ere by the
misfortune of their fathers and the crime of ours. Their labor,
privations, and sufferings, unpaid and unrequited, have cleared and
redeemed one-third of the inhabited territory of the Union. Their
toil has added to the resources and wealth of the nation untold
millions. Whether we prefer it or not, they are our countrymen, and
will remain so forever.

They are more than countrymen--they are citizens. Free colored
people were citizens of the colonies. The Constitution of the
United States, formed by our fathers, created no disabilities on
account of color. By the acts of our fathers and of ourselves, they
bear equally the burdens and are required to discharge the highest
duties of citizens. They are compelled to pay taxes and to bear
arms. They fought side by side with their white countrymen in the
great struggle for independence, and in the recent war for the
Union. In the revolutionary contest, colored men bore an honorable
part, from the Boston massacre, in 1770, to the surrender of
Cornwallis, in 1781. Bancroft says: "Their names may be read on the
pension rolls of the country side by side with those of other
soldiers of the revolution." In the war of 1812 General Jackson
issued an order complimenting the colored men of his army engaged
in the defense of New Orleans. I need not speak of their number or
of their services in the war of the rebellion. The Nation enrolled
and accepted them among her defendants to the number of about two
hundred thousand, and in the new regular army act, passed at the
close of the rebellion, by the votes of Democrats and Union men
alike, in the Senate and in the House, and by the assent of the
president, regiments of colored men, cavalry and infantry, form
part of the standing army of the Republic.

In the navy, colored American sailors have fought side by side with
white men from the days of Paul Jones to the victory of the
Kearsarge over the rebel pirate Alabama. Colored men will, in the
future as in the past, in all times of National peril, be our
fellow-soldiers. Tax-payers, countrymen, fellow-citizens, and
fellow-soldiers, the colored men of America have been and will be.
It is now too late for the adversaries of nationality and human
rights to undertake to deprive these tax-payers, freemen, ci