New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1868-06-21
sPEEcH OF HON THOMAS j. DU-
RANT

Mr.. PREsIDRNT-I Iadies and GentleTaen- |
Fellow Citizens-0ld Comrades Of riy past |
labors- should indeed be justly liable to !
the charge of insensibility did l not expert |
warm and generous reception; and if ex-
pressions of imperfect utterance fail to |
bring to your understandings evidence of |
that emotion ] now feel in my heart, |
trust you win attribute it to the lack of |
power to enunciate my own feelings, and |
not to any lack of gratitude or good win to-
ward you. If to attain the approval of
those we esteem be the highest object of an
honorable ambition and the pToudest aim of
an ingenious mind, certainly on this occa-
sion l must feel myself more than honored
in the presence of such an audience and re-
ceived with such greeting,
Called to Louisiana by the voice of friends
whom have long held dear, and TO whose
judgment have long been accustomed to
pay the most devoted respect have re-
paired among you now to renew old asso-
Citations, to light again the fires that should
glow upon the altar of friendship, to pour
out again the libation that should how be-
fore the shrine of patriotism, and to ac
knowledge once more. IS formerly, my
adhesion to the great principles of liberty
and equal rights-to assert anew that claim
which value more highly than any other
except the proud title Of American citizen
that of being the fellow citizen Of your
selves here in Louisiana. l feel myself
happy that am now surrounded by men
who in other days have struggled with me
in our great and arduous undertakings. l
see those whose souls first awakened to the
call OF liberty when liberty became the
watchword of this great struggle.
l see those around me who first
came to my side when we struggled in the
great cause of equal rights and equal suf
frage in Louisiana. see those before me-
and am proud to recognize thens who strug
gled against the mistaken idea, of such as
would have established free State without
free suffrage, and who successfully resisted
the application of an imperfect Louisiana
to admission into the halls of Congress-for
the admission of State nomiHally declared
to be free whose inhabitants did not ac-
knowledge the right Of protecting their own
| freedom with the ballot in their own hands,
would, fellow.citizens, have been called free
in vain. / see around me now all those
whom mutual united thoughts and counsels,
| equal hope and hazard in that glorious en-.
| terprise, Joined with me once in asserting
| firmly, in maintaining calmly, and now
carrying out successfully the principles Of
| equal rights and equal suffrage for all men,
without distinction of race, upon the soil
of Louisiana. (AppIause.)
have often heard it said in childhood
| here in New Orleans, and have heard it
| repeated since | lately reached the city, that
such was the effect of the waters of the
| MISSISSIPPI On UlLU NnD udl bllCC kdSLGu
| them that he never could in other cllmes
but revert to the scenes of that river, and
that though he might be long absent from
its shores he longed to return to them.
Whether this mysterious influence in truth
! exists or not, certain it is that the mind
reyerts with satisfaction to the scenes of
early struggles aud of early joys-that it
locks back in genial contemplation on those
days when hope was high when courage
was full, when fruition had not yet been
attained. Aud as was said by the traveller
so it was with me
''where'sr roam whatever realms to see,
My heart untrammeed fondly turns TO thee,
| Still to my brother t1rns with eoaSeless strain
And drags at each remove a heightened chain"
But trust that you Will understand that
my mind is sufficiently uncouded to per-
ceiverthat this generous greeting with which
you have met me is not due to any humble
merits of my own. | do not suppose that
nv personal services or my personal worth
is alone sufficient TO call forth such 8
friendly and enthusiastic salutation, but
receive it as a homage to those high princi
pies in the support of which we are all
engaged. acceptit as an acknowledgment
of that tie of sympathy which binds US al
to the great party which under the guidance
of the illustrious martyr who fell by assas
sin hands in the crowning ho1r OF his
countrysj victory had guided the ship Of
State through the stormy and tempestuous
sea of civil war. ] accept it as recOgni
tion of that sympathy we all feel, and the
obligations we all owe in common to that
great party which, under another inustrio1;
captain, will carry the ship still further on
in the path of liberty, humanity, and prog
ress. prolonged applause.)
Citizens, he is but superficial observer
who believes that parties arise from acci
dental circumstances. He knows but little
of the real nature of things who supposes
that party organizations only flow from the
maneuvers of selfish and ambitious office
seekers, or of needy men who find the path
of politics the road by which they must
seek support. The principles upon which
parties are constructed lie far deeper in the
nature of man than this. There is an eter.
nal law that guides the moralprinclples anc
the intellectual movements Of the universe
as certainly as there is law which guides
its physical organization, and that law il
deeply craven en- American institutions
and on the hearts of all American citizens.
{ Long since we left behind in Europe
monarchy and feudalism, barbarism ani
aristocracy, to found government here
upon the equal rights of man. A faith il
God and love of humanity are the guiding
principles of American institutions; and in
every great event, and wherever grea
thought has been uttered by an American
statesman responsive to the wishes Of the
, American people, those two great idea
have come forward. From the love of Coo
grows love for the brotherhood Of man
and in the teachings of the Divinity maj
/; instinctively knows that all other men are
his brothers. (Applause.) And as eacI
one intuitively feels that he possesses him
self inalienable rights, by the operation o
that very feeling he knows that these right
of his fellow men are inalienable.
When the trainers of the American system
laid the foundations of government they
appealed to God to approve thu
: rectitude of their intentions, and the.
, appealed TO the public opinion of the worlC
to sanetify the Justice of their acts; ant
they founded government, not on arbitrar,
distinctions, or the rights of classes, or tn
endowments of mind, or the principles o
Oligarchy, or the ideas of feudalism, bu
they declared that all men were createl
equal, and that they were endowed by thei
5 Creator with the inalienable rights of life
I liberty and the pursuit of happiness; an(
on this foundation, and on no other-th
recognition of the divine providence Of Goo
and the brotherhood of man-on this foun
= dation is reared the great fabric of tn
American republic-long distorted, lonl
falsihed, but now about in the cr0wnini
: work of the hour, to be consecrated, and t,
, remain the glory of humanity forever
(Great applause)
And it was by a recognition of thes'
principles, fellow citizens, that the Repub
lican party, which we glory to belong to
was born and has arisen. The Republican
7 party grew from the conscience of tn
! American people. The Republican part,
arose In the ideas of that select band Of mel
who protested against slavery, who denie,
! that the Institution was superior to the in
l dividual, who denied that consecrated ant
2 hoary wrong could rise superior to or b.
more venerable than the sacred rights 0
.