C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

Kind words to Africano-Americans.

You are all free now,--or you soon will be. Your charter has been duly signed by the President of the United States, and that deed is ratified in heaven.

God is always on the right side: he is the everlasting friend of freedom.

Being free, your earthly salvation is put into your own hands. While you had a master, he gave you bread, clothing, and shelter—such as they were. In escaping the lash, you must provide these things for yourselves. You have always claimed you could do it, and your friends believe you can. What is still better, you have through generations proved you could not only support yourselves, but your masters too.

Now, laying all theories aside, and coming down to practical business, think what questions are before you. But first let me tell you what is not before you.

1. You need not give yourselves any trouble about the great question of your freedom. It is a moral fact. It will be an actual material fact sooner by far than you can prepare for it. Remember that when the song of freedom is once sung its notes will vibrate forever. Slavery is mortal, and must die; Liberty is eternal.

2. Give yourselves no solicitude about the prejudice against your color; for that prejudice does not exist in pure and generous hearts in such a form or to such an extent as materially to interfere with your prosperity and future elevation. Let your minds rather be directed to the means you should employ for accomplishing the destiny which is now within your reach.

First. Get work as soon as you can,—anything that is honorable,—and begin to lay up money.—If you are idle, you will be despised as vagabonds; if you contract bad habits, you will have no friends; if you commit crime, you will be punished without mercy. In no community whatever can you expect to escape punishment when you do wrong. The color of the white man may save him, no matter how black his crime or loathsome his bestiality. But if you once put that bitter cup to your lips you will have to drain it to the last dregs. Here your friends cannot save you. You must beware in time, and escape the danger.

The law was made for you as well as for white men, and in your case it will be sternly enforced. Few voices will be heard pleading in your behalf, on the ground that you have been a slave. On the contrary, you will find—what does not often happen—that all the bad as well as the good will be arrayed against you. If you do not keep a sharp look-out, you will find that freedom, although a holy, is often a dangerous gift. A great poet says, ‘Lord of himself,—that heritage of woe.’

Second: get knowledge—Other things being equal, your progress and elevation will depend entirely upon the amount of your intelligence. Ignorance is one of the principal curses of slavery. In Heaven's name, rid yourselves of it as quickly as possible.

first of all, learn to read, and teach your wives and children. Do it nights and Sundays, if you can find no other time. And when this is done you will, indeed, find yourselves in a new world. You don't know how much good it would do you all. Ignorance cannot help you or anybody else. Ignorance is dark; knowledge is light. Do not think you have done much till you can read that glorious book which our Father sent down to us from heaven. It is his voice. It speaks to you. You must learn to read it. But, whatever you may neglect for yourselves, don't, oh, don't let your children grow up in ignorance; for they would still be under the curse of slavery. Get as near to the school-house and a Sunday-school as you can. There will hereafter be no law in the South punishing anybody that teaches you to read. All good people will help you, and you will find it not only very easy, after a little while, but very delightful. Then, and then only, will you know what freedom is worth.

You must forget and forgive all the wrongs you have suffered. ‘If you forgive not, neither shall you be forgiven.’ This is God's rule; and you must obey it if you would have his blessing. I know how hard it will sometimes come to forgive those who have sold your wives and children and heaped on your heads wrong upon wrong. But you must do it. Christ did it to his murderers. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’

All your friends are proud to hear that you have behaved so well wherever you have been instantly set free. The foes of emancipation predicted that you would be guilty of every crime. But of the tens of thousands who have suddenly passed into freedom, no record of crime yet appears against you. We can now point to your example, and justify ourselves for all the confidence we have had in you.

So too are we happy and grateful to learn that the three millions and a half of your race who still clank the chain are meekly and patiently waiting for the day of their liberation. God grant that they may wait patiently still! While he is doing the work, do not stand in His way. Show to the world that you were worthy to be free. The more you prove this, the quicker the fetters will fall. Let it be God's act. He will hasten it in his time.

From the beginning of the war till now, you have been compelled to look on, idle spectators of this great struggle; and you know the reason why. The war was not begun by the North, nor was it carried on by the North for the sake of destroying slavery. It was begun by the slave-holders to destroy the Union, extend slavery, and open the slave-trade. The North went into it to preserve the Union; and when we found that slavery would destroy the republic unless slavery should be wiped out itself, then Mr. Lincoln declared freedom to all the slaves of all the enemies of the Union.

Now it has come to this, that this great war is between slavery and freedom. It has become a war for you. Now you can come into the fight, and take the field, and help work out your own salvation. And you must do it; for remember that ‘he who would be free, himself must strike the blow.’ If you will not help yourselves, whom are you to look to?

Yes, you must not hang back. Enlist in the army the first chance you get. If you are not as ready and willing to spill your blood for your own freedom as white men are to do it for you, then you will prove, what your masters have always said, that you are not fit nor worthy to be free. You are not asked to take a life, or use or destroy any property, except as soldiers, under the command of your officers. In all this you are doing but your duty as men and citizens of a great and glorious country.

You will not forget that mankind respect nothing so much as valor. To fight gallantly in a good cause will win for you and your race more honor and respect than you can win in any other way. By showing that you are good soldiers, you will do more towards your own progress and elevation than all your friends could do for you in a century.

In this way, and in this way only, can you repay the debt of gratitude which you owe to your deliverers. Every brave deed you do, the higher your fidelity to your flag, the more complete your subordination and discipline, the higher you and your race will stand, not only with your commanders and with the whole country, but with all nations.

Never before have Africans had such a chance! In the name, then, of your nearly five millions in the United States, of more than half as many in South America and the West India Islands, and of the uncounted millions on the great continent of Africa, we call on you to shoulder the musket! and let your valor and martial achievements work the long-delayed redemption of a mighty people.

Another consideration, which is likely to be of grave magnitude hereafter, should not be left out of sight now. It is Emigration,—not colonization merely. It has been a Sisyphus work for us to try to found colonies in Africa while we held millions of slaves at home, and offered no inducement to emigrate except either to be made free at the price of expatriation, or to receive the poor boon of escaping the lighting influence of prejudice against color, at the cost of a life-long exile among barbarians of a darker skin, and no knowledge of civilization or the living God.

Few of your race went to Africa on these hard terms; and I am glad of it.

I might now—March 28th, 1874, when we have the sad news of Dr. Livingstone's death in the heart of Africa—press this consideration with earnestness: for it is my full conviction that the civilization of Africa—which is so sure to come—will be effected chiefly through the agency of the emancipated Africano-American Race.