e question _you_ must
answer at the poles in this election.

It was the intention of the great men who founded this Republic that it
should be "A government of the people, for the people, and by the
people"; that its citizens, from the highest to the lowest, should enjoy
perfect equality before the law. To realize this idea the rule of the
majority, to be ascertained through the processes provided by law, was
wisely adopted, and the laws providing for and regulating elections are
respected and obeyed in the Northern, Eastern, and Western States. The
Democracy of the South alone seems privileged to set at defiance the
organic as well as every statutory enactment, national and State,
designed to secure this essential principle of free government. Those
men must be taught that such an exceptional and unhealthy condition of
things will not be tolerated; that the rights of citizens of every
nationality are sacred in the eyes of the law, and their right to vote
for whom they please and have their ballots honestly counted shall not
be denied or abridged with impunity; that the faith of the Nation is
pledged to the defense and maintenance of these obligations, and it will
keep its pledge at whatever cost may be found necessary.

THE BLACK WOMAN OF THE SOUTH: HER NEGLECTS AND HER NEEDS[18]

BY ALEXANDER CRUMMELL, D. D., LL. D.

ALEXANDER CRUMMELL, D.D., _an eminent Negro Episcopal clergyman; a
graduate of Oxford University, England; professor in a Liberian College;
rector of St. Luke's in Washington and founder of the Negro Academy._

[Note 18: Address before the "Freedman's Aid Society," Methodist
Episcopal Church, Ocean Grove, N. J., August 15th, 1883.]

It is an age clamorous everywhere for the dignities, the grand
prerogatives, and the glory of woman. There is not a country in Europe
where she has not risen somewhat above the degradation of centuries, and
pleaded successfully for a new position and a higher vocation. As the
result of this new reformation we see her, in our day, seated in the
lecture-rooms of ancient universities, rivaling her brothers in the
fields of literature, the grand creators of ethereal art, the
participants in noble civil franchises, the moving spirit in grand
reformations, and the guide, agent, or assistant in all the noblest
movements for the civilization and regeneration of man.

In these several lines of progress the American woman has run on in
advance of her sisters in every othe