I
accepted the invitation, and delivered two addresses there during the
Jubilee week. The first of these, and the principal one, was given in
the Auditorium, on the evening of Sunday, October 16. This was the
largest audience that I have ever addressed, in any part of the
country; and besides speaking in the main Auditorium, I also
addressed, that same evening, two overflow audiences in other parts of
the city.
It was said that there were sixteen thousand persons in the
Auditorium, and it seemed to me as if there were as many more on the
outside trying to get in. It was impossible for any one to get near
the entrance without the aid of a policeman. President William
McKinley attended this meeting, as did also the members of his
Cabinet, many foreign ministers, and a large number of army and navy
officers, many of whom had distinguished themselves in the war which
had just closed. The speakers, besides myself, on Sunday evening,
were Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Father Thomas P. Hodnett, and Dr. John H.
Barrows.
The Chicago _Times-Herald_, in describing the meeting, said of my
address: --
He pictured the Negro choosing slavery rather than extinction;
recalled Crispus Attucks shedding his blood at the beginning of
the American Revolution, that white Americans might be free, while
black Americans remained in slavery; rehearsed the conduct of the
Negroes with Jackson at New Orleans; drew a vivid and pathetic
picture of the Southern slaves protecting and supporting the
families of their masters while the latter were fighting to
perpetuate black slavery; recounted the bravery of coloured troops
at Port Hudson and Forts Wagner and Pillow, and praised the
heroism of the black regiments that stormed El Caney and Santiago
to give freedom to the enslaved people of Cuba, forgetting, for
the time being, the unjust discrimination that law and custom make
against them in their own country.
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