And now that I am speaking of motives, let me say that I cannot conceal my feeling that, with special and peculiarly appealing considerations, God is binding upon us the work for the so-called alien races of this country. Let me illustrate. Here, for example, are four millions of _Freedmen_—strange designation for the inhabitants of a Republic that has already celebrated its centennial! Suppose that a stranger to our history should ask us the meaning of it, what must be our confession? Why this, and nothing else: that the ancestors of those Freedmen, by fraud, and violence were wrested from their distant and native land; that for two centuries they were held in sheer and open bondage; that they were denied the commonest rights of humanity; bought and sold like beasts of the field; debarred from the privileges of education and true Christian instruction; that, while their toil went to build the colleges and schools and churches of the dominant race, they were left without any reward but the desolation of their bondage; that, when they piteously plead, their appeal was met with derision; that, when they respectfully protested, the protest was crushed back with blows and curses; that when they ventured to resist, the resistance was answered unto death, with lashes and bullets and the fangs of pursuing hounds; that manhood was deliberately degraded among them; womanhood was well-nigh obliterated; truthfulness was made dangerous for them, and chastity absolutely impossible; and then at last, that to keep them in such a bondage, the whole power of the National Government was pledged and put forth; that, by Constitution interpreted and special laws enacted, by military might and civic decree, by private volition and public compulsion, it came to pass that there was not one spot of safety for them in all the land over which floated the flag of their country; that, in their effort to escape from their bondage, not a single door might lawfully be opened to them, nor any hearth-stone give them shelter; but, taking the pole-star for their guide, they must flee from the Republic to the land of a king or queen.