There are those in this presence who have seen the population of this
republic multiply itself nearly three times. Our childhood's geography
taught us that twenty-three millions of people lived in the United
States. Now our children learn that there are sixty millions. Twenty
years ago four millions of Negroes and eight millions to-day. Therefore,
as large as the problem now is to us, it will be greater for our
children if we err in our solution of it.

This race of African descent has been declared by constitutional
enactment to be entitled to whatever privileges belong to man, as man.
Standing on this, and beginning with nothing but the heredity of
hindrances, with the brand of color and the prejudice of race against
them, this people have climbed up from their low estate with a
remarkable progress. They have applied themselves to take hold of
knowledge as no other people ever did in the annals of history. They
have made great inroads upon their previous illiteracy. They have
rapidly acquired property. They have developed industrial skill, and
established the evidences of business facility. They have shown
themselves capable of good citizenship, both in the understanding of its
duties and the practice of them. They have vindicated the act of
emancipation and the decrees of citizenship.

Yet to-day their standing both as citizens and as Christians is opposed.
The question of their rights is discussed as if it were an open one, and
in the South it is coming to be increasingly denied. Under the plea that
it is unsafe for the black man to exercise his civil rights, there
arises a condition of affairs that can have no standing under our
government except a revolutionary standing. And the question whether the
rights of man as man shall be regarded, is to-day a more pressing
question than it has been at any previous time since the slaves were