humble
heart that God will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy and
in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see
him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the
death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him, when the
mould is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and
with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange
fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure
is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. And from the grave
comes a voice saying, "Follow him! put your arms about him in his need,
even as he put his about me. Be his friend as he was mine." And out into
this new world--strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both--I
follow! And may God forget my people--when they forget these!

Whatever the future may hold for them, whether they plod along in the
servitude from which they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was
laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers, and made to bear the cross of the
fainting Christ--whether they find homes again in Africa, and thus
hasten the prophecy of the psalmist, who said: "And suddenly Ethiopia
shall hold out her hands unto God"--whether for ever dislocated and
separate, they remain a weak people, beset by stronger, and exist, as
the Turk, who lives in the jealousy rather than in the conscience of
Europe--or whether in this miraculous Republic they break through the
caste of twenty centuries, and, belying universal history, reach the
full stature of citizenship, and in peace maintain it--we shall give
them uttermost justice and abiding friendship. And whatever we do, into
whatever seeming estrangement we may be driven, nothing shall disturb
the love we bear this Republic, or mitigate our consecration to its
service. I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new loyalty. When
General Lee, whose heart was the temple of our hopes, and whose arm was
clothed with our strength, renewed his allegiance to this government at
Appomattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be false, and he spoke
for every honest man from Maryland to Texas. From that day to this
Hamilcar has nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred and
vengeance, but everywhere to loyalty and to love. Witness the veteran
standing at the base of a Confederate monument, above the graves of his
comrades, his empty sleeve tossing in the April wind, adjuring th