held among us. I am willing, however, to take my share of the responsibility which the crisis of our country demands. I am willing to rely on the known love of the people I represent for the whole country and the abiding respect which I know they entertain for the Union of these States.

Mr. President, is there such an incompatibility of interest between the two sections of this country that they cannot profitably live together? Does the agriculture of the South injure the manufactures of the North? On the other hand, are they not their life-blood? And think you if one portion of the Union, however great it might be in commerce and manufactures, were separated from all the agricultural districts, that it would long maintain its supremacy? If any one so believes, let him turn to the written history of commercial states; let him look upon the moldering palaces of Venice; let him ask for the faded purple of Tyre, and visit the ruins of Carthage; there he will see written the fate of every country which rests its prosperity upon commerce and manufactures alone. United we have grown to our present dignity and power; united we may go on to a destiny which the human mind cannot measure. Separated, I feel that it requires no prophetic eye to see that the portion of the country which is now scattering the seeds of disunion to which I have referred will be that which will suffer most. Grass will grow on the pavements now worn by the constant tread of the human throng which waits on commerce, and the shipping will abandon your ports for those which now furnish the staples of trade. And we who produce the great staple upon which your commerce and manufactures rest, will produce those staples still; shipping will fill our harbors; and why may we not found the Tyre of modern commerce within our own limits? Why may we not bring the manufacturers to the side of agriculture, and commerce, too, the ready servant of both? . .

It is essentially the characteristic of the chivalrous that they never speculate upon the fears of any man, and I trust that no such speculation will be made upon the idea that may be entertained in any quarter that the South, from fear of her slaves, is necessarily opposed to a dissolution of this Union. She has no such fear; her slaves would be to her now, as they were in the Revolution, an element of military strength. I trust that no speculations will be made upon either the condition or the supposed weakness of the South. They will bring sad disappointments to those who indulge them. Rely upon her devotion to the Union; rely upon the feeling of fraternity she inherited and has never failed to manifest; rely upon the nationality and freedom from sedition which has in all ages characterized an agricultural people; give her justice, and the reliance will never fail you.

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS (1812-1883)

THE CONFEDERATE VICE-PRESIDENT

W

HEN, in the early days of 1861, the secession convention of Georgia, was considering the perilous purpose which most of its members had strongly in view, Alexander H. Stephens earnestly combatted its suicidal course. In this he was strongly sustained by another statesman of the convention, Benjamin H. Hill. But when the ordinance of secession was passed against their advice, they yielded their own opinions and went with their State, Hill becoming a Confederate Senator, and Stephens Vice-President of the Confederacy during its four eventful years. He had been a member of the National House of Representatives for sixteen years before the war, and entered this body again in 1874, serving for several terms. In 1882 he was elected Governor of Georgia. Alike as orator and statesman, Stephens was a man of unusual powers.

SEPARATE AS BILLOWS, BUT ONE AS THE SEA

[As an example of Mr. Stephens's oratory, we offer the following extract from his address of February 12, 1878, at the unveiling of Carpenter's picture illustrating the signing of the Proclamation of Emancipation by President Lincoln. It is of interest alike for its eulogy of Lincoln, and its views on the effect of emancipation and the reunion of the country.]

I knew Mr. Lincoln well. We met in the House in December, 1847. We were together during the Thirtieth Congress. I was as intimate with him as with any other man of that Congress, except perhaps my colleague, Mr. Toombs. Of Mr. Lincoln's general character I need not speak. He was warm-hearted; he was generous; he was magnanimous; he was most truly, as he afterwards said on a memorable occasion, "with malice toward none, with charity for all." He had a native genius far above his fellows. Every fountain of his heart was overflowing with the "milk of human kindness." From my attachment to him, so much deeper was the

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pang in my own breast, as well as of millions, at the horrible manner of his "taking off." This was the climax of our troubles, and the spring from which came unnumbered woes. But of those events, no more, now!

As to the great historic event which this picture represents, one thing should be duly noted. Let not History confuse events. It is this: that Emancipation was not the chief object of Mr. Lincoln in issuing the Procla mation. His chief object, the ideal to which his whole soul was devoted, was the preservation of the Union. Pregnant as it was with coming events, initiative as it was of ultimate emancipation, it still originated, in point of fact, more from what was deemed the necessities of war than from any purely humanitarian view of the matter. Life is all a mist, and in the dark our fortunes meet us. This was evidently the case with Mr. Lincoln. He, in my opinion, was, like all the rest of us, an instrument in the hands of that Providence above us, that "divinity which shapes our ends, roughhew them as we will." I doubt very much whether Mr. Lincoln, at the time, realized the great result. The Proclamation did not declare free all the colored people of the Southern States, but applied only to those parts of the country then in resistance to the Federal authorities. Mr. Lincoln's idea as embodied in his Proclamation of September 22, 1862, as well as that of January 1, 1863, was consummated by the voluntary adoption, by the South, of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. That is the charter of the colored man's freedom. Without that, the Proclamation had nothing but the continuance of the war to sustain it. Had the States, then in resistance, laid down their arms by the 1st of January, 1863, the Union would have been saved, but the condition of the slave, so called, would have been unchanged.

Before the upturning of Southern society by the Reconstruction Acts, the white people, there, came to the conclusion that their domestic institution, known as slavery, had better be abolished. It has been common to speak of the colored race as the wards of the nation. May I not say with appropriateness and due reverence, in the language of Georgia's greatest intellect, "They are rather the wards of the Almighty"? Why, in the providence of God, their ancestors were permitted to be brought over here, it is not for me to say; but they have a location and habitation here, especially at the South; and, though the changed condition of their status was the leading cause of the late terrible conflict between the States, I venture to affirm that there is not one within the circle of my acquaintance, or in the whole Southern country, who would wish to see the old relation restored.

This changed status creates new duties. Men of the North, and men of the South, of the East, and of the West, I care not of what party, I

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would, to-day, on this commemorative occasion, urge upon every one within the sphere of duty and humanity, whether in public or private life, to see to it that there be no violation of the divine trust.

During the conflict of arms I frequently almost despaired of the liberties of our country, both North and South. The Union of these States, at first, I always thought was founded upon the assumption that it was the best interest of all to remain united, faithfully performing, each for itself, its own constitutional obligations under the compact. When secession was resorted to as a remedy, I went with my State, holding it my duty to do so, but believing, all the time, that if successful, when the passions of the hour and of the day were over, the great law which produced the Union at first, "mutual interest and reciprocal advantage,' would reassert itself, and that at no distant day a new Union of some sort would again be formed.

And now, after the severe chastisement of war, if the general sense of the whole country shall come back to the acknowledgment of the original assumption that it is for the best interests of all the States to be so united, as I trust it will, the States being "separate as the billows, but one as the sea"-this thorn in the body politic being now removed-I can perceive no reason why, under such a restoration--the flag no longer waving over provinces, but States-we, as a whole, with peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations and entangling alliances with none, may not enter upon a new career, exciting increased wonder in the Old World, by grander achievements hereafter to be made than any heretofore attained, by the peaceful and harmonious workings of our matchless system of American federal institutions of self-government.

All this is possible, if the hearts of the people be right. It is my earnest wish to see it. Fondly would I gaze upon such a picture of the future. With what rapture may we not suppose the spirits of our fathers would hail its opening scenes, from their mansions above! But if, instead of all this, sectional passions shall continue to bear sway, if prejudice shall rule the hour, if a conflict of classes, of capital and labor, or of the races, shall arise, or the embers of the late war be kept a-glowing until with new fuel they shall flame up again, then, hereafter, by some bard it may be sung:

"The Star of Hope shone brightest in the West,

The hope of Liberty, the last, the best;

It, too, has set upon her darkened shore,

And Hope and Freedom light up earth no more."

W

ROBERT TOOMBS (1810-1885)

THE ORATOR OF SECESSION

HILE Phillips and Parker were vehemently denouncing slavery in the North, Robert Toombs, with equal force and equal eloquence, was advocating and sustaining it in the South and in the Senate of the United States, of which he was a member from 1853 to 1861. A man of deep political insight, he discerned the coming war at a long distance, and spoke in favor of secession from 1850 onward. The acquisition of territory from Mexico he looked upon as "a policy which threatened the ruin of the South and the subversion of this Government." In his opinion this movement pointed to conflict and would end in war. A leader in the secession movement in Georgia, he resigned from the Senate when that State left the Union, and was afterward a Confederate Secretary of War, Senator and brigadier-general.

THE CREED OF SECESSION

[As an orator Toombs was a man of remarkable readiness and fluency. His daring was as great as his eloquence was fervent. His speech, on resigning from the Senate to cast in his lot with his State, was one of the most audacious examples of oratory ever heard in that body. He fairly flung down the gauntlet of war on the floor of the Senate chamber before leaving it. We give the leading portions of this farewell speech.]

Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all our obligations and duties of the Federal Government. I am content, and have ever been content, to sustain it. While I doubt its perfection; while I do not believe it was a good compact; and while I never saw the day that I would have voted for it as a proposition de novo, yet I am bound to it by oath, and by that common prudence which would induce men to abide by established forms, rather than to rush into unknown dangers.

I have given to it, and intend to give to it, unfaltering support and allegiance; but I choose to put that allegiance on the true ground, not