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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 331

wherever else they might be strangers, they were all at home there. The same
boundless welcome is given to all American citizens by Washington.
Elsewhere we may belong to individual States, but here we belong to the
whole United States. Elsewhere we may belong to a section, but here we
belong to a whole country, and the whole country belongs to us. It is national
territory, and the one place where no American is an intruder or a carpet-
bagger. The new comer is not less at home than the old resident. Under its
lofty domes and stately pillars, as under the broad blue sky, all races and
colors of men stand upon a footing of common equality.

"'The wealth and magnificence which elsewhere might oppress the
humble citizen have an opposite effect here. They are felt to be a part of
himself and serve to ennoble him in his own eyes. He is an owner of the
marble grandeur which he beholds about him,—as much so as any of the
forty millions of this great nation. Once in his life every American who can
should visit Washington; not as the Mahometan to Mecca; not as the Catholic
to Rome; not as the Hebrew to Jerusalem, nor as the Chinaman to the
Flowery kingdom, but in the spirit of enlightened patriotism, knowing the
value of free institutions and how to perpetuate and maintain them.

"'Washington should be contemplated not merely as an assemblage of
fine buildings; not merely as the chosen resort of the wealth and fashion of
the country; not merely as the honored place where the statesmen of the
nation assemble to shape the policy and frame the laws; not merely as the
point at which we are most visibly touched by the outside world, and where
the diplomatic skill and talent of the old continent meet and match them-
selves against those of the new, but as the national flag itself—a glorious
symbol of civil and religious liberty, leading the world in the race of social
science, civilization, and renown.'

"My lecture in Baltimore required more than an hour and a half for its
delivery and every intelligent reader will see the difficulty of doing justice to
such a speech when it is abbreviated and compressed into a half or three-
quarters of a column. Such abbreviation and condensation has been resorted
to in this instance. A few stray sentences, culled out from their connections,
would be deprived of much of their harshness if presented in the form and
connection in which they were uttered; but I am taking up too much space,
and will close with the last paragraph of the lecture, as delivered in Baltimore.
'No city in the broad world has a higher or more beneficent mission. Among
all the great capitals of the world it is pre-eminently the capital of free institu-
tions. Its fall would be a blow to freedom and progress throughout the world.
Let it stand then where it does now stand—where the father of his country