Colonel David Branson, late of the 62nd Regiment, in his dedicatory speech, said:
"My Friends:—This, with one exception, has been the happiest 4th of July in my life. That exception was in 1863, when I saw the rebel flag go down at Vicksburg. I felt the exultation of victory then, and I feel it to-day as I look upon this splendid building. Looking in the faces of my old comrades of the 62nd Regiment here to-day, memory goes back to the past, when hundreds of you came to me at Benton Barracks, ragged, starving, and freezing—some did freeze to death—and emotions fill me that no language can express. I cannot sit down and think of those scenes of suffering without almost shedding tears. But happily those days are passed. No more marching with sluggish step and plantation gait through the streets of St. Louis, Mo., amid the jeers of your enemies; no more crossing the Mississippi on ice; no more sinking steamers, and consequent exposure on the cold, muddy banks of the river; no more killing labor on fortifications at Port Hudson, Baton Rouge and Morganza; no more voyages over the Gulf of Mexico, packed like cattle in the hold of a vessel; no mere weary marches in the burning climate of Texas; no more death by the bullet, and no more afternoons on the banks of the Rio Grande, deliberating on the future education of yourselves when discharged from the army; but peace and prosperity here with the result of those deliberations before us. Our enemies predicted, that upon the disbanding of our volunteer army—particularly the colored portion of it—it would turn to bands of marauding murderers and idle vagabonds, and this Institute was our answer."
When Colonel Shaw, of the 54th Regiment, fell at Fort Wagner, the brave soldiers of that regiment gladly contributed to a fund for a monument to his memory, but which, upon reflection, was appropriated to building the Shaw School at Charleston, S. C. And yet all these sums sink into insignificance when compared to that contributed by the negro soldiers to the erection of a monument to the memory of President Lincoln, at the capitol of the nation; seventeen hundred of them gave ten thousand dollars. But let the record speak for itself, for it is only a people's patriotism that can do such things:
CORRESPONDENCE AND STATEMENTS OF JAMES E. YEATMAN,
President of the Western Sanitary Commission, Relative to the Emancipation Monument.
"St. Louis, April 26th, 1865.
"James E. Yeatman, Esq.:
"My Dear Sir; A poor negro woman, of Marietta, Ohio, one of those made free by President Lincoln's proclamation, proposes that a monument to their dead friend be erected by the colored people of the United States. She has handed to a person in Marietta five dollars as her contribution for the purpose. Such a monument would have a history more grand and touching than any of which we have account. Would it not be well to take up this suggestion and make it known to the freedmen?
"Yours truly, T. C. H. Smith."
Mr. Yeatman says: