as nothing to gain and everything to lose in attempting to
repress the energies and ambition of the colored man. It is to the
safety as well as to the highest efficiency of society that all its
members should be allowed the same opportunities for moral,
intellectual and material development. "Do unto others as you would
have them do unto you." "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
There is no escape from the law of God. You either deal justly or
suffer the evil effects of wrong-doing. The disorders which have made
the South a seething cauldron for fifteen years have produced the most
widespread contempt of lawful authority not only on the part of the
lawless whites but the law-abiding blacks, who have suffered patiently
the infliction of all manner of wrong _because they were a generation
of slaves, suddenly made freemen_. They permitted themselves to be
shot because they had been educated to bare their backs at the command
of the white oligarch. But that sort of pusillanimous cowardice cannot
be expected to last always. Men in a state of freedom instinctively
question the right of others to impose unequal burdens upon them, or
to deny to them equal and exact protection of the laws. When oppressed
people begin to murmur, grow restless and discontented, the opposer
had better change his tactics, or lock himself up, as does the
cowardly tyrant of Russia.

A new generation of men has come upon the stage of action in the
South. They know little or nothing of the regulations or the horrors
of the slave regime. They know they are freemen; they know they are
cruelly and unjustly defrauded; and they _question the right_ of their
equals to oppose and defraud them. A large number of these people have
enjoyed the advantage of common school education, and not a few of
academic and collegiate education, and a large number have "put money
in their purse." The entire race has so changed that they are almost a
different people from what they were when the exigencies of war made
their manumission imperative. Yet there has been but little change in
the attitude of the white men towards this people. They still
strenuously deny their right to participate in the administration of
justice or to share equally in the blessings of that justice.

There must be a change of policy. The progress of the black man
demands it; the interest of the white man compels it. The South cannot
hope to share in the industrious emigration constantly flowin