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THE SPIRIT OF THE SOUTH

From "The New South," with the permission of Henry W. Grady Junior

BY HENRY W. GRADY

The New South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the
breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her
face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and
prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the
people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the
expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because
in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her
brave armies were beaten.

This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has
nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle
between the States was war and not rebellion, revolution and not
conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should
be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own
convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South
has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument
that crowns its central hills--a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its
shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a
brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all
the glories of New England--from Plymouth Rock all the way--would I
exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of
that shaft I shall send my children's children to reverence him who
ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the
shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I
say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life
was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am
glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in his Almighty
hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil--the
American Union saved from the wreck of war.

This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground.
Every foot of the soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a
battle ground of the Republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed
to you by the blood of your brothers, sacred soil to all of us, rich
with memories that make us purer and stronger and better, speaking an
eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble
union of American States and the imperishable brotherhood of the
American people.

Now what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the
prejudices of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it
has died in the hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this
prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts, which never
felt the generous ardor of conflict, it may perpetuate itself? Will she
withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his
soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the
vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch
of your dying captain, [Footnote: General Ulysses S. Grant.] filling
his heart with grace, touching his lips with praise and glorifying his
path to the grave; will she make this vision on which the last sigh of
his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion? If
she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must
accept with dignity a refusal; but if she does not, if she accepts in
frankness and sincerity this message of good will and friendship, then
will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very society forty
years ago amid tremendous applause, be verified in its fullest and
final sense, when he said: "Standing hand to hand and clasping hands,
we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of
the same country, members of the same government, united, all united
now and united forever. There have been difficulties, contentions, and
controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment,--

"'Those opposed eyes,
Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way.'"


SOMETHING RANKLING HERE

From the reply to Hayne, in the United States Senate, January, 1830.
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Publishers of "The Great Speeches
and Orations of Daniel Webster"

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

The gentleman, sir, in declining to postpone the debate, told the
Senate, with the emphasis of his hand upon his heart, that there was
something rankling _here_ which he wished to relieve. It would
not, Mr. President, be safe for the honorable member to appeal to those
around him upon the question whether he did in fact make use of that
word. But he may have been unconscious of it. At any rate, it is enough
that he disclaims it. But still, with or without the use of that
particular word, he had yet something _here_, he said, of which he
wished to rid himself by an immediate reply. In this respect, sir, I
have a great advantage over the honorable gentleman. There is nothing
_here_, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness; neither
fear, nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more troublesome than
either, the consciousness of having been in the wrong. There is
nothing, either originating _here_, or now received _here_ by
the gentleman's shot. Nothing originating here, for I had not the
slightest feeling of unkindness towards the honorable member. Some
passages, it is true, had occurred since our acquaintance in this body,
which I could have wished might have been otherwise; but I had used
philosophy and forgotten them. I paid the honorable member the
attention of listening with respect to his first speech; and when he
sat down, though surprised, and I must even say astonished, at some of
his opinions, nothing was farther from my intention than to commence
any personal warfare. Through the whole of the few remarks I made in
answer, I avoided, studiously and carefully, everything which I thought
possible to be construed into disrespect. And, sir, while there is thus
nothing originating _here_ which I wished at any time or now wish
to discharge, I must repeat also, that nothing has been received
_here_ which _rankles_, or in any way gives me annoyance. I
will not accuse the honorable member of violating the rules of
civilized war; I will not say that he poisoned his arrows. But whether
his shafts were or were not dipped in that which would have caused
rankling if they had reached their destination, there was not, as it
happened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring them to their mark.
If he wishes now to gather up those shafts, he must look for them
elsewhere; they will not be found fixed and quivering in the object at
which they were aimed.

But the gentleman inquires why _he_ was made the object of such a
reply. Why was _he_ singled out? If an attack has been made on the
East, he, he assures us, did not begin it; it was made by the gentleman
from Missouri. Sir, I answered the gentleman's speech because I
happened to hear it; and because, also, I chose to give an answer to
that speech, which, if unanswered, I thought most likely to produce
injurious impressions. I did not stop to inquire who was the original
drawer of the bill. I found a responsible indorser before me, and it
was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just
responsibility, without delay.


FAITH IN THE PEOPLE

BY JOHN BRIGHT

Our opponents have charged us with being the promoters of a dangerous
excitement. They have the effrontery to say that I am the friend of
public disorder. I am one of the people. Surely, if there be one thing
in a free country more clear than another, it is, that any one of the
people may speak openly to the people. If I speak to the people of
their rights, and indicate to them the way to secure them,--if I speak
of their danger to the monopolists of power,--am I not a wise
counsellor, both to the people and to their rulers?

Suppose I stood at the foot of Vesuvius, or Aetna, and, seeing a hamlet
or a homestead planted on its slope, I said to the dwellers in that
hamlet, or in that homestead, "You see that vapor which ascends from
the summit of the mountain. That vapor may become a dense, black smoke,
that will obscure the sky. You see the trickling of lava from the
crevices in the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava may become
a river of fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain.
That muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of violent
convulsion, that may shake half a continent. You know that at your feet
is the grave of great cities, for which there is no resurrection, as
histories tell us that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away,
and their names have been known no more forever."

If I say this to the dwellers upon the slope of the mountain, and if
there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder,
am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or
fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men that were in
danger. So, now, it is not I that am stimulating men to the violent
pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights.

The class which has hitherto ruled in this country has failed
miserably. It revels in power and wealth, whilst at its feet, a
terrible peril for its future, lies the multitude which it has
neglected. If a class has failed, let us try the nation.

That is our faith, that is our purpose, that is our cry. Let us try the
nation. This it is which has called together these countless numbers of
the people to demand a change; and from these gatherings, sublime in
their vastness and their resolution, I think I see, as it were, above
the hilltops of time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a better and a
nobler day for the country and the people that I love so well.


THE FRENCH AGAINST HAYTI

From a lecture, "Toussaint L'Ouverture," with the permission of
Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, Boston, publishers

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

You remember when Bonaparte returned from Elba, and Louis XVIII sent an
army against him, Bonaparte descended from his carriage, opened his
coat, offering his breast to their muskets, and saying, "Frenchmen, it
is the Emperor!" and they ranged themselves behind him, his soldiers
shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!" That was in 1815. Twelve years before,
Toussaint, finding that four of his regiments had deserted and gone to
Leclerc, drew his sword, flung it on the grass, went across the field
to them, folded his arms, and said, "Children, can you point a bayonet
at me?" The blacks fell on their knees, praying his pardon. It was
against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to General
Leclerc, the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, thirty thousand
of his best troops, with orders to reintroduce slavery. Among these
soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes.

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
on the whole civilized world marshaled against him. America, full of
slaves, of course was 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, Samana, 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!" He then recognized the only mistake of his life,--his
confidence in Bonaparte, which had led him to disband his army.

Returning to the hills, he 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
marshaled to crush him, and gave to his people the same heroic example
of defiance.


THE NECESSITY OF FORCE

From a speech in the United States Senate, March 24, 1898

BY JOHN M. THURSTON

I counseled silence and moderation from this floor when the passion of
the nation seemed at white heat over the destruction of the
_Maine_; but it seems to me the time for action has now come. No
greater reason for it can exist to-morrow than exists to-day. Every
hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and
death. Only one power can intervene--the United States of America. Ours
is the one great nation of the New World, the mother of American
republics. She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the
peoples and affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere. It was her
glorious example which inspired the patriots of Cuba to raise the flag
of liberty in her eternal hills. We cannot refuse to accept this
responsibility which the God of the universe has placed upon us as the
one great power in the New World. We must act! What shall our action
be? Some say, The acknowledgment of the belligerency of the
revolutionists. The hour and the opportunity for that have passed away.
Others say, Let us by resolution or official proclamation recognize the
independence of the Cubans. It is too late for even such recognition to
be of great avail. Others say, Annexation to the United States. God
forbid! I would oppose annexation with my latest breath. The people of
Cuba are not our people; they cannot assimilate with us; and beyond all
that, I am utterly and unalterably opposed to any departure from the
declared policy of the fathers, which would start this republic for the
first time upon a career of conquest and dominion utterly at variance
with the avowed purposes and the manifest destiny of popular
government.

There is only one action possible, if any is taken; that is,
intervention for the independence of the island. We cannot intervene
and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war; war
means blood. The lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee preached the
divine doctrine of love, "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not
peace on earth at the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will
toward men who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their
fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ. I believe in the
doctrine of peace; but men must have liberty before there can come
abiding peace. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won
except by force? What barricade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has
ever been carried except by force?

Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna
Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made
effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force waved the flag of
revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with
bloodstained feet; force held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the
flame-swept hill at Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout
Heights; force marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in
the Valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox;
force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made "niggers" men.
The time for God's force has come again. Let the impassioned lips of
American patriots once more take up the song:--

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

Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead for
further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay, but for me, I am
ready to act now, and for my action, I am ready to answer to my
conscience, my country, and my God.


AGAINST WAR WITH MEXICO

From a speech to the United States Senate, February 11, 1847

BY THOMAS CORWIN

The President has said he does not expect to hold Mexican territory by
conquest. Why, then, conquer it? Why waste thousands of lives and
millions of money fortifying towns and creating governments, if, at the
end of the war, you retire from the graves of your soldiers and the
desolated country of your foes, only to get money from Mexico for the
expense of all your toil and sacrifice? Who ever heard, since
Christianity was propagated among men, of a nation taxing its people,
enlisting its young men, and marching off two thousand miles to fight a
people merely to be paid for it in money? What is this but hunting a
market for blood, selling the lives of your young men, marching them in
regiments to be slaughtered and paid for like oxen and brute beasts?

Sir, this is, when stripped naked, that atrocious idea first
promulgated in the President's message, and now advocated here, of
fighting on till we can get our indemnity for the past as well as the
present slaughter. We have chastised Mexico, and if it were worth while
to do so, we have, I dare say, satisfied the world that we can fight.

Sir, I have read in some account of your Battle of Monterey, of a
lovely Mexican girl, who, with the benevolence of an angel in her bosom
and the robust courage of a hero in her heart, was busily engaged
during the bloody conflict, amid the crash of falling houses, the
groans of the dying, and the wild shriek of battle, in carrying water
to slake the burning thirst of the wounded of either host. While
bending over a wounded American soldier, a cannonball struck her and
blew her to atoms! Sir, I do not charge my brave, generous-hearted
countrymen who fought that fight with this. No, no! We who send them--
we who know what scenes like this, which might send tears of sorrow
"down Pluto's iron cheek," are the invariable, inevitable attendants on
war--we are accountable for this. And this--this is the way we are to
be made known to Europe. This--this is to be the undying renown of
free, republican America! "She has stormed a city--killed many of its
inhabitants of both sexes--she has room"! So it will read. Sir, if this
were our only history, then may God of His mercy grant that its volume
may speedily come to a close.

Why is it, sir, that we, the United States, a people of yesterday
compared with the older nations of the world, should be waging war for
territory--for "room?" Look at your country, extending from the
Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, capable itself of sustaining
in comfort a larger population than will be in the whole Union for one
hundred years to come. Over this vast expanse of territory your
population is now so sparse that I believe we provided, at the last
session, a regiment of mounted men to guard the mail from the frontier
of Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia; and yet you persist in the
ridiculous assertion, "I want room." One would imagine, from the
frequent reiteration of the complaint, that you had a bursting, teeming
population, whose energy was paralyzed, whose enterprise was crushed,
for want of space. Why should we be so weak or wicked as to offer this
idle apology for ravaging a neighboring Republic? It will impose on no
one at home or abroad.

Do we not know, Mr. President, that it is a law never to be repealed
that falsehood shall be short-lived? Was it not ordained of old that
truth only shall abide for ever? Whatever we may say to-day, or
whatever we may write in our books, the stern tribunal of history will
review it all, detect falsehood, and bring us to judgment before that
posterity which shall bless or curse us, as we may act now, wisely or
otherwise. We may hide in the grave (which awaits us all) in vain; we
may hope there, like the foolish bird that hides its head in the sand,
in the vain belief that its body is not seen; yet even there this
preposterous excuse of want of "room" shall be laid bare and the quick-
coming future will decide that it was a hypocritical pretense under
which we sought to conceal the avarice which prompted us to covet and
to seize by force that which was not ours.


THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY

From "Speeches and Lectures," with the permission of Lothrop, Lee and
Shepard, Boston, publishers.

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

Mr. Chairman: We have met for the freest discussion of these
resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them. I hope I shall be
permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last
speaker,--surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at
the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has
been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at
Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great
Britain had a right to tax the Colonies, and we have heard the mob at
Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot
fathers who threw the tea overboard! Fellow citizens, is this Faneuil
Hall doctrine? The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his
just rights,--met to resist the laws. We have been told that our
fathers did the same; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary
precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their
title to such defense, the gentleman says that the British Parliament
had a _right_ to tax these colonies. It is manifest that, without
this, his parallel falls to the ground; for Lovejoy had stationed
himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the
freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the
sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against
and over the laws. The _mob_, as the gentleman terms it,--mob,
forsooth! certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvelously
patient generation!--the "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old South
to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal
exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act
_laws!_ Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the
King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our
Revolutionary history upside down. Our state archives are loaded with
arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British
Parliament unconstitutional,--beyond its power. It was not till this
was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments
of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and
sanctioned the contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a
precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have
enacted, is an insult to their memory. The difference between the
excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness
to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the man of that day went
for the right, as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to
sustain the laws and constitution of the Province. The rioters of our
day go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the
gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side
by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those
pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the Hall] would have broken
into voice to rebuke the recreant American,--the slanderer of the dead.
The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared
to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments
he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the
blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.

I am glad, Sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for us to be
here. When Liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her
duty, to strike the keynote for these United States.




DEPICTING CHARACTER


A TALE OF THE PLAINS

From "Hunting the Grizzly," with the permission of G. P. Putnam's
Sons, New York and London, publishers.

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

One of my valued friends in the mountains, and one of the best hunters
with whom I ever traveled, was a man who had a peculiarly light-hearted
way of looking at conventional social obligations. Though in some ways
a true backwoods Donatello, he was a man of much shrewdness and of
great courage and resolution. Moreover, he possessed what only a few
men do possess, the capacity to tell the truth. He saw facts as they
were, and could tell them as they were, and he never told an untruth
unless for very weighty reasons. He was preeminently a philosopher, of
a happy, skeptical turn of mind. He had no prejudices.

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