nd the children of the poor freeman are educated at
the public expense, not so much by the pleading of the children's needs
as by the power of the father's ballot. To take the ground, that the
"superior" race will educate the "inferior" race it has but just held in
bondage, that it will humanely set to work to prepare and qualify the
"niggers" to be voters, only escapes from being considered the artifice
of the knave by charitably referring it to the credulity of the
simpleton. We do not send, as Mr. Sumner has happily said, "the child to
be nursed by the wolf"; and he might have added, that the only precedent
for such a proceeding, the case of Romulus and Remus, has lost all the
little force it may once have had by the criticism of Niebuhr.

If the negroes do not get the power of political self-protection in the
conventions of the people which are now to be called, it is not
reasonable to expect they will ever get it by the consent of the whites.
Legal State conventions are called by previous law. There is no previous
State law applicable to the Rebel communities, because, revolutionized
by rebellion, the very persons who are qualified by the old State laws
to call conventions are disqualified by the laws of the United States.
The result is, that the people are an unorganized mass, to be
reorganized under the lead of the Federal government; and of this mass
of people--literally, in this case, "the masses"--the free blacks are as
much a part as the free whites. As soon, however, as the machinery of
State governments is set in motion by these conventions,--as soon as
these governments are recognized by the President and Congress,--no
conventions to alter the constitutions agreed upon can be called, except
by previous State laws. If negro suffrage is not granted in the election
of members to the present conventions, the power will pass permanently
into the hands of the whites, and the only opportunity for a peaceful
settlement of the question will be lost. At the very time when,
abstractly, no party has legal rights, and only one party has claims, we
propose to deliberately sacrifice the party that has claims to the party
which will soon acquire legal rights to oppress the claimants. For,
disguise it as we may, the United States government really holds and
exercises the power which gives vitality to the preliminaries of
reconstruction, and it is therefore responsible for all evils in the
future which shall spring from its