LIBRARY OF CONGRESS II I 11 012 028 363 7 £ Hollinger pH8.5 Mill Run F3-1955 E 458 .M65 Copy 1 fHE SOUTHERN STATES HARDENED UNTIL RUINED. A SERMON PREACHED SALEM ON FAST DAY, April 13th, 18G5. BY ROBERT C. MILLS > Pastor of the First Baptist Church. :fc)ublisJ)t& bg ftrqurst. BOSTON: J. M. HEWES, PRINTER, 65 CORNHILL 1865. THE SOUTHERN STATES HARDENED UNTIL RUINED. SERMON PREACHED IN SALEM ON FAST DAY, ^Vpril 13th, 1865. BY ROBERT C. MILLS, Pastor of the First Baptist Church. ^hibltsljctf lig Bequest. BOSTON: J. M. HEWES, PRINTER, 65 CORNHILL, 1865. ,5 ■M4.5 SEEM ON. Exodus lO : SO. « But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, so That he would not let the children of israel go." On the second Sabbath of April, 1861, at two o'clock in the afternoon, "the evacuation of Fort Sumter was completed." Such was the despatch which the Charleston correspondent of a New York daily journal sent by the telegraph. Within about an hour of the same time, on the afternoon of the second Sabbath in April, 1865, the Commander in Chief of the army of the "Confederate States" surrendered, with all the forces under his immediate command, to the Lieut. General of our army. On the same day, the principal fort defending Mobile, the last of the important " Con- federate" ports, was also surrendered to our forces. Major Anderson lowered the flag of our country with a salute of fifty guns, as if to promise its defence, the vindication of its honor, and its restoration. He is now at Fort Sumter, with the same flag, to raise it again to-morrow, on the fourth anniversary of its re- moval. The providence of God has, however, ordered the other more grand and solemn commemoration of the event, which took place, by anticipation, on the same day of the week, without waiting for the same day of the month on which the evacuation occurred. Our Governor has appointed this for a day of Fast- ing, Humiliation and Prayer. But God has put songs and gladness in our hearts. If the Jews could not sing the Lord's song in a strange land, and in cap- tivity, neither can we spend the time in lamentation, even though our sins are many and great, when He has "triumphed gloriously" for us, and He has made us all feel that, " It is the Lord's doing, and it is mar- vellous in our eyes." Yet, to be very greatly blessed, sometimes most thoroughly reminds us of our unworthiness, and " the goodness of God leads us to repentance." To-day, we may well feel that deliverance, and the end of our con- flict, are what we do not deserve ; but the trial which we have so long endured is more nearly what we actu- ally merit from our holy and just Lord. And the whole course of events has been making the impres- sion both general and deep, that " God has risen up to judgment" in these affairs of ours ; and acted with us as He has before done with other nations, and ac- cording to the expectations which His Word excites. As we look on the desolate and vanquished Southern States, it does now seem as if they had been hardened to pursue the course of self-destruction. They have effected their own complete ruin in almost every re- spect, but especially in regard to that for which they had for years contended with us, which had corrupted them politically, socially and religiously, and for which they took up arms against their own country and its government, and plunged us into our long and bitter civil war. They thus repeat, while they illustrate, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart under similar circum- stances. I. The illustration ivhich the Southern States furnish of the hardening of the heart of the King of Egypt, is the first point ivhich tue would noiv consider. Many find difficulties with the Scriptural record in respect to Pharaoh. It seems to them to teach, that God set about the direct hardening of his heart, so as to prevent him from relenting and treating the Jews as he was commanded. And when God said, that He had for this purpose raised him up, to show in him His power, and that His name might be declared through- out all the earth, Exocl. 9 : 16, it has seemed to them as if Pharaoh could not have taken a different course from the one which he pursued. This was not the case, but God knew that he would not obey Him ; and because the reason of this was his own wickedness, God determined that it was not best to contend with his opposition with any other than the special and suitable means which Moses em- ployed by His direction. He purposed, notwithstand- ing Pharaoh's opposition, to free His people, and to punish the king also, for his sinful oppression, and dis- obedience to His command to let them go out from bondage. Under such circumstances, it may be that God, as a judgment, preferred to do what He knew could only harden Pharaoh, although it should have subdued and changed him. The result was Pharaoh's own work, indeed ; but God let the matter take this course, and chose it, because He felt that Pharaoh should be punished by being allowed to have his own way, to persist in his disobedience, until it had ruined him, at the same time, and by the very means, by which the Israelites also were set free. Thus, by the king's persisting in his own course and being punished, while the Israelites were delivered, God was honored. It now seems that God has dealt with the rebels among us in the same way as He dealt with the king of Egypt. One illustrates the other ; and as we now, with calmness, look over the course of the rebels, we see that they have had their hearts hardened to pros- ecute their own designs until they have placed them- selves where they now stand. They have been stout and strong in their success, until they have carried out their plans to their own utter confusion and undoing. It seems like a marked judgment of God. And this appears to be what God means by hardening a man's heart, viz., to allow him success in resisting or overcom- ing every thing which opposes his inclination, or plans, until in following them he ruins himself. This a na- tion may do as well as an individual. This Pharaoh did ; and now our Southern States have done the same thing once more. II. Let us now review some of the steps by which the South has been enabled and emboldened to go on in its chosen ivay until it has brought itself into its present condition. The Southern States made their own choice. That was wrong, both morally and politically. But God permitted them to find encouragement and success in the course which they had chosen. This was needed to undo them ; and it has ended in this result. What- ever steps they considered necessary to accomplish their purposes, they were permitted to take, but only to render their failure in them and their ruin more signal. One step was, the corruption of sentiment among themselves, in respect to the moral character of sla- very. Slavery could not be permanent any where with the views which the Southern States generally, in common with the rest of the country, held in oppo- sition to it, until within the present generation. And those views forbade them to hold, or claim, or gam, any position but one for which they must apologize to the world, and which must keep them in relative infe- riority and weakness among the States of the Union. It is only about twenty-five years, since one of the prominent Presbyterian clergymen of South Carolina expressed to Dr. Beecher, in a letter complaining of the conduct of abolitionists, the sentiments common, even then, at the South, as well as fifty and a hundred years ago. His language was :— « I have been a slave- holder from my youth, and yet I detest it as the politi- cal and domestic curse of our Southern country." Such views, of course, would not permit the South to perpetuate and widen the field of human bondage. But the desire to do this grew and extended among the leading men of that section of our country, espe- cially through the influence of John C. Calhoun. Con- sequently, such ideas as this clergyman expressed began to be opposed, and with such success, that, at last, even the pulpit fully and boldly contended for slavery, as not only desirable, but even morally right, and required as well as sanctioned by Christianity. Thus the whole moral tone of the South became cor- rupt. Success crowned this necessary step in the direction of establishing and perpetuating the bondage 8 of men. This gave a firmness to its throne at home which it had not previously enjoyed, and which yet it required to secure its desired place, first, at home, and then, in the nation. This success hardened the hearts of the South in respect to maintaining and perpetu- ating slavery. In the next place, it followed from this, that the South should demand from the nation new concessions in respect to this social institution. It naturally and unavoidably desired and asked that the nation gener- ally should not stand in opposition to its views and plans. If it did so, it would be in their way, and would be constantly condemning them, if it did not more actively oppose them. The South, therefore, demand- ed that there should be no legislation of Congress against slavery, but as much as it could possibly secure in its behalf; and that a person should be almost inel- igible to Congress, or any important office under the General Government, if he was opposed to human bondage. Finally, it demanded the restraint of the expression of an opinion against slavery, and wished to have the power to prevent even the holding of such an opinion. It quietly or openly set at nought all provisions of the Constitution, and all power of the General Government, for protecting those among them- selves who held and expressed opinions adverse to their favorite domestic institution. There was nothing needed or desired by the South, to secure and establish its views, which it could not attain. It heid and used, at its own will, the entire official power and authority of the nation. When sla- very was involved, there was no North, and no nation except the South, under all ordinary circumstances. On retiring from Congress in 1858, Mr. Stephens stated, that he did so, " because he was not needed, because the South had carried every point in the long debate with the North, and because its future supremacy in the Union was absolutely assured by the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case." It had success in its aims, and it was hardened yet more, and became more fixed in its plans, and more exacting in its requirements, and more confident that it should gain an unquestioned or unassailable predominance in the nation. But at length the South found an obstacle in its way. Senator Douglass, who was the leader in one of the last steps taken to concede everything to the slaveholders of the nation, defended his action on the plea that the Missouri Compromise was in theory or principle un- democratic, and no restriction should be placed on the settlers of a territory, if they but formed it into a State which had a republican government. The South wanted more than this ; but he could go no further. He therefore became an object of deep personal en- mity to the leading Southern men. They determined . that they would not accept him as their candidate for the Presidency in 1860 ; while his friends were equally determined that no one else should receive the regular Democratic nomination. When the Convention of this political party met at Charleston, it was well known that a division would almost surely give the Presidency to the Republicans. But the South foresaw, in the re- jection of Mr. Douglas as the candidate of the Demo- cratic party, either his defeat, and their triumph ; or the opportunity, in the success of the Republicans, to arouse the South to rebellion, which should at least 2 10 make them independent, if it did not put in their hands, by some revolution, the reins of power at Wash- ington and over the entire country. It took its choice, divided the party, and gave the election to the Republicans. It again had its own way, and thus secured one of its objects — the unity of the Southern States in a revolt against the Government. The South's determined pursuit of its purpose, to rule or ruin, hardened it to take this extreme step, expect- ing another victory from it, and willing to take such risks, and pay such a price, to protect and perpetuate slavery. Then came another step in the process of hardening itself to pursue its object. It was claimed even at the South, by Mr. Stephens and others, that no overt act of wrong had yet been done to that portion of the Union by the rest, or by the Government. It had guarantees in the Republican platform, and the Inaugu- ral address of Mr. Lincoln, that none would be done. But if these were not sufficient, it had them, beyond all question, in the character of the Supreme Court, and the opposition of the majority of both houses of Con- gress to those political views of the President which they feared. They soon received, besides, from the new Congress, Mr. Corwin's proposed amendment to the Constitution which expressly and forever prohibi- ted the change of the domestic institutions of any State without its own consent. Mr. Everett stated, in May 1861, in a speech at Roxbury, that, in case all this failed to retain the South in the Union, and they ab- stained from further aggression, he understood the pro- gramme of the Administration to have been to allow 11 the revolting States to go in peace. And of such a policy he himself approved. Surely all this might have made men hesitate before lighting the fires of civil war. But no. It seemed best to risk all in the hope that slavery might gain every thing, and liberty lose every thing. " The Dis- unionists would not wait for overt acts," again Mr. Everett said, " because they knew none could or would be committed." " The leaders were determined not to be satisfied." They drew or forced one State after another into secession. They chose to attack a fort, and the flag of the Union, when they knew that the garrison must evacuate that fort in a few days peaceably or else starve. And then they asserted that the form of our Government was wrong, because it rejected sla- very, and claimed liberty and equal rights for all men ; and soon they were ready to condemn and reject even the principle of government by the majority of the nation. The mass of the people soon followed their leaders in these extreme views. They were all harden- ing themselves to go further and further for their fa- vorite institution and form of society. And as God's providence permitted their plans to succeed, so far God too hardened them. They were able to commence actual warfare against the Government. As their phrase was, « The Southern heart was fired." Had they been unable to enlist the people in actual warfare, or been at once met by overwhelming forces of the Government, the revolt might soon have been suppressed, and every thing left as it was, for the present. But instead, they had pro- vided too well, and our Government too poorly, to meet the emergency. They were hardened, and em- 12 boldened to carry on the contest. Our Government could not directly attack them. Its first serious at- tack, made nearly three months after the threat to raise the flag of Secession on the National Capitol, and made almost within sight of Washington, met with a repulse. Thus matters went on, constantly favoring them. They were encouraged and hardened again. We put the war on the footing of reducing them to subjection to the National Government, without any interference with slavery as an institution. This was demanded by the majority of the North, and affirmed by Govern- ment, and its military officers. The success of the South in its resistance enabled it to oppose us effectu- ally, while carrying on the contest on this ground. It would not submit, and it could not be conquered. It was not willing to yield, when it could have saved that which was its great object in the war. It was once more hardened. Its success hardened it to persist in the contest. Its hope was to triumph, and not merely retain its slaves in bondage, but govern the Union, or establish another government on a basis of aristo- cratic rule. The success which thus encouraged the' South, com- pelled the nation to take a new position. It first con- quered its own wishes, plans, established policy ; first conquered itself in respect to the contest. War left it under no political obligations to any man, or govern- ment, or institution of the South, which had cast off its authority, and was contending with arms against it. The people said, We give it up ; slavery shall no longer be sacred; we will contend now to save the nation alone ; and because slavery is in our way it must go, 13 The means, the power, the skill, the spirit of the South hardened it to continue the contest until we were compelled to put it in this form ; so that all that was peculiar and precious to the rebels, and wrong to man and liberty, should go down together with them, if they were vanquished. But they were not. The nation took this stand over two years ago. The rebels held out. We could not conquer them. It seemed like their success. It was God hardening their hearts. This measure of success was required to tax to the extreme and wear out their strength, to inflict on all their territory the dire results of w.ar, and to bring them to such a point that when defeat came it should crush them, and leave them with- out means of recovery, or of renewing the contest. A defeat at another stage would have left their Com- mander-in-Chief where he could have made terms in surrendering, instead of being compelled to take such as his antagonist chose to give him. It would seem as if their spirit, their wishes, their policy, and their success had drawn our enemies on to make the plainest statement of their object, and the fullest exhibition of their character and their feelings, and had brought them where they had to place every thing at hazard at once. Then, as when Pharaoh and his host were in the midst of the Red Sea, the waters flowed over them, and covered them with a complete, irreparable ruin. Their hearts were set upon the triumph of those prin- ciples which they avowed. Wrong, they yet schooled themselves to believe them right. God then seemed to put it in their power to carry out their plans. Ev- ery obstacle seemed to fall before them; every thing 14 to favor their success. But the end proves that an- other Hand was controlling matters, while they seemed to be attaining their aims, and we seemed to be labor- ing almost uselessly to prevent them. They have been encouraged, emboldened, hardened, only to ensure their utter vanquishment. They lose what they had before the war, what they might have had at many stages of the war, what they could have secured even before they struck the last blow. To surrender on our terms was all they left themselves, or God left them. Think, for a moment, of their present position, along with the one they had. Then think what a fearful price they have for four years been paying to receive this, alone, as all that they have thus purchased for themselves. III. Let us then look at the results ivhich the Secession- ists notv find themselves compelled to accept. We can mention nothing else which makes it so evi- dent that the hand of God has controlled the whole affair ; and that they have been hardened only to lead them on to their own defeat and ruin. They have constantly been asking us to let them have their own way. In a certain sense, we have done so from the beginning, although we have not let them alone. The matter has been mainly in their hands, ^ince they ceased to govern the nation in Congress. They led us out into the field of conflict, and have given affairs their form far more than we have done. They secured the election which was the pretence for secession ; they seceded ; they attacked our forces ; they threatened us with subjugation ; they generally selected our battle-fields ; they protracted the war ; they shaped the plan and objects of the war; they put 15 every thing of theirs at stake on the battle-field. And now that they are beaten, what have they accomplish- ed ? Where have they left matters ? As the}'' look around to-day, they do not find at Washington, or in the nation, what their leaders left when they departed from the Capitol. Instead of the election of a President who represented a party in fa- vor of not extending slavery, but still having only the power of a minority in Congress, they find a President with the majority of Congress on his side in thorough opposition to slavery, and the States voting to amend the Constitution so as to exclude bondage from among us forever. Instead of the little which the triumphant party avowed and aimed at four years ago respecting slavery, they find what it had no purpose, nor hope of accomplishing, or seeing accomplished, for human free- dom. Instead of a minority opposed to making any new slave States, they find the mass of the nation de- termined that there shall henceforth be no men held in bondage among us. Instead of Constitutional guar- antees of the unmolested retention of servitude in any State where it exists, as long as that State may choose, they find the manumission of every slave in the revolt- ed States, with the promise of the protection of his freedom by the General Government. Instead of the nation being permitted to bring them back to allegi- ance in its way, without destroying slavery, they find it compelled to couple this with its contest to subdue their revolt. Instead of gaining the continuance, and security, and extension of servitude, with the other objects at which they aimed, they find that they have lost all they possessed in respect to slavery, together with the shame of defeat, their land filled with the 16 graves of the flower of their young men, their fields and homes desolated, and themselves waiting on the ruler rejected by them and loaded with every vile epi- thet, to ask him to be lenient and merciful. Were not their crimes so great, then their failure so complete, and their position so helpless and abject would move our pity. But now they make us think chiefly of God hardening men, who will persist in wickedness, until they are " filled with their own ways," and " their own iniquities correct " them. Again, when they look for the men who are trium- phant in their fall, those who attract their notice can- not be the mass of the nation, nor the President, nor that political party which elected him, but, first and most, the men whom they hated before all others, and whose principles they lacked words to mark with such abhorrence as they felt for them. It must embitter the extreme bitterness of their defeat, when they see that their course has given a complete triumph to the most radical and uncompromising abolitionists of the nation. Of all strange things of our day, it seems the strangest, that Davis, and Mason, and Toombs, and Rhett, that South Carolina and Mississippi, should have effected more than all the abolitionists of the nation tog-ether, to convert the nation to the abolition and destruction of slavery, and to cover with honor the names of Sumner, Greeley, and Garrison, and place Massachusetts, on account of her vigorous and success- ful contests with the enemies of liberty, first, in the field of discussion, and then, on the field of battle, in a higher rank of glory than she ever could have at- tained had it not been for the present issue of the mad conflict forced upon us by slaveholders to advance the 17 interests of slavery and increase its power. But the fin- ishing stroke to the mortification of the rebels must have been when the negro soldiers entered with triumph into Charleston and Richmond, as their masters and oppressors were compelled to flee from those cities. God took the foolish things, the weak, the base, the despised, those even which are not, to confound the mighty. Another result is, the fresh impression made, that in God's government of the world, He follows human in- iquity with present punishment. Men know that oppression is wrong, but it existed here on so large a scale, and had existed so long, and was so interwoven with our body politic, that it seemed as if it must remain and be overlooked, not only by men, but even by God. But when its end has come through means which were first threatened, and then employed, in order to extort from the nation every thing its friends desired for its security; when the step which has resulted in its overthrow was taken by its own friends ; when the nation was compelled to contend against it and its advocates, to preserve its own life ; when the course of the conflict has been such as to sorely punish our entire nation ; when the South has had success, and we defeats, which have drawn the South to its own ruin, as well as that of slavery ; when we know that neither would have un- dertaken the conflict, either for assault or defence, had its magnitude been foreseen ; and when we see that its cost has been almost as many men as there were men- slaves in bondage, and about as much treasure as it would have required to buy the freedom of them all ; when we consider all this, we cannot help feeling that 18 the hand of God is here, while His voice says, " Be still and know that I am God ;" " The wrath of man shall praise Me." But we feel this the more deeply, the more we con- sider the result — who are they who are ruined, and what in contrast are their principles to whom the tri- umph is given. The oppressor of man, he who sneered at human rights, and reviled the principles of the Gos- pel, is not the victor at the end. Through many a day of darkness, and discouragement, and anxiety the nation has passed. It dreaded war, and preferred any thing instead, excepting national ruin, social anarchy, and unfaithfulness to the charge of free government which God had committed to it. But, for a long time, fraud, oppression, iniquity, treason, seemed to have the prov- idence of God favoring them. All our exertions seem- ed to be baffled, our prayers unanswered, our justifi- cations of ourselves met only by such results as con- tradicted them. Men's hearts, again and again, failed them for fear ; but we dared not abandon the contest, even when we had little to rest on excepting confidence that we were doing our duty, and that the principles of God's government were on our side, even if at the time his dealings appeared adverse to us. And now the simple faith of pious men and women in a righteous God, who will not suffer iniquity to tri- umph in the end, sees its expectations realized. It is not because we are too good to be punished, but be- cause the fearful guilt of beginning this civil war does not rest on us, and because it does rest on those whom we had not wronged or oppressed, that God has cover- ed them with defeat. Because they contended not for freedom or right, but for oppression and iniquity, there- 19 fore now in the end " God is known by the judgment which he executeth ;" and men are made to feel that He frowns on wickedness, and that He crushes those who array themselves against Him, and His Anointed, and the -principles of right which He has declared in the Gospel of His Son. In their defeat, our enemies have also furnished the world with another most impressive illustration of the power of a single right idea, and of the weakness of every thing before it. We have for years had under discussion the ques- tion of human freedom. Most of us have believed in it, and we generally have tried to shift upon the South the guilt of opposing or denying it. It came to us, out of the Word of God, from our fathers. It has kept its hold among us, but has encountered an in- creasing and bitter opposition at the South. At length Southerners made the open avowal of hostility to the conviction that freedom is a man's right ; and they set themselves to oppose it, and expel it from among us. All social power was used against it. The influence of the National Government was also in the main secured. When all means had been in vain employed within the Union, then a civil war was commenced to contend against it more effectually. The South not only denied such a human right openly, but said, in substance, that we should not hold such an opinion ; it would prohibit its existence, or crush it out among us, and banish it from among men. The simple, plain, unwarlike, holy idea stood, and bore the attack. Every force which could be employed has for years beaten against it, It has, however, not taken up arms. When its friends contended against its ene- 20 mies, it did not ask them to fight for it ; they only de- fended themselves. All the time, through all the con- flict, it has stood and grown; its roots have spread under ground, its stock has become firmer and taller, its branches have reached out further and further. By all their eiforts its enemies have only exhausted and ruined themselves, while their exertions have given it new vigor. The simple, unarmed idea has conquer- ed. Monarchs who would not yield to it had already fallen before it ; governments had been overthrown, which would not admit its claims ; and now a nation has warred against it, in turn like all the rest, to be worsted in the conflict. The strength of God is given to those ideas, those principles of right, which He has established. Man has no power which can overcome them, although they never fight, but go on their way peaceably, except when men make war on them. The sentiment of hu- man freedom has at last taken its seat with the nation, in the chariot with which it rides to victory. Under the government of man's Redeemer, only in its com- pany could we conquer. Such are the things which we must consider at the present time. Each day forces them on our thoughts. This is not our work. This is not our plan. We shunned civil war, we dreaded it as a calamity. It was for our enemies to bring it on us. It is their work. They began it, they persisted in it, they gave it its form and character. We have suffered with them. But God's hand has been in it all. He meant to pun- ish us, but He meant also to let them harden themselves, and devise plans, and work them out to their ruin, es- pecially in that point for which they began the con- 21 test And, with their failure to maintain and extend human bondage, they give us its universal overthrow and its destruction, as an institute of the civilized "tow we must praise Him, for He has not suffered us to be destroyed. He has strengthened us for all that He has demanded of us, and has given ns the victory lith the ruin and termination of the oppression winch Z been our reproach among the nations of the earth and the constant source of alienation, variance and danger among ourselves. The work is done, and we are glad of it It has heen done in God's way and not ours and to His name Kp flip nraise On our enemies we look and say, u, rle Chast destroyed thyself!" To .he throne of God we turn, and bowing, cry, « Verily, Thou art .God who judgest in the "*?'**£%£ are a great deep !" Let us thank Him, let us tear H m!let us seek to be at peace with Him ; and let us Wealing with those we have vanquished, and set- togour national affairs, carefully consult His will, both in measuring out justice, and exercising mercy So < God, even our own God, shall bless us ; God "hall bles ns ; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him." LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 028 363 7 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Hollinger pH8.5 Mill Run F3-1955 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 028 363 7 £ *7— Hollinger pH8.5 Mill Run F3-1955