Archive Record
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Metadata
Object Name |
Speech |
Date |
1871/02/05 |
Catalog Number |
23.114.22 |
Description |
Address of Hon. Schuyler Colfax at a Meeting of the Congressional Temperance Society held at Lincoln Hall, Washington D.C. February 5th 1871 Photographically reported by S. J. Barrows |
Collection |
Colfax Collection |
Credit line |
Gift of the Colfax Family |
People |
Colfax, Schuyler |
Subjects |
Temperence |
Transcription |
Colfax Speech - Meeting of the Temperance Society (ribbon appears to be tied thru all pages at top) - February 5, 1871 23.114.22 Cover page Address of Hon. Schuyler Colfax At a meeting of the Congressional Temperance Society held at Lincoln Hall, Washington, D.C. February 5th 1871 Page One Mr. Chairman; Ladies and Gentlemen: I knew very well when I accepted the urgent invitation of the President of the Congressional Temperance Society to speak to you a few words this afternoon - for I shall be brief - in regard to that immense evil of our time, that fills (word "upon" crossed out) our land with manifold miseries and unutterable sorrows, that I should say to you nothing new upon this old, old story of woes. Let me come together from our households from Sabbath to Sabbath and from month to month, and from year to year to hear proclaimed to us, by those commissioned from on high, line upon line and precept upon precept to enforce upon us the necessity of one single word - salvation. Any knowing as I do that I come to a field where every subject pertaining to it has often been discussed I feel it not only a duty but a privilege to stand before an audience to impressive in its numbers and in its weight of character Page Two as this is, in the capital of our Nation, and to give you my reasons for the faith that is in me. (applause) But I never stand before my fellow citizens to speak to them of all the horrors, of all the woes, of all the despair that this enemy of the human race brings upon its victims, (written in pencil above more like a note - without sadness of heart that our land is this filled with woe) saddening our hearts and filling our land with woe - a land alas, in which I am compelled to say on this Sabbath afternoon there are 400,000 more of its citizens engaged in the manufacturing and selling of liquors than there are in preaching and teaching of all denominations and all sects of our land - a land where we 40,000,000 of people pay twelve millions of dollars per year for God's ministrations and one thousand millions of dollars per year to put into their mouths an enemy "to steal away their brains" and embitter their lives. How can I speak with such a retrospect before my mind with anything but the sadness which fills my hearts today? Only this very winter - and you have all had this experience as I have had it - only a few Page Three days ago meeting a friend accidentally at the Capital I heard of an old friend of my boyhood days, able and intelligent, who removed to another state and occupied a fine social and political position, who during this winter had trodden that downward pathway leading to the drunkard's grave. Oh, if I could impress it on your minds as palpably as it appears to my mind today it seems to me as if before you left this Hall you would resolve, let fashion command, let custom prescribe, as for you and your house you would trample forever under your feet the intoxicating bowl. (applause) Let us close these windows today and shut out this glorious sunlight of God's Sabbath afternoon and let us have act before us in panoramic views the dire results of intemperance in our land within the last twelve months. I see passing before me an army of fifty or thousand men with minds debased and dishonored by the thialdine of intoxication, Page Four marching, not wish the buoyant ??? wish - which the volunteer goes forth to fight against his country's foes, but with solemn and saddening tread marching on, marching on to that saddish of all deaths, the drunkard's death; to that saddish of all graves, the drunkard's grave. I have not time to consider the figures of statisticians are to the value of this country, inestimable as I know it is, of the bones and ??? and sinews and muscle of every able bodied man aiding in the development of the magnificent resources with which God has blessed us. Though they may estimate them, coming from the old world or born in the new, as ??? from five hundred to a thousand dollars apiece to us, sixty-millions of dollars in the aggregate, the loss it would be to this land right with one but a feathers weight in the balance. I remember what your minister read in God's word this afternoon from him who never did and cannot lie, when he proclaimed to all mankind of that day and to all coming ages in letters Page Five as of living light, "No drunkard shall inherit the Kingdom of God". The gates of the Eternal City he declares are bolted and barred forever against those who debase the temple of the living God, given to us for these souls and minds of ours to dwell in. I know not why that sentence appears in God's word unless it may be because he has declared that we are made in his image; that our minds, far removed as I know we are from Infinity, are the image and shadow and reflection of that mind that created us. And if we willingly debase, and dishonor, and degrade this temple of the living God, this mind that he has given us, in that land where there is joy and peace there us to be no house for us. But this is not all. If this panoramic view should stop here it would be full of horrors to all of us; but following this army is another army sadder if possible than the first. There are the widows and orphans of the hundreds and thousands who have lost husband and Page Six father, the protector and comforter, by the wiles and snares of this enemy of mankind. Nor is this all. Following after that is an army even sadder, if more sadness can be imagined. These all the worse than widowed wives and worse than orphaned children of those who had in in the springtime of life, when they started in the race of manhood with the willing bride by their sides, had pledged to her a life time of affection, but who have had that affection turned into hatred and maltreatment, malignity and blows by the cursed cup. Nor is this all, dark and gloomy as this picture would be to us this afternoon. No, go out through your land. Open your prison doors, unlock the bolts of your penitentiaries. Empty your alms-houses and your insane asylums and then bring in solemn review before your eyes and hearts the work this fiend and tempter has done within these last twelve months in our land. Page Seven I was reading but last week the statistics of the poor-house in Oneida County New York one of the representatives of which state of N.Y. I see upon the platform here. It was stated that out 260 inmates of that institution three-fifths of them were brought there by the thrall down of intoxicating liquors. Go to your jails, go to your state prisons, go to your penitentiaries, go to your insane asylums, go to every institution throughout the land for the amelioration of human misery and ask the inmates and the keepers what crowds these places with those wrecks of humanity and the answer comes to you louder than the last "the cause is intemperance". Then around this hall raise the gallows of the last twelve months, not with their victims hanging upon them - that would be too sad a sight - but that you might have before your eyes the number of those horrid executions which have been caused Page Eight directly by intoxication maddening the brain and nerving the arm that has robbed the life of some fellow being, for which the perpetrator has paid the felons doom. Nor is this all. If this does not confront you with your individual responsibility for the anguish that flows from this greatest of sorrows in our land, then is you had the ear of infinity and could listen to the groans of misery, all the wails of anguish, all the moans of the maltreated, all the appears of the miserable of the thousands whom in imagination we have assembled in this hall, in which can be traced to this debasing and dishonoring crime, it seems to me then you would say "it is enough", "it is enough". Whence cometh all this? It can, my friends, let me to you in every solitary instance of (word "with" crossed out) all these aggregated horrors I have endeavored thus feebly to depict before you, be traced to moderate drinking Page Nine That is the Irish step in the downward road. But it is "the Irish step that costs" and when once taken the descent is rapid and easy. Have we not been moved? Did we not hear read this afternoon that impressive series of questions, brief, terse, emphatic, prophetic, which are in God's word? Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath wounds without cause? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine". Thousands of years have passed since this proclamation and every year the world's history has fulfilled the prediction. Every year thousands upon thousands in every land have gone down on the same sure pathway to that saddest end of all. If when I speak to you ladies and gentlemen, many of whom I have no doubt indulge in moderate drinking, do you answer "there is no danger to me and mine" Page Ten No danger! In this winter season come wish me to the frozen lake or river where you will see hundreds engaged in that sport of the wintry season, skating, and you will see put up at one park the placard, written in human hands, "Danger". Who goes there? Do you? No. Your child? No. Should he do so do you not wish to bring him back? Do you not appeal to him and if appeal is vain do you not, with a father's or mother's devotion risk yourself to bring him back from where human hands have inscribed "Danger"? What for? Why, this is only the danger of life, it is not the danger of soul. It is not the danger of the gates of the Kingdom of heaven being barred against him. It is not the danger of the eternity of the hereafter, it is the danger of the present life. You avoid it. You teach your child to avoid it because you value life. God has written upon this habit in Page Eleven which you indulge because you say you are strong enough to avoid becoming enthralled by it - He has written in sacred word, "Danger", and you look at it and laugh it to scorn! You look around you and see thousands who have fallen victims in soul and body both in the happiness of this world, and the glory of their character, in their person and in estate, in basket and in stone, robbed of everything, as the result of this ??? and yet you see the writing of God's finger and laugh it to scorn and pursue this dangerous path. You are traveling over a road and you find a bridge across a river upon which a human hand has written "Danger". Do you cross it? Would you allow your wife to cross it? No. You would turn back though it may be miles and days to avoid this danger. And yet when God's word is full of these appeals to you, coupled with the solemn declaration Page Twelve which I have repeated to you, you heed it not but go on your way unthinking, with your family following after you. You go along the streets of some city to visit a neighbor and when you come to his home you find a flag floating at his door that indicates pestilence that is placed there to warn off persons, that the pestilence be not spread. You might risk that danger and come out from it unharmed but when you see the flag with the warning upon it, loving the inmate as you do, unless the demand of humanity takes you then to act the part of kindly nurse or friend when thus may not be there, you turn away because there is danger. (words "Let in" crossed out) When the world's history, the world's experience is full of proofs of these dangers you go heeding them not. Wives and husbands, parents, who are here in this assembly let me say to each one of you directly as I would say to you if I were speaking to you face to face Page Thirteen if you have upon your table the wine cup and the wine glass and your children , for children are imitators as well as inquisitors, - and your children become at last besotted, dishonored, degraded, bringing your gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, themselves down to that saddest of all deaths, the drunkard's death, before God your responsibility in the day of judgement will be greater than theirs. Wives, who because you think it is popular and fashionable and polite to offer the wine cup to your guests when they come, God has attend "more" against those who put the bottle to their neighbor's lips. If your children grow up thralls and victims and enslaved, in the years that are given to them, to this dishonoring practice you are the responsible one, you are the guilty cause. I do not know what more I can say to press this upon your hearts and souls. But you may ask me in the language of the Corinthian jailor "what shall I do Page Fourteen to be saved?" It is a question that relates not only to things that lie beyond the veil but also to one conduct in this life, and I have a triumphant answer to make. Though this enemy of whom I speak has gathered together his horrid array of victims from every class and profession of society; though he has taken the gifted, the distinguished, though he has taken those eminent in social, professional and political life, seeming like death "to love a shining mark", there is one class I am fond to say, from whom he has not yet wish all this billions of victims obtained one single trophy to add to the horrid trophies he has garnered, from those who have resolved through life that they will touch not, taste not, handle not the intoxicating bowl! (applause). I know right well - for I have anticipated the replay of some of you - I know how far short some of us, many of us here and elsewhere, fail Page Fifteen of all our duties to God and man. I know how fallible we are in all the relations of life, but I know in regard to this one crime and evil of which I speak we have our feet upon a rock of enteral safety. I have a safeguard over our hearts; an amulet which protects against the temptations and vices and causes of intemperance, and as we stand upon that rock, imperfect and fallible as we are in all things else, we can look at these constant triumphs of intemperance and can feel the moves of intoxication dash against our feet; but they shall dash, thank God forever and ever in vain. Transcribed by Linda C. Deaton 12/2022 |
Lexicon category |
8: Communication Artifact |
Lexicon sub-category |
Documentary Artifact |