American Eloquence, Volume 3: Studies In American Political History (1897)
History
American Eloquence, Volume 3: Studies In American Political History (1897)
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government
As to the argument, we have heard it all before. Not a position, not a
fact, not an argument has he used, which has not been employed on the
same side of the chamber, and replied to by me twice. I shall not follow
him, therefore, because it would only be repeating the same answer which
I have twice before given to each of his positions. He seems to get up
a speech as in Yankee land they get up a bedquilt. They take all the old
calico dresses of various colors, that have been in the house from
the days of their grandmothers, and invite the young ladies of the
neighborhood in the afternoon, and the young men to meet them at a dance
in the evening. They cut up these pieces of old dresses and make pretty
figures, and boast of what beautiful ornamental work they have made,
although there was not a new piece of material in the whole quilt. Thus
it is with the speech which we have had re-hashed here to-day, in regard
to matters of fact, matters of law, and matters of argument--every thing
but the personal assaults and the malignity. * * *
His endeavor seems to be an attempt to whistle to keep up his courage
by defiant assaults upon us all. I am in doubt as to what can be his
object. He has not hesitated to charge three fourths of the Senate with
fraud, with swindling, with crime, with infamy, at least one hundred
times over in his speech. Is it his object to provoke some of us to kick
him as we would a dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon the
just chastisement? What is the object of this denunciation against the
body of which we are members? A hundred times he has called the Nebraska
bill a "swindle," an act of crime, an act of infamy, and each time
went on to illustrate the complicity of each man who voted for it in
perpetrating the crime. He has brought it home as a personal charge to
those who passed the Nebraska bill, that they were guilty of a crime
which deserved the just indignation of heaven, and should make them
infamous among men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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