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464

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high foot-steps to liberty
and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence
of the black republic of Hayti, the special object of slaveholding aversion
and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly
received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal
slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abol-
ished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the
law enforced against the foreign slave-trade, and the first slave-trader
hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the
greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate
States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever,
battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the
fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slaveholders
three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the
immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its
principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States.
Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.

Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all
men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January, 1863,
when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as
his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I
waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less
anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read
to-day. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent
the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In
that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the
President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to with-
hold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we
were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time,
phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require
for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and
progress.

Fellow citizens, there is little necessity on this occasion to speak at
length and critically of this great and good man, and of his high mission in
the world. That ground has been fully occupied and completely covered
both here and elsewhere. The whole field of fact and fancy has been gleaned
and garnered. Any man can say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but
no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits
and public acts are better known to the American people than are those of