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[341] unabated reverence in the hour of trial, had refuted the accusations urged to justify ruin. The problem was to extinguish this kind feeling; to create antipathy in place of sympathy between the races; to mass race against race; to teach the negro to exchange all the higher qualities of a lower race for the lowest qualities of a higher race, that the tutors might walk over the course to offices of profit. The architects of this ruin, in their own behalf, lifted up the sacred refrain, ‘Forasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these!’ And what is it ye have done ‘unto the least of these?’ Made them part and parcel of the most predaceous, predatory gang the world ever saw. In the zeal to make odious what was called ‘treason,’ what was really brigandage was made honorable. ‘Let us have peace’ was the name; Reconstruction the reality. The message was: Weakness has no rights which power is bound to respect. It was the appeal to all that was low to put an end to all that was high.
Richmond, VA. 1908.
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