Part 31 (1/2)

Meanwhile the process of oblivion had gone on The graven effigy of Jefferson Davis at length appeared upon the silver service of an Auests, wherever and whenever they ht meet round her hospitable board, of national unification and peace, giving the lie to sectional nancy In the most famous and conspicuous of the national ceeneral not only placed there by consent of the Govern ceremonies supervised by the Department of War, which sent as its official representative the son of Grant, himself an army officer of rank and distinction

The world has looked on, incredulous and amazed, whilst our country has risen to each successive act in the dra enthusiasm

I have been all my life a Constitutional Nationalist; first the nation and then the state The episode of the Confederacy seems already far away It was an interlude, even as matters stood in the Sixties and Seventies, and noould thwart the unification of the country on the lines of oblivion, of iveness, throws hihway of his country's future, and is a traitor equally to the essential principles of free governe

If sectionalism be not dead it should have no place in popular consideration The country seems happily at last one with itself The South, like the East and the West, has coraphic expression Each of its states is in the Union, precisely like the states of the East and the West, all in one and one in all Interchanges of every sort exist

These exchanges underlie and interlace our social, doement and relation after half a century of strife thus established should continue through all tihtful, patriotic Areater dissonance to that sentiment in the South than in the North To what end, therefore, except ignominious recrimination and ruinous dissension, could a revival of old sectional and partisan passions--if it were possible--be expected to reach?

V

Humor has played no small part in our politics It was Col Mulberry Sellers, Mark Twain's hero, who gave currency to the conceit and enunciated the principle of ”the old flag and an appropriation” He did not claiot it, he said, of Senator Dillworthy, his patriotic file leader and ideal of Christian statesinal of Senator Dillworthy was recognized the country over as Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, ”Old Poinous piety and noisy patriotis of subsidies and the roasting of rebels, to prayer and land grants, had ie as upon his iress

He was a ruffle-shi+rted Pharisee, who affected the airs of a bishop, and resembled Cruikshank's pictures of Pecksniff

There have not been many ”Old Poms” in our public life; or, for that matter Aaron Burrs either, and but one Benedict Arnold That the chosen people of God did not dwell aes and in far-away Judea, but were reserved to a later tiion then undiscovered of men, and that the American republic was ordained of God to illustrate upon the theater of the New World the possibilities of free government in contrast with the failures and tyrannies and corruptions of the Old, I do truly believe That is the first article in my confession of faith And the second is like unto it, that Washi+ngton was raised up by God to create it, and that Lincoln was raised up by God to save it; else why the inia and the rail splitter of Illinois, for no reason that was obvious at the time, before all other men? God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perforer of our blessed Savior hung over the cradle of our blessed Union

Thus far it has weathered each historic danger which has gone before to le for existence; the foreign invasion; the internecine strife; the disputed succession; religious bigotry and racial conflict One other peril confronts it--the dereat prosperity; the concentration and the abuse of power Shall we survive the lures hich the spirit of evil, playing upon our self-love, seeks to trip our ard footsteps, purse-pride and party spirit,to abridge liberty and liberty running to license, greed lory--or under the process of a divine evolution shall we be able to mount and ride the waves which sed the tribes of Israel, which engulfed the phalanxes of Greece and the legions of Rome, and which still beat the sides and sweep the decks of Europe?

The one-party poe have escaped; the one-man poe have escaped

The stars in their courses fight for us; the virtue and intelligence of the people are still watchful and alert Truth is uard even in the Hall of Statues, walks everywhere the battlements of freedom!

Chapter the Twentieth

The Real Grover Cleveland--Two Clevelands Before and After Marriage--A Correspondence and a Break of Personal Relations

I

There were, as I have said, two Grover Clevelands--before and after ht be added, between his defeat in 1888 and his election in 1892 He was so sure of his election in 1888 that he could not be induced to see the danger of the situation in his own State of New York, where David Bennett Hill, who had succeeded hiovernorshi+p, was a candidate for reelection, and who party force He lost the State, and with it the election, while Hill won, and thereby arose an ugly faction fight

I did not believe as the quadrennial period approached in 1892 that Mr Cleveland could be elected I still think he owed his election, and Harrison his defeat, to the Homestead riots of the midsummer, which transferred the labor vote bodily from the Republicans to the Democrats

Mainly on account of this belief I opposed his nomination that year

In the Kentucky State Convention I made my opposition resonant, if not effective ”I understand,” I said in an address to the asseates, ”that you are all for Grover Cleveland?”

There came an affirmative roar

”Well,” I continued, ”I am not, and if you send me to the National Convention I will not vote for his nomination, if his be the only name presented, because I firh a slaughter-house to an open grave, and I refuse to be party to such a folly”