Mr. BROMW LL. BecauseIam notajudge nor a prosecuting attorne, and have nothing to do with it. But I say these men do not lac defenders. There are apologists for these traitors; there are men who today are using every means to make “the worse appear the better cause, " and gild over and varnish their most damnable crimes that posterity may gaze upon them as heroes in a “lost cause.” That is the term they now use, “our lost cause.” Doubtless there will be soon to hear from another lost cause” in this country, and I trust in God there may. Iallude to the attempt to foist upon us in this country a 3rd party, having neither object nor aim, unless it be to prop up and force the traitors into the power from which they were driven by the war. I think it will soon be upon the same ground as the “lost. cause, " for the American people have not stood at the guns for 4 years in vain, and borne the burdens and sorrows of war for naught; they are not now to gather the apples of Sodom when they come to pluck the fruits of victory. It may be partly successful for a time; but let me ask those who stand up for it to bear in mind that ancient maxim to which I have before now called their attention, that “the feet of the avenging gods are shod with wool.” They move as noiselessly and as surely as the foot of time. The retribution may not be heralded in its coming, but its advance is inevitable as fate. The falsities and subterfuges of men will melt. as snow before the anger of the American people, who are now bearded and mocked by the men who were lately defying our flag and laws as leaders of the rebel armies. These bills, sir, present a most magnanimous picture of the minds of our people; and I am glad they do. I am not here to curse the South. do not wish to punish the South. I only ask for justice and security; but these I will demand until the latest hour. But God do so to me if today I would vote.on a solitary bill in this House from any motive of revenge, or with a desire to humiliate or make mean any people within the bounds of our broad Republic. The grand cause of our troubles, slavery, has we know benefited the South more than the North. But I am not here prepared to charge the South alone with all the crime. If the toeean was paved with the bones of captives dying on their way to the southern markets, ships of the North were furnished to carry on the horrid traffic. If a southern taskmaster cracked his whip above the trembling victim in the price swamp, the northern, mone changer shut out the sound by the jingle o the gold which the barbarism produced for us. If the bloodhound tor'e the flesh from the victim, as he fled from brutal and savage punishment, the jails of the North yawned for his cowering form even when he a pealed for protection at the altars of Christ the Lord. It was in a land of civilization these things were done. It was in a land of Bibles these things were done. Who wonders, then, that the punishment fell upon us? 110 Wonders that our rivers ran wrth blood, and that the earth was honeycombed with graves? Who wonders that the angel of destruction spread his wings upon the smoke of1,000 battle fields and rode on the flames of consuming cities through half our land? It was but one of the retributions which this nation brought upon itself. Now, sir, I come to a principle of law which no man will deny. I say that if there is one obligation on earth which a man is bound to respect more than all others, it is the obligation of a trust. We are the trustees of that unfortunate race who have been our victims. We are not so created by an law; we are not so appointed by any court. but we are “trustees in our own wrong.” We made ourselves such, and we cannot shirk off the duty. It is because our people feel the weight of this truth that they are read to en ort such measures as the Freedmen’s ureau ill, which has been sneered at and scoffed at as paying out the hard earned money of the people for “lazy niggers, " not admitting the truth that it paid more for white refugees, the victims of this rebellion. Sir, if it paid ten times as much for the black man it would not discharge the debt of blood and sweat and groans which is heaped up against thiIsvpeeoaprele.trustees of that unfortunate race. We brought them here. They are turned loose on our hands. Other nations have lands and homes and propert, but these people have nothing we won (la low them to call t ieir own. And I cannot see how a man can find it in his heart to turn round at this hour, when 1000s of them are turned pennilcss from the fields where they bore our flag, and with his soul squatting in its cavern meanly count the vile pennies that would serve to give himself the title patent of manhood if he would stand up and take the responsibilities which himself and his God have imposed on him. When all else fails, we are reminded of Mr. Lincoln's policy; we are told that Mr. Lincoln’s was identical with this policy which paves the way for the entrance of the rebels into power and scatters palms and flowers under the ir feet this polic which shuts the door in the face of the black man and the loyal white man of the South. Who was Abraham Lincoln? And why do these apologists for treason and slavery up on] to him? I, too, can speak of Abraham Lincoln, for I can do so without the consciousness that in his life time, during the ears of his patience and perplexity and pain, had spoken of him otherwise. I will not tell you how much I was his friend, for that would be to signalize my own regard for virtue. I will not try to express to you my feelings on that doleful day, and since, for the interior feelings of‘ the heart shrink from expression, and this the more so as they are more interior and worthy of a man. But I will speak ofone thing, that he was great. It may not affect these measures that he was so, but we may well inquire why it was so. What was the quality in him which made him so ‘I The peop e, the world, and we have said that he was great, that hence forth his name must stand with those of the most illustrious few; those chosen and separated in the minds of men, even from the mul titude of world wide renown; those whose moral forms rise from distance to distance along the river of centuries, as the pyramids complete and eternal, tower above wrecks and rI‘allabish along the desert bound, mysterious 'l e. Abraham Lincoln was great. The peOple say it in their cottages where he was a welcomed and an equal guest; the cities, from their palaces, at whose portals the great rose p to do him reverence; the traveler by the wayside; the soldiers from their tents; and we have assembled in the capital of the nation to confirm and write it down. Why was he great? It was not because of birth. It was not because of education. It was not because of eloquence; although he had uttered some of the most eloquent sentences in the language. It was not by military prowess, for he never commanded in the field. What was it? The truth is, the people saw in him something they never expected to see a ruler of a great, powerful, and turbulent nation devoted to the truth above all things; to human rights as the foundation of all governmental institutions. They saw in him a man clad with power such as no scepter ever wielded, who walked humbly before his God, whose presence and authority he was not ashamed to recognize in every act of his official career. They heard words from him which touched the tenderest and subtlest chords of human feeling; words which pierced the cov erings of interest and prejudice, and silenced the obdurate passions which those who possess them still wish to subdue; words filled with truth and wisdom and charity, as the choice and heavy grains of the harvest are filled with nu triment and life; words which appealed to the obscured nobleness of the human soul, winning and drawing by reciprocal influences of sympa thy, until the affections of men’s hearts every where stretched forth their eager and gras ing tendrils to twine about his own, and Abraham Lincoln became the good StJohn of the new dispensation now dawning on the world, and which I trust will soon be set up by the Amer ican people in the name of God and humanity. Well may we come up here to celebrate b words and acts his life long devotion to high principles, those distinguis ied deeds which iave made his name‘familiar and will make it familiar to the eye and car of men until the tablets of history shall crumble beneath the corrosions of the ages or the waters of obliv ion whelin the choral bark of song. Deeds which have not only canonized but apotbeo sized him in the hearts of the American people, since his shed blood before our eyes has realized the mythic legend of the beloved Baldur slain by the enemy of light and truth. And here let me ask, why were we so shocked by his assas sination? Why did we look on it, not as mur der but as profanation, not as a crime of earth but as an assault of hell? Why is it that we feel today as though we could not be content unless we could express, by visible signs, our horror of the crime? Is it not for the same reason that the ancients cast dust in the air when they saw the divinetruth profaned by acts of sacrilege; because that justice and liberty are stricken down by the blow which smote the beloved Chief Magistrate of this Republic: because it was but another of those strokes which have been aimed so often at the life of the nation, and which, as the life long champion of the principles of the Declaration of American Independence, he received in his own body as the head and front of the Amer ican nation which that charter founded? disguise it as we may deny it as we can, the reason why the world and we have been so much moved, is not that a man was slain, but that a champion had fallen; not that a cham pion only, butthat the champion of a cause was smitten; not that a cause was assaulted, but that the cause in which all men have an intergpt dearer than life was stricken by his death ow. There is but one way to honor Abraham Lincoln. It is not by crying out that his policy was this or that; it is not by going with tears and sighs to his grave; but it is by laing the foundations of this Government ont e principles he professed; by carrying them out as he did in ever sphere of life through which he passed, from the beginning when he worked as a tiller of western soil, up to that hour when on the steps of this Capitol he uttered his 2nd inaugural address, so different from all the state papers of the world, which yet rings through our ears as the voice of one of the ancient prophets who spoke for Jehovah Sabaoth to the hosts of Israel. It is only by doing this that we can accomplish the en we have in view. Without this our sorrow for him is but grief dressed up for an occasion that sounding eulo ies may invite applause. But when we la the foundationsof this Government in trut and justice and the protection of human rights, then we may welcome in that l1 golden age of which he spoke in words that I will borrow now that I may clothe my own with their transcendent beauty, when he said: "The chords of memory stretching from every battle field and iatriot grave to every heart and hearth stonein his broad land shall yet swell the chorusof the Union when theyshall be touched.as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature." Welcome, such angels, welcome to this Hall, and at this hour. Come, Liberty, come, Union, come, Peace; clasp your hands, and rest once more your folding wings beside the altar of our common country.