452 A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSISSIPPI Southern eyes, represented the worst of Yankee abolitionist arrogance, a fanatical crusader determined to lift their former slaves into power over them. Sumner’s last days were devoted to passing a Civil Rights Act that would guarantee equal access for all races in public spaces, a bill that Lamar bitterly opposed. On April 27, 1874, Lamar spoke on the floor of the House to packed galleries. Lamar praised Sumner’s lifetime devotion to the cause of human freedom and equality, without explicitly endorsing Sumner’s policies. Just before his death, Sumner urged erasing the names of Union victories from army banners and national memorials as insulting to the Southern people. Lamar used this generous gesture to call for an end to the hatreds of the Civil War. Lamar assured Northern listeners that the South, prostrated and exhausted, accepted the result of the War. Both secession and slavery were dead beyond resurrection. Southerners did not ask the North to strike the mementos of victory from her banners. Instead, “They would rather that both sections should gather up the glories won by each section; not envious, but proud of each other and regard them as a common heritage of American valor.” Lamar’s speech was one of the first and most eloquent expressions of what became the dominant white interpretation of the Civil War: a “Brothers’War” that honored the valor, sacrifice, and sincerity of both sides as fellow Americans, an interpretation that allowed white Northerners and white Southerners to clasp hands over the “bloody chasm.” Lamar urged future generations not to speak of Northern prowess or Southern valor but of the heroism of Americans “in a war of ideas—a war in which each section signalized its consecration to principles, as each understood them, of American liberty, and of the Constitution received from their fathers.” Lamar closed with this moving plea: “My countrymen, know one another, and you will love one another.” As Lamar finished, he was greeted with a “tumult of applause” and grown men reduced to tears. Northern newspapers widely praised Lamar’s speech and welcomed Lamar as the rising new statesman of the “New South.” The Republican Boston Daily Advertiser celebrated his “magnanimous spirit,” asserting that Mr. Lamar’s speech “is the most significant and hopeful utterance that has been heard from the South since the war.” The Massachusetts Springfield Republican argued that when such a southerner as Lamar, a former radical secessionist, could deliver such a tender eulogy, it must dawn on “the most inveterate rebel hater in Congress and the press, that the war is over, and that universal amnesty is in order.” Lamar would go on to be the voice of sectional reconciliation, serving in the U. S. Senate, and when Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected President, Tate and DeSoto Counties Created In April 1873, a bill passed the Republican dominated state legislature creating Tate County. The 404 square miles were carved mostly out of DeSoto County south of the Coldwater River. DeSoto County lost almost 300 square miles, and slices of both Marshall and Tunica counties were also added. Republican Governor R. C. Powers appointed a slate of county officials, rewarding loyal members of the party. The legislature named the new county after Thomas Simpson Tate, an early settler and prominent Republican. Tate served as President of the county Board of Supervisors in 1871 and was one of seven who posted bond ($75,000) for DeSoto County’s first and only African American sheriff, J. J. Evans. Tate was the leading figure in the county’s creation. The voters rewarded him by sending him to Jackson as their first representative. County historian Rebecca Haas Smith writes that a major reason for creating Tate County was access to a closer government seat. In order to pay taxes, marry, or conduct other legal business, citizens of southern DeSoto County had to travel to Hernando across the Coldwater River. Senatobia, the new county seat of Tate, was founded in April 1834 when early pioneer and land speculator James Peters bought two sections of land from the Chickasaw for $1.25 an acre. In the Chickasaw language, “Senatobia” meant “White Sycamore,” a symbol of “rest for the weary.” Senatobia became a thriving shipper of cotton when the first train of the Mississippi and Tennessee pulled into the depot July 15, 1856. The state legislature officially chartered the town in 1860. Like most communities in North Mississippi during the Civil War, Senatobia suffered numerous raids, with Union troops twice burning the downtown business section. L.Q.C. Lamar’s Famous Speech Lucius Q. C. Lamar was the most improbable person to deliver a moving eulogy for Massachusetts Republican Senator Charles Sumner. Newly elected to the House of Representatives, the former fire eater, secessionist, and rebel officer was the first ex-Confederate from Mississippi sent to Congress. The recently deceased Sumner, in white Rust College would produce generations of African American leaders, politicians, and educators.