od the means and the courage to
prevent its reestablishment.

I regret, sir, that my section, hindered with this problem, stands in
seeming estrangement to the North. If, sir, any man will point out to me
a path down which the white people of the South, divided, may walk in
peace and honor, I will take that path, though I take it alone--for at
its end, and nowhere else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of
my section and the full restoration of this Union. But, sir, if the
negro had not been enfranchised the South would have been divided and
the Republic united. His enfranchisement--against which I enter no
protest--holds the South united and compact. What solution, then, can we
offer for the problem? Time alone can disclose it to us. We simply
report progress, and ask your patience. If the problem be solved at
all--and I firmly believe it will, though nowhere else has it been--it
will be solved by the people most deeply bound in interest, most deeply
pledged in honor to its solution. I had rather see my people render back
this question rightly solved than to see them gather all the spoils over
which faction has contended since Cataline conspired and Caesar fought.
Meantime we treat the negro fairly, measuring to him justice in the
fulness the strong should give to the weak, and leading him in the
steadfast ways of citizenship, that he may no longer be the prey of the
unscrupulous and the sport of the thoughtless. We open to him every
pursuit in which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his training and
capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and friendship--and to pin him
to the soil with ownership, that he may catch in the fire of his own
hearthstone that sense of responsibility the shiftless can never know.
And we gather him into that alliance of intelligence and responsibility
that, though it now runs close to racial lines, welcomes the
responsible and intelligent of any race. By this course, confirmed in
our judgment, and justified in the progress already made, we hope to
progress slowly but surely to the end.

The love we feel for that race, you cannot measure nor comprehend. As I
attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy, from her home up
there, looks down to bless, and through the tumult of this night steals
the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held me in her
black arms and led me smiling to sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak,
and I catch a vision of an old Southern home