Part One - Georgia

Summary

“It's a fine country you're coming to, Sir; just too many of these damned nigras! If only we had one Dutchman of your blond kind for ten of these black devils, it would be paradise. It's a blessed country, Sir, this Georgia, the jewel of the South, and so the jewel of the world!”

The blond, blue-eyed gentleman—despite his impeccable elegance, even at a hundred paces, one could spot him as a European “greenhorn”— listened in bemusement to his fellow traveler. He enjoyed the boundless self-satisfaction of Americans, who, no matter whether they came from New York, Illinois, California, or in this case Georgia, praised their native state as paradise on earth. At the same time, the tirades against blacks— which became increasingly harsh and brutal for every degree of latitude he traveled further south—irritated him. Brushing his hair off his forehead with his stubby fingers, he said with a shrug: “Just what do you all want from these poor Negroes? I've gotten to know them as barbers, shoeshine boys, servants, conductors, and deckhands, and I find them quite handy, considerably more polite than the hired help of our own skin color, and they are always in a good mood and jocular. I actually quite like them.”

With great virtuosity, the American spit right past the German into the spittoon.

“First of all, sir, my compliments on your excellent English. More refined English than us here stateside. By God, these Germans can do anything, and whatever they can do, they do right well.—However, with all due respect, you just do not understand the situation with the Negroes; you're talking rubbish there. One Negro is good as a barber, a shoeshine boy, or waiter, very good even, but in bunches they are bad, very bad. When they live in bunches, they are worse than beasts! And they are beasts, and it is unfortunate that those damned Yankees—may they go to hell, even though they are hardworking fellas—have gotten them to thinking that they are not brutes but human beings, just as good or even better than the evil white man who doesn't even grant they are human. Well, that might work in the North where they can be waiters or barbers or house servants, but here in the South it is a different story.