The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1864-03-19
HON. w. d. KELLEY.

Extract from his Speech on the Blu to eStab-
hsh a Bureau Of Freedmen's o0airs, House
Of Representatives., FEB. %, 1864.
SIR: In the absence of assailable provisions
in the BILL the gentleman from New York
(Mr. Brooks) poured forth his indignation
upon the grand old Puritan State. He said:
~ know the spirit of Massachusetts.
know her memorable, unappeasable, demo
MAC energy, know that what she DEGREES
she will execute, as when she ordered the
burning of witches at Salem, or the scourg-
aug of the Quakcrs, or the exile of the Bap-
lists to the rocky shores of the Narragan
sett, or to the mountain businesses and glens
of New Hampshire, where my maternal
Baptist ancestors were banished. Hence
when, az now, she DEGREES on the African,
l tremble for three million hitherto happy
human beings now doomed to e1termina-
ton"
And again he said:
"The spirit of Massachusetts has done
in two or three years only what Christ, or
the Church of Christ, was twelve or fifteen
hundred years in accomplishing in the Ro-
man Empire"
New England, as the gentleman is but
remember that in my hayward YOUTH being
free from the indenture that had bound me
to a long apprenticeship, but not having at
tanned manhood, | wandered from my native
Pennsylvania, counter to the current tide of
emigration, in pursuit of employment, and
found home in Massachusetts, and l may
be pardoned if I pause for moment to
feebly testify my gratitude to her in whom i
found gentle and generous foster mother.
thank God for the puritan spirit Of Massa-
chusetts. A boy, poor, friendless, and in
pursuit of wages for manual toll, found
open to me in the libraries of Boston the
science, history, and literature Of the world.
At a cost that even the laboring man did not
feel, found, night after night, and week
after week, in her iyceums and lecture rooms,
the means of intercourse with her Bancroft,
her Brownson, her Everetts her Channings,
her Prescott, her Emerson, and scores of
other as learned and as able, theugh perhaps
less distinguished sons than these. | thus
learned what it was to be an American citi-
zen, and to what height American civilza-
Il On will be carried; and found four years
of life spent at well paid toll worth to me
what the same number of years in college
mingt have been. | thank the men of Mas
sachussetts, as will the scholars in the pub
lie schools fashioned upon her principles in
the city of Charleston in good time. They
may be white, they may be black, they may
be yellow, but when the civilization of Mas
sachussetts shall have penetrated that dark
city, the pleasure Of the pupils in the schools
the spirit of Massachusetts which kept lib
erty alive, and finally brought its blessings to
the entire people of the country, Yes, sir,
Massachusetts in the past two or three years
has given n practical application of those
principles which, in twelve or fifteen centu-
res gave freedom to Europe, and is about
giving it to all the people of America. Not
without war, however; and the gentleman
ignored the teachings of history when he
said that it had been done without war in
Europe. Sir, the history Of the contest for
freedom in Europe is a history of continuous,
sanguinary, and destructive war
The gentlemen from Ohio (Mr. Cox less
gravely-l will not say more nppanty, for
that might be offensive-devoted his hour,
as have said, not to the examination of the
bill, but to q criticism of certain uttcrances
of Wendell Phillips and Theodore Tilton,
and the reading of copious extracts from an
anonymous pamphlet recently published by
Dexter, Hamilton, e. Co.. Nassau street,
New York, entitled 4" Miscegenation.
! am little disappointed, Mr. Speaker,
that this bill should receive such treatment
at the hands Of gentlemen On the other side
of the House. They profess to sympathze
with the people of the South. They profess
to wish for peace and to restore them to the
blessings of society. Sir, do they not know
that this bill relates to four million people
of the South, half million, Certainly more
than four hundred thousand,) of whom are
the near relatives of their former associates
upon this floor and their p;.rtsans in the
South, men to whom they and their dcludcd
partisans con6ded the administration of oul