Now, the position to which these gentlemen invite us is one of neutrality between the two great political parties, and to vote with either, or against either, according to the prevailing motive when the time for action shall arrive. In the interval we are to have no standing with either party, and have no active influence in shaping the policy of either, but we are to stand alone, and hold ourselves ready to serve one or to serve the other, or both, as we may incline at the moment.
With all respect to these political doctors, I must say that their remedy is no remedy at all. No man can serve two masters in politics any more than in religion. If there is one position in life more despicable in the eyes of man, and more condemned by nature than another, it is that of neutrality. Besides, if there is one thing more impossible than another, it is a position of perfect neutrality in politics. Our friends, Fortune, Downing, and others, flatter themselves that they have reached this perfection, but they are utterly mistaken. No man can read their utterances without seeing their animus of hate to the Republican party, and their preference for the Democratic party. The fault is not so much in their intention, as in their position. They can neither act with nor against the two parties impartially. They are compelled by their position to either serve the one and oppose the other, and they cannot serve or oppose both alike. Independence, like neutrality, is also impossible. If the colored man does not depend upon the Republican party, he will depend upon the Democratic party, and if he does neither, he becomes a nonentity in American politics. But these gentlemen do, in effect, ask us to break down the power of the Republican party, when to do it is to put the Government in the hands of the Democratic party. Colored men are already in the Republican party, and to come out of it is to defeat it.
For one, I must say that the Democratic party has as yet given me no sufficient reasons for doing it any such service, nor has the Republican party sunk so low that I must abandon it for its great rival. With all its faults it is the best party now in existence. In it are the best elements of the American people, and if any good is to come to us politically it will be through that party.
I must cease to remember a great many things and must forget a great many things before I can counsel any man, colored or white, to join the Democratic party, or to occupy a position of neutrality between that party and the Republican party. Such a position of the colored people of this country will prove about as comfortable as between the upper and nether millstone. Those of our number now posing as Independents are doing better service to the Democratic party under the Independent mask than they could do if they came out honestly for the Democratic party.
I am charged with commending the inaugural address of President Cleveland. I am not ashamed of that charge. I said at the time that no better words for the colored citizen had dropped from the east portico of the Capitol since the days of Lincoln and Grant, and I say so still. I did not say, as my traducer lyingly asserts, that Mr. Cleveland said better words than Lincoln or Grant. But it would not have suited the man who left Washington with malice in his heart and falsehood in his throat to be more truthful in Petersburg than in Washington. This malcontent accuser seeks to make the impression that those who thought and spoke well of the inaugural address did so from selfish motives, and from a desire to get or retain office. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” “With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, the same shall be measured to you again.” He ought to remember, however, that a serpent without a fang, a scorpion without a sting, has no more ability to poison than a lie which has lost its ability to deceive has to injure. It so happens that we had two Presidents and one Vice-President prior to President Cleveland, and I challenge my ambitious and envious accuser to find any better word for the colored citizens of this country in the inaugural addresses of either than is found in the inaugural address of President Cleveland. I also beg my accuser to remember that I gave no pledge that Mr. Cleveland would be able to live up to the sentiments of that address, but, on the contrary I doubted even the probability of his success in doing so. I gave him credit, however, for an honest purpose, and expressed a hope that he might be able to do as well and better than he promised. But I saw him in the rapids and predicted that they would be too strong for him. Did this look like seeking favor? He did a brave thing in removing from office an abettor of murder in Mississippi. He has expressed in a private way, to Messrs. Bruce and Lynch, his reprobation of the recent massacres at Carrollton, and for this we thank him. But he has done nothing in his position as Commander-in-chief of the army and navy to put a stop to such horrors. I am quite sure that he abhors violence and bloodshed. He has shown this in his publicly spoken words in behalf of persecuted and murdered Chinamen; he should do the same for the persecuted and murdered black citizens of Mississippi. He could threaten the law-breakers and murderers of the West with the sword of the nation, why not the South? If it was right to protect and defend the Chinese, why not the negro? If in the days of slavery the army could be used to hunt slaves, and suppress slave insurrections, why, in the days of liberty, may it not be used to enforce rights guaranteed by the Constitution? Alas! fellow-citizens, there is no right so neglected as the negro’s right. There is no flesh so despised as the negro’s flesh. There is no blood so cheap as the negro’s blood. I have been saying these things to the American people for nearly fifty years. In the order of nature I cannot say them much longer; but, as was said by another, “though time himself should confront me, and shake his hoary locks at my persistence, I shall not cease while life is left me, and our wrongs are unredressed, to thus cry aloud and spare not.”
Fellow-citizens, I am disappointed. The accession of the Democratic party to power has not been followed by the results I expected. When the tiger has quenched his thirst in blood, and when the anaconda has swallowed his prey, they cease to pursue their trembling game and sink to rest; so I thought when the Democratic party came into power, when the solid South gave law to the land, when there could no longer be any pretence for the fear of negro ascendency in the councils of the nation, persecution, violence, and murder would cease, and the negro would be left in peace; but the bloody scenes at Carrollton, and the daily reports of lynch law in the South, have destroyed this cherished hope and told me that the end of our sufferings is not yet.
But, fellow-citizens, I do not despair, and no power that I know of can make me despair of the ultimate triumph of justice and liberty in this country. I have seen too many abuses outgrown, too many evils removed, too many moral and physical improvements made, to doubt that the wheels of progress will still roll on. We have but to toil and trust, throw away whiskey and tobacco, improve the opportunities that we have, put away all extravagance, learn to live within our means, lay up our earnings, educate our children, live industrious and virtuous lives, establish a character for sobriety, punctuality, and general uprightness, and we shall raise up powerful friends who shall stand by us in our struggle for an equal chance in the race of life. The white people of this country are asleep, but not dead. In other days we had a potent voice in the Senate which awoke the nation.
Ireland now has an advocate in the British Senate who has arrested the eye and ear of the civilized world in championing the cause of Ireland. There is to-day in the American Senate an opportunity for an American Gladstone; one whose voice shall have power to awake this nation to the stupendous wrongs inflicted upon our newly-made citizens and move the Government to a vindication of our constitutional rights. We have in other days had a Sumner, a Wilson, a Chase, a Conkling, a Thaddeus Stevens, and a Morton. These did not exhaust the justice and humanity of American statesmanship. There is heart and eloquence still left in the councils of the nation, and these will, I trust, yet make themselves potent in having both the Constitution of 1789 and the Constitution with the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments made practically the law of the land for all the people thereof.