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APPENDIX.

ORATION BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, DELIVERED ON THE
OCCASION OF THE UNVEILING OF THE FREEDMEN'S
MONUMENT, IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, IN LINCOLN
PARK, WASHINGTON. D. C., APRIL 14, 1876.

Friends and fellow citizens:

I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has
caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have to-day. This
occasion is in some respects remarkable. Wise and thoughtful men of our
race, who shall come after us, and study the lesson of our history in the
United States: who shall survey the long and dreary spaces over which we
have traveled; who shall count the links in the great chain of events by which
we have reached our present position, will make a note of this occasion: they
will think of it and speak of it with a sense of manly pride and complacency.

I congratulate you, also, upon the very favorable circumstances in which
we meet to-day. They are high, inspiring, and uncommon. They lend grace,
glory, and significance to the object for which we have met. Nowhere else in
this great country, with its uncounted towns and cities, unlimited wealth, and
immeasurable territory extending from sea to sea, could conditions be found
more favorable to the success of this occasion than here.

We stand to-day at the national center to perform something like a
national act—an act which is to go into history; and we are here where every
pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt, and reciprocated. A thou-
sand wires, fed with thought and winged with lightning, put us in instanta-
neous communication with the loyal and true men all over this country.

Few facts could better illustrate the vast and wonderful change which
has taken place in our condition as a people, than the fact of our assembling
here for the purpose we have to-day. Harmless, beautiful, proper, and praise-
worthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that no such demonstration
would have been tolerated here twenty years ago. The spirit of slavery and
barbarism, which still lingers to blight and destroy in some dark and distant
parts of our country, would have made our assembling here the signal and
excuse for opening upon us all the flood-gates of wrath and violence. That
we are here in peace to-day is a compliment and a credit to American civili-
zation, and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in
the future. I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice; but

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