One may make a bust and yet be entirely unable to make a statue,--just as one may write a poem in the corner of a newspaper and not be able to produce an epic.

Senators, one after another, have attacked me personally.

Let the Senator quote a sentence or word which fell from me in disparagement of native art.

I know the art of my country too well, and think of it with too much of patriotic pride.

He was a true genius, versatile, fertile, bold.

His short life was crowned by the honors of his profession, and he was hailed at home and abroad as a great sculptor.

How can I speak of this friend of my early life except with admiration and love?

How, then, can any Senator complain that I praised foreign artists at the expense of artists at home?

It is because I would not have the art of my own country suffer, and because I would have its honors follow merit, that I oppose the largess you offer.

There is Powers, an artist of rarest skill with the chisel, of exquisite finish,--perhaps with less variety and freshness than some other artists, perhaps with less originality, but having in himself many and peculiar characteristics as a…

There is another sculptor of our country, whom I should name first of all, if I were to express freely my unbiased choice: I mean Story.

I suppose that you, as well as all other well-wishers for art in our country, have been mortified, if not really disgusted, at the success of the Vinnie Ream statue of our glorious old Lincoln.

The President insists upon installing ex-Rebels in political power, and sets at nought the claim of guaranties and the idea of security for the future, while he denies to Congress any control over the question, taking it all to himself.

Congress asserts control, and endeavors to exclude ex-Rebels from political power and establish guaranties, to the end that there may be security for the future.

This irrational assumption becomes more astonishing, when it is considered that the actual President, besides being the creature of circumstance, is inferior in ability and character, while the House of Representatives is eminent in both…

A President who has already sunk below any other President, even James Buchanan, madly undertakes to rule a House of Representatives which there is reason to believe is the best that has sat since the formation of the Constitution.

Looking at the two parties, we are tempted to exclaim, Such a President dictating to such a Congress!

It was said of Gustavus Adolphus, that he drilled the Diet of Sweden to vote or be silent at the word of command; but Andrew Johnson is not Gustavus Adolphus, and the American Congress is not the Diet of Sweden.

The question at issue is one of the vastest ever presented for practical decision, involving the name and weal of the Republic at home and abroad.

It is not a military question; it is a question of statesmanship.

We are to secure by counsel what was won by war.

Failure now will make the war itself a failure; surrender now will undo all our victories.

At the close of a terrible war, wasting our treasure, murdering our fellow-citizens, filling the land with funerals, maiming and wounding multitudes whom Death had spared, and breaking up the very foundations of peace, our first duty is to…

This can be only by provisions, sure, fundamental, and irrepealable, fixing forever the results of the war, the obligations of the Government, and the equal rights of all.

States which precipitated themselves out of Congress must not be permitted to precipitate themselves back.