In his fierce, determined glance you could discover that latent fires, hitherto unsuspected even in his warm bosom, had been aroused.  The whole man was to speak that day.  And he spoke.  We can give you his words but not his speech.  Man can photograph the body, but in the photograph you can only glimpse the soul.  Words can portray the form of a speech, but the spirit, the life, are missing and we turn away disappointed.  That sweet, well modulated voice, full of tender pathos, of biting sarcasm, of withering irony, of swelling rage, of glowing fervor, according as the occasion demanded, was a most faithful vehicle to Bernard; conveying fully every delicate shade of thought.

The following gives you but a faint idea of his masterly effort.  In proportion as you can throw yourself into his surroundings, and feel, as he had felt, the iron in his soul, to that extent will you be able to realize how much power there was in what is now to follow: 

The president’s message.

“Two terrible and discordant sounds have burst forth upon the erstwhile quiet air and now fill your bosom with turbulent emotions.  One is the blast of the bugle, fierce and loud, calling us to arms against a foreign nation to avenge the death of American seamen and to carry the cup of liberty to a people perishing for its healing draught.  The other is the crackling of a burning house in the night’s dead hours, the piteous cries of pain and terror from the lips of wounded babes; the despairing, heart-rending, maddening shrieks of the wife and mother; the harrowing groans of the dying husband and father, and the gladsome shout of the fiendish mob of white American citizens, who have wrought the havoc just described, a deed sufficiently horrible to make Satan blush and hell hastily hide her face in shame.

“I deem this, my fellow countrymen, as an appropriate time for us to consider what shall be our attitude, immediate and future, to this Anglo-Saxon race, which calls upon us to defend the fatherland and at the same moment treats us in a manner to make us execrate it.  Let us, then, this day decide what shall be the relations that shall henceforth exist between us and the Anglo-Saxon race of the United States of America.

“Seven million eyes are riveted upon you, hoping that you will be brave and wise enough to take such action as will fully atone for all the horrors of the past and secure for us every right due to all honorable, loyal, law-abiding citizens of the United States.  Pleadingly they look to you to extract the arrow of shame which hangs quivering in every bosom, shame at continued humiliation, unavenged.

“In order to arrive at a proper conclusion as to what the duty of the hour is, it would be well to review our treatment received at the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race and note the position that we are now sternly commanded by them to accept.

“When this is done, to my mind, the path of duty will be as plain before our eyes as the path of the sun across the heavens.  I shall, therefore, proceed to review our treatment and analyze our present condition, in so far as it is traceable to the treatment which we now receive from the Anglo-Saxon.