internecine war
of races, which would destroy us, or the amalgamation of our race and
blood with that of the negro. If we mean, as practical men and
statesmen, to seek our country's salvation by means of emancipation, we
must, in some way, relieve the national mind from the pressure of this
objection. Till we do so, the masses of the people will say to us: 'We
do not approve of slavery; we abhor it; but if we are to have the negro
among us, we believe in keeping him in slavery.' All of us, who are in
the habit of talking with the people on this subject, know that almost
in these very words we are met at every street corner. We must answer
it, or in some form slavery will still continue to be the curse of our
country, and to hurry it on to an untimely and ignominious end.

Let it be distinctly borne in mind that it is not the _moral_ equality
of the negro to the white man, which is under consideration. That indeed
is only indirectly assailed by the inveterate national prejudice of
which I speak. Those masses of the people who have no pecuniary interest
in slavery, trample on the moral rights of the colored man only because
they are made to believe themselves placed under the hard necessity of
doing so, in order to resist any approach toward that political and
social equality with him to which they are determined never to submit.
Show them how they can concede to him the former without conceding the
latter, and they will gladly do it. For myself, nothing can be added to
the intensity of my conviction not only that the colored man must be
protected in the full enjoyment of all the moral rights of humanity, as
a condition of our prolonged national existence; but that the masses of
the people never will consent to a political and social equality with
the negro race.

How then can the public mind be assured that to emancipate the enslaved
race, to confer on them all the moral rights of humanity, does not
involve by any necessity or even remote probability, either an
internecine war of races on our own soil, or the fusion of the two races
into one homogeneous people? One answer, which satisfies many, is, the
freedmen must be colonized in some unoccupied region of the earth, where
they may be separated from the white man, and build up for themselves an
independent and homogeneous nationality. I have no controversy with this
proposed solution of the difficulty, or with the excellent men who are
advocating and promoting it, with