Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1888-08-22
ADVICE TO THE NEGRO.
Geo. w, Cable Tells the Colered Man te
Vote.
From the Milwaukee wisconsin.


Colored people will find some good
advice in the Forum for August, under
the caption "What Shall the Negro
Do?" 1t is from Geo. w. Cable, whose
words heretofore uttered in behalf of
the negro of the South have drawn
against him an unwritten edict of
ostracism by the Southern people
among whom he for many years re-
sided.
Mr.. Cable is a close observer, and
during his life in the South be noted
clearly the trend of things social and
political, and therefore he knows
whereof he speaks. He uses plain Ian
guage, and does not hesitate to criticise
where criticism is just, or censure
where censure is deserved-he cuts
right and left with the impartiality of
one who is firmly convinced that he is
right.
The negro's grievance, Mr.. Cable
says, sis not that his liberties are few;
it is that in land and nation whose
measure of every mans freedom is all
the freedom anyone can attain without
infringing upon like freedom in others,
and where all the competitions of life
are keyed on this idea, his tenure Of
almost every public right is somehow
mutilated by arbitrary determinations
against him." In other words, the
negro is nominally the possessor of
rights he is not permitted TO fully en-
Joy. To make this more clear Mr..
Cable says:
'But the negro's grievance is that
the determinations made against him
are more and more unbearable the bet
ter public citizen he is or tries to be;
that they are impediments, not to the
grOvellngs of his lower nature, but to
the aspirations of his higher; that as
long as he is content to travel and lodge
as a ragamuffin, frequent the vilest
places Of amusement, laze about the
Streets shun the public library and the
best churches and colleges, and neglect
every political duty of his citizenship,
no white man could be much freer than
he finds himself; but that the farther
he rises above such life as this the more
he is CALLED and tormented with igno-
minious determinations made against
him as public citizen, both by custom
and by law; and finally, that as to his
mother, his wife, his sister, his daugh-
ter, the encouragements to ignoble
and disbursements to nobler life are
only crueler IN their case than in his
own"
The position of the negro as to his
civil and political rights could not be
more tersely stated; and even the most
bitter opponents Of the colored man
must admit that Mr.. Cable is not in
error. The barriers of prejudice
reared through more than century of
injustice TO the colored race cannot be
very readily swept away, and the negro
who received his freedom twenty-five
years ago is not yet as free as the white
man who exists in the same country
and is amenable to the same laws.
Toward a solution of the problem
Mr.. Cable advises the negro to make
the most of the liberty he has; to or
ganize for the advocacy and promotion
Of his civil rights; and to urgently claim
the liberty to perform all his civil duties
as the liberty to enjoy ali his civil
rights. He should proclaim that he
does not want negro supremacy" and
that as to political Office he yields no
right or emolument to any man because
he is white, nor claims any because he is
black-that he does not want any office
that does not want him.
Mr.. Cable strongly emphasizes the
necessity of voting. He says to the
negro You must keep your vote
alive" He advises him to cast his vote
though he is taxed forit; to vote though
he is deirauded of il; to vote though he
die for it.
"Let no man cry Liberty or blood;'
leave that for Socialists and Partisan
mobs; but when liberty means duty,
and death means ones own extinction.
then the cry Liberty or death is holy
cry, and the man who will not make It
his own, even in freedom, is not free.
Seek not to buy liberty with the blood
either of friends or of enemies; it is
only mans own blood at last that counts
in the purchase of liberty
In telling the negro to cast his vote
even though he die for it Mr.. Cable calls
his attention to the fact that 3OO.-
700 white men poured out their