Nobody has a right to whip me but my own master, and nobody shall do so if I can prevent it

Poor dusky children of slavery, men and women of my own race-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you, and the great masses of the North learned to look upon your helplessness with indifference-learned to speak of you as an idle, dependent race. Reason should have prompted kinder thoughts. Charity is ever kind.

None of us are perfect, for which reason we should heed the voice of charity when it whispers in our ears, "Do not magnify the imperfections of others.

Notwithstanding all the wrongs that slavery heaped upon me, I can bless it for one thing-youth's important lesson of self-reliance.

I lifted the white cloth from the white face of the man that I had worshipped as an idol-looked upon as a demi-god. Notwithstanding the violence of the death of the President, there was something beautiful as well as grandly solemn in the expression of the placid face. There lurked the sweetness and gentleness of childhood, and the stately grandeur of godlike intellect. I gazed long at the face, and turned away with tears in my eyes and a choking sensation in my throat. Ah! never was man so widely mourned before. The whole world bowed their heads in grief when Abraham Lincoln died.

When I heard the words, I felt as if the blood had been frozen in my veins, and that my lungs must collapse for the want of air. Mr. Lincoln shot!

For an act may be wrong judged purely by itself, but when the motive that prompted the act is understood, it is construed differently. I lay it down as an axiom, that only that is criminal in the sight of God where crime is meditated.