but God, reason and civilization stamp them as culprits.

I confess that the United States has the highest form of civilized
institutions that any nation has had. Let us take a cursory glance at
the institutions in this country. It has common schools by the tens of
thousands; colleges and universities of every grade by the hundred;
millions of daily newspapers are flying from the press, and weekly
papers and monthly magazines on all imaginary subjects; it has a
Congress and President, Governors and State Legislatures without end,
judges, various courts and law officers in countless numbers. Hundreds
of thousands of school teachers, professors, and college presidents,
and Doctors of Divinity, thousands of lecturers and public declaimers
on all subjects, railroads, telegraphs and telephones in such vast
numbers as stagger imagination itself, churches and pulpits that are
filled by at least a hundred and twenty-five thousand ministers of the
gospel, and Bibles enough to build a pyramid that would almost reach
to heaven; a land of books upon every subject scattered among the
people by the billions, and in short, we have all the forms and
paraphernalia of civilization. But no one can say, who has any respect
for truth, that the United States is a civilized nation, especially if
we will take the daily papers and inspect them for a few moments, and
see the deeds of horror that the ruling powers of the nation say "well
done" to.

I know that thousands, yea millions and tens of millions would not
plead guilty of having a part in the violent and gory outrages which
are often perpetrated in this country upon human beings, chiefly
because they are of African descent, and are not numerically strong
enough to contend with the powers in governmental control. But that is
no virtue that calls for admiration. As long as they keep silent and