Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 100

26. D[aniel] H[enry] Chamberlain, Ex-Governor Chamberlain on the Negro Problem (Charleston, SC: News and Courier, 1904). (32 p.)

Open letter entitled “Present Phases of Our So-Called Negro Problem” by a former governor of South Carolina (1874-77) addressed to the Right Honorable James Bryce of London, England, in response to a lecture the addressee had given at Oxford. The author was originally from Massachusetts, served in the Union army, and settled in South Carolina after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, he was an official in the Republican Party. “Regarding the negro problem in this [Christian] spirit,” he writes, “I find myself forced by my experience and observation to say that perhaps our first practical aim should be to undo, so far as possible, what we have heretofore done for the negro since his emancipation—namely, the inspiring in him the hope or dream of sharing with the white race here a social or political equality; for whoever will lay aside wishes and fancies and look only at realities, will see that there things are impossibilities within any measurable range of time, if ever.” The pamphlet contains two addition letters from Mr. Chamberlain, one to the Charleston News and Courier and the other the Springfield Republican, both along the same lines. (Governor Chamberlain was defeated for reelection by Wade Hampton and left the state when federal troops were withdrawn in 1877.)