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have received as freemen, and what rights as such are still witheld. I have told them always that in the rights secured to them - in the right to life; liberty and the pursuit of happiness they were the equals of all men every where. I also told them, and I have found it necessary to do it, to prevent their acting against their own interests, that social equality, with the right to associate with others against their wish [[crossed out]] the right to [[?]] associate with others against their wish [[/crossed out]] had  never existed among white people, and never would, that it does not exist among the freed people now, and that good people white or black had the right, and ought to refuse to associate on terms of intimacy and equality with bad people.
     In urging them to form habits of industry and economy, I have said to them that the value of their freedom will depend upon themselves and their own efforts, that if they would become honest, industrious and law.abiding, then their freedom would bring unnumbered