Lxxviii.
Emerging from all the blackness of this Crime, where we seem to have been lost, as in a savage wood, and turning our backs upon it, as upon desolation and death, from which, while others have suffered, we have escaped, I come now to the Apologies which the Crime has found. Sir, well may you start at the suggestion, that such a series of wrongs, so clearly proved by various testimony, so openly confessed by the wrong-doers, and so widely recognized throughout the country, should find apologists. But partisan spirit, now, as in other days, hesitates at nothing. Great crimes of history have never been without [287] apologies. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, which you now instinctively condemn, was at the time applauded in high quarters, and even commemorated by a Papal medal, which may still be procured at Rome,—as the Crime against Kansas, which is hardly less conspicuous in dreadful eminence, has been shielded on this floor by extenuating words, and even by a Presidential message, which, like the Papal medal, can never be forgotten in considering the perversity of men.Sir, the crime cannot be denied. The President himself has admitted ‘illegal and reprehensible’ conduct. To such conclusion he was compelled by irresistible evidence. But what he mildly describes I openly denounce. Senators may affect to put it aside by a sneer, or to reason it away by figures, or to explain it by theory, such as desperate invention has produced on this floor, that the Assassins and Thugs of Missouri are in reality citizens of Kansas; but all these efforts, so far as made, are only tokens of weakness, while to the original Crime they add another offence of false testimony against innocent and suffering men. But the Apologies for the Crime are worse than the efforts at denial. In essential heartlessness they identify their authors with the great iniquity.
They are four in number, and fourfold in character. The first is the Apology tyrannical; the second, the Apology imbecile; the third, the Apology absurd; and the fourth, the Apology infamous. This is all. Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity, and infamy all unite to dance, like the weird sisters, about this Crime.
