FELLOW CITIZENS: At that period to which our distinguished chairman has just referred at the close of the late civil war there were presented to this nation a number of great questions, appalling by their magnitude and by the dangers of a wrong decision. Among these I think one was in the hearts of all thinking men foremost: What shall be done with these millions formerly chattels, now citizens, the wards of the nation, the wards of humanity? Two answers were given to that question. Two paths were open to the triumphant nation. The first path laid out before us by many was simply confiscation. It was said: Don’t in Heaven’s name give to this country a great class of agricultural laborers divorced from the soil, with no property in the land upon which they stand, for if you do this you will but have escaped from the black sea of bondage into the red sea of pauperism and of socialism. We were told that right favored such a course. It was declared that these freedmen had a right to the soil which for ages had obtained its only value from the unpaid labor of themselves and of their forefathers for many generations. We were also told that experience favored such a course. We were pointed to Russia, where by the ukase of the despot a vast body of serfs had been set free, and had been endowed from the lands of their former masters. But, thank God, nobler counsels prevailed. The better instincts of the Anglo-Saxon race predominated. May I not say that the rising, the reviving spirit of brotherhood between North and South averted such a catastrophe. Nay, may I not go farther and still more truthfully say that that same hand of the Almighty, which every reverent and thoughtful student of history sees displayed so clearly in the history of our nation from first to last, was never more evident than when we avoided this path to new and deeper wells of bitterness. But on the other hand there was pointed out another path—a path chosen by devoted women, by earnest men, and that path was simply education. It led us at first, no doubt, through thickets of dislike; it led over chasms of hatred; nay, still worse, it led through vast deserts of indifference—but at last it became better and broader. It became better footing; it became more and more paved with the noble deeds of self-sacrificing men and women. It became more and more shaded by noble growths of human self-sacrifice until all could see it as the appointed highway and a better and nobler future for the whole nation.