open to him every pursuit in which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his training and capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and friendship, and to pin him to the soil with ownership, that he may catch in the fire of his own hearthstone that sense of responsibility the shiftless can never know. . . The love we feel for that race you cannot measure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old "black mammy," from her home up there, looks down on me to bless, and through the tumult of this night, steals the sweet music of her croonings. Thirty years ago she held me in her black arms or led me smiling into sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pillars and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert, yet helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and apprehensions, and in a big and homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man as they lay a mother's blessing there, while at her knees the truest altar I yet have found - I thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin, or on guard at her chamber door, put a black man's loyalty between her and danger. a I catch another vision. The crisis of battle soldier struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave, struggling through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of lurking death — bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down his life in his master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble heart that God will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and, with downcast eyes and uncertain step, start out into new and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure is lost in the light of a better and a brighter day. And from the grave comes a voice saying: "Follow him! Put your arms about him in his need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend as he was mine." And out into this new world strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both - I follow! And may God forget my people when they forget these! ... Whatever the future may hold for them we shall give them uttermost justice and abiding friendship. And whatever we do, into whatever seeming estrangement we may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we bear this republic, or mitigate our consecration to its service. I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was the temple of our hopes and whose arm was clothed with our strength, renewed his allegiance to this government at Appomattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be false, and he spoke for every honest man from Maryland to Texas. From that day to this, Hamilcar has nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred and vengeance - but everywhere to loyalty and love. Witness the veteran standing at the base of a Confederate monument, above the graves of his comrades, his empty sleeve tossing in the April wind, adjuring the young men about him to serve as honest and loyal citizens the government against which their fathers fought. This message, delivered from that sacred presence, has gone home to the hearts of my fellows! And, Sir, I declare here, if physical courage be always equal to human aspiration, that they would die, Sir, if need be, to restore this republic their fathers fought to dissolve! Such, Mr. President, is this problem as we see it, such the temper in which we approach it, such the progress made. What do we ask of you? First, patience; out of this alone can come perfect work. Second, confidence; in this alone can you judge fairly. Third, sympathy; in this you can help us best. Fourth, loyalty to the republic - for there is sectionalism in loyalty as in estrangement. This hour little needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section, and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts - that "knows no South, no North, no East, no West"; but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State of our Union. Our history, Sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way aye, even from the hour, when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day when the Old World will come to marvel and to learn, amid our gathered pleasures - let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love loving from the Lakes to the Gulf - the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill - serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory-blazing out the path and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God's appointed time! |