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340 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

but those scenes have now disappeared.... Without abating one jot of our
horror and indignation at the outrages committed in some parts of the
Southern States against the negro, we cannot but regard the present agitation
of an African exodus from the South as ill-timed and in some respects hurtful.
We stand to-day at the beginning of a grand and beneficent reaction.
There is a growing recognition of the duty and obligation of the American
people to guard, protect, and defend the personal and political rights of all
the people of all the States; to uphold the principles upon which rebellion
was suppressed, slavery abolished, and the country saved from dismemberment
and ruin.

"We see and feel to-day, as we have not seen and felt before, that the
time for conciliation and trusting to the honor of the late rebels and slaveholders
has passed. The President of the United States himself while still
liberal, just, and generous toward the South, has yet sounded a halt in that
direction, and has bravely, firmly, and ably asserted the constitutional authority
to maintain the public peace in every State in the Union, and upon every
day in the year, and has maintained this ground against all the powers of
House and Senate.

"We stand at the gateway of a marked and decided change in the statesmanship
of our rulers. Every day brings fresh and increasing evidence that
we are, and of right ought to be, a nation; that Confederate notions of the
nature and powers of our government ought to have perished in the rebellion
which they supported; that they are anachronisms and superstitions and no
longer fit to be above ground....

"At a time like this, so full of hope and courage, it is unfortunate that a
cry of despair should be raised in behalf of the colored people of the South;
unfortunate that men are going over the country begging in the name of the
poor colored man of the South, and telling the people that the government
has no power to enforce the Constitution and laws in that section, and that
there is no hope for the poor negro but to plant him in the new soil of Kansas
or Nebraska.

"These men do the colored people of the South a real damage. They give
their enemies an advantage in the argument for their manhood and freedom.
They assume their inability to take care of themselves. The country will be
told of the hundreds who go to Kansas, but not of the thousands who stay in
Mississippi and Louisiana.

"It will be told of the destitute who require material aid, but not of the
multitude who are bravely sustaining themselves where they are.

"In Georgia the negroes are paying taxes upon six millions of dollars; in