Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

John Quincy Adams: "No. The territories I helped bring into the nation were to be dwelt in by free men and made into free States.'

[ocr errors]

Aaron Burr: "Yes. You are repeating my buccaneering expedition down the Mississippi. I am to be vindicated at last!"

Abraham Lincoln: "No. I said in Independence Hall at Philadelphia, just before I entered upon my great office, that I rested upon the truth Thomas Jefferson has just uttered, and that I was ready to be assassinated, if need be, in order to maintain it. I was assassinated in order to maintain it."

And

Charles Sumner: "No. I proclaimed it when I brought in Alaska. I sealed my devotion with my blood, also. It was my support and solace through those many long and weary hours when the red-hot iron pressed upon my spine, the very source and origin of agony, and I did not flinch. He knows our country little, little also of that great liberty of ours, who supposes that we could receive such a transfer. On each side there is impossibility. Territory may be conveyed, but not a people."

William McKinley: "There has been a cloud before my vision for a moment, but I see clearly now; I go back to what I said two years ago: Forcible annexation is criminal aggression; governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, not some of them, but of all of them.' I will stand with the Fathers of the Republic. I will stand with the founders of the Republican party. No."

Mr. President, I know how imperfectly I have stated this argument. I know how feeble is a single voice amid this din and tempest, this delirium of empire. It may be that the battle for this day is lost. But I have an assured faith in the future. I have an assured faith in justice and the love of liberty of the American people. The stars in their courses fight for

freedom. The Ruler of the heavens is on that side. If the battle to-day go against it, I appeal to another day, not distant and sure to come. I appeal from the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet and the brawling and the shouting to the quiet chamber where the Fathers gathered in Philadelphia. I appeal from the spirit of trade to the spirit of liberty. I appeal from the Empire to the Republic. I appeal from the millionaire, and the boss, and the wire-puller, and the manager to the statesman of the older time, in whose eyes a guinea never glistened, who lived and died poor, and who left to his children and to his countrymen a good name far better than riches. I appeal from the Present, bloated with material prosperity, drunk with the lust of empire, to another and a better age. I appeal from the Present to the Future and to the Past.

CLARK HOWELL

[Extracts from a speech delivered at the Peace Jubilee, Chicago, November 19, 1898.]

[ocr errors][merged small]

IN the mountains of my State, in a county remote from the quickening touch of commerce and railroads and telegraph-so far removed that the sincerity of its rugged people flows unpolluted from the spring of nature two vine-covered mounds, nestled in the solemn silence of a country church-yard, suggest the text of my response to the sentiment to which I am to speak to-night. A serious text for an occasion like this, and yet of it there is life and peace and hope and prosperity, for in the solemn sacrifice of the voiceless grave can the chiefest lesson of the Republic be learned and the destiny of its real mission be unfolded. So bear with me while I lead you to the rust-stained slab, which for a third of a century-since Chickamauga-has been kissed by the sun as it peeped over the Blue Ridge, melting the tears with which the mourning night had bedewed the inscription:

Here lies a Confederate soldier.
He died for his country.

The September day which brought the body of this mountain hero to that home among the hills which had smiled upon his infancy, been gladdened by his youth,

and strengthened by his manhood, was an ever-memorable one with the sorrowing concourse of friends and neighbors who followed his shot-riddled body to the grave. And of that number no man gainsaid the honor of his death, lacked full loyalty to the flag for which he fought, or doubted the justice of the cause for which he gave his life.

Thirty-five years have passed; another war has called its roll of martyrs; again the old bell tolls from the crude, latticed tower of the settlement church; another great pouring of sympathetic humanity, and this time the body of a son, wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, is lowered to its everlasting rest beside that of the father who sleeps in the Stars and Bars. There were those there who stood by the grave of the Confederate hero years before, and the children of those were there, and of those present no one gainsaid the honor of the death of this hero of El Caney, and none were there but loved, as patriots alone can love, the glorious flag that enshrines the people of a common country as it enshrouds the form that will sleep forever in its blessed folds. And on this tomb will be

written:

Here lies the son of a Confederate soldier.
He died for his country.

And so it is that, between the making of these two graves, human hands and human hearts have reached. a solution of the vexed problem that has baffled human will and human thought for three decades. Sturdy sons of the South have said to their brothers of the North that the people of the South had long since accepted the arbitrament of the sword to which they had appealed. The sentiment of the great majority of the people of the South was rightly spoken in the message of the immortal Hill, and in the burning eloquence of

Henry Grady, the record of whose blessed work for the restoration of peace between the sections becomes a national heritage, and whose names are stamped in enduring impress upon the affection of the people of the Republic. And yet there were still those among us who believed your course was polite but insincere, and those among you who assumed that our professed attitude was sentimental and unreal.

Bitterness had departed and sectional hate was no more, but there were those who feared, even if they did not believe, that between the great sections of our greater Government there was not the perfect faith and trust and love that both professed; that there was want of the faith that made the American revolution a possibility; that there was want of the trust that crystallized our States into the original Union; that there was lack of the love that bound in unassailable strength the united sisterhood of States that withstood the shock of civil war. It is true this doubt existed to a greater degree abroad than at home. But to-day the mist of uncertainty has been swept away by the sunlight of events, and there, where doubt obscured before, stands in bold relief, commanding the admiration of the whole world, the most glorious type of united strength and sentiment and loyalty known to the history of nations.

II.

A COMMON FOE

NATIONS may be made by the joining of hands, but the measure of their real strength and vitality, like that of the human body, is in the heart. Show me the country whose people are not at heart in sympathy with its institutions, and the fervor of whose patriotism is not bespoken in its flag, and I will show you a ship

« AnteriorContinuar »