ng a dignity of manhood, of self-reliance and opportunity
for elevation hitherto unknown.

Then doubt, alternating, would present the immense problems awaiting
popular solution. Born in the seething cauldron of civil war, they had
been met in the arena of fervid Congressional debate and political
conflict. The amendments to the Constitution had been passed, but was
their inscription a record of the crystallization of public sentiment?
Subsequent events have fully shown that only to the magnanimity and
justice of the American people and the fruition of time can they be
commended. Not to believe that these problems will be rightfully solved
is to doubt not only the efficacy of the basic principles of our
Government, but the divinity of truth and justice. To these rounds of
hope's ladder, while eager in obtaining wisdom, the Negro should cling
with tenacity, with faith "a higher faculty than reason" unconquerable.

Having resolved to locate in some part of the South for the purpose of
practicing law, I had while in Victoria read the English Common Law, the
basis of our country's jurisprudence, under Mr. Ring, an English
barrister. Soon after my arrival in Oberlin, Ohio, where my family,
four years before, had preceded me, I entered the law department of an
Oberlin business college, and after graduation proceeded South, the
first time since emancipation. In an early chapter I described my first
contact with and impressions of slavery, when a lad; then the
hopelessness of abject servitude and consciousness of unrequited toil
had its impress on the brow of the laborer. Now cheerfulness, a spirit
of industry, enterprise, and fraternal feeling replaced the stagnant
humdrum of slavery. Nor was progress observable only among the freedmen.
Many evidences of kindness and sympathy were shown and expressed by
former owners for the moral and mental advancement of their former
bondsmen, which, to a great degree, unfortunately, was counterbalanced
by violence and persecution.

My brother, Jonathan C. Gibbs, was then Secretary of State of Florida,
with Governor Hart as executive. He had had the benefit of a collegiate
education, having graduated at Dartmouth, New Haven, and had for some
years filled the pulpit as a Presbyterian minister. The stress of
reconstruction and obvious necessity for ability in secular matters
induced him to enter official life. Naturally indomitable, he more than
fulfilled the expectations of his friends and s