The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1875-05-06
WHAT CHANT Saw Ar CONCORD
AND LEXINGTON.


PierrepOnt's appointment to the AttOr-
ney GenerAlship is Grants first concession
made, of late, to decency. The moral
effect Of centennial celebrations North and
South is illustrated in orations recently pro-
nounced in Confederate and Federal ceme-
teries, when these are decked by fair
hands with fragrant flowers. Everywhere,
as in Augusta, Georgia, and Columbus,
Mississippi, the tributes Of honor and affec-
ton were rendered alike to Northern and
Southern soldierly worth, and when the
women of the South have done this the
war is at an end. Grant cannot revive it
or reproduce Its passions. Federal soldiers
of the Army of Tennessee, even Sherman's
remorseless legions, who knew so well what
war was how terrible and how speedily,
and thus, mercifulIy perhaps, to end it,
even these dashing soldiers, who went
smashing things to the sea even these
have invited the men who confronted them,
from Chattanooga to Charlotte Court House
in the old North State, to sit at the commu-
nion table of patriotism and celebrate hal
lowed memories of the 6lden time. We
see in these results of the revival of blessed
recoIlections at Philadelphia, by such
celebration of memorable deeds of heroic
happy augury of more blessed future.
Grant must make concessions to the su-
preme passion of this next more glorious
than the year of jubilee or 60 out of Office
abhorred of his countrymen. He yields
unwillingly to the forces Of popular feeling,
but never before has whole people been
induced, as by a single impulse, to listen
to the voices of dead years, and, recitiDg
their lessons, become one mighty iAcarna-
tiOn of patriotism Grant, unimpassiora-
bic, undemonstratiYe, and accustomed to
gain his aims at any cost Of blood and even
in defiance of right, dared neither to i'm
pale Arkansas nor persist, after witness
ing the demonstration Of reproduced
local patriotism in New England, in his
violations of every instinct and passion
that gave birthto and at this hour vitalizes,
American freedom. He must take steps
backward. There is no supreme power in
America, save popular opinion, which, like
some mighty pendulum, swinging back and
forth forever, rests at lastprecisely where it
stood stock still one hundred years ago.
All the power of old England could not
move 1t, and the index finger of the old
Etime-piece of history points steadily to the
same spot, to the same facts, to the same
grand old men and memories and reprodees
the same passions and instincts and impulses
almost divine, that fired Amer can enthusi-
asm and American herOism one hundred
years ago. The rude soldier, harsh by ma
ture, remorseless by training, selfish and
greedy of power and gain, stands appalled,
in the presence of this resistless,1 ghostly
moral force demanding the reproduction OF
Ithe simple, honest republican government
of our fathers. II Grant cannot see these
facts he is more drunken than saTdan-
apalus and saw and heard nothing
in New England. But he was sober. He
appeared in public He was sane, since
he discarded Williams and substituted
Plerrepont. - -
4 These States won the right to freedom in
'177e they will achieve freedom itself in
1876, and who may measure the debt oi
gratitude due our fathers who first won in
dependence by their valor, and when We
had lost, they restore it by sheer force Of
that moral power welded by the story o.
their lives and deaths.