rying crisis in the history of this nation. In
the beginning of the seventeenth century, when labor troubles threatened
the very life of the infant colony and continuing to the founding of the
Republic--when white men were held in peonage or actual bondage for the
uncanceled financial obligations due to the nobility of Great
Britain--who furnished the labor which solved the vexed problem? Who
furnished the brawn and muscle which cleared the forests, leveled the
hills, tunneled the mountains, bridged the rivers, laid the tracks and
cultivated the fields, until this broad land had become as beautiful as
the lily of the valley and as fragrant as the rose of Sharon?

In 1776, when despotism was enthroned and liberty languished in the
streets of Boston, was it not the blood of a Negro--Crispus
Attucks--which animated the sinking spirit of the Goddess, who was
almost ready to die under the oppression of King George and the
despotism of Cornwallis?

In the Sixties--when Lincoln, despairing of the outcome of the Civil
War, on account of the treachery in his own ranks and repeated reverses
on the battle-field, called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the
Rebellion in the South--who came to the rescue of the Union? In spite of
the effort of McClellan and his company of 50,000 soldiers, who went to
Richmond to prevent "niggers," as they were called, from enlisting, who
came to the rescue of the Union? Whose blood helped to render the
testament of liberty valid? Ask Port Hudson and Milligan's Bend, and
Fort Wagner, and Fort Pillow, and Pittsburg Landing, how the nearly
200,000 Negro soldiers behaved themselves under the fire of the enemy
on these memorable battlefields--rendered sacred by their patriotic
blood.

Who saved the Rough Riders and Colonel Roosevelt in the late
Spanish-American War, when San Juan was illuminated with the fire of
Spanish cannonading? Hark! Methinks I hear the tramp of the black boys
of the 24th and the 25th Cavalry, chanting to the strains of martial
music,--"Glory Hallelujah, we are going to have a hot time in the old
town to-night," as they dashed up the dangerous parapet to defend the
honor of their country, and to keep "Old Glory" from trailing in the
dust.

At the close of the Civil War we were without homes, lands, or money.
To-day, according to the last census of the United States, we own
600,000 homes, 20,000,000 acres of farm land, covering an area equal to
the political dominions of the kin