the
poor man has but one, he should guard it as a sacred treasure. Long ago,
by fair treatment, the white leaders of the South might have bound the
Negro to themselves with hoops of steel. They have not chosen to take
this course, but by assuming from the beginning an attitude hostile to
his rights, have never gained his confidence, and now seek by foul means
to destroy where they have never sought by fair means to control.

I have spoken of the effect of disfranchisement upon the colored race;
it is to the race as a whole, that the argument of the problem is
generally directed. But the unit of society in a republic is the
individual, and not the race, the failure to recognize this fact being
the fundamental error which has beclouded the whole discussion. The
effect of disfranchisement upon the individual is scarcely less
disastrous. I do not speak of the moral effect of injustice upon those
who suffer from it; I refer rather to the practical consequences which
may be appreciated by any mind. No country is free in which the way
upward is not open for every man to try, and for every properly
qualified man to attain whatever of good the community life may offer.
Such a condition does not exist, at the South, even in theory, for any
man of color. In no career can such a man compete with white men upon
equal terms. He must not only meet the prejudice of the individual, not
only the united prejudice of the white community; but lest some one
should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn with some legal
prohibition which says, "Thou shalt not," or "Thus far shalt thou go and
no farther." But the Negro race is viable; it adapts itself readily to
circumstances; and being thus adaptable, there is always the temptation
to

"Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning."

He who can most skillfully balance himself upon the advancing or
receding wave of white opinion concerning his race, is surest of such
measure of prosperity as is permitted to men of dark skins. There are
Negro teachers in the South--the privilege of teaching in their own
schools is the one respectable branch of the public service still left
open to them--who, for a grudging appropriation from a Southern
legislature, will decry their own race, approve their own degradation,
and laud their oppressors. Deprived of the right to vote, and,
therefore, of any power to demand what is their due, they feel impelled
to buy the