"The makers of the Constitution, the amenders of the Constitution— that document subject to change, subject to being ignored, as has been the case—could never, under the enduring law, guarantee success plucked as an apple for each and every man who had not earned it. Gentlemen, talk not to me of the broad charity of this nation, or of its general justice to humanity. Call not this piece-work Constitution of ours, amended and subject to amendment, an approach to divine charity or wisdom. No; for in some of its effects it has proved to be the most cruel and unjust measure ever known in all human laws.
"It was cruel and unjust to whom? To us? To the white man? No, no. It was cruel in that it presented a title to success, to fitness and to survival unto eager, ignorant hands, and then by its own limitations snatched that title away from them again. It sought to do that which can not be done—to establish growth instead of the chance to grow. It was cruel. It was unjust. In the wisdom of a later day its patchwork form must once more be changed. It must be changed as a protection, no more against the former slaves of the South than against the future slaves of the North.
"Gentlemen, if that change could be effected to-morrow by the offering up of this life—of these lives now in your hands—I say these lives would be laid down gladly. Take them if you will. They are our pledge that we covet not lawlessness, but the law; our pledge that, having no law, we have been eager to act lawfully as we might. The reign of lawlessness and terror must end in this country. We must contrive some machinery of the law which shall command respect. We must not continually drag the name of the South—the name of America— in the mire of lawlessness. To do that is to smirch the flag—the one flag of America. But we denounce and will always denounce that false decree which says that black is white; that inequality is equality; that lack of manhood is manhood itself; that the absence of a hearthstone can mean a home; that the absence of the home can mean a permanent society.
"In the future the North, packed and crowded beyond endurance, with imported and herded white slaves who in time will demand the position of masters—as the blacks may legally demand that position here to- day—will pay her price for the right to make this plea. The South has already paid a thousand times for her right to make it to-day. With treasure she has paid for it; with roof-tree and hearth-tree she has paid it dear, and with the sacred tears of women. With the sacrifice of her own future she has paid for that right. But the South and the North belong together, not held apart by politics, but held together in brotherhood. In the name of all justice, let us hope that the South shall not be asked to pay the bitterest of all prices, the misunderstanding and the alienation of those whom she loves and would embrace as her brothers. Let us hope, in the name of mercy, if not of justice, that the South shall be understood as a region having a problem, a problem which is national, and not sectional, and not political. Let us in all fairness hope that our northern brothers will understand that the South is honest in her attempt to deal with that problem in her time, which is the time of to-day.
"Your Honor, I do not depart from my argument. I am not here for wild talk regarding the relations of the two races. It is the ages alone which will decide that problem. But I am here to stand for the law and not for lawlessness. I am here to say that our flag, the American flag, is for all men, and for America; not for Africa alone, or for Europe alone, but for America. It is the flag of progress, not the flag of anarchy. It is the banner of civilization and not of savagery. That, and not the banner of Africa or of Europe, must be our ensign to-day.
"Your Honor, and gentlemen, we are not here today to conclude that God set the white man over the black. We are to conclude simply that He set him apart from the black man. The divine right of slavery was an impiety, and, worst of all, an absurdity. The South made that mistake, and bitter has been the price of her folly. Yet the South, having sinned, paid the price of her sinning in all ways exacted of her. She accepted the ruling of the North, and, as a distinguished orator once said, surrendered 'bravely and frankly.' But she did not admit, and please God, never will admit, that those fresh from savagery should govern the white men, that they should institute the machinery of the law whereunder the white man must live.
"Gentlemen, you see before you, sardonically done, the fruits of the Black Justice. Is that the Law? If it be, then send us to our graves; for as that Black Justice formally exists to-day, Calvin Blount, and I, and these others, must go back to our fields or to our graves. Do you wish to send us to the latter? If you do, you send these other white men just as lawfully back to take up the hoe of labor, to bend their necks under the black yoke of African ignorance and savagery. Is that the Law? In my heart, gentlemen, I believe that those who say this is the law have not read the history of this country, do not understand the theory of this country, and can not speak for it unselfishly or honestly.
"Yet, gentlemen, that is the dilemma into which our brothers of the North would continually thrust us. Suppose that, casting about for some possible measure to free us from one point or the other of that dilemma, we should seek some legal compromise which would free us from the letter of this oppressive law of our national Constitution. Suppose there should be proposed some general and stern limitation of the franchise? Such an onerous qualification must needs apply to black and white alike. Who would be first to object to it? It would be the politicians of the North, who could not afford to exact even a prepaid poll-tax as a test for a vote. In time the North will need to free her white slaves, already turbulent and rebellious. In time she will have to pay for them, as we of the South have paid. After that great civil war which is yet to come, the men of the North may perhaps understand more fully the meaning of that phrase 'the manhood suffrage' and know that manhood means survival, that good manhood means the product of a good environment, a survival slowly and fitly won. By that time, North and South, perhaps, will know that the franchise should be as the bulwark of the law, not the destroyer of the law. Until that time, we of the South must continue to pay our part of the price of the national lawlessness; and we must continue, each commonwealth for itself as best it may, to enact laws which shall in part lessen the intolerable weight of that which we have set up as the idol of our national laws—that Constitution, which is impossible and not practicable, which is merciless instead of just, which is cruel instead of being kind, and most cruel to those whom it is thought to shelter. Meantime the South feels still the intolerable weight of that Constitution, the intolerable sting of the demand of her northern brothers, that she shall be asked to endure, in the name of this incubus, this body of the law, the continuous burglarizing of her honor and her prosperity—the burglarizing of the house of her society.
"We know that it is the chiefest of cruelty and unkindness, the chiefest of madness, to incite these poor and ignorant people—ever ready to follow the voice of sophistry or selfishness—to believe that their burglary of the house of success is right and reasonable; because it is certain that such burglary will be met in the South by the law, by the White Justice, and that, if need be, until either white or black man shall exist no more in this portion of America. Gentlemen, North and South owe it to America, America owes it to the world, that there be held aloft for our worship an image of the Law more honorable than this. Until that time of a more honorable image for our worship, there must perhaps go on the enormous folly of one portion of this nation asking another portion to destroy itself for the sake of an unworthy race. This demand, gentlemen, I take to be an actual treason to the law and to this country.
"The white man has won his rights—why? Because he was able to do so. He accords to any other race the same privilege. That is the law of survival; it is greater than any law of politics, greater than any statute law.