While thus every fairminded man will judge the doings of the colored people themselves with charity, no measure of condemnation can be too severe for those who made of the ignorant and credulous multitude a tool in their schemes of rapacity. What the colored people need above all things for their own security and welfare is a good understanding with their white neighbors. Had they, when they became a power in the political field, been led by conscientious and wise men, to cast their votes for good government, and thus to promote the common interests of both races, that good understanding with their white neighbors would not long have been wanting. But what characters did assume the leadership? Men who assiduously persuaded the negroes that their only safety was in a strict organization as a race against the Southern whites, and in blind obedience to the behests of their commanders; men who used that organization only to raise themselves to power, and who used that power for the spoliation of the people; men, who, in many cases, after having filled their pockets with spoil, sneaked off to a place of safety, leaving behind the poor tools of their iniquity as victims to the exasperation of plundered and outraged communities.
Truly, there never were professions of affection and solicitude more damnably treacherous than those lavished by such men upon the negroes of the South. To place the negroes of the South in the attitude of organized partisan supporters of corruption and robbery against the whites was the blackest crime that could be committed against the colored race. And I affirm that the men who did it, the carpet-baggers and plunderers, have been and are the cruelest, the most treacherous, the most dastardly enemies the colored people ever had since their emancipation.
The mischief is done and we see its consequences. The
