"No! No! No! No!" burst from a score of throats. Friends crowded around Belton and begged him to desist. They told him that the current was so strong that it was death to all future usefulness to try to breast it.
Belton waved them away and cried out in impassioned tones: "On her soil I was born; on her bosom I was reared; into her arms I hope to fall in death; and I shall not from fear of losing popular favor desist from pointing out the natural sources from which her sins arise, so that when judgment is pronounced justice will not hesitate to stamp it with her righteous seal."
"Remember your scars!" shouted one.
"Yes, I am scarred," returned Belton. "I have been in the hands of an angry mob; I have dangled from a tree at the end of a rope; I have felt the murderous pistol drive cold lead into my flesh; I have been accounted dead and placed upon the dissecting table; I have felt the sharp surgical knife ripping my flesh apart when I was supposed to be dead; all of these hardships and more besides I have received at the hands of the South; but she has not and cannot drive truth from my bosom, and the truth shall I declare this day."
Seeing that it was useless to attempt to deter him, Belton continued his speech without interruption: "There are many things in the message of our most worthy President that demand attention. It was indeed an awful sin for the Anglo-Saxon to enslave the negro. But in judging a people we must judge them according to the age in which they lived, and the influence that surrounded them.
"If David were on earth alive to-day and the ruler of an enlightened kingdom, he would be impeached forthwith, fined for adultery, imprisoned for bigamy, and hanged for murder. Yet while not measuring up to the standard of morality of to-day, he was the man after God's own heart in his day and generation.
"If Abraham were here to-day he would be expelled from any church that had any regard for decency; and yet, he was the father of the faithful, for he walked according to the little light that struggled through the clouds and reached him.
"When slavery was introduced into America, it was the universal practice of mankind to enslave. Knowing how quick we all are to heed the universal voice of mankind, we should be lenient toward others who are thus tempted and fall.
"It has appeared strange to some that the Americans could fight for their own freedom from England and yet not think of those whom they then held in slavery. It should be remembered that the two kinds of slavery were by no means identical. The Americans fought for a theory and abstract principle. The negro did not even discern the points at issue; and the Anglo-Saxon naturally did not concern himself at that time with any one so gross as not to know anything of a principle for which he, (the Anglo-Saxon) was ready to offer up his life.
"Our President alluded to the fact that the negro was unpaid for all his years of toil. It is true that he was not paid in coin, but he received that from the Anglo-Saxons which far outweighs in value all the gold coin on earth. He received instruction in the arts of civilization, a knowledge of the English language, and a conception of the one true God and his Christ.