The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper CorrespondentBriggs, Emily Edson
History
The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper Correspondent
Briggs, Emily Edson
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933; Washington (D.C.) -- History
We touch the honest, ungloved hand of the host of the evening,
Senator Harlan, one of the superb pillars of the Republican party;
one who has stood upon principles as firmly as though his feet were
planted upon the rock of ages; but once he became Secretary of the
Interior, and an angel from Heaven could not go into that sink of
pollution and come out with clean, unstained wings. If Senator Harlan
lives in a respectable mansion in Washington it is because the
interest of the unpaid mortgage upon it is less than the rent would
be if owned by a landlord; and let it be remembered that Senator
Harlan is the only man in the Iowa delegation who has a whole roof to
shelter his head; that his house is the only place where citizens of
Iowa can gather together and feel at home. It was the noble idea of
hospitality to the State that made the Senator pitch his tent outside
the horrors of a Washington boarding-house or a crowded hotel, and
not to “shine,” as the envious and malicious would have it. A thrust
at Senator Harlan is a stab at every man, woman and child who knows
him best, and if it was for the good of this nation that the New
York _Tribune_ should be broiled like St. Lawrence on a gridiron,
it would only be necessary to make it a Secretary of the Interior,
with the Indian Bureau in full blast, as it is to-day, and in less
than a single administration there would be nothing left of it but
a crumpled hat, an old white coat, and a mass of blackened bones.
As honest Western people, let us take care of our honest Western
statesmen. Let us have a care for the reputation of the men whom
we have trusted in war and in peace, and who have never yet proved
recreant to the trust.
Dear Republican: Let us dedicate this letter to our sister State,
Iowa, most honest, virtuous, best beloved niece of Uncle Sam. A
greeting to the Hawkeyes. May their shadows never grow less, and may
her thousands of domestic fires that now dot every hill, slope and
valley be never extinguished until the sun and the stars shall pole
together and creation be swallowed up in everlasting night.
OLIVIA.
BINGHAM AND BUTLER.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE CONGRESSIONAL GIANTS IN DEBATE.
WASHINGTON, _March 27, 1867_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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