Great nature made them men!”
Read the memorial signed by Judge Dillon, by the democratic mayor of Saint Louis, by Mr. Henderson, once a member of the Senate, and by other men known to the nation, detailing what has been done in recent weeks on the Southern Mississippi. Read the affidavits accompanying this memorial. Has any one a copy of the memorial here? I have seen the memorial. I have seen the signatures. I hope the honorable Senator from Illinois will read it, and read the affidavits which accompany it. When he does, he will read one of the most sickening recitals of modern times. He will look upon one of the bloodiest and blackest pictures in the book of recent years. Yet the Senator says, all is quiet. “There is not such faith, no not in Israel.” Verily “order reigns in Warsaw.”
Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Mr. President, the republican party every where wants peace and prosperity—peace and prosperity in the South, as much and as sincerely as elsewhere. Disguising the truth, will not bring peace and prosperity. Soft phrases will not bring peace. “Fair words butter no parsnips.” We hear a great deal of loose, flabby talk about “fanning dying embers,” “rekindling smoldering fires,” and so on. Whenever the plain truth is spoken, these unctious monitions, with a Peter Parley benevolence, fall copiously upon us. This lullaby and hush has been in my belief a mistake from the beginning. It has misled the South and misled the North. In Andrew Johnson’s time a convention was worked up at Philadelphia, and men were brought from the North and South, for ecstasy and gush. A man from Massachusetts and a man from South Carolina locked arms and walked into the convention arm in arm, and sensation and credulity palpitated, and clapped their hands, and thought an universal solvent had been found. Serenades were held at which “Dixie” was played. Later on, anniversaries of battles fought in the war of Independence, were made occasions by men from the North and men from the South for emotional, dramatic, hugging ceremonies. General Sherman, I remember, attended one of them, and I remember also, that with the bluntness of a soldier, and the wisdom and hard sense of a statesman, he plainly cautioned all concerned not to be carried away, and not to be fooled. But many have been fooled, and being fooled, have helped to swell the democratic majorities which now display themselves before the public eye.
Of all such effusive demonstrations I have this to say: honest, serious convictions are not ecstatic or emotional. Grave affairs and lasting purposes do not express or vent themselves in honeyed phrase or sickly sentimentality, rhapsody, or profuse professions.
This is as true of political as of religious duties. The Divine Master tells us, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”
Facts are stubborn things, but the better way to deal with them is to look them squarely in the face.
The republican party and the Northern people preach no crusade against the South. I will say nothing of the past beyond a single fact. When the war was over, no man who fought against his flag was punished even by imprisonment. No estate was confiscated. Every man was left free to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. After the Southern States were restored to their relations in the Union, no man was ever disfranchised by national authority—not one. If this statement is denied, I invite any Senator to correct me. I repeat it. After the Southern State governments were rebuilded, and the States were restored to their relations in the Union, by national authority, not one man for one moment was ever denied the right to vote, or hindered in the right. From the time that Mississippi was restored, there never has been an hour when Jefferson Davis might not vote as freely as the honorable Senator in his State of Illinois. The North, burdened with taxes, draped in mourning, dotted over with new-made graves tenanted by her bravest and her best, sought to inflict no penalty upon those who had stricken her with the greatest, and, as she believed, the guiltiest rebellion that ever crimsoned the annals of the human race.
As an example of generosity and magnanimity, the conduct of the nation in victory was the grandest the world has ever seen. The same spirit prevails now. Yet our ears are larumed with the charge that the republicans of the North seek to revive and intensify the wounds and pangs and passions of the war, and that the southern democrats seek to bury them in oblivion of kind forgetfulness.
We can test the truth of these assertions right before our eyes. Let us test them. Twenty-seven States adhered to the Union in the dark hour. Those States send to Congress two hundred and sixty-nine Senators and Representatives. Of these two hundred and sixty-nine Senators and Representatives, fifty-four, and only fifty-four, were soldiers in the armies of the Union. The eleven States which were disloyal send ninety-three Senators and Representatives to Congress. Of these, eighty-five were soldiers in the armies of the rebellion, and at least three more held high civil station in the rebellion, making in all eighty-eight out of ninety-three.