Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/79

 GREELEY

than is given through all my acts and words. From the hour of Lee's surrender down to this moment, no Southern man has yver hinted to me an expectation, hope, or wish that the rebel debt, whether Confederate or State, should be assumed or paid by the Union, and no Southern man who could be elected to a legislature or made colonel of a militia regiment, has suggested the pension of the rebel soldiers, or any of them, even as a remote possibility.

All who nominated me were perfectly aware that I had upheld and justified Federal legisla- tion to repress Kuklux conspiracy and outrage, tho I have long ago insisted as strenuously as T do now that complete amnesty and general oblivion of the bloody and hateful past would do more for the suppression and utter extinction of such outrages than all the force bills and suspensions of habeas corpus ever devised by man. Wrong and crime must be suppressed and punished, but far wiser and nobler is the legis- lation, the policy, by which they are prevented.

From those who support me in the South I have heard but one demand — justice; but one desire — reconciliation. They wish to be heartily reunited with the North on any terms which do not involve the surrender of their manhood. They ask that they should be regarded and treated by the Federal authorities as citizens, not as culprits, so long as they obey and uphold 3very law consistent with eciuality and right. They desire a rule which, alike for white aud

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