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THE GREATEST APOSTLE OF HUMAN LIBERTY

(A Speech of Introduction)*

COL. JOHN R. MARSHALL

JONE of the many exercises held to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the world's greatest citizen, is more significant and fitting than the one we are about to begin. I say this: No race of people within the borders of our common country can appreciate so much the greatest apostle of human liberty as can the negro race. The name of Abraham Lincoln will live always, wherever the cause of liberty and freedom is revered. His name was near and dear to the hearts of every negro in the darkest and most perilous hour of the nation. The time was when our faith in him was strained and taxed to the utmost; but it never failed, for he felt, in spite of the dark clouds that hovered around and about us, that the hour and the instrument of our redemption had met in the person of Abraham Lincoln.

And so we are here to express our gratitude for the vast preeminent services rendered to our race and to the nation by that great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.

On behalf of the Lincoln Memorial Centennial Committee appointed by the Mayor of our city, I take great pleasure in introducing as the chairman of the evening, Dr. A. J. Carey.

* Delivered before the meeting of the Eighth Infantry (Colored), and the Colored Citizens' Committee.

THE UNFINISHED TASK

(A Speech of Introduction)*

REV. A. J. CAREY

NE hundred years ago to-day the wilds of Kentucky

ON

gave to America an American, rugged as his surroundings in all save his kindliness of spirit, unprepossessing in all save his beauty of soul. The world saw him while he lived, as through a glass, darkly. To-day the vision becomes more distinct, although not altogether clear.

The heroic effort made this week by old America in memory, by new America in prophecy, to find itself, to know itself, is worthy of so noble an occasion. From church, from schoolhouse, from college, and from public hall one and the same strain floats forth: "Lincoln, Liberty, and Love." The quiet of the private home, the noises of the busy mart, are lost in one great anthem, one mighty pæan of praise.

That marvel of the twentieth century, the daily press, has labored overtime that none may be ignorant, that even the humblest may know and receive inspiration from Lincoln's life and times. The minor strain, the note of regret, is, that the life then just beginning should have been laid so untimely as a sacrifice on its country's altar, leaving its task unfinished.

The unfinished task, who will assume it? The task of loving the nation-not the sections simply but the nationinto one; the task of throwing himself with God, and counting a majority on the side of the oppressed; the task of doing the right as God gives him to see the right.

If the spirit world has interest in this material world, how depressed must be the spirit of Lincoln at the backward swinging of the pendulum, at the retreat of American senti

* Delivered before the meeting of the Eighth Infantry (Colored), and the Colored Citizens' Committee.

ment from the glory-crowned heights of freedom for all, to the valley of restriction and class legislation. The call of the sixties was for a man of heroic mould, a man who had been "driven many times to his knees by the overwhelming conviction that he had nowhere else to go." Such was the call and Lincoln was its answer.

The call in this, the morning of the twentieth century, is for a character no less true, a soul no less courageous, a spirit no less reliant upon its God-another man who will rise up and say, "The nation cannot live on injustice." Whence next will come the answer? for come it will and come it must. The country still lives upon Lincoln's ideals; still grows because of his sacrifices; and still marches in his spirit to meet and master the problems of to-day, whether social, industrial, or racial.

In him we have found the sources of abiding, conquering character. With him we have seen that to "allow all the governed an equal voice in the government-that, and that alone is self-government." With him we have seen that "in giving freedom to the slave"-physical freedom, intellectual freedom, political freedom-we assure freedom to the free.

Nothing stamped with the Divine image was sent into the world to be trodden on, to be degraded and imbruted by his fellows, and he who denies to the weakest of mankind the right, the privilege, the opportunity of rising to his greatest possibilities, not only displays his own cowardice and weakness but robs posterity of a legacy which a life enriched and glorified might bequeath to coming generations.

It is not Lincoln, the lawyer, nor Lincoln the politician, nor even Lincoln the statesman that will survive; but Abraham Lincoln, the friend of the oppressed, the champion of human rights, the great emancipator. Of him we speak and in his memory are we gathered, and with him we are dedicating ourselves to the great task remaining before us, the task remaining before this nation, the cherished hope of his life, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

THE LIBERATION OF THE NEGRO *

REV. J. W. E. BOWEN

VEN the schoolboy of to-day may easily interest an audience upon any phase of the life and deeds of Abraham Lincoln. It is not a difficult task, therefore, to gain attention, for the life of the man is full, his deeds are permanent, and his character is far-reaching in the superb and dominating elements that are appreciated by all mankind. I take it that the best thing to do on this occasion is to call your attention to some of the fundamental ideas that crystallized into deeds of the immortal Lincoln.

The name of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation should be spoken with one breath. It is impossible to separate them. But there is more to the Emancipation Proclamation in its essence and truth than the mere removing of the shackles of the slave, and the freeing of man from between the plough handles to enter the battle of life. Larger results were contemplated by Lincoln than the liberation of dumb driven cattle from between the plough handles of the South. Mightier results were before him than merely to see four millions of ignorant and stupid blacks set free upon this American continent. His thought reached beyond the liberation of hand and foot. He who knocks the manacles from the wrists of the slave has done a great thing; but that is only the beginning of the work of emancipation. Utter, complete emancipation, not only of hand and foot, but of mind and heart, and a complete amalgamation into the body politic as a citizen of the mighty Republic, is the ultimate hope and the larger result to be

* An address delivered before the meeting of the Eighth Infantry (Colored), and the Colored Citizens' Committee.

their victims out of the skulls of the dead. How far back can you go, sir?" Then the young man rose, his eye as the wing of the raven under the blaze of the sun, and shouted back to them and said, "Gentlemen, you are descendants; I am an ancestor. Your history has been written; I am going to write one. You have been made; I am going to make somebody!"

I look about me upon this platform and I see representatives of the mighty race that lived in the days when the great Irish bishop drove the snakes out of Ireland. I see here at my left, and at my right, and just behind me, and all through the audience, representatives of that mighty yeomanry that stood in the presence of the weakling King John, and compelled him to sign "Magna Charta," to assure the rights of the people of England. I look at others. Who are these men? These are the descendants of the men who followed in the wake of the mighty Gustavus, who, singing the battle hymn of Martin Luther, bit the dust and died for the liberties of his people. These men had ancestors who were kings and queens, who were the writers and wreckers of constitutions and of governments; ancestors who wrote books of law and laid the foundations of nations; ancestors who were mighty with pen and sword, who dominated the forces of sky and earth. These white men who sit here in the pride of American citizenship are the descendants of an illustrious ancestry. But who am I? Where did I come from?

I dare not step back one foot lest I fall into the pit from which God Almighty, through Abraham Lincoln, digged me. Even now, with the memory of my ancestors illuminating my brain, I can hear the pathetic wail of the bloodhound that tracked them through the South. I have no kings and prophets back of me. No queens illuminate the firmament of my history. No men who wrote constitutions and laid the foundations of a government are back of me.

Who am I? The blue-eyed Saxon had his history written; the black-eyed Hamite will write his. He has been made; I am going to make somebody. "He is a descendant; I am an ancestor!" It is my business since the Proclamation has

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