gress of the United States,
the death of African Slavery. We can have no permanent Peace, while
Slavery lives. It now reels and staggers toward its last death-struggle.
Let us strike the monster this last decisive blow."

And, after appealing to both Border-State men, and Democrats of the Free
States, not to stay the passage of this Resolution which "will strike
the Rebellion at the heart," he continued: "Gentlemen may flatter
themselves with a restoration of the Slave-power in this Country. 'The
Union as it was!' It is a dream, never again to be realized. The
America of the past, has gone forever. A new Nation is to be born from
the agony through which the People are now passing. This new Nation is
to be wholly Free. Liberty, Equality before the Law, is to be the great
Corner-stone."

So, too, Mr. Ingersoll eloquently said--among many other good things:
--"It is well to eradicate an evil. That Slavery is an evil, no sane,
honest man will deny. It has been the great curse of this Country from
its infancy to the present hour, And now that the States in Rebellion
have given the Loyal States the opportunity to take off that curse, to
wipe away the foul stain, I say let it be done. We owe it to ourselves;
we owe it to posterity; we owe it to the Slaves themselves to
exterminate Slavery forever by the adoption of the proposed Amendment to
the Constitution. * * * I believe Slavery is the mother of this
Rebellion, that this Rebellion can be attributed to no other cause but
Slavery; from that it derived its life, and gathers its strength to-day.
Destroy the mother, and the child dies. Destroy the cause, and the
effect will disappear.

"Slavery has ever been the enemy of liberal principles. It has ever
been the friend of ignorance, prejudice, and all the unlawful, savage,
and detestable passions which proceed therefrom. It has ever been
domineering, arrogant, exacting, and overbearing. It has claimed to be
a polished aristocrat, when in reality it has only been a coarse,
swaggering, and brutal boor. It has ever claimed to be a gentleman,
when in reality it has ever been a villain. I think it is high time to
clip its overgrown pretensions, strip it of its mask, and expose it, in
all its hideous deformity, to the detestation of all honest and
patriotic men."

After Mr. Samuel J. Randall had, at a somewhat later hour, pathetically
and poetically invoked the House, in its collective unity, as a
"Woodman," to