good as those provided for the whites out of the
common fund, nor have they means to supply from private avenues the
benefits of education denied them by the State. Now, what is the
solution of this manifold and grievous state of things? Will it come
by standing solidly opposed to the sentiment, the culture, the
statesmanship, and the possession of the soil and wealth of the South?
Let the history of the past be spread before the eyes of a candid and
thoughtful people; let the bulky roll of misgovernment, incompetence,
and blind folly be enrolled on the one hand, and then turn to the
terrors of the midnight assassin and the lawless deeds which desecrate
the sunlight of noontide, walking abroad as a phantom armed with the
desperation of the damned!

I maintain the idea that the preservation of our liberties, the
consummation of our citizenship, must be conserved and matured, not by
standing alone and apart, sullen as the melancholy Dane, but by
imbibing all that is American, entering into the life and spirit of
our institutions, spreading abroad in sentiment, feeling the full
force of the fact that while we are classed as Africans, just as the
Germans are classed as Germans we are in all things American citizens,
American freemen. Since we have tried the idea of political unanimity
let us now try other ideas, ideas more in consonance with the spirit
of our institution. There is no strength in a union that enfeebles.
Assimilation, a melting into the corporate body, having no distinction
from others, equally the recipients of government--this is to be the
independent man, be his skin tanned by the torrid heat of Africa, or
bleached by the eternal snows of the Caucasus. To preach the
independence of the colored man is to preach his Americanization. The
shackles of slavery have been torn from his limbs by the stern
arbitrament of arms; the shackles of political enslavement, of
ignorance, and of popular prejudice must be broken on the wheels of
ceaseless study and the facility with which he becomes absorbed into
the body of the people. To aid himself is his first duty if he
believes that he is here to stay, and not a probationer for the land
of his forefathers--a land upon which he has no other claim than one
of sentiment.

What vital principle affecting our citizenship is championed by the
National Republican party of to-day? Is it a fair vote and an honest
count? Measure our strength in the South and gaze upon the solitar