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to whom Bacon assigns this highest place of honor, whose names can hardly be repeated without a wondering smile, Romulus, Cyrus, Cæsar, Ottoman, Ismael,—is it due to our Washington, as the founder of the American Union. But if to achieve or help to achieve this greatest work of man's wisdom and virtue gives title to a place among the chief benefactors, rightful heirs of the benedictions, of mankind, by equal reason shall the bold bad men who seek to undo the noble work, Eversores Imperiorum, destroyers of States, who for base and selfish ends rebel against beneficent governments, seek to overturn wise constitutions, to lay powerful republican unions at the foot of foreign thrones, bring on civil and foreign war, anarchy at home, dictation abroad, desolation, ruin, — by equal reason, I say, yes a thousand fold stronger, shall they inherit the execrations of ages.

E. Everett.

HOW

CCCXIII.

A TRIBUTE TO OUR HONORED DEAD.

OW bright are the honors which await those who with sacred fortitude and patriotic patience have endured all things that they might save their native land from division and from the power of corruption. The honored dead! They that die for a good cause are redeemed from death. Their names are gathered and garnered. Their memory is precious. Each place grows proud for them who were born there. There is to be, ere long, in every village, and in every neighborhood, a glowing pride in its martyred heroes. Tablets shall preserve their names. Pious love shall renew their inscriptions as time and the unfeeling elements efface them. And the national festivals shall give multitudes of precious names to the orator's lips. Children shall grow up under more sacred inspirations, whose elder brothers dying nobly for their country, left a name that honored and inspired all who bore it. Orphan children shall find

thousands of fathers and mothers to love and help those whom dying heroes left as a legacy to the gratitude of the public.

Oh, tell me not that they are dead airy army of invisible heroes.

- that generous host, that They hover as a cloud of wit

-nesses above this nation. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society, and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?

Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears. It was your son: but now he is the nation's. He made your household bright now his example inspires a thousand households. Dear to his brothers and sisters, he is now brother to every generous youth in the land. Before, he was narrowed, appropriated, shut up to you. Now he is augmented, set free, and given to all. Before he was yours: he is ours. He has died from the 'family that he might live to the nation. Not one name shall be forgotten or neglected: and it shall by-and-by be confessed of our modern heroes, as it is of an ancient hero, that he did more for his country by his death than by his whole life.

Neither are they less honored who shall bear through life the marks of wounds and sufferings. Neither epaulette nor badge is so honorable as wounds received in a good cause. Many a man shall envy him who henceforth limps. So strange is the transforming power of patriotic ardor, that men shall almost covet disfigurement. Crowds will give way to hobbling cripples, and uncover in the presence of feebleness and helpnessness. And buoyant children shall pause in their noisy games, and with loving reverence honor them whose hands can work no more, and whose feet are no longer able to march except upon that journey which brings good men to honor and immortality. Oh, mother of lost children! set not in darkness nor sorrow whom a nation honors. Oh, mourners of the early dead, they shall live again, and live forever. Your sorrows are our gladness. The nation lives because you gave it men that love it better than their own lives. And when a few more days shall have cleared the perils from around the nation's brow, and 'she shall sit in unsullied garments of liberty, with justice upon her forehead, love in her eyes, and truth upon her lips, she shall not forget those whose blood gave vital currents to her heart, and whose life, given to her, shall live with her life till time shall be no more.

Every mountain and hill shall have its treasured name, every river shall keep some solemn title, every valley and every lake

shall cherish its honored register; and till the mountains are worn out, and the rivers forget to flow, till the clouds are weary of replenishing springs, and the springs forget to gush, and the rills to sing, shall their names be kept fresh with reverent honors which are inscribed upon the book of National Remembrance.

H. W. Beecher.

CCCXIV.

ON THE CONFISCATION BILL.

FEW of those engaged in this rebellion will ever be made to

suffer in their persons; and if they are to be left in the full possession and enjoyment of their cotton, their lands, and their negroes, the innocent will have been made to suffer while the guilty will go unpunished. Shall the fathers of the gallant sons whose mangled bodies have been borne back to Illinois by hundreds, from the bloody fields of Belmont, of Donelson, and Pea Ridge, be ground down by onerous taxes, which shall descend upon their children to the third and fourth generations, to defray the expenses of defending the Government against traitors, and we forbear to touch even the property of the authors of these calamities, whose persons are beyond our reach? Suppose ye that the loyal people of this country will submit to such injustice?

I believe I represent as loyal, as patriotic, and as brave a constituency as any other Senator. I claim nothing more. While I am proud of the part which the soldiers of my own State took in defeating the enemy in the West, I do not claim for them any superiority over the other soldiers of the Republic. The brave men who besieged Donelson, and who, after fighting through the day for three consecutive days, lay each night on the ground without shelter, exposed to the rain and sleet, were chiefly Illinoisans. It was there that rebellion received the heavy blow which has staggered it ever since. Forty dead bodies were borne from that bloody field to one small town in my State, and buried in a common grave. The Union forces at Pea Ridge were also largely made up of soldiers from Illinois. Suppose ye that I can go back to Illinois, among the relatives of those who have been cruelly destroyed, and propose to levy taxes upon them in order to conciliate and compensate the murderers, for

that is really what exempting rebel property from confiscation amounts to? Sir, I know not if they would submit to such injustice; and yet there are those who not only talk of an amnesty to the men who have brought these troubles upon the country, but oppose providing the mild punishment of confiscation of property for those who shall continue hereafter to war upon the Government, and whose persons are beyond our reach. Do gentlemen regard it as conciliatory to oblige us to lay taxes upon those whose habitations have been consumed, to reward those who have burned them? upon those whose whole property has been stolen, to reward the thieves? upon those whose relatives have been slain, to compensate the murderers? In my judgment, justice, humanity, and mercy herself all demand that we at once provide that the supporters of this cruel and wicked rebellion should henceforth be made to feel its burdens. When the rebels, whose hands are dripping with the blood of loyal citizens, shall have grounded their arms, it will be time enough to talk of clemency; but to have our sympathies excited in their behalf now, when fighting to overthrow the Government, is cruelty to the loyal men who have rallied to its support.

L. Trumbull.

CCCXV.

THE CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE.

SIR, what are the remedies that are proposed for the present condition of things, and what have they been from the beginning? They have been propositions of compromise; and Senators have spoken of peace, and of the horrors of civil war; and gentlemen who have contended for the right of the people of the Territories to regulate their own affairs, and who have been horrised at the idea of a geographical line dividing free States from slave States, free territory from slave territory, and who have proclaimed that the great principle upon which the Revolution was fought was that of the right of the people to govern themselves, and that it was a monstrous doctrine for Congress to interfere in any way with its own Territories, these gentlemen come forward here with propositions to divide the country on a geographical line; and not only that, but to establish slavery

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south of the line; and they call this the Missouri Compromise! The proposition known as the Crittenden Compromise is no more like the Missouri Compromise than is the government of Turkey like that of the United States. The Missouri Compromise was a law declaring that in all the territory which we had acquired from Louisiana, north of a certain line of latitude, slavery or involuntary servitude should never exist. But it said nothing about the establishment of slavery south of that line. It was a compromise made in order to admit Missouri into the Union as a slave State, in 1820. That was the consideration for the exclusion of slavery from all the country north of 36° 30'. Now, sir, I have no objection to the restoration of the Missouri Compromise as it stood in 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill repealed it.

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The proposition known as the Crittenden Compromise declares not only that "in the territory south of the said line of latitude, slavery of the African race is thereby recognized as existing, and shall not be interfered with by Congress; " but it provides further, that, in the territory we shall hereafter acquire south of that line, slavery shall be recognized, and not interfered with by Congress; but "shall be protected as property by all the departments of the territorial government during its continuance ; so that, if we make acquisitions on the south of territories now free, and where by the laws of the land the footsteps of slavery have never been, the moment we acquire jurisdiction over them, the moment the stars and stripes of the Republic float over those free territories, they carry with them African slavery, established beyond the power of Congress and beyond the power of any territorial legislature or of the people, to keep it out and we are told that this is the Missouri Compromise!

Now, sir, why cannot we have peace, I ask, upon the compromise measures of 1850? Why disturb them? They were enacted by great men. They gave peace to the country. Why is it necessary now to overturn them? Restore the old Missouri Compromise as it stood; let us go back to the settlement made in 1850, and there let us stand. What more would Senators have? The South were satisfied with that settlement. Have we disturbed it? Are we proposing to disturb it? Not at all.

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