all say nothing about the moral effect of disfranchisement upon the
white people, or upon the State itself. What slavery made of the Southern
whites is a matter of history. The abolition of slavery gave the South an
opportunity to emerge from barbarism. Present conditions indicate that the
spirit which dominated slavery still curses the fair section over which
that institution spread its blight.

And now, is the situation remediless? If not so, where lies the remedy?
First let us take up those remedies suggested by the men who approve of
disfranchisement, though they may sometimes deplore the method, or regret
the necessity.

Time, we are told, heals all diseases, rights all wrongs, and is the only
cure for this one. It is a cowardly argument. These people are entitled to
their rights to-day, while they are yet alive to enjoy them; and it is
poor statesmanship and worse morals to nurse a present evil and thrust it
forward upon a future generation for correction. The nation can no more
honestly do this than it could thrust back upon a past generation the
responsibility for slavery. It had to meet that responsibility; it ought
to meet this one.

Education has been put forward as the great corrective--preferably
industrial education. The intellect of the whites is to be educated to the
point where they will so appreciate the blessings of liberty and equality,
as of their own motion to enlarge and defend the Negro's rights. The
Negroes, on the other hand, are to be so trained as to make them, not
equal with the whites in any way--God save the mark! this would be
unthinkable!--but so useful to the community that the whites will protect
them rather than to lose their valuable services. Some few enthusiasts go
so far as to maintain that by virtue of education the Negro will, in time,
become strong enough to protect himself against any aggression of the
whites; this, it may be said, is a strictly Northern view.

It is not quite clearly apparent how education alone, in the ordinary
meaning of the word, is to solve, in any appreciable time, the problem of
the relations of Southern white and black people. The need of education of
all kinds for both races is wofully apparent. But men and nations have
been free without being learned, and there have been educated slaves.
Liberty has been known to languish where culture had reached a very high
development. Nations do not first become rich and learned and then free,
but the lesson o