Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/106

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

recollections of the Revolution ; filled with proud and tender memories of the sacred past; filled with the legends of liberty ; a year in which the sons of freedom will drink from the fountain of enthusiasm; a year in which the people call for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the field ; a year in which we call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the tongue of slander — a man that has snatched the mask of democracy from the hideous face of rebellion — a man who, like an intellectual athlete, stood in the arena of de- bate, challenged all comers, and who, up to the present moment, is a total stranger to defeat.

Like an armed .warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lances full and fair against the brazen foreheads of every defamer of his country and maligner of its honor.

For the Republican party to desert a gallant man now is worse than if an army should desert their general upon the field of battle.

James G. Blaine is now, and has been for years, the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republic. I call it sacred because no human being can stand beneath its folds without be- coming, and without remaining, free.

Gentlemen of the Convention, in the name of

the great Republic, the only republic that ever

existed upon this earth ; in the name of all her

defenders and of all her supporters ; in the name

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