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 ADDRESSES 
 
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 DEATH OF HON. OWEN LOVEJOY, 
 
 DKLIVERED IN THE 
 
 i{.y. 
 
 SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 MOIVDAY, ITIARCB 28, 1S04. 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 
 1864. 
 
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 E415 
 
 . UsfU5 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 Saturday, July 2, 1864. 
 
 Resolved, That there be printed for the use of the House three thousand 
 copies of the addresses delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives 
 on the death of the late Owen Lovejoy. 
 
'W. 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 DEATH OF HON. OWEN LOYEJOY. 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
 Monday, March 28, 1864. 
 
 Address of Mr. Washburne, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr, Speaker : It becomes my duty to announce to 
 the House of Representatives the death of Hon. Owen 
 LovEJOY, a representative in the Congress of the 
 United States from the State of IlHnois. Mr. Lovejoy 
 expired in the city of Brooklyn, New York, on Friday 
 evening last, March 25, 1864. A man of an iron con- 
 stitution, he had always enjoyed the most robust health 
 until a short time before the expiration of the last 
 Congress. He was then stricken down by a sudden 
 and severe illness, which detained him at the capital 
 for some time after the Congress had expired. Re- 
 turning to his home, he partially regained his health 
 during the last summer and autumn. Taking his seat 
 in Congress at the commencement of the session, in 
 the hopeful and buoyant feelings of his nature he flat- 
 tered himself with the idea of health recovered and 
 energies regained, but there was something in his 
 altered look which, even to the unpracticed eye, told 
 of disease and death, creating in the minds of his 
 
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 4 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 friends the gravest apjDrehensions. During the holidays, 
 in response to the pressing invitations of his friends, he 
 visited Portland, Maine, and delivered a public address 
 on the great events which are now challenging the 
 attention of the country and of the world. It was his 
 last effort at public speaking, and it was worthy of his 
 name and his fame in his palmiest days, and the news of 
 his death will reach that delighted auditory beforethe ac- 
 cents of his eloquent utterances will have died away. 
 
 Coming back to Washington after the recess of Con- 
 gress, he soon had a return of the disease which had 
 prostrated him nearly a year before. After several 
 M^eeks' confinement to his room and to his bed, he had 
 so far recovered as to believe himself able to partially 
 resume his duties in this house. He attended our 
 sittings a short time for several days, but his eye had 
 lost its brightness, and the unwonted and ghastly pallor 
 of his cheek told, alas ! but too plainly, that death had 
 already marked him as its early victim. Stimulated 
 by the stirring events of the passing hour, the import- 
 ant legislation of Congress, and the claims of a con- 
 stituency whose interests he had never neglected or 
 betrayed, and whose convictions he had never misrep- 
 resented, the effort he made to resume his duty among 
 us was too much for him. A partial relapse was the 
 consequence, and then it was determined that he should, 
 for a time, leave the excitement of the capital and visit 
 a more southern and a more genial climate, in the hope 
 that his shattered and broken health might yet be 
 restored. He left here for New York city some ten 
 days ago, but the trip thither was too hard for him to 
 
 i) i [di 
 
bear, and he was unable to pursue his journey further. 
 From that time he became rapidly worse until he ex- 
 pired at the time I have stated. Though dying away 
 from his own beloved home, he was yet surrounded not 
 only by kind and sympathizing friends, but by members 
 of his own flimily, and the pangs of his parting life 
 were assuaged by the aifection and the care of a 
 devoted wife. 
 
 Mr. LovEJOY was born at Albion, in the State of 
 Maine, on the 7th day of January, 1811, and was con- 
 sequently, at the time of his death, a little over fifty- 
 three years of age. The son of a Congregational 
 clergyman in a country town, his early life was devoted 
 to labor upon a farm and to the acquisition of such an 
 education as he could obtain at a New England " dis- 
 trict school." He entered Bowdoin Collesfe at the ao;e 
 of twenty-one years, and remained there for three 
 years, and then entered upon the pursuit of theological 
 studies. He removed to Illinois in 1836. In 1839 he 
 was ordained as pastor of the Congregational church 
 at Princeton, in that State, and remained its pastor 
 nearly seventeen years. It was his only charge, and 
 he there proclaimed, according to his own statement, 
 the " everlasting evangel of the fatherhood of God, the 
 sonship of Christ, and the brotherhood of man." His 
 first entrance into political life was in 1854, when he 
 was elected a member of the lower house of the Illinois 
 legislative assembly. In 185G he was first elected to 
 Congress for the then third congressional district of 
 Illinois, and he was twice re-elected from that district. 
 In the redistricting of the State in 1861, he was again 
 
-IP) 
 
 6 OBITUARY ADDEESSES. 
 
 elected to the present Congress from the fifth district, 
 having thus been elected four times, and having served 
 for a longer period, with four exceptions, than any man 
 ever elected from that State. This great fact speaks, 
 in unmistakable language, of the hold which he had 
 upon the confidence and affections of his constituents. 
 Mr. Speaker, Owen Lovejoy was no common man. 
 In saying that in his death a great man has fallen, I 
 speak it in no common or hackneyed sense, for he was 
 great. He was great in the leading idea of his life ; 
 great in his convictions ; great in the elements of his 
 character ; great in his eloquence ; great in his courage ; 
 and great in his abiding and ever-living faith in the 
 ultimate triumph of the eternal principles of right, 
 justice, and humanity. No man who has succeeded in 
 stamping his ideas and his principles, as he has, with 
 the impress of indelibility, upon the minds and hearts 
 of men, could be an ordinary man. Early impressed 
 with convictions in regard to the subject of American 
 slavery, he followed mose convictions with unswerving 
 fidelity, in the face of danger, of obloquy, and reproach. 
 His natural abhorrence of slavery was quickened by 
 the tragic fate of a beloved brother, who fell a victim 
 to his opposition to that institution, and who illustrated 
 his principles by his blood, shed by a lawless mob. In 
 the advancement of this great idea of his life Mr. 
 Lovejoy toiled with an earnestness and zeal which 
 were " without variableness or shadow of turning ; " 
 and in the pursuit of his great object it could truly 
 have been said of him — 
 
 " No dangers clauuted and no labors tired." 
 
 •m 
 
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 HON. OWEN LOVEJOY. 7 
 
 The heated denunciations of partisans, the ridicule and 
 clamor of the vulgar, and the threats of the cowardly 
 and the base, failed alike to turn him from that great 
 purpose of his life, which, like the 
 
 " Pontic sea, knew no retiring ebb," 
 
 and which purpose he pursued with unfaltering devotion 
 to the last moment of his earthly existence. If he did 
 not live to see the end of that stupendous struggle 
 which was to establish the great problem which he had 
 spent his life in working out, like Moses he saw the 
 promised land, bright and beautiful, as the last object 
 upon which his expiring eyes fell. 
 
 I cannot, Mr. Speaker, dwell at length upon the 
 striking incidents of the life of my late colleague, nor 
 shall the partiality of a long and uninterrupted personal 
 and political friendship lead me to trespass too long 
 upon the time of the House. But serving with him 
 for three full Congresses in this house, I should be 
 recreant to my own sense of what is due to truth and 
 justice did I not bear my testimony to the distinguished 
 ability and the great usefulness with which he served 
 his constituents, his State, and the country, as a repre- 
 sentative in the American Congress. As a legislator 
 he was wise, intelligent, practical, vigilant, independent, 
 and, above all, incorruptible. He was devoted to every 
 duty to his country and to his constituents. Wherever 
 there was any principle involved, he was as firm and 
 unyielding as the hills of his own native State. Yet, 
 in all matters of mere policy, involving no surrender of 
 principle, there was no man more ready or more willing 
 to yield to the suggestions of others. It is perhaps the 
 
OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 case that where men have been devoted to a particular 
 idea, they are generally impracticable in all other mat- 
 ters, but it was not so with our late associate. He 
 was eminently a practical man, and a man of great 
 common sense, a good judge of human nature, and 
 familiar with the workings of the human heart. 
 
 I have spoken of the deceased as a public man, but 
 who shall speak of the virtues which adorned his pri- 
 vate life 1. A¥ho shall speak of him as husband, father, 
 friend, neighbor, citizen ? He was so genial in his 
 intercourse, of a sympathy so quick and ready, so kind, 
 affectionate, and generous, that there seemed combined 
 in him all these cpialities which challenged the love 
 and admiration of those who best knew him, and which 
 disarmed the resentment of enemies, and endeared him 
 to the hearts of friends. Upon the immediate family 
 of our late colleague has this blow fallen with crushing 
 force. No words of human sympathy or condolence 
 can stanch the wounds of bleeding affection, and it is 
 alone to Him who "tempers the wind to the shorn 
 lamb " that the appeal must be made. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, the proceedings of this house as pub- 
 lished in the congressional annals for the last six j^ears 
 will furnish an undying record of the services and 
 labors of the distinguished man whose loss the country 
 so deeply deplores. Serving during a part of the most 
 interesting and turbulent periods of our congressional 
 history, he was one of the most active participants in 
 those scenes in the House which, to the student of 
 history, were the precursors of that terrible civil com- 
 motion which has since drenched our land in blood 
 
 -H 
 
HON OWEN LOVEJOY. 9 
 
 and made the civilized world to stand a^^hast. I migflit 
 call to your recollection, Mr. Speaker, and to the recol- 
 lection of those members of this house who were 
 members of the Thirty-sixth Congress, that extraordi- 
 nary scene in the House of the 5th of April, 1860, 
 and which has scarcely a parallel in the history of any 
 deliberative assembly in the world. It was on that 
 occasion that he displayed that undaunted courage and 
 matchless bearing which extorted the admiration of 
 even his most deadly foes. But I need not recount to 
 you, sir, the many other occasions during your service 
 when he has electrified the House by his outbursts of 
 eloquence. With a mind well stored with classic 
 learning, with a vigorous and enlightened understand- 
 ing, with a fine personal presence, he was one of the 
 greatest of orators, while yet he scorned the ordinary 
 artifices of eloquence. His was the eloquence of Mira- 
 beau, which in the Tiers Etat and in the national 
 assembly made to totter the throne of France ; it was 
 the eloquence of Danton, who made all France to 
 tremble from his tempestuous utterances in the national 
 convention. Like those apostles of the French revo- 
 lution, his eloquence could stir from the lowest depths 
 all the passions of man ; but, unlike them, he was as 
 good and as pure as he was eloquent and brave, a noble- 
 minded Christian man, a lover of the whole human 
 race and of universal liberty regulated by law. While 
 from this tribune he spoke to the nation, and left upon 
 it the impress of his principles and his convictions and 
 of his master mind, the theatre of his greatest triumphs 
 as an orator was on the stump and before the masses 
 
of the people. It was in his own State, where he was 
 known the best and heard the oftenest, that he achieved 
 his greatest distinction as an orator. In the presence 
 of the people he was invincible. Whatever might 
 have been aifected against him by political or personal 
 prejudice, whenever he reached the popular ear all was 
 scattered as if by a whirlwind. But he has left us in 
 the pride of his manhood, and in the fulness of his 
 intellectual vigor — gone almost at the moment when 
 he expected to see accomplished the great work to 
 which he had devoted his life. He expressed that 
 expectation in his great speech of April 5, 1860, by a 
 quotation from the speech of Mr. Webster on the sub- 
 ject of the threatened interposition of Russia to snatch 
 Kossuth from the protection of Turkey for the purpose 
 of sacrificing him on the altar of despotism ; and I will 
 close with that quotation : 
 
 " Gentlemen, there is something on earth greater than arbitrary 
 or despotic power. The lightning has its power, and the whirlwind 
 has its power, and the earthquake has its power, but there is some- 
 thing among men more capable of shaking despotic thrones than 
 lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake,, and that is the excited and 
 aroused indignation of the whole civilized world. 
 
 " ' The Avon to the Severn runs ; 
 The Severn to the sea ; 
 And WickliflFe's dust shall spread abroad 
 Wide as the waters be.' " 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I submit the following resolutions : 
 
 Resolved, That this house has heard with profound sorrow the 
 announcement of the death of Hon. Owen Lovejoy, a member of 
 this house from the fifth congressional district of the State of Illinois. 
 
 Resolved, That this house tenders to the widow and relatives of 
 
 m 
 
the deceased the expression of its deep sympatic in this afflicting 
 bereavement. 
 
 Resolved, That the Clerk of this house communicate to the 
 widow of the deceased a copy of these resolutions. 
 
 Resolved, That the Speaker appoint a committee of three to escort 
 the remains of the deceased to the place designated by his friends 
 for his interment. 
 
 Resolved, That, as an additional mark of respect for the memory 
 of the deceased, the members of this house will wear the usual 
 badge of mourniug on the left arm for thirty days. 
 
 Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be communicated to 
 the Senate ; and, as a further mark of respect, that this house do 
 now adjourn. 
 
 Address of^iv. J. C. Allen, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : I rise to second the resolutions of my 
 colleague. In the death of Owen Lovejoy we have 
 another evidence of the uncertainty of life How im- 
 pressive is the sentence, that man " cometh forth like a 
 flower, and is cut down ; he fleeth also as a shadow, 
 and continueth not." Well may we say that " in the 
 midst of life we are in death." 
 
 Of the private character of the deceased I cannot 
 speak. Of the years that he spent as a citizen of my 
 own State, and of his struggles, I cannot speak, for my 
 acquaintance with him dates from his first appearance 
 in this hall as a member of this house. I have known 
 him from that time as a fearless and bold advocate of 
 his opinions, not stopping at any time to inquire 
 whether they were popular or otherwise, but constantly 
 pressing on to the accomplishment of those purposes 
 
 m li 
 
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 12 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 wliich he thought would best subserve the interests of 
 his country and his race. In many of those opinions I 
 differed from him, and yet I am glad to be able to say 
 that notwithstanding these differences, at times, even, 
 when the excitement on these questions became most 
 fearful, his conduct toward me was always kind. In 
 our official and personal intercourse nothing ever oc- 
 curred to disturb our personal friendship toward each 
 other. 
 
 Mr. Love JOY, as is known by all his acquaintances, 
 was a vigorous thinker, and adhered to his views and 
 opinions with great tenacity, convincing us of the 
 sincerity of his convictions. He was a man of extensive 
 inlbrmation, of scholarly acquirements. Without high 
 forensic powers, he was always formidable in debate, 
 either in the forum or before his fellow-citizens. When 
 his health permitted him, he was assiduous in the dis- 
 charge of all his public duties. He was seldom found 
 absent from his post. The district which enjoyed him 
 as their representative will necessarily in that regard 
 feel deeply his loss. 
 
 But, alas ! in middle life, in the fulness of his mental 
 and physical powers, disease came and laid its hand 
 upon him, and his robust constitution sank beneath its 
 power. When he last appeared in his seat in this hall 
 he was but the shadow of his former self The last 
 time I met him on this floor, and expressed the hope 
 that returning health and vigor would soon enable him 
 again to participate actively in the business of the 
 House as a representative, I remember his answer. 
 It was, " I have been very near to the portals of death 
 
 ■S) 
 
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 HON. OWEN LOVE JOY. 13 
 
 and eternity ; I feel that I mnst soon enter there." 
 And he looked as though he was. expecting and was 
 prepared to meet the messenger on the j)ale horse. 
 
 He has passed from these halls. His seat is now 
 vacant. The place which has known him shall know 
 him no more forever. Let us learn from his death 
 how" uncertain is the tenure by which we hold our own 
 lives, and how trifling become earthly honors and 
 earthly powers when they are brought face to face 
 wdtli death. May we by this dispensation be induced 
 to heed that solemn warning. " Be ye also ready." 
 
 Address of Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : A few words shall suffice for me, for 
 the deceased filled so large a space in the public eye 
 that nothing which can be said here can give the House 
 or the people any better idea of his character and 
 principles. 
 
 So clear was his perception and so forcible his dic- 
 tion, that no hearer could misunderstand his meaning. 
 
 He had a ripe education, and was w^ell versed in 
 classic and modern literature. 
 
 Educated for the pulpit, his scriptural knowledge, 
 judiciously used, gave force and elevation to his argu- 
 ment 
 
 While he took a deep interest in everything that 
 affected the public welfare, his whole heart and soul 
 were aUve to the great cause of human freedom. 
 
 'M 
 
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 14 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 He was not afraid to defend the rights of the in- 
 jured and oppressed of every race, in this house, nor 
 ashamed to unite with them in worship and kneel at 
 the same altar. 
 
 The change to him is great gain. The only regret 
 we can feel is that he did not live to see the salvation 
 of his country ; to see peace and union restored, and 
 universal emancipation given to his native land. But 
 such are the ways of Providence. Moses was not per- 
 mitted to enter the promised land with those he had 
 led out of bondage ; he beheld it from afar off, and 
 slept with his fathers. 
 
 If his hatred of slavery sometimes seemed too in- 
 tense, it must be remembered that in early life he saw 
 a beloved brother murdered by the northern minions 
 of that infamous institution. No wonder that it deep- 
 ened his detestation of it, and gave unwonted vigor to 
 his anathemas. 
 
 We are permitted to linger yet a little while in this 
 land of error and of pain, while he is called to join the 
 assembled throng cf "just men made perfect." 
 
 The deceased has left among the archives of his 
 country the most solid testimonials of his virtue and 
 courage. He needs no perishable monument of brass 
 or marble to perpetuate his name. So long as the 
 English language shall be spoken or deciphered, so 
 long as liberty shall have a worshipper, his name will 
 be known. 
 
 Moses was buried in the land of the stranger, and 
 " no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day," but 
 his name is immortal. 
 
 -S) 
 
HON. OWEN LOVE JOY. 15 
 
 Address of Mr. Farnsworth, of lUinGis. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : It is now nearly twenty years since I 
 first became acquainted with Owen Lovejoy. At that 
 time there were gathered together in a httle church, 
 in the town where I still reside, a few friends of free- 
 dom. They came from different parts of a large 
 district, embracing nearly the whole northeastern quar- 
 ter of the State of Illinois, for the purpose of taking 
 counsel together and determining what action duty 
 demanded of them toward their country and toward 
 the slave. Texas had then recently been annexed, and 
 the slave power thereby largely augmented. This it 
 was there and then prophesied would prove a Pandora's 
 box from which would spring all manner of ills to the 
 country. There were not many at that convention, 
 yet it embraced nearly all of the professed "anti- 
 slavery" or "liberty" men in many of the towns and 
 counties of that district. At that meeting a " liberty 
 party " was organized, and Owen Lovejoy was nomi- 
 nated as our candidate for Congress. It was there I 
 first met him ; since then we have been friends ; as all, 
 I think, have been who formed that little band of 
 brothers. It seemed a foolish thing to the masses and 
 a very absurd thing to the politicians of that day thus 
 to cut loose from the great political parties, without the 
 faintest hope of electing or even getting votes enough 
 to make the poll respectable ; and many were the jeers 
 
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16 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of derision at the party and its candidate. Indeed, it 
 seemed a forlorn hope — 
 
 " Forlorn, forlorn, 
 Bearing the scorn 
 Of the meanest of mankind." 
 
 To " canvass " and " stump " the district was the 
 custom of the country, and expected of the candidates, 
 and, though it required much nerve to face the mobs, 
 all over that large district was the clarion voice of 
 LovEJOY heard by his electrifying and earnest eloquence 
 conquering, if not the convictions of the people, at least 
 their respect and admiration. He had caught an in- 
 spiration from the eloquent wounds of a martyred 
 brother murdered by the accursed spirit of slavery ; 
 and over his mangled corpse had registered a covenant 
 with his God of eternal hostility to that fell demon ; 
 and from that day to the hour of his death steadfastly 
 and well has he '" kept the faith." Nobly and valiantly 
 has he " fought the good fight." No sturdier blows 
 have been struck than his, and no more eloquent voice, 
 I may truly say, has been heard the nation over in 
 arousing the people to a sense of the cruel injustice 
 and evil eifects of slavery; and yet never, from the 
 time we met in the little church to his exjDiring breath, 
 did he teach the violation of a single provision or word 
 of the Constitution of his country. 
 
 As a public speaker the deceased had no superior. 
 Possessing in a most remarkable degree that electric 
 power which brings an audience into harmony and 
 sympathy with the speaker, with his fine and self- 
 possessed presence, his clear, ringing voice, his distinct 
 
 •m 
 
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 HON OWEN LOVEJOY. 17 
 
 but earnest utterances, his vivid and fascinating im- 
 agery, and, above all, that manner which shows the 
 soul of the speaker in his words, he held his hearers 
 spell-bound, or moved them at his will. 
 
 He was a bold man; brave in the sense of true 
 heroism. This is an age and a nation of brave men ; 
 but it is not every man who faces the cannon, the 
 Minie, or the charge, that is truly brave. Pride may 
 keep him up — he may be afraid to be a coward. 
 
 My deceased colleague was never afraid to do right, 
 to espouse the side of the despised, to face the hissing, 
 jeering world, to make " himself of no reputation," as 
 did his Master, for truth's sake. 
 
 On one occasion, indicted by a grand jury for giving 
 food and raiment to a poor woman who came, footsore 
 and starving, to his door, on her weary way from a land 
 of chains to a land of freedom*, he faced court, jury, bar, 
 and witnesses, and against their statutes and their 
 special pleading beat them with the righteousness of 
 his act. 
 
 At another time he faced an armed and threatening 
 mob who had seized and bound a man whose only 
 crime was a dark skin, cut his fetters and "let the 
 oppressed go free," while the mob, awe-struck by his 
 23resence and determined manner, slunk away in silence. 
 
 He had faith in truth, and never doubted its final 
 triumph. He believed, as a poet phrases it, that 
 
 " Never a truth has been destroyed ; 
 You may curse it and call it crime, 
 Pervert and betray, and slander and slay 
 Its teachers for a time ; 
 
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 18 OBITUAKY ADDRESSES. 
 
 But the truth shall triumph at the last 
 
 As round and round we run, 
 And ever the wrong shall be proved to be wrong, 
 
 And ever shall justice be done." 
 
 We entered this house together six years ago, and 
 he continued a member of it until his decease. During 
 the four years in which I was a member with him our 
 districts were adjoining, and well do I know that never 
 did a constituency have fuller confidence in or love a 
 member more than his. As a legislator he was ever 
 attentive to the wants and interests of his constituents, 
 while he never lost sight of the great and paramount 
 interests of the whole country. 
 
 In a struggle such as this nation is now engaged in 
 none need be told how Lovejoy would stand. For 
 such as he there could be but the one course : faithful, 
 determined, energetic support of the cause of freedom 
 and the Union. And there he was. It is a pity he 
 could not have lived to see the termination of this 
 struggle and the final end of that great curse which 
 was and is the cause of it. But, thank God, he did 
 live to see his faith adopted by the popular heart, and 
 to witness the death-throes of the institution he had 
 so long and nobly battled. Well has he avenged the 
 murder of the martyred brother, who may have watched 
 and waited for this meeting. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, I arose not to give a biography of 
 my deceased colleague — only to pay a brief tribute 
 to his memory. 
 
 It is said that all men have their faults as well as 
 virtues. That he may have had them is doubtless true ; 
 
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 HON. OWEN LOVE JOY. 19 
 
 but his virtues so much more abounded, and so o'er- 
 topped his faults, that they were seldom seen or men- 
 tioned ; an afFectionate and devoted husband, a kind 
 and indulgent father, a good neighbor, an exemplary 
 and consistent Christian minister, a lover and practicer 
 of justice, and a friend of the weak and oppressed. 
 
 The poor at his door were never turned empty away ; 
 the quivering fugitive from the lash of a cruel overseer 
 was fed and clothed by him, pointed to the no?-th star, 
 and sent " on his way rejoicing." 
 
 May it not be said to his good spirit, Come, ye 
 blessed of my Father ; for I was hungry, and ye gave 
 me meat; thirsty, and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye 
 clothed me ; sick and in prison, and ye came unto me ; 
 for inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, 
 ye did it unto me ? 
 
 Address of Mr. Pendleton, of Ohio. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: After friends and relatives have 
 strewed with fresh-blown flowers the new-made and 
 still open grave, it is permitted to acquaintances and 
 even to strangers to approach the narrow tenement 
 where lies wrapped in the cold embrace of death the 
 human form, lately all instinct with the impulses of 
 vigorous life. It is a custom which has grown up in 
 tender consideration of our frail humanity. It enables 
 the living to pay a silent and therefore honest tribute 
 to the qualities of the departed. It enables the dead 
 at the last hour of their stay on earth, even though 
 
 •ii 
 
d- 
 
 20 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 unconsciously, to do that which might well consummate 
 the perfect work of a useful life ; to point the living to 
 that grave to which we are all hastening. So now, sir, 
 after these friends have strewn this bier with roses, 
 made fragrant by their affections, I, comparatively a 
 stranger, approach this mystery of death to pay my 
 tribute and to receive my admonition. I have served 
 with Mr. LovEJOY since he first entered Congress. I 
 never met him off this floor ; I never met him in social 
 life. I differed radically with all of his opinions on 
 public affairs. I cannot speak of his personal qualities; 
 I cannot follow him into the circle of his friends ; I 
 cannot follow him into the more sacred circle of do- 
 mestic life. Sir, I knew him upon the arena of this 
 floor ; and here I knew him well. I had seen him in 
 all the vicissitudes of political life ; I had seen him 
 when his party upon this floor was in a great minority, 
 and he the leader of the Sinallest section of that party. 
 I had seen him when parties were so nearly equally 
 divided that after two months' stormy struggle we 
 were unable to elect a Speaker ; and I saw him after- 
 wards, when his party was largely in the majority, and 
 where he, with a few active friends, led the van in ex- 
 ploring those pathways which his party was destined 
 so soon to tread. 
 
 He was a prompt and ready debater. He was an 
 active and vigorous thinker. He was a brave and bold 
 apostle of the faith which he held. What he said, he 
 thought ; what he thought, he seemed to believe in the 
 innermost recesses of his soul. What he believed, he 
 uttered ; and what he uttered, he was prepared at all 
 
times to defend, with all the powers that God had given 
 him. He seemed to be overcome by the strength of 
 his convictions. He was too intense to be always fair ; 
 he was too ardent to be always just; he was too 
 thoroughly convinced of his own opinions to be always 
 correct ; but it was the very strength of his convictions 
 which made him self-reliant and self-confident ; and it 
 was his entire self-reliance which made him always 
 logical in his positions ; always candid, frank, outspoken 
 in their expression, and bold, determined, zealous, and 
 constant in their defence. 
 
 Sir, this is the tribute which I would lay upon this 
 bier. We saw him in the early portion of this session 
 apparently with the prospect of a long life ; soon we 
 heard that he was upon a bed of sickness ; then we 
 saw what I think has never been seen before in this 
 house : an absent member, sick upon his bed, sent his 
 argument on a question of pending legislation, which 
 by the consent of the House was read from the Clerk's 
 desk. 
 
 A little while more, and we saw him upon the floor 
 of this house, convalescing, as many hoped, to a long 
 and vigorous life. And still a little while, and we are 
 called to follow him to the dark and silent tomb. Sir, 
 let us do it so thoughtfully, so solemnly, so reverently, 
 that even in this din of life, in the secret recesses of 
 the heart of each one of us, may be heard the echoes 
 of the voice of his disembodied spirit, as it comes to us 
 through the portals of the eternal world, " Be ye also 
 ready ; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of 
 man cometh." 
 
m — m 
 
 » 
 
 22 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Address of Mr. Pike, of Maine. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : There are moments when we are 
 arrested by the stern grasp of the thought that, in the 
 purposes of the Ahnighty, man is as nothing. The 
 earnest worker, the brave fighter, the strong thinker, in 
 the ripeness of his years and the fullness of his powers 
 is stricken upon the field of his labor where his work 
 seems but half done. He departs, and the earth knows 
 him no more, but the work of God goes on. 
 
 We take satisfaction from this thought as we pause 
 beside this open grave, and, missing our friend and 
 brother, look back to see what he has done to link his life 
 with ideas that are eternal; how he wrought his life-work, 
 how he endured its burdens, how brave he was, how 
 cheerful, how hopeful when the skies were dark and 
 the tempest threatened, and how firmly and calmly he 
 met the shock when the sujDreme moment came and 
 anarchy made its dagger-thrust at the nation's life. 
 
 I speak of this, who from my boyhood knew him 
 well. Owen Lovejoy was a native of Maine ; born, 
 reared almost, within the shadow of those mountains 
 where a stern granite face looking out from the clifi*, 
 immovable amid the rage of the elements, unchanged 
 by the changing seasons or the sweep of years, seems 
 like Heaven's impress set upon New England character. 
 The stock he came of had met the dangers of the 
 wilderness and of war. They could take firm hold of 
 an idea. They could govern their lives by a conviction. 
 
 i i 
 
They could die for a faith. No wonder, then, this man, 
 with his large heart and busy brain, his strength of 
 will and energy of purpose, when he left New England 
 for his western home, at once took rank among the 
 men of influence who swayed the minds of other men, 
 and were looked to as the exponents of their thought 
 and feeling. The sympathy and interest of his native 
 State followed him to that home, not very remote from 
 the spot where his brother's life had been sacrificed in 
 vindicating free speech and a free press. Those he left 
 behind looked to see what he would do. If any man could 
 fear and falter and temjiorize in upholding an unpopular 
 cause, certainly he might, after so terrible an example of 
 what the dominant power could do. But he did neither. 
 Going to Illinois to preach, he never forgot to denounce 
 the great crime of the nation, and that without stint. 
 No doubt his words had a large influence in producing 
 the change of public sentiment which called him from 
 the pulpit to the halls of legislation. 
 
 It was the beginning of the time of transition. The 
 seed which had been sown in obscure places, and had 
 grown almost unknown, was beginning to put forth 
 fruit for the harvest. Not only conscience and religion 
 were protesting against the wrongs of slavery, but an 
 enlightened common sense was teaching the people 
 that in denying the rights of others they were losing 
 their own. The encroachments of the slave power 
 became menacing, and Mr. Lovejoy was the champion 
 sent from his district to the Thirty-fifth Congress to 
 protest and oppose. How well he did both, you know; 
 and the multitudes that mourn him to-day through the 
 
 ■fo' 
 
24 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 length and breadth of the lojal States do not need that 
 I should tell. By word and deed, by keen wit and 
 sharp logic, by eloquent pathos and most scathing de- 
 nunciation, he made his presence felt here as few have 
 been felt, and sent his words like a trumpet-blast to stir 
 the hearts of those outside these walls. And he was 
 singularly happy that, beginning amid so much opposi- 
 tion and contempt, he lived to see the monstrous wrong 
 against which he had vowed ceaseless warfare humbled 
 and wounded to death. 
 
 I think it must have been worth years of common 
 life to stand in this hall as he did on the memorable 
 occasion referred to Joy his colleague, [Mr. Wash- 
 BURNE,] after having repeatedly endured the insults 
 and felt the oppression exercised against those who 
 battled for freedom and the right of free speech; to 
 stand here, with the consciousness of power, and say, as 
 he said to those who vainly attempted to silence him, 
 " You shall hear me. I will speak. I stand here to 
 say what I have to say about the great crime of the 
 nation. I will not yield the floor." Those who saw 
 the determined face, the compact, erect form, and the 
 uplifted hand, motionless for five minutes amid the 
 turmoil of opposing voice, well know the earnestness of 
 the declaration and the stern will that underlay it. 
 
 That strength of will might sometimes make him 
 seem impracticable, but it was governed by honest 
 purposes and a high sense of duty, and balanced by a 
 sensitive nature full of noble impulses. 
 
 He was no mere theorist, laying the burdens of charity 
 on other men's shoulders. His kindness of heart never 
 
 -m 
 
HON. OWEN LOVEJOY. 25 
 
 : f. 
 
 wearied of the obligations imposed by the position he 
 occupied. Philanthropists are said to become chilled 
 and soured in their struggle to reform mankind, but he 
 kept his warm sympathies and his genial nature through 
 all the discouragements of the past and the perplexities 
 of these ill-jointed times. This and his quick percep- 
 tions and keen zest of mirth made him a delightful 
 companion for social hours, while his firm faith in God 
 enabled him to speak words of cheer to sustain the des- 
 pondent and sorrowing. Bitterly, painfully must his loss 
 be felt in the home he has left and the circle of those 
 nearest to him. The benedictions that cluster round 
 his lifeless form, the thrill of grief that ran through 
 many hearts in many homes when the news of his death 
 came, are the best tribute to the memory of a good man 
 gone to his reward — of a brave man who fought the 
 battle of life well, and won a victor's crown. 
 
 Sir, his place is henceforth amid the glorious activi- 
 ties of other spheres, but the sacred work to which he 
 devoted himself is still unfinished. The burden he has 
 laid down other hands must take up. 
 
 " Brothers and comrades, on you it is falling, 
 On you the proud voice of your country is calling, 
 While the lot of the balance is trembling on high." 
 
 Address of Mr. Norton, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : It is not my purpose to occupy more 
 than a moment or two of the brief space allotted to 
 these mournful proceedings. To what has been so 
 
 -m 
 
fittingly and so feelingly said by those who have pre- 
 ceded me I cannot hope to add anything. Yet I can- 
 not allow the occasion to pass without offering a brief 
 tribute to the memory of my distinguished colleague. 
 
 " Death," it is said, Mr, Speaker, " loves a shining 
 mark ; " and if this be so, surely his insatiate cravings 
 have been fully gi'atified in the instance before us. 
 Owen Love joy was no common man. In the State of 
 his adoption he had built up a reputation in the hearts 
 of the people which will be cherished long after his 
 ashes shall have mouldered back to their mother earth. 
 There has been mourning, and there will continue to 
 be mourning, throughout the length and breadth of that 
 great Commonwealth, as the news reaches the people 
 in their distant homes that this, one of her favorite 
 sons, has fallen a victim to death. 
 
 In this hall he is mourned to-day by the members 
 of this body, without distinction of party, as one of the 
 most distinguished and most beloved of our number. 
 
 His reputation as a public speaker of great power 
 was known and acknowledged throughout the whole 
 country, and his death will be regarded as a public 
 loss. 
 
 In this hall, in his own State, and wherever he was 
 known, he was regarded as a strong man. 
 
 He was possessed of a clear and manly intellect, a 
 vigorous understanding, a vivid imagination, and great 
 command of language. These had been strengthened 
 by long culture. He had an almost intuitive knowledge 
 of the avenues to the human heart. His love of justice 
 was strong, and he had the courage to avow and main- I 
 
 iQ) m 
 
HON. OWEN LOVE JOY. 27 
 
 tain it under all circumstances and at all hazards. It 
 was these qualities, combined with a ready humor and 
 a commanding presence, that gave him such great 
 power before a popular audience. Others may have 
 surpassed him in argument; they may have been more 
 logical, more learned, more accurate; but when the 
 great heart of the people was to be moved, when their 
 passions were to be aroused, Mr. Love joy was found 
 to move among them with the tread of a master. 
 Wherever he spoke the crowd was sure to be found. 
 His greatest efforts have been made in favor of the 
 poor and the down-trodden slave, and for the destruc- 
 tion of that terrible system gf wrong and oppression 
 which lies at the foundation of all our perils. And he 
 lived long enough to see that his cherished hopes are 
 to be realized, at no distant day, throughout the country 
 which he loved so well. 
 
 Mr. Lovejoy was an intensely loyal man. From 
 the commencement of hostilities to the hour of his 
 death his energies were devoted with all the strength 
 of his abilities and with an undeviating assiduity to the 
 crushing out of the rebellion, and to the restoration of 
 the supremacy of the Constitution and the laws over 
 every State and Territory of the Union. Surely such 
 a record is worth living for. 
 
 In the social circle Mr. Lovejoy was ever welcome. 
 Frank, generous, genial, fond of wit and humor, he 
 could always " set the table in a roar," and spread a 
 glow of kindly feeling wherever he moved. 
 
 But he is gone ! The places that once knew him 
 will know him no more forever. The silver cord is 
 
28 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 loosed, the golden bowl is broken ; the pitcher is broken 
 at the fountain, the wheel is broken at the cistern. He 
 has gone to his long home, and the mourners go about 
 the streets. The dust shall return to the earth as it was, 
 and the spirit shall return unto who God gave it. His 
 seat is vacant ; his robust and manly form lies stark and 
 motionless in its narrow house. The eye is dim, the 
 ear is deaf, the tongue is silent, and the heart is still. 
 And this is all that is left to us of Owen Love joy. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, death to most men is ever an unwel- 
 come visitor. To the aged, worn out with infirmities 
 and cares and troubles ; to the sick and the wounded, 
 writhing under agonies fi;om which there is no hope of 
 relief; to the unfortunate, from whose hearts all hope 
 has been crushed out, death may sometimes be hailed 
 as a deliverer, as the harbinger of rest. But to the 
 man in the full vigor of mind and body, in the very 
 midst of his hopes, his plans, and his labors, he must 
 be unwelcome. 
 
 So it was with Mr. Lovejoy. He was in the midst 
 of his career, with his hopes, his plans, his aspirations 
 only half accomplished. His iron constitution, his 
 robust health, his great physical strength, gave him the 
 right, to all human view, to believe that he had a fairer 
 chance for long life than most of his associates. Death 
 seemed to come to him at an unwelcome moment. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, this mournful event speaks in no uncer- 
 tain language to us. His seat is vacant to-day : whose 
 will be vacant to-morrow 1 This was his turn : on whose 
 shoulder will death fix his icy finger next ? You and I, 
 sir, are here to-day : where shall we be to-morrow 1 
 
 -m 
 
Mr. Speaker, we mourn not for our departed brother 
 "as those without hope." Mr. Lovejoy was a Christian. 
 He had chosen that better part that shall not be taken 
 away from him, neither in this life nor the life to come. 
 The trust he had cherished, the hope and the faith 
 which he had so long preached to others, that hope and 
 that faith were his solace in his passage through the 
 dark valley and shadow of death, and accompanied him 
 to that other and better land " where the wicked cease 
 from troubling, and where the weary are at rest." 
 
 Address of Mr. Ashley, of Ohio. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: On Friday night last the immortal 
 spirit of Owen Lovejoy passed from earth. This sad 
 message, borne on the lightning's wing, carried sorrow 
 to the hearts of millions. In his death the nation has 
 lost one of its ablest, most accomplished, and eloquent 
 sons, the slave a faithful friend, and true democracy a 
 cherished defender. 
 
 I was not at his bedside, and cannot tell you how he 
 died. The world knows how he lived ; and such a life 
 I am sure could only have a fitting close in a Christian 
 death. Let us learn by his heroic example that 
 
 " We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, the death of our friend was not wholly 
 unexpected by me. For more than two years, at our 
 
30 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 committee meetings, I have witnessed with anxiety, 
 
 month by month and week by week, the fire of his 
 
 eye grow dim and the vitality of his organization 
 
 gradually yield to the approaching destroyer. Though 
 
 not full of years, he was crowned with honors, and 
 
 descended to the tomb with the benediction of a nation 
 
 upon his head. He lived to see the seed he had sown 
 
 ripen into grain ready for the harvest. He saw the 
 
 dawning of the morn so long and so anxiously looked 
 
 for by the friends of freedom in the United States ; 
 
 but he was not permitted to remain with us to join in 
 
 the general song of joy which awaits the triumph that 
 
 ere long shall regenerate the nation. That Providence 
 
 which cannot err, has, for wise purposes, called our 
 
 friend and brother to his reward. While we sorrow 
 
 for our loss and sympathize with his bereaved family 
 
 in their deep affliction, we can truthfully and with 
 
 exultation say : 
 
 " The great work laid upon his manly years 
 Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears, 
 Who loved him as few men were ever loved, 
 
 AVe mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan 
 With him whose life stands rounded and approved 
 
 In the full growth and stature of a man." 
 
 Address of Mr. Morrill, of Vermont. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : Not until we assembled here to-day 
 had I expected to take any part in the present pro- 
 ceedings ; but I feel it a duty and privilege to add a 
 word to the bulk, if nothing more, of what has been 
 
already so eloquently said in relation to our late asso- 
 ciate. 
 
 No one could know much of the deceased without 
 at once perceiving that he was a man of marked 
 characteristics. Ready, resolute, and vigorous, he was 
 ever equal to the occasion, and often rose to the higher 
 keys of eloquence, argument, and wit. He was emi- 
 nently a man of true courage, moral and physical, and 
 never flinched from the maintenance of his convictions 
 or the protection of the oppressed, however fiercely 
 assailed. When the storms of opposition raged most 
 furiously, then he appeared like the rock, secure and 
 unmoved on its base. 
 
 I have seen him discoursing in the open air among 
 the people of his own district, and, take him all in all, 
 I have been disposed to regard him, prolific as our 
 country is in this class of orators, as without an equal 
 before a popular audience. Almost from the start he 
 seemed to exert a matchless power, swaying his hearers 
 to and fro at his will as with the wand of a magician. 
 Fertile in all the resources of logic and persuasion, he 
 also abounded in humor and those sallies of wit which 
 make a public speaker both feared and loved. 
 
 But I have seen him in his own family, and it was 
 there his virtues appeared to the greatest advantage. 
 There he possessed the unbounded confidence and 
 afl"ection of a beloved wife and a large family, who 
 were cultured and trained to all the generous hospitali- 
 ties of social life, and to all the duties of Christianity, 
 blended with the perpetual sunshine of his own genial 
 humor. Here he had made up and was surrounded by 
 
32 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 all we understand by the comprehensive word hojne I 
 He will not soon be forgotten here ; there he will never 
 be forgotten. 
 
 Address of Mr. Odell, of Neiv York. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : Some days since a distinguished 
 member of this body announced to me his intention of 
 going north for a time to recruit his health. I felt, sir, 
 then that I was conversing for the last time with one 
 of my brother members of this house. It was clearly 
 evident to my mind that death had marked him for his 
 victim. I fully realized that our hands were clasped 
 in friendship for the last time. He left the succeeding 
 day, and I saw his arrival announced in the city of 
 Brooklyn, which I have the honor to represent in part 
 upon this floor. He went to the home of his friend 
 and mine. With more than ordinary interest I looked 
 into the local papers to see if our friend was realizing 
 his expectations. Soon, very soon, news came that he 
 was rapidly sinking. On Friday last I received intelli- 
 gence that he was past recovery. I telegraphed at 
 once to my brother to call upon him, and if proper 
 to convey to him my heartfelt and kindly sympathy. 
 The message was too late. " The strong man had 
 fallen on sleep;" his spirit had taken its flight; he had 
 passed away beyond the reach or need of human sym- 
 pathy to the enjoyment of the sympathies of the 
 redeemed around the Throne. Soon after I had sent 
 
 m- 
 
■m 
 
 HON OWEN LOVE JOY. 33 
 
 my telegram, you, sir, announced in this hall the death 
 of Hon. Owen Love joy. 
 
 My apology for intruding myself npon this solemn 
 occasion is in the fact that he died in my district, in 
 the immediate neighborhood of my home, and was 
 attended in his last days by our mutual friends. 
 
 And here permit me to say that but few public men 
 had more ardent admirers or warmer friends in the city 
 of Brooklyn than our deceased brother. I first met 
 him upon the floor of this house at the extra session of 
 the Thirty-seventh Congress, called by the President 
 on the 4th of July, 1861. I deem it due to myself to 
 say that from the widely different political views we 
 entertained I was strongly prejudiced against him. 
 But, sir, I am glad to say here that it required but a 
 few days of personal intercourse for these prejudices 
 to disappear and vanish away. In the discharge of his 
 official duties he was a fearless and persistent advocate 
 of what he thought was right, and was always courteous 
 to his colleagues in debate. He was ever foremost in 
 support of measures to suppress the rebellion. That, 
 to my mind, was with him paramount to the one ques- 
 tion which had so long been his aim and object in 
 public and private life. His views upon the peculiar 
 institution of the country he often told me were now 
 subservient to the paramount duty of the nation, the 
 putting down by military power the enemies of our 
 country ; he believing that when this was accomplished 
 the object and purpose of his life, for which he had so 
 earnestly labored, would also be accomplished. 
 
 His love of country was most strongly marked ; his 
 
 -m 
 
patriotism none could doubt. I am authorized to say 
 that the Executive had in our departed associate at all 
 times a warm supporter of every measure which had 
 for its aim the restoration of the government. Socially 
 I ever found him genial, frank, and outspoken ; with 
 no man upon this floor were my relations more pleasant 
 and agreeable. He was at all times the Christian 
 gentleman. 
 
 One of his colleagues who had long known him in 
 both public and private life, and who is his political 
 opponent, said to me last night that Owen Lovejoy 
 was an honest man. In any age of the world this were 
 high praise ; but in these degenerate times, when pecu- 
 lation and fraud abound, when the whole nation seems 
 demoralized, such a reputation is of priceless worth. 
 Happy will it be for us who survive him, if, when our 
 earthly work is done, the same record shall be ours. 
 
 Our friend has closed his earthly career. His brief 
 days of life have suddenly ended. We shall no more 
 hear in this hall his clear, ringing voice, in words of 
 more than^ ordinary power and eloquence ; we shall 
 never again look upon his robust and manly person. 
 
 In relation to the closing scenes of his life I learn 
 from home this morning that his dissolution was calm 
 and peaceful. He died resting upon the promises of 
 that gospel which he had for so many years of his 
 earlier life preached to others. His last clays were 
 soothed by the presence of a devoted wife and loving 
 daughter. He died away from home, in a strange city, 
 but administered to and surrounded by kind friends. 
 
 I would, Mr. Speaker, take to my own heart the 
 
 i m 
 
D 
 
 HON. OWEN LOVE JOY. 35 
 
 lesson taught by this sudden demise of the brevity of 
 human hfe. It clearly indicates to us all that our life 
 is as " a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then 
 vanisheth away." It warns us in the midst of our 
 exciting duties, even here in the council chambers of 
 the nation, so to live in humble dependence upon God, 
 with faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, that when our 
 labors are ended we also may have a clear title to an 
 inheritance that is incorruptible and that fadeth not 
 away. 
 
 The resolutions offered by my honored friend from 
 Illinois have my hearty accord. 
 
 Address of Mr. Davis, of New York. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : I have been desired by my associates 
 of the Committee for the District of Columbia, of 
 which our deceased friend and brother was chairman, 
 to express in their behalf the sentiments they entertain 
 in respect to his life and character. 
 
 For myself, I never met Mr. Lovejoy until the 
 commencement of the present session of Congress. 
 He had been known to me by reputation, as he had, I 
 believe, by every man of ordinary intelligence through- 
 out the great republic, as a man of marked and positive 
 character, entertaining elevated though sometimes ex- 
 treme ideas, and who exerted all the powers of his 
 
 H- 
 
m 
 
 36 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 intellect to impress his convictions upon others. Con- 
 fiding in their correctness, with that positive character 
 which pertained to his nature, he doubtless sometimes 
 urged hi« views so persistently as to excite the censure 
 of those with whom he was brought in contact or 
 association. 
 
 I supposed, sir, until I knew him, that he had not 
 only an ardent but a vindictive temper ; that he was 
 rough and savage in his nature. I knew his intense 
 hatred of slavery, and I supposed that the fact that his 
 murdered brother had fallen in his arms years ago, as 
 the first sacrifice in this country to the liberty of the 
 press in its denunciation of human bondage, had so 
 intensified and diffused his hate as to give tone to his 
 entire character. 
 
 I knew him as a man of intellectual power, because 
 that appeared from his speeches in this hall ; but it is 
 not from the power of intellect upon this floor that we 
 are to form a correct judgment of character. Intellect 
 is sometimes cold, icy, unaffected by human sympathy, 
 and indifferent to human suffering. It was only when 
 we came together in our committee-room, where the 
 formalities which prevail here are laid aside, and in 
 frank intercourse men express their sentiments, that 
 we from whom our associate has been taken away 
 found that the highest intellect was combined with 
 childlike simplicity of character. No man ever pos- 
 sessed a more kindly or genial nature than Owen 
 LovEJOY. He was ever amiable and gentle, always 
 ready to do full and ample justice, to listen patiently to 
 those who sought redress of wrong, yet never willing 
 
 -8i 
 
to yield one jot or tittle of that high principle which 
 he applied to the government of his actions. 
 
 Allusion has been made, Mr. Speaker, by the eloquent 
 gentleman from Illinois to some of the incidents of the 
 early life of Mr. Lovejoy. He was born dependent. 
 By his own labor in the field he acquired the means 
 for even a classic education. It is one of the crowning 
 glories of our government and institutions, of which 
 he was so loyal and able a defender and advocate, that 
 they open the pathway of the poor young man to the 
 halls of learning, and, tearing down every barrier to 
 advancement, bid him cultivate his intellectual powers 
 for the benefit of his country and his race. 
 
 As an advocate of human freedom, Mr. Lovejoy's 
 name was known through the civilized world ; and 
 probably no man in this entire country was more 
 universally admired, for the boldness with which he 
 expressed his sentiments and his inflexible fidelity to 
 the cause of freedom, than Owen Lovejoy. 
 
 In social life I scarcely ever had the pleasure of 
 meeting him ; but from what I know of the simplicity 
 of his character, his kindness, his genial nature, and 
 his firm integrity, I doubt not that his home and his 
 fireside were ever cheered and made happy by his 
 presence, and that he, when he was called to rest, 
 
 " Like one that wraps tlie drapery of his couch 
 About him, lay down to pleasant dreams." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, death, which has come to him, must 
 come to all. Despotic power may rear no barrier at 
 its palace gates to stay death's entrance. Through 
 
 ■D 
 
38 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 frowning walls, behind the bars and bolts of the prisons 
 of the State, into the darkest, deepest dungeon of the 
 meanest criminal, death will find its way. The mon- 
 arch on his throne, the vassal in the hall, the peasant 
 in his cottage, the bondman in his chains, the legislator 
 in his seat, must die. Death is and ever has been the 
 universal, the inexorable, the immutable law and con- 
 dition of organic life. God has written in His own 
 autograph, upon the enduring rocks and mountains of 
 the globe, in language that science has interpreted for 
 the benefit of our race, the history of order after order 
 and generation after generation of organic and animal 
 life, which for untold ages before the ingress of man 
 lived, died, and sank into the earth's bosom. 
 
 Yet though under the mandate of this stern, original 
 law man enters the grave, 
 
 " Legions of angels can't confine him there." 
 
 The portals of the tomb but open on the pathway to 
 a new life, and we enter there with all the capacity for 
 enjoyment or suffering which we have created for our- 
 selves by our performance or neglect of duty here. 
 Who can doubt that Owen Lovejoy has passed to his 
 reward 1 Perhaps, sir, death came suddenly and unex- 
 pectedly. Often it comes unheralded ; it comes in the 
 midnight hour; it comes in the morning's dawn; it 
 comes in the miasma of the atmosphere ; it comes in 
 the flash of the lightning, with step unseen, unheard. 
 
 " Leaves have their time to fall. 
 And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 
 
 And stars to set ; but all, 
 Thou hast all seasons for thine own, Death." 
 
 m- 
 
Sir, death to Mr. Lovejoy came not in fear. He 
 had no reason to fear it. It was nature's law. My 
 eloquent friend, the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Ash- 
 ley,] told us truly that'life is measured by actions, not 
 by years ; and he who in life, whether short or long, 
 has aided in the elevation of his race, has relieved 
 human suffering, has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, 
 and lifted the shackles from the slave, has lived well, 
 and, no matter when he dies, dies nobly. The life of 
 our friend was a life of duty conscientiously performed, 
 and to him I may apply the language of the poet : 
 
 " Life's duty done, as sinks the clay, 
 Light from its load the spirit flies, 
 While heaven and earth combine to say, • 
 ' How blessed the good man when he dies.' " 
 
 Address of Mr. Grinnell, of Iowa. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: I have just returned from a long 
 journey, and it is only since I came into the hall this 
 morning that I received an intimation that I was to 
 speak on this mournful occasion. My few words shall 
 be the sympathetic utterances of a mourning friend 
 rather than those of a classic eulogist. I had the 
 honor of an intimate acquaintance with the deceased, 
 having shared the bounteous hospitality of his western 
 home, and at his Ijedside in this city I strove to drink 
 in the inspiration of his spirit. 
 
 ■D 
 
40 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 But a few weeks since, in his sick-room, I expressed 
 fears for his recovery. I saw the tears course down 
 his manly cheek as he said, "Ah! God's will be done, 
 but I have been laboring, voting," and praying for twenty 
 years that I might see the great day of freedom which 
 is so near and which I hope God will let me live to 
 rejoice in. I want a vote on my bill for the destruction 
 of slavery root and branch." He saw the sun of 
 national liberty but in its rising when he hoped to gaze 
 on it with raptures in its niidnoon splendor ; but mys- 
 teriously has God called him above the storm-clouds 
 of war, bringing rest to his weary spirit, and new 
 vision, with an exchange of the sorrows of earth for 
 the joys of Jieaven. A Christian and a hero has gone 
 home where there will be a multitude to welcome and 
 no one wronged to confront him. 
 
 As I review his eventful life I am constrained to 
 believe that had he died thirty years ago the world 
 would have said. We have lost a promising scholar. 
 Had his decease been twenty years since he would 
 have been called a fanatic by almost universal acclaim. 
 Had he left the world ten years since the narrow circle 
 in which he moved would have felt the loss of an 
 obscure free-soil candidate for Congress and a Congre- 
 gational minister. But what have ten years of noble, 
 heroic devotion to freedom achieved ! The clergyman 
 by leaving his flock for the promising field which in- 
 vited his labors is justified. A man and a citizen before 
 a minister, he proved that his politics were consistent 
 with and not derogatory to Christian and ministerial 
 character, following the example of Mayhew, Cooper, 
 
and Witherspoon of our early days, who were not more 
 eminent in the pul23it than learned and useful as legis- 
 lators, neither of whom made apology for a change of 
 avocation when they might speak for a nation in the 
 forum and espouse the cause of liberty for the world. 
 Our friend loved peace, and accepted the arbitrament 
 of the sword only as a dire necessity In his holy hate 
 for the rebellion, and slavery, its cause, he was 
 
 " For the peace whicli rings out from the cannon's throat, 
 And the suasion of shot and shell, 
 Till rebellion's spirit is trampled down 
 To the depths of its kindred hell." 
 
 And then for his country there was the ideal of the 
 church, " beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, and 
 terrible as an army with banners," to which he was 
 consecrated. The witnesses of his early and later 
 devotion made him as eyes 'to the blind, feet to the 
 lame ; and the cause which he knew not he searched 
 out. His home was his castle, where he gave assurance 
 of shelter and defence to the escaped from the southern 
 prison-house, who were thousands, and he caused the 
 widow's heart to sing for joy, while the blessing of 
 many ready to perish fell on him. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it is too early to pronounce the eulogy 
 on our deceased brother. Re spice finem ; wait till the 
 ripening of that of which he sowed the seed. Give 
 time to gather up the great thoughts first expressed in 
 the log school-house, which gathered volume, re-echoed 
 from the pulpit, and, taken up by the telegraph and the 
 press as from the statesman, true to his convictions and 
 
-la 
 
 42 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the fearless unapproached orator. The glory of his 
 life and the grandeur of his character will be unappre- 
 ciated until the last shackle falls from the slave, and 
 the muse of history asks for those who were of the 
 first to strike for the poor and end their life with 
 humane and Christian devotion. 
 
 It is well expressed, Owen Lovejoy was no ordinary 
 man. In the stern period of our history, breasting 
 prejudice and obloquy, he rOse to that proud distinction 
 to which the impassioned eloquence of this morning is 
 a fitting accord. His marked characteristics were 
 evinced in firmness like his native mountains, and there 
 was a scope of mind which seemed to borrow breadth 
 and beauty of imagery from the expanse of his prairie 
 home, carpeted with tasteful and floral decoration. 
 Above all, he died a Christian. With more than the 
 honors of a conqueror will his dust rest in sepulture 
 among the people by whom he was so ardently loved, 
 and his soul, ascending to his God, would, if it might 
 speak to us, counsel, Love your country, remember her 
 despised poor, and if you would rescue anything from 
 the wreck of time, lay it up in Grod. 
 
 Address of Mr. Arnold, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : My own indisposition renders it en- 
 tirely impossible for me to attempt to add anything to 
 the eloquent words spoken here to-day of our deceased 
 
m m 
 
 HON. OWEN LOVEJOY. 43 
 
 colleague. I will not attempt it, I will only say that 
 in looking over our country to-day, among all the brave 
 and eloquent and noble men, both in civil and military 
 life, who are seeking to uphold the flag of our country, 
 there lives no truer, nobler, braver heart than that 
 which beat in the breast of Owen Lovejoy. 
 
 One incident in his life, which I shall never forget, 
 has been recalled to-day. More than twenty years 
 ago, the first time that I ever saw Mr. Lovejoy, I had 
 the pleasure of hearing him in the city of Chicago 
 speak upon the subject which always lay near to his 
 heart, the subject of liberty to the slave ; and I heard 
 him on that occasion describe, in words the eloquence 
 of which has not yet faded from my mind, the scene 
 of his brother's death, that brother who fell a martyr 
 to liberty and liberty of the press. And I remember 
 that after describing the scene of that death in words 
 that stirred every heart, he said that he went a pilgrim 
 to his brother's grave, and, kneeling upon the sod 
 beneath which sleeps that brother, he swore by the 
 everlasting God eternal hostility to African slavery. 
 Well and nobly has he kept that oath ; and when the 
 scene of these days shall have passed, when peace shall 
 once more be restored to our country, when the his- 
 torian shall write upon his records the names of those 
 who have done most to accomplish the great deside- 
 ratum for which he lived, the destruction of African 
 slavery, in my judgment he will record the name of no 
 man who has done more than Owen Lovejoy. 
 
 Sir, it is too early to write his epitaph or to pro- 
 nounce his eulogy. When this civil war shall have 
 
^ -m 
 
 44 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 been ended, when our country shall be once more 
 restored to unity based upon liberty, then full and com- 
 plete justice will be done to Owen Lovejoy. 
 
 The question was taken on the resolutioijs, and they 
 were agreed to. 
 
 The Speaker appointed the following as the com- 
 mittee authorized by the resolutions : Messrs. Farns- 
 woRTH, Rice of Maine, and Ross. 
 
 And thereupon (at five minutes past three o'clock 
 p. m.) the House adjourned. 
 
 'U 
 
-m 
 
 yi ^ HON. OWEN LOVEJOY. 45 
 
 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 Tuesday, March 29, 1864. 
 
 The following message was received from the House 
 of Representatives, by Mr. McPherson, its Clerk : 
 
 Mr. President : I am directed to communicate to the Senate 
 information of the death of Hon. Owen Lovejoy, late a member of 
 the House of Representatives from the State of Illinois, and the 
 resolutions adopted bj the House thereupon. 
 
 The Vice-President. The resolutions will be read. 
 The Secretary read them as follows : 
 
 In the House of Representatives, 
 
 Marc/i 28, 1864. 
 On motion of Mr. E. B. Washburne, 
 
 Resolved, That this house has heard with profound sorrow the 
 announcement of the death of Hon. 0\ven Lovejoy, a member of 
 this house from the fifth congressional district of the State of Illinois. 
 
 Resolved, That this house tenders to the widow and relatives of 
 the deceased the expression of its deep sympathy in this afflicting 
 bereavement. 
 
 Resolved, That the Clerk of this house communicate to the 
 widow of the deceased a copy of these resolutions. 
 
 Resolved, That the Speaker appoint a committee of three to 
 escort the remains of the deceased to the place designated by his 
 friends for his interment. 
 
 Resolved, That, as an additional mark of respect for the memory^ 
 of the deceased, the members of this house will wear the usual 
 badge of mourning on the left arm for thirty days. 
 
 Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be communicated to 
 the Senate and, as a further mark of respect, this house do now 
 adjourn. 
 
 •m 
 
m 
 
 46 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Address of Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. President : This is the third time death has 
 entered the small circle of the congressional delegation 
 from Illinois since I have been a member of this body — 
 Harris, Douglas, and Lovejoy, all in the prime of life 
 and vigor of manhood, have been called hence within 
 the last six years. They were all men of mark, and 
 by their own efforts worked their way to places of 
 eminence and distinction, not only in Illinois but in the 
 nation. In many respects they were not unlike : they 
 all came to Illinois when mere youths, without means 
 or other fortuitous circumstances to aid them in enter- 
 ing on the struggles of life ; they were all men of strong 
 wills, great resolution, and indomitable energy. 
 
 Hon. Owen Lovejoy, whose loss we are now called 
 upon to mourn, expired Friday night last, at the house 
 of a friend in Brooklyn, New York, in the presence of 
 his wife and one of his daughters, the only members 
 of the family who were with him. He had gone to 
 Brooklyn some two weeks since in the vain hope of 
 regaining his health by escaping the anxieties and ex- 
 citements to which as a member of Congress he was 
 here exposed. He was naturally of a vigorous con- 
 stitution and possessed of great physical power. A 
 little more than a year ago, however, he was attacked 
 
by an acute disease in this city, which prostrated him 
 for a long time, and from which he never entirely re- 
 covered. Soon after the commencement of the present 
 session of Congress he was again taken down, and was 
 confined to his bed most of the time for two months 
 previous to going to Brooklyn. He leaves surviving 
 him a widow, three sons, and six daughters. 
 
 Mr. LovEJOY was a native of Maine, and fifty-three 
 years of age at the time of his death. The first I 
 remember to have heard of him in Illinois was in 1837, 
 at the time his brother was killed by a mob at Alton, 
 in that State. The circumstances of that transaction 
 have passed into history. Suffice it here to say that 
 his brother, in undertaking to defend a religious press 
 which he had established in the interest of freedom, 
 was wickedly slain. That transaction, very possibly, 
 had something to do in moulding the future life of my 
 deceased colleague, who, at the time, stood by his 
 brother's side, and, as I have been told, kneeling over 
 his body as his life's blood gushed out, vowed eternal 
 hostility to slavery. Not more faithfully did Hannibal, 
 the greatest captain of ^ancient times, keep his youthful 
 vow of eternal hostility to Rome, than did Owen 
 LovEJOY his of eternal hostility to slavery. 
 
 But there was this difference between the vow^s : 
 one was made in a spirit of vengeance against a rival 
 nation in behalf of ambitious Carthage ; the other, in a 
 spirit of philanthropy for a down-trodden race doomed 
 to perpetual bondage. Nobly did Mr. Love joy redeem 
 his pledge. The first knowledge we have of him in 
 Illinois he was battling against slavery, and he never 
 
48 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 ceased the strife till his last earthly struggle was over. 
 It was not permitted him to witness the consummation 
 of the great object to the accompHshment of which his 
 life had been devoted — the entire abolition of slavery ; 
 but he lived to see measures taken, with the inaugura- 
 tion of which he had much to do, which it is believed 
 will soon eifect that result. Like the great Jewish 
 captain, he was jjermitted to look forward to the land 
 of deliverance and promise, not to enter upon it. 
 
 In Illinois Mr. Lovejoy has occupied a prominent 
 and influential position for many years. Long l)efore 
 he held political office or entered political life he was 
 known as an anti-slavery lecturer of great power and 
 eloquence. He first held office as a member of the 
 Illinois legislature from the county of Bureau, in 1854. 
 In the fall of 1856 he was elected a representative to 
 Congress, and since then has been consecutively re- 
 turned at each election, having been three times elected 
 from the district as it existed previous to the last ap- 
 portionment and once from the district as it now is. 
 He acquired and maintained his popularity by appealing 
 directly to the masses. He had nothing to do with, 
 and knew little about, the appliances sometimes re- 
 sorted to by politicians to acquire position. At the 
 outset of his career his anti-slavery views were far in 
 advance of most of those around him. Nothing 
 daunted by this, he never hesitated to promulgate and 
 avow them whenever opportunity oifered, and often 
 sought and made opportunities for doing it. He was a 
 pioneer in the great and holy cause of freedom, and a 
 brave, bokl, and eloquent man. No man in the State, 
 
 •m 
 
if any in the nation, ever exerted a greater influence 
 on the masses by his speeches than Owen Lovejoy. 
 He had a loud, clear voice, wa|> thoroughly in earnest, 
 and throwing his whole soul into his subject, usually 
 having some relation to slavery, never failed to impart 
 to others something of that detestation and abhorrence 
 of human bondage which he himself felt. 
 
 In some portions of Illinois the prejudice against 
 abolitionists, of whom Mr. Lovejoy was denominated 
 the chief, was such that he could not address public 
 assemblies without danger of personal violence, but 
 when he once got a hearing such was his eloquence 
 and power over the people that he never failed to dis- 
 arm all personal opposition, if he did not wholly con- 
 vince his hearers. No man in the State did so much 
 as he to overcome the pro-slavery prejudices of a large 
 portion of its inhabitants, and to elevate that great 
 State to the proud position it now occi>pies on the side 
 of freedom and of right. But it is not alone as the 
 eloquent advocate of human rights that we should look 
 upon my departed colleague. 
 
 As a great leader and champion of the oppressed he 
 has, indeed, carved out for himself a reputation as 
 lasting as time ; but, endowed by the Great Author of 
 all with faculties of the highest order, and susceptible 
 of indefinite improvement, his philanthropic and noble 
 spirit was accustomed to look beyond this earthly 
 sphere to a country where the wicked cease from 
 troubling and the weary are at rest. My departed 
 colleague spent his life in pleading as well for deliver- 
 ance from sin and death as from that of human oppres- 
 
sion. For sixteen years previous to holding public 
 office he was the acceptable pastor over the Congre- 
 gational church at Princeton, the place of his residence. 
 There are few men who have left behind them a 
 brighter record than Owen Lovejoy. He was the 
 friend of the oppressed, the genial companion, the 
 eloquent orator, the able statesman, the Christian divine, 
 the affectionate husband and father. What more can 
 I say of him 1 To his bereaved widow and children 
 there is no consolation except that which cometh from 
 that other and better world whither he has gone and 
 now beckons them to follow. 
 
 I offer for adoption the following resolutions : 
 
 Resolved, That the Senate receive with sincere regret the an- 
 nouncement of the death of Hon. Owen Lovejoy, late a member 
 of the House of Representatives from the State of Illinois, and 
 tender to the family of the deceased the assurance of their sympathy 
 with them under the bereavement they have been called to sustain. 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate be directed to trans- 
 mit to the family of Mr. Lovejoy a certified copy of the foregoing 
 resolution. 
 
 Resolved, That, in token of respect for the memory of the de- 
 ceased, the Senate do now adjourn. 
 
 Address of Mr. Pomeroy, of Kansas. 
 
 I wish, Mr. President, to pay but a passing tribute 
 to the memory of one I learned to love many years ago. 
 
 -m 
 
HON. OWEN LOVE JOY. 51 
 
 Owen Love joy was the valued and tried friend, also, 
 of the people of my State during a period when such 
 friendship was invaluable. His heart and hand, his 
 voice and pen, were all consecrated to such a work as 
 the free-State men of Kansas were called to achieve. 
 I well remember the decided and cordial approval he 
 gave to the course we were pursuing. And when some 
 doubted, and others hesitated, he was ready to act. 
 And during the long and trying years of 1855 and 1856, 
 his voice cheered us; his hands, and others like his, 
 sustained us. 
 
 I remember the hospitality at his fireside, as well as 
 the stirring eloquence with which he plead our cause 
 before his own people, and in his own pulpit. 
 
 I had the pleasure often of being with him while he 
 addressed the assembled thousands of earnest and free 
 men of that portion of the great northwest during the 
 exciting and ever-memorable canvass of 1856. That 
 campaign did more than any other to establish in this 
 country a literature of freedom. 
 
 But, sir, I need add nothing to what has been said, 
 for this is no occasion for many words. Indeed, I have 
 known enough of sorrow and felt enough of its desola- 
 tion to realize that the truest tribute is oftener paid in 
 the silence of grief and by the eloquence of tears. In 
 this budding spring-time the prairie burying-place at 
 his own chosen home in Princeton will receive what 
 remains of Owen Lovejoy. And though the grass 
 may wave and the flowers bloom above and around him, 
 yet nothing, nothing can ever add beauty or fragrance 
 
52 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 to that name martyred and historic before, now and 
 hereafter forever to be dear to freedom, and as immortal 
 as liberty — the name of Owen Lovejoy. 
 
 Address of Mr. Sumner, of Massachusetts. 
 
 It is proposed to adjourn now in honor of Owen 
 Lovejoy, whose recent death we mourn. Could his 
 wishes prevail, lie would prefer much that senators 
 should continue in their seats and help to enact into 
 law some one of the several measures now pending to 
 secure the obliteration of slavery. Such an act would 
 be more acceptable to him than any personal tribute. 
 
 He spoke well always ; but he believed in deeds 
 rather than words, although speech with him was a 
 deed. It was his contribution to that sublime cause 
 for which he toiled always. " Words are the daughters 
 of earth, deeds are the sons of heaven ; " so says the 
 Oriental proverb. But there was little of earth in his 
 words. . Proceeding from a pure and generous heart, 
 they have So far prevailed even during his life that they 
 must be named gratefully among those good intiiiences 
 by which our triumph has been won. How his en- 
 franchised soul would be elevated even in those abodes 
 to which he has been removed to know that his voice 
 was still heard on earth encouraging, exhorting, insisting 
 that there should be no hesitation anywhere in striking 
 
 -m 
 
at slavery ; that this unpardonable wrong, from which 
 ah)ne the rebelHon draws its wicked life, must be 
 blasted by presidential proclamation, blasted by act of 
 Congress, blasted by constitutional prohibition, blasted 
 in every possible way, by every available agency, and 
 at every occurring opportunity, so that no trace of the 
 outrage may continue in the institutions of the land, 
 and especially that its accursed foot-prints may no 
 longer defile the national statute-book. Sir, it will be 
 in vain that you pass resolutions in tribute to him if 
 you neglect that cause for which he lived, and do not 
 hearken to his voice. 
 
 Shortly before he went away from Washington to 
 die, I sat by his bedside. There, too, within call, was 
 the beloved partner of his life. He was cheerful ; but 
 his thoughts were mainly turned to his country, whose 
 &rtuiies in the bloody conflict with slavery he watched 
 with intensest care. He did not doubt the great result. 
 But he longed to be at his post again to teach his fellow- 
 citizens, and to teach Congress, how vain it was to 
 expect to make an end of the rebellion without making 
 an end of slavery. It is only just to his fame that now, 
 on this occasion of commemoration, all this should be 
 faithfully told. To suppress it would be dishonest. I 
 could not speak at his funeral, if I were expected to 
 unite in robbing his grave of any of these titles derived 
 from his transcendent courage and discernment in the 
 trials of the present time. 
 
 The journals of the House show how faithfully he 
 began his labors at the present session. On the 14th 
 of December he introduced a bill, whose title discloses 
 
 -ii 
 
its character : " A bill to give effect to the Declaration 
 of Independence, and also to certain provisions of the 
 Constitution of the United States." It proceeds to 
 recite that all men were created equal, and were en- 
 dowed by the Creator with the inalienable right to life, 
 liberty, and the fruits of honest toil ; that the govern- 
 ment of the United States was instituted to secure 
 those rights ; that the Constitution declares that no 
 person shall be deprived of liberty without due process 
 of law, and also provides — article five, clause two — 
 that "this Constitution, and the laws of the United 
 States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme 
 law of the land, and the judges in each State shall be 
 bound thereby, anything in the constitution and laws 
 of any State to the contrary notwithstanding ; " that it 
 is now demonstrated by the rebellion that slavery is 
 absolutely incompatible with the union, peace, and 
 general welfare for which Congress is to provide ; ana 
 it therefore enacts that all persons heretofore held in 
 slavery in any of the States or Territories of the United 
 States are declared freedmen, and are forever released 
 from slavery or involuntary servitude except as punish- 
 ment for crime on due conviction. On the same day 
 he introduced another bill to protect freedmen and to 
 punish any one for enslaving them. These were among 
 his last public acts. And now they testify how hon- 
 estly he dealt with that question of questions in which 
 all other questions are swallowed up. It is easy to see 
 that he scorned the wicked fantasy that man can hold 
 property in man. This pernicious delusion, which is 
 the source of such intolerable pretensions on the part 
 
 -jp) 
 
of slave-masters, and, worse still, the source of such 
 intolerable irresolution on the part of professed of)po- 
 nents of slavery, could get no hold of him. He knew 
 that it was a preposterous falsehood, as wicked as false, 
 born of prejudice and infinite credulity, and therefore 
 he brushed aside as cobweb all the fine-spun snares of 
 law or Constitution so ingeniously woven in its support. 
 Recognizing freedom as the God-given birthright of all 
 who wear the human form, he knew no duty higher 
 than to protect it always ; and to this end law and 
 Constitution must minister. 
 
 He had never been a judge, and was not even a 
 lawyer, so that the technicalities and subtleties of the 
 profession had no chance of enslaving him. Besides, 
 to a nature like his, independent and self-poised, what 
 were the sophisms of learning and skill when employed 
 in the support of wrong ? It was enough that wherever 
 slavery appeared it w^as in defiance of that commanding 
 law of right before which all unjust pretensions, what- 
 ever form they may take, must disappear like the 
 morning dew under the flashing arrows of the ascend- 
 ing sun. From the beginning and at all times he was 
 fixed against all compromise with slavery, and stood 
 like a fortress. Sir, let it be spoken here in his honor. 
 He lies cold in death ; but he could have no better 
 epitaph than this : " Here rests one who would not 
 compromise with iniquity." When Senators and Presi- 
 dents bent to the ignoble behest he stood firm. He 
 was gifted to see that slavery — unlike the tarift' or 
 bank — did not come within the range of compromise 
 any more than the decalogue or multiplication table. 
 
He saw clearly how shamefully unconstitutional and 
 inhuman was the fugitive slave act, in spite of every 
 apology of compromise, and refused it all support. He 
 lies cold in death ; but his principles will live to sweep 
 this unutterable atrocity from the statute-book, which 
 it still fills from cover to cover with blackness. 
 
 He was not only a faithful counsellor, of perfect 
 loyalty, in whom truth was a religion and an instinct, 
 but he was a counsellor whose experience of mankind 
 and of public life united with an aptitude for affairs in 
 giving to what he said an added value. He sat for 
 several years in the other house face to face with the 
 slave-masters, who then ruled the country, so that he 
 knew them well in every respect, but especially in their 
 open brutality and their surpassing effrontery. During 
 this period, while shut out from participation in the 
 public business, his duty was that of champion, and 
 nobly did he perform it. But those who have watched 
 him under the responsibility recently cast upon a repre- 
 sentative of his character, have observed that he de- 
 veloped a practical talent, which rendered him useful 
 not only as champion, but also as workman in the 
 machine of government. He was a supporter of the 
 present administration, and of that declared policy 
 which, according to the motto of Algernon Sidney, 
 adopted on the arms of Massachusetts, seeks " placid 
 quiet under liberty " — placldam sub libertate quietem. 
 But there are few among his associates who may not be 
 instructed and inspired by his magnanimous example. 
 
 He had been a life-long soldier of liberty — baptized 
 into the service with blood. While he was yet young, 
 
HON OWEN LOVEJOY. 57 
 
 his brother, who was an editor in Illinois, devoted to 
 the slave, fell a victim to the cause he had served so 
 well. His fate awakened a wide sympathy throughout 
 the country, drawing Channing from his retirement to 
 speak at Faneuil Hall, and touching with a living coal 
 the lips of Wendell Phillips, whose voice then and 
 there, for the first time, flamed forth against slavery. 
 It was natural that Owen Lovejoy should assume 
 those vows of perpetual warfare with the tyrant mur- 
 derer which he so truly kept ; tyrant murderer of a 
 cherished brother; tyrant murderer of liberty, not only 
 on the plantation, but everywhere throughout the land ; 
 tyrant murderer of the Constitution, which guards 
 alike the rights of States and citizens ; and tyrant mur- 
 derer of national peace, without which there can be no 
 true prosperity or happiness. Thus, as a soldier of 
 liberty he began, and he kept his harness on to the last. 
 He was one of the most amiable of men, whose 
 heart was abundant with goodness and gentleness, and 
 whose countenance streamed with sunshine. But on 
 this account he was only the more inexorable toward a 
 wrong which was so cruel in all its influences. A child 
 of the New Testament, he was no stranger to the early 
 Hebrew spirit, and he had little patience with those 
 who, born among northern schools and churches, strove 
 to arrest or mitigate the doom of slavery. The famous 
 curse of Meroz, so solemnly denounced against neu- 
 trality, which had been echoed from ancient Judea by 
 English Puritans in their great contest, found an echo 
 also in his heart: "Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of 
 the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof 
 
58 OBITUARY ADDEESSES. 
 
 because they came not to the help of the Lord ; to the 
 help of the Lord aganist the mighty." (Judges, chap. 
 5, verse 23.) Of course in this spirit he used plain 
 words, and did not hesitate. But if he did not hesitate 
 it was because he saw clearly the path of duty. Amia- 
 biHty did not make him doubt. He was a positive 
 man of positive principles, who knew well how much 
 was always lost by timid counsels, especially on great 
 occasions. Because there were some about him who 
 were sceptical and irresolute, he was not disheartened ; 
 but he preserved to the last an example of fidelity 
 which history will piously enshrine. His own illustra- 
 tions were from the sacred writings; but a heathen 
 poet has given a warning which is a part of the lesson 
 of his life : 
 
 " Old Priam's age or Nestor's may be out, 
 And tliou, Taurus, still go on in doubt. 
 Come, then, how long such wavering shall we see ? 
 Thou may'st doubt on ; but then thou'lt nothing be." 
 
 But of all doubts, there are none more painful or 
 indefensible than those by which human rights are put 
 in jeopardy. 
 
 He was a representative of Illinois, born in Maine 
 when Maine was a part of Massachusetts, so that he 
 was in a certain sense a connecting link between the 
 east and the west. The welcome which he found in 
 the west, and his complete association with that region, 
 while his sympathies overflowed to his early home, 
 attest better than arguments the ligaments which bind 
 
— ^ ^ @1 
 
 HON. OWEN LOVEJOY. 59 
 
 together these different parts of our common Union ; 
 so that should hereafter any malignant spirit seek to 
 sow strife between us, his name alone will be a stand- 
 ing protest against the perversity. Born in the east, he 
 was honored in the west. Honored in the west, he 
 never lost his love for the east. But the whole country, 
 not excepting the south, had a home in his patriotic, 
 hospitable, and capacious heart. He hated slavery; 
 but he loved his country in every part with heart, soul, 
 and mind. 
 
 He was of the old guard of anti-slavery, and we 
 bury him with the honors that belong to him. Flags 
 are at half mast, and funeral guns are sounding in our 
 hearts. But from his new-made grave he speaks now 
 to the whole vast republic, animating all good citizens 
 to labor as he labored, and to live as he lived, that this 
 land may be redeemed. Especially does he speak to 
 the State which honored him in life, and to those as- 
 sociate States, which constitute the mighty northwest, 
 where he had found the home of his mature years — 
 Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota — ex- 
 horting them to take up bravely and without faltering 
 the cause which he had made his own, that it may not 
 lose by his death. But alas ! the vigilance of many 
 will be needed to supply the place which he filled. 
 
 Such a character must be mourned in Congress ; but 
 he will be mourned throughout the country at all those 
 virtuous firesides where fathers, mothers, brothers, and 
 sisters speak of those who have helped the cause of 
 human happiness on earth. And there is another com- 
 pany who cannot yet pronounce his name, but who, as 
 
iWj m 
 
 I 
 
 60 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. i 
 
 they hear how truly he was their friend, will rise to call 
 him blessed. Already, unseen of men, in vast un- 
 counted procession, the slaves of the Union help to 
 swell his funeral. 
 
 • The resolutions were adopted ne?n. con., and the 
 Senate adjourned. 
 
 V46 
 
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