previous next
[631] pleasant home at Silver Springs, in the vicinity of the Federal City. He said,—

I hope yet to find some night and day of uninterrupted quiet and repose of mind and limbs, when I may yield myself to friendship and philosophy under the shadow of its groves.

On the 21st of June, a meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, to consider the question of the re-organization of the Rebel States, at which Theophilus Parsons, Professor in Cambridge Law School, presided; and speeches were made by Mr. Parsons, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Henry Ward Beecher, S. C. Pomeroy, United States Senator from Kansas, and George B. Loring, of Salem. Letters were also read from Governor Andrew, Alexander H. Bullock of Worcester, Charles G. Loring, Alexander H. Rice and Samuel Hooper of Boston, and Benjamin F. Butler of Lowell.

The letter of Governor Andrew, which contained the views he then entertained, and which he adhered to during the remainder of his life, upon a subject of such engrossing interest and importance, cannot fail to be read with interest at this and in all succeeding time. We therefore quote from this letter as follows:—

It is not my belief that in any one of the seceding States the time has yet arrived when its State government can be re-established with. safety. Whether the white man only votes, or whether the colored man also votes, I regard the movement at the present moment with inexpressible concern. It has taken us four years to conquer the rebels in all of them. I would not run any risk, great or small, of allowing the same class of men to beat us by an appeal to fraud. They appealed to force, and were conquered. Let us hold on to the power we now have to do right, to protect the loyal, to rebuild the State, to re-establish society, to secure the liberty of the people and the safety of the Union. Let it be used with parental kindness and in the temper of conciliation. But hold on to the power, and in the fear of God let it be used. It was bought with the blood of more than a quarter of a million of heroes and patriots, who have given up their lives for their country. Let us see to it that by no error of ours such torrents of human blood shall flow again. I think the loyalty of the South needs time for concentration. Therefore I think no reconstruction will

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)
hide People (automatically extracted)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
June 21st (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: