Correspondents are specially requested to place at the head of each letter the name of their Post Office, and the County and State in which it is located. THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY. * * * * * VOL. XXXII. APRIL, 1878. No. 4. * * * * * _American Missionary Association._ * * * * * THE WARDS OF THE ALMIGHTY. The notable event connected with the formal presentation of Mr. Carpenter’s picture “Signing the Emancipation Proclamation,” to the United States, was the speech of the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens. It was a graceful and significant act, when the former Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy spoke such words of hearty good-will at the reception of this commemoration of its death-blow. Mr. Stephens claims for the South a share of the honor of emancipating the slaves, since “the freedom of that race was never finally consummated, and could not be, until the Southern States sanctioned the Thirteenth Amendment. They accepted the proposition for emancipation by a voluntary uncontrolled” adoption of it. Of the institution of slavery, as previously existing, he said: “If it were not the best relation for the happiness and welfare of both races—morally, physically, intellectually and politically—it was wrong and ought to have been abolished. This I said of it years before secession, and I repeat it still. But, as I have said, this is no time now to discuss those questions. “I have seen something of the world, and traveled somewhat, and I have never yet found on earth a paradise. The Southern States are no exception. Wherever I have been, I have been ready to exclaim with Burns: “‘But, oh! what crowds in every land Are wretched and forlorn! * * * * * Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn.’ “It was so at the South. It was so at the North. It is so yet. It is so in every part of the world that I have seen.” In regard to the future relation of the races in this land, Mr. Stephens speaks cautiously, and not unwisely. With many of the best men of the South, he sees here a problem not easily to be solved, and an outcome not lightly to be prophesied. He denies that any Southern men desire a change back to the old relation of master and slave. We quote again: