ll she make this vision, on
which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat
and delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for
comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not
refuse to accept in frankness and sincerity this message of good will
and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this
very society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, be verified in
its fullest sense, when he said: "Standing hand to hand and clasping
hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens
of the same country, members of the same government, united, all united
now and united forever." There have been difficulties, contentions, and
controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment,

"Those opened eyes,
Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual, well beseeming ranks,
March all one way."

DANIEL O'CONNELL[50]

WENDELL PHILLIPS

I do not think I exaggerate when I say that never since God made
Demosthenes has He made a man better fitted for a great work than He did
Daniel O'Connell.

You may say that I am partial to my hero, but John Randolph of Roanoke,
who hated an Irishman almost as much as he did a Yankee, when he got to
London and heard O'Connell, the old slaveholder threw up his hands and
exclaimed, "This is the man, those are the lips, the most eloquent that
speak English in my day," and I think he was right.

Webster could address a bench of judges; Everett could charm a college;
Choate could delude a jury; Clay could magnetize a senate; and Tom
Corwin could hold the mob in his right hand, but no one of these men
could do more than this one thing. The wonder about O'Connell was that
he could out-talk Corwin, he could charm a college better than Everett,
and leave Henry Clay himself far behind in magnetizing a senate.

It has been my privilege to have heard all the great orators of America
who have become singularly famed about the world's circumference. I know
what was the majesty of Webster; I know what it was to melt under the
magnetism of Henry Clay; I have seen eloquence in the iron logic of
Calhoun; but O'Connell was Webster, Clay, and Calhoun in one. Before the
courts, logic; at the bar of the senate, unanswerable and dignified; on
the platform,