more books; we are painting
and buying more pictures; we are struggling more and more to get at
the philosophy of life, of things--trying more and more to answer
the questions of the eternal Sphinx. We are looking in every
direction--investigating; in short, we are thinking and working. Besides
all this, I believe the people are nearer honest than ever before. A few
years ago we were willing to live upon the labor of four million slaves.
Was that honest? At last, we have a national conscience. At last, we
have carried out the Declaration of Independence. Our fathers wrote
it--we have accomplished it. The black man was a slave--we made him a
citizen. We found four million human beings in manacles, and now the
hands of a race are held up in the free air without a chain.

I have had the supreme pleasure of seeing a man--once a slave--sitting
in the seat of his former master in the Congress of the United States.
I have had that pleasure, and when I saw it my eyes were filled
with tears. I felt that we had carried out the Declaration of
Independence,--that we had given reality to it, and breathed the breath
of life into its every word. I felt that our flag would float over and
protect the colored man and his little children--standing straight in
the sun, just the same as though he were white and worth a million.
I would protect him more, because the rich white man could protect
himself.

All who stand beneath our banner are free. Ours is the only flag that
has in reality written upon it: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality--the three
grandest words in all the languages of men.

Liberty: Give to every man the fruit of his own labor--the labor of his
hands and of his brain.

Fraternity: Every man in the right is my brother.

Equality: The rights of all are equal: Justice, poised and balanced in
eternal calm, will shake from the golden scales, in which are weighed
the acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste: No race, no
color, no previous condition, can change the rights of men.

The Declaration of Independence has at last been carried out in letter
and in spirit.

The second century will be grander than the first.

Fifty millions of people are celebrating this day. To-day, the black man
looks upon his child and says: The avenues to distinction are open to
you--upon your brow may fall the civic wreath--this day belongs to you.

We are celebrating the courage and wisdom of our fathers, and the glad
shout of a free