brother Pike used to say, are letters that stand for the darkened
races of this continent--the American, the Mongolian and the African.
To the Christian people of America, these tribes are entrusted; for
their enlightenment and Christianization, we are responsible. The
Government at Washington can do something toward protecting these
people in their political rights; but there is very little, after all,
that can be done for any people which does not know how to assert and
maintain its own rights. Liberty can never be a gratuity, it must
always be an achievement. Peoples, as well as individuals, must work
out their own salvation. The Negro at the South is cheated out of his
political rights, simply because he does not know how to claim them;
the Indian on the plains is defrauded of his property, because he does
not know how to protect himself. No matter how favorable the laws may
be to these hapless people, they will be oppressed and impoverished
and kept in a condition of semi-slavery, unless they know how to use
the laws in their own advantage. Education, therefore, is the only
effectual remedy for their wrongs. To awaken their minds, to arouse
the energies of hope, to show them that they are made in God's image
and that they have a right to all the liberties of the laws of God, is
the only way to complete and secure their emancipation from bondage
and from barbarism.

This is the work to which the American Missionary Association calls us
all. It is our just pride as Congregationalists that through this
Association more has been done for the true enfranchisement of the
freedmen than through any other agency, and it is our duty to see that
this great work, in which we have borne so large and honorable a part,
halt not nor slacken in its energy because of our failure to keep its
treasury replenished and its faithful laborers re-enforced and
supported by our gifts and our prayers.