' And yet," he said, "we are willing to steal
the vote of the ignorant, the blind, the helpless colored man!"
It was not for the sake of the colored man, he said in conclusion,
that he appealed to them to pause and think. It was because the
honor, the nobility, the intelligence of the white man was being
degraded by the course which passion and resentment, and not reason
or patriotism, had dictated. He appealed to his hearers as _white
men_, not so much to give to the colored man the right to
express his sentiments at the ballot-box, as to regard that right
as sacred because it rested upon the law, which constituted the
foundation and safeguard of their own rights. He would not appeal
to them as Southern men, for he hoped the day was at hand when there
would no more be any such distinction. But he would appeal to them
as men--honest men, honorable men--and as American citizens, to
honor the law and thereby honor themselves.
It had been said that the best and surest way to secure the repeal
of a bad law was first to secure its unhindered operation. Especially
was this true of a people who had boasted of unparalleled devotion
to principle, of unbounded honor, and of the highest chivalry. How
one of them, or all of them, could claim any of these attributes
of which they had so long boasted, and yet be privy to depriving
even a single colored man of the right which the Nation had given
him, or to making the exercise of that right a mockery, he could
not conceive; and he would not believe that they would do it when
once the scales of prejudice and resentment had fallen from their
eyes.
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