A COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM IRRESPECTIVE OF COLOR.
Letter to the Colored Citizens of Washington, July 29, 1873.
Washington, July 29, 1873.
GENTLEMEN,—I am honored by your communication of July 26th, in which, after congratulating me upon returning health, and expressing your sincere hopes that I may resume my labors in the Senate, there to take up again the cause of Equal Rights, you mention that the colored citizens of Washington are now engaged in agitating what you properly call “a common-school system for all children.”
I desire to thank you for the good-will to myself which your communication exhibits, and for your hopes that I may again in the Senate take up the cause of Equal Rights. Health itself is valuable only as it enables us to perform the duties of life, and I know no present duty more commanding than that to which you refer.
I confess a true pleasure in learning that the colored people are at last rising to take the good cause into their own hands, because through them its triumph is certain. But they must be in earnest. They must insist and labor, then labor and insist again. Only in this way can indifference, which is worse even than the stubbornness of opposition, be overcome. The open foe can be met. It is hard to deal with that dulness which feels no throb at the thought of opening to all complete equality in the pursuit of happiness.
Permit me to remind you, Gentlemen, that, living at the national capital, you have a peculiar responsibility. In the warfare for Equal Rights you are the advance guard, sometimes the forlorn hope. You are animated to move forward, not only for your own immediate good, but because through you the whole colored population of the country will be benefited. What is secured for you will be secured for all,—while, if you fail, there is small hope elsewhere. Do not forget—and let this thought arouse to increased exertion—that your triumph will redound to the good of all.
The District of Columbia is the place where all the great reforms born of the war have begun. It is the experimental garden and nursery where all the generous plants have been tried. Emancipation, colored suffrage, the right of colored persons to testify, and the right to ride in the street-cars,—all these began here, and I remember well how they were all encountered.