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and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty.  His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another.  The trust which Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded.  He know the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.

Fellow-citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will every remain a memorable day in the annals of this Republic.  It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery-- the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  It was a new crime, a pure act of malice.  No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it.  It was the simple gratification of a  hell-black spirit of revenge.  But is has done good after all.  It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.

Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually -- we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly.  But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate -- for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him -- but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is double dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.

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Fellow-citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations.  We have done a good work for our race to-day.  In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal.  When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.