t myself and my campaign. After I had spoken
the crowd called for Jake Cummings, a long, black, slick old Negro
carpenter, who lives in Tupelo. Jake's speech ran about this way: "Well,
gentlemen, it's gettin' kinder late now. I don't know as it's necessary
for me to say anything. You's heerd Mister Taylor and Mister Allen on
the general politics of the day. They's dun told you what sort of man
Blaine is, and what sort of a man Cleveland is. It don't look to me like
no honest man ought to have trouble in picking out the fittinest man of
them two. And then you's heerd Mister Allen on hisself, and he has
ricommended hisself so much higher than any the rest of us kin ricommend
him it ain't worth while for me to say nuthin' about him.""

CHAPTER XIII.

There is at present a lowering cloud on prospect of righteous rule in
many of the Southern States, but the relative rights and
responsibilities of equitable government, enunciated from desk in
church, schoolhouse, or from stump in grove by the Republicans during
and since reconstruction, have been an education to the poor whites,
hitherto ignorant and in complete political thraldom to the landed
class, and to the freedman a new gospel, whose conception was
necessarily limited to his rights as a newly-fledged citizen.
Nevertheless, they were the live kernels of equality before the law,
that still "have their silent undergrowth," inducing a manhood and
patriotism that is now and will more and more blossom with national
blessing. Friends regretfully and foes despairingly sometimes speak of
the tardiness of his progress. He will compare favorably, however, for
all history records that it is slowly, through the crucible of physical
and mental toiling, that races pass to an elevated status. For of serfs
he was not the least in his appreciation of liberty.

Sir Walter Scott, in his note on English history during the reign of
George III, of the "colliers and salters, who were not Negroes," says:
"The persons engaged in these occupations were at the time bondsmen, and
in case they left the ground of the farms to which they belonged, and as
pertaining to which their services were bought and sold, they were
liable to be brought back by a summary process. The existence of this
species of slavery being thought irreconcilable with the spirit of
liberty, the colliers and salters were declared free, and put on the
same footing with other servants by the act of George III. But they w