October 28, 2008

Posterity

"We must stand at last at the bar of posterity, and answer there for ourselves and our country. If we look for party influence to sustain us now, it will fail us there. The little bickerings in which we now bustle and show off our importance, will have then ceased and been forgotten, or little understood . . . Our country will be brought by the historian—custodia fidelis rerum—to that standard of universal morality which will guide the judgment and fix the sentence of posterity. . . . The character of [our conduct] will then be known as it is. The full and clear light of truth will break in upon it, and it will stand out in history in bold relief. . . . The human heart will be consulted--the moral sense of all mankind will speak out fearlessly, and you will stand condemned by the law of God as well as the sentence of your fellow-men. You may not live to hear it, but there will be no refuge for you in the grave. You will yet live in history, and if your children do not disown their fathers, they must bear the humiliating reproaches of their name."

Henry Storrs, Representative from New York, Speech on Indian Removal, May 15, 1830

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