Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/139

 Life^ Services and Character of Jefferson Davis, 131

and Plattsburgh, of Chippewa and Erie, of Bowyer and Guilford, and New Orleans and Bunker Hill. Grouped together they form a mon- ument to the common glory of our common country; and where is the Southern man who would wish that monument even less by one of the Northern names that constitute the mass ? Who, standing on the ground made sacred by the blood of Warren, could allow sec- tional feeling to curb his enthusiasm as he looked upon that obelisk which rises a monument to freedom's and his country's triumph, and stands a type of the time, the men and event it commemorates ; built of material that mocks the waves of time, without niche or moulding for parasite or creeping thing to rest on, and pointing like a finger to the sky, to raise man's thoughts to philanthropic and noble deeds? *'

Scarce had these words died upon the air when there arose another in the House of Representatives, on February 12, 1848 — one who had just voted that the war with Mexico was unnecessary and uncon- stitutional, and who now based his views of the rights attaching by the conquest on the rights of revolution. He said :

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better.

" Tliis is a most valuable and most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.

an existing government may choose to exercise it.
 * ' Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of

'* Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, putting down a minority intermingled with or near about them who oppose their movements.

"Such a minority was precisely the case of the Tories of the Revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.*'

Who, think you, my countrymen, were these spokesmen ?

The one who thus glorified the Union was the Kentucky boy who had moved to Mississippi, and was about to lead her soldiers under the Stars and Stripes in battle, and who now fills the grave of a dis- franchised citizen. The other who thus held up revolution as the right which was " to liberate the world'* was Abraham Lincoln, the Kentucky boy who moved to Illinois, and who is now hailed as "the defender and preserver of the nation."

BOTH DAVIS AND LINCOLN REVOLUTIONISTS.

Success has elevated the one to a high niche in Fame's proud