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THANKSGIVING 
 
 fG FOR P™E; 
 
 A SERMON, 
 
 PREACHED IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, AT 
 PITTSFIELD, MASS., OX THE OCCASION OF THE 
 
 NATIONAL AND STATE THANKSGIVING; 
 
 DECEMBER 7, 1865. . . * 
 
 BY , 
 
 ,y 
 
 WILLIAM C. RICHAEDS, 
 
 PA8T0B OF THE BAPTIST CHUKCH, PITXSFIELD. 
 
 Victoria concordia crescit. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 SHELDON & COMPANY, 
 
 498 BROADWAY. 
 
 1866. 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE 
 
 A SERMON, 
 
 PREACHED IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, AT 
 PITTSFIELD; MASS., ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 
 NATIONAL AND STATE THANKSGIVING; 
 
 DECEMBER 7, 18(55. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM C. RICHARDS, 
 
 PASTOB or THK BAPTIST CHURCH, PITTSFIBLD. 
 
 Victoria concordia crescit.' 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 SHELDON & COMPANY, 
 
 498 BROADWAY. 
 
 1866. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by 
 WILLIAM C. RICHARDS, 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern Dis- 
 trict of New York. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 PiTTsriKLD, Dec. 10, 1865. 
 Rev. Prof. RicnARUS, 
 
 Very dear Sir : — We, the undersigned, who heard 
 your " National Thanksgiving Sermon," on the 7th 
 instant, were so impressed with its liberal and conser- 
 vative spirit, as to earnestly desii-e that it may be given 
 to the people in some permanent form. 
 
 We therefore respectfully request a copy for publi- 
 cation. 
 
 THOMAS COLT, H. M. PEIRSON, 
 
 GEO. P. BRTGGS, M. H. WOOD, 
 
 W. R. PLUNKETT, J. D. FRANCIS, 
 
 W. B. RICE, C. V. SPEAR, 
 
 J. L. PECK, E. S. FRANCIS, 
 
 E. B. AYILSON, L. G. BURNELL, 
 
 'PiTTSFiELD, Dec. 15, 1865. 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 It cannot be otherwise than gratifying to me to know 
 that my views and utterances in my Thanksgiving Ser- 
 mon, commend themselves to your cordial approbation. 
 With the hope that their extension beyond the imme- 
 diate audience to which they were spoken, will contri- 
 bute a little to the great wo ". of making the Peace 
 which God has given us, an ecpial blessing to the North 
 and the South, I cheerfully comply with your request, 
 and remain. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 WM. C. RICHARDS. 
 Messrs. Trios. Colt, Geo. P. Briggs, and others. 
 
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
 A PROCLAMATION. 
 
 Whereas, It has pleased Almighty God, during the year 
 •which is now coming to an end, to relieve our beloved country 
 from the fearful scourge of civil war, and permit us to secure 
 the blessings of peace, unity and harmony, with a great en- 
 largement of civil liberty ; 
 
 And whereas, Our Heavenly Father has also, during the 
 year, graciously averted from us the calamities of foreign war, 
 pestilence and famine, while our granaries are all full of the 
 fruits of an abundant season ; 
 
 And whereas, a righteousness exalteth a Nation, while sin 
 is a reproach to any people : 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the 
 United States, do hereby recommend to the people thereof that 
 they do set apart and observe the first Thursday of December 
 as a day of Thanksgiving to the Creator of the Universe, for 
 their deliverance and blessings. 
 
 And I do further recommend that, on that occasion, the 
 whole people make confession of our National sins against his 
 Infinite goodness, and with one heart and one mind implore the 
 Divine guidance in the ways of National virtue and holiness. 
 
 In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and 
 caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 
 Done at the City of Washington, this twentieth day of October, 
 in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred 
 t ^' ^'^ and sixty-five, and of the Independence of the Uni- 
 ted States the ninetieth. 
 (Signed,) ANDREW JOHNSON. 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 '' O COME, let us sing unto the Lord ; let us make a joy- 
 ful noise to the Rock of our Salvation. 
 
 ''Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, 
 and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms." 
 
 Psalms xcv. 1, 2. 
 
 The sacred challenge of the inspired Psalm- 
 ist comes to us to-day in a double echo. We 
 are assembled in this sanctuary in oliedience 
 to two proclamations ; one from the Gov- 
 ernor of our Commonwealth, and another 
 from the Chief Magistrate of the Eepublic ; 
 both of which call us, as the summons of the 
 Royal Poet called his people of old, to the 
 service and sacrifice of Thanksgiving unto 
 God. 
 
 Our State Thanksgiving which has hitherto 
 concentrated, in its almost immemorial fes- 
 
6 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 tival, the quickest and profoimdest emotions 
 of our hearts — and which has exalted itself 
 from a custom into almost the sanctity of a 
 sacred ordinance — is, to-day, blended with a 
 National service, of such peculiar dignit}', 
 and of such irresistible force of fitness, that, 
 in effect, the former is merged and absorbed 
 into the latter. We keep indeed both festi- 
 vals at once, and Avhile fealty to the Com- 
 monwealth, and tidelity to the principles l)e- 
 queathed to us by our fathers, forbid us to 
 omit the State ordinance, we yet joyfully 
 consent to overlay its gifts upon the altar 
 with the broader and more special offerings 
 of gratitude and praise, due from us as an 
 integral part of the great Nation coming up, 
 to-day, with Thanksgiving to the Lord. 
 
 Five years have passed aAvay since any 
 State of the American Union celebrated its 
 annual Thanksgiving, in such circumstances 
 of peace and prosperity, as would naturally 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 7 
 
 inspire the song of praise upon our lips and 
 melody in our hearts unto God. Four times 
 our own Commonwealth has l)een summoned 
 to tliis service, while the clouds of calamity 
 hung thickly in the national sky ; and while 
 upon all the horizon there was scarcely a ray 
 of light to be seen. The din of battle, the 
 shock of arms, the "confused noise and o^ar- 
 ments rolled in blood," the slaughter of our 
 ])rothers and sons, and innumerable other 
 tokens of the melancholy prevalence of civil 
 war within our borders — seemed almost 
 mockeries of our successive festivals, making 
 of them, to multitudes, times of fasting rather 
 than of feasting ; occasions for sorrow rather 
 than of song ; and clouding them, even to the 
 most favoured and hopeful participant, with 
 the shadows of impenetrable gloom. 
 
 1 cannot but remember and recall here, the 
 emotions wdth which, in a sister and contigfu- 
 ous State, I prepared to obey the call of its 
 
8 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. ^ 
 
 1 
 
 Executive for public Thanksgiving services ' 
 four years ago. Then the first fearful sur- 
 prise — the awe I may fitly say — of the Na- 
 tional calamity was upon all hearts. There | 
 was a paralysis of almost every arm of won- i 
 ted industry. Looms were idle. The wings | 
 of commerce were folded. The strokes of 
 labour fell feebly and with many intermissions. 
 The only activities were of a strange and 
 startling nature. They were the activities of j 
 vast and augmenting preparations for war. ' 
 The foundry and the forge were aglow with j 
 the lurid fires that melted and moulded the [ 
 iron for Death's deadly implements. ; 
 
 In these circumstances, the Thanksgiving 
 proclamation of 1861, in our Ncav England 
 States, and doubtless in others, had, at first, j 
 a tone of untimeliness in it. Some asked with 1 
 irony, some with bitterness, some with only ^ 
 heedlessness — " What have we to be thankful 
 for ?" AVithout misgiving, I charged my peo- 
 
THAAKSGIYIXG FOPv TEACE. V 
 
 pie. ill the words of Neheniiali, " Go 3^0111- 
 way ; eat the fat — drink the sweet, and send 
 portions unto them for whom nothing is pre- 
 pared. For this da}^ is holy unto our God : 
 Xeither he ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is 
 your strength."* There were darker clouds 
 upon the national sky, on subsequent Thanks- 
 giving days, than those whieli infolded the 
 annual feast in 18 Gl. Bnt we had l)ecome 
 too familiar with their gloom to fear them as 
 we did at tirst. And having risen once to 
 the grandeur of the occasion, and oflered unto 
 (lod Thanksoivino^ in War: reinemberin^: 
 His mercies in the midst of judgments ; look- 
 ing through the lurid smoke of battle upon 
 plentiful harvests ; hearing, in the intervals 
 of the sullen l)oom of the cannon, the sweet 
 tones of Divine promise — "For a small mo- 
 ment have I forsaken thee ; but with great 
 
 * Nehemiah viii, 10. 
 
 2 
 
10 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 mercies will I a^ither thee ;"* we were encour- 
 aged and strengthened to meet every recnr- 
 rence of the festival with renewed coniidence 
 in the final success of our cause and in the 
 restored favour of Heaven. 
 
 And this day, my hearers, we hold the 
 Thanksgiving for Peace. Peace is the fore- 
 most blessing, of that throng of Divine gifts, 
 for which we come, to-day, "before His pre- 
 sence with Thanksgiving, and make a jo^^ful 
 noise unto Him with psalms." 
 
 With a noble fitness our Chief Magistrate 
 calls upon the Nation to thank God ioY Peace. 
 I am glad that he did not su])stitute for this 
 sweet, this significant, this pregnant, this all- 
 embracing word — that other word — which 
 perhaps a less thoughtful, less gentle, less 
 catholic mind w^ould have seized upon as the 
 watchword of the great National Thanksgiving 
 
 * Isaiah, liv, 7. 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR TEACE. 11 
 
 sumiiioiis : I mean the word Victory. I say, 
 I am glad the President did not su1)stitute 
 Vk'tori/ for Peace in his prochnnation. He 
 might have done this and onr ])eantiful flag, 
 with its stars and stripes everywhere weaving 
 in the breeze, wonhl have jnstiiied the w^ord. 
 TJie dispersion of the rebel armies ; the hn- 
 miliation of their proud and skillful leaders ; 
 the surreiuler of their strongholds ; the ur- 
 gency of their chief men in their pleas for the 
 Executive Pardon ; the restoration of Federal 
 authority in courts and citadels, recently 
 proud and defiant with Rebellion ; these and 
 a thousand other signs would have warranted 
 the use of the word. Why, then, am I glad 
 it A\'as not used ? Because the Victory which 
 has been achieved is more wovtliily expressed, 
 and, indeed, only fltly expressed in the sweet 
 word Peace. Had we not conquered a Peace, 
 we had won no Victory. If the Roman peo- 
 ple held, as we are told by the historian, and 
 
12 THAMCSGIVING FOK PEACE. 
 
 without the influence of Christianity, that 
 there coxdd he no victories in civil icar — hoAv 
 much more shall we, under the mould ni<r 
 power of the gospel, hold that ever}- victoi'y 
 of arms Ave obtained over our rel)ellious l)re- 
 thren was yet but our melancholy defeat, {is 
 much as theirs, until we liad su1:>dued their 
 hearts. 
 
 For our sectional victories over their sec- 
 tional revolt ; for our arms triumphant over 
 their weapons ; it had been mockery — and 
 the refinement of it — for the representative 
 of our still undivided Nation to call them 
 with us to ThanJcsgiving. His call is not to 
 Massachusetts in her proud loyalty, any moi-<' 
 than to South Carolina in her bitter repent- 
 ance ; but to ])oth alike and together ; at the 
 common altar of Naticmal sacrifice, to give 
 thanks unto Him, whose arm hath gotten Him 
 the Victory — not for Massachusetts and not 
 over Carolina ; ])ut for them both as parts of 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 13 
 
 the J2:rcat and iindissovered league of States, 
 that but yesterday seemed about to be dis- 
 solved in blood ; ])ut, to-day, is l)y that very 
 blood — a solvent no more, but a cement — 
 compacted into a unity before impracticable. 
 Had the call l)een to Thankso'ivino; for 
 Victor}', instead of Peace, hoAv sadly marred 
 would not the people's compliance with it 
 have appeared ! At first we think, perhaps, 
 that there could have been no imperfection, 
 no dinmess on the glory of New England's 
 votive offerings unto God at this hour. She 
 had sighed and longed and prayed and toiled 
 and sacrificed and bled for Victory. While 
 the Rebellion w^as erect and defiant and inso- 
 lent, the thirst for victory, for the red trophy 
 of conquest, for the humbling of a proud foe, 
 for the degradation of a false standard and a 
 usurping banner, for the retributive punish- 
 ment of the begettors and abettors of Treason 
 — the thirst for these things, though in a 
 
14 THANKSC4IVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 sense sanguinary, did not seem to be alto- 
 gotlier unreasonable. Yet, liad it been, the 
 real and not the seeming, the deep and not 
 the superficial sentiment of the heart of New 
 England — had there been beneath it all no 
 profounder, no purer, no more patriotic and 
 philanthropic purpose and prayer — we must 
 have been convicted, my hearers, of putting 
 an estimate on triumphs in civil strife which 
 the unchristian pulilic sentiment of Rome 
 scorned. But even New England — the l)lood 
 of so many of whose gallant sons has reddened 
 the soil, and tinged the streams of Southern 
 battle fields — would not have given thanks to 
 God, to-day, for mere physical victories, 
 however many or magnificent they might 
 have been ; if dominant in all, and over all 
 the sounds of loyal victory, there were not, 
 swelling upon every breeze, and echoing from 
 the beetling cliffs of ocean, and the bluffs of 
 mighty rivers, North, South, East and West, 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 15 
 
 the heavenly pa?ans of Peace. It is for Peace, 
 and not for Victoiy, that the heart of New 
 Enghmd is thankfnl to-day. The mother 
 whose nol)le boy fell in the battle ; the grej- 
 haired sire who has no son left to take his 
 place, becanse his conntry needed him for a, 
 sacrifice ; even these are breathing out of 
 their swelling, sobbing bosoms, not the fiery, 
 feverish word Victory, l)ut the sweet, sooth- 
 ing, healing word — Peace ! 
 
 But if even in our loyal States, a thanks- 
 giving for mere Victory must have been a 
 blemished and distorted offerino^ — as savour- 
 ing to multitudes of the spirit of Moloch and 
 not of the Messiah — what shall I say of the 
 hollow mockeries of compliance with the 
 Thanksgiving call, which would be now 
 enacting solemn falsehoods and sacred farces 
 in the sanctuaries of the people who were, 
 but a few months ago, englamoured with the 
 spells of Secession and the hope of successful 
 
16 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 Revolution ! Where, in iill the region over 
 whieh the flag of revolt waved, would a 
 Thankso'ivino: for Vietory — I mean for th(^ 
 triumph of Northern over Southern foree — 
 have been anything hut a lie ? For would it 
 not have been the exultation of the van- 
 quished over their defeat ; their rejoicing in 
 what their pride must count as their shame ! 
 There could have been no Thankso^ivino- t()- 
 day, in Virginia, in Carolina, in Georgia — 
 amid the ruins of desolated towns, the black- 
 ened skeletons of once fair foiests, the ravaged 
 fields Avhere ahvays plenty smiled, the wrecks 
 of a luxurious prosperity, and the still pre- 
 sent signs of the conqueror's power and au- 
 thority. It needed that tlie form of Victoiy 
 should be disguised at least, with the beau- 
 tiful habiliments of Peace^ in order that the 
 subdued and yet spirited sons of the Soutli 
 should come to the festival of the Nation with 
 any other aspect and spirit than that of sul- 
 
TIIANKSGIYJXG FOR PEACE. 17 
 
 leiiiioss and shame. And, my hearers, if there 
 is not more in the national heart and inten- 
 tion, than a mere disgnising of Victory's 
 proud form in the k)Yely vestments of Peace ; 
 it' the sul)stituti()n is seeming and not i^eal, 
 there Avill l)e still Aictory, perhaps, but not, 
 in perpetuity, that whicli makes victory of 
 value — aniity, brotherhood, charity ! 
 
 Thanks o^i vino: for Peace ! This is the re- 
 quisition ; this th<? sweet, welcome, easy duty 
 of the day and the hour. It excludes no part 
 of the regenerated and delivered land ; no 
 State of all the great family so recently 
 plunged in the wild turmoil and turbulence 
 of a strife, which, for deadly earnestness and 
 deadly peril to lioth parties, had never a 
 parallel in history. Before the 1)1 esse d image 
 of Peace which has ])een set up at the Xational 
 Capital, there is no reason ^vhy every lately 
 revolted State shall not come and, with every 
 other loyal State, cast down its pledge of 
 
18 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 fidelity and lift up its song of Th{inksgivin<r 
 to God. In the Tluinksgiving for Peace all 
 partizan wranglings may titly l)e hushed. 
 Although months have elapsed shiee Peac(^ 
 was virtually achieved — its puhlic proclama- 
 tion has waited for the utterance of Nationtd 
 Praise ; that the clamours of section and party 
 prejudice might have time to rage and swell 
 and diminish, until now they should utterly 
 die away, while the universal song of Thanks- 
 giving soars heavenward from the National 
 heart. 
 
 Peace has returned to our land. The grim 
 visage of war is shrinking into the shadows 
 of the past. The soldier is laying aside his 
 arms and resuming the implements of indus- 
 try. The forge is taxed no longer, day and 
 night alike, with a demand for deadly weaj)- 
 ons. Already the spades which heaved the 
 soil into ominous l)illows of wrath, are level- 
 ling the mounds for the happ}' toil of the hus- 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 19 
 
 1)1111 (Imaii. Arsenals are no longer the hope 
 of the conntiy. Academies resnme their as- 
 eenclancy. Military tribunals ^deld up their 
 usurped functions to the civil courts, and the 
 scales of justice hang no longer from the 
 glittering, but unstable sword-hilt. Forts, if 
 not dismantled — as prudence disallows — 
 swarm no longer with crowded garrisons. 
 Iiattle-ships are transformed into merchant- 
 men. Our great railways are blocked no 
 longer with troops and munitions of War ; 
 ))ut rapidly exchange the generous produce 
 of the teeming fields and prairies of the West, 
 for the ingenious and useful products of the 
 busy looms and workshops of the East. 
 
 The familiarity of the National mind with 
 A\ holesale carnage and havoc is receding into 
 that natural and wholesome horror of blood, 
 from Avhich it was violently dragged forth by 
 ,tierce l^attles and slaughters, whose distinc- 
 tive names are burdensome, for their niulti- 
 
20 TIIANK.SGIVIXG FOR PEACP:. 
 
 tilde, to the memory. Eventliiiig around 
 us speaks the promise of a Xational prospe- 
 rity, which may have simuhitioiis, indeed, in 
 a time of War, Initcan l)e su])stantial only in 
 a time of Peace. 
 
 If to us of the loyal States, never impoY- 
 erished by the progress of the War, hut on 
 the contrary displaying, in the face of a gi- 
 gantic Terror — threatening our political and 
 social ruin, a constantly recuperative energy, 
 amazing to the nations of Europe and hardly 
 less so to ourselves ; if to us, upon Avhom the 
 dread burden of War has pressed with com- 
 paratively little force, the advent of Peace 
 Avith all her attendant train of blessings, is an 
 occasion for ardent thanksgiving — how can it 
 l)e less to the people whom the War has re- 
 duced from a proud alHuence to almost 
 penur}^, and who have seen — in tlie track of 
 the uidiindered march of an avenging Gov- 
 ernment — not onlv their estates despoiled, 
 
THAXKSGIYING FOR PEACE. 21 
 
 their possessions consumed, their strength 
 wasted, their armies overwhehned, but be- 
 yond these disasters — their cherished insti- 
 tutions and ideas shattered and dissipated in 
 the tempest, until they rest from a hopeless 
 conflict enfeebled and indeed exhausted. 
 Must not Peace be welcome to them ? They 
 might indeed scorn it at the hands of an alien 
 foe, though his foot were upon their necks ! 
 We should expect this from those in whose 
 veins our blood courses, and whom we could 
 not afl^ord to despise in the field. But at the 
 hands of the Nation, of which they and we 
 are equally integers, why should they not 
 take the beautiful olive branch, already blos- 
 somed thickly with the signs of happier days, 
 and press it to their Avan lips with fervent 
 praises to God ! 
 
 For Peace shall be even more to them than 
 to us — if heartily embraced and thoroughly 
 
 appreciated. To us it will bring renewed 
 3 
 
22 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 and, it may be, augmented prosperity. To 
 them it will be not a progress only, bnt a new 
 birth ; not an enhancement of good alone, 
 bnt a new inheritance. Under the sway of 
 the new Angel ef Peace — the social life, the 
 political condition, the industrial resources, 
 the very soil of the beautiful and generous 
 southern clime will iind regeneration and 
 bourgeon into aspects and products of l)eauty 
 and wealth, which we of this less genial clime 
 may yet, with brotherly kindness come to 
 envy. 
 
 But I shall disappoint your just expecta- 
 tions, and do injustice to this great National 
 occasion for Thanksgiving, if I find no other 
 reason for it than the restoration of Peace. 
 
 There are, indeed, two other grounds upon 
 which, if the service we render to-day needed 
 to be justified, I should confidently stand up 
 for its vindication. At one of these I shall 
 merely glance — assured that the briefest ob- 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 23 
 
 servation of it will suffice to convince 3^ou 
 that it is solid and no quicksand ; no deceit- 
 ful mirage merely. 
 
 Our gratitude, as a Nation, is due to Him 
 Avbo holds the destiny of kingdoms and dy- 
 nasties in His hand, for the 'preservation of 
 this Union of States without a flaw. The 
 disintegration of the Union, to the extent con- 
 templated and so vehemently desired by the 
 States recently in revolt, would have been a 
 calamity, the measure of Avhich we shall now 
 never determine ; but which might, perhaps, 
 have been unfolded, to the loyal and dis- 
 loyal alike, in the endurance of the inevitable 
 political, social and personal misfortunes 
 which would have been the only fruits of our 
 National dismemberment. In some sense, I 
 know, these alleged woes are only conjec- 
 tural, l)ut I have, again and again, sought to 
 look with strained eyes into the thick gloom 
 of Disunion, if haply I might discover there 
 
24 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 some fjiiiit promise of good to both, or even 
 to one, of the great divorced parties. While 
 I did not, indeed, desire to find some such 
 sign, I think there were times, in the gloomy 
 and weary march of events, when it would 
 have given me some sort of comfort to say to 
 my burdened heart — "Well poor, troubled 
 heart, if the worst comes to the worst, and 
 this glorious league of married States is bro- 
 ken in violent divorcement — there is yet a 
 gleam, a ray perhaps, of promise on the far 
 horizon, that may grow into brightness for 
 the divided peoples." But I could not dis- 
 cern that gleam. All beyond the melancholy 
 disruption was dark with the presage and 
 presence of disorder and strife. I saw not 
 then, any more than I see now, how States 
 drifted asunder by conflicting principles and 
 policies — till the fierce strain snapped the 
 cable that held them together, should there- 
 after peacefully and prosperously sail in the 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 25 
 
 same sea, the jurisdiction of whose waters 
 and shores must l)e forever in perplexing 
 (piestion, and often in complications of doubt, 
 ending only in fierce and bitter and relentless 
 antagonisms and strifes — hindering progress 
 and imperilling the existence of one or both. 
 With the imminence of the c^anyer connected 
 with the disjunction of the States — a danger 
 circumscribed, to the deliberate judgment of 
 multitudes, by no narrower sweep than the 
 wild orbit of anarch}^ — the violence such a 
 catastrophe w^ould do to the patriotism and 
 affection with wdiich loyal hearts cherished 
 the Union, devised by the wisdom, framed by 
 the toil and cemented by the blood of our 
 fathers, was as nothing, in comparison, while 
 yet the result was impending as a fearful pos- 
 sibility of doom ; but now that the doom is 
 averted, hj the Divine interposition, we feel, 
 in all its absolute terribleness, the anguish it 
 would have cost us to see the beautiful fabric 
 
26 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 of American popular government crum1)led 
 into fragments, hy the fratricidal strength of 
 those to whom its pillars should have been 
 more dear than their personal aggrandize- 
 ment, more sacred than their fondest ambi- 
 tions. Shuddering, as we must, to realize 
 the extreme narrowness of our escape from 
 ruin, with the overthrow of our National tem- 
 ple, we recover our calmness only before the 
 altar of Him, Avhose wisdom'and strength and 
 grace constituted the trinity of force required 
 for the conservation of a Government too ex- 
 ceptional and too beneficent, in the history 
 of nations, to be jeopardized hy caprice, or 
 ambition, without the deep dishonour of those 
 who dared the crime, and without our grate- 
 ful acknowledgments to Him who prevented 
 its dread consummation. 
 
 The third reason I shall offer for our hearty 
 observance of this service of gratitude to God 
 is the extension and jperfection of our National 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 27 
 
 Liberty. I use the word perfection in a rela- 
 tive rather than in an absolute sense, and as 
 applied to the scope, rather than to the qua- 
 lity of freedom residting from the great con- 
 vulsions of the Union. Without conviction — 
 without CA^en the thought — that the extinction 
 of American slavery, existing as it did by the 
 suffrage of the great Charter of our Federal 
 organization, would have been a wise and 
 worthy end of an internecine war ; or, in its 
 bare accomplishment, a vindication of the 
 measures in which such a war had its origin 
 on the part of the Government ; I am never- 
 theless not only prepared, l)ut profoundl}' 
 eager, to " make a joyful noise unto the Rock 
 of our Salvation," for the result of Emanci- 
 pation, as incidental to the progress of the 
 conflict betwixt unconditional loyalty to the. 
 Union, and uncompromising hostility to it. 
 The logic of events is too resistless to be op- 
 posed with mere preferences of judgment as 
 
28 TIIAXKSGIYIXG FOK PEACE. 
 
 to the manner in which truly gi'and and im- 
 measuraljly lofty moral eonsunnnations shall 
 be reached. 
 
 The nprooting of Slavery was of this order 
 of consnmmations, ' devoutly to be wished' ; 
 and in the face of its astonishing achievement, 
 all merely judicial scruples as to the doing of 
 it assume the aspect of solemn impertinence. 
 The ship with the dark flag has gone down 
 in the tempest madly evoked for its preser- 
 vation from a form of ruin, wdiich existecl, 
 perhaps, only in the imagination of those 
 whose idolatry of it disturbed their reason. 
 They counted its perpetuation as more to be 
 desired than the conservation of the Govern- 
 ment, which yet held in its Charter all the 
 warrants it could boast, or claim, for its con- 
 tinuance ; and in their reckless zeal to immo- 
 late the Constitution of the United States, 
 they brought Slavery, instead, within the sac- 
 rificial stroke of the knife and the fire. And 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PExiCE. 29 
 
 now over its blood and its consuming corpse, 
 liow shall the Nation do less than rejoice with 
 trembling, and give unfeigned thanks to God 
 for His salvation vouchsafed to us, from the 
 peril of a fearful cancer in the body politic — 
 which, disguised as it might be, was never 
 stripped of its terror, and yet was in such 
 close proximity to the life of the Nation, that 
 no hand but God's could ply the knife and 
 cut the festering death away. 
 
 I am claiming — observe my hearers — that 
 the extension of Freedom to the enslaved race 
 in the midst of us, is a fit occasion for National 
 Thanksofivino^ to God. I do not now think 
 of sectional interests, but of universal inte- 
 rests. If I did not sincerely believe that the 
 people, upon whom the sacrifice of Slavery 
 has fallen with the immediate aspect of a 
 calamity, and who, from their long association 
 with it, and from their general unconscious- 
 ness, and inapprehension even, of any social 
 
30 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 or moral wrong-doing in maintaining, defend- 
 ing and perpetnating it ; if I did not])elieve, 
 I repeat, that the hitc shive-owners have fully 
 as much reason as any of us — aye vastly more 
 than any of us — and not less, hy the least 
 whit, than the emancipated slaves them>selves, 
 to give thanks to God for the very thing they 
 shunned, as the worst of evils and the sad- 
 dest of disasters, I should not think it possi- 
 ble for this Thanksgiving festival to be in 
 any just and broad sense — National. Millions 
 of the people of the United States would be 
 unable to unite with other millions in the 
 recoo:nition of what these latter will doubtless 
 most exult in to-day, as ground for National 
 praises to our Fathers God — the emancipation 
 of all the slaves in our land. But on this 
 point I am in no perplexity of mind or con- 
 science. The deliverance of the shive-holder 
 is as great as that vouchsafed to the slave. 
 Both are emancipated. The freedom of the 
 
TIIAXKSGIVIXG FOR PEACE. 31 
 
 sLive is the freedom of the master. I can well 
 appreciate the feeling with which one of the 
 hitter class, in Georgia, said to his father — 
 jdso a slave-holder — the mornins: when the 
 President's finjd decree of Emancipation was 
 received, " Icongratulate you, sir, that you and 
 I are both freemen now." The father's per- 
 ception was not so quick as that of his son, 
 hut it needed only the impulsion of the felic- 
 itous thought, seconded by a few words of 
 explanation, and father and son shook hands 
 and looked into one another's faces with smiles 
 of unwonted brightness, as they felt together 
 that, in Slavery's overthrow, they were en- 
 larged. And while I cannot flatter myself, 
 or you, with the idea that a majority of the 
 late slave-masters of the South have reached 
 the Pisgah of a vision, so l)road and fair as 
 at I have alluded to, I do l)elieve that thou- 
 sands are climbing to it, and that ere long the 
 people of the South will atone for any lack 
 
32 THANKSf4IVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 of fervour in their gratitude to-dfiy for Emau- 
 cipatiou, by originating a special Thanks- 
 giving ordinance — for themselves, their chil- 
 dren, and their children's children to honour. 
 The masters who held slaves were them- 
 selves slaves to the system of servitude and 
 its sad entail of evils upon the white class. 
 In the atmosphere of this unconscious servi- 
 tude, Agriculture, Industrial Arts and Edu- 
 cation were all dwarfed and stunted. Labour, 
 which is the vitality of a people, was dispar- 
 aged and dishonoured 1)}^ Slavery. The slave 
 agriculture was slovenl^^ and exhaustive to 
 the land. The childhood of the white class 
 was degraded, intellectually, by association 
 with the slave children. Without pressing 
 this view further, and without defining the 
 injustice of Slavery to the subjects of it, which 
 is foreign to my point, I insist that in an eco- 
 nomical and social — not to say moral — sense, 
 the extinction of Slavery will result speedily 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR TEACE. 33 
 
 to the vast benefit of those who may now sul- 
 lenly, or more patiently, cleplore the dispensa- 
 tion of Providence which has broken the yoke 
 from the neck of the black man. A ncAV in- 
 dustry, new processes of competitive agri- 
 culture, labour the law of the white man as 
 well as of the black man, and compensation 
 according to toil ; these alone will prove 
 grand and rapid regenerating forces in the 
 now paralyzed and desolated South ; and we 
 shall see the wilderness blossom as the rose, 
 and the people of that afflcted region w^ill 
 have appointed to them " beauty for ashes, 
 the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of 
 {)raise for the spirit of heaviness." 
 
 For this Jubilee Year then to the Southern 
 land and its population, white and black alike, 
 the National heart should pour out, to-day, its 
 thankfulness to the Eock of our Salvation ; 
 the pulse and throb of the Southern heart 
 answering to the pulse and throb of the North- 
 
34 THANKSGIVING FOR TEACE. 
 
 erii heart ; while the clanking of chains is a 
 sound dying away into the preludes of the 
 new song of universal liberty. 
 
 I do not forget, to-day, because I fail spe- 
 cially to dwell upon them, those reasons for 
 profound gratitude to Almighty God, which 
 are, from their constant recurrence, not extra- 
 ordinary, like those I have indicated. The 
 common blessings vouchsafed to us in the al- 
 ternation of the seasons, with their healthful 
 w^ork and happy wages for it, wdth their out 
 of door charms and their home delights, are, 
 like ten thousand other gifts of our beneficent 
 and loving Father, the staple themes of our 
 thanksgiving. Surely, we are not less thank- 
 ful for them, to-day, because they are for a 
 season overshadowed by the grander gifts 
 which make the year an Annus JSIirabiUs in 
 our National Annals. We look up now to 
 the great gift of Peace, as the pilgrim in the 
 Alps lifts his eye to the sky-piercing Matter- 
 
THA^NKSGIYING FOR PEACE. 35 
 
 horn ; its wondrous peak supplanting a little 
 while all less, all lower objocts in his regard. 
 To that summit of our national elevation — 
 which we call Peace, we lift our eyes to-day. 
 We send our sonofs thitherward. We shout 
 our anthems that the strain may soar and soar 
 till that peak shall "catch the flying joy," 
 and " roll the rapturous hosanna round." 
 
 This sermon would have an inexcusable im- 
 perfection in it (as I know it has other 
 imperfections, which I trust in your generosity 
 to hold excusable ;) — if I should close it with- 
 out attempting to indicate some of the ways 
 in which true thankfulness to God will reveal 
 itself, not in the National voice alone, but in 
 the National conduct. 
 
 The times are confessedly momentous. 
 Every day may be shaping grand historical 
 events. Every day is, indeed, maturing to 
 perfect ripeness the fruit of the conflict ; or 
 else hastening within its heart the melancholy 
 
36 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 processes of blight tind decay. And the peo- 
 ple are individually responsi])le for the cha- 
 racter of National counsels and acts, mediately 
 if not immediately. It is, therefore, of vast 
 moment, that we should understand our re- 
 sponsibility, and with right judgment and 
 right action, acquit ourselves of it right man- 
 fully. The Peace and restored National Au- 
 thority, and the wide extension of Freedom, 
 which are the experiences of the Nation, this 
 present memorable year, all demand the ex- 
 tremest wisdom for their conservation and 
 happiest development. 
 
 At the foundation of true National thank- 
 fulness to God, as the Rock of our Salvation, 
 lies, essentially, a profound sense of His in- 
 terposition for us, in the fearful exigencies to 
 which we were brought by the Rebellion 
 and tlie War. Inseparable from such a con- 
 sciousness as this, is the conviction that only 
 the hand which saved us can keep us from 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 37 
 
 falling again and fatally. At such a doctrine 
 as this Infidelity and Atheism may sneer. 
 Rationalism may smile with ill-concealed 
 scorn ; but spiritual Reason and Christian 
 Faith, two divinely irradiated principles, 
 which will endure when all the sneers and 
 cavillinofs of unbelief shall be hushed in eter- 
 nal silence, will accept and vitalize the doc- 
 trine into duty and obedience. 
 
 The speedy restoration of mutual confi- 
 dence between the lately antagonistic sections 
 of the Union is the pressing demand of the 
 times. To effect this should be the aim of 
 every enlightened statesman and of every 
 true patriot. Upon the altar of true amity 
 all partizan creeds and platforms and preju- 
 dices and schemes should be cast and consu- 
 med. The clamours of sectionalism should 
 die away in fraternal words. In the accom- 
 plishment of a result so noble and lofty as this, 
 the initiative clearly belongs to the successful 
 
38 THANKSGIVING TOR PEACE. 
 
 contestant in the now ended conflict. The 
 people, humiliated by defeat of every kind, 
 physical, political, social and moral ; smart- 
 ing with surprising hurts ; bewildered by 
 amazing revolutions ; confounded by the col- 
 lapse of bubbles which they fondly believed 
 were spheres of granite ; impoverished to a 
 degiee of which their own serfs never afforded 
 an example, and their own generous land no 
 type ; awaking only with clouded and reluc- 
 tant eyes to the stern conviction that " old 
 things are passed away and all things are 
 made new " in their condition and destiny ; 
 distrusting and often utterly disbelieving the 
 T^rofessions of their successful competitors, 
 that they desire only the highest good of the 
 whole country — knowing no North and no 
 South ; dreaming yet, it may be, of impossi- 
 ble extrication from the meshes of Fate which 
 are about them ; the subdued, broken, disap- 
 pointed, discouraged, but yet generous, warm- 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 39 
 
 hearted, open-handed people of the lately 
 revolted regions, should be spared every 
 needless pang of fresh bitterness in the waters 
 of the full cup poured out to them. It is 
 ours, my hearers, it is Massachusetts' privi- 
 lege to kill their lingering pride and hate and 
 dou])t and defiance, with genuine magnani- 
 mity, with Christian kindness, with inco atro- 
 vertible proofs that, Slavery being now mori- 
 bund and practically out of the way, there 
 is actually nothing between Massachusetts 
 and Carolina — as the representatives of all the 
 loyal and all the returning Commonwealths — 
 to hinder the true embrace of sisterly love 
 and fellowship. 
 
 The exercise of magnanimity is not within 
 the power of the South. This high privilege 
 belongs to the North. I do not mean that the 
 people of the South cannot be generous. I 
 mean only, that now they have nothing to 
 give but their consent to what being inevi- 
 
40 THANKSGIVING FOR TEACE. 
 
 table, they may allow with cheerfulness or 
 suUenness, with high resolves to make the 
 best of it, or stolid inaction as sufferers, ac- 
 cording to the spirit and temper of those who 
 have the power of the majority to press what- 
 soever cup they will to the lips of the prone. 
 
 The people of the South can be won by 
 kindness. The people of the North can be 
 exalted, ennobled, enriched by the exercise 
 of kindness — than which God never ordained 
 an easier and happier method of a people's 
 aggrandizement. Henceforward, indeed, there 
 is but one people beneath the stars and the 
 stripes. The mad dream of another flag has 
 proved a baseless vision. The stars are not 
 for one section and the stripes for another ; 
 butf'both for all — the stars to multiply and 
 not the stripes. 
 
 We shall not be truly grateful to God 
 in this great epoch of deliverance, my hear- 
 ers, if we do not hold our judgment and 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 41 
 
 our impulses iu the stroug leash of moclera- 
 tiou, while we discuss aucl determine the 
 irrave matters ori^'inated by the new order of 
 things. We are unquestionably debtors to 
 the emancipated people of this country, to 
 the whole extent of the persistence and 
 vehemence with which we have desired their 
 freedom. A faithful discharge of our debt 
 to them will well attest the sincerity of our 
 gratitude to the Giver of Liberty. Our ef- 
 forts, our contributions, in their behalf, for 
 the amelioration of their suflerings in the 
 strange vicissitudes of sudden independence, 
 for their education, cultivation and conver- 
 sion, are all the legitimate sequences of our 
 hopes and prayers for their enlargement. 
 
 But even in this direction, there is need of 
 earnest and intelligent discrimination, lest 
 our impulses rush far beyond the limit of 
 judicious interference for them. The freed- 
 men must, for obvious reasons, abide in the 
 
42 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 South, either with or without the white chiss 
 which recently held them in Slavery. Yon 
 and I, and all thoughtful men, deprecate the 
 idea of a separate, isolated community of 
 colour. If, then, the white and coloured classes 
 are to dwell together, it is absolutely vain 
 for outside legislation to fix and define the 
 precise terms of their relationship. It is sa- 
 fer to entrust these grave questions to the 
 statesmanship and to the conscience of the 
 Southern people — who being obliged to ad- 
 just themselves to the new^ order of social 
 conditions, will not blindly override and op- 
 press those who must yet do their hard labour 
 for them. Moreover, I am persuaded that 
 there is a conscience in the South, which l)e- 
 ino' now unl^ound from the o^reen withs of an 
 almost irresponsible power over the slaves, 
 will rise up and assert itself in just require- 
 ments and judicious regulations for the 
 freedmen. 
 
TIIANKSGIVIXG FOR PEACE. 43 
 
 \ What we have to do at the North, is to 
 co-operate Avith the y^t crippled Southern 
 people, in repairing the immeasurable damage 
 they have sustained in their vain uprising 
 against the Union, and by the gentleness of 
 our spirit convince them of the true greatness 
 of our social and political and moral status, 
 that they may copy all its excellencies, and 
 excel if they can, all the proudest develop- 
 ments of its worth and wisdom we have yet 
 realized. 
 
 "Our whole country" is henceforth the 
 true watchword of our lips and oar hearts, 
 and if we mean less than this to-day, our 
 Thankso^ivius: must be marred. There will 
 be discordant notes in its melody — which 
 will gravitate it downward, iustead of waft- 
 ing it upward to Heaven. 
 
 Let us, my hearers, go forward, in our ima- 
 gination, forward a whole decade — until we 
 reach Thanksgiving Day in 1875. Some of 
 
44 TII.VKKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 
 
 US will never see that day with other eyes 
 than those of imagination. Happy, I think, 
 will be those e3'es that physically behold, 
 and those ears that physically hear, the scenes 
 and sounds of that not far distant day. If 
 the beneficent Father whom we worship, ac- 
 cepts the National service we bring, to-day, 
 to His altars — and He will accept it if we are 
 true patriots, true philanthropists and true 
 Christians, — then, upon this anniversary in 
 1875, there will stretch " from Eastern coast 
 to Western," a glorious league oi Forty mar- 
 ried States^ the basis of whose magnificent 
 prosperity will be universal Liberty — under 
 the aegis of which no privileged class will op- 
 press or wrongfully restrain another class ; 
 but all will have their rights before the law 
 and before God. To all orders of the people, 
 to its forty millions of minds, the blessings 
 of Education will l)e accessible, and even ob- 
 trusive, so that " he who runs mav read." 
 
THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 45 
 
 The gre^it ocejiiis, and the multitudinous 
 seas and harbours of the world will be whi- 
 tened with the sails of our commerce. The 
 metals and the co.ds, from the mines and the 
 measures of our great mineral storehouses, 
 will help to vitalize and adorn the industry 
 of all nations. The vast and fertile plains 
 and prairies of the West and South Avill choke 
 the granaries of Europe with food for its hun- 
 gry masses, and tire lier looms with staples 
 for clothing her sons and daughters. Science, 
 never idle, will have done in a decade of 
 years, the marvels which before had no par- 
 allel in a decade of centuries. She will have 
 reticulated the Western Continent with the 
 iron Aveb, every libre of which is a filament of 
 far reaching thought and speech. She will 
 have linked the i>reat seas too-ether with 
 bands of steel. She will have lighted our 
 cities, our highways, our coasts, with car])()n 
 or metallic suns — almost literally fulfilling 
 the inspired prediction, ''- For there is nothing 
 5 
 
46 THANKl^GIVLXG FOK PEACE. 
 
 bid which shall not hv nianit'ested."* She 
 will have controlled the subtle and myste- 
 I'ions sisterhood of unseen forces — transform- 
 ing them into one another, and by their agency ! 
 combining the elements with a wondrous skill i 
 for the benefit of man. All this will she \ 
 have done, and more : but most of all, she ] 
 will have revealed to us (iod. in earth and i 
 sea and sky and air. (iod only wise, iiod only 
 great. God only to he worshipped witli per- 
 petual Thanksgiving. I 
 On that Thanksgiving Day. if any of us, i 
 my hearers, may not look forth upon the de- j 
 velopment 1 have imagined : may it be ours | 
 to take part in a grander and loftier service j 
 of Praise than will ever send its echoes Hying I 
 from spire to spire, from hill top to hill tO}), i 
 on this round earth -even iri the perpetual ■ 
 festival of T h an kssfi vino- before the Throne of ] 
 God and the Lamb, in which all whom the Son j 
 has made free b}^ His blood, shall ha^e part . 
 " with joy unspeakable and full of glory.'' t 
 * *Mark iv. 22 (\' 
 
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