A survivor of the generation which read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as it week by week appeared,--fresh to-day from Massachusetts with its Lawrence race issues of a different character, I feel a sense of satisfaction in discussing here in South Carolina this question and issue in a spirit the reverse of dogmatic, a spirit purely scientific, observant and sympathetic. And in this connection let me say I well remember repeatedly discussing it with your fellow-citizen and my friend, Colonel Alexander Haskell, to whom I have already made reference. Rarely have I been more impressed by a conclusion reached and fixed in the mind of one who to the study of a problem had obviously given much and kindly thought. As those who knew him do not need to be told, Alexander Cheves Haskell was a man of character, pure and just and thoughtful. He felt towards the African as only a Southerner who had himself never been the owner of slaves can feel. He regarded him as of a less advanced race than his own, but one who was entitled not only to just and kindly treatment but to sympathetic consideration. When, however, the question of the future of the Afro-American was raised, as matter for abstract discussion, it was suggestive as well as curious to observe the fixed, hard expression which immediately came over Haskell's face, as with stern lips, from which all suggestion of a smile had faded away, he pronounced the words:--"Sir, it is a dying race!" To express the thought more fully, Colonel Haskell maintained, as I doubt not many who now listen to me will maintain, that the nominal Afro-American increase, as shown in the figures of the national census, is deceptive,--that in point of fact, the Ethiop in America is incurring the doom which has ever befallen those of an inferior and less advanced race when brought in direct and immediate contact, necessarily and inevitably competitive, with the more advanced, the more masterful, and intellectually the more gifted. In other words, those of the less advanced race have a fatal aptitude for contracting the vices, both moral and physical, of the superior race, in the end leading to destruction; while the capacity for assimilating the elevating qualities and attributes which constitute a saving grace is denied them. Elimination, therefore, became in Haskell's belief a question of time only,--the law of the survival of the fittest would assert itself. The time required may be long,--numbered by centuries; but, however remotely, it nevertheless would come. God's mill grinds slowly, but it grinds uncommon small; and, I will add, its grinding is apt to be merciless.