Year: 1869

Our cause has always adopted the
policy of concentrating its own at
tention, and trying to concentrate
that Of the public, on one thing at a
time. The step Immediately next is
usually very definitely marked. To
day the next move for us is to the
ratification Of the constitutional
amendment. Cabinets and the ma
terials of which they are made, are
no doubt important. On them de-
pend the base of the administration
and our whole security that the laws
shall be executed. To Congress we
must look for sucn legislation as will
protect men in the peaceful exercise
Of their rights and make what little
headway law can against the social
forcess. And on the slow changes
of thought and character we must be
content to wait for final undoing
of the heavy burden and cruel yoke
which prejudice lays on hapless con-
stituents. .-.s.- .-..- ----,-..... - F.


But our present work is to ratify
the proposed amendment, which
guarantees to the negro the ballot
throughout the nation. Its recon-
mendation by Congress and the
President is. the most advanced step
yet taken by the nation. Its ratifi-
cation will be the completion and
guarantee of emancipation itself. OF
course it is not all we could wish :;
nor is it just in the form some would
ask. But it covers the whole negro
race, North and South, and it con
tains the essential guarantees. It's
the grandest and most Christian act
ever contemplated by any nation
lifting, in a time of peace, a lately
enslaved and still hated race to the
full level of citizenship. Though it
does not cover all it ought,in present
circumstances-sti it contains with
in itself the cure for all its own de-
fects. A man with the ballot in his
hand is the master of the situation.
He defines all his other rights. What
is not already given him, he takes.
AS soon as the negro holds the bal
lot at the South, whatever he suffers
will be largely now, and in future
wholly, his own fault. Present pow
erty, ignorance, and lack of comb
nation will postpone the full use of
his power, but in the end, the ballot
makes every class sovereign over its
own fate. Corruption may steal
from man his independence, mon
ey may starve and intrigue fetter him
at times. But against all these his
vote. intelligently and honestly cast,
is i'm the long run his full protection.
1fin the struggle his fort surrenders
lis only because it is betrayed from
within. The ballot is the civil PAN
acea. No civil war in land of uni
versal suffrage. Mexico and some
of the bastard Republics may seem
to prove otherwise. But Mexico is
only a galvanized corpse, pretending
to life and soul.


The ballot is opportunity, educa-
tion, fair play, right to office and ell
bow room Compare the New Eng
land Of 1920 with the England of
Lustb yedT-OiIo, dlCtI tWO HuANh So
years of universal suffrage, the other
after two hundred years of timid
and heartless caste, and you see the
fruit of'the ballot. Then take the
England of to-day and you see what
the imitation of her child, in.this
particular. has done for her in forty
years. What the alphabet is in lit
erature the vote is in the State.


Now, for the first time in our his
tory, God opens to us this grand op-
portunity. Party necessity Graves
it. The peace of one whole section
demands it. The welfare of the ne
gro race in the West Indies and
throughout the world depends on the
position the race attains in the man.
agement of the great empire of this
continent. Congress. three to one,
recommends it. The Republican
party lifts it as q party symbol. The