needed here, and where a race is needed, there, in this age of the
world, it will abide. There is work to be done; they can do it,
they have done it; there is no one else at present to take their
place, and so a power above wishes, prejudice, or argument, holds
them here--the power of an economic necessity.

The colored race is here, here for a long time it will remain; it
will not--the events bewildering us by their rapid march all point
one way--it will not remain in slavery; it will and must by-and-by
be free. We, as an American people, must accept this double truth
with all its difficulties and perplexities; we must like men,
in God's fear and with many a cry for his help, bravely deal with
it. We need not now go back and stand sighing over the past, and
mourning that we did not a century ago meet it and escape the mighty
work and sorrow of to-day; we cannot put it away any longer; the
great questions rise up before us with a menace upon their brow;
they demand and they will have an answer now to-day. No scheme of
deportation or colonization shall open any easy door of escape; let
no man console himself that the question of emancipation is to be
solved by any such short and simple process; here on this continent,
within the borders of these States, slavery has done its work, and
just here freedom is to have her greatest and most glorious triumph.
This American State has given some examples to history, it has
given some demonstrations of the power of free institutions for the
white, it is giving to-day its most memorable, and is it too much
to hope that it will yet give to the world a more glorious, because
more difficult, demonstration of the same power in the black race?
What if it should remain, for it, after having completed its work
for the one, it should crown it in the other, by lifting it from
deepest slavery, and by self-sacrifice and toil make it a blessing