rded ample opportunity for designing
persons to mislead the uninformed among the mass, and to make them
believe that _political_ equality means social, intellectual, and moral
equality, that all are in fact equal in all respects in society, and
that their rights are infringed by their exclusion from such
recognition.

But while plying the people with the most levelling dogmas of equality,
it is the equality of the white race only that has been affirmed by the
crafty demagogue. The efforts for the enfranchisement of the negro have
been eagerly seized upon to widen still further the breach between the
intelligent and the ignorant. The thoughtless among the masses have been
persistently taught that the emancipation of the negro would result in
his coming North, that this would bring him in as a competitor in the
struggle for life, already so arduous and harassing, and that,
consequently, the emancipation of the black was a direct blow at the
interests of the poor white laboring man. When the present national
conflict began, and the politicians of the cunning, unscrupulous school
thought they saw it to be their interest to gain favor with the South,
they opposed the war, and sought to league the populace on their side by
raising the cry that the contest was for emancipation, not for saving
the Union. And now, when all other efforts to end the struggle in favor
of the South are unavailing, they have fastened on the prevention of the
draft as the 'last ditch' in which to make a final stand and risk a last
battle.

They have summoned all their forces to the field in this contest. They
urge the poor man to resist the conscription, because it infringes the
equality of the citizen and makes an invidious distinction between the
rich and the poor. They teach him that he is being forced from fireside
and friends, while others no better than himself are left at home; that
his family are left destitute by his absence, while others remain to
protect and support their dependants; that he is forced to do this in a
war which has for its principal object the liberation of a people whom
he believes he has every cause to hate, and who will become, on their
liberation, his rivals in the race where suffering and perhaps
starvation await the loser. Is it any wonder that they broke the wheel,
scattered the names, and burnt the enrolling offices--that they
plundered and murdered the negroes?

The New York riot had its active origin, nucleus, a