ll it end? I will tell you.
When you have given him equal rights, equal privileges, and equal
security with other citizens; when you have opened the way for him to
be a man, then will you have rendered exact justice which can alone
insure stability and content.

"Sir, if I ever did hold that this Government was made or belonged
exclusively to the white man, I should now be ashamed to avow it, or
to claim for it so narrow an application. The black man has made too
many sacrifices to preserve it, and endangered his life too often in
its defense to be excluded from it. The common sentiment of gratitude
should open its doors to him, if not political justice and equality.

"Mr. President, my house once took fire in the night-time; my two
little boys were asleep in it, when I and their mother were away. The
neighbors rushed into it, saved the children, and extinguished the
flames. When I reached it, breathless and exhausted, the first
exclamation was, 'Your children are safe.' Can you tell me how mean a
man I should have been, and what execration I should have deserved, if
the next time those neighbors came to my house I had kicked them out
of it? Tell me, then, I pray you, why two hundred thousand black men,
most of whom volunteered to fight your battles, who rushed in to save
the burning house of your Government, should not be permitted to
participate in that Government which they helped to preserve? When you
enlisted and mustered these men, when your adjutant-general went
South, and gathered them to the recruiting-office, and persuaded them
to join your ranks, did he, or any one, tell them this was the white
man's Government? When they came to the rendezvous, did you point to
the sign over the door, 'Black men wanted to defend the white man's
Government?' When you put upon them the uniform of the United States,
did you say, 'Don't disgrace it; this is the white man's Government?'
When they toiled on the march, in the mud, the rain, and the snow, and
when they fell out of the ranks from sheer weariness, did you cheer
them on with the encouragement that 'this is the white man's
Government?'

"When they stood on picket on the cold, stormy night to guard you
against surprise, did you creep up and warm their congealing blood
with an infusion of the white man's Government? When, with a wild
hurrah, on the 'double-quick,' they rushed upon the enemy's guns, and
bore your flag where men fell fastest and war made its wildest havo