itting "clothed in
their right minds" as listeners to their former victims. The colored man
is to-day the master of his own destiny. No power on earth can deprive
him of his rights as an American citizen. And it is in the light of
American citizenship that I choose to regard my colored friends, as men
having a common stake in the welfare of the country; mingled with, and
not separate from, their white fellow-citizens; not herded together as a
distinct class to be wielded by others, without self-dependence and
incapable of self-determination. Thanks to such men as Sumner and Wilson
and their compeers, nearly all that legislation can do for them has
already been done. We can now only help them to help themselves.
Industry, economy, temperance, self-culture, education for their
children,--these things, indispensable to their elevation and progress,
are in a great measure in their own hands.

You will, therefore, my friends and fellow-citizens, pardon me if I
decline to undertake to decide for you the question of your political
duty as respects the candidates for the presidency,--a question which you
have probably already settled in your own minds. If it had been apparent
to me that your rights and liberties were really in danger from the
success of either candidate, your letter would not have been needed to
call forth my opinion. In the long struggle of well-nigh forty years, I
can honestly say that no consideration of private interest, nor my
natural love of peace and retirement and the good-will of others, have
kept me silent when a word could be fitly spoken for human rights. I
have not so long acted with the class to which you belong without
acquiring respect for your intelligence and capacity for judging wisely
for yourselves. I shall abide your decision with confidence, and
cheerfully acquiesce in it.

If, on the whole, you prefer to vote for the reelection of General Grant,
let me hope you will do so without joining with eleventh-hour friends in
denouncing and reviling such an old and tried friend as Charles Sumner,
who has done and suffered so much in your behalf. If, on the other hand,
some of you decide to vote for Horace Greeley, you need not in so doing
forget your great obligations to such friends as William Lloyd Garrison,
Wendell Phillips, and Lydia Maria Child. Agree or disagree with them,
take their advice or reject it, but stand by them still, and teach the
parties with which you are connected