Without the cordial concurrence in this effort of all parties, black and white, local and national, it will not be fruitful in fundamental and permanent good. Each race must accept the present situation and build on it. To this end it is indispensable that one great evil, which was inherent in the reconstruction measures and is still persisted in, shall be eliminated. The party allegiance of the negro was bid for by the temptation of office and position for which he was in no sense fit. No permanent, righteous adjustment of relations can come till this policy is wholly abandoned. Politicians must cease to make the negro a pawn in the game of politics.
Let us admit that we have made a mistake. We seem to have expected that we could accomplish suddenly and by artificial Contrivances a development which historically has always taken a long time. Without abatement of effort or loss of patience, let us put ourselves in the common-sense, the scientific, the historic line. It is a gigantic task, only to be accomplished by long labor in accord with the Divine purpose.
“Thou
wilt not leave us in the dust;
Thou
madest man, he knows not why,
He
thinks he was not made to die;
And
thou hast made him; thou art just.
“Oh,
yet we trust that somehow good
Will
be the final goal of ill,
To
pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects
of doubt, and taints of blood.
“That
nothing walks with aimless feet,
That
not one life shall be destroyed,
Or
cast as rubbish to the void,
When
God hath made the pile complete.”