Where are the defenders of the Constitution? What hand in House or Senate; what voice in court or Cabinet is uplifted to stay this tide of violence, blood, and barbarism? Neither governors, presidents, nor statesmen have yet declared that these barbarities shall be stopped. On the contrary, they all confess themselves powerless to protect our class; and thus you and I and all of us are struck down, and bloody treason flourishes over us. In view of this confessed impotency of the Government and this apparent insensibility of the nation to the claims of humanity, do you ask me why I expend my time and breath in denouncing these wholesale murders when there is no seeming prospect of a favorable response? I answer in turn, how can you, how can any man with a heart in his breast do otherwise when, louder than the blood of Abel, the blood of his fellow-men cries from the ground? “Shall tongues be mute when deeds are wrought Which well might shame extremest hell? Shall freeman lock the indignant thought? Shall mercy’s bosom cease to swell? Shall honor bleed, shall truth succumb, Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb? By all around, above, below, Be ours the indignant answer, No!” In a former address, delivered on the occasion of this anniversary, I was at the pains of showing that much of the crime attributed to colored people, and for which they were held responsible, imprisoned, and murdered, was, in fact, committed by white men disguised as negroes. I affirm that all presumptions in courts of law and in the community were against the negro, and that color was the safest disguise a white man could assume in which to commit crime; that all he had to do to commit the worst crimes with impunity was to blacken his face and take on the similitude of a negro, but even this disguise sometimes fails. Only a few days ago a Mr. J. H. Justice, an eminent citizen of Granger county, Tenn., attempted under this disguise to commit a cunningly devised robbery and have his offence fixed upon a negro. All worked well till a bullet brought him to the ground and a little soap and water was applied to his face, when he was found to be no negro at all, but a very respectable white citizen.