man to be free, and equal with his fellow, and then to refrain from
enacting laws powerful to insure him in such freedom and equality, is
to trifle with the most sacred of all the functions of sovereignty.
Have not the United States done this very thing? Have they not
conferred freedom and the ballot, which are necessary the one to the
other? And have they not signally failed to make omnipotent the one
and practicable the other? The questions hardly require an answer. The
measure of freedom the black man enjoys can be gauged by the power he
has to vote. He has, practically, no voice in the government under
which he lives. His property is taxed and his life is jeopardized, by
states on the one hand and inefficient police regulations on the
other, and no question is asked or expected of him. When he protests,
when he cries out against this flagrant nullification of the very
first principles of a republican form of government, the insolent
question is asked: "What are you going to do about it?" And here lies
the danger.

You may rob and maltreat a slave and ask him what he is going to do
about it, and he can make no reply. He is bound hand and foot; he is
effectually gagged. Despair is his only refuge. He knows it is useless
to appeal from tyranny unto the designers and apologists of tyranny.
Ignominious death alone can bring him relief. This was the case of
thousands of men doomed by the institution of slavery. _But such is
not the case with free men._ You cannot oppress and murder freemen as
you would slaves: you cannot so insult them with the question, "What
are you going to do about it?" When you ask free men that question you
appeal to men who, though sunk to the verge of despair, yet are
capable of uprising and ripping hip and thigh those who deemed them
incapable of so rising above their condition. The history of mankind
is fruitful of such uprisings of races and classes reduced to a
condition of absolute despair. The American negro is no better and no
worse than the Haytian revolutionists headed by Toussaint l'Overture,
Christophe and the bloody Dessalaines.

I do not indulge in the luxury of prophecy when I declare that the
American people are fostering in their bosoms a spirit of rebellion
which will yet shake the pillars of popular government as they have
never before been shaken, unless a wiser policy is inaugurated and
honestly enforced. All the indications point to the fulfillment of
such declaration.

Th