Year: 1866

Will continue to disturb the public tran
guilty. 1t would be childish to expect
that so great an iniquity could be extir-
pated in single year, or even in a sim
degeneration. 1t should be remember
ed that it had invaded every source of
public, private social and domestic life
not only did it control the political
press and all political parties in this
State, but with rare exceptions it spoke
from all our pulpits, perverting the gos-
pei of human brotherhood into the gos-
pei of human childhood, and of the alb
solute submission of a fact to the best
and avarice of the rest of human kind.
Our religious teachers had forgotten to
preach the wrong of withholding the
line of labor, trading in the bodies and
souls of our fellow-men, of separating
husbands and wives, parents and chill
dren, and sending them to a returnless
distance from each other, and from the
houses of their living, and the graves of
their dead and he had become with
some worthy and glorious exceptions,
panderers and apologists of the lust,
and violence of masters, who in return
for his service were willing to feed him
on the fat of the land. Our Legislators
instead of following the christian law,
requiring much where much is given,
and proportioning accountability to the
gifts and talents of nature, had estab-
lished the reverse enactments, punish
ing the ignorant and uneducated, whom
it was made Il crime to enEghten, with
death for many offences, which when
committed by the educated and privil-
eyed, were satisfied with fine or imprls-
onment. Our courts of justice had pro-
claimed the infamous doctrine that dus-
ky men had no rights which white men
were bound to respect; and into this
very temple of law pious woman hal
been dragged as criminal for an act
which might almost invite an archan-
gel to come down from the mansions of
the blest for teaching the poor children
of oppression, and of licensed wrong to
read the Bible, and the laws made not
to govern them, but crush out OF them
every feeling Of humanity.


"And worst of all and worst to be
deplored was the prostitution of our
houses, the very heart and seat of do
mestic purity, the poisoning of which is
fatal to all moral vitality-and death
to public and private happiness. The
subsection of the woman of one COM





Righteousness, and as a consequence de-
nving to the women of our own COM
piexion the holy rites of marriage, or
making in thousands of cases those
rights as much mockery as conscious
traitors oath, are proclaimed on every
plantation in the bleached faces of the
children of the slave women, bleached
by the blood of the first families, until
I. Ill l. h., Of lnx -frrI
wedlock, and until it would seem that
masculine virtue must be nearly extinct
in the proud circles of the chivIlric az
istocracy of the State.


Your duties under these circumstan-
ces are both difficult and dangerous, for
you are called upon to oppose the worst
passions of every desperate man, who
will make vigorous efforts to verify
their often repeated predictions, that
freedom would bring ruin and extermi-
nation upon the colored people, and it
is possible that some of you may meet
with violence for faithful discharge of
your duties as one of the last grand jul
ry has already DONE But better, a
thousand times better to fall by the
hand of the assassin as Lincoln and
Dixon have fallen, or die under the
mockery of pretended forms of law as
our Saviour did, in the cause of freedom
and humanity, than to shrink like cow
ards from our public trusts, in order to
drag out few more years of ignoble
life before filling unhonored graves.


The laws of Congress, which will
guide your action, are instinct with
equity, and are ample if fearlessly ad-
ministered to check and humble the
most defiant, differing essentially in
this respect from the laws of our State
Legislature, which like those of an an
cient heather nation, seems S'like cob
webs made to catch the weak, but to
permit the strong to break through
them" Yours is the rough pioneer
work of removing the great obstructions
of crime and violence from our midst,
so that education, intellectual, moral
and religious education very different in
kind and degree from the past, may
come to curse the evils under which we
suffer- Where there is so much vice to
be reclaimed, ignorance to he enlight-
ened and misery to be alleviated, we
may hope the teacher and the missiona-
~ will come, and that culture and re-
tinement will yet be seen approaching
that which now classes Massachusetts |
and New England, and that the time
may he Fastening when our people
shall feel and act like brethren of the |
same blood, children of the same AL
mighty Benefactor, who permits all
alike to range the same earth, breathe
the same air, bask in the same sunshine,
and dwell under the same celestial can
opy, thus teaching our duty, and invit-
ing our imitation. When joining in eff
forts for mutual aid, we shall forget the
terrible past and gloomy present-the
bitter fruits of ages of violence and op-
preston on our side, and of misery, ig
norance and degradation on the other
Since the adjournment of the last Grand
Jury, the attention of the Court has
been particularly called to our distoyal
press, by the highest military authority
of the country, with view to the pun
ishment of its treason and Indictment
to rebellion.


While concurring entirely with the
Lieutenant General, and the distinguish