Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/27

 EDWARD D. BAKER

��They will have their courts still; they will have their ballot-boxes still ; they will have their elections still; they will have their representa- tives upon this floor still ; they wiL have taxation and representation still ; they will have the writ of habeas corpus still ; they will have every priv- ilege they ever had and all we desire. When the Confederate armies are scattered; when their leaders are banished from power; when the peo- ple return to a late repentant sense of the wrong they have done to a government they never felt but in benignancy and blessing, — then the Con- stitution made for all will be felt by all, like the descending rains from heaven which bless all alike. Is that subjugation ? To restore what was, as it was, for the benefit of the whole coun- try and of the whole human race, is all we de- sire and all we can have.

Sir, how can we retreat? Sir, how can we make peace? Who shall treat? What commis- sioners? Who would go? Upon what terms? Where is to be your boundary line? Where the end of the principles we shall have to give ap? What will become of constitutional gov- ernment? What will become of public liberty? What of past glories? What of future hopes? Shall we sink into the insignificance of the grave — a degraded, defeated, emasculated peo- ple, frightened by the results of one battle, and scared at the visions raised by the imagination of the senator from Kentucky upon this floor? No, sir ; a thousand times no, sir ! We will rally

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