of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best, only his step-children;
children by adoption, children by force of circumstances and necessity.
To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and
perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures
high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great
and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at this
altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of
the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their
forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect; let their bases be upon
solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue,
overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while, in the
abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic
devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble
offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for
you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson,
one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers
rose in rebellion to oppose.

Fellow citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion--merely a thing
of the moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our
hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were
no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt and
defeat, than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory. Our
faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never
failed. When he tarried long in the mountains; when he strangely told us
that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us
to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our
arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as
colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as
colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union, if he could,
with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of
General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular Commander of the
Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was
more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress
rebellion; when we saw all this and more, we were at times grieved,
stunned, and greatly bewildered, but our hearts believed, while they
ached and bled. Nor was this, at that time, a blind and unreasoning