on. Subsequently, at the
instance of Mr. Stevens himself, the second Article of the Resolution
was struck out by 72 yeas to 26 nays.
The proceedings in both Houses of Congress upon these propositions to
engraft upon the National Constitution a provision guaranteeing Freedom
to all men upon our soil, were now interrupted by the death of one who
would almost have been willing to die twice over, if, by doing so, he
could have hastened their adoption.
Owen Lovejoy, the life-long apostle of Abolitionism, the fervid
gospeller of Emancipation, was dead; and it seemed almost the irony of
Fate that, at such a time, when Emancipation most needed all its friends
to make it secure, its doughtiest champion should fall.
But perhaps the eloquent tributes paid to his memory, in the Halls of
Congress, helped the Cause no less. They at least brought back to the
public mind the old and abhorrent tyrannies of the Southern Slave power;
how it had sought not not only to destroy freedom of Action, but freedom
of Speech, and hesitated not to destroy human Life with these; reminded
the Loyal People of the Union of much that was hateful, from which they
had escaped; and strengthened the purpose of Patriots to fix in the
chief corner-stone of the Constitution, imperishable muniments of human
Liberty.
Lovejoy's brother had been murdered at Alton, Illinois, while
vindicating freedom of Speech and of the Press; and the blood of that
martyr truly became "the seed of the Church." Arnold--recalling a
speech of Owen Lovejoy's at Chicago, and a passage in it, descriptive of
the martyrdom,--said to the House, on this sad occasion: "I remember
that, after describing the scene of that death, in words--which stirred
every heart, he said he went a pilgrim to his brother's grave, and,
kneeling upon the sod beneath which sleeps that brother, he swore, by
the everlasting God, eternal hostility to African Slavery." And,
continued Arnold, "Well and nobly has he kept that oath."
Washburne, too, reminded the House of the memorable episode in that very
Hall when, (April 5, 1860), the adherents of Slavery crowding around
Lovejoy with fierce imprecations and threats, seeking then and there to
prevent Free Speech, "he displayed that undaunted courage and matchless
bearing which extorted the admiration of even his most deadly foes."
"His"--continued the same speaker--"was the eloquence of Mirabeau, which
in the Tiers Etat and in the National Assembly made t
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