Yes, he's doin' a good job by his step-children, I guess they would be called that seein' he stepped in when they wuz poor and oppressed and took 'em under his care.
I honor him for it, but wish he would do as well by his steal children, the dark complexioned ones stole away from their own land to be slaves and drudges for his white children.
He'll mebby tell me they wuz ignorant and degraded and wuz better off here than in their own land, but I'll say back to him, "Samuel, Josiah and I would probable be in a better house and more high-toned society if some king or other should steal us and carry us away from our humble farm to their palace. But do you spoze we would enjoy ourselves as well? No indeed!"
And 'tennyrate they're here, the problem that lays so heavy on the Southern and Northern heart and conscience and the riddle gits harder and harder to solve. The lurid blaze of livin' torches makes bloody blindness in the eyes of them that look on and light them fires. The disgraceful glare flames out, shamin' you in the eyes of the world, and streams up to the pityin' heavens askin' for justice.
Mebby you'll tell me you don't see how you can help it, but Samuel, you must try, for though there are here and there oasises in the gloom lighted up by education and inteligence still there remains the great multitude of your steel children that you ort to help, you ort to do as well by them settin' in long rows right on your very doorstep as you're doin' for them six thousand milds off. Sinners must be punished by law, else what is law made for? Order must be kep', the helpless protected, but you know, Samuel, that if some of the disgraceful seens that are bein' enacted here right under your dear old nose took place amongst your adopted Philippine children or even amongst your protejays in Turkey or China you would send out a warship to once. I am sorry for you, Samuel, and think the world on you, but faithful are the woonds of a friend; you must hear the truth once in awhile or who knows what would become on you, you might puff up with proud flesh and have to have an operation, and I guess you will anyway before you git through with this problem.
I presoom you want me to advise you what to do, only bein' a man you hain't really wanted to come out and ask me. Josiah acts jest like that lots of times.
So I'll say to you, I honor you, Samuel, for what you're doin' for these foreign children, but I want you to do jest as much to home. I want you to send teachers and found schools at your own expense; you're four handed and able to do it. And Id'no but you had better buy land in their own home you stole them from, buy a small farm for each one that wants to go. Travelers say that in the Valley of the Nile, a country with similar climate and soil to the south land where they wuz born, is an unoccupied place big enough for each one to have a small farm of their own. I want you, Samuel, to buy this land for 'em, take 'em back there at your own expense, all that want to go. There are plenty of the young and enterprising who would go full of the hope of foundin' a new republic for their own race, where they can expand and grow strong away from parlyzing influence of racial and social hatred.
There would be lots of 'em who wouldn't want to go, and why can't you, Samuel, I'd say, buy them a little home here, for instance, on the vast unoccupied area of Florida? Let 'em have the hull state if necessary; let each family have their little piece of land, and then make 'em work it; send teachers, found schools, teach 'em to be self sustaining and self respecting.
Samuel would probable sass me back and say, You can't teach a nigger to respect himself and stand upright.
And I'd say, "'Tain't so, Sam, but if it wuz, centuries have been spent by the white race in teachin' this people to be dependent and helpless, to not think for themselves, to lean entirely on the judgment and justice of the white people (weak reeds to lean on anon or oftener)."