3

upon the great questions of human liberty and equality. Here it touch-
es us deeply, and is a matter of supreme concern. To the millions of
our color at the South it is vastly more important than to us. It is,
in effect, a thing of peace and war, of order and disorder, of life and
death, if not of liberty and slavery. It, in fact, involves the main-
tainance of all the progress made during the last dozen years, and the
inauguration of a process of reaction, which may land our race into a
condition only a little better than the bondage and degradation of ages
from which we have just begun to emerge.

I know that this statement of the issues involved is stoutly de-
nied by one party to this canvass, and no doubt honestly denied, but
you and I know that there is such a thing as being honestly wrong. Hell
is said to be paved with good intentions.

The political canvass before us is indeed a very peculiar one.
There is nothing like it in the past, and I hope there may never be
anything like it in the future. To outward seeming we have two polit-
ical parties seeking to possess the Government, while professing sub-
stantially the same principles and commending their candidates for the
same noble qualities and dispositions. Two parties and one platform.
It is this seeming agreement which leads to confusion, and would almost
deceive the very elect. We have no longer an honest fight between ar-
mies under their own respective colors, battling for their own honest-
ly-cherished objects, but a war under the same flags, between armies in
the same uniforms, and professing the same objects.

The best illustration of the political contest now proceeding is
found in our late war for the Union. You will remember that neither
party to that conflict was willing to declare its true object. The
South said it was not fighting for slavery, and the North said it was
not fighting against slavery; and yet they were fighting hard, and
everybody who had any brains knew at the time that the two were really
fighting about slavery, and that one was for it and the other was against
it.

5

to have been from home for about twelve years, and to have had little
or nothing to eat all the time, so that he would even fain have filled
himself with the husks that the swine did eat. But when he saw his
father, he said: - "Father, I have sinned before heaven and in thy sight,
and am no more worthy to be called thy servant." Now, this was humili-
ity, and it is there that the parallel ceases. He did not come home
to drive out the elder son, but only wanted to be made a servant in his
father's house. It is here, as I said, that the analogy ceases. The
Democratic Party does not come in that spirit, after having spent our
substance, wasted our wealth, piled up a mountain of debt. Well, I
did not come here to argue or to expound. I have doubts about the
sincerity of this Democratic conversion. For one, I don't think it
will be safe to trust to that conversion just yet. I am willing to
receive the Prodigal Son, but I would keep him in a subordinate posi-
tion for a little time longer. Let us imitate the wisdom of our Meth-
odist brethren and take the Democrats on probation. I have an appeal
to make to you on behalf of my race. There are millions of them who
are to-night like chickens under a fence when the scream of the hawk is
heard in the air. In this anxious state they are afraid of the shad-
ow-- of the adumbration of a possibility of the reinstatement of the
old master-class to power in the Southern States, and I am here to-night
to ask you for four years more of the beneficent rule of the Republican
Party, and four years more of the steady, unimpassioned, eagle-eyed,
clear, steady, firm-nerved little man-- Ulysses S. Grant. When you
felt the earth crumbling beneath your feet, when the fate of the Repub-
lic trembled in the balance, oh, then, in your extremity you called
upon the black man to reach out his black, iron arm. And they came
200,000 strong; and from that hour the tide of battle turned. We
don't say we put down the rebellion, but we helped to put it down, and
so incurred the heavy displeasure of the master-class at the South.

laws are of little value in the hands of those unfriendly to their
objects. Besides, the very essence of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments is in the grant of power to Congress to enforce
them by "appropriate legislation." Without legislation these provi-
sions may be evaded and practically rendered null and void. Now, what
hope have we that a Democratic Congress will enforce these provisions
by appropriate legislation?

But let us look at the workings of the Constitution. Under that
instrument it would appear that oppression of an American citizen
would be impossible in any of the States; that the citizen of New York
would be as safe in South Carolina as in New York; yet we well know
that until within the last few years the free liberty of a Northern man
was impossible in the South. I, therefore, as a black man first, as
a man next, and as a newly-born citizen of the United States-- a citi-
zenship beyond all others on the globe-- as such a citizen I ask you,
one and all, to exert every faculty to retain in power that party
which has made the country glorious before the world, if you want the
country prosperous. I now ask you, if you desire success, to give
three hearty, rousing cheers for Ulysses S. Grant, and if you wish to
do so, follow me. Hip, hip, hip. (As he thus spoke he waived his
handkerchief three times, each wave eliciting a thundering cheer that
made the walls ring. At the end of the last, three additional cheers
were given for Douglass.)