LADIES, GENTLEMEN AND FRIENDS: As I am a stranger among you and a sojourner, you will, I hope, allow me a word about myself by way of

My second thought germane to this occasion, and which must have some interest for us all, very naturally relates to the noted place where we now happen to be assembled. Since the great and terrible battle with which its name is associated and which has now passed into history as the birth of many battles, no event has occured here, so important in its character and influence, and so every way significant, as the event which we have this day met to inaugurate and celebrate. To found an educational institution for any people is worthy of notice, but to found a school, in which to instruct, improve and develop all that is noblest and best in the souls of a deeply wronged and long neglected people, is especially noteworthy. This spot once the scene of fratricidal war, and the witness of its innumberable and indescribable horrors, is, we hope, hereafter to be the scene of brotherly kindness, charity and peace. We are to witness here, a display of elements of advanced civilization and good citizenship. It is to be a place where the children of a once enslaved people may realize the blessings of

No spot on the soil of Virginia could have been more fitly chosen for planting this school, than on this historic battlefield. It has not only the high advantage of forming an instructive contrast and illustrating the compensation possible to mankind, by patiently awaiting the quiet
operation of time and events, but suggests the battle to be waged against ignorance and vice. Thirty years ago when Federal and Confederate armies met here in deadly conflict over the question of the perpetual enslavement of the Negro, who would or could have dreamed that in a single generation, such changes would be wrought in the minds of men that a school would be founded here for the mental, moral and industrial education of the children of this same people whose enslavement was sought even with the sword? Who would have imagined that Virginia, after the agony of war, in a time so short, would become so enlightened and so liberal as to be willing and even pleased to welcome here, upon her sacred soil, a school for the children of her former slaves? Thirty years ago neither poet, priest nor prophet could have foretold the vast and wonderful changes which have taken place in the opinions and sentiments of the American people on this subject since the war. The North has changed and the South has changed, and we have all changed, and all changed for the better. Otherwise, we should not be here today engaged in the business of establishing this Institution.

The liberality on the part of the people of Virginia, a typical State of the South, which has encouraged and justified the founding of this Industrial School, not only within her borders, but here on the very first great battlefield between the two great sections of our Union, is as much a cause of amazement, satisfaction and joy, as is the readiness with which the good people of the North have responded to the call for pecuniary aid and thus made this enterprise successful. Both circumstances are to day causes of joy and congratulation. They show that the colored man need not despair that he has friends in both sections of the Republic. In view of this school and of the changes in public sentiment which it indicates, we may well exclaim with Milton, "Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than War!"

When first invited to speak a few words in celebration of the founding of this Industrial School, I was disposed to decline the honor, in favor of

The idea at the bottom of this Institution is rapidly gaining ground everywhere. Industrial education is with me, however, no new idea. Nearly forty years ago I was its advocate; and at that time I held it to be the chief want of the free colored people of the North. I was then editor of the "North Star" a newspaper printed in Rochester, N.Y. I saw then, that the free negro of the North, with everything great expected of him, but with no means at hand to meet such expectations, could not hope to rise while he was excluded from all profitable employments. He was free by law, but denied the chief advantages of freedom: he was indeed but nominally free; he was not compelled to call any man his master, and no one could call him, but he was still in fact a slave, a slave to society and could only be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. It was at that day easier to get a black boy into a lawyer's office to study law, or into a doctor's office to study medicine, than it was to get him into a carpenter's shop to push a plane, or into a blacksmith's shop to hammer iron.

While I have no sympathy with those who affect to despise labor, even the humblest forms of it, and hold that whatever is needed to be done, it is

Exclusive service or exclusive mastery is not good for the moral or mental health of any class. Pride and insolence will certainly be developed in the one class and weakness and servility in the other. The colored people to be respected must furnish their due proportion to each class. They must not be all masters or all servants. They must command as well as be commanded. However much I may regret that it was my lot to have been a slave, I shall never regret that I was once a common laborer; a servant, if you please so to term it. But I felt myself as much a man then as I feel myself a man now; for I had an ambition above my calling and I was determined then, as I have been ever since, to use every means in my power

My philosophy of work is, that a man is worked upon by that upon which he works. Some work requires more muscle than it does mind. That work which requires the most thought, skill and ingenuity will receive the highest commendation and will otherwise do most for the worker. Things which can be done simply with the exertion of muscle and with little or no exertion of the intellect will develop the muscle, but dwarf the mind.

Long ago it was asked, "How can he get wisdom who holdeth the plow and whose talk is of oxen."

The school which we are about to establish here is, if I understand its object, intended to teach the colored youth who shall avail themselves of it, the use of both mind and body. It is to educate the hand as well as the brain; to teach men to work as well as to think, and to think as well as to work. It is to teach them to join thought with work, and thus to get the very best results of both thought and work. In my opinion there is no useful thing that a man can do that can not be better done by an educated man than by an uneducated man.

In the old slave times colored people were expected to work without thinking. They were commanded to do as they were told. They were to be hands; only hands, not head. Thought was the prerogative only of the master. Obedience was the duty of the slave. I in my innocence once told my old master that I thought a certain way of doing some work I had in hand the best way to do it. He promptly demanded, "Who gave you a right to think?" I might have answered in the language of Robert Burns,

"Were I designed your lordling's slave, By Nature's law designed, Why was an independent thought E'er placed in my mind?"

But I had not then read Robert Burns. Burns had high ideas of the dignity of simple manhood. In respect of the dignity of man we may well exclaim with the great Shakespeare concerning him: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world; the paragon of animals!" Yet, if man

In his natural condition, however, man is only potentially great. As a mere physical being he does not take high rank, even among the beasts of the field. He is not so fleet as a horse or a hound or so strong as an ox or a mule. His true dignity is not to be sought in his arms or in his legs, but in his head. Here is the seat and source of all that is of especially great or practical importance in him. There is no fire in the flint and steel, but it is friction that causes it to flash, flame and burn and give light where all else may be darkness. There is music in the violin, but the touch of the master is needed to fill the air and the soul with the concord of sweet sounds. There is power in the human mind, but education is needed for its development. As man is the highest on earth it follows that the vocation of the scholar is among the highest known to man. It is to teach and induce man's potential and latent greatness. It is to discover and develop the noblest, highest and best that is in him. In view of this fact no man whose business it is to teach should ever allow himself to feel that his mission is mean, inferior or circumscribed. In my estimation neither politics nor religion present to us a calling higher than this primary business of unfolding and strengthening the powers of the human soul. It is a permanent vocation. Some men know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it. It is a want that begins with the beginning of human existence, and continues through-all the journey of human life. Of all the creatures that live and move and have their being on this green earth, man at his birth is the most helpless and the most in need of instruction. He does not even know how to seek his food. His little life is menaced on every hand. The very elements conspire against him. The cattle upon a thousand hills; the wolves and bears of the forest; all come into the world better equipped for life than does man. From first to last his existence depends upon instruction.

Yet this little helpless weakling, whose life can be put out as we put out the flame of a candle, with a breath, is the lord of creation, though in his beginning he is only potentially this lord, with education he is the commander of armies; the builder of cities; the tamer of wild beasts; the navigator of unknown seas, the discoverer of unknown islands, capes and continents, and the founder of great empires and capable of limitless civilization.

But if man is without education although with all his latent possibility attaching to him he is, as I have said, but a pitiable object; a giant in body but a pigmy in intellect, and at best but half a man. Without education he lives within the narrow, dark and grimy walls of ignorance. He is a poor prisoner without hope. The little light that he gets comes to him as through dark corridors and grated windows. The sights and sounds that reach him, so significant and full of meaning to the well trained mind, are to him of dim and shadowy importance. He sees, but does not perceive. He hears, but does not understand. The silent and majestic heavens fretted with stars, so inspiring and uplifting, so sublime and glorious to the souls of other men, bear no message to him. They suggest to him no idea of the wonderful world in which we live, or of the harmony of this great universe, and hence, impart to him no happiness.

Education, on the other hand, means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free. To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature. It is easy to deny them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of happiness and to defeat the very end of their being. They can neither honor themselves nor their Creator. Than this, no greater wrong can be inflicted; and, on the other hand, no greater benefit can be bestowed upon a long benighted people, than giving to them, as we are here earnestly this day endeavoring to do, the means of an education. It is aimed to make them skilled workmen, useful mechanics, workers in wood, leather, tin and iron.

It is sometimes said that we have done enough for the Negro; that we have given him his liberty and we should now let him do for himself. This sounds well but that is all. I do not undervalue freedom from chattel slavery. It was a great and glorious triumph of justice and humanity; it was the fruit of long years of labor, agitation and sacrifice. But let us look at his emancipation and see where it left the Negro, and we shall see how far it falls short of the plainest demands of justice and of what we owe the Negro.

To find an adequate measure of compensation for any wrong, we must first ascertain the nature and extent of the wrong itself. The mere act of enslaving the Negro was not the only wrong done him, nor were the labors and stripes imposed upon him, though heavy and, grievous to bear, the sum of his wrongs. These were indeed terrible enough; but deeper down, and more terrible still, were the mental and moral wrongs which enter into his claim for a slight measure of compensation. For two hundred and forty years the light of letters was denied him, and the gates of knowledge were closed against him.

He was driven from time to eternity in the darkest ignorance, herded with the beasts of the field; without marriage, without family, without school, and without any moral training, other than that which came by the slave drivers lash. People who live now, and talk of doing too much for the Negro, think nothing of these things, and those who know them, seem to desire to forget them, especially when they are made the basis of a claim for a larger measure of justice to the Negro. They forget that for these terrible wrongs there is, in truth, no redress and no adequate compensation. The enslaved and battered millions have come, suffered, died and gone with all their moral and physical wounds into Eternity. To them no recompense can be made. If the American people could put a school house in every valley; a church on every hill top in the South and supply them with a teacher and preacher respectively and welcome the descendants of the former slaves to all the moral and intellectual benefits of the one and the other, without money and without price, such a sacrifice would not compensate their children for the terrible wrong done to their fathers and mothers, by their enslavement and enforced degradation.

I have another complaint. It is said that the people of the South have made but little progress since their emancipation. This complaint is not only groundless, but adds insult to injury. Under the whole Heavens there never was a people liberated from bondage under conditions less favorable to the successful beginning of a new and free mode of life, than were the Freedmen of the South. Criminals, guilty of heinous crimes against the State and society, are let go free on more generous conditions than our slaves were.

The despotic Government of Russia was more liberal and humane to its emancipated slaves than our Republic was to ours. Each head of a family of slaves in Russia was given three acres of land and necessary farming implements with which to begin life. But our slaves were turned loose without anything-naked to the elements.

As one of the number of enslaved, I am none the less disposed to observe and note with pleasure and gratitude every effort our white friends and brothers are making to remedy the evils wrought by the long years of slavery and its concomitants. And in such wise I rejoice in the effort made here today.

I have a word now upon another subject, and what I have to say may be more useful than palatable. That subject is the talk now so generally

Since emancipation we hear much said of our modern colored leaders in commendation of race pride, race love, race effort, race superiority, race men and the like. One man is praised for being a race man and another is condemned for not being a race man. In all this talk of race, the motive may be good, but the method is bad. It is an effort to cast out Satan by Beelzebub. The evils which are now crushing the Negro to earth have their root and sap, their force and mainspring, in this narrow spirit of race and color and the Negro has no more right to excuse or to foster it than men of any other race. I recognize and adopt no such narrow basis for my thoughts, feelings, or motives of action. I would place myself and I would place you, my young friends, upon grounds vastly higher and broader than any founded upon race or color. Neither law, learning, nor religion is addressed to any man's color or race. Science, education, the word of God, and all the virtues known among men, are recommended to us not as races but as men. We are not recommended to love or hate any particular variety of the human family more than any other. Not as Ethiopians, not as Caucasians, not as Mongolians, not as Afro-Americans, or Anglo-Americans are we addressed but as men. God and nature speak to our manhood and manhood alone. Here all ideas of duty and moral obligation are predicated. We are accountable only as men. In the language of the Scripture, we are called upon to quit ourselves like men. To those who are everlastingly prating about race men, I have to say: Gentlemen, you reflect upon your best friends. It was not the race or the color of the Negro that won for him

While slavery lasted you know we could seldom get ourselves recognized in any form of law or language as men. Our old masters were remarkably shy of recognizing our manhood even in words written or spoken. They called a man with a head as white as mine, a boy. The old advertisements for runaways were carefully worded: "Runaway, my boy Tom, Jim or Harry," never, my man.

Hence, at the risk of being deemed deficient in the quality of love and loyalty to race and color, I confess that in my advocacy of the colored man's cause, whether in the name of education or freedom, I have had more to say of manhood and of what is comprehended in manhood and in womanhood, than of the mere accident of race and color; and if this is disloyalty to race and color, I am guilty. I insist upon it that the lesson which colored people, not less than white people ought now to learn is, that there is no moral or intellectual quality in the color of a man's cuticle; that color in itself is neither good nor bad; that to be black or white, is neither a proper source of pride nor shame. I go further and declare that no man's devotion to the cause of justice, liberty, and humanity is to be weighed, measured and determined by his color or race. We should never forget that the ablest and most eloquent voices ever raised in behalf of the black man's cause, were the voices of white men. Not for the race, not for color, but for man and manhood alone they labored, fought and died. Neither Phillips, nor Sumner, nor Garrison, nor John Brown, nor Gerrit Smith was a black man. They were white men, and yet no black men were ever truer to the black man's cause than these and other men like them. They saw in the slave, manhood, brotherhood, and womanhood outraged neglected and degraded and their own noble manhood, not their racehood, revolted at the offense. They placed the emphasis where it belonged. Not on the mint annis and cummin of color and race, but upon manhood, the weightier matters of the law.

Thus compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses, I can easily afford to be reproached and denounced for standing in defense of this principle against all comers. My position is, that it is better to regard ourselves as a part of the whole than as the whole of a part. It is better to be a member of the great human family, than a member of any particular variety of the human family. In regard to men as in regard to things, the whole is more than a part. Away then with the nonsense that a man must be black to be true to the rights of black men. I put my foot upon the effort to draw lines between white and black or between blacks and so-called Afro-Americans, or race line in the domain of liberty. Whoever is for equal rights, for equal education, for equal opportunities, for all men of whatever race or color, I hail him as a "countryman, clansman, kinsman and brother beloved."

I must not further occupy your time except to answer briefly the inquiry, "What of the night?" You young people have a right to ask me what the future has in store for you and the people with whom you are classed. I have been a watchman on your walls more than fifty years, so long that you think I ought to know what the future will bring to pass and to discern for you the signs of the times. You want to know whether the hour is one of hope or despair. I have no time to answer this solemn inquiry at length or as it deserves, and will content myself with giving you the assurance of my belief. I think the situation is serious but it is not hopeless. On the contrary, there are many encouraging signs in the moral skies. I have seen many dark hours and have yet never despaired of the colored man's future. There is no time in our history that I would prefer to the present. Go back to the annexation of Texas, the fugitive slave law times, and the border war in Kansas. The existence of this Industrial School of Manassas, is a triumphant rebuke to the cry of despair now heard in some quarters. Nor does it stand alone. It is a type of such institutions in nearly all of the Southern States. Schools and colleges for colored youth are multiplying all over the land. Hampton, Tuskegee, Cappahosic, are brilliant examples. The light of education is shedding its beams more brightly and more effectively upon the colored people of the South, than it ever did in the case of any

But it is said that we are now being greatly persecuted. I know it. I admit it. I deplore it. I denounce it. Attempts are being made to set aside the amendments of the Constitution: to wrest from us the elective franchise; to exclude us from respectable railroad cars; to draw the color line against us in religious organizations; to exclude us from hotels and make us a proscribed class. I know it all, and yet I see in it all a convincing evidence of our progress and the promise of a brighter future. The resistance we now meet is the proof of our progress. We are not the only people who have been persecuted.

The resistance is not to the colored man as a slave, a servant, or a menial, or a person. It is aimed at the Negro as a gentleman, a successful man, as a scholar. The Negro in ignorance and in rags meets no resistance. He is rather liked than otherwise. He is thought to be in his place. It is only when he acquires education, property, popularity and influence, only when he attempts to rise above his ancient level, when he was numbered with the beast of the field, and aspires to be a man and a MAN AMONG MEN, that he invites repression. Even in the laws of the South, excluding him from the railroad cars and other places, care is taken to allow him to ride as a servant, a valet, or a porter. He may make a bed, but must not sleep in it. He may handle bread, but must not eat it. It is not the Negro, but the quality of the Negro that disturbs popular prejudice. It is his character not his personality which makes him an offense or otherwise. In one quality he is smiled upon as a serviceable animal. In the other he is scorned as an upstart entirely out of his place and is made to take a back seat. I am not much disturbed by this for the same resistance in kind, though not in degree, has to be met by white men and white women who rise from lowly conditions. The successful and opulent esteem them as upstarts. A lady as elegant and opulent as Mrs. Potter Palmer, of Chicago, had to submit to this test. She

A ship at anchor, with halliards broken, sails mildewed, hull empty, her bottom covered with sea-weed and barnacles, meets no resistance. She lies perfectly still. But when she spreads her canvas to the breeze and sets out on her voyage, turns prow to the open sea, the higher shall be her speed, the greater shall be her resistance. And so it is with the colored man. He meets with resistance now because more than ever he is fitting himself for a higher life. He is shedding the old rags of slavery and putting on the apparel of freedom.

In conclusion, my dear young friends, be not discouraged. Accept the inspiration of hope. Imitate the example of the brave mariner who, amid clouds and darkness, amid hail, rain and storm bolts, battles his way against all that the sea opposes to his progress, and you will reach the goal of your noble ambition in safety.