On the 1st of January, 1863, the negro was like a newly-built ship launched upon the waters without mast, sail or rudder. Pleased with liberty, he thought his happiness complete; but a few months’ experience taught him better. When the ballot was denied, when he could not—nay, more, when he cannot—claim as a right or privilege the comforts of travel; when deeply-rooted prejudice on account of his color and previous condition of servitude confronted him at every turn, he soon found that he had not reached the full stature of an American citizen, but was still in his infancy. And the question that presents itself to your minds, and to the friends of the negro and to ours, the orphaned recipients of your generosity, is, Has the negro grown any? has he made any noticeable advancement? Or is he where freedom found him and where slavery left him? January, 1863, found the negro penniless, ignorant, a homeless wanderer, his chief object to be in General Sherman’s army, or if not in it, in the wake of it; but he is now settled, fixed, and by industry and by perseverance he has purchased homes, and he and his children, through the generous aid of friends, have received some education. The land that he once sowed in slavish fear and reaped with trembling, he now sows in joy and gathers with the gladsome shout of a free and jubilant harvester. In fact, the material, as well as the intellectual and moral progress of the negro has surprised his best friends. He has gone forth without possessing the tattered garments that he wore, without a foot of soil on which to tread, and he has purchased those homes. And not only has he purchased them, but he has carried into them those things which make home what it is—the comforts of home. It is nothing strange to go into a Southern home and see a carpet on the floor. If it is not on all of it, it will be a big piece in the middle. And if you don’t find it all the way up-stairs, you will find a little as you step on the first step. That shows a disposition to do something that is elevating. And then the fact that they have purchased these homes is something. I have seen it repeated in the newspapers of the North—and I regret to say by men who do not know the negro—that he is a lazy, shiftless fellow. Well, they do not go down South, as we term it, and go into the negroes’ houses. They do not go into his colleges and universities and high schools, but they ride around by the station, they see a few at the depot—a lot of lazy negroes, as you find a lot of lazy white men under similar circumstances. They judge us unfairly. No man is judged by the worst, but by the best. Did you want Lord Chief Justice Coleridge to form an opinion of America by the men that he met by accident or saw in the slums of New York—“lazy” men, that he saw lounging around the corners of the streets? No; you wanted him to judge you by your best, and you put your best forward. Now, what we ask for the negro is that he be judged by his