Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

“ With such effort, united to a faith in God and the American conscience, he will yet soften ascerbities, dispel hindrance, and stem the tide.
Philanthropy may assist a man to his feet, but cannot keep him there unaided by self-effort and an unconquerable will power to stand; while relinquishing no part of his claim upon his white brother as recompense for more than a century of unrequited labor, if with an equal chance for work, education and legal protection, he cannot not only stand, but advance, exertion in his behalf is "love's labor lost," he having no rights worthy of respect. ”

“ Meanwhile, it is the duty (which is ever the highest policy) of the Negro to be patriotic in his devotion to his country, manly in his appeals for justice, and wise by discarding, by word or action, the fomenting of strife; ever on the alert to close the breach by increase of intelligence, moral worth and financial progress, and thus in great measure dissipate ignorance, vice and poverty, the abolition of which can be assisted, but not dispelled, save by a spirit of self-sacrifice on his part, subjecting his lower nature to the control of the higher. ”

“ I was kept during our stay in what was known during slavery as the "great house," the master's residence, and my meals were eaten at the table he had quit, slept in the same house, and had, if desired, little or no opportunity to talk or mingle with the slaves during the week's visit. I did not understand at that time the philosophy of espionage, but in after years it became quite apparent that from my youthful lips had came the "open sesame to the door of liberty," "resistance to oppression," the slogan that has ever heralded the advent of freedom. ”

“ But can you wonder at the Negro's cohesion? Is it not a fact that his is the only class of citizens that your party deny equal participation in the franchise, and unjustly discriminate against in the application of the laws? Where better could a change of conduct which you would admire and he so happily embrace, be inaugurated than within your own political household; where could nobility of character be more grandly displayed than by the abolition of these vicious hindrances to the uplifting of the weak and lowly? ”

“ As a people no one denies that they are law-abiding; as laborers in all the avenues of industry in which they are capable they are faithful and honest: as patriots at the incipiency and duration of the Government they have been faithful and brave. If, then, in the roll of patriots, citizens and producers, they have maintained character for fidelity, deportment and industry, surely they can rightly claim and demand as citizens of the Republic protection from outrage, justice in the courts and in every way equality before the law. ”

“ Washington, the American "Mecca" for political worshipers, is a beautiful city, but well deserving its "nom de plume" as "the city of magnificent distances;" for any one with whom you have business seems to live five miles from every imaginable point of the compass; and should you be on stern business bent, distance will not "lend enchantment to the view." It is here that the patriot, and the mercenary, the ambitious and the envious gather, and where unity and divergence hold high carnival. ”

“ It's true, signs are thoughts for the poor and suffering, chivalrous regard and respect for women, the frank recognition of human brotherhood, irrespective of race or color, or nation or religion; the narrowing of the domain of mere force as a governing factor in the world, the love of ordered freedom, abhorrence of what is mean and cruel and vile, ceaseless devotion to the claims of justice. ”

“ Twenty-one years of age found me the possessor of a trade, an attainment, and a capital invaluable for a poor young man beginning the race of life. For whether seen smutted by the soot of the blacksmith shop, or whitened by the lime of the plasterer or bricklayer; whether bending beneath tool box of the carpenter or ensconced on the bench of the shoemaker, he has a moral strength, a consciousness of acquirement, giving him a dignity of manhood unpossessed by the menial and those engaged in unskilled labor. ”

“ The crude notion held by some, that in far-off climes, to the American Negro unknown, who, with small capital and limited education; with an inherited mental inertia that is being dispelled and can only be eradicated by contact with superior environment, that there awaits him peace, plenty, and equality, is an ignis fatuus the most delusive. Peace is the exhaustion of strife, and is only secure in her triumphs in being in instant readiness for war; equality a myth, and plenty the accumulation of weary toil. ”

“ Homicide has no local habitation; it is the accident of every community, in every nation, and the justice and impartiality with which the law is administered is the measure of their humanity and civilization. But here we have the spectacle of the press, pulpit, and rostrum of the State, with exceptions scarcely to be noted, either entirely dumb or a mere passing allusion, more often in commendation than censure. ”

“ The A. M. E. Church was distinctively the pioneer in the career of colored churches; its founders the first to typify and unflinchingly assert the brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God. Dragged from their knees in the white churches of their faith, they met exclusion by cohesion; ignorance by effort for culture, and poverty by unflinching self-denial; justice and right harnessed to such a movement, who shall declare its ultimatum.
Out from that blacksmith shop went an inspiration lifting its votaries to a self-reliance founded on God, a harbinger of hope to the enslaved. ”

“ Ever since the first note of reconstruction was sounded, each Administration has denounced lynching. All history is the record that it is only through discussion and the ventilation of wrong that right becomes a valued factor. But regard for justice is not diminishing in our country. The judiciary, although weak and amenable to prevailing local prejudices in localities, as a whole is far in advance on the sustenance of righteous rule than in the middle of the last century, when slavery ruled the Nation and its edicts were law, and its baleful influence permeated every branch of the Government. ”

“ Subsequent events have fully shown that only to the magnanimity and justice of the American people and the fruition of time can they be commended. Not to believe that these problems will be rightfully solved is to doubt not only the efficacy of the basic principles of our Government, but the divinity of truth and justice. To these rounds of hope's ladder, while eager in obtaining wisdom, the Negro should cling with tenacity, with faith "a higher faculty than reason" unconquerable. ”

“ If experience has established anything, it is that the interest of one class is never safe in the hands of another. There is no class so poor or ignorant in a Republic that it does not know its own suffering and needs better than the wealthy and educated classes. By the rule of justice it has the same right precisely to give them legal expression. That expression is bound to come, and it is wisest for it to come through the ballot box than through mobs and violence born of a feeling of misery and despair. ”

“ For how does it happen that the alien Cuban and Filipino colored brothers are so much more entitled to protection and the enjoyment of civil and political rights than the colored American brother, that thousands of lives and millions of treasure must be expended to establish that humanity and justice abroad denied by these "world reformers" to millions of their citizens at home? Really, it would seem that to duty and the bestowal of justice 'tis "distance that lends enchantment to the view." ”

“ Manifestly there is an absence of that arraignment and condemnation of wrong done the weak, that contributed so largely to abolish the "corn laws of England" and slavery in the United States. History is the record that it is the men of moral courage and heroism who by pen and voice, that sociality and gain cannot intimidate and combat evil in their very midst that "leave footprints in the sands of time." ”

“ And it was reserved for the founders of this nation to establish in the words of an illustrious benefactor, "a Government of the people, for the people, and by the people"—a Government deriving all its powers from the consent of the governed, where freedom of opinion, whether relating to Church or State, was to have the widest scope and fullest expression consistent with private rights and public good—-where the largest individuality could be developed and the patrician and plebeian meet on a common level and aspire to the highest honor within the gift of the people. ”

“ Too much dependence is as hurtful as entire neglect. The more persistent the call for the forces within the greater the response from the assistants without. The lethargy or neglect to give the Negro protection in the exercise of his constitutional rights is developing a spirit of self-help and intensity of purpose, to find and adopt a course and measures remedial that may be practical and efficient; to ignore the sentimentality of politics and subordinate them to conditions irrespective of party. ”

“ Springing into existence in a day, with a population of 4,000,000 people—a number larger than that possessed by the United States when they commenced their great career—its promise is pregnant with benign probabilities. May it be the fruition of hope that the banner of the Dominion and the flag of our Republic, locked and interlocked, may go forward in generous rivalry to bless mankind. ”

“ And in every age and people the ratio of persistency and sacrifice have been the measure of their fitness for its enjoyment. During 25 years preceding the abolition of slavery the colored people of the free States, though much proscribed, were active in their protests against enslavement, seizing every chance through press and forum "to pour the living coals of truth upon the nation's naked heart," setting forth in earnest contrast the theory upon which the government was founded with its administration as practiced. ”

“ You remember the trial, the ruling of the bench, the swearing on the stand, the witness coming back to alter and enlarge his testimony and have another gird at the prisoner. You have not forgotten the trials before Judge Kane at Philadelphia and Judge Greer at Christiana and Wilkesbarre.
"These are natural results from causes well known. You cannot escape a principle. Enslave a negro, will you? You doom to bondage your own sons and daughters by your own act." ”

“ This was my first visit to the land of Wilberforces and Clarksons of the seventeenth century, whose devotion and fidelity to liberty abolished African slavery in Britain's dominion and created the sentiment that found expression in the immortal utterance of Judge Mansfield's decision: "Slaves cannot breathe in England; upon touch of its soil they stand forth redeemed and regenerated by the genius of universal liberty." ”

“ To read the reports of commanders and other officers, and the narratives of bystanders, all attesting to a bravery invincible, causes the blood to tingle and the patriot heart to leap. We are making history replete with self-abnegation as we continue to bring to our country's altar an unstinted devotion and brilliant achievement. These take their places fittingly, and we should keep them in the forefront of our claim for equality of citizenship.
For it is declared that "not the least valuable lesson taught by the war with Spain is the excellence of the Negro soldiery". ”

“ Their retention ultimately rested with the sentiment and judgment of the nation. In the South the menace of their presence was galling and increasing in intensity. The North was daily growing averse to the bivouac of troops over a people who swore that they were on terms of "peace with all the world and the rest of mankind." Would compulsion soften animosity? Hayes was undoubtedly honest and sincere, but not of that class of epoch-making men who anchor on the right, await and buffet the advancing storm. ”

“ Every American should be happy in the thought that a higher civilization is making such acts less and less frequent. It is not strange that our present generation enjoying a large measure of civil and political liberty can but faintly comprehend the condition fifty years ago, when they were persistently denied. The justice of participation seems so apparent, it is not easy to fully conceive, when all were refused, in quite all that were denominated free States. ”

“ Conviction in the minds of the participants on either side as to who was right and who was wrong is as firmly fixed as the eternal hills. Given, that a view of events leading up to that fraternal strife, the bravery of the one or heroic conduct of the other from standpoints necessarily different will never find mutual ground for justification, it seems the mission of patriotism and national unity to give the hand of welcome to every effort that will unite us in all that will promote the common glory of the Republic. ”