Now, here is another Egypt. A long-oppressed, ignorant race is set up too sudden as a ruler over an educated, intelligent, intolerant one, for in many places the white race is in the minority.
But it will not yield to the misrule of ignorance.
The white people are bitter, arrogant, and oppressive under their new conditions.
The blacks, nursin’ their old and new wrongs, are burnin’ for vengeance on their oppressors. They will not suffer much longer and be still.
A great struggle is impendin’. I spoze the Nation thinks—and it is naterel for anybody to think—that the black vote cannot be put down legally sence the right of suffrage wuz gin ’em. They think it couldn’t be taken from them for a long time without a war followin’; they think they would fight their way to the poles, and it would seem naterel that they should, sez I, and so sez Maggie.
“Then what can be done?” sez Maggie; and then wuz the time that I sez, and I felt real riz up when I sez it:
There is one thing that might be tried—give the ballot to the white women of the South, and to the black women too, if they can come up to the standpoint of intelligence. Let a certain amount of education and intelligence be the qualification to the ballot.
This is your peaceful passin’ through the Red Sea of the present. The waves may stand up pretty high on each side; loud talk, and fears for womanly modesty, fears for man’s supremacy, fears for the dignity of the ballot will blow up pretty high waves on both sides.
But, sez I solemnly, if the Lord is the Leader, if He stands in front of the army, and it is His hand that beckons us forward, and He who passes over in front of the army, we shall pass through in safety, and the nation will be saved.
The supremacy will remain in the hands of the educated men and women of the South till the illiterates become safe leaders to themselves and others by education and the civilizing influences of the Bible and good teachers.