our civilization has refused them, and them alone, its benefit.
If we honor bravery, let us remember that they have resisted only when oppressed.
If we reverence the high and noble principles of fidelity in a people, let us not forget that, of all the nations of the earth, the Indian is the most faithful to his compact.
Let us as a nation, reading our destiny in the coming future by the light of the hundred stars upon our flag, be true to God, true to ourselves, and true to the high trust we hold.
While we shake hands with the Briton and our brothers of the South, over the battle-fields of the past, let us not withhold from these people our friendship.
While we forget the crimes of others, let us bury in one common grave all hatred of race, all thirst for revenge.
While we are strong enough and brave enough to defy the taunts of the civilized world for proclaiming the advent of the hour when the song of the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem shall become the motto of a Christian nation,—“Peace and good will to men,”—let us not live a lie, and prove our cowardice by shouting “EXTERMINATION” against a race fast fading away.
Let us not fall from our high estate by debasing a grand national power in a triumph over a civilization inferior to our own.
Let us gather up and care for these people, redeem the covenant of our fathers, fulfilling our high mission.
Let us uphold the hands of our rulers who declare a more humane policy, and let it be the crowning glory of the American statesman to proclaim to the world that the glad time so long foretold has come, when “The wolf, also, shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”