But Baltimore suggests more than could happen within Baltimore.  The change within Baltimore is part only of a far wider change.  When the war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it would last till now.  Each looked for the end, in some way, long ere to-day.  Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be much affected by the war.  But here we are; the war has not ended, and slavery has been much affected how much needs not now to be recounted.  So true is it that man proposes and God disposes.

But we can see the past, though we may not claim to have directed it; and seeing it, in this case, we feel more hopeful and confident for the future.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one.  We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.  With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.  Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty.  And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names —­liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one.  Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty.  Hence we behold the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.  Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty, and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary has been repudiated.

It is not very becoming for one in my position to make speeches at length; but there is another subject upon which I feel that I ought to say a word.  A painful rumor, true, I fear, has reached us, of the massacre, by the rebel forces at Fort Pillow, in the west end of Tennessee, on the Mississippi River, of some three hundred colored soldiers and white officers [I believe it latter turned out to be 500], who had just been overpowered by their assailants [numbering 5000].  There seems to be some anxiety in the public mind whether the Government is doing its duty to the colored soldier, and to the service, at this point.  At the beginning of the war, and for some time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the change of purpose was wrought I will not now take