And if with such heroic resolve we fall, we fall with honor, and transmit the name of liberty, committed to our keeping, untarnished, to go down to future generations.
John Creswell
The Public Record
John Andrew Jackson Creswell was an American politician and abolitionist from Maryland, who served as United States Representative, United States Senator, and as Postmaster General of the United States appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant. Creswell is considered to be one of the ablest, if not the best, Postmaster General in United States history. Creswell modernized the U.S. postal system to adapt to an expanding demand for increased postal routes throughout the Western states and remain competitive worldwide. Creswell also integrated the U.S. postal system, appointing both male and female African American postmasters throughout the United States, giving them significant positions of federal authority. Sweeping and constructive reforms of the U.S. postal system took place during Creswell's tenure, including securing fair competition among Star Route carriages, and the abolition of the franking system. Creswell developed a codified classification system of offenses against postal laws. Creswell streamlined and reduced postal costs, making the United States postal system run efficiently creating a fair pricing system domestically, and reducing international mailing prices. Creswell developed and implemented the United States first penny postcard.
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Yes, sir, if we must fall, let our last hours be stained by no weakness.
If we must fall, let us stand amid the crash of the falling Republic and be buried in its ruins, so that history may take note that men lived in the middle of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but chastised by God for the…
To make proselytes he had to conquer prejudices, correct traditions, elevate duty above interest, and induce men who had been the propagandists of slavery to become its destroyers.
When the rough hand of war had stripped off the pretexts which enveloped the rebellion, and it became evident that slavery had struck at the life of the Republic, unmindful of consequences to himself, he, among the first, arraigned the…
If from his father he drew a courage and a fierce determination before which his enemies fled in confusion, from his mother he inherited those milder qualities that won for him friends as true and devoted as man ever possessed.
His friends saw deeper, and knew that beneath the exterior he assumed in his struggles with the world there beat a heart as pure and unsullied, as confiding and as gentle, as ever sanctified the domestic circle, or made loved ones happy.
He lived to vote for that grand act of enfranchisement that wiped from the escutcheon of the nation the leprous stain of slavery, and to know that the Constitution of the United States no longer recognized and protected property in man.
He lived to witness the triumph of his country in its desperate struggle with treason, and to behold all its enemies, either wanderers, like Cain, over the earth, or suppliants for mercy at her feet.
The sword may rust in its scabbard, and so let it; but free men, with free thought and free speech, will wage unceasing war until truth shall be enthroned and sit empress of the world.
When I think of the good he would have accomplished had he survived for twenty years, I can say, in the language of Fisher Ames, "My heart, penetrated with the remembrance of the man, grows liquid as I speak, and I could pour it out like…
Never again will he, answering to the roll-call from this desk, respond for his country and the rights of man.
No more shall we hear his fervid eloquence in the day of imminent peril, invoking us, who hold the mighty power of peace and war, to dedicate ourselves, if need be, to the sword, but to accept no end of the conflict save that of absolute…
For the Christian, scholar, statesman, and orator, all good men are mourners; but what shall I say of that grief which none can share--the grief of sincere friendship?
Oh, my friend! comforted by the belief that you, while living, deemed me worthy to be your companion, and loaded me with the proofs of your esteem, I shall fondly treasure, during my remaining years, the recollection of your smile and…
Lost to me is the strong arm whereon I have so often leaned; but in that path which in time past we trod most joyfully together, I shall continue, as God shall give me to see my duty, with unfaltering though perhaps with unskilful steps…
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