No nobler words have been spoken of the late Gen. Lee than by soldiers who fought against him, and I respond to them with honor and praise. The production of men who may maintain the rights their fathers won, and ever grow in liberal thought, noble character, and worthy achievement is the highest mission of republican institutions. From Hastings, A.D. 1066, to Boston in 1776, the name of Lee was blended with the glories of our fatherland. But from Boston to Appomattox it grew the more illustrious with grander opportunities. Victorious through a track of eight hundred years to the 9th of April, 1865, it has been still more victorious since—rising to the height of harder trials and sterner tasks and grander duties than those of leading embattled lines. The glorious nation of which he was a type and the glorious band of which he was the son come forth from ruin and desolation on one side, moved by gracious institutions and magnanimous sentiments upon the other, taking their place in the reunited columns of parted friendship, cementing anew by adaptive virtues the broken ties, marching again with the mutual magnanimities of companionship at the head of column.

If a race that has won liberty and made it a birthright lets it slip away through hands of weakness or deeds of folly, and if the self-made man of to-day loses the vantage ground of his life work with his fleeting breath, the careers of nations would be brief, the story of liberty would be a nurse's tale, and the careers of individuals would be vanity of vanities. The prepotent blood that made an empire of an insignificant island and stamped its language and its laws upon it made also here the most splendid Republic of the earth out of a savage wilderness and assimilated to itself all tributaries. That Republic delegates its unfinished tasks to a posterity that will lift higher the monuments of its greatness and strengthen the foundations of its endurance; and in the lives of Gen. Lee and those of his worthy compatriots of all sections who unite as friends the moment conditions cease that made them foes, I see exemplified the noblest qualities of our kind and read the auguries of prolonged peace, progress, happiness, and stability.

The Vice-President. The question is on agreeing to the resolutions submitted by the Senator from Virginia.

The resolutions were agreed to unanimously, and under the last resolution the Senate (at 4 o'clock and 20 minutes p.m.) adjourned until Monday, March 7, 1892, at 12 o'clock m.

Страница 28 из 28

Назад 1…27 28Далее