Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/65

 very generosity will be to them the source of the bitterest disappointment. As long as they are excluded, they may still find some satisfaction in the delusion of being considered men of dangerous importance. Their very disabilities they look upon to-day as a recognition of their power. They may still make themselves and others believe that, were the Southern people only left free in their choice, they would eagerly raise them again to the highest honors.

So much for the first exception. Now to the second. It excludes from the benefit of this act all those who were officers of the army or of the navy and then joined the Rebellion. Why exclude that class of persons? I have heard the reason very frequently stated upon the floor of the Senate; it is because those men had been educated at the public expense, and their turning against the government was therefore an act of peculiar faithlessness and black ingratitude. That might appear a very argument at first sight. But I ask you was it not one of the very first acts of this administration to appoint one of the most prominent and conspicuous of that class to a very lucrative and respectable public office? I mean General Longstreet. He had obtained his military education at the expense of the American people. He was one of the wards, one of the pets of the American Republic, and then he turned against it as a rebel. Whatever of faithlessness, whatever of black ingratitude