The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1888-06-16
GRENADA. MISS SATURDAY, JUNE l6, 1883.

land of the free and the home of II
! brave" and that American, and ne
European, ideas OF civilization ought t
prevail, even, if necessary, to the es
clusion of the men who come, not t
enjoy, but to destroy our liberties. Crie
of "Amen!" and loud applause.
We are pledged, sir, to the destructio
Of the liquor traffic of America. We be
lieye that this traffic is the organized
vindictive, and deadly foe of our civil
zation and we are determined:never t.
cease war upon it until it shall be a
impossible to buy and sell rum as
beverage In this country as it now is tt
buy and sell slave. [Tremendou
applause In the language of Mr.
Liocoln, we are "resolved that thi
nation, under God, shall have new
birth of freedom, and that governmen
of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.
Loud applause.
Mr.. President, would not exaggeratt
our progress. and am deeply sensible OF
our manifold short comings. But, beyond
denial, there has been marked advance
in the public sentiment of the South
along all the great lines of civilization
Without ceasing to be Southerners, we
like yourselves, are becoming more
largely Americans. Our horizon sweeps
the whole circle of our glorious land, and
we feel equally at home amid the orange
groves of Florida or the boreal solitudes
of far Alaska's shores. The material de-
velopment of the Southern States is
phenomenal, and the steady influx of
population, capital, and industries, has
given us wonderful impulse. Yet, so
vast and so varied are the physical re
sources of the South, that it is safe to say
we are only on the threshold of our
progress. Speaking politically, we have
left the quck-sands of revolution, passed
safely over the bar of reconstruction, and
now we feel the long swell of the open
sea of national life on which we intend
to sail forever under the star,spangled
banner Of the free! Applause.
The people of the South, brethren, are
living in the present, not in the past, and
have their faces firmly set toward the
great future which unrolls before them.
We do not undervalue the past; we are
not ashamed of it. We do not forget
that we can understand the present only
by studying it in the past. We must
study the Athens of Solon to understand
the Athens of Pericles the Rome Of
Caesar to understand the Rome of Angus,
tus; the France of Louis NV. to under>
stand the France of Napoleon; the
England of George III. to understand
the England of Victoria. So. too, we
must study the America of to-day in the
broad and blood-stained pages of the
past. But, sir, if history is something
slse than "a fable about which men are
agreed" if 1t is rather the temple in
which Time preserves Truth for posterity,
md to whose shrine age succeeding age
must come to learn the loftiest lessons of
human life, then let us cross its shining
threshold with unsandaled feet and tread
is aisles in reverence.
1t is one thing to study the past with |
/ calm, unbiased mind, that we may
earn its solemn lessons and it il another |
hing to live IN 1t, and to perpetuate its
liscords. Because [ was Graded in the |
torn of revolution, and the tramp Of |
lostile battalions and thunder of warrinr |
rmies were heard around the home of |
ly childhood and | saw, in youthful
error, the red plowsharc of ruin upturn
ly,ancestral hearthstone, shall I live for
yer in the lurid light of that dread
ay? Cries of "no, no w When
he angel of peace has kissed the frown
'om the brow of the nation, and
he smile of approving heaven makes
lad the hearts of great and reunited
eople, shall grope in the murky abyss
IS of the past, and by sheer force of un-
ying hate, scourge into the light Of the
wing present CORY brood of ghouls and
light hags that haunt its places of horror?
Vhen the love of God is kindling in the
carts of millions, and all the hilltops are
flame with the fires of a glorious hope
,r humanity, and "the Gospel bells are
nging over land from sea to sea" and
the grand ethereal bow of Christian
rogress "shoots up immense" arching
le whole heavens with the bright mills
nnial pledge, and this weary old earth
ours is sweeping out of the dark shadow {
centuries of ignorance, and wrong, and
oe, into the larger and brighter and I
appier time, must l sullenly turn my i
ack upon it all, hug the past in mortal r
tterness, and strain my ear to catch [
ON its fast receding shore the sound of c
"The death shot kissing from affair."
The shock, the shout the groan OF ware" 7
erish the thought forever! Long and c
I'D applause' a
Mr.. President, 1 am confirmed opti> O
ist. / have en- abiding faith in the /
innate realization ot lofty idea of the i
otherhood of man. It may be that the a
yht on the landscape of the future is a t
Election from the luminous regions of s.
y own hope, and that 1 am doomed to v
But, sir, if we may il
arm any lessons from history if we may /,
.pe that the great moral forces, which r,
emily control the progress Of nations O.
III continue to operate in the future, as P
the past; if we may take into account NJ
e higher and wider sweep of human b
ents il we may trust the pacific tens ia
ncies of the age; the day is not remote m
len the patriotic South will build Il
10 Gen. Grant, Tremendous fr
plause. ] and the magnanimous North v.
ng garlsnds to the tomb of Lee. Loud d,
nlauso. Who asks to.dav. whether r 1