condition of the Negro--a change that is going on at an increased
ratio? Would an article be worth much on "What _Anglo-Saxon_ Supremacy
Means," based on extracts from Roman histories in regard to the
ancient Germans? True, the comparison is an extreme one, but it must
be remembered that more progress is now made in human civilization
in one year, than in a century then. But let us confine ourselves
to the facts as they now stand. The present generation of Negroes
in the South has had the aid of the public schools, limited and
inadequate as they are, and it has had the still more valuable aid
of schools sustained by Northern benevolence, supplemented in some
cases {pg 198} by aid from the Southern States, that have furnished
instruction of the best quality in all ranges of study, from primary
to college and professional. From Hampton, Va., to Austin, Texas,
these schools, supported by various religious denominations, with
carefully selected and thoroughly competent teachers from the North,
have been sending forth their graduates as teachers, preachers,
professional and business men. These schools of all grades number more
than two hundred, and a large per cent. of their graduates become
teachers who are giving a mighty uplift to their people. A colored
editor could say truthfully two years ago, "We have preachers learned
and eloquent; we have professors in colleges by hundreds, and
school-masters by thousands; successful farmers, merchants, ministers,
lawyers, editors, educators and physicians." To all this it may be
added that careful estimates place the amount of property on which the
Negroes in the Southern States pay taxes, at one hundred millions of
dollars. Surely this race could now furnish legislators more
intelligent and more interested in the assessment of taxes than in
1868, and the number and quality will be rapidly increased every year.
Senator Hampton might have looked around and ahead, and not backward
only! His article, as it stands, stamps him as a veritable Bourbon;