Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/89

 LAMAR

live together under a common government, form- ing unitedly but a single member of the great family of nations, shall we not now at last en- deavor to grow toward each other once more in heart, as we are indissolubly linked to each Dther in fortunes ? Shall we not, while honoring the memory of this great champion of liberty, this feeling sympathizer with human sorrow, this earnest pleader for the exercise of human tenderness and heavenly charity, lay aside the concealments which serve only to perpetuate misunderstandings and distrust, and frankly confess that on both sides we most earnestly desire to be one — one not merely in political organization; one not merely in community of language, and literature, and traditions, and country ; but more and better than all that, one also in feeling and in heart ?

Am I mistaken in this? Do the concealments of which I speak still cover animosities, which neither time nor reflection nor the march of events have yet sufficed to subdue? I can not believe it. Since I have been here I have scruti- nized your sentiments, as expressed not merely in public debate, but in the abandon of personal confidence. I know well the sentiments of these my Southern friends, whose hearts are so in- folded that the feeling of each is the feeling of all; and I see on both sides only the seeming of a constraint which each apparently hesitates to dismiss.

The South — prostrate, exhausted, drained of

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