This
invitation I accepted, and spent nearly three months in speaking in
various parts of the state. Charleston was successful in winning the
prize, and is now the permanent seat of government.
The reputation that I made as a speaker during this campaign
induced a number of persons to make an earnest effort to get me to
enter political life, but I refused, still believing that I could find
other service which would prove of more permanent value to my race.
Even then I had a strong feeling that what our people most needed was
to get a foundation in education, industry, and property, and for this
I felt that they could better afford to strive than for political
preferment. As for my individual self, it appeared to me to be
reasonably certain that I could succeed in political life, but I had a
feeling that it would be a rather selfish kind of success --
individual success at the cost of failing to do my duty in assisting
in laying a foundation for the masses.
At this period in the progress of our race a very large proportion
of the young men who went to school or to college did so with the
expressed determination to prepare themselves to be great lawyers, or
Congressmen, and many of the women planned to become music teachers;
but I had a reasonably fixed idea, even at that early period in my
life, that there was a need for something to be done to prepare the
way for successful lawyers, Congressmen, and music teachers.
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