avery, but the constant recollection of it, as the commanding
thought of a new people, who should be marching on to the broadest
freedom of thought in a new and glorious present, and a still more
magnificent future. You will notice here that there is a broad
distinction between memory and recollection. Memory is a passive act
of the mind, while recollection is the actual seeking of the facts,
the endeavor of the mind to bring them back again to consciousness.

The fact of slavery is that which cannot be faulted. What I object to
is the unnecessary recollection of it. The pernicious habit I protest
against as most injurious and degrading. As slavery was a degrading
thing, the constant recalling of it to the mind serves by the law of
association to degradation. My desire is that we shall, as far as
possible, avoid the thought of slavery. As a people, we have had an
exodus from it. We have been permitted by a gracious Providence to
enter the new and exalted pathways of freedom. We have new conditions
of life and new relations in society. These changed circumstances
bring to us thoughts, new ideas, new projects, new purposes, and new
ambitions, of which our fathers never thought. We have need,
therefore, of new adjustments in life. The law of fitness comes up
before us at this point, and we are called upon, as a people, to
change the currents of life and to shift them into new and broader
channels. I do not ignore the intellectual evils which have fallen
upon us. Neither am I indifferent to the political disasters we are
still suffering. But when I take a general survey of our race in the
United States I can see that there are evils which lie deeper than
intellectual neglect or political injury.

We have three special points of weakness in our race: 1. The Status of
the Family. 2. The Conditions of Labor. 3. The Element of Morals.

It is my firm conviction that it is our duty to address ourselves more
earnestly to the duties involved in these considerations than to any
and all other considerations. Let us notice first

THE STATUS OF THE FAMILY.

I shall not pause to detail the calamities which slavery has entailed
upon our race in the domain of the family. Every one knows how it has
pulled down every pillar and shattered every priceless fabric. But now
that we have begun the life of freedom we should attempt the repair of
this, the noblest of all the structures of human life. The basis of
all human progress and of al