mericans and as it appears to
them now for that matter, not warranted either by law or justice. The
punishment which that order inflicted on a whole battalion of American
soldiers, without trial of any kind seemed unmerited and cruel in the
highest degree, and a wanton abuse of executive power.

The history of this case is known of all men, thanks and yet again
thanks and love without limit to the illustrious man whom we have met to
honor to-night. For it is now and it must forever remain the history of
the Black Battalion and of Senator Foraker. It is the history of the
most masterly and heroic struggle in defense of the rights and liberties
of the individual citizen against executive usurpation and oppression
which this country has witnessed for a generation.

The act of the President, while it affected the rights of all Americans,
bore with peculiar hardship, with crushing injustice, on the one hundred
and sixty-seven men of the Black Battalion who were discharged from the
Army without honor and on a mere assumption of their guilt in the
"Brownsville" affray.

That act was a sad blow to the colored race of the country likewise, and
fell upon them with cruel surprise. For they are people without many
friends and are hard pressed in this boasted land of the free and home
of the brave. They are hard pressed in every part of the Republic by an
increasing race prejudice, by a bitter colorphobia which forgets that
they are weak, forgets their claim at the hands of a Christian nation to
just and equal treatment to the end that they may do and become as other
men with a race and color different from their own. Blows they are
receiving thick and fast from their enemies whose name is legion, blows
against their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in
the South and in the North. We are accustomed as a race to such blows.
Cruel as they are and hard to bear, yet they do not take us by surprise.
For we have learned by long and bitter experience to look for them from
a people who loudly proclaim, in season and out, their belief in the
principles of democracy and of Christianity. But when an old friend
turns against us, and strikes too like an ancient enemy, such a blow is
more grievous to bear, and seems crueler than death itself. The blow of
an old friend is always the unkindest blow of all. One is never prepared
for it, and when it falls the wound which it inflicts cuts deeper than
flesh and blood, for the iron