If, when it has passed a law, any Court shall refuse to obey its behests, it can impeach the judges.  If any president refuse to lend the executive arm of the government to the enforcement of the law, it can impeach the president.  No such extreme measures are likely to be necessary for the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments—­and the Thirteenth, which is also threatened—­but they are mentioned as showing that Congress is supreme; and Congress proceeds, the House directly, the Senate indirectly, from the people and is governed by public opinion.  If the reduction of Southern representation were to be regarded in the light of a bargain by which the Fifteenth Amendment was surrendered, then it might prove fatal to liberty.  If it be inflicted as a punishment and a warning, to be followed by more drastic measures if not sufficient, it would serve a useful purpose.  The Fifteenth Amendment declares that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of color; and any measure adopted by Congress should look to that end.  Only as the power to injure the Negro in Congress is reduced thereby, would a reduction of representation protect the Negro; without other measures it would still leave him in the hands of the Southern whites, who could safely be trusted to make him pay for their humiliation.

Finally, there is, somewhere in the Universe a “Power that works for righteousness,” and that leads men to do justice to one another.  To this power, working upon the hearts and consciences of men, the Negro can always appeal.  He has the right upon his side, and in the end the right will prevail.  The Negro will, in time, attain to full manhood and citizenship throughout the United States.  No better guaranty of this is needed than a comparison of his present with his past.  Toward this he must do his part, as lies within his power and his opportunity.  But it will be, after all, largely a white man’s conflict, fought out in the forum of the public conscience.  The Negro, though eager enough when opportunity offered, had comparatively little to do with the abolition of slavery, which was a vastly more formidable task than will be the enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment.

The Negro Problem, 1903