tient in the laying of a firm foundation, so to grow in skill and
knowledge that he shall place his services in demand by reason of his
intrinsic and superior worth. This is the key that unlocks every door of
opportunity, and all others fail. In this battle of peace the rich and
poor, the black and white, may have a part.

What lesson has this occasion for the future? What of hope, what of
encouragement, what of caution? "Watchman, tell us of the night; what
the signs of promise are." If through me, an humble representative,
nearly ten millions of my people might be permitted to send a message to
Massachusetts, to the survivors of the 54th Regiment, to the committee
whose untiring energy has made this memorial possible, to the family who
gave their only boy that we might have life more abundantly, that
message would be, "Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain, that
up from the depth of ignorance and poverty, we are coming, and if we
come through oppression out of the struggle, we are gaining strength. By
the way of the school, the well-cultivated field, the skilled hand, the
Christian home, we are coming up; that we propose to invite all who will
to step up and occupy this position with us. Tell them that we are
learning that standing-ground for the race, as for the individual, must
be laid in intelligence, industry, thrift, and property, not as an end,
but as a means to the highest privileges; that we are learning that
neither the conqueror's bullet nor fiat of law could make an ignorant
voter an intelligent voter, could make a dependent man an independent
man, could give one citizen respect for another, a bank account, a foot
of land, or an enlightened fireside. Tell them that, as grateful as we
are to artist and patriotism for placing the figures of Shaw and his
comrades in physical form of beauty and magnificence, that after all,
the real monument, the greater monument, is being slowly but safely
builded among the lowly in the South, in the struggles and sacrifices of
a race to justify all that has been done and suffered for it."

One of the wishes that lay nearest Colonel Shaw's heart was, that his
black troops might be permitted to fight by the side of white soldiers.
Have we not lived to see that wish realized, and will it not be further
realized in the future? Not at Wagner, not with rifle and bayonet, but
on the field of peace, in the battle of industry, in the struggle for
good government, in the lifting