We think, and appeal to the country for a justification of our opinion, that cases like those of the Norfolk Ferry-Boat, the Knights of Labor at Richmond, the William Lloyd Garrison Post, at Brooklyn, and countless others of daily occurrence, never meeting the public eye, but borne in silence and with that spirit of meekness and long-suffering which characterize our race, demand of us the gravest deliberation. We have further reached the conclusion that by placing within reach of the American public a concise summary of all the civil-rights adjudications since the emancipation proclamation, we may inaugurate a reform in public opinion which will correct the innumerable evils, and do away with the manifold abuses, from which our race grievously suffer east and west, north and south, which are particularly set forth in the foregoing dedicatory address.
The philanthropist and friend of civil liberty may look with sorrow upon the melancholy plight of African civil rights in America, but the far-seeing eye of the philosophic statesman can predict with certainty the period in the nation's history when the evolution of time will quietly, but surely, perfect that great picture of freedom, the canvas for which was stretched upon the pillars of the world, by the hands of the angels, at creation's dawn. The abolition of slavery in the British possessions, the manumission of the serf in despotic Russia, and the great emancipation amendment in this land of the free, were all the work of time. We need champions to combat the spirit of discrimination; inflexible, intrepid, fearless leaders of our own race; men of strength, grace, and wisdom, of unselfish love and purity; men who are able to tread the steep and arduous paths of duty; cool, prudent, and considerate, with gravity of character and of sound judgment. Night and day, in season and out of season, each of us, strong or weak, must make every effort to advance the standard of our constitutional rights, for we have found by experience that an obsequious subservience to race-prejudice seriously threatens their extinction. We must learn the eternal truth which Tacitus taught, "Oh, men! voluntary slaves make more tyrants than tyrants make involuntary slaves."
