Ever since the Negro was given the ballot he has, true to his teaching, steadily remained the ally of the party which gave it to him, following its lead with more than the obedience of the slave, and on all issues, in all times, opposing the respectable white element with whom he dwelt with a steadfast habitude which is only explicable on the ground of steadfast purpose. The phenomenon has been too marked to escape observation. The North has drawn from it the not unnatural inference that the Negro is oppressed by the White, and thus at once asserts his independence and attempts to obtain his rights. The South, knowing that he is not oppressed, draws therefrom the juster inference that he naturally, wilfully, and inevitably allies himself against the White simply upon a race line and stands, irrespective of reason, in persistent opposition to all measures which the White advocates. The North sees in the Negro’s attitude only the proper and laudable aspiration of a citizen and a man; the South detects therein a desire to dominate, a menace to all that the Anglo-American race has effected on this continent, and to the hopes in which that race established this nation. VI To ascertain which is the correct view it might be well at this point to examine the history of the Negro and his capacity as a citizen. In discussing this matter we are fortunately not relegated to the shadowy and uncertain domain of mere theory; the argument may be based on the firm and assured foundation of actual experience. In the first place, whatever a sentimental philanthropy may say; whatever a modern and misguided humanitarianism may declare, there underlies the whole matter the indubitable, potent, and mysterious principle of race quality. Ethnologically, historically, congenitally, the white race and the Negro differ widely. Slavery will not alone account for it all. In the recorded experience of mankind slavery—mere slavery—has not repressed intelligence; the bonds of the person, however tightly drawn, have not served to shackle the mind. Slavery existed among the Greeks, the Romans, the Phœnicians, among our own ancestors of the Teuton race: slavery as absolute, as inexorable as ever was African slavery. Indeed, under some of those systems there was absolute chattel slavery, which never existed with us, for the Greek and the Roman possessed over their slaves the absolute power of life and death; they might slay them as an exhibition for their guests, or might cast them into their fish-ponds as food for their lampreys.