“1. Let the general government refrain from all further legislation or interference on behalf of the negro as such. If riots arise that the State authorities cannot quell, the National Government, duly invoked, should interfere, to preserve the public peace; and also, if necessary, it should use the arm of power to sustain the courts in putting down injustice, outrage and wrong, by the arm of the law. But all this without making a point of caring for the negro in distinction from any other man; for the best way of caring for the negro is to cease to know him as a negro, and to treat him always and only as a man. Above all, should the government refrain from legislating upon social customs, instincts and prejudices. A legal injustice can be done away by law; a moral wrong, in the form of overt action, can be dealt with by law; but a taste, a sentiment, a feeling, an instinct, a prejudice—these pass the bounds of all legislation; and the attempt to rectify or regulate these by law serves only to irritate opposition. At these points human nature has much in common with the porcupine. “2. The black race should be taught that they are to depend upon themselves. Having freedom, schools, the rights of citizens guaranteed by law, and the inducement to self-culture presented by opportunities of political action, they should be made to feel that their future is in their own hands; that, if they would rise to a position of respect and of responsibility as men, they must show themselves to be men. There is no other way for any race. If they cannot do this, they must go under. If they will not do this, they ought to go under. But no one who knows the negro race in America can doubt, that with time on their side, and patience and justice toward them on the part of others, they will rise to the full measure of their opportunities, and, with their capacity for work, their docility, their kindliness, their adaptivity, their mirthfulness, their religious faith, will form as good a part as any in the social system of the future. Time, patience, justice, will cause the friction of races to disappear in the working of the American system of harmonized humanity.” * * * * * EXTRACTS FROM DR. PATTON’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS.