cease to be a
social factor. No two races ever lived antagonistic, yet in contact,
without the stronger either annihilating or absorbing the other.
(Chicago Conservator.)

* * * * *

The United States and not the Negro is responsible for the Negro's
identity with this country and also for his past and present condition
in America; and, having of her own accord made us citizens and
participants of this government (because we have merited both as
slaves in the forest and as armed soldiers and patriots on the field
of battle, protecting a flag which up to that time had never offered
us protection--by these means we have merited a citizenship) God and
the civilized world will hold the United States and the several states
responsible as our guardians to the heights of true civilization. As
for adaptation to and responsibility of civilization, the Negro is
receiving the highest mental and social culture. I call your attention
to the thousands of colored professional men and women who are rare
models of social culture and intellectual worth--men of learning and
distinguished for intelligence, men known and honored by the civilized
world for their mental merits. Blind Tom is the greatest musical
prodigy the world has ever seen. Regardless of his race and identity,
I believe that Rev. J. C. Price, D.D., was as fine an orator as
America ever produced, and Douglass the peer of any statesman. There
has been something very peculiar about the history of American issues
for the last one hundred years. Though the Negro himself has kept
silent, yet there has scarcely been in that length of time a decisive
issue before the American Congress that would have affected the entire
nation that was not either the outcome of our presence in this country
or a corollary thereto in some phase. The nation, not the Negro, is
responsible for the so-called Negro problem. Therefore it is the
nation's problem, and the nation must solve it. America bought the
whistle, and she must pay for it. The Negro has been and will ever be
the Pharaoh's plague to America, until the nation recognizes the
declaration of the fathers and the design of God in bequeathing to all
men justice in equity and the fullest recognition of citizenship to
all who are made a part of this government by constituency and
responsibility. This done, we will have but one problem, and that will
be how to better advance the glory of one common union. To-day w