“But what is the sum of our work? We have found out that in the general summing up the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hill-top and made it free to white and black.” “The relations of the Southern people with the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless women and children, whose husbands and fathers were fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty and devotion.” “But have we solved the problem he presents or progressed in honor and equity towards its solution? Let the record speak to this point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than the negroes of the South, none in fuller sympathy with the employing and land-owning class. He shares our school fund, has the fullest protection of our laws and the friendship of our people. Self-interest as well as honor demand that he should have this. Our future, our very existence, depend upon our working out this problem in full and exact justice. We understand that when Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, your victory was assured, for he then committed you to the cause of human liberty against which the arms of man cannot prevail, while those of our statesmen who made slavery the corner-stone of the Confederacy, doomed us to defeat, committing us to a cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in the light of advancing civilization.” “We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accepted as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in a toad’s head. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. Under the old régime the negroes were slaves to the South, the South was a slave to the system. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture, but leaving the body chill and colorless.”