however
similar, have lived anywhere, at any time, on the same soil with equal
rights in peace! In spite of these things we are commanded to make good
this change of American policy which has not perhaps changed American
prejudice--to make certain here what has elsewhere been impossible
between whites and blacks--and to reverse, under the very worst
conditions, the universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to
this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay--a rigor
that accepts no excuse--and a suspicion that discourages frankness and
sincerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with
our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would--so
bound up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if
we could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it into our hands, He alone
can know. But this the weakest and wisest of us do know: we cannot solve
it with less than your tolerant and patient sympathy--with less than the
knowledge that the blood that runs in your veins is our blood--and that,
when we have done our best, whether the issue be lost or won, we shall
feel your strong arms about us and hear the beating of your approving
hearts!

The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of the South--the men whose
genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of American
history--whose courage and fortitude you tested in five years of the
fiercest war--whose energy has made bricks without straw and spread
splendor amid the ashes of their war-wasted homes--these men wear this
problem in their hearts and brains, by day and by night. They realize,
as you cannot, what this problem means--what they owe to this kindly and
dependent race--the measure of their debt to the world in whose despite
they defended and maintained slavery. And though their feet are hindered
in its undergrowth, and their march cumbered with its burdens, they have
lost neither the patience from which comes clearness, nor the faith from
which comes courage. Nor, sir, when in passionate moments is disclosed
to them that vague and awful shadow, with its lurid abysses and its
crimson stains, into which I pray God they may never go, are they struck
with more of apprehension than is needed to complete their consecration!

Such is the temper of my people. But what of the problem itself? Mr.
President, we need not go one step further unless you concede right here
that the people I speak for ar