30 right of suffrage, the negro will remain exposed to many affronts ; the exercise of the best recognised rights will meet obstacles difficult to surmount ; and for some time, a special protection will be necessary; but this protection, powerless without the equality of the races, will acquire sudden efficacy by their recognized equality. For the protection of a race, it is necessary to find some point on which to rest. If the common law is absolutely in default, it will be in vain to multiply material aid, careful surveillance, and scholarly resources ; (and God knows that it will not be easy to introduce all these afterwards into the Southern states readmitted without conditions ;) it will be in vain to interpose between the former masters and the former slaves ; this distant and tardy action will never supply the lack of human dignity or take the place of self-respect. Take away suffrage, and temporary guardianship is but one more illusion added to so many others—an illusion that re-assures the conscience without modifying facts and wards off remorse without preventing injustice. If you wish to protect the blacks, and it will be necessary, I repeat, for some time to do so, do not begin by abandoning and degrading them, but, on the contrary, by opening to them, however prudently, the doors of the common law. Make them citizens, if you would not have them Helots. To degrade a race is a social crime, for which there is no comparison. He who degrades a man, depraves him. There is, at the bottom of the question of suffrage, a whole problem of elevation or decline, of morality or corruption. Those who know the worth of the soul, will understand what I say. Let us be sincere and earnest; in pursuing the abolition of slavery, you have not desired the suppression of the word, but the suppression of the fact. Now do you think that the South regards the fact as lost beyond redemption ? Is it not evident that it is about to seek to retain it as far as possible ? If, by a bold stroke (and not less prudent than bold), you do not hasten to put an end without it to a fatal state of affairs, are you not conscious that it will remain faithful to its convictions and traditions, that is, to the traditions of slavery ?
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