With no apologies for the past; with no recantation of the belief that they were patriots, without in any way casting reproach upon our dead, with a nature grand enough to admire Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, he had taken for his high mission on this earth, the task of reconciling the people of the sections. Until this great mission was accomplished, he had no time to devote to the narrow duties of a public office. Office, therefore, he did not seek. Office he would not have. There was but one office in this land great enough for him. Had he lived until his sun had reached its meridian splendor there would have been a complete reconciliation between the sections. Partisan malignity would not have sought to enact laws aimed at only a part of this grand country. Soon would there have been a complete union of hearts between those who had been engaged in fratricidal strife, which the most ultra partisanship could not have severed. Too young himself to be in the war, but the son of a gallant Confederate soldier, killed upon the field of battle, he, more than any one of older years, could by his chosen profession bear the messages of peace to the North, and by his mighty pen, by his eloquent tongue, by his melodious voice, and by his commanding presence could he procure a hearing from an audience of strangers and produce conviction. If it be true that, The tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony, then his last words, uttered in behalf of his people, will not have been spoken in vain. In his death the South has lost its most eloquent advocate and its most powerful defender. America weeps for one of her noblest sons. Who is there to finish this work? God grant that there may rise some one to complete his mission! He was a man full of impulse and a quick reader of the popular mind. Well do we all remember the time when the result of a presidential election became certainly known, how his heart, wild with joy at what he believed to be the beginning of better days for the South, organized a street procession and proceeded to the legislative halls of this State, and with his followers entered the house, and in his clear, ringing voice announced, “Mr. Speaker: A message from the American people,” and adjourned it. ’Tis said that history shows that there have been but two men who have ever adjourned a parliament without a vote, Oliver Cromwell and Henry Grady. One was an act of tyranny—the other the expression of the desire of every member of the house.