Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes Co., O. [Ohio]) 1870-1895, 1870-09-22
governments wars and other bur-
dens which he must bear.

oCno nAiSu NJ luuot oSois
I There YOU see, in France, 4 pee
pie of forty millions. They are a
brave and generous as any on thi
planet They are as industriou
and frugal as any. They live il
valleys, along rivers and upon hil
and mountain Slopes, as beautiful a
! God ever bestowed, in his boundles
love, upon any portion of his chill
dren. Some classes of their peopl
are as intelligent, in all department.
of knowledge, as any on the earth
In some departments ofscience the!
lead the civilization of the nine
teenth century. Even their peas
antry are as intelligent as theil
wants and their government vii
permit them to be. For many o
the elements of . great people tht
French have the admiration o
mankind. Look now at that peo
pie. Why. The hellish apparitioI
astounds the Universe, and man
kind, transported to its presence by
the modern miracle of the telegraph
stands there, appalled-transfxet
with horror. Two millions of mer
men, who like all their brothers
have hearth-stones, children-have
muscles, nerves, bones, blood, hearts
just like the rest of us, have RIGHTS
just like the rest of us, are caught up
at the back of one bad man and his
ministers, and dashed into the vor-
tex of a war where, three thous-
and hecatombs, or more, Of human
victims have gone down in one huge
and internal maelstrom of human
bones and blood.
And why? The world-the gov
ernments-the race-human nature
everywhere, as it sees, cries out, in
one universal, spontaneous excla.
nation of agonized horror-why
And who has answered? Who can?
And as the diplomat, and the cabinet
and the philosopher, and the states
man, and all people have stood in
this bewildered enquirement, why?
the answer they have wrought out,
and which is the one most credit
able to the Government of France
of all they have found--possibly the
one most near the TRUTHS that it
is because this man and cabinet de-
signed to bring back from Berlin to
Paris the political center of the
Continent, and by the eclat of that,
to fasten upon the great French
people the personal government of
a boy! Let us, as we 60 to-day to
the business of studying out what
is well for the future of our country,
look thoughtfully at this picture,
and then turn from it to that one
which displays how we, too, threw
into these same consuming arms of
this moloch of war million or more
of our children and five billions of
their hard earned treasures. And
after you have studied well our own
recent spectacle-so recent that the
smoke of the sacrifice has not yet
ceased to go up, or its odor to taint
the air-then ask yourselves what
we bought with this "great price?"
How often and strangely has this
startling question been put in
And what questioners
they are who indict the catechism!
You are asked it by the tears-notl
dried yet-of your own desolated
ones, and by the inky vestments of
their immense sorrow, not yet put
off. You are asked it by the grave
stones of your slain, and by the
bleaching skeletons of the unburied
asked it by the charred ruins of
our own cities, villages and homes,
and of all of our war-swept battle
it by the huge burdens
of debt and taxation which yet re-
main-remain the legacy of this
great calamity; and you are asked
it by the voices of all the people
who have endured this calamity.
1t is, Republicans, only within a
few days, only since the proclama-
ton of the 3Oth of March last, that
we felt that We had attained unto the
last, perhaps best, freedom" which
we bought with that great price"
1t was when, by its first Secretary,
the Republic proclaimed the Amend
ment had become ''valid to all in
tents and purposes as part of the
of the United States"
by which all of the people are not
only free but equal also. Only since
then have we felt assured that the
prices we have paid were not too
large for the gains which they
brought us. Never till now have
we been fully assured that Heaven
had yielded to us the answer, in full
measure, to the questionings of this
strange array of our interrogators;
because never before had the iber-
ties and rights of all the people been
based upon both the liberty and the
of all the people, were we
certain that any of the prior gains
from our great sacrifice were secure
or perpetual. When that event had |
come, you said with gratitude and
sit is Finished" and is |
enough. r.
1t is to this work Finished as
the past of our great party, that l
design to look to-day for the evi-
lences of its title to the confidence
Of the country in its future rule;
and it is the resistance to every part |
Of this work, by your political ad-
that l ask you to look in
leciding upon their claims to that
of their country. |
"a NATION"
1t is because those results and ac-
luisitions of that physical conflict
with the rebellion, and Of the NOR
Il conflict which has followed it, all |
belong to one family, are not only
near of kin to each other but are
each magnitudes and values that we
oose all just notions of degrees and
differences of magnitude, when we
to decide which of the
,chievments attained by these two
conflicts is greatest.
But look at that one which re-
lewed and preserved the Union.
Even throw out of your estimates of
t. nnnnitndn the idna thnt Il In