Charles C. Cook

“ The course of history shows that man at one time throws off all bonds, at another is shackled by them; from servility he rudely forces his way up to despotism, from haughty pride he sinks down to lowly self-sacrifice. That is the false freedom, license; this is the true freedom, service: that finds its compromise in non-interference, this has no limit where men exist.
Among myriad atoms of so nearly equal force and resistance, the efficiency of any individual will depend largely upon direction. What is the principle which will guide his progress? ”

“ Slavery, while a Southern institution, was not a bond of perfect union; but upon the platform of black inferiority and white domination, every Southern man has his foot squarely planted. Her answer, therefore, to all criticism is to point with pride to the solid South.
How often are we called upon to see with pain and wonder that opinions, theories, even the mind itself is shaped by actions. Nature, aiming at preservation of life, is quick to heal all possible wounds, to reconcile warring impulses, to gloss and beautify deformities, and even to conceal dangers and snares. ”

“ The drunkard follows the path of least resistance, when he lifts the cup for the twelfth time to his lips; the moth follows the path of least resistance when it flies into the candle flame. The path of least resistance is the path, which, whether chosen by ourselves or forced upon us; whether it lead to life, or to death; we have followed and are about to follow.
We come back then to the real thought, which is so clouded by that technical expression. The cry goes up: A black man cannot stand up in the South! ”

“ Silence has its part in our fight and many times the cause has been lost because of failure to observe it, but it is not silence in respect to wrongs. Neither upon battlefields nor in the mad clash of passions and ambitions that mark the control of states is victory won or success achieved by a boisterous parade of the plan of attack. In the subtle operation of American political methods, silence is the sphinx that baffles the most astute and insinuating politician. The silent vote is a greater dread to the party leaders than was the sword to Damocles. ”

“ It is vain to hope for a fair fight, man against man. The whites will not fail to make use of every advantage which they possess. The struggle will always be one between an armed white man and an unarmed Negro; between a man on one hand, and a man and a giant on the other, a giant made of store-houses, arsenals and navies, railroads, organization, science and confidence. It is equally idle to demand an impartial administration of the law. The English common law is but a stepmother of justice; her own child is prosperity. The Saxon came to England a pirate. ”

“ Outside of the slave states, equal participation in the government by all citizens has been the foundation stone of the Republic. For a brief moment slavery was dead, and all men were freemen. But slavery is alive again, and if its growth is not resisted, will again be restored in all but name. The words of Calhoun deserve to be called a prophecy. "Without political and social equality," he said, "to change the condition of the African race would be but to change the form of slavery." ”

“ We move through life, with our backs toward, to the engine, and see all that we see after it has passed. The reason, the imagination, with their creative powers, picture for themselves the world that lies before, but so swift and so unremitting is our progress, that the new revelations constantly pouring in alter the premises before a conclusion can be reached. Only the most gifted geniuses can draw in the vaguest outline a picture of the future which the flight of time will prove to be true. ”

“ Is there need of a statute of limitations to stop a political party from withdrawing the promises upon which it has encouraged millions of trusting people to build for forty years? Can it be honestly claimed that three-fourths of the States of the Union gave the ballot to the slave just out of the slave pen, with the implied condition that if he failed to prove himself able from the outset to resist temptation to childish indulgence and childish dishonesty, seduced as he was by the Northern men whom gratitude bade him trust and follow, he should lose it forever? ”

“ No one feels more the importance of emphasizing our duties than I do,—I think I have done about as much of it as anybody,—but among the duties that I have always emphasized, and still emphasize, is the duty of standing up squarely and uncompromisingly for our rights. When we are contending for the truth; when we are resisting the encroachments of those who are seeking to despoil us of our birth-right as citizens; when we are keeping up the agitation for equal civil and political privileges in this country, are we not in the line of duty? ”

“ It is hard to keep plodding along the narrow path, when fields of wealth and power stretch away on either side, but, happily for us, these are about all fenced in, even the great Sahara desert is fenced in. We cannot be tyrants if we would, nor can we despoil our fellows for they are as poor as we. Our road is made smooth before us. God has not led us into temptation. We ought then to come nearer than other peoples to a Christian life, to that better community, where one half of the world is not happy while the other half is miserable. ”

“ Whatever opinions may be entertained contrary to the doctrine and increasing practice of government by the consent of the governed, the fact is undeniable that as man has gained and exercised the right of participation in government, special privilege for the few has had to give way to the condition of equal opportunity for all. Abuses have been swept away and the door of opportunity has been opened for all. Thus has the ballot proven to be man's sure and effective weapon of defense against tyranny and proscriptive government. ”

“ That we have not quite forgotten our early lessons, our fidelity to our leaders in battle and devotion to our cause, have put beyond question. It has been more than once shown that there are men among us who can charge up a hill in the face of a withering fire; but who among us is capable of jumping into the air, and falling with both knees upon a fellow-student in a college foot-ball game; or of using against a savage tribe, as England proposed to do, the mutilating dum dum bullet, forbidden by the rules of civilized warfare, but too expensive to throw away? ”

“ It would seem, on first view, that the Negro who complains so bitterly against political restrictions in the South would rush to the freer conditions of the North as a gas from a denser to a rarer medium. But political and civil freedom offered by the North are more than off-set by industrial restrictions and by the inertia of a population devoid of the pioneer spirit. The warm blooded, warm hearted child of the tropics is chilled alike by the rigid climate and frigid social atmosphere that prevail in the higher latitudes. ”

“ Is there anything in the English or American past, to justify us in believing that they will part more willingly with wealth than with power? Are we not shortsightedly preparing for calamities far more destructive, and more enduring than the political murders of the last thirty years? ”

“ I believe that we ought to vote, and I vote on every public question when the privilege is accorded me. I believe that our leaders ought to give us the opportunity to vote and let us stand forth as men, whether successful or not, willing to do all within our power to be full-fledged citizens. Certainly our attitude ought never to allow the white people to say: the Negro cares nothing for the franchise and does not exercise it when he does have the opportunity. ”

“ The moral coward is he who sacrifices what he believes to be the higher from fear, who sacrifices his inner self to save his skin. If we hold our political rights dear above all else, if we think our manhood involved, let us be ready to give up wealth, comfort, and even life itself in their defense ”

“ Above, the upper world, ever turning to law and punishment to crush those who threaten this floor, upon which they stand from beneath, ever appealing to the prejudices of their class to persecute into submission those whose sense of justice or generosity threatens the crust from above. Beneath, the under world, sweating, spawning, gathering from its own misery and the dregs of vice and luxury from above poison, and shaping from its own eager thousands of ambitious men,—yes, and after the boldest men of the class above, fangs, that it may become all that revolution is wont to be. ”

“ Dutch and English vessels have fought desperately at sea, in the past, and to-day, Dutch and English are face to face in South Africa; England and America have fought two wars; the Northern and Southern states of this country have fought one. As far back as we can go the same condition reveals itself; Greece humiliates her sister Persia, and falls before her more powerful sister, Rome: the barbarians who sack Rome in the fifth century and the Romans themselves are of the same Aryan stock: so are the English and Russians, who seem about to grapple in a deadly struggle to-day. ”

“ The policy of white domination is stripped to unblushing nakedness, and confident of the fear of those who remained for two hundred years enslaved, the South narrows the issue to one of physical courage, inviting the Negro to wrest from her the power, which stands between him and justice, freedom, happiness. It is not then in the ignorance, laziness, and vice of the Negro, that the white South trusts, for the continuance of her policy, but in his defencelessness. ”

“ Doubts, weariness, exhaustion even will not stop the rapidly revolving wheels. Only in the wake of such frenzied progress there will follow rest, the rest of death. Study the wreckage in the South in the trail of slavery, black, and what is far worse, white illiteracy, brutality, wretched sloth. Observe the turning of defeat in the struggle into despair, then stagnation upon which forms a film, a scum, a crust which becomes strong enough to defy efforts to break it. ”