Nobody that stands on my platform--let ’em stand as close to me as they are a mind to--not one of ’em is answerable to God for what thoughts and principles are performin’ in my mind and soul. Josiah Allen’s wife hangs on to nobody’s apron strings only jest her own.
As far as the party on my doorstep believe what I think is right, I am with ’em heart and hand, but I am not one to shet up my eyes and walk up blindly and hang on to anybody’s apron strings, not even Horace Greeley’s, as anybody can see in the matter of biled vittles, Wimmen’s Rights, and cream biscuit. To think you have got to believe every thing your party does, seems jest as unreasonable to me, as it would when you go out to pick greens, to pick skunk cabbage because cow cabbage is good and wholesome. Why skunk cabbage is pison, jest as pison as sikuta or ratsbane. Now the doctrine of free love as some folks preach it up, folks in both parties, why the smell of it is jest as obnoxious in my political and moral nostrals as the smell of sikuta is, and if anything smells worse than that, I don’t want to go near it. Pick out the good and leave the bad, is my theme in greens and politix.
Now about puttin’ that bail onto Jeff. Davis, though as I say it madded my party, I was glad he put it on. Jeff. was a mean critter no doubt, but I don’t know as chokin’ him to death with a rope would have made him any better. I say this idee of chokin’ folks to death to reform ’em, is where we show the savage in us, which we have brought down from our barbarious ancestors. We have left off the war paint and war whoops, and we shall leave off the hangin’ when we get civilized.
Says some to me, “Look at our poor Northern boys that suffered and died in Libby prison and Andersonville through Jefferson.”
I says to ’em, “Would chokin’ Jefferson bring ’em back? if so I would choke him myself.--not to kill him of course, but so he would feel it, I can tell you.”
No! it was all over, and past. All the sin, and all the sorrow of the war. And God had out of it brought a great good to the black Africans, and the nation, in the way all good is generally brought, through sufferin’ and tribulation. And if a nation is made perfect through sufferin’ what should be the first lesson she should show to the world?