Resolved, therefore, that we strive for all happiness whatsoever, which may be fairly won. A good name and a level glance from those around us are essentials of happiness. If that is social equality, then, resolved that we strive for social equality. "This," says Cable, "is a fool’s dream." If so let us not shrink along with Christ, to be called fools. Once past slavery there is no insuperable barrier between us and freedom. Where is this line between civil and private rights? Is not the path from one to the other continuous? Workshops and offices, public conveyances, the theatre, hotels and restaurants, apartment-houses, the boarding table, barber-shops and bath rooms, the public school and college, the scientific society, the church, the alumni dinner, the church sociable—in city, town and village:—what are these but the way to the home?⁸ There is an upward slope from slavery, where a man is a thing, to freedom, where a man is a man. Millions, the better part of mankind, live and die on the hill-side; but all push on, as long as hope and manhood survive. That those above should acknowledge the brotherhood of those below and descend to help them is not to be generally expected; for that requires such love of their fellows as few possess. It _is foolish_ then to _demand_ the concession of social equality; but it is quite as _cowardly_ to give up obtaining it, as long as an upward way exists. That the path is open is proved by the cry of those who hate us: Turn the hill-side into a precipice,—slavery is the only alternative to equality; build an unscalable wall of caste founded upon the color of the skin, the lowest white man by law and force raised higher than the highest black. Yes, the first of all our resolutions must be this one, to strive for social equality. ⁸ That public conveyances come within the social sphere is asserted by Burgess: Reconstruction and the Constitution pp. 150—— "During the winter and spring of 1867-8 the work of these conventions went on under the greatest extravagance and incompetence of every kind. (The constitutions which came from them provided for complete equality in civil rights, and *in some cases, in advantages of a social character, such as equal privileges in public conveyances etc."*)