signified, and by the camel on which she sat, the people of the Gentiles, deformed in their morals and loaded with idols, is set forth? Rebecca, therefore, coming to Isaac, rides on the camel's back, because the Church hasting to Christ from her Gentile condition is found in the tortuous and vicious conversation of that ancient life. And when she saw Isaac, she lighted down from her camel, because holy Church the more clearly she beholds her Redeemer the more humbly she leaves off the lusts of carnal life, and sets herself to struggle against the viciousness of depraved conversation. . . Rebecca covered herself with her veil, because the more deeply the Church penetrates into the mysteries of her Savior, the more utterly is she confounded for her past life, and blushes for what she has done perversely. When the apostolic voice saith to the Church, converted from her former lofty estate, as to Rebecca descending from the camel and covering herself with a veil: What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? When Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother, she became his wife; because the Lord, in the place of the synagogue in which according to the flesh he was born, loved the holy Church and joined it to himself in love and contemplation; so that she who was before akin to him by relationship, that is, related by predestination, was afterwards joined by love and became his wife. Whom he so loved as to be comforted after his mother's death; because our Redeemer by gaining the holy Church was consoled for that grief which, perchance, he felt for the loss of the synagogue.

But if we care to interpret names, Isaac signifies "laughter,” Rebecca, "patience." Now laughter arises from joy, and patience comes from tribulation. And although holy Church is even now taken up by the contemplation of heavenly gladness, nevertheless she has something sorrowful to bear from the weight of mortal infirmities. But Isaac and Rebecca are joined, that is, laughter and patience are mingled together, because that is fulfilled in the Church which is written, Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.

B

BENJAMIN HARVEY HILL

(1823-1882)

ENJAMIN HARVEY HILL, leader of the Georgia opponents of Secession, and one of the most eloquent men of that State of orators, was born in Jasper County, Georgia, September 14th, 1823. He was educated at the Georgia State University, and in 1845 began the practice of law at La Grange. After serving several terms in the State legislature, he ran for Congress in 1855 on the American or "Knownothing" ticket and was defeated. He was again defeated as the American candidate for Governor in 1857, and he fared no better as a Presidential elector for Bell and Everett in 1861. He had, however, an indomitable persistence in fighting on the losing side, and in the State convention of 1861 he opposed secession at every point with his characteristic boldness. After this defeat, he served in the Confederate Congress, and as a result, being still on the losing side, he was arrested in 1865 for treason to the United States and was imprisoned at Fort Lafayette. This confirmed his popularity in Georgia, and after the State had been "reconstructed," he was elected to the forty-fourth and forty-fifth Congresses and in 1877 to the United States Senate. He died in 1882. His admirers have since erected a statue to him in Atlanta.

SIR

"A LITTLE PERSONAL HISTORY»

(From a Speech in the United States Senate, May 10th, 1879)

IR, I want to give a little personal history, because I give it as a representative man, and it is directly upon this question. South Carolina seceded, I believe, on the twentieth of December, 1860. A convention was called by the people of Georgia to take into consideration the course that Georgia should pursue. That convention was called to meet on the sixteenth of January, 1861. The people of the county of Troup, in which I then lived, assembled en masse and requested me to represent them as a delegate in that convention. They made that nomination on the twenty-fifth of December, 1860, and appointed a committee to notify me of that nomination. I accepted, and, as was my duty.

avowed to them the principle on which I should act as a member of that convention, if chosen, and here is what I said in a letter then written and published:

I will consent to the dissolution of the Union as I would consent to the death of my father, never from choice, only from necessity, and then in sorrow and sadness of heart; for, after all, the Union is not the author of our grievance. Bad, extreme men in both sections of the Union abuse and insult each other, and all take revenge by fighting the Union, which never harmed or insulted any. Perhaps it has blessed all above their merits. For myself, I will never ask from any government more real liberty and true happiness than I have enjoyed as a citizen of this great American Union. May they who destroy this Government in a frolic have wisdom to furnish our children a better.

And upon these sentiments written and published at that day, the people of that county sent me their delegate to that convention without opposition. The convention assembled the sixteenth of January, 1861. On the eighteenth of January a debate took place on a resolution asserting the right and duty of the State to secede. I had the honor of making the last speech on that occasion against the resolution. The resolution, however, was adopted just at nightfall. A committee was appointed to report an ordinance to carry the resolution into effect. The Ordinance of Secession, therefore, actually passed on the nineteenth of January, 1861, though the resolution declaring it the duty to secede was passed on the eighteenth. On the night of the nineteenth I wrote a letter to a friend, which was then published, and a copy of it I now have in my hand. That was the night of the day of Georgia's secession.

Dear Sir:

MILLEDGEVILLE, January 19th, 1861.

The deed is done. Georgia this day left the Union. Cannon have been firing and bells tolling. At this moment people are filling the streets, shouting vociferously. A large torchlight procession is moving from house to house, and calling out speakers. The resolution declaratory passed on yesterday, and similar scenes were enacted last night. The crowd called loudly for me, but my room was dark, my heart was sad, and my tongue was silent. Whoever may be in fault is not now the question. Whether by the North or by the South, or by both, the fact remains; our Union has fallen. The most favored sons of freedom have written a page in history which despots will

read to listening subjects for centuries to come to prove that the people are not capable of self-government. How can I think thus and feel otherwise than badly?

Do not understand me as intimating a belief that we cannot form a new union on the basis of the old Constitution. We can do it and we will. This point we have secured as far as Georgia can secure it, and her will on that subject will be the pleasure of her sister seceders. But can we form one with more inspiring hopes of perpetual life than did Washington and his comrades? Despots will say no; and therefore if the first Union lived only seventy-five years, how long will this live, and the next, and still the next, until anarchy comes? It will take a hundred years of successful, peaceful free government to answer the logic of this argument against constitutional liberty.

Sir, in 1868 I had a correspondence with that great man, Horace Greeley. In my judgment he did more to build up the republican party than any other man in America. He was a great and good man, honest in his convictions and fearless in asserting them. The charge had been made that the South had sought war, that the Southern people were not to be trusted. The correspondence is published in the Tribune of that day. beg the indulgence of the Senate while I read an extract from that correspondence. The letter is dated New York, October 2d, 1868. I will read the extract. Gentlemen can see the letter by looking at the New York Tribune of October 2d, 1868. It is to Mr. Greeley:

I

Sir, let the deep sincerity of my convictions crave your indulgence for a few additional sentences. I am entitled to an audience from your readers, and through your assistance. I allude to the incident following in no spirit of reproach, but in entire kindness, and only to illustrate my point and my motive. I have seen the explanation of the Tribune, and recognize its force viewed from the standpoint of the Tribune, but our people did not then so understand it. On the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, nearly all the old Whig leaders of the South joined the democracy. This left the Whigs or Americans in a decided minority. It was then I felt it to be my duty to change the purpose of my life and enter politics.

It was my lot to engage with all my humble powers, from 1855 to 1861, in a vain effort to arrest the tide of secession that was sweeping the South, as I thought, into revolution. Late in the winter of 1860, more earnest than ever before, I warned our people that war, on the most unequal terms, must follow secession. On one of these

occasions a distinguished secession gentleman replied to my warnings by reading extracts from prominent Northern Republicans

I call your attention to that

and with special emphasis from the columns of the Tribune to the effect that if the people of the South desired to secede, they had a right to do so, and would be allowed to do so in peace. He then alluded to me as one born and raised in the South, and yet was endeavoring to frighten our people from their rights by threats of war, while Northern Free-Soilers, who had been esteemed the enemies of the South, were conceding our rights and assuring its peaceful exercise. Now, my good sir, what could I have rejoined? Here are the very words I did rejoin:

"I care not what Mr. Greeley and Mr. Wade, or any other Republican, or all Republicans together, have said or may say to the contrary. More to be relied on than all these, I plant myself on the inflexible laws of human nature, and the unvarying teachings of human experience, and warn you this day that no government half as great as this Union can be dismembered and in passion except through blood. You had as well expect the fierce lightning to rend the air and wake no thunder in its track as to expect peace to follow the throes of dissolving government. I pass by the puerile taunts at my devotion to the best interests of the people among whom I was born and reared, and trust my vindication to the realities of the future, which I deprecate and would avert, and again tell you that dissolve this Union and war will come. I do not say it ought to come. I cannot tell when, nor how, nor between whom it will come; but it will come, and it will be to you a most unequal, fierce, vindictive, and desolating war.»

I have reason to know that those words impressed Mr. Greeley. How could a Northern Free-Soiler stand up and charge infidelity to the Union when that Northern Free-Soiler, as many of them did, had told the Southern people that it was their real desire that the South should secede and they could do so in peace. But there were men all over the South who stood up in that mad hour and warned their people what would result, that these Free-Soil teachings must not be listened to.

Sir, I am reading these things to show the sentiment in the South. The Southern people did not secede from hostility to the Union, nor hostility to the Constitution, nor from any desire to be rid of the system of government under which they had lived.

The highest evidence is what is given you in the very act of secession, when they pledged themselves to form a new union upon the model of the old. The very night when I was writing