“We are sheep in the midst of wolves’ […]  Do not then, we beseech you, give to one of thesewayward sisters’ the rights they abandoned and forfeited when they rebelled until you have secured our rights by the aforementioned amendment to the Constitution.”

The end of the civil war marked the end of slavery.  However, despite their new found ‘freedom’, the blacks still didn’t have many basic rights and felt like “sheep in the midst of wolves.”  As the very same people who they had fought against during the Civil War have been pardoned and granted amnesty, the blacks have been left to the mercy of “subjugated, but unconverted rebels.”  They go on to argue that the way to protect themselves is for the government to set in place laws to prevent discrimination against race and color, as well as the right to vote.  As many black troops had fought alongside the white men in the war, they deserved their rights just as much as the whites did.