Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1956-01-13

popuIority eoreer end ambitions for the principles
they believed right.
most rabid "fire-eaters" ever to come out Of the
Deep South, was delivering a moving. eulogy
lamenting his departure.
For Charles Sumner before he died,
Lamar told his hushed audience:
Believed that all occasion for strife
and distrust between the North and South
had passed away" /. i. is not that the common
sentiment-or if it is not, ought it not to
be-of the great mass of our people. North
and South?
Turning Point in Relations
Few speeches in American political his
tory have had such immediate impact.
Overnight it raised Lamar to the first rank
In the Congress and In the country; and
more Importantly 1t marked turning point
in the relations between North and South.
It was inevitable that some in both
North and South would misunderstood 1t.
Northerners whose political power depended
on maintaining the Federal hegemony over
the former Confederate States resisted any
effort to heal sectional strife.
Southerners to whom Sumner symboliZed
the worst of the prewar abolitionist movement
and the postwar reconstruction felt betrayed.
Such attacks, however were in the mi
nority. 1t was obvious that moved by the
strange forces of history and personal
destiny the man and the occasion had met
that day in Washington.
Who was the man?
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar was.
in 1874. public man." No petty issues.
no political trivia, not even private affairs.
were permitted to clutter up his intellect.
No partisan, personal or sectional considers
tions could outweigh his devotion to the
national interest and to the truth.
He was not only a statesman but also
q scholar and one of the few original thinkers
of his day. Henry Adams considered him to
be one of "the calmeSt, most reasonable and
most amiable men in the United States"
His youth was spent on a plantation
and Lamar later became famous for his tales
of the rural South. Emory College, which
Lamar attended. was a hotbed Of States
Rights. Elected to Congress, while Southern
Unionists were vainly seeking to stem the
sectional tide, Lamar was violently pro-
Southern. Others may boast" he said on
the floor of the House. of their :. =. enlarged
and comprehensive love Of this Union. . ).
confess that the promotion Of Southern
interests is second in Importance only to the
preservation of Southern honor" Some years
later he said that he never entertained a
doubt of the soundness Of the Southern sys-
tenn until he found out that slavery could not
stand war In a prewar letter he had
written Dissolution cannot take place
quietly :. When the sun Of the Union
eCto ~ VIA ~ uOWA ia bIOOd'
Prediction Confirmed
The wind had been sown now Lamar and
Mississippi were to reap the whirlwind. OF
the Is descendants of the first Lamar in
America who served in the Confederate
armies with the rank Of lieutenant colonel or
above. seven persisted in the war. Lucius
Lamar served much of the war as diplomatic
agent for the Confederate government.
With the end of the war Lamar lived
duief1v IN MiSsiccipYi teaching and rfirnO
law, as his State passed through the bitter
days of its reconstruction. No State suffered
more from carpetbag rule than Mississippi.
Lamar came to understand that the sole hope
for the South lay not In pursuing its ancient
quarrels with the North but in promoting
Cancellation.
This in turn could only be accomplished
by making the North comprehend that the
South no longer desired-in Lamar's words
to be the "agitator and agttated pendulum Of
American politics"
Summers death furnished the occasion
for which Lamar had long waited to hold out
the hand of friendship to the North. Every
thing conspired to insure his success: His pre-
war reputation as a disunionist, his service
as Confederate official, the fact that Sumner
was widely hated in Mississippi and in the
South, and Lamars exceptional skill as an
orator.
His memorable eulogy Of Sumner was
LdMdT 1lTSL opportunity 10 Demon
strate new kind of Southern craftsmanship.
But 1t would not be his last
Elected to Senate
Riding wave of popularity and the 1876
return to Democratic rule in Mississippi,
Lamar was elected to the United States
Senate. But even before he moved from the
House. Lamar again outraged many of his
hackers by abandoning his party and section
on another heated issue.
nk1 irI, fnIo
Ger had yet entered the Senate. Nor had
many Senators forgotten that nearly 20
years earlier Lamar was an extreme section
alist Congressman.
AS Senator Lamar rested at home
throughout much Of 1877. a new movement
was sweeping the South and West, move
ment which would plague the political parties
of the Nation for a generation to come
Free Silver" The Moses of the silver
forces William Jennings Bryan. had not yet
appeared on the scene; but "Silver Dick"
Bland, the Democratic Representative from
Missouri, was leading the way with his bill
for the free coinage Of all silver brought to
the mint. Inasmuch as a tremendous squirt
in the production Of the Western silver
mines had caused its value in relation to
gold to shrink considerably, the single purpose
Of the silver forces was clear, simple and
appealing-easy, inflationary money.
1t was a tremendously popular cause in
Mississippi The panic Of 1873 had engulfed
the Nation into the most terrible depression
it had ever suffered, and the already i'm
poverished States of the South were particu-
larly hard hit. The South foresaw itself in
a state of permanent indebtedness to the
financial institutions of the East unless easy
money could be made available to pay its
heavy debts.
Lamar. the learned scholar and professor,
approached the issue somewhat differently
than his colleagues. Paying but little heed
to the demands of his constituents, he ex-
hausted all available treatises on both sides
Of the controversy His study convinced him