With this change, the interest
which many of the Southern white citizens take in the welfare of
the negroes has increased. The colored men must base their hope on
the results of their own industry, self-restraint, thrift, and
business success, as well as upon the aid and comfort and sympathy
which they may receive from their white neighbors of the South.
There was a time when Northerners who sympathized with the negro
in his necessary struggle for better conditions sought to give him
the suffrage as a protection to enforce its exercise against the
prevailing sentiment of the South. The movement proved to be a
failure. What remains is the fifteenth amendment to the
Constitution and the right to have statutes of States specifying
qualifications for electors subjected to the test of compliance
with that amendment. This is a great protection to the negro. It
never will be repealed, and it never ought to be repealed. If it
had not passed, it might be difficult now to adopt it; but with it
in our fundamental law, the policy of Southern legislation must
and will tend to obey it, and so long as the statutes of the
States meet the test of this amendment and are not otherwise in
conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States, it
is not the disposition or within the province of the Federal
Government to interfere with the regulation by Southern States of
their domestic affairs.
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