"And for what are all these providences? For nothing? He who thinks so must be blinded--must be demented. In these facts are wound up a most distinct significance, and with them are connected most clear and emphatic obligations and responsibilities. The clear-minded and thoughtful colored men of America must mark the significance of these facts, and begin to feel their weight. For more than two centuries we have been working our way from the deep and dire degradation into which slavery had plunged us. We have made considerable headway. By the vigorous use of the opportunities of our partial freedom we have been enabled, with the divine blessing, to reach a position of respectability and character. We have pressed somewhat into the golden avenues of science, intelligence, and learning. We have made impressions there; and some few of our footprints have we left behind. The mild light of religion has illumined our pathway, and superstition and error have fled apace. The greatest paradoxes are evinced by us. Amid the decay of nations, a rekindled light starts up in us. Burdens under which others expire seem to have lost their influence upon us; and while _they_ are 'driven to the wall,' destruction keeps far from _us_ its blasting hand. We live in the region of death, yet seem hardly mortal. We cling to life in the midst of all reverses; and our nerveful grasp thereon cannot easily be relaxed. History reverses its mandates in our behalf: our dotage is in the past. 'Time writes not its wrinkles on our brow;' our juvenescence is in the future. All this, and the kindly nature which is acknowledgedly ours,--with gifts of freedom vouchsafed us by the Almighty in this land, in part, and in the West Indies; with the intellectual desire every where manifesting itself, and the exceeding interest exhibited for Africa by her own children, and by the Christian nations of the world, are indications from which we may not gather a trivial meaning, nor a narrow significance. "The teaching of God in all these things is, undoubtedly, that ours is a great destiny, and that we should open our eyes to it. God is telling us all that, whereas the past has been dark, grim, and repulsive, the future shall be glorious; that the horrid traffic shall yet be entirely stopped; that the whips and brands, the shackles and fetters, of slavery shall be cast down to oblivion; that the shades of ignorance and superstition that have so long settled down upon the mind of Africa shall be dispelled; and that all her sons on her own broad continent, in the Western Isles, and in this Republic, shall yet stand erect beneath the heavens, 'with freedom chartered on their manly brows;' their bosoms swelling with its noblest raptures--treading the face of earth in the links of brotherhood and equality."