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A PROBLEM.
A PROBLEM.
CONTEST ORATION BY W. Y. MORGAN, OF THE OREAD SOCIETY.
--that of violence, or known a principle of government save that enforced by the lash. What shall be done with the negro? is a problem which for fifteen years our statesmen have striven to answer. The attempt made by force to blot out the color line, almost indelible by long-continued existence, failed. Legislation has not worked out the remedy for the wrong. Suffrage has not atoned for the injury. The root of the evil is yet untouched; the axe to lay it bare is education. A ballot placed in the negro's hand gives him the power of making himself felt. And if that ballot be intelligent and upright, his elevation must follow and prejudice be swept away. No line can be drawn between men of worth because of a difference in a shade of color.
When the founders of our republic were deliberating over the constitution, a question occupied their attention which became for nearly a century a standing menace to the Union. In all the colonies slavery was practiced or recognized. Yet all agreed that the system was radically wrong. But in deference to the conservative spirit of the convention and from a desire to secure the adoption of the constitution, this matter was passed by and referred to the decision of the several States.
O, patriot fathers, could you have known the effects of this fatal omission, how different might have been many pages of our history! But the little cloud, just emerging from the horizon, was not noticed, and years afterward the tempest, bursting with pent-up fury, shook the state to its very foundation.
The desire for gain kept the eyes of onehalf of the country closed to its action. Slave labor was profitable. It brought wealth and power. It silenced conscience. But at last the awakening came; and after four years of civil war the error of the fathers was corrected. Four million slaves became freemen, citizens, voters. They learn the truth of Whittier's lines:
The ballot, though it fall as still
As snowflakes on the frozen sod,
Yet executes a freeman's will!
As lightning does the will of God."
Our power of assimilation is great. Multitudes of the oppressed and ignorant of the old world seek our shores, mingle with a free people, and are clothed with the purple of citizenship. Such is the story of a century. Emigration results not in apparent injury. But here are four millions of an entirely different race, for generations kept in abject slavery, who have never felt a restraining influence except
"But this will take time." Yes; the work of centuries can not be reversed in a day, or a year, or a generation. We must atone for our father's faults as well as enjoy their perfections. The tares must be reaped along with the grain. A long bloody war gave the negro freedom. But to stop here is criminal. We did but justice when we unloosed the shackles we had placed upon him, and the negro stood forth in Heaven's sunlight, a freeman.
"Before man made them citizens.
Great Nature made them men."
And in accordance with the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the black man, as well as the white, must be protected in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Self-protection demands that we give him every opportunity to rise to a higher level, to become a useful, a worthy citizen of this great republic.
The character of the negro is simple, almost childish. He is swayed by his passions rather than by his judgment. He
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