white
fellow-countrymen generally, they wish us to understand distinctly and
fully that they have no other use for us whatever, than to coin
dollars out of our blood.

Our position here is anomalous, unequal, and extraordinary. It is a
position to which the most courageous of our race cannot look without
deep concern. Sir, we are a hopeful people, and in this we are
fortunate; but for this trait of our character, we should have, long
before this seemingly unpropitious hour, sunk down under a sense of
utter despair.

Look at it, sir. Here, upon the soil of our birth, in a country which
has known us for two centuries, among a people who did not wait for us
to seek them, but who sought us, found us, and brought us to their own
chosen land,--a people for whom we have performed the humblest
services, and whose greatest comforts and luxuries have been won from
the soil by our sable and sinewy arms,--I say, sir, among such a
people, and with such obvious recommendations to favor, we are far
less esteemed than the veriest stranger and sojourner.

Aliens are we in our native land. The fundamental principles of the
republic, to which the humblest white man, whether born here or
elsewhere, may appeal with confidence in the hope of awakening a
favorable response, are held to be inapplicable to us. The glorious
doctrines of your revolutionary fathers, and the more glorious
teachings of the Son of God, are construed and applied against us. We
are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both
authorities,--human and divine. We plead for our rights, in the name
of the immortal declaration of independence, and of the written
constitution of government, and we are answered with imprecations and
curses. In the sacred name of Jesus we beg for mercy, and the
slave-whip, red with blood, cracks over us in mockery. We invoke the
aid of the ministers of Him who came "to preach deliverance to the
captive," and to set at liberty them that are bound, and from the
loftiest summits of this ministry comes the inhuman and blasphemous
response, saying: if one prayer would move the Almighty arm in mercy
to break your galling chains, that prayer would be withheld. We cry
for help to humanity--a common humanity, and here too we are repulsed.
American humanity hates us, scorns us, disowns and denies, in a
thousand ways, our very personality. The outspread wing of American
Christianity, apparently broad enough to give shelter to a perishing
w