on to a
firm-sinewed, iron-nerved, masculine man like the great minister of war.

On the 13th of April, 1870, the colored people of Central Ohio
celebrated the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment at an immense meeting
held in the opera house in Columbus. Governor Hayes, as their chosen
orator, delivered the following brief address, which seems the
inspiration of one who has the logic of history in his head and humanity
in his heart:

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--We celebrate to-night the final triumph of a
righteous cause after a long, eventful, memorable struggle. The
conflict which Mr. Seward pronounced "irrepressible" at last is
ended. The house which was divided against itself, and which,
therefore, according to Mr. Lincoln, could not stand as it was, is
divided no longer; and we may now rationally hope that under
Providence it is destined to stand--long to stand the home of
freedom, and the refuge of the oppressed of every race and of every
clime.

The great leading facts of the contest are so familiar that I need
not attempt to recount them. They belong to the history of two
famous wars--the war of the Revolution and the war of the
Rebellion--and are part of the story of almost a hundred years of
civil strife. They began with Bunker Hill and Yorktown, with the
Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Federal
Constitution. They end with Fort Sumter and the fall of Richmond,
with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Anti-Slavery and Equal
Rights Amendments to the Constitution of the Nation. These long and
anxious years were not years of unbroken ceaseless warfare. There
were periods of lull, of truce, of compromise. But every lull was
short-lived, every truce was hollow, and every compromise, however
pure the motives of its authors, proved deceitful and vain. There
could be no lasting peace until the great wrong was destroyed, and
impartial justice established.

The history of this period is adorned with a long list of
illustrious names--with the names of men who were indeed "Solomons
in council and Sampsons in the field." At its beginning there were
Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton, and their compeers; and in the
last great crisis Providence was equally gracious, and gave us such
men as Lincoln, and Stanton, and George H. Thomas.

All who faithfully bore