The black man would never have been freed from his chains of bondage had not a necessity arisen. God’s great opportunity comes on down the ages; let us be ready for it. He sees wrongs, and woes, and incomparable sufferings plead to Him for redress. The heavens are very still. The prayin’ ones hear no reply to their tears, their lamentations, their despairin’ cries. The heavens are very calm, and blue, and fur away. But at last man’s necessity, God’s great opportunity comes; the oppressors are driven into some corner by their own deeds, till the only way for them to get out in safety is to answer the prayers of centuries and let the oppressed go free. Man’s necessity has come; they endure plague after plague, and depend on their own strength and keep up their own proud wills, and harden their hearts, and refuse to answer the pleadings of justice. But bimeby the plagues increase, their troubles grow greater and greater, they encompass them about, there is no way out only to liberate the great throng that stands between them and safety. And bimeby, when there is a dead one in every house, and weepin’ is on every side, and the mourners go about the street, and the mountains are behind, and the sea in front, and there is no way out only to liberate the oppressed, why, then there is a “military necessity.” God’s opportunity has come. Rather than perish themselves they will let justice be done, let the oppressed go free. Now, here is another Egypt. A long-oppressed, ignorant race is set up too sudden as a ruler over an educated, intelligent, intolerant one, for in many places the white race is in the minority. But it will not yield to the misrule of ignorance. The white people are bitter, arrogant, and oppressive under their new conditions. The blacks, nursin’ their old and new wrongs, are burnin’ for vengeance on their oppressors. They will not suffer much longer and be still. A great struggle is impendin’. I spoze the Nation thinks—and it is naterel for anybody to think—that the black vote cannot be put down legally sence the right of suffrage wuz gin ’em. They think it couldn’t be taken from them for a long time without a war followin’; they think they would fight their way to the poles, and it would seem naterel that they should, sez I, and so sez Maggie. “Then what can be done?” sez Maggie; and then wuz the time that I sez, and I felt real riz up when I sez it: There is one thing that might be _tried_—give the ballot to the white women of the South, and to the black women too, if they can come up to the standpoint of intelligence. Let a certain amount of education and intelligence be the qualification to the ballot. This is your peaceful passin’ through the Red Sea of the present. The waves may stand up pretty high on each side; loud talk, and fears for womanly modesty, fears for man’s supremacy, fears for the dignity of the ballot will blow up pretty high waves on both sides.