surrounded by the most perplexing difficulties and on the brink of new disasters, they promptly swept all the resentments of the past out of their way and stretched out their hands to us with the very fullest measure of generosity, anxious, eager, to lift us up from our prostration?”
Sir, will not this do something to dispel those mists of error and prejudice which are still clouding the Southern mind? I ask again, will it not be well to add to the sad memories of the past which forever will live in their minds, this cheering experience, so apt to prepare them for the harmony of a better and common future?
No, sir; I would not have the past forgotten, but I would have its history completed and crowned by an act most worthy of a great, noble and wise people. By all the means which we have in our hands, I would make even those who have sinned against this Republic see in its flag, not the symbol of their lasting degradation, but of rights equal to all; I would make them feel in their hearts, that in its good and evil fortunes their rights and interests are bound up just as ours are, and that therefore its peace, its welfare, its honor and its greatness may and ought to be as dear to them as they are to us.
I do not, indeed, indulge in the delusion that this act alone will remedy all the evils which we now deplore. No, it will not; but it will be a powerful appeal to the very best instincts and impulses of human nature; it will, like a warm ray of sunshine in springtime, quicken and call to light the germs of good intention wherever they exist; it will give new courage, confidence and inspiration to the well-disposed; it will weaken the power of the mischievous, by stripping of their pretexts and exposing in their nakedness the wicked designs they still may cherish; it will light anew the beneficent glow of fraternal feeling and of National spirit; for, sir, your good sense as well
