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

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

The negroes are not only citizens in that they are entitled to complete protection under the laws in all their rights of person and property, but also citizens in that all males, twenty-one years old, not disqualified by crime or other conditions that would disqualify a white man, are entitled to vote. Every negro man of lawful age, if otherwise qualified, has the same legal right to vote that the President of the United States has.

It is now practically too late, in this country, to argue the advantages or disadvantages of universal suffrage. Much has been said for and against the doctrine of universal suffrage--" manhood suffrage," as the phrase is. But the time is past for such arguments; facts and not theories must be considered now. The people, acting through their representatives, some because they thought it wise, some as a means of political power, and others because they were obliged to do it, have adopted universal suffrage as a fundamental principle and have incorporated it into our entire political system. We must now make the best of it. After all, it may be best as it is; such matters are only determined by

experiment; we are now making the test. Such

experiments cannot be worked out in a year, or even in a generation. We know too little of such matters to dogmatize about them; after all the experience and wisdom of the past, what we call statesmanship is but a complicated, difficult, and uncertain experiment. But common sense teaches at least this much: when we cannot have what we prefer we should do the very best we can with what we have.

Whether the wholesale enfranchisement of the negro was a party measure, as his sudden and unconditioned emancipation was a war measure urged on by a political necessity; whether it was done in a paroxysm of feeling and sentimentalism; whether it was designed, in part at least, as a repression of any reactionary tendencies in the "old masters," we need not discuss at this time. When there is less noise of men running to and fro with dim lanterns or flaming torches in their hands; when there is less outcry and dissonance of fiercely contending passions; when there is less sensitiveness and prejudice, philosophical historians may discuss, with whatever ability and insight may be given to them, these difficult subjects that are now entangled in a hundred folds of warring interests and ambitions. But we must deal with the facts as we find them. A wise man who proposes to rebuild a burned house will not quarrel with his neighbors or workmen about the origin of the fire, nor ex

He

haust his time and energies in fruitless lamentations over the unsuitableness of his materials. cannot live with his family under the open sky, unless he proposes to be a savage. A house he must have; he will use his materials to the best possible advantage; if he cannot procure the best stone out of the quarries, he will use the best he has. If he can do no better he will build of sun-dried bricks, or of bricks that have twice known fire. Even an adobe house is better than

none.

At this time the people of the South may read with profit the life and labors of Nehemiah. History does not record a fairer, truer patriotism than his. He gave up a pleasant and profitable office "in Shushan the palace" to rebuild Jerusalem, that had been laid waste in bitter wars and relentless sieges. There are few more pathetic passages in the lives of patriotic men than we see in Nehemiah when he "went out by night . . . and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire." For his great task of rebuilding the sacred city he had small resources and manifold discouragements. His friends were dispirited and unorganized; his enemies were strong, bold, scoffing. He had to build the new out of the ruins of the old city. When, after incredible exertions, he had rallied a small but united and determined company for the

work of restoration, there was not lacking a Sanballat to mock their patriotic efforts. No doubt many of those Jews who held their brethren down. under "mortgages and bondage," were more in sympathy with Sanballat than with Nehemiah. Which was harder for the brave and great-hearted patriot to bear, the jeers of his enemies or the apathy or secret hate of those who ought to have been his helpers, it would be hard to say. There were not lacking Jews who said, "O, you can't do any thing with the ruins of the old Jerusalem." As for Sanballat, this describes him, and not only him, but some of our own times who have for the struggling South only jeers and contempt:

"But it came to pass, that when Sanballat heard that we builded the wall, he was wroth, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews. And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, What do these feeble Jews? will they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they make an end in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned."

The South has heard this Sanballat voice many times since Appomattox. And Sanballat has had to help him a class of Southern men, as greedy as vultures and as remorseless as death, who have done nothing to rebuild our broken walls and our burned gates, who have used their power and opportunity only to hold faster the poor and the

helpless of their own brethren. In this old history there is one other character who still survives to play his little part of imitation. There was one Tobiah, small echo of Sanballat, and this is the picture of him: "Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall."

But Sanballat's prophecies came to naught, and Tobiah's mean jests came back to him. Nehemiah and his patriotic band did rebuild Jerusalem, its walls and its gates. Let the men of the South take courage, and out of the ruins of their old system and out of the very difficulties of the new era, build up a better civilization than they ever knew. They can if they will; "the eternal powers" will help them.

Let us consider the difficulties of our position, as Nehemiah, before he began to rebuild, surveyed the ruins of the city of his fathers, recalling its vanished glories that he might strengthen his heart for the work of restoration. We find ourselves face to face with as difficult a problem as was ever com. mitted to any people of any age. Take any view possible of the history of the emancipation and enfranchisement of the negroes, and this portentous fact remains: nearly a million of men, who had been slaves, were made voters before they could read. They were told to vote upon the most diffi