tained for which all true men look; that if complaints be not patiently heard, and the evils set forth proved and fully redressed, then the "bravery" of the words of the Fourteenth Amendment rather injures than promotes the cause of civil liberty.
In this presentation of the cause of their people they do not wish to heighten the difficulties of the situation, but simply to imitate the example of impartial justice, which, though forced to condemn, never exaggerates the fault of the wrong-doer.
These addressers do not regard themselves as innovators, dreamers, murmurers, or diffusers of civil discontent; nor are they ambitious to propose any visionary scheme of unattainable perfection. They only desire to see rigidly maintained the spirit of the Supreme Court's decisions in the civil-rights cases, that the "Fourteenth Amendment obliterated the race-line so far as all rights fundamental in a state of freedom are concerned." The following work, undertaken and written at their request, is intended to further this end; and it is hoped that it will have a tendency to check the fungus-growth of illicit constitutional construction which has already so emasculated the amendments, and that it may induce the guardians of jurisprudence to substitute a sound and robust method of interpretation, in the place of those metaphysical abstractions and subtle distinctions which have served no better purpose than to aid in the resurrection of some of the ceremonialisms of slavery long after its interment.
These addressers only claim liberty to exercise the superior right of thought,—that independent freedom of inquiry which so conspicuously distinguishes the present age and our country. They insist that the significance, dignity, and importance of the African race as a potent industrial and economic factor, and a valuable and reliable political force, in its relation to the American commonwealth, are susceptible of demonstration, without subtlety, florid eloquence, or the vehement asserverations of acrimonious debate. It is their purpose to endeavor to expose the crudities, and correct the antiquated but still vigorous errors, of race-prejudice; and they fully realize that they have to combat a strange mixture of prejudice and indifference, and the worst of all tyrants,—authority confirmed by long-continued
