Speaker Reed to Congress, and the contest for the re-election of Mr.
Breckinridge in Arkansas; the Federal Election Bill, which proposes to
secure a free ballot for all men irrespective of color, and the Convention
in Mississippi, which aimed avowedly to curtail the voting of the colored
people--all these derive their importance from their relation to the
gravest problem of American statesmanship. That problem will not be
settled by the results of either of these current questions. For at the
bottom the real question is: Shall knowledge and character and property
become the possession of the colored race, and they thus be prepared for
their place in American politics, industry and prosperity, or will they be
allowed for the lack of these things to be crushed back into a condition
of semi-slavery or be goaded to resistance or discouraged in poverty,
pauperism and degradation? That is a fundamental question. For that, men
should read, think, pray and work.




The Federal Election Bill And The Mississippi Convention.
---------------------------------------------------------


The ultimate aim of the Federal Election Bill in Congress, and of the
Constitutional Convention in Mississippi, point in diametrically opposite
directions. They cannot be harmonized, and there is no middle way between
them. The Election Bill contemplates a "free ballot and fair count" for
every voter, including the Negro. The Mississippi Convention aims to
restrict Negro suffrage. In an address delivered by the President of the
Convention, September 11th, he is reported to have said that: "He did not
propose to mince matters and hide behind a subterfuge, but if asked by