In his speech, DeMond reviews African-American history as a map for the American nation's future. He identifies the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation as the twin pillars of the American Republic, the latter constituting fulfillment of the former. he said that the Emancipation Proclamation enabled African Americans to join in loyal patriotism, and he lauds the participation of black soldiers in the Spanish–American War. He pays tribute to such antislavery figures as Douglass, Garnet, Garrison, Phillips, Beecher, Stowe, Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, and Sumner for voicing a desire for freedom that informed the re-fashioning of the United States. He thought that American history was informed by three basic characters: "the Cavalier, the Puritan and the Negro." He praised African Americans for contributing "all that is noblest and best in American life." He incorporate rhetoric of the antislavery movement into early 20th-century nationalist discourse on freedom and the destiny of the United States.