cheme may have been used, in unjustifiable ways, as a means of
retarding our emancipation. But the question to me is, Is there not a
God above all man's schemes? May He not have over-ruled their designs,
and founded for us a nation by them?

"In these days, a nation is born in a day. A nation starts, now, with
all the great problems of republican life and civilization wrought out
to its hand;--it has not to discover, but only to apply. Let us, then,
all take hold together, with all our might, and see what we can do with
this new enterprise, and the whole splendid continent of Africa
opens before us and our children. _Our nation_ shall roll the tide of
civilization and Christianity along its shores, and plant there mighty
republics, that, growing with the rapidity of tropical vegetation, shall
be for all coming ages.

"Do you say that I am deserting my enslaved brethren? I think not. If I
forget them one hour, one moment of my life, so may God forget me! But,
what can I do for them, here? Can I break their chains? No, not as an
individual; but, let me go and form part of a nation, which shall have a
voice in the councils of nations, and then we can speak. A nation has
a right to argue, remonstrate, implore, and present the cause of its
race,--which an individual has not.

"If Europe ever becomes a grand council of free nations,--as I trust in
God it will,--if, there, serfdom, and all unjust and oppressive social
inequalities, are done away; and if they, as France and England have
done, acknowledge our position,--then, in the great congress of nations,
we will make our appeal, and present the cause of our enslaved and
suffering race; and it cannot be that free, enlightened America will
not then desire to wipe from her escutcheon that bar sinister which
disgraces her among nations, and is as truly a curse to her as to the
enslaved.

"But, you will tell me, our race have equal rights to mingle in the
American republic as the Irishman, the German, the Swede. Granted,
they have. We _ought_ to be free to meet and mingle,--to rise by our
individual worth, without any consideration of caste or color; and they
who deny us this right are false to their own professed principles of
human equality. We ought, in particular, to be allowed _here_. We have
_more_ than the rights of common men;--we have the claim of an injured
race for reparation. But, then, _I do not want it_; I want a country, a
nation, of my own. I think that the A