The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1869-01-14
A Radical md Religious Defence OF
Hiscegenation.

RADICAL ma htetI&Ious "
miscegenation.
The Reverend j. Blanchard, Presi-
dent of Wheaton College, Illinois, con-
tributes the following, under the head
of Personal Recellections Of Thaddeus
Stevens," to the Cincinnati Gazette of
January 9:
| begin this article on Mr.. Stevens
1.-THE last may ever write of him) with
precisely that point in his life on which
two or three religious papers have as
sailed his memory, and IN which his
Southern enemies most resembled, and,
at the same time, most maligned him.
| mean his domestic relations. The
colored Bishop Payne, n shrewd and
pious man, who bad the means of know
ing, said to me: ale lived with a color
ed woman as his wife; that was all
there was about that" And | suppose
it was true. once, in Cincinnati, mar
lied a man of prominent family IN
Alabama to his brunette slave, while
three bright children stood up by their
mother, the bride, His whole mind
and soul, heart and life, seemed
absorbed aud concentrated in the one
thought of saving that mother and chill
dren from the block of the auctiOneer,
and the living hell beyond it, after he
should be dead. For this he had to run
the gauntlet of his relatives, who had
OWNED his purpose, and come up from
Alabama TO Ohio. Mr.. Stevens, last
winter, reminded me of that Albanian,
by his determined zeal that his bones
should not lie in death in Il burial
ground from which caste spurned the
cOlored race. l will not profane the
memory of Mr.. Stevens by apOlogizing
for his fidelity to the woman whom law
and custom, stronger than law, forbade
him to marry; nor by reminding the
reader that he differed from Henry Clay
and the mass of Southrons only IN the
fact of that fidelity. | will do much
holder thing. Twill remind those tech
nically religious editors that God him
self once commanded an inspired prOph-
ct, saying: 600 take thee a wife of
whoredoms, and children of who're
doms." Hosea, l, 2.) | remind them
that He did this for the very pur-
pose of reaching and retaining
the land whose geseral debauch-
cry had degraded the woman whom
His prophet married, as his Inaugural
tion to his prophetic Office. And if we
suppose that God, who works by precept
or by providence, as He pleases, provi-
dentially connected Mr.. Stevens with
the mysterious race, as he connected
Hosea, by pTeCept, with degraded
casts in his day, and for a like purpose,
viz: to repeal and reverse tho degrade
tiou by wiping out the crime that caus-
ed it, we shall only nc supposing what
has happened in fact. And this suppo-
sition will give us the key to the con-
tradictions of Mr.. Stevens character.
Early poverty, pride, and a club foot
may have prevented his marriage with
the beauty and brilliant culture he was
so formed to relish and enjoy. Hotel
life and human passions may have cho'
sen for his companion the bright-eyed
brunette whom | saw last winter
agreeable in spite of old age-at once
his hOuse-keeper and presiding genius,
aud whose talents made her at the same
time the mistress of his business and
his earthly destiny. Shut off by circum-
stances such as these from that hoaOra-
BILE domestic life which has saved all
that was saved of such men as Prentiss,
of MissisSippi; Benton, of Missouri
and host of their peers; despiSing that
religion which could wink at slave
holding cohabitatiou, while Mortified
with ndelity in concubinage: retaining
enough of his mothers religion to make
him despise himself; strong rs the ia
bled giants, but in religion blind as Po-
lyphemus, their chief; bold, fearing
nothing but God, and really fearing
Him; loving justice, loving truth, and
Christ because, as he said, ale was the
truth In these elements you have the
great aud wonderful man who has just
left the stage; a modern Samson Agon'
istes, abhorring slavery; abhorring vice,
yet laying his head on her lap till the
locks of his strength were shorp. Like
Samson, he prayed and cried to God;
Ike Samson, too, he was connected and
counted with slaves at once the cham
plon OF the true God and the violator of
His laws; even In his GAIA. he beayed
at the pillars of our national idoIatry
with strength above human; and like
Samson, sunk into death with the ru;ns |
of that temple tumbling about his
head
No further seek his merits TO disclose.
Nor draw his frailtes from their dread abelr.
There they alike in trembling hope r.pose
The bosom Ofhis father aud his God