his master at the front, who
confided to his care the sustenance and even life of his wife and
little ones. This was the supremest test of his honesty, which he
sacredly discharged. Since the war, he has faithfully adhered to and
followed the fortunes of the Republican party, by the mandate of which
he was emancipated; even though in doing so he has suffered all the
evils which a hostile opponent can invent to plague and swerve him
from what he considers the path of gratitude and honor.

(d) He is brave; as the records of our wars will prove. His blood has
stained many battlefields where, under "Old Glory," he fought for the
Union and Liberty; not only on American soil, but also in foreign
lands. The Negro, in contending in war, for the life and liberties of
this Republic, has literally covered himself with glory.

(1) That he is patriotic goes without saying, in the light of what
has been written in the foregoing paragraph. With all his coarse and
homely ignorance, the heart of the American Negro, when yet a slave,
throbbed with patriotic love and loyalty; and this, too, at a time
when his college-bred and intelligent (?) master was doing his
uttermost to destroy this glorious fabric of Union.

It is only reasonable to assume that a man whose ignorance does not
blind him from shooting right, can, and will, under proper
instruction, which is given in prints and on the stump to all other
voters, vote rightly.

(2) The first and most potent step in the direction of humiliating the
Negro and relegating him to a condition of mental serfdom, is to
deprive him of the ballot. It is the only token of real power which he
possesses, aside from his brawn, which the white American really
covets; and once shorn of that, he would, like Samson, be passive, in
the hands of the Philistines.

(3) Another suggestion which may be urged in behalf of the suffrage
rights of the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" is, that he is
a hopeless minority; nor could he, by any means, control the destinies
of this country, if the intelligent voters of the land would but be
vigilant and prompt in the exercise of the franchise, imposed in them.
It is a sad reflection that the alleged fraud and corruption which
existed under "carpet-bag rule" in the South during the reconstruction
period could never have existed had the white voters of the South, who
were yet clothed with the elective franchise, given their countenance
and affiliation to the