prerequisites for voting, the average white man in the South desires
that any special law be passed to give him advantage over the Negro,
who has had only a little more than thirty years in which to prepare
himself for citizenship. In this relation another point of danger is
that the Negro has been made to feel that it is his duty to oppose
continually the Southern white man in politics, even in matters where
no principle is involved, and that he is only loyal to his own race
and acting in a manly way when he is opposing him. Such a policy has
proved most hurtful to both races. Where it is a matter of principle,
where a question of right or wrong is involved, I would advise the
Negro to stand by principle at all hazards. A Southern white man has
no respect for or confidence in a Negro who acts merely for policy's
sake; but there are many cases--and the number is growing--where the
Negro has nothing to gain and much to lose by opposing the Southern
white man in many matters that relate to government.

Under these six heads I believe I have stated some of the main points
which all high-minded white men and black men, North and South, will
agree need our most earnest and thoughtful consideration, if we would
hasten, and not hinder, the progress of our country.

As to the policy that should be pursued in a larger sense,--on this
subject I claim to possess no superior wisdom or unusual insight. I
may be wrong; I may be in some degree right.

In the future, more than in the past, we want to impress upon the
Negro the importance of identifying himself more closely with the
interests of the South,--the importance of making himself part of the
South and at home in it. Heretofore, for reasons which were natural
and for which no one is especially to blame, the coloured people have
been too much like a foreign nation residing in the midst of another
nation. If William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and George L.
Stearns were alive to-day, I feel sure that each one of them would
advise the Negroes to identify their interests as far as possible with
those of the Southern white man, always with the understanding that
this should be done where no question of right and wrong is involved.
In no other way, it seems to me, can we get a foundation for peace and
progress. He who advises against this policy will advise the Negro to
do that which no people in history who have succeeded have done. The
white man, North or South, who advises