IS LIBERTY WORTH PRESERVING?

When Washington warned his countrymen that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and Jefferson declared, “I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just,” they each had in mind, no doubt, some specific danger to the liberties of the people they had labored so untiringly to secure. Domestic turmoil and party strife were the perils which the Father of his Country saw forever impending over the land he loved. Perhaps the consciousness that he himself might have been a king helped to deepen this impression, or it may be that he realized the profound wisdom of the maxim, “What is everybody's business is nobody's concern,” and foresaw that when the first flush of patriotic ardor had cooled, the bulk of the electors, the real kings and conservators of the new states, absorbed by their personal concerns, would neglect to give their thought to the consideration of public policy and their time and attention to the administration of public affairs. He perhaps foresaw that vexed questions would be left to settle themselves; that evils might be allowed to grow until they became incurable; that usurpations might go on unchecked and sectional pride allowed to array itself against the national interests. If he had foreseen the very tide of internecine war that ebbed and flowed about his tomb, he could have given no wiser counsel to those into whose hands he surrendered the fate of the new-born Nation. Every peril that has threatened the American Republic has come from neglect of duty on the part of the citizen, from failure to restrict and eliminate known and recognized evils, from permitting sectional pride to override individual right and defy national power with impunity, and from leaving the control of public affairs in hands of self-constituted leaders and their associates to whom self-interest is a more potent force than patriotic obligation. The perils we have already passed and those which now impend alike have but one origin the lack of vigilance on the part of the citizen, who has forgotten that he alone can safely stand guard over is own liberties and has left that duty to others. Washington clearly 0003 2saw that unless the citizen performed his duty, his rights would be usurped and his freedom imperiled. He knew that there was no such thing as putting in a substitute in the never-ending war for liberty.

This was the practical view of the man of action. He did not concern himself with the particular questions that might arise or the particular elements of the new nationality which might thereafter become the cause of strife or the excuse for invasion of personal rights or usurpation of public power. He saw only results and the instrumentalities by which they might be effected. The philosophic mind of Jefferson, who had been the inspirer of the great experiment in self-government, looking at the elements of which the Republic was composed, despite the optimism which inspired his splendid confidence in the people, could not but tremble at her destiny. He did not think of the means, but of the cause-because God is just. He recognized that primal truth of human society, that injustice brings woe to the oppressor. It may be long delayed; but it is inevitable He knew, too, that oppression was self-perpetuating; that a people who have usurped another's rights never willingly relinquish their hold upon them. Such an evil grows always worse and worse until some great peril or bloody crisis arises and it is forced to yield in whole or in part. What was it that Jefferson saw in the future of the Republic that caused him to tremble when he remembered that “God is just?” He saw one race oppressing another race-one people denying another people their inherent rights. We have been accustomed to say that it was of Slavery he thus wrote. That was but one form of the injustice which he dreaded. It was the principle underlying it which he feared—the denial of the inherent rights of one people, race or class by the action of another people, race or class.

The injustice which made Jefferson tremble, and the lethargy which Washington feared are both elemental in the life of the Republic to-day, and threaten the rights and liberties of the American citizen far more sensibly and seriously than in that early time.

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THE NATIONAL CITIZENS' RIGHTS ASSOCIATION. This organization is a body of American Citizens who seek by peaceful means and lawful agencies, to accomplish two specific results,— 1.—To remedy an undeniable wrong. 2.—To obviate a danger of unprecedented magnitude.

The wrong is the denial of the inherent and constitutional rights of citizens of the United States on account of race, color or political affiliation in twelve States of the Union.

The danger consists in the results which must inevitably accrue from a denial of political right and equal civic privilege to eight millions of freemen.

PRINCIPLES OF THE ASSOCIATION. Its members are pledged to aid in the peaceful assertion of the rights of National Citizenship, by every lawful means, in every State of the Union, without distinction of race color or political affiliation.

They deny that a white citizen has any legal rights which do not attach also to the colored citizen, or that a Democrat has a right to exercise any political privilege which is not also freely accorded to a Republican. They maintain that this principle applies to Louisana just as well as to Vermont, and that wherever the State does not afford ample protection to every citizen in the enjoyment of his legal rights, it is the duty of the National government to secure to him their peaceful exercise and full and undisturbed enjoyment.

They contend that the exercise of free speech, peaceful assemblage, unrestricted discussion of all questions affecting the public welfare, party organization, the nomination and support of candidates are inalienable rights of every citizen of the United States, which it is the duty of the general government to assert and maintain in every part of the National domain.

They believe that the peaceful exercise of the elective franchise is a right of the highest dignity and sacredness to every citizen of the United States who is a legal voter, on the security of which the whole fabric of free government depends and that this right cannot be lawfully taken away from any citizen to whom it once attaches, except as a punishment for crime, and that one 0005 4race or party has no right to prevent or forbid to another race or party the exercise of any power which they themselves enjoy.

The members of the National Citizens' Rights Association maintain that it is the duty of the general government to see to it that the ballotorial power of one race or party is not ravished from it and unlawfully added to the power of another race or party; and that the ballot-box should everywhere be made as safely accessible to every voter as the letter-box to every correspondent, and its contents a thousand times more jealously guarded; that National government should not only provide an adequate remedy for the denial or impairment of the citizens' right, but should secure the same from impairment, denial or invalidation, by providing everywhere sufficient checks and guards to prevent intimidation, fraud or official malversation in regard to the effective exercise of the same.

They believe that in a large number of the States of the American Union, such rights as freedom of speech, of public assemblage, of party organization and the effective exercise of ballotorial power, are no more permitted to citizens of African descent or Republican politics, than is free speech to a Jew in Russia.

“THE LAND OF THE FREE.” That this condition of affairs does exist in all except a few restricted portions of the South is evident from, (1.) The unanimous testimony of Republicans resident therein. (2.) The testimony of all colored citizens, save a fraction altogether insignificant in numbers and character. (3.) The multitudinous declarations of governors, legislators, writers and speakers of the dominant class and party, who strenuously insist upon their right and determination never to allow the colored man to exercise any political control, no matter how great may be the majority of those acting with him.

This testimony is confirmed, (1.) By hundreds of unquestioned and undeniable acts of violence and intimidation which are capable of no other explanation unless it be claimed that they result from a widespread and purposeless barbarity, which is inconceivable in any, even semi-civilized, community.

(2.) It is confirmed also by the fact that in the various States, Districts and counties of this region, save a very few, no such thing as a party organization favoring equal rights for the colored citizen is known, or is allowed to exist.

(3.) It is confirmed, also, by the inherited bias of the dominant class, who maintained the righteousness of slavery on the ground 0006 5of a divinely ordained superiority of the white race, which not only authorized them to subordinate and control the colored race but made it a religious duty to do so. The man who could see no injustice in slavery is is not likely to regard it as a wrong to deprive the colored citizen of the rights he openly declares should never have been granted him.

But even if there were, as there is not any substantial conflict of authority as to the disfranchisement and intimidation of not merely the colored citizen, but of all who favor justice and equality of right for him it is a universal principle, illustrated by all history, that the testimony of the poor and weak subject alleging injustice, is much more likely to be true than that of strong and dominant denying or excusing it.

Especially is this true when for two centuries and a half the right to oppress the subject race and the absolute denial of every right on their part has been the unceasing contention of the dominant class. A class who who for so long a time denied that a colored man had any legal right whatever; or any legal remedy for any wrong, is likely at once to manifest the highest appreciation of his rights as an equal heir of National Citizenship. Indeed, it is not strange that they should be unable to see the absurdity of one rule of right for themselves and a different one for all who entertain views in any respect at variance with theirs, since the domination of Slavery was solely based on force and terror and not only the slave, but every one who advocate his cause, was held to be outside the pale of legal protection.

Besides these confirmatory probabilities, it must not be forgotten that those who thus appeal to National power for protection in their common right of citizenship are practically the only portion of the population of the section they inhabit who were on the side of the Union in in the struggle for its existence. Not only did 225,000 of the colored population of the country serve as soldiers in the ranks of our armies, with marked efficiency and fidelity, but and unnumbered host of guides, scouts, spies, and laborers of dusky hue, added to the security of every camp and the efficiency of every army. there is now no longer any room for doubt, in the mind of any reasonable man, that if the colored man had espoused the cause of the South with the same fervor with which he embraced that of the North, there would be two nations shown upon the map where now there is but one.

It must be remembered, too, that the party charged with wholesale nullification of the constitutional guarantees of citizenship stoutly resisted their adoption, and has, from the outset 0007 6maintained the right of the white citizens of those States to determine exactly what privileges a colored man should be entitled to enjoy within their borders.

Under these circumstances, it is only the very prejudice or the very ignorant. Northern man who will dare repeat the absurd and ridiculous statement that the Negro or Republican citizen of the South is allowed the free exercise of his political rights and civic privileges in those States.

THE EFFECT OF DISFRANCHISEMENT. But the coil does not stop here. No class or people was ever wise enough or good enough to have the unrestricted guardianship and control of another class or race.

The colored man, set free from bondage, was utterly naked, defenseless helpless. He had neither tools, stock, land or seed. He was without money, script, or property, save the clothes in which he stood. He had wrought for the dominant race for two hundred and fifty years; had been denied by laws made by the Christian men the right to hold property; to defend himself; to contract marriage; to have a family name or legitimate offspring, and to learn to read and write. He could not sue or be sued, and could appeal to no court for protection of any right or a remedy for any wrong.

Freedom was almost a mockery without the power to assert and maintain its privileges. He was given the rank of the citizen solely that he might be entitled to the protection of the flag he had saved. Deprived of this guaranty of citizenship, he became subject also in other relations. He is a dependent laborer whose fixed by the employing class without power on his part to question or refuse. Accustomed to “controlled labor” these thought they had the same right to dominate the citizen they employed, as the slave they had owned. The result has been to subject him to the will of the employer to a degree almost inconceivable in a region accustomed to free labor. The evils growing out of these conditions are very great and constantly increasing. He is arrested without process; executed without conviction; assaulted without remedy; killed without peril to his assassin.

A few months ago a colored man was hanged in Mississippi. The published report said in excuse that he was “enticing laborers to go to Arkansas with the promise of better wages.” It was said that “prominent gentlemen from three countries took part in the affair!” There were no arrests.

Last spring it was reported that the employes of a Louisiana 0008 7planter complaining of ill-treatment made a break for Arkansas. The employer followed with an armed force. Two were shot. “The others,” the report merely said, “were persuaded to return.”

About the same time a planter arriving at a station in Arkansas, found one of his employe, about to take the train. Refusing to return, the employer shot him the presence of the crowd, saying that if every one would imitate his example, “there would soon be no more runaway niggers!” No attempt was made to arrest the murderer.

The planters of several states decided to pay but 50 cents per 100 pounds for picking cotton. It is starvation wages. Very few slaves could pick 200 pounds under the most favorable conditions, even with the driver's lash to spur them on. A strike was begun. Thirteen Negroes were killed at one point and several more—the press report said, fifteen,—at another, enough to stop the strike at least.

During the twelve months previous to December 1891, the public press has reported seven colored men burned alive in those States, one flayed alive and one mutilated, disjointed, disemboweled and tortured by a mob for two hours before death came to his relief. Suppose they had been white Christians tortured by dusky savages, how many would it be necessary to kill to square the account?

The number of those lynched during the time, it is impossible yet to ascertain, it being nearly as difficulty and dangerous to get at the facts in such cases as it was to learn the inside truth with regarded to slavery. The writer has noted more than one hundred.

There can be no reasonable doubt that these are the direct and natural results of four things:

1.—The helpless and dependent position in which the colored man was left at emancipation.

2.—The fact that the National government has done absolutely nothing to protect him in the right of citizenship guaranteed him by the Constitution.

3.—The fact that slavery inculcated one measured of right for the white man and a very different one for the colored man.

4.—The fact that organized political opposition to the party in power in those states is prevented by violence and intimidation, so that there are none of those healthful checks by which alone safety and moderation may be secured in a popular government.

THE WRONG. The present evil is of exactly the same character and proceeds upon the same hypotheses both as to the quality of its acts and 0009 8their justification, as did the crime of Slavery, from which it sprang, by direct and traceable evolution. It is the assertion of the right of one race to control the rights and privileges of another because:

The white race is superior to the Negro:

This superiority is ethnic, inherent and ineradicable:

The meanest white man is the superior of the most accomplished Negro:

This white superiority is as a divinely ordained and immutable as God's truth:

It is not affected by admixture of blood so long as the admixture is visible or confessed:

Because the white man is superior to the colored man he has a right to rule, control and govern him. In the old slave times he had the right to own and possess him, buy and sell him, punish him for disobedience and kill him if he resisted.

If the slave was a female the right inured to the master to beget offspring of her at will, and such offspring were also slaves.

This form of society, with its natural incidents and resultants, was of divine ordainment.

Whoever questioned these views was regarded as an enemy of society. To express them was punishable as seditious language. In many States it was crime to have in possession books which questioned or attempted to controvert these theories. Even the mails were rifled by the post-office officials, and all such books and newspaper taken out and burned. Slavery silenced by law or violence every voice which questioned its perfection and infallibility.

Since the power to buy and sell has been abrogated, the inherent superiority of the white man entitles him to control the colored man to a less degree and in a different manner, but for the same reason, to-wit, his own inherent superiority; and for the same purpose, to-wit, his own advantage. This was the creed of Slavery: it is the policy of repression.

THE MUTUAL CONSEQUENCES. The white man is the land-owner and employer; the colored man the laborer. It is to the interest of the white man that the colored man should remain weak and the dependent in order that he may continue a cheap and controllable laborer. If he is accorded the exercise of his lawful rights of citizenship he will naturally grow self-dependent, higher-priced and less manageable. Masses act always from their general interest, and no race or people ever accords to a weaker or dependent race anything more of right than the logic of their mutual relation imperatively demands.

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The denial of the rights of free speech, party organization and a freeballot to the black and white Republicans of the South involves, also,their political affiliates in every State of the Union. The Republican whovotes in Vermont knows that his influence in the government is neutralized by the vote of a Democrat in Georgia who has silenced the remonstrant vote which should have counterbalanced his, by violence of fraud. This was the only point in which slavery really touched the Northern man's right or interest, at least apparently; but he felt, as an everopen sore, the fact that three-fifths of the non-voting slaves were counted in representation, and that his power as a constituent element of the National will was lessened in comparison with what of the Southern white man in just that proportion. At present, not merely three-fifths but five-fifths ofthe suppressed and disfranchised citizenship, is counted in representation against the Northern voter.

Injustice and oppression have never any self-remedial force. On the contrary, unchecked evil always goes on from bad to worse. For half a cent century the cry was that Christianity and civilization would ultimately ameliorate the slave's condition. In the meantime, slavery grew all the while worse and worse—more rigorous, more cruel, more debasing, more insolent, more defiant. What now exist at the South only shows the tendency by which the final outcome may be guessed. It must either proceed to greater hopelessness and infamy, be repressed by external power and authority, or go on until some bloody cataclysm—some appalling horror of blood and tears—startles the world with its barbarity and teaches anew the eternal lesson that justice is the only sure foundation of freedom and prosperity. Outside of these three alternatives there is but one possibility which involves a miracle greater than any ever yet preformed, to—wit, that a people should voluntarily and of their own motion, abandon the claim of right to subordinate a race or class which they have oppressed for generations.

The question for thoughtful and conscientious Americans to decide to-day is whether it is better to allow this evil to run its course unchecked, or to stand up as freemen and demand justice as the true remedy for wrong.

We have yet fresh in our memories an example pregnant with solemn warning. If three millions of American freemen had individually but unitedly, boldly and persistently, demanded the emancipation of the Negro by lawful and peaceful methods, in 1851, there would have been no need of the mustering in of three 0011 10millions of soldiers to put down the Slaveholders' Rebellion in 1861. Ink is cheaper than blood; ballots a more civilized force than bullets, and the law a nobler weapon than the sword. These are the form the National Citizen's Rights Association propose to employ.

THE DANGER. When we look back at slavery and recognize its atrocity and horror we tremble at the thought that God's justice spared a lethargic and and blinded people so long. It is then that realize the truth which Grant traced with trembling hand upon the margin of his proof-sheets while he waited for death on McGregor, “No nation can do wrong without paying the penalty,” and of that prophetic admission of the just measure of the penalty for this darkest of National sins which fell from the lips of Lincoln in those last days when the end of life and conflict were at hand:

“If God wills,” he said “that it (the scourge of war) continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

God teaches humanity but one lesson concerning its duty to man and that is—Justice. Individually or collectively, but one requirement is made of any man or race or class—that they should do to other men what in reserved conditions they would wish others to do to them. This is not charity nor mercy but Justice—measured by the one sure rule of self-demand. The lesson costs a great deal to learn and need to often be writ down large in blood and tears before nations and peoples will heed its requirement.

THE EXCUSE. It is said in justification of such injustice, usurpation and savagery, that they are “necessary for the preservation of civilization.” This is the identical plea on which Slavery based the justification of its inconceivable atrocities. It was necessary, it was claimed, that the slave who fled from bondage should be tortured; it was “necessary” that those who conspired to achieve their liberty should be burned alive; it was “necessary” that the white man who advocated emancipation as an act of justice should be lashed, mutilated, hanged. All these things were “necessary” to 0012 11protect “Christain civilization” from the tide of barbarism that would overflow the land should the slaves be set free. Yet for every white man who has been killed by a black hand during their quarter of a century of semi-freedom, a score if not a hundred colored men have been unlawfully slain by civilized white Christains at the South. The civilization which was born of Christian Slavery was based on terror and repression. It had one motive, the ease and comfort, gratification and interest of the slave-owner. All that militated against those it counted “dangerous to civilization.”

The present usurpation and nullification is based on the same theory; acts on the same assumption; uses the same methods; avows the same purpose and offers the same justification. Then, the Attorney General of Massachussetts declared that “to free the slaves would be to turn loose upon society a menagerie of wild beasts.”

To-day, a prominent divine in one of our great cities of the North declares, that the suspension of law, the nullification of constitutional guaranties, the denial of personal rights, the barbarism that puts to shame the horrors of Russian tyranny, are all “necessary” for the preservation of Christian civilization. A civilization based on injustice and upheld by terror and lawlessness is of as little value as a Christianity which stands sponsor and excusant for inequality of right among the children of God. The man who teaches such doctrine in the name of Christ, dishonors the son of God more than they who cast lots for his raiment. Such a minister should receive an immediate call to Hades. He would be very popular there and would serve the Master much better than in an earthly pulpit, since he would endanger the salvation of none of the Father's little ones by proclaiming him a God of cruelty, injustice and wrong beside whom the bloodthirsty deities of the Aztecs were white and clean and pure. A God whose cause demands injustice as the rule of National life and policy is to too monstrously vile to be conceived a possibility, even as a devil. Just such prophets of the “necessity” of crime and cruelty and injustice were the host of ministerial sophists who lulled the consciences of freemen to sleep lest they should heed the moans of the slave and be stirred to demand liberty and justice in his behalf. They would not believe that God meant justice to the Negro or that Christian ethics applied to racial relations, until the horrors of the battlefield quickened their moral natures to the truth.

It is very hard to be just to the weak and dependent. It is much 0013 12easier to recognize the rights of one whom we fear, than of one who fears us. It is easy to paint the poor as brutish and degraded. Those who dominate and oppress the weak are always the “best elements of society.” Why should they not be? They have lived in the light. Ease and wealth have brought opportunity for culture. They are the flowers of civilization. Want has not tempted them. Squalor has not blunted their sensibilities. But oppression has dulled their sense of justice for another race or a class. Contempt has stifled regard for others' rights. The nobility of France was the sweetest product of its civilization but justice was on the side of the Sans Culottes and Liberty sprang from the soil they watered so freely with blood. A civilization seared by the flames of slavery is one of the most dangerous elements of a Nation's life; just as the Christianity which accommodated itself to the infamies of the slave system and became the nurse and preserver of its prejudices, however sincere it may be, is one of the most serious obstacles to the prevalence of that justice which is the foundation principle of Christian duty.

The wrong is moral, legal and political. The colored man is wronged as a man, having a right to equal liberty with other men. He is wronged as a laborer, being deprived of free opportunity. he is wronged as a citizen, being stripped of lawful political power and civic privilege. He is wronged as a Christian, being denied by his white brethren the just and equal application of the Golden Rule. As a man, his appeal to other men cannot long pass unheeded; as a laborer, his cause is that of the laboring man everywhere. As a citizen he appeals to those who gave him citizenship and to those who by political affiliation suffer through the wrong done to him. As a Christian, his appeal lies to all the followers of the Christ who are learning more and more thoroughly the lesson that the tolerated evil of to-day is universally the blistering curse of to-morrow. Christianity, afraid to grapple with Slavery, finds itself now confronting its resultants, powerless to denounce evil without pronouncing condemnation of its past.

WHO IS FREE? The Negro is not only one having a distinct interest in the assertion of the rights of citizenship. Every man in the whole land who believes in the equal rights of citizens of the United States without regard to “race, color or previous condition of servitude,” is touched in his own person by present conditions. No man can call himself free who has to wear a gag or put a padlock on his tongue whenever he crosses certain state lines. A 0014 13party is only of slaves, which is no terror of another party that it dare not attempt to support an organization in a dozen States. No man who dissents from the views of the dominant class at the South is free to express his dissent, except in a few districts, and the Republican party which boasts of having freed the slaves could not include a thousand of its Northern members to canvass generally for it at the South this year for $10,000 a piece. The man who is not free to express his own political opinions in Mississippi is a slave though he may live in Minnesota. There is not a Republican in the Union who has a right to claim to be a freeman—he is only free in certain States.

An organ grinder is working his dismal passage along the street, as these lines are written. He has a puckered nosed, redfaced monkey fastened by a chain and cord to his waist. The monkey wanders curiously about the pavement, sometimes climbing the eave gutters to the second stories. He goes where he chooses, so long as the other interposes no objection. When the master objects he jerks savagely on the cord and the monkey runs obediently and deprecatingly to his heels and begins to wash his face with his cunning forepaws. The Republican party is the monkey. It is a liberty to go where it pleases so long as it does not go where the Southern Democracy does not want it. When it offers to go where,the Democracy jerks on the halter and Republicanism lowers its tail, squats in the mud and rubs its eyes apologetically for having trespassed on the Bourbon domain.

THE ELEMENTS OF DANGER. In seeking to estimate the consequences likely to result from present conditions, it is necessary to consider the view which the colored man as he grows more intelligent and gets farther from the fact of slavery, is likely to take of the assumptions of the dominant class at the South and his relations to it.

In this connection, it must be remembered that it is always easier and safer to hold a people in bondage where they have no rights, than to deprive a race of freemen of any right to which they believe themselves entitled. Almost every bloody revolution of the word has resulted not from continued oppression, but from an attempt to take away some right or privilege, very often a trivial one, which a people has previously enjoyed.

The Negro is human. One of the chief errors in the Southern views of the race and its relations has been the persistent effort to regard him as different from other men except in certain respects. Especially, is he not supposed to care anything about those rights 0015 14of person, family and citizenship which the white man prizes more highly than life.

There is also the established notion that he has a sort of instinctive fear of the white man, so that one of the superior race is accounted able to hold in subjection a score of colored men, his equals in strength and perhaps in intelligence. The idea prevails also, that the fear and terror which were the sole means of restraint during slavery, will be equally efficient in a state of freedom. There is too a curious belief that Christianity, which was the right hand of Slavery, teaching as it did, that disobedience was a sin and that the Christian must endure all things rather than appeal to violence or resist with force, will always exert a like restraining influence.

As a matter of fact, all these assumptions are unfounded. The Negro is a man, affected by human notives, keenly alive to the implication of inferiority, jealous of the rights he has once possessed and which he never would have surrendered, but from am abiding faith the government of the United States would ultimately protect the secure him in their re possession and enjoyment.

Intelligent has the same influence on him as on other men. It enables him to see his wrongs more clearly, to penetrate shallow assumptions of his oppressors and to show him they may be resisted. It teaches him to know his rights, to feel his wrongs. The slave felt but dully the invasion of his family by the ravisher. That the woman he called his wife or daughter should become the victim of the master 's lust was a common, every day fact in this world. To the freedman, the fact that his wife or his daughter is insulted, and that the law will afford no redress for the wrong, is a thought which lashes him to frenzy. so too, it is with every distinction of right or privilege between him and the white race. What the slave endured with sullen discontent, the intelligent freeman regards with flaming wrath.

The same is true of Christianity; hitherto it has restrained hereafter it will continually stimulate the sense of wrong and the impulse to resist injustice. They have learned that God is not unjust that he has given the white race no license to oppress. They do not believe that slavery was of divine ordainment or that the white man has a right to define their rights and privileges according to his own whim or interest.

A DARK RETROSPECT. Regarding the past of his race, the colored man will, as he grows in intelligence, very naturally be impressed with the most 0016 15important fact of its history, Slavery, and its resulting conditions. He He will inevitably regard this history as a most unprecedented sequence of unjust and oppressive acts. He is sure to say of Slavery:

“It was unjust to take my people's labor for two centuries and a half without recompense.

“It was unjust to make a man the mere creature of another's will.

“It was unjust to deprive him of the right of self-defense and subject his person and life to another's unrestrained brutality.

“It was unjust to deny the right of marriage and to strip the women of my race of protection to their persons.

“It was unjust to deny a race all marital rights and to deprive them them of a family name.

“It was unjust to refuse them the protection of the law, the right to sue and be sued and to take and hold property.

“It was unjust to deprive them of the right to learn to read and write to make it a crime for any one to teach them.”

When he comes to consider the condition which succeeded Slavery, he is sure likewise to feel that they are but a continuation of the same injustice. He will say:

“It was cruel to set me free without any compensation or recognition of the two centuries of unrequited toil wrung from my race with the lash.

“It was unjust to leave me free but dependent in all things upon those whom generations of denial had made deaf to my cry for justice.

“It was a cruel injustice to make me the butt of civilization by formally conferring on me the rights of citizenship without giving me any protection in their exercise, or any means of self-defense against those conspiring to take them from me.

“It was a mockery of justice to pretend to give me the rights of the freeman without protection for my person, my labor, my civil privileges or political power.”

These are certain to be the thoughts of the colored man as he grows more and more intelligent and perceives that the only reparation offered for past injuries is some new form of injustice.

CHANGED CONDITIONS. Knowledge is power, whether for good or ill. Every colored man or woman who has learned to read and write makes the race just so much harder to control—so much the more dangerous to oppress.

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The slave may be held, perhaps, for unnumbered generations by terror. The habit of subjection is no doubt inherited as well as the impulse of mastery. It is only with freedom that the real danger to the dominant class begins. What the slave would endure as irremediable, the freeman resists as unendurable.

The slave, having no rights, thought little if anything of freedom of speech and denial of political power; the freeman, seeing that all other rights and privileges depend upon these, counts life not worth having without them.

Christianity, which was used as a weapon to induce the race to submit to enslavement, impels the freeman to consider the defense of his rights, not only as the highest duty, but his most exalted privilege.

These motives and impulses are sure to affect the colored man of the future, simply because he is a man and subject to human motives and aspirations. But above all, his relation to his environment will be colored by profound conviction that the philosophy, the political theories and the religious dogmas on which the oppression of the past rested, are wholly false.

He will not believe that God created one race superior to another. He will never admit that any accidental superiority gives one race the right to dominate and control another.

He will say that neither wealth nor intelligence gives their possessor the right to deny to the poor or ignorant a voice in the direction of public affairs.

He will point to the fact that literacy is no guaranty of patriotism; that the poor man has more need of the ballot than the rich, and that injustice, oppression and evil come never from the weak and dependent elements of society, but always from its best and most highly cultured classes.

As he studies history and notes its truths, he will perceive that the condition of no dependent people was ever improved by the voluntary action of the dominant class; but that betterment has always come from resistance by the oppressed, through the intervention of some external force or from the co-operation of these two influences.

THE FUTURE. The precise consequences of an indefinite continuation of present conditions, it is, of course, impossible to predict. Some things may, however, be predicated of the future with the same certainty as if they had already occurred. Among these are the following:

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The American people will not long permit a condition of affairs to exist by which free speech and free political action are denied to a great political party in one-third of the Union. The freeman of the North knows that his National Citizenship is of little value if it does not carry with it protection of his rights in every State.

The people of the North will not long submit to see 7,000,000 of citizens deprived of political power and economic opportunity, because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It smacks too strongly of that Slavery which it cost so much to overthrow.

Civilization will not permit the permanent subjection of a race once emancipated and enfranchised. The drift of human progress is all the other way, and the fact is beginning to be recognized that the ignorance and poverty of the colored race are neither the result of ethnic qualities nor of individual inclination on their part, but are ineradicable evidences of the reckless greed injustice and neglect of duty of the white race in the past.

The world will not accept the shallow plea with which the dominant class of the South is seeking to excuse the enormities of the past, that they were not responsible for the original importation of the slaves from Africa. It matters not in what ships they came; it was the demand that brought them.

The world will hold the people of the North in a peculiar manner responsible for the future of the Negro in America.

1.—Because the Nation recognized and confirmed slavery by the provisions, limitations and evasions of the Federal Constitution.

2.—Because for eighty-five years it protected and maintained the institution with the full power of the National government.

3.—Because the people of the North denied the truth, paltered with conscience and bowed to the Slave Power of the South, for the sake of gain, finally moving only when necessity compelled, to abolish this most horrible of national infamies.

4.—Because in her hour of peril she appealed to the Negro for aid and without his assistance could not have vanquished her enemy.

5.—Because the people of the North are responsible for the emancipation of the slaves and it devolved upon them to secure to them such opportunity for personal and economic independence as the situation required.

6.—Because the people of the North, acting in the name and on the behalf of the Nation, guaranteed to the Negro the free and 0019 18untrt=amelled exercise of the rights of National Citizenship and thus far have failed to afford him any protection or means of self-defense therein.

It may also be accepted as a fact that neither the American people nor the civilized world will permit the terrorization of a race by lynchings and barbarities unknown in any other civilized land to continue; nor can assassination and violence be recognized in any English-speaking community as legitimate political instrumentalities. Neither can authority, based on murder and intimidation of the citizens, be permanently maintained.

THE ULTIMATE. It does not require any special knowledge or sagacity to know that far as the colored man of the South is concerned, the ultimate result of president conditions must be one of two things:

Either the Negro will continue to submit to the unjust and unjustifiable rule of the whites or the time will come when he will in some way endeavor to secure the rights that have been wrested from him.

That he will continue tamely to submit to injustice is extremely improbable. He is growing more and more sensitive to unjust discrimination and wholesale exaction. If he does continue to submit he will soon be practically reduced to serfdom and become a laborer wholly dependent on a class whose evident self-interest is evidently subserved by their hopeless subjection.

If he refuses to submit, he must either,

(1.) Appeal to the law for the assertion of his rights and the redress of his wrong.

(2.) Demand and secure the co-operation of such moral, political and economic forces as shall compel the dominant class of the South to accord him his inherent and constitutional rights.

(3.) If these methods fail or the pressure of unjust conditions becomes too great to be endured, there will be nothing left for him but an appeal to that great remedy of the oppressed-the divine law of retaliation which always obtains in favor of the weak and down-trodden when the later law of justice is denied them. Such an outbreak means no one can guess what of horror and devastation. No one can predict its outcome; no one should care to contemplate it. Unfortunately, the dominant class think that in such an appeal the victory would rest with them. It is by no means certain that such would be the result. A race numbering 7,000,000 driven driven to desperation is a terrible force to confront, especially when it is so closely intermingled with the dominant 0020 19race that it cannot be isolated from it. In such a conflict wealth and culture offer certain disadvantages. Property, as well as life, would be the object of attack. The torch, as well as the rifle, would be a chief instrument of offense. Cities may be burned, railroads destroyed, and civilization civilization in all its forms be forced to do penance for injustice and oppression. Whatever the outcome of the strife an inconceivable injury to the country and to civilization would result. Even if it lasted a day the work of a decade might be destroyed and, in any event, a slaughter, unequalled in modern times, would ensue.

Can civilization afford such a result? Can the American people afford it? What can prevent such a consummation?

There is but one remedy-one safeguard-JUSTICE!

WHAT THE NEGRO ASKS. The colored race does not demand reparation-thank Heaven for that-only justice, equality of civil privilege, political right and economic opportunity, properly guaranteed and secured for the future. If this is not accorded, resistance, wild and desperate, is as sure to be the final result as the days are to clapse.

Already thousands and tens of thousands of the more intelligent of the race see this and stand ready to demand justice or welcome extermination. The number and determination of these is sure to increase and the result which ordinary common sense sees to be inevitable, those who have watched the condition of affairs and the temper of the race most carefully and with the advantage of wide and unrestricted confidencce on their part know to be imminent.

We are living on a volcano—a volcano fed by the smouldering fires of two centuries and a half of oppression. When or where it may break out no one can tell. We only know that fresh injustice keeps it hourly in a state of probable eruption. It may be a massacre; it may spring from resentfulness at the “Jim Crow Car;“ it may result from lynching a man who defends his wife's honor,-the cause may be little or great,-the result is sure to be one of inconceivable horror. Beside it, the terrors of the French Revolution of and St. Bartholemew's Eve are likely to sink into insignficance. The people of the United States have only to sit still and let this evil grow to its full magnitude as they did with slavery, to secure in the near future this result. Do we want it? Can we afford it? Enforced ignorance and poverty are unpleasant facts. They are the fruits of oppression for which the penalty must be paid and that penalty is either JUSTICE OR WOE.

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It is an inflexible and divine law of human nature that the oppressor must pay in kind for his wrong doing unless he consents to accord justice to the oppressed. That is the universal law of collective human relation. There is no statue of limitation,—no excuse—no escape. Woe or justice, such is the inflexible historical alternative.

There are many thousands who believe that the time to avert such a calamity is past. They accept the words of the philosopher who wrote only half-conscious of the truth of the words he uttered:

“Whenever violence usurps the place of law and terror becomes the sole reliance of power, the hope of voluntary amendment of conditions is at an end and revolution becomes the only resort of the oppressed.”

MAGNITUDE OF THE PERIL. The consideration of these facts must convince any candid mind that the peril of the present situation is infinitely greater than was the apparent danger of slavery. Humanity, civilization, the national honor and sound policy alike demand that the 7,000,000 of our fellow citizens massed chiefly in the former locus of slavery, shall not be allowed to retrograde in development, manhood, or self-reliance. This it is impossible to avoid while they are subjected to the influence of legal discrimination or the assertion of white superiority and right to rule maintained by unlawful force and terror. Neither can we, as a Christian people, permit such a condition to ripen into strife and massacre. The fact that the dominant class belongs to the white race does not in any manner affect their rights as men or as citizens. The white man has a right to render and receive justice-nothing more. The white citizen has a right to equal power and privilege with the black citizen-nothing more. If he takes more he is a ursurper; if he is permitted to exercise more, the Nation endorses oppression and in effect re-establishes Slavery minus only the right to buy and sell.

So too, the fact that the dominant class is Christian does not in any degree tend to excuse or justify their course. Christianity is chameleonic especially so far as public or collective wrongs are concerned. Christianity did not merely tolerate, it was the active supporter and defender of slavery. Even the fact that slavery forbade the colored Christian to read the word of God; that he was compelled to live in a state of adultery; that it required the slave-woman to submit her person to the lust of the master; that it allowed the father to make merchandise of his own flesh and blood in short all the horrible and unspeakable infamies 0022 21of this atrocious system were not enough to shake the faith of Southern Christians in its righteousness or induce them even to pray for its extinction. It is not strange then that Southern Christianity of to-day should see nothing reprehensible, either in depriving the colored man of his legal rights or in the means by which his disfranchisement and subjection are accomplished. To them the white man is the divinely ordained ruler and superior. The natural and divinely established function of the colored race is to serve him and its highest duty is to submit to his direction and control. The duty of the white man is to treat this inferior kindly, if he behaves himself, and pay him for his labor as much as he pleases. The aspiration of the colored man to be an equal, to enjoy equal privilege and exercise equal power, man for man in the State, it is the religious duty of the white man to put down at all hazards and at any cost of blood and cruelty. That this is the status of Southern Christianity there can be no question,—and the fact is no more to be wondered at than that the oak springs from the acorn. In fact it would be a miracle equal to that of Calvary, if two centuries of Christianity shaped in the hard and unjust mold of slavery, should yield any other product. The faith of to-day is just as much an outgrowth of the religion of yesterday as in the man of to-day the product of yesterday's conditions and for the same reason.

THE MEASURE OF JUSTICE. The world will not accept the silly plea that mere liberty to go withersoever he pleased, mere freedom of locomotion, was the only obligation due to the colored man, either from the Nation or the people of the South. The slave's labor, up to 1860, was a very large element of the Nation's wealth and almost the sole origin of the wealth of the South. Its staples were the product almost entirely of slave labor. A few white farmers worked the uplands in a slovenly, half-hearted way, winning a scanty self-support rather than adding any considerable amount to the aggregate of production. But the great mass of cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice and what were termed naval stores, were the direct product of slave labor. Southern civilization derived its sustenance almost entirely from slave-labor. Its culture depended almost wholly upon the sweat which the lash wrung from dusky forms. It had no system of public schools, but its churches, academies colleges, were not only built but supported by the proceeds of enforced toil.

The duty of a civilized people towards an uncivilized people— 0023 22constituting a part of the population of a common country-consists of something more than merely permitting them to exist. Patriotism, elevation, opportunity, are essential elements of such obligation. The duty of the slaveholder and of the Nation which derived benefit from the slave's labor was, at least, to fit him for freedom. They had no right to allow him to remain in ignorance, to compel him to a life immorality, and to close upon him the door of hope. Because they did these things the obligations resting upon them have been enhanced a thousand fold. While the colored man was forbidden to take or hold property, the white man became seized of all the lands of the South. The colored man cleared them, cultivated them and gave them value. All this as well as the value of the slave's person accrued only to the white man's advantage. The Southern man professes to be the especial friend of the colored man. It is not friendship that will discharge this obligation which accrued in the past. Only justice can wipe it out. The Southern man made exactly the same claim when he held the Negro as a slave. He was his “best friend,” he said; treated him kindly and fed him well. Yet there was not one among all the white people of the South who would not rather have died a thousand deaths than have been a slave for a single day. Their kindness never reached to the height of justice. The colored man no longer asks the kindness of mere favor. He demands right, justice, equal opportunity, and stands before the world the most meritorious of creditors, holding a just and righteous claim for reparation which it would almost beggar the Nation to discharge, and asks in payment for past wrongs, only a citizen's right and a freeman's opportunity. The common sentiment of the civilized world will not permit either the Nation or the people of the South to ignore moral obligations of such weight in dealing with the colored race in the future.

ENCOURAGEMENT OF REVOLUTION. There is another view of this question which should not be neglected. The great danger of all republics has been the tendency to revolution. Every American citizen recognizes the fact that the Great Republic is not exempt from this peril. The bloodiest war of modern times has taught us that, if nothing more. But there is such a thing as revolution without warfare-revolution effected by preventing the expression of the popular will or the falsification of that will when expressed. In a republic such a state of affairs can not long exist without stimulating ambition and leading to usurpation. Then must follow strife or submission. 0024 23The peril to be apprehended from present conditions is not restrictedto the South alone. There the will of the majority was openly defied and finally overthrown by violence and terror. A party was overcome, not by defection of its voters or change in their political belief, but by the simple fact that they were deprived of the right of free speech, public assemblage, party organization, public discussion, and driven from the polls by threats and violence. It was a personal revolution, based on unnumbered murders and the universal threat of one class that they would dobodily violence to those of the other party who opposed their designs. By this means the power of a dozen States was snatched from the majority. This revolution has been confirmed and fortified until there is but one way possible to restore power to the majority. These States are ruled by minorities bound together by ambition, individualinterest and the desire to permanently disfranchise the colored voter. They have established in them, as a fundamental principle, that physical force is the measure of right to rule, and not a majority. The shot-gun, the bull-whack, the tissue ballot and laws made by a usurping minority, control and regulate the verdict of the ballot-box. What is the natural and evident deduction from such a state of facts? A child cannot help but draw the obvious inference. If revolution is possible by unlawful means in one State, why not in another? If it succeeds in a State, why not in the Nation? But it is said that “Southern methods” cannot succeed at the North? Possibly not; it is doubtful if any such resolute, determined, thoroughly compacted body of citizens as the dominant minority of the South exists at the North. It is not the methods, however, that are important; it is the fact that such a revolution once accomplished is submitted to, and may with proper care be indefinitely perpetuated. It is said there is no such ignorant and dependent class at the North as at the South. Very true; but it is just as easy to steal from a man who is asleep as from one who is blind. A neglectful citizen is just as easy to subjugate as an ignorant one. David B. Hill stole the State of New York much easier than Wade Hampton usurped the control of South Carolina. Suppose the Legislature should be authorized to choose the electors or the State gerrymandered and they be elected on the “Michigan plan,” what is the result? The National government in all probability, becomes the prize of revolutionary methods. The South, revolutionized by violence and fraud, joins hands with New York, revolutionized by fraud alone, to control the Nation.

Only the clear assertion of the rights of National Citizenship 0025 24and their adequate protection by National authority can prevent the American Nation from becoming the football of reckless revolutionary factions. A nation's life is never secure with an open sore of usurpation within its borders. The evil is sure to spread and blood-poisoning must ultimately ensue.

THE POLICY OF INACTION. It is often said, as if in excuse for these evils and in justification of the policy of non-interference therewith, that the dominant party of the South are perfectly sincere in their belief that denial of the colored citizens' right and suppression of free speech are necessary to preserve the supremacy and domination of the white race, and that it is their right and duty to rule at any cost, because they are white.

The white man of the South is like every other man, of every race and every age, in that he finds it easy to believe what is conformable to his wishes and what he esteems to be for his interest He is not as a rule, a man of broad views or disinterested motives. “The South” has always bounded his horizon. He sees nothing, or sees dimly, beyond its limit. In comparison with a Northern agricultural population his knowledge is amazingly restricted. One-fifth of their number cannot read or write; a considerable portion of the remainder can hardly read, and with difficulty write at all. It is doubtful if any sort of a newspaper goes to one-half the white homes of the South. Such a people easily believe what is consonant with their prejudices. They believed in slavery first of all things, because it was profitable. Whatever may be said of slavery as an economic policy for a State, so far as the individual slave-owner was concerned, it was undoubtedly the surest and easiest source of wealth ever known. Taking into account the value of the progeny, the slave-owner who gave the same attention to his affairs as other people give to theirs, was sure of a much greater profit, in connection with a life of ease and indulgence, if not luxury. Self-interest was the controlling motive of the slave-owner, and this made it easy to believe in the rightfulness of Slavery and chattelism. The non-slave-owner assented to this view because it was based on an assumed inherent superiority of the white race, and this superiority attached to and included him, no matter how ignorant and degraded he might be. That he was sincere in this belief there is no need to doubt. So, too, there is no reason to suppose that he is insincere in his present opinions. Peoples and classes usually believe that what they do or wish to do is right. The possessor of inherited power and privilege, nobles 0026 25and kings, are no doubt quite sincere in their belief in the righteousness of their claims. Gut such sincerity counts nothing in favor of their justice or rightfulness. Indeed, a class which believes itself right when it is in the wrong, is only the more dangerous for that fact, and all the greater obstacle in the way of civilization and liberty. The dominant class were so sincere in their belief in the rightfulness of slavery, that when they thought its existence threatened they plunged the country into war in its defense. They are so sincere in their present convictions, which are a natural result of the former bias, that they openly avow that no power on earth can make the Southern people submit to the exercise of political rights by the Negro. It is a familiar extravaganza. The fact that it is sincere, however, is no palliation of its wrong and no excuse for neglect of effort to obviate that wrong. If the people of the North had spoken out boldly and earnestly against slavery, instead of leaving it to cure itself, we should never have had that cataclysm of woe by which we paid with blood shed by the sword for the blood shed by the lash. The question to be asked with regard to any relation between the dominant class of a population to another, is not “Are they sincere in the belief in its righteousness or necessity?” but “Is it just?” There is no other test.

FORCE OF PUBLIC OPINION. To-day the voice of public opinion is more potent in shaping the action of peoples and nations than ever before. A million names upon our roll will command the attention of every phase of the world's thought. It will show the dominant class of the South that the sentiment of liberty, justice and equality of opportunity is not a mere evanescent whim on the part of the Northern people; it will show the colored citizen that he is not to be abandoned to the greed of a type who regard him as without any right which he is entitled to assert against their will and pleasure. It will encourage the “Silent South” to speak out and help avoid the peril which impends. One of the chief misfortunes of the situation, in that the dominant class of the South think, as they did in the days of slavery, that only “fanatics” and a few self-seeking political leaders of the North care anything about the condition or fate of the colored man. A chief purpose of the National Citizens' Rights Association, is to show that beyond question the falsity of notion and let them know that the army of those who love liberty is not less but greater than it was when it spurned the thought of revenge, and asked only obedience to law at Appomattox, and that it asks to-day only what it then required as the sole fruit of victory.

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The National Citizen' Rights Association is composed of American citizens who believe that the power of the Nation is sufficient to avert the present evil as it was to destroy the viper Slavery from whose maw it crept. Whether it may be done without bloodshed or not, we don not know, but we believe that it is the duty of every citizen to see to it that all peaceful and lawful means are exhausted before such a terrible crisis shall occur, if occur it finally must.

They believe that it is the duty of every citizen who desires this to be remedied without bloodshed and who believes in justice, liberty and the free exercise of the rights of citizenship, to personally certify the same in order that the force of cumulated opinion may be brought to bear for the amendment of present conditions. The first object of the Association therefore is to form a roll of the Liberty-lovers of the land. No fee is required beyond a two-cent stamp for the return of a certificate. No assessments are made, all contributions being purely voluntary.

At present the organization of the National Citizens' Rights Association is provisional in character, consisting of a President, a council of Administration and an Advisory Committee in each county having a sufficient membership to require it, usually whet it reaches 500. The Provisional President makes report to the Council of Administration each month of money received and work done. No officer has any salary or perquisites.

The only expense thus far has been for stationery, printing and a small sum for clerical work. A roll of the Members is kept according to the numbers of the certificates; of membership issued also, an autograph roll composed of the applications or membership arranged by state and counties. The first certificate of membership was sent out on November 6th, 1891; on the first of January, 1892, nearly 100 countries had been organized with active Advisory Committees in every State of the Union save one.

The Citizens' Rights Association has no specific remedy for the evils it desires to ameliorate. It recognizes the fact that the amendment of general conditions is always affected by the cooperation of multiform agencies. Its great purpose being to turn the force of cumulated public sentiment upon present evils, it will devote its attention first to ascertaining the extent of the sentiment by extending its membership. It is impossible to estimate the real force of such sentiment until we know ho how many Liberty-lovers there are in the land, who they are, and where they are.

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The means at present relied on for its extension, are the personal efforts of members. Application lists are sent to each one and as every one is able to obtain at least a few signatures, the enrollment of those favoring the movement goes on quietly, steadily and with the least possible expense.

When this work has proceeded to such a point as to justify it, it is the intention of the Council of Administration to give especial attention to serving and publishing reliable information in regard to political and economic conditions at the South; to aid a securing the adjudication of questions touching the rights of citizenship. It will use all lawful means to secure just legislation, and, in every way that may offer such to promote and protect the free, and equal exercise of the rights of American citizenship by all entitled thereto.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE? The need of this work will be appreciated at a glance.

1.—Since the suppression of free-speech at the South, just as in the days of Slavery, one of the most difficult things to do, has been to obtain a just and true idea of the condition of affairs in the various parts of the South, regarded from the standpoint of those who suffer injustice. A chief reason of this is the fear which citizens have of the consequences of giving information, should the fact become known. The National Citizens' Rights Association proposes to remedy this by protecting those who give it information, from discovery. No member of the Association need fear disclosure of his identity. Indeed, he need not sign his name, the number of his certificate is sufficient. With Advisory committees in each state and many counties, its opportunities for ascertaining the facts will be unrivalled. Indeed, the voluntary information already received is amazing.

2.—The mass of legislation which bears unjustly upon the colored man at the South, is but little comprehended by the people of the North. Some of the laws, like the Separate Car Act of various States are openly and professedly class legislation, which a colored minister with fine instinctive perception of true relations, has recently fitly termed, “the cradle of Slavery.” Wherever such legislation is tolerated, some form of slavery is not very far away.

In other cases, as in the “amended” Mississippi constitution and election laws, what it is admitted could not lawfully be done directly, is sought to be obtained by indirection.

In other cases laws have been enacted or construed so as to be 0029 28peculiarly burdensome to the laborer or that class of laborers who are mostly colored. And in still other cases the administration of the law is made unequal and unjust to their great wrong and oppression.

The National Citizens' Rights Association will encourage and aid, so far as it is authorized by the liberality of its members, the appeal to law and public opinion for the amendment of these evils.

3.—In addition to these, the National Citizens' Rights Association, while not distinctively partisan, will urge by every means in its power, the enactment and enforcement of National legislation intended to promote and secure to every citizen of the United States, the just and equal and untrammeled exercise of all the rights of citizenship in every State of the Union.

What results are possible no one can foretell, but certain things may be regarded as beyond question.

1.—Nothing desirable is ever accomplished without effort.

2.—No great cause is advanced without harmonious co-operation.

3.—If American citizenship is ever to be made less of a farce than American freedom was in the days of Slavery, it must be by the voluntary co-operation of American citizens.

4.—Parties and peoples yield to the force of public opinion, but public opinion can be made appreciable only by individual effort and demonstrable organization.

In this work the same plan will be pursued as in the work of extension, to wit, there will be no assessments. The organization is the voluntary action of its members and it will depend solely on gratuitous contributions to carry on its work, including such sums as may be received for publications made for its benefit. The extent of its work, therefore, depends on the liberality of its members. Whatever can be done with the funds contributed, that it will try to do: when it is without means its work will cease. Thus far it has not lacked means for the actual work in hand. The contributions have not been large but with every specific need, the money has been in hand to meet it. No one has been asked for a dollar, but many have been moved to give to help along the cause of liberty and justice.

The Association will not deal in promises but in work, and what it will do depends on the means which are provided to sustain its work.

But the most important duty of this Association will be to induce all citizens to give this terrible question their serious 0030 29consideration, to impress upon all a clearer view of the peril it involves, and to endavor to secure from all a recognition of the fundamental truth that JUSTICE is the only cure for wrong and only reliable basis of peace and prosperity.

THINGS TO BE REMEMBERED. “Government of the people, by the people and for the people,” means always THE RULE OF THE MAJORITY.

Government BY a minority, is always Government FOR the Minority. The King rules FOR his dynasty; the noble FOR the nobility; a caste FOR their caste FOR their caste; a race FOR their race.

There are but two methods of avoiding the penalty for oppression; the one is by DOING JUSTICE; the other is by perperpetrating some new and GREATER INJUSTICE.

INJUSTICE TO A PEOPLE IS A DEBT BEARING COMPOUND INTEREST WHICH NO STATUTE OF LIMITATION EVER BARS.

“UNSETTLED QUESTIONS HAVE NO REGARD FOR THE REPOSE OF NATIONS.”

GOD IS AN EXPERT ACCOUNTANT WHO ACCEPTS NO “DOCTORED” BALANCED-SHEET, BUT MAKES UP HIS OWN FOOTINGS AND BALANCES THE ACCOUNTS BETWEEN PEOPLES, IF NEED BE, IN RED INK. DO IT NOW!

If you are in accord with these views you are respectfully invited to become a member of this Association which every citizen, male or female, above the age of 18 years, may do by signing the accompanying form of application, giving name, post-office, county, (or street if in a city) and sending the same with a two-cent stamp for each name pay for return of certificates of membership, to the President of the Association.

Contributions for promoting the purpose of the organization will be promptly acknowledged and faithfully applied. If you remit by money order, or draft, the same should be made payable to Albion W. Tourgee, Provisional President, Mayville, Chautauqua Co., N. Y.-to whom all communications in regard to the Association should be addressed.

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A BYSTANDER's NOTES. Hon. Albion W. Tougee, the president of the Association, is well known as the author of numerous works dealing with subjects connected with “National Citizenship” and the “Race Problem,” published at various times during the last decade.

He is also the author of “A Bystander's Notes,” published in The Inter Ocean, Chicago, Ills., in which for several years he has discussed this subject in each Saturday's issue. The “Bystander's Notes” are reproduced, also, in the Weekly edition of The Inter Ocean, price $1.00 a year, In these “Notes” will be given from time to time full accounts of the work of the National Citizens' Rights Association, which is the outgrowth of a simple suggestion made in one of them.

The demand for the “Bystander's Notes” in book form has been so persistent that it has been determined to issue a volume of extracts from the same bearing upon the questions of CITIZENSHIP AND THE RACE PROBLEM, which will be published at an early day, should the orders received in advance be sufficient to justify the expense. It will be composed mainly of extracts from the “Notes” during the past year. It will be a volume of about 250 pages, uniform in size with the author's other works, and will be sold,

In cloth, 12mo. post paid for . . $1.00

In paper “ “ “ 60

All orders should be sent to

ALBION W. TOURGEE,

MAYVILLE, (Chautauqua Co.) N. Y.

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The calls for other works by Judge Tourgee, bearing 01. “National Citizenship” and the “Race Problem,” are so frequent at the headquarters of the National Citizens” Rights Association, that arrangements have been made with the publishers to supply those ordering through this office at the rates given below. “A Fool's Errand” and Bricks Without Straw” can also be furnished in paper covers, postpaid, at 60 cts. each.

A Fool's Errand, Cloth, $1.25 Bricks Without Straw, “ 1.25 Hot Plowshares, “ 1.25 A Royal Gentleman, “ 1.25 An Appeal to Caesar, “ 1.00 Pactolus Prime, “ 1.00 Send postpaid on receipt of above prices. Address, ALBOIN W. TOURGEE, Mayville, (Chautauqua Co.) N. Y NATIONAL ORGANIZATION. The following are the officers of the National Citizen' Rights Association. HON. ALBION W. TOURGEE, Provisional President Mayville, Chatauqua Co., N. Y.

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF ADMINISTRATION. Rev. J. Bates - - - - Mayville, N. Y. Prof. W. H. Pierce, Sec'y - “ “ Mr. V. A. Albro - - - “ “ Mr. E. A. SKINNER - - - Westfield, “ Rev. DAVID BEATON - - - Chicago, Ills. Mr. GEORGE W. CABLE - - Northampton, Mass Miss FLORENCE A. LEWIS - - Philadelphia, Pa. Mr. L. A. MARTINET - - New Orleans, La. It has been decided to increase the National Council of Administration to fifty members at an early day.

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ADVISORY COMMITTEES. These are appointed from the most active members in each county, as soon as the membership in the country reaches 500. They are charged with the duty of appointing soliciting agents, and supervising and promoting the extension of the organization generally.

FORM OF APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP IN THE NATIONAL CITIZEN' RIGHT ASSOCIATION. I wish to enroll my name as a member of the National Citizens' Rights Association for the legal assertion and protection of the rights of American Citizenship, and hereby pledge my aid and support in extending its membership and promoting its patriotic purposes. Name, Postoffice, Country, State, Sign the above form and send, with two-cent stamp for return of certificate, to

ALBION W. TOURGEE, Mayville, Chautaqua Co., New York.

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HON. ALBION W. TOURGEE **HAS BEEN FOR SEVERAL YEARS *A REGULAR CONTRIBUTION TO THE INTER OCEAN “A BYSTANDER's NOTES" Written by him are published in THE DAILY INTER OCEAN every Saturday, and in THE WEEKLY INTER OCEAN. They have attracted great attention in almost every part of the country. THE INTER OCEAN IS A RADICAL REPUBLICAN NEWSPAPER. The price of the Daily(without Sunday), $6.00 per year The price of the Daily(with Sunday), 8.00 per year Sunday Edition alone, 2.00 per year Semi-Weekly Edition, 2.00 per year The Weekly Edition 1.00 per year Address

THE INTER OCEAN. CHICAGO.

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In August next, THE INTER OCEAN will begin the publication of A SERIAL STORY BY JUDGE ALBION W. TOURGEE. Entitled “OUT OF THE SUNSET SEA.” It will be a story of the times of CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, when fact was more wonderful than fiction. COLUMBUS AND HIS GREAT DISCOVERY will be woven into the theme. * * * * * ...JUDGE TOURGEE has given the subject great study and excepts to make this the greatest work of his life. It will run through the daily and weekly editions of THE INTER OCEAN.

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