arkets for our cotton, tobacco, and sugar on the best
possible terms. We have had a vast majority of the higher offices of
both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and
sailors were drawn from the North. Again, from official documents, we
learn that a fraction over three-fourths of the revenue collected for
the support of the government has uniformly been raised from the North.

Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars
you must expend in a war with the North; with tens of thousands of your
sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon the
altar of your ambition--and for what, we ask again? Is it for the
overthrow of the American government, established by our common
ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on
the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity? And as such, I
must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been
repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots, in this
and other lands, that it is the best and freest government--the most
equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in
its measures, and the most aspiring in its principles, to elevate the
race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. Now, for you to
attempt to overthrow such a government as this, under which we have
lived for more than three-quarters of a century--in which we have gained
our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety, while the
elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity accompanied
with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed--is the height of
madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I neither lend my sanction nor
my vote.

FOOTNOTE:

[41] Delivered at the Georgia State Convention, January, 1861.

THE DEATH OF GRADY

JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES

Oh, brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a season thy precious
dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but we fling back
against all our brightening skies the thoughtless speech that calls thee
dead! God reigns and His purpose lives, and although these brave lips
are silent here, the seeds sown in his incarnate eloquence will sprinkle
patriots through the years to come, and perpetuate thy living in a race
of nobler men!

But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we should speak
the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within the city that he
loved