Page images
PDF
EPUB

American Historical Association holds its third meeting this week in Washington. Mr. Geo. Bancroft, president, has presented an interesting communication from Leopold von Ramke.- -Two common-place books of Burns brought £325 and £284 at a recent sale in Edinburgh.. Washington, the Expander of England," is the title of a new essay by E. A. Freeman, the historian-. -Walt. Whitman is lecturing on the Death of Lincoln. He announces his intention of doing so at the anniversary of Lincoln's death until he too shall join the majority.—Mrs. Frances Brooks has just presented to the Boston Kindergarten $200, her share of the profits on the sale of the last edition of "Heidi." Ludwick Schick, of Chicago, will republish German fiction. Most of the issues are short and very attractive in both form and matter.- -Canon Farrar thinks Mr. Browning obscure only in the sense that his thoughts are profound.- -Bancroft's "History of Alaska" does not escape adverse criticism.-First class works on architectural subjects are increasing.- -Mrs. Van Renssalaer will commence her papers on "American Country Dwellings" in the May Century.The Political Science Quarterly proposes to discuss politics from the historical and scientific rather than the party point of view.Count Tolster has published "Scenes from the Seige of Sebastapol" from the Russian side.Mr. Stevenson sends to "The Academy" (Lon

don) a letter on "American Rights and Wrongs," in which he says that American authors should be careful to understand the bargains into which they enter with English publishers, and either strictly reserve their American rights, or see that they receive an equivalent. Mr. Stevenson adds "that he has known English publishers dispose of advance sheets without accounting, when the book was burdened with a royalty, to the author."- -Cassel & Co. and Messrs. Routledge are in a quarrel over the right to first steal an American work and publish it abroad.- -President Porter has completed his work on Kant's Ethics. It is now in type, and will appear early in April, as the fifth volume in the series of Grigg's German Philosophical Classics.- Frank Moore's Songs and Ballads of the Southern People are in press.Gen. Logan's book, "The Great Conspiracy," will be out between the first and tenth of May.- -Mr. W. H. Bishop begins a new serial story, "The Golden Justice," in the May number of the Atlantic.- -The short story that recently appeared anonymously in the Atlantic, entitled "A Brother to Dragon," was written by Miss Amélie Rives, of Richmond, Va.- "Anna Karenina," by Count Leo Tolstor; "Ameil's Journal," by Henri Frederic Amiel; and Andrew Carnegie's Triumphant Democracy" are receiving much attention from the reviewers.. Hittle's "History of California is said to be a thorough history of the Gold State. The editor of the Literary World thinks that English novelists, when they touch on politics, go to pieces artistically.- -There is to be a Thackeray carnival in Boston -Miss Susan B. Anthony is writing the last chapter of "The History of Woman's Suffrage."- -A Southern poet says, "I would rather be remembered by one poem, though I had written millions, than by millions. It seems to me that, with the exception of Shakespeare, the best loved poets are those of whose verses we really read only two or three."

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

A PRACTICAL MANUAL OF PARLIAMENTARY RULES.-By Ainsworth R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress. A. H. Andrews & Co., Chicago.

A WOMAN'S TRIUMPH.-A true story of Western life. A. H. Andrews & Co., Chicago.
HOW WE ARE GOVERNED.-An explanation of the Constitution and Government of the
United States. A book for young people. By Anna Laurens Dawes. 423 pages. D.
Lothrop & Co., Boston.

EXERCISES FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SENSES.-By Horace Grant. Edited by Willlam Small. Lee & Shepard, Boston.

FORGOTTEN MEANINGS, or an Hour with a Dictionary.-By Alfred Waites. Boston, Lee & Shepard. New York, Chas. T. Dellingham.

THREE HUNDRED PRESENTS-DECORATIVE AND FANCY ARTICLES FOR PRESENTS, FAIRS, ETC. By Lucretia P. Hall and Margaret E. White. 206 pages. Boston, S. W. Tilton & Co.

[blocks in formation]

WIT OF THE WEEK.

CLIPPINGS FROM CONTEMPORARIES.

WORKING OVER TIME. A Florida hen having laid two eggs in one day, it is understood she will be boycotted by the Knights of Labor for over-production.Robert J. Burdette.

MATERIALIZING MEDIUM: "This is the spirit of Harry Hardup. Does any one recognize him?"

Voice: "Ach, yah."

Medium: "He does not seem to know you."

"Sufferin' Isaacs, nein. He was owing me $10.79. Holt 'em vhile I put some attachment dose angel vings of his on."-Boston Post.

THE forthcoming marriage of President Cleveland having been publicly announced, the marriageable young ladies of Washington are expected to boycott him. Anyway, a "tie-up" in the White House is threatened.-Norristown Herald. UNCLE GEORGE: "And so you go to school now, Johnny? What part of the exercises do you like best?"

Johnny. The exercise we get at recess."- -Pretzel's National Weekly. "FATHER," said Rollo, "what is meant by intoxication of wealth?" "Means that money is tight," replied Rollo's father, who had been shinning around all the afternoon with a piece of paper looking for an autograph.Burdette.

"I HAVE loved you and love you still," he said to the girl he had been courting for several months, "but there has come recently into my affairs a new order of things, and I fear that we can never be more than friends. I cannot marry you.'

"Well, whoever said you could?" she answered, with a snap that jerked him backward out of the front door and shattered even the hope of friendship.Washington Critic.

JOTTINGS FROM JUDGE.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

COUNTRYMAN (who thinks of living in the city)—"What rent do you charge for one of them flats ?"

Landlady (snappishly): "A thousand dollars a year."

Countryman (petrified): "How much for the rent, I mean?-we'll furnish our own meals."

THE question of trousers or no trousers is being agitated. We know not what others may think, but as for us trousers or give us a warmer climate. LAWYER (joyfully) : "How do you feel now?" Condemned murderer (who has just been reprieved): "As playful as a child, my boy." Lawyer (slapping him on the back): "Ah, I see; you have just skipped a

rope."

"An' how's yer son,

MRS. GRADY (through the hole in the back fence): Moike, ez wint wist fur his health, gettin' along at-all at-all?" Mrs. O'Brien (taking the clothes-pin out of her mouth): "Splindid, me dear; splindid. He must be gittin' sthrong ez an ox, fur he's jist sint me a litter in which he sez he's been after holding up a stage in the Rucky mountains, an' aul be hisself too, moind ye."

A LARGE crack has been discovered in the Washington monument. It has taken so long to complete the monument that we half suspect it is the crack of doom.

PICKINGS FROM PUCK.

IN answer to Joe Cook's question, "Is life worth living?" we reply that it all depends on the liver.

[ocr errors]

"I UNDERSTAND you haf vailed in peesness, Mr. Levi ?"

Yes, I vas unvordunate in a brivate sbeculation. Dot vas not the vorst. I vas deceifed."

"How so?"

"In my assignee. He vas a scoundrel. He vormed his vay into my convidence, unt made me bay ninety-six ber cent. Did you effer hear of such an oud

rage ?"

IT is said that Maud S. has cost Mr. Robert Bonner over four thousand dollars during the past winter. From this we infer that the mare sometimes makes money

goo, too.

LAUGHTER FROM LIFE.

FIRST CITIZEN (excitedly): "What has happened to the officer ?"
Second citizen: "There was a riot here just now, and he has fainted."
First C. "Why, how was that?"

Second C." He got here before it was over."

A CLOTHES shave-a ballet girl's costume.

OVERHEARD at midnight on a Cunarder.-Small boy: "Ma! MAR! My dinner won't stay swallered!"

TIFFANY asks $85 for a scent bottle. And there are 100 cents to a dollar.

BULLETS.

THE situation in the Democratic party at the present time seems to be that Frank Hurd has been voted out; that Joseph Pulitzer has resigned; that Henry Watterson is going to Europe, and that a Republican woman has been appointed postmaster of the Louisville Courier-Journal.—Chicago News.

IF 500,000 are embraced, as Mr. Powderly says, in the organization of the Knights of Labor, while 18,000,000 wage-earners in this country have preferred not to join that or any other organization, government for the people will not take the part of the few against the many.-N. Y. Tribnue.

THE Knights of Labor declare that moral worth, not wealth, should be the standard of individual and national greatness. Corporate monopoly declares that gold, or its equivalent, based on selfishness, shall be the standard of greatness. Which is to be most commended?—The Craftsman.

THE statement that the Democratic majority on the Pan-Electric Committee has resolved to whitewash Garland, Harris, Casey Young, and the rest, if correct, would seem to show that the party is prepared to resort to any expedient to defeat Cleveland in 1888.-N. Y. Tribune.

SIR CHARLES DILKE is going to emerge from his obscurity for the purpose of seeking a denser shade. In his efforts to find it, Sir Charles will have the hearty assistance of every morality-loving person in both hemispheres.-Philadelphia Times.

CLERGYMEN, as a rule, make the worst husbands in the world. Editors rank The reasons are, that while editors are away day and night, clergymen are at home night and day.-Kansas City Times.

next.

AMONG the arrivals in Baltimore on Saturday was a jackass from England. The commendable thing about this particular animal is that he will not take to the lecture platform.-Baltimore American.

LABOR can only be really strong by being right. And the labor cause will break down unless it studies the principles of human society and obeys them.-N. Y. Commercial-Advertiser.

FOREIGN.-Lord Sherburne attacks the Irish proposals. The Greek question is still unsettled. King Louis, of Bavaria, has been declared bankrupt, and it is anticipated that a regency will be declared. An attempt was made in Madrid to blow up a church.

SATURDAY, APRIL 24.

DOMESTIC.-Ex-President Arthur's condition is reported very critical, with prospect of early demise. The corner-stone of the new College of Physicians and Surgeons was laid in New York. A letter on labor troubles by Jefferson Davis was made public. He favors arbitration. There is an unusual pressure of business in the Chicago divorce court. There is no change in the situation on the Gould lines. Funds continue to pour into the treasury of the Knights. The railroad companies declare that their roads are in no way hampered and that business has been fully resumed. The cotton manufacturers of New England are said to have combined to oppose strikes. Six Italian laborers were burned to death in a shanty near Mount Alton, Pennsylvania. "Arbor Day" was inaugurated in Massachusetts by the governor and the mayor of Boston formally planting an elm tree each.

[blocks in formation]

WHEN Rev. Beecher called the Democratic party a double-eared ass he doubtless forgot that he brayed with the drove in 1884.-Milwaukee Journal.

A WASHINGTON promise of favor is like a lover's promise of devotion-easily made, and broken with great facility.-St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

THE trouble seems to be that when Mr. Blaine retires from public life he generally takes public life along with him.-Philadelphia Times.

Two years of tariff unrest and business prostration should finally dispose of a Democratic Congress.-N. Y. Tribune.

THE President might take a trip to Detroit and confer with Senator Jones.-N. Y. Tribune.

EVENTS OF THE WEEK.

THURSDAY, APRIL 22,

DOMESTIC.-Father Ryan, the poet, died at Louisville, Ky. Four girls were badly bitten by mad dogs at Lindenville, Ohio. Statistical reports show great industrial growth in the South. The labor troubles continue at many points. An extensive fire occurred in Broadway, New York. A large furniture factory was burned in Chicago. The business affairs of E. Remington & Sons, of Ilion, N. Y., have been placed in the hands of receivers. The New York grand jury rendered indictments for conspiracy against seven men who bribed the Aldermen of 1884 to grant a Broadway railroad franchise.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

CONGRESSIONAL.-The Senate debated the Inter-State Commerce bill, and the House continued debate on the River and Harbor bill. Jay Gould testified in relation to labor troubles in the Southwest.

SUNDAY, APRIL 25.

DOMESTIC.-The building contractors in Boston formally oppose the eight-hour measure. Easter observances were very general. Spring wheat presents a hopeful outlook. The fishermen of Gloucester, Mass., are opposed to any treaty with Canada which shall affect any of their present rights. They are indignant at the threat of the Dominion government to seize and confiscate their vessels if they enter any Canadian port.

[blocks in formation]

FOREIGN.-Archbishop Croke delivered an eulogy on Mr. Gladstone at Thurles,
Ireland. Mr. Gladstone has addressed an autograph letter to a London morning
journal in reference to home rule. Las Vegas, N. M., has been considerably dam-
aged by the overflowing of the Rio Gallonas from recent heavy rains.
The post-
office building, railroad buildings, oil and lumber works have been destroyed. The
war feeling in Greece is intense.

DOMESTIC. Boycotters were indicted for robbery in St. Louis. The Wheeling and Lake Erie road was sold. An insane woman at Harmony, N. J., killed her four children and herself. There was a more general observance of Good Friday than is usual throughout the country. An immense crevasse has occurred in the Mississippi levee near Helena, Ark., and thousands of acres are flooded. The execution of Robert Fowler for the murder of Miss Lydia Burnett took place at Louisville, Ky., in the presence of five thousand people. Mrs. Monroe Smith, the wife of a farmer near Keyport, attempted to murder her whole family, and succeeded in killing one child.

MONDAY, APRIL 26.

DOMESTIC.-A train was wrecked and several passengers killed on the Union
Pacific railroad. Four moonshiners and a deputy marshal were killed in Ten-
The death of Mrs. Wendell Phillips is reported. The John Hopkins
University, at Baltimore, Md., celebrated its tenth anniversary.

CONGRESSIONAL.-The Senate was not in session. The President's special message on labor troubles was warmly discussed in the House.

nessee.

CONGRESSIONAL.-Both houses in session. In the Senate Messrs. Stanford and Van Wyck spoke on the Inter-State Commerce bill; Senator Whitthorne, of Tennessee sworn in. In the House, Mr. Springer, of Illinois, introduced a bill to create a Department of Labor.

FOREIGN. The reply of Greece to the Powers is not satisfactory. Lord Hartington spoke in Lancashire against the Irish government bill.

TUESDAY, APRIL 27.

DOMESTIC.-George Bancroft delivered an address before the American Historical Association in Washington. Twenty-four tailors were arrested in New York for boycotting. The partisan troubles in the Ohio Senate are likely to be resumed over the committee reports on the Cincinnati election frauds. Three lives were lost on the Potomac river by the capsizing of a schooner. George E. Graham, the evangelist and wife-murderer, was lynched by a mob of 400 armed men at Springfield, Mo.

CONGRESSIONAL.--Both branches in session. The Senate discussed the InterState Commerce bill. The majority reports of the special committee of the Ohio Legislature on the election of Senator Payne were laid before the Senate, and, on motion of Mr. Payne, who addressed the Senate, were sent to the Committee on Privileges and Elections. The House continued debate on the River and Harbor bill.

[ocr errors]

FOREIGN. Representatives of foreign powers in Athens discussed the Greek question. There is a serious uprising of the Galician peasantry.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28.

DOMESTIC.-An important mass meeting was held in Washington to express sympathy with the Irish home rule movement. Jefferson Davis received an ovation in Montgomery, Ala., where he delivers an address. Senor Elmore, Peruvian Minister, took official leave of the President. Secretary Whitney has written to the officers in charge of the work on the new naval cruisers, calling attention to the delay in completing the Atlanta, and asking that she be put in condition for sea as soon as possible.

CONGRESSIONAL.-The Senate discussed the Post Office appropriation bill, after Senator Mitchell had spoken on the Chinese question. The House continued debate on the River and Harbor bill.

[ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

VOL. I.

PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY THE PUBLIC OPINION COMPANY.

WASHINGTON, D. C., SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1886.

POLITICAL.

JEFFERSON DAVIS AND THE LOST CAUSE.

The laying of a corner-stone of a monument to the Confederate dead, at Montgomery, Alabama, on the 29th ultimo, and the unveiling of a statue to ex-Senator Hill, at Atlanta, Georgia, on the 1st instant, were the occasions which called Mr. Jefferson Davis to those cities. His speeches and other incidents of the ceremonies have elicited the comments here collated.

Montgomery Advertiser (Dem.), April 29.

[ocr errors]

THE great day has come and gone with its pomp and ceremony-the outward show of what the heart did feel. Mr. Davis has returned to the capital that saw him invested with a new-born nation's leadership. On that other time he was the great chieftain of a proud and confident people, who saw in him the star of their hopes and resolution. On this later day he comes after defeat has perched upon his banners and his people have trodden with him the valley of the shadow of death to the bright shore beyond of a new prosperity. Once he heard the wild huzzas of hope and pride. Now he hears the deep-toned voice of a love we never felt in the day of his power. There is something romantic, something that talks to the fancy in this gala welcome of Mr.-Davis to the city where he was inaugurated president of the Confederacy. He is sheltered under the same roof that sheltered him then. He beholds the same scenes, walks the same streets, and hears the same shouts. As if in rebellion at a break in the eternal fitness of things, the heavens frowned. And in obedience to their frown, he went and stood upon the self-same spot where he stood and uttered the solemn oath of his high office. As he stood there and looked out upon the glad throng before him and back through the years that have fled, what a host of memories came crowding in his mind! What event in the course of time has had so much of thrilling interest, so much that appeals to the sentiment and the imagination of the heart! Since Mr. Davis has been in the city he has heard the enthusiastic plaudits that greet few save the conquerors of earth. A Roman general, with kings at his chariot wheels, saw the heavens rent with shouting, and might well have believed himself a god. Yet he knew in his heart these were fruits of victory, and defeat would hurl him to the dust of forgetfulness or disdain. The same people who "threw high their ready caps in air" for him, would repeat the show in honor of his rival. To-day they weep for Cæsar slain; to-morrow build a monument to Brutus." Not so with the people whom Davis led. They were with him in the hour of victory, in the hour of defeat, and are with him now, and will be to the last. Seeing and hearing what he has since leaving Beauvoir, Mr. Davis said: "It takes a great people to do this." Ay! a great people! Pomp and pageantry and all the ceremony which greets a popular idol are easy when he comes from a field of glory. All peoples in all times have done this. But how many have struck for independence, been beaten to allegiance, accepted results, gone back to the ways of industry, built up their desolated country, and through it all maintained their love and veneration for the man they looked to, and looked to in vain, for salvation from their enemies? "The price of defeat is the king's head" has been the rule as this world goes. Let the pageant of yesterday go down as proof how closer defeat drew around our illustrious chieftain the hearts and the homage of his people. But is it because we are the greater people or he the greater man? Something of both. No nation ever followed such a man to the grounding of their arms. No wonder on yesterday as his carriage passed up the streets and the thousands on thousands of his countrymen sent up the voice of gladness at the sight, his face beamed and a smile lit the worn features and he became as young again. He knew it all was sincere, the pure outpouring of the people's faith in him and belief in him and love for him. There was no other reason in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, that could prompt a plaudit or stimulate a cheer. On the long journey to Montgomery, of all the hundreds who have talked to him, not one has heard a bitter word or regretful allusion to the past escape him. He is too great a man to weep above his broken idols, and to-day no man in all the South is more hopeful of the future, more earnest in his wish to see his people happy and prosperous in the way the God of destiny has willed it.

A WISH. It is the earnest wish of the people of Montgomery that when Mr. Davis shall at last sink beneath the weight of years-and may the day be far distant— he will allow us reverently to bear to his first capital his sacred remains and lay them to rest in our own soil. This wish is uttered, not prematurely, but as the tenderest tribute our love can pay him. Will he think of it when he is back at his quiet home by the seaside? It is an honor too great, almost, for hope, and yet one we fain would have,

The New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, April 30.

[Translated expressly for PUBLIC OPINION.]

A FEW Republican leaders in Albany, at which the not particularly renowned Gen. Barnum was at the head, could not reconcile to themselves the idea of a memorial festivity at Montgomery, and especially a speech from Mr. Davis; but the

No. 4.

press of the States, in general, has taken no umbrage at the ovation which was ac corded him, nor his remarks upon the same occasion. This indicates the great revolution which has taken place in the Northern mind. Unquestionably a like demonstration at an earlier period would not have been met by the same indulgence that it now receives. To this is to be ascribed the clear conviction which has permeated the Northern mind that the South no longer dreams of reconstructing the lost cause, but, on the contrary, has become sincerely reconciled to the restored Union, and clearly understands that the abolition of its peculiar institution is not only irrevocable, but that it has proved itself a blessing to the South. After having reached this conviction, the North can estimate, without prejudice, the feeling in the South toward the victims of the struggle for the lost cause, and the few remaining leaders in that struggle. It does not enter into the minds of the immense majority of the Northern people to regard this feeling as a demonstration against the Union of to-day.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

New York Tribune (Rep.), April 30.

TWENTY-ONE years after he should have been hanged this unrepentant old villian and Union-hater gets up and whines about the loss of liberty" and the 'glories of the Lost Cause," the cause which was lost being that of human slavery and the opportunity to extend the shameful, undemocratic, abominable practice over the free Territories of the West. Instead of devoting his few remaining days to repentance for his black treason to the Republic and for the horrors of the war which he planned and precipitated upon this unhappy country in order to spread and perpetuate slavery, and to expressions of gratitude that the Union soldiers who captured him did not shoot him on the spot, as they certainly would have done had they not thought that he would be tried and hanged for his treason, he feebly sputters out his chronic disloyalty to his country when he took the oath to do his best to destroy it, and with the flag waving above him to which he proved a recreant traitor. Had justice been done-the justice which never before in the world's históry failed to overtake traitors—the country would have been spared this disgraceful spectacle. The ex-rebel soldier who followed him, Gen. Gordon, declared his devotion to the old flag, showing that he is again loyal; but Jeff Davis could do no more than show unrepentant disloyalty. The mistake in dealing with the rebellion was, that it was not disgraced with a rope around the neck of its chief. The only mistake made was that of unfortunate and unprecedented leniency, and that was the work of Andy Johnson and Horace Greeley.

Memphis Avalanche (Dem.), May 1.

IT is to be hoped that the patriotic numbskulls who met at Albany, in the State of New York, to sing, "We'll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree," and to resolve that "treason is odious," contemplated their little crowd of two hundred, one-half, doubtless, mere spectators, with a comparative view as to what numbers would have attended such meetings at any time from 1865 to 1876. The fool is sometimes the sincerest person in the world. Idiots are sometimes very positive and earnest in the little they do know and believe, and the most adhesive person in the world is the monomaniac. It is not necessary to doubt that these patriotic idiots contemplated their diminished numbers with a feeling that patriotisin had waned, and they were the last of the salt of the earth. We have no doubt that, by extraordinary drumming, an equal number could be found in the South who would sing, "We'll hang Abe Lincoln on a sour-apple tree," and resolve that the American Republic ended at Appomattox. Fortunately, a country lives and propagates and descends through its great common-sense masses of people of all classes, and not in its fools and idiots, sincere and earnest and, so far as intent and motive goes, patriotic, as these fools often are, when it is possible to separate the residuum of genuine sentiment from that love of a little cheap notoriety which is always a large moving force with such people.

Atlanta Special to Philadelphia Press, May 1.

ANOTHER day of flowers, yells, crowds and excitement. It is all for Jeff Davis. "This Easter week is the most glorious occasion since the resurrection," shouted Henry Grady, of the Constitution, while speaking in front of the veiled statute of Senator Hill this morning. Mr. Davis sat on one side of him, and Gen. Longstreet, clad in his Confederate uniform, on the other as he spoke this sentence. The expression has no more significance in it than hundreds of the extravagant phrases one hears from Southern lips. It typifies the wild enthusiasm which the presence of the leader of the lost cause has awakened among his former followers down here in Dixie. These incidents may be taken as the one danger which it was feared would follow Mr. Davis' re-entrance into publicity. His people are overdoing it. For the first time since Mr. Davis left his home in Mississippi, nearly a week ago, the people of the South are beginning to feel that it would have been much better to have let the aims and ideas which he represents be undisturbed in the grave in which they were buried a generation ago. The South has undoubtedly turned its face to the future and the men who are furnishing the energy and brains to make it a prosperous country are the ones who are taking little or no part in the present

ceremonies.

St. Louis Republican (Dem.), May 2.

LAYING the foundation of the Confederate States government and laying the corner stone of a monument to the Confederate dead are very different tasks, as

Mr. Davis and the Alabama people have the best reasons for knowing; and yet, the magnificent outburst of passion with which the one was done twenty-five years ago, and the profound and pious affection with which the other was performed last week, equally reveal a valiant and heroic people, and disclose qualities which, combined with the more rugged and robust virtues of the North, supply the material for the future American people. Mr. Davis has outlived both the friends and enemies of 1861. He saw the beginning and the ending of the Confederacy. He saw it in its cradle, and he lives to stand over its grave, He has seen the experiment of twenty-five years ago embalmed as a "lost cause" in elegies that make the tears course on thousands of cheeks. He has seen the stars and bars turned into "the conquered banner" and folded away forever. He is the disappointed, vanquished, and broken leader of a disappointed, vanquished, and broken people. And yet, even his enemies must yield him the credit of a high and patient intiep idity in standing under the flag of a country which denies him the right of citizenship and performing the last pious offices in honor of the comrades who died in battle against it.

New Orleans Times-Democrat (Dem.), April 29.

DEFEAT, with all its accompanying humiliations, the surrender to an overwhelming power, the desolation and impoverishment of their homes, the hecatombs of victims of the sanguinary struggle, could not subdue the conscious pride in the integrity and sincerity of all who participated in that contest, or extort a confession of the wrongfulness of the cause for which they fought and suffered. With fortitude and patience they have met and endured the penalties of failure, but not the shame of voluntary surrender of their conviction of the justice of their cause, and the consciousness of a patriotic duty discharged with a heroism and fidelity never surpassed in history. Honest and loyal as has been their submission to the victor in the defeat of the object and aim of their struggle, and implicit as will be the confidence of all right-thinking men in the pledges they have given of their renewed relations of brotherhood with their recent foes, and the resumption of their seats in the household which their fathers once filled, they will not and should not be so faithless to the memories of their martyred brethren as to repress the flow of patriotic and grateful sentiments on occasions when they may be appropriately expressed.

Washington Fost (Dem.), April 30.

than the Declaration of Independence--the very kernel and heart of Anglo-Saxon
liberty and freedom. The time will never come when Southerners will be ashamed
of the soldiers of Lee and Johnston, or fail to honor the statesman whose only sin
is that he was their chosen chief and proved his title to their confidence by eager
and most patriotic devotion to his duties.

THERE is no reason why the people of the South should be otherwise than manly and self-respecting. The logic of events and the stern arbitrament of war proved that they were mistaken in their views twenty-five years ago. But no one questions the bravery-the heroism-with which against such odds they maintained the terrible struggle. No one at the North, except a bigot, doubts their honesty of purpose: The memories that reach down from the period of their devotion to duty and patriotism, as they conceived these virtues, will always affect the Southern mind with enthusiasm and pride. It is the "lost" cause that everywhere embodies the sentimental and poetical elements, and makes the strongest appeal to the sensibilities of the generous heart. The people of the South therefore would have shown themselves singularly lacking in those honorable and chivalrous attributes with which they are credited if they had failed to receive with respect the man who stood foremost in the movement in which he and they staked their all a quarter of a century ago.

State Senator Coggeshall, at the Albany Indignation Meeting.

Albany Evening Journal (Rep.), April 29.

No more pusil [?] and ridiculous spectacle ever has been presented to the people of the United States than the resurrection of Jeff Davis, whose political ghost is now on exhibition at Montgomery, Alabama. The senile old rebel slobbered over his venomous treason with a cracked and wheezy voice, glorying in the anniversary of his perjury amid the clamorous applause of brass bands and a blatant and bragging crowd. The Confederate martyr, changed by unrepentant years into a mere Confederate scarecrow, gibbered and snarled yesterday over the defeat of the bloody attempt to create a slaveholders' oligarchy on the ruins of a broken and divided republic. The hate that inspired Andersonville and Libby prisons drizzled its poison through his rhetoric. A traitor still, powerless, but yet with the heart of a political assassin, he gesticulated before an admiring crowd, and also before a patient country whose mistaken magnanimity had years ago tossed back to him as not worth taking his cheap and perjured life. No "bloody shirt" the North has ever aired to menace political murder has equalled the clotted banner Jeff Davis waves.

I CAN NOT believe that the words which were at Montgomery uttered to or by Jefferson Davis express or reflect the true sentiment of any considerable portion of the people of this land. In my humble judgment the time is not yet, nor do I believe it ever will be, when this great nation will so far condone treason as to honor the man, living or dead, whose treachery caused it so much suffering and loss. Rear and dedicate monuments, if you please, to the Confederate dead. Cover the mounds where they sleep with floral offerings, but do not strew flowers in the pathway of the man whose treason made possible their deaths, and who of all others deserves the condemnation of every liberty-loving, law-abiding citizen of our fair land. Let no laurel wreaths be entwined about his brow; greet him not as a "hero" or as "a type of manhood," either of the North, South, East, or West, but let him go forth an "Ishmaelite," with the brand of Cain upon him-a wanderer, an exile, and an outcast.

Charleston News and Courier (Dem.), May 1.

Chicago Inter-Ocean (Rep.), April 29.

THERE was, of course, no call for Mr. Davis, on his own account, to come to the
front. The occasion was deliberately planned and carefully prepared for by those
who, for some reason, determined to make the demonstration as striking and im-
pressive as possible. That there are in the South so many thousands eager to enter
into such a plan is a fact worth remembering. Jefferson Davis was not in accord
with the men who have made the new South. That the new South should care
to stop in its progressive march and turn for one week to make a hero of the man
who represents the old South is a question to be considered and discussed, and
after it has been discussed the question of the effect of such a demonstration will
remain unanswered. The answer is to come in the course of the next twenty
years, and the effect will be good or bad as the professions of the South in favor of
the Union are stronger than their impulse to make much of the memories of what
they lost.
N. Y. Herald (Ind.), April 30.

THERE is nothing to regret, nothing to apologize for in his reception. The people of the South, who accord to President Lincoln, to Charles Sumner, to William Lloyd Garrison, and all the hosts of devoted Union men the praise and honor which is their due for devotion to principle, the people who voted for Horace Greeley for President, and who sincerely mourned the death of Gen. Grant, of McClellan, and Hancock, claim the poor right to honor the devoted patriot who presided over their destinies in the shock of war, and will honor him to the end. There is no need to conceal this sentiment. It is deep and lasting, and will abide for all time. In honoring him and honoring the Confederacy the South proves its undying loyalty to its convictions of right and to the Government of its choice. Its allegiance has been transferred, by the will of heaven, to another power.and another cause, and there is no safer rule than to judge its present faith by its faithfulness to the past.

Memphis Appeal (Dem.), April 30.

WHEN Mr. Davis, on Wednesday, revived the memories of the past, the flag of the Union floated from the masthead over the crowd, the flag of the Union hung in drapery from the front of the capitol, the flag of the Union almost touched with its protecting folds the head of the ex-president of the Confederacy, and we do not use facts too lightly when we affirm that a patriotic love of that flag filled the hearts of the very men who cheered Mr. Davis' eulogy of the courage of the Southern army. Let the South build as many monuments as it will to its numberless heroes. We have done and are doing the same for our noble dead: God knows we fought each other grandly, but now the time has come to grandly forget. We did our best to win the victory, and we won it; they did their best to wrest it from our grasp. We can both hereafter do our best to protect and purify a government which, with all its imperfections, is the last and noblest product of centuries of political experience.

No man or body of men at the North can teach or tell the people of the South anything about the Union. Every foot of the soil of Alabama is consecrated by the blood of the soldiers who fought to win it for the Union under Jackson, the man who, above all others of his time, emphasized by his words and deeds his love and faith in the Union. Just such a love is treasured for it to-day everywhere in the South, in the confident belief that it is a beacon to a darkened world, and the best government ever devised by man. So believing, we can still turn to the graves of our dead and honor them with monuments for their devotion to a principle older

Newark Advertiser (Rep.), April 29.

A FEW faded old men like Davis hang over the extinct fires and turn their mental vision backward; but the rest of the world is looking forward. And the South, no longer the South, but the Union, is pressing on to repair the disasters of the old days with new and splendid moral and material achievements. It may be that the age of fantastic chivalry is gone. Let us hope that it is. But, as the embodiment of an obsolete idea, Davis has a certain hold on the enthusiasm of his fellow-citizens. He is a curiosity of the time, an archaic relic. It were cruel to dispel the old man's dream. And it were worse than useless to interrupt this passing show. The Union, strong and great, may look serenely on while a few aged survivors fight the battles o'er again and futilely deplore the fate that made them free.

Providence Journal (Rep.), April 29.

IS THIS mourning for the "lost cause ?" It is not mourning at all, but rather an outburst of joy and thanksgiving such as the South has not had in a full score of years. It is not sorrow for the past so much as pride and exultation in the present. At the North there will be a difference of opinion as to the taste displayed in selecting the occasion for this remarkable celebration, but the occasion is of secondary importance. Under the old flag, with expressions of heartiest loyalty to the Union and the Government, the present greets the past with a significant hail and farewell. So we choose to regard the Alabama episode, and so regarding it we fear nothing more serious than that the festivities of the week will reduce some of the newspaper organs to a pitiable state of uncertainty as to the exact date of the close of hostilities "between the States."

Newark Evening News (Rep.).

NO ONE who loves his country will say nay when the people of the South see fit to erect a monument to their sons who fell in the strife to disrupt the country that nursed them, and to destroy the flag under whose proud folds they were born and reared; but when the chief imp in the deviltry rises up continuously after the blessing of peace has been secured to sew a new crop of traitorous notions, it is high time to protest.

Springfield, Mass., Republican, (Ind.), April 30.

How could we respect the Southern people if they did not believe in the thing they undertook to do, if they were not attached to its memory, if they did not honor their leaders and their soldiers, nor exalt their services and their sacrifices? They do well to cherish the sentiment that hallows their story. General Gordon

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]
[graphic]

is right in suggesting that the valor of the South must be held as a possession of the nation. Ten years ago the Republican looked forward to the time when the dead of both sides in that great war would be honored together, as illustrating American manhood when brought to the supreme test of courage, endurance and devotion. The time is at hand. Ours is one country; all that has been done in it to the credit of the American character is the heritage of the whole country, not solely of one section. Kansas City Times (Ind.), May 1.

THERE are various ways of looking at things even among party organs. There is the Chicago Inter-Ocean, which thinks that the celebration at Montgomery is "more a tribute to the bravery and heroism of the men and women who made such sacrifices in the cause which was ultimately lost; which no amount of heroism could save." And here is the Kansas City Journal which writhes in the thought that "men don't realize that there are plotters against the peace and integrity of the nation, and that such occasions as this at Montgomery are used to poison the rising youth of the South and keep alive the spirit of hatred till the favorable time comes to strike for lost empire and revenge." When such eminent Republican organs disagree there would appear to be no reason for a vast exercise of mental trouble.

Atlanta Constitution (Dem.), May 1.

ATLANTA gave Mr. Davis the grandest reception on yesterday that she ever tendered any public man. The demonstration was never surpassed in enthusiasm in any city in this country. We doubt if it was ever equaled. Had Mr. Davis been returning to this city after having concluded a triumphant peace, with the terms of victory in his pocket, his welcome would not have been as overwhelming as it is when he comes now, twenty one years after an overwhelming defeat. In this superb demonstration Atlanta honored herself more than she honored him, and the good that comes to her from this lifting up of the hearts of her people and the glorious revival of tender and pathetic memories will outweigh the good it can

bear to him.

Philadelphia Telegraph (Ind.), April 29.

THE demonstration at Montgomery, Ala., yesterday, comes at too late a date in the century to occasion much excitement in this part of our dear native land. To a considerable portion of the adult American population of to-day, the spectacle of Jefferson Davis appearing, amid a flutter of Union flags, to deliver an address in the first capital of the one-time Confederacy, awakens curious rather than hostile emotions. He will represent to them a remoteness as far away from their personal experiences as would the ghost of some Revolutionary worthy or unworthy, were he to revisit the glimpses of the moon for the purpose of whimpering about the merits, from his point of view, of the cause which he espoused.

Chicago Tribune (Rep.), May 1.

THE Montgomery monument commemorates the regret of the slaveholders at the loss of the system of human chattelhood. It represents no achievements except those of treason. The shouting, yelling crowd welcomed Jeff. Davis as the representative and incarnation of disunion. They honored him for his treason, and paraded their allegiance to him and his pro-slavery sentiment and his hatred of the American Union. The astonishing magnanimity of the American people left him unhanged, and the result is now apparent in this fresh outbreak of his venom and its laudation by the South; and yet these disunion'. howlers have the sublime audacity to accuse Northern men of waving the bloody shirt, and of keeping alive sectional differences!

Boston Post (Dem.), May 1.

PERHAPS it was indiscrete and unwise to hold the Montgomery celebration. But it commemorated a great chapter of history. It carried men in remembrance back to scenes of valor, sacrifice and suffering. They were scenes similar to those which come thronging at the call of recollection when our commemorative days are observed at the North. Could we keep silent under such circumstances? Can we expect that the men of the South will be like "dumb-driven cattle" when confronted again with the great deeds of their past? The men whom we fought so hard, and at last so successfully, were soldiers to be proud of. We are proud of them at the North. How much more may they be supposed to be so at the South?

Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette (Rep.), May 1.

WE Do not mind the celebration by the people of the South, of their heroes who died for "the lost cause," or of the survivors of those who were in at "the surrender." The Southern soldiers were brave men, and those who fell, as a rule, had been nurtured on the provincialisms that were the personal folly and political poison of their section. They were enthusiasts narrow men-and strange as they may think it, fanatics. But we do not like to see the old rankling State rights heresy, which was at the bottom of the mischief, revived and praised and set up for sanctification. It has cost the country blood enough. The South should not put itself in the way of sacrificing any more brave men on that line..

N. Y. World (Dem)..

So far as Jefferson Davis' recent speeches in the South are concerned, nobody cares for them in the least. He has said nothing that he has not been saying steadily for twenty years. The fact that Mr. Davis is "unreconstructed' is well understood, and he is privileged to say pretty much what he pleases. But the vast crowds that have paid homage to him, the flowers that have been strewn in his pathway, the approving hurrahs that have ascended with his utterances, have given the enemies of the South another opportunity to declare that the spirit of rebellion is abroad again, and to this extent it is to be deplored that Mr. Davis was persuaded into making another public appearance.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

any State, and the most conspicuous representative of treason can freely proclaim that its cause was just, and give utterance to the other treasonable language used by Mr. Jefferson Davis at Montgomery. So far as Mr. Davis is concerned it is only by grace of the leniency of the loyal people of this country that he has been permitted to draw breath during the last twenty years. It was a concession to a sentiment of exaggerated magnanimity that spared the life of Mr. Davis, and it was a grave political mistake.

The Courrier des Etats-Unis, May 1.

[Translated expressly for PUBLIC OPINION.]

THE role that Mr. Jefferson Davis has played in the ceremonies which took place at Montgomery this week, attending the laying of the corner-stone of a monument consecrated to the memory of the Confederate dead in the war of Secession, has been criticised by certain pseudo-Puritans of the North as a new appeal to passions extinguished, and a provocation calculated to revive the recriminations of the 'bloody shirt." Wiser are those who look upon the ceremonies at Montgomery as the official interment of the Southern Confederacy, and the address of Mr. Davis as its funeral oration.

Taggart's Sunday Times, Phila., (Rep.).

JEFF DAVIS was a traitor of the deepest dye, and if a man ever deserved hanging, he did. He was educated at West Point at the expense of the Government, held high and important positions of honor and trust under that Government, but after being thus honored he became false to the nation, that had so honored him and did his best to destroy it. In any other country he would have been executed more than twenty years ago, when he was captured, instead of being allowed to live, and at this late day to vent his spite upon the Union which he tried to destroy. But the world is wide, and the people of the North can afford to laugh at his impotent ravings. N. Y. Sun (Dem.), May 3.

It seems to us that there are braver and more magnanimous things to do than to wage war with a harmless old man, and nobler policies for a political party than to try and distort an interesting and not unworthy sentiment into a revival of hostility to the Union. The South cannot with any self-respect forget how much was glorious in a cause which was still well lost; nor is she less true to the Union because she nourishes the fading memories of futile aspirations stoutly struggled for. But the Republican party will never be satisfied, whatever the South does. Abuse and distrust of the South are the principal remaining assets of that concern. Indianapolis Journal (Rep.).

THE Democratic press would be glad to make it appear that the venomous old traitor, Jeff Davis, stood alone; but the demonstrations in Montgomery and throughout the South tell a different story. He is the mouthpiece of a very large element, if not the controlling element, of the Southern people. The presence of the stars and stripes to grace the occasion when this superfluous veteran drooled his treason to the applauding shouts of the assembled thousands, was a profanation which will mantle with a blush of indignation the bronzed faces of the veterans who bore it to victory over the Southern rebellion.

New York Independent, May 6.

JEFFERSON DAVIS, the ex-president of the defunct confederacy, last week had what he thought and what his friends doubtless thought to be a brilliant reception at Montgomery and Atlanta. The better way for the South, and equally for the North, is to leave Mr. Davis in the quietude of his retirement, and let him die there, without parading him before the country as the representative of the "lost cause.' The less he says and the less said about him the better. It is not wise to make him an occasion for the discussion of issues that are now practically obsolete. Let the South bury him with flowers if they will.

Chicago Herald (Ind.), May 3.

[ocr errors]

WITH the people the Confederacy is a bitter memory; with Mr. Davis it is a fond regret. He would have things different; they would not change them now if they could. He has stood still for twenty-five years, while all about him has sprung up a generation which has new aims and aspirations. In his old age he touches their sentimentality, their local pride, their humanity; but he does not shake the conviction that long since seized every rational mind at the South, that secession was a blunder akin to a crime, and that its success would have entailed consequences infinitely worse than its failure.

Der Baltimore Journal, April 30.

[Translated expressly for PUBLIC OPINION.]

WE have frequently heard it strongly objected against the Grand Army of the Republic that it tended to keep alive recollections of the civil war. But what shall be said of the speech which Jeff Davis has just delivered in Montgomery, Ala., in which he praises those who sacrificed their "blood and treasure for the good cause of the South? It sounded like irony when Gen. Gordon afterward sang pæeans to "Jeff" and his wise statesmanship.

Davenport, Iowa, Gazette (Rep.).

THE blood of thousands of brave Union soldiers stains Davis' worthless carcass, and his death would be but a feeble atonement for it. Let it be hoped that a patient and long-suffering people will never again be afflicted with his revolting and damnable political heresies at even an ordinary gathering in the South. His speech has put the South back several years in its social and political relations with the North. One or two more such wild demonstrations of applause at the appearance of Jeff Davis will enable an outraged public to bury the Democratic party out of sight in 1888.

Boston Advertiser (Ind.), April 29.

THE extravagant tone of laudation of Mr. Davis adopted by the Southern press is not calculated to produce pleasant sensations on the part of the defenders of the

« PreviousContinue »