Since the world began, freedom has been at war with all that savored of servitude. The sentiment of liberty is innate in every human breast. Freedom of speech and of action--the right of every man to be his own master--has ever been the inestimable privilege sought, the boon most craved. For this guerdon men have fought; for this they have even gladly died. It was the unquenchable desire for liberty that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth Rock. They knew that all that is highest and noblest in the human soul is fostered to its greatest development only under the blazing sunlight of freedom. And it was the same flame burning in the heart of the young nation planted on these Western shores that led to the ratification of the sentiment placed by the hand of Thomas Jefferson in the corner-stone of our American independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created free and equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Here was heralded to the nation prophetic freedom for all mankind and for all generations. However, the years of bondage for Africa's sons and daughters in this fair land stretched on over a half century more before the issue was raised. But at last the grasping arms of the gigantic octopus, that was feeding at the nation's heart, reached out too far, and the combat with the monster was begun. Then that laurelled champion and leader of freedom's cause, Charles S. Sumner, laid his hand upon that Declaration of Independence and declared that the nation was "dedicated to liberty and the rights of human nature." I count it the glory of that gifted humanitarian that he gave his magnificent talents and energies to the organization of a party that could add to its _amor patriae_ the larger, broader, nobler love of freedom for all mankind; and I count it the glory of that party that it stood for "the voice of a people--uprisen, awake"; that it was "born to make men free." No matter what name has been inscribed on its banner during its existence of a full half century, the cause that the party of freedom espoused has given its standard-bearer a right to claim that it, and it alone, is the legitimate heir to power in this land where the forefathers sought the liberty the Old World denied. Who dares dispute the claim? Who dares challenge the assertion? Time and events have sanctioned it; age has but strengthened it. And to-day, holding as tenaciously the same principles of truth and justice, the party that, among the parties of this Republic, alone stands as the synonym of freedom is the Republican party. None dare gainsay it. And, among the growing multitudes in this broad land of ours, none know this better than ten millions of Afro-Americans who but for its strong arm of power might still be suffering from "Man's inhumanity to man."