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Lucius Q.C. Lamar Speaks in the
House of Representatives
On Sumner and the South
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Lucius Q.C. Lamar.
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Charles Sumner.
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Lucius Lamar's On Sumner and the
South speech.
It follows an excerpt from the transcript of
Lucius Q.C. Lamar's speech On Sumner and the
South, delivered in the House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. -
April 25, 1874.
It was certainly a
gracious act on the part of Charles Sumner
toward the South, tho unhappily it jarred on the
sensibilities of the people at the other extreme
of the Union, to propose to erase from the
banners of the national army the mementoes of
the bloody internal struggle which might be
regarded as assailing the pride or wounding the
sensibilities of the Southern people. The
proposal will never be forgotten by that people
so long as the name of Charles Sumner lives in
the memory of man.
But while it
touched the heart and elicited her profound
gratitude, her people would not have asked of
the North such an act of self-renunciation.
Conscious that they themselves were animated by
devotion to constitutional liberty, and that the
brightest pages of history are replete with
evidences of the depth and sincerity of that
devotion, they can but cherish the recollection
of the battles fought and the victories won in
defense of their hopeless cause; and respecting,
as all true and brave men must respect, the
martial spirit with which the men of the North
vindicated the integrity of the Union, and their
devotion to the principles of human freedom,
they do not ask, they do not wish the North to
strike the mementoes of heroism and victory from
either records or monuments or battle-flags.
They would rather that both sections should
gather up the glories won by each section, not
envious, but proud of each other, and regard
them as a common heritage of American valor. Let
us hope that future generations, when they
remember the deeds of heroism and devotion done
on both sides, will speak, not of Northern
prowess or Southern courage, but of the heroism,
courage and fortitude of the Americans in a war
of ideas—a war in which each section signalized
its consecration to the principles, as each
understood them, of American liberty and of the
Constitution received from their fathers.
Charles Sumner in
life believed that all occasion for strife and
distrust between the North and South had passed
away, and there no longer remained any cause for
continued estrangement between those two
sections of our common country. Are there not
many of us who believe the same thing? Is not
that the common sentiment, or if not, ought it
not to be, of the great mass of our people,
North and South? Bound to each other by a common
constitution, destined to live together under a
common government, forming unitedly but a single
member of the great family of nations, shall we
not now at last endeavor to grow toward each
other once more in heart, as we are indissolubly
linked to each other in fortunes? Shall we not,
while honoring the memory of this great champion
of liberty, this feeling sympathizer with human
sorrow, this earnest pleader for the exercise of
human tenderness and heavenly charity, lay aside
the concealments which serve only to perpetuate
misunderstandings and distrust, and frankly
confess that on both sides we most earnestly
desire to be one—one not merely in political
organization; one not merely in community of
language, and literature, and traditions, and
country; but more and better than all that, one
also in feeling and in heart?
Am I mistaken in
this? Do the concealments of which I speak still
cover animosities, which neither time nor
reflection nor the march of events have yet
sufficed to subdue? I can not believe it. Since
I have been here I have scrutinized your
sentiments, as expressed not merely in public
debate, but in the abandon of personal
confidence. I know well the sentiments of these
my Southern friends, whose hearts are so
infolded that the feeling of each is the feeling
of all; and I see on both sides only the seeming
of a constraint which each apparently hesitates
to dismiss.
The
South—prostrate, exhausted, drained of her
life-blood as well as her material resources,
yet still honorable and true—accepts the bitter
award of the bloody arbitrament without
reservation, resolutely determined to abide the
result with chivalrous fidelity. Yet, as if
struck dumb by the magnitude of her reverses,
she suffers on in silence. The North, exultant
in her triumph and elevated by success, still
cherishes, as we are assured, a heart full of
magnanimous emotions toward her disarmed and
discomfited antagonist; and yet, as if under
some mysterious spell, her words and acts are
words and acts of suspicion and distrust. Would
that the spirit of the illustrious dead, whom we
lament to-day, could speak from the grave to
both parties to this deplorable discord, in
tones which would reach each and every heart
throughout this broad territory: My countrymen!
know one another and you will love one another.
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