He battled for a nation's life—for the rights of slaves—the dignity of labor, and the liberty of all. He guarded with a father's care the rights of the hunted, the hated and despised. He attacked the savage statutes of the reconstructed States with a torrent of invective, scorn and execration. He was not satisfied until the freedman was an American Citizen—clothed with every civil right—until the Constitution was his shield—until the ballot was his sword.
And long after we are dead, the colored man in this and other lands will speak his name in reverence and love. Others wavered, but he stood firm; some were false, but he was proudly true—fearlessly faithful unto death.
He gladly, proudly grasped the hands of colored men who stood with him as makers of our laws, and treated them as equals and as friends. The cry of "social equality" coined and uttered by the cruel and the base, was to him the expression of a great and splendid truth. He knew that no man can be the equal of the one he robs—that the intelligent and unjust are not the superiors of the ignorant and honest—and he also felt, and proudly felt, that if he were not too great to reach the hand of help and recognition to the slave, no other Senator could rightfully refuse.
We rise by raising others—and he who stoops above the fallen, stands erect.
Nothing can be grander than to sow the seeds of noble thoughts and virtuous deeds—to liberate the bodies and the souls of men—to earn the grateful homage of a race—and then, in life's last shadowy hour, to know that the historian of Liberty will be compelled to write your name.
There are no words intense enough,—with heart enough—to express my admiration for the great and gallant souls who have in every age and every land upheld the right, and who have lived and died for freedom's sake.
In our lives have been the grandest years that man has lived, that Time has measured by the flight of worlds.
The history of that great Party that let the oppressed go free—that lifted our nation from the depths of savagery to freedom's cloudless heights, and tore with holy hands from every law the words that sanctified the cruelty of man, is the most glorious in the annals of our race. Never before was there such a moral exaltation—never a party with a purpose so pure and high. It was the embodied conscience of a nation, the enthusiasm of a people guided by wisdom, the impersonation of justice; and the sublime victory achieved loaded even the conquered with all the rights that freedom can bestow.
Roscoe Conkling was an absolutely honest man. Honesty is the oak around which all other virtues cling. Without that they fall, and groveling die in weeds and dust. He believed that a nation should discharge its obligations. He knew that a promise could not be made often enough, or emphatic enough, to take the place of payment. He felt that the promise of the Government was the promise of every citizen—that a national obligation was a personal debt, and that no possible combination of words and pictures could take the place of coin. He uttered the splendid truth that "the higher obligations among men are not set down in writing signed and sealed, but reside in honor." He knew that repudiation was the sacrifice of honor—the death of the national soul. He knew that without character, without integrity, there is no wealth, and that below poverty, below bankruptcy, is the rayless abyss of repudiation. He upheld the sacredness of contracts, of plighted national faith, and helped to save and keep the honor of his native land. This adds another laurel to his brow.
He was the ideal representative, faithful and incorruptible. He believed that his constituents and his country were entitled to the fruit of his experience, to his best and highest thought. No man ever held the standard of responsibility higher than he. He voted according to his judgment, his conscience. He made no bargains—he neither bought nor sold.