There was a time when Northerners who sympathized with the negro in his
necessary struggle for better conditions sought to give him the
suffrage as a protection to enforce its exercise against the prevailing
sentiment of the South. The movement proved to be a failure. What
remains is the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution and the right to
have statutes of States specifying qualifications for electors
subjected to the test of compliance with that amendment. This is a
great protection to the negro. It never will be repealed, and it never
ought to be repealed. If it had not passed, it might be difficult now
to adopt it; but with it in our fundamental law, the policy of Southern
legislation must and will tend to obey it, and so long as the statutes
of the States meet the test of this amendment and are not otherwise in
conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States, it is not
the disposition or within the province of the Federal Government to
interfere with the regulation by Southern States of their domestic
affairs. There is in the South a stronger feeling than ever among the
intelligent well-to-do, and influential element in favor of the
industrial education of the negro and the encouragement of the race to
make themselves useful members of the community. The progress which the
negro has made in the last fifty years, from slavery, when its
statistics are reviewed, is marvelous, and it furnishes every reason to
hope that in the next twenty-five years a still greater improvement in
his condition as a productive member of society, on the farm, and in
the shop, and in other occupations may come.

The negroes are now Americans. Their ancestors came here years ago
against their will, and this is their only country and their only flag.
They have shown themselves anxious to live for it and to die for it.
Encountering the race feeling against them, subjected at times to cruel
injustice growing out of it, they may well have our profound sympathy