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."

Men organize themselves into society for mutual protection. Government
justly derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. But
what shall we say of that society which is incapable of extending the
protection which is inherent in it? What shall we say of that
government which has not power or inclination to insure the exercise
of those solemn rights and immunities which it guarantees? To declare
a man to be free, and equal with his fellow, and then to refrain from
enacting laws powerful to insure him in such freedom and equality, is
to trifle with the most sacred of all the functions of sovereignty.
Have not the United States done this very thing? Have they not
conferred freedom and the ballot, which are necessary the one to the
other? And have they not signally failed to make omnipotent the one
and practicable the other? The questions hardly require an answer. The
measure of freedom the black man enjoys can be gauged by the power he
has to vote. He has, practically, no voice in the government under
which he lives. His property is taxed and his life is jeopardized, by
states on the one hand and inefficient police regulations on the
other, and no question is asked or expected of him. When he protests,
when he cries out against this flagrant nullification of the very
first principles of a republican form of government, the insolent