But it cannot be. When the negro was enfranchised, the South was condemned to solidity as surely as self-preservation is the first law of nature. A State here or there may drift away, but it will come back assuredly—and come through such travail, and bearing such burden, as neither war nor pestilence can bring. This problem is not of our seeking. It was thrust upon us not in the orderly unfolding of a preordained plan, but in hot impulse and passion, against the judgment of the world and the lessons of history, and to the peril of popular government, which rests at last on a pure and unsullied suffrage as a building rests on its cornerstone. If it be urged that it was the inexorable result of our course in 1860, we reply that we took that course in deliberation, maintained it in sincerity, sealed it with the blood of our best and bravest—and we accept without complaint, and abide in dignity, its direct and ultimate results, and shall hold it to be, in spite of defeat, forever honorable and sacred. This much I add. No king that ever sat on a throne, though backed by autocratic power, would have dared to subject his kingdom to the strain, and his people to the burden that the North put on the prostrate, impoverished, and helpless South when it enfranchised the body of our late slaves. We would not undo this if we could. We know that this step, though taken in haste, shall never be retraced. Posterity will judge of the wisdom and patriotism in which it was ordered, and the order and equity in which it was worked out. To that judgment we appeal with confidence. From that judgment Mr. Blaine has already appealed by shrewdly urging in his written history, that the North did not intend to enfranchise the negro, but was forced to do it by the stubborn attitude of the South. Be that as it may, it is our problem now, and with resolute hands and unfailing hearts we must carry it to the end. It dominates, and will dominate, all other issues with us. Political spoils are not to be considered. The administration of our affairs is secondary, and patronage is less. Economic issues are as naught, and even great moral reforms must wait on the settlement of this question. To quarrel over other issues while this is impending is to imitate the mother quail that thrums the leaves afar from her nest, or recall the finesse of the Spartan boy who smiled in his mother’s face while he hid the fox that was gnawing at his vitals.