orate
and vexing inquiries, investing the registration officers with judicial
powers, and avowedly aiming at the elimination of the negro vote, was
passed by the Legislature, at the instigation of Senator Gorman and
against the opposition of a Democratic governor, and decisively rejected
by the popular vote in November, 1905.]

CHAPTER XL

LOOKING FORWARD

It is difficult to write history, but it is impossible to write
prophecy. We can no more tell what lies before us than the Fathers of
the Republic could foresee the future a century ago. They little guessed
that slavery, which seemed hastening to its end, would take new vigor
from an increase of its profits,--that, stimulated by the material gain,
a propaganda of religious and political defense would spring up,--that a
passionate denunciation and a passionate defense would gradually inflame
the whole country,--that meanwhile the absorption of the mass of
citizens in private pursuits would blind them to the evil and peril, and
prevent that disinterested, comprehensive statesmanship which ought to
have assumed as a common burden the emancipation of the slaves,--that
the situation would be exasperated by hostility of the sections and
complicated by clashing theories of the national Union,--that only by
the bitter and costly way of war would a settlement be reached,--and
that emancipation, being wrought by force and not by persuasion, would
leave the master class "convinced against its will," and a deep gulf
between the races, whose spanning is still an uncertain matter,--all
this was hidden from the eyes of the wisest, a century ago. So is hidden
from our eyes the outworking of the century to come.

But the essential principles of the situation, the true ideals, the
perils,--these were seen of old. Jefferson wrote, "I tremble for my
country when I reflect that God is a God of justice." And Washington
said, "I can already foresee that nothing but the rooting out of
slavery can perpetuate the existence of our Union, by consolidating it
in a common bond of principle." Just so clearly can we read the basal
principles on which depends our national safety. We look forward to-day,
not to predict what will be, but to see what ought to be, and what we
purpose shall be.

We, the people of the United States, are to face and deal with this
matter. We are all in it together. Secession has failed, colonization is
impossible. Southerner and Northerner, white man and black