Читать книгу Samantha on the Race Problem онлайн

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“The times were so dark that any measure adopted for safety was only groping towards the light, only catching at the first rope of safety that seemed to lower itself through the heavy clouds of war.

“The heavy eyes and true hearts watching through those black hours will never be forgotten by this republic.

“And now, in looking back and criticising the errors of that time, it is like the talk of those who are watching a storm at sea, when, in order to save the ship, wrong ropes may be seized, and life-boats cast out into the stormy waves may be swept down and lost. But if the ship is saved, let the survivors of the crew forever bless and praise the brave hands and hearts that dared the storm and the peril.

“But when the sky is clearer you can see more plainly than when the tempest is whirling about you and death and ruin are riding on the gale.

“You can see plainer and you can see farther.

“Now, it was a great and charitable idea, looking at it from one side, to let those who had tried their best to ruin the Union at once take an equal place with those who had perilled life and property to save it—to give them at once the same rights in making the laws they had set at defiance.