of it enters the soul itself. And so it
happened to us, when, two years ago, the cruel wrong of that executive
order was done to our brave boys in blue by the hand of a trusted
friend, the apostle of the "square deal."

Who can describe the shock of that first terrible amazement, the hot
indignation felt by a race at the huge injustice, at the Draconian
severity of that order which expelled from the American Army one hundred
and sixty-seven men without trial of any kind and on a mere suspicion of
their guilt, and which made them forever ineligible to employment
thereafter in any department of the National Government, whether on its
civil, military, or naval side, and the deep consternation which filled
the homes of every colored man in the land--North and South alike? I for
one can not describe those feelings, although I experienced in unison
with the race at the time the amazement, the indignation, and the
consternation which swept us together and caused us to feel and speak
and act as one man under the wrong done us by the hand of an old friend
whose golden words of hope and fair play we had sometime written in
letters of light on the tablets of our hearts. It is no slight matter
for any man, whether he be President or private citizen, so to wound the
sense of right of a whole race, so to shock its faith in the justice
and righteousness of its rulers and government, as that cruel blunder of
the President of the United States produced among the colored people of
the entire country.

We lifted up our voice as the voice of many waters from one end of the
land to the other in loud protest against the wrong, in stern
denunciation of it, and the press of the North came nobly to our
assistance and swelled the volume of our protest and denunciation. But
alas, all this volume of protest and denunciation on the part of the
race and of the press would have passed over the nation and the
Government like a summer storm of wind and rain--so little do our
outcries against injustice and oppression excite the attention and
sympathy of the Republic any more--had there not arisen in the Senate of
the United States a man for the hour, had not God raised him up to
defend his little ones against the slings and arrows of a sleepless
energy, of an almost omnipotent power seated in the highest place of the
Government. It was the genius, the grandeur of soul of a great man who
was able to gather into thunderbolt after thunderbolt all the sens