36 accept, without a frown, your general conditions—elementary knowledge or property, it matters little. Nevertheless, we have the right, perhaps, to maintain that the negroes, as a body, are less incompetent than certain classes of whites who play an important part in the elections of your large cities. Are those immigrants that Europe sends you, and that are so speedily transformed among you into citizens, always more enlightened, more moral, and more independent, than the blacks of the South, attached to their church, to their family, and even to the ground which they have cultivated under a master ? I content myself with putting the question. There is another question which I will not put—for whom would the Southern negroes vote ? I almost say that it troubles me little, for the greatness of the principle here effaces the more or less striking imperfections of its application ; then, because I have at the bottom the absolute certainty that, the first moment of hesitation and fear passed, the negroes would constitute in the South a loyal element of indisputable value. Men amuse themselves by terrifying us. “ These negroes will be instruments ! They will all vote for their old masters.” On the first day perhaps. In spite of federal surveillance, intimidation might do its work. “Vote as I do, or I will take away your work. Vote as I do, or I will render your subsistence impossible.” But the independence of the negroes is more real than is affirmed ; in proportion as they become accustomed to act as citizens, in proportion as the number of their votes increases, this independence will not fail to be strengthened. I shall never forget, for my part, that the South, so sure of its slaves, never dared to put a musket in their hands. Nothin" was easier, it was said at that time, than to launch them against the Yankees. But, even at the moment when there were no more able-bodied men, when old men and children were levied, we did not see a single negro regiment appear in the ranks at Richmond. At the same epoch, slaves by hundreds of thousands were braving frightful perils in order to attain liberty. And even
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