116                    CHURCH REVIEW.

gation, either of honor or gratitude, that obligation was canceled
years ago.  In this satanic work they have shown a cunning
equally satanic.  They have taken advantage of one of the most
despicable vices to which human nature is susceptible.  Knowing
how easy it is to turn the hearts of debtors against creditors, and
that lenders often lose their friends as well as their money, they
have preached deliverance to the one and poured bitter contempt
upon the other.  They have demanded absolute perfection in the
Republican party, but have piled sophistries mountain high to
hide the crimes of the Democratic party.  They have strained at
a Republican gnat and swallowed whole processions of Demo-
cratic camels.
  These men  have argued mainly in favor of the following
propositions:
  First.--It is the duty of the Negro to divide his vote between
the two great political parties.
  Second.--The Negro should form an independent race and
color party.
  Third.--The  Negro should support the candidates of the
Democratic party.
  These propositions have been advocated at different times, ac-
cording to circumstances.  Though three modes of action are
here proposed, they are one in purpose and effect, and that pur-
pose is to draw the Negro vote away from the Republican party.
To this end various arguments and appeals have been made.
Some of these will doubtless prove hurtful in certain sections,
unless they are well and conclusively refuted.  In several States
of the North the Negro vote is potential, and may, in a close
contest between the two great parties, turn the scale either in
favor of the one or the other.  This is especially the case in New
York, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio.   Knowing this, several
Afro-American papers have, of late, sprung up in these quarters,
seeking and gaining Democratic support.  There is in this world
much that is strange, but nothing stranger or more incompre-
hensible than this attitude of the colored man.  The strangeness
is not, however, all on one side. The black man, as a Democrat,
is not a more strange object than is a white Democrat who is
brazenly seeking to win Negro votes at the North, where their
votes are needed, while his Democratic brothers are shooting and
hanging Negroes at the South, where their votes are not needed.
In view of this we might ask, as in another campaign Daniel
Webster did, " Is there no shame in men ?"   A dozen years ago
nothing would have surprised and shocked a white Democrat
more than to have met with a Negro pretending to be a Demo-
crat.  Such a pretender would have been scouted as an arrant
hypocrite or as a confounded fool.  But what has been thought
impossible  has  happened.  There has been found a Negro
calling himself a Democrat, and some white Democrats have
been found to recognize him.  At least this is his boast.  Like




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 09, Num. 2

Negro in the Present Campaign

Volume:  09
Issue Number:  02
Page Number:  114
Date:  10/01/1892