Serfdom or apprenticeship is slavery in another guise. To save the freedman from this tyranny, with all its accumulated outrage, is a solemn duty. For this we are now devising guaranties; but, believe me, the only sufficient guaranty is the ballot. Let the freedman vote, and he will have in himself under the law a constant, ever-present, self-protecting power. The armor of citizenship will be his best security. The ballot will be to him sword and buckler,--sword with which to pierce his enemies, and buckler on which to receive their assault. Its possession will be a terror and a defence. The law, which is the highest reason, boasts that every man’s house is his castle; but the freedman can have no castle without the ballot. When the master knows that he may be voted down, he will know that he must be just, and everything is contained in justice. The ballot is like charity, which never faileth, and without which man is only as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The ballot is the one thing needful, wanting which, rights of testimony and all other rights are no better than cobwebs, which the master will break through with impunity. To him who has the ballot all other things shall be given,--protection, opportunity, education, a homestead. The ballot is the Horn of Abundance, out of which overflow rights of every kind, with corn, cotton, rice, and all the fruits of the earth. Or, better still, it is like the hand of the body, without which, man, who is now only a little lower than the angels, must have continued only a little above the brutes. We are fearfully and wonderfully made; but as is the hand in the work of civilization, so is the ballot in the work of government. “Give me the ballot and I will move the world” may be the exclamation of the race despoiled of this right. There is nothing it cannot open with almost fabulous power, like that golden bough which in the hands of the classical adventurer unclosed the regions of another world, while, like that magic rod, it is renewed as in the verse,-- “One plucked away, a second branch you see Shoot forth in gold and glitter through the tree.”[190] If I crowd these illustrations, it is only that I may bring home that supreme efficacy which cannot be exaggerated. Though simple in character, there is nothing the ballot may not accomplish,--like the homely household lamp in Arabian story, which, at call of its possessor, evoked a spirit that did all things, from the building of a palace to the rocking of a cradle, and filled the air with an invisible presence. As protector it is of immeasurable power,--like a fifteen-inch Columbiad pointed from a Monitor. Ay, Sir, the ballot is the Columbiad of our political life, and every citizen who has it is a full-armed Monitor. * * * * *