thick and fast, skillfully guiding his horse,
that hoofs should not profane the sacred dead, he there saw in sad
confusion where lay the white and black soldier, who had gone down
together. The appeal, though mute, was irresistible. Stopping his horse
and raising his hand in the cold, grey light to heaven, said: "May my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth and my right hand forget its
cunning if I ever cease to insist upon equal justice to the colored
man." It was at the unequal fight at Milliken's Bend; it was at Forts
Wagner and Pillow, at Petersburg and Richmond, the colored troops asked
to be assigned the posts of danger, and there before the iron hail of
the enemy's musketry "they fell forward as fits a man." In our memory
and affections they deserve a fitting place "as those long loved, and
but for a season gone."

Slavery, shorn of its power, nurtured revenge. On the 14th day of April,
1865, while sitting with his family at a public exhibition, Abraham
Lincoln was assassinated, and the nation was in tears. Never was
lamentation so widespread, nor grief so deep; the cabin of the lowly,
the lordly mansion of wealth, the byways and highways, gave evidence of
a people's sorrow. "Men moved about with clinched teeth and bowed-down
heads; women bathed in tears and found relief, while little children
asked their mothers why all the people looked so mournful," and we, as
we came up out of Egypt, lifted up our voices and wept. Our friend was
no more, but intrenched in the hearts of his countrymen as one who did
much "to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of nations."

Since that eventful period the Negro has had a checkered career, passing
through the reconstruction period, with its many lights and shadows,
despite the assaults of prejudice and prescription by exclusion from
most of the remunerative callings and avocations, partiality in
sentencing him to the horrors of the chain-gang, lynching, and burning
at the stake. Despite all these he has made progress--a progress often
unfairly judged by the dominant race. Douglass has pithily said: "Judge
us not from the heights on which you stand, but from the depths from
whence we sprung." So, with a faith and hope undaunted, we scan our
country horizon for the silver lining propitious of a happier day.

Regarding that crime of crimes, lynching by hanging and burning human
beings, a barbarity unknown in the civilized world save in our country,
it is cheering to observe a