ecuring the support and retaining the confidence
of all the parts of our heterogeneous compact, to the end that a
homogeneous whole may move in the same direction for the good of all
concerned.

The Negroes ask for--and as a part of this republic--have a right to
demand the perpetuation of these basic principles of our government.
While we are young in citizenship, and admit having made many
political mistakes, yet we are willing that the search-light of reason
be thrown upon our acts, and a fair and impartial verdict rendered as
to our conduct, when all the circumstances surrounding our variegated
political history are taken into consideration. Liberated,
enfranchised and turned loose among our former masters, who could not
take kindly to our new citizenship, we naturally sought friendship and
political alliance with those claiming to be our best friends--those
who had been instrumental in obtaining our freedom. These new friends
came largely from the Federal army, interspersed with many adventurers
who followed in the wake of that army, seeking strange fields in which
to ply their vocations. Many of these new-comers proved to be true
friends to the Negro of the South and led us on and taught us as a
faithful guardian would teach and care for his wards. But the great
majority of them were wholly unscrupulous and worked upon the
ignorance, inexperience and gullibility of the Negro, overtime, to
place themselves into positions where they had unlimited sway. The
result that followed was most natural--the use of public trust for
private gain, the looting of many of the Southern states, the
political degradation of the Negro, and the complete estrangement
between him and his former neighbors. When all these things were
accomplished, these human cormorants betook themselves to their
Northern homes to live in ease and splendor on the results of their
pillage, while the black man was left in the South to endure
disfranchisement, torture and murder on account of the malice and
hatred begotten from his first political experience.

Surrounded by such environments, the suppression of his right of
franchise, the open and notorious examples of fraud, ballot-box
stuffing and intimidation practiced in every Southern election for the
last thirty years, on the one hand, and the unfaithfulness,
"Jingoism," the free offering of bribes and the continued practice of
duplicity, on the part of those claiming to be his friends, on the
other