62 prejudice and tradition which lately shrouded the most luminous truths from one end to the other of your country, no Christian has any longer a right to hesitate, no Christian church has a right to fold its hands. If the question of slavery has perchance been obscured by the fear of the social convulsions which threatened to surround emancipation, the question of the equality of races looms up clear, transparent, and evident. Among Christians, at least, we cannot conceive the possibility of doubt. The equality of races 1 It is written in the first chaptei' of Genesis. The equality of races ! It is written a second time, and in far more shining characters, in the last chapters of the Gospel. Those men for whom Christ died—is it possible for you to despise them ? Those men for whom a place is prepared by your side in heaven—have you the courage to refuse them a place by your side on earth ? Those men who believe with you, who pray with you, who love with you, those men, your equals through the heart, through the soul, through the conscience, and through the family—could you endure the thought that you had suffered them to ba banished in the South to the rank of Helots or pariahs ? I might say besides, Mr. President, those men who have fought, bravely fought under your flag—does it not belong to you, their companions in arms, to protect them, both against the maintenance of the Southern anathema, and those cowardly brutalities which should not survive the war ? XVIII. A word more before concluding. Those who were so much surprised when, at the moment of discouragement, I wrote the Uprising of a Great People, will not be less surprised to see me, at the moment of universal congratulation, show you the moral and material disasters, the degradation, in a word, which is about to burst upon you if you do not take a virile resolution from this moment, before the opening of Congress. Disasters, degradation—nonsense ? Is not peace re-established ? Is not slavery abolished ? Is not the danger of re-
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