ed as the harbinger of that day for which
all good men pray, when the fallen pillars of the republic shall be
restored without violence or the noise of words or the sound of the
hammer, each to its original place in the sacred temple of our
national liberties, thereby giving assurance to all the world that,
for the defense of the republic, it was not in vain that a million and
a half of men, the very elect of the earth, rushed to arms; that the
republic still lives, and will live for evermore, the sanctuary of an
inviolable justice, the refuge of liberty, and the imperishable
monument of the nation's dead, from the humblest soldier who perished
on the march, or went down amid the thunder and tempest of the dread
conflict, up through all the shining roll of heroes and patriots and
martyrs to the incorruptible and immortal Commander-in-chief, who fell
by an assassin's hand in the capital, and thus died that his country
might live."

The hour having arrived when, by understanding of the House, the
discussion should close, Mr. Stevens closed the debate with a short
speech. "I am glad," said he, "to see great unanimity among the Union
friends in this House on all the provisions of this joint resolution
except the third one. I am not very much gratified to see any division
among our friends on that which I consider the vital proposition of
them all. Without that, it amounts to nothing. I do not care the snap
of my finger whether it be passed or not if that be stricken out. I
should be sorry to find that that provision was stricken out, because,
before any portion of this can be put into operation, there will be,
if not a Herod, a worse than Herod elsewhere to obstruct our actions.
That side of the house will be filled with yelling secessionists and
hissing copper-heads. Give us the third section or give us nothing. Do
not balk us with the pretense of an amendment which throws the Union
into the hands of the enemy before it becomes consolidated. Do not, I
pray you, admit those who have slaughtered half a million of our
countrymen until their clothes are dried, and until they are reclad. I
do not wish to sit side by side with men whose garments smell of the
blood of my kindred. Gentlemen seem to forget the scenes that were
enacted here years ago. Many of you were not here. But my friend from
Ohio [Mr. Garfield] ought to have kept up his reading enough to have
been familiar with the history of those days, when the men that you