Speech #510170237

There is a governing power amongst the tribes of Africa. and the superiormen in those tribes never fail to invoke the law of slavery for the purpose of keeping their subordinates in place and getting out of them all the good they can for the benefit of the general population. They never fail to do that. But if it had been left to the States of this Union to determine. each State for itself. whoshould vote. the State losing from its basis of representation the number of black men. or the number of Indians. or the number of any others that might be stricken out except for crime. we should have found the States of the South and of the East. the West and the North. engaged actively today in the naturalization and preparation of the recently emancipated negroes for the duties ad powers and rights ard privileges and oblgations of citizenship. They would have gone straight along and the political parties in the different States would have found it conveent and necessary to take up the more enlightened and the better parts of these communities and to bring them in by aprocess either of naturalization or of examination or otherwise. admitting them to the full Tights of citizenship as they had become qualified therefor. and then the rest of them. seemng that good conduct was a recommendation to the authorities by whonm they were surrounded and of whom they were a part for their advancement and progress in political power. would have been stimulated to very different action from that which has taken place when they have been taken upOn u e and without respect to their intelligence or their virtue. and without discrimination at all between the higher and the lower grades of the negro family. they live all been dumped into the political power of the country for the purpose of giving to politicians the advantage of thatslavery of spirit by which they knew and haveknown all the time and still know that they can control them at their will and pleasure. The negro is a grateful man. Heisagood man.