "is here to stay and our institutions must
be adapted to comprehend him and develop his possibilities." _The
Colored American_, then the leading Negro organ of t