es he has made a good citizen. No issue in the
State has been foreign to him. He has proven his patriotism and his
fondness for this land to which he was dragged in chains, and in his
obedience to its laws and devotion to its principles has stood second
to none. His home promises much good. His whole life seems to have
undergone a radical change. He has shown a disposition and delight in
the education of his children; and the constantly growing demand for
competent teachers and educated preachers shows that he has outgrown
his old ideas concerning education and religion. From an insatiable
desire for gewgaws he has turned to a practice of the precepts of
economy. From the state of semi-civilization in which he cared only
for the comforts of the present, his desires and wants have swept
outward and upward into the years to come and toward the Mysterious
Future. He has learned the difficult lesson that "man shall not live
by bread alone," and has shown himself delighted with a keen sense of
intellectual hunger. One hundred weekly newspapers, conducted by
Negroes, are feeding the mind of the race, binding communities
together by the cords of common interests and racial sympathy; while
the works of twenty Negro authors[141] lend inspiration and purpose
to every honest effort at self-improvement.

The fiery trials of the young Colored men who gained admission to West
Point, and the noble conduct of the four regiments of black troops in
the severe service of the frontiers have strengthened the hopes of a
nation in the final outcome of the American Negro.

* * * * *

But what of the future? Can the Negro endure the sharp competition of
American civilization? Can he keep his position against the tendencies
to amalgamation? Since it has been proven that the Negro is not dying
out, but on the contrary possesses the powers of reproduction to a
remarkable degree, a new source of danger has been discovered. It is
said that the Negro will perish, will be absorbed by the dominant race
ere long; that where races are crossed the inferior race suffers; and
that mixed races lack the power to reproduce their species; and that
hence the disappearance of the Negro is but a question of time. Mr.
Joseph C. G. Kennedy, superintendent of the Federal Census during the
war, took the following view of this question:

"That an unfavorable moral condition has existed and continues
among the free Colored, b