Matters have been working, since then, toward that result, and have a much better look now than then. If all the people—all the white people, I mean, for the colored people seem pretty well agreed—felt as I do, that it is the interest of all that the rights of all, in suffrage as in other matters, should be equal before the law, you would not have to wait long for equal rights at the ballot-box; no longer than it would take to pass the necessary law. [Cheers.] But very many of the white people do not see things as I do; and I do not know what the National Government proposes to do. I am not now, as you know, in the Cabinet councils; nor am I a politician; nor do I meddle with politics. I can only say this: I believe there is not a member of the Administration who would not be pleased to see suffrage universal; but I can not say, for I do not know, that the Administration is prepared to say that suffrage shall be universal.
What I do know is this; that if you are patient, and patiently claim your rights, and show by your acts that you deserve to be entrusted with suffrage, and inspire a confidence in the public mind that you will use it honestly, and use it too on the side of liberty, and order, and education, and improvement, you will not have to wait very long. I can say this safely on general principles. Common sense tells us that suffrage can not be denied long to large masses of people, who ask it and are not disqualified for its exercise. Believing in your future as I do, I feel sure you will have it sometime; perhaps very soon; perhaps a good while hence. If I had the power it would be very soon. It would, in my judgment, be safe in your hands to-day; and the whole country would be better off if suffrage were now universal.
But whatever may be the action of the white people here in Charleston, or of the Government at Washington, be patient. That you will have suffrage in the end, is just as sure as it is that you respect, yourselves and respect others, and do your best to prove your worthiness of it. Misconduct of any kind will not help you, but patience and perseverance in well-doing will help you mightily. So, too, if the National Government, taking all things into consideration, shall come to a conclusion different from mine, and delay to enroll you as citizens and voters, your best policy, in my judgment, is patience. I counsel no surrender of principle—no abandonment of your just claims; but I counsel patience. What good will fretting and worrying and complaining do? If I were in your place I would just go to work for all good objects, and show by my conduct that the Government, in making a delay, had made a mistake. [Cheers.] If you do so and the mistake is made, it will be the more speedily corrected.
Let me repeat, that I think it best for all men—white men, black men, and brown men, if you make that distinction, that all men of proper age and unconvicted of crime, should have the right of suffrage. It is my firm conviction, that suffrage is not only the best security for freedom, but the most potent agent of amelioration and civilization. He who has that right will usually respect himself more, be more respected, perform more, and more productive work, and do more to increase the wealth and welfare of the community, than he who has it not. Suffrage makes nations great. Hence I am in favor of suffrage for all; but if the Government shall think differently, or if circumstances delay its action, I counsel calmness, patience, industry, self-respect, Respect for others, and, with all these, firmness.
Such, in my judgment, is your duty. Ordinarily the simple performance of duty is so blessed of God, that men who live in the doing of it, are the best off, in all respects, even in this world. But if these immediate rewards do not attend its performance, still, if a man carries in his heart the consciousness of doing right, as in the sight God, rendering to each his due, withholding from none his right, contributing all he can to the general improvement, and diffusing happiness to the extent of his power through the sphere of which he is the center, he may go through life as happy as a king, though he may never be a king, and go at last where no wrong finds entrance, nor any error, because there reigns one God and one Father, before whom all his children are equal. [Prolonged cheers.]
B.
[The following is a letter from Rev. Richard Fuller, D. D., of Baltimore, whose visit to his former slaves on St. Helena Island has been described. Dr. Fuller’s high position in the Baptist Church, and his prominence in former times as a defender of the divinity of slavery, in the discussions with President Wayland, give weight to his indorsement of the substantial accuracy of what has been said, in the foregoing pages, as to the condition and prospects of the Sea Island negroes. A few sentences of a purely personal nature are omitted:]
“My Dear Sir:—I could add very little to your clear and full statements concerning our visit to St. Helena, and the condition in which we found the negroes. I can only repeat that the freedmen at Port Royal, under General Saxton, seemed to me to present a favorable solution of the question of free labor.
Against my convictions and apprehensions, I was brought to the conclusion, that their former masters might cultivate their fields profitably by these hired servants.
You are mistaken, however, as I think, in speaking of the slaves on these islands as less advanced in intelligence, or morals than the colored people in the interior.