The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-18
THE AFRICAN IN HIS NEW CAREER.

From the NJ Y. World
The National AntG-Slagery Standard de-
votes all its space last week to the recent
jubilation of the American Anti-Slavery So
ciety over the ratification of the fifteenth
amendment. 1t was the last meeting ever to
be held by that society, which has ended in
sort of triumphant dissolution.
Whether the event celebrated with such
blaze of oratorical bonfres justifes all this
exultation is q question to be decided by
those who are to come after us. They will
gather the ripened fruit of the tree planted
in tornado and watered with blood. Whether
this stupendous change is q reform must be
determined by the sure test of experience.
1t ought to be great reform indeed to justify
its hideous cost Its advantages are yet
doubtful; but the evils by which it has been
purchased are, alas, too real million of
the bravest of our countrymen have paid their
lives or their limbs to purchase this negro
jubilee. They have not been benefited. They
were generous young men, cut down in the
flower of their age. Had they lived, and had
each become the father of four children, their
offspring would have been equal in number
to the negro population freed and enfran-
chised. The exchange of four millions of
such citizens for four millions of voting
freedmen presents an account which has
debit as well as credit side, even if the
negroes should prove to be worthy members
of the body polite.
The brave men who fell in battle or died of
military exposure left agonized relatives at
| least equal in number to the whole negro
population. The iubilant Anti-Slavery So
ciety prudently forbore to go into the arith-
metic of bereavement and deprivation. The
exultant orators did not compute whether the
pain of these sufferers is overbalanced by the
boon conferred on the negroes. The grief
and destitution, the blasted hopes and ago
nized affections, of four millions of white
mourners make sum total of misery more
than equal to the happiness which has ac-
crued to the four millions of negroes by the
change in their condition. So far as this
generation is concerned, the balance is against
the experiment.
And there is still another exhibit on the
debit side of the account The change has
cost in money more than it has cost in blood
and sorrow. 1t has piled up a mountain of
debt. 1t has destroyed our shipping, de-
ranged our currency, wrenched our political
institutions, sscrippled our industry by ruinous
taxation, filled the hearts of our people with
fierce animosities andiendish hate increased
the hours and diminished the rewards OF
labor. These surely are not blessings; and
they cannot be left out of any fair estimate OF
the results of the negro agitation. Whatever
may be the value of emancipation and negro
suffrage, the ecstasies of exultation need to
be tempered by sense of what the expert
ment has cost. 1t ought to bring harvest
of benefcent consequences in future genera
tions, to Justify the losses and suffering it has
inflicted on the present.
All has now been done for the negroes
which can be done for them by legislation
and they must hereafter depend upon them
selves. They will be the architects of thei
own fortune, or of their own ruin. Constitu
tions and laws can do nothing for human
beings but to remove distractions to the fre
exertion of their faculties The negroes will
find their proper level. Their color will re
main black in spite of emancipation and tn
+ fifteenth amendment. If their mental endow
5 ments are naturally inferior, no law declaring
them equal can make the declaration good
a any more than it can change their color
Q Those who resisted their enfranchsement di
1 not wish to exclude them for mere color, bu
because they supposed there was as inefface
8 able a distinction in the characters c
g the two races as in their complexions.
' is for the negroes to prove that this opinio
8 is prejudice. If they shall display equa
d energy and capacity with the white race
o their color will be no impediment to tn
1t recognition of their equality. But if they ar
o to rise in the esteem of the white race the
n must rise by their own efforts The field
IS open; they have every opportunity. A bir
L and frog may be equally tied down by
/; string; when the string is cut the bird mount
ID carolling into the air, but the frog can onl
N hop and croak. When the negroes shall rivi
the whites as skilful, inventive mechanic
IS. when pictures and statues by negro artis
70 shall bear comparison with the best product
e. Of white genius; when poems, novels, an
40 works of science by negro authors shall
AZ read and praised by people of culture; whe
~ negroes shall become the heads OF great me