them
in the past and believing what was the future of my country to
them--among my dead comrades there I swore to myself a solemn oath,
'May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the
roof of my mouth, if I ever fail to defend the rights of those men
who have given their blood for me and my country this day, and for
their race forever,' and, God helping me, I will keep that oath."

Mr. Phillips in his great oration on Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Black of
St. Domingo; statesman, warrior and LIBEEATOR,--delivered in New York
City, March 11, 1863, said among other things, a constellation of
linguistic brilliants not surpassed since the impassioned appeals of
Cicero swept the Roman Senate to its feet, or Demosthenes fired his
listeners with the flame of his matchless eloquence;

"You remember that Macaulay says, comparing Cromwell with Napoleon,
that Cromwell showed the greater military genius, if we consider
that he never saw an army till he was forty; while Napoleon was
educated from a boy in the best military schools in Europe.
Cromwell manufactured his own army; Napoleon at the age of
twenty-seven was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever
saw. They were both successful; but, says Macaulay, with such
disadvantages, the Englishman showed the greater genius. Whether
you allow the inference or not, you will at least grant that it is
a fair mode of measurement.

"Apply it to Toussaint. Cromwell never saw an army until he was
forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell
manufactured his own army--out of what? Englishmen--the best blood
in Europe. Out of the middle class of Englishmen, the best blood of
the island. And with it he conquered what? Englishmen--their
equals. This man manufactured his army out of what? Out of what you
call the despicable race of Negroes, debased, demoralized by two
hundred years of slavery, 100,000 of them imported into the island
within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to
each other. Yet out of this mixed, and, as you say, despicable
mass, he forged a thunderbolt, and hurled it at what? At the
proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home
conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put
them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the Eng