We are as a people often reproached with ambition for political offices
and honors. We are not ashamed of this alleged ambition. Our destitution
of such ambition would be our real shame. If the six millions and a half
of people whom we represent could develop no aspirants to political
office and honor under this Government, their mental indifference,
barrenness and stolidity might well enough be taken as proof of their
unfitness for American citizenship.
It is no crime to seek or hold office. If it were it would take a larger
space than that of Noah’s Ark to hold the white criminals.
One of the charges against this convention is that it seeks for the
colored people a larger share than they now possess in the offices and
emoluments of the Government.
We are now significantly reminded by even one of our own members that we
are only twenty years out of slavery, and we ought therefore to be
modest in our aspirations. Such leaders should remember that men will
not be religious when the devil turns preacher.
The inveterate and persistent office-seeker and office-holder should be
modest when he preaches that virtue to others which he does not himself
practice. Wolsey could not tell Cromwell to fling away ambition properly
only when he had flung away his own.
We are far from affirming that there may not be too much zeal among
colored men in pursuit of political preferment; but the fault is not
wholly theirs. They have young men among them noble and true, who are
educated and intelligent--fit to engage in enterprise of “pith and
moment"--who find themselves shut out from nearly all the avenues of
wealth and respectability, and hence they turn their attention to
politics. They do so because they can find nothing else. The best cure
for the evil is to throw open other avenues and activities to them.
We shall never cease to be a despised and persecuted class while we are
known to be excluded by our color from all important positions under the
Government.
While we do not make office the one thing important, nor the one
condition of our alliance with any party, and hold that the welfare,
prosperity and happiness of our whole country is the true criterion of
political action for ourselves and for all men, we can not disguise from
ourselves the fact that our persistent exclusion from office as a class
is a great wrong, fraught with injury, and ought to be resented and
opposed by all reasonable and effective means in our power.
We hold it to be self-evident that no class or color should be the
exclusive rulers of this country. If there is such a ruling class, there
must of course be a subject class, and when this condition is once
established this Government of the people, by the people, and for the
people, will have perished from the earth.