end that any
appropriation made for this purpose be so limited in annual amount and
as to the time over which it is to extend as will on the one hand give
the local school authorities opportunity to make the best use of the
first year's allowance, and on the other deliver them from the
temptation to unduly postpone the assumption of the whole burden
themselves.

The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us. They were brought
here in chains and held in the communities where they are now chiefly
found by a cruel slave code. Happily for both races, they are now free.
They have from a standpoint of ignorance and poverty--which was our
shame, not theirs--made remarkable advances in education and in the
acquisition of property. They have as a people shown themselves to
be friendly and faithful toward the white race under temptations of
tremendous strength. They have their representatives in the national
cemeteries, where a grateful Government has gathered the ashes of
those who died in its defense. They have furnished to our Regular Army
regiments that have won high praise from their commanding officers for
courage and soldierly qualities and for fidelity to the enlistment oath.
In civil life they are now the toilers of their communities, making
their full contribution to the widening streams of prosperity which
these communities are receiving. Their sudden withdrawal would stop
production and bring disorder into the household as well as the shop.
Generally they do not desire to quit their homes, and their employers
resent the interference of the emigration agents who seek to stimulate
such a desire.

But notwithstanding all this, in many parts of our country where the
colored population is large the people of that race are by various
devices deprived of any effective exercise of their political rights and
of many of their civil rights. The wrong does not expend itself upon
those whose votes are suppressed. Every constituency in the Union is
wronged.

It has been the hope of every patriot that a sense of justice and of
respect for the law would work a gradual cure of these flagrant evils.
Surely no one supposes that the present can be accepted as a permanent
condition. If it is said that these communities must work out this
problem for themselves, we have a right to ask whether they are at work
upon it. Do they suggest any solution? When and under what conditions is
the black man to have a free ballot? When is he