The Tupelo journal., 1903-08-07

er and an orator, student and a teach
err. Lucius @. c. Lamar possessed
few men are endowed with-gen-
lus. Taught in the school of Calhoun,
he was a follower of Jefferson Davis,
and greater than Wise or Wigfall. He
was a gentleman of the old South, and
her most eloquent champion in the
theater of polemics. He was second to
no man in the American Senate when
that body was exceptional for the
transcendent abilities of it's members.
The Lamar family Is French, the
French that were beaten at Jarnac,
and the French that were victorious at
Ivry-Huguenot French. Driven from
France by Richelieu or M%aintenon, the
LamarS settled in the English Catholic
colony of Maryland, where religious
liberty first had birth, and whence
some of the family went to Georgia,
and it was in that State that l.. @. c..
Lamar was born, September IT, 1925.
He was a nephew of Mirabeau B. La
mar, whose name is forever linked to
the early and heroic history of Texas.
He was bred to the bar, and settled
at Oxford, Miss, where he was teach.
er, lawyer, planter and eminent cit
izen.
In 1857 Mr.. Lamar took his seat in
the T~hirty-fifth Congress. He was very
young for so great a place, but he was
soon to prove himself one of the first
men of even that day. He was n
a%pologiSt for slavery as it then existed
at the South, but its advocate, and he
looked upon it as a conservative factor
that was to save the people from des-
potism and preserve society from
chaos. He saw in the landed gentry
of England the prop and glory of the
realm, and he saw in the planters of
the South the prop and glory of the
Union. His speeches were brilliant
orations and powerful arguments, and
will repay the reading even to this
day, though the issue upon which they
were made is as obsolete as the Pelo-
ponnesus dispute of ancient story.
With the South holding to the views
it did, and the North asserting the
views it did, war was as certain to fol
low as effect follows cause. When it
came Lamar was a volunteer, but he
possessed none of the attributes of a
soldier except dauntless courage and
fervent patriotism. Soon he was or
dered from the field of arms to assume
a diplomatic mission to Europe. He
failed, n when the war was over he
returned to his home in Mississippi,
and, like Robert E. Lee, became a
teacher of Southern youth. In 1866
he was a professor of political econo-
my and social science in the Univer-
sity of Mississippi, and the following
year he was law professor in that in
stitution. He continued this work I'M
til elected to Congress in 1872, and the
next year he took his seat as a member
of the Forty-third Congress.
The Republican party was in the
saddle and riding rough shod over the
PROSTATE South. Treason was odious.
Loyalty was profitable. Butler and
Morton ruled Congress and forged
chains for the beaten section. No Re-
publican put a particle of confidence
in any protestation of good faith on
the part of any Southern man who re-
manned outside the Republican party.
The work of reconstruction was in
complete until the South crawled on
its belly, ate dirt, and cried "Unclean!
Unclean!"-that was Republican doc
trine.
Charles Sumner was of the very
aristocracy of Northern intellect and
Northern opinion. He was not Peter
the Hermit, and yet he was something
like that fanatic; he was not Marcus
Cato, for he could forgive. The old
South had looked upon him as every
thing that was revolutionary, every
thing that was fanatical, everything
that UoC HncniPah1p and hotrod of him
drove brave men to condone a brutal
assault that was a shame and a dis
grace. Sumner was a problem. The
ordinary man cannot understand him.
There never was a moment that he
would have inflicted the slightest
physical punishment on President
Brooks, even had opportunity offered.
He never bore one particle of malice
against the man who inflicted such
cruel humiliation upon him, and con-
tributed to greatly shorten his days.
Perhaps the most curious piece of po-
litical literature in our annals is the
letter of Sumner challenging James
G. Blaine for bringing the Brooks as
sault into the campaign of 1872. AS
a magnanimity it stands alone among
political transactions. If this was not
Christian charity, who shall escape
condemnation?
A greater son of New England than
Sumner wrote, Never a magnanimity
fell to the ground" Nor did this. L.
@. c. Lamar clasped it and took it to
his heart. Sumner died in 1874, and
in April of that year Mr.. Lamar de-
livered an eulogy upon him in the
American Congress that challenged
the patriotism, the A~mericanism, and
the manhood of the whole country. 1t
was wholly unexpected and it aston
ished and electrified all America. For
the moment it drowned the morose,
churlish, brutal voice of discord that
had been clamorous in Congress for
half a century, and from that day La
mar was the favorite son of the South
and the most interesting public man
in the country.
Grant and Lee had made the SOL
iiery Of the North and the South &C
quainted on stricken fields; Lamar
made the craftsmanship of the North
and the South acquainted in this eu-
logy, worthy of Demosthenes or Cic-
ero of ancient day, worthy a Burke or
Bossuet of modern day. 1t was the
first and the loftiest plea for union,
the union of hearts. The dying song
of Grady was but its echo. 1t awoke
a responsive chord at the North, and
even the bloody shirt was dipped in ad-
miration and applause.
In the succeeding Congress Lamar
wac reinforced nv Rpn Hi1l-tha for