manhood rights, he received as his portion chains and contempt.  The spirit of injustice, inborn in the Caucasian nature, asserted itself in each instance.  Selfishness and greed rode roughshod over the promptings of a generous, humane, Christian nature, as they have always done in this country, not only in the case of the African but of the Indian as well, each of whom has in turn felt the pernicious influence of that heartless greed which overleaps honesty and fair play, in the unmanly grasp after perishable gain.

The books which have been written in this country—­the books which have molded and controlled intelligent public opinion—­during the past one hundred and fifty years have been written by white men, in justification of the white man’s domineering selfishness, cruelty and tyranny.  Beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, down to the present time, the same key has been struck, the same song as been sung, with here and there a rare exception—­as in the case of Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Judge Tourgee’s A Fool’s Errand, Dr. Haygood’s Our Brother in Black, and some others of less note.  The white man’s story has been told over and over again, until the reader actually tires of the monotonous repetition, so like the ten-cent novels in which the white hunter always triumphs over the red man.  The honest reader has longed in vain for a glimpse at the other side of the picture so studiously turned to the wall.

Even in books written expressly to picture the black man’s side of the story, the author has been compelled to palliate, by interjecting extenuating, often irrelevant circumstances, the ferocity and insatiate lust of greed of his race.  He has been unable to tell the story as it was, because his nature, his love of race, his inborn, prejudices and narrowness made him a lurking coward.

And so it has been with the newspapers, which have ever been the obsequious reflex of distempered public opinion, siding always with the strong and powerful; so that in 1831, when the “Liberator” (published in Boston by the intrepid and patriotic Garrison) made its appearance, it was a lone David among a swarm of Goliaths, any one of which was willing and anxious to serve the cause of the devil by crushing the little angel in the service of the Lord.  So it is to-day.  The great newspapers, which should plead the cause of the oppressed and the down-trodden, which should be the palladiums of the people’s rights, are all on the side of the oppressor, or by silence preserve a dignified but ignominious neutrality.  Day after day they weave a false picture of facts—­facts which must measurably influence the future historian of the times in the composition of impartial history.  The wrongs of the masses are referred to sneeringly or apologetically.

The vast army of laborers—­men, women, and even tender children—­find no favor in the eyes of these Knights of the Quill.  The Negro and the Indian, the footballs of slippery politicians and the helpless victims of sharpers and thieves, are wantonly misrepresented—­held up to the eyes of the world as beings incapable of imbibing the distorted civilization in the midst of which they live and have their being.  They are placed in the attic, only to be aired when somebody wants an “issue” or an “appropriation.”