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THE WEEKLY CONSTITUTIONALIST
WEDNESDAY MORNING. MAY 6, 1868 ■
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A SPLENDID SPEECH-
A lew days since, we published the con
cluding passages of ex-Gov. Thomas H.
Seymour’s speech delivered at St. James
Hotel, New York, on the anniversary of
Thomas Jefferson. On the same occasion,
the Hon. Mr. Akers, of Missouri, formerly
a member of Congress from that State, but
for some years a resident of Gotham, spoke
with a beauty and eloquence of idea, warmth
of imagery and pomp of purple words, not
easily equalled in this material age. Apart
from its sentiments, which will be raptu
rously received by Southern men, it has a
high literary merit seldom evinced by the
politicians oi our epoch. A distinguished
Georgian, to whom we arc indebted for a
copy of this noble utterance, informs us
that the auditors were men of tine intellect
and enlarged information, leading and illus
trious persons who still adhere to the fun
damental principles of States Rights and
Strict Construction. The speech of Mr.
Akers was listened to with profound atten
tion, frequent plaudits and marked enthu
siasm. We give it a conspicuous place in
these columns as a brave answer to the
Macedonian cry of the South.
In the progress of after-dinner ceremo
nies, the subjoined toast was read :
The South— The birthplace of the greatest
statesmen, orators and heroes of the revolu
tion, desolated by the military rule of
strangers and tyrants—may she arise like
a Phoenix from her ashes and bestow again
the inestimable blessings of peace and lib
erty upon her people.
To which the Hon. Thomas P. Akers re
sponded as follows;
Mr. President and Gentlemen : I beg to as
sure you, and I do it without affectation,
and not as a cold formality, that I respond
to the sentiment announced from the bot
tom of my heart. The South, though not i
my birthplace, was the home of my youth |
and early manhood, and I frankly confess .
that I feel to-night, as I trust 1 always shall '
feel, a profound respect for her great
“statesmen, heroes and orators,” and a
lively sympathy for her suffering people;
and my heart yearns, with an ardor too
deep for utterance, to see her arise “ like a
Phoenix from her ashes and bestow again
the inestimable blessings of peace and lib
erty on her people
One would suppose that the devastation
and ruin of the South, occasioned by the
late war, had been sufficiently complete and
comprehensive to satisfy the hate of her
bitterest and most relentless oppressors.
War, in its mildest form, when waged by
one nation against another, and softened by
a rigid observance of all the rules of civil
ized warfare, is a terrible minister of ruin.
But a sectional war, such as that which
wrought the ruin of the South, draws after
it, of necessity, a train of horrors that no
words can adequately describe.
The conflict of arms between the North
and South had scarcely commenced, when
the tone of public morals, on both sides,
began to relax. As it progressed, all the
bad passions of human nature were arous
ed. The ties of family—that sacred shrine
of the pure and holy affection, that verdant
spot in life’s dreary waste, around which
memory lingers, whose strong cords hold
back the wayward youth and draw him
out of the vortex of crime when the last
strand of every other cable has parted—
were rudely snapped asunder. Men—born
of the same mother and reared at the same
hearthstone—were suddenly transformed
into demons, as if by some terrible enchant
ment, and thirsted for each other’s blood.
Religion, itself, which had always been a
bright pole-star to light and guide the err
ing footsteps of fellow-man, fell from its
high and holy place, like that star of evil
omen spoken of in the Book of the Apoca
lypse, which fell from heaven on the foun
tains and rivers, and changed them into
wormwood.
It is not unnatural, perhaps, that sec
tional war, born of fanaticism, and draw
ing the mcaus of its malignant progress
from the tierce passions of sectional jeal
ousy, and hatred, and revenge—should har
ness the Furies to its car, and drive the
country to destruction. But whether na
tural or unnatural, such was the sad histo
ry of the sanguinary strife between the
North and the South. Both sections have
suffered greatly; but it is at the South
more especially where the sombre shadings
of the picture grow dark indeed. There
“ the destruction that vvasteth at noonday ”
entered every house. Ruin on so broad a
scale never before fell on any people. The
accumulated wealth of an hundred years
was swept away by a single breath of the
National Executive; and the South, from
being a land of opulence, became the abode
of poverty.
But the loss of her property is the least.
of the great afflictions which have filled the
cup of the South to its brim. Her past is j
strewn with the wrecks of her former great-'
ncss. Her present is full of fearful perils I
Her future is dark with the gathering
Clouds of new and direr calamities. “Hordes
Os thriftless and indolent negroes—the
fruit of the Freedmen’s Bureau ; passionate
almost to brutality, induced to vice by
idleness, incited to crime by evil counsel
lors; fed and clothed at the public expense
with a great, army for their protection,
roam over the land, on a mission of evil
carrying dismay to the hearts of helpless
innocence, and shocking civilization with
the worst of nameless crimes.
But words after all are vain. Look at
the wan and wasted form of the South, as
she sits in silence and sadness on the tomb
of her buried renown. “ Broken in spirit,
stripped of fortune, wasted, ragged, wretch
ed and ruined, her situation invokes the
magnaminity of kindred manhood and ap
peals to the generous sympathy of a noble
enemy.”
Shall the appeal ot the South be made in
vain? Has she not suffered enough? Is it
not enough that her fruitful fields have
been trampled by the hoofs of the invader
and made red and slippery by the blood of
her sons? Is it not enough that through
out her vast territory scarcely an inland
village has been spared from the torch of
an infuriated soldiery? Is it not enough that
her seaport cities—the seats of Southern
civilization—have been laid in ashes, and
her men of noble mould put to the sword,
until the very gutters 'of their streets ran
foaming with blood unto the sea ? Is it not
enough that the proud old Commonwealth
of Virginia—the mother of States and of
statesmen—the mother of Washington and
Jefferson, of Monroe and Madison, of Pat
rick Henry and' the Lees, and of a host of
others, whose fame is the proudest inherit
ance of the nation—should be loaded with
chains, turned away from the door of the
Union, her proud spirit crushed and bro
ken, and her very groan of agony stifled by
strange bayonets?
To the shame of Christian civilization, I
am compelled to answer that all this was
not enough to satisfy the Radical majority
of the present Congress. What the war
and their predecessors in office had done,
did not utterly stamp out the life of the
Southern States. The form and semblance
of free government still remained. The
people still had their State Governors and
State Courts to protect them. If the mili
tary upstart, who chanced to be in au
thority, became insufferably oppressive,
they had their appeal to the National Ex
ecutive. Hence that last act, brought for
ward by the present Congress, which sweeps
the Southern States out of existence, and
erects on their ruins a colossal military
Imperium—a despotism more thorough and
unrestrained than that which the Czar of
Russia wields over prostrate Poland ; and
more heartless than that which crushes
bleeding Hungary under the heel of the
modern Nero of Austria.
Professing to be engaged in the work of
reconstructing the Southern States, the
Radical majority of Congress has actually
blotted them out of existence. Professing
to be in favor of free speech and a free
press, they have muzzled the press of the
South, and silenced all freedom of discus
sion by the bayonet. Professing to be the
very champions of liberty, they have made
the liberties of the white race of the South
the object of their special hate. Professing
to be the advocates of “ equal rights ” to
all men, they have stricken down ten
States from their position of “ equality ” in
I the national family.
This crusade upon the liberties of a vast
empire of kindred freemen is, on the part of
the Radicals, no idle fancy, no passing ca
price, no gust of passion. It is elevated to
the dignity, and pursued with the consist
ency, of a principle of policy. It is sus
tained by the powerful energy of mad fa
naticism, and covered by the holy names
of God and Religion.
While the great struggle between the
North and the South was pending, the
Radical leaders declared, under the au
thoritative sanction of an act of Congress,
“ that the war was waged for no purpose of
conquest or subjugation of the South,” but
simply to “maintain the Union, withall
the ancient rights and dignities of the
States unimpaired.” And now, as if in
solemn mockery of this pledge, which form
ed indeed the very basis upon which the
South laid down her arms, these same men
have stripped those States of all “ their an
cient rights and dignities,” and have re
manded them as “ conquered ” and “ subju
gated provinces,” to their chrysalis condi
, tion of “ waste territories of the United
States.”
Yon may search the records of history,
from its earliest dawn to the present mo
ment, in Christian and in heathen lands,
| and I defy you to find an example of insin-
I cerity, of contempt of oaths, of infidelity to
pledges, on the part of legislators, which,
in moral turpitude, approaches the case of
the American Congress in its treatment of
i the South.
In their misnamed measures of recon
struction, the Radical leaders have shown
themselves to be utterly wanting in states
manship, wanting in integrity, wantingin
patriotism, wanting, in short, in everything
except the power and the will to do mis
chief. But in this last respect they' have
evinced a peculiar capability. In their
treatment of the South, they have shown
us how much easier it is to destroy than to
create, to ywß down than to build up, free
governments.
Slowly and reluctantly docs human na
ture rise up from sloth and ignorance, and
animalism; and many hands and constant
efforts are required to raise and hold up the
sluggish mass of society: but a single hand
may cut the cord and let it thunder back
on destruction.
To produce the witching strains of music
which flow without apparent cflbrt from the
well tuned Instruments of an accomplished
orchestra, long years of patient study, a
cultivated ear, and a skillful touch are
necessary ; but a set of clowns may put the
instruments out of order and send out notes
of discord.
To raise a garden to its highest state of
cultixation, taste, and industry, and much
culture, and constant pruning are demand-
I ed ; but a herd of swine may root it up and
1 destroy its beauty in an hour.
To create our political system, with its
faultless division and distribution of
powers—State and Federal—qualities of
head and of heart were needed which the
world has never produced but once; but a
miserable faction of political dabsters have
destroyed its equilibrium ; and the beauti
ful structure reels and totters to its fall.
What the South, and indeed the whole
country needs just now, more than anything
else, is one year of sound Jeffersonian Demo
cratic administration. Desperate as the
case of the South has become under the
treatment of her Radical doctors, such a
change, I verily believe, would lay the foun
dation of a permanent cure.
The Radicals told us that the path to
union and concord lay through the bloody
gate of sectional war ; and though we have
long since passed through thegatc, we have
not yet reached the goal.
We have tried the policy of force for six
years to no purpose. Let us now try the
opposite policy. Let us see what virtue
there may be in the policy of conciliation.
It was this policy that created the Union.
It was this that carried the Union through
the trials of 1820. It was this that saved
the Union in 1850. And this, I verily
believe, would have saved the Union in
1860. If the sun attract, the planets will
not wander from their orbits.
. Conciliation is, in fact, more influential
in controlling mind than coercion. It al
ways melts the obduracy of man and
moulds him to its purposes. The worst of
criminals—hardened by coercion—is in
stantly subdued by the warm look of con
ciliation. The trembling inebriate—hope
lessly lost to all sense of shame—stands
abashed in its presence. The raving ma
niac—chained to his pillar, rending his gar
ments and gnawing his own flesh —is grad
ually subdued, healed' and harmonized by
kind and conciliatory words. The dumb
brute—maddened and made stubborn by
the goad—becomes tractable and obedient
under kind and gentle treatment. The wild
beasts of prey are subject to the subduing
power of conciliation. With a face ot kind
ness you may go into the presence of these
monsters —you may ride on the tusks of the
elephant, you may sport with the cata
mount and the tiger, you may frolic with
the treacherous leopard, you may thrust
your head into the mouths of lions, you
may wind the most venemous serpent
around your body, or make your pillow
upon a coil of dragons. There is, in
deed, no limit to tiie sway of this
powerful principle. The reason is ob
vious. It lies in the fact that coer
cion addresses itself to the lowest instincts
of human nature —to those that belong to
I us in common with the lower orders of the
animal creation —it addresses itself to our
fears, while conciliation, on the other hand,
appeals to the highest attributes of mind—
to those that connect us with the higher
orders of intelligence—it appeals to our
i hopes. Coercion commands ; conciliation
• entreats. Coercion compels ; conciliation
I persuades. Coercion concentrates itself in
| wrath ; conciliation diffuses itself in mer-
I cy. Coercion is like the lightning which
strikes the gnarled oak, rending its solid
trunk asunder, and scattering it in splin
ters to the ground; conciliation is like the
cloud which baptizes the world with its
tears, and bends the bright rainbow of
peace over mountains all rustling with
thanksgivings, and valleys of silent beauty
all sparkling with praises. Coercion is the
weapon of the Radicals ; conciliation is the
sheet anchor of the Democracy. We have
tried the one; let us try the other. Let
the olive-branch be twined about the bolt
of Jove. Try the power of persuasion, of
entreaty, of kind and conciliatory words.
Do this, and the South will speedily arise,
in the language of your sentiment, “ like a
Phoenix from her ashes, and bestow again
the blessings of peace and liberty upon her
people.” The light of peace will break
upon her like the rays of morning ; it will
sparkle from the tops of her mountains,
which receive the first and retain the last
rays of the rising and the setting sun. It
will girdle her prostrate and bleeding form
with a zone of light, and fling over her a
canopy of beauty. The gloom which now
invests her, chilling her warm and gener
ous heart, will be promptly dissipated.—
All darkness will be driven away, all
clouds dispersed, “ and, beautiful as the
stars beyond,” will arise again in the politi
cal firmament, the Southern constellation
of States.
A reconstruction, such as this, would
almost efface from the memory of the South
the recollection of her deep humiliation.—
Let us hope that such a reconstruction may
yet be realized. Let us hope that fraternal
love may supplant sectional hatred—that
union and concord may take the place of
disunion and strife—and that the Republic
may live and rise to a glorious immortality.
Restore the South by this method, and it
may yet transpire that the war, which we
now regard as an unmeasured calamity,
was but designed, in the Divine Economy,
to augment our glory. Do this, and it may
turn out in the end, that during the very
throe and travail of our great strife we were
only being “ lead up” like the Phrophet to
the Mount “in the midst of thunderings
and lightnings” which appalled the nations,
“to behold the face” of the Eternal Law
Giver ; and when the visitation shall have
fully passed away, the world, it may be,
shall see the Young Republic, “ coming
down from the mountain and the cloud, her
brow blazing, and her hands holding the
Commandments of Mankind.
The Most Independent Man.—There
is no man more independent than the owner
of a well-cultivated farm. He is less be
holden to popular sentiment than any other
calling. He has always a sure support be
fore him without consulting the opinions
or relying upon the custom of any one.
There is constant market for all the surplus
lie can produce, and he obtains for it the
current price without any one demanding
to know ot him his religious or political
faith.
[From the New Orleans Bee.
Gen. Beauregard Refutes the Slander.
We have received from Gen. Beauregard
the following letter, with reference to the
malignant misrepresentation of his conduct,
on the occasion of a visit to Arlington
House, the property of the wife of Gen. IL
E. Lee, made by the Washington correspon
dent of the Boston Commfrnwealth, which
we denounced on Tuesday last.
That journal will, we have no doubt, con
tradict, at once, the statement of its corres
pondent :
New Orleans, April 12, 1868.
To the Editors of the N. 0. Bee :
Gentlemen : Allow me to thank you for
having refuted, in your paper of yesterday,
the following slander contained in the
Washington correspondence of the Boston
Commonwealth, to wit:
“ Beauregard at Arlington.—Speak
ing of the cenotaph erected to the memory
of the unknown braves, we are reminded
that the children of Gen. Lee, as well as the
notorious Gen. Beauregard, recently visited
Arlington. The former declined, but the
latter boldly accepted the invitation to re
cord his name in the book of visitors kept
in the mansion. A wounded soldier acts
as janitor of the place. He accompanied
Beauregard to the memorial vault, and
pointed to him the touching words inscribed
thereon. Beauregard read them, and burst
into a loud laugh, scoffing at the woe and
suffering he had in part caused. Senator
Wade soon after visited the grounds. The
old servitor told him the story with well
expressed indignation. ‘ Brave fellow !’
exclaimed old Ben, 1 crippled as you are,
why did you not strike him to the earth
with your cane as he thus jeered at the suf
ferings of our people ?’ The old soldier, as
we listened to him, looked as though he
would like to have the valiant General come
again; and, with such high authority be
hind him, we have no doubt he would put
into execution at once the bluff Senator’s
suggestion.’
The attack is only on a par with those,
from similar sources, which have already
been made upon me and other ex-Confede
rate Generals. I trust my friends will par
don me for noticing this new aspersion;
my remarks are intended only for that nu
merous class of my fellow-citizens who are
unacquainted with me.
When in Washington, last October, I was
invited by some friends to visit “ Arlington
House,” which I had never seen except at a
distance. I accepted the invitation, and
while there we were conducted by one of
the guardians of the place to sec the ceme
tery. We entered it with that silent re
serve which is due to the abode of the dead,
and I left it shortly afterward with a sad
dened heart, at the thought that the graves
of so many of our brave Confederates
should be still uncared for by friends or
foes. A true-hearted soldier feels the same
respect for the grave of a gallant enemy as
for that of a brother-in-arms—and I am yet
to learn that a single Federal grave has
ever been desecrated by a true Confederate
soldier.
On returning to the Mansion, our con
ductor disappeared for an instant, and
presently returned with a handsome bou
quet of flowers, gathered from the flower
garden of Mrs. Lee ; he asked me to accept
it as a memento of my visit, and in return
to enter my name in the visitor’s registry
book. We then shook hands and parted,
probably never to meet again. If he be “ a
brave, crippled soldier,” he is incapable of
having been guilty of the vile slander in
vented to injure a defeated and proscribed
fellow-soldier.
I remain, yours, very sincerely,
G. T. Beauregard.
[From the Charleston Mercury.
The Supreme Court and the Georgia Cases.
That one of the three great independent
co-ordinate and co-essential branches of the
United States Government should readily
succumb to threats and give effect to the
subversion of law by another department
in the temporary grasp, of a reckless party,
is a fact as sorrowful as it is ominous of
evil. Under the pretext of compulsion, the
Judges of the Supreme Court (with two
honorable exceptions) have prostituted
their high office and sacred functions to the
lust of party uses. They have betrayed the
charge given them as trusted keepers of the
integrity of the constitution and purity of
the law. The country must needs mourn
over the fall of its servants, invested for life
with the grand duties of these great offices
of honor and profit. Bufethe people should
understand and appreciate that the lapse
of the court is due, not so much to a weak
and cowardly fear of the action of the Con
gress. as to an unscrupulous willingness to
tacitly favor the illegal views and policy
of the Radical faction.
The whole course of the court on the
several cases brought before it point inevi
tably to this conclusion. They refused to
render a decision on the twpws case of
McCardle, after the case was made, argued
and a decision come to. But before this
they threw out one Georgia suit, on the
ground that no property was involved.
And when Governor Jenkins, through
Judge Black, forthwith brought another
case, they resorted to new and unheard of
expedients of technicalities to postpone and
defeat the object—a judicial opinion. After
first agreeing, on the 11th of February, to
allow the bill to be filed, the clerk was in
structed that the 31st rule must be con
strued to stand in the way—not in let
ter, but in spirit. After .thus achieving
considerable delay, a motion to file was
on a Friday entertained, and permis
sion was given on a Monday. After
summons had all been issued, this was
made a cause for postponement. The
clerk was instructed not to issue summons
without a special order of the court. For
mal application was required, and, after
due consideration, was granted in form. No
little time being in these ways got rid of,
the case was brought up for argument.—
But the court now became very anxious
and curious to know whether Mr. Carpen
ter, who was present to argue the defense,
defends not only General Grant but aZZ the
parties. And this being the last day of the
term for motions, the illustrious body post
poned the Georgia case to a more conve
nient season.
We have called attention to these facts,
that the course pursued by the Supreme
Court should be fully understood. These
judges, under the lead of Chief Justice
Chase, have negatively played into the
hands of the faction who are violating law
and subverting the Constitution of the
country. They should be regarded, not as
timid men reluctantly yielding to pressure,
but as willing coadjutors and cunning co
conspirators with the Radical revolution
ists, and held up accordingly to public
scorn and indignation.
The Liberty of the Press.—We have re
ceived from the editors of the Memphis Ava
lanche record, in pamphlet form, of the per
secutions of that journal by a Radical Judge.—
It is a plain ease of Radicalism versus the Lib
erty of the Press, and should be read by every
satrap in the South. Radicalism having at
tempted to silence the voice of honest men,
will not pause in the effort, under the domin
ion of Ben Wade, to muzzle the journals.
| From the Round Table.
Mr- Greeley as a Gentleman.
Mr. Horace Greeley has just disgraced
himself, his newspaper, and the American
press by one of the most infamously abusive
articles ever printed. No American gen
tleman can read the paper headed Gover
nor Seymour as a liar, published in the
ofthe 9th inst., without indignation
and contempt. The offender has done this
sort of thing too often to deserve that deli
cacy in discussing it which his years or
presumed services would otherwise natu
rally command, and we make bold to in
form Mr. Greeley, with the utmost respect
for whatever is respectable about him, that
the language employed by him in the
article referred to is such as to unfit him
for the society of gentlemen, inasmuch as
it is of the sort commonly confined to
blackguards. It seems an astonishing thing
—although it is probably a very natural
one—that so many of these people who
strain to distinguish themselves as ultra
philanthropists, and who arc so ostenta
tiously eager for the rights and feelings of
their fellow creatures in mass, should be so
utterly regardless of the same rights and
feelings when they come to deal with in
dividuals. It is perhaps quite consistent
that the advocates of the lucusanon lucendo
principle—men who seek to elevate the
nation by degrading the suffrage—should
think to augment the usefulness of political
discussion by studding it with the epithes
of Billingsgate and saturating it with the
slime of the kennel. Possibly we ought
not to be surprised when demagogues
whose notoriety has been gained by stimu
lating the prejudices of the ignorant, and
who, through enjoying the worship of
fanatical mobs, have learned to regard
themselves as infallible, do not know how
to behave themselves when dealing with
gentlemen, and fail to exhibit that self
control which is among a gentleman’s first
■ attributes. An utter disregard for the pos
sibility of a political opponents being
honest in his belief and in his statements
appears, in truth, to have become a cardi
nal dogma of the Radical creed. The silly
Springfield Republican calls people wicked
who differ from it in political opinion. The
sillier Mr. Greeley is more specific and more
Saxon, and simply dubs his antagonists
“ liars.”
A “ little story ” occurs to us which hap
pens very nicely to illustrate the title of
this article, and which we shall take the
liberty to relate.
A few years ago a certain American
journalist arrived in Liverpool by an ocean
steamer. Although the day, like many
English days, was a very wet one, our
traveler trudged bravely through the mud
to a hotel affected by his countrymen—let
us say the Adelphi. He proceeded into the
coffee-room, so-called, where a large num
ber of guests were dining. The room is
spacious and elegant of its class, and is
frequented by rather fastidious people. At
the end of the apartment blazed a large
and cheerfid fire, below which a great many
plates for the service of the various dinners,
present and expected, were being kept hot.
The new comer strode to the fire, seated
himself, and finding his feet were wet with
walking through the rain, he deliberately
forced off his boots, and thrust over the
plates and edibles his not over cleanly or
otherwise attractive extremities to dry
them. Now, while there is no narm in
a man’s wishing to dry his feet when wet,
we must all admit that there is a time
and place for every thing, and that the
selection of time and place in this in
stance was a little unfortunate. To stretch
a pair of dripping and steaming feet over
dishes off which forty or fifty people are
to dine may be regarded as objectionable,
even if those people are not over-particular.
No wonder, then that amazement, conster
nation, and derisive laughter were succeed
ed in this case by indignation and com
plaint, and that our journalist, after having
been unsuccessfully remonstrated with by
a servant, was finally unwillingly conduct
ed from the room by the landlord of the
hotel. Now, we have not the least doubt
whatever that the “ masses” whom our
damp and discomfited friend was in the
habit of swaying with his editorial eloquence
at home would have regarded this parti
cularly dirty trick of his as pardonable
eccentricity, or even as a stroke of genius ;
but he happened— mirabile dietu— to be
among gentlemen, and they didn’t. They
merely thought, as the Saturday Review, in
its contemptuous lashing of the Tribune of
March 21, implied, that a very low-bred
fellow was doing his country and his pro
fession very great injustice, and that the
small vanity of trying to make one’s self
conspicuous, even in a disgusting way, was
mingled unpleasantly with the ill-breeding.
It is barely possible that the moral of this
little story may be lost upon Mr. Horace
Greeley; but if any further details may
assist him in finding it they are very much
at his service. In the meantime, we can
scarcely expect him to agree with us in the
opinion that very few of the Southern
blacks, whom he is so anxious universally
to enfrancaise, would have been such un
couth and selfish boors as to have done
likewise.
The recommendation may come rather
tardily, but we would really recommend
Air. Greeley to begin forthwith the study
of Chesterfield. Some philosopher began
the study of Greek at eighty, when he
knew almost as little about his subject,
and Air. Greeley has twenty years the ad
vantage. His autobiography might be
very nicely rounded off by a few essays on
the usages current among gentlemen ; and
that he feels the stirrings of a certain cu
riosity in that direction appears from the
Tribune of the 10th, in an article about the
Erie controversy in the Supreme Court,
wherein, mounting the censor’s seat with
infinite grace and propriety, Mr. Greeley
observes:
“ Then comes this question : How far are
gentlemen to understand the rules of so
cial and personal intercourse? And are
there not certain ideas of delicacy sacred
to every gentleman ? We should like to
hear from Air. Haskin and Air. Brady on
this point.”
This is charming in the highest degree.
Air. Greeley should immediately open a
school department at the Tribune office,
and Alessrs. Brady and Haskin should be
his first pupils. Who knows but with the
aid of so finished an instructor those gen
tiemen may be so far improved as to be
qualified to preside at a great public din
ner, and in virtue of their clear understand
ing of “ the rules of social and personal in
tercourse,” and of “ the ideas of delicacy
sacred to every gentleman,” that they may
be made competent to take the chair at a
festival given in honor of the next great
novelist that England sends us in 1878 ?
Among the two million people by whom
Jeddo, in Japan, is inhabited, there is not ?
beggar in the streets, not a man unable to read,
not a boor, not a drunkard, not a ruffian. The
women are beautiful, the men are robust and
energetic ; there is no trouble about the fash
ions; education is universal ; books are plenti
ful, though there are no newspapers; life is
simple and easy; marriage is universal and
children go naked.
Two Counties Left Out.—Telfair and Ir
win held no elections fast week, the registra
tion officers not having visited those counties. {
The failure occasions a loss of from 800 to 1,000
to the Democrats.— Telegraph.
[ From the London Daily Telegraph.
Robert E- tee/"'
At Lexington, in the State of •Virginia,
there is a college which bears the name of
the most illustrious citizen ever born in the
“ Old Dominion,” fertile as that pleasant
laud has been in heroes ; nor could George
Washington himself have wished that the
college erected in his honor should have for
President a worthier chief than the one
who quietly entered upon his duties just a
fortnight ago. The new President is still
in the prime of manhood, though already
his hair and beard are gray; he has been
long accustomed to command ; he is fami
liar with hardships as with fame—hasslept
for months amid the woods of Virginia, and
has crossed the Rappahannock Northward
at the head of a victorious army ; he has
been proved alike by good and evil fortune,
and whether when threatening the Federal
capital, or when surrendering his sword to
a Federal Captain, he has ever borne him
self as beseemed a man noble alike by an
cestry and by nature. The descendant of
“ Light Horse Harry” has doffed the gray
uniform for the garb of a peaceful professor;
nor can we own that change is a degrada
tion, even for Robert Lee.
There is a difference in the mode of ac
tion, but no alteration in the object, which
is simply to render the best service he can
to his native State. To that single aim he
has never once been unfaithful; and he will
still pursue it, we may rest assured, with
the old high enthusiasm, tempered by a
cautious brain. Throughout the war noth
ing was more remarkable than Lee’s per
sonal influence—the manner in which he
impressed every one who approached him.
That men with Jackson’s purity and ear
nestness, or with the debonnaire and grace
ful valor of Stuart, should appreciate the
illustrious qualities of their leader, was
only natural; but even the humblest sol
diers in the rank felt, though they might
not have been able to express the moral
power which Lee exerted. The war was,
in all conscience, sanguinary enough; but
there would have been a very carnival of
carnage, a devilish outbreak of all men’s
fiercest passions, had the Southern leader
been of different temper. Gallantly as the
Confederates fought, we must never forget
that their armies were often composed of
somewhat questionable raw material; that
the volunteers, with all the instinct of
bravery which seldom deserts a dominant
class, had likewise many oi the vices which
are invariably engendered by the possession
of arbitrary and lawless power. Accus
tomed to the unchecked license of authority,
the slaveholders might perchance have been
ready enough to give the war a character
of internecine hatred; and it was eminently
due to Robert Lee that the courtesies and
humilities of civilized warfare were, on the
whole, observed. The gentle nature of the
man never degenerated into weakness;
with a high hand he could restrain ex
cesses, and admirably did he exercise his
power. There are no purer pages in the
history of the civil war than those which
relate to his invasion of Maryland and
Pennsylvania, at a time when the temper
of the Southern people was sorely tried.
Such qualities as he displayed could not
fail, in a long run, to win the regard of a
manly and affectionate people ; and while
we find that he was loved like a father by
all those who shared his immediate perils,
we have not yet forgotten that when the
victorious veterans of the North were
marching home through Richmond, they
burst into a splendid shout of enthusiasm
as they recognized, gravely contemplating
them from a curtained window, the familiar
form and face of Robt. Lee.
[From the Baltimore Gazette.
Boutwell’s Speech.
Lest it should be lost on the public, which
will probably read his speech in a very cursory
way, we reproduce one extract. It runs as fol
lows :
“Travelersand astronomers inform us that
in the Southern Heavens, near the Southern
cross, there is a vast space which the uneduca
ted call the hole in the sky, where the eye of
man, with the aid of the powers of the tele
scope, has been unable to discover nebulae, or
asteroid, or comet, or planet, or star, or sun.
In that dreary, cold, dark reelon of space,
which is only known to be less than intinate
by the evidences of creation elsewhere, the
Great Author of celestiil mechanism has left
the chaos which was in the begining. If thia
earth were capable of the sentiments and emo
tions of justice and virtue, which in human
mortal beings are the evidences and the pledge
ot our Divine origin and immortal destiny, she
would heave and throw, with the energy of the
combined forces of air, fire and water, and pro
ject this enemy of two races of men into that
vast region, there forever to exist in a solitude
eternal as life, or as the absence of life, emble
matical of, if not really, that ‘outer darkness’
of which the Saviour of man spoke in warning
to those who are the enemies of themselves, of
their race and oi their Gud.”
It is barely possible that some one member
of the Senate —Mr. Charles Sumner, perhaps—
may think this very fine. The idea that “if
this earth were capable of the sentiments and
emotions of justice and virtue,” &<•., “ she
would heave and throw ” Air. Johnson through
“ the hole in the sky ” intojnfinite chaos may
be thought by a Bowery boy to be what be
would call a “ bully ” suggestion. School boys
may be struck by the effort of a member of Con
gress of “ Divine origin and immortal destiny ”
to consign an official who is opposed to the
Radical party to a “ solitude as eternal as life,”
whatever they may mean. Sensible people
will only read Mr. Boutwell’s flight with a
smile, and will class him with that celebrated
functionary who insisted that they should
write him down an ass.
In the Wrong Pulpit.—The Grass
Lake (Michigan) Reporter writes the follow
ing:
Quite an amusing incident occurred over
in Sharon, the other Sabbath, which we
give for the edification of our readers. It
appears that there are two churches in that
town, owned respectively by a Methodist
and Congregational society. In the Con
gregational Church, a week ago last Sun
day, the Rev. Air. Gallup, of this village,
was to preach, and the Alethodist Church,
situated about two miles south, was sup
plied by a Rev. Air. Brown, of Clinton, the
regular pastor being absent. Both services
were at the same hour. As Mr. Brown
came from Clinton, he was, of course, a
stranger in the locality, and as he made
frequent inquiries along the road for the
Sharon Church, was directed to the Con
gregational Church. On his arrival at the
church he hitched his horse, went in, and
found the pulpit empty, as Air. Gtillup had
not arrived. After warming himself, re
moving his.overshoes, etc., he went into the
pulpit, and when the time come, rose to
read the hymn. What was his surprise as
he opened the book, to find it was a Con
gregational hymn book! He stood awhile,
and finally beckoned to a gentleman who
sat near, and asked him if this was the
Sharon Alethodist Church. Receiving a
negative answer, the reverend gentleman
dropped his head and exclaimed : “ Well, I
have furnished a good subject for an anec
dote !” Os course he had to explain to the
congregation the dilemma he was in, and
meekly took his leave.