fare shall not be raised again, like unquiet ghosts, into the arena of politics, to disturb the peace and prosperity of the Nation. We honor the valor and manliness of the South, and will respect her rights. We demand the same, and no more. On that platform we can stand together, and against the world. The substantial interests of both sections are one; and henceforth their union should be one, and inseparable. In the fraternal emulations of business and the healthful rivalries of honorable politics, we must labor for the purity, power, and glory of the republic. The old hearthstone is broad enough for all, and our household gods are worthy of our worship. We feel a special tenderness for our native State; but there is a profounder love and a more comprehensive patriotism than this, that throbs in the heart of every loyal American. The State is but a unit of that organic and august whole, our Country; in whose destiny are involved the welfare and power of each member. The bright examples and splendid achievements of the Nation must remain ours to emulate. "The whole land is the sepulchre of illustrious men," and their hallowed dust, not less than their works, and their fame, are the common treasure of all.

The beacons which we kindle will fade, and the chiselled rock will crumble; but the intellectual and moral life, evolved by the freedom of the State, will transmit the lineaments of the national spirit, in imperishable form of thought. When the sculptured marbles, the gorgeous temples, and the noblest monuments which a proud and grateful country can raise shall have completed their short-lived immortality, these will still survive,the inextinguishable lights of a Christian Commonwealth.

JAMES WILLIS PATTERSON.

“SEPARATE AS BILLOWS, BUT ONE AS THE SEA.”

(From Address by ex United States Senator Stephens at the unveiling of Carpenter's picture illustrating Mr. Lincoln's signing the Proclamation of Emancipation, February 12, 1878.)

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 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 Proclamation. 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 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. ""

ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS.

BELLIGERENT NON-COMBATANTS.

(From Address in connection with Memorial Day, at New York, 1878, deploring war as only "the last dread tribunal of kings and peoples," and edited by permission for the "Patriotic Reader.")

It is related of General Scott that when asked, in 1861, the probable duration of the then Civil War, he answered, "The conflict of arms will endure for five years; but will be followed by twenty years of angry strife, by the belligerent non-combatants." The roar of arms only lasted four years, and let us hope that the belligerent non-combatants will give us a correspondingly shorter period of civil contention, than was then predicted....

The flippant manner in which some of our orators and newspaper critics make use of warlike terms, warrants me in warning them of the danger of playing with edged tools. . . . Men who have felt the sting of the bullet, who have heard the crash of the cannon's shot and exploding shell, or have witnessed its usual scenes of havoc and desolation, rarely appeal to war as a remedy for ordinary grievances. Wars are usually made by civilians, bold and defiant in the forum; but when the storm comes, they go below and leave their innocent comrades to catch the "peltings of the pitiless storm." Of the half-million of brave fellows whose graves have this day been strewn with flowers, not one in a thousand had the remotest connection with the causes of the war which led to their untimely death. . . . I now hope, and beg, that all good men, North and South, will unite in real earnest, to repair the mistakes and wrongs of the past; will persevere in the common effort to make this great land of ours to blossom as the garden of Eden.

I invoke all, within the hearing of my voice, to heed well the lessons of this "Decoration Day;" to weave, each year, a fresh garland for the grave of some beloved comrade or favorite hero, and to rebuke any and all who talk of civil war, save as the "last dread tribunal of kings and peoples."

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN.

ALL UNDER THE SAME BANNER NOW, “ITS BROAD FOLDS UNRENT, AND ITS BRIGHT STARS UNOBSCURED."

(From Address delivered July 4, 1887, at Austin, Texas, before the surviving veterans of Hood's Texas Brigade, and edited by permission for the "Patriotic Reader.")

BUT few of you are here to-day. The great majority of your old comrades fill unknown graves, with naught to mark their silent resting-places; but their names are embalmed in as many loving hearts as ever entwined around living, or lingered around the graves of deceased, patriots. And to-day, as our memory recalls face after face of this vast spectral army, of those who