“Lands intersected by a narrow frith, abhor each other;
Mountains interposed make enemies of nations,
Which else, like kindred drops, had mingled into one.”
But in this case there were neither friths nor mountains to separate the
South from the North, or to make our Southern brethren hate the people
of the North. The moral cause of trouble in the system of slavery being
now removed, peace and harmony are possible, and, I doubt not, these
blessings, though long delayed, will finally come. In calling attention
to the event which makes this day precious we honor ourselves, and
honor the noble and brave men who brought it about. We render our humble
tribute of gratitude to-day, not only to those whose valor and whose
blood on the battlefield brought freedom to the American slave; not only
to the great generals who led our armies, but to our great statesmen as
well who framed our laws; and not to these only, but also to the noble
army of men and women which preceded both statesmen and warriors in the
cause of emancipation, and made these warriors and statesmen possible.
Neither would our gratitude forget those who supplemented the great act
of emancipation by carrying the blessings of education to the benighted
South, thus preparing the liberated freedman for the duties of
citizenship.
I need not stop here to call the roll of any of these classes. The
nation knows the debt it owes them, and will never forget them. We have
but to mention the honored name of Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential
chair, of Ulysses S. Grant in the field, at whose bedside a grateful
nation now stands mute in sympathy and sad expectation; of William Lloyd
Garrison in the columns of the _Liberator_, of Wendell Phillips on the
rostrum, of Charles Sumner in the Senate, to cause a host of noble men
and women to start up and pass in review before us.
But I drop this brief reference to the history and personnel of the
anti-slavery movement, and will speak of matters nearer our times and
equally pertinent to this occasion. Those who abolished slavery did
their work, and did it well. They served their day and generation with
wisdom, courage, and fortitude, and are an example to this and coming
generations. They bravely upheld the principles of liberty and justice,
and it will go well with this nation and with us if we in our time, and
if those who are to come after us in theirs, shall adhere to and uphold
these same principles with equal zeal, courage, fidelity, and fortitude.
One generation cannot safely rest on the achievements of another, and
ought not so to rest.
Hitherto there has been little variety in the thoughts, resolutions, and
addresses presented for consideration on occasions similar to this. Each
celebration has been almost a _fac-simile_ of its predecessors. The
speeches have been little more than echoes of those made before, because
the conditions of their utterances have been so uniform, and all one
way. To-day, however, conditions are changed, or appear to be changed.
We do not stand where we stood one year ago. We are confronted by a new
Administration. The term of twenty-four years of steady, unbroken,
successful Republican rule is ended. The great Republican party that
carried the country safely through the late war against the rebellion,
emancipated the slave, saved the Union, reconstructed the government of
the Southern States, enfranchised the freedmen, raised the national
credit, improved the currency, decreased the national debt, and did more
for the honor, prosperity, and glory of the American people than was
ever done before in the same length of time by any party in any country
under similar circumstances, has been defeated, humiliated, and driven
from place and power.
For the first time since the chains fell from the limbs of the slaves of
the District of Columbia; for the first time since slaves were raised
from chattels to men; for the first time since they were clothed with
the dignity of American citizenship they find themselves under the rule
of a political party which steadily opposed their every step from
bondage to freedom, and this fact may well enough give a peculiar
coloring to the thoughts and feelings with which this anniversary of
emancipation is celebrated.
The great question of the hour respects the true significance of this
change in the national front. What does it portend? How will it affect
our relations to the people and government of this country? How was this
stupendous change brought about, and, in point of fact, it may be asked
with some propriety if there has really been any serious change made in
our condition by this change in the relations of parties?
To the eye of the colored man the change, or apparent change, in the
political situation is very marked, and wears a very sinister aspect. He
has so long been accustomed to think the Republican party the
sheet-anchor of his liberty, the star of all his hopes, that he can see
nought but ill in the ascendancy of the Democratic party. He addresses
it much as did Hamlet his father’s ghost:
“Tell why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre.
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws to cast thee up again.
What may this mean, that thou, dead corpse,
Again in complete steel, revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we, poor fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?”
It is, perhaps, too early to determine the full significance of the
return of the Democratic party to power, or to tell just how that return
to power came about. One thing must be admitted, and that is that the
power and vitality of the Democratic party have been vastly underrated.
It has indulged in vices and crimes enough to have killed a dozen
ordinary parties, and yet it lives. At times it has really seemed to be
dead. Some said it had died by opposing the war for the Union, but it
was not so. We thought the life had gone out of it when it took our late
friend, Horace Greely, for its candidate for the Presidency and adopted
a Republican platform, but it was not so.
It was the same old party in a new dress, and time has shown that it was
as full of life and power as ever. The fact is, it was never either
honestly dead or securely buried. Even when it slept it had one eye
open, and saw better with that one eye than did the Republican party
with its two. Our mistakes concerning it have been made abundantly clear
by the late election and the dazzling splendor of the recent
inauguration. We thought the Democratic party dead when it was alive,
and the Republican party alive and strong when it was half dead. Long
continuance in power had developed rival ambitions, personal
animosities, factional combinations in the Republican party that were
fatal to its success and even endangered its life.
One great lesson taught by Republican defeat is familiar to all. It is
the folly of relying upon past good behavior for present success.
Parties, like men, must act in the living present or fail. It is not
what they have done or left undone in the past that turns the scale, but
what they are doing, and mean to do now. The result shows that neither
the past good conduct of the Republican party nor the past bad conduct
of the Democratic party has had much to do with the late election.
Americans have too little memory for good or bad political conduct. The
people have said in the late election, “We care nothing for your past;
but what is your present character and work?” And in rendering judgment
they have said, “We see little ground for preferring one to the other.”
But, fellow-citizens, it is consoling to think that this change in the
political front justly implies no real change for the worse in the moral
convictions of the American people. On the great questions that divided
the parties during the periods of war and reconstruction there has been
no change whatever. Upon all the great measures of justice, liberty,
and civilization, originated and carried through Congress by the
Republican party, I believe the heart of the nation to be still safe and
sound. If the measures then in controversy between the parties were now
submitted to the American people, I fully believe they would sustain
them one and all by an overwhelming vote.
The trouble was that the Republican party in the late campaign forgot
for the moment its high mission as the party of great moral ideas, and
sought victory on grounds far below its ordinary level. It made national
pelf more important and prominent than national purity. It made the body
more important than the soul; national prosperity more important than
national justice. There was no square issue made up between the parties.
One talked in favor of the tariff and the other did not talk against it.
Both together beat the air and raised a dust, confused counsel, blinded
the voters, and rendered victory a thing of chance rather than a thing
of choice. The Republican party was not more surprised by defeat than
the Democratic party was astonished by victory. Twelve hundred votes
would have changed the result; so that nothing for the future can be
safely predicted upon the election either way. It does not imply that
the Democratic party is in power to stay, or that the Republican party
is out of power to stay, or that new parties are to arise and take the
place of the old.
While it was painfully evident that the Republican party, during the
late canvass, had little or nothing to say against the outrages
committed upon the newly enfranchised people of the South, it was
equally plain that the Democratic party had nothing to say in defense of
these outrages. Yet it is not strange, in view of the history of the two
parties, that much alarm was felt by colored people all over the South
when they first learned that the great Republican party was defeated and
that the Democratic party was soon to administer the National
Government.
Ignorant as the colored people of the South have been, and may still be,
about other matters of national importance, they have always been
intelligent enough as to the character and relations of political
parties. They have never been mistaken as to the historical difference
between the party which gave them liberty and the party which sought to
continue their enslavement. They had known the Democratic party long
and well and only as the party of the old master class. They naturally
held the triumph of that party as a victory of the old master class. In
the panic of the moment they saw in it a possible attempt to
rehabilitate the old order of government in the South, in which they
would be greatly oppressed if not enslaved.
In the joy and exultation of the old master class over the defeat of the
Republican party, and over the return of the old Democratic party to
power, they read what they thought their doom. Jealous of their newly
gained liberty, as well they might be, feeling themselves in peril and
left naked to their enemies, their fears amounted to agony. But, thanks
to the kind assurances promptly given by the President-elect and by
other Democrats in high places, this alarm was transient, and has now
given way in some measure to a feeling of confidence and security.
How long this feeling of confidence and security will last, however,
will depend upon the future policy of the present administration. The
inaugural address of President Cleveland was all that any friend of
liberty and justice could reasonably ask for the freedmen. It was a
frank and manly avowal, worthy of the occasion. It accepted their
citizenship as a fact settled beyond debate, and as a subject which
ought to attract attention only with a view to the improvement of their
character and their better qualification by education for the duties and
responsibilities of citizens of the Republic.
No better words have dropped from the east portico of the Capitol since
the inauguration days of Abraham Lincoln and Gen. Grant. I believe they
were sincerely spoken, but whether the President will be able to
administer the government in the light of those liberal sentiments is an
open question. The one-man power in our government is very great, but
the power of party may be greater. The President is not the autocrat,
but the executive of the nation. But, happily, the executive is yet a
power, and may be able to obtain the support of the co-ordinate branches
of the government in so plain a duty as protecting the rights of the
colored citizens, with those of all other citizens of the Republic. For
one, though Republican I am, and have been, and ever expect to be,
though I did what I could to elect James G. Blaine as President of the
United States, I am disposed to trust President Cleveland. By his words,
as well as by his oath of office, solemnly subscribed to before
uncounted thousands of American citizens, he is held and firmly bound
to execute the Constitution of the United States in the fullness of its
spirit and in the completeness of its letter, and thus far he has shown
no disposition to shrink from that duty.
The Southern question is evidently the most difficult question with
which President Cleveland will have to deal. Hard as it may be to manage
his party on the civil service question, where he has only to deal with
hungry and thirsty office-seekers, nineteen out of every twenty of whom
he must necessarily offend by failing to find desirable places for them,
he will find it incomparably harder to meet that party’s wishes in
dealing with the Southern question. There are several methods of
disposing of this Southern question open to him, and there are lions in
the way, whichever method he may adopt.
First. He may adopt a policy of total indifference. He may shut his eyes
to the fact that in all of the Gulf States political rights of colored
citizens are literally stamped out; that the Constitution which he has
solemnly sworn to support and enforce is under the feet of the mob; that
in those States there is no such thing as a fair election and an honest
count. He may utterly refuse to interfere by word or deed for the
enforcement of the Constitution and for the protection of the ballot,
and let the Southern question drift whithersoever it will, to a port of
safety or to a rock of disaster. He will probably be counselled to
pursue the course of President Hayes, but I hope he will refuse to
follow it. The reasons which supported that policy do not exist in the
case of a Democratic President. Mr. Hayes made a virtue of necessity. He
had fair warning that not a dollar or a dime would be voted by a
Democratic Congress if the army were kept in the South. The cry of the
country was against what was called bayonet rule.
Secondly. The President may pursue a temporizing policy; keep the word
of promise to the ear and break it to the heart, a half-hearted, a
neither hot nor cold, a good Lord and good devil policy. He may try to
avoid giving offence to any, and thus succeed in pleasing none; a policy
which no man or party can pursue without inviting and earning the scorn
and contempt of all honest men and of all honest parties.
Thirdly. He may decide to accept the Mississippi plan of conducting
elections at the South; encourage violence and crime; elevate to office
the men whose hands are reddest with innocent blood; force the negroes
out of Southern politics by the shot-gun and the bulldozer’s whip;
cheat them out of the elective franchise; suppress the Republican vote;
kill off their white Republican leaders, and keep the South solid; and
keep its one hundred and fifty-three electoral votes--obtained thus by
force, fraud, and red-handed violence--ready to be cast for a Democratic
candidate in 1888. This might be acceptable to a certain class of
Democrats at the South, but the Democrats of the North would abhor and
denounce it as a bloody and hell-black policy. It would hurl the party
from power in spite of the solid South, and keep it out of power another
four and twenty years.
Fourthly. He may sustain a policy of absolute fidelity to all the
requirements of the Constitution as it is, and, as John Adams said of
the Declaration of Independence, he may bravely say to the South and to
the nation: “Sink or swim, survive or perish, I am for the Constitution
in all its parts! I will be true to my oath, and I will, to the best of
my ability, and to the fullest extent of my power, defend, protect, and
maintain the rights of all citizens, without regard to race or color.”
There can be no doubt as to which of these methods of treating the
Southern question is the most honest and safe one. There may be many
wrong ways for individuals or nations to pursue, but there is but one
right way, and it remains to be seen if this is the one the present
administration will adopt and pursue. Left to the promptings of his own
heart and his own view of his constitutional duties, and to his own
sense of the requirements of consistency, and even expediency, I firmly
believe that President Cleveland would do his utmost to protect and
defend the constitutional rights of all classes of citizens. But he is
not left to himself, and may adopt a different policy.
One thing seems plain, which it is well for all parties to know and
consider. It is this: There are 7,000,000 of colored citizens now in
this Republic. They stand between the two great parties--the Republican
party and the Democratic party--and whichever of these two parties shall
be most just and true to these 7,000,000 may safely count upon a long
lease of power in this Republic. It is not their votes alone that will
tell. There is deep down among the people of this country a love of
justice and fair play, and that fact will tell. It is now as it was in
the time of war, and it will be so in all time. The party which takes
the negro on its side will triumph. The world moves, and the conditions
of success and failure have changed.
Formerly, devotion to slavery was the condition upon which the success
of the Democratic party was based. But time and events have swept away
this abhorred condition. Liberty, not slavery, is now the autocrat of
the Republic. Neither politics nor religion can succeed in the future by
pandering to the prejudices arising out of slavery. Let the great
Democratic party realize this fact, and shape its policy in accordance
with it; let it do justice to the negro, and it will certainly succeed
itself in power four years hence, and long years after.
On the contrary, if it forgets the nation’s progress, falls back into
its old ruts, and seeks success on the old conditions; if it forgets
that slavery has now become an anachronism, a superstition of the past,
having no proper relation to the age and body of our times, it will be
ignominiously driven from place and power four years hence, and no arm
can, or ought to, save it.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which,
Taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
This tide is now rising at the feet of President Cleveland and his
administration, and, as I have said, it remains to be seen if it will be
wisely taken at the flood. Depend upon it, if the Democratic party does
not avail itself of the colored man’s support the Republican party
certainly will. That party is still the colored man’s party, and it will
be all the more likely to consider the claims of the colored man, in
view of its late defeat, and the causes by which that defeat was brought
about. Twelve hundred more colored votes in the State of New York would
have saved that party from defeat.
Unless the ballot is protected better than heretofore the Augusta speech
of the Hon. James G. Blaine, delivered after the election, will be the
keynote of the Republican campaign four years hence. There is only one
way to prevent the success of the Republican party if that issue is
permitted to be raised. The Northern people were sound for free soil;
sound for free speech; sound for the Union; sound for reconstruction in
other days, and they will be sound for justice and liberty and a free
ballot to the newly enfranchised citizens when that issue shall be
fairly presented as a living issue between the two contending parties.
The great mistake made by the leaders of the Republican party during the
late canvass was the failure to recognize the facts now stated, and
their refusal to act upon them. They had become tired of the old issues
and wanted new ones. They made their appeal to the pocket of the nation,
and not to the heart of the nation. They attended to the mint, anise,
and cummin of politics, but omitted the weightier matters of the
law--judgment, mercy, and faith. They were loud for the protection of
things, but silent for the protection of men. These things they ought to
have done, and not left the other undone.
The idea that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that sin is a
reproach to any people, was, for a time, lost sight of. The
all-engrossing thought of the campaign was a judicious, discriminating
protective tariff. The great thing was protection to the wool of Ohio;
to the iron of Pennsylvania, and to American manufactures generally.
Little was said, thought, or felt about national integrity, the
importance of maintaining good faith with the freedmen or the Indian, or
the protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens, except
where such rights were in no danger.
The great thing to be protected was American industry against
competition with the pauper labor of Europe--not protection of the
starving labor of the South. The body of the nation was everything; the
soul of the nation was nothing. It did not appear from the campaign
speeches that it was important to protect and preserve both, or that the
body was not more dependent upon bread for life than was the soul
dependent upon truth, justice, benevolence, and good faith for health
and life. In the absence of these, the soul of the nation starves,
sickens, and dies. It may not fall at once upon the withdrawal of these,
but persistent injustice will, in the end, do its certain work of moral
destruction. No nation, no party, no man can live long and flourish on
falsehood, deceit, injustice, and broken pledges. Loyalty will perish
where protection and good faith are denied and withheld, and nothing
other that this should be expected, either by a party, a man, or by a
government. On the other hand, where good faith is maintained, where
justice is upheld, where truth and right prevail, the government will be
like the wise man’s house in Scripture--the winds may blow, the rains
may descend, the flood may come and beat upon it, but it will stand,
because it is founded upon the solid rock of principle. I speak this,
not only for the Republican party, but for all parties. Though I am a
party man, to me parties are valuable only as they subserve the ends of
good government. When they persistently violate the fundamental rights
of the humblest and weakest in the land I scout them, despise them, and
leave them.
We boast of our riches, power, and glory as a nation, and we have reason
to do so. But what is prosperity, what is power, what is national glory,
when national honor, national good faith, and national protection to the
rights of our citizens are denied? Of what avail is citizenship and the
elective franchise where a whole people are deliberately abandoned to
anarchy by the Government under which they live, and told they must
protect themselves from violence as best they may, for, practically,
this is just what the American Government has said to the colored and
white Republican voters of the South during the last eight years.
Minister Lowell was accused of not protecting the rights of
Irish-Americans in England, and our ships are just now ordered to Panama
to look after the interests of American citizens in Central America.
This is all right, but when and where have our army and navy gone to
protect the rights of American citizens at home? To say, “I am a Roman
citizen!” could once arrest the bloody scourge and cause the brutal
tyrant to turn pale. But who cares now for the citizenship of any
American Republican, black or white, in Mississippi or South Carolina?
We are rich and powerful. But we should remember that the whole vast
volume of human history is dotted all along with the wrecks of nations
which have perished amid wealth, luxury, and splendor. What doth it
profit a nation to gain the whole world if it shall lose its own soul?
Henry Clay, in 1839, made an elaborate defence of the right to hold
property in man. Two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and
identified negro slaves as property. When warned by anti-slavery men of
the dreadful consequences of perpetuating slavery, he said that that
warning had been given fifty years before, and that it had been answered
by fifty years of unexampled prosperity. His idea was that if slavery
were a curse God would not allow a nation that upheld it to prosper. The
argument was sophistical, but it contained a great truth after all, and
time only was required to verify it. He forgot that God reigns in
eternity; that space is sometimes given for repentance. He did not
remember, as Jefferson did, that God is just, and that His justice
cannot sleep forever.
Had Mr. Clay lived to see, as we have seen, the union of his beloved
country rent asunder at the centre, and hostile armies composed of his
beloved countrymen on the field of battle, amid dust, smoke, and fire,
blowing each other to pieces from the cannon’s mouth; had he seen five
hundred thousand of the youth and flower of both sections of this land
cut down by the sword and flung down into bloody graves; had he seen in
the wake of this fratricidal war the smoldering ruins of noble towns and
cities, and the nation staggering under a debt heavier than a mountain
of gold; had he seen the sullen discontent and deadly hate which
survived the war, and traced all these calamities and more, as he must
do, to the existence of slavery, he would, in all the bitterness of his
soul, have cursed the day when he poured out his eloquence in defence of
that system which brought upon his country these accumulated horrors.
The lesson of this national experience is in place to-day, and it would
be well for this nation to study and learn it. Look abroad! What rocks
Europe to-day? What causes the Emperor of all the Russias to be uneasy
on his pillow? What makes Austria tremble? Why does England start up
frantically at midnight and search her premises? You know, and I know,
that these countries have aggrieved classes among them who have just
ground of complaint against their governments.
Now, fellow-citizens, let me speak plainly. This is an age when men go
to and fro in the earth, and knowledge increases oppressed peoples all
over the world are protesting with earthquake emphasis against all forms
of injustice, some by one means and some by another. Examples, like
certain diseases, are contagious. Railroads, steam navigation, electric
wires, newspapers, and traveling emissaries are abroad. Can you be quite
sure that the oppressed laborers in this country, white and colored,
will not some day make common cause and learn some of the dangerous
modes of protest against injustice adopted in other countries? I deal in
no threats, for myself or for any of my countrymen, and am only for
peaceful methods; but I say to all oppressors, “Have a care how you goad
and imbrute the colored man of the South!” He is weak, but not
powerless. He is submissive to wrongs, but not insensible to his rights.
He is hopeful, but not incapable of despair. He can endure, but even to
him may come a time when he shall think endurance has ceased to be a
virtue. All the world is a school, and in it one lesson is just now
being taught in letters of fire and blood, and that is, the utter
insecurity of life and property in the presence of an aggrieved class.
This lesson can be learned by the ignorant as well as by the wise. Who
can blame the negro if, when he is driven from the ballot-box, the
jury-box, and the schoolhouse, denied equal rights on railroads and
steamboats, called out of his bed at midnight and whipped by regulators,
compelled to live in rags and wretchedness, and his wages kept back by
fraud, denied a fair trial when accused of crime, he shall imitate the
example of other oppressed classes and invokes some terrible explosive
power as a means of bringing his oppressors to their senses, and making
them respect the claims of justice? This would indeed be madness, but
oppression will make even a wise man mad.
It should not be forgotten that the negro is not what he was twenty
years ago. Kossuth once said that bayonets think. The negro is beginning
to think. Years ago a book had as little to say to him and had as little
meaning for him as a brick. It was then a thing of darkness and silence.
Now it is a thing of light and speech. Education, the sheet anchor of
safety to society where liberty and justice are secure, is a dangerous
thing to society in the presence of injustice and oppression.
I pursue this thought no further. A hint to the wise ought to be
sufficient. Let not my words be construed as a menace, but taken as I
mean them--as a warning; not interpreted as inviting disaster, but
considered as designed to avert disaster.
Fellow-citizens, many things calculated to make us thoughtful have
occurred since I addressed you on an occasion like this, two years ago;
but nothing has occurred which ought to make us more thoughtful than the
recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on the civil
rights bill. That decision came upon the country like a clap of thunder
from a clear sky. It came without warning. It was a surprise to enemies
and a bitter disappointment to friends. Had the bench been composed of
Democratic judges some such a decision might have come upon us without
producing any very startling effect. But the fact was otherwise. This
blow was dealt us in the house of our friends. The bench was composed
of nine learned Republican judges, and of these nine honorable men only
one came to our help, I mean Honorable Justice John M. Harlan. He stood
up for the rights of colored citizens as those rights are defined by the
fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
It was a magnificent spectacle, this grand representation of American
justice standing alone, and the country will not soon forget it. Without
meaning any disrespect to the Supreme Court, or reflecting upon the
purity of its motives, I must say here, as I have said elsewhere, and
shall say many times over if my life is spared, that that decision is
the most striking illustration I have ever seen of how it is possible to
keep alive the letter of the law and at the same time stab its spirit to
death. Portia strictly construed the law of Venice for mercy, and this
rule of construction has the approval of all the ages, but the Supreme
Court of the United States construed American law against the weak and
in the interest of prejudice and brutality. Never before was made so
clear the meaning of Paul’s saying, “The letter killeth, but the spirit
giveth life.”
I am glad, and I know that you are glad, that there was one man on that
bench who had the mind and heart to be as true to liberty in this its
day as was the old Supreme Court of slavery in its day. While slavery
existed all presumptions were made in its favor. The obvious intention
of the law prevailed, but now the plain intention of the law has been
strangled by the letter of the law.
The fourteenth amendment of the Constitution was plainly intended to
secure equal rights to all citizens of the United States, without regard
to race or color, and Congress was authorized to carry out this
provision by appropriate legislation. But by this decision of the
Supreme Court the fourteenth amendment has been slain in the house of
its friends. I have no doubt that that decision contributed to the
defeat of the Republican party in the late election. I repeat, that
decision may well make colored men thoughtful.
Kentucky has done many evil things in her time, but she has also done
many great and good things. She has recently given us a law by which
equal educational advantages have been extended to colored children.
Long ago she gave us James G. Birney, the first abolition candidate for
the presidency of the United States; a former slave-holder, but one who
emancipated his slaves on his own motion; a genuine gentleman of the old
school, and one to be gratefully remembered by every friend of liberty
in this country. She has given us Cassius M. Clay, the man who fought
his way to freedom of speech on his native soil. She has given us John
G. Fee, the earnest and devoted educator of the freedman. Nor is this
all. She has given us two of the largest hearts and broadest minds of
which our country can boast; men who had the courage of their
convictions, and who dared, at the peril of what men hold most dear, to
be true to their convictions. These strong men--one dead and the other
living--are Abraham Lincoln and John M. Harlan. Abraham Lincoln is
already enshrined in the hearts of the American people, and Justice John
M. Harlan will hold a place beside him in the hearts of his countrymen.
You remember the public meeting held in Lincoln Hall, and the free
expression of opinion upon the unsoundness of the decision of the
Supreme Court on the civil rights bill. You will also remember that the
ablest and boldest words there spoken were from the lips of Robert G.
Ingersoll, a man everywhere spoken against as an infidel and a
blasphemer. Well, my friends, better be an infidel and a so-called
blasphemer than a hypocrite who steals the livery of the court of heaven
to serve the devil in.
Infidel though Mr. Ingersoll may be called, he never turned his back
upon his colored brothers, as did the evangelical Christians of this
city on the occasion of the late visit of Mr. Moody. Of all the forms of
negro hate in this world, save me from that one which clothes itself
with the name of the loving Jesus, who, when on earth, especially
identified himself with the lowest classes of suffering men, and the
proof given of his Messiahship was that the poor had the Gospel preached
unto them. The negro can go into the circus, the theatre, the cars, and
can be admitted into the lectures of Mr. Ingersoll, but cannot go into
an Evangelical Christian meeting.
I do not forget that on the occasion of the civil rights meeting I have
mentioned, one evangelical clergyman, a real man of God, gave to the
gospel trumpet a certain sound. The religion of Dr. John E. Rankin, like
the love of his Redeemer, is not bounded by race or color, but takes in
the whole human family. No truer man than he ever ascended a Washington
pulpit.
In conclusion let me say one word more of the soul of the nation and of
the importance of keeping it sensitive and responsive to the claims of
truth, justice, liberty, and progress. In speaking of the soul of the
nation I deal in no cant phraseology. I speak of that mysterious,
invisible, impalpable something which underlies the life alike of
individuals and of nations, and determines their character and destiny.
It is the soul that makes a nation great or small, noble or ignoble,
weak or strong. It is the soul that exalts it to happiness, or sinks it
to misery. While it modifies and shapes all physical conditions, it is
itself superior to all such conditions. It is the spiritual side of
humanity. Fire cannot burn it, water cannot quench it. Though occult and
impalpable, it is just as real as granite or iron. The laws of its life
are spiritual, not carnal, and it must conform to these laws or it
starves and dies. The outward semblance of it may survive for a time,
just as ancient temples and old cathedrals may stand long after the
spirit that inspired them has vanished. But they, too, will moulder to
ruin and vanish. The life of the nation is secure only while the nation
is honest, truthful, and virtuous; for upon these conditions depend the
life of its life.
A few years ago a terrible and desolating fire swept over the proud
young city of Chicago, and left her architectural splendors in ashes. In
a few hours her “cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces” and solemn
temples crumbled to dust, and were scattered to the four winds of
heaven, so that no man could find them, but there remained the invisible
soul of a great people, full of energy, enterprise, and faith, and
hence, out of the ashes and hollow desolation, a grander Chicago than
the one destroyed arose “as if by magic.”
“What constitutes a state?
Not high raised battlements, or labored mound,
Thick walls or moated gate;
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride.
No, men; high-minded men!
With power as far above dull brutes endued,
In forest, brake, or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain.”