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 ON OCCASION OF THE NATIONAL FAST, 
 April 30, 18G3. 
 
 DELIVERED IN WATERTOWN, 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHN WEISS. 
 
 J 
 IT 
 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY, 
 
 245, Washington Street. 
 1863. 
 
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$jtor%ru .Strength anb Mealmess. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 ON OCCASION OF THE NATIONAL FAST, 
 
 April 30, 18G3> . # 
 
 DELIVERED IN WATERTOWN, 
 
 REV. JOHN WEISS. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY, 
 
 245, Washington Street. 
 1863. 
 

 
 61 SOS 
 
 'OS 
 
Jtortbcrn Stttngtlr an)) Mealiness. 
 
 Two years have passed away since the first gun of 
 treason summoned Americans to the defence of their 
 form of government, and to a fresh valuation of the 
 principles which it pretended to represent. Men 
 live fast in such times, and gray hairs make more 
 rapidly than usual. We have been sternly taught to 
 know things never before suspected; to hurriedly 
 revise what we knew previously ; to count our 
 acquisitions by the marks of suffering. There is no 
 doubt that the country has made much progress in 
 self-knowledge. Can it show any progress in the 
 vindication of her best ideas? 
 
 The Northern mind has been, till very lately, so 
 desponding, that a person ignorant of affairs would 
 have presumed failure at most points, and in direc- 
 tions the most vital. Never was melancholy so 
 causeless, or so continually threatened by the facts. 
 The American man of business is trained in a poor 
 school, if a tenacious cheeriness be any thing worth 
 
a man's while to protect and cultivate. His moods 
 follow the fluctuations of trade, the condition of the 
 market, the prospects for crops and supplies, the rise 
 and fall of stocks. He watches every thing ner- 
 vously, — the total of exports and imports, the rates 
 of exchange and insurance, the complexion of local 
 politics. Every bulletin extravagantly raises or de- 
 presses him. A victory is on the point of quenching 
 the Rebellion ; a defeat is sure to precipitate foreign 
 intervention. Unhappily, we are a reading people, 
 and newspapers are not dear. We should have been 
 happier if we had not devoured so many columns 
 of special correspondents' views, — men on the spot 
 with powerful microscopes, who hold up the war, as 
 a lecturer displays a drop of putrid water, to startle 
 and distress us with the monstrous vices and mis- 
 takes it has engendered. " Can the country swallow 
 this, and live ? " we have exclaimed. Yes, all this, 
 and more, as harmlessly as water. Too many news- 
 papers put the country's happiness in peril more 
 certainly than all those inevitable accessories of a 
 great contest like that which we have waged, and 
 are on the point of bringing to a successful termina- 
 tion. 
 
 Let a brief retrospect instruct our fears. What 
 was the task which lay before us two years ago, and 
 how much of it has been accomplished? When 
 President Lincoln called for seventy thousand men, 
 and the rioters at Montgomery were laughing at his 
 simplicity, a great slaveholding tendency was on the 
 
point of consolidating every Southern and Border 
 State into the unity of Rebellion. The sin of fifty 
 years rose wrathfully, and held its poisoned cup to 
 the trembling lips of the country. Not a Border 
 State would send a man to cover Washington. Gov- 
 ernors insulted the Executive with impunity, and 
 encouraged citizens to arm in the interest of treason 
 rather than of law. Forts, arsenals, and navy -yards, 
 points of defence, and the means for defending, fell 
 into rebellious hands. Washington had slavery 
 behind and before, determined, malignant, command- 
 ing every approach, conscious of secret treason at 
 the North that was supported by a widely ramified 
 society. Some of the best officers of the army and 
 the navy turned their swords against the mother's 
 bosom that had just been nourishing them. Ships 
 and regiments were scattered. There was distrac- 
 tion in the place of concentration, a deliberate under- 
 valuing of the hostile power, a delusive expectation 
 of some early adjustment. Every thing conspired 
 to paralyze the country, and to make disunion an 
 accomplished fact. 
 
 In this condition, we commenced the undertaking 
 to repossess important points, to recover control of 
 the great streams and harbors, and to slowly press 
 back the tide of Rebellion. At the most, we hoped 
 to preserve neutrality among the Border States ; 
 and as for the institution of slavery, that was still 
 the great American taboo, upon which no hand could 
 be laid. 
 
We began with secret treason at home, and ill-will 
 abroad. We were embarrassed by not exactly know- 
 ing the extent of these hostile feelings, and what 
 influence they would exert. At this time, the 
 boundary of the United States of North America 
 could be drawn with difficulty from Fortress Mon- 
 roe, skipping treasonable counties along the Chesa- 
 peake, avoiding Baltimore, clinging to the Pennsyl- 
 vania line, and down the Obio as far as Cairo. As 
 a boy plays hop-scotch, it might be traced from the 
 Atlantic to the Mississippi ; and there it stopped : 
 and nothing but the sudden uprising of the people 
 kept it there for a while, till the process of recon- 
 struction could commence. In the Gulf of Mexico, 
 the flag waved over the single sand island upon which 
 Fort Pickens is built. 
 
 We really knew nothing of the art of war, nor 
 how armies should be enrolled, disciplined, victualled, 
 and clothed. We had no improved cannon or pro- 
 jectiles. Routine pervaded the service by sea and 
 land; an iron-clad was undreamed of; cavalry was 
 considered superfluous; political aspirants hastened 
 for commissions, and avaricious traders began plun- 
 dering the Government by contract. The first popu- 
 lar enthusiasm was the only gleam that shot athwart 
 this sullen sky ; and, notwithstanding this enthusi- 
 asm, what ignorance pervaded the popular mind as 
 to the historical emergency ! Few persons counted 
 correctly the strokes of the hour which was striking. 
 The political and moral connection of events with 
 
the past history of the country ; the absolute neces- 
 sity of the struggle ; the impossibility of a peaceful 
 solution ; the terrible purposes of the slave-power ; 
 the insignificance of the slave, his dread of rising, 
 his inability to help us, his immense importance as 
 the war-making power of a secession movement, — 
 what crude and contradictory theories were afloat 
 respecting the real nature and the elements of the 
 crisis! Such ignorance is more weakening than 
 the defection of fleets and armies ; for it was con- 
 tinually sending a boy to perform a man's errand. 
 When the history of a nation is reaching suddenly 
 forward to a great conclusion, what kind of a ges- 
 ture will she make, if the people she wants to save 
 have not made up their minds that they really need 
 vigorous saving, and complain that she pulls them 
 along in striding? The politicians tried to catch 
 this winged History, and harness her to their plough. 
 In fifty days, this rugged bit of ground would be 
 turned up, and the season's work well over. But 
 the ploughshare of God's thought, driven by the 
 dread event, was cleaving the nation's mind, and lay- 
 ing it open to the sun and rain of heaven. History 
 has underscored her intention with the blood of two 
 campaigns. She said, " Absolute freedom, all the 
 rights of man to all men, union for the sake of 
 liberty ; " but we heard it not till successive cannon- 
 thunders translated it into the vernacular. 
 
 But, although this position seemed gloomy enough, 
 how would its gloom have deepened if we could have 
 
foreseen every complication, obstacle, and distress 
 which the war itself has developed ! To have anti- 
 cipated, under those early circumstances, a struggle 
 of this magnitude, and crowded with such tremen- 
 dous embarrassments, would have sent the people's 
 blood from the cheek to the heart, routed in advance 
 by an appalling prospect. Fortunately, the war and 
 the people have grown together, and every nettle 
 of danger has unexpectedly put forth a flower of 
 safety. 
 
 What, then, has been achieved? 
 
 The boundary of the United States has been 
 steadily encroaching upon the eclipse of Rebellion, 
 and the line has never for a moment receded. Fol- 
 lowing the Potomac to the Blue Bridge, it runs 
 down to North Carolina, cutting in half the Old 
 Dominion. Tennessee will soon plant the flag upon 
 her southern limit, on its way to the Gulf. Practi- 
 cally, Kentucky belongs to the United States, not- 
 withstanding her disloyal element. Self-interest will 
 soon compel her to share the sentiment which has 
 fixed Missouri irrevocably upon the Northern side. 
 Of all the points which we have recovered by land 
 or sea, we have lost again only the harbor of Gal- 
 veston. If we speak of immediate probabilities, it 
 is reasonable to say, that we shall control the Missis- 
 sippi ; and, when the United States pass freely up and 
 down that stream, its western bank will not long be 
 the limit of their practical jurisdiction. 
 
 We have tried the strength of Northern treason ; 
 
we know where it is, and what its means and objects 
 are. In every town and village of the North, the 
 members of the two classes — sympathizers with 
 slavery, and opponents of the Administration — are 
 well known. Disaffection is unmasked, and brought 
 to daylight, where it chafes hitherto in vain against 
 the deliberate purpose of the people. This is one of 
 the greatest achievements of the war. 
 
 "We need not speak of the improvements in the 
 service by land and sea : they are too numerous. In 
 the act of engaging the enemy, we learn to improve 
 our whole equipment; in protecting the national 
 life, we test each novelty of warfare for the benefit 
 of the civilized world : so that, when we emerge from 
 this contest, it will be with an intelligence formida- 
 bly armed, springing like Minerva, full-panoplied, 
 from the racking forehead of the country. 
 
 Foreign intervention, which was never imminent, 
 is now less probable than ever. The people of 
 England are becoming instructed upon the cause 
 and object of the Rebellion. We may well o-rant 
 them a little time to acquire a healthy opinion on 
 this point; for we took some time ourselves: it had 
 to be beaten into our heads as into theirs. The at- 
 tack of the French upon Mexico was an imperial 
 speculation, inspired by glory, Catholicism, stock- 
 jobbing, and the chance of swindling or of helping 
 the Confederate States according to events. The 
 unexpected resistance of the Mexicans continues to 
 save us from a possible complication in that quarter; 
 
10 
 
 while the Polish insurrection is a European event of 
 so grave a nature, that it distracts the single purpose 
 of the French emperor. Indeed, it is my opinion, 
 that this spark, which we call the Polish revolution, 
 will run through all the liberal tinder of Europe ; 
 it will spread, and not go down. If a man is dis- 
 posed to take advantage of your embarrassments, the 
 least gesture from afar may divert his glance just 
 long enough till you recover a position. The snap- 
 ping of a twig scares the tiger from his meditated 
 spring. 
 
 And what solid triumphs have been wrested from 
 slavery itself! What are slaves worth in Dela- 
 ware ? What will an able-bodied negro sell for in 
 Maryland, in Western Virginia, in Missouri, and up 
 and down the Mississippi ? What is slavery worth 
 to-day in Louisiana ? Not so much as the buttons on 
 Gen. Banks's coat. Emancipation has been pro- 
 claimed in the District of Columbia. Slavery is 
 henceforth illegal in the Territories of the United 
 States. Maryland, Missouri, Western Virginia, will 
 accept the scheme of compensation. What will sla- 
 very, thus girdled by free States, be worth in Ken- 
 tucky and Tennessee ? And the great Proclamation 
 of the new year speaks a word which cannot be 
 recalled, — a legal word, that lifts the idea of eman- 
 cipation into its place of power in Congress, in the 
 Judiciary, in every department of the Government, 
 into every town-meeting between the Atlantic and 
 Pacific. Will a premature peace, followed by politi- 
 
11 
 
 cal intrigue, be able to dislodge it? The past, at 
 least, is secure. The country has let loose a tendency 
 that will become greater than its actual triumphs, if 
 the people continue to hold Northern treason under 
 foot, till victory, followed by an armed occupation of 
 rebellious States, shall make the Presidential word 
 take flesh upon every plantation, and chattels shall 
 stand up living souls. 
 
 Let us not omit from our estimate the effect of 
 this struggle in refining and lifting up the people's 
 hearts. War does not debase a country which wages 
 it to sustain national existence, and to promote the 
 welfare of mankind. When passion and self-interest 
 inspire a war, defeat is a great blessing. Our costly 
 suffering will be the salvation of the South, as it has 
 been the ennobling of ourselves. When every State 
 can count its graves by thousands of sons who took 
 the field for the common defence, from Maine to 
 Missouri, for whom all the ordinary implements of 
 trade and labor were welded into a weapon, and 
 all the customary feelings into a sentiment of duty, 
 there is unity, like that which sorrow creates within 
 a house. Tidings of wounds and death travel to 
 and fro on every wire ; but the telegraph itself 
 does not connect these States together so firmly as 
 the news does which it transmits. There is a com- 
 mon throb of anguish and pride, a common awe in 
 the presence of the invisible, a common prayer for 
 the Almighty strengthening, a common glorying that 
 death came in the way of duty. In this religious 
 
12 
 
 stillness there is an opportunity for the most pre- 
 cious of the country's ideas to take root and flourish. 
 When sometimes I hear a father read those tender 
 letters, which contain last messages delivered from 
 some comrade's pen, the sole relics of death's mo- 
 ment in the skirmish and the battle, it seems to 
 me as if the souls of these brave sons had not gone 
 to heaven, but had come home. Death said to them, 
 " Your country must be reinforced ; " and they 
 hasten at the call, to deepen our religiousness, in- 
 flame our patriotism, and confirm our thoughts with 
 the sincerity which they gained in dying. 
 
 Notwithstanding the flattering nature of this retro- 
 spect which the Divine Providence has secured for 
 us, there is matter enough for humiliation. It is no 
 formal confession of generalities which we have to 
 make at the call of the President. This unfinished 
 war is itself a witness against that unfaithfulness of 
 the popular mind, which was willing to see the evils 
 of the country grow to be so monstrous, that nothing 
 but the sword could cure them. And the duration of 
 the war will measure the extent and virulence of the 
 sins which thrived upon our apathy. The axe is laid 
 unto the root. This is one of the great periods in 
 the life of a people when God grows tired of com- 
 promises, and hews down every tree which does not 
 bear his fruit. We have not yet touched the bottom 
 of this war, which is our retribution. Slavery drew 
 a portion of its vitality from Northern soil. Its sub- 
 tle rootlets undermined the surface, and fastened to 
 
13 
 
 every thing that was immoral and unmanly in the 
 Northern heart. Can their intricate clasp be undone 
 without drawing deeply on our blood ? They are not 
 yet undone ; and God's right hand shall pull at them, 
 and tear them away, though pieces of the flesh go 
 with them, if our heart will not make a cheaper 
 sacrifice. Have we stood for two years amid these 
 graves, and have not discerned that this is a day of 
 God's coming, when he shall thoroughly purge his 
 threshing-floor of this Republic, and gather up his 
 wheat? Who is this that cometh with bloody gar- 
 ments, trampling hearts like grapes for the new wine 
 of his kingdom ? It is the long-suffering God of 
 inexorable justice. When the worst comes, and he 
 has to choose between sparing our hearts and sparing 
 his immutable decrees, he rises terribly, and casts 
 our hearts into his wine-press. Oh, wonderful maker 
 of the world's sound vintages ! Out of these very 
 hearts his justice is expressed. We suffer, but yield 
 the fruits of righteousness. 
 
 So long as the war lasts, it is a judge that sits in 
 purple robes, and calls a delinquent people to its 
 feet. How mad we were with money and the wild 
 joys of speculation ! How luxury and profuse dis- 
 play, and vulgar styles of living, built their streets 
 of palaces, and sat within, scoffing at all gentleness, 
 humility, and temperance, and forbidding even the 
 broken victuals to be tossed to the Golden Rule that 
 begged at the proud doors ! The merchants and the 
 politicians lobbied against the Beatitudes. Intellect 
 
14 
 
 was salaried to believe and teach a lie. How the 
 nation laughed when the words of scorn rolled be- 
 neath the dome-like forehead ! — " There is no higher 
 law. Take an eagle's flight above the Alleghanies, 
 and find no higher law. There is nothing better 
 than the laws which men have made." And the 
 merchants, and the ministers, and the lawyers, and 
 the judges laughed, and said " Amen ! " And all the 
 little traders thanked God that there was no higher 
 law. But God answers to-day, and the message 
 leaps from every cannon, — " Unless my law be 
 within your laws, woe to your laws ! " 
 
 How the politicians built their platforms, and 
 cringed as Slavery ascended the steps to dictate its 
 crime to freemen ! How the people thundered their 
 affirmative to resolutions which denied the first prin- 
 ciples of the country, and the real spirit of her Con- 
 stitution, by denying the natural rights of man ! And 
 all the merchants with Southern connections said 
 that conscience itself was a luxury, which they 
 would give up to save the Union. Now, the Union 
 and conscience are the same : if conscience be deli- 
 vered, the Union is saved. The Union and conscience 
 are together on the rack of war : the tie stretches to 
 the point of breaking. Without conscience, it will fly 
 apart like ravelled tow. 
 
 How we amused ourselves with an inferior and 
 degraded race of people ! We had cant names for 
 them, and saluted them with coarse noises in the 
 street. We crowded into places of entertainment 
 
15 
 
 where the peculiarities of their body and mind were 
 seasoned with jests and music, till the most popular 
 amusement of the middle class of this nation turned 
 upon the degradation of another class. Can a people 
 do that, and live? — laugh in that way, without draw- 
 ing tears mingled with blood ? Can the heart derive 
 a harmless pleasure from the shame and suffering 
 of the unprotected? See how coarse the people 
 grew in consequence of that ! how little they thought 
 of the base act of returning a fugitive ! and how 
 much sublimer they thought an Ethiopian entertain- 
 ment was than the golden rule of him who said, " In- 
 asmuch as ye did it not to them, ye did it not to me " ! 
 And now, because we did it not to them, the same 
 heavenly voice cries, " Depart — into the fire of bat- 
 tle ; become purged by fire ! " And the race which 
 we despised so smilingly is called by God to take 
 rank with us in battle, beneath the flag which we 
 thought waved only for the white men ; whose stars 
 we scornfully imagined were emblems of exclusive 
 truths and privileges. There is nothing exclusive in 
 the designs which God has for a country. When he 
 would raise up a nation, he is no respecter of per- 
 sons. It is not your privilege even to bleed and die 
 exclusively. The slave must see the stars where 
 before he saw only the stripes, else you will change 
 places with him as the stars are blotted from your 
 firmament. This day, God dips a people's contempt 
 in blood. 
 
 How well the negro contrasts his occasional noble 
 
16 
 
 services with this contempt ! What did one say, 
 when a flat-boat, filled with soldiers, grounded under 
 the shower of the enemy's bullets in attempting to 
 land at Rodman's Point ? He was the only negro 
 on board. All the soldiers prostrated themselves in 
 the bottom of the boat to escape the fire. " Some- 
 body's got to die to git us out of dis," he said ; " and 
 it may as well be me." He succeeded in pushing off 
 the boat, and fell pierced by five bullets. Yes, 
 somebody's got to die to get us out of this. The 
 instinct of the country spoke in the heroism of this 
 despised and rejected man. 
 
 But our contempt is not yet all dipped in the sacri- 
 ficial stream. The nation still holds in its bosom 
 the men who deny all rights except their own, and 
 who want a Constitution, as old tyrants wanted 
 the peine forte et dure, — a machine to squeeze 
 out of other men their breath. This vulgar and ma- 
 lignant element, which parades the sacred name of 
 Democracy, has survived the chastening of the war, 
 still dreams and plots an ignominious peace, and 
 prevents a perfect sacrifice from being offered up to 
 God. It hates the slave, as it ever did ; it hates 
 the slave's friend, as it ever must do ; it hates the 
 rolling of the wheels of God's mercy ; it loves itself, 
 and hates mankind as despots hate who honestly 
 pronounce their proper name. Is this a day of 
 humiliation ? Who, I pray you, shall be humiliated 
 on this day, if it be not the man who is willing to 
 transmit another war to his children by transmitting 
 
IT 
 
 its yet unvanquished cause ; whose sympathies are 
 with the class that lives by an exclusive privilege ; 
 who is willing to take that slaveholding hand 
 which is dipped to the elbow and to the armpits in 
 the blood of honest farmers' sons and of mechanics, 
 who are the bone and gristle of a true Democracy ? 
 For shame, false Democrats, false editors of treason, 
 false freemen, who care for all this blood no more 
 than if it ran, a pig's slaughter, in the gutter ; who 
 would sell it all to have slavery back to-morrow, as 
 men sell bullocks' blood to manufacturers ! To have 
 it written above all these graves, " This man died to 
 let slavery back again into America," — would you 
 like to have that the epitaph of your splendid friends 
 at Newbern, in the stout intrenchment of Washington, 
 before Vicksburg and Fredericksburg, in Nims's bat- 
 tery, or Dupont's fleet ? May God save them, but 
 not save them to see other graves so insulted and 
 dishonored ! The blood which your children spilt at 
 Antietam, and all along the ravening fronts of battle, 
 must nourish God, not Satan. See to it that slavery 
 does not taste a drop of that redeeming liquid. See 
 to it by humiliating the men who will not humiliate 
 themselves in this time of your trials. The shield 
 which History shall lift up in the face of your coun- 
 try's future will have one side lustrous with the 
 names of your maimed or dead preservers, and the 
 other side infamous with the names of your living 
 betrayers. Every town and village shall furnish its 
 list of glory and of shame to make that record true. 
 2 
 
18 
 
 We have all cause for humiliation in the weak- 
 ness of our moral convictions. In this protracted 
 struggle, despondency has often seized us because 
 we have secretly doubted whether, after all, Slavery 
 were not as strong as Freedom. Many people begin 
 to say, that it is only a question of time and numbers, 
 and that the side which has the last dollar will pre- 
 serve or dissolve the Union. This shows a wavering 
 faith in the ideas which the Union represents. Men 
 are astonished to find the South so capable of resist- 
 ance, and so well provided at every point with all the 
 latest requisites of warfare. They recognize in its 
 unanimity and tenacity the elements which have lent 
 success to every cause. The Rebellion is a lens, which 
 brings all the intelligence and passion of the South 
 concentrated into a fiery focus, which its leaders 
 flash in our faces whithersoever we turn. All its 
 women are of one mind and resolution : their hatred 
 of the North is a fresh soul to slavery. Even the 
 best lyric* which the war has produced has been 
 written on the Southern side, and sings a happy 
 inspiration of pathos and high resolve. If in the 
 beginning we doubted whether Southern men were 
 in earnest, that doubt has been buried in a hundred 
 thousand graves. 
 
 We have, been so often baffled, that some have 
 secretly whispered, " Perhaps, after all, God intends 
 to make two nations here, and to grant a lease of 
 
 * "Maryland, — my Maryland." 
 
19 
 
 brilliant existence to a slaveholding Republic, such 
 as Athens and Sparta were. The best we can do 
 is to maintain against it the southernmost possible 
 line, and set up the glory of free labor and intelli- 
 gence." It seems to some people as if this contest 
 had become a fight between two powers of nearly 
 equal consideration in the sight of History and Pro- 
 vidence ; for, if great principles of freedom cannot 
 be vindicated, their greatness does not appear. The 
 stronger side is the successful one ; and God is 
 always plainly on the stronger side. 
 
 When we doubt our own convictions in this way, 
 it is time to feel humiliated. If a nation has no 
 faith in its legitimate principle, it cannot stand 
 before an illegitimate one, be it ever so puny. It is 
 time for us to say to God, " Increase our faith in the 
 divine nature of free labor and free men," and to 
 ask God if it be indeed true, as some of us suspect, 
 that he has a leaning toward the iniquity of slavery. 
 For it comes to that, when we fall into despond- 
 ency : we say virtually, that God is on the point of 
 joining the enemy, disgusted with our failures, 
 weaknesses, and jealousies, disheartened at our want 
 of organizing talent and whole-souled patriotism, 
 driven by stress of imbecility into the arms of des- 
 perate and skilful men, who make no secret of their 
 godless intention, but who, nevertheless, win a kind 
 of admiration from the Divine Mind by their gifts of 
 pluck and strategy. God would doubtless prefer to 
 be with us; but we are such children, with our 
 
20 
 
 superfine views and feelings, and have made such 
 botchwork of the glorious lesson which he set, that 
 he finds villanous energy more exhilarating, and will 
 support the able action, though it be the riveting of 
 fetters upon men made in his image and supported 
 by his breath. 
 
 No : such disheartening moods do not represent 
 the general mind : we are traitors to the nation 
 when we indulge them. This is not a contest of 
 ambition ; here are not two passions nearly matched. 
 We fight for the supremacy of no vulgar motive. 
 On the one hand is the yearning of all mankind for 
 the right of owning itself, working for itself, and 
 living intelligently for the common good. The pro- 
 phets of poverty and misery have, in all ages, 
 dreamed of that country in which men should 
 possess their own souls and bodies, and live untram- 
 melled to the praise of God. This prophecy of a 
 land, in which no man, but where mankind, shall 
 reign, dawned in the conscious hearts of our fathers, 
 who saw that America was the land of the poor man's 
 dream. That yearning was called once "the spirit 
 of 76:" but it is the spirit and the fact of '63; 
 and that, with all civilized and honorable things, all 
 beneficent institutions, all knowledge, art, all manual 
 and mental skill, all refined delights and manly ex- 
 pectations, expresses the divine intent of God. 
 
 On the other side is a direct crime against 
 God, because an explicit contradiction of these 
 things, in the interest of barbarism for the mass, 
 
21 
 
 and culture for the few. It is a crime that is four 
 million times repeated every day. It is carved 
 in the crouching attitude of every slave, stamped in 
 the brutified countenance of every poor white, 
 announced from every auction -block, where God, 
 in the persons of his little ones, is knocked off to 
 bidders. It poisons the edge of every bayonet, and 
 its forked tongue darts viciously from the cannon's 
 jaws. 
 
 Do you think that the power is on this side be- 
 cause the newspapers tell you that we have no 
 generals, but a great many contractors and a horde 
 of bunglers ; that the blockade is inefficient, starva- 
 tion a chimera, Knights of the Golden Circle a million 
 strong, every ship-yard in England engaged for the 
 rebels, and every town in America a harbor for 
 traitors ? The power is on the side of Faith. A 
 great popular conviction that God prefers light to 
 darkness, and democracy to aristocracy, fed by the 
 obstinate prayers of all men and women, is the Gene- 
 ral which leads your hosts, and the draft which 
 keeps them recruited. Every moment that your 
 faith wavers, God feels that the North is weaker : 
 when you believe in him, your salvation is at hand. 
 Is there a God? and is there a difference between 
 justice and injustice? O North Wind ! blow strong 
 with God's breath in twenty million men ! 
 
 How soon the grass grows over the earthquake's 
 
22 
 
 edge, and down the chasm into which houses slipped, 
 marking the way they went by the stains of lace- 
 rated hearts ! The little blades come and feed like 
 insects upon every blotch of butchery, till the terror 
 and suffering have all disappeared. So no miasma 
 spreads ; and children play up and down the green 
 slopes where other children were swallowed up 
 alive ; and the vine-dresser sings as he picks shriv- 
 elled grapes from the full bunches whose roots are 
 close to the restless heat below. 
 
 Truth creeps everywhere, like vegetation, and 
 appears the most luxuriantly upon the seams and 
 fractures of mankind. Lovers repair unconsciously 
 to bowers that ruins nourished to conceal their 
 unsightliness : in those charming coverts, they sit 
 close upon moss-emblazoned epitaphs, and whisper 
 the first intimations that they live for ever. 
 
 The Spring emphasizes the usual language of 
 Hope with which she claims the year. It gives the 
 grass a deeper green, and tills the buds of fruit-trees 
 with the flavors of Autumn. In the morning I 
 wake with such happiness, that the blue-bird which 
 comes close to the window, upon the spray of the 
 elm-tree, seems to be singing my own heart-full of 
 thanks to God for the forefeeling of victory. A 
 pleased surprise appears struggling out of the whole 
 face of Nature. There is blood in this grass, and 
 mounting to the topmost branches : you will see it 
 in the apple-blossoms. It is the blood of your 
 kindred, which seemed wasted for nothing as it ran 
 
23 
 
 away into the pores of the ground, — the precious 
 drops which you would so gladly have ransomed, 
 and remanded to the heart, if you could have done 
 it, standing by with all your fortune, as they fell. 
 Short-sighted husbandry of man ! long-sighted eco- 
 nomy of God ! It gives America a greener spring 
 than she has seen since Lexington. It sends into 
 all the fruit such a flavor as is seldom tasted more 
 than once a century. Hail, year of God's farming ! 
 Hail, summer of an emancipated continent, which 
 shall lay up in storehouse and barn the great truths 
 that were worth the costly dressing of a people's 
 blood ! And hail to you all, families, who show the 
 mark of the spear in your sides over your hearts, 
 out of which you felt some dear blood slip, till you 
 almost swooned with the weakness and the anguish ! 
 Your blood is all safe : Republican Truth caught it 
 as it fell, and you see your children everywhere. If 
 we blush with pleasure, it is their blood. You can- 
 not look in a single face without seeing them. They 
 shall rise in the new life of a country which their 
 own arms helped to tear from the embrace of 
 Treason that she might be chastely wedded to 
 Almighty Truth. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 012 027 027 8 g 
 
Hollinger 
 
 pH8.5 
 
 Mill Run F3-1955