CCXCI.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY THE LIFE OF THE NATION.

We of America have been accustomed to contemplate, with something of gratified and patriotic pride, the wondrous progress of our country, and the strength and stability of our Government. Gazing with beaming eye and throbbing heart upon the grandeur and beauty of this splendid edifice of constitutional government in America, we came to believe that it was as imperishable as the memory of its illustrious builders. We dreamed for our native land a glorious destiny—a magnificent career among the nations during the coming ages. But our firm, confident faith is now shaken—our bright hopes are now dimmed—our lofty pride is now humbled—our gorgeous visions of the future glories of the Republic are now obscured by the storm of battle. Our country, the land of so much of affection, of pride and of hope, now presents to the startled and astonished gaze of mankind an appalling, humiliating, and saddening spectacle. Treasonable menaces of other days have now ripened into treasonable deeds. Civil war holds its carnival, and reaps its bloody harvest. The nation is grappling with a gigantic conspiracy—struggling for existence—for the preservation of its menaced life—against a rebellion that finds no parallel in the annals of the world.

Why is it that the land resounds with the measured tread of a million of armed men? Why is it that our bright waters all stained and our green fields reddened with fraternal blood? Why is it that the young men of America, in the pride and bloom of early manhood, are summoned from homes, from the mothers who bore them, from the wives and sisters who love them, to the fields of bloody strife—there to do soldiers' duties, bear soldiers' burdens, and fill soldiers' graves? Why is it that thousands of the men and the women of Christian America are sorrowing, with aching hearts and tearful eyes, for the absent, the loved, and the lost? Why is it that the heart of loyal America throbs, heavily oppressed with anxiety and gloom, for the future of the country?

These crimes against the peace of the country and the life of the nation are all, all to eternize the hateful dominion of man over the souls and bodies of his fellow-men—to make slavery perpetual and its power forever dominant in Christian and Republican America. These sacrifices of property of health, of life—these appalling sorrows and agonies now upon us, are all the inflictions of slavery, in its gigantic effort to found a slaveholding empire in America. Yes, slavery is the "architect of ruin" who organized this mighty conspiracy against the unity and existence of the Republic. Slavery is the traitor that plunged the Nation into the fire, and blood, and darkness of civil war. Slavery is the criminal whose hands are dripping with the blood of our murdered sons. Before the tribunal of mankind, of the present and of coming ages—before the bar of the ever-living God—the loyal heart of America holds slavery responsible for every dollar sacrificed, for every drop of blood shed, for every pang of toil, of agony, and of death for every tear wrung from suffering or affection, in this godless rebellion now upon us. For these treasonable deeds, these crimes against freedom, humanity, and the life of the Nation, slavery should be doomed by the loyal people of America to a swift, utter, and ignominious annihilation.

Slavery, bold, proud, domineering with hate in its heart, scorn in its eye, defiance in its mien, has pronounced against the existence of republican institutions in America, against the supremacy of the Government, the unity and life of the Nation. Slavery, hating the cherished institutions that tend to secure the rights and enlarge the privileges of mankind, despising the toiling masses, as "mudsills" and "white slaves," defying the Government, its Constitution and its laws, has openly pronounced itself the mortal and unappeasable enemy of the Republic. Slavery stands now the only clearly pronounced foe our country has on the globe. Therefore, every word spoken, every line written, every act performed, that keeps the breath of life, for a moment, in slavery, is against the existence and perpetuity of democratic institutions against the dignity of the toiling millions of America—against the liberty, the peace, the honor, the renown, and the life of the Nation. In the lights of to-day that flash upon us from camp and battle-field, the loyal eye, heart, and brain of America sees and feels and realizes that THE DEATH OF SLAVERY IS THE LIFE OF THE NATION! The loyal voice of patriotism throughout all the land pronounces, in clear accents, that AMERICAN SLAVERY MUST DIE THAT THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC MAY LIVE! H. Wilson.

CCXCII.

THE FANATICISM OF MASSACHUSETTS.

This, sir, is not the first time in her history that Massachusetts has drawn upon herself reproach and rebuke for unbending adherence to the rights of human nature. In the days of her colonial existence, her unshrinking devotion to the rights of mankind often drew upon her the censure of the pliant supporters of the British Crown; but the world now quotes and commends her inspiring example. Now her abhorrence of human slavery brings upon her the condemnation of its advocates and apologists, but the hour will yet come, in the march of time, when her unwavering fidelity to an unpopular cause in spite of obloquy and reproach, will be a source of inspiration to men struggling to recover lost rights. Massachusetts clings with the tenacity of profound conviction to the teachings of her own illustrious sons. She was taught by Benjamin Franklin that "slavery is an atrocious debasement of human nature;" by John Adams that "consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust;" by John Quincy Adams that "slavery taints the very sources of moral principle"—"establishes false estimates of virtue and vice;" by Daniel Webster that "it is a continual and permanent violation of human rights"—"opposed to the whole spirit of the Gospels and to the teachings of Jesus Christ;" by William Ellery Channing that "to extend and perpetuate the evil, we cut ourselves off from the communion of nations; we sink below the civilization of our age; we invite the scorn, indignation and abhorrence of the world." Massachusetts cannot forget or repudiate these words of her immortal sons.

The distinguishing opinion of Massachusetts concerning slavery in America is often flippantly branded in these Halls, as wild, passionate, unreasoning fanaticism. Senators of the South! tell me, I pray you tell me, if it be fanaticism for Massachusetts to see in this age, what your peerless Washington saw in his age "the direful effects of slavery?" Is it fanaticism for Massachusetts to believe as your Henry believed, that "slavery is as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to liberty?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe as your Madison believed, that "slavery is a dreadful calamity?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe with your Monroe, that "slavery has preyed upon the vitals of the union and has been prejudicial to all the States in which it has existed?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe with your Martin that "slavery lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us to tyranny and oppression?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe with your Pinckney that "it will one day destroy the reverence for liberty, which is the vital principle of a Republic?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe with your Henry Clay, that "slavery is a wrong, a grievous wrong, and no contingency can make it right?" Surely, Senators who are wont to accuse Massachusetts of being drunk with fanaticism, should not forget that the noblest men the South has given to the service of the Republic, in peace and in war, were her teachers. H. Wilson.

CCXCIII.

DEFENCE OF MASSACHUSETTS.

Massachusetts, in her heart of hearts, loves liberty—loathes slavery. I glory in her sentiments; for the heart of our common humanity is throbbing in sympathy with her opinions. But she is not unmindful of her constitutional duties, of her obligations to the Union and to her sister States. Up to the verge of constitutional power she will go in maintenance of her cherished convictions; but she has not shrunk, and she does not mean to shrink, from the performance of her obligations as a member of this Confederation of constellated States. She has never sought, she does not seek, to encroach, by her own acts or by the action of the Federal Government, upon the constitutional rights of her sister States. Jealous of her own rights, she will respect the rights of others. Claiming the power to control her own domestic policy, she freely accords that power to her sister States. Concealing the rights of others, she demands her own. Loyal to the Union, she demands loyalty in others. Here, and now, I demand of her accusers that they file their bill of specifications, and produce the proofs of their allegations, or forever hold their peace.

In other days, when Adams, Webster, Davis, Everett, Cushing, Choate, Winthrop, Mann, Rantoul, and their associates graced these chambers, Massachusetts was then, as she is now, the object of animadversion and assault. I have sometimes thought, Mr. President, that these continual assaults upon the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were prompted—not by her faults, but by her virtues rather—not by the sense of justice, but by the spirit of envy and jealousy and uncharitableness. Unawed, however, by censure or menace, she continues in her course, upward and onward, to the accomplishment of her high destinies. She is but a speck, a mere patch on the surface of America, hardly more than one four-hundredth part of the territory of the Republic, with a rugged soil and still more rugged clime. But on that little spot of the globe is a Common wealth where common consent is recognized as the only just basis of fundamental law, and personal freedom is secured in its completest individuality. In that Commonwealth are one and a quarter million of freemen, with skilled hand and cultivated brain,—with mechanic arts and manufactures on every streamlet, and commerce on the waves of all the seas—with institutions of moral and mental culture open to all, and art, science, and literature illustrated by glorious names—with benevolent institutions for the sons and daughters of misfortune and poverty, and charities for humanity the wide world over, The heart, the soul, the reason of Massachusetts send up unceasing aspirations for the unity, indivisibility, and perpetuity of the North American Republic; but if it shall be rent, torn, dissevered, she will not lose her faith in God and humanity, she will not go down with the falling fortunes of her country without making a struggle to preserve and perpetuate free institutions. So long as the ocean shall roll at her feet, so long as God shall send her health-giving breezes and sunshine and rain, she will endeavor to illustrate, in the future as in the past, the daily beauty of freedom secured and protected by law. H. Wilson.

CCXCIV.

EMANCIPATION.

Shall these once slaves but now freemen be remanded back to bondage? No: "personal property once forfeited is always forfeited." No: slaves once legally free are always free. No, no; thrice no, by the ashes of our fathers, by the altar of our God! The "chosen curses," and the "hidden thunder in the stores of heaven" will forbid the rendition—a crime to them, a malediction to their masters, a shame to us, and a disgrace to the age. If these children of wrong and oppression are the lawful spoil of our victorious arms, give up to the enemy your proudest national memorials—the sword of Washington, the staff of Franklin, that time-worn but immortal parchment which just authoritatively published your Independence to the world—give up to him the blood-stained flags and trophies which, upon the bristling crest of battle, our heroic defenders have wrenched from his desperate grasp; give up to him this Capitol itself and throw at his feet the President's head, before you give up the most abject of these bondsmen disenthralled; for in surrendering them you will squander one of those priceless moments, big with the future, worth more than a whole generation of either bond or free, the rare and pregnant occasion placed in your hand by the fortune of war of wiping forever African slavery from the American continent.

If this deliverance is ever vouchsafed, then shall we be purged forever of the sole source of our weakness and dissension in the past; then will pass away forever the sole cloud that threatens the glory of our future; then will the American Union be transfigured into a more erect and shining presence, and tread with firm footsteps a loftier plane, and cherish nobler theories, and carry its head nearer the stars; then will it be no profanation to wed its redeemed and unpolluted name to that of immortal Liberty; then Liberty and Union will go on, hand in hand, and, under a holier inspiration and with more benign and blessed auspices, will revive their grand mission of peacefully acquiring and peacefully incorporating contiguous territories, and peacefully assimilating their inhabitants; then from the Orient to the Occident, from the flowery shores of the great Southern Gulf to the frozen barriers of the great Northern Bay, will they unite in spreading a civilization, not intertwined with slavery, but purged of its contamination, a civilization which means universal emancipation, universal enfranchisement, universal brotherhood.

Despair not, then, soldiers, statesmen, citizens, women, we are fighting energetically for a nation's life. The cloud which now shuts down before your vision will yet disclose its silver lining. Peace shall be born from war, and out of chaos order shall yet emerge. We shall dwell together in harmony, and but one nation shall inhabit our sea-girt borders. We seem sailing along the land, hearing the ripple that breaks upon the shore, where our recreated and regenerated Republic, after it has passed through this fiery furnace of war, these gates of death, shall be permanently installed. We shall yet tread its meadows and pastures green, trade in its marts, live in its palaces worship in its temples, and legislate in its Capitol. H. C. Deming.

CCXCV.

PROTECTION FOR TENNESSEE.

The amendments to the Constitution which constitute the Bill of Rights, declare that "a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Our people are denied this right secured to them in their own constitution and the constitution of the United States; yet we hear no complaints here of violations of the Constitution in this respect. We ask the Government to interpose to secure us this constitutional right. We want the passes in our mountains opened, we want deliverance and protection for a down-trodden and oppressed people who are struggling for their independence without arms. If we had had ten thousand stand of arms and ammunition when the contest commenced, we should have asked no further assistance. We have not got them. We are a rural people; we have villages and small towns—no large cities. Our population is homogeneous, industrious, frugal, brave, independent; but now harmless and powerless, and oppressed by usurpers. You may be too late in coming to our relief or you may not come at all though I do not doubt you will come—and they may trample us under foot; they may convert our plains into graveyards, and the caves of our mountains into sepulchers; but they will never take us out of this Union, or make us a land of slaves—no, never! We intend to stand as firm as adamant, and as unyielding as our own majestic mountains that surround us. Yes, we will be as fixed and as immovable as are they upon their bases. We will stand as long as we can; and if we are overpowered and Liberty shall be driven from the land, we intend before she departs to take the flag of our country with a stalwart arm, a patriotic heart, and an honest tread, and place it upon the summit of the loftiest and most majestic mountain. We intend to plant it there, and leave it, to indicate to the inquirer who may come in after times, the spot where the Goddess of Liberty lingered and wept for the last time, before she took her flight from a people once prosperous, free, and happy.

We ask the Government to come to our aid. We love the Constitution as made by our fathers. We have confidence in the integrity and capacity of the people to govern themselves. We have lived entertaining these opinions; we intend to die entertaining them. We may meet with impediments, and may meet with disasters, and here and there a defeat; but ultimately freedom's cause must triumph, for—

"Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won."

Yes, we must triumph. My faith is strong, based on the eternal principles of right that a thing so monstrously wrong as this rebellion cannot triumph. I say, let the battle go on—it is freedom's cause—until the Stars and Stripes ( God bless them!) shall again be unfurled upon every cross-road, and from every house-top throughout the Confederacy North and South. Let the Union be reinstated; let tie law be enforced; let the Constitution be supreme. A. Johnson.

CCXCVI.

THE SUBMISSIONISTS.

With the curled lip of scorn we are told by the disunionists that, in thus supporting a Republican Administration in its endeavors to uphold the Constitution and the laws, we are "submissionists," and when they have pronounced this word, they suppose they have imputed to us the sum of all human abasement. Well, let it be confessed, we are "submissionists," and weak and spiritless as it may be deemed by some, we glory in the position we occupy. The law says, "Thou shalt not swear falsely;" we submit to this law, and while in the civil or military service of the country, with an oath to support the Constitution of the United States resting upon our consciences, we would not, for any earthly consideration, engage in the formation or execution of a conspiracy to subvert that very Constitution and with it the Government to which it has given birth. Write us down, therefore, "submissionists."

Nor are we at all disturbed by the flippant taunt that, in thus submitting to the authority of our Government, we are necessarily cowards. We know whence this taunt comes, and we estimate it at its true value. We hold that there is a higher courage in the performance of duty than in the commission of crime. The tiger of the jungle and the cannibal of the South Sea Islands have that courage in which the revolutionists of the day make their especial boast; the angels of God and the spirits of just men made perfect have had, and have that courage which submits to the law. Lucifer was a non-submissionist, and the first secessionist of whom history has given us any account, and the chains which he wears fitly express the fate due to all who openly defy the laws of their Creator and of their country. He rebelled because the Almighty would not yield to him the throne of heaven. The principle of the Southern rebellion is the same. Indeed, in this submission to the laws, is found the chief distinction between good men and devils. A good man obeys the laws of truth, of honesty, of morality, and all those laws which have been enacted by competent authority for the government and protection of the country in which he lives; a devil obeys only his own ferocious and profligate passions.

The principle on which this rebellion proceeds, that laws have in themselves no sanctions, no binding force upon the conscience, and that every man, under the promptings of interest, or passion, or caprice, may at will, and honorably, too, strike at the government that shelters him, is one of utter demoralization, and should be trodden out as you would tread out a spark that has fallen on the roof of your dwelling. Its unchecked prevalence would resolve society into chaos, and leave you without the slightest guarantee for life, liberty, or property. It is time, that, in their majesty, the people of the United States should make known to the world that this Government, in its dignity and power, is something more than a moot court, and that the citizen who makes war upon it is a traitor, not only in theory but in fact, and should have meted out to him a traitor's doom. The country wants no bloody sacrifice, but it must and will have peace, cost what it may. J. Holt.

CCXCVII.

ADDRESS TO KENTUCKY VOLUNTEERS.

Soldiers, next to the worship of the Father of us all, the deepest and grandest of human emotions is the love of the land that gave us birth. It is an enlargement and exaltation of all the tenderest and strongest sympathies of kindred and of home. In all centuries and climes it has lived and has defied chains and dungeons and racks to crush it. It has strewed the earth with its monuments, and has shed undying lustre on a thousand fields on which it has battled. Through the night of ages, Thermopyl glows like some mountain peak on which the morning sun has risen, because twenty-three hundred years ago, this hallowing passion touched its mural precipices and its crowning crags.

It is easy, however, to be patriotic in piping times of peace, and in the sunny hour of prosperity. It is national sorrow, it is war, with its attendant perils and horrors, that tests this passion, and winnows from the masses those who, with all their love of life, still love their country more. While your present position is a most vivid and impressive illustration of patriotism, it has a glory peculiar and altogether its own.

The mercenary armies which have swept victoriously over the world, and have gathered so many of the laurels that history has embalmed, were but machines drafted into the service of ambitious spirits whom they obeyed, and little understood or appreciated the problems their blood was poured out to solve. But while you have all the dauntless physical courage which they displayed, you add to it a thorough knowledge of the argument on which this mighty movement proceeds, and a moral heroism which, breaking away from the entanglements of kindred, and friends, and State policy enables you to follow your convictions of duty, even though they should lead you up to the cannon's mouth. It must, however, be added, that with elevation of position come corresponding responsibilities. Alike in the inaction of the camp, and amid the fatigues of the march, and the charge and shouts of battle, you will remember that you have in your keeping not only your own personal reputation, but the honor of your native State, and, what is infinitely more inspiring, the honor of that blood-bought and beneficent Republic whose children you are. Any irregularity on your part would sadden the land that loves you; any faltering in the presence of the foe would cover it with immeasurable humiliation.

Soldiers, when Napoleon was about to spur on his legions to combat on the sands of an African desert, pointing them to the Egyptian pyramids that loomed up against the far-off horizon, he exclaimed, "From yonder summits forty centuries look down upon you." The thought was sublime and electric; but you have even more than this. When you shall confront those infuriated hosts, whose battle-cry is, "Down with the government of the United States," let your answering shout be, "The Government as our fathers made it;" and when you strike, remember that not only do the good and the great of the past look down upon you from heights infinitely above those of Egyptian pyramids, but that uncounted generations yet to come are looking up to you, and claiming at your hands the unimpaired transmission to them of that priceless heritage which has been committed to our keeping. I say its unimpaired transmission—in all the amplitude of its outlines, in all the symmetry of its matchless proportions, in all the palpitating fulness of its blessings; not a miserably shrivelled and shattered thing, charred by the fires and torn by the tempests of revolution, and all over polluted and scarred by the bloody poniards of traitors. J. Holt.

CCXCVIII.

THE AMERICAN QUESTION IN ENGLAND.

Citizens of Carlyle, I have endeavored to present to your view a faithful picture of the religion and politics, the objects and the aims, of the rebel confederate States of America; of those States that at this moment, through their commissioned emissaries on this side the Atlantic, are seeking admission into the Commonwealth of Christian nations! One of these accredited representatives is, while I am speaking, upon our shores; and on the behalf of the object of these men some of our leading journals are daily writing laborious articles; for them our shipbuilders are constructing warlike vessels, not to meet an equal foe in fair fight, but to plunder and destroy defenseless merchantmen, engaged in the lawful and laudable trade of carrying the legitimate products of one country to the markets of another; for these men our capitalists are raising money, that, if possible, they may render successful a rebel slaveholders' revolt—a revolt which for wickedness and infamy has no parallel save in the impious rebellion of Lucifer and his compeers.

Yonder, across the wide waste of waters, four millions of helpless slaves—the victims of the cruelty and lust of Southern men-stealers—raise their fettered hands and imploringly inquire what part you will take in the conflict which involves their fate and that of their posterity; whether you will give aid and comfort to their oppressors, or whether you will send them words of sympathy and hope, and give encouragement and support to the friends of freedom in the North, who are nobly sacrificing property and life for their redemption. What answer will you return to this appeal? What think you is the duty of England in this life-or-death contest between the North and the South? Of England, whose heart was with the cause of the heroic black population of Hayti, when, under the leadership of the immortal Toussaint l'Ouverture, they were resisting unto blood, in the cause of liberty, the mercenary hordes of Napoleon? Of England who, with disinterested ardor, fought the battle of the Greeks against the Turks? Of England, who has so often raised her voice on behalf of bleeding, crusaded, denationalized Poland? Who has welcomed in her cities, and cherished in her homes, the illustrious patriot Louis Kossuth? Whose best wishes and earnest prayers have ever attended the efforts in the cause of freedom of Mazzini and Garibaldi?

In what do the struggles in which England has heretofore sympathized, differ from that which is now convulsing America? Is it not a contest between a vile slaveholding oligarchy on the one hand, and the upholders of free democratic institutions and the friends of emancipation on the other? The only difference, if difference there be, is this, that the conspirators against human rights in the South are fighting for objects immeasurably more base and more deeply stained with guilt than any which were ever sought by the crowned kings and despots of the Old World. The confederate banditti of the South are fighting for what their Vice-president avows is a new idea—a government based upon the perpetual enslavement of the laboring class. In a conflict between liberty and slavery between a free democratic government and the foulest despotism which the enemies of mankind ever conspired together to establish, where should England stand? On the side of two hundred and fifty thousand traitors and tyrants, or on the side of four millions of slaves? England with her past history and glorious traditions, England that extinguished the accursed slave trade, and abolished colonial slavery, whose cathedrals and council chamfers and market places are adorned with the statues of Howard and Wilberforce, and Clarkson, and Buxton, and Sturge?

It may be granted that, when the Government of the North first armed for the defence of the national life, it did not at once decree the universal abolition of slavery; and I have given, as I think, good and sufficient reasons why it did not and could not. The action of the President at the beginning was restricted to constitutional objects. Those objects were—the enforcement of the laws; the suppression of a local insurrection; the reintegration of the disputed territory; the protection of the Capitol and its archives from the spoliating hands of traitors. But the seat of government saved; the President seated firmly in the chair; the Congress duly assembled; and the machinery of the Constitution set to work; and then commenced, and were carried out, a series of measures such as were never before accomplished in the same space of time by any government in the world. First we saw the National District purged from the pollution and shame of slavery; then, the prohibition of slavery forever in the vast Territories of the Northwest; then, the enforcement of the laws against the slave trade, and the execution of Gordon the slave trader; then, an offer of compensation to such slave States as would adopt measures of emancipation; then, the recognition of the independence of the black republics of Hayti and Liberia; and finally, a proclamation of freedom to all the slaves within the rebel States.

It was said of Napoleon that he would go down to posterity with the code which bears his name, in his hand. It may be said of Abraham Lincoln, that he will descend to future time, holding in his hand the Great Charter of the Negro's rights his Emancipation Proclamation of January, 1863. With such a President, at the head of such a people, engaged in such a cause, need I answer the questions I have so often put to you, on which side should England be found in the great American struggle? G. Thompson.

CCXCIX.

PATRIOTISM.

Right and wrong, justice and crime, exist independently of our country. A public wrong is not a private right for any citizen. The citizen is a man bound to know and do the right, and the nation is but an aggregation of citizens. If a man should shout, in the delirium of his dinner, "My country, by whatever means extended and bounded: my country, right or wrong;" he merely repeats the words of the thief who steals in the streets or of the trader who swears falsely at the Custom-House, both of them chuckling "My fortune, however acquired." Thus, gentlemen, we see that a man's country is not a certain area of land—of mountains, rivers, and woods—but it is principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

In poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this feeling becomes closely associated with the soil and symbols of the country. But the secret sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the idea which they represent, and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove of his mistress and wears a lock of her hair upon his heart.

So, with passionate heroism, of which tradition is never weary of tenderly telling, Arnold Von Winkelreid gathers into his bosom the sheaf of foreign spears, that his death may give life to his country. So Nathan Hale, disdaining no service that his country demands, perishes untimely, with no other friend than God and the satisfied sense of duty. So George Washington, at once comprehending the scope of the destiny to which his country was devoted, with one hand put aside the crown, and with the other sets his slaves free. So, through all history from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs has fought fiercely and fallen bravely for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history to the end, as long as men believe in God, that army must still march and fight and fall—recruited only from the flower of mankind—cheered only by their own hope of humanity, strong only in their confidence in their cause. G. W. Curtis.

CCC.

POLITICAL MORALITY.

Have we no interest that the controlling force in this country shall be a moral force?—that it shall conspire with the great idea of Liberty, and not degrade and destroy it? The theory of our institutions is our pride. But it is a pitiful truth that our public life has become synonymous with knavery. If a politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it is universally conceded that the best men, the men of intelligence and probity, generally avoid politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been shown a handful of bank-notes publicly displayed in the ante-room of a Legislature, and sagaciously told: "That is the logic for legislators." Men think they cannot afford to go to Congress, and send other men to do their duties to the State—forgetting that we can have nothing without paying for it, and that if we hope to enjoy the best government in the world we must give time and labor, each one of us, and not suppose that the country will govern itself nor bad men govern it well.

Remember that the greatness of our country is not in its achievement, but in its promise—a promise which cannot be fulfilled without that sovereign moral sense—without a sensitive national conscience. If it were a question of the mere daily pleasure of living, the gratification of taste, opportunity of access to the great intellectual and sthetic results of human genius, and whatever embellishes human life, no man could hesitate for a moment between the fulness of foreign lands in these respects, and the conspicuous poverty of our own. What have we done? We have subdued and settled a vast domain. We have made every inland river turn a mill, and wherever, on the dim rim of the globe, there is a harbor, we have lighted it with an American sail. We have bound the Atlantic to the Mississippi, so that we drift from the sea to the prairie upon a cloud of vapor; and we are stretching one hand across the continent to fulfil the hope of Columbus in a shorter way to Cathay, and with the other we are grasping under the sea to clasp there the hand of the old continent, that so the throbbing of the ocean may not toss us further apart, but be as the beating of one common pulse of the world.

Yet these are the results common to all national enterprise, and different with us only in degree, not in kind. These are but the tools with which to shape a destiny. Commercial prosperity is only a curse, if it be not subservient to moral and intellectual progress; and our prosperity will conquer us, if we do not conquer our prosperity. G. W. Curtis.

CCCI.

IDEAS THE LIFE OF A PEOPLE.

The leaders of our Revolution were men of whom the simple truth is the ugliest praise. Of every condition in life, they were singularly sagacious, sober and thoughtful. Lord Chatham spoke only the truth when he said to Franklin, of the men who composed the first colonial Congress: "The Congress is the most honorable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times." Given to grave reflection, they were neither dreamers nor missionaries, and they were much too earnest to be rhetoricians. It is a curious fact, that they were generally men of so calm a temper that they lived to extreme age. With the exception of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, they were most of them profound scholars, and studied the history of mankind that they might know men. They were so familiar with the lives and thoughts of the wisest and best minds of the past that a classic aroma hangs about their writings and their speech; and they were profoundly convinced of what statesmen always know, and the adroitest mere politicians never perceive—that ideas are the life of a people—that the conscience, not the pocket, is the real citadel of a nation, and that when you have debauched and demoralized that conscience by teaching that there are no natural rights, and that therefore there is no moral right or wrong in political action, you have poisoned the wells and rotted the crops in the ground. The three greatest living statesmen of England knew this also—Edmund Burke knew it, and Charles James Fox, and William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. But they did not speak for the King or parliament, or the English nation. Lord Gower spoke for them when he said in Parliament: "Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights! their rights as men and citizens! their rights from God and nature! I am for enforcing these measures!" My lord was contemptuous, and the King hired the Hessians, but the truth remained true. The Fathers saw the scarlet soldiers swarming over the sea, but more steadily they saw that national progress had been secure only in the degree that the political system had conformed to natural Justice. They knew the coming wreck of property and trade, but they knew more surely that Rome was never so rich as when she was dying, and, on the other hand, the Netherlands, never so powerful as when they were poorest. Farther away, they read the names of Assyria, Greece, Egypt. They had art, opulence, splendor. Corn enough grew in the valley of the Nile. The Syrian sword was as sharp as any. They were merchant princes, and the clouds in the sky were rivalled by their sails upon the sea. They were soldiers, and their frown frightened the world. "Soul, take thine ease." those Empires said, languid with excess of luxury and life. Yes: but you remember the King who had built his grandest palace, and was to occupy it upon the morrow, but when the morrow came the palace was a pile of ruins. "Woe is me!" cried the King, "who is guilty of this crime?" "There is no crime," replied the sage at his side; "but the mortar was made of sand and water only, and the builders forgot to put in the lime." So fell the old empires, because the governors forgot to put justice into their governments. G. W. Curtis.

CCCII.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

These things our fathers saw and pondered. I do not mean that when the Writs of Assistance were issued, or the Stamp Act proposed, or Port Bill passed, they did not oppose them upon technical and legal grounds. Undoubtedly they did. But their character, and habits, and studies, were such that, as the tyranny encroached, they rose naturally into the sphere of fundamental truths, as into a purer and native air. In great crises, men always revert to first principles, as in sailing out of sight of land the mariner consults celestial laws. So the Fathers began at the beginning, with God and human nature, and derived their government from truths which they disdained to prove, asserting them to be self-evident. Thus the Revolution was not the struggle of a class only, but of a people. It was not merely the rebellion of subjects whose pockets were threatened, it was the protest of men whose instincts had been outraged. As Mr. Webster was fond of saying, it was fought on a preamble. A two-penny tax on tea or paper was not the cause, it was only the occasion, of the Revolution. The spirit which fought the desperate and disastrous battle on Long Island yonder was not a spirit which could be quieted by the promise of sugar gratis. The chance of success was slight—the penalty of failure was sure. But they believed in God, they kissed wife and child, left them in His hand, and kept their powder dry. Then to Valley Forge, the valley of the shadow of death—with feet bleeding upon the sharp ground—with hunger, thirst, and cold dogging their steps—with ghastly death waiting for them in the snow, they bore that faith in ideas which brought their fathers over a pitiless sea to a pitiless shore.

Ideas were their food; ideas were their coats and camp-fires. They knew that their ranks were thin and raw, and the enemy trained and many. But they knew, also, that the only difficulty with the proverb that God fights upon the side of the strongest battalions is that it is not true. If you load muskets with bullets only, the result is simply a question of numbers. But one gun loaded with an idea is more fatal than the muskets of a whole regiment. A bullet kills a tyrant, but an idea kills tyranny, What chance have a thousand men fighting for a sixpence a day against a hundred fighting for life and liberty, for home and native land? In such hands, the weapons themselves feel and think. And so the family firelocks and rusty swords, the horse-pistol and old scythes of our fathers thought terribly at Lexington and Monmouth, at Saratoga and Eutaw Springs. The old Continental muskets thought out the whole Revolution. The English and Hessian arms were better and brighter than ours; but they were charged only with saltpetre. Our guns were loaded and rammed home with ideas. G. W. Curtis.

CCCIII.

EMANCIPATION THE WAR POLICY OF THE PRESIDENT.

At length the skies are cleared, and the oracles have spoken. The ultimate achievement is already determined in the irreversible purpose of the loyal States; and that purpose is, a restored republic from the Gulf to the Lakes,—and a Republic of Freemen.

When the war first broke out, the free States became at once united for the safety of the capital and for vengeance upon those who had dishonored the common flag. Time passed on; the capital was supposed to be secure; changing fortune visited our arms; the people of the North became divided; some insisted upon an instant order of emancipation; others insisted upon no emancipation at all. One there was, as it has seemed to me, who abided the time of Providence and possessed his soul in patience; he was the President. He waited, counselled, struggled for a restored Union, before which and in comparison with which all other things should be subordinated. Within seventeen months after the first gun—so short are the historic stages in our time—he issued his proclamation of freedom with three months of notice. It saved the heart of the North and of a portion of Europe.

In the mean time the loyal arms had rescued several States from the clutch of revolt, and the inquiry everywhere arose, when, and how, and in what manner, the policy of emancipation should be applied. Then again it was, in the fulness of time, that the second Presidential proclamation came forth for the restoration of the States upon the basis of the equality of all men before God. Upon that he will stand, and upon that we shall stand, with no faltering or retracing step, until from the waters of the Gulf to the woods of the North, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific sea, this broad beat of empire shall possess an invincible people with no clanking manacle to fetter the creatures of God.

Accepting this, then, as the fixed policy of the States which are to subjugate the rebellion, we may felicitate ourselves upon the part we are permitted to bear in human events—that a measure, which in other countries and in more peaceful ages would have required a quarter or a half a century for its accomplishment, has become the announced edict of the loyal people of the United States, within the space of thirty-four months. The abolishment of the slave trade by the British Government, initiated by Wilberforce, supported by Pitt and Fox, and Burke and Granville, was accomplished only after seventeen years of parliamentary agitation.

When Mr. Fox, in 1806 submitted this, which proved to be the last motion he ever made in Parliament, and lived to witness its success, nobly did he declare: "That if, during the forty years he had sat in Parliament, he had been so fortunate as to accomplish that object, and that only, he should think he had done enough." If Mr. Fox might take to his heart that gratulation over the first sanction extorted from the Legislature of Great Britain for the abolition of the slave trade, may I not reclaim it with redoubled force for the American Magistrate under whose decree four millions of men will burst the bondage of ages, and mount enriched and ennobled to the enfranchisements of immortality.

The literature of England is rich with the eloquence of eulogium upon the statesman whose star was in the ascendant when freedom became the policy of the Empire; but I choose to appropriate it to him upon this side of the ocean, who has achieved the highest honor of mortal lot; who has won a triumph which leaves every other triumph of humanity and justice out of sight behind it, and for which, to the end of time, mankind will revere his name and bless his memory. A. H. Bullock.

CCCIV.

THE DUTY OF THE HOUR.

As to duty, that is clear from what I have already told you. We owe allegiance to the Government of the Union, and its history to the breaking out of the present foul rebellion, the memory of the men who gave it to us, the untold blessings it has conferred upon us, the support it has given to constitutional liberty everywhere, the gratitude we owe to Washington, whom Providence, it has been said, left childless, that his country might call him father, will all unite in making that allegiance a pleasure as well as a duty. To be false to such a Government, to palter even with the treason that seeks its downfall, to associate with the wicked men or the madmen who are in arms against it, would be as vile a dishonor and as base a crime as fallen man ever perpetrated.

Peace, in such a crisis—the cry of our opponents—how is it to be attained? How, upon their plan, but by a gross violation of our clearest obligations—or total disregard of an allegiance to which we are bound, not only by the Constitution, but by the pledge our ancestors gave for us? The force the Government is raising is not, as is falsely alleged by the conspirators, to subjugate States or citizens. It is but to vindicate the Constitution and the laws, and maintain the existence of the government. It is but to suppress the "insurrection," force the citizen to return to his duty, and restore him to the unequalled benefits of the Union. And when this is done, as done it will be if there is justice in Heaven, the authors of the present calamity will be consigned to the execrations of the civilized world, and punished, perhaps, if that is possible, more severely by the people whom, by arts and subterfuges, they have so deluded and deceived. R. Johnson.

CCCV.

THE FIRST GUN FIRED AT SUMTER.

As if to show how coldly and calmly all this had been calculated beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to "fire the Southern heart" and light the flame of civil war, was given into the trembling hand of an old white-headed man, the wretched incendiary whom history will handcuff in eternal infamy with the temple-burner of ancient Ephesus. The first gun that spat its iron insult at Fort Sumter, smote every loyal American full in the face. As when the foul witch used to torture her miniature image, the person it represented suffered all that she inflicted on his waxen counterpart, so every buffet that fell on the smoking fortress was felt by the sovereign nation of which that was the representative. Robbery could go no farther, for every loyal man of the North was despoiled in that single act as much as if a footpad had laid hands upon him to take from him his father's staff and his mother's Bible. Insult could go no farther, for over those battered walls waved the precious symbol of all we most value in the past and hope for in the future,—the banner under which we became a nation, and which, next to the cross of the Redeemer, is the dearest object of love and honor to all who toil or march or sail beneath its waving folds of glory. O. W. Holmes.

CCCVI.

OUR COUNTRY'S CALL.

We shall have success if we truly will success,—not other wise. It may be long in coming,—Heaven only knows through what trials and humblings we may have to pass before the full strength of the nation is duly arrayed and led to victory, We must be patient, as our fathers were patient; even in our worst calamities we must remember that defeat itself may be a gain where it costs our enemy more in relation to his strength than it costs ourselves. But if, in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty, this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations for the race, if we have not virtue enough to ennoble our whole people, and make it a nation of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying honor those who vindicated the insulted majesty of the Republic, and struck at her assailants so long as a drum-beat summoned them to the field of duty.

Citizens of Boston, sons and daughters of New England, men and women of the North, brothers and sisters in the bond of the American Union, you have among you the scared and wasted soldiers who have shed their blood for your temporal salvation. They bore your Nation's emblems bravely through the fire and smoke of the battlefield; nay, their own bodies are starred with bullet-wounds and striped with sabre-cuts, as if to mark them as belonging to their country until their dust becomes a portion of the soil which they defended, In every Northern graveyard slumber the victims of this destroying struggle. Many whom you remember playing as children amidst the clover-blossoms of our Northern fields, sleep under nameless mounds, with strange Southern wild-flowers blooming over them. By those wounds of living heroes, by those graces of fallen martyrs, by the hopes of your children, and the claims of your children's children yet unborn, in the name of outraged honor, in the interest of violated sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled nation, for the sake of men everywhere and of our common humanity, for the glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom on earth, your country calls upon you to stand by her through good report and through evil report, in triumph and in defeat, until she emerges from the great war of Western civilization, Queen of the broad continent, arbitress in the councils of earth's emancipated peoples; until the flag that fell from the wall of Fort Sumter floats again inviolate, supreme, over all her ancient inheritance, every fortress, every capital, every ship, and this warring land is once more a united nation. O. W. Holmes.

CCCVII.

MANHOOD AND COUNTRY BEFORE WEALTH AND LUXURY.

Let us say it plainly it will not hurt our people to be taught that there are other things to be cared for besides money making and money spending; that the time has come when manhood must assert itself by brave deeds and noble thoughts; when womanhood must assume its most sacred office, "to warn, to comfort," and, if need be, "to command" those whose services their country calls for. This Northern section of the land has become a great variety shop, of which the Atlantic cities are the long-extended counter. We have grown rich for what? To put gilt bands on coachmen's hats? To sweep the foul sidewalks with the heaviest silks which the toiling artisans of France can send us? To look through plate-glass windows, and pity the brown soldiers,—or sneer at the black ones? to reduce the speed of trotting horses a second or two below its old minimum? to color meerschaums? to flaunt in laces, and sparkle in diamonds? to dredge our maiden's hair with gold-dust? to float through life, the passive shuttlecocks of fashion, from the avenues to the beaches, and back again from the beaches to the avenues? Was it for this that the broad domain of the Western hemisphere was kept so long unvisited by civilization?—for this, that Time, the father of empires, unbound the virgin zone of this youngest of his daughters, and gave her, beautiful in the long veil of her forests, to the rude embrace of the adventurous Colonists?

All this is what we see around us, now,—now, while we are actually fighting this great battle, and supporting this great load of indebtedness. Wait till the diamonds go back to the Jews of Amsterdam; till the plate-glass window bears the fatal announcement, For Sale, or to Let; till the voice of our Miriam is obeyed as she sings:—

"Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms!"

till the gold-dust is combed from golden locks, and hoarded to buy bread; till the fast-driving youth smokes his clay-pipe on the platform of the horse-car; till the music-grinders cease because none will pay them; till there are no peaches in the windows at twenty-four dollars a dozen, and no heaps of bananas and pine-apples selling at the street-corners; till the ten-flounced dress has but three flounces, and it is a felony to drink champagne; wait till these changes show themselves, the signs of deeper wants, the preludes of exhaustion and bankruptcy; then let us talk of the Maelstrom;—but till then, let us not be cowards with our purses, while brave men are emptying their hearts upon the earth for us; let us not whine over our imaginary ruin, while the reversed current of circling events is carrying us farther and farther, every hour, beyond the influence of the great failing which was born of our wealth, and of the deadly sin which was our fatal inheritance! O. W. Holmes.

CCCVIII.

OUR COUNTRY'S GREATEST GLORY.

The true glory of a nation is in an intelligent, honest, industrious Christian people. The civilization of a people depends on their individual character; and a constitution which is not the outgrowth of this character is not worth the parchment on which it is written. You look in vain in the past for a single instance where the people have preserved their liberties after their individual character was lost. It is not in the magnificence of its palaces, not in the beautiful creations of art lavished on its public edifices, not in costly libraries and galleries of pictures, not in the number or wealth of its cities, that we find pledges of a nation's glory. The ruler may gather around him the treasures of the world, amid a brutalized people; the senate chamber may retain its faultless proportions long after the voice of patriotism is hushed within its wails; the monumental marble may commemorate a glory which has forever departed. Art and letters may bring no lesson to a people whose heart is dead.

The true glory of a nation is in the living temple of a loyal, industrious, and upright people. The busy click of machinery, the merry ring of the anvil, the lowing of peaceful herds, and the song of the harvest-home, are sweeter music than pans of departed glory, or songs of triumph in war. The vine-clad cottage of the hillside, the cabin of the woodsman, and the rural home of the farmer are the true citadels of any country. There is a dignity in honest toil which belongs not to the display of wealth or the luxury of fashion. The man who drives the plough, or swings his axe in the forest, or with cunning fingers plies the tools of his craft, is as truly the servant of his country, as the statesman in the senate or the soldier in battle. The safety of a nation depends not alone on the wisdom of its statesmen or the bravery of its generals. The tongue of eloquence never saved a nation tottering to its fall; the sword of a warrior never stayed its destruction. There is a surer defence in every Christian home. I say Christian home, for I allow of no glory to manhood which comes not from the cross. I know of no rights wrung from tyranny, no truth rescued from darkness and bigotry, which has not awaited on a Christian civilization.

Would you see the image of true glory, I would show you villages where the crown and glory of the people was in Christian schools, where the voice of prayer goes heaven-ward, where the people have that most priceless gift—faith in God. With this as the basis, and leavened as it will be with brotherly love, there will be no danger in grappling with any evils which exist in our midst; we shall feel that we may work and bide our time, and die knowing that God will bring victory. Bishop Whipple.

CCCIX.

OUR NATIONAL ANNIVERSARY.

We celebrate to-day no idle tradition—the deeds of no fabulous race; for we tread in the scarcely obliterated footsteps of an earnest and valiant generation of men, who dared to stake life, and fortune, and sacred honor, upon a declaration of rights, whose promulgation shook tyrants on their thrones, gave hope to fainting freedom, and reformed the political ethics of the world.

The greatest heroes of former days have sought renown in schemes of conquest, based on the love of dominion or the thirst for war; and such had been the worship of power in the minds of men, that adulation had ever followed in the wake of victory. How daring then the trial of an issue between a handful of oppressed and outlawed colonists, basing their cause, under God, upon an appeal to the justice of mankind and their own few valiant arms. And how immeasurably great was he, the fearless commander, who, after the fortunes and triumphs of battle were over, scorned the thought of a regal throne for a home in the hearts of his countryman. Amidst the rejoicings of this day, let us mingle something of gratitude with our joy—something of reverence with our gratitude—and something of duty with our reverence.

Let us cultivate personal independence in the spirit of loyalty to the State. and may God grant that we may always be able to maintain the sovereignty of the State in the spirit of integrity to the Union. Thus shall still be shed imperishable honors upon the American name thus perpetuated, through all coming time, the heritage which has been bequeathed to us by our fathers. Whatever shall be the fate of other governments, ours thus sustained, shall stand forever. As has been elsewhere said, nation after nation may rise and fall, kingdoms and empires crumble into ruin, but our own native land, gathering energy and strength from the lapse of time, shall go on and still go on its destined way to greatness and renown. And when thrones shall crumble into dust, when sceptres and diadems shall have been forgotten, till Heaven's last thunder shall shake the world below, the flag of the republic shall still wave on, and its Stars, its Stripes, and its Eagle, shall still float in pride, and strength, and glory,

"Whilst the earth bears, a plant, Or the sea rolls a wave."

A. H. Rice.

CCCX.

SOUTHERN USURPATIONS AND NORTHERN CONCESSIONS.

Why did these Southerners make war upon the country, converting their own domain into a receptacle of stolen goods, and the hiding-place of mercenaries, murderers, and madmen, and ours into one vast recruiting tent? Tell me, you cowardly and traitorous Northmen, who talk about peace before the last armed foe has expired on the soil his attainted blood defiles, or of compromise, while yet the walls of our hospitals resound with the groans of the mangled, and are damp with the death-dew of the expiring? Tell me, you traitors, Davis, Pickens, Stephens, and Floyd? what do you say provoked you to the point where forbearance ceased to be a virtue? What had we of the North usurped that belonged to you? I inquire not now of what some among us may have said. I challenge any act of usurpation by the non-slaveholding States against your rights as members of the confederacy. Facts are incontrovertible. What had we done? What provision of the Federal Constitution had we violated? For once lay aside your declamation and abuse, and soberly and truthfully state your grievances.

You know, and we know, and the world knows, that we made no encroachment upon your reserved rights as a party to the compact between your fathers and ours. You know, also, that we have been so terrified at your reiterated threats against the family peace and general welfare, that, in our anxiety to preserve national concord, we have sacrificed personal honor and State pride. You called us "mudsills" and "greasy mechanics," until labor almost began to be ashamed of its God-given dignity. You beat our representatives in the national council chambers, because they expressed the views of those whom they served. You denied us freedom of speech in all your borders. This and much else, before the last burden, which broke our uncomplaining patience into active, and, as you are destined to learn, terrible resistance and deserved retribution. But what had we done? How sinned against you? In 1820 you wanted a geographical limit assigned to your peculiar institution and we passed the law known as the Missouri Compromise. You got sick of this when it appeared that slavery would not be a gainer thereby, as it was supposed, and begged a repeal of the act. It was repealed. In 1850, you clamored for further legislation in favor of your property in human beings, and the fugitive slave law was placed on the nation's statute book. You continually cried, "Give, give!" and we gave. But nothing would satisfy your rapacity; you had resolved to quarrel with us. Do you remind me that we did not return your escaped slaves? This is only half the truth. Whenever you came after your chattel, with legal proofs of ownership, we caught and caged him, and sent him back to you, often at our own expense. If you did not think it worth your while to hunt up your runaway, it was none of our concern. Sometimes a man among us, more of a humanitarian than a jurisconsult, and better versed in the law of nature than the law of the land, illegally, but conscientiously, aided your bondman to escape. John Brown did so, and you hanged him for it! But no State, as such, and no authority within a State, ever hesitated or refused to fulfil its constitutional obligations to you on this head. But you did not mean to be satisfied. You meant to rebel. You have rebelled, and you must abide the consequences. R. Busteed.

CCCXI.

MONUMENTAL HONORS TO PUBLIC BENEFACTORS.

What parent, as he conducts his son to Mount Auburn or to Bunker Hill, will not, as he pauses before their monumental statues, seek to heighten his reverence for virtue, for patriotism, for science, for learning, for devotion to the public good, as he bids him contemplate the form of that grave and venerable Winthrop, who left his pleasant home in England to come and found a new republic in this untrodden wilderness; of that ardent and intrepid Otis, who first struck out the spark of American independence; of that noble Adams, its most eloquent champion on the floor of Congress; of that martyr Warren, who laid down his life in its defense; of that self-taught Bowditch, who, without a guide, threaded the starry mazes of the heavens; of that Story, honored at home and abroad as one of the brightest luminaries of the law, and, by a felicity of which I believe there is no other example, admirably portrayed in marble by his son? What citizen of Boston, as he accompanies the stranger around our streets, guiding him through our busy thoroughfares, to our wharves, crowded with vessels which range every sea and gather the produce of every climate, up to the dome of this capitol, which commands as lovely a landscape as can delight the eye or gladden the heart, will not, as he calls his attention at last to the statues of Franklin and Webster, exclaim:—"Boston takes pride in her natural position, she rejoices in her beautiful environs, she is grateful for her material prosperity; but richer than the merchandise stored in palatial warehouses, greener than the slopes of sea-girt islets, lovelier than this encircling panorama of land and sea, of field and hamlet, of lake and stream, of garden and grove, is the memory of her sons, native and adopted; the character, services and fame of those who have benefited and adorned their day and generation. Our children, and the schools at which they are trained, our citizens, and the services they have rendered:—these are our monuments, these are our jewels, these our abiding treasures." E. Everett.

CCCXII.

THE CRIME OF THE REBELLION.

I call the war which the Confederates are waging against the Union a "Rebellion," because it is one, and in grave matters it is best to call things by their right names. I speak of it as a crime, because the Constitution of the United States so regards it, and puts "rebellion" on a par with "invasion." The Constitution and law not only of England, but of every civilized country regard them in the same light; or rather they consider the rebel in arms as far worse than the alien enemy. To levy war against the United States is the constitutional definition of treason, and that crime is, by every civilized government: regarded as the highest which citizen or subject can commit. Not content with the sanctions of human justice, of all the crimes against the law of the land it is singled out for the denunciations of religion. The litanies of every church in Christendom, as far as I am aware, from the metropolitan cathedrals of Europe to the humblest missionary chapel in the islands of the sea, concur with the Church of England in imploring the Sovereign of the universe, by the most awful adjurations which the heart of man can conceive or his tongue utter, to deliver us from "sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion." And reason good,—for while a rebellion against tyranny; a rebellion designed, after prostrating arbitrary power, to establish free government on the basis of justice and truth, is an enterprise on which good men and angels may look with complacency; an unprovoked rebellion of ambitious men against a beneficent government, for the purpose—the avowed purpose-of establishing, extending, and perpetuating any form of injustice and wrong, is an imitation on earth of that first foul revolt of "the Infernal serpent," against which the Supreme Majesty of Heaven sent forth the armed myriads of his angels, and clothed the right arm of his Son with the three-bolted thunders of Omnipotence.

Lord Bacon, "in the true marshalling of the sovereign degrees of honor," assigns the first place to "the Conditores Imperiorum, founders of States and Commonwealths "; and truly to build up from the discordant elements of our nature; the passions, the interests, and the opinions of the individual man; the rivalries of family, clan, and tribe; the influences of climate and geographical position; the accidents of peace and war accumulated for ages, to build up, from these oftentimes warring elements, a well-compacted, prosperous and powerful State, if it were to be accomplished by one effort, or in one generation, would require a more than mortal skill. To contribute in some notable degree to this the greatest work of man, by wise and patriotic counsel in peace, and loyal heroism in war, is as high as human merit can well rise, and far more than to any of those to whom Bacon assigns this highest place of honor, whose names can hardly be repeated without a wondering smile,—Romulus; Cyrus, Csar, Ottoman, Israel,—is it due to our Washington, as the founder of the American Union. But if to achieve or help to achieve this greatest work of man's wisdom and virtue gives title to a place among the chief benefactors, rightful heirs of the benedictions, of mankind, by equal reason shall the bold bad men who seek to undo the noble work,—Eversores Imperiorum, destroyers of States,—who for base and selfish ends rebel against beneficent governments, seek to overturn wise constitutions, to lay powerful republican unions at the foot of foreign thrones, bring on civil and foreign war, anarchy at home, dictation abroad, desolation, ruin,—by equal reason, I say, yes a thousand fold stronger, shall they inherit the execrations of ages. E. Everett.

CCCXIII.

A TRIBUTE TO OUR HONORED DEAD.

How bright are the honors which await those who with sacred fortitude and patriotic patience have endured all things that they might save their native land from division and from the power of corruption. The honored dead! They that die for a good cause are redeemed from death. Their names are gathered and garnered. Their memory is precious. Each place grows proud for them who were born there. There is to be, ere long, in every village, and in every neighborhood, a glowing pride in its martyred heroes. Tablets shall preserve their names. Pious love shall renew their inscriptions as time and the unfeeling elements efface them. And the national festivals shall give multitudes of precious names to the orator's lips. Children shall grow up under more sacred inspirations, whose elder brothers dying nobly for their country, left a name that honored and inspired all who bore it. Orphan children shall find thousands of fathers and mothers to love and help those whom dying heroes left as a legacy to the gratitude of the public.

Oh, tell me not that they are dead—that generous hosts that airy army of invisible heroes. They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this nation. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society, and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?

Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears. It was your son: but now he is the nation's. He made your household bright: now his example inspires a thousand households. Dear to his brothers and sister's, he is now brother to every generous youth in the land. Before, he was narrowed, appropriated, shut up to you. Now he is augmented, set free, and given to all. Before he was yours: he is ours. He has died from the family that he might live to the nation. Not one name shall be forgot ten or neglected: and it shall by-and-by be confessed of our modern heroes, as it is of an ancient hero, that he did more for his country by his death than by his whole life.

Neither are they less honored who shall bear through life the marks of wounds and sufferings. Neither epaulette nor badge is so honorable as wounds received in a good cause. Many a man shall envy him who henceforth limps. So strange is the transforming power of patriotic ardor, that men shall almost covet disfigurement. Crowds will give way to hobbling cripples, and uncover in the presence of feebleness and helplessness. And buoyant children shall pause in their noisy games, and with loving rererence honor them whose hands can work no more, and whose feet are no longer able to march except upon that journey which brings good men to honor and immortality. Oh, mother of lost children! set not in darkness nor sorrow whom a nation honors. Oh, mourners of the early dead, they shall live again, and live forever. Your sorrows are our gladness. The nation lives because you gave it men that love it better than their own lives. And when a few more days shall have cleared the perils from around the nation's brow, and she shall sit in unsullied garments of liberty, with justice upon her forehead, love in her eyes, and truth upon her lips, she shall not forget those whose blood gave vital currents to her heart, and whose life, given to her, shall live with her life till time shall be no more.

Every mountain and hill shall have its treasured name, every river shall keep some solemn title, every valley and every lake shall cherish its honored register; and till the mountains are worn out, and the rivers forget to flow, till the clouds are weary of replenishing springs, and the springs forget to gush, and the rills to sing, shall their names be kept fresh with reverent honors which are inscribed upon the book of National Remembrance. H. W. Beecher.

CCCXIV.

ON THE CONFISCATION BILL.

Few of those engaged in this rebellion will ever be made to suffer in their persons; and if they are to be left in the full possession and enjoyment of their cotton, their lands, and their negroes, the innocent will have been made to suffer while the guilty will go unpunished. Shall the fathers of the gallant sons whose mangled bodies have been borne back to Illinois by hundreds, from the bloody fields of Belmont, of Donelson, and Pea Ridge, be ground down by onerous taxes, which shall descend upon their children to the third and fourth generations, to defray the expenses of defending the Government against traitors, and we forbear to touch even the property of the authors of these calamities, whose persons are beyond our reach? Suppose ye that the loyal people of this country will submit to such injustice?

I believe I represent as loyal, as patriotic and as brave a constituency as any other Senator. I claim nothing more. While I am proud of the part which the soldiers of my own State took in defeating the enemy in the West, I do not claim for them any superiority over the other soldiers of the Republic. The brave men who besieged Donelson, and who, after fighting through the day for three consecutive days, lay each night on the ground without shelter, exposed to the rain and sleet, were chiefly Illinoisans. It was there that rebellion received the heavy blow which has staggered it ever since. Forty dead bodies were borne from that bloody field to one small town in my State, and buried in a common grave. The Union forces at Pea Ridge were also largely made up of soldiers from Illinois. Suppose ye that I can go back to Illinois, among the relatives of those who have been cruelly destroyed, and propose to levy taxes upon them in order to conciliate and compensate the murderers, for that is really what exempting rebel property from confiscation amounts to? Sir, I know not if they would submit to such injustice; and yet there are those who not only talk of an amnesty to the men who have brought these troubles upon the country, but oppose providing the mild punishment of confiscation of property for those who shall continue hereafter to war upon the Government, and whose persons are beyond our reach. Do gentlemen regard it as conciliatory to oblige us to lay taxes upon those whose habitations have been consumed, to reward those who have burned them? upon those whose whole property has been stolen, to reward the thieves? upon those whose relatives have been slain, to compensate the murderers? In my judgment, justice, humanity, and mercy herself all demand that we at once provide that the supporters of this cruel and wicked rebellion should henceforth be made to feel its burdens. When the rebels, whose hands are dripping with the blood of loyal citizens, shall have grounded their arms, it will be time enough to talk of clemency; but to have our sympathies excited in their behalf now, when fighting to overthrow the Government, is cruelty to the loyal men who have rallied to its support. L. Trumbull.

CCCXV.

THE CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE.

Sir, what are the remedies that are proposed for the present condition of things, and what have they been from the beginning? They have been propositions of compromise; and Senators have spoken of peace, and of the horrors of civil war; and gentlemen who have contended for the right of the people of the Territories to regulate their own affairs, and who have been horrified at the idea of a geographical line dividing free States from slave States, free territory from slave territory,—and we have proclaimed that the great principle upon which the Revolution was fought was that of the right of the people to govern themselves, and that it was a monstrous doctrine for Congress to interfere in any way with its own Territories—these gentlemen come forward here with propositions to divide the country on a geographical line; and not only that, but to establish slavery south of the line; and they call this the Missouri Compromise! The proposition known as the Crittenden Compromise is no more like the Missouri Compromise than is the government of Turkey like that of the United States. The Missouri Compromise was a law declaring that in all the territory which we had acquired from Louisiana, north of a certain line of latitude, slavery or involuntary servitude should never exist. But it said nothing about the establishment of slavery south of that line. It was a compromise made in order to admit Missouri into the Union as a slave State, in 1820. That was the consideration for the exclusion of slavery from all the country north of 36 30'. Now, sir, I have no objection to the restoration of the Missouri Compromise as it stood in 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill repealed it.

The proposition known as the Crittenden Compromise declares not only that "in the territory south of the said line of latitude, slavery of the African race is thereby recognized as existing, and shall not be interfered with by Congress;" but it provides further, that, in the territory we shall hereafter acquire south of that line, slavery shall be recognized, and not interfered with by Congress; but "shall be protected as property by all the departments of the territorial government during its continuance;" so that, if we make acquisitions on the south of territories now free, and where by the laws of the land the footsteps of slavery have never been, the moment we acquire jurisdiction over them, the moment the stars and stripes of the Republic float over those free territories, they carry with them African slavery, established beyond the power of Congress and beyond the power of any territorial legislature or of the people, to keep it out: and we are told that this is the Missouri Compromise!

Now, sir, why cannot we have peace, I ask, upon the compromise measures of 1850? Why disturb them? They were enacted by great men. They gave peace to the country. Why is it necessary now to overturn them? Restore the old Missouri Compromise as it stood; let us go back to the settlement made in 1850, and there let us stand. What more would Senators have? The South were satisfied with that settlement. Have we disturbed it? Are we proposing to disturb it? Not at all. You yourselves disturbed it, and brought these difficulties upon the country.

I have always insisted that the people of the Northern States were in no manner responsible for slavery in the Southern states; and why? Because they had no power in regard to it. Each State has a right to manage its own domestic affairs. I will not interfere with it where I have no authority by the Constitution to interfere; but I will never consent, the people of my State will never consent, the people of the great Northwest, numbering more in white population than all your Southern States together, never will consent by their act to establish African slavery anywhere. No, sir; I will never agree to put into the Constitution of the country a clause establishing or making perpetual slavery anywhere. No, sir; no human being shall ever be made a slave by my vote. Not one single foot of God's soil shall ever be dedicated to African slavery by my act—never! Never! L. Trumbull.

CCCXVI.

REPLY TO SENATOR BRECKINRIDGE.

The Senator from Kentucky stands up here in opposition to what he sees is the overwhelming sentiment of the Senate, and utters reproof, malediction and prediction combined. I would ask him, sir, what would you havre us to do now—a rebel army within twenty mites of us, advancing or threatening to advance to destroy your Government? Will the Senator yield to rebellion? Will he shrink from armed insurrection? Will his State justify it? Will its better public opinion allow it? Shall we send a flag of truce? What would he have? Or would he conduct this war so feebly that the whole world would smile at us in derision? What would he have? These speeches of his, sown broadcast over the land—what clear, distinct meaning have they? Are they not intended for disorganization in our very midst? Are they not intended to dull our weapons? Are they not intended to destroy our zeal? Are they not intended to animate our enemies? Sir, are they not words of brilliant, polished treason, even in the very Capitol of the Confederacy?

Be with the enemy or with us.

I come, then, to emancipation. And, first, I ask my countrymen to proclaim emancipation to the slaves as a matter of necessity to ourselves; for unless it be by accident, we are not to come out of this contest as one nation, except by emancipation. Confiscation of the property of the rebels may be necessary and just; but it is not enough. It will not save us in "this rugged and awful crisis." It is inadequate to meet the exigency in which the country is placed. We must have emancipation. The political salvation of the country demands it; and it is inevitable. The time is approaching when emancipation must take place, and we have now, I think, only a choice of ways. Emancipation may be achieved by the slaves themselves; it may be effected by the Government of the United States; it may come through the desperation of the slaveholding rebels themselves. But come it must. I say, then, let us, at the head of our armies, on the soil of South Carolina, proclaim Freedom—freedom to all her slaves, and then enforce the proclamation as far and as fast as we have opportunity. Let the blow fall first on that State which first rebelled, as a warning and a penalty for her perfidy in this business, which began at the moment that her delegates penned their names to the Constitution.

Next, Florida, impotent in her treachery, with less than a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and with property not equal to that of a single ward in this city, and that purchased with the money of the people,—emancipate her slaves, and invite the refugees from slavery in the South, for the moment to assemble there, if they desire, and take possession of the soil.

And next in this work of emancipation I name Texas, a State purchased by a costly war with Mexico and which went out of the Union because she could not extend slavery in the Union. Let us teach her people that in the Union or out of the union, slavery is not to be extended. Emancipate the slaves in Texas, and invite men from the army, invite men from the North, invite men from Ireland, invite men from Germany,—the friends of freedom, of every name and every nation?—bid them welcome to the millions of acres of fertile lands we shall there confiscate, and they will form a barrier of freemen, a wall of liberty, over which, or through which, or beneath which it will be impossible for slavery to extend itself.

These three States may be sufficient for warning, for refuge, and for security against the spread of slavery; but I would have it distinctly understood, that by the next anniversary of the birth of the Father of his Country, we shall emancipate the slaves in all the disloyal and rebellious States if they do not previously return to their allegiance.

But justice to the slaves, no less than necessity to us, demands emancipation. Certainly they have been subjected to a sufficient apprenticeship under slavery, through two centuries, to prepare them for freedom if ever they are to be prepared. I say, then, justice to the slave demands emancipation. Let us maintain the principles of the declaration of Independence. The fundamental difference on which the North and South have divided for thirty years is on that part of the Declaration which says "All men are created equal." They have denied it; we have undertaken to maintain it. Jefferson meant, when he penned that immortal truth, not that men are equal physically, intellectually, or morally, but that no one is born under any political subserviency to his fellow man. Let us maintain the doctrine now. These slaves are men; Jefferson did not hesitate to call them "brethren." The declaration concerning the equality of men applies to them as to us; and now that in the progress of events the South has relieved us from responsibility in regard to eleven disloyal States, let us stand forth as a nation in our original strength and purity, maintaining the ideas to which our fathers gave utterance. That we may have ground on which to stand and defend ourselves in this contest, let us declare in the presence of these slaveholders and rebels, in the presence of Europe, that we proclaim THE EQUALITY OF ALL MEN. G. S. Boutwell.