Mr. PRESIDENT: The echoes of the voices of those who pronounced eulogies
upon the life and character of the late distinguished Senator from
Kansas have hardly died away in this Chamber, and we have again laid
business aside to pay our tributes to the memory of a late honored
member of the House of Representatives and a distinguished son of
Virginia.
These sorrowful occasions, which are deprecated by some as involving a
loss of the time of the Senate and needless expense to the Government, I
can not think are unprofitable to us or to the country. Surely in the
mad rush and hurry of business we may be permitted to halt long enough
to take notice of the invasion of our ranks by death and to voice our
esteem for a departed member. The death of an eminent member of the
Senate or of the House is not only a loss to his immediate constituency,
but to the whole country, and, in accordance with a long and honored
usage, demands from his former associates formal and appropriate action.
After such an hour spent in the contemplation of the common end of all
that live, in introspection and retrospection, who of us does not again
take up the burdens of life with renewed resolutions to redouble our
energies to faithfully discharge every public and private duty.
My acquaintance with Mr. LEE was not intimate. I frequently met him
socially, but he did not belong to the party with which I am affiliated,
and no fortuitous circumstance occurred to bring us together in the
discharge of public duties. The incidents of his life, his public
services, and his domestic relations have been fittingly alluded to by
others, and it only remains for me to cast an evergreen upon his grave,
to add my poor tribute to his memory, and give expression to the
emotions awakened by the occasion and the exercises of the hour. Coming
from a long line of distinguished ancestors, serving with marked
distinction in the Confederate army until the cause he championed was
hopelessly lost, honored by the people of his State by election to high
civil positions, in which he did credit to himself and honored them with
a rounded character and well-developed manhood, at once the incarnation
of gentleness, tenderness, and courage, it is not to be wondered at that
sorrow for his death hung over his State like a funeral pall, and all
parties vied with each other in giving expression to the universal sense
of private and public loss.
He was the son of a distinguished sire, who in life was the idol of the
people of Virginia; but he was held in the highest esteem by the people
of his State not so much on account of his illustrious father as on
account of his own ability and worth. His public services and his
blameless life, touching, tender, and beautiful, won the tributes to his
memory pronounced by his colleagues at the other end of this Capitol.
Fortunate, indeed, is the man who can win such admiration from his
associates.
What higher eulogy can be pronounced on any man than that in every
station, public and private, he was true to himself and faithful to the
people and was equal to the duties of his station? Not every man can
become great; genius is the gift of the few, but goodness and fidelity
to duty are within the reach of all. He has gone the way of all the
living. He has found the level of the grave. Our words of eulogy can not
reach him there.
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flatt'ry soothe the dull, cold ear of death?
Solomon, summing up this question, said:
For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any
thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them
is forgotten.
Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished;
neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is
done under the sun.
To human reason the death of him we mourn was untimely. He was born May
31, 1837, and died October 15, 1891. He was therefore in the prime of
manhood, and apparently had many years of useful life before him. But
death sometimes strangely selects his victims. No season, no station, no
age is exempt from his fatal shafts. When death comes to the aged as the
end of a fully completed life we regard it as natural. But when death
comes to the young, the gifted, and the promising, we with our finite
vision look upon it as sad and mysterious. We are constantly reminded
that--
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
It is creditable to our humanity that at the grave animosities are
buried, and those who speak of the dead remember their virtues and pass
over their frailties.
Death is a mighty mediator. There all the flames of rage are
extinguished, hatred is appeased, and angelic pity, like a weeping
sister, bends with gentle and close embrace over the funeral urn.
The reconciling grave swallows distinction first that made us foes;
there all lie down in peace together.
To the grave, "the world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil,"
we are all hastening. Earth's highest station and meanest place ends in
the common receptacle to which we shall all be taken. Dark and gloomy
indeed would be the grave without a hope in a personal immortality, a
belief that the soul survives the body, and that to this immortal part
the tomb is the gate to heaven. When one feels like Theodore Parker when
he said:
When this stiffened body goes down to the tomb, sad, silent, and
remorseless, I feel there is no death for the man. That clod which
yonder dust shall cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its
place; man to his own. It is then I feel my immortality. I look
through the grave into heaven. I ask no miracle, no proof, no
reasoning for me; I ask no risen dust to teach me immortality. I am
conscious of eternal life.
Or like Byron when he wrote:
I feel my immortality oversweep all pains, all tears, all time, all
fears, and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep into my ears
this truth--thou livest forever!
Death loses its terrors and the grave becomes a welcome goal for weary
and buffeted mariners on life's stormy sea--the gate to endless life.
By these oft-repeated scenes in this Chamber; by the frequent visits of
the stern messenger to both Houses of Congress to summon a member from
his field of labor here to the bar of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe
above; by the constant changes going on around us in obedience to the
inevitable law of nature, by which death everywhere succeeds to life,
we are reminded that we shall not long continue as we now are. It is
possible that as we are startled by the announcement of the death of an
associate we mentally ask ourselves, Who will be called next?
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.