But I am bound to say, indeed it is but to repeat what I have
said many times, that my long conflict with their leaders
has impressed me with an ever-increasing admiration of the
great and high qualities of our Southern people. I said at
Chicago in February, 1903, what I said, in substance, twenty
years before in Faneuil Hall, and at about the same time in
the Senate:
"Having said what I thought to say on this question, perhaps
I may be indulged in adding that although my life, politically
and personally, has been a life of almost constant strife
with the leaders of the Southern people, yet as I grow older
I have learned, not only to respect and esteem, but to love
the great qualities which belong to my fellow citizens of
the Southern States. They are a noble race. We may well
take pattern from them in some of the great virtues which
make up the strength, as they make the glory, of Free States.
Their love of home; their chivalrous respect for women; their
courage; their delicate sense of honor; their constancy, which
can abide by an opinion or a purpose or an interest of their
States through adversity and through prosperity, through the
years and through the generations, are things by which the
people of the more mercurial North may take a lesson.
Pages:
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043