acknowledgments. But I am so
profoundly impressed by the formidable array of rank, genius,
intellect, scholarship, and moral and religious worth which I
see before me, that I fear I shall not be able to address you,
except with a fluttering pulse and a stammering tongue. For me
this is, indeed, an anomalous position. Assuredly, this is
treatment with which I have not been familiar. For more than
thirty years, I had to look the fierce and unrelenting hostility
of my countrymen in the face, with few to cheer me onward. In
all the South I was an outlaw, and could not have gone there,
though an American citizen guiltless of wrong, and though that
flag (here the speaker pointed to the United States ensign) had
been over my head, except at the peril of my life; nay, with the
certainty of finding a bloody grave. (Hear, hear.) In all the
North I was looked upon with hatred and contempt. The whole
nation, subjugated to the awful power of slavery, rose up in
mobocratic tumult against any and every effort to liberate the
millions held in bondage on its soil. And yet I demanded nothing
that was not perfectly just and reasonable, in exact accordance
with the Declaration of American Independence and the Golden
Rule. I was not the enemy of any man living. I cherish no
personal enmities; I know nothing of them in my heart. Even
whilst the Southern slave-holders were seeking my destruction, I
never for a moment entertained any other feeling toward them
than an earnest desire, under God, to deliver them from a deadly
curse and an awful sin. (Hear, hear.) It was neither a sectional
nor a personal matter at all. It had exclusive reference to the
eternal law of justice between man and man, and the rights of
human nature itself.

Sir, I always found in America that a shower of brickbats had a
remarkably tonic effect, materially strengthening to the
back-bone. (Laughter.) But, sir, the shower of compliments and
applause, which has greeted me on this occasion would assuredly
cause my heart to fail me, were it not that this generous
reception is only incidentally personal to myself. (Hear, hear.)
You, ladies and gentlemen, are here mainly to celebrate the
triumph of humanity over its most brutal foes; to rejoice that
universal emancipation has at last been proclaimed throughout
the United Stat