last thirty years has been strewn with thorns and thistles. It
has been as one groping through the long darkness into the light.
The time is not far distant when the world will begin to
appreciate the real character of the burden that was imposed upon
the South in giving the franchise to four millions of ignorant
and impoverished ex-slaves. No people was ever before given such
a problem to solve. History has blazed no path through the
wilderness that could be followed. For thirty years we have
wandered in the wilderness. We are now beginning to get out. But
there is only one road out; and all makeshifts, expedients,
profit and loss calculations, but lead into swamps, quicksands,
quagmires, and jungles. There is a highway that will lead both
races out into the pure, beautiful sunshine, where there will be
nothing to hide and nothing to explain, where both races can
grow strong and true and useful in every fibre of their being. I
believe that your convention will find this highway, that it will
enact a fundamental law that will be absolutely just and fair to
white and black alike.

"I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the
ballot-box against the ignorant you will open the school-house.
More than one-half of the population of your State are Negroes.
No State can long prosper when a large part of its citizenship is
in ignorance and poverty, and has no interest in the government.
I beg of you that you do not treat us as an alien people. We are
not aliens. You know us. You know that we have cleared your
forests, tilled your fields, nursed your children, and protected
your families. There is an attachment between us that few
understand. While I do not presume to be able to advise you, yet
it is in my heart to say that, if your convention would do
something that would prevent for all time strained relations
between the two races, and would permanently settle the matter of
political relations in one Southern State at least, let the very
best educational opportunities be provided for both races; and
add to this an election law that shall be incapable of unjust
discrimination, at the same time providing that, in proportion as
the ignorant secure education, property, and character, they will
be given the right of citizenship. Any