indeed in lands, while the black man was poor in everything, even in
manhood, not because of any neglect or improvidence on his part, but
because, though he labored from the rising to the setting of the sun,
he received absolutely nothing for his labor, often being denied
adequate food to sustain his physical man and clothing to protect him
from the rude inclemency of the weather. He was a bankrupt in purse
because the _government_ had robbed him; he was a bankrupt in
character, in all the elements of a successful manhood, because the
_government_ had placed a premium upon illiteracy and immorality. It
was not the individual slave-owner who held the black man in chains;
it was the _government_; for, the government having permitted slavery
to exist, the institution vanished the instant the government declared
that it should no longer exist!

I therefore maintain that the people of this Nation who enslaved the
black man, who robbed him of more than a hundred years of toil, who
perverted his moral nature, and all but extinguished in him the Divine
spark of intelligence, are morally bound to do all that is in their
power to build up his shattered manhood, to put him on his feet, as
it were, to fit him to enjoy the freedom thrust upon him so
unceremoniously, and to exercise with loyalty and patriotism the
ballot placed in his hands--the ballot, in which is wrapped up the
destiny of republican government, the perpetuity of democratic
institutions. It is the proper function of government to see to it
that its citizens are properly prepared to exercise wisely the
liberties placed in their keeping. Self-preservation would dictate as
much; for, if it be considered the better part of valor to discretely
build and maintain arsenals and forts to bar out the invader, to
prepare against the assaults of the enemy from without, how much more
imperative it is to take timely precautions to counteract the mischief