e of
outraged justice on the part of race and press, and to hurl them with
marvelous precision and overwhelming might against that cruel executive
order and the hosts of words and messages and other hordes of blood-dyed
epithets which the President marshalled and sent forth from time to time
in defense of his Draconian decree. If there was sleepless energy in the
White House, there was an energy just as sleepless on the floor of the
Senate. The almost omnipotent power wielded for the destruction of the
Black Battalion by the formidable occupant of the executive mansion was
met and matched, ay, overmatched again and again by an omnipotence in
discussion which a just cause and genius as orator, lawyer, and debater
of the first rank could alone have put into the strong right arm of the
brave redresser of a race's wrongs on the floor of the Senate. For more
than two years he carried the case of the Black Battalion in his big and
tireless brain, in his big and gentle heart, as a mother carries under
her bosom her unborn babe. God alone knows what sums of money, what deep
thought and solicitude, what unflagging energy, what unceasing labor, he
spent in his holy and self-imposed task to right the wrongs of those
helpless and persecuted men. In the Senate their case pursued him like a
shadow, and at home it sat with him like a ghost in his library, and
slept for a few hours only when the great brain slept and the generous
heart rested from the pain which was torturing it. Sir, did you know
what love went out to you during those tremendous months of toil and
struggle, and what prayers from the grateful hearts of ten millions of
people?

Yes, he was one man against the whole power of the Administration and
all that that meant. Perhaps we do not fully understand what a colossal
power that was to confront and grapple with. Almost single-handed he met
that power and threw it again and again in the arena of debate. Every
speech he made in behalf of his clients, whether on the floor of the
Senate or outside of that body, was as terrible as an army with banners
to the enemies of the Black Battalion who had now, alas, become his
enemies too, and who were bent on the destruction of both, the defender
and the defended alike. But he did not hesitate or quail before that
power and the danger which threatened his political life. As the battle
thickened and perils gathered fast about his head he fought the fight of
the Black Battalion as few