The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-08-06

ability that has been gilded with gold they
wrung by force or fraud from the weak and
the witiess; for these men stand for the
glorious possibilities of human nature: for
its latent nobility, 50 that we take courage
feeling that no country need despair to
whom God has given so many sons who
believed
Better than selfindulgent years,
The Quitting heart Of youth,
Than pleasant songs in idle can
The tumult of the truth.
Under our free institutions no finer
fruit has been produced than is seen in
the spectacle of an ex-president of the re-
public sincerely prouder of his valiant
comradeship with the veterans of the
Union; prouder of his simple soldier
citizenship than he is of having been
president of the United States; that is.
President Hayes is large enough to place
his title and service as a simple, plain,
patriotic soldier clean above all his po-
htical service, titles and honors.
President Hayes called it s'the sacred
and stainless war for the Union" It is
sacred" because its memories run back
TO nearly every hearth and hearthstone in
this broad land, and it is stainless because
1t was fought to maintain aad perpetuate
free institutions against confederacy
whose cornerstone, as its founders with
brutal defiance of the spirit of the age
boosted, was human slavery. OF the
sincerity of the Southern people there is
no more question than there is of their
Astounding valor, but sincerity of convic-
ton does not establish the excellence of
faith, since the pilgrims to the shrine at
Mecca are as feryent and sincere in belief
as were those who melted their plate,
mortgaged their estate and spent their
blood to win "the Holy Sepulchre."
JEFF Davis with dying lips reiterated that
false theory of state supremacy and seces-
sion which, invented by Jefferson, adopted
and deliberately articulated and expounded
by Calhoun, was invoked as the inspira-
ton of rebellion by Yancey and Toombs.
This doctrine never had leg to stand
upon historically; for when the New York
State Convention debated the acceptance
of the constitution Alexander Hamilton,
when asked whether New York could ratify
the instrumentconditionall reserving the
right to withdraw from the Union in case
the amendments desired by her were not
adopted, replied, with the concurrence of
James Madison, emphatically in the mega
tive; that state which had once ratified
must remain in the Federal bond forever;
for the constitution could neither provide
f0r rv.ia 70 ffo
On this declaration of Hamilton, Marshall
and Madison, Webster rested his logic
when he wrestled with Hayne; his ma
jestic eloquence was all his own, but his
Interpretation of the constitution dated
back to Hamilton, Washington, Madison
and Marshall.
The war for the Union was not only
stainless in moral, but in legal and
constitutional equity. The national
government dates back to the Con-
tinental Congress convoked by the
whole people and recognized by the colo
MES in law and fact as a national govern
ment; the colonies became states by the
action of the whole people by their repre-
sentatives in congress. The statehood be-
gan when the Continental Congress ''of the
whole people" declared sin the name of the
people" these united colonies Ito be free
and independent states" At the last con-
stitutional convention of Mississippi dis
tinguished Democratic lawer and ex-Con-
federate said that while he had once hon.
estly believed in the right and sound pol
icy OF secession, he did so no longer, and
the other day DR.. Chappell, in the Georgia
Senate, said of Toombs:
Who was Robert Toombs? An extremist, who
was going 10 divide this Union without drop
of blood. The young men of the South followed
him into secession and into blood. death and
desolaton. There are o!" heads in this hall
who can remember that without secession there
would have been no war. II Georgia had not
seeded the ether Southern states would not
Without Robert Toombs Georgia would never
have seeded That is the kind of mistaken,
arbitrary spirit that the gentleman quotes FROM