You
could not read the story of their public career without going
to sleep. They never said anything worth quoting, and never
did anything that any other equally good and sensible man
would not have done in their place. I have a huge respect
for them. I can never myself attain to their excellence.
Yet I would as lief spend my life as an omnibus horse as live
theirs.
But we have occasionally some delightful exceptions. It
so happens that some of the best, most attractive men I have
known, were from the South. They are men who stood by the
Southern people through thick and thin during the Rebellion,
and in resisting every attempt on the part of the victorious
Northern majority to raise the colored people to a political
equality. They have all of them, I believe, been Free Traders.
In general they have opposed the construction of the Constitution
which has prevailed in New England and throughout the North,
and in which I have myself always believed.
I have never had much personal intimacy with any of them.
I have had some vigorous conflicts with one or two of them.
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