For the last fifteen years what have we known of the South, especially of the blacks? What steps have we taken to ascertain the actual truth regarding four millions of negroes whom we suddenly railroaded into our political system? When the General Government wished to obtain facts concerning the geological, botanical and mineral character of the Western territory, it sent out experts skilled in examining, testing, classifying and surveying. These men were kept in the field for years, and their reports fill a score of volumes, and now we know something about the plains and the mountains. For the intricate social questions of the South, that vast tract of unknown land, that section of the Dark Continent in America, we have neither expert or surveyor, or intelligent process of examination, though the demands for accuracy in social science are as imperative as in physical. Visiting statesmen have been there. But was a visiting statesman ever known to report a fact which hurt his party? Northern men who are in the South for the purpose of getting office will not tell the truth, because it may bear against them. Southern men, as a rule, do not report the real facts, because they are prejudiced. Northern men who have become prosperous in business at the South, long since discovered that silence was golden, and their lips are sealed to the public. The testimony of the blacks is the most unreliable of all for reasons which will be given hereafter. The poor Northern men who have failed to make a fortune in the South have a grievance, and cannot be trusted. It is upon the newspaper correspondent that the North has relied mainly for information. But he is always under limitations. One of them (whom you all know by reputation) said to me—“We correspondents are not sent here to find out the actual truth, but to support the theories of the papers which send us. It won’t do for me to say in my letters that the nigger is to blame, when the editorial columns of my paper say the white men are in the wrong.” The newspaper makes its theory first, or it inherits a theory, and then sends out for facts to fit it. Does not every one know beforehand how every daily paper in this city will treat any given political event? The best sources of information regarding the blacks are his educators. These men, all of them from the North, know something about the negro. Though little enough as yet, Congress has never asked these teachers to tell what they know about him. Facts regarding the lives or the motives of men are not obvious. The newspaper correspondent cannot reach them in an hour, or even in a year. I have been personally familiar with a number of events in the South. I have never known one of these to be correctly reported. Has any lawyer of this city ever known one of his cases to be reported accurately in the daily press? Truth seems to be in a deep well everywhere. The _Herald_ says Edison’s light is a great success. The _Nation_ is doubtful about it.