I yield to no one in attachment to that rule of general suffrage which distinguishes our policy as a nation.  But there is a limit, wisely observed hitherto, which makes the ballot a privilege and a trust, and which requires of some classes a time suitable for probation and preparation.  To give it indiscriminately to a new class, wholly unprepared by previous habits and opportunities to perform the trust which it demands, is to degrade it, and finally to destroy its power, for it may be safely assumed that no political truth is better established than that such indiscriminate and all-embracing extension of popular suffrage must end at last in its destruction.  I repeat the expression of my willingness to join in any plan within the scope of our constitutional authority which promises to better the condition of the Negroes in the South, by encouraging them in industry, enlightening their minds, improving their morals, and giving protection to all their just rights as freedmen.  But the transfer of our political inheritance to them would, in my opinion, be an abandonment of a duty which we owe alike to the memory of our fathers and the rights of our children.

The plan of putting the Southern States wholly and the General Government partially into the hands of Negroes is proposed at a time peculiarly unpropitious.  The foundations of society have been broken up by civil war.  Industry must be reorganized, justice reestablished, public credit maintained, and order brought out of confusion.  To accomplish these ends would require all the wisdom and virtue of the great men who formed our institutions originally.  I confidently believe that their descendants will be equal to the arduous task before them, but it is worse than madness to expect that Negroes will perform it for us.  Certainly we ought not to ask their assistance till we despair of our own competency.

The great difference between the two races in physical, mental, and moral characteristics will prevent an amalgamation or fusion of them together in one homogeneous mass.  If the inferior obtains the ascendency over the other, it will govern with reference only to its own interests for it will recognize no common interest—­and create such a tyranny as this continent has never yet witnessed.  Already the Negroes are influenced by promises of confiscation and plunder.  They are taught to regard as an enemy every white man who has any respect for the rights of his own race.  If this continues it must become worse and worse, until all order will be subverted, all industry cease, and the fertile fields of the South grow up into a wilderness.  Of all the dangers which our nation has yet encountered, none are equal to those which must result from the success of the effort now making to Africanize the half of our country.