sas to the National Republican Convention at
Cincinnati. He is a lawyer, one of the foremost of his race in Arkansas.
He is rather slender and a genteel-looking man, with something in his
features that denotes superiority" ("Though poor in thanks," Redfield,
yet I thank thee.) "His speech upon taking the chair, was another event.
It was the third good speech of the day and calculated to leave the
believers of internal inferiority in something of a muddle.

"He made a manly plea for equal rights for his race. All they wanted was
an equal chance in the battle of life. They did not desire to hinder any
man for exercising his political rights as he saw fit, and all they
claimed was liberty of thought and action for themselves. He was sorry
there was occasion for a convention of black men to consider black men's
status. The fact alone was evidence that the race had not been accorded
right and justice. Of the treatment of his race in Arkansas he had
little to complain of, but spoke bitterly of the murders at Vicksburg,
Miss. He gave the Republican party, as administered at Washington,
several blows under the chin. He complained of bad treatment of colored
men by that party, notwithstanding all its professions. He made the bold
declaration that all the whites of the South need do to get their votes
was to promise equal and exact justice and stand to it. All they wanted
was their rights as American citizens and would go into the party that
would secure them. He said the question primarily demanding the
attention of the convention were educational and political, and he hoped
the proceedings would be so orderly as to convince the whites present
that we were capable of self-control. His speech had a highly
independent flavor and the particular independent passages were
applauded by whites and blacks alike."

While the call for the convention was not distinctly political, that
feature of the proceedings was the most pronounced. For at that early
day, through an experience the most bitter, the lesson had been learned
that politics was not the panacea, but that our affiliation with the
Republican party was the main offence. Hence a disposition to
fraternize with Southern politicians for race protection and opportunity
had many adherents, and voiced by Governor Pinchback and other prominent
leaders in the South, who, while preferring to maintain their fealty to
the Republican party, were willing to sacrifice that allegiance if they
c