* * * * *

ADDRESS OF REV.  F.P.  WOODBURY, D.D.

I feel that I have learned a great deal to-day; and as the last speaker spoke concerning Africa, an idea has come into my mind which I may express.  Here we have on one side of the great ocean, Africa; on the other side, America.  We have here a race conflict; on the one side eight millions of blacks, we will say, and perhaps eight millions of irreconcilable whites on the other.  And these dominant eight millions of white men maintain, with the utmost pertinacity—­and they have the power in their right hand so far as we can see—­that they propose to rule and keep down those eight millions of black men.  I have seen the title of a book recently published, “An Appeal to Pharoah,” which is vouched for as a calm and temperate discussion of the question whether, after all, we are not going to get by this race difficulty by a great deportation to Africa.  It is a good deal to raise the question of eight millions of men leaving one country and going across the ocean and settling in another continent.  But isn’t there something in it after all?  Might it not compose the differences?  I know that the cost would be very large, but careful estimates go to show that the cost is not anywhere near the amount we spent in our civil war.  On the one side, we have these eight millions of black men—­ignorant, very largely superstitious, still somewhat above those of the same color in Africa, and plunged here into an antagonism which is deep, and bitter, and hopeless.  On the other side, we have these eight millions of white people who do not accept the results of the war.  Isn’t it better that eight millions shall go?  I don’t know.  I think it deserves serious consideration.

But when the question arises for practical consideration, I think there is another and a little deeper question that we ought to remember, and that is this:  Which eight millions ought to go?  Is it these who have been faithful to the American flag, who are straight in the line of progress that this republic proposes to maintain, who are in the line of the development of all the ages, who are looking upward?  Or is it the eight millions who are hopelessly side-tracked by the purposes of infinite God, and who are standing here in this republic, undertaking to maintain a conflict that is necessarily one of despair, as sure as God is at the head of the universe?  Expatriation if you please, deportation if you will; but consider the question whether it shall be eight millions of American patriots who are to be sent over to Africa or eight millions who have come out of a rebellion and maintain their seditious and rebellious attitude to-day.