"I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the ballot box against the ignorant you open the schoolhouse. More than one half of the population of your State are negroes. No State can long prosper when a large part of its citizenship is in ignorance and poverty, and has no interest in government. I beg of you that you do not treat us as an alien people. We are not aliens. You know us; you know that we have cleared your forests, tilled your fields, nursed your children, and protected your families. There is an attachment between us that few understand. While I do not presume to be able to advise you, yet it is in my heart to say that if your convention would do something that would prevent for all time strained relations between the two races, and would permanently settle the matter of political relations in one Southern State, at least, let the very best educational opportunities be provided for both races; and add to this an election law that shall be incapable of unjust discrimination, at the same time providing that in proportion as the ignorant secure education, property, and character, they will be given the right of citizenship. Any other course will take from one half your citizens interest in the State, and hope and ambition to become intelligent producers and taxpayers, to become useful and virtuous citizens. Any other course will tie the white citizens of Louisiana to a body of death. "The negroes are not unmindful of the fact that the white people of your State pay the greater portion of the school taxes, and that the poverty of the State prevents it from doing all that it desires for public education; yet I believe that you will agree with me that ignorance is more costly to the State than education; that it will cost Louisiana more not to educate the negroes than it will to educate them. In connection with a generous provision for public schools, I believe that nothing will so help my own people in your State as provision at some institution for the highest academic and normal training in connection with thorough training in agriculture, mechanics, and domestic economy. The fact is that ninety per cent of our people depend upon the common occupations for their living, and outside of the cities eighty-five per cent rely upon agriculture for support. Notwithstanding this, our people have been educated for the most part since the war in everything else but the very thing most of them live by. First-class training in agriculture, horticulture, dairying, stock raising, the mechanical arts, and domestic economy would make us intelligent producers, and not only help us to contribute our proportion as taxpayers, but would result in retaining much money in the State that now goes outside for that which can be as well produced at home. An institution which will give this training of the hand, along with the highest mental culture, would soon convince our people that their salvation is largely in the ownership of