y. We are
wrapped up in the history of the United States of America, despite the
attempt in certain quarters to deny us a respectful place therein. There
is not a single page, from the period of its colonial existence to its
present standard of greatness and renown, from which we are absent. From
the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock to the advent of the
Cavaliers at Jamestown; from the stirring periods of the Revolution,
which resulted in the emancipation of the colonists from British
imperialism, to the Rebellion in 1860--resulting in the salvation of the
Federal Union--we have ever and always been a potent factor in the
history of this country.

Our presence here has made this day possible. There would have been no
Decoration Day had the American kidnappers left us in Africa--our
fatherland. The world must, therefore, hear from us upon these special
occasions. So, like other elements of the population, we come to-day to
make our annual report. We come, in company with the others, to review
the past, to study the present, and, if possible, to forecast the
future. In measuring the progress of any successful commercial
enterprise, the mode of procedure is to compare beginnings with
balance-sheets. Commercially speaking, it is to take an inventory. What,
therefore, is true of any commercial enterprise is equally true of races
and individuals. The _modus operandi_ is the same. In fact, we proceed
by comparing beginnings with beginnings; environments with environments,
and the advantages and disadvantages of the past and present. This is
the mode by which the progress of a race or the attainments of an
individual must be measured, and the Negro race offers no exception to
this rule.

It was Wendell Phillips, one of America's greatest statesmen, jurists,
and orators, who said in that marvellous lecture on Toussaint
L'Ouverture--beyond doubt the greatest military genius of the nineteenth
century--that there are two ways by which Anglo-Saxon civilization
measures races. First, by the great men produced by that race; secondly,
by the average merit of the mass of that race. In support of the first
he bravely summoned to his presence, from the regions of the dead, the
immortal Bacon, Shakespeare, Hampden, Hancock, Washington, and Franklin,
offering them as stars, who, in their day, had lent lustre in the galaxy
of history. And with equal pride he gloried in the average merit of
Anglo-Saxon blood, since it first streamed