the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments--and the Thirteenth, which is also threatened--but they are
mentioned as showing that Congress is supreme; and Congress proceeds,
the House directly, the Senate indirectly, from the people and is
governed by public opinion. If the reduction of Southern representation
were to be regarded in the light of a bargain by which the Fifteenth
Amendment was surrendered, then it might prove fatal to liberty. If it
be inflicted as a punishment and a warning, to be followed by more
drastic measures if not sufficient, it would serve a useful purpose. The
Fifteenth Amendment declares that the right to vote _shall not_ be
denied or abridged on account of color; and any measure adopted by
Congress should look to that end. Only as the power to injure the Negro
in Congress is reduced thereby, would a reduction of representation
protect the Negro; without other measures it would still leave him in
the hands of the Southern whites, who could safely be trusted to make
him pay for their humiliation.

Finally, there is, somewhere in the Universe a "Power that works for
righteousness," and that leads men to do justice to one another. To this
power, working upon the hearts and consciences of men, the Negro can
always appeal. He has the right upon his side, and in the end the right
will prevail. The Negro will, in time, attain to full manhood and
citizenship throughout the United States. No better guaranty of this is
needed than a comparison of his present with his past. Toward this he
must do his part, as lies within his power and his opportunity. But it
will be, after all, largely a white man's conflict, fought out in the
forum of the public conscience. The Negro, though eager enough when
opportunity offered, had comparatively little to do with the abolition
of slavery, which was a vastly more formidable task than will be the
enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment.

_The Negro Problem_, 1903

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH AND OTHER
STORIES OF THE COLOR LINE, AND SELECTED ESSAYS***

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