"They seem to have forgotten," he said, "in their advocacy of slavery, that we have passed through a fierce war, begun by slavery, waged against the Government by slavery, and solely in its interest to more thoroughly establish itself upon the Western Continent, and crush out the best interests of freedom and humanity; and that this war, guided on our part by the omnipotent arm of the Invisible, made bare in our behalf, has resulted in a most complete overthrow of this great wrong; and by the almost omnipotent voice of the republic, as now expressed in its fundamental law, it has no right to live, much less entitled to the right of burial, and should have no mourners in the land or going about the streets. Such speeches as those of the gentlemen from New Jersey, [Mr. Rogers,] and from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Boyer,] and my colleague and friend, [Mr. Chanler,] who represents, with myself, in part, the Empire State, carry us back to the days and scenes before the war, when slavery ruled supreme, not only throughout the land, by and through its hold upon power, which the people in an evil hour had given it, but here in these halls of legislation, where liberty and its high and noble ends ought to have been secured by just and equal laws, and the great and paramount object of our system of government carried out and fully developed. They seem to forget that liberty and good government have been on trial during these five years last past of war and blood, and that they have succeeded in the mighty struggle. They forget that Providence, in a thousand ways, during this fierce conflict, has given us evidence of his favor, and led us out of the land of bondage into a purer and higher state of freedom, where slavery, as an institution among us, is no more. Why do they labor so long and so ardently to resurrect again into life this foul and loathsome thing? Why can not they forget their former love and attachments in this direction, and no longer cling with such undying grasp to this dead carcass, which, by its corruptions and rottenness, has well nigh heretofore poisoned them to the death? Why not awake to the new order of things, and accept the results which God has worked out in our recent struggle, and not raise the weak arm of flesh to render null and void what has thus been done, and thus attempt to turn back the flow of life which is overspreading all, and penetrating every part of the body politic with its noble purposes and exalted hopes?"