Chapter XII: Part IV (6)

Our government was never in so good a condition to pursue such a policy. It has a prestige among oriental nations before unknown. Its voice, when it speaks with an imperative tone, will now be heard. The question for it is far larger than a missionary question. An influential American citizen has lately written me from an oriental country where our requests have received little attention, saying: "If our government proposes to do nothing for American citizens they should say so and turn us over to the care of the British embassy."

Such language as that makes one's blood tingle and stirs us to ask afresh, not alone as friends of missionaries, but as American citizens, what policy will our nation adopt to secure the rights of all our countrymen of whatever pursuit who are dwelling under treaty guarantees in China and Turkey? The friends of missions ask no exceptional favors from the government. They simply seek for such protection as their fellow-citizens need.

It is, of course, for our government to say at what time and by what methods it shall act. It is sometimes wise and even necessary for a government to postpone seeking a settlement of difficulties with a foreign power, even when it is clear that a settlement is highly desirable. Great exigencies may require delays. We must exercise the patience which patriotism calls for. But we may be permitted without impropriety to express our desire and our opinion that our government should find some way to make it absolutely clear to oriental countries that it intends to secure the protection for all our citizens, including missionaries, to which they are entitled by treaties and by international law.

AMERICAN SLAVERY

JOHN BRIGHT

Slavery has been as we all know the huge, foul blot upon the fame of the American Republic. It is an outrage against human right and against divine law, but the pride, the passion of man, will not permit its peaceable extinction. Is not this war the penalty which inexorable justice exacts from America, North and South, for the enormous guilt of cherishing that frightful iniquity of slavery for the last eighty years? The leaders of this revolt propose this monstrous thing,--that over a territory forty times as large as England the blight and curse of slavery shall be forever perpetuated.

I cannot believe that such a fate can befall that fair land, stricken as it now is with the ravages of war. I cannot believe that civilization in its journey with the sun will sink into endless night to gratify the ambition of leaders of this revolt, who seek to

"Wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind."

I have a far other and brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic, westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main,--and I see one people, and one law, and one language, and one faith, and over all that wide continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime.

THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES

WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE

Ladies and Gentlemen, Before I come to the resolution which I have undertaken to move, there are certain subjects which I wish to clear out of the way. There are most important distinctions to be drawn on the ground that the sufferers under the present misrule and the horribly accumulated outrages of the last two years are our own fellow-Christians. But we do not prosecute the cause we have in hand upon the ground that they are our fellow-Christians. This is no crusade against Mohammedanism. This is no declaration of an altered policy or sentiment as regards our Mohammedan fellow-subjects in India. Nay, more; I will say that it is no declaration of universal condemnation of the Mohammedans of the Turkish Empire. On the contrary, amid the dismal and heartrending reports of which we have had to read and hear so much, one of the rare touches of comfort and relief has been that in spite of the perpetration of massacres by the agents of the Government, in spite of the countenance given to massacre by the highest authority, there have been good and generous Mohammedans who have resisted these misdeeds to the uttermost of their power, who have established for themselves a claim to our sympathy and our admiration.

Although it is true that those persons are Christians on whose behalf we move, I confidently affirm, and you will back me in my affirmation, that if instead of being Christians they were themselves Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists, or Confucianists--they would have precisely the same claims upon our support; and the motives which have brought us here to-day would be incumbent upon us with the same force and with the same sacredness that we recognize at the present moment.

There is another distinction, gentlemen, less conspicuous, that I would wish to draw your attention to. You have been discouraged by the attitude or by the tone of several of the Continental Governments. Do not too hastily assume that in that attitude and tone they are faithful representatives of the people whom they rule. The ground on which we stand here is not British nor European, but human. Nothing narrower than humanity could pretend for a moment justly to represent it.

It may have occurred to some that atrocities which it is hardly possible to exaggerate have been boldly denied; and we are told by the Government of Turkey that the destruction of life which has taken place is not the work of either the Sultan or his agents, but is the work of revolutionaries and agitators.

In answer to this we may say that we do not rely upon the reports of revolutionaries or agitators. We rely upon the responsible reports of our public men. Nay, more; while we know that there are those among the six Powers who have shown every disposition to treat the case of the Sultan with all the leniency, with all the friendship that they could, yet every one of them concurs in the statements upon which we stand, and in giving an entire denial to counter-statements of the Turkish Government. The guilt of massacre, and not of massacre only but of every other horror that has been transacted, rests upon that Government. And to the guilt of massacre is added the impudence of denial, and this process will continue--how long? Just as long as you, as Europe, are contented to hear it. Recollect that eighteen months or more have passed since the first of those gigantic massacres was perpetrated, and when that occurrence took place it was thought to be so extraordinary that it was without precedent in the past; for Bulgaria becomes pale by the side of Armenia. But alas! that massacre, gigantic as it was, has been followed up so that one has grown into a series. To the work of murder was added the work of lust, the work of torture, the work of pillage, the work of starvation, and every accessory that it was possible for human wickedness to devise. To all other manifestations which had formerly been displayed in the face of the world there was added consummate insolence.

Come what may, let us extract ourselves from an ambiguous position. Let us have nothing to do with countenance of, and so renounce and condemn, neutrality; and let us present ourselves to Her Majesty's Ministers, promising them in good faith our ungrudging and our enthusiastic support in every effort which they may make to express by word and by deed their detestation of acts, not yet perhaps having reached their consummation, but which already have come to such a magnitude and such a depth of atrocity that they constitute the most terrible and most monstrous series of proceedings that have ever been recorded in the dismal and deplorable history of human crime.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC[37]

JULIA WARD HOWE

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal,
Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat.
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

FOOTNOTE:

[37] By special permission of the author.

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY

HENRY CABOT LODGE

I was a boy ten years old when the troops marched away to defend Washington. I saw the troops, month after month, pour through the streets of Boston. I saw Shaw go forth at the head of his black regiment, and Bartlett, shattered in body but dauntless in soul, ride by to carry what was left of him once more to the battlefields of the Republic. I saw Andrew, standing bareheaded on the steps of the State House, bid the men godspeed. I cannot remember the words he said, but I can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought tears to the eyes and fire to the hearts of all who listened. To my boyish mind one thing alone was clear, that the soldiers, as they marched past, were all, in that supreme hour, heroes and patriots. Other feelings have, in the progress of time, altered much, but amid many changes that simple belief of boyhood has never altered.

And you, brave men who wore the gray, would be the first to hold me or any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say that now it was all over I thought the North was wrong and the result of the war a mistake. To the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we hold out our hands freely, frankly and gladly. We have no bitter memories to revive, no reproaches to utter. Differ in politics and in a thousand other ways we must and shall in all good nature, but never let us differ with each other on sectional or state lines, by race or creed.

We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I have said, to New England. We welcome you to old Massachusetts. We welcome you to Boston and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll back, and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental Congress, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."

A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves at Arlington, said: "Only a great people is capable of a great civil war." Let us add with thankful hearts that only a great people is capable of a great reconciliation. Side by side, Virginia and Massachusetts led the colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side, they founded the government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox, Moultrie and Prescott, men of the South and men of the North, fought shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same uniform of buff and blue,--the uniform of Washington.

Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is sentiment, true sentiment, that has moved the world. Sentiment fought the war, and sentiment has reunited us. When the war was closed it was proposed to give Governor Andrew, who had sacrificed health and strength and property in his public duties, some immediately lucrative office. A friend asked him if he would take such a place. "No," said he; "I have stood as high priest between the horns of the altar, and I have poured out upon it the best blood of Massachusetts, and I cannot take money for that." Mere sentiment truly, but the sentiment which ennobles and uplifts mankind.

So I say that the sentiment manifested by your presence here, brethren of Virginia, sitting side by side with those who wore the blue, tells us that if war should break again upon the country, the sons of Virginia and Massachusetts would, as in the olden days, stand once more shoulder to shoulder, with no distinction in the colors that they wear. It is fraught with tidings of peace on earth, and you may read its meaning in the words on yonder picture, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"

CORRUPTION OF PRELATES

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA

When the demon sees that man is weak he gives him a blow with a hatchet, to make him fall into sin, but when he sees him strong he strikes him down with an axe. If there be a young woman, honest and well brought up, he sets an immoral youth near her, and with all kinds of flattery deceives her, and makes her fall into sin. Here the devil has dealt a blow with an axe. Here is an honorable citizen, he enters the courts of the great lords; there is the axe, and so well sharpened, that no strength of virtue can resist it. But we are in these days in a sadder plight; the demon has called his followers for the harvest, and has struck terrible blows upon the doors of the temple. The doors are those which lead into the house, and the prelates are those who should lead the faithful into the church of Christ. It is because of this that the devil has dealt his great blows, and broken the doors to pieces. It is for this that good pastors are no longer to be found in the church. Do ye not perceive that they are bringing everything to ruin? They have no judgment. They can make no distinction between good and evil, between truth and falsehood, between sweet and bitter. Things good appear to them evil, things true to them false, the sweet are to them bitter, the bitter sweet. Ye see prelates prostrating themselves before earthly affections and earthly things; they no longer lay to heart the care of souls; it is enough for them if they receive their incomes; the sermons of their preachers are composed to please princes, and be magnified by them. But something worse yet remains; not only have they destroyed the church of God, but have erected one according to a fashion of their own. This is the modern church, no longer built with living stones, that is, by Christians established in a living faith, and so formed of love. Go to Rome and through all Christendom, in the houses of the great prelates and the great lords, nothing is thought of but poetry and the art of oratory.

Go and see, and you will find them with books of the humanities in their hands, and giving themselves up to the belief that they know how to lead the souls of men aright by Virgil, Horace, and Cicero. Do you wish to see the church guided by the hand of the astrologer? Ye will not find either prelate or great lord who is not in confidential intercourse with some astrologer, who predicts to him the hour when he must ride or engage in some other affair. These same great lords do not dare to move a step contrary to what their astrologer tells them. There are only two things in that temple in which they find delight, and these are the paintings, and the gilding with which it is covered.

It is thus that in our church there are many beautiful external ceremonies in the solemnization of the holy offices, splendid vestments and draperies, with gold and silver candlesticks, and many chalices, all of which have a majestic effect. There you see great prelates, wearing golden miters, set with precious stones, on their heads, and with silver crosiers, standing before the altar with copes of brocade, slowly intoning vespers and other masses with much ceremony, accompanied by an organ and singers, until ye become quite stupefied; and these men appear to you to be men of great gravity and holiness, and ye believe that they are incapable of error, and they themselves believe that all they say and do is commanded by the gospel to be observed.

Men feed upon those vanities, and rejoice in those ceremonies, and say that the church of Christ was never in so flourishing a state, and that divine worship was never so well conducted as in this day; and that the first prelates were very contemptible preachers in comparison with those of modern times. They certainly had not so many golden miters, nor so many chalices; and they parted with those they had to relieve the necessities of the poor; our prelates get their chalices by taking that from the poor which is their support. But dost thou know what I would say? In the primitive church there were wooden chalices and golden prelates; but now the church has golden chalices and wooden prelates. They have established amongst us the festivals of the devil, they believe not in God, and make a mockery of the mysteries of our religion.

What doest thou, O Lord? Why slumberest thou? Arise and take the church out of the hands of the devil, out of the hands of tyrants, out of the hands of wicked prelates. Hast thou forgotten thy church? Dost thou not love her? Hast thou no care for her? We are become, O Lord, the opprobrium of the nations; Turks are masters of Constantinople; we have lost Asia, we have lost Greece, we are become tributaries of infidels. O Lord God, thou hast dealt with us as an angry father, thou hast banished us from before thee! Hasten the punishment and the scourge that there may be a speedy return to thee! Pour out thy wrath upon the nations!

Be not scandalized, my brethren, by these words; rather consider that when the good wish for punishment, it is because they wish to see evil driven away and the blessed reign of Jesus Christ triumphant throughout the world. We have no other hope left us, unless the sword of the Lord threatens the earth.

THE CROSS OF GOLD[38]

W. J. BRYAN

I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty--the cause of humanity. We object to bringing this question down to the level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest over a principle.

When you come before us and tell us that we are about to disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your course. We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding-places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak of this broader class of business men.

Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose--the pioneers away out there, who rear their children near to Nature's heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds--out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead--these people, we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!

We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin and issue money is a function of government. We believe it. We believe that it is a part of sovereignty, and can no more with safety be delegated to private individuals than we could afford to delegate to private individuals the power to make penal statutes or levy taxes. Mr. Jefferson seems to have differed in opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of the minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank, and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of government, and that the banks ought to go out of the governing business.

And now, my friends, let me come to the paramount issue. If they ask us why it is that we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that, if protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we do not embody in our platform all the things that we believe in, we reply that when we have restored the money of the Constitution all other necessary reforms will be possible; but that until this is done there is no other reform that can be accomplished.

Why is it that within three months such a change has come over the country? Three months ago when it was confidently asserted that those who believe in the gold standard would frame our platform and nominate our candidates, even the advocates of the gold standard did not think that we could elect a President. Why this change? Ah, my friends, is not the reason for the change evident to any one who will look at the matter? No private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people a man who will declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this country, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place the legislative control of our affairs in the hands of foreign potentates and powers.

We go forth confident that we shall win. Why? Because upon the paramount issue of this campaign there is not a spot of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle. If they tell us that the gold standard is a good thing, we shall point to their platform and tell them that their platform pledges the party to get rid of the gold standard and substitute bimetallism. If the gold standard is a good thing, why try to get rid of it? If the gold standard is a bad thing, why should we wait until other nations are willing to help us to let go? Here is the line of battle, and we care not upon which issue they force the fight; we are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all the nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard and that both the great parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why should we not have it? If they come to meet us on that issue, we can present the history of our nation.

More than that; we can tell them that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have declared for a gold standard, but not where the masses have. There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them. You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

My friends, we declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth; and upon that issue we expect to carry every state in the Union. I shall not slander the inhabitants of the fair State of Massachusetts nor the inhabitants of the State of New York by saying that, when they are confronted with the proposition, they will declare that this nation is not able to attend to its own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation; shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers?

No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

FOOTNOTE:

[38] From a speech delivered in the city of Chicago before the Democratic National Convention of 1896.

DEATH OF CONGRESSMAN BURNES

J. J. INGALLS

At this crisis and juncture, when every instant is priceless, the Senate proceeds by unanimous consent to consider resolutions of the highest privilege, and reverently pauses in obedience to the holiest impulses of human nature to contemplate the profoundest mystery of human destiny--the mystery of death. In the democracy of death all men at least are equal. There is neither rank, nor station, nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.

At that fatal threshold the philosopher ceases to be wise and the song of the poet is silent. At that fatal threshold Dives relinquishes his millions and Lazarus his rags. The poor man is as rich as the richest and the rich man is as poor as the pauper. The creditor loses his usury and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation. The proud man surrenders his dignity, the politician his honors, the worldling his pleasures. James Nelson Burnes, whose life and virtues we commemorate to-day, was a man whom Plutarch might have described and Vandyke portrayed. Massive, rugged and robust, in motion slow, in speech serious and deliberate, grave in aspect, serious in demeanor, of antique and heroic mold, the incarnation of force. As I looked for the last time upon that countenance, from which no glance of friendly recognition nor word of welcome came, I reflected upon the impenetrable and insoluble mystery of death.

If death be the end, if the life of Burnes terminated upon "this bank and shoal of time," if no morning is to dawn upon the night in which he sleeps, then sorrow has no consolation, and this impressive and solemn ceremony which we observe to-day has no more significance than the painted pageant of the stage. If the existence of Burnes was but a troubled dream, his death oblivion, what avails it that the Senate should pause to recount his virtues? Neither veneration nor reverence is due the dead if they are but dust; no cenotaph should be reared to preserve for posterity the memory of their achievements if those who come after them are to be only their successors in annihilation and extinction. If in this world only we have hope and consciousness duty must be a chimera; our pleasures and our passions should be the guides of conduct, and virtue is indeed a superstition if life ends at the grave. This is the conclusion which the philosophy of negation must accept at last. Such is the felicity of those degrading precepts which make the epitaph the end. If the life of Burnes is as a taper that is burned out then we treasure his memory and his example in vain, and the latest prayer of his departing spirit has no more sanctity to us, who soon or late must follow him, than the whisper of winds that stir the leaves of the protesting forest, or the murmur of the waves that break upon the complaining shore.

THE DEATH OF GARFIELD[39]

JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE

On the morning of Saturday, July second, the President was a contented and happy man--not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly, happy. On his way to the railroad-station, to which he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been safely passed; that trouble lay behind him, and not before him; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him; that he was going to his alma mater to renew the most cherished associations of his young manhood, and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon his college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his countrymen.

Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him, no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave.

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of Murder he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death. And he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell? What brilliant broken plans, what baffled high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day, and every day rewarding, a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree.

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison-walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders, on its far sails whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.

FOOTNOTE:

[39] From a memorial oration delivered in the House of Representatives, February 27, 1882, published by Henry Bill Publishing Co., Norwich, Conn.

DEATH OF TOUSSAINT L'OVERTURE[40]

WENDELL PHILLIPS

Returning to the hills, Toussaint issued the only proclamation which bears his name, and breathes vengeance: "My children, France comes to make us slaves. God gave us liberty. France has no right to take it away. Burn the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon, poison the wells. Show the white man the hell he comes to make"; and he was obeyed.

When the great William of Orange saw Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said: "Break down the dikes, give Holland back to ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" When Alexander saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said: "Burn Moscow, starve back the invaders!" and Europe said, "Sublime!" This black saw all Europe come to crush him, and gave to his people the same heroic example of defiance.

Holland lent sixty ships. England promised by special message to be neutral; and you know neutrality means sneering at freedom, and sending arms to tyrants. England promised neutrality, and the black looked out and saw the whole civilized world marshaled against him. America, full of slaves, was of course hostile. Only the Yankee sold him poor muskets at a very high price. Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island, he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever seen before. Sixty ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of Europe, rounded the point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread, like Cæsar's, had shaken Europe: soldiers who had scaled the Pyramids, and planted the French banners on the walls of Rome. He looked a moment, counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and turning to Christophe, exclaimed: "All France is come to Hayti; they can only come to make us slaves; and we are lost!"

Toussaint was too dangerous to be left at large. So they summoned him to attend a council; he went, and the moment he entered the room the officers drew their swords and told him he was a prisoner. They put him on shipboard and weighed anchor for France. As the island faded from his sight he turned to the captain and said, "You think you have rooted up the tree of liberty, but I am only a branch; I have planted the tree so deep that all France can never root it up."

He was sent to a dungeon twelve feet by twenty, built wholly of stone, with a narrow window, high up on one side, looking out on the snows of Switzerland. In this living tomb the child of the sunny tropics was left to die. But he did not die fast enough. Napoleon ordered the commandant to go into Switzerland, to carry the keys of the dungeon with him and stay four days. When he returned, Toussaint was found starved to death.

Napoleon, that imperial assassin, was taken, twelve years later, to his prison at St. Helena, planned for a tomb, as he had planned that of Toussaint, and there he whined away his dying hours in pitiful complaints. God grant that when some future Plutarch shall weigh the great men of our epoch, he do not put that whining child of St. Helena into one scale, and into the other the negro, meeting death like a Roman, without a murmur, in the solitude of his icy dungeon.

FOOTNOTE:

[40] By permission of the publishers, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

THE DEDICATION OF GETTYSBURG CEMETERY

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far beyond our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

THE FALLEN HEROES OF JAPAN

ADMIRAL HEIHAICHIRO TOGO

This speech was a part of a very impressive Shinto ceremony in
which the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese fleets addressed the
spirits of the officers and sailors who lost their lives during the
war with Russia. For simple eloquence it has seldom been surpassed.

The clouds of war have disappeared from sea and from shore, and the whole city, with a peaceful, placid heart like that of a child, goes out to meet the men who shared life and death with you, and who now return triumphant under the imperial standard, while their families wait for them at the gates of their homes.

Looking back, we recall how, bearing the bitter cold and enduring the fierce heat, you fought again and again with our strong foe, and while the issue of the contest was still uncertain you went before us to the grave, leaving us to envy the glory you had won by your loyal deaths. We longed to imitate you in paying the debt to sovereign and country. Your valiant and vehement fighting always achieved success. In no combat did you fail to conquer. Throughout ten months the attack on Port Arthur continued and the result was determined. In the Sea of Japan a single annihilating effort decided the issue. Thenceforth the enemy's shadow disappeared from the face of the ocean. This success had its origin in the infinite virtues of the emperor, but it could not have been achieved had not you, forgetting yourselves, sacrificed your lives in the public service. The war is over. We who return in triumph see signs of joy everywhere. But we remember that we cannot share it with you, and mingled feelings of sadness and rejoicing struggle painfully for expression. The triumph of to-day has been purchased by your glorious deaths, and your loyalty and valor will inspire our navy, guarding the imperial land for all time.

We here perform this rite of worship to your spirits, and speaking something of our sad thoughts, pray you to come and receive the offerings we make.

SECESSION[41]

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS

Mr. President: This step of secession, once taken, can never be recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must follow, will rest on the convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth; when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land; our temples of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolation of war upon us; who but this Convention will be held responsible for it? And who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetrate? Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can give, that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments--what reason you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case; and what cause or one overt act can you name or point, on which to rest the plea of justification? What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the government of Washington, of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge the answer. While, on the other hand, let me show the facts, of which I wish you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand as records authentic in the history of our country. When we of the South demanded the slave-trade, or the importation of Africans for the cultivation of our lands, did they not yield the right for twenty years? When we asked a three-fifths representation in Congress for our slaves, was it not granted? When we asked and demanded the return of any fugitive from justice, or the recovery of those persons owing labor or allegiance, was it not incorporated in the Constitution, and again ratified and strengthened by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850? But do you reply that in many instances they have violated this compact, and have not been faithful to their engagements? As individual and local communities, they may have done so; but not by the sanction of government; for that has always been true to Southern interests. Again, gentlemen, look at another act; when we have asked that more territory should be added, that we might spread the institution of slavery, have they not yielded to our demands in giving us Louisiana, Florida, and Texas? From these, four States have been carved, and ample territory for four more is to be added in due time, if you, by this unwise and impolitic act, do not destroy this hope, and, perhaps, by it lose all, and have your last slave wrenched from you by stern military rule, as South America and Mexico were; or by the vindictive decree of a universal emancipation which may reasonably be expected to follow.

But, again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change of our relation to the general government? We have always had the control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we have been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from the South, as well as the control and management of most of those chosen from the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to their twenty-four, thus controlling the executive department. So of the judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the South and but eleven from the North; although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the free states, yet a majority of the Court has always been from the South. This we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interests in the legislative branch of government. In choosing the presidents of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the House we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority of the representatives, from their greater population, have always been from the North, yet we have generally secured the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other department of the general government. Attorney-generals we have had fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have had eighty-six and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the free states, from their greater commercial interest, yet we have had the principal embassies, so as to secure the world-markets for our cotton, tobacco, and sugar on the best possible terms. We have had a vast majority of the higher offices of both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North. Again, from official documents, we learn that a fraction over three-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of the government has uniformly been raised from the North.

Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars you must expend in a war with the North; with tens of thousands of your sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon the altar of your ambition--and for what, we ask again? Is it for the overthrow of the American government, established by our common ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity? And as such, I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots, in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest government--the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most aspiring in its principles, to elevate the race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this, under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century--in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety, while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed--is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I neither lend my sanction nor my vote.

FOOTNOTE:

[41] Delivered at the Georgia State Convention, January, 1861.

THE DEATH OF GRADY

JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES

Oh, brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a season thy precious dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but we fling back against all our brightening skies the thoughtless speech that calls thee dead! God reigns and His purpose lives, and although these brave lips are silent here, the seeds sown in his incarnate eloquence will sprinkle patriots through the years to come, and perpetuate thy living in a race of nobler men!

But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we should speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within the city that he loved, a monument tall as his services, and noble as the place he filled. Let every Georgian lend a hand, and as it rises to confront in majesty his darkened home, let the widow who weeps there be told that every stone that makes it has been sawn from the sound prosperity that he builded, and that the light which plays upon its summit is, in afterglow, the sunshine that he brought into the world.

And for the rest--silence. The sweetest thing about his funeral was that no sound broke the stillness save the reading of the Scriptures, and the melody of music. No fire that can be kindled upon the altar of speech can relume the radiant spark that perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn beside the sunlight of his useful life. After all, there is nothing grander than such living.