What we behold here today, is but one of thousands of pictures of the results of Emancipation. When I look over this great audience I feel that you are here for a purpose, for a laudable purpose. This is the thirty-third anniversary of the signing by Abraham Lincoln of that great liberty giving proclamation known as the Emancipation Proclamation, the paper that gave to the colored people of this country all the rights and priviledges accorded to other men. It is right and proper and I heartily approve of this celebration. It should kept fresh in the memory of all men and especially the colored people.
All nations have days they celebrate on account of some event in their history.
Organizations celebrate their anniversaries, and Americans everywhere celebrate the Fourth of July, it being the day the colonies determined to be free and independent states. How well they carried out that determination is shown to-day, when we are able to point you to a nation of seventy million of freemen under one flag, and the colored man is there to swell the crowd. Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia Emancipation celebration. The three in one, bound by ties that cannot be severed as long as that starry banner floats over the people, that know no north, no south, no east and no west, nothing but the union, one and inseparable. West Virginia stood as a great bulwark in defence of liberty and the success of our armies in that great conflict, was largely due to the stand that our people took in the maintenance of the union.