hundred and sixty acres of land allotted in severalty with the condition that it could not be alienated for twenty-five years, what he would say to that. It was a great while before he could be made to comprehend what I meant, with an earnest desire to understand the full meaning of these words; and when at last he seemed fully to comprehend them, shaking his head, he said, "It would not do us any good; it might our children; but we do not understand your language; we do not know how to treat with white men; they always get the better of us; they would pluck us as you do a bird."

Then I put the question in another form: "Suppose you were so allotted, and a good, honest Indian agent my friend from Illinois [Mr. Davis] almost laughs when I say that" a good, honest Indian agent were put over you to keep off the white people and let you develop yourselves?"

"We don't know how to work very well; we were never taught to work; if our children could be brought up to understand your language and to understand what comes of work, to understand that what they earned to-day is theirs, and they can hold it against the world, they could take these lands and they could take care of themselves and of us, but we cannot do it."

There is more philosophy in that Indian's statement of the question than all that has been developed in the Indian policy of the government for the last quarter of a century. Take their children; above all take their girls into schools in which they may be taught the English language and English ways and English habits and ideas. They bring up the families; they take care of the children; from them the children learn to talk and learn to think and learn to act; and yet, in all the schools established in Indian agencies for the education of the Indians, the Indian girl is hardly thought of. Take the boy

and make something of him; not keep him till he forgets his race and his parentage, but keep him until there shall be inspired in him a missionary spirit to go forth among those of his blood and attempt to make something of them.

Appropriate this $125,000 which in this bill you pledge yourselves to distribute every year per capita around among these people, to the education each year of these four thousand Ute Indians, and by the time this experiment shall have failed and the Indian question, so far as Colorado is concerned, shall have come back upon us with increased force, you will have raised up among those Indians a restraining and at the same time an elevating influence that shall quicken in the whole tribe a desire to acquire, and with it shall come also the desire to protect and keep their daily earnings; and with that comes the necessity and the desire for peace, and with peace comes respect for law, and that is the simple natural process and the only one, it seems to me, Mr. President, which opens up to us with any hope of success.

It is a long and tedious process out of this difficulty; it is beset with embarrassments and discouragements on every side; but those who understand best and appreciate more fully than I do all these difficulties have themselves the strongest confidence in its ultimate success. Certainly, sir, these puny efforts on the part of the government to deal with the Indian question, these homeopathic doses, are idle and are folly in the extreme. If I could see any good to come from this bill, recognizing as I do the imperative necessity of action in respect to these Utes, recognizing as I am free to do the earnest desire on the part of the Indian department to do the best possible thing, I should like to support it. I know that with great propriety and with necessity the department turns to Congress; for it is Congress, and Congress alone, that can solve

this question; but I fear that by no such processes as those we are considering to-day, involving as they do (and which I do not think the Senate quite realize) an enormous expenditure of public moneys with so little in return, can the great result I desire be accomplished.

DOUGLASS

REDERICK DOUGLASS, a famous American orator, was born a slave, the son of a white father and African mother, in Tuckahoe, Maryland, February, 1817. At ten years of age he was sent to Baltimore to live with one of his master's relatives and after a time found work in a shipyard, having by this time learned to read and write. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and fled to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he lived for several years, and was aided in his efforts at self-education by William Lloyd Garrison. He now dropped his former master's name of Lloyd and adopted that of Frederick Douglass. At an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket in 1841 he delivered a speech that was so well liked that he was made the agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and for four years lectured to large audiences throughout New England. He then went to Europe for two years in behalf of the anti-slavery cause, and during this time his freedom was purchased by his English friends. For several years following his return he edited at Rochester, New York, the “ North Star," a weekly paper, and in 1870 became editor of the "New National Era" at Washington. He was appointed assistant secretary of the Santo Domingo commission in 1871 and the next year was presidential elector at large for New York State. He held the post of United States marshal of the District of Columbia, 1876-81, and recorder of deeds for the District for the five years following. In 1888-89 he was United States minister resident and consulgeneral to Hayti. He died near Washington, February 20, 1895. Douglass was a man of commanding appearance, fine manners, and a very noble style of delivery. His orations exhibited great refinement of language and grace of expression. Beside his orations and addresses he was the author of "Narrative of My Experiences in Slavery" (1844); "My Bondage and My Freedom" (1855); "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" (1881).

WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS

DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY AT BOSTON, 1865

R. PRESIDENT,- I came here, as I come always to

M

the meetings in New England, as a listener, and not

as a speaker; and one of the reasons why I have not been more frequently to the meetings of this society, has been because of the disposition on the part of some of my friends to call me out upon the platform, even when they knew that there was some difference of opinion and of feeling between those

who rightfully belong to this platform and myself; and for fear of being misconstrued, as desiring to interrupt or disturb the proceedings of these meetings, I have usually kept away, and have thus been deprived of that educating influence, which I am always free to confess is of the highest order, descending from this platform. I have felt, since I have lived out West, that in going there I parted from a great deal that was valuable; and I feel, every time I come to these meetings, that I have lost a great deal by making my home west of Boston, west of Massachusetts; for, if anywhere in the country there is to be found the highest sense of justice, or the truest demands for my race, I look for it in the East, I look for it here. The ablest discussions of the whole question of our rights occur here, and to be deprived of the privilege of listening to those discussions is a great deprivation.

I do not know, from what has been said, that there is any difference of opinion as to the duty of Abolitionists, at the present moment. How can we get up any difference at this point, or at any point, where we are so united, so agreed? I went, especially, however, with that word of Mr. Phillips, which is the criticism of General Banks and General Banks's policy. I hold that that policy is our chief danger at the present moment; that it practically enslaves the negro, and makes the proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion. What is freedom? It is the right to choose one's own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything; and when any individual or combination of individuals undertakes to decide for any man when he shall work, where he shall work, at what he shall work, and for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce him to slavery. He is a slave. That I understand General Banks to do to determine for the so-called freedman, when, and where, and at what, and