This is the commodity of price of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, are the things that hold together the great contexture of the mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member. Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England? It is the love of the people; it is the attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests—not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness, of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be.



VII. DANIEL WEBSTER

I. BUNKER HILL MONUMENT

This uncounted multitude before me and around me proves the feeling which the occasion has excited. These thousands of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and from the impulses of a common gratitude turned reverently to heaven in this spacious temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, the place and the purpose of our assembling have made a deep impression on our hearts.

If, indeed, there be anything in local association fit to affect the mind of man, we need not strive to repress the emotions which agitate us here. We are among the sepulchers of our fathers. We are on ground, distinguished by their valor, their constancy and the shedding of their blood. We are here, not to fix an uncertain date in our annals, nor draw into notice an obscure and unknown spot. If our humble purpose had never been conceived, if we ourselves had never been born, the 17th of June, 1775, would have been a day on which all subsequent history would have poured its light, and the eminence where we stand a point of attraction to the eyes of successive generations. But we are Americans. We live in what may be called the early age of this great continent; and we know that our posterity, through all time, are here to enjoy and suffer the allotments of humanity. We see before us a probable train of great events; we know that our own fortunes have been happily cast; and it is natural, therefore, that we should be moved by the contemplation of occurrences which have guided our destiny before many of us were born, and settled the condition in which we should pass that portion of our existence which God allows to men on earth.

But the great event in the history of the continent, which we are now met here to commemorate, that prodigy of modern times, at once the wonder and the blessing of the world, is the American Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, of high national honor, distinction, and power, we are brought together, in this place, by our love of country, by our admiration of exalted character, by our gratitude for signal services and patriotic devotion.

The Society whose organ I am was formed for the purpose of rearing some honorable and durable monument to the memory of the early friends of American Independence. They have thought, that for this object no time could be more propitious than the present prosperous and peaceful period; that no place could claim preference over this memorable spot; and that no day could be more auspicious to the undertaking, than the anniversary of the battle which was here fought. The foundation of that monument we have now laid. With solemnities suited to the occasion, with prayers to Almighty God for his blessing, and in the midst of this cloud of witnesses, we have begun the work. We trust it will be prosecuted, and that, springing from a broad foundation, rising high in massive solidity and unadorned grandeur, it may remain as long as heaven permits the works of man to last, a fit emblem, both of the events in memory of which it is raised, and of the gratitude of those who have reared it.

We know, indeed, that the record of illustrious actions is most safely deposited in the universal remembrance of mankind. We know, that if we could cause this structure to ascend, not only till it reached the skies, but till it pierced them, its broad surfaces could still contain but part of that which, in an age of knowledge, hath already been spread over the earth, and which history charges itself with making known to all future times. We know that no inscription on entablatures less broad than the earth itself can carry information of the events we commemorate where it has not already gone; and that no structure, which shall not outlive the duration of letters and knowledge among men, can prolong the memorial. But our object is, by this edifice, to show our own deep sense of the value and importance of the achievements of our ancestors; and, by presenting this work of gratitude to the eye, to keep alive similar sentiments, and to foster a constant regard for the principles of the Revolution. Human beings are composed, not of reason only, but of imagination also, and sentiment; and that is neither wasted nor misapplied which is appropriated to the purpose of giving right direction to sentiments, and opening proper springs of feeling in the heart.

Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, and be proud, in the midst of its toil. We wish that, in those days of disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national power are still strong. We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden him who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit.[31]

FOOTNOTE:

[31] This and the following extract taken from an address delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, June 17, 1825.



II. REVOLUTIONARY PATRIOTS

Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death;—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of the whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defense. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you!

But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your own country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve, that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of peace, like

"another morn, Risen on mid-noon;"

and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless.

But, ah! Him! the first great martyr in this great cause! Him! the premature victim of his own self-devoting heart! Him! the head of our civil councils, and the destined leader of our military bands, whom nothing brought hither but the unquenchable fire of his own spirit! Him! cut off by Providence in the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom; falling ere he saw the star of his country rise; pouring out his generous blood like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage!—how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name! Our poor work may perish; but thine shall endure! This monument may molder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory shall not fail! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found that beats to the transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred with thy spirit.

Veterans! you are the remnant of many a well-fought field. You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans of half a century! when in your youthful days you put everything at hazard in your country's cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this! At a period to which you could not reasonably have expected to arrive, at a moment of national prosperity such as you could never have foreseen, you are now met here to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowings of a universal gratitude.

But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform me that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending feelings rushes upon you. The images of the dead, as well as the persons of the living, present themselves before you. The scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining years, and bless them! And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces, when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in the exultation of victory, then look abroad upon this lovely land which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled; yea, look abroad upon the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind!



III. CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON[32]

America has furnished to the world the character of Washington! And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind. Washington! "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen!" Washington is all our own! The enthusiastic veneration and regard in which the people of the United States hold him, prove them to be worthy of such a countryman; while his reputation abroad reflects the highest honor on his country. I would cheerfully put the question to-day to the intelligence of Europe and the world, what character of the century, upon the whole, stands out in the relief of history, most pure, most respectable, most sublime; and I doubt not, that, by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be Washington!

The structure now standing before us, by its uprightness, its solidity, its durability, is no unfit emblem of his character. His public virtues and public principles were as firm as the earth on which it stands; his personal motives, as pure as the serene heaven in which its summit is lost. But, indeed, though a fit, it is an inadequate emblem. Towering high above the column which our hands have builded, beheld, not by the inhabitants of a single city or a single State, but by all the families of man, ascends the colossal grandeur of the character and life of Washington. In all the constituents of the one, in all the acts of the other, in all its titles to immortal love, admiration, and renown, it is an American production. It is the embodiment and vindication of our transatlantic liberty. Born upon our soil, of parents also born upon it; never for a moment having had sight of the Old World; instructed, according to the modes of his time, only in the spare, plain, but wholesome elementary knowledge which our institutions provide for the children of the people; growing up beneath and penetrated by the genuine influences of American society; living from infancy to manhood and age amidst our expanding, but not luxurious civilization; partaking in our great destiny of labor, our long contest with unreclaimed nature and uncivilized man, our agony of glory, the war of Independence, our great victory of peace, the formation of the Union, and the establishment of the Constitution,—he is all, all our own! Washington is ours.

I claim him for America. In all the perils, in every darkened moment of the state, in the midst of the reproaches of enemies and the misgivings of friends, I turn to that transcendent name for courage and for consolation. To him who denies or doubts whether our fervid liberty can be combined with law, with order, with the security of property, with the pursuits and advancement of happiness; to him who denies that our forms of government are capable of producing exaltation of soul, and the passion of true glory; to him who denies that we have contributed anything to the stock of great lessons and great examples;—to all these I reply by pointing to Washington!

FOOTNOTE:

[32] From the Second Bunker Hill Oration, delivered June 17, 1843.



SIX GREAT TRIUMPHS IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ORATORY

The selections under this division are taken from speeches which represent six of the greatest victories in the history of American eloquence: (1) Patrick Henry before the Virginia Convention, (2) Alexander Hamilton before the New York Convention, (3) Daniel Webster in Reply to Hayne in the Senate, (4) Wendell Phillips on the Murder of Lovejoy, (5) Abraham Lincoln in his debates with Douglas, and (6) Henry Ward Beecher in his speeches in England in defence of the American Union.



I. THE CALL TO ARMS

PATRICK HENRY

This speech was delivered March 20, 1775, in the Virginia Convention. Although the measures he advocated sent a shock of consternation through the conservative assembly and caused them to oppose the resolutions with all their power, yet all objections were swept away and the measures were adopted.

Mr. President, it is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who having eyes see not, and having ears hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And, judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love?

Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation, the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us. They can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted?

Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm that is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary; but when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature hath placed in our power.

Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable, and let it come! I repeat, it, sir, let it come!

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace! but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!



II. COERCION OF DELINQUENT STATES

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

In the summer of 1788 the New York Convention assembled at Poughkeepsie to consider the question of the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. Forty-six of the sixty-five delegates at first stoutly opposed ratification. Hamilton in a series of speeches upheld the Constitution, and when the vote was taken a majority of three sustained his position. The following is an extract from one of those speeches:

The honorable member who spoke yesterday went into an explanation of a variety of circumstances, to prove the expediency of a change in our National Government, and the necessity of a firm Union. At the same time he described the great advantages which this state, in particular, receives from the Confederacy, and its peculiar weaknesses when abstracted from the Union. In doing this he advanced a variety of arguments which deserve serious consideration.

Sir, it appears to me extraordinary, that while the gentlemen in one breath acknowledge that the old Confederation requires many material amendments, they should in the next deny that its defects have been the cause of our political weakness and the consequent calamities of our country. We contend that the radical vice in the old Confederation is that the laws of the Union apply only to States in their corporate capacity. Has not every man who has been in our Legislature experienced the truth of this position? It is inseparable from the disposition of bodies who have a constitutional power of resistance to examine the merits of a law. The States have almost uniformly weighed the requisitions by their own local interests, and have only executed them so far as answered their particular convenience or advantage. Hence there have ever been thirteen different bodies to judge of the measures of Congress, and the operations of Government have been distracted by their taking different courses. Those which were to be benefited have complied with the requisitions; others have totally disregarded them. Have not all of us been witnesses to the unhappy embarrassments which resulted from these proceedings? Even during the late war, while the pressure of common danger connected strongly the bond of our union, and incited to vigorous exertion, we have felt many distressing effects of the important system. How have we seen this State, though most exposed to the calamities of the war, complying in an unexampled manner with the federal requisitions, and compelled by the delinquency of others to bear most unusual burdens! Our misfortunes in a great degree proceeded from the want of vigor in the Continental Government.

From the delinquency of those States which have suffered little by the war, we naturally conclude that they have made no efforts; and a knowledge of human nature will teach us that their ease and security have been a principal cause of their want of exertion. While danger is distant its impression is weak, and while it affects only our neighbors we have few motives to provide against it. Sir, if we have national objects to pursue we must have national revenues. If you make requisitions and they are not complied with what is to be done? It has been observed to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single State. This being the case can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war? Suppose Massachusetts, or any large State, should refuse and Congress should attempt to compel them, would they not have influence to procure assistance, especially from those States which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this idea present to our view? A complying State at war with a non-complying State; Congress marching the troops of one State into the bosom of another; this State collecting auxiliaries and forming, perhaps, a majority against its federal head. Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself—a government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a government.

But can we believe that one State will ever suffer itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream; it is impossible. Then we are brought to this dilemma—either a federal standing army is to enforce the requisitions, or the federal treasury is left without supplies, and the Government without support. What, sir, is the cure for this great evil? Nothing, but to enable the national laws to operate on individuals in the same manner as those of the States do. This is the true reasoning upon the subject, sir. The gentlemen appear to acknowledge its force; and yet, while they yield to the principle, they seem to fear its application to the government.

What, then, shall we do? Shall we take the old Confederation as a basis of a new system? Can this be the object of the gentlemen? Certainly not. Will any man who entertains a wish for the safety of his country trust the sword and purse with a single assembly organized on principles so defective, so rotten? Though we might give to such a government certain powers with safety, yet to give them the full and unlimited powers of taxation and the national forces would be to establish a despotism, the definition of which is, a government in which all power is concentrated in a single body. To take the old Confederation and fashion it upon these principles would be establishing a power which would destroy the liberties of the people. These considerations show clearly that a government totally different must be instituted. They had weight in the convention who formed the new system. It was seen that the necessary powers were too great to be trusted to a single body; they therefore formed two branches and divided the powers that each might be a check upon the other. This was the result of their wisdom and I presume every reasonable man will agree to it. The more this subject is explained the more clear and convincing it will appear to every member of this body. The fundamental principle of the old Confederation is defective; we must totally eradicate and discard this principle before we can expect an efficient government.



III. THE REPLY TO HAYNE

DANIEL WEBSTER

This speech was delivered in the Senate, January 26, 1830. The doctrine of Nullification and State Rights had been set forth with great zeal and ability by Senator Hayne of South Carolina. The arguments were overthrown by the masterly speech of Webster.

If anything be found in the national Constitution, either by original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If any construction unacceptable to them be established, so as to become practically a part of the Constitution, they will amend it at their own sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to maintain it as it is, while they are satisfied with it, and refuse to change it, who has given, or who can give, to the State legislatures a right to alter it either by interference, construction, or otherwise? Gentlemen do not seem to recollect that the people have any power to do anything for themselves. They imagine there is no safety for them, any longer than they are under the close guardianship of the State legislatures. Sir, the people have not trusted their safety, in regard to the general Constitution, to these hands. They have required other security, and taken other bonds.

They have chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain words of the instrument, and to such construction as the government itself, in doubtful cases, should put on its own powers, under its oaths of office, and subject to its responsibility to them; just as the people of a State trust their own State governments with a similar power. Secondly, they have reposed their trust in the efficacy of frequent elections, and in their own power to remove their own servants and agents whenever they see cause. Thirdly, they have reposed trust in the judicial power, which, in order that it might be trustworthy, they have made as respectable, as disinterested, and as independent as was practicable. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in case of necessity or high expediency, on their known and admitted power to alter or amend the Constitution peaceably and quietly, whenever experience shall point out defects or imperfections. And, finally, the people of the United States have at no time, in no way, directly or indirectly, authorized any State legislature to construe or interpret their high instrument of government; much less to interfere by their own power to arrest its course and operation.

I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction that, since it respects nothing less than the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential importance to public happiness.

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the Sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the Earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured; bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as, "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first, and Union afterwards;" but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,—Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!



IV. THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY

WENDELL PHILLIPS

On November 7, 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy, an anti-slavery editor, was shot by a mob at Alton, Ill., while defending his printing-press from destruction. Prominent citizens of Boston called a meeting, on December 8, to condemn the act of the mob. The Attorney-General of Massachusetts opposed the resolutions of condemnation, defended the mob, and declared that "Lovejoy died as the fool dieth." Wendell Phillips said to a friend, "Such a speech made in Faneuil Hall must be answered in Faneuil Hall." He made his way to the platform and spoke in part as follows:

Mr. Chairman, We have met for the freest discussion of these resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them. I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last speaker, surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to tax the colonies, and we have heard the mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard. Fellow-citizens, is this Fanueil Hall doctrine? The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights, met to resist the laws. We have been told that our fathers did the same, and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their title to such defense the gentleman says that the British Parliament had a right to tax these colonies. It is manifest that without this his parallel falls to the ground, for Lovejoy had stationed himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof in arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against and over the laws. The mob as the gentleman terms it,—mob, forsooth! certainly we sons of the tea spillers are a marvelously patient generation!—the "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws,—but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea-tax and stamp-act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the king's prerogative, but the king's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional, beyond its power. It was not till this was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms.

The arguments of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. To draw the argument of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their memory. The difference between the excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the men of our day went for the right as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws and constitution of the Province. The rioters of our day go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips[33] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead. The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.

The gentleman says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent, he "died as the fool dieth." And a reverend clergyman of the city tells us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob follows such publication on him rests the guilt. He must wait forsooth till the people come up to it and agree with him. This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions. If this be so what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster the mob, where we know not what we may do or say till some fellow-citizen has tried it and paid for the lesson with his life. This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for the abuses of the press, not the law but the dread of the mob. By so doing it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights, but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may sometimes provoke disturbance from the minority. A few men may make a mob as well as many. The majority then have no right as Christian men, to utter their sentiments if by any possibility it may lead to a mob. Shades of Hugh Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits!

Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defense was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion into imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile the race he hated sat again upon the throne.

Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus, "The patriots are routed, the redcoats victorious, Warren lies dead upon the field." With what scorn would that Tory have been received who should have charged Warren with imprudence, who should have said that, bred as a physician, he was "out of place" in the battle, and "died as the fool dieth!" How would the intimation have been received that Warren and his associates should have waited a better time?

Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the press on American ground! Is the assertion of such freedom before the age? So much before the age as to leave one no right to make it because it displeases the community? Who invents this libel on his country? It is this very thing that entitles Lovejoy to greater praise. The disputed right which provoked the revolution—taxation without representation—is far beneath that for which he died. As much as thought is better than money, so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when the king did but touch his pocket. Imagine if you can his indignant eloquence had England offered to put a gag upon his lips.

FOOTNOTE:

[33] Phillips points to portraits in the hall.



V. THE SLAVERY ISSUE

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

An extract from a speech delivered at Alton, Ill., October 15, 1858. It is taken from one of a series of seven speeches delivered in joint debate with Douglas in the Senatorial campaign in Illinois. Lincoln lost the Senatorship but won the Presidency by this series of speeches.

Fellow-citizens, I have not only made the declaration that I do not mean to produce a conflict between the states, but I have tried to show by fair reasoning that I propose nothing but what has a most peaceful tendency. The quotation that "a house divided against itself cannot stand," and which has proved so offensive to Judge Douglas, was part of the same thing. He tries to show that variety in the domestic institutions of the different states is necessary and indispensable. I do not dispute it. I very readily agree with him that it would be foolish for us to insist upon having a cranberry law here in Illinois where we have no cranberries, because they have a cranberry law in Indiana where they have cranberries. I should insist that it would be exceedingly wrong in us to deny to Virginia the right to enact oyster laws, where they have oysters, because we want no such laws here. If we here raise a barrel of flour more than we want and the Louisianians raise a barrel of sugar more than they want, it is of mutual advantage to exchange. That produces commerce, brings us together and makes us better friends. These mutual accommodations bind together the different parts of this Union. Instead of being a thing to "divide the house" they tend to sustain it, they are the props of the house tending always to hold it up.

But is it true that all the difficulty and agitation we have in regard to this institution of slavery springs from office seeking, from the mere ambition of politicians? Is that the truth? How many times have we had danger from this question? Go back to the days of the Missouri Compromise. Go back to the Nullification question, at the bottom of which lay this same slavery question. Go back to the time of the annexation of Texas. Go back to the troubles that led to the Compromise of 1850. You will find that every time, with the single exception of the Nullification question, they sprung from an endeavor to spread this institution. There never was a party in the history of this country, and there probably never will be, of sufficient strength to disturb the general peace of the country. Parties themselves may be divided and quarrel on minor questions. Yet it extends not beyond the parties themselves.

The Judge alludes very often in the course of his remarks to the exclusive right which the states have to decide for themselves. I agree with him very readily that the different states have the right. Our controversy with him is in regard to the new territories. We agree that when the states come in as states they have the right and the power to do as they please. We have no power as citizens of the free states or in our federal capacity as members of the federal Union through the general government to disturb slavery in the states where it exists. What I insist upon is that the new territories shall be kept free from it while in the territorial condition. Judge Douglas assumes that we have no interest in them, that we have no right whatever to interfere. I think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have. Do we not wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express myself? Do we not feel an interest in getting to that outlet with such institutions as we would like to have prevail there? If you go to the territory opposed to slavery and another man comes to the same ground with his slave, upon the assumption that the things are equal, it turns out that he has the equal right all his way and you have no part of it your way.

The real issue in this controversy is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as wrong. It is the sentiment around which all their actions, all their arguments circle, from which all their propositions radiate. They look upon it as being a moral, social, and political wrong. Has anything ever threatened the existence of this Union save this very institution of slavery? What is it that we hold most dear amongst us? Our own liberty and prosperity. What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity except this institution of slavery? If this be true, how do you propose to improve the condition of things by enlarging it? You may have a cancer upon your person and not be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death, but surely it is no way to cure it to graft it and spread it over your body. That is no proper way of treating what you regard as wrong.

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself are silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other is the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.



VI. MORAL ASPECT OF THE AMERICAN WAR

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Taken from a speech delivered in London, October 20, 1863. In a series of five speeches in order at Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London, Henry Ward Beecher changed the attitude of the English nation from one of open hostility to the Union to neutrality and even to favor. It is doubtful if there ever was a greater triumph in the history of eloquence.

This war began by the act of the South, firing at the old flag that had covered both sections with glory and protection. The attack made upon us was under circumstances which inflicted immediate humiliation and threatened us with final subjugation. The Southerners held all the keys of the country. They had robbed our arsenals. They had made our treasury bankrupt. They had possession of the most important offices in the army and navy. They had the advantage of having long anticipated and prepared for the conflict. We knew not whom to trust. One man failed and another man failed. Men, pensioned by the Government, lived on the salary of the Government only to have better opportunity to stab and betray it. And for the North to have lain down like a spaniel, to have given up the land that every child in America is taught, as every child in Britain is taught, to regard as his sacred right and his trust, to have given up the mouths of our own rivers and our mountain citadels without a blow, would have marked the North in all future history as craven and mean.

Second, the honor and safety of that grand experiment, self-government by free institutions, demanded that so flagitious a violation of the first principles of legality should not carry off impunity and reward, thereafter enabling the minority in every party conflict to turn and say to the majority, "If you don't give us our way we will make war." Oh, Englishmen, would you let a minority dictate in such a way to you? The principle thus introduced would literally have no end, would carry the nation back to its original elements of isolated states. Nor is there any reason why it should stop with states. If every treaty may be overthrown by which states have been settled into a nation, what form of political union may not on like grounds be severed? There is the same force in the doctrine of secession in the application of counties as in the application to states, and if it be right for a state or a county to secede, it is equally right for a town or a city. This doctrine of secession is a huge revolving millstone that grinds the national life to powder. It is anarchy in velvet, and national destruction clothed in soft phrases. No people with patriotism and honor will give up territory without a struggle for it. Would you give it up? It is said that the states are owners of their territory! It is theirs to use not theirs to run away with. We have equal right with them to enter it. I would like to ask those English gentlemen who hold that it is right for a state to secede when it pleases, how they would like it if the county of Kent would try the experiment. The men who cry out for secession of the Southern States in America would say, "Kent seceding? Ah, circumstances alter cases."

One more reason why we will not let this people go is because we do not want to become a military people. A great many say America is becoming too strong, she is dangerous to the peace of the world. But if you permit or favor this division, the South becomes a military nation and the North is compelled to become a military nation. Along a line of 1500 miles she must have forts and men to garrison them. Now any nation that has a large standing army is in great danger of losing its liberties. Before this war the legal size of the national army was 25,000. If the country were divided then we should have two great military nations taking its place. And if America by this ill-advised disruption is forced to have a standing army, like a boy with a knife she will always want to whittle with it. It is the interest then of the world, that the nation should be united, and that it should be under the control of that part of America that has always been for peace.

The religious minded among our people feel that in the territory committed to us there is a high and solemn trust, a national trust. We are taught that in some sense the world itself is a field, and every Christian nation acknowledges a certain responsibility for the moral condition of the globe. But how much nearer does it come when it is one's own country! And the church of America is coming to feel more and more that God gave us this country not merely for material aggrandizement, but for a glorious triumph of the church of Christ. Therefore we undertook to rid the territory of slavery. Since slavery has divested itself of its municipal protection and has become a declared public enemy, it is our duty to strike down slavery which would blight this territory. These truths are not exaggerated, they are diminished rather than magnified in my statement, and you cannot tell how powerfully they are influencing us unless you are standing in our midst in America; you cannot understand how firm that national feeling is which God has bred in the North on this subject. It is deeper than the sea, it is firmer than the hills, it is serene as the sky over our head where God dwells.

We believe that the war is a test of our institutions, that it is a life-and-death struggle between the two principles of liberty and slavery, that it is the cause of the common people the world over. We believe that every struggling nationality on the globe will be stronger if we conquer this odious oligarchy of slavery and that every oppressed people in the world will be weaker if we fail. The sober American regards the war as part of that awful yet glorious struggle which has been going on for hundreds of years in every nation between right and wrong, between virtue and vice, between liberty and despotism, between freedom and bondage. It carries with it the whole future condition of our vast continent, its laws, its policy, its fate. And standing in view of these tremendous realities we have consecrated all that we have, our children, our wealth, our national strength, and we lay them all on the altar and say, "It is better that they should all perish than that the North should falter and betray this trust of God, this hope of the oppressed, this western civilization." If we say this of ourselves, shall we say less of the slave-holders? If we are willing to do these things, shall we say, "Stop the war for their sakes!" If we say this of ourselves, shall we have more pity for the rebellious, for slavery seeking to blacken a continent with its awful evil, desecrating the social phrase, "National Independence," by seeking only an independence that shall enable them to treat four millions of human beings as chattels? Shall we be tenderer over them than over ourselves? Standing by my cradle, standing by my hearth, standing by the altar of the church, standing by all the places that mark the name and memory of heroic men who poured out their lives for principle, I declare that in ten or twenty years of war we will sacrifice everything we have for principle. If the love of popular liberty is dead in Great Britain you will not understand us, but if the love of liberty lives as it once lived, and has worthy successors of those renowned men that were our ancestors as much as yours, and whose example and principles we inherit as so much seed corn in a new and fertile land, then you will understand our firm invincible determination to fight this war through at all hazards and at every cost.



ABOLITION OF WAR[34]

CHARLES SUMNER

Can there be in our age any peace that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable? The true honor of a nation is conspicuous only in deeds of justice and beneficence, securing and advancing human happiness. In the clear eye of that Christian judgment which must yet prevail, vain are the victories of war, infamous its spoils. He is the benefactor, and worthy of honor, who carries comfort to wretchedness, dries the tear of sorrow, relieves the unfortunate, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, does justice, enlightens the ignorant, unfastens the fetters of the slave, and finally, by virtuous genius, in art, literature, science, enlivens and exalts the hours of life, or by generous example, inspires a love for God and man. This is the Christian hero; this is the man of honor in a Christian land. He is no benefactor, nor worthy of honor, whatever his worldly renown, whose life is absorbed in feats of brute force, who renounces the great law of Christian brotherhood, whose vocation is blood.

Fellow-citizens, this criminal and impious custom of war, which all condemn in the case of individuals, is openly avowed by our own country, and by other countries of the great Christian Federation, nay, that it is expressly established by international law, as the proper mode of determining justice between nations,—while the feats of hardihood by which it is waged, and the triumphs of its fields, are exalted beyond all other labors, whether of learning, industry, or benevolence, as the wellspring of glory. Alas! upon our own heads be the judgment of barbarism which we pronounce upon those who have gone before!

Who has taught you, O man! thus to find glory in an act, performed by a nation, which you condemn as a crime or a barbarism, when committed by an individual? In what vain conceit of wisdom and virtue do you find this incongruous morality? Where is it declared that God, who is no respecter of persons, is a respecter of multitudes? Whence do you draw these partial laws of an impartial God? Man is immortal; but nations are mortal. Man has a higher destiny than nations. Can nations be less amenable to the supreme moral law? Each individual is an atom of the mass. Must not the mass, in its conscience, be like the individuals of which it is composed? Shall the mass, in relation with other masses, do what individuals in relation with each other may not do? As in the physical creation, so in the moral, there is but one rule for the individual and the mass. It was the lofty discovery of Newton, that the simple law which determines the fall of an apple prevails everywhere throughout the universe, reaching from earth to heaven, and controlling the infinite motions of the spheres. So, with equal scope, another simple law, the law of right, which binds the individual, binds also two or three when gathered together, binds conventions and congregations of men, binds villages, towns, and cities, binds states, nations, and races, clasps the whole human family in its embrace, and binds in self-imposed bonds, a just and omnipotent God.

Stripped of all delusive apology and tried by that comprehensive law under which nations are set to the bar like common men, war falls from glory into barbarous guilt, taking its place among bloody transgressions, while its flaming honors are turned into shame. Painful to existing prejudice as this may be, we must learn to abhor it, as we abhor similar transgressions by vulgar offenders. Every word of reprobation which the enlightened conscience now fastens upon the savage combatant in trial by battle, or which it applies to the unhappy being who in murderous duel takes the life of his fellow-man, belongs also to the nation that appeals to war. Amidst the thunders of Sinai God declared, "Thou shalt not kill"; and the voice of these thunders, with this commandment, is prolonged to our own day in the echoes of Christian churches. What mortal shall restrict the application of these words? Who on earth is empowered to vary or abridge the commandments of God? Who shall presume to declare that this injunction was directed, not to nations, but to individuals only; not to many, but to one only; that one man shall not kill but that many may; that one man shall not slay in duel, but that a nation may slay a multitude in the duel of war; that each individual is forbidden to destroy the life of a single human being, but that a nation is not forbidden to cut off by the sword a whole people? We are struck with horror and our hair stands on end, at the report of a single murder; we think of the soul hurried to final account; we hunt the murderer; and Government puts forth its energies to secure his punishment. Viewed in the unclouded light of truth, what is war but organized murder, murder of malice aforethought, in cold blood, under sanction of impious law, through the operation of extensive machinery of crime, with innumerable hands, at incalculable cost of money, by subtle contrivances of cunning and skill, or amidst the fiendish atrocities of the savage, brutal assault. The outrages, which, under most solemn sanction, it permits and invokes for professed purposes of justice, cannot be authorized by any human power; and they must rise in overwhelming judgment, not only against those who wield the weapons of battle, but more still against all who uphold its monstrous arbitrament.

Oh, when shall the St. Louis of the nations arise, and in the spirit of true greatness, proclaim that henceforward forever the great trial by battle shall cease, that war shall be abolished throughout the commonwealth of civilization, that a spectacle so degrading shall never be allowed again to take place, and that it is the duty of nations, involving the highest and wisest policy, to establish love between each other, and, in all respects, at all times, with all persons, whether their own people or the people of other lands, to be governed by the sacred law of right, as between man and man.

FOOTNOTE:

[34] From the "True Grandeur of Nations," delivered in Boston, July 4, 1845.



THE AMERICAN FLAG[35]

HENRY WARD BEECHER

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truths, the history, which belong to the nation which sets it forth.

When the French tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the new-found Italian flag is unfurled, we see resurrected Italy. When the other three-cornered Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see in it the long-buried but never dead principles of Hungarian liberty. When the united crosses of St. Andrew and St. George on a fiery ground set forth the banner of Old England, we see not the cloth merely; there rises up before the mind the noble aspect of that monarchy, which, more than any other on the globe, has advanced its banner for liberty, law, and national prosperity. This nation has a banner, too; and wherever it streamed abroad, men saw daybreak bursting on their eyes, for the American flag has been the symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it. Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the sea carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for the captive, and such glorious tidings.

The stars upon it were to the pining nations like the morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light. As at early dawn the stars stand first, and then it grows light, and then as the sun advances, that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent, so on the American flag, stars and beams of many-colored light shine out together. And wherever the flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred emblazonry no rampant lion and fierce eagle, but only light, and every fold significant of liberty.

The history of this banner is all on one side. Under it rode Washington and his armies; before it Burgoyne laid down his arms. It waved on the highlands at West Point; it floated over old Fort Montgomery. When Arnold would have surrendered these valuable fortresses and precious legacies, his night was turned into day, and his treachery was driven away by the beams of light from this starry banner. It cheered our army, driven from New York, in their solitary pilgrimage through New Jersey. It streamed in light over Valley Forge and Morristown. It crossed the waters rolling with ice at Trenton; and when its stars gleamed in the cold morning with victory, a new day of hope dawned on the despondency of the nation. And when, at length, the long years of war were drawing to a close, underneath the folds of this immortal banner sat Washington while Yorktown surrendered its hosts and our Revolutionary struggles ended with victory.

Let us, then, twine each thread of the glorious tissue of our country's flag about our heartstrings; and looking upon our homes and catching the spirit that breathes upon us from the battle-fields of our fathers, let us resolve, come weal or woe, we will, in life and in death, now and forever, stand by the Stars and Stripes. They have been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans, in the halls of the Montezumas and amid the solitude of every sea; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, they have led the brave to victory and to glory. They have floated over our cradles; let it be our prayer and our struggle that they shall float over our graves.

FOOTNOTE:

[35] By permission of the publishers, Fords, Howard & Hulbert.



THE AMERICAN PEOPLE[36]

ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE

The day for the provincial and the transient has passed in American statesmanship. To-day our destiny is brooding over every sea. We are dealing with the world and with the unborn years. We are dealing with the larger duties that ever crowned and burdened human brows. American statesmanship must be as broad as American destiny and as brave as American duty. And American statesmanship will be all this if it draws its inspiration from the masterful American people and their imperial history.

For the American people have never taken fear for a counselor. They have never taken doubt for a guide. They have obeyed the impulses of their blood. They have hearkened to the voice of our God. They have surmounted insuperable obstacles on the wings of a mighty faith; they have solved insoluble problems by the sovereign rule of liberty; they have made the bosom of the ocean and the heart of the wilderness their home; they have subdued nature and told history a new tale. Let American statesmanship listen to the heart-beats of the American people in the present hour and there will be no confusion, no hesitation, no craven doubt. The faith of the Mayflower, as it sailed into the storm-fringed horizon, is with us yet. The courage of Lexington and Bunker Hill is with us yet. The spirit of Hamilton and Jefferson and Jackson and Seward and Grant is with us yet. The unconquerable heart of the pioneer still beats within American breasts, and the American flag advances still in its ceaseless and imperial progress, with law and order and Christian civilization trooping beneath its sacred folds.

The American people are the propagandists and not the misers of liberty. He who no longer believes in the vitality of the American people, in the immortality and saving grace of free institutions, in the imperial greatness of American destiny, belongs not in the councils of the American Nation, but in the somber Cabinets of the decaying races of the world. The American people are not perishing; they are just beginning their real career. The full sunrise of the day which peculiarly belongs to the American people in the progress of human events has flooded all the world at last; and we will live each golden moment of our mighty day in a way as great as the day itself.

FOOTNOTE:

[36] By permission of the author.



THE AMERICAN QUESTION

JOHN BRIGHT

Now let me ask you, what is this people about which so many men in England at this moment are writing and speaking and thinking with harshness? Two centuries ago multitudes of the people of this country found a refuge on the North American Continent, escaping from the tyranny of the Stuarts, and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits from our country made great experiments in favor of human freedom on that continent. Bancroft, the great historian of his country, has said, "The history of the colonization of America is the history of the crimes of Europe."

From that time down to our own period America has admitted the wanderers from every clime. Since 1815, a time which many here remember, and which is within my lifetime, more than three millions of persons have emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States. During the fifteen years from 1845 to 1860 more than two million persons left the shores of the United Kingdom as emigrants to North America.

At this very moment, then, there are millions in the United States who personally have been citizens of this country. They found a home in the far West, they subdued the wilderness, they met with plenty there and became a great people. There may be men in England who dislike democracy and who hate a republic. But of this I am certain that only misrepresentation the most gross or calumny the most wicked can sever the tie which unites the great mass of the people of this country with their friends and relatives beyond the Atlantic.

Now whether the Union will be restored I know not. But this I think I know, that in a few years, a very few years, the twenty millions of freemen in the North will be thirty or even fifty millions, a population equal to that of this kingdom. When that time comes I pray that it may not be said amongst them that, in the darkest hour of their country's trials, England, the land of their fathers, looked on with icy coldness and saw unmoved the perils and calamities of their children. As for me I have but this to say, if all other tongues are silent, mine shall speak for that policy which gives hope to the bondsmen of the South and which tends to generous thoughts and generous words and generous deeds between the two great nations who speak the English language, and from their origin are alike entitled to the English name.



AMERICA'S RELATION TO MISSIONS

JAMES B. ANGELL

The government which breaks treaties with respect to missionaries and takes no steps to protect them will easily yield to the temptation to infringe on the rights of other citizens. Is it not possible that because our government has allowed outrages against our missionaries to go on since 1883 in Turkey,—highway robbery, brutal assault, destruction of buildings,—without any demonstration beyond peaceful and patient argument, the Ottoman government is now proceeding in so highhanded a manner to prevent by false allegations the importation of our flour and our pork? A nation which allows one class of citizens, who are of the purest character and most unselfish spirit, to be insulted and outraged with impunity in a foreign land must not be surprised if other classes of its citizens are also imposed upon and wronged in that land, wherever selfish interests are invoked against them.

Careful observation will show that our large mercantile interests are likely to be imperiled by our neglect to insist on the rights which citizens of any honorable calling are entitled to under treaties of international law. A display of force does not necessarily mean war. It is certainly an emphatic mode of making a demand. It often insures a prompt settlement of difficulties, which, if allowed to drag on and accumulate, would end in war. Therefore, wisely and opportunely made, a proper demonstration in support of a just demand may obviate the ultimate necessity of war.

The problem is not a simple one for the government. If it does nothing but register requests for justice, injustice may be done, not only to missionaries, but also to other citizens. Those dilatory, oriental governments, embarrassed by so many difficult problems of internal administration, do not willingly act except under some pressure. And pressure which is not war and which will probably not lead to war, can be brought to bear by diplomatic and naval agencies.

Our government was never in so good a condition to pursue such a policy. It has a prestige among oriental nations before unknown. Its voice, when it speaks with an imperative tone, will now be heard. The question for it is far larger than a missionary question. An influential American citizen has lately written me from an oriental country where our requests have received little attention, saying: "If our government proposes to do nothing for American citizens they should say so and turn us over to the care of the British embassy."

Such language as that makes one's blood tingle and stirs us to ask afresh, not alone as friends of missionaries, but as American citizens, what policy will our nation adopt to secure the rights of all our countrymen of whatever pursuit who are dwelling under treaty guarantees in China and Turkey? The friends of missions ask no exceptional favors from the government. They simply seek for such protection as their fellow-citizens need.

It is, of course, for our government to say at what time and by what methods it shall act. It is sometimes wise and even necessary for a government to postpone seeking a settlement of difficulties with a foreign power, even when it is clear that a settlement is highly desirable. Great exigencies may require delays. We must exercise the patience which patriotism calls for. But we may be permitted without impropriety to express our desire and our opinion that our government should find some way to make it absolutely clear to oriental countries that it intends to secure the protection for all our citizens, including missionaries, to which they are entitled by treaties and by international law.



AMERICAN SLAVERY

JOHN BRIGHT

Slavery has been as we all know the huge, foul blot upon the fame of the American Republic. It is an outrage against human right and against divine law, but the pride, the passion of man, will not permit its peaceable extinction. Is not this war the penalty which inexorable justice exacts from America, North and South, for the enormous guilt of cherishing that frightful iniquity of slavery for the last eighty years? The leaders of this revolt propose this monstrous thing,—that over a territory forty times as large as England the blight and curse of slavery shall be forever perpetuated.

I cannot believe that such a fate can befall that fair land, stricken as it now is with the ravages of war. I cannot believe that civilization in its journey with the sun will sink into endless night to gratify the ambition of leaders of this revolt, who seek to

"Wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind."

I have a far other and brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic, westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main,—and I see one people, and one law, and one language, and one faith, and over all that wide continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime.



THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES

WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE

Ladies and Gentlemen, Before I come to the resolution which I have undertaken to move, there are certain subjects which I wish to clear out of the way. There are most important distinctions to be drawn on the ground that the sufferers under the present misrule and the horribly accumulated outrages of the last two years are our own fellow-Christians. But we do not prosecute the cause we have in hand upon the ground that they are our fellow-Christians. This is no crusade against Mohammedanism. This is no declaration of an altered policy or sentiment as regards our Mohammedan fellow-subjects in India. Nay, more; I will say that it is no declaration of universal condemnation of the Mohammedans of the Turkish Empire. On the contrary, amid the dismal and heartrending reports of which we have had to read and hear so much, one of the rare touches of comfort and relief has been that in spite of the perpetration of massacres by the agents of the Government, in spite of the countenance given to massacre by the highest authority, there have been good and generous Mohammedans who have resisted these misdeeds to the uttermost of their power, who have established for themselves a claim to our sympathy and our admiration.

Although it is true that those persons are Christians on whose behalf we move, I confidently affirm, and you will back me in my affirmation, that if instead of being Christians they were themselves Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists, or Confucianists—they would have precisely the same claims upon our support; and the motives which have brought us here to-day would be incumbent upon us with the same force and with the same sacredness that we recognize at the present moment.

There is another distinction, gentlemen, less conspicuous, that I would wish to draw your attention to. You have been discouraged by the attitude or by the tone of several of the Continental Governments. Do not too hastily assume that in that attitude and tone they are faithful representatives of the people whom they rule. The ground on which we stand here is not British nor European, but human. Nothing narrower than humanity could pretend for a moment justly to represent it.

It may have occurred to some that atrocities which it is hardly possible to exaggerate have been boldly denied; and we are told by the Government of Turkey that the destruction of life which has taken place is not the work of either the Sultan or his agents, but is the work of revolutionaries and agitators.

In answer to this we may say that we do not rely upon the reports of revolutionaries or agitators. We rely upon the responsible reports of our public men. Nay, more; while we know that there are those among the six Powers who have shown every disposition to treat the case of the Sultan with all the leniency, with all the friendship that they could, yet every one of them concurs in the statements upon which we stand, and in giving an entire denial to counter-statements of the Turkish Government. The guilt of massacre, and not of massacre only but of every other horror that has been transacted, rests upon that Government. And to the guilt of massacre is added the impudence of denial, and this process will continue—how long? Just as long as you, as Europe, are contented to hear it. Recollect that eighteen months or more have passed since the first of those gigantic massacres was perpetrated, and when that occurrence took place it was thought to be so extraordinary that it was without precedent in the past; for Bulgaria becomes pale by the side of Armenia. But alas! that massacre, gigantic as it was, has been followed up so that one has grown into a series. To the work of murder was added the work of lust, the work of torture, the work of pillage, the work of starvation, and every accessory that it was possible for human wickedness to devise. To all other manifestations which had formerly been displayed in the face of the world there was added consummate insolence.

Come what may, let us extract ourselves from an ambiguous position. Let us have nothing to do with countenance of, and so renounce and condemn, neutrality; and let us present ourselves to Her Majesty's Ministers, promising them in good faith our ungrudging and our enthusiastic support in every effort which they may make to express by word and by deed their detestation of acts, not yet perhaps having reached their consummation, but which already have come to such a magnitude and such a depth of atrocity that they constitute the most terrible and most monstrous series of proceedings that have ever been recorded in the dismal and deplorable history of human crime.



BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC[37]

JULIA WARD HOWE

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal, Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on."

He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat, He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.

FOOTNOTE:

[37] By special permission of the author.



THE BLUE AND THE GRAY

HENRY CABOT LODGE

I was a boy ten years old when the troops marched away to defend Washington. I saw the troops, month after month, pour through the streets of Boston. I saw Shaw go forth at the head of his black regiment, and Bartlett, shattered in body but dauntless in soul, ride by to carry what was left of him once more to the battlefields of the Republic. I saw Andrew, standing bareheaded on the steps of the State House, bid the men godspeed. I cannot remember the words he said, but I can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought tears to the eyes and fire to the hearts of all who listened. To my boyish mind one thing alone was clear, that the soldiers, as they marched past, were all, in that supreme hour, heroes and patriots. Other feelings have, in the progress of time, altered much, but amid many changes that simple belief of boyhood has never altered.

And you, brave men who wore the gray, would be the first to hold me or any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say that now it was all over I thought the North was wrong and the result of the war a mistake. To the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we hold out our hands freely, frankly and gladly. We have no bitter memories to revive, no reproaches to utter. Differ in politics and in a thousand other ways we must and shall in all good nature, but never let us differ with each other on sectional or state lines, by race or creed.

We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I have said, to New England. We welcome you to old Massachusetts. We welcome you to Boston and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll back, and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental Congress, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."

A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves at Arlington, said: "Only a great people is capable of a great civil war." Let us add with thankful hearts that only a great people is capable of a great reconciliation. Side by side, Virginia and Massachusetts led the colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side, they founded the government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox, Moultrie and Prescott, men of the South and men of the North, fought shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same uniform of buff and blue,—the uniform of Washington.

Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is sentiment, true sentiment, that has moved the world. Sentiment fought the war, and sentiment has reunited us. When the war was closed it was proposed to give Governor Andrew, who had sacrificed health and strength and property in his public duties, some immediately lucrative office. A friend asked him if he would take such a place. "No," said he; "I have stood as high priest between the horns of the altar, and I have poured out upon it the best blood of Massachusetts, and I cannot take money for that." Mere sentiment truly, but the sentiment which ennobles and uplifts mankind.

So I say that the sentiment manifested by your presence here, brethren of Virginia, sitting side by side with those who wore the blue, tells us that if war should break again upon the country, the sons of Virginia and Massachusetts would, as in the olden days, stand once more shoulder to shoulder, with no distinction in the colors that they wear. It is fraught with tidings of peace on earth, and you may read its meaning in the words on yonder picture, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"



CORRUPTION OF PRELATES

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA

When the demon sees that man is weak he gives him a blow with a hatchet, to make him fall into sin, but when he sees him strong he strikes him down with an axe. If there be a young woman, honest and well brought up, he sets an immoral youth near her, and with all kinds of flattery deceives her, and makes her fall into sin. Here the devil has dealt a blow with an axe. Here is an honorable citizen, he enters the courts of the great lords; there is the axe, and so well sharpened, that no strength of virtue can resist it. But we are in these days in a sadder plight; the demon has called his followers for the harvest, and has struck terrible blows upon the doors of the temple. The doors are those which lead into the house, and the prelates are those who should lead the faithful into the church of Christ. It is because of this that the devil has dealt his great blows, and broken the doors to pieces. It is for this that good pastors are no longer to be found in the church. Do ye not perceive that they are bringing everything to ruin? They have no judgment. They can make no distinction between good and evil, between truth and falsehood, between sweet and bitter. Things good appear to them evil, things true to them false, the sweet are to them bitter, the bitter sweet. Ye see prelates prostrating themselves before earthly affections and earthly things; they no longer lay to heart the care of souls; it is enough for them if they receive their incomes; the sermons of their preachers are composed to please princes, and be magnified by them. But something worse yet remains; not only have they destroyed the church of God, but have erected one according to a fashion of their own. This is the modern church, no longer built with living stones, that is, by Christians established in a living faith, and so formed of love. Go to Rome and through all Christendom, in the houses of the great prelates and the great lords, nothing is thought of but poetry and the art of oratory.

Go and see, and you will find them with books of the humanities in their hands, and giving themselves up to the belief that they know how to lead the souls of men aright by Virgil, Horace, and Cicero. Do you wish to see the church guided by the hand of the astrologer? Ye will not find either prelate or great lord who is not in confidential intercourse with some astrologer, who predicts to him the hour when he must ride or engage in some other affair. These same great lords do not dare to move a step contrary to what their astrologer tells them. There are only two things in that temple in which they find delight, and these are the paintings, and the gilding with which it is covered.

It is thus that in our church there are many beautiful external ceremonies in the solemnization of the holy offices, splendid vestments and draperies, with gold and silver candlesticks, and many chalices, all of which have a majestic effect. There you see great prelates, wearing golden miters, set with precious stones, on their heads, and with silver crosiers, standing before the altar with copes of brocade, slowly intoning vespers and other masses with much ceremony, accompanied by an organ and singers, until ye become quite stupefied; and these men appear to you to be men of great gravity and holiness, and ye believe that they are incapable of error, and they themselves believe that all they say and do is commanded by the gospel to be observed.

Men feed upon those vanities, and rejoice in those ceremonies, and say that the church of Christ was never in so flourishing a state, and that divine worship was never so well conducted as in this day; and that the first prelates were very contemptible preachers in comparison with those of modern times. They certainly had not so many golden miters, nor so many chalices; and they parted with those they had to relieve the necessities of the poor; our prelates get their chalices by taking that from the poor which is their support. But dost thou know what I would say? In the primitive church there were wooden chalices and golden prelates; but now the church has golden chalices and wooden prelates. They have established amongst us the festivals of the devil, they believe not in God, and make a mockery of the mysteries of our religion.

What doest thou, O Lord? Why slumberest thou? Arise and take the church out of the hands of the devil, out of the hands of tyrants, out of the hands of wicked prelates. Hast thou forgotten thy church? Dost thou not love her? Hast thou no care for her? We are become, O Lord, the opprobrium of the nations; Turks are masters of Constantinople; we have lost Asia, we have lost Greece, we are become tributaries of infidels. O Lord God, thou hast dealt with us as an angry father, thou hast banished us from before thee! Hasten the punishment and the scourge that there may be a speedy return to thee! Pour out thy wrath upon the nations!

Be not scandalized, my brethren, by these words; rather consider that when the good wish for punishment, it is because they wish to see evil driven away and the blessed reign of Jesus Christ triumphant throughout the world. We have no other hope left us, unless the sword of the Lord threatens the earth.



THE CROSS OF GOLD[38]

W. J. BRYAN

I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity. We object to bringing this question down to the level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest over a principle.

When you come before us and tell us that we are about to disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your course. We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding-places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak of this broader class of business men.