The ballot is _schoolmaster_. Reading and writing are of inestimable value, but the ballot teaches what these cannot teach. It teaches manhood. Especially is it important to a race whose manhood has been denied. The work of redemption cannot be complete, if the ballot is left in doubt. The freedman already knows his friend by the unerring instinct of the heart. Give him the ballot, and he will be educated into the principles of government. Deny him the ballot, and he will continue alien in knowledge as in rights. His claim is exceptional, as your injustice is exceptional. For generations you have shut him out from all education, making it a crime to teach him to read the Book of Life. Let not the tyranny of the past be apology for further exclusion. Prisoners long immured in a dungeon are sometimes blinded, as they come forth into day; but this is no reason for continued imprisonment. To every freedman the ballot is the light of day. * * * * * The ballot is _protector_. Perhaps, at the present moment, this is its highest function. Slavery has ceased in name; but this is all. The old master still asserts an inhuman power, and now by positive statutes seeks to bind his victim in new chains. Let this conspiracy proceed unchecked, and the freedman will be more unhappy than the early Puritan, who, seeking liberty of conscience, escaped from the “lords bishops” only to fall under the “lords elders.” The master will still be master, under another name,--as, according to Milton, “New presbyter is but old priest writ large.”