moral and material power of her people once more
unified, opposition would crumble until its last desperate leader was
left alone, vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts--as that night
should fade in the kindling glory of the sun. You may pass force bills,
but they will not avail. You may surrender your own liberties to federal
election law, you may submit, in fear of a necessity that does not
exist, that the very form of this government may be changed, you may
invite federal interference with the New England town meeting, that has
been for a hundred years the guarantee of local government in
America--this old State which holds in its charter the boast that it "is
a free and independent commonwealth"--it may deliver its election
machinery into the hands of the government it helped to create--but
never, sir, will a single State of this Union, North or South, be
delivered again to the control of an ignorant and inferior race. We
wrested our State governments from negro supremacy when the Federal
drum-beat rolled closer to the ballot-box, and Federal bayonets hedged
it deeper about than will ever again be permitted in this free
government. But, sir, though the cannon of this Republic thundered in
every voting district of the South, we still should find in the mercy of
God the means and the courage to prevent its re-establishment. I regret,
sir, that my section, hindered with this problem, stands in seeming
estrangement to the North. If, sir, any man will point out to me a path
down which the white people of the South, divided, may walk in peace and
honor, I will take that path though I take it alone--for at its end, and
nowhere else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of my section
and the full restoration of this Union. But, sir, if the negro had not
been enfranchised, the South would have been divided and the republic
united. His enfranchisement--against which I enter no protest--holds
the South united and compact. What solution, then, can we offer for the
problem? Time alone can disclose it to us. We simply report progress,
and ask your patience. If the problem be solved at all--and I firmly
believe it will, though nowhere else has it been--it will be solved by
the people most deeply bound in interest, most deeply pledged in honor
to its solution. I had rather see my people render back this question
rightly solved than to see them gather all the spoils over which faction
has contended since Catiline conspi