According to the
principles of our government it is not possible for us to keep
soldiers enough down south to guard all their ballot boxes, and
indeed we need a good many up north to guard our own sometimes.
At all events it is not consistent with the principles of our
government that we should undertake to rule in local affairs, and,
therefore, while we should give to those who are oppressed, in our
own country as well as in others, every kindly aid which the
constitution and the law allow, yet, after all, the people of the
south must work out their own salvation.

"I am inclined to think that the blacks, having the labor and the
muscle and industry on their side, will not be far behind the white
race in the future in the south. It is now conceded on all hands
that, under our system of government, we cannot by external force
manage or interfere with the local affairs of a state or community,
unless the authorities of the state call for aid to resist domestic
violence. Wrongs inflicted upon citizens by mobs are beyond redress
by the general government. The only remedy is migration and public
opinion; but these, though slow and very discouraging, will in time
furnish a remedy and also a punishment. Neither capital nor labor,
prosperity nor hope, will go or linger long where human rights and
life are unsafe. The instinctive love of justice and fair play
will, in time, dissipate the prejudice of race or caste and point
the finger of scorn to the man who robs another of his rights, as
it now does to the man who cheats, or steals the property of his
neighbor. With the power of the colored people to migrate, whenever
they are unjustly treated, to a place where law and justice prevail,
with the capacity for labor and to acquire property, with reasonable
opportunity for education, they will in time make sure their rights
as citizens. I believe this is the growing feeling in the new
south. I am willing to trust it, and I will be glad to aid it
whenever and wherever I can see the way.

"What the new south wants now more than all else is education!
education!! education!!! The statistics with which we have been
made familiar recently in the debate in the Senate, of illiteracy
in the south, are appalling, but not much more so than was the
condition of the western states fifty years ago. The negroes being
slaves were, of necessity, without education. The great mass of
the white people were in the same condition, not