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Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on
Steam'd up from Cairo's swamps of pestilence.
Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth
And borne to injur'd tribes slavery and pangs;
And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
With slow perdition murders the whole man,
His body and his soul."
Alas, nothing of the kind is visible in all this pamphlet! It is an indictment, from beginning to end, of a victimized and wronged people! Bishops, presbyters, and laymen all unite in a dark picturing of an entire race, almost oblivious of any wrong-doing on their part! Some of these men are painstaking in the endeavor to show that the difficulty lies in the inherent nature of the negro! Poor miserable obtuse creature, he has been to school two hundred years! He has had Bishop Howe's "schoolmaster," and all his teachings; but he still remains an ignorant, stupid, semi-barbarous animal! It is the Negro! the Negro!
And Dr. Tucker, instead of a wail of lamentation at the neglect and outrage which has brought this race to degradation, not only ignores all the conspicuous facts of Negro progress since emancipation, but actually enters a gross and exaggerated charge of deterioration against the entire race. Nay, worse than this; when confronted by brother clergymen, who deny his charges, he goes to work to gather in from every quarter every possible charge of infamy against them! It is evidently a disguised attempt to prove Emancipation a failure!
The negro race south, progressive in numbers, in property, in education, in religion.
This indictment of the black race is a false one. I care not how generous may be the professions of Dr. Tucker, his statement before the Episcopal Congress at Richmond
