war measure by President Lincoln--are no
longer regarded as fundamental by the South. The beneficiaries of
those amendments have failed in every instance to enjoy the benefits
that were, presumably, intended to be conferred.

These laws--having passed both branches of the Federal legislature,
having received the approval and signature of the Chief Executive of
the nation, and having been ratified by a majority of the states
composing the sisterhood of states--these laws are no longer binding
upon the people of the South, who fought long and desperately to
prevent the possibility of their enactment; and they no longer
benefit, if they ever did, the people in whose interest they were
incorporated in the _Magna Charta_ of American liberty; _while the
Central authority which originated them, has, through the Supreme
Court, declared nugatory, null and void all supplementary legislation
based upon those laws, as far as the government of the United States
is concerned!_ The whole question has been remanded to the
legislatures of the several states! The Federal Union has left to the
usurped governments of the South the adjudication of rights which the
South fought four years in honorable warfare to make impossible, and
which it has since the war exhausted the catalogue of infamy and
lawlessness to make of no force or effect. The fate of the lamb has
been left to the mercy of the lion and the tiger.

The "party of great moral ideas," having emancipated the slave, and
enfranchised disorganized ignorance and poverty, finally finished its
mission, relinquished its right to the respect and confidence of
mankind when, in 1876, it abandoned all effort to enforce the
provisions of the war amendments. That party stands today for
organized corruption, while its opponent stands for organized
brigandage. The black man, who was betrayed by his party and murdered
by the opponents of his party, is absolved from all allegiance which
_gratitude_ may have dictated, and is to-day free to make conditions
the best possible with any faction which will insure him in his right
to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The black men of the United States are, today, free to form whatever
alliances wisdom dictates, to make sure their position in the social
and civil system of which, in the wise providence of a just God, they
are a factor, for better or for worse.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] "Southerners fire up terribly, as has been noted in these