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BOOK IV.

Recent Political Orators

ITH the passing of the Civil War and the period of reconstruction of the Union that followed, there vanished a prolific source of fervent oratory in the United States. Since then, indeed, the country has not been without its events calling for argument and breeding controversy, but these have been of minor importance as compared with the all-controlling excitement of the slavery conflict and the reconstruction debate. There have been active party controversies, on such perennial subjects of public interest as the tariff, the greenback currency, free silver, the Philippine question, and other topics on which opinion differed; but none of these have a threat of war or revolution behind them, and the stir of thought or vigor of expression to which they gave rise, was slight compared with that in which the dissolution of the Union was involved. There have been no lack of orators in the recent period, many of them eloquent, some of them full of force and fervor. But it is not easy to make a hot fire without coals, and a vehement burst of oratory on an inconsequential subject is apt to yield more smoke than flame. The speeches upon which we shall draw, therefore, in the present section, are largely of the academic character; many of them fine efforts, displaying cultured thought and eloquent powers of expression, yet none of them based on such national exigencies as gave inspiration to the words of a Henry or a Webster.

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ORTY years ago a private in Stonewall Jackson's brigade, and to-day an United States Senator, with the reputation of being one of the most eloquent men in the Upper House of Congress, we herewith present John Warwick Daniel to our readers. Born at Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1842, and a boy at school when the Civil War began, he lost no time in closing his books and taking his musket, finding ready entrance into Jackson's famous brigade. Beginning as a private, he left the army as a major, with several wounds to his credit, and again resorted to his books at the University of Virginia, making the law his study. His powers as an orator and activity as a politician soon led him to the Virginia legislature, in which he sat from 1869 to 1881. He here won a high reputation as an orator and statesman, and was made the Democratic nominee for Governor. Beaten in this contest, he was sent to Congress in 1884, and in 1885 succeeded General Mahone in the United States Senate. In this body he is one of the leaders among the Democratic members.

DEDICATION OF THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT

[Loftiest among the architectural erections in the world stands the great monument to the "Father of his Country," on an elevated situation in the National Capital. Of obelisk shape, and towering 555 feet in the air, it dominates the landscape for miles around. Projected early in the century, its completion and dedication came in 1885. We quote here from the eloquent oration made by Mr. Daniel in the hall of the House of Representatives, February 21, 1885, in honor of the important event, his glowing pauegyric of Washington's work and character.]

No sum could now be made of Washington's character that did not exhaust language of its tributes and repeat virtue by all her names. No sum could be made of his achievements that did not unfold the history of

his country and its institutions, the history of his age and its progress, the history of man and his destiny to be free. But, whether character or achievement be regarded, the riches before us only expose the poverty of praise. So clear was he in his great office that no ideal of the leader or ruler can be formed that does not shrink by the side of the reality. And so has he impressed himself upon the minds of men, that no man can justly aspire to be the chief of a great free people who does not adopt his principles and emulate his example. We look with amazement on such eccentric characters as Alexander, Cæsar, Cromwell, Frederick, and Napoleon, but when Washington's face rises before us, instinctively mankind exclaims: "This is the man for nations to trust and reverence, and for rulers to follow."

Drawing his sword from patriotic impulse, without ambition and without malice, he wielded it without vindictiveness and sheathed it without reproach. All that humanity could conceive he did to suppress the cruelties of war and soothe its sorrows. He never struck a coward's blow. To him age, infancy, and helplessness were ever sacred. He tolerated no extremity unless to curb the excesses of his enemy, and he never poisoned the sting of defeat by the exultation of the conqueror.

Peace he welcomed as a heaven-sent herald of friendship; and no country has given him greater honor than that which he defeated; for England has been glad to claim him as the scion of her blood, and proud, like our sister American States, to divide with Virginia the honor of producing him. Fascinated by the perfection of the man, we are loath to break the mirror of admiration into the fragments of analysis. But lo! as we attempt it, every fragment becomes the miniature of such sublimity and beauty that the destructive hand can only multiply the forms of immortality.

Grand and manifold as were its phases, there is yet no difficulty in understanding the character of Washington. He was no Veiled Prophet. He never acted a part. Simple, natural, and unaffected, his life lies before us, a fair and open manuscript. He disdained the arts which wrap power in mystery in order to magnify it. He practiced the profound diplomacy of truthful speech, the consummate tact of direct attention. Looking ever to the All-Wise Disposer of events, he relied on that Providence which helps men by giving them high hearts and hopes to help themselves with the means which their Creator has put at their service. There was no infirmity in his conduct over which charity must fling its veil; no taint of selfishness from which purity averts her gaze; no dark recess of intrigue that must be lit up with colored panegyric; no subterranean passage to be trod in trembling lest there be stirred the ghost of a buried crime.

A true son of nature was George Washington-of nature in her brightest intelligence and noblest mold; and the difficulty, if such there be, in comprehending him, is only that of reviewing from a single standpoint the vast procession of those civil and military achievements which filled nearly half a century of his life, and in realizing the magnitude of those qualities which were requisite to their performance; the difficulty of fashioning in our minds a pedestal broad enough to bear the towering figure, whose greatness is diminished by nothing but the perfection of its proportions. If his exterior-in calm, grave and resolute repose-ever impressed the casual observer as austere and cold, it was only because he did not reflect that no great heart like his could have lived unbroken unless bound by iron nerves in an iron frame. The Commander of Armies, the Chief of a People, the Hope of Nations could not wear his heart upon his sleeve; and yet his sternest will could not conceal its high and warm pulsations. Under the enemy's guns at Boston he did not forget to instruct his agent to administer generously of charity to his needy neighbors at home. The sufferings of women and children, thrown adrift by war, and of his bleeding comrades, pierced his soul. And the moist eye and trembling voice with which he bade farewell to his veterans bespoke the underlying tenderness of his nature, even as the storm-wind makes music in its undertones..

When Marathon had been fought and Greece kept free, each of the victorious generals voted himself to be first in honor, but all agreed that Miltiades was second. When the most memorable struggle for the rights of human nature of which time holds record was thus happily concluded in the monument of their preservation, whoever else was second unanimous acclaim declared that Washington was first. Nor in that struggle alone does he stand foremost. In the name of the people of the United States, their President, their Senators, their Representatives, and their Judges do crown to-day with the grandest crown that veneration has ever lifted to the brow of glory, him whom Virginia gave to America, whom America has given to the world and to the ages, and whom mankind with universal suffrage has proclaimed the foremost of the founders of the empire in the first degree of greatness; whom liberty herself has anointed as the first citizen in the great Republic of Humanity.

BENJAMIN HARVEY HILL (1823-1882)

A BRILLIANT LAWYER AND ORATOR

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HEN, in 1861, the advocates of secession grew active in their efforts to drag Georgia out of the Union of the States, chief among those who stood firm for the old flag, and fought secession boldly in the convention, as at once a wrong and a blunder, was Benjamin Harvey Hill, one of the most brilliant legal advocates in the State. In this he was sustained by Alexander H. Stephens, the subsequent vice-president of the Confederacy. Hill followed Stephens in support of the measure after it had been carried, and spent the four years of the war at Richmond, as a member of the Confederate Senate. The war ended, he was among those fully ready to accept the new conditions, and in 1873 entered the United States Senate as a member from the reconstructed State of Georgia. He remained there until his death, well sustaining his reputation for eloquence and statesmanlike ability.

A PLEA FOR UNION

[As Hill had opposed secession and the disruption of the Union for the preservation of African slavery in the Georgia Convention, he expressed himself to the same effect in a noble speech made before the United States Senate on May 10, 1879. A more eloquent appeal for the stability of the American Union has never been made. Before this great good, in his opinion, the system of African slavery was not worthy of a moment's consideration. We select the most eloquent portion of this address.]

The Southern people did not secede from hostility to the Constitution, nor from any desire to be rid of the system of government under which they had lived.

The highest evidence is what is given you in the very act of secession, when they pledged themselves to form a new union upon the model of the old. The very night when I was writing that letter and the serenading bands were in the streets, I wrote to my friends: "We will be able to effect a new Union upon the model of the old," and we did form