First. He may adopt a policy of total indifference. He may shut his eyes to the fact that in all of the Gulf States political rights of colored citizens are literally stamped out; that the Constitution which he has solemnly sworn to support and enforce is under the feet of the mob; that in those States there is no such thing as a fair election and an honest count. He may utterly refuse to interfere by word or deed for the enforcement of the Constitution and for the protection of the ballot, and let the Southern question drift whithersoever it will, to a port of safety or to a rock of disaster. He will probably be counselled to pursue the course of President Hayes, but I hope he will refuse to follow it. The reasons which supported that policy do not exist in the case of a Democratic President. Mr. Hayes made a virtue of necessity. He had fair warning that not a dollar or a dime would be voted by a Democratic Congress if the army were kept in the South. The cry of the country was against what was called bayonet rule. Secondly. The President may pursue a temporizing policy; keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the heart, a half-hearted, a neither hot nor cold, a good Lord and good devil policy. He may try to avoid giving offence to any, and thus succeed in pleasing none; a policy which no man or party can pursue without inviting and earning the scorn and contempt of all honest men and of all honest parties. Thirdly. He may decide to accept the Mississippi plan of conducting elections at the South; encourage violence and crime; elevate to office the men whose hands are reddest with innocent blood; force the negroes out of Southern politics by the shot-gun and the bulldozer’s whip; cheat them out of the elective franchise; suppress the Republican vote; kill off their white Republican leaders, and keep the South solid; and keep its one hundred and fifty-three electoral votes--obtained thus by force, fraud, and red-handed violence--ready to be cast for a Democratic candidate in 1888. This might be acceptable to a certain class of Democrats at the South, but the Democrats of the North would abhor and denounce it as a bloody and hell-black policy. It would hurl the party from power in spite of the solid South, and keep it out of power another four and twenty years. Fourthly. He may sustain a policy of absolute fidelity to all the requirements of the Constitution as it is, and, as John Adams said of the Declaration of Independence, he may bravely say to the South and to the nation: “Sink or swim, survive or perish, I am for the Constitution in all its parts! I will be true to my oath, and I will, to the best of my ability, and to the fullest extent of my power, defend, protect, and maintain the rights of all citizens, without regard to race or color.”