rsons who will
represent them, speak for them and vote for them upon any question of
legislation which arises. It is because of this that there is great
rejoicing among Afro-Americans when any man of theirs is put forward
for his party in any official capacity whatever, and it is because of
this that so few of them have been, and are put forward.

Wherever an Afro-American is found supporting, by his lung-power and
ballot, a party which denies him participation in its primary (basis
of party) government, then you have found a man who does not know what
his attitude in politics should be; and, whether he should be pitied
or despised, must remain a question for each individual to decide. The
democratic party is the only party in the United States which denies
to the Afro-American this basic right in party government. Logically
enough, it is the only party in the United States which has always
sought to prevent him from enjoying the rights of the elective
franchise, the right to vote and to be voted for, and which has
necessarily, to justify this policy, always sought in every
conceivable way to degrade his manhood to the brute standard. A
voteless citizen is always a social and political outcast; a voteless
race in a composite citizenship will always constitute a problem more
or less dangerous to the state--enemies, fostered in the bosom, as
Cleopatra's asp, only to wound to the death. It has been the way of
the world since the dawn of history.

It is creditable to the good sense and the manhood of the
Afro-American people that they have constantly recognized and acted
upon the theory I have here laid down, as the consistent one in
politics. Their attitude has been manly and consistent; they have
stood by their friends and defied their enemies, even when their
friends have been lukewarm, or brutally indifferent, and this has been
the attitude of their friends since 1870.

Through good and evil report they have refused to be seduced from
their allegiance to the party of freedom, and their enemies have
wreaked their vengeance, without hindrance, so that the attitude books
of every Southern state bristle with a code of laws as infamous and
oppressive as the slave code. But that does not affect the principle
in the least, and the principle is the thing; it is the essence of all
life. He who clings to it, though he may die, as the poor Indian has
done, deserves and receives the respect of mankind. When it has been
said of