As every season of the year has its beauties, so has every season of life. Though it be winter, it is only the poor who sigh for the summer heats. He who is rich in intellect, though he stands upon the snows of age, partakes of the holiest and most elevated joys. Far up the mountain the traveler has ascended. Human life, with its contentions and struggles, is spread out before him in the valley below. He can look down upon his fellow-man kindly, lovingly, for he sees the thorn and the bramble, the hidden ditch and the concealed stone, over which his brother may stumble and sometimes falls. But as he climbs higher and still higher, the valley, with its smiling river and fairy dells, fades imperceptibly, the twilight of the upper world surrounds him, and he sees, both above and below, in letters of living fire, the single word JUSTICE; and happy is he who, like Thaddeus Stevens, has made this solemn word his song by day, his pillar of fire by night, for eternal justice is the living God.
A great many years ago, a Green Mountain boy was fairly embarked on the ocean of life. No gaily-painted merchantman was at his command; only a little life-boat, whose paddles were a pair of strong hands; no supplies, only those so deftly hidden away in the cunning recesses of his brain. In the beginning he said it is not good to be alone; so he fashioned himself a banner, inscribed with the golden letters of Universal Justice, Liberty, and Education. With this flag upon his bosom, singlehanded and alone, he fought the ignorant prejudices of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This childless bachelor said the State should be taxed to educate the children. Was it light from the Infinite shining upon Mr. Stevens that enabled him to see deeper into the welfare of these children than their own parents or guardians? He met the most powerful opposition, but proved himself as invulnerable as Achilles without a heel. He conquered. The commonschool system of Pennsylvania owes its being to Thaddeus Stevens, and unborn myriads may owe their success in life to this great benefactor.
There was weeping and wailing heard through the centuries. The stifled sob of slave mothers smote the air because their babes were sold into bondage, and though they might be living on the earth yet were dead to them forever. The slave-pen lifted its atrocious head and flaunted its pestilential shadows within the call of the nation’s capital. The auctioneer’s voice rang shrill and clear, going! going! gone! whilst the American Shylock advanced and paid for his pound of human flesh. The torturing chain and lash were held in the hand of the overseer, and with no hope, no refuge, for the fugitive but the deadly morass or more desolate canebrake, there to be followed by the keen-scented bloodhound or his still more relentless foe. The people of Israel lay prostrate with faces buried in the dust, forgotten by the nations of the earth, apparently forgotten by their God. But the clouds of wrath gathered, and at last overspread the whole land. The youthful Republic saw, for the first time, a serious civil war. Although tried on many a battlefield before, it was in the great war for the downfall of oppression that Thaddeus Stevens sprang into existence as the “leader of the House.” It was in the vast arena of Congress, that awful place, where even more than average men are lost in its immensity, that Thaddeus Stevens shone with a steady unfaltering light--a sun with a solar system around him. It was not alone the untiring efforts of great generals, or the spilling of blood or the wasting of treasure, that saved the life of the nation. He who helps to keep the fountain of legislation pure, who keeps the mantle of trust reposed in him by the people clean and free from the speck or blemish at all times, whether it be war or peace, is a nation’s benefactor. Let the nation’s head be uncovered in the presence of Thaddeus Stevens.