upporters by rare ability
as a thinker and speaker, with unflinching fidelity to his party
principles. I found him at Tallahassee, the capital, in a
well-appointed residence, but his sleeping place in the attic
contracted, and, as I perceived, considerable of an arsenal. He said
that for better vantage it had been his resting place for several
months, as his life had been threatened by the "Ku Klux," that band of
midnight assassins whose deeds of blood and carnage darken so many pages
of our national history, and was the constant terror of white and black
adherents to the national Government's policy of enfranchisement. He was
hopeful of better conditions in Florida, and introduced me to Governor
Hart. Both urged me to locate in the State, promising me their support.
I highly appreciated the affection of the one and the proffered
friendship of the other. But the feeling paramount was that my brother
had "won his spurs" by assiduity and fidelity through the scathing and
fiery ordeal of those troublesome times; that it would ill become me to
profit or serenely rest beneath the laurels he had won. It was the last
interview or sight of my brother. Subsequently after a three hours'
speech, he went to his office and suddenly died of apoplexy.

I continued my tour of observation, and, having been appointed a
delegate from Ohio to a national convention to be held in Charleston,
South Carolina, I attended. It was the first assembly of the kind at
which I had been present since emancipation. I had hitherto met many
conventions of colored men having for their object the amelioration of
oppressive conditions. This gathering was unlike any similar meeting.
The deliberations of the convention presented a combination of a strong
intellectual grasp of present needs and their solution, with much
uninformed groping and strife for prominence, features of procedure I
have observed not confined to Negro assemblies.

The majority were unlettered, but earnest in their mental toiling for
protection to life and equality before the law. Hitherto the purpose had
been to make earnest appeals to the law-making power for such
legislation as would abolish slavery and award equal justice--the first
supported by the national conscience, but mainly as a military
necessity, was a "fait accompli;" the other had been legislatively
awarded, but for its realization much more was necessary than its simple
identification on the statute books of a nation, when