Our Duty to the Negro

He did not of his own motion make himself the issue of the civil war. Congressmen from the South and from New England discussed him, and worked themselves into a passion about him, which broke forth into a horrible contention of blood. In this contention he behaved himself with notable loyalty and service. He accepted the issues of the civil war as the settlement of a fear ful contention between the North and his Southern owners.He did not ask for the ballot. That was given to him by the white legislators of the nation. The use or misuse he may have made of the ballot was in obedience to the orders of those who passed the fifteenth amendment and made him a voter.In some of the Southern States the ballot has been taken from many of them, or, to be more accurate, constitutions have been so changed that only a small number of negroes can vote. This was done without their request, and those who have watched most closely the negroes to whom the ballot has been denied, must admit that they seem about as well satisfied not to vote as they were to vote.He had no choice in the matter of fixing his primary ideas of civilization. Beginning as a slave, he submitted to the ideas of his owner in those matters as well as in industrial matters. Under the laws of servitude which forced him to carry out the will of his owner, by a natural process he became an imitator of his master, and this easily became the method of his primary educa tion in civilization.