Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1874-05-02

LAMAR on SUMNER.-The speech
of the Mississippi Senator is one of
the great speeches of this session
Lamar's appeal to the country. to
follow Summers last teachings. Lu-
cious Quintus Curtlus Lamar was-a-
'sire-eater Of the most advanced tpye.
His speeches in the two Congresses
that preceded the war, spoke seces-
sion in every line. He eXulted IN
Toombs' bombast about calling the
roll of his slaves on Bunker Hill. A
fiery eloquence and a magnificent
physique combined to make him
leader of the ultra-Southern party.
He hated Sumner, as a matter of
course, and very probably wished
that Preston Brooks load bludgeon
had fallen a little heavier on the de-
fenseless head. That feeling was
not uncommon in the States which al
lowed their citizens to advertise re-
wards for Sumner and GidGngs'
lives. Lamar went into the war at
the start and fought to the end
When he was reelected to Congress,
timorous organs ground deleful tunes
about the rampant disloyalty of Mis-
sissippi in sending such ''fre-eater"
to share in the Government of the
Union he had tried to disrupt The
issue has proved the folly of the fear.
Mr.. Lamar's eulogy on Sumner IS
one of the most hopeful signs we
have had from the Sonth during
these weary years of misrule. He
touches lightly on the dead Sena
tors scholarship and high moral
tone, and passes to the theme of his,
relations with the South Mr.. Sum-
ner's unconquerable love of liberty
..
love too strong to be fettered
by logic or tempered by law
seemed to the South murderous
fanaticism. 1t does him justice now
by recognizing that a mighty moral
idea possessed him, and that he hated
the measures, not the men who up
held them. The honest pro-slavery
and the honest abolitionist views
have, perhaps, never been better con-
trasted than in this passage of Mr..
Lamar's speech: aH
Il mattered not to him how humble in
the scale of rational beings the subject OF
this restraint mi4ht be, how dark his skin.
or how d.nse his Ignorance, behind ali
that lay for him the great principle
that liberty is the birlhright of all hunt n
iiy, and thai every individual, OF every
race, who has soul 10 save, is rnlilled TO
freedom which may enable him to work
out his salvation. 1t mattered nottOhim
that thr slave might he COntenied with
mis- lot that his actual condition might
be immeasurably more desirable than
that from which il had transplanted him
that il gave him the physical eOmfUri,
mental elevation, and Trli lions truth pos
ssed by the race in no other condition
that his bonds had not been placed upon
his hands by the living generation: thai
the mixed social system of which h,
formed an element had been regarded by
the fathers of the Republic, and by The
ahlesl statesmen who had riser up after
then, as not calculated To be thrown
aside without danger 10 society itself. or
even civilization. or finally, that the aci
ual state of things had been recognized
and explicitly sanctioned by the very or
ganic law of the republic. WeighlY as,
these considerations might be, formida.
BILE as the difficulties in the way of III
practical enforcement of bis great princi
pie, he held not the less tina. il must,
sooner or later, be enforced, though insii-
lutiOns and constitutions should Civ
way alike before it.
Mr.. Lamar most fittingly says
"Would that the spirit of the illus
trious dead, whom we lament to-day,
could speak from the grave to both
parties to this deplorable discord, in
tones which should reach each and
every heart throughout this broad
territory: My countrymen, know one
another, and you will love one an
other!'"