WILLIAM SANDERS SCARBOROUGH, M. A., PH. D., LL.D., _President of
Wilberforce University, Ohio. Author of "First Lessons in Greek," the
first and only Greek book written by a Negro, largely used as text-book
in both white and Negro schools. Author of a large number of classical
interpretations, and philological pamphlets._

[Note 25: Address delivered at the Lincoln Day Banquet, Dayton,
Ohio, Feb. 11, 1899.]

Slavery has been well called the "perfected curse of the ages." Every
civilization, ancient and modern, has experienced its blighting,
withering effect, and it has cost thrones to learn the lesson that

"The laws of changeless justice blind
Oppressor and oppressed";

that

"Close as sin and suffering joined,"

these two

"March to Fate--abreast."

Since the world began, freedom has been at war with all that savored of
servitude. The sentiment of liberty is innate in every human breast.
Freedom of speech and of action--the right of every man to be his own
master--has ever been the inestimable privilege sought, the boon most
craved. For this guerdon men have fought; for this they have even gladly
died.

It was the unquenchable desire for liberty that brought the Pilgrim
Fathers to Plymouth Rock. They knew that all that is highest and noblest
in the human soul is fostered to its greatest development only under the
blazing sunlight of freedom. And it was the same flame burning in the
heart of the young nation planted on these Western shores that led to
the ratification of the sentiment placed by the hand of Thomas Jefferson
in the corner-stone of our American independence: "We hold these truths
to be self-evident--that all men are created free and equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among
them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Here was heralded
to the nation prophetic freedom for all mankind and for all generations.

However, the years of bondage for Africa's sons and daughters in this
fair land stretched on over a half century more before the issue was
raised. But at last the grasping arms of the gigantic octopus, that was
feeding at the nation's heart, reached out too far, and the combat with
the monster was begun. Then that laurelled champion and leader of
freedom's cause, Charles S. Sumner, laid his hand upon that Declaration
of Independence and declared that the nation was "dedicated to liberty
and the rights of human nat