t as to his advancement. A
people nine-tenths of whom 40 years ago did not legally own themselves
or property, now having 140,000 farms, homes and industries worth
$800,000,000; a people who, for a century previous to emancipation, were
by law forbidden to learn to read or write, now have 3,000,000 children
in 27,000 schools, and have reduced their illiteracy 45 per cent., have
school and church property to the amount of $50,000,000, contributing
themselves thereto $20,000,000; have written 300 books; have over 250
newspapers issued each week. His comparative success as merchant,
mechanic or other line of industry which he is permitted to enter,
speaks for itself, and finally, with per capita valuation of $75. Yet,
in face of such statistical evidence, there are not wanting the
Tillmans, Morgans, Burke Cockrans and other seers of a Montgomery
convention, who, because the Negro, trammeled, as he is, does not keep
step with the immense strides of the dominant class in their wondrous
achievement, the product of a thousand years of struggle and culture,
unblushingly allege that he is relapsing into barbarism, and with an
ingratitude akin to crime, are oblivious to the fact that a large
measure of the intellectual and material status of the nation and the
cultured ability they so balefully use to retard him, are the product of
a century of his unrequited labor.

The feeling that the results of the civil war have been beneficent,
harmonizing theory and practice in the autonomy of the nation is
manifest and conceded. The growing unity of the people of our country
who 40 years ago were engaged in fraternal strife, should be a source of
pleasure and welcomed by every patriotic heart; for, while bitterness
can be assuaged, and laudable effort made to conform to new conditions,
still convictions formed and baptized in the fiery ordeal of war, blood
and material loss require fortitude, generosity and patriotism to soften
their asperity, and much kindly intercourse to promote the general
welfare. The increased desire in this direction is evidenced at each
recurring "Decoration Day," when the Blue and the Gray harmoniously
intermingle, recalling memories and incidents of the internal strife.
The soldiers of each vieing in reciprocity, as with "a union of hearts
and a union of hands" with fragrant flowers they bedeck historic sod.

But will the nation remember that after all that can be said or written,
of heroic circumstance of war,