Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South.
In my opinion, Washington is trying to talk to the black people first in order to make it sympathetic to the white people and make them willing to improve their relationships with the black people.