I’m the fall of 1873 even the staunchly firmly pro grant and pro freedman Boston evening transcript ran a letter arguing that the blacks as a people are unfitted for the proper exercise of political duties the rising generation of blacks needed a period of probation and instruction a period long enough for the black to have forgotten something of his condition as a slave and learned much of the true method of gaining honorable subsistence and of performing the duties of any position to which he might aspire