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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oration on the Life and Character of Henry
+Winter Davis, by John A. J. Creswell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis
+
+Author: John A. J. Creswell
+
+Release Date: July 16, 2007 [EBook #22084]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY WINTER DAVIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ORATION
+ON THE
+LIFE AND CHARACTER
+OF
+HENRY WINTER DAVIS,
+
+BY
+
+HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL.
+
+Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives,
+February 22, 1866.
+
+WASHINGTON:
+GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The death of Hon. HENRY WINTER DAVIS, for many years a distinguished
+Representative of one of the Baltimore congressional districts, created
+a deep sensation among those who had been associated with him in
+national legislation, and they deemed it fitting to pay to his memory
+unusual honors. They adopted resolutions expressive of their grief, and
+invited Hon. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL, a Senator of the United States from
+the State of Maryland, to deliver an oration on his life and character,
+in the hall of the House of Representatives, on the 22d of February, a
+day the recurrence of which ever gives increased warmth to patriotic
+emotions.
+
+The hall of the House was filled by a distinguished audience to listen
+to the oration. Before eleven o'clock the galleries were crowded in
+every part. The flags above the Speaker's desk were draped in black, and
+other insignia of mourning were exhibited. An excellent portrait of the
+late Hon. HENRY WINTER DAVIS was visible through the folds of the
+national banner above the Speaker's chair. As on the occasion of the
+oration on President LINCOLN by Hon. GEORGE BANCROFT, the Marine band
+occupied the ante-room of the reporters' gallery, and discoursed
+appropriate music.
+
+At twelve o'clock the senators entered, and the judges of the Supreme
+Court, preceded by Chief Justice Chase. Of the Cabinet Secretary Stanton
+and Secretary McCulloch were present. After prayer by the chaplain, the
+Declaration of Independence was read by Hon. EDWARD MCPHERSON, Clerk of
+the House. After the reading of the Declaration, followed by the playing
+of a dirge by the band, Hon. SCHUYLER COLFAX, Speaker of the House of
+Representatives, introduced the orator of the day, Hon. J. A. J.
+CRESWELL.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS
+
+OF
+
+HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX,
+
+SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
+
+
+Hon. SCHUYLER COLFAX, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said:
+
+LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The duty has been devolved upon me of introducing
+to you the friend and fellow-member, here, of HENRY WINTER DAVIS, and I
+shall detain you but a moment from his address, to which you will listen
+with saddened interest.
+
+The world always appreciates and honors courage: the courage of
+Christianity, which sustained martyrs in the amphitheatre, at the stake,
+and on the rack; the courage of Patriotism, which inspired millions in
+our own land to realize the historic fable of Curtius, and to fill up
+with their own bodies, if need be, the yawning chasm which imperiled the
+republic; the courage of Humanity, which is witnessed in the pest-house
+and the hospital, at the death-bed of the homeless and the prison-cell
+of the convict. But there is a courage of Statesmen, besides; and nobly
+was it illustrated by the statesman whose national services we
+commemorate to-day. Inflexibly hostile to oppression, whether of slaves
+on American soil or of republicans struggling in Mexico against
+monarchical invasion, faithful always to principle and liberty,
+championing always the cause of the down-trodden, fearless as he was
+eloquent in his avowals, he was mourned throughout a continent; and from
+the Patapsco to the Gulf the blessings of those who had been ready to
+perish followed him to his tomb. It is fitting, therefore, though dying
+a private citizen, that the nation should render him such marked and
+unusual honors in this hall, the scene of so many of his intellectual
+triumphs; and I have great pleasure in introducing to you, as the orator
+of the day, Hon. J. A. J. CRESWELL, his colleague in the thirty-eighth
+Congress, and now Senator from the State of Maryland.
+
+
+
+
+ORATION
+
+OF
+
+HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL.
+
+
+MY COUNTRYMEN: On the 22d day of February, 1732, God gave to the world
+the highest type of humanity, in the person of George Washington.
+Combining within himself the better qualities of the soldier, sage,
+statesman, and patriot, alike brave, wise, discreet, and incorruptible,
+the common consent of mankind has awarded him the incomparable title of
+Father of his Country. Among all nations and in every clime the richest
+treasures of language have been exhausted in the effort to transmit to
+posterity a faithful record of his deeds. For him unfading laurels are
+secure, so long as letters shall survive and history shall continue to
+be the guide and teacher of civilized men. The whole human race has
+become the self-appointed guardian of his fame, and the name of
+Washington will be ever held, over all the earth, to be synonymous with
+the highest perfection attainable in public or private life, and
+coeternal with that immortal love to which reason and revelation have
+together toiled to elevate human aspirations--the love of liberty,
+restrained and guarded by law.
+
+But in the presence of the Omnipotent how insignificant is the proudest
+and the noblest of men! Even Washington, who alone of his kind could
+fill that comprehensive epitome of General Henry Lee, so often on our
+lips, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
+countrymen," was allowed no exemption from the common lot of mortals. In
+the sixty-eighth year of his age he, too, paid the debt of nature.
+
+The dread announcement of his demise sped over the land like a
+pestilence, burdening the very air with mourning, and carrying
+inexpressible sorrow to every household and every heart. The course of
+legislation was stopped in mid career to give expression to the grief of
+Congress, and by resolution, approved January 6, 1800, the 22d of
+February of that year was devoted to national humiliation and
+lamentation. This is, then, as well a day of sorrow as a day of
+rejoicing.
+
+More recent calamities also remind us that death is universal king. Just
+ten days ago our great historian pronounced in this hall an impartial
+judgment upon the earthly career of him who, as savior of his country,
+will be counted as the compeer of Washington. Scarce have the orator's
+lingering tones been mellowed into silence, scarce has the glowing page
+whereon his words were traced lost the impress of his passing hand, yet
+we are again called into the presence of the Inexorable to crown one
+more illustrious victim with sacrificial flowers. Having taken up his
+lifeless body, as beautiful as the dead Absalom, and laid it in the tomb
+with becoming solemnity, we have assembled in the sight of the world to
+do deserved honor to the name and memory of HENRY WINTER DAVIS, a native
+of Annapolis, in the State of Maryland, but always proudly claiming to
+be no less than a citizen of the United States of America.
+
+We have not convened in obedience to any formal custom, requiring us to
+assume an empty show of bereavement, in order that we may appear
+respectful to the departed. We who knew HENRY WINTER DAVIS are not
+content to clothe ourselves in the outward garb of grief, and call the
+semblance of mourning a fitting tribute to the gifted orator and
+statesman, so suddenly snatched from our midst in the full glory of his
+mental and bodily strength. We would do more than "bear about the
+mockery of woe." Prompted by a genuine affection, we desire to ignore
+all idle and merely conventional ceremonies, and permit our stricken
+hearts to speak their spontaneous sorrow.
+
+Here, then, where he sat for eight years as a Representative of the
+people; where friends have trooped about him, and admiring crowds have
+paid homage to his genius; where grave legislators have yielded
+themselves willing captives to his eloquence, and his wise counsel has
+moulded, in no small degree, the law of a great nation, let us, in
+dealing with what he has left us, verify the saying of Bacon, "Death
+openeth the good fame and extinguished envy." Remembering that he was a
+man of like passions and equally fallible with ourselves, let us review
+his life in a spirit of generous candor, applaud what is good, and try
+to profit by it; and if we find aught of ill, let us, so far as justice
+and truth will permit, cover it with the vail of charity and bury it out
+of sight forever. So may our survivors do for us.
+
+The subject of this address was born on the 16th of August, 1817.
+
+His father, Rev. Henry Lyon Davis, of the Protestant Episcopal church,
+was president of St. John's College at Annapolis, Maryland, and rector
+of St. Ann's parish. He was of imposing person, and great dignity and
+force of character. He was, moreover, a man of genius, and of varied and
+profound learning, eminently versed in mathematics and natural sciences,
+abounding in classical lore, endowed with a vast memory, and gifted with
+a concise, clear, and graceful style; rich and fluent in conversation,
+but without the least pretension to oratory and wholly incapable of
+_extempore_ speaking. He was removed from the presidency of St. John's
+by a board of democratic trustees because of his federal politics; and,
+years afterward, he gave his son his only lesson in politics at the end
+of a letter, addressed to him when at Kenyon College, in this laconic
+sentence: "My son, beware of the follies of Jacksonism."
+
+His mother was Jane Brown Winter, a woman of elegant accomplishments and
+of great sweetness of disposition and purity of life. It might be
+truthfully said of her, that she was an exemplar for all who knew her.
+She had only two children, Henry Winter, and Jane, who married Rev.
+Edward Syle.
+
+The education of Henry Winter began very early, at home, under the care
+of his aunt, Elizabeth Brown Winter, who entertained the most rigid and
+exacting opinions in regard to the training of children, but who was
+withal a noble woman. He once playfully said, "I could read before I was
+four years old, though much against my will." When his father was
+removed from St. John's, he went to Wilmington, Delaware, but some time
+elapsed before he became settled there. Meanwhile, Henry Winter remained
+with his aunt in Alexandria, Virginia. He afterward went to Wilmington,
+and was there instructed under his father's supervision. In 1827 his
+father returned to Maryland and settled in Anne Arundel county.
+
+After reaching Anne Arundel, Henry Winter became so much devoted to
+out-door life that he gave small promise of scholarly proficiency. He
+affected the sportsman, and became a devoted disciple of Nimrod;
+accompanied always by one of his father's slaves he roamed the country
+with a huge old fowling-piece on his shoulder, burning powder in
+abundance, but doing little damage otherwise. While here he saw much of
+slaves and slavery, and what he saw impressed him profoundly, and laid
+the foundation for those opinions which he so heroically and constantly
+defended in all his after-life. Referring to this period, he said long
+afterward, "My familiar association with the slaves while a boy gave me
+great insight into their feelings and views. They spoke with freedom
+before a boy what they would have repressed before a man. They were far
+from indifferent to their condition; they felt wronged and sighed for
+freedom. They were attached to my father and loved me, yet they
+habitually spoke of the day when God would deliver them."
+
+He subsequently went to Alexandria, and was sent to school at Howard,
+near the Theological Seminary, and from Howard he went to Kenyon
+College, in Ohio, in the fall of 1833.
+
+Kenyon was then in the first year of the presidency of Bishop
+McIlvaine. It was the centre of vast forests, broken only by occasional
+clearings, excepting along the lines of the National road, and the Ohio
+river and its navigable tributaries. In this wilderness of nature, but
+garden of letters, he remained, at first in the grammar school, and then
+in the college, until the 6th of September, 1837; when at twenty years
+of age he took his degree and diploma, decorated with one of the
+honorary orations of his class, on the great day of commencement. His
+subject was "Scholastic Philosophy."
+
+At the end of the Freshman year, a change in the college terms gave him
+a vacation of three months. Instead of spending it in idleness, as he
+might have done, and as most boys would have done, he availed himself of
+this interval to pursue and complete the studies of the Sophomore year,
+to which he had already given some attention in his spare moments. At
+the opening of the next session he passed the examination for the Junior
+class. Fortunately I have his own testimony and opinion as to this
+exploit, and I give them in his own language:
+
+     "It was a pretty sharp trial of resolution and dogged diligence,
+     but it saved me a year of college, and indurated my powers of study
+     and mental culture into a habit, and perhaps enabled me to stay
+     long enough to graduate. I do not recommend the example to those
+     who are independently situated, for learning must fall like the
+     rain in such gentle showers as to sink in if it is to be fruitful;
+     when poured on the richest soil in torrents, it not only runs off
+     without strengthening vegetation, but washes away the soil itself."
+
+His college life was laborious and successful. The regular studies were
+prosecuted with diligence, and from them he derived great profit, not
+merely in knowledge, but in what is of vastly more account, the habit
+and power of mental labor. These studies were wrought into his mind and
+made part of the intellectual substance by the vigorous collisions of
+the societies in which he delighted. For these mimic conflicts he
+prepared assiduously, not in writing, but always with a carefully
+deduced logical analysis and arrangement of the thoughts to be developed
+in the order of argument, with a brief note of any quotation, or image,
+or illustration, on the margin at the appropriate place. From that brief
+he spoke. And this was his only method of preparation for all the great
+conflicts in which he took part in after life. He never wrote out his
+speeches beforehand.
+
+Speaking of his feelings at the end of his college life, he sadly said:
+
+     "My father's death had embittered the last days of the year 1836,
+     and left me without a counsellor. I knew something of books,
+     nothing of men, and I went forth like Adam among the wild beasts of
+     the unknown wilderness of the world. My father had dedicated me to
+     the ministry, but the day had gone when such dedications determined
+     the lives of young men. Theology as a grave topic of historic and
+     metaphysical investigation I delighted to pursue, but for the
+     ministry I had no calling. I would have been idle if I could, for I
+     had no ambition, but I had no fortune and I could not beg or
+     starve."
+
+All who were acquainted with his temperament can well imagine what a
+gloomy prospect the future presented to him, when its contemplation
+wrung from his stoical taciturnity that touching confession.
+
+The truth is, that from the time he entered college he was continually
+cramped for want of money. The negroes ate everything that was produced
+on the farm in Anne Arundel, a gastronomic feat which they could easily
+accomplish, without ever having cause to complain of a surfeit. His
+aunt, herself in limited circumstances, by a careful husbandry of her
+means, managed to keep him at college. Kenyon was then a manual-labor
+institution, and the boys were required to sweep their own rooms, make
+their own beds and fires, bring their own water, black their own boots,
+if they ever were blacked, and take an occasional turn at grubbing in
+the fields or working on the roads. There was no royal road to learning
+known at Kenyon in those days. Through all this Henry Winter Davis
+passed, bearing his part manfully; and knowing how heavily he taxed the
+slender purse of his aunt, he denied himself with such rigor that he
+succeeded, incredible as it may appear, in bringing his total expenses,
+including boarding and tuition, within the sum of eighty dollars per
+annum.
+
+His father left an estate consisting only of some slaves, which were
+equally apportioned between himself and sister. Frequent applications
+were made to purchase his slaves, but he never could be induced to sell
+them, although the proceeds would have enabled him to pursue his studies
+with ease and comfort. He rather sought and obtained a tutorship, and
+for two years he devoted to law and letters only the time he could
+rescue from its drudgery. In a letter, written in April, 1839, replying
+to the request of a relative who offered to purchase his slave Sallie,
+subject to the provisions of his father's will, which manumitted her if
+she would go to Liberia, he said: "But if she is under my control." (he
+did not know that she had been set to his share,) "I will _not consent
+to the sale_, though he wishes to purchase her subject to the will." And
+so Sallie was not sold, and Henry Winter Davis, the tutor, toiled on and
+waited. He never would hold any of his slaves under his authority, never
+would accept a cent of their wages, and tendered each and all of them a
+deed of absolute manumission whenever the law would allow. Tell me, was
+that man sincere in his opposition to slavery? How many of those who
+have since charged him with being selfish and reckless in his advocacy
+of emancipation would have shown equal devotion to principle? Not one;
+not one. Ah! the man who works and suffers for his opinions' sake places
+his own flesh and blood in pledge for his integrity.
+
+Notwithstanding his irksome and exacting duties, he kept his eye
+steadily on the University of Virginia, and read, without assistance, a
+large part of its course. He delighted especially in the pungent pages
+of Tacitus and the glowing and brilliant, dignified and elevated epic of
+the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. These were favorites which
+never lost their charm for him. When recently on a visit at my house, he
+stated in conversation that he often exercised himself in translating
+from the former, and in transferring the thoughts of the latter into his
+own language, and he contended that the task had dispelled the popular
+error that Gibbon's style is swollen and declamatory; for he alleged
+that every effort at condensation had proved a failure, and that at the
+end of his labors the page he had attempted to compress had always
+expanded to the eye, when relieved of the weighty and stringent fetters
+in which the gigantic genius of Gibbon had bound it.
+
+About this time--the only period when doubts beset him--he was tempted
+by a very advantageous offer to settle in Mississippi. He determined to
+accept; but some kind spirit interposed to prevent the despatch of the
+final letter, and he remained in Alexandria. At last his aunt--second
+mother as she was--sold some land and dedicated the proceeds to his
+legal studies. He arrived at the University of Virginia in October,
+1839.
+
+From that moment he entered actively and unremittingly on his course of
+intellectual training. While a boy he had become familiar, under the
+guidance of his father, with the classics of Addison, Johnson, Swift,
+Cowper, and Pope, and he now plunged into the domain of history. He had
+begun at Kenyon to make flanking forays into the fields of historic
+investigation which lay so invitingly on each side of the regular march
+of his college course. As he acquired more information and confidence,
+these forays became more extensive and profitable. It was then the
+transition period from the shallow though graceful pages of Gillies,
+Rollin, Russel, and Tytler, and the rabbinical agglomerations of
+Shuckford and Prideaux to the modern school of free, profound, and
+laborious investigation, which has reared immortal monuments to its
+memory in the works of Hallam, Macaulay, Grote, Bancroft, Prescott,
+Motley, Niebuhr, Bunsen, Schlosser, Thiers, and their fellows. But of
+the last-named none except Niebuhr's History of Rome and Hallam's Middle
+Ages were accessible to him in the backwoods of Ohio. Cousin's Course of
+the History of Modern Philosophy was just glittering in the horizon, and
+Gibbon shone alone as the morning star of the day of historic research,
+which he had heralded so long. The French Revolution he had seen only as
+presented in Burke's brilliant vituperation and Scott's Tory diatribe. A
+republican picture of the great republican revolution, the fountain of
+all that is now tolerable in Europe, had not then been presented on any
+authentic and comprehensive page.
+
+Not only these, but all historical works of value which the English,
+French, and German languages can furnish, with an immense amount of
+other intellectual pabulum, were eagerly gathered, consumed with
+voracious appetite, and thoroughly digested. Supplied at last with the
+required means, he braced himself for a systematic curriculum of law,
+and pursued it with marked constancy and success. While at the
+university he also took up the German and French languages and mastered
+them, and he perfected his scholarship in Latin and Greek. Until his
+death he read all these languages with great facility and accuracy, and
+he always kept his Greek Testament lying on his table for easy
+reference.
+
+After a thorough course at the university, Mr. DAVIS entered upon the
+practice of the law in Alexandria, Virginia. He began his profession
+without much to cheer him; but he was not the man to abandon a pursuit
+for lack of courage. His ability and industry attracted attention, and
+before long he had acquired a respectable practice, which thenceforth
+protected him from all annoyances of a pecuniary nature. He toiled with
+unwearied assiduity, never appearing in the trial of a cause without the
+most elaborate and exhaustive preparation, and soon became known to his
+professional brethren as a valuable ally and a formidable foe. His
+natural aptitude for public affairs made itself manifest in due time,
+and some articles which he prepared on municipal and State politics gave
+him great reputation. He also published a series of newspaper essays,
+wherein he dared to question the divinity of slavery; and these, though
+at the time thought to be not beyond the limits of free discussion, were
+cited against him long after as evidence that he was a heretic in
+pro-slavery Virginia and Maryland.
+
+On the 30th of October, 1845, he married Miss Constance T. Gardiner,
+daughter of William C. Gardiner, Esq., a most accomplished and charming
+young lady, as beautiful and as fragile as a flower. She lived to
+gladden his heart for but a few years, and then,
+
+    "Like a lily drooping,
+    She bowed her head and died."
+
+In 1850 he came to Baltimore, and immediately a high position,
+professional, social, and political, was awarded him. His forensic
+efforts at once commanded attention and enforced respect. The young men
+of most ability and promise gathered about him, and made him the centre
+of their chosen circle. He became a prominent member of the whig party,
+and was everywhere known as the brilliant orator and successful
+controvertist of the Scott campaign of 1852. The whig party, worn out by
+its many gallant but unsuccessful battles, was ultimately gathered to
+its fathers, and Mr. DAVIS led off in the American movement. He was
+elected successively to the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and
+thirty-sixth Congresses by the American party from the fourth district
+of Maryland. He supported with great ability and zeal Mr. Fillmore for
+the Presidency in 1856, and in 1860 accepted John Bell as the candidate
+of his party, though he clearly divined and plainly announced that the
+great battle was really between Abraham Lincoln, as the representative
+of the national sentiment on the one hand, and secession and disunion,
+in all their shades and phases, on the other. To his seat in the
+thirty-eighth Congress he was elected by the Unconditional Union party.
+
+Since the adjournment of the thirty-eighth Congress he has been
+profoundly concerned in the momentous public questions now pressing for
+adjustment, and he did not fail on several fitting occasions to give his
+views at length to the public. Nevertheless, he frequently alluded to
+his earnest desire to retreat for awhile from the perplexing annoyances
+of public life. He had determined upon a long visit to Europe in the
+coming spring, and had almost concluded the purchase of a delightful
+country-seat, where he hoped to recruit his weary brain for years to
+come from the exhaustless riches of nature. When the thirty-ninth
+Congress met, and he read of his old companions in the work of
+legislation again gathering in their halls and committee-rooms, I think,
+for at least a day or two, he felt a longing to be among them. During
+the second week of the session he again entered this hall, but only as a
+spectator. The greeting he received--so general, spontaneous, and
+cordial--from gentlemen on both sides of the House, touched his heart
+most sensibly. The crowd that gathered about him was go great that the
+party was obliged to retire to one of the larger ante-rooms for fear of
+interrupting the public business. A delightful interview among old
+friends was the reward. He was charmed with his reception, and mentioned
+it to me with intense satisfaction. Little did you, gentlemen, then
+think that between you and a beloved friend the curtain that shrouds
+eternity was so soon to be interposed. His sickness was of about a
+week's duration. Until the morning of the day preceding his death, his
+friends never doubted his recovery. Later in the day very unfavorable
+symptoms appeared, and all then realized his danger. In the evening his
+wife spoke to him of a visit, for one day, which he had projected, to
+his old friend, Mrs. S. F. Du Pont, when he replied, in the last words
+he ever uttered, "It shows the folly of making plans even for a day." He
+continued to fail rapidly in strength until two o'clock on the afternoon
+of Saturday, the 30th of December, when HENRY WINTER DAVIS, in the
+forty-ninth year of his age, appeared before his God. His death
+confirmed the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, who declared, "Marshaling
+all the horrors of death, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I
+find not anything therein able to daunt the _courage_ of a _man_, much
+less a _well-resolved Christian_." He passed away so quietly that no one
+knew the moment of his departure. His was--
+
+                "A death, life sleep;
+    A gentle wafting to immortal life."
+
+Mr. DAVIS left a widow, Mrs. Nancy Davis, a daughter of John B. Morris,
+Esq., of Baltimore, and two little girls, who were the idols of his
+heart. He was married a second time on the 26th of January, 1857. His
+nearest surviving collateral relation is the Hon. David Davis, associate
+justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who is his only
+cousin-german. To all these afflicted hearts may God be most gracious.
+
+Thus has the country lost one of the most able, eloquent, and fearless
+of its defenders. Called from this life at an age when most men are just
+beginning to command the respect and confidence of their fellows, he has
+left, nevertheless, a fame as wide as our vast country. He died nineteen
+years younger than Washington and eight years younger than Lincoln. At
+forty-eight years of age Washington had not seen the glories of Yorktown
+even in a vision, nor had Lincoln dreamed of the presidential chair; and
+if they had died at that age they would have been comparatively unknown
+in history. Doubtless God would have raised up other leaders, if they
+had been wanting, to conduct the great American column, which He has
+chosen to be the bodyguard of human rights and hopes, onward among the
+nations and the centuries; but in that event the 12th and 22d days of
+February would not be, as they now are, held sacred in our calendar.
+
+Mr. DAVIS had gathered into his house the literary treasures of four
+languages, and had reveled in spirit with the wise men of the ages. He
+had conned his books as jealously as a miner peering for gold, and had
+not left a panful of earth unwashed. He had collected the purest ore of
+truth and the richest gems of thought, until he was able to crown
+himself with knowledge. Blessed with a felicitous power of analysis and
+a prodigious memory, he ransacked history, ancient and modern, sacred
+and profane; science, pure, empirical, and metaphysical; the arts,
+mechanical and liberal; the professions, law, divinity, and medicine;
+poetry and the miscellanies of literature; and in all these great
+departments of human lore he moved as easily as most men do in their
+particular province. His habit was not only to read but to reread the
+best of his books frequently, and he was continually supplying himself
+with better editions of his favorites. In current, playful conversation
+with friends he quoted right and left, in brief and at length, from the
+classics, ancient and modern, and from the drama, tragic and comic. In
+his speeches, on the contrary, he quoted but little, and only when he
+seemed to run upon a thought already expressed by some one else with
+singular force and appositeness. He was the best scholar I ever met for
+his years and active life, and was surpassed by very few, excepting mere
+book-worms. He has for many years been engaged in collecting extracts
+from newspapers, containing the leading facts and public documents of
+the day; but he never commonplaced from books. His thesaurus was his
+head.
+
+I have but little personal knowledge of Mr. DAVIS as a lawyer. It was
+never my good fortune to be associated with him in the trial of a cause;
+nor have I ever been present when he was so engaged. But at the time of
+his death he filled a high position at the bar, and was chosen to lead
+against the most distinguished of his brethren. On public and
+constitutional questions, as distinguished from those involving only
+private rights, he was a host, and in the argument of the cases which
+grew out of the adoption of the new constitution of Maryland he won
+golden laurels, and drew extraordinary encomiums even from his opponents
+in that angry litigation. He was thoroughly read in the decisions of the
+federal courts, and especially in those declaring and defining
+constitutional principles.
+
+Possessed of a mind of remarkable power, scope, and activity; with an
+immense fund of precious information, ready to respond to any call he
+might make upon it, however sudden; wielding a system of logic formed in
+the severest school, and tried by long practice; gifted with a rare
+command of language and an eloquence well nigh superhuman; and withal
+graced with manners the most accomplished and refined, and a person
+unusually handsome, graceful, and attractive. Mr. DAVIS entered public
+life with almost unparalleled personal advantages. Having boldly
+presented himself before the most rigorous tribunal in the world, he
+proved himself worthy of its favor and attention. He soon rose to the
+front rank of debaters, and whenever he addressed the House all sides
+gave him a delighted audience.
+
+I shall not attempt a review of the topics discussed in the
+thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth Congresses. The day was fast coming when
+contests for the Speakership and battles over appropriation bills, ay,
+even the fierce struggle over Kansas, would sink into insignificance,
+and Mr. DAVIS, with that political prescience for which he was always
+remarkable, seemed to discern the first sign of the coming storm. The
+winds had been long sown, and now the whirlwind was to be reaped. The
+thirty-sixth Congress, which had opened so inauspiciously, and which his
+vote had saved from becoming a perpetuated bedlam, met for its second
+session on the 3d of December, 1860, with the clouds of civil war fast
+settling down upon the nation. In the hope that war might yet be
+averted, on the fourth day of the session, the celebrated committee of
+thirty-three was raised, with the lamented Corwin, of Ohio, as chairman,
+and Mr. DAVIS as the member from Maryland. When the committee reported,
+Mr. DAVIS sustained the majority report in an able speech, in which,
+after urging every argument in favor of the report, he boldly proclaimed
+his own views, and the duties of his State and country. In his speech of
+7th February, 1861, he said:
+
+     "I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate the already
+     too much inflamed state of the public mind; but I will say that the
+     Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance
+     thereof, _must be enforced_; and they who stand across the path of
+     that enforcement must either _destroy_ the _power_ of the _United
+     States_, or it will _destroy them_."
+
+For such utterances only a small part of the people of his State was on
+that day prepared. Seduced by the wish, they still believed that the
+Union could be preserved by fair and mutual concessions. They were on
+their knees praying for peace, ignorant that bloody war had already
+girded on his sword. His language was then deemed too harsh and
+unconciliatory, and hundreds, I among the number, denounced him in
+unmeasured terms. Before the expiration of three months events had
+demonstrated his wisdom and our folly, and other paragraphs from that
+same speech became the fighting creed of the Union men of Maryland. He
+further said, on that occasion:
+
+     "But, sir, there is one State I can speak for, and that is the
+     State of Maryland. Confident in the strength of this great
+     government to protect every interest, grateful for almost a century
+     of unalloyed blessings, she has fomented no agitation; she has done
+     no act to disturb the public peace; she has rested in the
+     consciousness that if there be wrong the Congress of the United
+     States will remedy it; and that none exists which revolution would
+     not aggravate.
+
+     "Mr. Speaker, I am here this day to speak, and I say that I do
+     speak, for the people of Maryland, who are loyal to the United
+     States; and that when my judgment is contested, I appeal to the
+     people for its accuracy, and I am ready to maintain it before them.
+
+     "In Maryland we are dull, and cannot comprehend the right of
+     secession. We do not recognize the right to make a revolution by a
+     vote. We do not recognize the right of Maryland to repeal the
+     Constitution of the United States, and if any convention there,
+     called by whatever authority, under whatever auspices, undertake to
+     inaugurate revolution in Maryland, their authority will be resisted
+     and defied in arms on the soil of Maryland, in the name and by the
+     authority of the Constitution of the United States."
+
+In January, 1861, the ensign of the Republic, while covering a mission
+of mercy, was fired on by traitors. In February Jefferson Davis said, at
+Stevenson, Alabama, "We will carry war where it is easy to advance,
+where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely
+populated cities." In March the thirty-sixth Congress, after vainly
+passing conciliatory resolutions by the score, among other things
+recommending the repeal of all personal liberty bills, declaring that
+there was no authority outside of the States where slavery was
+recognized to interfere with slaves or slavery therein, and proposing by
+two-thirds votes of both houses an amendment of the Constitution
+prohibiting any future amendment giving Congress power over slavery in
+the States, adjourned amid general terror and distress.
+
+Abraham Lincoln, having passed through the midst of his enemies,
+appeared at Washington in due time and delivered his inaugural, closing
+with these memorable words:
+
+     "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine,
+     is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail
+     you.
+
+     "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.
+     You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the
+     government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve,
+     protect, and defend' it.
+
+     "I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not
+     be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break,
+     our bonds of affection.
+
+     "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and
+     patriot grave to every living hearth and hearth-stone all over this
+     broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
+     touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our
+     nature."
+
+Words which, if human hearts do not harden into stone, through the long
+ages yet to come,
+
+    "Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
+    The deep damnation of his taking off."
+
+The appeal was spurned; and, in the face of its almost godlike
+gentleness, they who already gloried in their anticipated saturnalia of
+blood inhumanly and falsely stigmatized it as a declaration of war. The
+long-patient North, slow to anger, in its agony still cried, "My
+brother; oh, my brother!" It remained for that final, ineradicable
+infamy of Sumter to arouse the nation to arms! At last, to murder at one
+blow the hopes we had nursed so tenderly, they impiously dragged in the
+dust the glorious symbol of our national life and majesty, heaping
+dishonor upon it, and, like the sneering devil at the crucifixion,
+crying out, "Come and deliver thyself!" and then no man, with the heart
+of a man, who loved his country and feared his God, dared longer delay
+to prepare for that great struggle which was destined to rock the earth.
+
+Poor Maryland! cursed with slavery, doubly cursed with traitors! Mr.
+DAVIS had said that Maryland was loyal to the United States, and had
+pledged himself to maintain that position before the people. The time
+soon came for him to redeem his pledge. On the morning of the 15th of
+April the President issued his proclamation calling a special session of
+Congress, which made an extra election necessary in Maryland. Before the
+sun of that day had gone down, this card was promulgated:
+
+     _To the voters of the fourth congressional district of Maryland:_
+
+     I hereby announce myself as a candidate for the House of
+     Representatives of the 37th Congress of the United States of
+     America, upon the basis of the _unconditional maintenance of the
+     Union_.
+
+     Should my fellow-citizens of _like views_ manifest their preference
+     for a different candidate on _that basis_, it is not my purpose to
+     embarrass them.
+
+                                                        H. WINTER DAVIS.
+     APRIL 15, 1861.
+
+But dark days were coming for Baltimore. A mob, systematically
+organized in complicity with the rebels at Richmond and Harper's Ferry,
+seized and kept in subjection an unsuspecting and unarmed population
+from the 19th to the 24th of April. For six days murder and treason held
+joint sway; and at the conclusion of their tragedy of horrid barbarities
+they gave the farce of holding an election for members of the house of
+delegates.
+
+To show the spirit that moved Mr. DAVIS under this ordeal, I cite from
+his letter, written on the 28th, to Hon. William H. Seward, the
+following:
+
+     "I have been trying to collect the persons appointed scattered by
+     the storm, and to compel them to take their offices or to decline.
+
+     "I have sought men of undoubted courage and capacity for the places
+     vacated.
+
+     "We must show the secessionists that we are not frightened, but are
+     resolved to maintain the government in the exercise of all its
+     functions in Maryland.
+
+     "We have organized a guard, who will accompany the officers and
+     hold the public buildings against all the secessionists in
+     Maryland.
+
+     "A great reaction has set in. If we _now_ act promptly the day is
+     ours and the State is safe."
+
+These matters being adjusted, he immediately took the field for
+Congress on his platform against Mr. Henry May, conservative Union, and
+in the face of an opposition which few men have dared to encounter, he
+carried on, unremittingly from that time until the election on the 13th
+of June, the most brilliant campaign against open traitors, doubters,
+and dodgers, that unrivalled eloquence, courage, and activity could
+achieve. Everywhere, day and night, in sunshine and storm, in the
+market-houses, at the street corners, and in the public halls, his voice
+rang out clear, loud, and defiant for the "unconditional maintenance" of
+the Union. He was defeated, but he sanctified the name of _unconditional
+union_ in the vocabulary of every true Marylander. He gathered but 6,000
+votes out of 14,000, yet the result was a triumph which gave him the
+real fruits of victory; and he exclaimed to a friend, with laudable
+pride, "With six thousand of the workingmen of Baltimore on my side, won
+in such a contest, I defy them to take the State out of the Union."
+Though not elected, he never ceased his efforts. With us it was a
+struggle for homes, hearths, and lives. He said at Brooklyn:
+
+     "You see the conflagration from a distance; it blisters me at my
+     side. You can survive the integrity of the nation; we in Maryland
+     would live on the side of a gulf, perpetually tending to plunge
+     into its depths. It is for us life and liberty; it is for you
+     greatness, strength, and prosperity."
+
+Nothing appalled him; nothing deterred him. He said, at Baltimore, in
+1861:
+
+     "The War Department has been taught by the misfortune at Bull Run,
+     which has broken no power nor any spirit, which bowed no State nor
+     made any heart falter, which was felt as a humiliation that has
+     brought forth wisdom."
+
+He also said, speaking of the rebels, and foretelling his own fate, if
+they succeeded in Maryland:
+
+     "They have inaugurated an era of confiscations, proscriptions, and
+     exiles. Read their acts of greedy confiscation, their law of
+     proscriptions by the thousands. Behold the flying exiles from the
+     unfriendly soil of Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri."
+
+And so he worked on, never abating one jot of his uncompromising
+devotion to the Union, like a second Peter the Hermit, preaching a
+cause, as he believed, truly represented by insignia as sacred as the
+Cross, and for which no sacrifice, not even death, was too great.
+
+But his crowning glory was his leadership of the emancipation movement.
+The rebels, notwithstanding "My Maryland's" bloody welcome at South
+Mountain and Antietam, claimed that she must belong to their confederacy
+because of the homogeneousness of her institutions. They contended that
+the fetters of slavery formed a chain that stretched across the Potomac,
+and held in bondage not only 87,000 slaves, but 600,000 white people
+also. Their constant theme was "the deliverance" of Maryland. We
+resolved to break that last tie, and to take position unalterably on the
+side of the Union and freedom, and thus to deal the final blow to the
+cause and support of rebellion. We organized our little band, almost
+ridiculous from its want of numbers, early in 1863. A Sibley tent would
+have held our whole army. Our enemies laughed us to scorn, and the
+politicians would not accept our help on any terms, but denied us as
+earnestly as Peter denied his Lord. Mr. DAVIS was our acknowledged
+leader, and it was in the heat and fury of the contest which followed
+that our hearts were welded into permanent friendship. He was the
+platform maker, and he announced it in a few lines:
+
+     "A hearty support of the entire policy of the national
+     administration, including immediate emancipation by constitutional
+     means."
+
+It was very short, but it covered all the ground. The campaign opened
+by the publication of an address, written by Mr. DAVIS, to the people of
+Maryland, which, I venture to say, is unsurpassed by any state paper
+published in this age of able state papers for the warmth and vigor of
+its diction, and the lucidity and conclusiveness of its argumentation.
+It is a pamphlet of twenty pages, glowing throughout with the
+unmistakable marks of his genius and patriotism, and closing with these
+words of stirring cheer:
+
+     "We do not doubt the result, and expect, freed from the trammels
+     which now bind her, to see Maryland, at no distant day, rapidly
+     advancing in a course of unexampled prosperity with her sister
+     _free_ States of the _undivided_ and _indivisible_ Republic."
+
+Mr. DAVIS was ubiquitous. He was the life and soul of the whole contest.
+He arranged the order of battle, dictated the correspondence, wrote the
+important articles for the newspapers, and addressed all the concerted
+meetings. In short, neither his voice nor his pen rested in all the time
+of our travail. He would have no compromise; but rejected all overtures
+of the enemy short of unconditional surrender. On the Eastern Shore he
+spoke with irresistible power at Elkton, Easton, Salisbury, and Snow
+Hill, at each of the three last-named towns with a crowd of wondering
+"American citizens of African descent" listening to him from afar, and
+looking upon him as if they believed him to be the seraph Abdiel. His
+last appointment, in extreme southern Maryland, he filled on Friday,
+after which, bidding me a cordial God-speed, he descended from the
+stand, sprang into an open wagon awaiting him, travelled eighty miles
+through a raw night-air, reached Cambridge by daylight, and then crossed
+the Chesapeake, sixty miles, in time to close the campaign with one of
+his ringing speeches in Monument square, Baltimore, on Saturday night.
+In this, our first contest, we were completely victorious.
+
+But we had yet a weary way before us. The legislature had then to pass
+a law calling a convention. That law had to be approved by a majority of
+the people. Members of the convention had then to be elected in all
+parts of the State, and the Constitution which they adopted had to be
+carried by a majority of the popular vote. He allowed himself no
+reprieve from labor until all this had been accomplished. And when the
+rest of us, worn out by incessant toil, gladly sought rest, he went
+before the court of appeals to maintain everything that had been done
+against all comers, and did so triumphantly.
+
+Let free Maryland never forget the debt of eternal gratitude she owes to
+HENRY WINTER DAVIS.
+
+If oratory means the power of presenting thoughts by public and
+sustained speech to an audience in the manner best adapted to win a
+favorable decision of the question at issue, then Mr. DAVIS assuredly
+occupied the highest position as an orator. He always held his hearers
+in rapt attention until he closed, and then they lingered about to
+discuss with one another what they had heard. I have seen a promiscuous
+assembly, made up of friends and opponents, remain exposed to a beating
+rain for two hours rather than forego hearing him. Those who had heard
+him most frequently were always ready to make the greatest effort to
+hear him again. Even his bitterest enemies have been known to stand
+shivering on the street corners for a whole evening, charmed by his
+marvelous tongue. His stump efforts never fell below his high standard.
+He never condescended to a mere attempt to amuse. He always spoke to
+instruct, to convince, and to persuade through the higher and better
+avenues to favor. I never heard him deliver a speech that was not worthy
+of being printed and preserved. As a stump orator he was unapproachable,
+in my estimation, and I say that with a clear recollection of having
+heard, when a boy, that wonder of Yankee birth and southern development,
+S. S. Prentiss.
+
+Mr. DAVIS'S ripe scholarship promptly tendered to his thought the
+happiest illustrations and the most appropriate forms of expression. His
+brain had become a teeming cornucopia, whence flowed in exhaustless
+profusion the most beautiful flowers and the most substantial fruits;
+and yet he never indulged in excessive ornamentation. His taste was
+almost austerely chaste. His style was perspicuous, energetic, concise,
+and withal highly elegant. He never loaded his sentences with
+meretricious finery, or high-sounding, supernumerary words. When he did
+use the jewelry of rhetoric, he would quietly set a metaphor in his page
+or throw a comparison into his speech which would serve to light up with
+startling distinctness the colossal proportions of his argument. Of
+humor he had none; but his wit and sarcasm at times would glitter like
+the brandished cimeter of Saladin, and, descending, would cut as keenly.
+The pathetic he never attempted; but when angered by a malicious assault
+his invective was consuming, and his epithets would wound like pellets
+of lead. Although gallant to the graces of expression, he always
+compelled his rhetoric to act as handmaid to his dialectics.
+
+Style may sometimes be an exotic; but when it is, it is sure to partake
+more and more, as years increase, of the peculiarities of the soil
+wherein it is nurtured. But the style of Mr. DAVIS was indigenous and
+strongly marked by his individuality. Although he doubtless admired, and
+perhaps imitated, the condensation and dignity of Gibbon, yet it is
+certain that he carefully avoided the monotonous stateliness and the
+elaborate and ostentatious art of that most erudite historian. I look in
+vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the cynical Bolingbroke, or
+the gorgeous Burke. These were all to him intellectual giants; but
+giants of false belief and practice. Not even from Tacitus, upon whom he
+looked with the greatest favor, could he have acquired his burning and
+impressive diction.
+
+HENRY WINTER DAVIS was a man of faith, and believed in Christ and his
+fellow-man. His heart and mind were both nourished into their full
+dimensions under the fostering influences of our free institutions; so
+that, being reared a freeman, he thought and spake as became a freeman.
+No other land could have produced such dauntless courage and such heroic
+devotion to honest conviction in a public man; and even our land has
+produced but few men of his stamp and ability. His implicit faith in
+God's eternal justice, and his grand moral courage, imparted to him his
+proselyting zeal, and gave him that amazing, kindling power which
+enabled him to light the fires of enthusiasm wherever he touched the
+public mind.
+
+To show his power in extemporaneous debate, as well as his determined
+patriotism, I will introduce a passage from his speech of April 11,
+1864, delivered in the House of Representatives. You will remember that
+the end of the rebellion had not then appeared. Grant, with his
+invincible legions, had not started to execute that greatest military
+movement of modern times, by which, after months of bloody persistence,
+hurling themselves continually against what seemed the frowning front of
+destiny, they finally drove the enemy from his strongholds, made Fortune
+herself captive, and, binding her to their standards, held her there
+until the surrender of every rebel in arms closed the war amid the
+exultant plaudits of men and angels. Our hopes had not then grown into
+victory, and we looked forward anxiously to the terrible march from the
+Rappahannock to Richmond. Thinking that perhaps our army stood appalled
+before the great duty required of it, and that the people might be
+diverted from their purpose to crush the rebellion when they saw that it
+could only be accomplished at the cost of an ocean of human blood, a
+call was made on the floor of the American Congress for a recognition of
+the southern confederacy. Speaking for the nation, Mr. DAVIS said:
+
+     "But, Mr. Speaker, if it be said that a time may come when the
+     question of recognizing the southern confederacy will have to be
+     answered, I admit it. * * * * When the people, exhausted by
+     taxation, weary of sacrifices, drained of blood, betrayed by their
+     rulers, deluded by demagogues into believing that peace is the way
+     to union, and submission the path to victory, shall throw down
+     their arms before the advancing foe; when vast chasms across every
+     State shall make it apparent to every eye, when too late to remedy
+     it, that division from the south is anarchy at the north, and that
+     peace without union is the end of the Republic; _then_ the
+     independence of the south will be an accomplished fact, and
+     gentlemen may, without treason to the dead Republic, rise in this
+     migratory house, wherever it may then be in America, and declare
+     themselves for recognizing their masters at the south rather than
+     exterminating them. Until that day, in the name of the American
+     nation; in the name of every house in the land where there is one
+     dead for the holy cause; in the name of those who stand before us
+     in the ranks of battle; in the name of the liberty our ancestors
+     have confided to us, I devote to eternal execration the name of him
+     who shall propose to destroy this blessed land rather than its
+     enemies.
+
+     "But until that time arrive it is the judgment of the American
+     people there shall be no compromise; that ruin to ourselves or ruin
+     to the southern rebels are the only alternatives. It is only by
+     resolutions of this kind that nations can rise above great dangers
+     and overcome them in crises like this. It was only by turning
+     France into a camp, resolved that Europe might exterminate but
+     should not subjugate her, that France is the leading empire of
+     Europe to-day. It is by such a resolve that the American people,
+     coercing a reluctant government to draw the sword and stake the
+     national existence on the integrity of the Republic, are now
+     anything but the fragments of a nation before the world, the scorn
+     and hiss of every petty tyrant. It is because the people of the
+     United States, rising to the height of the occasion, dedicated this
+     generation to the sword, and pouring out the blood of their
+     children as of no account, and vowing before high Heaven that there
+     should be no end to this conflict but ruin absolute or absolute
+     triumph, that we now are what we are; that the banner of the
+     Republic, still pointing onward, floats proudly in the face of the
+     enemy; that vast regions are reduced to obedience to the laws, and
+     that a great host in armed array now presses with steady step into
+     the dark regions of the rebellion. It is only by the earnest and
+     abiding resolution of the people that, whatever shall be our fate,
+     it shall be grand as the American nation, worthy of that Republic
+     which first trod the path of empire and made no peace but under the
+     banners of victory, that the American people will survive in
+     history. And that will save us. We shall succeed, and not fail. I
+     have an abiding confidence in the firmness, the patience, the
+     endurance of the American people; and, having vowed to stand in
+     history on the great resolve to accept of nothing but victory or
+     ruin, victory is ours. And if with such heroic resolve we fall, we
+     fall with honor, and transmit the name of liberty, committed to our
+     keeping, untarnished, to go down to future generations. The
+     historian of our decline and fall, contemplating the ruins of the
+     last great Republic, and drawing from its fate lessons of wisdom on
+     the waywardness of men, shall drop a tear as he records with sorrow
+     the vain heroism of that people who dedicated and sacrificed
+     themselves to the cause of freedom, and by their example will keep
+     alive her worship in the hearts of men till happier generations
+     shall learn to walk in her paths. Yes, sir, if we must fall, let
+     our last hours be stained by no weakness. If we must fall, let us
+     stand amid the crash of the falling Republic and be buried in its
+     ruins, so that history may take note that men lived in the middle
+     of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but chastised by
+     God for the sins of their forefathers. Let the ruins of the
+     Republic remain to testify to the latest generations our greatness
+     and our heroism. And let Liberty, crownless and childless, sit upon
+     these ruins, crying aloud in a sad wail to the nations of the
+     world, 'I nursed and brought up children and they have rebelled
+     against me.'"
+
+Mr. DAVIS'S most striking characteristics were his devotion to principle
+and his indomitable courage. There never was a moment when he could be
+truthfully charged with trimming or insincerity. His views were always
+clearly avowed and fearlessly maintained. He hated slavery, and he did
+not attempt to conceal it. He remembered the lessons of his youth, and
+his heart rebelled against the injustice of the system. His antipathy
+was deeply grounded in his convictions, and he could not be dissuaded,
+nor frightened, nor driven from expressing it.
+
+He was not a great captain, nor a mighty ruler; he was only one of the
+people, but, nevertheless, a hero. Born under the flag of a nation which
+claimed for its cardinal principle of government, that all men are
+created free, yet held in abject slavery four millions of human beings;
+which erected altars to the living God, yet denied to creatures, formed
+in the image of God and charged with the custody of immortal souls, the
+common rights of humanity; he declared that the hateful inconsistency
+should cease to defile the prayers of Christians and stultify the
+advocates of freedom. No dreamer was he, no mere theorist, but a worker,
+and a strong one, who did well the work committed to him. He entered
+upon his self-imposed task when surrounded by slaves and slave-owners.
+He stood face to face with the iniquitous superstition, and to their
+teeth defied its worshipers. To make proselytes he had to conquer
+prejudices, correct traditions, elevate duty above interest, and induce
+men who had been the propagandists of slavery to become its destroyers.
+Think you his work was easy? Count the long years of his unequal strife;
+gather from the winds, which scattered them, the curses of his foes;
+suffer under all the annoyances and insults which malice and falsehood
+can invent, and you will then understand how much of heart and hope, of
+courage and self-relying zeal, were required to make him what he was,
+and to qualify him to do what he did. And what did he? When the rough
+hand of war had stripped off the pretexts which enveloped the rebellion,
+and it became evident that slavery had struck at the life of the
+Republic, unmindful of consequences to himself, he, among the first,
+arraigned the real traitor and demanded the penalty of death. The
+denunciations that fell upon him like a cloud wrapped him in a mantle of
+honor, and more truthfully than the great Roman orator he could have
+exclaimed, "_Ego hoc animo semperfui, ut invidiam virtute partam,
+gloriam non invidiam putarem_."
+
+This man, so stern and inflexible in the execution of a purpose, so
+rigorous in his demands of other men in behalf of a principle, so
+indifferent to preferment and all base objects of pursuit, had a monitor
+to whom he always gave an open ear and a prompt assent. It was no demon
+like that which attended Socrates, no witch like that invoked by Saul,
+no fiend like that to which Faust resigned himself. A vision of light
+and life and beauty flitted ever palpably before him, and wooed him to
+the perpetual service of the good and true. The memory of a pious and
+beloved mother permeated his whole moral being, and kept warm within him
+the tenderest affection. Hear how he wrote of her:
+
+     "My mother was a lady of graceful and simple manners, fair
+     complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair, with a rich and exquisite
+     voice, that still thrills my memory with the echo of its vanished
+     music. She was highly educated for her day, when Annapolis was the
+     focus of intellect and fashion for Maryland, and its fruits shone
+     through her conversation, and colored and completed her natural
+     eloquence, which my father used to say would have made her an
+     orator, if it had not been thrown away on a woman. She was the
+     incarnation of all that is Christian in life and hope, in charity
+     and thought, ready for every good work, herself the example of all
+     she taught."
+
+It was the force of her precept and example that formed the man, and
+supplied him with his shield and buckler. His private life was spotless.
+His habits were regular and abstemious, and his practice in close
+conformity with the Episcopal church, of which he was a member. He
+invariably attended divine service on Sunday, and confined himself for
+the remainder of the day to a course of religious reading. If from his
+father he drew a courage and a fierce determination before which his
+enemies fled in confusion, from his mother he inherited those milder
+qualities that won for him friends as true and devoted as man ever
+possessed. Some have said he was hard and dictatorial. They had seen him
+only when a high resolve had fired his breast, and when the gleam of
+battle had lighted his countenance. His friends saw deeper, and knew
+that beneath the exterior he assumed in his struggles with the world
+there beat a heart as pure and unsullied, as confiding and as gentle, as
+ever sanctified the domestic circle, or made loved ones happy. His heart
+reminded me of a spring among the hills of the Susquehanna, to which I
+often resorted in my youth; around a part of it we boys had built a
+stone wall to protect it from outrage, while on the side next home we
+left open a path, easily traveled by familiar feet, and leading straight
+to the sweet and perennial waters within.
+
+He lived to hear the salvos that announced, after more than two
+centuries of bondage, the redemption of his native State. He lived to
+vote for that grand act of enfranchisement that wiped from the
+escutcheon of the nation the leprous stain of slavery, and to know that
+the Constitution of the United States no longer recognized and protected
+property in man. He lived to witness the triumph of his country in its
+desperate struggle with treason, and to behold all its enemies, either
+wanderers, like Cain, over the earth, or suppliants for mercy at her
+feet. He lived to catch the first glimpse of the coming glory of that
+new era of progress that matchless valor had won through the blood and
+carnage of a thousand battle-fields. He lived, through all the storm of
+war, to see, at last, America rejuvenated, rescued from the grasp of
+despotism, and rise victorious, with her garments purified and her brow
+radiant with the unsullied light of liberty. He lived to greet the
+return of "meek-eyed peace," and then he gently laid his head upon her
+bosom, and breathed out there his noble spirit.
+
+The sword may rust in its scabbard, and so let it; but free men, with
+free thought and free speech, will wage unceasing war until truth shall
+be enthroned and sit empress of the world. Would to God that he had been
+spared to complete a life of three score and ten years, for the sake of
+his country and posterity. When I think of the good he would have
+accomplished had he survived for twenty years, I can say, in the
+language of Fisher Ames, "My heart, penetrated with the remembrance of
+the man, grows liquid as I speak, and I could pour it out like water."
+
+At the portals of his tomb we may bid farewell to the faithful
+Christian, in the full assurance that a blessed life awaits him beyond
+the grave. Serenely and trustfully he has passed from our sight and gone
+down into the dark waters.
+
+    "So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
+    And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
+    And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
+    Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."
+
+From this hall, where as scholar, statesman, and orator he shone so
+brightly, he has disappeared forever. Never again will he, answering to
+the roll-call from this desk, respond for his country and the rights of
+man. No more shall we hear his fervid eloquence in the day of imminent
+peril, invoking us, who hold the mighty power of peace and war, to
+dedicate ourselves, if need be, to the sword, but to accept no end of
+the conflict save that of absolute triumph for our country. He has gone
+to answer the great roll-call above, where the "brazen throat of war" is
+voiceless in the presence of the Prince of Peace. Let us habitually turn
+to his recorded words, and gather wisdom as from the testament of a
+departed sage; and since we were witnesses of his tireless devotion to
+the cause of human freedom, let us direct that on the monument which
+loving hearts and willing hands will soon erect over his remains, there
+shall be deeply engraved the figure of a bursting shackle, as the emblem
+of the faith in which he lived and died.
+
+For the Christian, scholar, statesman, and orator, all good men are
+mourners; but what shall I say of that grief which none can share--the
+grief of sincere friendship?
+
+Oh, my friend! comforted by the belief that you, while living, deemed me
+worthy to be your companion, and loaded me with the proofs of your
+esteem, I shall fondly treasure, during my remaining years, the
+recollection of your smile and counsel. Lost to me is the strong arm
+whereon I have so often leaned; but in that path which in time past we
+trod most joyfully together, I shall continue, as God shall give me to
+see my duty, with unfaltering though perhaps with unskilful steps, right
+onward to the end.
+
+Admiring his brilliant intellect and varied acquirements, his
+invincible courage and unswerving fortitude, glorying in his good works
+and fair renown, but, more than all, _loving the man_, I shall endeavor
+to assuage the bitterness of grief by applying to him those words of
+proud, though tearful, satisfaction, from which the faithful Tacitus
+drew consolation for the loss of that noble Roman whom he delighted to
+honor:
+
+     "Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet
+     mansurumque est, in animis hominum, in æternitate temporum, fama
+     rerum."
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+The writer uses some archaic spelling which has been kept as printed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oration on the Life and Character of
+Henry Winter Davis, by John A. J. Creswell
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oration on the Life and Character of Henry
+Winter Davis, by John A. J. Creswell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis
+
+Author: John A. J. Creswell
+
+Release Date: July 16, 2007 [EBook #22084]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY WINTER DAVIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2>ORATION</h2>
+<h3>ON THE</h3>
+<h2>LIFE AND CHARACTER</h2>
+<h3>OF</h3>
+<h1>HENRY WINTER DAVIS,</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL.</h2>
+
+<p class="center">Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives,<br />
+February 22, 1866.</p>
+
+<p class="center">WASHINGTON:<br />
+GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.<br />
+1866.
+</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The death of Hon. <span class="smcap">Henry Winter Davis</span>, for many years a distinguished
+Representative of one of the Baltimore congressional districts, created a deep
+sensation among those who had been associated with him in national legislation,
+and they deemed it fitting to pay to his memory unusual honors. They
+adopted resolutions expressive of their grief, and invited Hon. <span class="smcap">John A. J.
+Creswell</span>, a Senator of the United States from the State of Maryland, to deliver
+an oration on his life and character, in the hall of the House of Representatives,
+on the 22d of February, a day the recurrence of which ever gives increased
+warmth to patriotic emotions.</p>
+
+<p>The hall of the House was filled by a distinguished audience to listen to the
+oration. Before eleven o'clock the galleries were crowded in every part. The
+flags above the Speaker's desk were draped in black, and other insignia of
+mourning were exhibited. An excellent portrait of the late Hon. <span class="smcap">Henry
+Winter Davis</span> was visible through the folds of the national banner above the
+Speaker's chair. As on the occasion of the oration on President <span class="smcap">Lincoln</span> by
+Hon. <span class="smcap">George Bancroft</span>, the Marine band occupied the ante-room of the
+reporters' gallery, and discoursed appropriate music.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock the senators entered, and the judges of the Supreme Court,
+preceded by Chief Justice Chase. Of the Cabinet Secretary Stanton and Secretary
+McCulloch were present. After prayer by the chaplain, the Declaration
+of Independence was read by Hon. <span class="smcap">Edward McPherson</span>, Clerk of the
+House. After the reading of the Declaration, followed by the playing of a
+dirge by the band, Hon. <span class="smcap">Schuyler Colfax</span>, Speaker of the House of Representatives,
+introduced the orator of the day, Hon. <span class="smcap">J. A. J. Creswell</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>REMARKS</h3>
+
+<h5>OF</h5>
+
+<h2>HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX,</h2>
+
+<h4>SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Hon. <span class="smcap">Schuyler Colfax</span>, Speaker of the House of Representatives,
+said:</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ladies and Gentlemen</span>: The duty has been devolved upon me
+of introducing to you the friend and fellow-member, here, of <span class="smcap">Henry
+Winter Davis</span>, and I shall detain you but a moment from his
+address, to which you will listen with saddened interest.</p>
+
+<p>The world always appreciates and honors courage: the courage
+of Christianity, which sustained martyrs in the amphitheatre, at the
+stake, and on the rack; the courage of Patriotism, which inspired
+millions in our own land to realize the historic fable of Curtius, and
+to fill up with their own bodies, if need be, the yawning chasm
+which imperiled the republic; the courage of Humanity, which is
+witnessed in the pest-house and the hospital, at the death-bed of the
+homeless and the prison-cell of the convict. But there is a courage
+of Statesmen, besides; and nobly was it illustrated by the statesman
+whose national services we commemorate to-day. Inflexibly hostile
+to oppression, whether of slaves on American soil or of republicans
+struggling in Mexico against monarchical invasion, faithful always
+to principle and liberty, championing always the cause of the down-trodden,
+fearless as he was eloquent in his avowals, he was mourned
+throughout a continent; and from the Patapsco to the Gulf the
+blessings of those who had been ready to perish followed him to his
+tomb. It is fitting, therefore, though dying a private citizen, that
+the nation should render him such marked and unusual honors in
+this hall, the scene of so many of his intellectual triumphs; and I
+have great pleasure in introducing to you, as the orator of the day,
+Hon. <span class="smcap">J. A. J. Creswell</span>, his colleague in the thirty-eighth Congress,
+and now Senator from the State of Maryland.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>ORATION</h3>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h2>HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Countrymen</span>: On the 22d day of February, 1732,
+God gave to the world the highest type of humanity, in
+the person of George Washington. Combining within
+himself the better qualities of the soldier, sage, statesman,
+and patriot, alike brave, wise, discreet, and incorruptible,
+the common consent of mankind has awarded
+him the incomparable title of Father of his Country.
+Among all nations and in every clime the richest
+treasures of language have been exhausted in the effort
+to transmit to posterity a faithful record of his deeds.
+For him unfading laurels are secure, so long as letters
+shall survive and history shall continue to be the guide
+and teacher of civilized men. The whole human race
+has become the self-appointed guardian of his fame,
+and the name of Washington will be ever held, over all
+the earth, to be synonymous with the highest perfection
+attainable in public or private life, and coeternal with
+that immortal love to which reason and revelation have
+together toiled to elevate human aspirations&mdash;the love
+of liberty, restrained and guarded by law.</p>
+
+<p>But in the presence of the Omnipotent how insignificant
+is the proudest and the noblest of men! Even
+Washington, who alone of his kind could fill that comprehensive
+epitome of General Henry Lee, so often on
+our lips, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the
+hearts of his countrymen," was allowed no exemption
+from the common lot of mortals. In the sixty-eighth
+year of his age he, too, paid the debt of nature.</p>
+
+<p>The dread announcement of his demise sped over
+the land like a pestilence, burdening the very air with
+mourning, and carrying inexpressible sorrow to every
+household and every heart. The course of legislation
+was stopped in mid career to give expression to the
+grief of Congress, and by resolution, approved January
+6, 1800, the 22d of February of that year was devoted
+to national humiliation and lamentation. This is, then,
+as well a day of sorrow as a day of rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>More recent calamities also remind us that death is
+universal king. Just ten days ago our great historian
+pronounced in this hall an impartial judgment upon the
+earthly career of him who, as savior of his country, will
+be counted as the compeer of Washington. Scarce
+have the orator's lingering tones been mellowed into
+silence, scarce has the glowing page whereon his words
+were traced lost the impress of his passing hand, yet
+we are again called into the presence of the Inexorable
+to crown one more illustrious victim with sacrificial
+flowers. Having taken up his lifeless body, as beautiful
+as the dead Absalom, and laid it in the tomb with becoming
+solemnity, we have assembled in the sight of
+the world to do deserved honor to the name and memory
+of <span class="smcap">Henry Winter Davis</span>, a native of Annapolis, in
+the State of Maryland, but always proudly claiming to
+be no less than a citizen of the United States of
+America.</p>
+
+<p>We have not convened in obedience to any formal
+custom, requiring us to assume an empty show of bereavement,
+in order that we may appear respectful to
+the departed. We who knew <span class="smcap">Henry Winter Davis</span>
+are not content to clothe ourselves in the outward garb
+of grief, and call the semblance of mourning a fitting
+tribute to the gifted orator and statesman, so suddenly
+snatched from our midst in the full glory of his mental
+and bodily strength. We would do more than "bear
+about the mockery of woe." Prompted by a genuine
+affection, we desire to ignore all idle and merely conventional
+ceremonies, and permit our stricken hearts to
+speak their spontaneous sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, where he sat for eight years as a Representative
+of the people; where friends have trooped
+about him, and admiring crowds have paid homage to
+his genius; where grave legislators have yielded themselves
+willing captives to his eloquence, and his wise
+counsel has moulded, in no small degree, the law of a
+great nation, let us, in dealing with what he has left us,
+verify the saying of Bacon, "Death openeth the good
+fame and extinguished envy." Remembering that he
+was a man of like passions and equally fallible with
+ourselves, let us review his life in a spirit of generous
+candor, applaud what is good, and try to profit by it;
+and if we find aught of ill, let us, so far as justice and
+truth will permit, cover it with the vail of charity and
+bury it out of sight forever. So may our survivors do
+for us.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of this address was born on the 16th of
+August, 1817.</p>
+
+<p>His father, Rev. Henry Lyon Davis, of the Protestant
+Episcopal church, was president of St. John's College
+at Annapolis, Maryland, and rector of St. Ann's parish.
+He was of imposing person, and great dignity and force
+of character. He was, moreover, a man of genius, and
+of varied and profound learning, eminently versed in
+mathematics and natural sciences, abounding in classical
+lore, endowed with a vast memory, and gifted with
+a concise, clear, and graceful style; rich and fluent in
+conversation, but without the least pretension to oratory
+and wholly incapable of <i>extempore</i> speaking. He was
+removed from the presidency of St. John's by a board
+of democratic trustees because of his federal politics;
+and, years afterward, he gave his son his only lesson in
+politics at the end of a letter, addressed to him when
+at Kenyon College, in this laconic sentence: "My son,
+beware of the follies of Jacksonism."</p>
+
+<p>His mother was Jane Brown Winter, a woman of
+elegant accomplishments and of great sweetness of
+disposition and purity of life. It might be truthfully
+said of her, that she was an exemplar for all who knew
+her. She had only two children, Henry Winter, and
+Jane, who married Rev. Edward Syle.</p>
+
+<p>The education of Henry Winter began very early,
+at home, under the care of his aunt, Elizabeth Brown
+Winter, who entertained the most rigid and exacting
+opinions in regard to the training of children, but who
+was withal a noble woman. He once playfully said, "I
+could read before I was four years old, though much
+against my will." When his father was removed from
+St. John's, he went to Wilmington, Delaware, but some
+time elapsed before he became settled there. Meanwhile,
+Henry Winter remained with his aunt in Alexandria,
+Virginia. He afterward went to Wilmington,
+and was there instructed under his father's supervision.
+In 1827 his father returned to Maryland and settled in
+Anne Arundel county.</p>
+
+<p>After reaching Anne Arundel, Henry Winter became
+so much devoted to out-door life that he gave small
+promise of scholarly proficiency. He affected the
+sportsman, and became a devoted disciple of Nimrod;
+accompanied always by one of his father's slaves he
+roamed the country with a huge old fowling-piece on
+his shoulder, burning powder in abundance, but doing
+little damage otherwise. While here he saw much of
+slaves and slavery, and what he saw impressed him profoundly,
+and laid the foundation for those opinions which
+he so heroically and constantly defended in all his after-life.
+Referring to this period, he said long afterward,
+"My familiar association with the slaves while a boy
+gave me great insight into their feelings and views.
+They spoke with freedom before a boy what they would
+have repressed before a man. They were far from
+indifferent to their condition; they felt wronged and
+sighed for freedom. They were attached to my father
+and loved me, yet they habitually spoke of the day when
+God would deliver them."</p>
+
+<p>He subsequently went to Alexandria, and was sent
+to school at Howard, near the Theological Seminary,
+and from Howard he went to Kenyon College, in Ohio,
+in the fall of 1833.</p>
+
+<p>Kenyon was then in the first year of the presidency
+of Bishop McIlvaine. It was the centre of vast forests,
+broken only by occasional clearings, excepting along
+the lines of the National road, and the Ohio river and
+its navigable tributaries. In this wilderness of nature,
+but garden of letters, he remained, at first in the grammar
+school, and then in the college, until the 6th of
+September, 1837; when at twenty years of age he
+took his degree and diploma, decorated with one of the
+honorary orations of his class, on the great day of commencement.
+His subject was "Scholastic Philosophy."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the Freshman year, a change in the
+college terms gave him a vacation of three months. Instead
+of spending it in idleness, as he might have done,
+and as most boys would have done, he availed himself
+of this interval to pursue and complete the studies of
+the Sophomore year, to which he had already given
+some attention in his spare moments. At the opening
+of the next session he passed the examination for the
+Junior class. Fortunately I have his own testimony
+and opinion as to this exploit, and I give them in his
+own language:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was a pretty sharp trial of resolution and dogged diligence,
+but it saved me a year of college, and indurated my powers of study
+and mental culture into a habit, and perhaps enabled me to stay
+long enough to graduate. I do not recommend the example to those
+who are independently situated, for learning must fall like the
+rain in such gentle showers as to sink in if it is to be fruitful;
+when poured on the richest soil in torrents, it not only runs off
+without strengthening vegetation, but washes away the soil itself."</p></div>
+
+<p>His college life was laborious and successful. The
+regular studies were prosecuted with diligence, and from
+them he derived great profit, not merely in knowledge,
+but in what is of vastly more account, the habit and
+power of mental labor. These studies were wrought
+into his mind and made part of the intellectual substance
+by the vigorous collisions of the societies in
+which he delighted. For these mimic conflicts he prepared
+assiduously, not in writing, but always with a
+carefully deduced logical analysis and arrangement of
+the thoughts to be developed in the order of argument,
+with a brief note of any quotation, or image, or illustration,
+on the margin at the appropriate place. From
+that brief he spoke. And this was his only method of
+preparation for all the great conflicts in which he took
+part in after life. He never wrote out his speeches
+beforehand.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of his feelings at the end of his college
+life, he sadly said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"My father's death had embittered the last days of the year
+1836, and left me without a counsellor. I knew something of books,
+nothing of men, and I went forth like Adam among the wild beasts
+of the unknown wilderness of the world. My father had dedicated
+me to the ministry, but the day had gone when such dedications
+determined the lives of young men. Theology as a grave topic of
+historic and metaphysical investigation I delighted to pursue, but for
+the ministry I had no calling. I would have been idle if I could,
+for I had no ambition, but I had no fortune and I could not beg or
+starve."</p></div>
+
+<p>All who were acquainted with his temperament can
+well imagine what a gloomy prospect the future presented
+to him, when its contemplation wrung from his
+stoical taciturnity that touching confession.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, that from the time he entered college
+he was continually cramped for want of money. The
+negroes ate everything that was produced on the farm
+in Anne Arundel, a gastronomic feat which they could
+easily accomplish, without ever having cause to complain
+of a surfeit. His aunt, herself in limited circumstances,
+by a careful husbandry of her means, managed
+to keep him at college. Kenyon was then a manual-labor
+institution, and the boys were required to sweep
+their own rooms, make their own beds and fires, bring
+their own water, black their own boots, if they ever
+were blacked, and take an occasional turn at grubbing
+in the fields or working on the roads. There was no
+royal road to learning known at Kenyon in those days.
+Through all this Henry Winter Davis passed, bearing
+his part manfully; and knowing how heavily he taxed
+the slender purse of his aunt, he denied himself with
+such rigor that he succeeded, incredible as it may appear,
+in bringing his total expenses, including boarding
+and tuition, within the sum of eighty dollars per annum.</p>
+
+<p>His father left an estate consisting only of some
+slaves, which were equally apportioned between himself
+and sister. Frequent applications were made to
+purchase his slaves, but he never could be induced to
+sell them, although the proceeds would have enabled
+him to pursue his studies with ease and comfort. He
+rather sought and obtained a tutorship, and for two
+years he devoted to law and letters only the time he
+could rescue from its drudgery. In a letter, written in
+April, 1839, replying to the request of a relative who
+offered to purchase his slave Sallie, subject to the provisions
+of his father's will, which manumitted her if she
+would go to Liberia, he said: "But if she is under my
+control." (he did not know that she had been set to his
+share,) "I will <i>not consent to the sale</i>, though he wishes
+to purchase her subject to the will." And so Sallie
+was not sold, and Henry Winter Davis, the tutor, toiled
+on and waited. He never would hold any of his slaves
+under his authority, never would accept a cent of their
+wages, and tendered each and all of them a deed of
+absolute manumission whenever the law would allow.
+Tell me, was that man sincere in his opposition to
+slavery? How many of those who have since charged
+him with being selfish and reckless in his advocacy of
+emancipation would have shown equal devotion to principle?
+Not one; not one. Ah! the man who works
+and suffers for his opinions' sake places his own flesh
+and blood in pledge for his integrity.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding his irksome and exacting duties, he
+kept his eye steadily on the University of Virginia, and
+read, without assistance, a large part of its course. He
+delighted especially in the pungent pages of Tacitus
+and the glowing and brilliant, dignified and elevated
+epic of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
+These were favorites which never lost their charm for
+him. When recently on a visit at my house, he stated
+in conversation that he often exercised himself in translating
+from the former, and in transferring the thoughts
+of the latter into his own language, and he contended
+that the task had dispelled the popular error that
+Gibbon's style is swollen and declamatory; for he
+alleged that every effort at condensation had proved a
+failure, and that at the end of his labors the page he
+had attempted to compress had always expanded to the
+eye, when relieved of the weighty and stringent fetters
+in which the gigantic genius of Gibbon had bound it.</p>
+
+<p>About this time&mdash;the only period when doubts beset
+him&mdash;he was tempted by a very advantageous offer to
+settle in Mississippi. He determined to accept; but
+some kind spirit interposed to prevent the despatch of
+the final letter, and he remained in Alexandria. At
+last his aunt&mdash;second mother as she was&mdash;sold some
+land and dedicated the proceeds to his legal studies.
+He arrived at the University of Virginia in October,
+1839.</p>
+
+<p>From that moment he entered actively and unremittingly
+on his course of intellectual training. While
+a boy he had become familiar, under the guidance of
+his father, with the classics of Addison, Johnson, Swift,
+Cowper, and Pope, and he now plunged into the
+domain of history. He had begun at Kenyon to make
+flanking forays into the fields of historic investigation
+which lay so invitingly on each side of the regular
+march of his college course. As he acquired more
+information and confidence, these forays became more
+extensive and profitable. It was then the transition
+period from the shallow though graceful pages of
+Gillies, Rollin, Russel, and Tytler, and the rabbinical
+agglomerations of Shuckford and Prideaux to the
+modern school of free, profound, and laborious investigation,
+which has reared immortal monuments to its
+memory in the works of Hallam, Macaulay, Grote,
+Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Niebuhr, Bunsen, Schlosser,
+Thiers, and their fellows. But of the last-named none
+except Niebuhr's History of Rome and Hallam's Middle
+Ages were accessible to him in the backwoods of Ohio.
+Cousin's Course of the History of Modern Philosophy
+was just glittering in the horizon, and Gibbon shone
+alone as the morning star of the day of historic research,
+which he had heralded so long. The French Revolution
+he had seen only as presented in Burke's brilliant
+vituperation and Scott's Tory diatribe. A republican
+picture of the great republican revolution, the fountain
+of all that is now tolerable in Europe, had not then
+been presented on any authentic and comprehensive
+page.</p>
+
+<p>Not only these, but all historical works of value
+which the English, French, and German languages can
+furnish, with an immense amount of other intellectual
+pabulum, were eagerly gathered, consumed with voracious
+appetite, and thoroughly digested. Supplied at
+last with the required means, he braced himself for a
+systematic curriculum of law, and pursued it with
+marked constancy and success. While at the university
+he also took up the German and French languages
+and mastered them, and he perfected his scholarship in
+Latin and Greek. Until his death he read all these
+languages with great facility and accuracy, and he
+always kept his Greek Testament lying on his table for
+easy reference.</p>
+
+<p>After a thorough course at the university, Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span>
+entered upon the practice of the law in Alexandria,
+Virginia. He began his profession without much to
+cheer him; but he was not the man to abandon a pursuit
+for lack of courage. His ability and industry
+attracted attention, and before long he had acquired a
+respectable practice, which thenceforth protected him
+from all annoyances of a pecuniary nature. He toiled
+with unwearied assiduity, never appearing in the trial
+of a cause without the most elaborate and exhaustive
+preparation, and soon became known to his professional
+brethren as a valuable ally and a formidable foe.
+His natural aptitude for public affairs made itself
+manifest in due time, and some articles which he
+prepared on municipal and State politics gave him
+great reputation. He also published a series of newspaper
+essays, wherein he dared to question the divinity
+of slavery; and these, though at the time thought to be
+not beyond the limits of free discussion, were cited
+against him long after as evidence that he was a heretic
+in pro-slavery Virginia and Maryland.</p>
+
+<p>On the 30th of October, 1845, he married Miss Constance
+T. Gardiner, daughter of William C. Gardiner,
+Esq., a most accomplished and charming young lady, as
+beautiful and as fragile as a flower. She lived to
+gladden his heart for but a few years, and then,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Like a lily drooping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She bowed her head and died."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In 1850 he came to Baltimore, and immediately a
+high position, professional, social, and political, was
+awarded him. His forensic efforts at once commanded
+attention and enforced respect. The young men of
+most ability and promise gathered about him, and made
+him the centre of their chosen circle. He became a
+prominent member of the whig party, and was everywhere
+known as the brilliant orator and successful controvertist
+of the Scott campaign of 1852. The whig
+party, worn out by its many gallant but unsuccessful
+battles, was ultimately gathered to its fathers, and Mr.
+<span class="smcap">Davis</span> led off in the American movement. He was
+elected successively to the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and
+thirty-sixth Congresses by the American party from
+the fourth district of Maryland. He supported with
+great ability and zeal Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency
+in 1856, and in 1860 accepted John Bell as the candidate
+of his party, though he clearly divined and plainly
+announced that the great battle was really between
+Abraham Lincoln, as the representative of the national
+sentiment on the one hand, and secession and disunion,
+in all their shades and phases, on the other. To his
+seat in the thirty-eighth Congress he was elected by
+the Unconditional Union party.</p>
+
+<p>Since the adjournment of the thirty-eighth Congress
+he has been profoundly concerned in the momentous
+public questions now pressing for adjustment, and he
+did not fail on several fitting occasions to give his views
+at length to the public. Nevertheless, he frequently
+alluded to his earnest desire to retreat for awhile from
+the perplexing annoyances of public life. He had
+determined upon a long visit to Europe in the coming
+spring, and had almost concluded the purchase of a
+delightful country-seat, where he hoped to recruit his
+weary brain for years to come from the exhaustless
+riches of nature. When the thirty-ninth Congress
+met, and he read of his old companions in the work of
+legislation again gathering in their halls and committee-rooms,
+I think, for at least a day or two, he felt a
+longing to be among them. During the second week
+of the session he again entered this hall, but only
+as a spectator. The greeting he received&mdash;so general,
+spontaneous, and cordial&mdash;from gentlemen on both sides
+of the House, touched his heart most sensibly. The
+crowd that gathered about him was go great that the
+party was obliged to retire to one of the larger ante-rooms
+for fear of interrupting the public business. A
+delightful interview among old friends was the reward.
+He was charmed with his reception, and mentioned it
+to me with intense satisfaction. Little did you, gentlemen,
+then think that between you and a beloved friend
+the curtain that shrouds eternity was so soon to be
+interposed. His sickness was of about a week's duration.
+Until the morning of the day preceding his
+death, his friends never doubted his recovery. Later
+in the day very unfavorable symptoms appeared, and all
+then realized his danger. In the evening his wife
+spoke to him of a visit, for one day, which he had
+projected, to his old friend, Mrs. S. F. Du Pont, when
+he replied, in the last words he ever uttered, "It shows
+the folly of making plans even for a day." He continued
+to fail rapidly in strength until two o'clock on
+the afternoon of Saturday, the 30th of December, when
+<span class="smcap">Henry Winter Davis</span>, in the forty-ninth year of his
+age, appeared before his God. His death confirmed
+the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, who declared,
+"Marshaling all the horrors of death, and contemplating
+the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able
+to daunt the <i>courage</i> of a <i>man</i>, much less a <i>well-resolved
+Christian</i>." He passed away so quietly that no one
+knew the moment of his departure. His was&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"A death, life sleep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A gentle wafting to immortal life."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> left a widow, Mrs. Nancy Davis, a daughter
+of John B. Morris, Esq., of Baltimore, and two little
+girls, who were the idols of his heart. He was married
+a second time on the 26th of January, 1857. His
+nearest surviving collateral relation is the Hon. David
+Davis, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the
+United States, who is his only cousin-german. To all
+these afflicted hearts may God be most gracious.</p>
+
+<p>Thus has the country lost one of the most able,
+eloquent, and fearless of its defenders. Called from
+this life at an age when most men are just beginning to
+command the respect and confidence of their fellows,
+he has left, nevertheless, a fame as wide as our vast
+country. He died nineteen years younger than Washington
+and eight years younger than Lincoln. At forty-eight
+years of age Washington had not seen the glories
+of Yorktown even in a vision, nor had Lincoln dreamed
+of the presidential chair; and if they had died at that
+age they would have been comparatively unknown in
+history. Doubtless God would have raised up other
+leaders, if they had been wanting, to conduct the great
+American column, which He has chosen to be the bodyguard
+of human rights and hopes, onward among the
+nations and the centuries; but in that event the 12th
+and 22d days of February would not be, as they now
+are, held sacred in our calendar.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> had gathered into his house the literary
+treasures of four languages, and had reveled in spirit
+with the wise men of the ages. He had conned his
+books as jealously as a miner peering for gold, and had
+not left a panful of earth unwashed. He had collected
+the purest ore of truth and the richest gems of thought,
+until he was able to crown himself with knowledge.
+Blessed with a felicitous power of analysis and a prodigious
+memory, he ransacked history, ancient and
+modern, sacred and profane; science, pure, empirical,
+and metaphysical; the arts, mechanical and liberal; the
+professions, law, divinity, and medicine; poetry and the
+miscellanies of literature; and in all these great departments
+of human lore he moved as easily as most men
+do in their particular province. His habit was not only
+to read but to reread the best of his books frequently,
+and he was continually supplying himself with better
+editions of his favorites. In current, playful conversation
+with friends he quoted right and left, in brief and at
+length, from the classics, ancient and modern, and from
+the drama, tragic and comic. In his speeches, on the
+contrary, he quoted but little, and only when he seemed
+to run upon a thought already expressed by some one
+else with singular force and appositeness. He was the
+best scholar I ever met for his years and active life, and
+was surpassed by very few, excepting mere book-worms.
+He has for many years been engaged in collecting
+extracts from newspapers, containing the leading facts
+and public documents of the day; but he never commonplaced
+from books. His thesaurus was his head.</p>
+
+<p>I have but little personal knowledge of Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> as a
+lawyer. It was never my good fortune to be associated
+with him in the trial of a cause; nor have I ever been
+present when he was so engaged. But at the time of
+his death he filled a high position at the bar, and was
+chosen to lead against the most distinguished of his
+brethren. On public and constitutional questions, as
+distinguished from those involving only private rights,
+he was a host, and in the argument of the cases which
+grew out of the adoption of the new constitution of
+Maryland he won golden laurels, and drew extraordinary
+encomiums even from his opponents in that angry
+litigation. He was thoroughly read in the decisions of
+the federal courts, and especially in those declaring
+and defining constitutional principles.</p>
+
+<p>Possessed of a mind of remarkable power, scope, and
+activity; with an immense fund of precious information,
+ready to respond to any call he might make upon it,
+however sudden; wielding a system of logic formed in
+the severest school, and tried by long practice; gifted
+with a rare command of language and an eloquence well
+nigh superhuman; and withal graced with manners the
+most accomplished and refined, and a person unusually
+handsome, graceful, and attractive. Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> entered
+public life with almost unparalleled personal advantages.
+Having boldly presented himself before the most rigorous
+tribunal in the world, he proved himself worthy of its
+favor and attention. He soon rose to the front rank of
+debaters, and whenever he addressed the House all sides
+gave him a delighted audience.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not attempt a review of the topics discussed
+in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth Congresses. The
+day was fast coming when contests for the Speakership
+and battles over appropriation bills, ay, even the fierce
+struggle over Kansas, would sink into insignificance,
+and Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span>, with that political prescience for which
+he was always remarkable, seemed to discern the first
+sign of the coming storm. The winds had been long
+sown, and now the whirlwind was to be reaped. The
+thirty-sixth Congress, which had opened so inauspiciously,
+and which his vote had saved from becoming a
+perpetuated bedlam, met for its second session on the
+3d of December, 1860, with the clouds of civil war fast
+settling down upon the nation. In the hope that war
+might yet be averted, on the fourth day of the session,
+the celebrated committee of thirty-three was raised,
+with the lamented Corwin, of Ohio, as chairman, and
+Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> as the member from Maryland. When the
+committee reported, Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> sustained the majority
+report in an able speech, in which, after urging every
+argument in favor of the report, he boldly proclaimed
+his own views, and the duties of his State and country.
+In his speech of 7th February, 1861, he said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate the already
+too much inflamed state of the public mind; but I will say that the
+Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance
+thereof, <i>must be enforced</i>; and they who stand across the path of that
+enforcement must either <i>destroy</i> the <i>power</i> of the <i>United States</i>, or
+it will <i>destroy them</i>."</p></div>
+
+<p>For such utterances only a small part of the people
+of his State was on that day prepared. Seduced by the
+wish, they still believed that the Union could be preserved
+by fair and mutual concessions. They were on
+their knees praying for peace, ignorant that bloody war
+had already girded on his sword. His language was
+then deemed too harsh and unconciliatory, and hundreds,
+I among the number, denounced him in unmeasured
+terms. Before the expiration of three months events
+had demonstrated his wisdom and our folly, and other
+paragraphs from that same speech became the fighting
+creed of the Union men of Maryland. He further said,
+on that occasion:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"But, sir, there is one State I can speak for, and that is the State
+of Maryland. Confident in the strength of this great government
+to protect every interest, grateful for almost a century of unalloyed
+blessings, she has fomented no agitation; she has done no act to disturb
+the public peace; she has rested in the consciousness that if
+there be wrong the Congress of the United States will remedy it;
+and that none exists which revolution would not aggravate.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Speaker, I am here this day to speak, and I say that I do
+speak, for the people of Maryland, who are loyal to the United
+States; and that when my judgment is contested, I appeal to the
+people for its accuracy, and I am ready to maintain it before them.</p>
+
+<p>"In Maryland we are dull, and cannot comprehend the right of
+secession. We do not recognize the right to make a revolution by
+a vote. We do not recognize the right of Maryland to repeal the
+Constitution of the United States, and if any convention there, called
+by whatever authority, under whatever auspices, undertake to inaugurate
+revolution in Maryland, their authority will be resisted and
+defied in arms on the soil of Maryland, in the name and by the
+authority of the Constitution of the United States."</p></div>
+
+<p>In January, 1861, the ensign of the Republic, while
+covering a mission of mercy, was fired on by traitors.
+In February Jefferson Davis said, at Stevenson, Alabama,
+"We will carry war where it is easy to advance,
+where food for the sword and torch await our armies in
+the densely populated cities." In March the thirty-sixth
+Congress, after vainly passing conciliatory resolutions
+by the score, among other things recommending
+the repeal of all personal liberty bills, declaring that
+there was no authority outside of the States where
+slavery was recognized to interfere with slaves or slavery
+therein, and proposing by two-thirds votes of both houses
+an amendment of the Constitution prohibiting any future
+amendment giving Congress power over slavery in the
+States, adjourned amid general terror and distress.</p>
+
+<p>Abraham Lincoln, having passed through the midst
+of his enemies, appeared at Washington in due time
+and delivered his inaugural, closing with these memorable
+words:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in
+mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will
+not assail you.</p>
+
+<p>"You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.
+You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government,
+while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and
+defend' it.</p>
+
+<p>"I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must
+not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not
+break, our bonds of affection.</p>
+
+<p>"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield
+and patriot grave to every living hearth and hearth-stone all over
+this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
+touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature."</p></div>
+
+<p>Words which, if human hearts do not harden into
+stone, through the long ages yet to come,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The deep damnation of his taking off."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The appeal was spurned; and, in the face of its almost
+godlike gentleness, they who already gloried in
+their anticipated saturnalia of blood inhumanly and
+falsely stigmatized it as a declaration of war. The long-patient
+North, slow to anger, in its agony still cried,
+"My brother; oh, my brother!" It remained for that
+final, ineradicable infamy of Sumter to arouse the nation
+to arms! At last, to murder at one blow the hopes
+we had nursed so tenderly, they impiously dragged in
+the dust the glorious symbol of our national life and
+majesty, heaping dishonor upon it, and, like the sneering
+devil at the crucifixion, crying out, "Come and deliver
+thyself!" and then no man, with the heart of a man,
+who loved his country and feared his God, dared longer
+delay to prepare for that great struggle which was destined
+to rock the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Maryland! cursed with slavery, doubly cursed
+with traitors! Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> had said that Maryland was
+loyal to the United States, and had pledged himself to
+maintain that position before the people. The time
+soon came for him to redeem his pledge. On the morning
+of the 15th of April the President issued his proclamation
+calling a special session of Congress, which
+made an extra election necessary in Maryland. Before
+the sun of that day had gone down, this card was promulgated:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>To the voters of the fourth congressional district of Maryland:</i></p>
+
+<p>I hereby announce myself as a candidate for the House of Representatives
+of the 37th Congress of the United States of America,
+upon the basis of the <i>unconditional maintenance of the Union</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Should my fellow-citizens of <i>like views</i> manifest their preference
+for a different candidate on <i>that basis</i>, it is not my purpose to embarrass
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="right">H. WINTER DAVIS.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">April</span> 15, 1861.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>But dark days were coming for Baltimore. A mob,
+systematically organized in complicity with the rebels
+at Richmond and Harper's Ferry, seized and kept in
+subjection an unsuspecting and unarmed population from
+the 19th to the 24th of April. For six days murder
+and treason held joint sway; and at the conclusion of
+their tragedy of horrid barbarities they gave the farce
+of holding an election for members of the house of
+delegates.</p>
+
+<p>To show the spirit that moved Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> under
+this ordeal, I cite from his letter, written on the 28th,
+to Hon. William H. Seward, the following:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have been trying to collect the persons appointed scattered by
+the storm, and to compel them to take their offices or to decline.</p>
+
+<p>"I have sought men of undoubted courage and capacity for the
+places vacated.</p>
+
+<p>"We must show the secessionists that we are not frightened, but
+are resolved to maintain the government in the exercise of all its
+functions in Maryland.</p>
+
+<p>"We have organized a guard, who will accompany the officers and
+hold the public buildings against all the secessionists in Maryland.</p>
+
+<p>"A great reaction has set in. If we <i>now</i> act promptly the day is
+ours and the State is safe."</p></div>
+
+<p>These matters being adjusted, he immediately took
+the field for Congress on his platform against Mr. Henry
+May, conservative Union, and in the face of an opposition
+which few men have dared to encounter, he carried
+on, unremittingly from that time until the election on
+the 13th of June, the most brilliant campaign against
+open traitors, doubters, and dodgers, that unrivalled
+eloquence, courage, and activity could achieve. Everywhere,
+day and night, in sunshine and storm, in the
+market-houses, at the street corners, and in the public
+halls, his voice rang out clear, loud, and defiant for the
+"unconditional maintenance" of the Union. He was
+defeated, but he sanctified the name of <i>unconditional
+union</i> in the vocabulary of every true Marylander. He
+gathered but 6,000 votes out of 14,000, yet the result
+was a triumph which gave him the real fruits of victory;
+and he exclaimed to a friend, with laudable pride,
+"With six thousand of the workingmen of Baltimore
+on my side, won in such a contest, I defy them to take
+the State out of the Union." Though not elected, he
+never ceased his efforts. With us it was a struggle for
+homes, hearths, and lives. He said at Brooklyn:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"You see the conflagration from a distance; it blisters me at my
+side. You can survive the integrity of the nation; we in Maryland
+would live on the side of a gulf, perpetually tending to plunge into
+its depths. It is for us life and liberty; it is for you greatness,
+strength, and prosperity."</p></div>
+
+<p>Nothing appalled him; nothing deterred him. He
+said, at Baltimore, in 1861:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The War Department has been taught by the misfortune at Bull
+Run, which has broken no power nor any spirit, which bowed no
+State nor made any heart falter, which was felt as a humiliation that
+has brought forth wisdom."</p></div>
+
+<p>He also said, speaking of the rebels, and foretelling
+his own fate, if they succeeded in Maryland:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"They have inaugurated an era of confiscations, proscriptions,
+and exiles. Read their acts of greedy confiscation, their law of
+proscriptions by the thousands. Behold the flying exiles from the
+unfriendly soil of Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri."</p></div>
+
+<p>And so he worked on, never abating one jot of his
+uncompromising devotion to the Union, like a second
+Peter the Hermit, preaching a cause, as he believed,
+truly represented by insignia as sacred as the Cross, and
+for which no sacrifice, not even death, was too great.</p>
+
+<p>But his crowning glory was his leadership of the
+emancipation movement. The rebels, notwithstanding
+"My Maryland's" bloody welcome at South Mountain
+and Antietam, claimed that she must belong to their
+confederacy because of the homogeneousness of her
+institutions. They contended that the fetters of slavery
+formed a chain that stretched across the Potomac, and
+held in bondage not only 87,000 slaves, but 600,000
+white people also. Their constant theme was "the deliverance"
+of Maryland. We resolved to break that last
+tie, and to take position unalterably on the side of the
+Union and freedom, and thus to deal the final blow to
+the cause and support of rebellion. We organized our
+little band, almost ridiculous from its want of numbers,
+early in 1863. A Sibley tent would have held our
+whole army. Our enemies laughed us to scorn, and
+the politicians would not accept our help on any terms,
+but denied us as earnestly as Peter denied his Lord.
+Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> was our acknowledged leader, and it was in
+the heat and fury of the contest which followed that
+our hearts were welded into permanent friendship. He
+was the platform maker, and he announced it in a few
+lines:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A hearty support of the entire policy of the national administration,
+including immediate emancipation by constitutional means."</p></div>
+
+<p>It was very short, but it covered all the ground.
+The campaign opened by the publication of an address,
+written by Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span>, to the people of Maryland, which,
+I venture to say, is unsurpassed by any state paper published
+in this age of able state papers for the warmth
+and vigor of its diction, and the lucidity and conclusiveness
+of its argumentation. It is a pamphlet of twenty
+pages, glowing throughout with the unmistakable marks
+of his genius and patriotism, and closing with these
+words of stirring cheer:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We do not doubt the result, and expect, freed from the trammels
+which now bind her, to see Maryland, at no distant day, rapidly
+advancing in a course of unexampled prosperity with her sister <i>free</i>
+States of the <i>undivided</i> and <i>indivisible</i> Republic."</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> was ubiquitous. He was the life and soul
+of the whole contest. He arranged the order of battle,
+dictated the correspondence, wrote the important articles
+for the newspapers, and addressed all the concerted
+meetings. In short, neither his voice nor his pen rested
+in all the time of our travail. He would have no compromise;
+but rejected all overtures of the enemy short
+of unconditional surrender. On the Eastern Shore he
+spoke with irresistible power at Elkton, Easton, Salisbury,
+and Snow Hill, at each of the three last-named
+towns with a crowd of wondering "American citizens of
+African descent" listening to him from afar, and looking
+upon him as if they believed him to be the seraph
+Abdiel. His last appointment, in extreme southern
+Maryland, he filled on Friday, after which, bidding me a
+cordial God-speed, he descended from the stand, sprang
+into an open wagon awaiting him, travelled eighty miles
+through a raw night-air, reached Cambridge by daylight,
+and then crossed the Chesapeake, sixty miles, in time
+to close the campaign with one of his ringing speeches
+in Monument square, Baltimore, on Saturday night. In
+this, our first contest, we were completely victorious.</p>
+
+<p>But we had yet a weary way before us. The legislature
+had then to pass a law calling a convention. That
+law had to be approved by a majority of the people.
+Members of the convention had then to be elected in
+all parts of the State, and the Constitution which they
+adopted had to be carried by a majority of the popular
+vote. He allowed himself no reprieve from labor until
+all this had been accomplished. And when the rest of
+us, worn out by incessant toil, gladly sought rest, he
+went before the court of appeals to maintain everything
+that had been done against all comers, and did so
+triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>Let free Maryland never forget the debt of eternal
+gratitude she owes to <span class="smcap">Henry Winter Davis</span>.</p>
+
+<p>If oratory means the power of presenting thoughts
+by public and sustained speech to an audience in the
+manner best adapted to win a favorable decision of the
+question at issue, then Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> assuredly occupied
+the highest position as an orator. He always held his
+hearers in rapt attention until he closed, and then they
+lingered about to discuss with one another what they
+had heard. I have seen a promiscuous assembly, made
+up of friends and opponents, remain exposed to a beating
+rain for two hours rather than forego hearing him.
+Those who had heard him most frequently were always
+ready to make the greatest effort to hear him again.
+Even his bitterest enemies have been known to stand
+shivering on the street corners for a whole evening,
+charmed by his marvelous tongue. His stump efforts
+never fell below his high standard. He never condescended
+to a mere attempt to amuse. He always
+spoke to instruct, to convince, and to persuade through
+the higher and better avenues to favor. I never heard
+him deliver a speech that was not worthy of being
+printed and preserved. As a stump orator he was
+unapproachable, in my estimation, and I say that with
+a clear recollection of having heard, when a boy, that
+wonder of Yankee birth and southern development, S.
+S. Prentiss.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis's</span> ripe scholarship promptly tendered to his
+thought the happiest illustrations and the most appropriate
+forms of expression. His brain had become
+a teeming cornucopia, whence flowed in exhaustless
+profusion the most beautiful flowers and the most substantial
+fruits; and yet he never indulged in excessive
+ornamentation. His taste was almost austerely chaste.
+His style was perspicuous, energetic, concise, and withal
+highly elegant. He never loaded his sentences with
+meretricious finery, or high-sounding, supernumerary
+words. When he did use the jewelry of rhetoric, he
+would quietly set a metaphor in his page or throw a
+comparison into his speech which would serve to light
+up with startling distinctness the colossal proportions
+of his argument. Of humor he had none; but his wit
+and sarcasm at times would glitter like the brandished
+cimeter of Saladin, and, descending, would cut as keenly.
+The pathetic he never attempted; but when angered by
+a malicious assault his invective was consuming, and his
+epithets would wound like pellets of lead. Although
+gallant to the graces of expression, he always compelled
+his rhetoric to act as handmaid to his dialectics.</p>
+
+<p>Style may sometimes be an exotic; but when it is, it
+is sure to partake more and more, as years increase, of
+the peculiarities of the soil wherein it is nurtured. But
+the style of Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> was indigenous and strongly
+marked by his individuality. Although he doubtless
+admired, and perhaps imitated, the condensation and
+dignity of Gibbon, yet it is certain that he carefully
+avoided the monotonous stateliness and the elaborate
+and ostentatious art of that most erudite historian. I
+look in vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the
+cynical Bolingbroke, or the gorgeous Burke. These
+were all to him intellectual giants; but giants of false
+belief and practice. Not even from Tacitus, upon whom
+he looked with the greatest favor, could he have acquired
+his burning and impressive diction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Henry Winter Davis</span> was a man of faith, and
+believed in Christ and his fellow-man. His heart and
+mind were both nourished into their full dimensions
+under the fostering influences of our free institutions;
+so that, being reared a freeman, he thought and spake
+as became a freeman. No other land could have produced
+such dauntless courage and such heroic devotion
+to honest conviction in a public man; and even our land
+has produced but few men of his stamp and ability.
+His implicit faith in God's eternal justice, and his grand
+moral courage, imparted to him his proselyting zeal, and
+gave him that amazing, kindling power which enabled
+him to light the fires of enthusiasm wherever he touched
+the public mind.</p>
+
+<p>To show his power in extemporaneous debate, as
+well as his determined patriotism, I will introduce a
+passage from his speech of April 11, 1864, delivered in
+the House of Representatives. You will remember
+that the end of the rebellion had not then appeared.
+Grant, with his invincible legions, had not started to execute
+that greatest military movement of modern times,
+by which, after months of bloody persistence, hurling
+themselves continually against what seemed the frowning
+front of destiny, they finally drove the enemy from his
+strongholds, made Fortune herself captive, and, binding
+her to their standards, held her there until the surrender
+of every rebel in arms closed the war amid the exultant
+plaudits of men and angels. Our hopes had not then
+grown into victory, and we looked forward anxiously to
+the terrible march from the Rappahannock to Richmond.
+Thinking that perhaps our army stood appalled
+before the great duty required of it, and that the people
+might be diverted from their purpose to crush the
+rebellion when they saw that it could only be accomplished
+at the cost of an ocean of human blood, a call
+was made on the floor of the American Congress for a
+recognition of the southern confederacy. Speaking for
+the nation, Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis</span> said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"But, Mr. Speaker, if it be said that a time may come when the
+question of recognizing the southern confederacy will have to be
+answered, I admit it. * * * * When the people, exhausted
+by taxation, weary of sacrifices, drained of blood, betrayed by their
+rulers, deluded by demagogues into believing that peace is the way
+to union, and submission the path to victory, shall throw down their
+arms before the advancing foe; when vast chasms across every
+State shall make it apparent to every eye, when too late to remedy
+it, that division from the south is anarchy at the north, and that
+peace without union is the end of the Republic; <i>then</i> the independence
+of the south will be an accomplished fact, and gentlemen may,
+without treason to the dead Republic, rise in this migratory house,
+wherever it may then be in America, and declare themselves for
+recognizing their masters at the south rather than exterminating
+them. Until that day, in the name of the American nation; in the
+name of every house in the land where there is one dead for the holy
+cause; in the name of those who stand before us in the ranks of
+battle; in the name of the liberty our ancestors have confided to us,
+I devote to eternal execration the name of him who shall propose to
+destroy this blessed land rather than its enemies.</p>
+
+<p>"But until that time arrive it is the judgment of the American
+people there shall be no compromise; that ruin to ourselves or ruin
+to the southern rebels are the only alternatives. It is only by resolutions
+of this kind that nations can rise above great dangers and
+overcome them in crises like this. It was only by turning France
+into a camp, resolved that Europe might exterminate but should not
+subjugate her, that France is the leading empire of Europe to-day.
+It is by such a resolve that the American people, coercing a reluctant
+government to draw the sword and stake the national existence on
+the integrity of the Republic, are now anything but the fragments of
+a nation before the world, the scorn and hiss of every petty tyrant.
+It is because the people of the United States, rising to the height of
+the occasion, dedicated this generation to the sword, and pouring out
+the blood of their children as of no account, and vowing before high
+Heaven that there should be no end to this conflict but ruin absolute
+or absolute triumph, that we now are what we are; that the banner
+of the Republic, still pointing onward, floats proudly in the face of
+the enemy; that vast regions are reduced to obedience to the laws,
+and that a great host in armed array now presses with steady step
+into the dark regions of the rebellion. It is only by the earnest and
+abiding resolution of the people that, whatever shall be our fate, it
+shall be grand as the American nation, worthy of that Republic which
+first trod the path of empire and made no peace but under the banners
+of victory, that the American people will survive in history. And
+that will save us. We shall succeed, and not fail. I have an abiding
+confidence in the firmness, the patience, the endurance of the American
+people; and, having vowed to stand in history on the great
+resolve to accept of nothing but victory or ruin, victory is ours.
+And if with such heroic resolve we fall, we fall with honor, and
+transmit the name of liberty, committed to our keeping, untarnished,
+to go down to future generations. The historian of our decline and
+fall, contemplating the ruins of the last great Republic, and drawing
+from its fate lessons of wisdom on the waywardness of men, shall
+drop a tear as he records with sorrow the vain heroism of that people
+who dedicated and sacrificed themselves to the cause of freedom, and
+by their example will keep alive her worship in the hearts of men
+till happier generations shall learn to walk in her paths. Yes, sir, if
+we must fall, let our last hours be stained by no weakness. If we
+must fall, let us stand amid the crash of the falling Republic and be
+buried in its ruins, so that history may take note that men lived in
+the middle of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but
+chastised by God for the sins of their forefathers. Let the ruins of
+the Republic remain to testify to the latest generations our greatness
+and our heroism. And let Liberty, crownless and childless, sit upon
+these ruins, crying aloud in a sad wail to the nations of the world,
+'I nursed and brought up children and they have rebelled against
+me.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Davis's</span> most striking characteristics were his devotion
+to principle and his indomitable courage. There
+never was a moment when he could be truthfully charged
+with trimming or insincerity. His views were always
+clearly avowed and fearlessly maintained. He hated
+slavery, and he did not attempt to conceal it. He
+remembered the lessons of his youth, and his heart
+rebelled against the injustice of the system. His antipathy
+was deeply grounded in his convictions, and he
+could not be dissuaded, nor frightened, nor driven from
+expressing it.</p>
+
+<p>He was not a great captain, nor a mighty ruler; he
+was only one of the people, but, nevertheless, a hero.
+Born under the flag of a nation which claimed for its
+cardinal principle of government, that all men are
+created free, yet held in abject slavery four millions of
+human beings; which erected altars to the living God,
+yet denied to creatures, formed in the image of God
+and charged with the custody of immortal souls, the
+common rights of humanity; he declared that the
+hateful inconsistency should cease to defile the prayers
+of Christians and stultify the advocates of freedom.
+No dreamer was he, no mere theorist, but a worker,
+and a strong one, who did well the work committed to
+him. He entered upon his self-imposed task when
+surrounded by slaves and slave-owners. He stood face
+to face with the iniquitous superstition, and to their
+teeth defied its worshipers. To make proselytes he
+had to conquer prejudices, correct traditions, elevate
+duty above interest, and induce men who had been the
+propagandists of slavery to become its destroyers.
+Think you his work was easy? Count the long years
+of his unequal strife; gather from the winds, which
+scattered them, the curses of his foes; suffer under all
+the annoyances and insults which malice and falsehood
+can invent, and you will then understand how much of
+heart and hope, of courage and self-relying zeal, were
+required to make him what he was, and to qualify him
+to do what he did. And what did he? When the
+rough hand of war had stripped off the pretexts which
+enveloped the rebellion, and it became evident that
+slavery had struck at the life of the Republic, unmindful
+of consequences to himself, he, among the first,
+arraigned the real traitor and demanded the penalty of
+death. The denunciations that fell upon him like a
+cloud wrapped him in a mantle of honor, and more
+truthfully than the great Roman orator he could have
+exclaimed, "<i>Ego hoc animo semperfui, ut invidiam
+virtute partam, gloriam non invidiam putarem</i>."</p>
+
+<p>This man, so stern and inflexible in the execution of
+a purpose, so rigorous in his demands of other men in
+behalf of a principle, so indifferent to preferment and
+all base objects of pursuit, had a monitor to whom he
+always gave an open ear and a prompt assent. It was
+no demon like that which attended Socrates, no witch
+like that invoked by Saul, no fiend like that to which
+Faust resigned himself. A vision of light and life and
+beauty flitted ever palpably before him, and wooed him
+to the perpetual service of the good and true. The
+memory of a pious and beloved mother permeated his
+whole moral being, and kept warm within him the tenderest
+affection. Hear how he wrote of her:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"My mother was a lady of graceful and simple manners, fair
+complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair, with a rich and exquisite
+voice, that still thrills my memory with the echo of its vanished
+music. She was highly educated for her day, when Annapolis was
+the focus of intellect and fashion for Maryland, and its fruits shone
+through her conversation, and colored and completed her natural
+eloquence, which my father used to say would have made her an
+orator, if it had not been thrown away on a woman. She was the
+incarnation of all that is Christian in life and hope, in charity and
+thought, ready for every good work, herself the example of all she
+taught."</p></div>
+
+<p>It was the force of her precept and example that
+formed the man, and supplied him with his shield and
+buckler. His private life was spotless. His habits
+were regular and abstemious, and his practice in close
+conformity with the Episcopal church, of which he was
+a member. He invariably attended divine service on
+Sunday, and confined himself for the remainder of the
+day to a course of religious reading. If from his father
+he drew a courage and a fierce determination before
+which his enemies fled in confusion, from his mother
+he inherited those milder qualities that won for him
+friends as true and devoted as man ever possessed.
+Some have said he was hard and dictatorial. They
+had seen him only when a high resolve had fired his
+breast, and when the gleam of battle had lighted his
+countenance. His friends saw deeper, and knew that
+beneath the exterior he assumed in his struggles with
+the world there beat a heart as pure and unsullied, as
+confiding and as gentle, as ever sanctified the domestic
+circle, or made loved ones happy. His heart reminded
+me of a spring among the hills of the Susquehanna, to
+which I often resorted in my youth; around a part of
+it we boys had built a stone wall to protect it from outrage,
+while on the side next home we left open a path,
+easily traveled by familiar feet, and leading straight to
+the sweet and perennial waters within.</p>
+
+<p>He lived to hear the salvos that announced, after
+more than two centuries of bondage, the redemption of
+his native State. He lived to vote for that grand act of
+enfranchisement that wiped from the escutcheon of the
+nation the leprous stain of slavery, and to know that the
+Constitution of the United States no longer recognized
+and protected property in man. He lived to witness
+the triumph of his country in its desperate struggle
+with treason, and to behold all its enemies, either wanderers,
+like Cain, over the earth, or suppliants for mercy
+at her feet. He lived to catch the first glimpse of the
+coming glory of that new era of progress that matchless
+valor had won through the blood and carnage of a thousand
+battle-fields. He lived, through all the storm of
+war, to see, at last, America rejuvenated, rescued from
+the grasp of despotism, and rise victorious, with her
+garments purified and her brow radiant with the unsullied
+light of liberty. He lived to greet the return
+of "meek-eyed peace," and then he gently laid his head
+upon her bosom, and breathed out there his noble spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The sword may rust in its scabbard, and so let it;
+but free men, with free thought and free speech, will
+wage unceasing war until truth shall be enthroned and
+sit empress of the world. Would to God that he had
+been spared to complete a life of three score and ten
+years, for the sake of his country and posterity. When
+I think of the good he would have accomplished had
+he survived for twenty years, I can say, in the language
+of Fisher Ames, "My heart, penetrated with the remembrance
+of the man, grows liquid as I speak, and I could
+pour it out like water."</p>
+
+<p>At the portals of his tomb we may bid farewell to
+the faithful Christian, in the full assurance that a blessed
+life awaits him beyond the grave. Serenely and trustfully
+he has passed from our sight and gone down into
+the dark waters.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet anon repairs his drooping head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From this hall, where as scholar, statesman, and
+orator he shone so brightly, he has disappeared forever.
+Never again will he, answering to the roll-call from this
+desk, respond for his country and the rights of man.
+No more shall we hear his fervid eloquence in the day
+of imminent peril, invoking us, who hold the mighty
+power of peace and war, to dedicate ourselves, if need
+be, to the sword, but to accept no end of the conflict
+save that of absolute triumph for our country. He has
+gone to answer the great roll-call above, where the
+"brazen throat of war" is voiceless in the presence of
+the Prince of Peace. Let us habitually turn to his
+recorded words, and gather wisdom as from the testament
+of a departed sage; and since we were witnesses
+of his tireless devotion to the cause of human freedom,
+let us direct that on the monument which loving hearts
+and willing hands will soon erect over his remains, there
+shall be deeply engraved the figure of a bursting shackle,
+as the emblem of the faith in which he lived and died.</p>
+
+<p>For the Christian, scholar, statesman, and orator, all
+good men are mourners; but what shall I say of that
+grief which none can share&mdash;the grief of sincere friendship?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, my friend! comforted by the belief that you,
+while living, deemed me worthy to be your companion,
+and loaded me with the proofs of your esteem, I shall
+fondly treasure, during my remaining years, the recollection
+of your smile and counsel. Lost to me is the
+strong arm whereon I have so often leaned; but in that
+path which in time past we trod most joyfully together,
+I shall continue, as God shall give me to see my duty,
+with unfaltering though perhaps with unskilful steps,
+right onward to the end.</p>
+
+<p>Admiring his brilliant intellect and varied acquirements,
+his invincible courage and unswerving fortitude,
+glorying in his good works and fair renown, but, more
+than all, <i>loving the man</i>, I shall endeavor to assuage the
+bitterness of grief by applying to him those words of
+proud, though tearful, satisfaction, from which the faithful
+Tacitus drew consolation for the loss of that noble
+Roman whom he delighted to honor:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet
+mansurumque est, in animis hominum, in &aelig;ternitate temporum, fama
+rerum."</p></div>
+
+
+<p style="padding-top: 3em;"><b>Transcriber's Note</b></p>
+
+<p>Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.</p>
+
+<p>The writer uses some archaic spelling which has been kept as printed.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oration on the Life and Character of
+Henry Winter Davis, by John A. J. Creswell
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,1549 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oration on the Life and Character of Henry
+Winter Davis, by John A. J. Creswell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis
+
+Author: John A. J. Creswell
+
+Release Date: July 16, 2007 [EBook #22084]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY WINTER DAVIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ORATION
+ON THE
+LIFE AND CHARACTER
+OF
+HENRY WINTER DAVIS,
+
+BY
+
+HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL.
+
+Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives,
+February 22, 1866.
+
+WASHINGTON:
+GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The death of Hon. HENRY WINTER DAVIS, for many years a distinguished
+Representative of one of the Baltimore congressional districts, created
+a deep sensation among those who had been associated with him in
+national legislation, and they deemed it fitting to pay to his memory
+unusual honors. They adopted resolutions expressive of their grief, and
+invited Hon. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL, a Senator of the United States from
+the State of Maryland, to deliver an oration on his life and character,
+in the hall of the House of Representatives, on the 22d of February, a
+day the recurrence of which ever gives increased warmth to patriotic
+emotions.
+
+The hall of the House was filled by a distinguished audience to listen
+to the oration. Before eleven o'clock the galleries were crowded in
+every part. The flags above the Speaker's desk were draped in black, and
+other insignia of mourning were exhibited. An excellent portrait of the
+late Hon. HENRY WINTER DAVIS was visible through the folds of the
+national banner above the Speaker's chair. As on the occasion of the
+oration on President LINCOLN by Hon. GEORGE BANCROFT, the Marine band
+occupied the ante-room of the reporters' gallery, and discoursed
+appropriate music.
+
+At twelve o'clock the senators entered, and the judges of the Supreme
+Court, preceded by Chief Justice Chase. Of the Cabinet Secretary Stanton
+and Secretary McCulloch were present. After prayer by the chaplain, the
+Declaration of Independence was read by Hon. EDWARD MCPHERSON, Clerk of
+the House. After the reading of the Declaration, followed by the playing
+of a dirge by the band, Hon. SCHUYLER COLFAX, Speaker of the House of
+Representatives, introduced the orator of the day, Hon. J. A. J.
+CRESWELL.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS
+
+OF
+
+HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX,
+
+SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
+
+
+Hon. SCHUYLER COLFAX, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said:
+
+LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The duty has been devolved upon me of introducing
+to you the friend and fellow-member, here, of HENRY WINTER DAVIS, and I
+shall detain you but a moment from his address, to which you will listen
+with saddened interest.
+
+The world always appreciates and honors courage: the courage of
+Christianity, which sustained martyrs in the amphitheatre, at the stake,
+and on the rack; the courage of Patriotism, which inspired millions in
+our own land to realize the historic fable of Curtius, and to fill up
+with their own bodies, if need be, the yawning chasm which imperiled the
+republic; the courage of Humanity, which is witnessed in the pest-house
+and the hospital, at the death-bed of the homeless and the prison-cell
+of the convict. But there is a courage of Statesmen, besides; and nobly
+was it illustrated by the statesman whose national services we
+commemorate to-day. Inflexibly hostile to oppression, whether of slaves
+on American soil or of republicans struggling in Mexico against
+monarchical invasion, faithful always to principle and liberty,
+championing always the cause of the down-trodden, fearless as he was
+eloquent in his avowals, he was mourned throughout a continent; and from
+the Patapsco to the Gulf the blessings of those who had been ready to
+perish followed him to his tomb. It is fitting, therefore, though dying
+a private citizen, that the nation should render him such marked and
+unusual honors in this hall, the scene of so many of his intellectual
+triumphs; and I have great pleasure in introducing to you, as the orator
+of the day, Hon. J. A. J. CRESWELL, his colleague in the thirty-eighth
+Congress, and now Senator from the State of Maryland.
+
+
+
+
+ORATION
+
+OF
+
+HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL.
+
+
+MY COUNTRYMEN: On the 22d day of February, 1732, God gave to the world
+the highest type of humanity, in the person of George Washington.
+Combining within himself the better qualities of the soldier, sage,
+statesman, and patriot, alike brave, wise, discreet, and incorruptible,
+the common consent of mankind has awarded him the incomparable title of
+Father of his Country. Among all nations and in every clime the richest
+treasures of language have been exhausted in the effort to transmit to
+posterity a faithful record of his deeds. For him unfading laurels are
+secure, so long as letters shall survive and history shall continue to
+be the guide and teacher of civilized men. The whole human race has
+become the self-appointed guardian of his fame, and the name of
+Washington will be ever held, over all the earth, to be synonymous with
+the highest perfection attainable in public or private life, and
+coeternal with that immortal love to which reason and revelation have
+together toiled to elevate human aspirations--the love of liberty,
+restrained and guarded by law.
+
+But in the presence of the Omnipotent how insignificant is the proudest
+and the noblest of men! Even Washington, who alone of his kind could
+fill that comprehensive epitome of General Henry Lee, so often on our
+lips, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
+countrymen," was allowed no exemption from the common lot of mortals. In
+the sixty-eighth year of his age he, too, paid the debt of nature.
+
+The dread announcement of his demise sped over the land like a
+pestilence, burdening the very air with mourning, and carrying
+inexpressible sorrow to every household and every heart. The course of
+legislation was stopped in mid career to give expression to the grief of
+Congress, and by resolution, approved January 6, 1800, the 22d of
+February of that year was devoted to national humiliation and
+lamentation. This is, then, as well a day of sorrow as a day of
+rejoicing.
+
+More recent calamities also remind us that death is universal king. Just
+ten days ago our great historian pronounced in this hall an impartial
+judgment upon the earthly career of him who, as savior of his country,
+will be counted as the compeer of Washington. Scarce have the orator's
+lingering tones been mellowed into silence, scarce has the glowing page
+whereon his words were traced lost the impress of his passing hand, yet
+we are again called into the presence of the Inexorable to crown one
+more illustrious victim with sacrificial flowers. Having taken up his
+lifeless body, as beautiful as the dead Absalom, and laid it in the tomb
+with becoming solemnity, we have assembled in the sight of the world to
+do deserved honor to the name and memory of HENRY WINTER DAVIS, a native
+of Annapolis, in the State of Maryland, but always proudly claiming to
+be no less than a citizen of the United States of America.
+
+We have not convened in obedience to any formal custom, requiring us to
+assume an empty show of bereavement, in order that we may appear
+respectful to the departed. We who knew HENRY WINTER DAVIS are not
+content to clothe ourselves in the outward garb of grief, and call the
+semblance of mourning a fitting tribute to the gifted orator and
+statesman, so suddenly snatched from our midst in the full glory of his
+mental and bodily strength. We would do more than "bear about the
+mockery of woe." Prompted by a genuine affection, we desire to ignore
+all idle and merely conventional ceremonies, and permit our stricken
+hearts to speak their spontaneous sorrow.
+
+Here, then, where he sat for eight years as a Representative of the
+people; where friends have trooped about him, and admiring crowds have
+paid homage to his genius; where grave legislators have yielded
+themselves willing captives to his eloquence, and his wise counsel has
+moulded, in no small degree, the law of a great nation, let us, in
+dealing with what he has left us, verify the saying of Bacon, "Death
+openeth the good fame and extinguished envy." Remembering that he was a
+man of like passions and equally fallible with ourselves, let us review
+his life in a spirit of generous candor, applaud what is good, and try
+to profit by it; and if we find aught of ill, let us, so far as justice
+and truth will permit, cover it with the vail of charity and bury it out
+of sight forever. So may our survivors do for us.
+
+The subject of this address was born on the 16th of August, 1817.
+
+His father, Rev. Henry Lyon Davis, of the Protestant Episcopal church,
+was president of St. John's College at Annapolis, Maryland, and rector
+of St. Ann's parish. He was of imposing person, and great dignity and
+force of character. He was, moreover, a man of genius, and of varied and
+profound learning, eminently versed in mathematics and natural sciences,
+abounding in classical lore, endowed with a vast memory, and gifted with
+a concise, clear, and graceful style; rich and fluent in conversation,
+but without the least pretension to oratory and wholly incapable of
+_extempore_ speaking. He was removed from the presidency of St. John's
+by a board of democratic trustees because of his federal politics; and,
+years afterward, he gave his son his only lesson in politics at the end
+of a letter, addressed to him when at Kenyon College, in this laconic
+sentence: "My son, beware of the follies of Jacksonism."
+
+His mother was Jane Brown Winter, a woman of elegant accomplishments and
+of great sweetness of disposition and purity of life. It might be
+truthfully said of her, that she was an exemplar for all who knew her.
+She had only two children, Henry Winter, and Jane, who married Rev.
+Edward Syle.
+
+The education of Henry Winter began very early, at home, under the care
+of his aunt, Elizabeth Brown Winter, who entertained the most rigid and
+exacting opinions in regard to the training of children, but who was
+withal a noble woman. He once playfully said, "I could read before I was
+four years old, though much against my will." When his father was
+removed from St. John's, he went to Wilmington, Delaware, but some time
+elapsed before he became settled there. Meanwhile, Henry Winter remained
+with his aunt in Alexandria, Virginia. He afterward went to Wilmington,
+and was there instructed under his father's supervision. In 1827 his
+father returned to Maryland and settled in Anne Arundel county.
+
+After reaching Anne Arundel, Henry Winter became so much devoted to
+out-door life that he gave small promise of scholarly proficiency. He
+affected the sportsman, and became a devoted disciple of Nimrod;
+accompanied always by one of his father's slaves he roamed the country
+with a huge old fowling-piece on his shoulder, burning powder in
+abundance, but doing little damage otherwise. While here he saw much of
+slaves and slavery, and what he saw impressed him profoundly, and laid
+the foundation for those opinions which he so heroically and constantly
+defended in all his after-life. Referring to this period, he said long
+afterward, "My familiar association with the slaves while a boy gave me
+great insight into their feelings and views. They spoke with freedom
+before a boy what they would have repressed before a man. They were far
+from indifferent to their condition; they felt wronged and sighed for
+freedom. They were attached to my father and loved me, yet they
+habitually spoke of the day when God would deliver them."
+
+He subsequently went to Alexandria, and was sent to school at Howard,
+near the Theological Seminary, and from Howard he went to Kenyon
+College, in Ohio, in the fall of 1833.
+
+Kenyon was then in the first year of the presidency of Bishop
+McIlvaine. It was the centre of vast forests, broken only by occasional
+clearings, excepting along the lines of the National road, and the Ohio
+river and its navigable tributaries. In this wilderness of nature, but
+garden of letters, he remained, at first in the grammar school, and then
+in the college, until the 6th of September, 1837; when at twenty years
+of age he took his degree and diploma, decorated with one of the
+honorary orations of his class, on the great day of commencement. His
+subject was "Scholastic Philosophy."
+
+At the end of the Freshman year, a change in the college terms gave him
+a vacation of three months. Instead of spending it in idleness, as he
+might have done, and as most boys would have done, he availed himself of
+this interval to pursue and complete the studies of the Sophomore year,
+to which he had already given some attention in his spare moments. At
+the opening of the next session he passed the examination for the Junior
+class. Fortunately I have his own testimony and opinion as to this
+exploit, and I give them in his own language:
+
+     "It was a pretty sharp trial of resolution and dogged diligence,
+     but it saved me a year of college, and indurated my powers of study
+     and mental culture into a habit, and perhaps enabled me to stay
+     long enough to graduate. I do not recommend the example to those
+     who are independently situated, for learning must fall like the
+     rain in such gentle showers as to sink in if it is to be fruitful;
+     when poured on the richest soil in torrents, it not only runs off
+     without strengthening vegetation, but washes away the soil itself."
+
+His college life was laborious and successful. The regular studies were
+prosecuted with diligence, and from them he derived great profit, not
+merely in knowledge, but in what is of vastly more account, the habit
+and power of mental labor. These studies were wrought into his mind and
+made part of the intellectual substance by the vigorous collisions of
+the societies in which he delighted. For these mimic conflicts he
+prepared assiduously, not in writing, but always with a carefully
+deduced logical analysis and arrangement of the thoughts to be developed
+in the order of argument, with a brief note of any quotation, or image,
+or illustration, on the margin at the appropriate place. From that brief
+he spoke. And this was his only method of preparation for all the great
+conflicts in which he took part in after life. He never wrote out his
+speeches beforehand.
+
+Speaking of his feelings at the end of his college life, he sadly said:
+
+     "My father's death had embittered the last days of the year 1836,
+     and left me without a counsellor. I knew something of books,
+     nothing of men, and I went forth like Adam among the wild beasts of
+     the unknown wilderness of the world. My father had dedicated me to
+     the ministry, but the day had gone when such dedications determined
+     the lives of young men. Theology as a grave topic of historic and
+     metaphysical investigation I delighted to pursue, but for the
+     ministry I had no calling. I would have been idle if I could, for I
+     had no ambition, but I had no fortune and I could not beg or
+     starve."
+
+All who were acquainted with his temperament can well imagine what a
+gloomy prospect the future presented to him, when its contemplation
+wrung from his stoical taciturnity that touching confession.
+
+The truth is, that from the time he entered college he was continually
+cramped for want of money. The negroes ate everything that was produced
+on the farm in Anne Arundel, a gastronomic feat which they could easily
+accomplish, without ever having cause to complain of a surfeit. His
+aunt, herself in limited circumstances, by a careful husbandry of her
+means, managed to keep him at college. Kenyon was then a manual-labor
+institution, and the boys were required to sweep their own rooms, make
+their own beds and fires, bring their own water, black their own boots,
+if they ever were blacked, and take an occasional turn at grubbing in
+the fields or working on the roads. There was no royal road to learning
+known at Kenyon in those days. Through all this Henry Winter Davis
+passed, bearing his part manfully; and knowing how heavily he taxed the
+slender purse of his aunt, he denied himself with such rigor that he
+succeeded, incredible as it may appear, in bringing his total expenses,
+including boarding and tuition, within the sum of eighty dollars per
+annum.
+
+His father left an estate consisting only of some slaves, which were
+equally apportioned between himself and sister. Frequent applications
+were made to purchase his slaves, but he never could be induced to sell
+them, although the proceeds would have enabled him to pursue his studies
+with ease and comfort. He rather sought and obtained a tutorship, and
+for two years he devoted to law and letters only the time he could
+rescue from its drudgery. In a letter, written in April, 1839, replying
+to the request of a relative who offered to purchase his slave Sallie,
+subject to the provisions of his father's will, which manumitted her if
+she would go to Liberia, he said: "But if she is under my control." (he
+did not know that she had been set to his share,) "I will _not consent
+to the sale_, though he wishes to purchase her subject to the will." And
+so Sallie was not sold, and Henry Winter Davis, the tutor, toiled on and
+waited. He never would hold any of his slaves under his authority, never
+would accept a cent of their wages, and tendered each and all of them a
+deed of absolute manumission whenever the law would allow. Tell me, was
+that man sincere in his opposition to slavery? How many of those who
+have since charged him with being selfish and reckless in his advocacy
+of emancipation would have shown equal devotion to principle? Not one;
+not one. Ah! the man who works and suffers for his opinions' sake places
+his own flesh and blood in pledge for his integrity.
+
+Notwithstanding his irksome and exacting duties, he kept his eye
+steadily on the University of Virginia, and read, without assistance, a
+large part of its course. He delighted especially in the pungent pages
+of Tacitus and the glowing and brilliant, dignified and elevated epic of
+the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. These were favorites which
+never lost their charm for him. When recently on a visit at my house, he
+stated in conversation that he often exercised himself in translating
+from the former, and in transferring the thoughts of the latter into his
+own language, and he contended that the task had dispelled the popular
+error that Gibbon's style is swollen and declamatory; for he alleged
+that every effort at condensation had proved a failure, and that at the
+end of his labors the page he had attempted to compress had always
+expanded to the eye, when relieved of the weighty and stringent fetters
+in which the gigantic genius of Gibbon had bound it.
+
+About this time--the only period when doubts beset him--he was tempted
+by a very advantageous offer to settle in Mississippi. He determined to
+accept; but some kind spirit interposed to prevent the despatch of the
+final letter, and he remained in Alexandria. At last his aunt--second
+mother as she was--sold some land and dedicated the proceeds to his
+legal studies. He arrived at the University of Virginia in October,
+1839.
+
+From that moment he entered actively and unremittingly on his course of
+intellectual training. While a boy he had become familiar, under the
+guidance of his father, with the classics of Addison, Johnson, Swift,
+Cowper, and Pope, and he now plunged into the domain of history. He had
+begun at Kenyon to make flanking forays into the fields of historic
+investigation which lay so invitingly on each side of the regular march
+of his college course. As he acquired more information and confidence,
+these forays became more extensive and profitable. It was then the
+transition period from the shallow though graceful pages of Gillies,
+Rollin, Russel, and Tytler, and the rabbinical agglomerations of
+Shuckford and Prideaux to the modern school of free, profound, and
+laborious investigation, which has reared immortal monuments to its
+memory in the works of Hallam, Macaulay, Grote, Bancroft, Prescott,
+Motley, Niebuhr, Bunsen, Schlosser, Thiers, and their fellows. But of
+the last-named none except Niebuhr's History of Rome and Hallam's Middle
+Ages were accessible to him in the backwoods of Ohio. Cousin's Course of
+the History of Modern Philosophy was just glittering in the horizon, and
+Gibbon shone alone as the morning star of the day of historic research,
+which he had heralded so long. The French Revolution he had seen only as
+presented in Burke's brilliant vituperation and Scott's Tory diatribe. A
+republican picture of the great republican revolution, the fountain of
+all that is now tolerable in Europe, had not then been presented on any
+authentic and comprehensive page.
+
+Not only these, but all historical works of value which the English,
+French, and German languages can furnish, with an immense amount of
+other intellectual pabulum, were eagerly gathered, consumed with
+voracious appetite, and thoroughly digested. Supplied at last with the
+required means, he braced himself for a systematic curriculum of law,
+and pursued it with marked constancy and success. While at the
+university he also took up the German and French languages and mastered
+them, and he perfected his scholarship in Latin and Greek. Until his
+death he read all these languages with great facility and accuracy, and
+he always kept his Greek Testament lying on his table for easy
+reference.
+
+After a thorough course at the university, Mr. DAVIS entered upon the
+practice of the law in Alexandria, Virginia. He began his profession
+without much to cheer him; but he was not the man to abandon a pursuit
+for lack of courage. His ability and industry attracted attention, and
+before long he had acquired a respectable practice, which thenceforth
+protected him from all annoyances of a pecuniary nature. He toiled with
+unwearied assiduity, never appearing in the trial of a cause without the
+most elaborate and exhaustive preparation, and soon became known to his
+professional brethren as a valuable ally and a formidable foe. His
+natural aptitude for public affairs made itself manifest in due time,
+and some articles which he prepared on municipal and State politics gave
+him great reputation. He also published a series of newspaper essays,
+wherein he dared to question the divinity of slavery; and these, though
+at the time thought to be not beyond the limits of free discussion, were
+cited against him long after as evidence that he was a heretic in
+pro-slavery Virginia and Maryland.
+
+On the 30th of October, 1845, he married Miss Constance T. Gardiner,
+daughter of William C. Gardiner, Esq., a most accomplished and charming
+young lady, as beautiful and as fragile as a flower. She lived to
+gladden his heart for but a few years, and then,
+
+    "Like a lily drooping,
+    She bowed her head and died."
+
+In 1850 he came to Baltimore, and immediately a high position,
+professional, social, and political, was awarded him. His forensic
+efforts at once commanded attention and enforced respect. The young men
+of most ability and promise gathered about him, and made him the centre
+of their chosen circle. He became a prominent member of the whig party,
+and was everywhere known as the brilliant orator and successful
+controvertist of the Scott campaign of 1852. The whig party, worn out by
+its many gallant but unsuccessful battles, was ultimately gathered to
+its fathers, and Mr. DAVIS led off in the American movement. He was
+elected successively to the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and
+thirty-sixth Congresses by the American party from the fourth district
+of Maryland. He supported with great ability and zeal Mr. Fillmore for
+the Presidency in 1856, and in 1860 accepted John Bell as the candidate
+of his party, though he clearly divined and plainly announced that the
+great battle was really between Abraham Lincoln, as the representative
+of the national sentiment on the one hand, and secession and disunion,
+in all their shades and phases, on the other. To his seat in the
+thirty-eighth Congress he was elected by the Unconditional Union party.
+
+Since the adjournment of the thirty-eighth Congress he has been
+profoundly concerned in the momentous public questions now pressing for
+adjustment, and he did not fail on several fitting occasions to give his
+views at length to the public. Nevertheless, he frequently alluded to
+his earnest desire to retreat for awhile from the perplexing annoyances
+of public life. He had determined upon a long visit to Europe in the
+coming spring, and had almost concluded the purchase of a delightful
+country-seat, where he hoped to recruit his weary brain for years to
+come from the exhaustless riches of nature. When the thirty-ninth
+Congress met, and he read of his old companions in the work of
+legislation again gathering in their halls and committee-rooms, I think,
+for at least a day or two, he felt a longing to be among them. During
+the second week of the session he again entered this hall, but only as a
+spectator. The greeting he received--so general, spontaneous, and
+cordial--from gentlemen on both sides of the House, touched his heart
+most sensibly. The crowd that gathered about him was go great that the
+party was obliged to retire to one of the larger ante-rooms for fear of
+interrupting the public business. A delightful interview among old
+friends was the reward. He was charmed with his reception, and mentioned
+it to me with intense satisfaction. Little did you, gentlemen, then
+think that between you and a beloved friend the curtain that shrouds
+eternity was so soon to be interposed. His sickness was of about a
+week's duration. Until the morning of the day preceding his death, his
+friends never doubted his recovery. Later in the day very unfavorable
+symptoms appeared, and all then realized his danger. In the evening his
+wife spoke to him of a visit, for one day, which he had projected, to
+his old friend, Mrs. S. F. Du Pont, when he replied, in the last words
+he ever uttered, "It shows the folly of making plans even for a day." He
+continued to fail rapidly in strength until two o'clock on the afternoon
+of Saturday, the 30th of December, when HENRY WINTER DAVIS, in the
+forty-ninth year of his age, appeared before his God. His death
+confirmed the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, who declared, "Marshaling
+all the horrors of death, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I
+find not anything therein able to daunt the _courage_ of a _man_, much
+less a _well-resolved Christian_." He passed away so quietly that no one
+knew the moment of his departure. His was--
+
+                "A death, life sleep;
+    A gentle wafting to immortal life."
+
+Mr. DAVIS left a widow, Mrs. Nancy Davis, a daughter of John B. Morris,
+Esq., of Baltimore, and two little girls, who were the idols of his
+heart. He was married a second time on the 26th of January, 1857. His
+nearest surviving collateral relation is the Hon. David Davis, associate
+justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who is his only
+cousin-german. To all these afflicted hearts may God be most gracious.
+
+Thus has the country lost one of the most able, eloquent, and fearless
+of its defenders. Called from this life at an age when most men are just
+beginning to command the respect and confidence of their fellows, he has
+left, nevertheless, a fame as wide as our vast country. He died nineteen
+years younger than Washington and eight years younger than Lincoln. At
+forty-eight years of age Washington had not seen the glories of Yorktown
+even in a vision, nor had Lincoln dreamed of the presidential chair; and
+if they had died at that age they would have been comparatively unknown
+in history. Doubtless God would have raised up other leaders, if they
+had been wanting, to conduct the great American column, which He has
+chosen to be the bodyguard of human rights and hopes, onward among the
+nations and the centuries; but in that event the 12th and 22d days of
+February would not be, as they now are, held sacred in our calendar.
+
+Mr. DAVIS had gathered into his house the literary treasures of four
+languages, and had reveled in spirit with the wise men of the ages. He
+had conned his books as jealously as a miner peering for gold, and had
+not left a panful of earth unwashed. He had collected the purest ore of
+truth and the richest gems of thought, until he was able to crown
+himself with knowledge. Blessed with a felicitous power of analysis and
+a prodigious memory, he ransacked history, ancient and modern, sacred
+and profane; science, pure, empirical, and metaphysical; the arts,
+mechanical and liberal; the professions, law, divinity, and medicine;
+poetry and the miscellanies of literature; and in all these great
+departments of human lore he moved as easily as most men do in their
+particular province. His habit was not only to read but to reread the
+best of his books frequently, and he was continually supplying himself
+with better editions of his favorites. In current, playful conversation
+with friends he quoted right and left, in brief and at length, from the
+classics, ancient and modern, and from the drama, tragic and comic. In
+his speeches, on the contrary, he quoted but little, and only when he
+seemed to run upon a thought already expressed by some one else with
+singular force and appositeness. He was the best scholar I ever met for
+his years and active life, and was surpassed by very few, excepting mere
+book-worms. He has for many years been engaged in collecting extracts
+from newspapers, containing the leading facts and public documents of
+the day; but he never commonplaced from books. His thesaurus was his
+head.
+
+I have but little personal knowledge of Mr. DAVIS as a lawyer. It was
+never my good fortune to be associated with him in the trial of a cause;
+nor have I ever been present when he was so engaged. But at the time of
+his death he filled a high position at the bar, and was chosen to lead
+against the most distinguished of his brethren. On public and
+constitutional questions, as distinguished from those involving only
+private rights, he was a host, and in the argument of the cases which
+grew out of the adoption of the new constitution of Maryland he won
+golden laurels, and drew extraordinary encomiums even from his opponents
+in that angry litigation. He was thoroughly read in the decisions of the
+federal courts, and especially in those declaring and defining
+constitutional principles.
+
+Possessed of a mind of remarkable power, scope, and activity; with an
+immense fund of precious information, ready to respond to any call he
+might make upon it, however sudden; wielding a system of logic formed in
+the severest school, and tried by long practice; gifted with a rare
+command of language and an eloquence well nigh superhuman; and withal
+graced with manners the most accomplished and refined, and a person
+unusually handsome, graceful, and attractive. Mr. DAVIS entered public
+life with almost unparalleled personal advantages. Having boldly
+presented himself before the most rigorous tribunal in the world, he
+proved himself worthy of its favor and attention. He soon rose to the
+front rank of debaters, and whenever he addressed the House all sides
+gave him a delighted audience.
+
+I shall not attempt a review of the topics discussed in the
+thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth Congresses. The day was fast coming when
+contests for the Speakership and battles over appropriation bills, ay,
+even the fierce struggle over Kansas, would sink into insignificance,
+and Mr. DAVIS, with that political prescience for which he was always
+remarkable, seemed to discern the first sign of the coming storm. The
+winds had been long sown, and now the whirlwind was to be reaped. The
+thirty-sixth Congress, which had opened so inauspiciously, and which his
+vote had saved from becoming a perpetuated bedlam, met for its second
+session on the 3d of December, 1860, with the clouds of civil war fast
+settling down upon the nation. In the hope that war might yet be
+averted, on the fourth day of the session, the celebrated committee of
+thirty-three was raised, with the lamented Corwin, of Ohio, as chairman,
+and Mr. DAVIS as the member from Maryland. When the committee reported,
+Mr. DAVIS sustained the majority report in an able speech, in which,
+after urging every argument in favor of the report, he boldly proclaimed
+his own views, and the duties of his State and country. In his speech of
+7th February, 1861, he said:
+
+     "I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate the already
+     too much inflamed state of the public mind; but I will say that the
+     Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance
+     thereof, _must be enforced_; and they who stand across the path of
+     that enforcement must either _destroy_ the _power_ of the _United
+     States_, or it will _destroy them_."
+
+For such utterances only a small part of the people of his State was on
+that day prepared. Seduced by the wish, they still believed that the
+Union could be preserved by fair and mutual concessions. They were on
+their knees praying for peace, ignorant that bloody war had already
+girded on his sword. His language was then deemed too harsh and
+unconciliatory, and hundreds, I among the number, denounced him in
+unmeasured terms. Before the expiration of three months events had
+demonstrated his wisdom and our folly, and other paragraphs from that
+same speech became the fighting creed of the Union men of Maryland. He
+further said, on that occasion:
+
+     "But, sir, there is one State I can speak for, and that is the
+     State of Maryland. Confident in the strength of this great
+     government to protect every interest, grateful for almost a century
+     of unalloyed blessings, she has fomented no agitation; she has done
+     no act to disturb the public peace; she has rested in the
+     consciousness that if there be wrong the Congress of the United
+     States will remedy it; and that none exists which revolution would
+     not aggravate.
+
+     "Mr. Speaker, I am here this day to speak, and I say that I do
+     speak, for the people of Maryland, who are loyal to the United
+     States; and that when my judgment is contested, I appeal to the
+     people for its accuracy, and I am ready to maintain it before them.
+
+     "In Maryland we are dull, and cannot comprehend the right of
+     secession. We do not recognize the right to make a revolution by a
+     vote. We do not recognize the right of Maryland to repeal the
+     Constitution of the United States, and if any convention there,
+     called by whatever authority, under whatever auspices, undertake to
+     inaugurate revolution in Maryland, their authority will be resisted
+     and defied in arms on the soil of Maryland, in the name and by the
+     authority of the Constitution of the United States."
+
+In January, 1861, the ensign of the Republic, while covering a mission
+of mercy, was fired on by traitors. In February Jefferson Davis said, at
+Stevenson, Alabama, "We will carry war where it is easy to advance,
+where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely
+populated cities." In March the thirty-sixth Congress, after vainly
+passing conciliatory resolutions by the score, among other things
+recommending the repeal of all personal liberty bills, declaring that
+there was no authority outside of the States where slavery was
+recognized to interfere with slaves or slavery therein, and proposing by
+two-thirds votes of both houses an amendment of the Constitution
+prohibiting any future amendment giving Congress power over slavery in
+the States, adjourned amid general terror and distress.
+
+Abraham Lincoln, having passed through the midst of his enemies,
+appeared at Washington in due time and delivered his inaugural, closing
+with these memorable words:
+
+     "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine,
+     is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail
+     you.
+
+     "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.
+     You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the
+     government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve,
+     protect, and defend' it.
+
+     "I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not
+     be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break,
+     our bonds of affection.
+
+     "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and
+     patriot grave to every living hearth and hearth-stone all over this
+     broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
+     touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our
+     nature."
+
+Words which, if human hearts do not harden into stone, through the long
+ages yet to come,
+
+    "Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
+    The deep damnation of his taking off."
+
+The appeal was spurned; and, in the face of its almost godlike
+gentleness, they who already gloried in their anticipated saturnalia of
+blood inhumanly and falsely stigmatized it as a declaration of war. The
+long-patient North, slow to anger, in its agony still cried, "My
+brother; oh, my brother!" It remained for that final, ineradicable
+infamy of Sumter to arouse the nation to arms! At last, to murder at one
+blow the hopes we had nursed so tenderly, they impiously dragged in the
+dust the glorious symbol of our national life and majesty, heaping
+dishonor upon it, and, like the sneering devil at the crucifixion,
+crying out, "Come and deliver thyself!" and then no man, with the heart
+of a man, who loved his country and feared his God, dared longer delay
+to prepare for that great struggle which was destined to rock the earth.
+
+Poor Maryland! cursed with slavery, doubly cursed with traitors! Mr.
+DAVIS had said that Maryland was loyal to the United States, and had
+pledged himself to maintain that position before the people. The time
+soon came for him to redeem his pledge. On the morning of the 15th of
+April the President issued his proclamation calling a special session of
+Congress, which made an extra election necessary in Maryland. Before the
+sun of that day had gone down, this card was promulgated:
+
+     _To the voters of the fourth congressional district of Maryland:_
+
+     I hereby announce myself as a candidate for the House of
+     Representatives of the 37th Congress of the United States of
+     America, upon the basis of the _unconditional maintenance of the
+     Union_.
+
+     Should my fellow-citizens of _like views_ manifest their preference
+     for a different candidate on _that basis_, it is not my purpose to
+     embarrass them.
+
+                                                        H. WINTER DAVIS.
+     APRIL 15, 1861.
+
+But dark days were coming for Baltimore. A mob, systematically
+organized in complicity with the rebels at Richmond and Harper's Ferry,
+seized and kept in subjection an unsuspecting and unarmed population
+from the 19th to the 24th of April. For six days murder and treason held
+joint sway; and at the conclusion of their tragedy of horrid barbarities
+they gave the farce of holding an election for members of the house of
+delegates.
+
+To show the spirit that moved Mr. DAVIS under this ordeal, I cite from
+his letter, written on the 28th, to Hon. William H. Seward, the
+following:
+
+     "I have been trying to collect the persons appointed scattered by
+     the storm, and to compel them to take their offices or to decline.
+
+     "I have sought men of undoubted courage and capacity for the places
+     vacated.
+
+     "We must show the secessionists that we are not frightened, but are
+     resolved to maintain the government in the exercise of all its
+     functions in Maryland.
+
+     "We have organized a guard, who will accompany the officers and
+     hold the public buildings against all the secessionists in
+     Maryland.
+
+     "A great reaction has set in. If we _now_ act promptly the day is
+     ours and the State is safe."
+
+These matters being adjusted, he immediately took the field for
+Congress on his platform against Mr. Henry May, conservative Union, and
+in the face of an opposition which few men have dared to encounter, he
+carried on, unremittingly from that time until the election on the 13th
+of June, the most brilliant campaign against open traitors, doubters,
+and dodgers, that unrivalled eloquence, courage, and activity could
+achieve. Everywhere, day and night, in sunshine and storm, in the
+market-houses, at the street corners, and in the public halls, his voice
+rang out clear, loud, and defiant for the "unconditional maintenance" of
+the Union. He was defeated, but he sanctified the name of _unconditional
+union_ in the vocabulary of every true Marylander. He gathered but 6,000
+votes out of 14,000, yet the result was a triumph which gave him the
+real fruits of victory; and he exclaimed to a friend, with laudable
+pride, "With six thousand of the workingmen of Baltimore on my side, won
+in such a contest, I defy them to take the State out of the Union."
+Though not elected, he never ceased his efforts. With us it was a
+struggle for homes, hearths, and lives. He said at Brooklyn:
+
+     "You see the conflagration from a distance; it blisters me at my
+     side. You can survive the integrity of the nation; we in Maryland
+     would live on the side of a gulf, perpetually tending to plunge
+     into its depths. It is for us life and liberty; it is for you
+     greatness, strength, and prosperity."
+
+Nothing appalled him; nothing deterred him. He said, at Baltimore, in
+1861:
+
+     "The War Department has been taught by the misfortune at Bull Run,
+     which has broken no power nor any spirit, which bowed no State nor
+     made any heart falter, which was felt as a humiliation that has
+     brought forth wisdom."
+
+He also said, speaking of the rebels, and foretelling his own fate, if
+they succeeded in Maryland:
+
+     "They have inaugurated an era of confiscations, proscriptions, and
+     exiles. Read their acts of greedy confiscation, their law of
+     proscriptions by the thousands. Behold the flying exiles from the
+     unfriendly soil of Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri."
+
+And so he worked on, never abating one jot of his uncompromising
+devotion to the Union, like a second Peter the Hermit, preaching a
+cause, as he believed, truly represented by insignia as sacred as the
+Cross, and for which no sacrifice, not even death, was too great.
+
+But his crowning glory was his leadership of the emancipation movement.
+The rebels, notwithstanding "My Maryland's" bloody welcome at South
+Mountain and Antietam, claimed that she must belong to their confederacy
+because of the homogeneousness of her institutions. They contended that
+the fetters of slavery formed a chain that stretched across the Potomac,
+and held in bondage not only 87,000 slaves, but 600,000 white people
+also. Their constant theme was "the deliverance" of Maryland. We
+resolved to break that last tie, and to take position unalterably on the
+side of the Union and freedom, and thus to deal the final blow to the
+cause and support of rebellion. We organized our little band, almost
+ridiculous from its want of numbers, early in 1863. A Sibley tent would
+have held our whole army. Our enemies laughed us to scorn, and the
+politicians would not accept our help on any terms, but denied us as
+earnestly as Peter denied his Lord. Mr. DAVIS was our acknowledged
+leader, and it was in the heat and fury of the contest which followed
+that our hearts were welded into permanent friendship. He was the
+platform maker, and he announced it in a few lines:
+
+     "A hearty support of the entire policy of the national
+     administration, including immediate emancipation by constitutional
+     means."
+
+It was very short, but it covered all the ground. The campaign opened
+by the publication of an address, written by Mr. DAVIS, to the people of
+Maryland, which, I venture to say, is unsurpassed by any state paper
+published in this age of able state papers for the warmth and vigor of
+its diction, and the lucidity and conclusiveness of its argumentation.
+It is a pamphlet of twenty pages, glowing throughout with the
+unmistakable marks of his genius and patriotism, and closing with these
+words of stirring cheer:
+
+     "We do not doubt the result, and expect, freed from the trammels
+     which now bind her, to see Maryland, at no distant day, rapidly
+     advancing in a course of unexampled prosperity with her sister
+     _free_ States of the _undivided_ and _indivisible_ Republic."
+
+Mr. DAVIS was ubiquitous. He was the life and soul of the whole contest.
+He arranged the order of battle, dictated the correspondence, wrote the
+important articles for the newspapers, and addressed all the concerted
+meetings. In short, neither his voice nor his pen rested in all the time
+of our travail. He would have no compromise; but rejected all overtures
+of the enemy short of unconditional surrender. On the Eastern Shore he
+spoke with irresistible power at Elkton, Easton, Salisbury, and Snow
+Hill, at each of the three last-named towns with a crowd of wondering
+"American citizens of African descent" listening to him from afar, and
+looking upon him as if they believed him to be the seraph Abdiel. His
+last appointment, in extreme southern Maryland, he filled on Friday,
+after which, bidding me a cordial God-speed, he descended from the
+stand, sprang into an open wagon awaiting him, travelled eighty miles
+through a raw night-air, reached Cambridge by daylight, and then crossed
+the Chesapeake, sixty miles, in time to close the campaign with one of
+his ringing speeches in Monument square, Baltimore, on Saturday night.
+In this, our first contest, we were completely victorious.
+
+But we had yet a weary way before us. The legislature had then to pass
+a law calling a convention. That law had to be approved by a majority of
+the people. Members of the convention had then to be elected in all
+parts of the State, and the Constitution which they adopted had to be
+carried by a majority of the popular vote. He allowed himself no
+reprieve from labor until all this had been accomplished. And when the
+rest of us, worn out by incessant toil, gladly sought rest, he went
+before the court of appeals to maintain everything that had been done
+against all comers, and did so triumphantly.
+
+Let free Maryland never forget the debt of eternal gratitude she owes to
+HENRY WINTER DAVIS.
+
+If oratory means the power of presenting thoughts by public and
+sustained speech to an audience in the manner best adapted to win a
+favorable decision of the question at issue, then Mr. DAVIS assuredly
+occupied the highest position as an orator. He always held his hearers
+in rapt attention until he closed, and then they lingered about to
+discuss with one another what they had heard. I have seen a promiscuous
+assembly, made up of friends and opponents, remain exposed to a beating
+rain for two hours rather than forego hearing him. Those who had heard
+him most frequently were always ready to make the greatest effort to
+hear him again. Even his bitterest enemies have been known to stand
+shivering on the street corners for a whole evening, charmed by his
+marvelous tongue. His stump efforts never fell below his high standard.
+He never condescended to a mere attempt to amuse. He always spoke to
+instruct, to convince, and to persuade through the higher and better
+avenues to favor. I never heard him deliver a speech that was not worthy
+of being printed and preserved. As a stump orator he was unapproachable,
+in my estimation, and I say that with a clear recollection of having
+heard, when a boy, that wonder of Yankee birth and southern development,
+S. S. Prentiss.
+
+Mr. DAVIS'S ripe scholarship promptly tendered to his thought the
+happiest illustrations and the most appropriate forms of expression. His
+brain had become a teeming cornucopia, whence flowed in exhaustless
+profusion the most beautiful flowers and the most substantial fruits;
+and yet he never indulged in excessive ornamentation. His taste was
+almost austerely chaste. His style was perspicuous, energetic, concise,
+and withal highly elegant. He never loaded his sentences with
+meretricious finery, or high-sounding, supernumerary words. When he did
+use the jewelry of rhetoric, he would quietly set a metaphor in his page
+or throw a comparison into his speech which would serve to light up with
+startling distinctness the colossal proportions of his argument. Of
+humor he had none; but his wit and sarcasm at times would glitter like
+the brandished cimeter of Saladin, and, descending, would cut as keenly.
+The pathetic he never attempted; but when angered by a malicious assault
+his invective was consuming, and his epithets would wound like pellets
+of lead. Although gallant to the graces of expression, he always
+compelled his rhetoric to act as handmaid to his dialectics.
+
+Style may sometimes be an exotic; but when it is, it is sure to partake
+more and more, as years increase, of the peculiarities of the soil
+wherein it is nurtured. But the style of Mr. DAVIS was indigenous and
+strongly marked by his individuality. Although he doubtless admired, and
+perhaps imitated, the condensation and dignity of Gibbon, yet it is
+certain that he carefully avoided the monotonous stateliness and the
+elaborate and ostentatious art of that most erudite historian. I look in
+vain for his model in the skeptical Gibbon, the cynical Bolingbroke, or
+the gorgeous Burke. These were all to him intellectual giants; but
+giants of false belief and practice. Not even from Tacitus, upon whom he
+looked with the greatest favor, could he have acquired his burning and
+impressive diction.
+
+HENRY WINTER DAVIS was a man of faith, and believed in Christ and his
+fellow-man. His heart and mind were both nourished into their full
+dimensions under the fostering influences of our free institutions; so
+that, being reared a freeman, he thought and spake as became a freeman.
+No other land could have produced such dauntless courage and such heroic
+devotion to honest conviction in a public man; and even our land has
+produced but few men of his stamp and ability. His implicit faith in
+God's eternal justice, and his grand moral courage, imparted to him his
+proselyting zeal, and gave him that amazing, kindling power which
+enabled him to light the fires of enthusiasm wherever he touched the
+public mind.
+
+To show his power in extemporaneous debate, as well as his determined
+patriotism, I will introduce a passage from his speech of April 11,
+1864, delivered in the House of Representatives. You will remember that
+the end of the rebellion had not then appeared. Grant, with his
+invincible legions, had not started to execute that greatest military
+movement of modern times, by which, after months of bloody persistence,
+hurling themselves continually against what seemed the frowning front of
+destiny, they finally drove the enemy from his strongholds, made Fortune
+herself captive, and, binding her to their standards, held her there
+until the surrender of every rebel in arms closed the war amid the
+exultant plaudits of men and angels. Our hopes had not then grown into
+victory, and we looked forward anxiously to the terrible march from the
+Rappahannock to Richmond. Thinking that perhaps our army stood appalled
+before the great duty required of it, and that the people might be
+diverted from their purpose to crush the rebellion when they saw that it
+could only be accomplished at the cost of an ocean of human blood, a
+call was made on the floor of the American Congress for a recognition of
+the southern confederacy. Speaking for the nation, Mr. DAVIS said:
+
+     "But, Mr. Speaker, if it be said that a time may come when the
+     question of recognizing the southern confederacy will have to be
+     answered, I admit it. * * * * When the people, exhausted by
+     taxation, weary of sacrifices, drained of blood, betrayed by their
+     rulers, deluded by demagogues into believing that peace is the way
+     to union, and submission the path to victory, shall throw down
+     their arms before the advancing foe; when vast chasms across every
+     State shall make it apparent to every eye, when too late to remedy
+     it, that division from the south is anarchy at the north, and that
+     peace without union is the end of the Republic; _then_ the
+     independence of the south will be an accomplished fact, and
+     gentlemen may, without treason to the dead Republic, rise in this
+     migratory house, wherever it may then be in America, and declare
+     themselves for recognizing their masters at the south rather than
+     exterminating them. Until that day, in the name of the American
+     nation; in the name of every house in the land where there is one
+     dead for the holy cause; in the name of those who stand before us
+     in the ranks of battle; in the name of the liberty our ancestors
+     have confided to us, I devote to eternal execration the name of him
+     who shall propose to destroy this blessed land rather than its
+     enemies.
+
+     "But until that time arrive it is the judgment of the American
+     people there shall be no compromise; that ruin to ourselves or ruin
+     to the southern rebels are the only alternatives. It is only by
+     resolutions of this kind that nations can rise above great dangers
+     and overcome them in crises like this. It was only by turning
+     France into a camp, resolved that Europe might exterminate but
+     should not subjugate her, that France is the leading empire of
+     Europe to-day. It is by such a resolve that the American people,
+     coercing a reluctant government to draw the sword and stake the
+     national existence on the integrity of the Republic, are now
+     anything but the fragments of a nation before the world, the scorn
+     and hiss of every petty tyrant. It is because the people of the
+     United States, rising to the height of the occasion, dedicated this
+     generation to the sword, and pouring out the blood of their
+     children as of no account, and vowing before high Heaven that there
+     should be no end to this conflict but ruin absolute or absolute
+     triumph, that we now are what we are; that the banner of the
+     Republic, still pointing onward, floats proudly in the face of the
+     enemy; that vast regions are reduced to obedience to the laws, and
+     that a great host in armed array now presses with steady step into
+     the dark regions of the rebellion. It is only by the earnest and
+     abiding resolution of the people that, whatever shall be our fate,
+     it shall be grand as the American nation, worthy of that Republic
+     which first trod the path of empire and made no peace but under the
+     banners of victory, that the American people will survive in
+     history. And that will save us. We shall succeed, and not fail. I
+     have an abiding confidence in the firmness, the patience, the
+     endurance of the American people; and, having vowed to stand in
+     history on the great resolve to accept of nothing but victory or
+     ruin, victory is ours. And if with such heroic resolve we fall, we
+     fall with honor, and transmit the name of liberty, committed to our
+     keeping, untarnished, to go down to future generations. The
+     historian of our decline and fall, contemplating the ruins of the
+     last great Republic, and drawing from its fate lessons of wisdom on
+     the waywardness of men, shall drop a tear as he records with sorrow
+     the vain heroism of that people who dedicated and sacrificed
+     themselves to the cause of freedom, and by their example will keep
+     alive her worship in the hearts of men till happier generations
+     shall learn to walk in her paths. Yes, sir, if we must fall, let
+     our last hours be stained by no weakness. If we must fall, let us
+     stand amid the crash of the falling Republic and be buried in its
+     ruins, so that history may take note that men lived in the middle
+     of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but chastised by
+     God for the sins of their forefathers. Let the ruins of the
+     Republic remain to testify to the latest generations our greatness
+     and our heroism. And let Liberty, crownless and childless, sit upon
+     these ruins, crying aloud in a sad wail to the nations of the
+     world, 'I nursed and brought up children and they have rebelled
+     against me.'"
+
+Mr. DAVIS'S most striking characteristics were his devotion to principle
+and his indomitable courage. There never was a moment when he could be
+truthfully charged with trimming or insincerity. His views were always
+clearly avowed and fearlessly maintained. He hated slavery, and he did
+not attempt to conceal it. He remembered the lessons of his youth, and
+his heart rebelled against the injustice of the system. His antipathy
+was deeply grounded in his convictions, and he could not be dissuaded,
+nor frightened, nor driven from expressing it.
+
+He was not a great captain, nor a mighty ruler; he was only one of the
+people, but, nevertheless, a hero. Born under the flag of a nation which
+claimed for its cardinal principle of government, that all men are
+created free, yet held in abject slavery four millions of human beings;
+which erected altars to the living God, yet denied to creatures, formed
+in the image of God and charged with the custody of immortal souls, the
+common rights of humanity; he declared that the hateful inconsistency
+should cease to defile the prayers of Christians and stultify the
+advocates of freedom. No dreamer was he, no mere theorist, but a worker,
+and a strong one, who did well the work committed to him. He entered
+upon his self-imposed task when surrounded by slaves and slave-owners.
+He stood face to face with the iniquitous superstition, and to their
+teeth defied its worshipers. To make proselytes he had to conquer
+prejudices, correct traditions, elevate duty above interest, and induce
+men who had been the propagandists of slavery to become its destroyers.
+Think you his work was easy? Count the long years of his unequal strife;
+gather from the winds, which scattered them, the curses of his foes;
+suffer under all the annoyances and insults which malice and falsehood
+can invent, and you will then understand how much of heart and hope, of
+courage and self-relying zeal, were required to make him what he was,
+and to qualify him to do what he did. And what did he? When the rough
+hand of war had stripped off the pretexts which enveloped the rebellion,
+and it became evident that slavery had struck at the life of the
+Republic, unmindful of consequences to himself, he, among the first,
+arraigned the real traitor and demanded the penalty of death. The
+denunciations that fell upon him like a cloud wrapped him in a mantle of
+honor, and more truthfully than the great Roman orator he could have
+exclaimed, "_Ego hoc animo semperfui, ut invidiam virtute partam,
+gloriam non invidiam putarem_."
+
+This man, so stern and inflexible in the execution of a purpose, so
+rigorous in his demands of other men in behalf of a principle, so
+indifferent to preferment and all base objects of pursuit, had a monitor
+to whom he always gave an open ear and a prompt assent. It was no demon
+like that which attended Socrates, no witch like that invoked by Saul,
+no fiend like that to which Faust resigned himself. A vision of light
+and life and beauty flitted ever palpably before him, and wooed him to
+the perpetual service of the good and true. The memory of a pious and
+beloved mother permeated his whole moral being, and kept warm within him
+the tenderest affection. Hear how he wrote of her:
+
+     "My mother was a lady of graceful and simple manners, fair
+     complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair, with a rich and exquisite
+     voice, that still thrills my memory with the echo of its vanished
+     music. She was highly educated for her day, when Annapolis was the
+     focus of intellect and fashion for Maryland, and its fruits shone
+     through her conversation, and colored and completed her natural
+     eloquence, which my father used to say would have made her an
+     orator, if it had not been thrown away on a woman. She was the
+     incarnation of all that is Christian in life and hope, in charity
+     and thought, ready for every good work, herself the example of all
+     she taught."
+
+It was the force of her precept and example that formed the man, and
+supplied him with his shield and buckler. His private life was spotless.
+His habits were regular and abstemious, and his practice in close
+conformity with the Episcopal church, of which he was a member. He
+invariably attended divine service on Sunday, and confined himself for
+the remainder of the day to a course of religious reading. If from his
+father he drew a courage and a fierce determination before which his
+enemies fled in confusion, from his mother he inherited those milder
+qualities that won for him friends as true and devoted as man ever
+possessed. Some have said he was hard and dictatorial. They had seen him
+only when a high resolve had fired his breast, and when the gleam of
+battle had lighted his countenance. His friends saw deeper, and knew
+that beneath the exterior he assumed in his struggles with the world
+there beat a heart as pure and unsullied, as confiding and as gentle, as
+ever sanctified the domestic circle, or made loved ones happy. His heart
+reminded me of a spring among the hills of the Susquehanna, to which I
+often resorted in my youth; around a part of it we boys had built a
+stone wall to protect it from outrage, while on the side next home we
+left open a path, easily traveled by familiar feet, and leading straight
+to the sweet and perennial waters within.
+
+He lived to hear the salvos that announced, after more than two
+centuries of bondage, the redemption of his native State. He lived to
+vote for that grand act of enfranchisement that wiped from the
+escutcheon of the nation the leprous stain of slavery, and to know that
+the Constitution of the United States no longer recognized and protected
+property in man. He lived to witness the triumph of his country in its
+desperate struggle with treason, and to behold all its enemies, either
+wanderers, like Cain, over the earth, or suppliants for mercy at her
+feet. He lived to catch the first glimpse of the coming glory of that
+new era of progress that matchless valor had won through the blood and
+carnage of a thousand battle-fields. He lived, through all the storm of
+war, to see, at last, America rejuvenated, rescued from the grasp of
+despotism, and rise victorious, with her garments purified and her brow
+radiant with the unsullied light of liberty. He lived to greet the
+return of "meek-eyed peace," and then he gently laid his head upon her
+bosom, and breathed out there his noble spirit.
+
+The sword may rust in its scabbard, and so let it; but free men, with
+free thought and free speech, will wage unceasing war until truth shall
+be enthroned and sit empress of the world. Would to God that he had been
+spared to complete a life of three score and ten years, for the sake of
+his country and posterity. When I think of the good he would have
+accomplished had he survived for twenty years, I can say, in the
+language of Fisher Ames, "My heart, penetrated with the remembrance of
+the man, grows liquid as I speak, and I could pour it out like water."
+
+At the portals of his tomb we may bid farewell to the faithful
+Christian, in the full assurance that a blessed life awaits him beyond
+the grave. Serenely and trustfully he has passed from our sight and gone
+down into the dark waters.
+
+    "So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
+    And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
+    And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
+    Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."
+
+From this hall, where as scholar, statesman, and orator he shone so
+brightly, he has disappeared forever. Never again will he, answering to
+the roll-call from this desk, respond for his country and the rights of
+man. No more shall we hear his fervid eloquence in the day of imminent
+peril, invoking us, who hold the mighty power of peace and war, to
+dedicate ourselves, if need be, to the sword, but to accept no end of
+the conflict save that of absolute triumph for our country. He has gone
+to answer the great roll-call above, where the "brazen throat of war" is
+voiceless in the presence of the Prince of Peace. Let us habitually turn
+to his recorded words, and gather wisdom as from the testament of a
+departed sage; and since we were witnesses of his tireless devotion to
+the cause of human freedom, let us direct that on the monument which
+loving hearts and willing hands will soon erect over his remains, there
+shall be deeply engraved the figure of a bursting shackle, as the emblem
+of the faith in which he lived and died.
+
+For the Christian, scholar, statesman, and orator, all good men are
+mourners; but what shall I say of that grief which none can share--the
+grief of sincere friendship?
+
+Oh, my friend! comforted by the belief that you, while living, deemed me
+worthy to be your companion, and loaded me with the proofs of your
+esteem, I shall fondly treasure, during my remaining years, the
+recollection of your smile and counsel. Lost to me is the strong arm
+whereon I have so often leaned; but in that path which in time past we
+trod most joyfully together, I shall continue, as God shall give me to
+see my duty, with unfaltering though perhaps with unskilful steps, right
+onward to the end.
+
+Admiring his brilliant intellect and varied acquirements, his
+invincible courage and unswerving fortitude, glorying in his good works
+and fair renown, but, more than all, _loving the man_, I shall endeavor
+to assuage the bitterness of grief by applying to him those words of
+proud, though tearful, satisfaction, from which the faithful Tacitus
+drew consolation for the loss of that noble Roman whom he delighted to
+honor:
+
+     "Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet
+     mansurumque est, in animis hominum, in aeternitate temporum, fama
+     rerum."
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+The writer uses some archaic spelling which has been kept as printed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oration on the Life and Character of
+Henry Winter Davis, by John A. J. Creswell
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