Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/216

192 T. W. Davenport. lead US into devious and perplexing ways which must be retraced. Even now, notwithstanding our costly experience, it is quite common to see admissions from high sources in the North, that the constitutional amendment placing the negro upon a legal equality with his white brother, was a mistake, and that be should have been left to the tender mercies and sense of justice of his former master. And this, too, though Southern public opinion, if left to itself, would not permit him to hold up his head and stand erect in the image of his maker, but condemn him to a life but little above mere beasts of burden. Those who would crush out every aspiration of the Afro- American to rise in the scale of being, the Smiths and Varde- mans, are elected to places of trust and power, while the great man, Booker T. Washington, is spit upon by the superior race holding sway in the city which is an eye witness of his success in raising the negro from his low estate. From all this, is it not evident that the race question, like the slavery question, is not a local one, and that the negro, free or slave, cannot be left to the disposition of those who would make him keep his place" and cherish no ambition above the rude'^t toil? Are we so dull of comprehension that we cannot see that the solution of the race question, and all other disturbing questions, lies in the establishment of justice among men; that there is no other solution, that injustice to a part means degradation to the whole, and that nothing less than the com- bined moral strength and intelligence of the whole people constantly exerted, can establish a just and progressive social stated Hence the necessity of seeing the facts of history in their true light, unswayed by weak sentimentality or the arts of sophistry, ever remembering that, "In the corrupted currents of this world, Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft 'tis seen, the wicked prize itself Buys out the law." Another class of critics is voiced by a learned legal friend, who asked, "Do you think there is a kernel in that chaff?"