“The inquiry will be made why should the Negro move out of the Southern States? He will not except on his own volition. There is nothing in this bill which coerces him or compels him to move. My answer, however, is that it would be for his own good and for the good of his white neighbors also. It cannot have escaped the attention of the most casual observer that where the Negro remains in large masses and exceeds in numbers their white neighbors, they not only do not advance, but actually retrograde. It is not needful for any intelligent white man to read St. John’s dismal narrative of ‘The Black Republic of Hayti,’ or Bruce’s graphic story, ‘The plantation Negro as a Freeman,’ or Froude’s ‘Negro in the West Indies,’ to establish the truth of the proposition. On the other hand, observation and experience convince us, that in regions of the South, where the whites are largely in the majority, the Negro is better off and the white man is better off. The Negro dresses better and is more intelligent and thrifty and the white man is more prosperous and progressive.... It is conceded on all hands, that if the Negro is to attain the full stature of his manhood, if he is to become an independent self-reliant, self-respecting man, and be made fully competent to discharge all the high responsibilities and duties of life, he must finally rely upon himself, he must elevate himself in the moral social and industrial scale by his own exertions, by his own self-assertion. To do this effectually, he must have a fair chance in an open field. Can he be expected to accomplish this; can it be expected of him under the shadow and amid the scenes of dependence and inferiority which enshroud him in the surroundings of his former debased condition? Take him away from them and allow his pulse of freedom to throb unobstructed by the memories and associations of his servile bondage. I am not one of those who believe in the total, hopeless depravity of the Negro race. I believe that there are great possibilities in store for him. I do not undervalue the worth of the labor of the Negro in what was accomplished in the way of the material development of the South. All that I mean to say is but for that kind of labor, the South would have been far ahead of her present development.... Nor do I underestimate the obligations we are all under to the race for the fidelity and most praiseworthy conduct during our depleting civil strife. Whatever fate the future may have in store for him nothing can deprive the Negro of this record; nothing can destroy or obliterate the strong ties of affectionate kindness between him and his former owner.... I repeat Sir it is for his good and the good of his future generations, as well as the good of his former master and his descendants, that I would have him more generally distributed among the great mass of his white fellow citizens, from whose energy and thrift and enlightenment and