There was not during the whole Rebellion a single negro that was not our friend. We are willing to be reconciled to our Southern brethren when they will treat our friends as men. When they will be just to the friends of this country; when they are in favor of allowing every American citizen to have his rights--then we are their friends. We are willing to trust them with the Nation when they are the friends of the Nation. We are willing to trust them with liberty when they believe in liberty. We are willing to trust them with the black man when they cease riding in the darkness of night, (those masked wretches,) to the hut of the freedman, and notwithstanding the prayers and supplications of his family, shoot him down; when they cease to consider the massacre of Hamburg as a Democratic triumph, then, I say, we will be their friends, and not before. Now, my friends, thousands of the Southern people and thousands of the Northern Democrats are afraid that the negroes are going to pass them in the race of life. And, Mr. Democrat, he will do it unless you attend to your business. The simple fact that you are white cannot save you always. You have to be industrious, honest, to cultivate a sense of justice. If you do not the colored race will pass you, as sure as you live. I am for giving every man a chance. Anybody that can pass me is welcome. I believe, my friends, that the intellectual domain of the future, as the land used to be in the State of Illinois, is open to pre-emption. The fellow that gets a fact first, that is his; that gets an idea first, that is his. Every round in the ladder of fame, from the one that touches the ground to the last one that leans against the shining summit of human ambition, belongs to the foot that gets upon it first. Mr. Democrat, (I point down because they are nearly all on the first round of the ladder) if you can not climb, stand one side and let the deserving negro pass. I must tell you one thing. I have told it so much, and you have all heard it fifty times, but I am going to tell it again because I like it. Suppose there was a great horse race here to-day, free to every horse in the world, and to all the mules, and all the scrubs* and all the donkeys. At the tap of the drum they come to the line, and the judges say "it is a go." Let me ask you, what does the blooded horse, rushing ahead, with nostrils distended, drinking in the breath of his own swiftness, with his mane flying like a banner of victory, with his veins standing out all over him, as if a network of life had been cast upon him--with his thin neck, his high withers, his tremulous flanks--what does he care how many mules and donkeys run on that track? But the Democratic scrub, with his chuckle-head and lop-ears, with his tail full of cockle-burrs, jumping high and short, and digging in the ground when he feels the breath of the coming mule on his cockle-burr tail, he is the chap that jumps the track and says, "I am down on mule equality."