Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/427

Rh that it is not necessary for them to herd together in a political party of their own for self-defense. They know also that they can never hope again to become the ruling power in politics as they felt themselves to be for a time under the leadership of Republican adventurers, and that, therefore, negro politics in the old way will never pay them again. This will help them to understand that they will best serve their race by identifying themselves closely with the general interest.

The state of mind produced among the negroes by this revelation can scarcely be better expressed than in the language of an address delivered by an intelligent colored politician, a United States mail agent, before a colored debating club in a Southern city during my visit there. Of this address I was fortunate enough to secure the manuscript. The title was “The Effect of the Incoming Administration upon the Negro Race.” After setting forth that the election of a Democratic President did not, as had been apprehended, threaten the freedom of the negro, it proceeded:

Man cannot live upon bread alone, nor can a race achieve civil and political success by politics alone. Education, wealth and morality must keep pace with political progress in order for that progress to be of a lasting and permanent character. Having given nearly twenty years to vain endeavors to secure full and complete civil and political rights under Republican rule, and having failed, Democratic restoration destroys all hope of securing them with the ballot; therefore, the negro will eliminate himself from the body-politic. His ambitions and aspirations will naturally turn to the obtaining of money, property, education and the improvement of his morals. And when he shall have spent as much time and consideration upon these subjects as he has upon politics, his condition will be advanced a hundred per cent. The bugbear “negro domination” being removed