If they had been wronged and outraged as a people, their
only fit revenge was to display a manhood and a magnanimity which
should attest the superiority upon which they prided themselves.
This address was received by his white hearers with surprised silence;
by the colored men with half-appreciative cheers. They recognized
that the speaker was their friend, and in favor of their being
allowed the free exercise of the rights of citizenship. His white
auditors saw that he was assailing with some bitterness and earnest
indignation both their conduct and what they had been accustomed to
term their principles. There was no immediate display of hostility
or anger; and Hesden Le Moyne returned to his home full of hope
that the time was at hand for which he had so long yearned, when the
people of his native South should abandon the career of prejudice
and violence into which they had been betrayed by resentment and
passion.
Early the next morning some of his friends waited upon him and adjured
him, for his own sake, for the sake of his family and friends, to
withdraw from the canvass. This he refused to do. He said that what
he advocated was the result of earnest conviction, and he should
always despise himself should he abandon the course he had calmly
decided to take. Whatever the result, he would continue to the end.
Then they cautiously intimated to him that his course was fraught
with personal danger.
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