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GREAT SPEECH OF
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» FREDERICK

DELIVERED BEFORE

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THE BETHEL LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION,

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IN THE

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METROPOLITAN A. M. E. CHURCH,
Washington, D. C.
OCTOBER 21, 1890.

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ERROR 1T3 HAKE UP.— Atter rending first page
of speech pass to page •". and then to pages 4 and C.
THE RACE PROBLEM.

Members and Friends of the Bethel Literary and Historical Associ
ation : I esteem it a great privilege to be with you and assist in
this your first meeting since the close of your last winter's term.
The organization of your association was an important step in the
progress of the colored people in this city. It is an institution well
fitted to improve the minds and elevate the sentiments not only of
its members, but of the general public. Nowhere else outside of
the courts of law and the Congress of the United States have Iheard
vital public questions more seriously discussed. The men selected
to address you know very well that what they may utter is subjected
to close scrutiny and severe discussion. Mere rant, bombast, and self-
inflation may pass elsewhere, but not here. For this reason, and for
my own self-respect, I shall endeavor to say only what I believe- to
be the truth upon what is popularly called " The Negro Problem."
My first thought respects the importance of calling things by their
true names. This importance cannot be over-estimated or over
stated. Truth is the fundamental, indispensable, and everlasting
requirement in obtaining right results. No department of human
life can afford to dispense with truth. The carpenter cannot join
his timbers without having the parts of contact perfectly true to
each other. The mason cannot build a wall that will stand the test
of time and gravitation without applying the plumb and makin» the
wall vertical and true. No train of cars is safe on the road where
the relations of the rails are not true. No shot is certain of its aim
where the gun-barrel is not true. As in mechanics, so in politics
morals, manners, metaphysics, and philosophies, nothing can stand
the test of time and experience that does not stand ou the unassail
able, indestructible, unchangeable, foundation of truth. Con
sidering how important this truth is, it seems strange that false
hood should hold such sway in the world, fpne main advantage bv
which error is able to darken, blight, and dominate the minds ot?me"n
is the skill of its votaries in using language deceitfully, in panderim-
to prejudice by misstating anil misapplying terms to the existin- re
lations of men. It ha* been well said that in an important sense
words arc things. They are especially such when they are emolov-
ed to express the popular sentiment concerning the Negro : to couple

• 4
breath, and saw in the Negro's baptism a menace to the peace and
stabilityjof society, as well as of slavery. For to baptize the Ne
gro and admit him to nvmbirship in the Christian church was to
recognize him as a man, a child of God, an heir of Heaven, redeemed
by the blood of Christ, a temple of the Holy Ghost, a standing-
type and representative of the Saviour of the world, one who, ac
cording to the apostle Paul, must be treated no longer as a servant,
but as a brother beloved. Viewed in this light,his admission to bap
tism, and to the church was a matter for the gravest consideration.
It.touched the money nerve of the Christians of that day, for their
wealth was largely invested in Negro flesh and blood. It was well
said that the proposition was novel, extraordinary, and full of dan
ger. It would impair the value of the slave, and it would put in
jeopardy the authority of the master : 1hey were right, -and if the
Negro is to be regarded as a Christian, he could not be regarded as
a"heathen, and as the Bible sanctioned only the enslavement of hea
then, the Negro Christian could not be bought and sold, enslaved
and„whipped, according to the requirements of the relation of mas
ter and slave. From every view they could then take of the propo
sition to baptize the Negro was rank radicalism and deserved stern
resistance at its inception.
"To the credit of the church and its ministers, it must be said that
one learned and able divine, in the person of Dr Godwin, was equal
to the situation. He met the arguments of the opposition to Negro
baptism in a book of 200 pages, in which he endeavored to show that
baptism would not impair either the value of the slave or the au-
thor.ty of the master. His argument was a curious one. It divided
the Negro into two separate parts, giving one to the Lord and the
other to the slaveholder, and leaving nothing whatever of soul, body
or spirit to himself. Baptism, he said, freed the Negro from the
bondage of the devil, but not from the bondage of his earthly mas
ter. The controversy over this problem was long and furious, and
the Negro only won a partial victory after all. The matter was
finally settled, as usual, by a kind of compromise. The Negro was
baptized and admitted to the church, but a sort of second table was
set for him. He could take the Lord's supper only after his white
brethren had finished eating the bread and drinking the wine. He
was not even allowed to enter the same door of the sanctuary by
which his white brethren entered. A separate door was cut for him
in the wall, a sort of hole in the wall, leading to a high and dark
place in the gallery, where his preseuce could g-ive no offense to the
Lord's white children on the floor.
It is strange that this state of things did not disgust and repel the
Negro, make him an infidel, and drive him from religion altogether,
but it did not. He clung to religion all the same. Believing that
half a loaf was better than no bread, he took what he could get of
the church, kept on praying and singing, and sometimes shouting.
He could pray as fervently for the conversion of the scoundrel who
tore his flesh with the lash, as for his best friend. He was made to
think that his offensive black skin on earth would be changed for a
white one in Heaven. It was a strange fancy, but quite a natural
one when we see the importance given to color in the problems be
fore us in our day.
Another problem greatly disturbed the conscientious during the

his name with anything in this world seems to damage it and dam
age him likewise. Hence I object to t haiai teriziri", the relation
subsisting between the white and uoloicd people of this country as
!the Negro problem, as if the Negro had precipitated that problem,
and as if he were in any way responsible for the problem. Though
a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, it is not in good taste
to give it a name that suggests otl'tn^ive associations. There ere,
On the other , hand, things that are in themselves revolting, and
should not be given fair-seeming names. The slaveholders under
stood this principle well enough. Slavery loi-t something of its of
fensive aspect when it was called a domestic institution or a social
system and other like names. Emancipation wa made- to look dan
gerous when it got itself called an experiment,, although slavery it
self was an experiment, and liberty is the normal condition of man.
'' The Negroes were the cause of the war." said Mr. Lincoln, and
straightway the loyal soldiers of the Republic began to kick and
beat the poor Negroes on the banks of the Potomac, and the Irish
began to hang-, stab, and murder the Negroes in New York. It is
dangerous even to a dog to be given a bad name. I am, therefore,
-in favor of employing the truest and most agreeable names to de
scribe the relation which at present subsists between ourselves and
^he other people of the country.
Again, another advantage to error and one which is often employ
ed with marked skill and elfect in the presentation to the minds of
men of what may be called half truths for whole truths, and thus
making a sweet and wholesome truth the cover for a bitter false
hood. A counterfeit nearest in likeness to what is genuine is always
most likely to impose upon the unskillful. A lie teases to be very
dangerous when it parts with its ability to deceive. The devil is
less dangerous as a roaring lion than when transformed as an an^el
of light.
The application of these homely truths and familiar examples will
become apparent in the discuss. on I propose of what is popularly but
improperly called the race problem, it seems that the American
people have a special liking- for this mathematical formula as applied
to the Negro. They seem determined to keep his braiu forever em
ployed and his time forever occupied iu solving a great variety of
problems, and generally to his disadvantage. As soon as he solves
one another is propounded to him, and when he thinks, good, e-asv
soul, his work is done he finds a new one invented, a new burden
imposed, and a new hardship inflicted. There may be rest for the
weary, but there seems at present no rest for the Negro. He has
been solving problems during all his history.
I have before referred in this place, 1 think, to the fact that the
Negro was confronted 200 years ago by what was considered a "rtat
religious problem, one which was very dillicult of solution. "That
problem was: Ought the Negro to be baptized in water and admitted
to membership in the Christian church? This was, as I have often
said, considering the time of it, a tremendous problem. ^s la
day in regard to Negro problems, the opinions of the wise and "i-eit
were strongly pronounced and much divided. The right of the" X ,-
gro to baptism was liercely disputed, especially by tho.-e who Jw njj
them as slaves. What is plain to all now was dark and doubtful to
many then. It is easy to fancy that men spoke of it with bated

6
true of slavery. It was this ; Can a Negro contract a valid mar
riage? If he could, and could enforce his right to his wife and chil
dren, it would prove an inconvenient limitation on the power of his
master. If what God has joined together no man shall put asunder,
the right to sell the wife from the husband and the husband from.
the wife must cease. In the miuds of the men who had to deal with
it no such limitation in the right of the master could be allowed or
tolerated for a moment. The master must have the right to buy and
sell as he pleased, was the solution of that problem. One terrible
evil of this solution of the marriage question is still seen in our land.
Unable to contract valid marriage, the Negro felt himself unre
strained, and licensed to do as he pleased. He was not expected to
limit his conduct by any rule or principle of morality or decency,
but took to himself the freedom of the beasts of the field and the
fowls of the air. He had in law no wife, no family, no children, and
. did not own himself. The consequence of this state of things may
be seen very often in our own city at the police court and elsewhere,
and the strange thing is, the very people who are responsible for
th's immorality and crime make merry over our wretchedness and
talk solemuly about the terrible Negro problem.
Happily for us, and happily for our common country, as we shall
see later oh, the Southern solution of this Negro problem has now
been unsolved by the act of emancipation and the superior civiliza
tion of the loyal American people over the people of the old slave-
holding States.
Another troublesome problem presented to our Christian country
was whether the Negro should have the help of the Bible with which
to get to Heaven; whether, in fact, the command to search the Scrip
tures imposed any obligation or duty on him. Our Southern breth
ren, with whom we have always been profoundly sympathetic even
unto this day, decided this problem against the Bible, and against the
"Negro, as usual. They made it a crime, to be punished with banish
ment, imprisonment, and stripes, for any one to teach the Negro to
read. Yet the descendants of these same men, with the education of
their fathers, and with the antecedents of their fathers, are now ask
ing us in piteous tones to allow them in their superior wisdom and
goodness of heait to solve what they are pleased to call the Negro
problem of t3-day. They are crying out lustily to the nation, like
demons tormented before their time, " Hands off ! We want no Fed
eral authority, and want only local self-government. We want to
be let alone I" They tell us that they know the Negro, and that
they can manage him better than anybody else. They can manage
his wages, his voting, and his education, and all that pertains to him.
I hope the nation will not let them do any such thing. They have
shown a strange inaptitude for such a task. The point with them is
not what is right, but what will best suit themselves.
But again, in the history of the Negro we had another perplexing
problem. It was this, and this was in some sense a national prob
lem : Can the Negro lie made a soldier? This, too, was a very seri
ous problem for the country, for it was a matter of Union or no
Union, of life or death. For at one time it needed all the material
which the nation could command to settle the problem of our
national existence. It will be remembered that at the beginning
of the war it was given out that no Negro need app y. He was

not to be allowed to shoulder a musket, carry a knapsack, or
wear a Union uniform. The glory of the battle-field was to be won
wholly by white men. The Negro might dig but not fight. He
might be a servant, but not a soldier. He might carry a pn k-ax,
but never a musket.
In considering this problem the nation, strangely enough, shut its
eyes to the fact that in the history of the Revolution the Negro
fought bravely for American independence, and in the war of 1*1*3
he even extorted praise for his valor from the stern lips of General
Andrew Jackson. His fighting qualities were nobly admitted by the
hero of New Orleans. In spite of this it was insisted that the Negro
was a born coward ; that he could never make a soldier: that he
would run at the sight of a whip, and that he would run nm h fas
ter at the sight of a gun. Time and events. ho>\e\er, helped the
Negro and the Nation in the solution of this problem, as i 1 hiuk they
will help in the solution of any others that may arise. Fort Wag
ner, Port Hudson, Vicksburg, James Island, Olustee, Petersburg,
Richmond — a cloud of witnesses rise before us to solve the problem
of the Negro's soldierly qualities.
Whether the Negro could be educated, was another problem, and
I think this has been solved to the satisfaction of all candid men.
He would be a dishonest man, or an amazingly stupid one who, in
the face of the thousands of Negro teachers, the hundreds of Negro
preachers, doctors, lawyers, authors, and editors, with which the
country is now studded, should insist, as it was once insisted, that
education was impossible to the Negro.
But the greatest problem for the Negro was whether he could
with safety be made free. Good men knew that slavecy was wrong,
but how to get rid of it was the great question. Neither the pulpit,
nor the press, nor the statesman could see a solution of the great
problem, and yet that problem has been solved. The Negro is free.
and the country is cleansed of its greatest curse, crime, and scandal.
There were terrible things to happen upon the passin"- awav of
slavery. The freedom of the slave was the signal of rum. There
was to be no more cotton, no more sugar, no more work done bv the
Negro, and the South was to become a howling wilderness. But
against all these dark forebodings, these pictures of dismal terror.
the late war made short work of the whole problem. That sturdy
old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the Negro a contraband, Abra
ham Lincoln made him a, freeman, and General Ulvssts S.-' Grant
made him a citizen, and not one of these terrible things have hap
pened. But now, though all this has been done, though slavery has been
abolished, though the Negro has been freed, though he has become
a citizen, though the Union has been saved, in part by his vnlor the
Negro is not to be let off quite yet. He is to be made the victim of
a new deal by precipitating upon the country a false it.sue. He is
to face another problem.
Now that the Union is no longer in danger, now that the North
and South are no longer enemies; now tliiit they have ctased t
scatter, tear, and slay each other, but sit together in halls of Con'
gress, commerce, religion, and in brotherly love, it seems" that the
negro is to lose by their sectional harmony and goo, I will ill il
rights and privileges that he gained by their former bitter cmuit\"'

This, it is found, cannot be accomplished without confusing the
moral sense of the nation and misleading the public mind ; without
creating doubt, inflaming passion, arousing prejudice, and attract
ing to the enemies of the negro the popularsympathy by represent
ing the negro. as an ignorant, base, and dangerous person, and by
presenting to those enemits that nis existence to them is a dreadful
problem. With their u^ual i unning, these enemies of the negro
have made the North partly believe that they are now contending
with a vast and mysterious problem, the mere contemplation of
which, should cause the whole North to shudder and come to the
rescue.. The trick s worth}- of its inventors, and has been played
for all that it is worth. The orators of the South have gone North
and have eloquently described this terrible problem, and the press
of the South has flamed with it, and grave Senators from that sec
tion have painted it in most distressing colors. Problem, problem,
race problem, negro problem, has, as Junius says, flitted through
their sentences in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion.
in speaking of this subject in another place, I said what I say
now, that these Southern people have outwitted the North in this
.problem business. Like skillful prestidigitators, they have turned
the attention of the spectator to a distant object while they have
manipulated the thing in hand. They imitated the cunning of the
hunter who draws a red herring across the path of the game to di-
vvert the hounds.
The true problem is not the negro, but the nation. Not the law-
abiding blacks of the South, but the white men of that section, who
by fraud, violence, and persecution, are breaking the law, trampling
on the Constitution, corrupting the ballot-box, and defeating the
ends\)f justice. The true problem is whether these white ruffians
shall be allowed by the nation to go on in their lawless and nefarious
career, dishonoring the Government and making its ver\' name a
mockery. It is whether this nation has in itself sufficient moral
stamina to maintain its own honor and integrity by vindicating its
own Constitution and fulfilling its own pledges, or whether it has
already touched that dry rot of moral depravity by which nations
decline and tall, and governments fade and vanish. The United
States Government made the negro a citizen, will it protect him as
a citizen? This is the problem. It made him a soldier, will it hon
or him as a patriot? This is the problem. It made him a voter,
will it defend his right to vote? This is the problem. This, I say,
is more a problem for the nation than for the negro, and this is the
side of the question far more than the other which should be kept
in view by the American people.
What these problem orators now ask is that the nation shall undo
all that it did by the suppression of the rebellion and in mainten
ance of the Union. They ask that the nation shall recede from its
advance in the path of justice, liberty, and civilization. They bold
ly ask that what was justly and gratefully given to the negro in the
hour of national peril shall be taken from him in the hour of na
tional security. They ask that the nation shall stultify itself and
commit an act of national shame which ought to make every lover
ofjhis country cry out in bitter indignation and unite as one man
to oppose. A demand so scandalous and so shocking to every senti
ment of honor and gratitude.

And from whom does this demand come? Not from the men who
gave their lives to save the nat'on, but from those who gave tl>eir
lives to destroy it. Not from the free and loyal North, but from
the rebellious and slave-holding South. Not irom the section where
men go to the ballot-box with the same freedom from personal dang
er as they go to church on Sunday, but from that section where
personal safety is endangered, where Federal authority is defied,
where the amendments to the Constitution are nulitied, where the
ballot-box is tainted by fraud, and red-shirted intimidation makes a
free vote impossible. It comes from the men who led the nation in
a dance of blood during four long years, and who now have the im
pudence to assume to control the destiny of this Republic as well as
tie destiny of the negro.
And what are the reasons they give for demanding of the nation
this retreat from its advanced position? They are these : They tell
us that they are afraid, very much afraid ; they are alarmed, very
much alarmed, by the possibility of negro supremacy over them.
This is the calamity from which they would be delivered, and with
eloquent lips and lusty lungs they are calling out : "Men and breth
ren, save us from this threatened and terrible danger !"
My reply to this alarm is easy. It is that the wicked flee when no
man pursueth ; that the thief thinks each bush an officer ; that the
thing they pretend to fear can never happen, and that blank absurd
ity is written upon the face of it. The eagle, with fierce talon and
bloody beak screamingin terror at the approach of a harmless black
bird would not be more absurd and ridiculous. The superior intelli
gence of the whites, the comparative ignorance of the blacks, the
former dominion of the whites and the former subjection of the
blacks, the habit of bearing rule of }he whites, and the habit of sub
mission by the blacks make black supremacy in any part of our
common countrj' utterly impossible.
But supposing such an occurrence possible, what hardship would
it impose? What wrong would it inflict? Who would be injured
by it? If the blacks should get the upper hand, their rule would
have to be regulated by the Constitution and the laws of the United
States. They could not discriminate against white people on ac
count of race, color, or previous condition without finding the iron
hand of the nation laid heavily on their shoulders. The white peo
ple of the South are the rich, the negroes are the poor ; the white
people are the land-owners, the negroes are the landless. The white
people of the South are numbered with the ruling class of the na
tion. They have behind them every possible source of power. They
have railroads," steamships, electric telegraphs, the .Armv and the
Navy. They have the sword and the purse of the nation behind
them, and yet they profess to be shaking in their shoes lest the
8,000,000 of blacks shall come to rule over them and their brethren
the 50,000,000 of whites.
Now I am here to say that there is nothing whatever in this sup
position. I can hardly call this invention a cunning device for the
pretense is too open, too transparent, too absurd, to rise even to the
dignity of low cunning. It is an old ragged pair of trousers, and
an old mashed and battered hat of the last century stuck upon a
pole in a field where there are neither crows uor corn. It is the crv
pf Are by the thief, when he would divert the officer of the law i\

10
is as I have said, a red herring to divert the hounds from the true
game, and the strange thing is that any class of our citizens, white
or black-; can be deceived by it. <.
But black supremacy is not the only string on the harp of a thou
sand strings upon which our Southern brethren play. They are not
merely afraid of black supremacy, but they are afraid of ignorant
black supremacy. Now, this danger is just the one to appeal to the
sympathy of the North. The Northern people are not in love with
ignorance or illiteracy. They deplore it ; they hate it, and take
every means in their power to banish it from their States. They
naturally sympathize with any people in deploring it and who are
making honest efforts to remove it from among them. Hence they
are pouring out millions of dollars to aid the South, and are send
ing competent teachers there to enlighten 1 he ignorant and to lift up
the black man and white man alike from the darkness and ignorance
to which they had been doomed by slavery and by these would-be
negro problem solvers.
" But it is worthy of emphatic remark thai the men in the South
who are loudest in their outcry against the ignorance of the negro
are not those who wish to have him instructed, but those who would
make his ignorance a reason for depriving him of the rights secured
to him under the Constitution.
But again, when before in the history of the Southern people have
they been alarmed by the presence of ignorance among- them ?
When before did they ask the nation to assist them in stemming the
tide of ignorauce? The whole history of the legislation of the
South — by the South I mean the ruling class of the South — is on the
side of ignorance. Their laws have made it a crime to enlighten the
black man's ignorance. It has been the policy of the ruling class
there to oppose education not only for the blacks, but for the poor
whites as well. But as I have said, this cry is raised not for help to
educate the negro, but as an excuse for taking from him the right
of suffrage, by which he can in some measure promote his own ed
ucation and the education of those about him.
But admitting what I do not admit, that the ignorance of the ne
gro is recognized by the South as a source of danger, and admitting
the sincerity of Southern men who are professing to deplore it, I
have to say to them : If you could stand the negro when he was a
slave, you can stand it now that he is free, at least a reasonable
length of tune for his education. Clearly enough, the remedy is
not in the abridgement of his Tights, but in the education of his
mind. It is not in evading the plain provisions of the Constitution,
but in teaching him the duties imposed by the Constitution ; not in
taking away his vote, but in teaching him how te use it.
•To me there is something very audacious and insolent rather than
pathetic and pursuasive in the language employed by Southern men
on this question. There is something of the old-time Southern
gwacro*er and assumption in their tone and bearing— a tone and bear-
in" which is entirely out of date, out of place, and out of harmony
with the age and body of our time — a tone and bearing which invites
rebuke rather than sympathy, disgust rather than approbation.
Such men as Senator Butler, of South Carolina, should remember
that there is such a thing as modesty as well as decency for men of
such antecedents as theirs and that it is neither modest nor decent

11
for them to coolly propose the expulsion of citizens innotent of
crime from the State of South Carolina, or from any other State in-
the American Union. It is only a little while ayo that Senator
Butler ami his clas were in arms against the Government wlrch
these same negro citizens loyally and bravely endeavored to save
from their disloyal hands.
But let me say again, the South neither really fears the ignorance
of the negro, nor the supremacy of the negro. It is not the ignor
ant negro, but the intelligent North that it fears ; not the suprema
cy of a different race from itself, but the supremacy of the Repub
lican party. It is not the men who are emancipated but the people
who emancipated them that disturb its repose. In other words trie
trouble is not racial, but political. It is not the race and color of
the vote. Disguise this as it may, the real thing that troubles the
South is the Republican party, its principles, and its ascendency in
Southern Staies and the nation. When it talks of negro ignorance,
negro supremacy, it means this, and simply this, and only this, it
uses the word negro simply as a means to the end of awakening pop
ular prejudice and enlisting its influence in favor of its bad cause, a
cause for which they have shown themselveseapable of committing
every description of frauds the most scandalous, and cruelty the
most barbarous. We all know that the negro problem would vanish
into thin air, would utterly disappear like the mist before the morn
ing sun, if the intelligent negroes of the South would renounce their
connection with the Republican party and support only the Demo
cratic party. What the South wants, and what it means to have,
peaceably if it can, or forcibly if it must, is a solid Democratic party
South and Democratic rule in the nation. There is not an intelligent
man at the South that does not kuow this, and there is not an honest
man at the South, who, if he would speak candidly on the subject,
would deny this. The trouble is that the people of the North do
not see this in its true light. Honest themselves, they cannot read
ily believe that others are not alike honest. It is in some sense cred
itable in them that they have never believed in the story of out
rages com uitted against the negro voters of the South, because thev
themselves would not be guilty of such outrages, they have been
easily imposed upon by the pretended fear of a negro supremacy pro
fessed by the South.
But let me be more intelligible. My idea about the problem busi
ness is this When a case has been in litigation before a court of
highest; resort, and that case has been solemnly adjudicated in that
court, that case is finished and all the parties to it must submit to the
decision or become law-breakers and criminals. The case goes into
history hence forth res adjudicata. It is settled. If this beneficent
rule did not exist there would be no end to litiyation and no repose
for the public mind.
To make my meaning still more clear : When in England a few
years ago Northampton saw fit to send Mr. Bradlaugh, an infidel, to
represent it in the British Hou.-e of Commons, and he was not allow
ed to take his seat, the admission of an infidel to the House of Com
mons was a problem ; but when he continued to knock at the door
of the House till he was finally admitted the mlidel problem
so far as the right of membership of that House was concerned, was
solved.

12
Again, we are not the only people whose rights have been denied
on the ground of race. Our brother Shem has had a taste of pro
scription as well as ourselves. No Jew was at one lime eligible to
membership in the parliament of Great Britain, but after long years
of agitation of the question. Mr. Baring, an eminent Jew, was ad
mitted to a seat in parliament. The Jewish problem, when Mr. Bar
ing was seated, was ended, I mean this : When the American peo
ple declared their independence of Great Britain and made good
that declaration by victory in a seven years war, the problem of
American independence was solved, and there \» as never anything
afterwards concerning it which could be called problematical. It
was a fixed fact, and has remained such until now, and will remain
. so, I trust, forever. '- _ . ,
There is a grand agitation now in progress in Great Britain for lo
cal Self-government, at the head of which are Mr. Gladstone and Mr.
Parnell. If Great Britain shall giant home rule to Ireland, the Irish
problem will be solved, and it will be nonsense thereafter to speak of
it as an unsolved problem. Our American women are asking for a
sixteenth amendment to the Constitution, whereby they may vote.
They ought to have it. If the American people -hall adopt such an
amendment, the women problem will cease to exist.
In like manner, when the negro was declared free by the highest au
thority in the land, whenthe whole system of his bondage was broken
up, when he was invested by the organic law of the land with the title,
dignity and immunity of an American citizen, and when it was de
clared that any discrimination made by any State against him on ac-
- count of race or color was unlawful, I hold that his race condition
could no longer be considered a problem. The thing was done : it
was finished. The nation had taken its position and all the parts of
the nation must ultimately adjust themselves to the whole. The in
dividual Stales may be great, but the United States is greater. The
mountain will not and cannot go to Mahomet, so Mahomet must and
will in the end go to the mountain. Herein is the ground of my
hope. The trend of civilization, the power of large bodies to at
tract small ones, the force of national greatness, the generation of
patriotism by the idea of common country, and the inclination to the
strong rather than to the weak in human forces will ultimately bring
the individual States in line with the Federal body. I affirm that
while the National Government shall remain in the hands of the Re
publican party and under the principles of that party, no State will
or can permanently disfranchise any of its' citizens because of race
or color or previous condition. Attempts may be made to do this,
but the race problem in that respect is solved, and the case cannot
be permanently reopened.-
But I am asked, what of the future? and will the various peoples
of this country ever be thoroughly assimilated ? or, to speak more
plainly, will they ever intermarry ? My answer is, "Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof." We should not cross the stream till
we have come lo it. Whether such marriages will ever become com
mon or not is no matter of vital concern to anybody at this day. It
is mere speculation and is utterly without practical importance, so
far as the rights of the American people are concerned. It touches
no question of politics, statesmanship, or religion.
Individual interests, personal preferences and public sentiment

13
may he safely left to regulate the relations of the races in respect
of intermarriage. Such, I think, is the view that common sen* will
take of it, but such does not seem to be the view taken of. it by
some of our people— white, black and mixed. There seems to be a
fascination about the subject which makes it impossible for men to
let alone. They thrust it into our faces on all occassions, in sea-on
and out of season, and seem distressed because we cannot solve the
problem for them. Some of them say that the repugnance of the
white race for the black makes marriages between them impossible,
and yet they proceed with great warmth and eloquence to denounce
it as a thing to be closdy watched and guarded against, and by no
means encouraged. If the thing is impossible to happen no" one
should be afraid that it will happen.
I noticed while at my post in Hayti that even the Senate of the
United States was compelled to listen to a learned disquisition upon
this subject of race intermarriage from the lips of the eloquent,
learned, and distinguished Senator from Kansas. I have always en
tertained for that gifted gentleman the highest respect. When he is
rii'ht he is very right and when he is wrong he is very wrong. There
is no halfness in his character and composition. He is either all or he
is nothing. In the present instance he happens to be not only all
wrong, but very wrong. His argument against the admixture of
the race is intense but narrow, brilliant but unsound, learned but in
consistent and illogical. He not only contradicts the facts and the
science of the case but contradicts himself. He asserts that only the
bad qualities of each ra-e are inherited by a mixed race, and at the
same time he permits himself to say that he attributes whatever
ability I happen to possess to the Caucasian side of my parentage.
So good a logician as Senator Ingalls should not have allowed him
self, almost in the same breath, to knock down the whole superstruc
ture of his argument. Mr. Ingalls is a brave and a generous man,
and I am surprised that these qualities were allowed to forsake him
on the occasion referred to. Had he listened to the manly side 0f j^g
character he would have never allowed himself to slay with his bril
liant rhetoric a million of his colored fellow-citizens. He took ad
vantage of his position on the floor of the United States Senate to
deal us a blow which we had no means of parrying. His advantage
was great, and the ignoble character of his attack must be measured
by the greatness of his advantage. Had any colored man of spirit
and ability been a member of the Senate to reply to his assault. Mr.
Ingalls would nothave been inconsistent with his well-known chiv-
alric qualities. But the case was otherwise.
If it be true that good qualities are not transmissable -in such
unions; if it be true that ouly evil, and that continually, must de
scend to the children of such parents, it may be well asked why any
of the mulatto or quadroon children and grandchildren of our earlier
statesmen are found anywhere outside of the thick walls aud iron-
barred windows of our prisons. Why are they walking our streets
and employed. in our houses as trusted servants and stewards? Why
are they our teachers, professors, and preachers? Why are they re
spected and treated as gentlemen and Christians in every part of the
world except our own? Oh, no, Mr. Ingalls! Your argument will
not hold. It will not bear the test of either reason or experience.
Your language is the language of alarm, and the question \*ou

14.
should put to yourself is, What if, in a nation of a hundred millions
there should occasionally happen a marriage between two different
varieties of the human family ? Who would be hurt by it ? Who,
outside the parties themselves, should give themselves any trouble
'about it? The sun whould not cease to shine, the rain to descend,
nor the grass to grow. Men would not cease to go to and fro in the
earth, or knowledge cease to roll onward. If the country has en
sured, during 240 years, lawless relations on a broad scale between
the two peoples, it shuold not go into paroxysms of alarm over what
: may possibly take place under lawful conditions.
And now comes Mr. Isaiah Montgomery, of Mississippi, with his
solution of the pretended Negro problem. I have spoken of hiin
elsewhere, and I take back nothing that I have sad either of this
remarkable man, or his remarkable address. He has surrendered to
a disloyal State a great franchise given to himself and his people by
the loyal nation, He has taken the work of solving the nation's
work out of the nation's hands. He has virtually said to the nation:
"You have done wrong in giving us this great liberty. You should
' give us back a part of our bondage.-' He has surrendered a part of
his rights to an enemy who will make this surrender a reason for
demanding all of his rights. He has conducted his people to a depth
from which they will be invited to a lower deep, for if he can right
fully surrender a part of his heritage from the National Govern
ment at the bidding of his oppressors, he may surrender the whole.
The people with whom he makes this deal are restrained in dealing
with the rights of colored men by no sense of modesty or modera
tion in their demands. They want all that is to be had, and will
take all that they can get. Their real sentiment is that no Negro
shall or ought to have the right to vote. Yet I have no denuncia
tion for the man Montgomery. He is not a conscious traitor though
bis act is treason: treason to the cause of the colored people, not
only of his own State, but of the United States.
I wish the consequences of his act could be confined to Mississippi
alone, but I fear this cannot be. Other colored men in other States.
dazzled by the fame obtained by Mr. Montgomery through the Dem
ocratic press, will probably imitate his bad example. I speak of this
Montgomery business more in sorrow than in anger. I hear in the
plaintive eloquence of his marvelous address a groan of bitter an
guish born of oppression and despair. It is the voice of a soul from
which all hope has vanished. His deed kindles indignation to be-
sure, but his condition awakens pity. He had called to the nation for
help — help which it ought to have rendered and could have rendered
but it did not — and In a moment of impatience and despair he has
thought to make terms with the enemy, an enemy \v;ith whom no
colored man can make terms, but by a sacrifice of his manhood.
* There is no need here of an analysis of Mr. Montgomery's address.
Its character is known and it has nothing to commend it but its abil
ity and plaintive eloquence and the man, the place, and the circum
stances under which it was delivered. The logic of the speech
would have conducted magnanimous men to a prompt rejection of
the surrender, for it was an appeal to all that was noble, grateful,
and generous in hearts of Mississippi ans. They should have \said,
¦'No, Mr. Montgomery: youi people have been our best friends
when we needed friends, and we scorn to take from you the fran-

1.1
chise accorded to you by the wisJom and magnanimity of the Na
tional Government "
Ladies and gentlemen : I have been requested to say an encourag
ing word to our people before I leave for my po-tof duty at Port-au-
Prince, and if I have not already said such a word I find it quite easy
to do so now. From every view I have been able to take of the
moral and political situation of our cause, before and since my arri
val in the country, I am hopeful. I have no doubt whatever of the
future. I know that there are times in the history of all reforms
when the future looks dark ; when the friends of reform are impa
tient and despondent ; when they cannot see the end from the begin
ning; when the truth that is plain to them compels them to reject
the honesty of all who refuse to receive it. When they meet with
opposition where they expected co-operation : when they met with
treachery where they expected fideltv, and defeat where they ex
pected victory. I, for one, have gone through all this. I have had
fifty years of it, and yet I have not lost either heart or hope. It is
true that we have been sadly disappointed in the action, or rather
non-action, of the Fift3--first Congress. The platform of the Repub
lican party iidopted at Chicago plaioljT committed the Republican
Earty to some measure of protection to the Republican voters of the
outh. We had a right to expect that the pledge there given would
find fulfillment in the action of this Republican Congress. We have
been disappointe I, sadly disappointed. Following the advice of a
new leader from Pennsylvania, but a leader not of the Thaddeus Ste
vens and Charles Sumner mold, this Congress has preferred protec
tion to commerce and property to protection to personal and politi
cal liberty. We had hoped that it would adopt either the Federal
election bill or the Blair educational bill. It has done neither, The
omission is, on the face of it, discouraging. But what then? Shall
we get mad and denounce and renounce the Republican party? Has
that party sinned away its day of grace ? Are there no remaining
reasons for giving it our confidence ? I entertain no such thought.
The Federal election and educational bills are not dead, nor are their
friends idle. Mr. Cabot Lodge and Mr. Blair and their friends in the
Senate and in the House may permit delay but they will not suffer
defeat. The president of the United States is true to his trust. No
man since General Grant has stood by us more firmly than has Gen
eral Harrison. He has let it be known openly and emphatically that
he is for stepping to the very verge of constitutional limitations to
secure honest elections, a free vote, and a fair count in every State
in the Union, and he is not the man to take any steps backward.
I admit that during many years to come the colored man will have
to endure prejudice against his race and color, but this constitutes
no problem to vex and disturb the course of legislation. The world
was never yet without prejudice. There exists prejudice in favor of
and against classes among men of the same race and color. There
is prejudice between religious sects and denomination ; between
Catholic and Protestant; between families and individuals. The
time may never come this side the millennium when men will not
ask "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" But what busi
ness has government, State or National, with these prejudices ? Why
should grave statesmen concern themselves with them ? The busi
ness of government is to hold its broad shield over all and to see that

it;

every American citizen is alike and equally protected in his civil
and personal rights. My confidence is strong and high in the nation
a sa whole. I believe in its justice and in its power. I believe that
it means to keep its word with its colored citizens. 1 lielieve in its
progress, in its moral as well as its material civilization. Its trend
is in the right direction. Its fundamental principles are sound. Its
conception of humanity and of human rightsis clear and comprehen
sive. Its progress is fettered by no State religion tend.ng to repress
liberal thought; by no order of nobility tending to keep down the
toiling masses; by no divine right theory tending to national stagna
tion under the idea of stability. It stands out free and clear with
nothing to obstruct its view of the lessons of reason and experience.
It may be said, as has been said, that I am growing old, and am
easily satisfied with things as they are. When our young men shall
have worked and waited for victory as long as I have worked and
waited, they will not only learn to have patience with the men op
posed to them, but with me also for having patience with such. I
have seen dark hours in my life, and I have seen the darkness grad
ually disappearing and the light gradually increasing. One by one
I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected, prejudices softened,
proscriptions relinquished, and my people advancing in all the ele
ments that go to make up the sum of general welfare. And I re
member that God reigns in eternity, and that what ever delays,
whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth,
justice, liberty .and humanity will ultimately prevail.