Maltreat the negro as you may, he is nevertheless American to the core and he will follow the flag wheresoever it leads, Santiago and San Juan Hill he will rush upon to the inspiring strains of “Yankee Doodle” and “The Star Spangled Banner,” insensible to every danger. Socially ostracise the negro, make rules that bar him from the orders of Masonry, Odd Fellowship and the many American institutions and he will immediately turn up possessed of signs, tokens and passwords of these orders, fully caparisoned and equipped, bound to be an American. The curled lips, flat nose and crispy wool, which were such powerful arguments against the negro in our Boston editor’s mind, need not be taken into account when the flag is endangered or its supremacy to be upheld. He had shown the quality of his mind by coming out first in many a college contest; the deftness of his fingers proven whenever an opportunity has been given him. The wage paid him has gone into circulation again for things distinctively American, his savings invested in an American home and not hoarded up to be sent abroad to enrich other countries. The doctrines of Spiess, Parsons and Herr Most have never found lodgment in a negro breast, and should the day ever come that Beacon Hill or Murray Hill shall be threatened by the disciples of anarchy, the sword of the commonwealth may be placed in the hands of every negro, without question, for the salvation of our institutions, pure and simple, as handed down from the earliest days of the republic; and it may again be said, as of old, that “the stone which the builders rejected had become the chief corner stone of the temple.” Indeed, the negro has shown that he possesses all the qualities that render a people readily assimilable into the body politic, and he has shown these qualities under most adverse circumstances; workshops closed to him, despised, proscribed socially, absolutely barred and deprived of all those helps accorded all other races by the American people, he has nevertheless risen to the full dignity of a most trusted and intelligent citizen, only too eager, possibly, to be found foremost in expressions and acts of patriotic devotion. So well has he succeeded that he can afford to rest his case, feeling assured that the people will in the end deal justly by him. He has reached that exalted place of life which prompts him not to unjustly criticise other races anxious, like himself, to become a part of this great nation; nor to make any odious comparisons unless compelled in his own defense when unjustly assailed. His home is wherever the American flag is unfurled and he will cheerfully give his whole self to the development of every inch of territory acquired by his government. * * * * * Transcriber’s Notes: ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.