322 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" No man can have respect for the Government and officers of 

 the law when he knows, deep down in his heart, that the exercise of 

 the franchise is tainted with fraud. 



" The road that the South has been compelled to travel during 

 the last thirty years has been strewn with thorns and thistles. It 

 has been as one groping through the long darkness into the light. 

 The time is not far distant when the world will begin to appreciate 

 the real character of the burden that was imposed upon the South 

 when four million ex-slaves, ignorant and impoverished, were given 

 the franchise. No people has ever been given such a problem to 

 solve. History has blazed no path through the wilderness that 

 could be followed. For thirty years we have wandered in the wil- 

 derness. We are now beginning to get out. But there is only one 

 road out, and all makeshifts, expedients, profit-and-loss calculations, 

 but lead into swamps, quicksands, quagmires, and jungles. There 

 is a highway that will lead both races out into the pure, beautiful 

 sunshine, where there will be nothing to hide and nothing to ex- 

 plain, where both races can grow strong and true and useful in 

 every fiber of their being. I believe that your convention will find 

 this highway; that it will enact a fundamental law that will be abso- 

 lutely just and fair to white and black alike. 



" I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the 

 ballot box against the ignorant you open the schoolhouse. More 

 than one half of the population of your State are negroes. No 

 State can long prosper when a large part of its citizenship is in 

 ignorance and poverty, and has no interest in government. I beg 

 of you that you do not treat us as an alien people. We are not 

 aliens. You know us; you know that we have cleared your forests, 

 tilled your fields, nursed your children, and protected your families. 

 There is an attachment between us that few understand. While 

 I do not presume to be able to advise you, yet it is in my heart to 

 say that if your convention would do something that would prevent 

 for all time strained relations between the two races, and would 

 permanently settle the matter of political relations in one Southern 

 State, at least, let the very best educational opportunities be pro- 

 vided for both races; and add to this an election law that shall be 

 incapable of unjust discrimination, at the same^time providing that 

 in proportion as the ignorant secure education, property, and char- 

 acter, they will be given the right of citizenship. Any other course 

 will take from one half your citizens interest in the State, and hope 

 and ambition to become intelligent producers and taxpayers, to be- 

 come useful and virtuous citizens. Any other course will tie the 

 white citizens of Louisiana to a body of death. 



u The negroes are not unmindful of the fact that the white 



