d ready for the true second coming of
Christ in the practical supremacy of his doctrine, and its incarnation,
after so many centuries of burial, in the daily lives of men. We have
been but dimly, if at all, conscious of the greatness of our errand,
while we have already accomplished a part of it in bringing together
the people of all nations to see each other no longer as aliens or
enemies, but as equal partakers of the highest earthly dignity,--a
common manhood. We have been forced, whether we would or no, first to
endure, then to tolerate, and at last to like men from all the four
corners of the world, and to see that each added a certain virtue of
his own to that precious amalgam of which we are in due time to fashion
a great nation. We are now brought face to face with our duty toward
one of those dusky races that have long sat in the shadow of the world;
we are to be taught to see the Christ disguised also in these, and to
find at last that a part of our salvation is inextricably knit up with
the necessity of doing them justice and leading them to the light. This
is no sentimental fancy; it is written in plain characters upon the
very surface of things. We have done everything to get rid of the
negro; and the more we did, the more he was thrust upon us in every
possible relation of life and aspect of thought. One thing we have not
tried,--a spell before which he would vanish away from us at once, by
taking quietly the place, whatever it be, to which Nature has assigned
him. We have not acknowledged him as our brother. Till we have done so
he will be always at our elbow, a perpetual discomfort to himself and
us. Now this one thing that will give us rest is precisely what the
South, if we leave the work of reconstruction in their hands, will make
it impossible for us to do; and yet it must be done ere America can
penetrate the Southern States. It is for this reason, and not with any
desire of establishing a standing garrison of four hundred thousand
loyal voters in the South, that we insist on the absolute necessity of
justice to the black man. Not that we have not a perfect right to
demand the reception of such a garrison, but we wish the South to
govern itself; and this it will never be able to do, it will be
governed as heretofore by its circumstances, if we allow it to replace
slavery by the disenfranchisement of color, and to make an Ireland out
of what should be the most productive, populous, and happy part of th