l of this notion of self-help, today
illogical, unreasonable, absurd, but powerful none the less despite
its technical infraction of the law of the land? Is not the lynching
of a Negro or of a white man simply the old primitive self-help with
the hue and cry and the execution of the victim when caught by the mob
or by the sheriff's posse? There is perhaps no field of speculation so
fascinating as this of the survival of bygone customs, traditions, and
notions, in present society. At the same time he will be a poor and
uncritical student who will not recognize the ease of erecting vast
structures upon slender foundations. My purpose in this article is
not to allege the necessary truth of this proposition, but, if
possible, to stimulate along different lines than has been common the
researches of those who are interested in the psychological attitude
of the white man toward the Negro.

There will be no doubt those who will exclaim that if I am right in
this analysis of the problem--indeed, if there be any reasonable
modicum of truth in what I say--then the solution of the problem will
be difficult in the extreme. The whole method of attack upon it will
be altered. A long educational campaign will become the main feature,
intended to expose the true basis of the white man's denial of real
equality to the Negro race. It will look like a battle too long to be
waged with courage because the victory will be far in the future. I do
not agree. The attack, if properly directed, and vigorously followed
up, will, like the assault of the woman suffragists upon equally
ancient instinctive promptings, be unexpectedly successful. The walls
of the fortress are thin and the defenders the wraiths of a dim past.

ROLAND G. USHER.

LINCOLN'S PLAN FOR COLONIZING THE EMANCIPATED NEGROES[1]

The colonization of the emancipated slaves had been one of the
remedies for the difficulties created by the presence of freedmen in
the midst of slave conditions. The American Colonization Society was
founded in 1816 with the object of promoting emancipation by sending
the freedmen to Africa. Some of the slave States, moreover, had laws
compelling the freedmen to leave the State in which they had formerly
resided as slaves. With an increasingly large number securing legal
manumission, the problem caused by their presence became to the
slaveholding group a most serious one. The Colonization Society,
theref