Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1875-02-04
Though Dead, yet He speaketh


The following extract is from a
speech of Senator Yates, delivered at
Strawns Hall, in Jacksonville, in 1857
or 1868:
"And now 1 believed that the only
way in which intemperance can be
put down is not by any halfway
ground--not by any mere attempts to
secure only the moderate use of in
toxicating drinks--not by legislative
licenses, but by total abstinence from
all that intoxicates, and by abolition
of all alcohol may not sometimes be
useful as a medicine, but will say
that its use as beverage slays so
many thousands more than it saves as
medicine, and that the counterbal-
ancing evils are so enormous, that if
l had the power, I would at one fell
sweep blot it from the face of the
earth and obliterate from the mind of
man the knowledge of making it for
ever.
"And now, gentlemen, mark the
prediction, within the next ten years
| you will have not alone the question
of the moderate use of ardent spirits,
| license or no license, or prohibition
of the traffic, but your Legislative ia
bles will groan with petitions and bills
| for the. suppression of the manufac-
ture of alcoholic drinks The ques-
ton will not be whether this man or
that man is to blame for drinking or
selling liquor, with or without license,
but whether society is to blame, and
what are the duties and responsibilities
of communities, states, aRd the United
States. a
81 have always been citizen here,
and voted against licenses to sell liq-
uors simply for the reason that no
State or municipal government ought
ever TO license any body to do wrong.
1.-The friends of temperance who
have struggled;so long and SO faithful
ly for the triumph of the cause may
sometimes despair, but now that the
war is over and the anti-slavery agita-
ton ended, the burning eye of public
opinion will be turned TO this blight
ing evil. Who of all of US ever
thought that slavery would soon go
I down?
eve all thought that slavery would
sometime die out; that sometime, way
/ down the centuries and ages, God, in
his providence, would deal the final
deathbloW to such an accursed wrong
but that it had become so deeply
rooted and inwrought in the polity and
institutions of he-South-that it was
so propped by the millions upon mil
lions of capital invested in it, and
ministered to the wealth, comfort and
ease, and was so allied with the pride
and predjudices of the southern dig
archy, that most of our greatest
statesmen and divines believed that
the period of its extinction was far
down in the remote ages of the future.
But the keen conscience, the enlight-
ened moral sentiment, and the judg-
ment of public opinion poured such
red hot volleys of moral artillery up
on the citidal and all the outposts of
slavery as to drive its advocates to ap-
peal to the sword in it's behalf, and it
died a speedy and ignoble death amid
the flames of civil war.
stIf such was the fate of slavery,
what do you say of that monster who
rides over the land the prime minister
of death and every woe-whose de-
struction is so widespread, indiscrim-
mating and universal that there is not
a man, woman, or child now living
J. who has not in some way, directly or
indirectly, suffered from intemperance,
more destructive than war, pestilence
and famine combined, and filling an
nually one hundred thousand fresh
made graves, and scattering wretchcd-
ness, tears, broken hearts and sorrow
: over the land"