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[318] discover and adopt measures for the intellectual and religious improvement of the colored race. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Judge Hugh L. Bond, of Baltimore, and Senator Evans, of Colorado, and myself, as commissioner of freedmen, were present. Judge Bond, Senator Evans, and I were to make the addresses. The chief justice, it was hoped, would add at the end a word of encouragement.

Rev. J. A. McCauley gave out a hymn and led in prayer. Judge Bond followed in his effective style, half humorous and half earnest. The judge hoped that it would be the result of that meeting that suppression of certain subjects in church conferences would cease; that it would not be unlawful hereafter to say negro as well as African — that is, refer to this race in America as well as in Africa-and that the Methodists would now see and meet their duty to the colored race. Judge Bond was one of those Southern heroes deeply attached to the Union who underwent persecution and ostracism for consciencea sake.

I spoke of my early career and experiences in the army when stationed in Florida, how Christians there believed that negroes had souls, that we were all children of a common Heavenly Father, that our Lord made sacrifices for all, that He taught the doctrine of universal brotherhood, and that we could not escape the injunction to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Then I made a plea for education in the South for blacks and needy whites. That pleading has always held my mind and heart.

After that I urged a more practical extension of marriage rites. I stated that it was ridiculous to demand for church offices only proper marriages among the negroes. As to the constant statement that negroes

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