es of whites and blacks. We can
have no inferior servile class, peon or peasant. We must assimilate or
expel. The American is a citizen king or nothing. I can conceive of no
greater calamity than the assimilation of the negro into our social and
political life as our equal. A mulatto citizenship would be too dear a
price to pay even for emancipation."

"Words have no power to express my loathing for such twaddle!" cried
Stoneman, snapping his great jaws together and pursing his lips with
contempt.

"If the negro were not here would we allow him to land?" the President
went on, as if talking to himself. "The duty to exclude carries the right
to expel. Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the negro in the
tropics, and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of
government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of
manhood. This he can never do here. It was the fear of the black tragedy
behind emancipation that led the South into the insanity of secession. We
can never attain the ideal Union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an
alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor
desirable. The Nation cannot now exist half white and half black, any more
than it could exist half slave and half free."

"Yet 'God hath made of one blood all races,'" quoted the cynic with a
sneer.

"Yes--but finish the sentence--'and fixed the bounds of their habitation.'
God never meant that the negro should leave his habitat or the white man
invade his home. Our violation of this law is written in two centuries of
shame and blood. And the tragedy will not be closed until the black man is
restored to his home."

"I marvel that the minions of slavery elected Jeff Davis their chief with
so much better material at hand!"

"His election was a tragic and superfluous blunder. I am the President of
the United States, North and South," was the firm reply.

"Particularly the South!" hissed Stoneman. "During all this hideous war
they have been your pets--these rebel savages who have been murdering our
sons. You have been the ever-ready champion of traitors. And you now dare
to bend this high office to their defence----"

"My God, Stoneman, are you a man or a savage!" cried the President. "Is
not the North equally responsible for slavery? Has not the South lost all?
Have not the Southern people paid the full penalty of all the crimes of
war? Are our skirts free? Was Sherman's ma