“And lost in triumphant thoughts of what they had done, they did not heed this truth, that instead of peace hovering down upon the borders of the fair Southern land, they had blindly and ignorantly, no doubt, let loose the bitter, corroding, wearing curse of animosity and ignorant misrule. “Yes, those wise men had launched these turbulent spirits instead of peace on the heads of the free and enlightened, if bigoted white people of the South, and upon the black race. “And never stopped to think, so it would seem, whether three millions strong of an ignorant, superstitious, long-degraded people, the majority of whom could not read nor write, and were ignorant of the first principles of truth and justice, could suddenly be lifted up to become the peers, and in many cases the superiors, of a cultured and refined people who had had long ages of culture and education behind them, and, above all, class prejudices. “They never paused to ask themselves whether it was in reality just to the white race, or whether this superior class would quietly submit to the legal equality and rule of the inferior. “The difficulty of this problem did not seem to strike them, whether by any miracle the white race would at once forget its pride and its prejudices. “Whether by a legal enactment a peacock could be made to change its plumage for the sober habit of a dove, or an eagle develop the humility of a snail. “The wise men expected to do more than this, and failed. “And they never seemed to ponder this side of the question: Whether it was not cruelty to the weaker class to thus raise up to a greater strength the prejudice and animosity of the dominant race. “And whether this premature responsibility they had caused them to assume was not as cruel as to put knives and rifles into the hands of babies, and send them out to fight a battle with giants—fight or die. [Illustration: “I SOT DEMUTE.” ] “And so these wise men, having done their best, it would seem, to rouse the blind passions and intensify the ignorant prejudice and class hatred of the blacks, sit at their ease. “And so the farce has been played out before a pitying heaven, and has been for a quarter of a century, growing more pitiful to look at year by year. “The farce of slave and tyrant masquerading in the robes of liberty and equality, and the poor Northern zealot playing well his part with a fool’s cap and bells. The weak crushed and trodden under foot, the strong shot down by secret violence—murder, rapine, and misrule taking the part of law, and both races swept along to their ruin like a vision of the night.”