[Speech of Roger A. Pryor at the annual banquet of the New York
State Bar Association, given in the City of Albany, January 15,
1889. The President, Martin W. Cooke, introduced Justice Pryor in
these words: "The next in order is the benediction. There is no
poetical sentiment accompanying this toast, but if you will bear
with me I promise you learning, poetry, and eloquence. To that end
I call upon General Roger A. Pryor."]
MR. CHAIRMAN:--I don't know what I am to respond to. I have no
text; I have no topic. What am I to talk about? I am not only unlike
other gentlemen, taken by surprise, but I am absolutely without a
subject, and what am I to say? I don't know but that, as His Excellency
the Governor of this Imperial State expatiated, eloquently and justly,
upon the achievements and glories of New York, it might be pardoned me
in saying something of my own native State.
What has Virginia done for our common country? What names has she
contributed to your historic roll? She has given you George Washington.
[Applause.] She has given you Patrick Henry, who first sounded the
signal of revolt against Great Britain. She has given you John Marshall,
who so profoundly construed the Constitution formed by Madison and
Hamilton. She has given you Thomas Jefferson, the author of the
Declaration of Independence. [Applause.] She has given you Madison and
Monroe. Where is there such a galaxy of great men known to history? You
talk of the age of Pericles and of Augustus, but remember, gentlemen,
that at that day Virginia had a population of only one-half the
population of the city of Brooklyn to-day, and yet these are the men
that she then produced to illustrate the glory of Americans.
And what has Virginia done for our Union? Because sometime a rebel, as I
was, I say now that it is _my_ Union. [Applause.] As I have already said
it was a Virginian--Patrick Henry--kinsman, by the way, of Lord
Brougham, kinsman of Robertson, the historian, not a plebeian as some
would represent, and one nominated by George Washington to be Justice of
the Supreme Court of the United States, which nomination was carried to
him by Light-Horse Harry Lee--I mention that because there is a notion
that Patrick Henry was no lawyer. He was a consummate lawyer, else
George Washington would never have proposed him to be Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of the United States; and he was a reading man, too, a
scholar, deeply learned, and he printed at his own expense Soame Jenyns'
work upon the internal evidence of Christianity. He was a profound
student, not of many books, but of a few books and of human nature. He
first challenged Great Britain by his resolutions against the Stamp act
in 1765, and then it was that Virginia, apropos of what you said to-day
in your admirable discourse--I address myself to Judge Cooley--Virginia
was the first free and independent people on earth that formulated a
written complete Constitution. I affirm that the Constitution of
Virginia in 1776 was the first written Constitution known to history
adopted by the people. And the frontispiece and the fundamental
principle of that Constitution, was the Bill of Rights--that Bill of
Rights, drawn by George Mason, you, gentlemen, in your Constitution of
New York, from your first Constitution to your last, have adopted. So
when you expatiate upon the merits of written-over prescriptive
constitutions, and with such eloquence and convincing force, I beg you
to remember that this now forlorn and bereaved Commonwealth was the
first people on earth that ever promulgated a formal, complete, written
Constitution, dividing the functions of government in separate
departments and reposing it for its authority upon the will of the
people. Jefferson gave you the Declaration of Independence in pursuance
of a resolution adopted by the Legislature of Virginia, instructing the
delegates in the Continental Congress to propose a Declaration of
Independence. The first suggestion of your more perfect union came from
the Legislature of Virginia in January, 1786, and your Federal
Constitution is construed upon the lines laid down by Edmund Randolph,
and proposed in the convention as the basis of the Constitution which
resulted in your now incomparable, as Mr. Gladstone says, incomparable
instrument of government.
Furthermore, your great Northwest, your States of Ohio and Michigan,
whose jurisprudence Judge Cooley so signally illustrates, Indiana and
others, to whom are you indebted that this vast and fertile and glorious
country is an integral part of our Union? You are indebted to a
Virginian, to Patrick Henry, then the Governor of Virginia, for the
expedition to the Northwest headed by George Rogers Clark, as he was
called, the Hannibal of the New World, who with three hundred untrained
militia conquered for you that vast domain of the Northwest, which
Virginia, in her devotion to the Union gave, a free donation with
magnanimity surpassing that of Lear. She divided her possession with her
associates, and let me add, it has not been requited with the
ingratitude of Lear's daughters, for the disposition and the policy of
this Government toward Virginia at the end of the war, and toward the
people of the South has been characterized by a magnanimity and clemency
unparalleled in the history of the world. [Applause.]
You must remember that the war commenced, as you gentlemen believe,
without provocation; we believe otherwise. This war so commenced,
costing a million of lives and countless millions of treasure, has not
been expiated by one drop of retributive blood. [Applause.] You must
further remember, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that at the formation of
the Constitution every distinguished Virginian was hostile to slavery
and advocated its abolition. [Applause.] Patrick Henry, George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, all without exception, were
the enemies of slavery and desired its extinction, and why it was not
then abolished I leave you gentlemen to determine by consulting history;
it was certainly not the fault of Virginia.
Now will you pardon me, I have been led into these remarks because you
did not give me a text, and I had to extemporize one, or rather adopt
the suggestion of his Excellency, the Governor of this State. Now, here
we are asked, why did Virginia go into the War of Secession? Let me tell
you as one who was personally cognizant of the events. Twice Virginia in
her convention voted against the ordinance of secession, the deliberate
will of the people of Virginia, expressed under circumstances which did
not coerce their opinion, was that it was her interest and her duty to
remain loyal to the Union, but meanwhile a blow was struck at Sumter,
war, actual war, occurred. What then was the course of Virginia? She
said to herself, I know I am to be the Flanders of this conflict; I know
that my fields are to be ravaged and my sons to be slaughtered and my
homes to be desolated, but war has occurred, the South is my sister and
I will go with her. It was a magnanimous and it was a disinterested
resolution, and if her fault was grievous, grievously hath she answered
it. When this war occurred, she, beyond dispute, occupied the primacy in
the Union; she is to-day the Niobe of nations, veiled and weeping the
loss of her sons, her property confiscated and her homes in ashes.
Perhaps, you may say, the punishment is not disproportionate to her
trespass, but nevertheless there she is, and I say for her, that
Virginia is loyal to the Union. [Applause.] And never more, mark what I
say, never more will you see from Virginia any intimations of hostility
to the Union; she has weighed the alternative of success, and she sees
now, every sensible man in the South sees, that the greatest calamity
that could have befallen the South would have been the ascendency of
this ill-starred Confederacy. [Applause.] Because that Confederacy
carried to the utmost extreme, to the _reductio ad absurdum_, the right
of secession, carried in its bosom the seed of its own destruction, and
even in the progress of war, welded together as we were under pressure,
some were so recalcitrant, that the president of the Confederacy
recommended the suspension of the _habeas corpus_ act for the
suppression of disaffection, and let me say, rebels as we were, so true
were we to the traditions of Anglo-Saxon liberty that we never would
suspend for a moment that sacred sanction of personal freedom.
[Applause.] And, moreover, we see now, you will be surprised at what I
say, I voice the sentiment of every reflecting man in Virginia, and
woman too. We see now that slavery was a material and a moral evil, and
we exult that the black man is emancipated and stands as our equal under
the law.
Why didn't we see it before? You know the story of the view of the
opposite sides of the shield. We had been educated under slavery, our
preachers had taught us that it had the sanction of the Divine
Scripture, we never saw any other aspect of the question, but now since
it is changed, we look at it and we perceive that slavery is not only
incompatible with the moral principles of government, but is hostile to
the material interests of the country, and I repeat that to-day, if the
people of the South were permitted to vote upon the question to
re-establish African slavery, there would not be a hundred votes in the
entire South, in favor of reshackling the limbs of the liberated negro.
Gentlemen, that is the attitude of old Virginia, the Old Dominion, as we
proudly call her, and as such I am sure you will pardon her, because
when she was in the Union she never failed you in any emergency; when
you were menaced by the invasion of the British, it was Winfield Scott
and the Cockade Corps of Virginia that repelled the enemy from your
shores. Old Virginia has always been true to the Union, if you blot from
her history that recent episode which I say you have blotted generously
from your memory, and she from hers; we stand now with you, and I have
personal testimony of the fact, because coming among you, not only an
utter stranger, and having against me natural prejudices as a rebel,
nevertheless, I have been received in the State of New York with nothing
but courtesy and kindness. Mr. Benjamin, in England, is no parallel
instance, because he went among a people who sympathized with the
Rebellion, and who, if they had dared to strike would have taken sides
with the Rebellion, but I came here to those who naturally would have
repelled me, but instead of rejecting me, they have kindly taken me to
the bosom of their hospitalities and have rewarded me infinitely beyond
my merits; and to them, and especially to my brother lawyers of the
State of New York, I feel the profoundest gratitude, in attestation of
which I trust that when I go, my bones may rest under the green sod of
the Imperial State. [Applause.]