Year: 1866

Reply of the COIOred Delegation to Pres
ident Johnson.


The following is the published reply of


the Colored Delegation to Presipent


johnson, prepared after they had their


interview on the 7th:


Mr.. PRESIDENT In consideration of a


delicate sense of propriety, as well as


your own repeated intimations of indis-


position to discuss or to listen to a reply


to the views and opinions you were pleas


ed to express to US in your elaborate


speech to-day, the undersigned would


respectfully take this method of replying
thereto. Believing as we do that the


views and opinions expressed in that ad-


dress are entirely unsound and predjudi-


cial to the highest interests of our race as


well as of our country, we cannot do 9th


erwise than expose the same, and as far


as may be in our power, arrest their dan


gerous influence. 1t is not necessary, at


this time, to call attent tion to more than
two or three features of your remarkable


address. The first point to which we feel


especially bound to take exception is


your attempt to defend a policy opposed


to our enfranchisement, upon the alleged


ground of an existing hostility on


the part of the former slaves


toward the poor white people of the


South. We admit the existence of the


hostility and hold that it is entirely re-


ciprocal, but you obviously commit an


error by drawing an argument from a
state of Slavery and making it basis for


policy adapted to state of freedom


The hostility between the whites and


blacks of the South is easily explained


1t has its root and sap in the relation of
slavery and was melted on both sides by


the cunning of the slave masters. These
masters secured this ascendancy over
both the whites and blacks by putting
enmity between them. They divided
both to conquer each. There was no
earthly reason why the blacks should
not hate and dread the poor whites, when
in a state of slavery, for it was from this
class that the masters received their
slave catchers, slave drivers and over
seers. They were the men called in up
on all occasions, by the masters, when
any fendish outrage was to be commit
ted upon the slave.


Now, Sir, you cannot but perceive that
the cause of this hatred removed the ha-
tired must be removed also Slavery is
abolished. The cause of antagonism re-
moved, and you must see that it is illog-
ical, putting new wine into old bottles,
mending new garments with old cloth,
to legislate from a slaVe-holding and
slaVe-driving premises for a people whom
you have repeatedly declared your pur- /
pose of maintaining in their freedom =
besides, even if it were true as you allege, |
that the hostility of the blacks tow ards |
the poor whites must necessarily be the |
same in a state of freedom as in a state |
of slavery, in the name of Heaven we |
ask, how can you. in view
of your professed desire to promote the /
welfare of the black man, deprive him of /.
all means OF defence, and clothe him,
whom you regard as his enemy, in the
panoply of political power? Can it be
that you would recommend a policy
which would arm the strong and
cast down the defenceless? Can you
by any possibility of reasoning, regard
this as just, fair, or wise? Experience
proves that those are oftenest abused
that can be abused with the greatest i'm
punity. Men are whipped oftenest who
are whipped easiest. Peace between the
races is not to be secured by degrading
one race and exalung another, by giving
power TO one race and Withholding 1t from
another, but by maintaining a state of
equality between all parties. First pure,
then peaceable. On the colonization
theory that you were pleased to broach,
very much could be said. 1t is Impossi-
BILE to suppose. in view of the usefulness
Of the black man in time of peace as a
aborer in the South, and in time of war
IS soldier at the North, andthe growing
respect for his rights among the people,
md his increasing adaptation to high
'tate of civilization, in this his native
and, there can never come time when
ne can be removed from this country
without terrible shock to its prosperity
md Ieace, Besides the worst enemy of
he country GOULD not cast upon its fair
name greater infamy than to suppose
hat negroes could be tolerated among
hem in state of the most abject slave I