of a _blessing_, that the nation's incapacity
to deal justly with our recently liberated slaves proves our inability
to deal with nine millions more of untutored and so-called inferior
people.

[Note 27: War with Spain.]

* * * * *

The final conclusion of the whole matter may be forecasted thus: The
Negro element in this country is permanent and indestructible. So great
are the numbers of the Negroes, and so intimate their relations with the
white people, that it is safe to say without fear of contradiction that
the status of the Negro element will determine in a large degree the
future of the white. Let this truth once be learned. Let the thoughtful
people of the nation cease trying to deceive themselves. The inevitable
teachings of history will not be reversed. The blood of these varied
races will finally be mingled until race distinctions will ultimately be
obliterated. The docile nature of the Negro race, his intimate domestic
and other relations with the whites, make this conclusion inevitable.
The two races are complements of each other and cannot be separated.

A DEFENSE OF THE NEGRO RACE[28]

BY HON. GEORGE H. WHITE

_Member of Congress from North Carolina_

[Note 28: Extracts from a speech delivered in the House of
Representatives, January 29, 1901.]

_Mr. Chairman:_

I want to enter a plea for the colored man, the colored woman, the
colored boy, and the colored girl of this country. I would not thus
digress from the question at issue and detain the House in a discussion
of the interests of this particular people at this time but for the
constant and the persistent efforts of certain gentlemen upon this floor
to mold and rivet public sentiment against us as a people, and to lose
no opportunity to hold up the unfortunate few, who commit crimes and
depredations and lead lives of infamy and shame, as other races do, as
fair specimens of representatives of the entire colored race. And at no
time, perhaps, during the 56th Congress were these charges and
countercharges, containing, as they do, slanderous statements, more
persistently magnified and pressed upon the attention of the nation than
during the consideration of the recent reapportionment bill, which is
now a law. As stated some days ago on this floor by me, I then sought
diligently to obtain an opportunity to answer some of the statements
made by gentlemen from different States, but the privilege was denied
me; and I therefore must embr