Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 9

During the present century the artists of this country have gallantly and n.o.bly endeavored to maintain and to elevate their standard [cheers], and have not perhaps in that great task always received that a.s.sistance which could be desired from the public taste which prevails around them.

But no one can examine even superficially the works which adorn these walls without perceiving that British art retains all its fertility of invention [cheers], and this year as much as in any year that I can remember, exhibits in the department of landscape, that fundamental condition of all excellence, intimate and profound sympathy with nature.

[Cheers.]

As regards literature one who is now beginning at any rate to descend the hill of life naturally looks backwards as well as forwards, and we must be becoming conscious that the early part of this century has witnessed in this and other countries what will be remembered in future times as a splendid literary age. [Cheers.] The elder among us have lived in the lifetime of many great men who have pa.s.sed to their rest--the younger have heard them familiarly spoken of and still have their works in their hands as I trust they will continue to be in the hands of all generations. [Cheers.] I am afraid we cannot hope for literature--it would be contrary to all the experience of former times were we to hope that it should be equally sustained at that extraordinarily high level which belongs, speaking roughly, to the first fifty years after the peace of 1815. That was a great period--a great period in England, a great period in Germany, a great period in France, and a great period, too, in Italy. [Cheers.]

As I have said, I think we can hardly hope that it should continue on a perfect level at so high an elevation. Undoubtedly the cultivation of literature will ever be dear to the people of this country; but we must remember what is literature, and what is not. In the first place, we should be all agreed that bookmaking is not literature. ["Hear!"] The business of bookmaking I have no doubt may thrive and will be continued upon a constantly extending scale from year to year. But that we may put aside. For my own part if I am to look a little forward, what I antic.i.p.ate for the remainder of the century is an age not so much of literature proper--not so much of great, permanent and splendid additions to those works in which beauty is embodied as an essential condition of production, but I rather look forward to an age of research. [Cheers.] This is an age of great research--of great research in science, great research in history--an age of research in all the branches of inquiry that throw light upon the former condition whether of our race, or of the world which it inhabits [cheers]; and it may be hoped that, even if the remaining years of the century be not so brilliant as some of its former periods, in the production of works great in themselves, and immortal,--still they may add largely to the knowledge of mankind; and if they make such additions to the knowledge of mankind, they will be preparing the materials of a new tone and of new splendors in the realm of literature. There is a sunrise and sunset.

There is a transition from the light of the sun to the gentler light of the moon. There is a rest in nature which seems necessary in all her great operations. And so with all the great operations of the human mind. But do not let us despond if we seem to see a diminished efficacy in the production of what is essentially and immortally great. Our sun if hidden is hidden only for a moment. He is like the day star of Milton:--

"Which anon repairs his drooping head And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore, Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."

[Cheers.]

I rejoice in an occasion like this which draws the attention of the world to topics which ill.u.s.trate the union of art with literature and of literature with science, because you have a hard race to run, you have a severe compet.i.tion against the attraction of external pursuits, whether those pursuits take the form of business or pleasure. It is given to you to teach lessons of the utmost importance to mankind, in maintaining the principle that no progress can be real which is not equable, which is not proportionate, which does not develop all the faculties belonging to our nature. [Cheers.] If a great increase of wealth in a country takes place, and with that increase of wealth a powerful stimulus to the invention of mere luxury, that, if it stands alone, is not, never can be, progress. It is only that one-sided development which is but one side of deformity. I hope we shall have no one-sided development. One mode of avoiding it is to teach the doctrine of that sisterhood you have a.s.serted to-day, and confident I am that the good wishes you have expressed on behalf of literature will be re-echoed in behalf of art wherever men of letters are found. [Loud cheers.]

HENRY W. GRADY

THE RACE PROBLEM

[Speech of Henry W. Grady at the annual banquet of the Boston Merchants' a.s.sociation, at Boston, Ma.s.s., December 12, 1889. Mr. Grady was introduced by the President of the a.s.sociation, Jonathan A. Lane, as the spokesman for the South on the subject he was to treat. His speech electrified his hearers, and was the feature of the occasion.]

MR. PRESIDENT:--Bidden by your invitation to a discussion of the race problem--forbidden by occasion to make a political speech--I appreciate, in trying to reconcile orders with propriety, the perplexity of the little maid, who, bidden to learn to swim, was yet adjured, "Now go, my darling, hang your clothes on a hickory limb and don't go near the water."

The stoutest apostle of the Church, they say, is the missionary, and the missionary wherever he unfurls his flag, will never find himself in deeper need of unction and address than I, bidden to-night to plant the standard of a Southern Democrat in Boston's banquet hall, and to discuss the problem of the races in the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr.

President, if a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and sincerity; if earnest understanding of the vast interests involved; if a consecrating sense of what disaster may follow further misunderstanding and estrangement; if these may be counted to steady undisciplined speech and to strengthen an untried arm--then, sir, I shall find the courage to proceed.

Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet at last to press New England's historic soil and my eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. Here within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill--where Webster thundered and Longfellow sang, Emerson thought and Channing preached--here in the cradle of American letters and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that every American owes New England when first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and unique figure--carved from the ocean and the wilderness--its majesty kindling and growing amid the storms of winter and of wars--until at last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in the suns.h.i.+ne, and the heroic workers rested at its base--while startled kings and emperors gazed and marvelled that from the rude touch of this handful cast on a bleak and unknown sh.o.r.e, should have come the embodied genius of human government and the perfected model of human liberty! G.o.d bless the memory of those immortal workers, and prosper the fortunes of their living sons--and perpetuate the inspiration of their handiwork.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _HENRY WOODFIN GRADY Photogravure after a photograph from life_ ]

Two years ago, sir, I spoke some words in New York that caught the attention of the North. As I stand here to reiterate, as I have done everywhere, every word I then uttered--to declare that the sentiments I then avowed were universally approved in the South--I realize that the confidence begotten by that speech is largely responsible for my presence here to-night. I should dishonor myself if I betrayed that confidence by uttering one insincere word, or by withholding one essential element of the truth. Apropos of this last, let me confess, Mr. President, before the praise of New England has died on my lips, that I believe the best product of her present life is the procession of 17,000 Vermont Democrats that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death, unrecruited by birth or conversion, have marched over their rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots and gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neighbors, and awake to read the record of 26,000 Republican majority. May the G.o.d of the helpless and the heroic help them, and may their st.u.r.dy tribe increase.

Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by a line--once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in fratricidal blood, and now, thank G.o.d, but a vanis.h.i.+ng shadow--lies the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and hospitable people. There is centred all that can please or prosper humankind. A perfect climate above a fertile soil yields to the husbandman every product of the temperate zone. There, by night the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locks the suns.h.i.+ne in its bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. There are mountains stored with exhaustless treasures; forests--vast and primeval; and rivers that, tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the three essential items of all industries--cotton, iron and wood--that region has easy control. In cotton, a fixed monopoly--in iron, proven supremacy--in timber, the reserve supply of the Republic. From this a.s.sured and permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot much longer prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries. Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar off from the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting in divine a.s.surance, within touch of field and mine and forest--not set amid costly farms from which compet.i.tion has driven the farmer in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set a limit--this system of industries is mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world. That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my home--a land better and fairer than I have told you, and yet but fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal and gentle quality of its citizens.h.i.+p. Against that, sir, we have New England, recruiting the Republic from its st.u.r.dy loins, shaking from its overcrowded hives new swarms of workers, and touching this land all over with its energy and its courage. And yet--while in the Eldorado of which I have told you but fifteen per cent. of its lands are cultivated, its mines scarcely touched, and its population so scant that, were it set equidistant, the sound of the human voice could not be heard from Virginia to Texas--while on the threshold of nearly every house in New England stands a son, seeking, with troubled eyes, some new land in which to carry his modest patrimony, the strange fact remains that in 1880 the South had fewer northern-born citizens than she had in 1870--fewer in '70 than in '60. Why is this? Why is it, sir, though the sectional line be now but a mist that the breath may dispel, fewer men of the North have crossed it over to the South, than when it was crimson with the best blood of the Republic, or even when the slaveholder stood guard every inch of its way?

There can be but one answer. It is the very problem we are now to consider. The key that opens that problem will unlock to the world the fairest half of this Republic, and free the halted feet of thousands whose eyes are already kindling with its beauty. Better than this, it will open the hearts of brothers for thirty years estranged, and clasp in lasting comrades.h.i.+p a million hands now withheld in doubt. Nothing, sir, but this problem and the suspicions it breeds, hinders a clear understanding and a perfect union. Nothing else stands between us and such love as bound Georgia and Ma.s.sachusetts at Valley Forge and Yorktown, chastened by the sacrifices of Mana.s.sas and Gettysburg, and illumined with the coming of better work and a n.o.bler destiny than was ever wrought with the sword or sought at the cannon's mouth.

If this does not invite your patient hearing to-night--hear one thing more. My people, your brothers in the South--brothers in blood, in destiny, in all that is best in our past and future--are so beset with this problem that their very existence depends on its right solution.

Nor are they wholly to blame for its presence. The slave-s.h.i.+ps of the Republic sailed from your ports, the slaves worked in our fields. You will not defend the traffic, nor I the inst.i.tution. But I do here declare that in its wise and humane administration in lifting the slave to heights of which he had not dreamed in his savage home, and giving him a happiness he has not yet found in freedom, our fathers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. In the storm of war this inst.i.tution was lost. I thank G.o.d as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone forever from American soil. But the free man remains.

With him a problem without precedent or parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races on the same soil--with equal political and civil rights--almost equal in numbers, but terribly unequal in intelligence and responsibility--each pledged against fusion--one for a century in servitude to the other, and freed at last by a desolating war, the experiment sought by neither but approached by both with doubt--these are the conditions. Under these, adverse at every point, we are required to carry these two races in peace and honor to the end.

Never, sir, has such a task been given to mortal stewards.h.i.+p. Never before in this Republic has the white race divided on the rights of an alien race. The red man was cut down as a weed, because he hindered the way of the American citizen. The yellow man was shut out of this Republic because he is an alien, and inferior. The red man was owner of the land--the yellow man highly civilized and a.s.similable--but they hindered both sections, and are gone! But the black man, affecting but one section, is clothed with every privilege of government and pinned to the soil, and my people commanded to make good at any hazard, and at any cost, his full and equal heirs.h.i.+p of American privilege and prosperity.

It matters not that every other race has been routed or excluded without rhyme or reason. It matters not that wherever the whites and the blacks have touched, in any era or in any clime, there has been an irreconcilable violence. It matters not that no two races, however similar, have lived anywhere, at any time, on the same soil with equal rights in peace! In spite of these things we are commanded to make good this change of American policy which has not perhaps changed American prejudice--to make certain here what has elsewhere been impossible between whites and blacks--and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay--a rigor that accepts no excuse--and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sincerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would--so bound up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if we could. Can we solve it? The G.o.d who gave it into our hands, He alone can know. But this the weakest and wisest of us do know; we cannot solve it with less than your tolerant and patient sympathy--with less than the knowledge that the blood that runs in your veins is our blood--and that, when we have done our best, whether the issue be lost or won, we shall feel your strong arms about us and hear the beating of your approving hearts!

The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of the South--the men whose genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of American history--whose courage and fort.i.tude you tested in five years of the fiercest war--whose energy has made bricks without straw and spread splendor amid the ashes of their war-wasted homes--these men wear this problem in their hearts and brains, by day and by night. They realize, as you cannot, what this problem means--what they owe to this kindly and dependent race--the measure of their debt to the world in whose despite they defended and maintained slavery. And though their feet are hindered in its undergrowth, and their march c.u.mbered with its burdens, they have lost neither the patience from which comes clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. Nor, sir, when in pa.s.sionate moments is disclosed to them that vague and awful shadow, with its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray G.o.d they may never go, are they struck with more of apprehension than is needed to complete their consecration!

Such is the temper of my people. But what of the problem itself? Mr.

President, we need not go one step further unless you concede right here that the people I speak for are as honest, as sensible and as just as your people, seeking as earnestly as you would in their place to rightly solve the problem that touches them at every vital point. If you insist that they are ruffians, blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun to plunder and oppress a race, then I shall sacrifice my self-respect and tax your patience in vain. But admit that they are men of common sense and common honesty, wisely modifying an environment they cannot wholly disregard--guiding and controlling as best they can the vicious and irresponsible of either race--compensating error with frankness, and retrieving in patience what they lose in pa.s.sion--and conscious all the time that wrong means ruin--admit this, and we may reach an understanding to-night.

The President of the United States, in his late message to Congress, discussing the plea that the South should be left to solve this problem, asks: "Are they at work upon it? What solution do they offer? When will the black man cast a free ballot? When will he have the civil rights that are his?" I shall not here protest against a partisanry that, for the first time in our history, in time of peace, has stamped with the great seal of our government a stigma upon the people of a great and loyal section; though I gratefully remember that the great dead soldier, who held the helm of State for the eight stormiest years of reconstruction, never found need for such a step; and though there is no personal sacrifice I would not make to remove this cruel and unjust imputation on my people from the archives of my country! But, sir, backed by a record, on every page of which is progress, I venture to make earnest and respectful answer to the questions that are asked. We give to the world this year a crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth, $450,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, gra.s.ses, and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise above the hum of industry, and contentment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire. I present the tax books of Georgia which show that the negro, twenty-five years ago a slave, has in Georgia alone $10,000,000 of a.s.sessed property, worth twice that much. Does not that record honor him, and vindicate his neighbors?

What people, penniless, illiterate, has done so well? For every Afro-American agitator, stirring the strife in which alone he prospers, I can show you a thousand negroes, happy in their cabin homes, tilling their own land by day, and at night taking from the lips of their children the helpful message their State sends them from the schoolhouse door. And the schoolhouse itself bears testimony. In Georgia we added last year $250,000 to the school fund, making a total of more than $1,000,000,--and this in the face of prejudice not yet conquered--of the fact that the whites are a.s.sessed for $368,000,000, the blacks for $10,000,000, and yet forty-nine per cent. of the beneficiaries are black children; and in the doubt of many wise men if education helps, or can help, our problem. Charleston, with her taxable values cut half in two since 1860, pays more in proportion for public schools than Boston.

Although it is easier to give much out of much than little out of little the South, with one-seventh of the taxable property of the country, with relatively larger debt, having received only one-twelfth as much of public lands, and having back of its tax books none of the $500,000,000 of bonds that enrich the North--and though it pays annually $26,000,000 to your section as pensions--yet gives nearly one-sixth to the public school fund. The South, since 1865, has spent $122,000,000 in education, and this year is pledged to $32,000,000 more for State and city schools, although the blacks, paying one-thirtieth of the taxes, get nearly one-half of the fund. Go into our fields and see whites and blacks working side by side. On our buildings in the same squad. In our shops at the same forge. Often the blacks crowd the whites from work, or lower wages by their greater need and simpler habits, and yet are permitted, because we want to bar them from no avenue in which their feet are fitted to tread. They could not there be elected orators of white universities, as they have been here, but they do enter there a hundred useful trades that are closed against them here. We hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds in the garden than to water the exotic in the window.

In the South there are negro lawyers, teachers, editors, dentists, doctors, preachers, multiplying with the increasing ability of their race to support them. In villages and towns they have their military companies equipped from the armories of the State, their churches and societies built and supported largely by their neighbors. What is the testimony of the courts? In penal legislation we have steadily reduced felonies to misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigating punishment for crime, that we might save, as far as possible, this dependent race from its own weakness. In our penitentiary record sixty per cent. of the prosecutors are negroes, and in every court the negro criminal strikes the colored juror, that white men may judge his case.

In the North, one negro in every 185 is in jail--in the South only one in 446. In the North the percentage of negro prisoners is six times as great as that of native whites, in the South, only four times as great.

If prejudice wrongs him in Southern courts, the record shows it to be deeper in Northern courts. I a.s.sert here, and a bar as intelligent and upright as the bar of Ma.s.sachusetts will solemnly indorse my a.s.sertion, that in the Southern courts, from highest to lowest, pleading for life, liberty or property, the negro has distinct advantage because he is a negro, apt to be over-reached, oppressed--and that this advantage reaches from the juror in making his verdict to the judge in measuring his sentence.

Now, Mr. President, can it be seriously maintained that we are terrorizing the people from whose willing hands comes every year $1,000,000,000 of farm crops? Or have robbed a people who, twenty-five years from unrewarded slavery, have ama.s.sed in one State $20,000,000 of property? Or that we intend to oppress the people we are arming every day? Or deceive them, when we are educating them to the utmost limit of our ability? Or outlaw them when we work side by side with them? Or re-enslave them under legal forms, when for their benefit we have even imprudently narrowed the limit of felonies and mitigated the severity of law? My fellow-countrymen, as you yourselves may sometimes have to appeal at the bar of human judgment for justice and for right, give to my people to-night the fair and unanswerable conclusion of these incontestable facts.

But it is claimed that under this fair seeming there is disorder and violence. This, I admit. And there will be until there is one ideal community on earth after which we may pattern. But how widely is it misjudged. It is hard to measure with exactness whatever touches the negro. His helplessness, his isolation, his century of servitude, these dispose us to emphasize and magnify his wrongs. This disposition inflamed by prejudice and partisanry has led to injustice and delusion.

Lawless men may ravage a county in Iowa and it is accepted as an incident--in the South a drunken row is declared to be the fixed habit of the community. Regulators may whip vagabonds in Indiana by platoons and it scarcely arrests attention--a chance collision in the South among relatively the same cla.s.ses is gravely accepted as evidence that one race is destroying the other. We might as well claim that the Union was ungrateful to the colored soldiers who followed its flag because a Grand Army post in Connecticut closed its doors to a negro veteran as for you to give racial significance to every incident in the South, or to accept exceptional grounds as the rule of our society. I am not one of those who becloud American honor with the parade of the outrages of either sections, and belie American character by declaring them to be significant and representative. I prefer to maintain that they are neither, and stand for nothing but the pa.s.sion and sin of our poor fallen humanity. If society, like a machine, were no stronger than its weakest part, I should despair of both sections. But, knowing that society, sentient and responsible in every fibre, can mend and repair until the whole has the strength of the best, I despair of neither.

These gentlemen who come with me here, knit into Georgia's busy life as they are, never saw, I dare a.s.sert, an outrage committed on a negro! And if they did, no one of you would be swifter to prevent or punish. It is through them, and the men who think with them--making nine-tenths of every southern community--that these two races have been carried thus far with less of violence than would have been possible anywhere else on earth. And in their fairness and courage and steadfastness--more than in all the laws that can be pa.s.sed, or all the bayonets that can be mustered--is the hope of our future.

When will the blacks cast a free ballot? When ignorance anywhere is not dominated by the will of the intelligent. When the laborer anywhere casts a vote unhindered by his boss. When the vote of the poor anywhere is not influenced by the power of the rich. When the strong and the steadfast do not everywhere control the suffrage of the weak and s.h.i.+ftless--then, and not till then, will the ballot of the negro be free. The white people of the South are banded, Mr. President, not in prejudice against the blacks--not in sectional estrangement--not in the hope of political dominion--but in a deep and abiding necessity. Here is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote--clannish, credulous, impulsive and pa.s.sionate--tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in that it was led into alienation from its neighbor and taught to rely on the protection of an outside force, it cannot be merged and lost in the two great parties through logical currents, for it lacks political conviction and even that information on which conviction must be based. It must remain a faction--strong enough in every community to control on the slightest division of the whites. Under that division it becomes the prey of the cunning and unscrupulous of both parties. Its credulity is imposed upon, its patience inflamed, its cupidity tempted, its impulses misdirected--and even its superst.i.tion made to play its part in a campaign in which every interest of society is jeopardized and every approach to the ballot-box debauched. It is against such campaigns as this--the folly and the bitterness and the danger of which every southern community has drunk deeply--that the white people of the South are banded together. Just as you in Ma.s.sachusetts would be banded if 300,000 men, not one in a hundred able to read his ballot--banded in race instinct holding against you the memory of a century of slavery, taught by your late conquerors to distrust and oppose you, had already travestied legislation from your State House, and in every species of folly or villainy had wasted your substance and exhausted your credit.

But admitting the right of the whites to unite against this tremendous menace, we are challenged with the smallness of our vote. This has long been flippantly charged to be evidence and has now been solemnly and officially declared to be proof of political turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Virginia--a State now under fierce a.s.sault for this alleged crime--cast in 1888 seventy-five per cent. of her vote, Ma.s.sachusetts, the State in which I speak, sixty per cent. of her vote.

Was it suppression in Virginia and natural causes in Ma.s.sachusetts? Last month Virginia cast sixty-nine per cent. of her vote, and Ma.s.sachusetts, fighting in every district, cast only forty-nine per cent. of hers. If Virginia is condemned because thirty-one per cent. of her vote was silent, how shall this State escape in which fifty-one per cent. was dumb? Let us enlarge this comparison. The sixteen Southern States in '88 cast sixty-seven per cent. of their total vote--the six New England States but sixty-three per cent. of theirs. By what fair rule shall the stigma be put upon one section, while the other escapes? A congressional election in New York last week, with the polling place in touch of every voter, brought out only 6,000 votes of 28,000--and the lack of opposition is a.s.signed as the natural cause. In a district in my State, in which an opposition speech has not been heard in ten years and the polling places are miles apart--under the unfair reasoning of which my section has been a constant victim--the small vote is charged to be proof of forcible suppression. In Virginia an average majority of 12,000, under hopeless division of the minority, was raised to 42,000; in Iowa, in the same election, a majority of 32,000 was wiped out and an opposition majority of 8,000 was established. The change of 40,000 votes in Iowa is accepted as political revolution--in Virginia an increase of 30,000 on a safe majority is declared to be proof of political fraud.

It is deplorable, sir, that in both sections a larger percentage of the vote is not regularly cast. But more inexplicable that this should be so in New England, than in the South. What invites the negro to the ballot-box? He knows that of all men it has promised him most and yielded him least. His first appeal to suffrage was the promise of "forty acres and a mule." His second, the threat that Democratic success meant his re-enslavement. Both have been proved false in his experience.

He looked for a home, and he got the Freedman's Bank. He fought under promise of the loaf, and in victory was denied the crumbs. Discouraged and deceived, he has realized at last that his best friends are his neighbors with whom his lot is cast, and whose prosperity is bound up in his--and that he has gained nothing in politics to compensate the loss of their confidence and sympathy, that is at last his best and enduring hope. And so, without leaders or organization--and lacking the resolute heroism of my party friends in Vermont that make their hopeless march over the hills a high and inspiring pilgrimage--he shrewdly measures the occasional agitator, balances his little account with politics, touches up his mule, and jogs down the furrow letting the mad world wag as it will!

The negro vote can never control in the South, and it would be well if partisans at the North would understand this. I have seen the white people of a State set about by black hosts until their fate seemed sealed. But, sir, some brave man, banding them together, would rise, as Elisha rose in beleaguered Samaria, and, touching their eyes with faith, bid them look abroad to see the very air "filled with the chariots of Israel and the hors.e.m.e.n thereof." If there is any human force that cannot be withstood, it is the power of the banded intelligence and responsibility of a free community. Against it, numbers and corruption cannot prevail. It cannot be forbidden in the law, or divorced in force.

It is the inalienable right of every free community--the just and righteous safeguard against an ignorant or corrupt suffrage. It is on this, sir, that we rely in the South. Not the cowardly menace of mask or shotgun, but the peaceful majesty of intelligence and responsibility, ma.s.sed and unified for the protection of its homes and the preservation of its liberty. That, sir, is our reliance and our hope, and against it all the powers of earth shall not prevail. It was just as certain that Virginia would come back to the unchallenged control of her white race--that before the moral and material power of her people once more unified, opposition would crumble until its last desperate leader was left alone, vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts--as that night should fade in the kindling glory of the sun. You may pa.s.s force bills, but they will not avail. You may surrender your own liberties to federal election law, you may submit, in fear of a necessity that does not exist, that the very form of this government may be changed, you may invite federal interference with the New England town meeting, that has been for a hundred years the guarantee of local government in America--this old State which holds in its charter the boast that it "is a free and independent commonwealth"--it may deliver its election machinery into the hands of the government it helped to create--but never, sir, will a single State of this Union, North or South, be delivered again to the control of an ignorant and inferior race. We wrested our State governments from negro supremacy when the Federal drum-beat rolled closer to the ballot-box, and Federal bayonets hedged it deeper about than will ever again be permitted in this free government. But, sir, though the cannon of this Republic thundered in every voting district of the South, we still should find in the mercy of G.o.d the means and the courage to prevent its re-establishment. I regret, sir, that my section, hindered with this problem, stands in seeming estrangement to the North. If, sir, any man will point out to me a path down which the white people of the South, divided, may walk in peace and honor, I will take that path though I take it alone--for at its end, and nowhere else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of my section and the full restoration of this Union. But, sir, if the negro had not been enfranchised, the South would have been divided and the republic united. His enfranchis.e.m.e.nt--against which I enter no protest--holds the South united and compact. What solution, then, can we offer for the problem? Time alone can disclose it to us. We simply report progress, and ask your patience. If the problem be solved at all--and I firmly believe it will, though nowhere else has it been--it will be solved by the people most deeply bound in interest, most deeply pledged in honor to its solution. I had rather see my people render back this question rightly solved than to see them gather all the spoils over which faction has contended since Catiline conspired and Caesar fought. Meantime we treat the negro fairly, measuring to him justice in the fulness the strong should give to the weak, and leading him in the steadfast ways of citizens.h.i.+p that he may no longer be the prey of the unscrupulous and the sport of the thoughtless. We open to him every pursuit in which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his training and capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and friends.h.i.+p--and to pin him to the soil with owners.h.i.+p, that he may catch in the fire of his own hearthstone that sense of responsibility the s.h.i.+ftless can never know. And we gather him into that alliance of intelligence and responsibility, that, though it now runs close to racial lines, welcomes the responsible and intelligent of any race. By this course, confirmed in our judgment, and justified in the progress already made, we hope to progress slowly but surely to the end.

The love we feel for that race, you cannot measure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy, from her home up there, looks down to bless, and through the tumult of this night steals the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling to sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pillars and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands--now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man--as they lay a mother's blessing there, while at her knees--the truest altar I yet have found--I thank G.o.d that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin, or guard at her chamber door, puts a black man's loyalty between her and danger.

I catch another vision. The crisis of battle--a soldier struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffling through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of hurtling death--bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down his life in his master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble heart that G.o.d will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him, when the mould is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. And from the grave comes a voice saying, "Follow him! put your arms about him in his need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend as he was mine." And out into this new world--strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both--I follow! And may G.o.d forget my people--when they forget these!

Whatever the future may hold for them, whether they plod along in the servitude from which they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers, and made to bear the cross of the fainting Christ--whether they find homes again in Africa, and thus hasten the prophecy of the psalmist, who said: "And suddenly Ethiopia shall hold out her hands unto G.o.d"--whether for ever dislocated and separate, they remain a weak people, beset by stronger, and exist, as the Turk, who lives in the jealousy rather than in the conscience of Europe--or whether in this miraculous Republic they break through the caste of twenty centuries, and, belying universal history, reach the full stature of citizens.h.i.+p, and in peace maintain it--we shall give them uttermost justice and abiding friends.h.i.+p. And whatever we do, into whatever seeming estrangement we may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we bear this Republic, or mitigate our consecration to its service. I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was the temple of our hopes, and whose arm was clothed with our strength, renewed his allegiance to this government at Appomattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be false, and he spoke for every honest man from Maryland to Texas. From that day to this Hamilcar has nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred and vengeance, but everywhere to loyalty and to love. Witness the veteran standing at the base of a Confederate monument, above the graves of his comrades, his empty sleeve tossing in the April wind, adjuring the young men about him to serve as earnest and loyal citizens the government against which their fathers fought. This message, delivered from that sacred presence, has gone home to the hearts of my fellows! And, sir, I declare here, if physical courage be always equal to human aspiration, that they would die, sir, if need be, to restore this Republic their fathers fought to dissolve!

Such, Mr. President, is this problem as we see it, such is the temper in which we approach it, such the progress made. What do we ask of you?

First, patience; out of this alone can come perfect work. Second, confidence; in this alone can you judge fairly. Third, sympathy; in this you can help us best. Fourth, give us your sons as hostages. When you plant your capital in millions, send your sons that they may know how true are our hearts and may help to swell the Caucasian current until it can carry without danger this black infusion. Fifth, loyalty to the Republic--for there is sectionalism in loyalty as in estrangement. This hour little needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Ma.s.sachusetts--that knows no South, no North, no East, no West, but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State of our Union.

A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, are Americans--and we stand for human liberty! The uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth.

France, Brazil--these are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression--this is our mission! And we shall not fail.

G.o.d has sown in our soil the seed of His millennial harvest, and He will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until His full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way--aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless and traceless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day--when the old world will come to marvel and to learn amid our gathered treasures--let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic, compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love--loving from the lakes to the gulf--the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill, serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory, blazing out the path and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in G.o.d's appointed time! [Great applause.]

SARAH GRAND