LC 
 
 111 
 
 .1)5 
 
 AMENDMENTS ' 
 
 fHI CiSflT^Ili OF THE iiTi SliTES 
 
 Non-Sectariai aid Uoiversal Mncatioii. 
 
 VETERAN ASSOCIATION, ORDER OF UNITED AMERICANS, 
 
 NEW YORK, FEP'.RUAKY 23d, 1876. 
 
 REMARKS 
 
 OK 
 
 DANIEL ULLMANN, LL.D., 
 
 IN RESPONSE TO THE SENTIMENT : 
 
 Our Common Schools, the Glorv of our Republic, Undefiled by Sectarianism ; 
 ' OrR Hd'E AND Boast ; they shall he Maintained. 
 
 N£iV YORK: 
 
 RAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, 25 PARK ROW. 
 
 1876. 
 
Class LL . Ill 
 
 Book ' '\j\. 
 
Oass. 
 Book_ 
 
AMENDMENTS 
 
 mmmm of m oiiied mm. 
 
 Noii-Sectai'iai M Mnm\ EflBcalioii. 
 
 VETERAN ASSOCIATION, ORDER OF UNITED AMERICANS, 
 NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 22d, 1876. 
 
 'V 
 
 REMARKS 
 
 DANIEL ULLMANN, LL.D., 
 
 IX RESPONSE TO THE SENTIMENT: 
 
 Our Common Schools, the Glory of our Republic, Undefiled by Sectarianism ; 
 Our Hope and Boast ; they shall be Maintained. 
 
 /^^oVcfiN, 
 
 NEIV YORK: 
 
 BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, 25 PARK ROW. 
 
 1876. 
 
LCii 
 
 U5 
 
REMARKS OF DANIEL ULLMANN. 
 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 We have reason to congratulate ourselves upon the 
 present condition of public opinion in the United 
 States. The thoughts which we expressed in other 
 days, not without obloquy, are now ripening into 
 national convictions. Hopes and impulses which were 
 considered superficial and transient, and only the reflec- 
 tion of emotion and passion, are now recognized as fixed 
 purposes, based upon the elementary principles of 
 political philosophy, and destined to assert themselves 
 with irresistible might. Such are ever the phases and 
 tendencies of historic movements. The martyrs of to- 
 day are the heroes of the future. Principles which we 
 promulgated long since, under many trials and vicissi- 
 tudes, are evidently becoming widely diftused. Thou- 
 sands, who once received them with scorn and derision, 
 are now found among their most strenuous advocates. 
 The upheavals of society, political and religious, daily 
 demanding our attention, indicate that the mighty 
 
forces which control its action are stirring up its deep- 
 est depths, and are preparing for a great moral revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Some years ago, I ventured to avow my faith in an 
 unsectarian system of free and universal education, 
 and was therefor publicly burned in effigy ; and had 
 the individuals, w'ho instigated that outrage, possessed 
 tlie powders exercised by their fellows of the Spanish 
 Inquisition, in the reign of Pliilip II, they would gladly 
 have turned the mock into a real auto da fe. How 
 striking is the contrast ! Now powerful organizations 
 enthusiastically proclaim these sentiments as the basis 
 of their Union ; — the State conventions of a great 
 political party unhesitatingly adopt them as a portion 
 of tkeir declaration of principles, and the chief magis- 
 trate of the nation, in his annual message, boldly and 
 comprehensively enunciates these truths. 
 
 " Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again ; 
 The eternal years of God are hers. " 
 
 " And thus the whirligig 
 Of time brings in his revenges." 
 
 Three maxims are fundamental in America : — 
 First, — Tbe sovereignty of the people; Second, — An 
 absolute separation of church and state ; and Third, — 
 
That republican institutions cannot permanently exist, 
 unless the people are virtuous and intelligent. 
 
 Now, if virtue and intelligence be the bulwark of 
 American institutions, then free and universal education 
 is a supreme necessity. If the maxim that there shall 
 be no connection between church and state be funda- 
 mental, then the schools established by the state, and 
 sustained by taxes levied upon the whole people, must 
 remain unsectarian. These are logical sequences, from 
 which there is no escape. 
 
 But one of the great powers of the earth utterly 
 denies these axiomatic truths. The doo^matic decrees 
 of the Vatican Council, and the infallible Head of the 
 Roman Hierarchy, in his " Syllabus of Errors," declare 
 that the whole human race are bound, at the peril of 
 salvation, to believe precisely the reverse. Pius IX, in 
 his encyclical letters, addressed to the whole Koman 
 world, says, in effect, that these fundamental maxiros 
 are " false opinions," " perverse," " detestable," and the 
 result of a " delirium," and " let him " who accepts 
 them " be anathema." 
 
 Thus is the issue made. It is the same " old, old 
 story." " The thing that hath been, it is that which 
 
shall be." Here we have, standing on this continent, 
 opposed face to face, the two systems which have 
 divided mankind since the beginning of history, and 
 have been the cause of most of the wars which have 
 desolated the earth. It is the very problem whose 
 solution is the most momentous that concerns the 
 human race. These two system^ cannot co-exist, with- 
 out collision — conflict — war. One gives free scope to 
 that love of power which is deeply seated in the cor- 
 ruption of the human heart; the other to that love 
 of liberty which is equally the desire of every human 
 being. One system is called despotism, — the other 
 freedom. So long as man is man — human nature, 
 human nature — it is vain to attempt to reconcile them. 
 It is a dead-lock. There is no middle ground ; both 
 cannot be right ; one or the other is utterly wrong. 
 
 It is not easy to realize the immense power of the 
 Roman Hierarchy. Its huge machinery is better 
 adapted to 'crush individual intelligence, and enslave 
 the human mind than any other ever devised by man. 
 It is a broad, comprehensive system, closely united, 
 compact, steady in its counsels, untiring in its exertions 
 and energetic in its action. Never losing sight of its 
 great end — the government of mankind by means of 
 their ignorance and superstitious fears — it adapts it- 
 
self with infinite flexibility and skill to the exigencies 
 of each age, and the characteristics of each nation. The 
 Roman Hierarchy is the most gigantic political associa- 
 tion on earth. In medieval ages it claimed universal 
 empire, and there is no utterance or record of modern 
 Rome renouncing, retracting, or abandoning this claim. 
 It holds and exercises, at this hour, despotic sway over 
 two hundred millions of human beino-s. The actual 
 forces which govern this vast organization are con- 
 centrated in the Curia Momana, an unrecognized body, 
 consisting of Jesuits — the arch-intriguers of mankind — 
 who controlled the deliberations of the Vatican Coun- 
 cil, and shape the action of the Hierachy, including 
 the Pontiff himself. This is what Mr. Gladstone calls 
 " The Ultramontane minority which pervades the 
 world ; which triumphs in Belgium ; which brags in 
 England ; which partly governs and partly plots in 
 Fi'ance • -^ ■^- * which is everywhere coherent, 
 everywhere tenacious of its purpose, everywhere knows 
 its mind, follows its leaders, and bides its time." 
 
 " This is the minority, which persecutes Italy," beau- 
 tiful Italy, who, crushed for ten centuries under the iron 
 heel of a soulless despot, having now achieved her na- 
 tional unity, is striving to reassert her ancient pre- 
 eminence in art, science and literature ; " which hates 
 
Germany," whose old Empire it destroyed by its un- 
 ceasing efforts to realize universal dominion ; and is 
 now waging a war, without truce, with Prussia and her 
 great statesman ; which, in Austria, declares laws of the 
 Empire annulled ; which, in Bavaria, insults the king 
 in his palace, and dragoons the Diet in its chambers; 
 and which, by eating out the substance of her national 
 life, has reduced S23ain, once the most powerful and 
 magnificent of European kingdoms, to being one of the 
 most feeble. It is this same all-grasping Hierarchy, 
 which, having kept the governments of Mexico, Central 
 and South America in a state of chronic revolution, is 
 enacting scenes of medieval bigotry on the virgin soil of 
 Canada ; and, in the United States, with a compact and 
 subservient minority, taught to move at tap of drum 
 ecclesiastic, is advancing, as they hope, with sure and 
 steady steps, to grasp and wield the sceptre of power 
 on this American continent. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone says, " that Rome has substituted for 
 the proud boast of semper eadem, a policy of violence 
 and change of faith." As to matters of faith, Mr. Glad- 
 stone is right, — of policy, not. Rome has changed her 
 faith, — her policy, never. Since the fifth century, when 
 she first began to assume a political aspect, her policy 
 in all lands and subsequent centuries, has been one and 
 
unvarying, semper eadem ; — the gratification of her insa- 
 tiable lust for POWER, — financial power, political power. 
 And how have the Roman Hierarchy aimed to extend 
 this power ? Understanding the springs of human ac- 
 tion and the forces which move society, they have al- 
 ways known, that he who trains the children of a 
 people, governs that people ; they have, therefore, ever 
 claimed to be the sole teachers of men ; and, in every 
 country and age, have striven to draw to themselves the 
 exclusive instruction of youth. Necessarily, then, in the 
 United States, the public schools have been their ob- 
 jective point. They must either control the schools, or 
 break them down. They must destroy the schools, or 
 the schools will destroy them. Bishop Hughes, some 
 thirty or forty years ago, began this war on the schools, 
 and persistently has it ever since been waged. The 
 great Archbishop, with his clear vision, thorough knowl- 
 edge of American politics, and comprehensive grasp of 
 mind, saw that, inside of the school-liouses, would be the 
 battle-ground. 
 
 The Roman Hierarchy are forced by an irresistible 
 logic into antagonism to every scheme of education not 
 under their control. In the presence of education, ab- 
 solutely free and universal, they could not maintain 
 
10 
 
 themselves for a single generatioD. Without ignorance 
 and superstition, with which to mold mankiud into 
 slaves, that vast fabric of stupendous falsehood and 
 crime, with all its towers and turrets and battlements, 
 gray with the hoar of twelve centuries of oppression, 
 and cemented with the blood of martyrs, would totter 
 and fall into endless ruin. 
 
 And now. Gentlemen, to what practical point do 
 these remarks tend ? Obviously, to this : — That this 
 whole subject shall be lifted up out of the slough of 
 partisan and sectarian influences, and be incorporated 
 into the Constitution of the United States. Nothing 
 short of this will meet the present and future exigencies 
 of the case. The unwritten law of a nation is strong, 
 but it becomes doubly strong, when embodied in its 
 written Constitutions. I am aware that there are ob- 
 jections to the interference of the National Government 
 in the local management of educational affairs ; but na- 
 tional education is a national duty, transcending all 
 other duties, excepting that of national preservation ; 
 and the interests of the whole nation are too complicated 
 and universal to be left exclusively to private effort, or 
 to the separate action of the several States. Some have 
 neglected this great and sacred duty. No State of this 
 Union stands alone ; all are connected and interdepend- 
 
11 
 
 ent. The ignorance, demoralization or anarchy of one 
 affects all. Unless there be, at least, an approximation 
 to a harmonious unity in the entire aggregate of the 
 principles and actions of a nation, it has already entered 
 upon the period of its decline and fall. While, there- 
 fore, it may be wise not to allow the General Govern- 
 ment to enter directly into the execution of plans for 
 educating the people, yet, it should have the power to 
 aid or compel a State to discharge her duty, when fail- 
 ing to make provision for the education of all her citi- 
 zens. We are admitting to full political privileges 
 millions of persons, utterly uninstructed, even in rudi: 
 mentary knowledge. Intelligent citizens, having ample 
 means of observation, have expressed the opinion that 
 the freedmen of some States never will be educated, un- 
 less the National Government shall interfere. No 
 higher responsibility ever rested upon a nation than 
 thaC which the American people assumed, to protect the 
 loyal freedmen in the full enjoyment of all their rights 
 as citizens. We emancipated them to save the nation. 
 Shall a great and magnanimous j)eople not discharge 
 obligations thus incurred ? 
 
 The Constitution of the United States guarantees to 
 every State a republican form of governijient. Repub- 
 licanism and education are convertible, correlative terms. 
 
^"l 
 
 12 
 
 why not also guarantee to every State an imsectarian 
 system of free and universal education ? 
 
 I respectfully submit to you, for your consideration, 
 these TWO amendments to the Constitution of the 
 United States : — 
 
 1. No State shall make any law respecting an estab- 
 lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
 thereof; and no money raised, or property acquired by 
 taxation in any State for the supjDort of public schools, 
 or derived from any public fund therefor, shall ever be 
 under the control of any religious sect ; nor shall any 
 money so raised, or property so acquired, ever be given 
 or loaned to any religious sect or denomination. 
 
 2. "The United States shall guarantee to every 
 State in this Union, a republican form of government," 
 
 AND AN ADEQUATE SYSTEM OF FREE AND UNIVERSAL UN- 
 SECTARIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 LBJL '05