are more absolutely under the control of the Southern whites; they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they are more poorly housed, clothed and fed, than under the slave regime; and they enjoy, practically, less of the protection of the laws of the State or of the Federal government.  When they appeal to the Federal government they are told by the Supreme Court to go to the State authorities—­as if they would have appealed to the one had the other given them that protection to which their sovereign citizenship entitles them!

Practically, there is no law in the United States which extends its protecting arm over the black man and his rights.  He is, like the Irishman in Ireland, an alien in his native land.  There is no central or auxiliary authority to which he can appeal for protection.  Wherever he turns he finds the strong arm of constituted authority powerless to protect him.  The farmer and the merchant rob him with absolute immunity, and irresponsible ruffians murder him without fear of punishment, undeterred by the law, or by public opinion—­which connives at, if it does not inspire, the deeds of lawless violence.  Legislatures of States have framed a code of laws which is more cruel and unjust than any enforced by a former slave State.

The right of franchise[5] has been practically annulled in every one of the former slave States, in not one of which, to-day, can a man vote, think or act as he pleases.  He must conform his views to the views of the men who have usurped every function of government—­who, at the point of the dagger, and with shotgun, have made themselves masters in defiance of every law or precedent in our history as a government.  They have usurped government with the weapons of the coward and assassin, and they maintain themselves in power by the most approved practices of the most odious of tyrants.  These men have shed as much innocent blood as the bloody triumvirate of Rome.  To-day, red-handed murderers and assassins sit in the high places of power, and bask in the smiles of innocence and beauty.

The newspapers of the country, voicing the sentiments of the people, literally hiss into silence any man who has the courage to protest against the prevailing tendency to lawlessness[6] and bare-faced usurpation; while parties have ceased to deal with the question for other than purposes of political capital.  Even this fruitful mine is well-nigh exhausted.  A few more years, and the usurper and the man of violence will be left in undisputed possession of his blood-stained inheritance.  No man will attempt to deter him from sowing broadcast the seeds of revolution and death.  Brave men are powerless to combat this organized brigandage, complaint of which, in derision, has been termed “waving the bloody shirt.”