Let the white people of the North and South conquer their prejudices.
Let the Northern press and pulpit proclaim the gospel of truth and justice against the war now being made upon the Negro.
Let the American people cultivate kindness and humanity.
Let the South abandon the system of mortgage labour and cease to make the Negro a pauper, by paying him dishonest scrip for his honest labour.
Let them give up the idea that they can be free while making the Negro a slave. Let them give up the idea that to degrade the coloured man is to elevate the white man. Let them cease putting new wine into old bottles, and mending old garments with new cloth.
They are not required to do much. They are only required to undo the evil they have done, in order to solve this problem.
In old times when it was asked, “How can we abolish slavery?” the answer was “Quit stealing.”
The same is the solution of the race problem to-day. The whole thing can be done simply by no longer violating the amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and no longer evading the claims of justice. If this were done, there would be no Negro problem or national problem to vex the South or to vex the nation.
Let the organic law of the land be honestly sustained and obeyed. Let the political parties cease to palter in a double sense, and live up to the noble declarations we find in their platforms. Let the statesmen of our country live up to their convictions. In the language of ex-Senator Ingalls: “Let the nation try justice and the problem will be solved.”
Two hundred and twenty years ago the Negro was made a religious problem, one which gave our white forefathers about as much perplexity and annoyance as we now profess. At that time the problem was in respect of what relation a Negro sustains to the Christian Church, whether he was in fact a fit subject for baptism, and Dr. Godwin, a celebrated divine of his time, and one far in advance of his brethren, was at the pains of writing a book of two hundred pages or more, containing an elaborate argument to prove that it was not a sin in the sight of God to baptize a Negro.