“In the name of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,—and I declare the true sentiments of thousands,—I say, that for your Church and your race we cherish the kindliest feelings that ever found a lodgment in the human breast. [Applause.] Of this you need not be told. Let speak your former missionaries among us, who now hold seats upon this floor, and whose hearts have so often burned within them as they have seen the word sown by them in such humble soil burst forth into abundant prosperity. Ask the hundred thousand of your laymen who still survive the dead, how we conducted ourselves as tillers of the soil, as servants about the dwelling, and as common worshipers in the temple of God! Ask your battle-scarred veterans, who left their all to the mercy of relentless circumstances, and went, in answer to the clarion call of the trumpet, to the gigantic and unnatural strife of the second revolution! Ask them who looked at their interests at home [great cheering]; who raised their earthworks upon the field; who buried the young hero so far away from his home, or returned his ashes to the stricken hearts which hung breathless upon the hour; who protected their wives and little ones from the ravages of wild beasts, and the worse ravages of famine! And the answer is returned from a million heaving bosoms, as a monument of everlasting remembrance to the benevolence of the colored race in America. [Immense applause.] And these are they who greet you to-day, through their chief organization, the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America. [Loud and continued applause.] “And now, though the yoke which bound the master and the slave together in such close and mutual responsibility has been shivered by the rude shock of war, we find ourselves still standing by your side as natural allies against an unfriendly world.” [Applause.]