red and Caesar fought. Meantime we
treat the negro fairly, measuring to him justice in the fulness the
strong should give to the weak, and leading him in the steadfast ways of
citizenship that he may no longer be the prey of the unscrupulous and
the sport of the thoughtless. We open to him every pursuit in which he
can prosper, and seek to broaden his training and capacity. We seek to
hold his confidence and friendship--and to pin him to the soil with
ownership, that he may catch in the fire of his own hearthstone that
sense of responsibility the shiftless can never know. And we gather him
into that alliance of intelligence and responsibility, that, though it
now runs close to racial lines, welcomes the responsible and intelligent
of any race. By this course, confirmed in our judgment, and justified in
the progress already made, we hope to progress slowly but surely to the
end.

The love we feel for that race, you cannot measure nor comprehend. As I
attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy, from her home up
there, looks down to bless, and through the tumult of this night steals
the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held me in her
black arms and led me smiling to sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak,
and I catch a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pillars and
its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women
with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see
night come down with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a big
homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands--now worn
and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and
stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man--as they lay a
mother's blessing there, while at her knees--the truest altar I yet
have found--I thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her
slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin, or guard at her chamber door, puts
a black man's loyalty between her and danger.

I catch another vision. The crisis of battle--a soldier struck,
staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffling through the smoke, winding
his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of hurtling
death--bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the
stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down
his life in his master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside,
ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his