Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/28

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

— if, indeed, our words be necessary — we will rally the people, the loyal people, of the whole country. They will pour forth their treasure, their money, their men, \nthout stint, without measure. Th' most peaceable man in this body may stamp his foot upon this Senate-chamber floor, as of old a warrior and a senator did, and from that single stamp there will spring forth armed legions.

Shall one battle determine the fate of an em- pire ? or the loss of one thousand men, or twenty thousand; or one hundred million dollars, or five hundred million dollars? In a year's peace, in ten years, at most, of peaceful progress, we can restore them all. There will be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of af- fection. There will be some privation; there will be some loss of luxury; there will be some- what more need for labor to procure the necessa- ries of life. When that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country, the Un- ion, the Constitution, free government — with these there will return all the blessings of well- ordered civilization ; the path of the country will be a career of greatness and of glory such as, in the olden time, our fathers saw in the dim visions of years yet to come, and such as would have been ours now, to-day, if it had not been for the treason for which the senator too often seeks to apologize !

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