Others think the short way to peace is by force, keeping the Negro down with a strong hand, and keeping the Anglo Saxon on top by any vigorous means that may be needed.  Others, again, think there never can be any solution of the problem so long as the two races occupy the same territory, and they propose some mammoth scheme of colonization to take the blacks away to some quarter of the world where they can be by themselves.  But these and other remedies are utterly futile, because they are in collision with God’s plan, as indicated by certain manifest facts.  Meantime, while men are so busy trying to get around the difficulty instead of solving it in a straightforward way, the problem gets a little bigger every year.  The caste question agitates our great religious assemblies.  The spoliation of the civil rights of the Negro is one of the most menacing features in our politics.  Bitter race prejudices keep Southern cities in a ferment, and even break out in dreadful massacres.  This race problem will continue to be one of the most momentous and disturbing questions in American public life, until somehow we learn how to get into line with Providence, and find some solution that harmonizes with the great movements that have the hand of God in them.

It is time to ask then, with searching inquiry, What is the divine plan with regard to the Negro here, or, in other words, What is to be the future of the Negro in America?  In certain significant facts and tendencies of his past and present, we may see the finger of Providence pointing on to that future.  Let us look at some of these facts and their bearings.

First of all, the Negro is here, and that not of his own consent.  He has not forced himself upon the country; he has been forced to make this his home against his will.  We of the white race are responsible for his presence.  We invited him here in the most pressing manner, and would not take “no” for an answer.

And he is here to stay.  All the ingenious schemes for settling this troublesome question by taking up the black race bodily and dropping it in some roomy region far away from all possible contact with white people, are utterly delusive.  The Negro does not want to go elsewhere.  Having been compelled to make his home here for two centuries, he is domesticated here, and has as good a right to remain as the white man.  Moreover, he can see as well as any one that this is the best country in the world to live in—­the land offering greatest opportunity for advancement, the poor man’s Paradise.  Brought by force, he will not relinquish his rightful hold here except by force.  And we may be sure that our National Government will never undertake the chimerical experiment of deporting him to some other land, and pay the enormous expense of it out of the National Treasury.  Having been brought by the providence of God to expiate its former wrongs to the black man at such immense cost of treasure and blood, the Nation will be slow to tax itself enormously to do him another wrong.