Do not ask me what will be the final result of the so-called Negro
problem. I cannot tell you. I have sometimes thought that the American
people are too great to be small, too just and magnanimous to oppress
the weak, too brave to yield up the right to the strong, and too
grateful for public services ever to forget them or to reward them.
I have fondly hoped that this estimate of American character would
soon cease to be contradicted or put in doubt. But events have made me
doubtful. The favour with which this proposition of disfranchisement
has been received by public men, white and black, by republicans as
well as democrats, has shaken my faith in the nobility of the nation.
I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate
future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts
before me.
Strange things have happened of late and are still happening. Some of
these tend to dim the lustre of the American name, and chill the hopes
once entertained for the cause of American liberty. He is a wiser man
than I am who can tell how low the moral sentiment of the Republic may
yet fall. When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline, and the
wheels of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the
one will fall or where the other will stop. The downward tendency,
already manifest, has swept away some of the most important safeguards
of justice and liberty. The Supreme Court, has, in a measure,
surrendered. State sovereignty is essentially restored. The Civil
Rights Bill is impaired. The Republican party is converted into a party
of money, rather than a party of humanity and justice. We may well ask,
what next?
The pit of hell is said to be bottomless. Principles which we all
thought to have been firmly and permanently settled by the late war
have been boldly assaulted and overthrown by the defeated party.
Rebel rule is now nearly complete in many states, and it is gradually
capturing the nation’s Congress. The cause lost in the war is the cause
regained in peace, and the cause gained in war is the cause lost in
peace.
There was a threat made long ago by an American statesman that the
whole body of legislation enacted for the protection of American
liberty and to secure the results of the war for the Union, should
be blotted from the national statute book. That threat is now being
sternly pursued and may yet be fully realised. The repeal of the laws
intended to protect the elective franchise has heightened the suspicion
that Southern rule may yet become complete, though, I trust, not
permanent. There is no denying that the trend is in the wrong direction
at present. The late election, however, gives us hope that the loyal
Republican party may yet return to its first love.