27 lu short, let us sum up the whole matter. The point at stake here is not a political inequality, but a social anathema. It is the quality of manhood that is denied ; it is the human dignity that is attacked. In a country in which all men vote, he who is excluded by his race from voting, is no longer a man ; or, if you prefer, he is an inferior man, branded with an indelible mark of incapacity, a pariah. The point in question here is much more than personal indignity, it is indignity to a race, that is to say, the most intolerable of insults. The placing of a race outside the law throughout the whole South—such is the proposition which it is dared to present to you. And let it not be said that the point in question is to advance by degrees, to accord their rights to the negroes gradually, to steer cautiously in a state of affairs in which it is impossible to be abrupt without peril. In such a matter, there is no middle position ; one is or is not a citizen. Moreover, place whatever conditions you please upon the exercise of the right of suffrage, it matters little, provided that these conditions are general, and that the whites are subject to them, the same as the blacks. Otherwise, slavery remains standing in part. Slavery is the negation of the common law. We almost always attempt to stop halfway in' our good deeds. In this manner, it seems admirable to many men to emancipate the negroes civilly without emancipating them politically. It remains to be known whether civil liberty is not in this wise suppressed and endangered. You will in vain have secured to the freedmen of the South the advantages of federal protection ; they will not the less remain bound in the daily conduct of life to the all-powerful wishes of those whites who, by virtue of the privileges of color, will alone enjoy the title and dignity of citizens. The whites alone will vote the taxes, and lay such burdens as they see fit upon the shoulders of the negroes. The whites alone will make the regulations of labor. The whites alone will decide whether the idleness of the negroes is not a
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