JJl^ HENRY'S ORA.TIOJNf. 
 
 PATRIOTISM 
 
 SLAVEHOLDERS' REBELLION 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SLAVEHOLDERS' REBELLION. 
 
 ^tt ©ration* 
 
 
 By 0. S. HEI^ET 
 
 / 
 
 NEW TOEK: 
 
 D. APPLETOK AND COMPANY, 
 
 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 
 
 LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 
 
 1861. 
 
.ftV 
 
TO 
 
 THE HON. HAMILTON FISH. 
 
 My Dear Sib: 
 
 The following discourse was delivered some weeks ago, on the anni- 
 versary of an Academic Association ; and more recently (except the in- 
 troductory pages) on another occasion. You and other gentlemen who 
 heard it have thought its circulation may do good. 
 
 I inscribe it to you, because it is chiefly owing to you that it is pub- 
 lished, and also because I am glad of an opportunity of testifying to the 
 respect and regard which your character and public life have gained from 
 all honest men and true patriots. 
 
 Very truly and heartily yours, 
 
 C. S. Henby. 
 
 Kbwbitsgh. Sept. 28, 1861 
 
ORATION 
 
 Mk. Peesident and Gentlemen of the Alumni 
 Association : 
 
 We have come here to-day to shake hands with each 
 other as brothers, to look at our Fair Mother's face, to 
 pay her our filial duty, to consult for her honor and 
 her good. But who would have thought, at our last 
 meeting, three years ago, that before the next our coun- 
 try would be plunged in a Civil War — a war waged by 
 parricidal hands for the overthrow of the Constitution, 
 the destruction of our national existence, and the extinc- 
 tion of the dearest hopes of the human race. But such 
 is the fact ; and all along the different roads by which 
 we have come to these academic seats, — at every town 
 and village through which we have passed, every ham- 
 let, nook and station house, we have met with sights 
 and sounds to remind us of the fact. The tokens of it 
 are around us here to-day — in the flags and colors of 
 the Union hung round these walls. It is the fact that 
 Ls uppermost in all minds and on all tongues when men 
 meet together. I cannot if I would (nor do I think 
 you would have me if I could) ignore this fact on this 
 
6 
 
 occasion of our meeting as brothers trained and nur- 
 tured here. I should contradict my own impulses, and 
 I think I should fail of your sympathy, if I should 
 propose to make our meeting one of mere literary 
 recreation, and aim at nothing more than to contrib- 
 ute to the elegant entertainment of the hour. This is 
 no time 
 
 " To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
 Or play with the tangles of Nerea's hair." 
 
 Inter anna silent leges — the din of arms drowns 
 even the sacred voice of law, much more the notes of 
 Arcadian pipes breathing festive strains and the song 
 of shepherd's love : the harp of the muses, to be heard, 
 must be swept to martial strains, such as of old Tyrtaeus 
 poured forth — the war song and the battle march — in- 
 spiring heroic Spartans to fight and die for the defence 
 of their Eunomia^ the " good constitution " of their 
 native land. I cannot strike such strains. Mine is not 
 the tuneful power to sing either of peace or of war. 
 But I shall attempt in plain prose to speak of some 
 things which the times suggest to us as scholars, 
 as thinkers, as representatives of the liberal culture of 
 the nation, who as such have duties in regard to the 
 education of the national mind ; and among these things 
 first of this : the importance for our country of what I 
 may call a patriotic education ; by which I mean the 
 direction of all the influences which go to mould the 
 character of the young — school instruction and all other 
 forming influences — to the cultivation of the spirit of 
 nationality, loyalty, love of country, unselfish devotion 
 to the public good — in a word, patriotism. 
 
Patriotism lias its root among tlie elementary affec- 
 tions, in the social sympathies of our nature. It is a 
 sentiment — something in the heart, not resting in calcu- 
 lations of private advantage, nor deduced from abstract 
 regards of any sort, but springing up of itself in every 
 generous and unperverted soul. It is a sympathy, 
 which, twined with a thousand associations, makes a 
 man feel that his individual life is bound up with his 
 country's life, its Avhole life, past, present, and future. 
 As between a man and his country it is what religion is 
 between a man and his God, what the parental and 
 filial affections are between parents and children — a 
 bond of union ; and like all the noble and true human 
 affections, it is disinterested, it is a bond that cannot be 
 wrought and twined out of any considerations of self- 
 interest, nor even of public utility. It is fraught in- 
 deed with all manner of beautiful and benignant utili- 
 ties, indispensable to the safety and defence, the highest 
 welfare and noblest life of a nation ; just as the home 
 affections are fruitful of blessings to those who are con- 
 nected by the ties of home ; but in neither case ai'e 
 you to look for the origin of the affections in the utili- 
 ties that flow from them. This is preposterous — putting 
 the wrong thing foremost. The form and beauty, the 
 flower and fruit of the tree spring from the root, not 
 the root from them. There must be first the love 
 or else not the advantages of love ; and love of coun- 
 try, like all other love, must be a pure unselfish senti- 
 ment, or it is not love, and cannot bear the fruits of 
 love. 
 
 Nor can patriotism, as a sentiment, be construed as 
 a mere sense of duty, any more than it can be resolved 
 
into self-interest or regards of general advantage. It 
 may, like all the better sentiments of our nature, enter 
 into the sphere of reason and conscience, be taken into 
 union with the sense of duty, giving to it warmth, and 
 deriving from it exaltation and support : the sense of 
 duty being made more living by love, and the love 
 made more firm by the imperial voice of duty. This 
 is so with all duties : love is a living energy that ani- 
 mates the doing of them, helps the better to do them, 
 makes it pleasant to do them. It is a cold, hard, dreary 
 thing to do the duties of love without the heart of love. 
 [t is our duty to give our life, if need be, for the defence 
 of our country, to give our life for the life and welfare 
 of unborn generations ; but how much easier the duty, 
 and more surely done, if the heart be in the conscience 
 and in the will, — if, besides the sense of duty, there be 
 a love stronger than death ! Out of this only comes it 
 that we can say and feel its truth : 
 
 Dulce ei decorum pro patria mori. 
 
 jSTothing but love can make it a sweet and beautiful 
 thing to die for others. Out of this only come the 
 heroisms that make the glory of history and attest the 
 nobleness of which human nature, by God's inspiration, 
 is capable. Of which take the case of that Frenchman, 
 the Chevaher D'Assas, colonel of the regiment of Au- 
 vergne, commanding the outpost of the French army 
 at Klostercamp near Gueldres, during the Seven Years' 
 War — who, going the rounds of the posts in the gray 
 of the morning of Oct. 15, 1760, fell in with a division 
 of the enemy that had been advancing under cover of 
 the night, and was just ready to fall on the slumbering 
 
9 
 
 Frencli. He was immediately seized and threatened 
 with instant death if he uttered a cry of alarm. To be 
 silent was the destruction of the French army. With- 
 out a moment's hesitation, summoning all his strength, 
 he shouted out : " Au moi., Auvergne I " " Hither Au- 
 vergne, the enemy's at hand ! " and the next moment 
 fell dead, pierced through the heart by the weapons 
 pointed at his breast. But he gained his object. The 
 warning was timely, and the attack was repulsed. 
 
 Such is the noble spontaneousness of patriotic love. 
 And if I have dwelt upon this point somewhat at length, 
 it is because it is upon the depth and strength of this 
 sentiment, pervading the heart of a people, that the true 
 prosperity and highest welfare of a nation always, and 
 the very salvation of its freedom and national existence 
 sometimes, depend. It prompts to deeds and services 
 and sacrifices and sufferings which the impulses of self- 
 interest not only never prompt to, but oj^pose, and 
 which the clearest convictions of duty cannot, through 
 the weakness of the human will, always make sure. 
 Nothing but love can overcome the impulses of selfish- 
 ness, or always make the will strong to obey the voice 
 of duty. 
 
 The true j^atriotic spirit, I need hardly say, is 
 heaven-wide from that mere national conceit, vain-glori- 
 ousness and pride, which is nothing but national ego- 
 tism — which may be intense indeed, as among the old 
 Greeks and Romans, but is, at the same time, illib- 
 eral and exclusive, and the more intense, the more illib- 
 eral and exclusive — making the word stranger synony- 
 mous with enemy, and impairing the sense of justice 
 towards other nations. On the contrary, true patriot- 
 
10 
 
 ism is that noble sentiment of nationality, loyalty, and 
 unselfish devotion to the good of one's own country, 
 which is perfectly compatible not only with justice but 
 with hearty good will towards other nations, and with 
 the largest feeling of the universal brotherhood of the 
 human race. 
 
 But patriotism, like every other generous sentiment 
 of our nature, needs cultivation. And to whom does it 
 eminently belong to feed the sacred fire, and to keep it 
 alive and glowing, pure and bright in the great heart 
 of the nation ? To whom, but to the educated class, 
 whose superior culture makes them, of right and of duty, 
 the " shepherds of the people." 
 
 The people of this country should be hroitglit iip to 
 be patriots. This should be one of the ends aimed at 
 in the training of the young from childhood upwards. 
 It should be one of the objects kept in view in all school 
 instruction throughout the country. It should enter 
 especially into our system of higher instruction. For 
 what end are our colleges and universities ? For intel- 
 lectual training, liberal learning, and refined culture — 
 we say. Undoubtedly they are for this — but not mere- 
 ly for this : for this in itself is an end without an end. 
 The true end and worthy purpose of all training and 
 culture, all knowledge and accomplishment, is to fit men 
 for life and its duties, and especially for those good of- 
 fices which society has a right to expect from those who 
 have the best intellectual training and the highest cul- 
 ture. A certain number of them may indeed, in the 
 still air of secluded studies, devote themselves mainly to 
 the advancement of science and knowledge, to sj^ecula- 
 
11 
 
 tion, discovery, invention, and production in the intel- 
 lectual sphere. But the calling of the great majority 
 of them is practical — the magnanimous discharge of 
 those pu])lic duties on which the maintenance and well- 
 being of the commonwealth depend, and the exercise 
 of that influence which rightfully belongs to them as 
 guides and leaders of the people, forming and directing 
 public opinion and the practical action of their coun- 
 trymen. 
 
 To fulfil this high calling to the honor and advan- 
 tage of their country, something more than a mere 
 classical, mathematical, and logical education, something 
 more than mere intellectual trainino; and culture, is ne- 
 cessary : moral training, moral culture is indispensable. 
 This our colleges should supply. It ought to be a fact 
 put beyond question, that the youth of the nation nur- 
 tured in them, are brought under influences which make 
 it reasonably certain that they will be imbued with 
 sound moral principles, that the seeds of magnanimity 
 and public virtue will be planted in their minds. It 
 ought to be a well understood and undoubted thing 
 that in all these institutions sound instruction in morals 
 generally, and in political ethics and the constitutional 
 principles of our Government in particular, is dispensed 
 by the most competent men that can be found. The 
 oflfice of giving it — as it is of the very highest impor- 
 tance — so it should be considered one of the most digni- 
 fied and honorable in the land. It is a trust that should 
 be confided only to men of the highest order of mind 
 and the largest possible measure of that enthusiasm, 
 force of character, and peculiar gift of influence over 
 other minds, which go to make the great true teacher — 
 
12 
 
 one who vivifies what lie expounds, making it enter, 
 not as dry dead formulas, but as a life and living power 
 into the minds of tlie young, and so forms them into 
 true and worthy men, of magnanimous spirit, fit for all 
 the duties which God and their country may call them 
 to, when they go from the schools into life and the 
 world. 
 
 This earnest cultivation of the patriotic spirit is for 
 lis the more indispensable both from the absence of cer- 
 tain favorable conditions, and the working of certain 
 causes that are positively unfavorable to its growth. 
 
 In the first place, our population is not homogeneous. 
 It is made up from different nations. There is not as 
 yet one universal mother tongue for all the people of 
 the land. We have indeed a common national language, 
 but that is not exclusively ours : it is the English 
 tongue. 
 
 Then, again, we have no proper national name. We 
 cannot call ourselves Americans in any distinguishing 
 way ; for the Canadians, the Mexicans, the Brazilians 
 are equally Americans — though they all have what we 
 have not, a distinguishing name for their respective 
 countries. We sometimes call our country Columbia. 
 That is only poetical usage ; but it shows the instinc- 
 tive feeling of the want of a distinguishing national 
 name. Our ojficial designation is the United States of 
 America. It is a great pity we have not a better one. 
 It distracts and perplexes the idea of national oneness. 
 It fosters the notion of independent separateness which 
 is the very thing the people intended to destroy, when 
 they abrogated the old Articles of Confederation and 
 
13 
 
 establislied the new Constitution. It is a pity they did 
 not then fix upon some single national name — Columbia, 
 AUeghania, or whatever other might have been thought 
 appropriate. 
 
 We are indeed one nation in the theory of the Con- 
 stitution. This is put beyond all doubt by the instru- 
 ment itself — by its preamble, by its provisions expressly 
 vesting in the Union, and prohibiting to the States as 
 such, every attribute and function of sovereignty, and 
 by its palmary declaration of the supremacy of the 
 Constitution and laws of the Union over all State con- 
 stitutions and laws. But the very name — Constitution 
 of the United States — suggests feelings which some- 
 times make an argument from its terms needful ; whereas 
 if the style of it had been the Constitution of the people 
 of Columbia, the name itself would have always pre- 
 sented us to ourselves and to the world as a nation one 
 and indivisible — would have carried home to the feel- 
 ings what the language of the instrument makes clear 
 to the understanding. It would have gone far to pre- 
 vent, if not rather effectually to preclude those notions 
 of State rights and State sovereignty in which the doc- 
 trine of secession now finds its pretext-r-Rome was al- 
 ways and everywhere Rome Rome when she was 
 
 founded on the seven hills — Rome when she absorbed 
 the states of Italy — Rome when she had annexed the 
 world — and made the word JRoman citizen a word of 
 pride in the lips of all that could pronounce it wherever 
 they might go. Such things are not without impor- 
 tance. A word, a name, often exerts a powerful influ- 
 ence on the education of a people ; and it is certain 
 that the sense of national oneness and the sentiment of 
 
14 
 
 loyalty and love of country are fostered by a common 
 origin, a common language, and a national name. 
 
 Now as to what is positively bad in its effects. It 
 is not to be denied that in the actual working of our 
 political system — and especially in the business of quad- 
 rennial President-making, with its hot contests of rival 
 parties and stupendous scramble for offices and jobs, 
 there are influences constantly operating on the whole 
 mass of the people which tend more powerfully to de- 
 moralize the nation than any that can be found in the 
 working of any other political system on the globe. I 
 say this advisedly as to every word I use, because I be- 
 lieve it is undeniably true, and because it is equally un- 
 deniable that whatever goes to corrupt the morals of a 
 nation goes to corrupt the sources of its patriotism. 
 
 But Slavery — I trust I may be permitted to refer to 
 this subject without violating that propriety whirh, on 
 occasions like this, forbids the introduction of topics on 
 which radical differences of opinion and feeling may be 
 presumed to exist. May T not take it for granted that 
 to-day I run no risk of giving offence by saying what 
 the line of thought I am pursuing leads me to say on 
 the influence of Slavery on patriotism ? I shall venture 
 so to presume, and therefore frankly express my own 
 thoughts — Slavery, I say, then, more than any thing 
 else, has debauched the moral sense of the people of the 
 Southern States and corrupted the springs of loyal patri- 
 otic national feeling there — not without mischievous 
 effect too, to a considerable extent, upon the Northern 
 mind. Look how it has worked. 
 
 The fathers of the republic. South as well as North, 
 
15 
 
 thouglit it a curse and a shame; their Southern sons 
 hold it for a blessing and a glory ; 
 
 The fathers regarded it as repugnant to the princi- 
 ples of natural justice, and did not dream of defending 
 it on that ground ; their sons uphold it as sanctioned by 
 God and the Gospel ; 
 
 The fatliers hoped it would be gradually restricted 
 and ultimately extinguished ; their sons are resolved to 
 perpetuate and extend it, and are now in arms for the 
 overthrow of the Union and the establishment of a 
 great slave empire that shall ultimately embrace all 
 Mexico and Central America. 
 
 What a prodigious change of sentiment is this ! 
 And in how comparatively short a period it has been 
 wrought. — The time is not so far back as not to be 
 within the memory of many of you, when John Ran- 
 dolph spoke only the general feeling of the most en- 
 lightened Southern men, in his reply to that Northern 
 member of Congress who had meanly thought to curry 
 Southern favor by expressing his approbation of slavery : 
 " Mr. Speaker," said he, extending his long arm and point- 
 ing his long skinny finger at the cowering " doughface " 
 — his shrill voice and sallow face full of the intensest 
 scorn — " Mr. Speaker, I envy neither the head, nor 
 the heart of the Northern man who rises here to defend 
 slavery on principle." The doughface shrunk into him- 
 self abashed at the withering rebuke. But Mr. Ran- 
 dolph, I say, spoke only the general feeling of respectable 
 Southern men at that time. It is not quite thirty years 
 ago since slavery was denounced as an economical, social, 
 and moral evil by the leading men of Virginia, and its 
 abolition earnestly urged, and almost carried in the 
 
16 
 
 Convention of that State — only one vote more being 
 needed, I believe, to carry it. 
 
 What has wrought this great change of opinion ? 
 Mercenary considerations — suddenly enhanced profits 
 on cotton-growing in the Lower Slave states, and a cor- 
 responding sudden enhancement of profits on slave- 
 breeding in the Upper ones. Here began the change 
 of moral opinion on slavery which we have seen. Men 
 always try to find moral and religious grounds to justify 
 what selfish interests determine them to do, and Avill 
 bend and force the Word of God Himself into sanctioning 
 what the spontaneous dictates of reason and conscience 
 pronounce to be contrary to the plainest principles of 
 natural right: just as if such a procedure (supposing 
 their interpretation correct) could have any other le- 
 gitimate effect than to destroy the claims of any pre- 
 tended Divine revelation. — Show me a revelation that 
 contradicts the necessary convictions of reason and 
 conscience — and I reject it. Show me a revelation that 
 says the mere right of the strongest is, in itself, a moral 
 right — a revelation that says that difference of color, of 
 race, of intellectual endowment and capacity for civili- 
 zation and self-elevation, is God's sanction for the strong- 
 er race to drag the weaker from their native seats and 
 make them tools and chattels — and I reject it as quickly 
 as I would a pretended revelation that should declare 
 two and two to be eight, or that the three angles of a 
 triangle are not equal to two right angles. The South- 
 ern Gospel puts God in contradiction with himself. I 
 thank God for the conviction I have that it is a false 
 Gospel. The Gospel of Christ does indeed tell us that 
 not all wrongs are to be redressed in any way, no matter 
 
17 
 
 what the consequences — it is not, in my opinion, a Gar- 
 risonian Abolitionist Gospel. It does indeed preach 
 the duties that may mutually pertain to the parties to a 
 false abnormal relation while that relation exists. It 
 does indeed preach submission, patience, endurance un- 
 der many a wrong, and the spirit of justice and charity 
 under all wrongs. But it never preaches that therefore 
 wrong is right : yet this is the preaching that has been 
 going on for thirty years at the South, every year more 
 and more boldly proclaimed — until the moral sense of 
 the present generation there is completely debauched. 
 
 Nor has the debauching influence been confined to 
 the South. Through the interests of party politics and 
 the immense commercial interests the growth of slavery 
 has created, it has spread quite considerably at the 
 North ; and within the last half dozen years, especially, 
 we have heard the Southern Gospel zealously pro- 
 claimed among us — in pulpits, on platforms, and by the 
 press — in sermons, speeches, and articles — by editors, 
 political haranguers and divines, in a fashion that a 
 man would have been thought crazy to have predicted 
 thirty years ago, or twenty years ago. — I think this sort 
 of preaching is at an end here now. I do not believe 
 we shall have much more of it at the North. I think 
 we are all now pretty well agreed as to the influence of 
 slavery on the character of a people — what sort of chiv- 
 alry, honor and honesty, for instance, it produces. We 
 shall need have a new dictionary to define the Southern 
 meaning of the words : the chivalry that drives harm- 
 less women from their homes and confiscates the petti- 
 coats left behind in the hurried flight ; the honor that 
 makes army and na\y officers hold their places and 
 2 
 
18 
 
 draw tLeir pay as long as tliey can by secret treachery 
 injure the Government, for whose defence they were 
 nurtured and sworn and honored and trusted and paid, 
 and then go over openly to war against it ; the honesty 
 that steals and robs under trust and glories in the rob- 
 bery and theft. — It is a pretty good commentary on the 
 tone of moral sentiment engendered by slavery, when 
 Floyd and Cobb and Twiggs and Lee and men of that 
 stamp are held in respect and crowned with applause. 
 
 I presume, too, we have all arrived at a pretty clear 
 conviction as to the quality of patriotism fostered by 
 slavery, and need no more instruction to convince us 
 that slave-holding institutions are as perfectly compati- 
 ble with a real love for republican freedom and a true 
 loyalty to a republican government like ours, as the 
 worship of God and Mammon. — ^There can indeed be 
 no true loyalty, no genuine reverence for law, where 
 all men have not equal rights — I do not speak of polit- 
 ical rights but equal personal rights — before the law. It 
 is supplanted by the barbarous law of wilfulness and 
 brute violence. There can be no true freedom even for 
 the free, — no security for the dearest rights of freemen, 
 — ^freedom of the press, freedom of suffrage, freedom of 
 speech, freedom of thought. Slave-holding institutions 
 are hostile to them all. Their spirit is essentially a 
 spirit of oligarchic tyranny. Its tendency is inevitably 
 to despotism and a military rule. This all philosophy 
 and all history teach. But we have been slow to learn 
 the lesson. 
 
 Seventy-two years ago, William Pinkney, the great 
 statesman and orator of Maryland, thus warned the peo- 
 ple : " That the dangerous consequences of the system 
 
19 
 
 of "bondage," said he, " have not yet been felt does not 
 prove tliat they never will be. ... To me nothing 
 for which I have not the evidence of my senses is more 
 clear than that it loill one day destroy that reverence for 
 liberty loliich is the vital 'principle of a repvhlic. While 
 a majority of your citizens are accustomed to rule with 
 the authority of despots within particular limits, while 
 your youth are reared in the habit of thinking that the 
 great rights of human nature are not so sacred but they 
 may with innocence be trampled on, can it be expected 
 that the public mind should glow with that gener- 
 ous ardor in the cause of freedom which can alone save 
 a government like ours from the lurhing demon of usur- 
 pation f . . . For my own part, I have no hope 
 that the stream of general liberty will flow forever un- 
 polluted through the mire of partial bondage, or that 
 they who have been habituated to lord it over others 
 will not in time be base enough to let others lord it 
 over them. If they resist it will be the struggle of 
 pride and selfishness, not of principle."* — So spoke 
 William Pinkney seventy-two years ago. The wisdom 
 of the warning, the truth of the prediction, we see in 
 the events we are in the midst of now. 
 
 The revolt of the Southern States has been accom- 
 plished by a band of conspirators possessing themselves 
 of arms and of the machinery of State action. It was 
 precipitated by trickery and fraud, by despotism and 
 terror — in some cases, without even the show of submit- 
 
 * " I am indebted for this passage from Mr. Pinkney's speech 
 to the noble and admirable Address of Mr. John Jay, delivered 
 at Mount Cisco, New York, on the Fourth of July last, on " The 
 Great Conspiracy and England's Neutrality." 
 
20 
 
 ting the question to tlie suffi'ages of the people, and in 
 no case with a free, fair, full expression of the popular 
 mind by ballot or by voice. The insurrectionary gov- 
 ernment organized by the conspirators, is nothing more 
 thaii a usurpation^ such as Mr. Pinkney foretold ; and 
 in spite of its republican forms, it is really nothing at 
 bottom but a military despotism^ to which the Southern 
 people, willingly or unwillingly, are forced to submit. 
 
 Let us clearly understand the nature of this war. It 
 is not a war, on the part of the insurgents, merely for 
 the establishment of the doctrine of secession, or for the 
 conquest of a separate independent government ; nor on 
 our part, merely for the overthrow of that doctrine, or 
 for the preservation of the integrity of the national do- 
 main. These are both indeed issues that are to be de- 
 cided by it. But it has a far deeper significance — a sig- 
 nificance that invests it wdth a solemn historical impor- 
 tance not surpassed by that of any war ever waged since 
 modern civilization began its march over the world. 
 
 It is at bottom a war between two antagonistic and 
 irreconcileable systems of social order — the one founded 
 on the old Declaration of Independence of 1776, the 
 other on the denial of it. When that Declaration pro- 
 claimed that " all men are born free and equal " — are 
 freemen, that is, l^y birthright, and entitled to equal 
 rights before the law^ — not meaning thereby politi- 
 cal rights, for these are not natural but prescrip- 
 tive rights, but equal personal rights before the law ; 
 that is, equal right to "life, liberty, and the pur- 
 suit of happiness " — when, I say, that Declaration 
 proclaimed this, it proclaimed a doctrine incompatible 
 with any defence of slavery on principle. So the 
 
21 
 
 fathers of the Republic, South as well as North, un- 
 derstood it then. So the Southern insurgents under- 
 stand it now. The fathers did not justify slavery as 
 right in principle ; but only excused it as an evil en- 
 tailed upon them to be provisionally tolerated, and to 
 be got rid of as soon as it could be well and wisely 
 done : the Southern insurgents justify it as right in 
 principle, and so they are driven by a strict logical neces- 
 sity to contradict the doctrine of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence. Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the 
 insurgent confederacy, says it is a " pestilent heresy." 
 He does not, like many others, stupidly mistake or wil- 
 fally pervert its meaning in order to deride it. He does 
 not even call it (as Mr. Choate did) a " glittering gen- 
 erality." He knows better. He knows that it is a suf- 
 ficiently clear enunciation of a very intelligible doctrine 
 — which may be denied as false, but cannot be derided 
 as absurd. He therefore confronts it with a denial, and 
 proposes to build up a new order of things on the con- 
 tradiction of it : " The foundations of our new govern- 
 ment," he says, " are laid, its corner-stone rests, in the 
 great truth," that slavery is the natural and moral con- 
 dition of the Negro race. " This, our new government," 
 he adds, " is the first in the world based on this great, 
 physical, philosophical, and moral truth ; " and, " with a 
 government so founded," he declares " that the world 
 would recosfnize in theirs the model nation of historv." 
 This is a war, then, for the overthrow of the old 
 Declaration of Independence. That is its inmost mean- 
 ing. It is a war that sooner or later was sure to come. 
 The recognition of slavery in the Constitution of the 
 Union — indirect as it was — and little as I am now dis- 
 
22 
 
 posed to condemn tlie motives of its framers at tliat day 
 — was still at variance with tlie Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. No tlieoretical inconsistency but some day works 
 practical mischief You cannot introduce contradictory 
 elements into the bosom of any social organization 
 without inaugurating an " irrepressible conflict." There 
 is a logic of history that cannot be resisted. What has 
 come to pass was inevitable. 
 
 The two systems of social order, co-existing under 
 one government, have gone on developing — the one in 
 the North, the other in the South — until, on the one 
 side, you see a society of twenty millions of people, 
 every one with equal rights of person and projoerty in 
 the eye of law, every one equally protected in " life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; " and on the 
 other side, a society of ten millions, more than four mil- 
 lions of whom are legally held as property, bought and 
 sold, as cattle, sheep, or any other property are bought 
 and sold, their persons, and faculties of body and mind, 
 controlled by theii' owners at their will, and for their 
 ends. 
 
 And now these two systems are face to face with 
 each other, in open, deadly war. 
 
 I said it was inevitably sure to come. Not that it 
 need ever have come — so far as the North is concerned 
 ■ — if the South had been content with its constitutional 
 pound (and it has had a great deal more than its con- 
 stitutional pound) of slavery flesh. At the North, ex- 
 periencing none of the evils that work inevitably in the 
 bosom of a slaveholding society, and deriving from the 
 Union many advantages, the great body of the people 
 have been ahvays, practically, not only contented to 
 
leave tlie Soutli in the undisturbed enjoyment of its pe- 
 culiar institution and of those constitutional advantages 
 in which it had, in many respects, much the best of the 
 bargain ; but more than contented — they have been al- 
 ways making concession after concession to its imperious 
 demands, stretchins: the Constitution to the utmost, if not 
 breaking it, in favor of slavery, and certainly (as every 
 statesman knows) going over it and beyond it in al- 
 lowing the whole power of the Union to help aggran- 
 dize it in extent and in political importance, by the 
 purchase or conquest of immense territories to be 
 brouofht in as new slave States. 
 
 But the South has not been content mth its original 
 bargain, nor mth all it has gained besides. It is not in 
 the nature of the slaveholding power to be contented in 
 the Union without controlling it. Its spirit is essen- 
 tially aggressive. It "t)rooks no superior. It demands 
 submission from every thing with which it has to do. — 
 This is why I said this war was inevitably sure to 
 come. This is why it has come. 
 
 Thirty years ago, the leading spirits at the South 
 took the determination to get possession of the political 
 power of the nation, through the help of whatever 
 Northern votes they could bring to their side, and to 
 control it for the aggrandizement and extension of sla- 
 very, and to break up the Union whenever that posses- 
 sion and control should pass from theii* hands. — ^Then 
 began that systematic sowing of the seeds of disloyalty 
 to the Union, and that systematic perversion of the 
 sentiment of allegiance among all classes, and especially 
 among the officers of the array and nav}', which has 
 lately displayed itself in treacheries and treasons such 
 
24 
 
 as the history of the world sliows nothing equal to for 
 dishonor and baseness. 
 
 From that day onward the Southern leaders have 
 kept their clear persistent purpose. Gaining the politi- 
 cal control of the Union, they wielded it for their own 
 ends. The acquisition of Texas, the war with Mexico, 
 the Fugitive Slave Law, the repeal of the Missouri com- 
 promise, and the Dred Scott decision, all these were ac- 
 complished in their interest. They failed indeed in the 
 attempt to force slavery into Kansas ; but they had all 
 the power and influence of the Administration on their 
 side. The attempt was an atrocious crime ; but it was 
 also what Talleyrand said is a great deal worse than a 
 crime, it was an enormous political blunder. It awoke 
 a spirit of determined resistance to slavery aggressions 
 at the North. 
 
 On the 6th of November la^ the consj)irators saw 
 that their hour had come. The sceptre of power was 
 about to pass from their hands. But for six months 
 more they would be in possession of the Administration 
 — with a pliant tool at the head of it (whether more an 
 imbecile or more a traitor, history will decide) — ^with 
 accomplices in the Treasury, "War, and Navy depart- 
 ments : Chhb robbing the treasury of millions, dispos- 
 ing the public moneys for the convenient grasp of the 
 conspirators, and planning to reduce the Government to 
 banlo-uptcy ; Floyd sending South all the national 
 arms and munitions of war, and putting all the South- 
 ern forts, arsenals, and public property in the best con- 
 dition for them to seize ; with Toucey keeping our navy 
 at the ends of the world, and doing nothing, and urging 
 nothing to be done, in his department which, with his 
 
25 
 
 knowledge, lie knew tke defence of tlie country required 
 to be done and urged. 
 
 Then came secession, and secession — in some cases 
 preceded, in others followed, by the seizui'e of forts, and 
 arsenals, and custom-houses, public moneys, and vessels 
 — until seven States had been declared out of the 
 Union ; the Star of the West, with national troops on 
 board, fired into, and the flag of the Union insulted ; 
 the Administration looking on with traitorous or help- 
 less inaction — ^^vhile the rebel insurgents and their trai- 
 torous sympathizers in every quarter were filling the 
 land and confusing the public mind with the impudent 
 cry of " no coercion ! " If observation and history had 
 not taught us how prodigious often is the delusive force 
 of the perpetual reiteration of phrases and watchwords 
 over unreflecting minds, one would stand amazed at the 
 effrontery that could utter, and the stupidity that could 
 be deluded by, any thing so unspeakably absurd as this 
 cry of " no coercion " raised in behalf of those who were 
 engaged in such acts of theft, robbery, treason, and war 
 against the nation. The highwayman's protest against 
 any outcry of alarm from you when he is clutching your 
 throat, or the burglar's protest against any defensive 
 violence on your part when he is breaking into your 
 house, are incomparably less impudent and more enti- 
 tled to respect. 
 
 Such was the state of the country when President 
 Lincoln came into power. Whether or not it was any 
 part of the conspiracy that he should be assassinated, at 
 any time before or after his advent, may never perhaps 
 be known. There are those who believe it was. 
 
26 
 
 But lie came into office : witli an army and navy 
 weakened by tlie desertion of many of the officers, and 
 not well knowing who and how many of those that re- 
 mained were to be trusted ; with traitors in eveiy de- 
 partment of the public service — in every bm-eau, every 
 room, and almost at every desk ; without arms ; with 
 an empty treasury ; with the Border States urging 
 " compromise " and threatening secession, backed by 
 numerous journals and multitudes of men at the North 
 openly proclaiming secession sympathies, and demand- 
 ing compromising concessions ; the great body of the 
 people hardly yet able to understand and believe what 
 a crisis had come, and leaving it doubtful whether the 
 Government would find a united North to support it 
 in a vigorous repression of the conspiracy, even if the 
 means of doing so Avere in its hands ; and all this time 
 the insurgents, with defiant boldness, pushing on their 
 preparations for war — erecting batteries, pointing can- 
 non, gathering and drilling troops, getting down from 
 the North all the arms and aimnunition they could find 
 mercenary traitors willing to supply them with ; yet 
 still shouting the cry of " no coercion " — a cry still 
 joined in by the Border States and still echoed by 
 many a Northern voice ! 
 
 Thus stood things until the tliirteenth of Ajjril^ 
 when Fort Sumter fell, and on both sides the war 
 began. 
 
 I need not recite what has followed since. It is all 
 fresh in your minds : — the call of the President — the up- 
 rising of the nation — the three hundred thousand men 
 on foot, all volunteers — the meeting of Congress — the 
 five hundred thousand men and the five hundred mil- 
 
27 
 
 lions of dollars voted for the defence of the Union. You 
 know it all — what successes have crowned our arms ; and 
 what reverses we have sustained, enough to sadden, but 
 not enough to cast us down — not enough to make us 
 bate one jot of heart or hope of the final triumph of the 
 righteous cause. No. No. Had the rout of the Union 
 forces at Manassas been ten times more terrible than 
 that of the Komans at Cannae, the spirit of the nation 
 would, I am sure, rise to an equal height of heroic 
 resolution. 
 
 A Civil War is a great calamity ; but great as it is, 
 it is not the greatest calamity that can befall a nation. 
 Moral degeneracy, corruption, and rottenness are worse ; 
 and a civil war, notwithstanding its inevitable miseries, 
 and the moral evils inevitably incident to it, may, un- 
 der God's Providence, be sometimes the only effectual 
 means to preserve a nation from the dissolution and 
 downfall which come ever in the sequel of a certain 
 stage of moral corruption and decay. 
 
 I presume not to penetrate the counsels of the Most 
 High in this war. But I see it has already wrought a 
 great deliverance for us, worth more than all the treas- 
 ure and blood it has yet cost or is likely to cost. " The 
 whole life of this nation turns on the problem of con- 
 verting four and sixpence to a dollar," said Albert Gal- 
 latin thirty years ago.* This was too true then, and it 
 has been a great deal more true since then. But it is 
 not true to-day. The cannonade of Fort Sumter evoked 
 a nobler spirit, and substituted a higher problem. How 
 
 * " Shall I not be avenged on such a people as this? Saith the 
 Lord," was old John Quincy Adams's remark in reply. 
 
28 
 
 electrical its effect ! It broke the suffocating spell 
 of cotton and politics — tlie lust of gold and 'the greed 
 of office. It emancipated the mind of the North from 
 the thraldom to mere material interests, and lifted 
 it up into the higher region of ideas, of invisible prin- 
 ciples. It united the hearts of twenty millions of peo- 
 ple as the heart of one man — made them see and feel 
 that there is something greater than gold, more essential 
 to a nation's life than trade, more sacred than the Gos- 
 pel of Cotton, — that the Flag of the Union is a symbol 
 of spiritual interests grander, nobler, more inspiring 
 than the interests of commerce and of parties — the great 
 ideas of nationality, government, law, and loyalty ; and 
 for that Flag and for the ideas it represents made them 
 ready to pour out all their treasure and to shed all their 
 blood. Whatever be the end of the war, it is a great 
 thing that it has thus united the hearts and exalted the 
 spirit of twenty millions of people. History shows 
 nothing grander than this outburst of loyal enthusiasm. 
 I trust in God this wickedest of all traitorous conspira- 
 cies is destined to be overwhelmed with defeat and dis- 
 grace. I humbly confide in Him to give the victory to 
 the great righteous cause. 
 
 But to make this sure, there must needs be on our 
 part something more than a mere outburst of popular 
 enthusiasm. The spirit which the cannonade of Fort 
 Sumter made go like lightning through every loyal 
 heart, must settle into the calm inflexible determination 
 to endure, if need be, any extremity of sacrifice and 
 suffering in the discharge of the great obligations which 
 this crisis imposes on us. Our country is on trial of its 
 patriotism for the first time since 17 7 6. We have had 
 
29 
 
 since then but little to try and nothing to test thedeptli 
 and strength of the patriotic spirit.— The day of trial 
 has come. The events of the last six months have 
 rudely dispelled all old illusions, and brought us face 
 to face with the fact tliat our institutions must, under 
 God, find their security in ourselves, not we ours in 
 them. The question now is not about our institutions 
 sustaining us, but about our ability to defend them : 
 and this is a question not of physical resources, (for of 
 them there is plenty,) nor of military skill and bravery 
 on the battle-field, (for there is and will be enough of 
 this,) but a question of the moral spirit of the nation— 
 of the firmness and constancy of patriotic principle and 
 purpose in the mind and heart of the nation, based in 
 clear convictions, and a profound sense of the duty which 
 rests upon us of maintaining the supremacy of the Na- 
 tional Government and thereby the foundations of all 
 government, all social order, and all true human progress. 
 Do the people see and feel their obligation never to lay 
 down their arms until this Slaveholders^ Rehellion^ with 
 its anarchical doctrine of Secession and the monstrous 
 principle of government put forward by Mr. Stephens, 
 is overwhelmed, crushed, and reduced to unconditional 
 submission? Do they see and feel that all talk of 
 " peace " short of this is of the nature of treason, not 
 only to the country, but to the most sacred interests of 
 the human race ? Do they thus see and feel ? And 
 will they continue thus to see and feel — pledging, like 
 the old fathers, their lives, their fortunes, and their 
 sacred honor on the issue ? I trust so. I think so. 
 There may he politicians looking out for the future with 
 mean^ selfish ambitions. There may be less of pure 
 
30 
 
 self-denying patriotism among those who have the ad- 
 ministration of affairs than there was in the old revolu- 
 tionary struggle ; there may be more of corruption and 
 profligacy in the expenditure of the pubhc moneys ; but 
 I think the great heart of the nation is right. The 
 action of Congress is noble, is glorious — nothing in his- 
 tory surpasses it. And the nation — I hope, I trust, I • 
 believe — the nation will sustain it to the end. I think 
 the nation will rigidly insist that the Administration 
 shall show itself thoroughly in earnest in the prosecu- 
 tion of the war. No Administration can stand that in- 
 curs the settled distrust of the people on this point. I 
 think there is a profound determination on the part of 
 the great body of the nation that the war shall be car- 
 ried on and finished as soon as possible on purely mili- 
 tarij principles without any ulterior political regards. 
 Crush the rebellion by arms first, and let political ad- 
 justments be looked after when that is done. Negoti* 
 ations with rebels in arms will not be tolerated. 
 
 Last winter I thought that if the slaveholding 
 States were deliberately determined to go out of the 
 Union, and would do it peaceably and honestly, and 
 wait until the thing could be legally accomplished, I 
 would be for letting them go. I thought we should in 
 many respects be well rid of them ; and that they 
 would learn some salutary lessons from the experiment 
 of setting up for themselves, and after a little be glad to 
 come back and behave better in the Union. 
 
 But I am of a different mind now. Events have 
 shown a settled determination on the part of the con- 
 spirators to effect a pennanent division of the country. 
 I see that the material interests of the nation demand 
 
31 
 
 tlie preservation of tlie integrity of the national domain. 
 These Southern States are geographically and politically 
 necessary to us as a nation. Those most necessary to 
 round out and complete the national area are ours by 
 every claim. We have bought them, and paid for 
 them, and fous^ht for them, and bled for them. "What 
 with purchase money paid — what with fortifications 
 and defences built — what with driving the natives out 
 and the war waged with Mexico, they have cost us mil- 
 lions of treasure and thousands of lives. If the " right 
 of secession " for any of the original thirteen members 
 of the Union be (as it is) an absurd claim, it is for 
 these newer States too monstrously absurd to deserve a 
 moment's regard. They belong to us by every title. 
 They are ours of right — om^s as a necessary possession — 
 and we must keep them. It w^ould never do to have 
 an independent slave empire on our Southern frontier 
 in possession of the Mexican gulf and of the outlet of 
 the great rivers of the West. It would be a perpetual 
 source of irritation, conflict, and war. The two great 
 conflicting systems of social order could never live 
 peaceably side by side. And even if they could, the 
 cause of Christian civilization, and the great interests 
 of human progress, forbid us ever to consent to the dis- 
 memberment of the national domain in order to estab- 
 lish a great empire based upon the contradiction of the 
 Declaration of Independence. 
 
 We have, it seems to me, no election. The rebellion 
 must be crushed. Nothing short of this will do. 
 
 And as to. the fate of slavery in the sequel of the 
 -^ar — we must leave it to the future. Opposed as I 
 am in my inmost soul to slavery, and delighted as I 
 
32 
 
 should be to see tlie Constitution purged of every re- 
 cognition and guaranty to it and brought back to per- 
 fect harmony with the doctrine of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, and believing, as I do, that this will some 
 day be done ; rejoiced as I should be at the entire ex- 
 tinction of slavery throughout the land, and confident 
 as I am that it will some day be accomplished, I have 
 never been willing to incur the responsibility of advo- 
 cating the immediate emancipation of the slaves in mass 
 — especially in the lower States, where the slave popu- 
 lation is so dense. I have indeed been in the habit 
 heretofore of thinking, and on more than one public 
 occasion have declared the conviction, that immediate 
 emancipation would be no mercy to the slaves and a 
 great curse to the country. But I confess to a less de- 
 cided opinion now. I do not know that the slaves 
 would be any better off at first. But I have less appre- 
 hension of results disastrous to social order and secu- 
 rity than I formerly entertained. Manumission v/orked 
 peacefully in St. Domingo for seven years ; and it was 
 not until the attempt made by Napoleon after that time 
 to reduce the blacks again to slavery, that those scenes 
 of bloody horror were enacted which have been so often 
 held up to alarm and to warn. Emancipation worked 
 peacefully in the British West India islands. It*might 
 work so here. Still the future of slavery in this coun- 
 try is to me a problem dark and difficult of solution. 
 But time makes many dark things dear — and often in a 
 wonderfully short and decisive way. I am more and 
 more every year impressed with this truth. 
 
 The theory on which our Government is carrying on 
 this war insures the constitutional rights of all slave* 
 
83 
 
 holders wlio are loyal to the Union. But what claim, 
 to such protection have rebels in arms to overthrow the 
 Constitution ? Is it due in justice ? or in sound policy? 
 In neither, as I think. I am of opinion that the time 
 may come when not only sound policy, but the stern 
 necessities of war — in the military occupation of the 
 Border States — will compel the proclamation of freedom 
 to the slaves of rebel and traitor masters. This will be 
 putting the axe to the root of the tree. It mil hasten 
 the extinction of slavery in tliose States — a consumma- 
 tion sure indeed to come at no distant day from the 
 operation of other causes economical and social. What 
 in the sequel will come in the Lower States, God only 
 can foresee ; — what may come, it makes one shudder to 
 forecast, unless the power of the Union be interposed to 
 protect the lives of those who are seeking to destroy 
 the Union. On the whole, I am inclined to think that 
 the end of this war will in some way be the eud, or the 
 beginning of the end, of slavery. But whether so or 
 not, I am sure that the Most High, whose Providence is 
 the genius of human history, will in some wise way dis- 
 pose of this, as of every other great question, according 
 to His plans in the conduct of human affairs. 
 
 Meantime let us be true to our God and to our 
 countiy, true to the great cause of justice and of human 
 rights. Let us not be cast down by the reverses we 
 have sustained. Let us rather profit by our disasters. 
 We have been too proud and boastful in our confi- 
 dence. It may do us a great deal of good to learn at 
 the outset of the war the lessons our reverses should 
 teach. Let us learn them ; and let us be roused to a 
 firmer couraare to maintain the areat cause amidst all 
 
34 
 
 sacrifices and all sufferinojs. Our fathers fouslit for 
 seven years to establish the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence ; and shame to us if we are not willinfr to fio-ht 
 if need be, for seven times seven years to prevent its 
 overthrow. They were three millions all told ; v>- e are 
 twenty. They were poor ; we are rich. They fought 
 against fearful odds; we have the odds on our side- 
 We fight f 07^ more than tliey fought for. If we are true 
 to our duty, our triumph is sure. If we fail, it will be 
 because we are basely recreant ; and we shall incur, as 
 we shall deserve, the scorn and execration of all noble 
 spirits as long as the ages roll. Shall we then suc- 
 cumb ? No, never — I trust in God, never. 
 
 We have appealed to the God of Battles. The ap- 
 23eal has been forced upon us. After a forbearance un- 
 paralleled in history, we have accepted the issue so 
 wickedly forced upon us. In the face of the world, in 
 the sight of the universe, we have made our appeal to 
 the God of Battles ; and we must never withdraw that 
 appeal as long as He gives us a pulse to feel, or an arm 
 to strike for the sacred cause of truth and right. We 
 fight not for ourselves alone, not for this generation 
 alone, but for our posterity, for unborn ages, for every 
 thing dear and sacred in the great future of our country 
 and of the human race. Let us then maintain the 
 conflict until the "Star-Spangled Banner" shall again 
 float over the land from Maine to Texas, and from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific — and with the exalted trust that 
 it will to the end of time float over a country one and 
 indivisible, a country that shall forever be 
 
 " The home of the free and the land of the brave." 
 
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