About ten days before the 18th of June, 1861, Judge Hoar called at my office and invited me to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge on the 18th of the month. Although I had but little time for preparation, I accepted the invitation upon the understanding, or rather upon his request, that I was to deal with the questions then agitating the country. Among my hearers was the venerable Josiah Quincy, formerly President of the College. My address was so radical that the timid condemned it, and even Republican papers deprecated the violence of my language--they then living in the delusion that concessions, mild words and attitudes of humility could save the Union. Mr. Quincy was not of those. He gave to my address unqualified support, and I had no doubt that the majority of my audience sympathized with my views. There were, however, copperheads, and peace-men at any price, and gradually there appeared a more troublesome class of men who professed to be for the prosecution of the war, but criticized and condemned all the means employed. They were the hypocrites in politics--a class of men who affect virtue, and who tolerate and protect vice in government. My address was called "The Conspiracy--Its Purpose and Power," and as far as I know, it was the first time that emancipation was demanded publicly, as a means of ending the war and saving the nation. The demand was made in a qualified form, but I renewed it in the December following in an address that I delivered before the Emancipation League. This address gave rise to similar or even to severer criticisms from the same classes. They were never a majority in Massachusetts, but they had sufficient power to impair the strength of the state, and in 1862 under the style of the People's Party, they endangered the election of Governor Andrew. These criticisms made no impression upon me, for my confidence was unbounded that emancipation was inevitable and I was willing to wait for an improved public opinion. I quote a portion of my remarks at Cambridge, which gave rise to criticism in some quarters, and provoked hostility among those whose sympathies were with the South: "The settlers at Jamestown and Plymouth did not merely found towns or counties or colonies, or States even; they also founded a great nation, and upon the idea of its unity. "Their colonial charters extended from sea to sea. Their origin, their language, their laws, their civilization, their ideas, and now their history, constitute us one nation. In the geological structure of this continent, Nature seems to have prepared it for the occupation of a single people. I cannot doubt, then, that continental unity is the great, the supreme law of our public life.