Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2: From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860Blaine, James Gillespie
History
Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2: From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860
Blaine, James Gillespie
United States -- History; United States -- History -- 1865-1898
in your homes, and whose commissions ordered the torch to be carried
to your cities, and the yellow-fever to your wives and children.
They planned one universal bonfire of the North, from Lake Ontario
to the Missouri. They murdered, by systems of starvation and
exposure, sixty thousand of your sons as brave and heroic as ever
martyrs were. They destroyed, in the four years of horrid war,
another army so large that it would reach almost around the globe
in marching-column. And then to give to the infernal drama a fitting
close, and to concentrate into one crime all that is criminal in
crime and all that is detestable in barbarism, they murdered the
President of the United States."
"I allude to these horrid events," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "not
to revive frightful memories, or to bring back the impulses towards
the perpetual severance of this people which they provoke. I allude
to them to remind us how utter was the overthrow and the obliteration
of all government, divine and human, how total was the wreck of all
constitutions and laws, political, civil and international. I allude
to them to condense their monstrous enormities of guilt into one
crime, and to point the gentleman from New York to it and tell him
that that was the _specific act_."
Mr. Voorhees of Indiana followed on the day succeeding Mr.
Shellabarger's speech, in support of a series of resolutions which he
had offered on the same day that Mr. Raymond addressed the House, and
further embarrassing Mr. Raymond by the proffer of Democratic support,
and proportionately discouraging the Republicans from coming forward
in aid of the Administration. The resolutions of Mr. Voorhees declared
in effect that "the President's message is regarded by the House as an
able, judicious and patriotic State paper;" that "the principles
therein advocated are the safest and most practicable that can be
applied to our disordered domestic affairs;" that "no State or number
of States confederated together can in any manner sunder their
connection with the Federal Union;" and that "the President is entitled
to the thanks of Congress and the country for his faithful, wise and
successful efforts to restore civil government, law and order to the
States lately in rebellion." Mr. Voorhees made an exhaustive speech in
support of these resolutions, indicating very plainly the purpose of
the Democratic party to combine in support of the President. He was
answered promptly and eloquently, though not without some display of
temper, by Mr. Bingham of Ohio, who at the close of his speech moved
a substitute for the series of propositions made by Mr. Voorhees--simply
declaring that "this House has an abiding confidence in the President,
and that in the future as in the past, he will co-operate with Congress
in restoring to equal position and rights with the other States in the
Union, the States lately in insurrection."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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