Note 42 — Chapter I

Note the frank reply of a lawyer to a negro politician: “I stand ready, as far as in me lies, to protect them in their rights as citizens. Here my friendship stops; I am not their friend when it comes to official life. The colored man has just been redeemed from slavery, and in his new character he is unfit for office. It is an insult and outrage to place him over the white people as an office-holder.” Granting that slavery was wrong, that did not prove “that you should be put into office to run the government before your people have learned anything about the laws.” Sen. Rpts., 44 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 701, xxxv.