SPEECH OF HON. JOHN M. LANGSTON.

The House being in committee of the Whole on the state of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H. R. 12729) making appropriation to provide for the expenses of the government of the District of Columbia for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1892, and for other purposes, the following proceedings were had:

Mr. McCOMAS. I yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Langston].

Mr. LANGSTON. Mr. Chairman, how much time have I?

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman has fifty-two minutes.

Mr. LANGSTON. If there is anything that I would gladly see, it is “Our country first on land, and first on sea,” and it is natural for me, coming into this body as I do, from the Old Dominion that gave life to Washington and birth to Jefferson to come with the sentiment I have just expressed. I have seen American masters of ships wronged in foreign countries, and finally successfully defended by the Government through the vigorous and manly efforts of our representatives abroad. I recollect among the very last things that occurred, when I had the honor of representing this Government abroad, was this fact, first that an old shipmaster said to me in our legation, “When you go home, if you ever have the opportunity to say a word for us, say it, say it freely and say it positively, and so emancipate us, that on the great sea, as well as at home, we may feel the consciousness that we are Americans.”

I promised that shipmaster that if ever I had the opportunity of speaking for our shipping, I would do it, and do it fearlessly and thoroughly. One of these days, in this august body, I trust that I shall have the opportunity of saying a word. But how can we make our land and our Government great in the estimation of others, except as finally we planted ourselves as a nation on those fundamental, far-reaching, eternal principles, underlying all democracies and perpetuating all republics.

I would speak to-day to you, not in any other wise than as I would defend the Constitution of my country, planting myself on those doctrines of the Declaration so clearly and forcibly enunciated in these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

0003 4

Ah, Mr. Chairman, the day has come to us now when we are to recur in our thoughts and reach in our purposes those olden times of this Republic when our fathers built, as Christ did, “on the rock,” that His church might stand, and now that our Government may stand.

Why, the feeling in the country seems to be to-day that silver is the thing; and a man said to me the other day, when the silver bill had been laid aside for the time being, “Ah, Sir, your cause has been sold for thirty pieces of silver.”

Mr. JOSEPH TAYLOR. The “elections bill,” you mean, was laid aside.

Mr. LANGSTON. Yes; I mean when the election bill was laid aside. But I said: “Not so, sir, for we live in the United States of America, in the midst of schoolhouses, in the midst of schools, in the midst of churches, in the midst of Christians, and we have built our nation on other which shall find any class of our population, politicians or statesmen, finally willing to sell the cause of liberty, the rights of the humblest citizen of our Government, for anything like a compromise, even in silver.” [Applause on the republican side.]

Why, on what are we built, and where do we go? Our nation is built first on those fundamental laws given in the midst of the flame and smoke of Sinai, and across the gateway of the old Mosaic system it was written, “He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hands, he shall surely die; and in the light of this law slavery has gone. We find that there was in the same law, enunciated so clearly and so beautifully by Him “who spake as never man spake,” the maxim that “Whatever you would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.” And we built on that afterwards. But here is the declaration which we have built on, and that is this Constitution, which we have amended, not because it needed amendment, but that there might be no mistake as to the question as to whether a black man might be free or slave; whether he should continue ignorant and a discredit to you by having been born in this country. In his nativity he finds the fact that he is an American, and the law must protect him in that character. [Loud applause on the Republican side.]

But my friend on the other side of the House the other day referred to what was done in 1815. He alluded to the fact that great men moved in that day, and I watched for him to come down to the position of General Jackson on the negro question, because I wanted to hear him on that; but he tarried at the Hartford convention and did not come on down to the victory that was won at New Orleans, when the great general of that day called his troops about him and gave utterance to sentiments that the negro loves and some men hate even up to this hour. [Applause on the Republican side.] Ah, General Jackson was not a bad man, although he was a Democrat in some senses of the word. [Laughter.]

I would that the Democrats of the United States would accept the doctrines of that great and venerable man who, firm and true to the color of his face, the fact that he was a man and the fact that he could be a patriotic American. [Applause on the Republican side.] Now, if you will permit me I will read a few words from the utterance of that distinguished man on this subject, to show that he could call us citizens of the United States, American citizens, and, in addressing us, 0004 5could use language which became the lips of a brave valiant American general—

Soldiers— He says in addressing his black troops after the war— soldiers, when on the banks of the Mobile I called you to take up arms, inviting you to partake the perils and glory of your white fellow-citizens

Ah, my white-fellow citizens on the other side of the House [laughter] and my white fellow-citizens on every side of the House, and my white fellow-citizens in every section of the country, black as we are no man shall go ahead of us in devotion to this country, in devotion to its free institutions, for we hold our lives, our property, and our sacred honor in pledge to the welfare of our country and of all our fellow citizens. [Applause on the Republican side.] Do you want men to fight; call us and we will come. Do you want men to tarry at home and take care of your wives, take care of your children, take care of your homes and protect your interest; call on us. And when the time is past, if you can find a negro who has betrayed you in a single case put your finger on him and we will aid you in lynching him. [Applause.] But he cannot be found.

Oh, no. What a wonderful chapter that is, that the men who lived near where General Jackson uttered these words, in the State of Louisiana, and in the States of the South, all along the line of the battle, could go away leaving everything in the hands of the negro and come back and find that it had been guarded, thoroughly protected. For that alone, if for no other reason, the negro might well be accorded the freedom and justice that are his right, and he would be if those men had only been fair and true to him. Now, you see, General Jackson calls us your “fellow-citizens” by referring to the white man as our “white fellow-citizens” [Laughter.] That certainly is legal and logical. He says further:

I expected much from you, for I was not ignorant that you possessed qualities most formidable to an invading enemy. I knew with what fortitude you could endure hunger and thirst and the fatigues of the campaign. I knew well how you loved your native country—

“Your native country.” Oh, yes; this is our native country. We do not have to go abroad to find our native country, for Jackson has told us weneed not go. Some men want us to go to Africa and to the isles of the sea,but, blessed be the name of this grand old Democrat, he has taught another lesson, he has taught us that this is our home; and in the name of Jackson,whose shade is about me now, I declare in this sacred place that we are here to go away. [Laughter] Why, we cannot go. How can I get out of this country?

I undertook to leave Virginia, and the first thing I knew I was back there. I moved away and located in Ohio, but I could not stay. I came to the District of Columbia, but I could not stay. I went abroad, but could not stay there. When I returned and undertook to go away again, by a curious adjustment of Providence I found myself in Virginia; and to-day,by a curious adjustment of Providence, I find myself standing in this august and wonderful presence. We cannot control ourselves in these things.

Do you think that the negro would have come to this country to find slavery when the white man came here for liberty? Yet, when the white man were landing on the Eastern shores of the continent and beginning to build our nationality, the negro came in chains to the southward; and, as the white men became great in numbers, the negroes multiplied. 0005 6until finally, in the great struggle for liberty, when in its far-reaching and broad sweepslavery had stricken down the liberties of the people, and the fight had to come, the negro, in the midst of the thunder of the great contest is called from his slumbers, comes forth from his rags a free man, and enters upon real life equal of his white fellow-citizen. [Applause on the Republican side.] Here we are and here we are to stay. And I gave my Democratic friends warning that they may oppress us as much as they will, but still we shall remain. Abuse us as you will, gentlemen, we will increase and multiply until, instead of finding every day five hundred black babies turning up their bright eyes to greet the rays of the sun, the number shall be five thousand, and shall still go on increasing. [Laughter and applause.]

There is no way to get rid of us. [Laughter.] It is our native country.

And that you as well as ourselves had to defend what man holds most dear, parents, wife, children, and property, you have done more than I have expected. In addition to the previous qualities I before knew you to possess, I found among you a noble enthusiasm which leads to the performance of great things.

And we will not disappoint you in that.

Soldiers! the President of the United States shall hear how praiseworthy was your conduct in the hour of danger, and the representatives of the American people will give you the praise your exploits entitle you to. Your general anticipates them in applauding your noble ardor.

We are simply fellow-citizens. We have always been fellow-citizens. We are nothing but fellow-citizens to-day, and fellow-citizens in permanent residence in this our native country.

But this is not the only testimony. I can offer on this subject Southern testimony which goes farther than this. Gentlemen are very timid about us; not only timid, but anxious. But where do you find the very first judicial opinion, broad and comprehensive, recognizing the negro of this country not only as a citizen but as an elector? Suppose I should state here, Mr. Chairman, that in this matter we must follow the lead of the South? Suppose I should say as a matter of fact the enunciation in that behalf, clear and distinct, was made not by a Northern judge but by a Southern judge, and that this judge was the first lawyer of the State of North Carolina? I will say so; and I will astonish you by reading (if you have not read it) from the learned opinion of Chief Justice Gaston, as given in the case of the State vs. Manuel. A negro boy, having assaulted a white boy, was brought to trial and found guilty; the punishment adjudged was thirty-nine lashes at the whipping post.

A young white lawyer said to gentlemen of Fayetteville, N.C.: “Raise a little purse and I will take this case before the supreme court of State; I will ask Judge Gaston to pass the case, and I believe he will decide that no colored man, even though born a slave, if subsequently emancipated, as Manuel has been, can be punished at the whipping post, because by reason of his nativity he is an American citizen”. The money was raised and the case carried to the supreme court. Judge Gaston sat in that case and delivered the opinion. Now what do my Democratic friends think he said? Mark you, I read from the opinion of a North Carolina judge. Listen:

According to the laws of this State (North Carolina) all the human beings within it are not slaves fall within one of the two classes. Whatever distinctions may have existed in the Roman laws between citizens and free inhabitants, they are unknown to our institutions. Before our Revolution all free persons born within the dominions of the King Great Britain, whatever their color or complexion, were native-born British subjects; those born out of 0006 7his allegiance were aliens. Slavery did not exist in England, but it did in the British colonies. Slaves were not, in legal parlance, persons but property. The moment he incapacity, the disqualification of slavery was removed, they became persons, and were then either British subjects or not British subjects, according as they were or were not born within the allegiance of the British King.

Upon the Revolution no other change took place in the laws of North Carolina than was consequent on the transition from a colony dependent on a European king to a free and sovereign State—slaves remained slaves; British subjects in North Carolina become North Carolina freemen: foreigners, until made members of the State, remained aliens; slaves manumitted here became freemen, and therefore, if born within North Carolina, and all free persons born within he State are born citizens of the State. The Constitution extended the elective franchise to every freeman who had arrived at the age of twenty-one and paid a public tax, and it is a matter of universal notoriety that under it free persons, without regard to color, claimed and exercised the franchise until it was taken from freemen of color a few years since by our amended constitution.

North Carolina started this doctrine and we accept it.

And on this question of citizenship, allow me to read the opinion of Hon Edward Bates, given by him as Attorney-General of the United States, in 1862, in response to the question propounded by the then Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, “Are colored men citizens of the united States, and therefore competent to command American vessels?”

1. In every civilized country the individual is born to duties and rights: the duty of allegiance and the right to protection; and these are correlative obligations, the one the price of the other, and they constitute the all-sufficient bond of union between the individual and his country, and the country he is born in is prima facie his country.

2. And our Constitution in speaking of natural-born citizens uses no affirmative language to make them such, but only recognizes and reaffirms the universal principle, common to all nations and as old as political society, that the people born in the country do constitute the nation, and, as individuals, are natural members of the body politic.

3. In the United States it is too late to deny the political rights and obligations conferred and imposed by nativity, for our laws do not pretend to create or enact them, but, do assume and recognize them as things known to all men, because pre-existent and natural, and therefore things of which the laws must take cognizance.

4. It is strenuously insisted by some that “persons of color,” though born in the country, are not capable of being citizens of the United States. As far as the Constitution is concerned, this is a naked assumption, for the Constitution contains not one word upon the subject.

5. There are some who abandoning the untenable objection of color, still contend that no person descended from negroes of the African race can be a citizen of the United States. Here the objection is not color but race only. * * * The Constitution certainly does not forbid, but is silent about race as it is about color.

6. But it is said that African negroes are a degraded race, and that all who are tainted with that degradation are forever disqualified for the functions of citizenship. I can hardly comprehend the thought of the absolute incompatibility of degradation and citizenship; I thought that they often went together.

7. Our nationality was created and our political Government exists by written law, and inasmuch as that law does not exclude persons of that descent, and as its terms are manifestly broad enough to include them, it follows inevitably that such persons born in the country must be citizens unless the fact of African descent be so incompatible with the fact of citizenship that the two can not exist together.

Being citizens, being electors, we are confronted to-day as distinctly as in 1861-'65 with the question of slavery or freedom, with the question whether every American citizen may wield the ballot in this country freely and according to his own judgment in the interest of the welfare of our common country. It does not matter how black we are; it does not matter how ignorant we are; it does not matter what our race may be; it does not matter whether we were degraded or not; the question presented to-day under our amended Constitution, as under the Constitution 0007 8without amendment, is, shall every freeman, shall American every citizen, shall every American elector in the North and in the South, everywhere in the country, be permitted to wield a free ballot in the interests of our common country and our free institutions? [Applause.]

Here lies the difference: The old Democratic party used to maintain that this right should be accorded to every American citizen; the new Democratic party is fighting it. But, thank God, the genuine American—mainly found in the Republican party—some few in the Democratic party, but through mistake [laughter]—are standing up bravely and truly to-day to meet this question intelligently and patriotically.

“Oh,” but the Democrats say, “you got beaten at the last election.” In one sense we did, and in one sense we did not. “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” [Laughter.] We have only been chastened a little to make us more firm, and more solid, and the more certain in the high march that is before us to the “promised land” in the midst of our own homes to which God would lead us in the establishment of an all-comprehensive freedom and equality of right.

How dark it was in 1861! How dark it was in 1850! Ah! compromises were made; the great orators spoke; the great parties resolved; and the friends of freedom came well nigh to despair. But the voice of the faithful and the true was still heard; and finally in the thunder of great guns, in the midst of terrible smoke as of the Mountain of Sinai, and in the flashes of light that made every slave in the land glad, emancipation was declared and the country was saved. [Applause.]

But, Mr. Chairman, it is sneeringly said that the Republican party laid aside the elections bill in the Senate. But it was only for a little while; it was only to take it up again; that was all. And they have taken it up now in earnest. And if the elections shall come around shortly, you will see the change when the people have been forgotten who failed to do their duty in connection with the matter. Yes, they have taken up the elections bill again, and those people who yielded it for awhile, who laid it aside to address themselves to other matters, have gone back to the solid, patriotic conviction that at last liberty is the whitest and brightest jewel in the firmament, and that the greatest heritage of American citizen is to be free. [Applause]

Why, sir, the Democrats talk of carrying the election in 1892. How could they carry it? They could not do it by any fair means. But our Democratic friends do not talk of fair means any more. They avoid all that that. [Laughter.] A gentleman who spoke the other day, and talked of free ballots and all that sort of thing, was asked against whom he made charges. He said “The Democratic party.” Why should we not so charge it under the circumstances? I would like to see somebody put his finger on something that the Democratic party has done from the beginning that looks like favoring freedom, or favoring the colored men in this country, at whose friends on this floor strange words have been hurled. How peculiarly our friends are characterized! You can hardly believe the language that is us used towards them. I have some of it here before me, studied, selected, written and rewritten it must have been, but yet very peculiar language. I have read it a good many times, but I never saw anything like it before. Here is a specimen:

Mr. Speaker, I am heartily tired and sick of this eternal cant and hypocrisy. I think the time has come to tear off the thin veil which covers it, and to express our opinions about this business and the fellows who are engaged in it. 0008 9What is this bill, anyhow? It is urged on the pretense that it is necessary to secure fair elections. But every honest man of intelligence knows that that is a mere subterfuge. It originates in a section of the Union which has grown enormously rich at the expense of the West and South. It observes the development and rapid growth in political power of the West and South with ever-increasing alarm. Conscious that unity of interest will, as a matter of self-defense, ultimate inevitably in bringing about some unity of action between the West and South, this bill is thrown as a firebrand into our politics, with the hope of passing it under the spur of partisan prejudice and pressure, thereby delaying that political adhesion already approaching in other sections, and using it to perpetuate as long as possible a local advantage.

Fair elections! Sir, it will be a sad day for this Republic when the people can be no longer trusted with the ballot box. Virtue is the very essence of popular liberty; but equally so is liberty the essence of public virtue. These gentlemen say they can no longer trust the States and the people with their own ballot box. They hold it has become necessary to have an army officials, without direct responsibility to the voters, to watch, to supervise, and, if need be, to punish them. If, indeed, it be true that patriotism and public sentiment and public morals have come to this low ebb, then are we approaching that starless night into whose eternal shadows has disappeared nearly every effort at popular government which mankind, striving for higher and nobler ideas of liberty, have ever made in the history of the world. I do not believe it.

I can still trust with perfect confidence the people of all or any of the States of the American Union. I had rather confide the ballot box to the plain people of the land, risk its purity to their patriotism and its safety to their hands than trust it to any hand of partisan mercenaries, with budges on their lapels and batons or bayonets in their hands, appointed by any Federal administration that ever was or shall be.

Against whom, specially and professedly, is this haughty insolence directed? Against whom are these charges of fraud and crime, these burning and intolerable insults, leveled? The Democratic party. Forget not, gentlemen, that that party represents a large majority of all the people of the whole country, and a full round million majority of the white voters of the United states, the sons of the warriors and matrons who won the battles of the Revolution and laid broad and deep the foundations of the Republic. They can be intimidated by a threat nor overawed by a menace.

There is no need to continue this. It is found on every page of the Record.

In this connection I wish to quote in contrast what is said so ably by the President in his last annual message:

But it is said that this legislation will revive race animosities, and some have even suggested that when the peaceful methods of fraud are made impossible they may be supplanted by intimidation and violence. If the proposed law gives to any qualified elector, by a hair's weight, more than his equal influence, or detracts by so much from any other qualified elector, it is fatally impeached. But if the law is equal ad the animosities it is to evoke grow out of the fact that some electors have been accustomed to exercise the franchise for others as well as for themselves, then these animosities ought not to be confessed without shame, and can not be given any weight in the discussion without dishonor.

No choice is left to me but to enforce with vigor all laws intended to secure to the citizen his constitutional rights, and to recommend that the inadequacies of such laws be promptly remedied. If to promote with zeal and ready interests every project for the development of its material interests, its rivers, harbors, mines, and factories, and the intelligence, peace, and security under the law of its communities and its homes, is not accepted as sufficient evidence of friendliness to any State or section. I can not add connivance at election practices that not only disturb local results, but rob the electors of other States and sections of their most priceless political rights.

Eight millions of people who stand behind me to-day, a few in the West and all over the South, command me to say to you that so long as there is a name akin to that of Hoar in New England we will honor and revere it because that man has been true to us in the Senate. [Applause on the Republican side]. But it would not have made any difference. We do not forget our friends.

You recollect that there was a Hoar who went South once, and he 0009 10went to Charleston, S.C., going there as the agent of the great State of Massachusetts. He appeared in the name of the sovereignty of that great State as a lawyer, not to “steal negroes,” but to inquire in the courts of that State as to whether it was legal for a colored citizen of the State of Massachusetts, sailing into the harbor of Charleston on a Northern vessel, to be arrested and imprisoned and adjudged a free negro and sold into interminable slavery. He was accompanied by his sweet, elegant, charming daughter, a young lady of Boston. He appeared, and very soon a committee of gentlemen of property waited on him. “What is your business here, sir?” He said. “I have come,” as I have described, “in the name of the Commonwealth in which I live, to look after matters of interest to the great body of the people of our State.”

“We give you, sir, one hour's notice to take your trunk and leave this city, and if you are not gone within that time we will tar and we will feather you.” And at the end of that time the committee waited on him again. He was a little behind time. And, Mr. Chairman, it is recorded in history that the presence of his daughter alone saved him from their clutches.

Mr. MORSE. That is as true as Gospel.

Mr. LANGSTON. And coming around to Philadelphia a Whig national convention was in session, and this noble man of Massachusetts, this grand man, was called on for a speech. How do you think he opened his address?

Fellow-citizens, having escaped the bloody clutches of the slaveholders of the South, I take a great deal of pleasure in addressing you.

Ah, Mr. Chairman, this spirit does not know white man or black man. All stand equal before it; as they should stand equal before the law. When I stand here to-day speaking the cause of the people of my State, my native State, the State of Virginia, I am pleading for her people both white and black. I am speaking for white men as well as for negroes; for white men in my State are proscribed, and they are denied a free ballot, though their “locks be flaxen and their eyes blue.” I might cite you to the case of a man, a friend of mine, residing in Chase City, the postmaster at that place, appointed through my efforts. He writes me:

I can not go to the polls on election day to vote for you because I was proscribed already for my support of you. My family were proscribed, my children at the school, and we are all hated because I vote the Republican ticket.

And that is not uncommon or isolated case. But go into another county county, if you will. Go with me to my beautiful city of Petersburgh. They sometimes say I do not live there, but if you will go with me down there I will show you that I do live there you live Petersburgh because you have a house in Washington.” Well, unfortunately, I have got a house in Washington, because it sometimes happens that a colored man can have two houses, one in which he lives and one where he does not live. [laughter.] white men, of course, may have three or four without question.

Mr. ATKINSON, of West Virginia. Some do not have any.

Mr. LANGSTON. That is true. But most negroes now have their own homes.

Come down there with me. Let me introduce you to a fine-looking man with splendid hair, noble face, fine bearing, the picture of intelligence. 0010 11He leaves his table on election day and gets to the door of his office, where he is met asked: “Where are you going?” “Going to vote.” “Are you going to vote for that fellow?” “What, are you going to vote for Langston?” “Yes, I am. Langston is a Republican. There is only one Republican running, and I always vote the Republican ticket. Here is my ticket. I am on the way to vote for him.”

He went and voted. What was the result? The next morning at 5 o'clock, when he stepped out of his door, he found it all draped with crape. What was going to be done? Why, he voted for a Republican yesterday, and this crape was significant. What was the result? He was proscribed, his children proscribed. They point their fingers at his children as they are on the way to school, and when they get to the school they call his children names. And I plead the cause here to-day, Mr. Chairman, not only of 7,000,000 negroes of the South, but of the white men in all the South who have accepted the principle of the fathers and dedicated their faith to Republican doctrine. [Applause on the Republican side.] And I do not apologize for it.

I appeal to any and every Democrat on this floor, if it is not true, that I state hastily here, too hastily to make myself well understood, the doctrine, first, that the white men of the South have maintained that negroes are citizens upon their nativity; and secondly, the decision of Judge Gaston, who ruled that we are entitled to the elective franchise upon a property qualification in North Carolina; and then thirdly and lastly, if it is not true to-day in the South that white men may not vote the Republican ticket with greater facility or larger freedom from proscription than negroes themselves? Oh, you ought to come down there and see it. You ought to see an intelligent, fine looking white girl, well dressed, well behaved, bearing herself like a lady, passing along the street with a rabble of white men saying, “Your father voted for a damned negro and we will show you,” and frightening that sweet American girl.

Do you like that spirit? I do not. I will never be the coward to say that I do not. And I would pass bills and pile up penalties, and put behind every bill soldiers, until they rose to the top of the mountains and kissed the stars, to put these women and these men in the sure consciousness of their protection by law. [Applause on the Republican side.]

Now, oppress negroes if you must, but for God's sake stop oppressing white voters. [Applause on the Republican side.] Deny to the negro the ballot if you will, but for God's sake do not take the ballot from your own brothers with flaxen hair and blue eyes! And yet that is done.

Now, another speaker says, “Why don't you make Bruce President? why don't you make Langston President?” I want to plead guilty to some things here. I think we have honored Mr. Bruce a good deal. He is a splendid gentleman. he is one of the class of good-looking colored men on this continent, and you will excuse me if I tell you we have got some of the finest looking negroes on this continent that you ever saw. And then we have got so many. You think you have got millions in the United States, but go with me where I used to live when I was your representative, and let me show you hundreds of 0011 12thousands there, so black on one side of the island and so light on the other, and let me introduce you to that living monument of fine appearance and culture and magnificent appointments in every respect—the man who used to be president of the Republic of Haiti.

When Rear Admiral Cooper visited me on his ship, the Tennessee, I said, “Admiral, do not you want to see a splendid man; do not you want to see the best-looking black man in the world; do not you want to see a great man, the impersonation of learning and culture, a man who many a day escorted Mrs. Dix to dinner in Paris, who towered up there in all his beauty as a gentleman admired by every representative of every foreign country?” The old admiral said, “I would like to see him.” And I made arrangements whereby on the next morning, at 10 o'clock, we went to the national palace, the White House of that country, where we were received in fine style, the national band playing what they thought was our national air: John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave. But his soul is marching on. [Applause and laughter on the Republican side.]

That will be your national air one of these days, in the good time coming. Our bands shall play it, our choristers shall sing it, and we as a Christian nation shall march on under the banner of the Republican party to national and local victory under the impulse and purpose which that song will awaken in our souls.

We entered the palace, and very soon we were in the presence of this magnificent man of more than 300 pounds' weight. His hair was as white as snow, his face as black as the night, his face the face of Webster, his manner polite, genteel, and elegant, like the manner of Wendell Phillips. He was the impersonation of culture. And when I said to him in French: “Mr. President, I have the honor to present to you a rear admiral of the American Navy,” the bow he made, out of his high regard for our free institutions and our noble country and our magnificent nation, was charming in the extreme.

And shortly we took the usual elegant drink of magnificent champagne without ice, as it is the custom in this country. [Laughter.] When the rear admiral was about ready to he said, “Now minister, make my speech to the President. Tell the President that my godly ship, the Tennessee, has carried me into the waters of every civilized nation; that I have looked into the faces of kings and queens, emperors and empresses, and the executives of all sorts of men and governments; and say to him that I seem now, in the presence of this President, to stand in the presence of the man whom we call the father of our country—First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.' I feel that I stand in the presence of Washington himself.” I threw it into French, as I could then, and then these great men advanced with tears in their eyes and gave each other the warm palm; and I said to them, “Ah! gentlemen, this is the Great Republic of the North extending her warm palm in sympathy to this negro republic.”

It is prophetic of what? That American influences shall prevail with reference to the negro race of this country on the continent and in the isles of the sea. We are here on the continent; we are here living on the continent as a part of a great nation. God is with us; the people are with us, and we are with you, and we are in the South to remain; coming gently towards the North, increasing day by day, to wield the ballot, 0012 13the free ballot, given to us by the Government that we defended in its possession, and we will wield it to make our country great on the land and great on the sea, matchless in the ship, and matchless in industry, with mankind to applaud our magnificent pride of country, emulating with the white man in our endeavors to realize the glory and distinction which the fathers knew this country would attain in the future; and to that end may God help us. [Loud applause on the Republican side]