Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/88

 superior, and I am, as much as any other man, in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

"This was Lincoln's position and is the position of nine-tenths of the voters of his party. It is insanity to believe that the Anglo-Saxon race at the North can ever be so blinded by passion that they can assume any other position.

"Slavery is dead for all time. It would have been destroyed whatever the end of the war. I know some of the secrets of the diplomatic history of the Confederacy. General Lee asked the government at Richmond to enlist 200,000 negroes to defend the South, which he declared was their country as well as ours, and grant them freedom on enlistment. General Lee's request was ultimately accepted as the policy of the Confederacy though too late to save its waning fortunes. Not only this, but the Confederate government sent a special ambassador to England and France and offered them the pledge of the South to emancipate every slave in return for the recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. But when the ambassador arrived in Europe, the lines of our army had been so broken, the governments were afraid to interfere.

"The man who tells you that your old masters are your enemies and may try to reinslave you is a wilful and malicious liar."

"Hear dat, folks!" yelled old Reuben as he waved his arm grandly toward the crowd.

"To the white people here to-day, I say be of good cheer. Let politics alone for awhile and build up your ruined homes. You have boundless wealth in your soil. God will not forget to send the rain and the dew and the sun. You showed yourselves on a hundred fields ready to die for your country. Now I ask you to do