Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/293

 "as opportunity offers and ability serves, seek our places, sometimes in the field of letters, arts, science and the professions. More frequently mechanical pursuits will attract and elicit our efforts; more still of my people will find employment and livelihood as the cultivators of the soil. The bulk of this people by surroundings, habits, adaptation, and choice will continue to find their homes in the South and constitute the masses of its yeomanry. We will there, probably of our own volition and more abundantly than in the past, produce the great staples that will contribute to the basis of foreign exchange, aid in giving the nation a balance of trade, and minister to the wants and comforts and build up the prosperity of the whole land. Whatever our ultimate position in the composite civilization of the republic and whatever varying fortunes attend our career, we will not forget our instincts for freedom nor our love for country."

A careful study of the speech shows what a model it has been for speakers and writers of a much later period. It deals openly and frankly with the Southern question, and is prophetic of President Harding's recent utterances on the Negro's political status in the South.

During the second session of the Forty-fourth Congress, Mr. Bruce confined his efforts largely to the relief of the legal heirs of Negro soldiers who had fought to preserve the Union. Consequently, he introduced a number of bills praying that arrears of pensions be granted. In this way, he became the benefactor of many persons who otherwise might never have received their pensions. In addition to such relief legislation, he presented for the second time a petition praying for a general law prohibiting liquor traffic, and introduced a bill for certain improvements in the Mississippi River.

The Forty-fifth Congress was not especially eventful. Senator Bruce, however, continued to introduce bills for the relief of legal heirs of soldiers. During the second session of this Congress, he took an active interest in the