ADDRESS.

FELLOW-CITIZENS AND GENTLEMEN :

When I had the honor to receive your kind and unexpected invitation to visit Nashville, a city famous for its elegance and refinement, and the scene of so many thrilling events and patriotic associations during the late struggle for Union and liberty, I was naturally enough very much pleased with the prospect of being present on this occasion; but when I was informed that my visit was not to be either for pleasure or observation, but to make an address, and that the said address must be of a character appropriate to this your third annual agricultural exhibition, my joy and enthusiasm received a very decided check; the "native hue of resolution was sicklied over with the pale cast of thought." The fact is—and I am not ashamed to admit it—I felt very much as some of our Generals did when called upon to face the enemy on the open field of battle. I would have gladly been relieved of the command, and to have allowed the imposing task assigned me to fall into other and more competent hands. But your committee was composed of earnest and resolute men. They were men from Tennessee, and as willful as old Hickory himself. They made no account of any modest distrusts of my ability, would hear none of my excuses, and in short would be satisfied with nothing less than my presence and speech on this occasion. Well, gentlemen, these willful men have succeeded; they have got me here, but I beg you to remember the old saying, which must have originated with farmers, for the best things always have originated with them, that "one man may carry a horse to water, but twenty cannot make him drink."

The ground of my hesitation about coming here was not the cholera, for Nashville is now tolerably healthy; it was not the

2

distance I would have to travel to get here, for your railway com-
munications are nearly equal to any in the country, but the trouble
was the address, the *appropriate* address. There was the rub. It
was the rub then and it is the rub now, and instead of disappear-
ing on my approach it is all the more perplexing when I look out
upon this expectant multitude, and remember the high-sounding
praises heaped upon me in anticipation of my coming.

Gentlemen, this is an agricultural and mechanical industrial fair. I am surrounded to-day by industrious mechanics and farmers, and you have got me up here to tell you what I know about farming. Now, I am neither a farmer nor a mechanic. During the last thirty-five years I have been actively employed in a work which left me no time to study either the theory or the practice of farming. I could far more easily tell you what I don't know about farming than what I do know, though the former would take more time to tell it than the latter. Well, gentlemen, I do not mean to censure your excellent committee for paying me in advance and insisting upon my coming, thus buying a pig in a bag, not knowing what kind of an animal would come forth at the opening, but I am bold to say that they violated in that act one of the very first rules of successful farming, which is to see that the tools are always placed in the hands that can use them best. There are, undoubtedly, hundreds of colored men in the vicinity of Nashville, practical farmers and mechanics, who could address you upon the subjects of this occasion far more appropriately and effectively than I can do. This suggestion may seem rather late, but it may serve you a good turn when the business of selecting a speaker shall come around again.

But, gentlemen, there is a sunnier side to this distressing picture.
Since I am now here, and there is no possible way of escape, I may
at least employ the device of the boy who whistled in the grave-
yard to keep up his courage. Several considerations serve in some
measure to reconcile me to my task. One of these is the fact that
being a public speaker, I have often found myself in just such
embarrassing situations at other times and places. If you will
pardon me a little autobiography and, perhaps, a little egotism as

3

well, I will tell you, that like many other men, I have been all
my life long doing extraordinary things for the first time, some of
which had been better undone. I have been constantly required to
undertake the performance of works which came upon me as a
surprise, and for which I had no previous training or preparation,
and while my work has generally been rather unskillfully and
imperfectly done, I have always had a thoughtful and generous
people for my judges, who have measured and estimated my achieve-
ments not by the rule of intrinsic excellence, but by the rule of my
disadvantages, and have thus often accorded me higher praise than
I could possibly claim on the score of merit.

Besides this, there is encouragement in the subject itself. Agri-
culture is one of the very oldest themes and one upon which only
a genius can be expected to say anything either new or striking.
Originality is out of the question. The knowledge already accu-
mulated and recorded on this subject is vast and minute, and the
man who can give you but a glimpse of one of the many sides of
this vast accumulation of knowledge does not speak in vain.

In few things perhaps, more than in farming, does one find that
there is nothing new under the sun. The sages of to-day do but
reiterate the wisdom of the sages of antiquity. The perception of
truth may be new or old, but the truth itself is neither old nor new,
but eternal as the Universe. The discovery of the fundamental
principles of Agriculture reach far beyond the limits of authentic
history, for men tilled the soil long before they wrote books, and
would never have written books if they had not tilled the soil. All
the present rests upon all the past. The very best that any in my
circumstances can do is to teach and preach the discoveries made
by other men and at other times.

There are doubtless many great truths which yet remain to be
discovered and applied to Agriculture, as well as to many other
matters of human welfare. It was a favorite saying of Theodore
Parker, that "all the space between man's mind and God's mind
is crowded with truths which wait to be discovered and organized
into law for the practice of men."

But mankind is so nearly on a level of equality that no one man

4

may claim the exclusive merit of original discovery. Truth, like
the gentle light of heaven, usually dawns upon more than one
mind at the same time, so that there is seldom a discovery which
has not more than one to claim the honor of it.

Gentlemen, I find still another source of encouragement. It is
in the terms you employ in announcing my subject to-day. I am
to speak to you of the importance of agricultural and mechanical
industry and of united effort on the part of our people to improve
their physical, moral, and social condition. Upon a subject so
broad and comprehensive and deeply interesting it would be almost
impossible to speak without saying something capable of being
turned to use by sensible people.

Now, gentlemen, having looked out for myself, always an im-
portant lesson, and one which farmers readily learn, let me attend
to you. I give you my warmest congratulations, first of all, upon
the attitude you have assumed before the American people this day.
I especially congratulate you upon the noble example you have
set for our whole race. You have gone to work like earnest men,
fully believing in the future of your people. You have wisely
availed yourselves of a well known power, the power of associa-
tion, organization, mutual counsel and cooperation. You have
dared to organize an Agricultural and Mechanical Association for
the State of Tennessee. You propose to avail yourselves of what-
ever knowledge or wisdom there may be in this State, which can
assist you in the work of your general improvement. You have
dared to open here in the city of Nashville a State Agricultural
Fair, to display the rich fruits of your industry, and to ask your
fellow-countrymen of all conditions and colors to view and inspect
them. This is an act, on your part as brave as it is wise. It proves
that you are not ashamed of your achievements. It proves that
you, like the great Oliver Cromwell and all other brave men, want
to be painted as you are, and to receive no other or higher credit
than that which you honestly win by open and fair competition.

The organization of your State Agricultural Society and this
third annual exhibition demonstrate that you appreciate the new
order of things which has dawned upon the country. By these

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two signs you advertise and inform the world of your *farewell*,
your departure forever from the moral and intellectual stagnation
of a by-gone condition, and have taken up your line of march
under the banner of liberty with the more advanced peoples of the
earth to higher plains of civilization, culture, and refinement.

I congratulate you again, gentlemen, upon the point of time at
which you begin your public career of agricultural industry. In
this respect the conditions of success are nearly perfect. You have
taken the tide at its flood. You start in the full blaze of the
accumulated wisdom of ages. No fifty years of human life and
exertion have been so crowded with discovery and invention as the
first half of this nineteenth century. You may now walk by sight
where others only walked 'by faith. You have not to feel your
way in the dark or to hew out any new road to fortune. The very
elements around you have been fighting on your side, and, like a
fortunate general, you came upon the field of action at exactly the
right moment to secure an easy and brilliant victory. Agricul-
tural implements of world-approved materials and of world-
approved patterns are ready to your hand. The toil and drudgery
of ancient farming have been banished from the field. The heavy
cradle which wore out your manhood, and the sickle which bent
your bodies in pain, belong to a by-gone age. The old-fashioned
hoe, broad, heavy, and cumbrous; and the wooden plow, with
its miserable mold-board, and its so-called steel point, that kept
you always running to the blacksmith's shop, have followed the
sickle and the cradle to their common resting place. Science, the
noblest and grandest artificer of human fortune and well-being,
the source and explanation of all progress, has patiently unfolded
the nature and composition of plants, and made us acquainted
with the properties of the common earth, wherever they grow.
The quality of soil, best suited to a given class of plants, has been
accurately ascertained. The chemical properties of various kinds
of manure have been thoroughly investigated. Even the weather,
hitherto supposed to be hidden in the inscrutable bosom of infinity,
and only known to God, has been compelled to give up its my-
tery. Instead of being governed by any supposed supreme will,

6

or controlled by the wishes and prayers of men, it is subject to and acts in accordance with eternal and irreversible laws. "Old Probabilities," as the commissioner of this department of knowledge is called, with his nerves of wire, extending all over the country, is able to tell us daily and in advance what storms are in the skies, and when and where they may be expected to descend. There is light everywhere and darkness nowhere. We have only to open our eyes and to behold all around us the essential conditions of successful exertion.

I have spoken of the impossibility of presenting anything original upon this subject. In reading the works of modern writers, it is surprising to find how much and how far we have been anticipated by those who have gone before us in the field of thought and discovery. Most that we have done in modern times has been, after all, to find new applications of old principles. The plow, though vastly improved, is the same implement known by that name thousands of years ago. Deep plowing and draining, and a thorough pulverization of the soil, so earnestly and eloquently insisted upon nowadays, and very wisely so, though now better accomplished by means of our better tools than at any previous time, especially in England, were well known to the cultivators of the soil in China and Egypt centuries ago. The Egyptians even deified Osiris, the inventor of the plow. The small farm theory, by which a man may double the number of his acres, by skillful and thorough cultivation, and one which has been so eloquently and persistently advocated by the lamented Horace Greeley, was by no means a new idea, or in any sense original with him. Cato, two thousand years ago, held and advocated precisely the same idea. The wisdom of this theory may be appropriately commended on this occasion. The principle underlying the small farm theory is very easily comprehended. Everybody knows that distance is an element to be considered in farming and in much other work. As much time and labor are required to walk, plow, or drive over one acre of poor ground as over one acre of rich ground, while the poor acre will give you only half the production of the rich one, and that an article of inferior quality.

7

In the one case you are but half paid for your toil, while in the other you reap an abundant reward both in quantity and in quality.

The same principle, as I have said, operates elsewhere. Talking with Mr. William Whipper, a successful lumber merchant in the city of Philadelphia, he told me, he could not afford to keep a single piece of inferior lumber in his yard, and the reason he assigned for keeping only the very best quality of lumber, was that land was too dear and rents too high, to be occupied by anything of inferior quality. Besides, said he, a poor stick of timber will occupy as much space, and require as many hands and as much labor to handle it, as would a superior article, while it would only command half the price. I came to the conclusion in listening to this reasoning, that I had met in Mr. Whipper a wise man as well as a successful man, one who practically carried out the idea that whatever is worth doing at all is worth being done well.

Gentlemen, I would like to make a speech to-day of the orthodox agricultural pattern. I would like to tell you of the wise things said and done in respect to ancient and modern tillage. Neither you nor I can afford to be ignorant of the facts of this history, for knowledge is power, here as elsewhere, and there is no danger that we shall know too much about any useful employment. There is for us in the agricultural history of the world a special cause for complacency. If to the race to which we belong mankind can ascribe any glory, the achievements upon which it is founded stretch far away into the past. It is pleasant to know that in color, form, and features, we are related to the first successful tillers of the soil; to the people who taught the world agriculture; that the civilization which made Greece, Rome, and Western Europe illustrious, and even now makes our own land glorious, sprung forth from the bosom of Africa. For, while this vast continent was yet undiscovered by civilized men; while the Briton and the Gallic races wandered like beasts of prey in the forests, the people of Egypt and Ethiopia rejoiced in well cultivated fields and in abundance of corn. I follow only the father of history when I say that the ancient Egyptians were black and their hair

8

woolly. However this may be disputed now, there is no denying
that these people more nearly resembled the African type than the
Caucasian.

I would like to dwell here on the progress of agriculture, and
note the causes which have led to its rapid development in this
country; show how diversified labor produces a home market for
the productions of our soil; how the prosecution of internal im-
provements of rivers and harbors, of canals, railroads and steam-
navigation have stimulated agricultural industry; how science,
observation and experiment have assisted in its general dovelop-
ment; and especially would it be pleasant to comply with the
letter as well as the spirit of your invitation, dwell upon the
general importance of this branch of industry; picture to you the
midnight gloom and destitution which would fall upon the world
if its wheels should cease to revolve, and the earth refuse food for
man and beast; how commerce would languish, how mechanical
machinery would gradually become silent; how the iron horse
would stand still on the track; how the fire would die out on the
hearth, the gaunt and withered arms of the mother hang down in
despair; the wan babe in the cradle sleep its last sleep, and the busy
hopeful, courageous and joyous world sink back again into the depths
and darkness of barbarism. It would be well enough, too, if there
were time, to give you the testimony of poets, scholars, statesmen
and philosophers of all countries and ages in favor of country life;
to follow, especially, the retiring statesman, when worn and broken
by the storms of public life, or when covered with its honors, to
the old farm of his birth, and paint the scene of peace and sweet
content in which he spends his declining years, and, at last, sinks
to rest forever; to dwell at large upon the soothing charms of
nature, the honest affection and trust of well-treated domestic
animals, to prove that among the truly beautiful and healthful
scenes of this world, there is none more beautiful than a well-
managed farm.

But, gentlemen, this is an opportunity too unusual, an occasion
too peculiar, and my relation to you is too singular to make such
a disposition of your time justifiable.

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Mine, to-day, is a rare privilege. No man perhaps was ever
called upon to address so vast a concourse of newly-emancipated
people; a people wide awake and just starting in the race of men-
tal, moral and social progress; a people of whom, heretofore, no
reckoning was made; a people recognized as standing outside of
the circle, and ranked by the laws of the land with horses, sheep,
and swine, and like these to be held and bought and sold.

Gentlemen, since this is our first meeting since the revolution, in
your situation and mine, I feel less like dwelling on agriculture in
general than calling upon you to join me in loud, earnest, joyous
and long-continued cheers over our newly-gained freedom. Agri-
cultural industry to-day has an interest for me mainly in respect
to the new order of things upon which we have now fairly entered.
How it can be made to serve us, as a particular class, is the com-
manding question of the hour.

If we look abroad over our country and observe the condition of
the colored people, we shall find their greatest want to be regular
and lucrative employments for their energies. They have secured
their freedom, it is true, but not the friendship and favor of the
people around them. The sentiment that greeted them all over
the South, when their fetters were broken, was: let the negro
starve! Happily to-day that sentiment is seldom heard, but
though seldom heard—I am sorry to say—it is still felt, and is
active in a thousand ways to our hurt. It keeps back the wages of
the black laborer by fraud; it refuses to rent and sell land; it ex-
cludes them from printers' unions and other mechanical associa-
tions; it refuses to teach them trades, and shuts them out from all
respectable employments, and consoles itself with the theory that
the negroes—like the Indians—will ultimately die out.

The effect of this ruling in the American mind has driven the
negroes in great numbers from the country into the large cities,
and into menial positions, where they easily learn to imitate the
vices and follies of the least exemplary whites, and they perish
as a consequence. "Let the negroes starve!" thus executes itself.

In these circumstances, I hail agriculture as a refuge for the
oppressed. The grand old earth has no prejudices against race,

10

color, or previous condition of servitude, but flings open her ample
breast to all who will come to her for succor and relief. Agricult-
ure is simply the act of cultivating the ground so as to secure its
largest and best product for sustaining life and health. There are
special and pressing reasons why we, of all the people of the United
States, should master this great art. It is our last resort, and if
we fail here I see not how we can succeed elsewhere. We are not
like the Irish, an organized political power, welded together by a
common faith. We are not shrewd like the Hebrew, capable of
making fortunes by buying and selling old clothes. We are not
like the Germans, who can spend half their time in lager beer
saloons and still get rich; but we are just what we are: a laborious,
joyous, thoughtless, improvident people, just released from our
thraldom, and with just such necessities as agricultural life will
secure.

I have already referred generally to the favorable conditions
afforded to successful agriculture on our part. Besides land, labor,
and skill, there must be heat, moisture, and manure. While man
is required to eat bread in the sweat of his brow, nature must give
us warmth and moisture, or there is no bread. In the farthest
North, where cold, ice, and snow are perpetual, and in the far
South, under a vertical sun, where the fierce heat drinks up all the
moisture and leaves the land a sandy desert, agriculture, of course,
in such lands and latitudes is impossible.

Happily for us, we have no such heat and no such cold to con-
tend with here. In this respect there is no country in the world
more highly favored than the United States, and it would be hard
to point to any State more favorable to farming than your own
great State of Tennessee. You have mountain, valley, river, and
plain, heat and moisture, and a beautifully temperate climate,
where, with knowledge, skill, and industry, you may obtain the
highest agricultural results.

Some of your old citizens, no doubt, continue to regret the change
which has taken place in the relations of the people of Tennessee.
In the loss of slavery the State, in their estimation, has parted with
the source of its happiness and prosperity. To my mind it would

11

be hard to find a greater mistake than this. Emancipation in this
State was not only a triumph of justice, but a triumph of agricul-
tural industry. It was not merely a blessing to the slave, but a
blessing to the master. I put it to the common sense of all who
hear me: what possible motive had the slave for a careful, success-
ful cultivation of the soil? What concern could he have for in-
creasing the wealth of the master, or for improving and beautifying
the land? The wealth of the master did not attach to the slave,
but the reverse. The natural tendency of wealth was to deepen the
chasm between the master and the slave, and to break up all sym-
pathy between them. The small slave owners went to the field
with their few bondmen and worked side by side with them.
Humane and kindly relations sprang up between them; common
toils and common privations made them, in some sense, friends.
But the reverse was the case with the rich and great masters.
Their hands were unused to toil. They could afford to leave their
slaves in the hands of soulless overseers and drivers, who had no
motives of kindness and good will. Thus it was for the interest of
the slave to make the rich man poor and the poor man poorer. To
reduce as far as possible the difference between themselves and
others, and since they themselves could not be masters, they had a
direct and powerful motive for reducing their masters to the poverty
of slaves.

This however, was not the worst element of the situation. The
very soil of your State was cursed with a burning sense of injustice.
Slavery was the parent of anger and hate. Your fields could not
be lovingly planted nor faithfully cultivated in its presence. The
eye of the overseer could not be everywhere, and cornhills could
be covered with clods in preference to soft and pulverized soil in
their absence, for the hand that planted cared nothing for the
harvest. Thus you will see that emancipation has liberated the
land as well as the people.

In contemplating the successful husbandry of the British Islands,
abounding as they do, with fertile fields and the most perfectly
formed and best developed cattle, a distinguished Frenchman was
led to exclaim: "It is not fertility but liberty that cultivates a

12

"country." The State of Tennessee is now to be cultivated by liberty; by knowledge which comes of liberty; by the respectability of labor; by the motive of general welfare, and by the sense of patriotism confined to no particular class, and I predict for her a vast and general increase of happiness and prosperity in the new era which has dawned upon her.

Gentlemen, if this prophecy of prosperity to your State shall prove slow of fulfillment, or be defeated, the fault will not be due to the new order of liberty, but to the old order of slavery. It will not be in the emancipated slave, but in the discontented master. It will not be due to any inherent defect of the principle of liberty, but to the inherent disposition of despotic power, to supplant freedom. A dog will scratch his neck long after his collar is removed. The illusion is kept up when its cause has departed. Neither the slave nor his master can abandon all at once the deeply intrenched errors and habits of centuries.

I take it that one part of the mission of this State Agricultural Association is the speedy and radical extinction of the evils inherited by the emancipated class from their former condition, and that, therefore, it is appropriate on this occasion, to point out some of the more palpable of those errors for condemnation and banishment, and inculcate in their stead the wiser and better ideas, suggested by the condition upon which we have entered.

## TREATMENT OF ANIMALS.

There is no denying that slavery had a direct and positive tendency to produce coarseness and brutality in the treatment and management of domestic animals, especially those most useful to agricultural industry. Not only the slave, but the horse, the ox and the mule shared the general feeling of indifference to rights naturally engendered by a state of slavery. The master blamed the overseer; the overseer the slave, and the slave the horses, oxen and mules, and violence and brutality fell upon the animals as a consequence. Now, there is no successful farming without well-trained and well-treated horses and oxen, and one of the greatest pleasures connected with agricultural life may be found in the

13

pleasant relations capable of subsisting between the farmer and
his four-legged companions; for they are company as well as
帮手在 his toil. I have seen men spend valuable hours of the
best part of the day, chasing the horse and the mule in the open
field, which but for the abuses heaped upon them when in harness,
would have come instantly upon the call of their master. The
loss arising from this source is twofold. Both man and beast have
been wearied by the chase, and the temper of both has been ren-
dered unfavorable to calm and steady exertion. It should be the
study of every farmer to make his horse his companion and friend,
and to do this, there is but one rule, and that is, uniform sympathy
and kindness. All loud and boisterous commands, all brutal
flogging should be banished from the field, and only words of cheer
and encouragement should be tolerated. A horse is in many re-
spects like a man. He has the five senses, and has memory, affect-
tion and reason to a limited degree. When young, untrained and
untamed, he has unbounded faith in his strength and fleetness. He
runs, jumps and plays in the pride of his perfections. But con-
vince him that he is a creature of law as well as of freedom by a
judicious and kindly application of your superior power, and he
will conform his conduct to that law, far better than your most
law-abiding citizen.

CARE OF AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS.

Gentlemen, in farming, as everywhere else, time is money; and one-tenth of all the time of some farmers is lost to useful labor in searching for and mending tools carelessly flung down anywhere and everywhere and left forgotten to rust, decay, and ruin. I have seen in some of our Western States, amid the snows and rains of winter, costly plows, harrows, and mowing machines exposed to all the destructive forces of the elements. Of course, men who farm thus bring no honor to agriculture, but are a disgrace to that vocation. The loss of time, labor, and money, as in the other cases, are not the only evils of this style of practical farming. The loss of temper, the mental confusion to which this one evil gives rise, will rack a man's constitution more than the heaviest, steadiest strokes of well-directed exertion.

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THE WELL AND THE WOODPILE.

Life is said to be made up of little things, and small annoyances are often more distressing to the temper than large ones. There can be no happy and successful farming when there is no peace at home. When the wife smiles and the children are happy and gleeful, the toil and burdens of the husbandman are light and easily borne. Everything, therefore, which tends to make home happy is in the line of a wise economy, both of time and labor. Where a woman must go half a mile in the woods to tote brush or rotten bark to make a fire, or a quarter of a mile to the spring to fetch water, it is impossible that household affairs can go on either regularly or pleasantly. Such economy is unworthy of the sense of a Hottentot or a Bushman. If you come up tired and hungry from the field; if your house is not neat, sweet, and in order; if the eyes of your wife and daughter are red with smoke and tears; if your children are fretting and crying, and you yourself suffer from loss of temper, you have in fact only yourself to blame. You have neglected to supply your woodshed with an ample quantity of sound and well-seasoned wood, and to put down a well of pure water at your door, and have thus omitted the primary conditions of peace, purity, and order in your household. By all means, be sure of your water and wood!

MANURES.

Successful farming does not entirely depend upon good plowing, harrowing, and hoeing, nor prompt attention to seedtime and harvest. Every crop gathered from the field takes something valuable from the soil upon which it is grown, and the richest land in the world can be made poor if we take everything from it and give it nothing in return. While providing for ourselves, our next best thought should be given to the question as to how we shall provide for the wants of the soil out of which comes our own living. All flesh is grass, and the amount of vegetable matter we obtain from the earth will be the measure of the life and happiness of the men and animals who subsist upon it. Now, there need be no such thing in the world as wornout land. The same

15

soil has been cultivated in China during the space of two thousand
years, and the land is as rich to-day as when the plow and the
spade first turned it to the light and heat of the sun. The expla-
nation of this prolonged fertility is manure. The Chinaman knows
its value and puts his knowledge in practice. He knows how to
make, save, and apply it. My advice to you is to go and do like-
wise. Your first maxim should be: let nothing be wasted! Noth-
ing that will rot in the ground is useless, and nothing should be
allowed to decay unused. The very water and soap employed in
washing your hands and clothes should find their way to your
trimly arranged bed of compost. The bones from your table should
be made also to do double duty. The soil of England is richer
and yields better crops to-day than two hundred years ago, and the
reason is the same there as in China. They attend to the wants
of the soil as well as to their own. Feed the land and it will feed
you! Starve the land and it will starve you!

AGRICULTURAL BOOKS AND PAPERS.

Knowledge is power. There is no work that men are required
to do, which they cannot better and more economically do with
education than without it. The trouble with us as a people has
been to work without a knowledge of the theory of work. We
could build ships if some one would draft them. We could build
a house if some one would draw the plan. All that we have done
has been by rote. We have farmed without a knowledge of the
philosophy of farming. We have used our muscles, but not our
minds. Under the old *regime* we were not expected to think, but
only to do as we were told. We were not allowed to profit even by
our own experience, and to do things in the easiest and best way
which our practical knowledge might suggest. The master and
the overseer directed every stroke, and we were but living
machines. All is changed now. The machine must begin to
think, and in this the reading of agricultural books and papers
will materially assist. It used to be said, if you want to keep a
secret from a negro, put it in a book or newspaper. This must be
so no longer. Every colored farmer and mechanic should take

16

and read one or more of the many excellent mechanic and agricul-
tural journals. If you cannot read yourself, let your son or daugh-
ter read to you. Depend upon it, an hour spent in this way, will
do more for you than the labor of any other hour in the day.
Muscle is mighty, but mind is mightier, and there is no better field
for the exercise of mind than is found in the cultivation of the
soil.

THE FARMER'S NATURAL ENEMIES,

I shall attempt no solution of the origin of evil in the world.
Whether it came by the fall of Adam or the fall of anybody else,
I neither know nor care, for it does not matter. It is enough to
know that we have it and it is in abundance, and that the best use
we can make of it is to resist and destroy it as far as we can. All
nature teems with it, and the life of a farmer is a constant battle.
He not only has to contend with the elements, but with all manner
of destructive insects. Flies, bugs, worms, caterpillars, grasshop
pers, and locusts spring out of the ground like armed warriors and
endeavor to flank and defeat him. He must fight or die. His foes
will neither treat nor compromise. It is "kill or be killed." Not
an hour is to be lost. Time gives strength to the enemy and weak-
ness to the farmer. This insect host must be met and stamped out
without delay. The advantage of a single hour will sometimes
enable the caterpillar to ruin your fruit crop. Prevention is better
than cure, and it is better to destroy those enemies in their eggs
than to wait until they are full of life and activity. The warrior
uses the telescope to discover his enemy. The farmer should use
the microscope. With a little experience in its use, he can antici-
pate his foe. Indeed, you should go a step further than this. You
should not only make war upon the enemy, but upon the conditions
of his existence. Like most of the enemies of human life and wel-
fare, they originate in darkness and in all manner of unclean and
unsightly places. Break up the nest of weed, brier, and thorns in
your fence corners. Take away your old, rotten and worm-eaten
ground rail. Put a sound one in its place. Let in the bright sun-
light and the pure air. summon fire and water, if it need be, to

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clean out these breeders of vermin to prey upon your crops. For when you have done all in your power, you will still see more to do, but you will at least be rewarded by abundant returns for your wisdom, courage, vigilance and industry.

## UNION AND IMPROVEMENT.

Gentlemen, I approach this subject with less confidence of meeting your approval than at other points. As a race, we have suffered from two very opposite causes. Disparagement on the one hand, and undue praise on the other. I propose to err on neither side. This question of improvement or non-improvement involves the whole subject of our destiny as a part of the American people. In other words, it is the question whether we shall advance or recede, rise or fall, survive or perish; for one or the other of these things must necessarily happen to us. To stand still is utterly impossible. If we even could hold our own, and stand where we now are, the effect of improvement in all around us would make our standing still positive retrogression. Of course, gentlemen, we stand to-day in point of civilization far in the rear of our white fellow-citizens. We are, in fact, wearing the old clothes left by a by-gone generation. The books we read, the sermons we hear, the prayers we repeat, are all obtained from the white race. We have neither made books, sermons, prayers, nor hymns. We have no science nor philosophy of our own. We have neither history nor poetry. As Andrew Johnson used to say of Congress: "We are hanging on the verge" of the white man's civilization. It is painful to make such an admission as this; but nothing is gained by concealing the truth either from ourselves or from others.

The question, which the future has to answer, is: Whether the negro is what he is to-day because of his mental and moral constitution, or because he has been enslaved and degraded for centuries. If it shall be found, after the lapse of twenty-five years of freedom, that the colored people of this country have made no improvement in their social condition, it will confirm the opinion that the negro is, by his very nature, limited to a servile condition. But if, on the other hand, we supply the world with the proof of

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our advancement to a plane, even a little above that on which
slavery left us, we shall prove that, like all other men, we are
capable of civilization, where its conditions are accessible to us.
Still further, to simplify the question, which the present is pressing
upon us. It is: Whether the black man will prove a better master
to himself than his white master was to him.

This, then, is the work to which we have to address ourselves
as a race. We are to prove that we can better our own condition,
and that by the development of our own self-contained qualities.
I need not stop here to point out the particular modes of action
by which this can be accomplished. I will only indicate one.

## ACCUMULATE PROPERTY.

Yes, accumulate property. This may sound to you like a new
gospel. You have been accustomed to hear that money is the root
of all evil; that it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of
Heaven; that this world is of no account; that we should take no
thought for to-morrow, and much more of the same sort. In
answer to all which I say: that no people can ever make any
social or mental improvement whose exertions are thus limited.
Poverty is our greatest calamity. It draws down upon us the very
condition which makes us a helpless, hopeless, dependent, and dis-
pired people, the target for the contempt and scorn of all around
us. On the other hand, property, money, if you please, will pur-
chase for us the only condition upon which any people can rise to
the dignity of genuine manhood; for, without property, there can be
no leisure. Without leisure, there can be no thought. Without
thought, there can be no invention. Without invention, there can
be no progress.

But how shall we get money? Work for it, and save it when
you get it. I have spoken of slavery as our enemy. I have noth-
ing to take back at that point. It has robbed us of education. It
has robbed us of the care due us from our mothers. It has written
its ugliness in our countenance, deformed our feet, and twisted our
limbs out of shape; and yet this same slavery has been, in some
sense, our best friend. It has trained us to regular industry, and

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hardened our muscles to toil, and thus has left in our hands the staff of all accomplishments. We can work, and the grateful earth yields as readily and as bountifully to the touch of black industry as of white. We can work, and by this means we can retrieve all our losses. Knowledge, wisdom, culture, refinement, manners, are all founded on work, and the wealth which work brings.

As I already have said: we must save as well as work. This cannot be done by traveling from place to place in search of new homes. Rolling stones gather no moss. Emerson says that the men who made Rome worth going to see staid there. In nine cases out of ten a man's condition is worse by changing his location. You had far better endeavor to remove the evil from your door than to remove and leave it there. "It is better to endure the ills you have than to fly to others you know not of." If you have got a few acres, stick by them. The sweat and toil you put into them will add to their value and enable you to buy more. Every new beginning you make will have its peculiar troubles. Infancy is the time of special dangers to measures as well as to men. Every baby must have the whooping cough and measles. Life is too short, time is too valuable to be wasted in the experiment of seeking new homes. People are about as good in your neighborhood as anywhere else in the world, and may need you to make them better.

But, gentlemen, I have detained you too long already. Our destiny is in our own hands. We are no longer slaves, but free-men. We are no longer property, but persons. We are not aliens, but citizens. We are not only men, but men among men. If any people may have a future, a prosperous and happy future, such a future is possible to us, and I hope it will be the business of every man who hears my voice to-day, to contribute his full share to the sum of the common welfare of our race.