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LETTER FROM COLONEL FORNEY.
PHILADELPHIA, April 12, 1876.
     My Dear Mr. Langston: I had the honor to receive, while in Washington last Saturday, your kind note, dated April 5, inviting me to be present at the inauguration ceremonies of the Lincoln statue, which will be unveiled in Lincoln park at 1 o'clock p.m., on the 14th inst., and it is a source of extreme regret that owing to other engagements I cannot join you and my fellow-citizens. 
     Strange enough, the 14th of April, 1865, was Good Friday, and the ceremony  you propose eleven years afterwards also comes on Good Friday. Who can forget that fatal night? Have you ever thought that if the scenes in every household throughout our broad land, North and South, and indeed all over the civilized world, when the news of the death of our beloved President was proclaimed, could be repeated, they would make a volume of unequaled interest? There is hardly a man, woman, or child living at that day, and still living, who cannot relate an experience unspeakably touching. Nothing that has been written or spoken during or since the war would be such as contribution to history as these individual experiences. 
     I recollect that I was in Richmond on that day, sent by dear Mr. Lincoln on a message of conciliation to the South; sent, in fact, by him to reorganize the close printing offices in Virginia, and, with the aid of the Southern newspapers in the interest of peace and forgiveness. Where you were that night or the next morning, a gloomy Saturday, would doubtless be a story worthy of your best eloquence. I have never talked about Mr. Lincoln's death in any company or in any place, whether in my own dear land or in far-off nations, without being impressed by some startling revelation of individual agony, or some novel dramatic incident connected with that event. Well, my dear sir, if we have not forgotten, and cannot forget how our great leader fell, so we must admit that the very manner of this martyrdom fixed and freshened his immortality through all time. 
     There have been many changes since; many prophecies fulfilled, and many prophecies destroyed, but there is no change marked in the broad history of mankind more remarkably than the change in condition of the colored race between Friday, the 14th of April, 1865, and Friday, the 14th of April, 1876, and I would rejoice in the opportunity to dwell upon the unparalleled revolution before the manumitted, multitudes of the District of Columbia. As I rode through the broad streets of the National Capital last Saturday, just to enjoy the extraordinary improvements on Capitol Hill, where, during many years, I had resided, and then followed the new streets and avenues, which brought Georgetown and the Navy Yard into close neighborhood, and made of Georgetown a great city itself, the impression was left that the Government of no country in the world had such a capital as our own. But, incomparable as this experience was, nothing was so overwhelming as the difference between the colored man when Mr. Lincoln was killed and the present hour. Look at our courts, our jails, our poor houses, our hospitals, and I can freely challenge contradiction when I say that there are fewer colored criminals, and fewer colored paupers than any other race in proportion to their numbers. 
     Then look at our churches and our school-houses, and I feel equal pride in asserting that there is at least as profound and active a religious sentiment among them as among any other people, and a ravenous thirst for intelligence without a parallel in civilization. These plain facts go further than speeches, but they prove beyond and above all, first, that freedom on this continent could not exist side by side with slavery; and second, that when slavery itself was destroyed. white freedom secured a closer and stronger hold upon the future; and this great Government, founded before on the sand, from that moment became an inherent and integral part of the rock of enduring truth. To have had anything to do with these events, to have contributed in however small a degree to such a result, is a recollection of anything in my past life; and if I were to die to-day I should desire to be remembered by nothing so much as that I helped liberate the slave, to put arms in his hands, to perpetuate his liberty, to push him forward in the march of education, and to demand at all times and in all places that he should be in every respect the equal of every other man. This sentiment, after years of obedience to the slave tyrants of the old Democratic party, became at last a profound conviction. Liberty comes from God, and as it can neither be conferred by man, so it cannot be withheld, and the right of the colored race to all the franchises of every other race could no more be denied than the right to air, light and water. 
Most sincerely yours, J.W Forney.
J.M Langston, Esq.