So here is a remarkable fact, that from 757,208 in 1790 the Negro race has grown to be 6,580,793 in 1880! The theory that the race was dying out under the influences of civilization at a greater ratio than under the annihilating influences of slavery was at war with common-sense and the efficient laws of Christian society. Emancipation has taken the mother from field-work to house-work. The slave hut has been supplanted by a pleasant house; the mud floor is done away with; and now, with carpets on the floor, pictures on the wall, a better quality of food properly prepared, the influence of books and papers, and the blessings of a preached Gospel, the Negro mother is more prolific, and the mortality of her children reduced to a minimum. The Negro is not dying out. On the contrary he has shown the greatest recuperative powers, and against the white population of the United States as it stands to-day-if it were not fed by European immigrants,—within the next hundred years the Negroes would outnumber the whites 12,000,000! Or at an increase of 33 per cent. the Negro population in 1980 would be 117,000,000! providing the ratio of increase continues the same between the races.

And in addition to the fact that the Negro, like the Irishman, is prolific, is able to reproduce his species, it should be recorded that the Negro intellect is growing and expanding at a wonderful rate. The children of ten and twelve years of age are more apt to-day than those of the same age ten years ago. And the children of the next generation will have no superiors in any of the schools of the country.

CHAPTER XXIII.

REPRESENTATIVE COLORED MEN.

THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION. THE LEGAL DESTRUCTION OF SLAVERY AND A CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITION. FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT GRANTING MANHOOD SUFFRAGE TO THE AMERICAN NEGRO.-- PRESIDENT GRANT'S SPECIAL MESSAGE UPON THE SUBJECT. UNIVERSAL REJOICING AMONG THE COLORED PEOPLE. THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. THE NEGRO IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE OF THE COUNTRY. - FREDERICK DOUGLASS. HIS BIRTH, ENSLAVEMENT, ESCAPE TO THE NORTH, AND LIFE AS A FREEMAN, BECOMES AN ANTI-SLAVERY ORATOR.-GOES TO GREAT BRITAIN. RETURNS TO AMERICA. ESTABLISHES THE "NORTH STAR." HIS ELOQUENCE, INFLUENCE, AND BRILLIANT CAREER. RICHARD THEODORE GREENER, - HIS EARLY LIFE, EDUCATION, AND SUCCESSFUL LITERARY CAREER.-JOHN P. GREEN. - HIS EARLY STRUGGLES TO OBTAIN AN EDUCATION. A SUCCESSFUL ORATOR, LAWYER, AND USEFUL LEGISLATOR. — OTHER RepresenTATIVE COLORED MEN. REPRESENTATIVE COLORED WOMEN.

THE

HE Government could not escape the logic of the position. it took when it made the Negro a soldier, and invoked his aid in putting down the slave-holders' Rebellion. As a soldier he stood in line of promotion: the Government destroyed the Confederacy when it placed muskets in the hands of the slaves; and at the close of the war had to legally render slavery forever impossible in the United States. The bloody deduction of the great struggle had to be made a living, legal 'verity in the Constitution, and hence the Thirteenth Amendment.

"SECTION I. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

"SECTION 2.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

This was the consummation of the ordinance of 1787, carried to its last analysis, applied in its broadest sense. It drove the last nail in the coffin of slavery, and blighted the fondest hope of the friends of secession.

But there was need for another amendment to the Constitution conferring upon the Colored people manhood suffrage. On the 27th of February, 1869, the Congress passed a resolution recommending the Fifteenth Amendment for ratification by the Legislatures of the several States. On the 30th of March, 1870, President U. S. Grant sent a special message to Congress, calling the attention of that body to the proclamation of the Secretary of State in reference to the ratification of the Amendment by twenty-nine of the States.

SPECIAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT GRANT ON RATIFICATION OF THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT.

"To the Senate and House of Representatives:

"It is unusual to notify the two houses of Congress, by message, of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the ratification of a constitutional amendment. In view, however, of the vast importance of the XVth Amendment to the Constitution, this day declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable. A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, who were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so, (with the assertion that, 'at the time of the Declaration of Independence, the opinion was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race, regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, that black men had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,') is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free government to the present day.

“Institutions like ours, in which all power is derived directly from the people, must depend mainly upon their intelligence, patriotism, and industry. I call the attention, therefore, of the newly-enfranchised race to the importance of their striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws I would say, withold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizen. The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people. The Father of his Country,' in his farewell address, uses this language: Promote, then, as a matter of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of the government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public. opinion should be enlightened.' In his first annual message to Con

gress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message.

"I repeat that the adoption of the XVth Amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life. The change will be beneficial in proportion to the heed that is given to the urgent recommendations of Washington. If these recommendations were important then, with a population of but a few millions, how much more important now, with a population of forty millions, and increasing in a rapid ratio.

"I would therefore call upon Congress to take all the means within their constitutional powers to promote and encourage popular education throughout the country; and upon the people everywhere to see to it that all who possess and exercise political rights shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the government a blessing and not a danger. By such means only can the benefits contemplated by this amendment to the Constitution be secured. "U. S. GRANT.

CERTIFICATE OF MR. SECRETARY FISH RESPECTING THE RATIFICATION OF THE XVTH AMENDMENT TO THE

CONSTITUTION, MARCH 30, 1870.

"HAMILTON FISH, SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

"To all to whom these presents may come, grecting :

66 Know ye that the Congress of the United States, on or about the 27th day of February, in the year 1869, passed a resolution in the words and figures following, to wit:

A RESOLUTION proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both houses concurring.) That the following article be proposed to the legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said legislatures, shall be valid as part of the Constitution, namely:

ARTICLE XV.

66 SECTION I. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

"SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

"And, further, that it appears, from official documents on file in this department, that the amendment to the Constitution of the United States, proposed as aforesaid, has been ratified by the legislatures of the States of North Carolina, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Maine, Louisiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, New Hampshire, Nevada, Vermont, Virginia, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Texas; in all, twenty-nine States.

"And, further, that the States whose legislatures have so ratified the said proposed amendment constitute three-fourths of the whole number of States in the United States.

"And, further, that it appears, from an official document on file in this department, that the legislature of the State of New York has since. passed resolutions claiming to withdraw the said ratification of the said amendment which had been made by the legislature of that State, and of which official notice had been filed in this department.

'And, further, that it appears, from an official document on file in this department, that the legislature of Georgia has by resolution rati fied the said proposed amendment.

"Now, therefore, be it known that I, Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State of the United States, by virtue and in pursuance of the 2d section of the act of Congress, approved the 20th day of April, 1818, entitled "An act to provide for the publication of the laws of the United States, and for other purposes," do hereby certify, that the amendment aforesaid has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution of the United States.

"In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the Department of State to be affixed.

"Done at the city of Washington, this 30th day of March, in the year of our Lord, 1870, and of the independence of the United States, the ninety-fourth.

[SEAL.]

"HAMILTON FISH."

The Emancipation Proclamation itself did not call forth such genuine and wide-spread rejoicing as the message of President Grant. The event was celebrated by the Colored people in all the larger cities North and South. Processions, orations, music and dancing proclaimed the unbounded joy of the new citizen. In Philadelphia Frederick Douglass, Bishop Jabez P. Campbell, I. C. Wears, and others delivered eloquent addresses to enthusiastic audiences. Mr. Douglass deeply wounded the religious feelings of his race by declaring: "I shall not dwell in any