"I have been studying what I can to help on the good cause of emancipation, abolitionism, or by whatsoever name you may call it—I mean in this campaign that is now raging and at fever heat all along the Northern states, and from ocean to ocean. I am willing to do all I can to help the cause of the oppressed and terribly down-trodden slave. I am willing to place my services at the command of the managing committee in these parts, and to speak, to play, and to sing, and do my best in every way for the good cause. (Loud applause all over the hall). Fred. Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison, and Henry Ward Beecher, and many others of the ’big guns’ will be coming around; and perhaps even Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe herself. I think she, at least, ought to pay us a visit, for if any free colored person in the South is detected with her 'Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in his possession, that person may be sent to prison for twelve months. Now I myself managed to read ’Uncle Tom,’ even in slavery. So did my honored mother and husband—all here present before you—and Mr. Jackson, our owner, could have been fined so much apiece for us three, had the State of Kentucky been made aware of the fact! (Loud ironical cheers and great laughter by the whole house). In a campaign like this, we must all put our shoulders to the wheel, and give a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together; and each and every one of us must do all we can to bring the abominations of slavery to an end. ’There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we will.’ Such are the words of Shakespeare. We also are rough-hewing the cause of freedom for the slave. The divinity of heaven will give the proper shape and finish to these ends of ours.