recalling,
though it gave the keynote to the whole day. The very moment the speaker
had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, which now for the
first time meant anything to these poor people, there suddenly arose,
close beside the platform, a strong male voice (but rather cracked and
elderly), into which two women's voices instantly blended, singing, as
if by an impulse that could no more be repressed than the morning note
of the song-sparrow.--

"My Country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing!"

People looked at each other, and then at us on the platform, to see
whence came this interruption, not set down in the bills. Firmly and
irrepressibly the quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others of
the colored people joined in; some whites on the platform began, but I
motioned them to silence. I never saw anything so electric; it made
all other words cheap; it seemed the choked voice of a race at last
unloosed. Nothing could be more wonderfully unconscious; art could
not have dreamed of a tribute to the day of jubilee that should be so
affecting; history will not believe it; and when I came to speak of it,
after it was ended, tears were everywhere. If you could have heard how
quaint and innocent it was! Old Tiff and his children might have sung
it; and close before me was a little slave-boy, almost white, who seemed
to belong to the party, and even he must join in. Just think of it!--the
first day they had ever had a country, the first flag they had ever seen
which promised anything to their people, and here, while mere spectators
stood in silence, waiting for my stupid words, these simple souls burst
out in their lay, as if they were by their own hearths at home! When
they stopped, there was nothing to do for it but to speak, and I went
on; but the life of the whole day was in those unknown people's song.

Receiving the flags, I gave them into the hands of two fine-looking
men, jet black, as color-guard, and they also spoke, and very
effectively,--Sergeant Prince Rivers and Corporal Robert Sutton. The
regiment sang "Marching Along," and then General Saxton spoke, in his
own simple, manly way, and Mrs. Francis D. Gage spoke very sensibly to
the women, and Judge Stickney, from Florida, added something; then some
gentleman sang an ode, and the regiment the John Brown song, and then
they went to their beef and molasses. Everything was very orderly, and
they seemed to have a very gay