his problem of labor to be settled? I reply, in all candor, that I am
unable to answer so intricate a question. But this I do say: (1) That
you have got to bring to the settlement of it all the brain power, all
the penetration, all the historical reading, and all the generous
devotedness of heart that you can command; and (2) that in the
endeavor to settle this question that you are not to make the mistake
that it is external forces which are chiefly to be brought to bear
upon this enormity. No race of people can be lifted up by others to
grand civility. The elevation of a people, their thorough
civilization, comes chiefly from internal qualities. If there is no
receptive and living quality in them which can be evoked for their
elevation, then they must die! The emancipation of the black race in
this land from the injustice and grinding tyranny of their labor
servitude is to be effected mainly by the development of such personal
qualities, such thrift, energy, and manliness as shall, in the first
place, raise them above the dependence and the penury of their present
vassalage, and next shall bring forth such manliness and dignity in
the race as may command the respect of their oppressors.

To bring about these results we need intelligent men and women, so
filled with philanthropy that they will go down to the humblest
conditions of their race, and carry to their lowly huts and cabins all
the resources of science, all the suggestions of domestic, social, and
political economies, all the appliances of school and industries in
order to raise and elevate the most abject and needy race on American
soil. If the scholarly and enlightened colored men and women care not
to devote themselves to these lowly but noble duties, to these humble
but sacred conditions, what is the use of their schooling and
enlightenment? Why, in the course of Providence, have they had their
large advantages and their superior opportunities?

I bring to your notice one other requirement of the black race in this
country, and that is the need of a

HIGHER PLANE OF MORALITY.

I make no excuse for introducing so delicate and, perchance, so
offensive, a topic; a topic which necessarily implies a state of
serious moral defectiveness. If the system of slavery did not do us
harm in every segment and section of our being, why have we for
generations complained of it? And if it did do us moral as well as
intellectual harm, why, when attempting by education