upon the lips of the doubter; he deems the thing
impossible. So he would have pronounced our noble record of the last
three years, three years ago. Nay, it is already half accomplished,
since we now know it must be done. The black man free, the red man must
at last receive attention. The protection of our laws must be thrown
around him; justice must guide our future dealings with him, and sorrow
for all the fearful ills we have wrought upon him must awaken larger
sympathy, and elicit tender mercy. The race are dying out among us: let
us at least soothe their parting hours. And let the Government look well
to its avaricious agents. Our people are generous, and mean to be just;
that is not enough: they must take the proper means, and see that their
beneficent intentions are carried out with regard to this wretched
remnant. It is not possible that a race so full of wild natural
eloquence, of graceful imagery, of tender metaphor, of stern endurance,
can be _utterly_ lost and depraved. Be it our noble task to try to save
these wild children of the forest, while throwing the most complete
protection around our brave frontier population. Our nationality is now
fully born--on our banner is inscribed the equal rights of humanity. Our
mission is revealed to us--it is that labor shall be elevated, and that
equal justice be the law of _actual life_. 'That the human race is in a
real sense one--that its efforts are common, and tend to a joint result,
that its several members may stand in the eye of their Maker, not only
as _individual_ agents, but as contributors to this joint result--is a
doctrine which our reason, perhaps, finds something to support, and
which our heart readily accepts.' This Christmas peal rings to us as it
has never rung before: let it awaken our consciousness of what God means
us to be upon this planet, and touch our heart. It has at last reached
the ear of the emancipated African, after pealing nearly nineteen
hundred years for the more favored part of humanity; and, thanks to the
mercy of God and our own manhood, the most oppressed of the brethren of
Christ may now feel themselves men. The dark wife, in her new right to
be faithful, is at last a woman; her dusky children are now her own, and
cannot be torn from her arms at the dictates of one who has bought at
the human auction block the right to torture the body and soul. Is not
humanity newborn among us? Is the negro of the accursed race of Ham? It
is we who