|
Friends and Fellow-Citizens, I warmly congratulate you
upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble
in such numbers and spirit as you have today. This occasion is in
some respects remarkable. Wise and thoughtful men of our race, who
shall come after us, and study the lesson of our history in the
United States; who shall survey the long and dreary spaces over
which we have traveled; who shall count the links in the great chain
of events by which we have reached our present position, will make
a note of this occasion; they will think of it and speak of it with
a sense of manly pride and complacency.
I congratulate you, also, upon the very favorable circumstances
in which we meet today. They are high, inspiring, and uncommon.
They lend grace, glory, and significance to the object for which
we have met. Nowhere else in this great country, with its uncounted
towns and cities, unlimited wealth, and immeasurable territory extending
from sea to sea, could conditions be found more favorable to the
success of this occasion than here.
We stand today at the national center to perform something like
a national act--an act which is to go into history; and we are here
where every pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt,
and reciprocated. A thousand wires, fed with thought and winged
with lightning, put is in instantaneous communication with the loyal
and true men all over the country.
Few facts could better illustrate the vast and wonderful
change which has taken place in our condition as a people than the
fact of our assembling here for the purpose we have today. Harmless,
beautiful, proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I
cannot forget that no such demonstration would have been tolerated
here twenty years ago. The spirit of slavery and barbarism, which
still lingers to blight and destroy in some dark and distant parts
of our country, would have made our assembling here the signal and
excuse for opening upon us all the flood-gates of wrath and violence.
That we are here in peace today is a compliment and a credit to
American civilization, and a prophecy of still greater national
enlightenment and progress in the future. I refer to the past not
in malice, for this is no day for malice; but simply to place more
distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has
come both to our white fellow-citizens and ourselves, and to congratulate
all upon the contrast between now and then; the new dispensation
of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old
dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races--white
and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future,
with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with
liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate
you upon this auspicious day and hour.
Friends and fellow-citizens, the story of our presence
here is soon and easily told. We are here in the District of Columbia,
here in the city of Washington, the most luminous point of American
territory; a city recently transformed and made beautiful in its
body and in its spirit; we are here in the place where the ablest
and best men of the country are sent to devise the policy, enact
the laws, and shape the destiny of the Republic; we are here, with
the stately pillars and majestic dome of the Capitol of the nation
looking down upon us; we are here, with the broad earth freshly
adorned with the foliage and flowers of spring for our church, and
all races, colors, and conditions of men for our congregation--in
a word, we are here to express, as best we may, by appropriate forms
and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high, and preeminent
services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country, and
to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.
The sentiment that brings us here today is one of the
noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned
and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with
the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate
the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men.
It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant
and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic
soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the
sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence
of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with
the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and
song; a sentiment which can never die while the Republic lives.
For the first time in the history of our people, and
in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high
worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored
custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of
our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner,
we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving
and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in
every part of the Republic; let men of all parties and opinions
hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect
us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and
gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes
an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition
of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members
of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general
sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body,
the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the
calmest judgment of the country; in the presence of the Supreme
Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions
we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye
of the honored and trusted Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly
emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the
close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have now
and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a figure of which the
men of this generation may read, and those of after-coming generations
may read, something of the exalted character and great works of
Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.
Fellow-citizens, in what we have said and done today,
and in what we may say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything
like arrogance and assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior
devotion to the character, history, and memory of the illustrious
name whose monument we have here dedicated today. We fully comprehend
the relation of Abraham Lincoln both to ourselves and to the white
people of the United States. Truth is proper and beautiful at all
times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful
in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example
is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his
departure to the solemn shades, the silent continents of eternity.
It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the
presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham
Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man
or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits
of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.
He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely
devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at
any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone,
and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote
the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education
and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the
Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition
to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this
policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion
to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate
slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less
ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation.
He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United
States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside
the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send
back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising
for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against
the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special
objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my
white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full
and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects
of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are
the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children;
children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity.,
To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and
perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures
high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was
a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting
you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments;
let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship;
let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their
bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging
blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in
the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and
patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not
the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham
Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage,
according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of
the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.
Fellow-citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion--merely
a thing of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and
dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the
Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds
of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with
victory, honor, and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and
strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried
long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the
cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us that we were
to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ
our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services
as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture
as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if
he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation
of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander
of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat,
who was more zealous n his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress
rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved,
stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they
ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning
superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite
the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to
take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable
allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured
him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and
tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated
facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect
glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey,
in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of
that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will,
we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption
had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little
to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered
little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow
in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was
at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy
with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until
slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States.
When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do
with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had
to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he
loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than
our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we
saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the
heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule,
and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that
the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription,
was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under
his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country
could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and
brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over
in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under
his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people
responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their
shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps
to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we
saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special
object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and
her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city
of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which
so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in
the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time
the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first
slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his
rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration,
we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race
must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered
to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time,
we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months'
grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal
paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its
principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the
United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.
Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of
all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January,
1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to
be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night,
when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting,
with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the
word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I
eve forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air
when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation.
In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness,
forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their
arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system
with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the
President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable
device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a
great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress.
Fellow-citizens, there is little necessity on this occasion to speak
at length and critically of this great and good man, and of his
high mission in the world. That ground has been fully occupied and
completely covered both here and elsewhere. The whole field of fact
and fancy has been gleaned and garnered. Any man can say things
that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that
is new of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits and public acts are
better known to the American people than are those of any other
man of his age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard
him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and
feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though
strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounce in his convictions,
he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient
under reproaches. Even those who only knew him through his public
utterance obtained a tolerably clear idea of his character and personality.
The image of the man went out with his words, and those who read
them knew him.
I have said that President Lincoln was a white man,
and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored
race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country,
we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part
may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in
organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict
before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His
great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country
from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from
the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he
must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his
loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition
to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless.
Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the
Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class
of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible.
Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy,
cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment
of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult,
he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.
Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white
fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say
that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery....The
man who could say, ``Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that
this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills
it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage
shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash
shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,'' gives all needed
proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing,
while the South was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh,
because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther
than this no earthly power could make him go.
Fellow-citizens, whatever else in this world may be
partial, unjust, and uncertain, time, time! is impartial, just,
and certain in its action. In the realm of mind, as well as in the
realm of matter, it is a great worker, and often works wonders.
The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly discerning the needs
of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole duty,
though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his
course to the silent judgment of time. Few great public men have
ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham Lincoln
was during his administration. He was often wounded in the house
of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast upon him from within
and from without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed by
Abolitionists; he was assailed by slave-holders; he was assailed
by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those
who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed
for not making the war an abolition war; and he was bitterly assailed
for making the war an abolition war.
But now behold the change: the judgment of the present
hour is, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous
magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means
to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom
has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission
than Abraham Lincoln. His birth, his training, and his natural endowments,
both mental and physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared
among the lowly, a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple
single-handed with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender
youth to sturdy manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic
qualities demanded by the great mission to which he was called by
the votes of his countrymen. The hard condition of his early life,
which would have depressed and broken down weaker men, only gave
greater life, vigor, and buoyancy to the heroic spirit of Abraham
Lincoln. He was ready for any kind and any quality of work. What
other young men dreaded in the shape of toil, he took hold of with
the utmost cheerfulness.
" A spade, a rake, a hoe,
A pick-axe, or a bill;
A hook to reap, a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what you will.''
All day long he could split heavy rails in the woods,
and half the night long he could study his English Grammar by the
uncertain flare and glare of the light made by a pine-knot. He was
at home n the land with his axe, with his maul, with gluts, and
his wedges; and he was equally at home on water, with his oars,
with his poles, with his planks, and with his boat-hooks. And whether
in his flat-boat on the Mississippi River, or at the fireside of
his frontier cabin, he was a man of work. A son of toil himself,
he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every
loyal part of the Republic. This very fact gave him tremendous power
with the American people, and materially contributed not only to
selecting him to the Presidency, but in sustaining his administration
of the Government.
Upon his inauguration as President of the United States,
an office, even when assumed under the most favorable condition,
fitted to tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln
was met by a tremendous crisis. He was called upon not merely to
administer the Government, but to decide, in the face of terrible
odds, the fate of the Republic.
A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him;
the Union was already practically dissolved; his country was torn
and rent asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized
against the Republic, armed with the munitions of war which the
Republic had provided for its own defense. The tremendous question
for him to decide was whether his country should survive the crisis
and flourish, or be dismembered and perish. His predecessor in office
had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment,
by denying to it the right of self-defense and self-preservation--a
right which belongs to the meanest insect.
Happily for the country, happily for you and for me,
the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment
of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense,
sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question.
He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at
once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union
of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith
was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid
men said before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, that we have seen the
last President of the United States. A voice in influential quarters
said, ``Let the Union slide.'' Some said that a Union maintained
by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of 8,000,000
cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity,
and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and
had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of
doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and
there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman,
backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate
that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery;
his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught
that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His
moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another.
The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people
was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded.
He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and
his truth was based upon this knowledge.
Fellow-citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865,
of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever
remain a memorable day in the annals of this Republic. It was on
the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion
was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies
were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant
and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already
beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn
of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning
crime of slavery--the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a
new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was
to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black
spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled
the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love
for the great liberator.
Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills
to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which
his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise;
had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the
solemn curtain of death come down but gradually--we should still
have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly.
But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated,
taken off without warning, not because of personal hate--for no
man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him--but because of his
fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his
memory will be precious forever.
Fellow-citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations.
We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the
memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors
to ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening
ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have
also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now
it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no
appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach
of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us
beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the
monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
|
