davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31
ZEBULON BAIRD VANCE-By Savoyard

That is what made him tolerate the Blair bill And if the abolitionsts had allowed, men of Vances way of thought would have made free states of Della ware, Maryland Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and North Carolina Thus slavery would have died natural death and there would be no negro problem in this country today If you don't think there is a negro problem read the fool stuff of which Bill Chandler delivered him- self the other day. I shall comment with hearty approval on Vance's reply to In- gals on the negro question, and with just as emphatic disapprovai on his sil- yer speech in opposition to the repeal of the purchasing clause or the Sherman silver law.
 John James Ingalls, became a senator in 1s73 as the result of a bunco game that was played on that sanctimonious old reprobate, full of loyalty and thrift. Samuel s. Pomeroy, in those days known as "Old Subsidy Pom" Ingalls, was a wizard of words, though not very opu- lent in ideas; but he held seat In the Senate IS years and he was the most ornate and brilliant of all the bloody shirters, and got to think that under that grand and filthy old garment /he could remain In the Senate the remainder of his life. All he had to do was to make an annual speech in the Senate to set all or lHe hdHSdD5 WIlO Wol5HiPPcd eiioN OiN scoundrel, John Brown, up side down and inside out, with the senatorial toga as the usufruct.
 Ingalls, depended too long on the bloody shirt and rhetoric. storm was brewing in his rear that he little needed There were the unspeakable Peffer and the Sockless Simpson, the latter converted to democracy by Logan Carlisle, the zone, and even a more intellectual man than his father, the speaker, extrava- gant as that statement may seem. Mary Ellen Lease was after Ingalls,, and tho new evangel has engulfed Kansas before Ingalls, found 1t out All too late he act ed. and January 2s, 1890, he made a bloody shirt speech. that he entitled Fiat Jus- titia," in which he reproached the south for not sending negroes to help him and Cabot Lodge make laws for the American people, though to do him justice. the brilliant Kansas senator did say that New England never found out that she had conscience on the negro question until it was demonstrated that slavery was not profitable in that region. And besides that, if slavery had been as prof
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

houn and William c. Preston. and gov ernors had been fellow pupils with her at school She was a pious member of the Presbyterian church, and her whole heart was full of the hope that her gifted son would become a clergyman of that faith; but the young man did not hear the call to preach, and frankly told his mother of that deficiency, when she ex- postulated with "Zeb, you've got relig- ion enough to be an Episcopal minister. " The old lady was absolutely uncon- scious of the humor her speech con- veyed to the mind of her son, but 1t was always a delight to him.
 Some years ago I undertook to write something about Vance and it was print ed. I do not remember what I said, but 1t Is possible that 1t contained a deal about his early career as lawyer and pol itician, his service in the Confederate army and the invaluable aid he gave to the Confederate government, lacking which Richmond would have fallen a year, perhaps two years, earlier. If Isham G. Harris, governor of Tennessee, saw to the filling of the volunteer quotas of the western army, Zebulon B. Vance saw to the arming and equipping of the army of Northern Virginia. His block ade runners were worth an army corps to Lee.
 It is my purpose to say something or
  ital In the first place, he was of the people, as much so as any man who ever lived, and he was that, too. without a shadow of shade of demagogy. It was simply impossible for Feb Vance to be uncandid. What his heart forged that his tongue uttered, and he would not have fattered Neptune for his trident nor love for his power to thunder. He lived in the open day and was always above suspicion Midas, though he had put his touch on either Ind. could not have made gold enough to buy a single thought of this grand man, or a single l dream, or a single word, or single nod. But his character belongs to history now, and I only intend to make a review of two of his speeches, and to quote the closing passages of his lecture on 'The Scattered Nation.' I shall say nothing of his speech in advocacy of the Blair educati tional bill. I wish he had been on the other side of that question. But it is almost worth his error In that behalf for the chastisement he administered to Senator Hoar. Vance was reared a whig and was a whig member of Congress.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

Kansas? Vance took hold of the proposi- ton and rended it limb from limb Nor did he stop with repelling the enemy. but he assailed and laid open the brutal treatment the negro got at the north. I cannot quote from Vance, for every line Is quotable.
 Ingalls, was garrulous enough to say this:
 "The south, MT. President, is standing upon a volcano the south is sitting upon a safety valve. They are breeding innu- merable John Browns and Nat Turner's. Already mutterings of discomfort by hos tile organizations are heard. The use of the torch and the dagger Is advised"
 Yes, and not a great while after h. gals delivered himself of that piece of asshood they burned negro at the stake in Kansas for an unspeakable outrage against white woman.
 We'll Vance took up that phaze of the argument and he did not leave enough of Ingalls, to be carried out of the Senate chamber in a corner grocer's one-pound paper sack. I wish I had space enough to quote Vance on how the fool aboli- tionists of the north-Giddings, Phillips Beecher and the other lunatics of that ill1-by their violence suppressed and dis peled the anti-slavery sentiment at the south, the period of two score years be-
 
 in eloquent tongue.
 It is the only speech Vance ever made, so far as I know, in which he did not re- sort to humor and to ridicule, though this passage must have brought smile, and surely it made Ingalls writhe. h. gals had said that no other people but the negro at the south had ever sub mitted to the wrongs and the injustice which have been for 20 years heaped upon the colored men of the south. with out revolution and blood" Vance re- piled:
 This constitutes the burden of his speech, around which is clustered the brightest display of rhetorical pyrotech- ncs ever employed to conceal a paucity of ideas by the joy of phraseology. This declamatory display across the forensic heavens reminds me of an astronomers description of the remarkable tenuity of the tale of certain comet. He said it's length was 100,000,000 miles as 1t stretched athwart the skies-that It's breadth was 5000 miles-and yet the solid matter which it contained could be condensed and transported in one
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

professor could prove that Job was Hebrew. and that he could give the exact dates of his birth and his death, what is there to show that he cared nere for his children than for his wife?
 We may infer that he had no very ex- alted estimate of his wife's intellect; for, in Job 2:10, he comes as near calling her a fool as any well-bred gentlemen could. The facts, ss recorded in the Bible, have not the remotest bearing upon our pro- fessors contention.
 And here is another case in point:
 Prof Edward L. Curtiss of Yale informs us, in an article on ''The Literary Products of Israel" that the book which Hikiah, the high priest, found in the temple, in the days of King Josiah c Kings 22:S) is universally recognized as having been Deuteronomy" We have heard that the advanced critics have been at work on a new dictionary of the Bible, and it seems fitting that they should now begin work on a new dictionary of the English language-a dictionary that will give them authority for using words as loosely as their arguments may seem to require. What, for instance, does the word "universally'' mean? If 1t leaves out such scholars as William Henry Green of Princeton, Howard Osgood of Rochester and divers other conservative men in our theological seminaries, north and south, has it not taken on new meaning? universally recognized" ac- cording to the new dictionary, would mean recognized by everybody on our side," and the rest are not worth count ing.
 And still another from the same '1earned" source:
 In the Biblical World" for June, 1898, in an article by Prof. Edward L. Cur tiss of Yale, we find Con page 440) the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

horse cart"
 The last elaborate speech Vance made in the Senate was on the silver ques- ton. It was as good a speech as was ever delivered against what Is known in political economy as "the Gresham law" nations of the earth acting in concert, for 1t provides that a cheap currency will banish a dear currency. If any one who does me the honor to read this will then sit down and read chapter XXI of Macaulay's History of England he will know what l mean and realize what a Quixote Vance and the south were In 1893. Their proposition was bt-metalism, when all history shows that the two metals were never coined concurrently at fixed ratio at any mint on private account.
 But what is the use of talking about that7 The folly of IS to 1 would not carry a single state of the union in 1910 independent Of other political issues.
 Here is the beginning of the perora- tion of that Christ-like oration on "Ths Scattered Nations
 'I have stood on the summit of the very monarch of our great southern Ale ghanies and seen the night flee away be- fore the chariot wheels of the god of day. The stars receded before the pillars of laInbent fire that pierced the zenith. and thousand ragged mountain peaks began to peer up from the abysmal is- land whose Jutting and confounded base was swilled by the wild and wasteful scene" As the curtain was lifted moro and more and the eastern brightness grew in radiance and in glsry, animate nature prepared to receive her lord; the tiny snow-bird from its nest in the turf began chirping to its young, the silver pheasant sounded its morning drumbeat for its mate in the boughs of the fra grant flr the dunn deer rising slowly from his messy couch and stretching himself in graceful curves, began to crop the tender herbage, whilst the lordly eagle, rising straight upward from his home on the crags. with pinions wide spread, barred his golden breast to the yellow beams and screamed his well come to the sun in his coming. Soon the vapors of night are lifted up on shafts of fire, rolling and seething in pillows of refulgent flame, until when far over head they are caught upon the wings of the mountain breeze ana swept away: perfect day is established and there is peace"
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

following paragraph went the rounds of the papers in various parts of the coun- try:
 "In his recent address at the anni- versary of Crozer Theological seminary Rev. J. c. Hiden discussed the subject of Biblical Criticism Wise and Other
 wise. Of course he had occasion to re- view the positions of a number of the most prominent biblical critics, Ameri- can and foreign. In the course of his review he thus paid his respects to- the distinguished president of Chicago uni- Versity: After a careful study of Prof.
 w. K. Harper's debate with Prof. Will liam Henry Green in 'Hebraica' and of his Stories of Genesis as publish ed
 in the Biblical World l find 1t ex-
 tremely difficult to ascertain just
 where he belongs. To borrow the image
 of a distinguished British statesman, l
 sh ould say that he seems to be like a ferryboat-made to go from one side
 to the other. Down south, we have a
 story of a Dutchman who owned a stock farm in Texas. Among hlf swine was one which gave him a great
 deal of trouble. It would get under, or over, or through any fence he could make. So he built a pen of fence rails. He made 1t high, strong and tight, and therein confined the troublesome ami mal Next morning, she was gone. There was snow on the ground; so he tralIed her to the creek, where the track failed him. After considerable meditation, he divided his negroes Into two squads; called up his oldest son and announced his plan of campaign; Hans, you dakes desc men, and you l goes dis side O dis greek; and I dakes desc men, und I goes dat side O dis ! greek; cause I pleef my soul dat | besky SOW is on bofe sides O dis I greek"
 l After delivering that Crozer address
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

visions Just SO: and in the same way we prove that the constitution of the United States could not have been known in New England when the Hartford Con vention" met; that William H. Seward must have been ignorant of 1t when he had citizens arrested and imprisoned for exercising the right of free speech; and. finally, that Abraham Lincoln could have known nothing of 1t when he issued the emancipation proclamation. These are modern instances of the logic of the advanced critics and we see how 1t works where we can follow it. Why should we trust 1t when 1t works out of sight2 Three thousand years hence, some wise critic may proclaim that the American people of the nineteenth century could not have been acquainted with the sermon on the mount, because the contemporary records show that even the best of them fre- quently violated the plainest precepts laid down in that discourse. Please under stand-this Is not our logic, but the logic of the advanced critics. as represented by Prof. Lewis B. Patton of Hartford Theological seminary.
 So much for the contributors; and now for the distinguished editor, who out Herods Herod," and gives 'tthe most un- kind cut of all'':
 In a leading editorial in the Biblical World" Abraham is represented, or rather misrepresented. as imagining that he had received instructions from a high CT power. | e., from Jehovah Himself. to kill his own son. This would make an ignorant, superstitious fanatic out of "the father of the faithful" Is not that "advancel criticism with a vengeance I have never seen anything cooler in the frozen pages of Wellhausen him. self.
 How did President Harper know that Abraham intended to slay Isaac? From
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

ly, he is unsatisfed and yearns for ar idealization of contentment. In unhap- piness he exclaims:
 ''I have, alas, Philosophy,
 Medicine, Jurisprudence, too,
 And, to my cost, Theology,
 With ardent labor studied through; And here I stand with all my lore, Poor fool, no wiser than before. TIa, how my heart is riven now Each sense. with eager palptation. Is strained to catch some new sensation ''
 He would try every sphere of thought. of emotion, of action and of being; and in his purpose, every restraint is cast off. He scorns safety of soul and body in his quest exclaiming to the Earth-Spirit that appears to him in a ruddy fiame
 ''I feel my heart surrendered unto thee, Thou must, thou must, though life should
 be the fec"
 Given over to the guidance of Mephis- topheles, Faust" begins the long and wondrous quest with all its accidents and incidents, its fortunes and misfor- tunes, it's tests and failures, it's romance and tragedies. One foiiows him into strange scenes of dark rolling clouds, huge, mysterious and shadowy; then Into the werdest phantasmagoria of unreali- ty; into gardens of flowers and flames of fire; into scenes of love, of scorn and of blood; he invites the most awful possl- bilities, but is scornful of results; he as- cends the heights of lofty intellectualism, and descends to the baseness of sensu- ality. he tramples upon virtue and brushes the whitest flower that blooms along the path he treads, leaving it soiled bleeding at every petal and sad ly dropping in the adverse winds of scorn and neghborhood contempt He wan ders everywhither, but finds not in earth or air, nor in philosophy, lofty station, abounding wealth nor elsewhere. in things less than the Divine those condi- tions that can satisfy. Tn all his varied life, except at the last, there is not the dawn of day of real Joy, day which he would address with a line from his compact with Mephistophees:
 ''Lnger awhile; thou art so fair" Indeed when Faust set out upon his wanderings he did not expect to find that for which he lonsed, and when he links his destiny with Mephistophees, so unbeieving is he of satisfactory re- suits, that. he says;
 'If e'er upon my couch, stretched at my ease, I'm found, Then may my lifeinstant cease;  Let that day be for me the last Be this our wager
 
 When to the moment I shall say, Linger awhile, thou art so fair Then may the solemn death-bell sound, And to the abyss will repair:
 Thenma y the solemn death-bell sound, And from thy service thou art free; Thein dex may then cease its round, And time be nevermore for me-
 So sure was Faust that never would come that moment that he sealed the wager" with his own blood; but the day did come at the last and he could say:
 ''Linger awhile; thou art so fair"
 But 1t dawned from the world of purity and unselnshness a realm that he, until now, had not considered. The meaning, I suppose, is that no man is beyond re- demption, even though he go so far as to enter Into eoVsnnn1 vdnktpna with thA
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

~ OME years ago when I was preach
 Ing in a protraeted meeting in a AH country district of South Carolina. an old ''hardshell' brother, who had done me the honor to hear me, was standing with me, near the railroad track as the train was approaching and in a low voice he said: q want to ask you one question" and pointing to the train, he asked. Does them things do more harm or more good in this world?' With perfect sincerity I replied: "That is too big a question for me; l don't know how to answer it.'
 Singularly one may puzzle himself over the question, now mooted among thought full men in various parts of the coun- try: "Is the (so-called) Baptist university of Chicaso blessing or a curse2" The question 's puzzling as "Was Henry Ward Be and is Lyman Abbott a benefactor d nuisance to the world?"
 On none of these questions shall I here offer either answer or discussion, though I have pretty decided opinions upon them all. My business now is with some back numbers of the Biblical World,'' which, when I used to read 1t, was edited by the late president of tho Chicago university. Let 1t be distinctly understood that this scribe has never had the least personal grudge against the late President Harper. On the con- trary. have defended him when he has been ignorantly attacked and misrepre- scented. l am not here dealing with the man, but with his published utterances and I know of none that could awaken my more determined dissent.
 Several years ago the substances of the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

itable in Iowa as it was supposed to be in Arkansas we would have slavery to- day.
 It was a resplendent speech, and many is the time l have listened to that bols- terous voice of his and wondered where there was room enough in that thin chest for lungs to make all that noise. The language was perfect in construction. In this respect he was the envy and the despair of the average senator, and if Ingalls, had had an idea or two worth the devils bringing he would have been the greatest of the senators. He was a tulip of man in his eloquence a hollyhoek- all color. gorgeous, but without a par ticle of fragrance. Unfortunately he be- lieved nothing, and ideas will not stay with that sort of a man.
 One week later Vance answered him. and 1t was a debate between two men, one of whom knew all about the subject and the other of whom knew nothing about 1.-the negro at the south It was an indictment of the north that proved itself. No man with a spark of candor can read this production, be he northern or southern, without concluding that in the entire political history of mankind the greatest the most stupenduous, the most prodigious blunderers who ever came into power were Thad Stevens Oliver P. Morton, Ben Wade, Charles
 
 and that set.
 What did they propose? Nothing sim pler-to make the whites of the south the political bondsmen of their former slaves. That is what 1t was and all 1t was. Cropping around for something to say, he found 1t and said it-did Ingalls, in his speech when he was deploring the fact that the south would not make sen ators and representatives of her negroes. Here is what he said and he was talking about the Anglo-Saxon:
 Most arrogant and rapacious, the most exclusive and indomitable in history. It is the conquering and the unconquerable race through which alone man has taken possession of the physical and moral world. To our race humanity is indebted for religion for literature, for civiliza- ton. It has genius for conquest, for politics, for jurisprudence and for ad- ministration. All other races have been its enemies or it's victims"
 What did the fellow want to say that for when he was making a speech in favor of negro equality for the edifca- ton of the disciples of John Brown in
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-31

changing lover whose momentary affec- tions can be as readily bestowed upon his last woman acquaintance as upon the first; and who in the first part of Faust can weep over the pitful fate that befalls Margaret, and in the second part forgets the tragedy of the simple hearted girl of Martha's garden in his raptuous love for the stately Helena. If it be objected, that, I understand the relation of Helena to the whole drama and that she was merely a figure or symbol of the object which Faust loved, then I ask, what was Margaret? No; 1t is a chapter out of the book of Boethe's own experience, even though it be alle- gorical.
 Notwithstanding the stupendous in- tellectualty and the grandeur of genius disclosed in Faust" much of it's inter- est and profit are lost because we cannot disassocate the poet from the poem. This may not be in accord with the can ons of literature, but older and deeper than any canons of literature there is an old fashioned canon of morality writ ten in our human nature. and we all
  est end to write lessons cS ethics. which some affect to find in Faus.. with pen dipped into the black ink-well of immor- ality. I say therefore. that We know too much about Goethe. We know of his unholy loves, and of his brushing away the bloom from the cheek of innocence and apparently counting it no more than a little episode. Byron with all his sins was no worse. Said writer in Black woods Magazine: Goethe as a man is hateful to the great proportion of peo- pie. His votaries worship him with a blind faith and superstition so long as that faith is not called forth towards sacred things; and great many of the rest of us detest him with an insttnctive and thorough repugnance; but no one denies his greatness"
 A satisfactory interpretation of Faust" Is rendered almost impossible by the ab- struseness of the allegorical style adopt ed by it's local allusions; by it's subtle personal references, and. above all, by the indeHniteness of purpose in the poet himself Am I alone in this criti- cism? No; I stand with Goethe himself in tn1S. lie Sdlu. f'eOplc dsk Hle WIldL this and that means, as if knew
 It will be remembered that "Faust'' was begun when Goethe was young man of 20; 1t was taken up and laid aside many times during the long period of SO years. and was not completed until the young man had become the old man of 80. This arrested composition discloses itself in an uneven structure and in a. distinct lack of perspicacity.
 Nc. man can be always at his best in mood and ability, and in such a long period of years as there was between. the beginning of the great tragedy and its completion, there must have been vary ing moods and many different rising and receding tides of mentality. To recur to the panorama, we know that. now and then there is fiuctuaton of light behind the slides which renders some scenes very clear, while others may be dim and cloudy. So is 1t with Faust; at times 1t is clear, and again it is almost unin- 'telligibls. The ssms sgitieism applies to