These facts, this serious aspect of affairs, and the palpable inefficiency of temporary remedies, are awakening the North to a fresh sense of responsibility and to the use of thorough remedies. One evidence of this is found in the turning tide of political affairs. A still more ominous one is foreshadowed in the enthusiasm gathered around the flag of the Union. In 1872 Charles Sumner—zealous Union man as he was—moved in the Senate that the names of victories in our civil war should not be inscribed on our national regimental flags, and in the decline of public interest those flags lay neglected in the cases where they were deposited. But a few weeks since the State of Connecticut removed her flags from the State Arsenal to the new Capitol in Hartford, when, lo, ten thousand veteran survivors and one hundred thousand spectators, making the grandest popular demonstration ever witnessed in the State, assembled to bear those flags with honor to their new resting place. I believe in the power of the ballot, and I revere the flag, but I want to raise my humble voice in warning against expecting too much from elections, and against the terrible effects of an appeal to arms. Has not the nation awaited with anxiety many times for election returns only to be disappointed in the permanent effects, and have we not felt enough of the dread evils of war to stand aghast at the thought of its renewal? Let me use the words of Paul and say, “Behold, I show you a more excellent way.” I present three pictures: The _first_ shows a gathering of colored people peacefully assembled to promote their political welfare. But see that rush of armed men, the brief unequal struggle, and the flight of those who met only to exercise a constitutional right. In the background of the picture is a jail broken open and the venerable Judge Chisholm and his little son clinging to his knees, and his heroic daughter endeavoring to shield her father, all butchered in cold blood. In that background is another scene. That strong man, the leader of Ku Klux bands, whose hands are dyed with the blood of innocent colored men, and who could show the medal which the grateful South had given him, is himself murdered in open day, because he dared to announce himself not as a Republican, but as an independent candidate for office. The worst of all is that there is no legal remedy for these crimes. The National Government cannot reach them with punishment, and the State governments will not. They can only be tried in Southern courts and before Southern juries, and these have acquitted the murderer of the Chisholm father and children and refuse to try Barksdale for the Yazoo murder. Thus does the South make itself solid, and wipe out in blood the least traces of dissent from its supremacy. The North is moved by all this—indignant, determined, and well it may be; for what now avails the four years of war and the fourteen years of attempt at justice and conciliation?