n written upon the
statute books of a single southern state within the last decade in
recognition of the Negro as a man entitled to respect, or fair and just
consideration.

In 1857, Mr. Lincoln uttered the following words in reference to
slavery, which are not wanting in significance in their bearing upon the
present assault upon the Negro:

"To aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal,
it (the Declaration of Independence) is assailed and sneered at,
construed and hawked at and torn, till, if the framers could rise
from their graves, they would hardly recognize it. All the powers
of earth seem combined against him. Ambition follows, philosophy
follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining in the cry.
They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person
and left no prying instrument with him; and now they have him as it
were bolted with a lock of a hundred keys which can never be
unlocked, except by the concurrence of every key in the hands of a
hundred different men and they scattered to a hundred different
places. And now they stand musing as to what invention in all the
domain of mind and matter can be produced to make the impossibility
of his escape more complete than it is."

IV

The nation can not put up with many more of these instruments of
disfranchisement. It can not endure the present ones very much longer.
The question is ceasing to be one of interest merely to the Negro; it is
rapidly becoming one of national moment. It is becoming a contest
between democracy and oligarchy in which the stability and integrity of
republican institutions are involved. Already a few thousand minions of
oligarchy are exerting a larger influence in the national government
than do millions of freemen who are obeying the Federal Constitution by
maintaining a republican form of government. The election returns from
the three states of Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi show how
startling is the power which they exercise in Congress by reason of
these disfranchising instruments. The following shows the number of
votes polled in these states for members of Congress in 1898 and in the
case of Louisiana the votes polled may be compared with the returns of
1896 when the old constitution was in force:

LOUISIANA

District. Total Vote, 1898. Total Vote, 1896.

I 6,318 15,4