They had not yet learned to take care of themselves; the emancipation had removed them from the care of their masters, and exposure, neglect, and disease were rapidly thinning out the population on which the wasted State had to rely for labor.
Reid reflects on the struggles faced by newly emancipated individuals in the South after the Civil War.
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In this way they will surely overcome unjust hostility, and convince even the most prejudiced that the denial to them of any right which citizens may properly exercise is equally unwise and wrong.
It has proved, also, that universal suffrage is the surest guarantee and most powerful stimulus of individual, social and political progress.
They should persist in this claim respectfully, but firmly, taking care to bring no discredit upon it by their own action.
Never was there a problem more serious or difficult than that which is now before the Nation, as to this race, whose destiny has been confided to the wisdom and honor of our Government.