pay less attention to
politics and more to business, to industry, to education, to the
building up of a strong and sturdy manhood everywhere--to the
assimilation generally of all that goes to demand the world's respect
and consideration. He must lop off, as so many _incubi_, the
professional Negro office-seeker, the professional Negro office-holder,
and the Negro politician who aspires to lead the race, for the revenue
that is in it. The best men, the wisest, the most unselfish, and above
all, the men of the most profound integrity and uprightness, must take
the helm or retrogression will be the inevitable result. Politics
followed as an end has been the curse of the race. Under it problems
have multiplied, and under it the masses have remained longer than they
should in the lower stages of development. Only in the hands of men of
noble mold, and used only as a _means_ to an end, can politics
accomplish the highest good for all the race.

The Negro can keep all this in view and yet yield loyal support to the
party that set him free.

Let the party of freedom and the freedmen recognize and observe these
duties as reciprocal, and a force may be created, having its basis on
undying principles, that will pave the way for the ultimate success of
the highest aspirations of each--a force that will stretch southward and
westward bearing, wherever Old Glory floats, the promise to the
oppressed: Freedom, equality, prosperity. And though men may apostatize,
this mutual righteous cause shall live to sway for unnumbered years the
fortunes of this grand Republic, for the God who reared the continents
above the seas and peopled them with nations, who gave these nations
freedom of conscience and will, and who has watched their rise and fall
from the dawn of creation, still guides the destinies of races and of
parties, and standeth

"... within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own."

THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO RACE PROBLEMS IN
AMERICA[26]

BY NATHAN F. MOSSELL, A. M., M. D.

_Surgeon-in-Chief, Frederick Douglass Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa._

[Note 26: From _Howard's American Magazine_.]

Those who are familiar with history will testify that the blacks were a
fundamental element in the civilized races of antiquity, as also of the
primitive races of southern Europe. In fact, all history is pregnant
with traces of the Negro element. The world will ever look with wonder
and amazement up