The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—PoliticalIngersoll, Robert Green
History
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Political
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Recollect that the Democratic party did all the things of which I have
told you, when the fate of our nation was submitted to the arbitrament
of the sword. Recollect that the Democratic party did these things when
your brothers, your fathers, and your chivalric sons were fighting,
bleeding, suffering, and dying upon the battle-fields of the South; when
shot and shell were crashing through their sacred flesh. Recollect that
this Democratic party was false to the Union when your husbands, your
fathers, and your brothers, and your chivalric sons were lying in the
hospitals of pain, dreaming broken dreams of home, and seeing fever
pictures of the ones they loved; recollect that the Democratic party was
false to the nation when your husbands, your fathers, and your brothers
were lying alone upon the field of battle at night, the life-blood
slowly oozing from the mangled and pallid lips of death; recollect that
the Democratic party was false to your country when your husbands, your
brothers, your fathers, and your sons were lying in the prison pens of
the South, with no covering but the clouds, with no bed but the frozen
earth, with no food except such as worms had re-p fused to eat, and with
no friends except Insanity and Death. Recollect it, and spurn that party
forever.
I have sometimes wished that there were words of pure hatred out of
which I might construct sentences like snakes; out of which I might
construct sentences that had fanged mouths, and that had forked tongues;
out of which I might construct sentences that would writhe and hiss;
and then I could give my opinion of the Northern allies of the Southern
rebels during the great struggle for the preservation of the country.
There are three questions now submitted to the American people. The
first is, Shall the people that saved this country rule it? Shall the
men who saved the old flag hold it? Shall the men who saved the ship
of State sail it, or shall the rebels walk her quarter-deck, give the
orders and sink it? That is the question. Shall a solid South, a united
South, united by assassination and murder, a South solidified by the
shot-gun; shall a united South, with the aid of a divided North, shall
they control this great and splendid country? We are right back where we
were in 1861. This is simply a prolongation of the war. This is the war
of the idea, the other was the war of the musket. The other was the war
of cannon, this is the war of thought; and we have to beat them in
this war of thought, recollect that. The question is, Shall the men who
endeavored to destroy this country rule it? Shall the men that said,
This is not a Nation, have charge of the Nation?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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