Negro voters, instead of standing aloof from
them and leaving them to be swayed by a set of _educated men_, many of
whom were neither "to the manor born," nor particularly interested in
the welfare of the several communities in which they operated.

(4) We must never lose sight of the fact that the welfare of the
Republic is not resident altogether in the _brains_ of the voters. The
_heart_ plays a very conspicuous part in the casting of a pure and
salutary ballot. As between a voter possessing a pure, kind and
patriotic heart but an uncultivated mind, and another endowed with all
the learning of the universities, but swayed by ulterior and
unpatriotic designs, one would experience little or no difficulty in
making choice of the former, even though clad in a black skin.

(5) The fact that a Negro is a "non-property-holding Negro" should not
militate against his right to exercise his rights of citizenship; for,
many of the most useful and valuable of our voters, of both races,
are "non-property-holding" voters. The fact of holding property is
frequently predicated on conditions altogether fortuitous--a reverse
of the wheel of fortune, a large or expensive family--a drought or
flood, as well as many other contingencies all play conspicuous parts
in preventing good and true citizens from accumulating property, even
to the extent of an humble homestead; while fire, cyclone and flood
often reduce a man of great possessions in a day to the conditions of
a "non-property-holding" citizen; and did his right to vote depend on
his property holding, he would be utterly bereft of it. On the
contrary, it is no extraordinary thing to see a man of less than
average intelligence endowed with "worldly goods" through a turn of
the wheel of fortune or the expansion or contraction of a "margin,"
where men win or lose all on the casting of a die.

It does not seem to have occurred to many of those who are exceedingly
anxious to deprive "ignorant and non-property-holding Negroes" of the
ballot, that ignorance in a white man is just as vicious as ignorance
in any other class of citizens; yet they go on eliminating, by laws of
questionable validity, the hard working, wealth producing Negro of the
South, while in most instances the ignorant, dilettante and faneant,
with a white skin, is not only permitted to vote, but even protected
in the exercise of the function.

Upon the whole, after mature reflection, an affirmative answer would
seem t