"But your duties commence with your liberties. Remember that you are to be obedient, faithful, true, and loyal to the country forevermore. [Cheers, and cries of 'Yes!' 'Yes!' 'Yes!'] Remember that you are to educate your children; that you are to improve their condition; that you are to make a brighter future for _them_ than the past has been to _you_. Remember that you are to be industrious. Freedom does not mean that you are not to work. It means that when you do work you shall have pay for it, to carry home to your wives and the children of your love. Liberty means the liberty to work for yourselves, to have the fruits of your labor, to better your own condition, and improve the condition of your children. I want every man and woman to understand that every neglect of duty, every failure to be industrious, to be economical, to support yourselves, to take care of your families, to secure the education of your children, will be put in the faces of your friends as a reproach. Your old masters will point you out and say to us, 'We told you so.' For more than thirty years we have said that you were fit for liberty. We have maintained it amid obloquy and reproach. For maintaining this doctrine in the halls of Congress our names have been made a by-word. The great lesson for you in the future is to prove that we were right; to prove that you were worthy of liberty. We simply ask you, in the name of your friends, in the name of our country, to show by your good conduct, and by efforts to improve your condition, that you were worthy of freedom; to prove to all the world, even to your old masters and mistresses, that it was a sin against God to hold you in Slavery, and that you are worthy to have your names enrolled among the freemen of the United States of America. [Great cheering.] "We want you to respect yourselves; to walk erect, with the consciousness that you are free men. Be humane and kind to each other, always serving each other when you can. Be courteous and gentlemanly to everybody on earth, black and white, but cringe to nobody. "You have helped us to fight our battles; you have stood by the old flag; you have given us your prayers; and you have had the desire of your hearts fulfilled. The cause of freedom has triumphed; and in our triumph we want all to stand up and rejoice together." EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH BY HON. JUDGE KELLY TO THE COLORED PEOPLE IN CHARLESTON, S. C., APRIL, 1865.