Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis

Front Cover
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1866 - 43 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 26 - In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it.
Page 26 - I shall have the most solemn one to " preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Page 26 - Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking off...
Page 41 - The tears that flow on this fond recital will never dry up. My heart, penetrated with the remembrance of the man, grows liquid as I write, and I could pour it out like water.
Page 24 - I say that the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, must be enforced ; and they who stand across the path of that enforcement must either destroy the power of the United States, or it will destroy them.
Page 35 - Union, and submission the path to victory, shall throw down their arms before the advancing foe ; when vast chasms across every State shall make apparent to every eye, when too late to remedy it, that division from the South is...
Page 20 - ... or grave-makers I am become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality; but that marshalling all the horrors, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a well resolved Christian...
Page 36 - ... banner of the Republic, still pointing onward, floats proudly in the face of the enemy ; that vast regions are reduced to obedience to the laws, and that a great host in armed array now presses with steady step into the dark regions of the rebellion.
Page 11 - My familiar association with the slaves while a boy gave me great insight into their feelings and views. They spoke with freedom before a boy what they would have repressed before a man. They were far from indifferent to their condition ; they felt wronged and sighed for freedom. They were attached to my father and loved me, yet they habitually spoke of the day when God would deliver them.
Page 37 - Yes, sir, if we must fall, let our last hours be stained by no weakness. If we must fall, let us stand amid the crash of the falling Republic and be buried in its ruins, so that history may take note that men lived in the middle of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but chastised by God for the sins of their forefathers. Let the ruins of the Republic remain to testify to the latest generations our greatness and our heroism. And let Liberty, crownless and childless, sit upon these ruins,...

Bibliographic information