flag, was Ensign Bagley, of North Carolina.  The young man who penetrated the Island of Cuba, ’mid Spanish bayonets and bullets, and searched out Cevera and his fleet in the harbor was Victor Blue, the son of a Confederate soldier.  The young man who sank the Merrimac, Captain Richmond Pearson Hobson, was the son of another Confederate.  Our Consul in Cuba, whose patriotism no one ever doubted, was General Fitzhugh Lee, and the old man who planted the flag in the tree-tops around Santiago, and led two negro regiments into the battle, was fighting Joe Wheeler of the Confederate army.

If I were to close here, what an optimistic picture would be left in the glow of the century’s searchlight.  But alas! we have unsolved problems of imperial moment, and my purpose is to throw the searchlight upon a few of these unsolved problems.

First, being a southern man, I shall turn it upon the Race Problem.

A century ago the Indian question was a perplexing problem, but it cuts but little figure now, for the Indian is nightly pitching his moving tepee a day’s march nearer the sunset shore, where one more shove, and,

  “Mad to life’s history
  Glad to death’s mystery,”

the red race will go, to where the pale face will cease from troubling, and the weary spirit will find its rest at last.

The Chinese question is of equal insignificance, since our doors are closed and barred against the almond eyes of the Orient.

The Negro question seems to be the race riddle of our civilization and it will take much tact, patience and wisdom to solve the problem.  It may be a revelation to some of you to know, that at the rate the negro race has grown since the Civil War, when the twentieth century goes out, there will be sixty millions of negroes in one black belt across the Southland.  I say across the Southland because, the main body of the negro race will never leave the track of the southern sun.  The South held the negro in slavery, the North set him free.  We supposed at the close of the war, he would leave the South and go to live among his liberators.  But after half a century, he is still clinging to the cotton and the cane, or sitting in his log house home, the “shadowed livery of the burning sun” upon his brow, the plantation song still lingering on his lips, the banjo tuned to memory’s melodies on his knee, a clump of kinky-headed pickaninnies playing in the sand about his cabin door, and there he sits multiplying the Southland and problemizing the century.

I have not time to discuss at length the solution of the problems before us, but I hope to present them in such a manner as will help you to appreciate their importance and how they are linked with the destiny of the republic.

It seems to me exaltation of character, dignification of labor, material prosperity, leaving social equality to take care of itself, makes up the best solution of the negro problem.  Social equality does take care of itself even among the white races.  Some of you may have a white servant who is a good woman, a Christian woman, you expect to meet her in heaven (if you get there), but she is not admitted to your social set.