"A large undertaking," the professor glibly observed. "And you will dare such a program?"
"I'll at least strike a blow for it. The first great crime against the purity of our racial stock was the mixture of blood which the physical contact of slavery made inevitable.
"But the second great crime, and by far the most tragic and disastrous, was the insane Act of Congress inspired by the passions of the Reconstruction period by which a million ignorant black men, but yesterday from the jungles of Africa, were clothed with the full powers of citizenship under the flag of Democracy and given the right by the ballot to rule a superior race.
"The Act of Emancipation was a war measure pure and simple. By that act Lincoln sought to strike the South as a political power a mortal blow. He did not free four million negroes for sentimental reasons. He destroyed four billion dollars' worth of property invested in slaves as an act of war to save the Union. Nothing was further from his mind or heart than the mad idea that these Africans could be assimilated into our National life. He intended to separate the races and give the Negro a nation of his own. But the hand of a madman struck the great leader down in the hour of his supreme usefulness.
"In the anarchy which followed the assassination of the President and the attempt of a daring coterie of fanatics in Washington to impeach his successor and create a dictatorship, the great crime against Democracy was committed. Millions of black men, with the intelligence of children and the instincts of savages, were given full and equal citizenship with the breed of men who created the Republic.
"Any plan to solve intelligently the problem of the races must first correct this blunder from which a stream of poison has been pouring into our life.
"The first step in the work of separating the races, therefore, must be to deprive the negro of this enormous power over Democratic society. It is not a solution of the problem, but as the great blunder was the giving of this symbol of American kingship, our first task is to take it from him and restore the ballot to its original sanctity."
"Your movement will encounter difficulties, I foresee!" observed the professor with a gracious smile.
He was finding his task with Norton easier than he anticipated. The editor's madness was evidently so hopeless he had only to deliver his ultimatum and close the interview.
"The difficulties are great," Norton went on with renewed emphasis, "but less than they have been for the past twenty years. Until yesterday the negro was the ward of the Nation. Any movement by a Southern state to remove his menace was immediately met by a call to arms to defend the Union by Northern demagogues who had never smelled powder when the Union was in danger.