CCLXI.

THE MURDER OF THE SOUL.

There are some people whose sympathies have been excited upon the subject of slavery, who, if they can only be satisfied that the slaves have enough to eat, think it is all very well, and that nothing more is to be said or done.

If slaves were merely animals, whose only or chief enjoyment consisted in the gratification of their bodily appetites, there would be some show of sense in this conclusion. But, in fact, however crushed and brutified, they are still men; men whose bosoms beat with the same passions as our own; whose hearts swell with the same aspirations,—the same ardent desire to improve their condition; the same wishes for what they have not; the same indifference towards what they have; the same restless love of social superiority; the same greediness of acquisition; the same desire to know; the same impatience of all external control.

The excitement which the singular case of Caspar Hauser produced a few years since in Germans is not yet forgotten. From the representations of that enigmatical personage, it was believed that those from whose custody he declared himself to have escaped, had endeavored to destroy his intellect, or rather to prevent it from being developed, so as to detain him forever in a state of infantile imbecility. This supposed attempt at what they saw fit to denominate the murder of the soul, gave rise to great discussions among the German jurists; and they soon raised it into a new crime, which they placed at the very head of social enormities.

It is this very crime, the murder of the soul, which is in the course of continuous and perpetual perpetration throughout the southern States of the American Union; and not upon a single individual only, but upon nearly one half of the entire population.

Consider the slaves as men, and the course of treatment which custom and the laws prescribe is an artful, deliberate and well-digested scheme to break their spirit; to deprive them of courage and of manhood; to destroy their natural desire for an equal participation in the benefits of society; to keep them ignorant, and therefore weak; to reduce them, if possible, to a state of idiocy; to crowd them down to a level with the brutes. R. Hildreth.

CCLXII.

JUDICIAL TRIBUNALS.

Let me here say that I hold judges, and especially the Supreme Court of the country, in much respect; but I am too familiar with the history of judicial proceedings to regard them with any superstitious reverence. Judges are but men, and in all ages have shown a full share of frailty. Alas! alas! the worst crimes of history have been perpetrated under their sanction. The blood of martyrs and of patriots, crying from the ground, summons them to judgment.

It was a Judicial tribunal which condemned Socrates to drink the fatal hemlock, and which pushed the Saviour barefoot over the pavements of Jerusalem, bending beneath his cross. It was a judicial tribunal which, against the testimony and entreaties of her father, surrendered the fair Virginia as a slave; which arrested the teachings of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and sent him in bonds from Judea to Rome; which, in the name of the Old Religion, adjudged the saints and fathers of the Christian Church to death, in all its most dreadful forms; and which afterwards, in the name of the New Religion, enforced the tortures of the Inquisition, amidst the shrieks and agonies of its victims, while it compelled Galileo to declare, in solemn denial of the great truth he had disclosed, that the earth did not move round the sun.

It was a judicial tribunal which, in France, during the long reign of her monarchs, lent itself to be the instrument of every tyranny, as during the brief reign of terror it did not hesitate to stand forth the unpitying accessory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of law, which sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the Eighth, from the unjust divorce of his queen, to the beheading of Sir Thomas More; which lighted the fires of persecution that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield, over the cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rogers; which, after elaborate argument, upheld the fatal tyranny of ship-money against the patriotic resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance of justice and humanity, sent Sydney and Russell to the block; which persistently enforced the laws of Conformity that our Puritan Fathers persistently refused to obey; and which afterwards, with Jeffries on the bench, crimsoned the pages of English history with massacre and murder—even with the blood of innocent woman.

Ay, sir, and it was a judicial tribunal in our country, surrounded by all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem,—which affirmed the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, while it admonished "jurors and the people" to obey,—and which now, in our day has lent its sanction to the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Bill. C. Sumner.

CCLXIII.

SLAVERY THE MAINSPRING OF THE REBELLION.

The whole quantity of slave-owners, great and small, according to the recent census, is not more than four hundred thousand; out of whom there are not more than one hundred thousand who are interested to any considerable extent in this peculiar species of property; and yet this petty oligarchy—itself controlled by a squad still more petty—in a population of many millions, has aroused and organized this gigantic rebellion. The future historian will record that the present rebellion—notwithstanding its protracted origin, the multitudes it has enlisted, and its extensive sweep—was at last precipitated by fewer than twenty men; Mr. Everett says, by as few as ten. It is certain that thus far it has been the triumph of a minority; but of a minority moved, inspired, combined, and aggrandized by slavery.

And now this traitorous minority, putting aside all the lurking, slimy devices of conspiracy steps forth in the full panoply of war. Assuming to itself all the functions of a government, it organizes States under a common head—sends ambassadors into foreign countries—levies taxes—borrows money—issues letters of marque—and sets armies in the field, summoned from distant Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, as well as from nearer Virginia, and composed of the whole lawless population—the poor who cannot own slaves as well as the rich who own them—throughout the extensive region where, with satanic grasp, this slaveholding minority claims for itself

"—ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace."

Pardon the language which I employ. The words of the poet do not picture too strongly the object proposed. And now these parricidal hosts stand arrayed openly against that paternal Government to which they owed loyalty, protection, and affection Never in history did rebellion assume such a front. Call their numbers four hundred thousand or two hundred thousand—what you will—they far surpass any armed forces ever before marshalled in rebellion; they are among the largest ever marshalled in war. And all this is in the name of slavery, and for the sake of slavery, and at the bidding of slavery. The profligate favorite of the English monarch—the famous Duke of Buckingham—was not more exclusively supreme—even according to those words by which he was exposed to the judgment of his contemporaries:

"Who rules the kingdom? The king. "Who rules the king? The Duke. "Who rules the Duke? The Devil."

The prevailing part here attributed to the royal favorite belongs now to slavery, which in the rebel States is a more than royal favorite.

Who rules the rebel States? The President. Who rules the President? Slavery. Who rules slavery?—

The latter question I need not answer. But all must see—and nobody can deny—that slavery is the ruling idea of this rebellion. It is slavery which marshals these hosts and breathes into their embattled ranks its own barbarous fire. It is slavery which stamps its character alike upon officers and men. It is slavery which inspires all, from the general to the trumpeter. It is slavery which speaks in the words of command, and which sounds in the morning drum-beat. It is slavery which digs trenches and builds hostile forts. It is slavery which pitches its white tents and stations its sentries over against the national capital. It is slavery which sharpens the bayonet and casts the bullet; which points the cannon and scatters the shell, blazing, bursting with death. Wherever this rebellion shows itself—whatever form it takes—whatever thing it does—whatever it meditates—it is moved by slavery; nay, it is slavery itself, incarnate, living, acting, raging, robbing, murdering, according to the essential law of its being. C Sumner.

CCLXIV.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

Mr. President, with unspeakable delight I hail this measure and the prospect of its speedy adoption. It is the first instalment of that great debt which we all owe to an enslaved race, and will be recognized in history as one of the victories of humanity. At home, throughout our own country, it will be welcomed with gratitude, while abroad it will quicken the hopes of all who love freedom. Liberal institutions will gain everywhere by the abolition of slavery at the national Capital. Nobody can read that slaves were once sold in the markets of Rome, beneath the eyes of the sovereign Pontiff without confessing the scandal to religion, even in a barbarous age; and nobody can hear that slaves are now sold in the markets of Washington, beneath the eyes of the President, without confessing the scandal to liberal institutions. For the sake of our good name, if not for the sake of justice, let the scandal disappear.

Slavery, beginning in violence, can have no legal or constitutional existence, unless through positive words expressly authorizing it. As no such positive words can be found in the Constitution, all legislation by Congress supporting slavery must be unconstitutional and void, while it is made still further impossible by positive words of prohibition guarding the liberty of every person within the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress. But the question is asked, Shall we vote money for this purpose? I cannot hesitate; and I place it at once under the sanction of that commanding charity proclaimed by prophets and enjoined by apostles, which all history recognizes and which the Constitution cannot impair. From time immemorial every government has undertaken to ransom its subjects from captivity,—and sometimes a whole people has felt its resources well bestowed in the ransom of its prince. Religion and humanity have both concurred in this duty, as more than usually sacred. "The ransom of captives is a great and excelling office of justice," exclaims one of the early fathers. The power thus commended has been exercised by the United States under important circumstances with the coperation of the best names of our history, so as to be without question.

If slavery be unconstitutional in the national Capital, and if it be a Christian duty, sustained by constitutional examples, to ransom slaves, then your swift desires cannot hesitate to adopt the present bill, and it becomes needless to enter upon other questions, important perhaps, but irrelevant. C. Sumner.

CCLXV.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

Of course, I scorn to argue the obvious truth that the slaves here are as much entitled to freedom as the white slaves that enlisted the early energies of our Government. They are men by the grace of God, and this is enough. There is no principle of the Constitution, and no rule of justice, which is not as strong for the one as for the other. In consenting to the ransom proposed, you will recognize their manhood, and, if authority be needed, you will find it in the example of Washington, who did not hesitate to employ a golden key to open the house of bondage.

Let this bill pass, and the first practical triumph of freedom for which good men have longed, dying without the sight—for which a whole generation has petitioned, and for which orators and statesmen have pleaded—will at last be accomplished. Slavery will be banished from the national Capital. This metropolis, which bears a venerated name, will be purified; its evil spirit will be cast out; its shame will be removed; its society will be refined; its courts will be made better; its revolting ordinances will be swept away; and even its loyalty will be secured. If not moved by justice to the slave, then be willing to act for your own good and in self-defence. If you hesitate to pass this bill for the blacks, then pass it for the whites. Nothing is clearer than that the degradation of slavery affects the master as much as the slave; while recent events testify that wherever slavery exists, there treason lurks, if it does not flaunt. From the beginning of this rebellion, slavery has been constantly manifest in the conduct of the masters, and even here in the national Capital, it has been the traitorous power which has encouraged and strengthened the enemy. This power must be suppressed at every cost, and if its suppression here endangers slavery elsewhere, there will be a new motive for determined action.

Amidst all present solicitudes the future cannot be doubtful. At the national Capital slavery will give way to freedom; but the good work will not stop here. It must proceed. What God and nature decree rebellion cannot arrest. And as the whole wide-spreading tyranny begins to tumble, then, above the din of battle, sounding from the sea and echoing along the land, above even the exaltations of victory on well-fought fields, will ascend voices of gladness and benediction, swelling from generous hearts wherever civilization bears sway, to commemorate a sacred triumph whose trophies, instead of tattered banners, will be ransomed slaves. C. Sumner.

CXLXVI.

EXTRACT FROM FAREWELL ADDRESS AT NEW ORLEANS.

I shall speak in no bitterness, because I am not conscious of a single personal animosity. Commanding the Army of the Gulf, I found you captured, but not surrendered; conquered, but not orderly; relieved from the presence of an army, but incapable of taking care of yourselves. I restored order, punished crime, opened commerce, brought provisions to your starving people, reformed your currency, and gave you quiet protection, such as you had not enjoyed for many years. The enemies of my country unrepentant and implacable, I have treated with merited severity. I hold that rebellion is treason, and that treason persisted in is death, and any punishment short of that due a traitor gives so much clear gain to him from the clemency of the government. Upon this thesis have I administered the authority of the United States, because of which I am not unconscious of complaint. I do not feel that I have erred in too much harshness, for that harshness has ever been exhibited to disloyal enemies to my country, and not to my loyal friends. To be sure, I might have regaled you with the amenities of British civilization, and yet been within the supposed rules of civilized warfare. You might have been smoked to death in caverns, as were the Covenanters of Scotland, by the command of a general of the royal house of England; or roasted, like the inhabitants of Algiers during the French campaign; your wives and daughters might have been given over to the ravisher, as were the unfortunate dames of Spain in the Peninsular war; or you might have been scalped and tomahawked, as our mothers were at Wyoming by the savage allies of Great Britain, in our own Revolution; your property could have been turned over to indiscriminate "loot," like the palace of the Emperor of China; works of art which adorned your buildings might have been sent away, like to paintings of the Vatican; your sons might have been blown from the mouths of cannon, like the Sepoys at Delhi; and yet all this would have been within the rules of civilized warfare as practised by the most polished and the most hypocritical nations of Europe. For such acts the records of the doings of some of the inhabitants of your city toward the friends of the Union, before my coming, were a sufficient provocative and justification. But I have not so conducted. On the contrary, the worst punishment inflicted, except for criminal acts punishable by every law, has been banishment with labor to a barren island, where I encamped my own soldiers before marching here.

It is true I have levied upon the wealthy rebels, and paid out nearly half a million of dollars to feed forty thousand of the starving poor of all nations assembled here, made so by this war. I saw that this rebellion was a war of the aristocrats against the middling men—of the rich against the poor; a war of the landowner against the laborer; that it was a struggle for the retention of power in the hands of the few against the many; and I found no conclusion to it, save in the subjugation of the few and the disenthralment of the many. I, therefore, felt no hesitation in taking the substance of the wealthy, who had caused the war, to feed the innocent poor, who had suffered by the war. And I shall now leave you with the proud consciousness that I carry with me the blessings of the humble and loyal, under the roof of the cottage and in the cabin of the slave! and so am quite content to incur the sneers of the salon, or the curses of the rich. B. F. Butler.

CCLXVII.

CONCLUSION OF FAREWELL ADDRESS AT NEW ORLEANS.

I found you trembling at the terrors of servile insurrection All danger of this I have prevented by so treating the slave that he had no cause to rebel. I found the dungeon, the chain, and the lash your only means of enforcing obedience in your servants. I leave them peaceful, laborious, controlled by the laws of kindness and justice. I have demonstrated that the pestilence can be kept from your borders. I have added a million of dollars to your wealth in the form of new land from the batture of the Mississippi. I have cleansed and improved your streets, canals, and public squares, and opened new avenues to unoccupied land. I have given you freedom of elections greater than you have ever enjoyed before. I have caused justice to be administered so impartially that your own advocates have unanimously complimented the judges of my appointment. You have seen, therefore, the benefit of the laws and justice of the government against which you have rebelled. Why, then, will you not all return to your allegiance to that government,—not with lip-service, but with the heart.

I conjure you, if you desire ever to see renewed prosperity, giving business to your streets and wharves—if you hope to see your city become again the mart of the Western world, fed by its rivers for more than three thousand miles, draining the commerce of a country greater than the mind of man hath ever conceived—return to your allegiance. If you desire to leave to your children the inheritance you received from your fathers—a stable constitutional government; if you desire that they should in the future be a portion of the greatest empire the sun ever shone upon—return to your allegiance.

There is but one thing that stands in the way. There is but one thing that at this hour stands between you and the Government—and that is slavery. The institution, cursed of God, which has taken its last refuge here, in His providence will be rooted out as the tares from the wheat, although the wheat be torn up with it. I have given much thought to the subject. I came among you, by teachings, by habit of mind, by political position, by social affinity, inclined to sustain your domestic laws, if by possibility they might be with safety to the Union. Months of experience and observation have forced the conviction that the existence of slavery is incompatible with the safety either of yourselves or of the Union. As the system has gradually grown to its present huge dimensions, it were best if it could gradually be removed; but it is better, far better, that it should be taken out at once, than that it should longer vitiate the social, political, and family relations of your country. I am speaking with no philanthropic views as regards the slave, but simply of the effect of slavery on the master.

See for yourselves. Look around you and say whether this saddening, deadening influence has not all but destroyed the very framework of your society. I am speaking the farewell words of one who has shown his devotion to his country at the peril of his life and his fortune, who, in these words, can have neither hope nor interest, save the good of those he addresses; and let me here repeat, with all the solemnity of an appeal to Heaven to bear me witness, that such are the views forced upon me by experience. Come, then, to the unconditional support of the Government. Take into your own hands your own institutions; remodel them according to the laws of nations and of God, and thus attain that great prosperity assured to you by geographical position, only a portion of which was heretofore yours. B. F. Butler.

CCLXVIII.

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE UNION.

I am not for the Union as it was. I have the honor to say, as a Democrat, and as an Andrew Jackson Democrat, I am not for the Union as it was, because I saw, or thought I saw, the troubles in the future which have burst upon us; but having undergone those troubles, having spent all this blood and this treasure, I do not mean to go back again and be cheek by jole, as I was before, with South Carolina, if I can help it. Mark me now; let no man misunderstand me; and I repeat, lest I may be misunderstood (for there are none so difficult to understand as those who do not wish to)—mark me again,—I say, I do not mean to give up a single inch of the soil of South Carolina If I had been living at that time, and had the position, the will, and the ability, I would have dealt with South Carolina as Jackson did, and kept her in the Union at all hazards; but now that she has gone out, I would take care that when she comes in again she should come in better behaved; that she should no longer be the firebrand of the Union, ay, that she should enjoy what her people never yet enjoyed, the blessings of a republican form of government. And, therefore, in that view I am not for the reconstruction of the Union as it was. I have spent treasure and blood enough upon it, in conjunction with my fellow-citizens, to make it a little better, and I think we can have a better Union. It was good enough if it had been let alone. The old house was good enough for me, but the South pulled it down, and I propose, when we build it up, to build it up with all the modern improvements.

And one of the logical sequences, it seems to me, that follow inexorably and inevitably, from the proposition that we are dealing with alien enemies, is the question, what is our duty in regard to the confiscation of their property? And that would seem to me to be very easy of settlement under the Constitution, and without any discussion, if my proposition is right. Has it not been held from the beginning of the world down to this day, from the time the Israelites took possession of the land of Canaan, which they got from alien enemies, has it not been held that the whole of the property of those alien enemies belongs to the conqueror, and that it has been at his mercy and his clemency what should be done with it? And for one, I would take it and give it to the loyal man—loyal from the heart,—at the South, enough at least to make him as well as he was before; and I would take the rest of it and distribute it among the volunteer soldiers who have gone forth in the service of their country; and so far as I know them, if we should settle South Carolina with them, in the course of a few years, I should be quite willing to receive her back into the Union. B. F. Butler.

CCLXIX.

SPEECH AT THE UNION SQUARE MEETING IN NEW YORK.

But we are called upon to act. There is no time for hesitation or indecision—no time for haste and excitement. It is a time when the people should rise in the majesty of their might, stretch forth their strong arm, and silence the angry waves of tumult. It is time the people should command peace. It is a question between union and anarchy—between law and disorder. All politics for the time being are and should be committed to the oblivion of the grave. The question should be, "Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country." We should go forward in a manner becoming a great people, But six months ago, the material prosperity of our country was at its greatest height. To-day, by the fiat of madness, we are plunged in distress and threatened with political ruin, anarchy, and annihilation. It becomes us to stay the hands of this spirit of disunion. The voice of the Empire State can be potential in this unnatural strife. She has mighty power for union. She has great wealth and influence, and she must bring forward that wealth and exert that influence. She has numerous men, and she must send them to the field, and in the plenitude of her power command the public peace. This is a great commercial city—one of the modern wonders of the earth. With all the great elements that surround her, with her commercial renown, with her architectural magnificence, and with her enterprise and energy, she is capable of exercising a mighty power for good in silencing the angry waves of agitation.

While I would prosecute this war in a manner becoming a civilized and a Christian people, I would do so in no vindictive spirit. I would do it as Brutus set the signet to the death-warrant of his son—"Justice is satisfied, and Rome is free." I love my country; I love this Union. It was the first vision of my early years; it is the last ambition of my public life. Upon its altar I have surrendered my choicest hopes. I had fondly hoped that in approaching age it was to beguile my solitary hours, and I will stand by it as long as there is a Union to stand by and when the ship of the Union shall crack and groan, when the skies lower and threaten, when the lightnings flash, the thunders roar, the storms beat, and the waves run mountain-high, if the ship of State goes down, and the Union perishes, I would rather perish with it than survive its destruction. Let us, my friends, stay up the hands of Union men in other sections of the country. How much have they sacrificed of advantage of national wealth, of political promotion! Let us aid them and cheer them on. Let us, my fellow-citizens, rally round the flag of our country, the flag of our fathers, the glorious flag known and honored throughout the earth, and now rendered more illustrious by the gallant Anderson. In the spirit of peace and forbearance he waved it over Fort Sumter. The pretended authorities of South Carolina and the other Southern States attacked him because they seemed to consider him a kind of minister plenipotentiary. Let us maintain our flag in the same noble spirit that animated him, and never desert it while one star is left. If I could see my bleeding, torn, maddened, and distracted country once more restored to quiet and lasting peace under those glorious stars and stripes, I should almost be ready to take the oath of the infatuated leader in Israel—Jephthah and swear to sacrifice the first living thing that I should meet on my return from victory. D. S. Dickinson.

CCLXX.

THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION.

Give up the Union? Never! The Union shall endure, and its praises shall be heard when its friends and its foes, those who support, and those who assail, those who bare their bosoms in its defence, and those who aim their daggers at its heart, shall all sleep in the dust together. Its name shall be heard with veneration amid the roar of the Pacific's waves, away upon the river of the North and East where liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in gentle breezes upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest and wave in the standing corn, on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in the bleating folds find lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South. It shall be proclaimed by the Stars and Stripes in every sea of earth, as the American Union, one and indivisible; upon the great thoroughfares, wherever steam drives, and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and perpetuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped in the earliest words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to Heaven upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of manhood, and rise to the mercy-seat upon woman's gentle availing prayer. Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall be whispered in the last accents of expiring age. Thus shall survive and be perpetuated the American Union; and when it shall be proclaimed that time shall be no more, and the curtain shall fall, and the good shall be gathered to a more perfect union, still may the destiny of our dear land recognize the conception, that

"Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along, And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung, Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The Queen of the world, and the child of the skies." D. S. Dickinson.

CCLXXI.

OUR REFORMERS.

What to-day is the position of the men who, for the past thirty years, have worked to bring our practice into conformity with the principles of the Government, and who, in the struggle against established and powerful interests, have accepted political disability and humiliated lives? Have any of these been put in governing places where their proved fidelity would guarantee the direct execution of what is to-day the nearly unanimous will of the people? Certainly not yet. So far, the virtue of the reformers is its own reward. While they are yet living, their mantles have fallen upon the shoulders of others to whom you have given high position, but they are still laboring in narrow paths—broadening, to be sure, and brightening—for the rough ground is passed, and their sun of victory is already rising. We give deep sympathy and honor to the men who, in the interests of civilization, separated themselves from mankind to penetrate the chill solitudes of the Arctic regions. Their names remain an added constellation in polar skies. But, we know that bitter skies and winter winds are not so unkind as man's ingratitude. And why, then, do we withhold sympathy and honor from these men who have so unflinchingly trod their isolated paths of self-appointed duty, accepting political and social excommunication—these heroes of the moral solitudes? But even as it is, our reformers have a better lot than history usually records for such; they have the satisfaction not only to see but to enter, with the people whom they led, into the promised land. And perhaps they are well satisfied to repose, and to rest upon their finished work, feeling surely that they have been faithful servants and that their country will yet say to them, "Well done!"

Sometimes, in unfamiliar countries, the traveller finds himself shrouded in fog and the way so hidden, the features of the country so singularly cleansed from the reality, that he cannot safely move. But if some friendly mountain side lets him ascend a few hundred feet above, he finds himself suddenly in a clear atmosphere with a blue sky and a shining sun. Below him the smaller objects that misled and bewildered him lie hidden; before him stand out, salient and clear, the leading ridges and great outlines of the country which point out to him the right way, and show him where he may reach a place of security and repose for the night, and he goes on his journey confidently. And so it is with those men who devote their lives, unflinchingly and singly, to the public good to the maintenance of principles and the advocacy of great reforms. They live in a pure atmosphere. And such ought also to be the character of the men whom we elevate to our high places. Raised into that upper air, and charged with the general safety, they are expected to be impersonal; they are expected to see over and beyond the personal ambitions and individual interests which of necessity influence men acting individually; their horizon is universal, and they see broadly defined the great principles which lead a nation continuously on to a settled prosperity and a sure glory. And as a condition of our material safety we should see to it that only such men are put in such places. Men capable of receiving a conviction and realizing a necessity—men able to comprehend the spirit of the age and the country in which we live, and fearless in working up to it. J. C. Fremont.

CCLXXII.

PUBLIC RUMOR.

The counsel for the prosecution has said that if the Reverend defendant has not been duly charged with heretical teachings by actual evidence, he has been so charged by public rumor; and he gravely contends that a clergyman charged by public rumor may be required to exculpate himself before an ecclesiastical council. There is a passion known among men as the most eager, implacable, remorseless of passions, a moral curiosity, named by psychologists the odium theologicum. It thrives on the slightest possible food. It lives on air. Public rumor is substantial enough for its richest diet. Public Rumor! I was educated to despise it. An established public opinion, we must treat with due respect, but disparaging rumor, however public, I should be ashamed to own as a motive for one action of my life. When the counsel for the prosecution passed his eulogy on the memory of Dr. Croswell, I could not but think what a rebuke his whole life was to public rumor. If ever man was the destined victim of public rumor, that man was William Croswell. Not left to its low haunts, but elevated by Episcopal sanction, promulgated by Episcopal proclamation, it charged him with teaching doctrines and observances "degrading to the character of the Church and perilling the souls of the people." But in patience and confidence he lived it all down. He went forward in the discharge of his noble duties, in daily prayers, daily public service, daily ministrations to the poor, sick and afflicted, not without much suffering from the relentless attacks of party spirit,—sufferings which shortened his days on earth,—and the daily beauty of his life made ugly the countenance of detraction and defamation. Public confidence, a plant of slow growth, grew about him. Public justice was rendered to him without a movement of his own. He fell, at his post, with all his armor on. At the time of the evening sacrifice, the angel touched him and he was called away. He fell, with his face to the altar, with the words of benediction on his lips, surrounded by a devoted congregation, mourned by an entire community. All men rose up and called him blessed. From the distinguished Rector of St. Paul's, exclaiming, in the words of the prophet, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" to the humble orphan child in the obscure alley, who missed his daily returning visit,—all, all, with one accord, sent up their voices as incense to Heaven.

I had the privilege to be one of the number who received him on his entrance into this city, to take charge of his newly formed parish. I am proud and grateful to remember that I was one of those on whom, in his long struggle, in a measure, according to my ability, he leaned for support. And after seven years, I believe seven years to the very day that we received him, I had the melancholy privilege, with that same company, of bearing his body up that aisle which he had so often ascended in his native dignity and in the beauty of holiness.

I should be an unworthy parishioner, pupil, I may say friend of his, if I allowed myself to defer for a moment to public rumor on a question of character or principle. I should be forgetful of his example if I permitted any one to do so who looked to me for counsel or direction. No, gentlemen, let us all, laymen or clergymen, call to mind his life and his death, and let public rumor blow past us as the idle wind. R. H. Dana, Jr.

CCLXXIII.

THE POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NORTH.

Mr. Chairman; Will the people of the Free States unite in one earnest effort to recover their personal and political equality, and to retrieve the honor of the country? It must be done! But, let us not deceive ourselves. The task is no easy one. Oligarchies have ruled the world. Our national government has always been qualified by the element of a slaveholding aristocracy. This aristocracy is powerful,—powerful in its unity of interest, the common slave property, with its values and its perils. It is powerful in its character as a caste. Unlike all other modern aristocracies it is a caste, and the most formidable, exclusive and ineradicable of all castes—a caste founded on race and color. It is powerful in the ordinary elements of power which oligarchies possess. The slaveholding education gives elements of control, the bearing and habit of command, and the assertion of superiority. This exercises its influence over weak minds. People doubtful of their own gentility bow to the established aristocracy of slavery. The thing that hath been is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun.

What forces are we to bring into the field against them?—the divided, heterogeneous masses of a free and equal people. The vast class of the timid, mercenary and time-serving belong to the strongest. Slavery has had them. We shall never have them until we show ourselves the strongest. Will the trading and moneyed interests, so powerful in the Northern cities, do their duty? Is there force enough, virtue enough, in our thirteen millions to assert their political equality, to achieve their own enfranchisement, to make freedom national and slavery sectional; to secure the future to freedom? The few next years will answer this question. You appeal to the spirit of 1776. Remember that the Dutch revolution was as glorious as our own. Holland began in civil and religious liberty, with heroism, freedom, industry and prosperity. In time the Dutch learned to make material interests their ruling motive. They ceased to live for ideas, and where are they now? Prosperous, educated, industrious and—despised! The high tone, the glory is gone!

But is such to be the fate of Massachusetts,—of New England? Massachusetts, in times past, has lived and suffered for ideas, for principles, for abstractions. Powerful influences have been exerted, from the highest quarters, to bring her into subjection to material interests and unheroic maxims, to sap the chivalry and enthusiasm of her youth. But it is not too late, Let her slough this all off in her hour of trial! Let her cast off her disguises and her rags together, and stand forth in the garb and attitude of a hero! This work must be done. If the men of scholarship and accomplishments and wealth who have heretofore enjoyed prominence, do not feel themselves up to the work, the people will call the cobbler from his stall, the factory-boy from his loom, the yeoman from his plough, but the work shall be done. Fishermen and tent-makers renovated the world. The Roman centurion was sent to a fisherman who lodged at the house of a tanner by the seaside, to hear what, should be done for mankind.

Why do we hesitate? What provocation more do we propose to wait for? They have added Slave States by a coup d'tat: shall we wait until they have added Cuba and Mexico? They are forcing slavery upon the Territories: must we wait until they have succeeded? They have violated one solemn compact: how many more must they break before we assert our right? They have struck down a Senator in his place. They are already designating the next victim: must we wait until he has fallen? The Senator from Georgia spoke truth when he said the deed was done in the right time and right manner. There needed an act as bad as it could be made to rouse the spirit of the North. Let the priest be slain at the altar-stone. Let these Herods mingle blood with their sacrifices. It is needed. We have been so long sentient that the spirit of freedom must be roused by violence. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer! By the duty we owe to justice and liberty throughout the world, by the natural pride of men, by the cultivated honor of gentlemen, it is not fit that we bear the shame longer! R. H. Dana, Jr.

CCLXXIV.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WAR.

Over and above the ordinary and universal means of intellectual development, the Divine Providence, now and then, prepares extraordinary means to the same end, in those social convulsions and calamities that shake whole nations with the mighty upheavals of thought and passion. A war of secession and disintegration is upon us. The nation's integrity and its very life are at stake. It is an epoch that the most sluggish minds cannot sleep through. They who never thought before must think now. They who never felt before must feel now. The intellect of the nation is aroused in the presence of this immense issue. It is an educational epoch. Its perils, trials, sacrifices, are the school-discipline of God. The mind of the people grows up whole cubits of stature in a short time. The heart of the people is moved to its deepest depths,—of all classes, but most of the most numerous and the governing class, the agricultural. And the heart is always the head's best ally. Deep feeling begets strong thinking. Sentiments of patriotism and loyalty, newborn and fervid, awaken and reinforce the intellect, raise up character, enlarge the whole man. And this reviving and reinvigorating influence will not pass away with the trials that produced it. When God educates it is not for a day, but for generations. When He quickens a new life in the soul of a people, it is a life that lasts. When He touches the human harp with His own mighty, but tender hand, the sound remains in the strings for an age, and for ages.

Long after this war shall have closed, and its distresses passed away, its moral and intellectual compensations will remain. Every village will have its war-worn veterans to tell the story of Antietam, and Gettysburg, and Port Hudson, and many another field of daring achievement. Almost every farm-house in the land will have its sacred and inspiring memories of a father, son, or brother, who fought for his country, whom they, and their posterity after them, must henceforth love and take thought for as their very mother.

And every village graveyard will have its green mounds, that shall need no storied monuments to clothe them with a peculiar consecration,—graves that hold the dust of heroes,—graves that all men approach with reverent steps,—graves out of whose solemn silence shall whisper inspiring voices, telling the young from generation to generation, how great is their country's worth and cost, and how beautiful and noble it was to die for it. G. Putnam.

CCLXXV.

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY FEBRUARY 22, 1864.

Meanwhile, the military signs of the hour are auspicious. Already we seem to see the dawn breaking in the horizon. In these latter months, we have heard it from all loyal tongues, and seen it in all loyal faces—the confident hope that the day of triumph and peace is ready to break and shine on into noonday fulness.

The nation's banner, torn and soiled in battle, but with every star and stripe kept whole and radiant in its fair expanse, shall be brought back to the Capitol; and it may well be that he, the illustrious civic leader, who first flung it to the breeze in the nation's necessity, should be the man whose hands shall be privileged to furl it again in Peace,—he, who sits worthily in the chair that once held Washington; he, so honest and pure in his great function, so wise and prudent, so faithful and firm;—God bless and preserve Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States!

Therefore, if it be in our hearts this day, bending at the shrine of Washington, to renew our vow to preserve the country which he gave us for a sacred inheritance, we can do it with good hope. And verily we must vow, and keep the vow, cost what it may of time or wealth, or blood,—for his sake, and our own, and our children's, and humanity's sake, we must.

It is true, there is no perpetuity for national existence, or for individual influence or renown. Earthly empires must decay at last, and with them the vital presence, the living influence of their founders and fathers.

This magnificent polity—his, ours—must, doubtless, one day, share the common fate, and where it goes down, the star of Washington must set with it, and his name pass, an unheeded word, into the dead annals of the obsolete ages. But O! not yet—say it, Americans!—not now!

The laurel chaplet must not be torn from his brow while it is still so fresh and green, and not yet fully wreathed. His statues must not be pushed from their pedestals to be crumbled into common earth, until the centuries have had time to hallow them with their venerable stains.

This fair palace of national freedom, of which he was the master-builder, must not crumble into ruin, till it shall have given a shelter and a home, security, glory, and peace, to the children's children, and the remote posterity of those for whom he reared it with the loving ardor of his great soul and the strength of his mighty arm.

It must not, need not, shall not be. To think of it for a moment is base recreancy and intolerable shame. Forbid it, thou God of nations, and our fathers God! Forbid it, ye, my countrymen, as ye have the power—ay, ten times the power that is requisite. Only rise up again, and yet again, in your strength, and by all that is dear and sacred in the name and fame of your country's Father, swear that it shall not be, and then it cannot be. Give anew your heart and soul and faith, unswerving fidelity, whole-hearted loyalty—your voice, your strength, your wealth all that you are or possess, to this great cause, give these unitedly, fervently, with one shout, one blow, and in perfect accord, and then it will not be. Then the mad enterprise of rebellion is crushed, and the fiend goes howling back, baffled, to his place. Then your birthright is rescued from the destroyer, And when this anniversary shall return, next year, or the next, yonder marble form in our Capitol shall exchange the look of majestic sorrow which seems to have gathered over it, for a smile of grateful joy; and those lips of stone shall move and grow fervid with words of exultant and benedictory congratulation.

Forth, then, friends and compatriots, to the work that shall save the storm-tossed ark of our liberties and our hopes. G. Putnam.

CCLXXVI.

OUR HEROIC DEAD.

There is a history in almost every home of Massachusetts, which will never be written; but the memory of kindred has it embalmed forever. The representatives of the pride and hope of uncounted households, departing, will return no more. The shaft of the archer, attracted by the shining mark, numbers them among his fallen. In the battles of Big Bethel, of Bull Run, of Ball's Bluff, of Roanoke Island, of Newbern, of Winchester, of Yorktown, of Williamsburg, of West Point, of Fair Oaks, the battles before Richmond from Mechanicsville to Malvern Hill, of James Island, of Baton Rouge, of Cedar Mountain, of Bull Run again, of Chantilly of Washington in North Carolina, of South Mountain, of Antietam, of Fredericksburg, of Goldsborough,—through all the capricious fortunes of the war, the regiments of Massachusetts have borne her flag by the side of the banner of the Union. And, beyond the Atlantic slope, every battle-field has drunk the blood of her sons, nurtured among her hills and sands, from which in adventurous manhood they turned their footsteps to the West. Officers and enlisted men have vied with each other in deeds of valor. This flag, whose standard-bearer, shot down in battle, tossed it from his dying hand nerved by undying patriotism, has been caught by the comrade, who in his turn has closed his eyes for the last time upon its starry folds as another hero-martyr clasped the splintered staff and rescued the symbol at once of country and of their blood-bought fame.

How can fleeting words of human praise gild the record of their glory? Our eyes suffused with tears, and blood retreating to the heart, stirred with unwonted thrill, speak with the eloquence of nature, uttered but unexpressed. From the din of the battle, they have passed to the peace of eternity. Farewell! warrior, citizen, patriot, lover, friend,—whether in the humbler ranks or bearing the sword of official power, whether private, captain, surgeon, or chaplain, for all these in the heady fight have passed away,—Hail! and Farewell! Each hero must sleep serenely on the field where he fell in a cause "sacred to liberty and the rights of mankind."

"Worn by no wasting, lingering pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way." J. A. Andrew.

CCLXXVII.

HONOR TO OUR HEROES.

The heart swells with unwonted emotion when we remember our sons and brothers, whose constant valor has sustained on the field, during nearly three years of war, the cause of our country, of civilization, and liberty. Our volunteers have represented Massachusetts, during the year just ended, on almost every field and in every department of the army where our flag has been unfurled. At Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner, at Chickamauga, Knoxville, and Chattanooga,—under Hooker, and Meade, and Banks, and Gillmore, and Rosecrans, Burnside, and Grant; in every scene of danger and of duty, along the Atlantic and the Gulf, on the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Mississippi and the Rio Grande,—under Dupont and Dahlgren, and Foote, and Farragut and Porter,—the sons of Massachusetts have borne their part, and paid the debt of patriotism and valor. Ubiquitous as the stock they descend from, national in their opinions and universal in their sympathies, they have fought shoulder to shoulder with men of all sections and of every extraction. On the ocean, on the rivers, on the land, on the heights where they thundered down from the clouds of Lookout Mountain the defiance of the skies, they have graven with their swords a record imperishable,

The Muse herself demands the lapse of silent years to soften, by the influences of Time, her too keen and poignant realization of the scenes of War—the pathos, the heroism, the fierce joy, the grief of battle. But, during the ages to come, she will brood over their memory. Into the hearts of her consecrated priests will breathe the inspirations of lofty and undying Beauty, Sublimity and Truth, in all the glowing forms of speech, of literature and plastic art. By the homely traditions of the fireside—by the head-stones in the church-yard consecrated to those whose farms repose far off in rude graves by the Rappahannock, or sleep beneath the sea,—embalmed in the memories of succeeding generations of parents and children, the heroic dead will live on in immortal youth. By their names, their character, their service, their fate, their glory, they cannot fail:—

"They never fail who die In a great cause; the block may soak their gore; Their heads may sodden in the sun, their limbs Be strung to city gates and castle walls; But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years Elapse and others share as dark a doom, They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts Which overpower all others, and conduct The world at last to Freedom."

The edict of Nantes maintaining the religious liberty of the Huguenots gave lustre to the fame of Henry the Great, whose name will gild the pages of philosophic history after mankind may have forgotten the martial prowess and the white plume of Navarre. The Great Proclamation of Liberty will lift the Ruler who uttered it, our Nation and our Age, above all vulgar destiny.

The bell which rang out the Declaration of independence, has found at last a voice articulate, to "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof." It has been heard across oceans, and has modified the sentiments of cabinets and kings. The people of the Old World have heard it, and their hearts stop to catch the last whisper of its echoes. The poor slave has heard it, and with bounding joy, tempered by the mystery of religion, he worships and adores. The waiting Continent has heard it, and already foresees the fulfilled prophecy, when she will sit "redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible Genius of Universal Emancipation." J. A. Andrew.

CCLXXVIII.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONTEST.

I hold this armed contest to be a great historical movement, and to have high moral interest and significance because it is to determine the character of the institutions under which we, and those who come after us, are to live. You are not merely sustaining the administration of President Lincoln against unlawful combinations, but you are fighting on the side of law, order, government, civilization and progress. The result of this war is to settle the question whether they who are hereafter to inhabit this magnificent country are or are not to have that primal blessing of a good government, without which the most abundant material resources are as valueless as scientific books or philosophical installments would be among the most barbarous tribes of Africa or Australia. Surely there cannot be imagined a war more worthy of calling forth all the energies of a great people than this.

And if I am asked to define my meaning more distinctly and precisely, I say that the questions now submitted to the stern arbitrament of war are substantially these: Is the Constitution of the United States a compact or a law? Is this Union a Commonwealth, a State, or is it merely a confederacy or a copartnership? Is there a right of secession in the separate States, singly or collectively, other than the right of revolution? These are momentous questions, and if they can be settled in no other way than by a war, then such a war is worth the price it costs, great as that is. For if the right of secession be fairly and logically deducible from the Constitution—if any State, upon its own mere motion, with cause or without cause, can withdraw from the Union as a partner may dissolve a copartnership—then the Constitution itself is a stupendous failure, the men who made it were bungling journeymen and not master-mechanics, and to institutions of our country, so far from deserving our gratitude and admiration, are worthy only of our contempt. The hour has come, and the men have come, to settle these issues, fraught with such vital consequences to unborn millions. The dusky clouds, surcharged with electric fires, that stand front to front in mid air and darken the heavens with their power, have been long in gathering; let the storm continue till the air is cleared—and no longer.

I want to have it now determined that for all future time any State, or any cluster of States, that may attempt to coerce or bully a legal and constitutional majority by the threat of secession, shall be met with the answer: "You don't go out of this Union unless you are strong enough to fight your way out." I want to have the armed heel of the country crush the serpent head of secession, now and forever, so that it shall never again glare with its baleful eyes, or brandish its venomous tongue. Let not the fate and fortunes of this glorious country be committed to the keeping of a clumsy, misshapen raft, compacted of twenty-four or thirty-four logs, good enough to float down a river, but sure to go to pieces when it gets into deep water; Let let them be embarked on board a goodly ship, well found, well fastened, well manned—in which every timber and plank has been so fashioned as to contribute to the beauty and strength of the whole fabric, with a good seaman at the helm, the Constitution in the binnacle, and the stars and stripes at the masthead. When the time of my departure shall come, let me feel, let me know, that I leave those whom I love under the protection of a government good enough to secure the affection of its subjects, and strong enough to enforce their obedience. Remember that if a strong government be sometimes bad, a weak government is never good. G. S. Hillard.

CCLXXIX.

THE MILITARY CAPACITY OF THE PEOPLE.

We have cause for gratitude in the military capacity which our people have developed. We had no great standing armies. We had but a single thoroughly furnished military school. There was no military profession proper, inviting young men on the threshold of life to choose the trade of arms. A soldier's garb was a rare spectacle, and every child ran to the window to gaze at the passing glitter. Whence should come our fighting men if the bugle should blow? You must have men before you have soldiers. Our institutions raised men. Proverbially the Yankee can turn his hand to anything. He likes to do well what he undertakes. He has a pride in showing himself equal to his position. Above all, he has force of personal character. When a Northern regiment makes a charge, it is not merely the weight of so much physical humanity; there goes weight of character with it. Why, there is an accomplished schoolmaster there, and the best blacksmith of the village, and a solid merchant, and a dexterous lawyer, and the handiest coachman of the stable, and a well known stage-driver on a prominent public route, and a butcher with an unerring cleaver, and a jolly tar whose vessel never missed stays with his hand at the wheel; do you suppose that these men are going to charge like so many nameless Hessians? Why, it is a personal matter with every one of them. They go in under orders, to be sure, but they have not lost the sense of individual responsibility. The thing is to be well done because they are there. I know it, my friends, the personal character of our recruits lends weight and irresistibleness to them as soldiers.

There have been no braver men, no stouter soldiers, in all war's red annals, than these armed clerks, farmers, college boys, and their comrades of every peaceful calling. Each community keeps the name of some young hero, nobler than Spartan mothers ever welcomed on his shield. Redder blood never stained the earth, than those full libations our new mustered ranks have poured out for union, law, and liberty. There has been no fighting in the bloody past of human story, where muzzle to muzzle and steel to steel, bold hearts have more truly played the man, than in those battles of two years past in which our citizen armies have saved our nationality. Never have the hardships of the camp, the march, the field, and the trenches, and the merciless privations of imprisonment been more heroically endured. It was not needed—and our President said it well—to consecrate the sacred acres of Gettysburg; that was already done by the deep baptism that had laved those hills, and not that field only, but all the sands and sods and waves our boys' brave blood have crimsoned. No land beneath the blue heavens was ever kept by stouter living bulwarks; no mourners ever had a nobler heritage than those that mourn our soldier-dead. A. L. Stone.

CCLXXX.

LIMIT TO HUMAN DOMINION.

God has given the land to man, but the sea He has reserved to Himself. "The sea is His, and He made it." He has given man "no inheritance in it; no, not so much as to set his foot on." If he enters its domain, he enters it as a pilgrim and a stranger. He may pass over it, but he can have no abiding place upon it. He cannot build his house, nor so much as pitch his tent within it. He cannot mark it with his lines, nor subdue it to his uses, nor rear his monuments upon it. It steadfastly refuses to own him as its lord and master. Its depths do not tremble at his coming. Its waters do not flee when he appeareth. All the strength of all his generations is to it as a feather before the whirlwind; and all the noise of his commerce, and all the thunder of his navies, it can hush in a moment within the silence of its impenetrable abysses. Whole armies have gone down into that unfathomable darkness, and not a floating bubble marks the place of their disappearing. If all the populations of the world, from the beginning of time, were cast into its depths the smooth surface of its oblivion would close over them in an hour; and if all the cities of the earth, and all the structures and monuments ever reared by man were heaped together over that grave for a tombstone, it would not break the surface of the deep or lift back their memory to the light of the sun and the breath of the upper air. The sea would roll its billows in derision, a thousand fathoms deep, above the topmost stone of that mighty sepulchre. The patient earth submits to the rule of man, and the mountains bow their rocky heads before the hammer of his power and the blast of his terrible enginery. The sea cares not for him; not so much as a single hair's breadth can its level be lowered or lifted by all the art, and all the effort, and all the enginery of all the generations of time. He comes and goes upon it, and a moment after it is as if he had never been there. He may engrave his titles upon the mountain top, and quarry his signature into the foundations of the globe, but he cannot write his name on the sea. And thus, by its material uses and its spiritual voices, does the sea ever speak to us, to tell up that its builder and maker is God. He hewed its channels in the deep, and drew its barriers upon the stand, and cast its belted waters around the world. He fitted it to the earth and the sky, and poised them skilfully, the one against the other, when He "measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighted the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance." He gave the sea its wonderful laws, and armed it with its wonderful powers, and set it upon its wonderful work.

"O'er all its breadth His wisdom walks, On all its waves His goodness shines." L. Swain.

CCLXXXI.

THE BATTLE OF CIVILIZATIONS.

Our war is only an appeal from the nineteenth century of freedom and ballots to the system of the sixteenth century. The old conflict,—a new weapon, that is all. The South thought because once, twice, thrice, the spaniel North had gotten down on her knees, that this time, also, poisoned by cotton-dust, she would kiss her feet. But instead of that, for the first time in our history, the North has flung the insult back, and said: "By the Almighty, the Mississippi is mine, and I will have it." Now, when shall come peace? Out of this warlike conflict, when shall come peace? Just as it came in the conflict of parties and discussion. Whenever one civilization gets the uppermost positively, then there will be peace, and never till then.

There is no new thing under the sun. The light shed upon our future is the light of experience. Seventy years have not left us ignorant of what the aristocracy of the South means and plans. The South needs to rule, or she goes by the board. She is a wise power. I respect her for it. She knows that she needs to rule. What does Mr. Jefferson Davis plan? Do you suppose he plans for an imaginary line to divide South Carolina from New York and Massachusetts? What good would that do? An imaginary line would not shut out ideas. But she must bar out those ideas. That is the programme in the South. He imagines he can broaden his base by allying himself to a weaker race. He says: "I will join marriage with the weak races of Mexico and the Southwest, and then, perhaps, I can draw to my side the Northwest, with its interests as an agricultural population, naturally allied to me, and not to the Northeast, with its tariff set of States." And he thinks thus, a strong, quiet, slaveholding empire, he will bar New England and New York out in the cold, and will have comparative peace.

But if he bar New England out in the cold, what then? She is still there. And give it only the fulcrum of Plymouth Rock an idea will upheave the continent. Now, Davis knows that better than we do,—a great deal better. His plan, therefore is to mould an empire so strong, so broad, that it can control New England and New York. He is not only to found a slaveholding despotism, but he is to make it so strong that, by traitors among us, and hemming us in by power, he is to cripple, confine, break down, the free discussion of these Northern States. Unless he does that, he is not safe. He knows it. Now I do not say he will succeed, but I tell you what I think is the plan of a statesmanlike leader of this effort. To make slavery safe, he must mould Massachusetts, not into being a slaveholding Commonwealth, but into being a silent, unprotesting Commonwealth; that Maryland and Virginia, the Carolinas, and Arkansas, may be quiet, peaceable populations. He is a wise man. He knows what he wants, and he wants it with a will, like Julius Csar of old. He has gathered every dollar and every missile south of Mason and Dixon's line to hurl a thunderbolt that shall serve his purpose. And if he does achieve a separate confederacy, and shall be able to bribe the West into neutrality, much less alliance, a dangerous time, and a terrible battle, will these Eastern States have. For they will never make peace. The Yankee who comes out of Cromwell's bosom will fight his Naseby a hundred years, if it last so long, but he will conquer. In other words, Davis will try to rule. If he conquers, he is to bring, in his phrase, Carolina to Massachusetts. And if we conquer, what is our policy? To carry Massachusetts to Carolina. In other words, carry Northern civilization all over the South. It is a contest between civilizations. Which ever conquers supersedes the other. W. Phillips.

CCLXXXII.

SECESSION THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

Severed from us, South Carolina must have a government. You see now a reign of terror,—threats to raise means. That can only last a day. Some system must give a support to a government. It is an expensive luxury. You must lay taxes to support it. Where will you levy your taxes? They must rest on productions. Productions are the result of skilled labor. You must educate your laborer, if you would have the means for carrying on a government. Despotisms are cheap; free governments are a dear luxury,—the machinery is complicated and expensive. If the South wants a theoretical republic, she must pay for it, she must have a basis for taxation. How will she pay for it? Why, Massachusetts, with a million workmen,—men, women, and children,—the little feet that can just toddle bringing chips from the wood-pile.—Massachusetts only pays her own board and lodging, and lays by about four per cent a year. And South Carolina, with one half idlers, and the other half slaves, a slave doing only half the work of a freeman,—only one quarter of the population actually at work, how much do you suppose she lays up? Lays up a loss! By all the laws of political economy, she lays up bankruptcy; of course she does! Put her out, and let her see how sheltered she has been from the laws of trade by the Union! The free labor of the North pays her plantation patrol; we pay for her government, we pay for her postage, and for everything else. Launch her out, and let her see if she can make the year's ends meet! And when she tries, she must educate her labor in order to get the basis for taxation. Educate slaves! Make a locomotive with its furnaces of open wirework, fill them with anthracite coal, and when you have raised it to a white heat, mount and drive it through a powder magazine, and you are safe, compared with a slaveholding community educating its slaves. But South Carolina must do it, in order to get the basis for taxation to support an independent government. The moment she does it, she removes the safeguard of slavery.

What is the contest in Virginia now? Between the men who want to make their slaves mechanics, for the increased wages it will secure, and the men who oppose, for fear of the influence it will have on the general security of slave property and white throats. Just that dispute will go on, wherever the Union is dissolved. Slavery comes to an end by the laws of trade. Hang up your Sharpe's rifle, my valorous friend! The slave does not ask the help of your musket. He only says, like old Diogenes to Alexander, "Stand out of my light!" Just take your awkward proportions, you Yankee Democrat and Republican, out of the light and heat of God's laws of political economy, and they will melt the slaves' chains away! W. Phillips.

CCLXXXIII.

THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT.

No matter where you meet a dozen earnest men pledged to a new idea,—wherever you have met them, you have met the beginning of a revolution. Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back. The child feels; he grows into a man, and thinks; another, perhaps, speaks, and the world acts out the thought. And this is the history of modern society. Men undervalue the Anti-slavery movement, because they imagine you can always put your finger on some illustrious moment in history, and say, here commenced the great change which has come over the nation. Not so. The beginning of great changes is like the rise of the Mississippi. A child must stoop and gather away the pebbles to find it. But soon it swells broader and broader, bears on its ample bosom the navies of a mighty republic, fills the Gulf, and divides a continent.

I remember a story of Napoleon which illustrates my meaning. We are apt to trace his control of France to some noted victory, to the time when he camped in the Tuileries, or when he dissolved the Assembly by the stamp of his foot. He reigned in fact when his hand was first felt on the helm of the vessel of state, and that was far back of the time when he had conquered in Italy, or his name had been echoed over two continents. It was on the day when five hundred irresolute men were met in that Assembly which called itself, and pretended to be, the government of France. They heard that the mob of Paris was coming the next morning, thirty thousand strong, to turn them, as was usual in those days, out of doors. And where did this seemingly great power go for its support and refuge? They sent Tallien to seek out a boy-lieutenant,—the shadow of an officer,—so thin and pallid that, when he was placed on the stand before them, the President of the Assembly, fearful, if the fate of France rested on the shrunken form, the ashy cheek before him, that all hope was gone, asked, "Young man, can you protect the Assembly?" And the stern lips of the Corsican boy parted only to reply, "I always do what I undertake!" Then and there Napoleon ascended his throne; and the next day, from the steps of St. Roche, thundered forth the cannon which taught the mob of Paris, for the first time, that it had a master. That was the commencement of the Empire. So the Anti-slavery movement commenced unheeded in that "obscure hole" which Mayor Otis could not find, occupied by a printer and a black boy. W. Phillips.

CCLXXXIV.

"TOUCH NOT SLAVERY"

What! you the descendants of those men of iron who preferred a life-or-death struggle with misery on the bleak and wintry coast of New England to submission to priestcraft and kingcraft; you, the offspring of those hardy pioneers who set their faces against all the dangers and difficulties that surround the early settler's life; you, who subdued the forces of wild nature, cleared away the primeval forest, covered the end less prairie with human habitations; you, this race of bold reformers who blended together the most incongruous elements of birth and creed, who built up a government which you called a model republic, and undertook to show mankind how to be free; you, the mighty nation of the West, that presumes to defy the world in arms, and to subject a hemisphere to its sovereign dictation; you, who boast of recoiling from no enterprise ever so great, and no problem ever so fearful—the spectral monster of Slavery stares you in the face, and now your blood runs cold, and all your courage fails you? For half a century it has disturbed the peace of this Republic; it has arrogated to itself your national domain; it has attempted to establish its absolute rule, and to absorb even your future development; it has disgraced you in the eyes of mankind, and now it endeavors to ruin you if it cannot rule you; it raises its murderous hand against the institutions most dear to you; it attempts to draw the power of foreign nations upon your heads; it swallows up the treasures you have earned by long years of labor; it drinks the blood of your sons and the tears of your wives and now, every day it is whispered in your ears, "Whatever Slavery may have done to you, whatever you may suffer, touch it not! No matter how many thousand millions of your wealths it may cost, no matter how much blood you may have to shed in order to disarm its murderous hand, touch it not! No matter how many years of peace and prosperity you may have to sacrifice in order to prolong its existence, touch it not! And if it should cost you your honor, touch it not!"

Listen to this story: On the Lower Potomac, as the papers tell us, a negro comes within our lines, and tells the valiant defenders of the Union that his master conspires with the rebels, and has a quantity of arms concealed in a swamp; our soldiers go and find the arms; the master reclaims the slave; the slave is given up; the master ties him to his horse, drags him along eleven miles to his house, lashes him to a tree, and, with the assistance of his overseer, whips him three hours—three mortal hours; then the negro dies. That black man served the Union; Slavery attempts to destroy the Union; the Union surrenders the black man to Slavery, and he is whipped to death—touch it not! Let an imperishable blush of shame cover every cheek in this boasted land of freedom—but be careful not to touch Slavery! Ah, what a dark divinity is this, that we must sacrifice to it our peace, our prosperity, our blood, our future, our honor! What an insatiable vampire is this that drinks out the very marrow of our manliness! Pardon me; this sounds like a dark dream, like the offspring of a hypochondriac imagination; and yet—have I been unjust in what I have said? Carl Schurz.

CCLXXXV.

OHIO.

Ohio rises before the world as the majestic witness to the beneficent reality of the democratic principle. A commonwealth younger in years than he who addresses you, not long ago having no visible existence but in the emigrant wagons, now numbers almost as large a population as that of all England when it gave birth to Raleigh, and Bacon, and Shakespeare, and began its continuous attempts at colonizing America. Each one of her inhabitants gladdens in the fruit of his own toil. She possesses wealth that must be computed by thousands of millions; and her frugal, industrious and benevolent people, at once daring and prudent, unfettered in the use of their faculties, restless in enterprise, do not squander the accumulations of their industry in vain show, but ever go on to render the earth more productive, more beautiful, and more convenient to man; mastering for mechanical purposes the unwitting forces of nature; keeping exemplary good faith with their public creditors; building in half a century more. churches than all England has raised since this continent was discovered; endowing and sustaining universities and other seminaries of learning. Conscious of the dynamic power of mind in action as the best of fortresses, Ohio keeps no standing army but that of her school-teachers, of whom she pays more than twenty thousand; she provides a library for every school-district; she counts among her citizens more than three hundred thousand men who can bear arms, and she has more than twice that number of children registered as students in her public schools. Here the purity of domestic morals is maintained by the virtue and dignity of woman. In the heart of the temperate zone of this continent, in the land of corn, of wheat, and the vine, the eldest daughter of the Ordinance of 1787, already the young mother of other commonwealths that bid fair to vie with her in beauty, rises in her loveliness and glory, crowned with cities, and challenges the admiration of the world. Hither should come the political skeptic, who, in his despair, is ready to strand the ship of state; for here he may learn how to guide it safely on the waters. Should some modern Telemachus, heir to an island empire, touch these shores, here he may observe the vitality and strength of the principle of popular power; take from the book of experience the lesson that in public affairs great and happy results follow in proportion to faith in the efficacy of that principle, and learn to rebuke ill-advised counsellors who pronounce the most momentous and most certain of political truths a delusion and a failure. G. Bancroft.

CCLXXXVI.

THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN THE NORTH AND SOUTH.

It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. The question is, What will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. What will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly—done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us: "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone—have never disturbed them—so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this, an any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we can not justly object to its nationality—its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension—its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces either of destruction to the government or of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT. A. Lincoln.

CCLXXXVII.

THE PRETEXT OF REBELLION.

If war must come—if the bayonet must be used to maintain the Constitution—I can say, before God, my conscience is clear. I have struggled long for a peaceful solution of the difficulty. I have not only tendered those States what was theirs of right, but I have gone to the very extreme off magnanimity, The return we receive is war, armies marched upon our Capital obstructions and danger to our navigation, letters of marque to invite pirates to prey upon our commerce, a concerted movement to blot out the United States of America from the map of the globe. The question is, Are we to be stricken down by those who, when they can no longer govern, threaten to destroy? What cause, what excuse do disunionists give us for breaking up the best government on which the sun of heaven ever shed its rays? They are dissatisfied with the result of a Presidential election. Did they never get beaten before? Are we to resort to the sword when we get defeated at the ballot-box? I understand that the voice of the people expressed in the mode appointed by the Constitution must command the obedience of every citizen. They assume, on the election of a particular candidate, that their rights are not safe in the Union. What evidence do they present of this? I defy any man to show any act on which it is based. What act has been omitted or been done? I appeal to these assembled thousands, that so far as the constitutional rights of the Southern States—I will say the constitutional rights of slaveholders—are concerned, nothing has been done, and nothing omitted, of which they can complain.

There has never been a time, from the day that Washington was inaugurated first President of these United States, when the rights of the Southern States stood firmer under the laws of the land than they do now; there never was a time when they had not as good a cause for disunion as they have to-day. What good cause have they now that has not existed under every administration? If they say the Territorial question—now, for the first time, there is no act of Congress prohibiting slavery anywhere. If it be the non-enforcement of the laws, the only complaints that I have heard have been of the too vigorous and faithful fulfillment of the Fugitive Slave Law. Then what reason have they? The slavery question is a mere excuse. The election of Lincoln is a mere pretext. The present secession movement is the result of an enormous conspiracy formed more than a year since—foraged by leaders in the Southern Confederacy more than twelve months ago. They use the slavery question as a means to aid the accomplishment of their ends. They desired the election of a Northern candidate, by a sectional vote, in order to show that the two sections cannot live together. When the history of the two years from the Lecompton charter down to the Presidential election shall be written, it will be shown that the scheme was deliberately made to break up this Union. They desired a Northern Republican to be elected by a purely Northern vote, and now assign this fact as a reason why the sections may not longer live together. If the disunion candidate in the late Presidential contest had carried the united South, their scheme was, the Northern candidate successful, to seize the Capital last spring, and, by a united South and divided North, hold it. That scheme was defeated in the defeat of the disunion candidate in several of the Southern states. The conspiracy is now known. Armies have been raised, war is levied to accomplish it. There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against them. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots or traitors. S. A. Douglass.

CCLXXXVIII.

NO NEUTRALS; ONLY PATRIOTS OR TRAITORS.

But this is no time for a detail of causes. The conspiracy is now known. Armies have been raised, war is levied to accomplish it. There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against them. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots or tractors. We cannot close our eyes to the sad and solemn fact that war does exist. The government must be maintained, its enemies overthrown; and the more stupendous our preparations the less the bloodshed, and the shorter the struggle will be. But we must remember certain restraints on our action even in time of war. We are a Christian people, and the war must be prosecuted in a manner recognized by Christian nations. We must not invade constitutional rights. The innocent must not suffer, nor women or children be the victims. Savages must not be let loose. But while I sanction no war on the rights of others, I will implore my countrymen not to lay down their arms until our own rights are recognized. The Constitution and its guarantees are our birth right, and I am ready to enforce that inalienable right to the last extent. We cannot recognize secession. Recognize it once, and you have not only dissolved government, but you have destroyed social order, and upturned the foundations of society You have inaugurated anarchy in its worst form, and will shortly experience all the horrors of the French Revolution.

Then we have a solemn duty,—to maintain the government. The greater our unanimity, the speedier the day of peace. We have prejudices to overcome from a fierce party contest waged a few short months since. Yet these must be allayed. Let us lay aside all criminations and recriminations as to the origin of these difficulties. When we shall have again a country, with the United States flag floating over it, and respected on every inch of American soil, it will then be time enough to ask who and what brought all this upon us. I have said more than I intended to say. It is a sad task to discuss questions so fearful as civil war; but sad as it is, bloody and disastrous as I expect the war will be, I express it as my conviction, before God, that it is the duty of every American citizen to rally round the flag of his country. S. A. Douglass.

CCLXXXIX.

ON THE ORDINANCE OF SECESSION IN THE GEORGIA CONVENTION.

This step, once taken, can never be recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that follow will rest on the convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth; when your green fields of waving harvests shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and the very car of war sweeping over our land; our temples of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolation of war upon us, who but this convention will be held responsible for it? and who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetrate?

Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can give that will ever satisfy yourselves in calmer moments,—what reasons you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us? What reason can you give the nations of the earth to justify it? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case, and to what cause, or one overt act can you point, on which to rest the plea of justification? What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? and what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong deliberately and purposely done by the government at Washington of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge the answer! While, on the other hand, let me show the facts (and believe me, gentlemen, I am not here the advocate of the North, but am here the firm friend and lover of the South and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and every other man's interest, the words of truth and soberness,) let me show the facts, I say, of which I wish you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand as records authentic in the history of our country.

When we of the South demanded the slave-trade, or the importation of Africans for the cultivation of our lands, did they not yield the right for twenty years? When we asked a three-fifths representation in Congress for our slaves, was it not granted? When we asked and demanded the return of any fugitive from justice, or the recovery of those persons owing labor or allegiance, was it not incorporated in the constitution? and again ratified and strengthened in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850? Do you reply that in many instances they have violated this compact, and have not been faithful to their engagements? As individuals and local communities they may have done so; but not by the sanction of government; for that has always been true to Southern interests.

Leaving out of the view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars you must expend in a war with the North, there will be thousands and tens of thousands of your sons and brothers slain in battle, and opened up as sacrifices upon the altar of ambition,—and for what, we ask again? It is for the overthrow of the American government, established by our common ancestry cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on the broad principles of Right, Justice, and Humanity? And, as such, I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesman and patriots in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest government,—the most equal in its rights,—the most just in its decisions—the most lenient in its measures: and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men, that the sun in heaven ever shone upon.

Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this, under which we have lived for more than three quarters of a century, in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety while the elements of peril are round us with peace and tranquility accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed—is the height of madness, folly and wickedness, to which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote. A. H. Stephens.

CCXC.

"THE HIRELING LABORERS" OF THE NORTH.

The Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hammond] exclaims: "The man who lives by daily labor, your whole hireling class of manual laborers, are essentially slaves; and they feel galled by their degradation." What a sentiment is this to hear uttered in the councils of this democratic republic! This language of scorn and contempt is addressed to senators who were not nursed by a slave; whose lot it was to toil with their own hands,—to eat bread, earned, not by the sweat of another's brow, but by their own.

Sir, should the Senator and his agitators and lecturers come to Massachusetts, on a mission to teach our "hireling class of manual laborers," our "slaves," the "tremendous secret of the ballot-box," and to help "combine and lead them," these stigmatized "hirelings" would reply to the Senator and his associates: "we are freemen; we are the peers of the gifted and the wealthy; we know 'the tremendous secret of the ballot-box;' and we mould and fashion these institutions that bless and adorn our free Commonwealth! These public schools are ours, for the education of our children; these libraries, with their accumulated treasures, are ours; these multitudinous and varied pursuits of life, where intelligence and skill find their reward, are ours. Labor is here honored and respected, and great examples incite us to action.

"All around us, in the professions, in the marts of commerce, on the exchange where merchant princes and capitalists do congregate, in these manufactories and workshops where the products of every clime are fashioned into a thousand forms of utility and beauty, on these smiling farms fertilized by the sweat of free labor, in every position of private and of public life,—are our associates, who were but yesterday what you call 'hireling laborers,' and therefore, 'essentially slaves!' In every department of human effort are noble men who sprang from our ranks,-men whose good deeds will be felt, and will live in the grateful memories of men, when the stones reared by the hands of affection to their honored names shall crumble into dust. Our eyes glisten and our hearts throb over the bright, glowing, and radiant pages of our history that record the deeds of patriotism of the sons of New England who sprang from our ranks, and wore the badges of toil. While the names of Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Nathaniel Greene, and Paul Revere, live on the brightest pages of our history, the mechanics of Massachusetts and New England will never want illustrious examples to incite us to noble aspirations and noble deeds.

"Go home, sir, and say to your privileged class, which you vauntingly say leads progress, civilization, and refinement, that in the opinion of the 'hireling laborers' of Massachusetts, if you have no sympathy for your African bondsmen, you should, at least, sympathize with the millions of your own race, whose labor your have dishonored and degraded by slavery! You should teach your millions of poor and ignorant white men, so long oppressed by your policy, the 'tremendous secret that the ballot-box is stronger than an army with banners!' You should 'combine' and lead them to the adoption of a policy which shall secure their own emancipation from a degrading thraldom!" H. Wilson.