eir behalf, I feel it a duty and a
privilege to set forth their praises and to extol their excellencies.
For, humble and benighted as she is, the black woman of the South is one
of the queens of womanhood. If there is any other woman on this earth
who in native aboriginal qualities is her superior, I know not where she
is to be found; for, I do say, that in tenderness of feeling, in genuine
native modesty, in large disinterestedness, in sweetness of disposition
and deep humility, in unselfish devotedness, and in warm, motherly
assiduities, the Negro woman is unsurpassed by any other woman on this
earth.

The testimony to this effect is almost universal--our enemies themselves
being witnesses. You know how widely and how continuously, for
generations, the Negro has been traduced, ridiculed, derided. Some of
you may remember the journals and the hostile criticisms of Coleridge
and Trollope and Burton, West Indian and African travelers. Very many of
you may remember the philosophical disquisitions of the ethnological
school of 1847, the contemptuous dissertations of Hunt and Gliddon. But
it is worthy of notice in all these cases that the sneer, the contempt,
the bitter gibe, have been invariably leveled against the black
_man_--never against the black woman! On the contrary, _she_ has almost
everywhere been extolled and eulogized. The black man was called a
stupid, thick-lipped, flat-nosed, long-heeled, empty-headed animal; the
link between the baboon and the human being, only fit to be a slave! But
everywhere, even in the domains of slavery, how tenderly has the Negress
been spoken of! She has been the nurse of childhood. To her all the
cares and heart-griefs of youth have been intrusted. Thousands and tens
of thousands in the West Indies and in our Southern States have risen up
and told the tale of her tenderness, of her gentleness, patience, and
affection. No other woman in the world has ever had such tributes to a
high moral nature, sweet, gentle love, and unchanged devotedness. And by
the memory of my own mother and dearest sisters I can declare it to be
true!

Hear the tribute of Michelet: "The Negress, of all others, is the most
loving, the most generating; and this, not only because of her youthful
blood, but we must also admit, for the richness of her heart. She is
loving among the loving, good among the good. (Ask the travelers whom
she has so often saved.) Goodness is creative; it is fruitfulness; it is
the ve