"You must think as we think and act as we act, or you must go!" This
is the law of the South.

In each of the late rebellious states the ballotbox has been closed
against the black man. To reach it he is compelled to brave the
muzzles of a thousand rifles in the hands of silent sentinels who
esteem a human life as no more sacred than the serpent that drags his
tortuous length among the grasses of the field, and whose head mankind
is enjoined to crush.

The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Federal
constitution which grew out of the public sentiment created by thirty
long years of agitation of the abolitionists and of the "emancipation
proclamation"--issued as a war measure by President Lincoln--are no
longer regarded as fundamental by the South. The beneficiaries of
those amendments have failed in every instance to enjoy the benefits
that were, presumably, intended to be conferred.

These laws--having passed both branches of the Federal legislature,
having received the approval and signature of the Chief Executive of
the nation, and having been ratified by a majority of the states
composing the sisterhood of states--these laws are no longer binding
upon the people of the South, who fought long and desperately to
prevent the possibility of their enactment; and they no longer
benefit, if they ever did, the people in whose interest they were
incorporated in the _Magna Charta_ of American liberty; _while the
Central authority which originated them, has, through the Supreme
Court, declared nugatory, null and void all supplementary legislation
based upon those laws, as far as the government of the United States
is concerned!_ The whole question has been remanded to the