Page:The Clansman (1905).djvu/105

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which lashed the slave's bared back, struck down New England's Senator for daring to speak, lifted the torch of rebellion, slaughtered in cold blood its thousands, and starved our helpless prisoners. Its end is not martyrdom, but dishonour."

Bishop Simpson said:

"Let every man who was a member of Congress and aided this rebellion he brought to speedy punishment. Let every officer educated at public expense, who turned his sword against his country, be doomed to a traitor's death!"

With the last note of this wild music lingering in the old Commoner's soul, he sat as if dreaming, laughed cynically, turned to the brown woman and said:

"My speeches have not been lost after all! Prepare dinner for six. My cabinet will meet here to-night."

While the press was re-echoing these sermons, gathering strength as they were caught and repeated in every town, village, and hamlet in the North, the funeral procession started westward. It passed in grandeur through the great cities on its journey of one thousand six hundred miles to the tomb. By day, by night, by dawn, by sunlight, by twilight, and lit by solemn torches, millions of silent men and women looked on his dead face. Around the person of this tall, lonely man, rugged, yet full of sombre dignity and spiritual beauty, the thoughts, hopes, dreams, and ideals of the people had gathered in four years of agony and death, until they had come to feel their own hearts beat in his breast and their own life throb in his life. The assassin's bullet had crashed into their own brains, and torn their souls and bodies asunder.