“In the long line of those who have occupied seats in Congress, we should see, here and there, rising above the undistinguished mass, the figures of those great men whose lives and labors have made their country illustrious, and whose influence upon its destiny will be felt for ages to come. We should see that group of great statesmen whom the last war with England brought to public notice, among whom were Ames and Randolph, Clay and Webster, Calhoun and Benton, Wright and Prentiss, making their era famous by their statesmanship, and creating and destroying political parties by their fierce antagonisms. We should see the folly and barbarism of the so-called code of honor, destroying noblemen in the fatal meadow of Bladensburgh. We should see the spirit of liberty awaking the conscience of the nation to the sin and danger of slavery, whose advocates had inherited and kept alive the old anarchic spirit of disunion. We should trace the progress of that great struggle from the days when John Quincy Adams stood in the House of Representatives, like a lion at bay, defending the sacred right of petition; when, after his death, Joshua R. Giddings continued the good fight, standing at this post for twenty years, his white locks, like the plume of Henry of Navarre, always showing where the battle for freedom raged most fiercely; when his small band in Congress, reinforced by Hale and Sumner, Wade and Chase, Lovejoy and Stevens, continued the struggle amid the most turbulent scenes; when daggers were brandished and pistols were drawn in the halls of Congress; and, later, when, one by one, the senators and representatives of eleven States, breathing defiance and uttering maledictions upon the Union, resigned their seats and left the Capitol to take up arms against their country. We should see the Congress of a people long unused to war, when confronted by a supreme danger, raising, equipping, and supporting an army greater than all the armies of Napoleon and Wellington combined: meeting the most difficult questions of international and constitutional law; and, by new forms of taxation, raising a revenue which, in one year of the war, amounted to more than all the national taxes collected during the first half century of the Government.”