o the presence of immediate interest, which is
always strong in human nature, to the love of race, and to the love of
section, which comes next to the love of country.

Our country is great not only in mineral and cereal resources, in
numbers, and in accumulated wealth, but great in extent of territory,
and in multiplicity of interests, out-growing from peculiarities of
locality, race, and the education of the people. Thus the people of
the North and East and West are given to farming, manufacturing, and
speculation, making politics a subordinate, not a leading interest;
they are consequently wealthy, thrifty and contented: while the people
of the South, still in the shadow of defeat in the bloodiest and most
tremendous conflict since the Napoleonic wars, are divided sharply
into two classes, and given almost exclusively to the pursuits of
agriculture and hatred of one another. The existence of this state of
things is most disastrous in its nature, and deplorable in its
results. It is a barrier against the progress of that section and
alien to the spirit and subversive of the principles of our free
institutions.

It is in the South that the largest number of our people live; it is
there that they encounter the greatest hardships; it is there the
problem of their future usefulness as American citizens must have full
and satisfactory, or disastrous and disheartening demonstration.
Consequently, the colored statesman and the colored editor must turn
their attention to the South and make that field the center of
speculation, deduction and practical application. We all understand
the conditions of society in that section and the causes which have
produced them, and, while not forgetting the causes, it is a common
purpose to alter the existing conditions, so that they may conform to
the logic of the great Rebellion and the spirit and letter of the
Federal Constitution. It is not surprising, therefore, that, as an
humble worker in the interest of my race and the common good, I have
decided views as to the course best to be pursued by our people in
that section, and the fruits likely to spring from a consistent
advocacy of such views.

I may stand alone in the opinion that the best interests of the race
and the best interests of the country will be conserved by building up
a bond of union between the white people and the negroes of the
South--advocating the doctrine that the interests of the white and the
interests of the c