The maximum of persecution of the Negro in recent years does not equal the misery of slavery. Even if all the lynchings and burnings and humiliations and disabilities be put together they do not add up to one year of servitude. Most Negroes understand that. They know that no matter what may be the vicissitudes they pass through they are still progressing to an ever fuller freedom. In viewing the whole situation one is apt to underestimate the unhappiness of slavery and to magnify the unhappiness of the present era of freedom. It is blessed to be free. Even to be the worst possible peon is far removed from slavery. The great significance of the Emancipation is that the Negro slaves were set free—free for anything and everything in the wide world. In the prison house of a national institution of slavery there was no hope, no sense of the ultimate possibilities latent in a man. But with freedom every baby became a potential Alexander. In 1863 a new life began to germinate, began to have promise. Some thought that it must show forth at once. But that was fallacious. It was bound to spend a long time underground before the first modest shoots of the new should appear. Many have argued that the Negro would come to nothing in his freedom, and even those who have believed in his destiny have been impatient. Premature greetings have been given time and oft to new Negro culture and responsibility. The only criticism made here is that they were premature. The greatest of these was the suffrage. I have said that the denial of the Negro his legitimate vote is a part of peonage, and I have also said that it was wrong to give the freed-men votes at once. I should like to explain how Negro suffrage stands to-day.