no claim on the white man
for social equality, but he has a right to the key of knowledge and a
chance in the world.

Slavery was not an unmixed evil. Like the famed shield it had two
sides. While it had its blighting effects it had its blessings. In
bondage the negro was taught to speak the English language, and in
childhood had the association of white children with their southern
home training. They were taught two valuable lessons, industry and
obedience, without which liberty means license. The negro was
compelled to work and obey, two lessons the Indian never had and never
respected. Beside these valuable lessons the negro was taught the
fundamental principles of Christianity and at the opening of the war
nearly every negro belonged to some church. Their preachers used to
get their dictionary and Bible very amusingly mixed at times. Elder
Barton exhorting his hearers said: "Paul may plant and Apolinarus
water, but if you keeps on tradin' off your birthright for a pot of
Messapotamia you'se gwine to git lost. You may go down into de water
and come up out ob de water like dat Ethiopian Unitarium, but if you
keeps on ossifyin' from one saloon to another; if you keeps on
breakin' the ten commandments to satisfy your appetite for chicken; if
you keeps on spendin' your time playing craps, the fourteenth
amendment ain't gwine to save you. Seben come elebin never took a man
to Heben. I want you to understand dat." Yet from such crudeness of
expression has come preaching, remarkable for thought as well as
scholarship and eloquence, while out of the suffering of slavery,
through the law of compensation, we have matchless melodies in negro
choirs and negro concert companies.

Leaders of thought may differ as to the methods of solution, but upon
one thing all must agree. The net-work of our republic is such that if
one suffers all suffer, and the negro is so interwoven with the
various interests of our National life, we must level the race up or
it will level the white race down. The lower classes must be lifted to
the tableland of a better life, where they can breathe the pure air of
intelligence and morality, or they will pollute the whole body
politic. They must also acquire property. Economy is a lesson the
negro race needs to learn. This lesson was well presented to a drunken
white man by a sober old negro. The white man spent his money for
liquor, and then started for home. Reaching a river he must cross by
ferry, he