"
"What!-educate a nigger! These are pretty principles for a
southerner to maintain! Why, sir, if such doctrines were advocated
in the body politic they would be incendiary to southern
institutions. Just educate the niggers, and I wouldn't be an editor
in the south two days. You'd see me tramping, bag and baggage, for
the north, much as I dislike it! It would never do to educate such a
miserable set of wretches as they are. You may depend what I say is
true, sir. Their condition is perfectly hopeless at the north, and
the more you try to teach them, the greater nuisance they become."
"Now, my good northern friend, not so fast, if you please; I can see
the evil of all this, and so can you, if you will but study the
negro's character a little deeper. The menial man who has passed
through generations of oppression, and whose life and soul are
blotted from the right of manhood, is sensitive of the power that
crushes him. He has been robbed of the means of elevating himself by
those who now accuse him of the crime of degradation: and, wherever
the chance is afforded him of elevation, as that increases so does a
tenacious knowledge of his rights; yet, he feels the prejudice that
cuts and slights him in his progress, that charges him with the
impudence of a negro, that calls his attempts to be a man mere
pompous foolery."
"And it is so! To see a nigger setting himself up among white
folks-it's perfectly ridiculous!"
"Mark me, Mr. Scranton: there's where you northerners mistake
yourselves.
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