His closing words addressed to his own people, prescient, as they seemed to be of days and dangers as yet but vaguely understood, made an ineffaceable impression upon men of his color who heard him:
“We have done a great work for our race to-day. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honor to ourselves and those who are to come after us. We have been attaching to ourselves a name and fame imperishable and immortal. We have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal, when now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to this monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”
In his address before the Tennessee Colored Agricultural and Mechanical Association at Nashville, September 18, 1873, he furnished the country new evidence of his ability to give instruction, to inspire hope and ambition, and to encourage thrift. Though not an agriculturist by occupation, his speech can still be used as a manual for the young farmer. It, like his other addresses, is full of practical and useful maxims. His quotation from Theodore Parker, “All the space between man’s mind and God’s mind is crowded with truths which wait to be discovered and organized into law for the practice of men,” indicates the tone of high hopefulness that ran through all his appeals to the people. “If we look abroad over our country and observe the condition of the colored people,” he said, “we shall find their greatest want to be regular and lucrative employment for their energies. They have secured their freedom, it is true, but not the friendship and favor of the people around them.... On account of bad treatment, great numbers are driven from the country to the larger cities where they quickly learn to imitate the vices and follies of the least exemplary whites. Under these circumstances, I hail agriculture as a refuge for the oppressed.”
Insisting that the condition of the Negro in this country is exceptional, he reminded his hearers that “the farm is our last resort, and if we fail here, I do not see how we can succeed elsewhere. We are not like the Irish, an organized political power; we are not shrewd like the Hebrews, capable of making fortunes by buying and selling old clothes.”
The address is rich with maxims that are good to remember and to use as rules of conduct; such as:
“Emancipation has liberated the land as well as the people.”
“It is not fertility, but liberty that cultivates a country.”
“The state of Tennessee is now to be cultivated by liberty, by knowledge which comes of liberty, by the respectability of labor.”
“Neither the slave nor his master can abandon all at once the deeply entrenched errors and habits of centuries.”
“There is no work that men are required to do, which they cannot better and more economically do with education than without it.”