CONCLUSION.
We have thus spread out the present condition of the freedmen, before the American people. It is a plain case for the former, and not a hard one for the latter.
The whole question of emigration, as it now stands, lies in three propositions, one of which every freedman must choose.
1. He must remain, as he is, under the political trinity of despotism; be denied the free ballot, conferred upon him by the amendments to the United States Constitution; be forced to vote for the despotism that crushes him, already deserted by the government he fought to save, and which is constitutionally bound to protect him in his political rights and Christian privileges; or,
2. He must, vi et armis, maintain those rights against rebel despotism, with the "Federal bayonets" in rebel hands, and the power to send the army to the Indians or the devil; or,
3. He must, quietly, if he can, forcibly, if he must, emigrate to the public lands in the West, pre-empt a farm, and enjoy the rights of citizenship under a republican form of government, of which he is an integral part, and be represented in Congress by one elected by a majority of legal voters, and not by a minority of rebels, as is now the case in large Republican districts in the Southern States.
For obvious reasons, we pray the freedmen, in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to the last proposition, and in every county and town where their political rights are ignored by a rebel Democracy, let them form colonies under a chosen leader and emigrate West. If they cannot go without assistance, let that fact be communicated to us, and we will appeal to the people of the North to furnish them the means to do so.
It will be readily perceived that the converse of all this will be, that the landed aristocracy of the South must pay their laborers honest wages, recognize their constitutional rights as citizens of this Republic, acknowledge the ownership of their capital, which means the fruits of their labor (land and labor being co-operative capital, neither being available or profitable without the other), or, otherwise, the land-owners must submit to the loss of their laborers by emigration, perform their own labor, or employ foreign emigrants.