And this General took Johnston’s sword in surrender! He looked upon the thin and ragged battalions in gray, that for four years had held his teeming and heroic legions at bay. Facing them, he read their courage in their depleted ranks, and gave them a soldier’s parole. When he found it in his heart to taunt these heroes with this threat, why—careless as he was twenty years ago with fire, he is even more careless now with his words. If we could hope that this problem would be settled within our lives I would appeal from neither madness nor unmanliness. But when I know that, strive as I may, I must at last render this awful heritage into the untried hands of my son, already dearer to me than my life, and that he must in turn bequeath it unsolved to his children, I cry out against the inhumanity that deepens its difficulties with this incendiary threat, and beclouds its real issue with inflaming passion. This problem is not only enduring, but it is widening. The exclusion of the Chinese is the first step in the revolution that shall save liberty and law and religion to this land, and in peace and order, not enforced on the gallows or at the bayonet’s end, but proceeding from the heart of an harmonious people, shall secure in the enjoyment of these rights, and the control of this republic, the homogeneous people that established and has maintained it. The next step will be taken when some brave statesman, looking Demagogy in the face, shall move to call to the stranger at our gates, “Who comes here?” admitting every man who seeks a home, or honors our institutions, and whose habit and blood will run with the native current; but excluding all who seek to plant anarchy or to establish alien men or measures on our soil; and will then demand that the standard of our citizenship be lifted and the right of acquiring our suffrage be abridged. When that day comes, and God speed its coming, the position of the South will be fully understood, and everywhere approved. Until then, let us—giving the negro every right, civil and political, measured in that fullness the strong should always accord the weak—holding him in closer friendship and sympathy than he is held by those who would crucify us for his sake—realizing that on his prosperity ours depends—let us resolve that never by external pressure, or internal division, shall he establish domination, directly or indirectly, over that race that everywhere has maintained its supremacy. Let this resolution be cast on the lines of equity and justice. Let it be the pledge of honest, safe and impartial administration, and we shall command the support of the colored race itself, more dependent than any other on the bounty and protection of government. Let us be wise and patient, and we shall secure through its acquiescence what otherwise we should win through conflict, and hold in insecurity.