Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1861-07-24
SPEECH OF HON. JOSEPH HOLT
AT LOUISVILLE.

tory, now look down upon the South anC
: see there hundred or hundred and fifty
thousand men marching in hostile array
/ threatening the capture of the Capital, ,anC
the dismemberment of the territory of thC
Republic, and cOald he look again and SCI
that this army is marshalled and directed
by officers recently occupying distinguish
ed places in the civil and military service
+ of the country, and further, that the States
from which this army has been drawn ap
pear to be one vast, seething cauldron oi
: ferocious passion, he would very naturally
conclude that the Government of the Uni
ted States had committed some great crime
. against its people, and that this uprising
: was in resistance to wrongs and outrageS
which had been borne until their endurance
was no longer possible. And yet, no con-
: clusion could be further from the truth
than this. The Government of the Uni
ted States has been faithful to all its con-
stitutiOnal obligations. For eighty years
!, it has maintained the national honor at
home and abroad, and by its prowess, its
wisdom, and its justice, has given to the
title of an American citizen an elevation
among the nations of the earth which the
citizens of no republic has enjoyed since
: Rome was mistress of the world. Under
its administration the national domain has
stretched away to the Pacific, and that con-
stellation which announced our birth as a
people has expanded from thirteen to thir-
ty-four stars, all, until recently, moving
undisturbed and undimmed in their orbs of
light and grandeur. The rights of no
State have been invaded; no mans liberty
abridged, no mans life oppressively jeop-
ardized by the action of this Government
. Under its benign influences the rills of
public and private prosperity have swelled
into rivulets, and from rivulets into rivers
ever brimming in their fulness, and every
where, and at all periods of its history,
its ministrations have fallen as gently on
the people of the United States as do the
dews of summers night on the flowers and
grass of the gardens and fields.
Whence, then, this revolutionary out
! break? Whence the secret spring of this
gigantic conspiracy, which, like some huge
boa, had completely coiled itself around
the limbs and body of the Republic, before
single hand was lifted to resist it?-
Strange and indeed startling as the an
nouncement must appear when it falls up
on the ears of the next generation, the ma
tiOnal tragedy in whose shadow we stand
tonight, has come upon us because in No
Vember last, John c. Breckinridge was not
elected President of the United States, and
Abraham Lincoln was. This is the whole
stcry. And | would pray now to know on
what was John C. Breckenridge fed that
he has grown so great that republic found
ed by Washington and cementcd by the
best blood that has ever coursed in human
veins is to be everthrOwn because forsooth
he cannot be its President? Had he been
chosen we we'll know that we should not
heard of this rebellion, and the lever with
which it is being moved would have been
wanting to the hands of the conspirators.
Even after its defeat, could it have been
guaranteed, beyond all peradvcnture, that
Jefferson Davis or some other kindred spir-
it would be the successor of Mr.. Lincoln,
l presume we hazard nothing in assuming
that this atrocious movement against the
Government would not have been set on
foot. So much for the principle involved
in it. Tkis great crime, then, with which
we are graphing sprang from that "sin
by which the angels fell''-an unmastered
and prohigate ambition-an ambition that
"would rather reign in hell than serve in
HEAVIER" would rather rule supreme
ly over shattered fragment of the Repub-
lie than run the chances of sharing with
others the honOrs of the whole.
The conspirators of the South read in
the election of Mr.. Lincoln a declaration
that the Democratic party had been pros
trated, if not fnally destroyed by the self
ish intrigues and corruptions of its leaders;
they read, too, that the vicious, emaciated
and spawned hobby of the slavery agita-
ton, on which they had so often rode into
power, could no longer carry them beyond
a given geographical line of our territory,
and that in truth this factious and trea-
sonable agitation on which so many of
them had grown great by debauching and
denatiOnalizing the mind of people natu-
rally generous and patriotic, had run its
course, and hence, that from the national
disgust for this demagogueing and from the !
inexorable law of population, the time had
come when those who had no other pOliti-
cal capital than this, would have to prepare
for retirement to private life, so far at
least as the highest offices of the country
were concerned. Under the influence of
these grim discouragements they resolved
to consummate at onee-what our politi-
cal history shows to have been with them
long cherished purpOse-the dismember-
ment of the Government. They said to
themselves: "Since We can no longer mo-
nopOlize the great offices of the Republic
as we have been accustomed to do, we will
destroy it and build upon its ruins an en-
pire that shall be all our own, and whose
spoils neither the North nor the East nor
the West shall share with us" Deplora-
bic and humiliating as this certainly is, it
is but rehearsal of the sad, sad story of
the past. We had, indeed, supposed that
under our Christian civilization We had
reached point in human progress, when
a repub ic could exists without having its
life sought by its own offspring; but the
of the South have proved that
we were mistaken. Il
Let no man imagine that because this
rebellion has been made by men renowned
in our civil and military history, that it is
therefore the less guilty or the less cOur-
ageously to be resisted. 1t is precisely
this class of men who have subverted the
best governments that have ever existed.
The purest spirits that have lived in the
tide of times, the noblest institutions that
have arisen to bless our race, have found
among those in whom they had most con-
fidence and whom they had most honOred,
men wicked enough. either secretly to be-
tray them unto death or openly to seek
their overthrow by lawless violence. The