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T. SHVFTEW. Jr (htth/u of the Oration dt/iveredty Chaplain Henry M Twrner, * Baptist Church, M January Ist, 1866, being the Celebration of the First Anniversary of Freedom. B and Ladies, or Fellow Citiiens, I should haws saidj we hare assembled today under circumstances, unlike those of any other day in the history of our lives. We have met for the purpose of cele- this, the first day of the New Year, not because it is the first ; New Year's day we ever f*w, but because it is the first one We ever enjoyed. 01 how different this day from similar days of the past. The first day of January hitherto, was one of gloom and fearful sus pense The foundation of our social comforts hung upon the scales of. apgfirriiension, and fate with its decisions of weal or wo looked every i one of us in the face, and dread forebodings kept in dubius agitation, every fleeting moment that passed. But to-day we stand upon no such sandy foundation. Uncertainty is no more the basis of our ex istence ; we have for our fulcrum the eternal principles of right and equity. Associated with the first day of January are peculiar interests, which in their accomodation to the world of colored men, will hereafter enshrine it in their affections with a deathless sacredness, foreveraud ever. This day which hitherto seperated so many families, and tear wet so many faces -heaved so many hearts, and, filled the air. with so many groans and sighs; this of all others the most bitter. day of the, year to our poor miserable jace, shall henceforth and forever be filled with acclamations of the wildsi joy, and expressions of ecstacy too numerous for augelib pens to note. Before this day, all other days will dwindle fotp insignificance with us, and the glory that shall en viron it, Will, compared with which, make hazy 7b appearance all other days God’s day exempted. It has been the custom of men in all ages to celebrate certain days in commemoration of certain achievements or national transactions. A few out of the many which are observed in some manner; are days which hold universal claim upon the obser vance of slimeo, and among them we may mention the Sabbath, and Christmas. True, the observance of those two heaven consecrated days, follow only in the wake of religious civilization, while all nations civilized or pagans, have their regular anniversaries, be the cause of the observance, fictitious or real. But reverting to the customs of civilized nations, we will only name a few. The Sabbath day demands our attention first of all, in noticing those reckoned in the sacred catalogue. This day was hallowed and set apart by God him* self, to f be observed by all the inhabitants of the earth as a day of rest and of gratitude to God for the marvelous act which his Almighty fiat performed, in standing out upon the unfathomable abyss of an eternal nonentity, and decorating the dismal caverns of old chaos with burning solars and rolling worlds. This act of Almighty greatness ‘and wisdom, at first called forth the undying praises of the skies, and God perpetuated its sanctity on earth by hallowing the day of its final completion. That day remained sacred in the hearts of mankind for t four thousand years. At the end of which time, God clothed his Sod, —the brightest jewel that glittered in the courts of Heaven—in the garb of humanity, and He 16ft that throne for a while, which had not been vacated since the morn of eternity, and came to .earth with bis etern al attributes circumbounded by flesh and blood, indureda miserable life; died ah ignominious death: robed death, hell, and the eraye of their visionary trophies; and fin tfieWsF* day oF the week rose from the dead to the joy of earth and ecstacy of Heaven, and changed the sanctity of the day by virtue of the greater feat performed, from the seventh to the first day of the week, and for over eighteen hundred years, Christians of every tongue and every clime have kept it as a day of gratitude to Heaven for the triumphs of Emmanuel. This day above all others, holds the first claim upon all men irrespective of class or condition, a day upon which is stamped fadeless perpetu ity. 2d. The next day which was important in the history of the civil ized world was the first day of the year of Jubilee. Theologians have differed it is true, as to whether the claims of the jubilee were national or universal, whether its special bearings contemplated only the house of Israel, or religious humanity at large. However, on the day of its arrival, the blast of the trumpet and the blow of the rams horn, sent a thrill of universal joy among all the people, which was peculiarly intensified by the shouts of the bondman and the insolvent, because it was the day of the release of the former, and restoration of the property of the latter. id. Christmas, the day on which the birth of Christ is celebrated and his nativity recognized has also been observed for many centuries, since the reign of Dioclesian up to the present, if not before. Chris* tian people and Christian nations every where have made it a day of special honor, nevertheless, thousands regard it as a day of desecra tion and festive revelry others run wild with drunkness, and honor it with bacchanalian retorts. They treat the birth day of Jesus with solemn contempt, and hundreds of church members regard it as a day to shake hands with sin, and compromise with crime. 4th. For the sake of brevity, we will only notice one or two more days which have been honored for certain events that have changed the order of things in the nations history. For ages Catholicism had been the prevailing religion in England, but in consequence of some small opposition in the executive circles of the Government, Catesby and some other disappointed and desperate hearted Catholics, planned a scheme known as the ‘gunpowder plot,’ for the murder of the king and the distraction of both houses of parliament It was resolved that Guy Fawket, one of the number should set fire to a train of pow* der which they had. prepared ; they were all ready, and the sth, of November 1605, was at hand, the day to which parliament was pro- ' rogued. But God averted the horrid catastrophe by its timely dis covery, a«d gave Catholicism jts death blow, and crowned the pros testant faith with eternal honors which ever since has gathered strength with increasing years, till its mighty volume of sacred truths have spaned t|»e broad Atlantic and dashed against American shores—not broken, but divided into religious orders of different friths—and have swelled W valley? with notes of joy, and dotted our hills with re* bounding Thu?, the sth, of November, will ever stand prominent among ths d?yo of English commemoration. sth. The 4th of July js especially familiar to ,every school boy io this owr onoe cursod, but now blessed country. The white people have made it f day of gratitude and general rejoicing ever sinee 1776, oonsequeptly guns are fired; bells are rung; flags are raised; speeches are doljvered. imd every mode to express their fieri mgs of pleasureis resorted to, because on that day they threw off the British Yoke, and trampled underfoot theatre of de&pptw tyranny. They railed the Btandaard of indepeudmee on that ever memorable dty, and every man rallied to ita support by the declaration of ladtpeode nee. An aged sire stood in toe steeple of lodependanoe Heil io tbeoity of Phila delphia for hours with th' iron tongue ofa bellmhie hand, ahdring hie head the assembled nuHitnde, wbrn quartered upon relating to his miwon. As soon as every that ragust cotlveiwd within, was appendod toJhM ndghty rteojßnent, whickha* oteraiuo. defied the world, a iitUe boy (fronted out*fit%! ring I’ and with all the power of a freeman, he (trade that bdttone hundred Hows, (the tame number of day, it took Abraham Lincoln WHMa, Saturday January 13, 1866. fr<w£epfembet r »22d, 1862, to Janu *** -Tri 2 ' tmimed out the irons words f D ?J* . k U ?? n *?”’ . r °T?!? nb*rty throughout all the land, and to the thereof’ and thus th. ‘ stone cut out of the moun* make its first revolu wo.rld, as then predicted, for I hold tuat America and her Democratic principles and institutions is the great stonewh«*#Sp(A:en df< Sherbet Daniel. I know that peolog ans haye mteiprMedtte swipUre to mean Messiah’s king* om on earth. But consistency must ie .the rule of all true internets* Uen, prophetic or otherwise. Therefore jj the image will not admit the stone that pulverised it will not. The first, second, and <lnrd> Kingdoms represented by that Symbolic image have junquestionaWo passed away. ><nd the fourth or the Ro ~,r. ; £ prayers of the Pnritant; MM brUlfra and inflaence. of the pioneers of American civilization and eoweorated by the blood of the revolutionary sires; founded, uponfrrafprinciplra apd recognising equality m all men by the declaration of .Independence, is destined in the event of things to dethrone monarchs of the old world, and snatch the mace of oppreeaior from the now nerv.n. gr‘p of every doepot in Europe, and then to teach the world that royal blood flows unobstructed through the Verna of all men. This great Continent slept in the cradle of undisturfaee far thousands of years. Qod seemed to have held it back for .oiae important purpose, while Asia, Africa and Europe were tho world’s theatres, and men of all sizes, colors and languages were playing out the drama of life While Mtions W. rising on the one band and crumbling on the other. tnd for Me. they slept in peace from the band of enterprue. N f mercena *y adveufarers from Sweden, Den* Norway, came over here five hundred years before the time, but God thwarted their designs, and sent them back, till Amerim should get ripe. The Indian and the roving beasts, true, «be Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, but they only fed the soil, preparatory to the introduction of No gospel messengers went fofth to herald the claims of he world s’Redeemer, nor summoiw men to a sense of reason. At length Columbus came, and in his wake ten thousand followed. God removed the obstructions on the one side, and human genius clamored ior the world on the -other. Settlement and colony succeeded each )ther, as they ran from the land of fettered conscience, many claim* ng atso a desire to christianize *be Indians, the aborigines, of this joentry. James Oglethorpe, one hundred and thirty years ago, same over with 120 emtmgrants-his leading idea being to teach lndian—to this-®ow Wood stained State of Georgia; But be vas Only a drop in tfc& bucket lo the multitudes that’came to other »rts, God saw this spirit fa them and was pleased. The pilgrims long before that, had moored the May Flower to the ed£e of Plymouth Kock, and with knees bent and uplifted hand, had range irated this land to God, and to just and holy ends. The same year - ‘*2, ™**“ and f sti years ago—Mancious greed had n old bone-bleached Virginia, that State where hardened guilt and Hellish crime lie piled to mountain height; tbatState, like the mother jf harlots, who has poisoned by her slave mart (Richmond, the black est spot on God’s earth) all the other States of the South, and finally plunged them into an inextricable Vortex, where unbridled ven geance stalked in gigantic strides, and wrote death upon all their institutions of injustice. However, resuming the subject again this was the introduction of the slave trade, and for many years it was kept up, meeting with tlfe approbation of the most prominent men of the world. The early settlers of this country had run from outrage themselves, and had manifested a desire to civilize the heathen, and to build up an asylum for the oppressed of all nations, and to enact laws which would comtemplate justice to all men. Therefore, God seeing the African stand in need of civilization, sanctioned for a’while the slave trade—not that it was in harmony with his fundamental laws for one man to nde another, nor did God ever contemplate that the negro was to be reduced to the status of a vassal, but as a sub ject for moral and intellectual culture. So God winked* pr tided his eye balls at the institution of slavery as a test of the white man’s obedience, and elevation of the negro. The extremeties of two colors, white and black, were now to meet, and embrace each other and work out a great prob’em by the sanction of Heaven for the good of mankind. The African was, I have no doubt, committed to the care of the white man as a trust from God. That he should clear up the land, and pioneer the march of civilization, by agricultural labor and domestic pursuits, is a fact about which I have no hesi* fancy in admitting. That the white rian should have made him work and exacted so much daily toil as was oommeasurate with the ne* cessities of life and the developments of the nation s resources, was all in keeping with order and sense, for he was by virtue of his superior advantages, thereby, his superior in intellect, and the guardian of the negro. But that the white man should bar all the avenues of im provement, and hold the Black as he would a horse or a cow; de face the image of God by ignorance, which the black man was the re presentative of, was the crime which offended Heaven. We gave tRe white man our labor, yes I every drop, of sweat which oozed from our face he claimed as his own. In return, he should have educated us, taught us to read and write at least, and to have seen that Africa was well supplied with missionaries. Their Doctors of Divinity should have told thorn, that we had rights, and the people must re spect vnem. Had the ministers exhausted half then 1 Earning and study in showing the. white people their duty to the negro at a trust from God, that they have in trying to prove the divine righit of slavery, Africa would have been two-thirds civilized to day, and the nation twice as wealthy, and the bones of a million of our country, men would not now lie bleaching over every Southern State. ** The Fourth of July— memorable in the history of our nation as the great day of independence to its countrymen—had no claims upon our sympathies. They made a tag and threw it to the 1 heavens, and bid it floatforever; buteVery stat fait was against us; every stripe aghinstue f the red, white agd blge was against ua; the nation’s eon- S =2? rtrMe; tad wdrto erery church *s agiiifrt us; prayer ‘ and prcaohifig wM enough to Babe to foMont with God AUlcks, ,foH bltoded negro. A frto the pomeefo? all through the revolutiODsry w«r to make-m trsitore to Mr oountrv bat foiled; we stood firm then and arb firm stilk Was it eause tiMit We haye nttljeen t&ahuet u a mdtaber <st nation’s fomily ? Are Wt not -Wdfr 'is other meif fl Have we not all the bones, muscles, nerves, veins, organs and fane- A twa« that other men have? Are there any difference in onr women ? men am aniwer that quetlUm bitter than us. And eo far M intellect m concerned, are we net as susceptible of improvement as they are. Cannot we learn anything they can ? If we‘cannot, whv “± k lite T:”L t 0 2 e { Oun t t f ,aohin e » “?» ? for it was a penitent!- ary act in this State, though it was not unlawful to teach a horse to read and write. But the whites not only refused to learn us them selves, but refused to let us learn at all if they could prevent it; at least .aw was against it, which was argument enough. They seem to have forgotten that they were shutting up in darkness, by refusing intellectual development, that immortal spirit; that undying princi ple; that spark of Deity which was created with exhaustless ‘X sources; vith a mind, though minute at present, will one day swal low down, or comprehend the mysteries of the universe. Oh! slavery, thou horrid jpouster! Thy days are numbered! Thou wag t ,* to this nation; but far in the distance I hear the last sound®lot thy rumbling departure, saying, gone! gone! forever gone!’ Had the white people treated slavery as a trust from God, it would oever have ended in a terrible war. It would have gone on until it became» a social burden It would have passed away so imper ceptibly that no one would have felt the shock; more like a weary man gmrg to deep. But the way it was treated, and the ends to *bick it was appropriated, was an insult to God. And nothing less than floods of his burning ire and the thunders of his scathing judge* ment, poured out upon the guilty heads of the violators of this law. and crimsoned acres of ground with the heart’s gore of tens of thou sands, could satisfy divine justice, and make slavery despicable in | the eyes of a country which had loved it so dearly and nurtured it so long- yes—men of every rank and position—had become darkened to the true status of manhood, because worldly gain lav at the bottom of all his moral considerations. 08e toat should have taught the people equity, have exhausted life m ransacking history to prove that the curse of Noah, pronounced upon Canaan, was a legitimate assignment of the colored race to per petual servitude. And when history failed to support that abomin able theory—for we are not of the posterity of Canaan, if the curse was worth anything at adl (which I emphatically deny)—it does not effect us as a people, because we came through the lineage of Cush, and we have no more to do with Noah’s malediction upon the pos terity of Canaan, than we have with Isaac’s blessing upon the posteri ty of Jacob—when all these visionary theories were blown to the wind, they then resorted to the customs of the dark and crude ages °i av w ? They built air kingdoms of slavery from the servants of Abraham, not knowing that Abraham was a king or commanding patriarch, and these 1 so called ’ servants were his subjects, and obedi* ance to the orders of the chieftain was the rule of that age, as it was for centuries afterwards. Others would eternally anathematize Ham and his whole posterity, and assign them a place among chattels; but Jet it be remembered, henceforth and forever, that they were the men They founded the first cities and form ed the first empires | they were the greatest generals, and the great est mechanics; they carried the alphabet first to proud Greece, and the mathematical problems of Eudid «tiH puzzle the world; besides, we count three hundred black bishops in the Primitive Church, manhood; go to the bloody fields that have Wnredened by gallX of the richest blood that ever coursed its w*y through the vems of maa 1 bfe ac k ,n g bones whiqh lie strewn around Petersburg and Richmond of my own brave regiment;, then visit Port Hudson t ort Wagoner, and a hundred other scenes of carnage,, where black troops fought, bled and died, why are you here ? and the answer lhat was all they wanted, and it is all we want Unlike the white have no desire to enslave them or deprive them of their oath, disfranchise them, or to expatriate them. All we want is our rights in common with other men, and Jet them have theirs’. When the nation first called upon the colored men to rally to its flag a howl and a whine was raised North and South that, ‘lf ar ™ the negroes, you can never discipline them; they will be cannibals kill all the women and children and eat them into the bargain ’ But the negroes were armed, and Ethiopia stretched forth her hands to God with a musket in thepi. Twelve hundred of us were placed on a bend of the James River, known as Wilson’s Landin* bbortly afterwards Gen. Fitz Hugh Lee came down upon us with twenty-five hundred men. As soon as he drove in our pickets a a flag of truce was sent in to demand a surrender of the place or he would take it, and death should be the penalty of our refusal We however defied his army, so he opened the contest, which raged in fearful suspense for the space of four hours. He charged us three left r leaving three hundred dead oft the field. The segro oanmbap (for I was one) went out, took up bid wounded, carried them to our hospital and treated them kindly White man, show a better heart. v • The feet is, we have a better heart than the white people. We want thtm free and invested with all their righto. We want to treat them kindly and live in friendship ; jet, I must ear, as I believe that as soop as old things can be forgotten, or all things become oom mon, that the Southern people will take us by the hand and welcome us to their respect and regard. I look forward to the day when tZ white, people of the South will not exhibit one half the prejudice they do North, for they know us, and we know them: but at present they are peevish, because they think themselves subjugated, while the poorer class never did like ns at best. It was also said that the * eolored people contemplated a cold blooded insurrection during the Uhristmas holidays, and several of our white friends, I lewn had grave apprehensions about its possibility. I knew then, as I know now, that it was all a piece of nonsensical fiidge. What have we to insurreot for ’ Are we not free and eternal'# free, and do we not know it r Away with such a hallucination 1 We never insurrected when we had something to insurrect for. It wati also Mid, and Southern fanatics rods that hobby every where • That if yon free the negro he will want to mrry X daughters and sitters,' that was another fooliab dream- What do we «at with tamr daughters and sisters? We have as mueh bounty as they ? Look at our ladies, <J O you want more beauty than that ? AZ? we W of the white man wto let our ladies alone* and thev need not fear us. The difficulty has "heretofore been, our ladies were 2 always at our ow* disposal. t t M nt we have met to day tor the purpose of mingling our congratu na, and tendering opr gratitude to the Great Disposer of events th.twe.to, have a day reckoned in the eatalogne*®Xiesjn’ wuicuiwt i Qa&WHBemble, rejoiee and- feel our man h nod Rravinma kel<^S d otauned ok bodies; hot now (CtttifiHWfttf on Fourth Page) VOL. I.—WO, 5.