Year: 1874

| color. Persons who IN their infancy


were nursed by negro women, in thei


childhood slept and played with negro


children, in youth and manhood were


the daily companions of negroes in the


workshop, upon the farm, in the carriage


and upon the journey, who employed ne


groes as body servants, and in that way


were almost continually in their society
dressed by them, shaved by them, nurseo


by them in sickness, and in various ways
| inhaling their breath hundred times g


day, and having with them that physical
intimacy and contact which does moi


exist between equals in society; yet when
the negro, as freeman, presumes to
stop at the same hotel, or to ride in the
same car with them, or to send his chill
dren to the same school with theirs, or to
kneel in the same church, they are mex
pressibly shocked, and declare that social
equality will degrade and destroy society.
They think to make few votes by APP
pealing to the prejudices and fears of the
white people about mixed schools. In
towns and communities where the chill
dren of each color are numerous enough
to be formed into separate schools, there
will be no trouble on the subject, and
there has not been. But in districts
sparsely populated, or in neighborhoods
in which there are few colored children,
and where their proportion of the school
fund would be wholly insufficient to
maintain separate schools, and their pa
rents are not able to maintain private
schools they must grow up in ignorance
and without education. And what harm
would these colored children do in the
public sehool2 They would interrupt
nobody, though in many places they
would be the victims of insult and op-
preston. The man who would say that
under such circumstances these colored
children must grow up without educa-
tion, to be poor, ignorant, helpless and
perhaps vicious throughout their lives,
simply because it would be offensive to
have them go into the same school house
with white children, himself needs edu-
cation in the principles of our common
humanity.


EvEN-HANDED JUSTICE.


But the punishment and suffering will
not fall upon the negro children only !;
the country which inficts the wrong will
ultimately have to pay for it in some way
Such are the mysterious rulings of Provi-
dence. Even now the people of the
South are complaining bitterly of the ig-
norance of the colored voters by whom
they are surrounded, and by whom, in
some of the States and many of the dis
tricts, they are outnumbered. The poi
soned chalice is commended to their own
lips. Only few years ago the people of
South Carolina Louisiana and, in fact,
every Southern State made the educa-
ton of negroes felony. For teaching
them to read and write their teachers
were fined, imprisoned cast out from
society and often put to death; so that
the negroes grew up in mass in the
densest ignorance, for it was thought
that that would make them the most
subservient of slaves. And mean white
men now hate to see the negro educated
for fear that he will become their intel
lectual superior


But there came a grand revolution.
The masters had embarked in a wicked
rebellion in which they were defeated.
The slaves were made free and clothed
with equal civil and political rights with
their late masters. In some of the dis
tricts, and in two or three States, they
were numerically in the majority, and
took the reins of government naturally
into their own hands They are not as a
mass very well qualified to govern, and
the moral as well as the intellectual edu-
cation of many of them was sadly defec-
tive, for slavery is very bad instructor
in morals, teaching honesty neither by
precept nor example. When the white
people come to US with loud complaint
of misgovernment of the negroes in
South Carolina and other Southern
States, | answer them the negroes are
just what they made them. Their former
masters must take the bitter with the
sweet. 1t is impossible that the brutal
slavery of two hundred years should not
be followed by some consequences which
are disagreeable to their former masters
And what are all the sufferings and the
evils resulting from misgovernment by
the negroes in all the Southern States
combined, compared with the intolerable
suferings and hardships resulting from
the institution of slavery, for even one
short month But the negro of the
South is improving rapidly, and is every
where distinguished for his desire to get
an education. Even the old are learn
ing to read and write, and all are anxious
for the education of their children. In
the State of South Carolina, in which the
negro population are SO largely in the
ascendent, and over which there is so
much Democratic groaning, they have
to-day better system of schools than in
most Southern States


PERSONAL ARRAIGNMEMT.


The resolution in the Democratic plat
form which l am considering says: 1--WE
view with adherence this attempt on