nt whose supreme judicial tribunal declares that
it cannot, through the executive arm, enforce its own decrees, and,
therefore, refuses to pass upon a question, squarely before it,
involving a basic right of citizenship. For the decision of the Supreme
Court in the Giles case, if it foreshadows the attitude which the Court
will take upon other cases to the same general end which will soon come
before it, is scarcely less than a reaffirmation of the Dred Scott
decision; it certainly amounts to this--that in spite of the Fifteenth
Amendment, colored men in the United States have no political rights
which the States are bound to respect. To say this much is to say that
all privileges and immunities which Negroes henceforth enjoy, must be by
favor of the whites; they are not _rights_. The whites have so declared;
they proclaim that the country is theirs, that the Negro should be
thankful that he has so much, when so much more might be withheld from
him. He stands upon a lower footing than any alien; he has no government
to which he may look for protection.

Moreover, the white South sends to Congress, on a basis including the
Negro population, a delegation nearly twice as large as it is justly
entitled to, and one which may always safely be relied upon to oppose in
Congress every measure which seeks to protect the equality, or to
enlarge the rights of colored citizens. The grossness of this injustice
is all the more apparent since the Supreme Court, in the Alabama case
referred to, has declared the legislative and political department of
the government to be the only power which can right a political wrong.
Under this decision still further attacks upon the liberties of the
citizen may be confidently expected. Armed with the Negro's sole weapon
of defense, the white South stands ready to smite down his rights. The
ballot was first given to the Negro to defend him against this very
thing. He needs it now far more than then, and for even stronger
reasons. The 9,000,000 free colored people of to day have vastly more to
defend than the 3,000,000 hapless blacks who had just emerged from
slavery. If there be those who maintain that it was a mistake to give
the Negro the ballot at the time and in the manner in which it was
given, let them take to heart this reflection: that to deprive him of it
to-day, or to so restrict it as to leave him utterly defenseless against
the present relentless attitude of the South toward his rights, wi