"Such I am sure is the feeling of the people whom I represent toward
those whom you represent. I but express their desire when I say I hope
and they hope for peaceful relations with you, though we must part--"
He paused as if to suppress emotions too deep for words while a silence,
intense and suffocating, held the crowd in a spell. The speaker's voice
dropped to still lower and softer notes of persuasive tenderness as each
rounded word of the next sentence fell slowly from the thin lips.
"If war must come, we can only invoke the God of our fathers, who
delivered us from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages
of the bear, and putting our trust in Him and in our firm hearts and
strong arms we will vindicate the right as best we may--"
No cheer greeted this solemn utterance. In the pause which followed, the
speaker deliberately gazed over the familiar faces of his Northern
opponents and continued with a suppressed intensity of feeling that
gripped his bitterest foe.
"In the course of my service here, associated at different times with a
great variety of Senators, I see now around me some with whom I have
served long. There have been points of collision, but, whatever offense
there has been to me, I leave here.
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