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 THE 
 
 CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE 
 
 ABOLITIONISM: 
 
 jfrmon prc;u!if& x\\ ibf ^irsf |lrosbgicnnn Cbuitlj of ^roohljiiT, |l.' W,, 
 
 Sunday Evening, December 9, 1860, 
 
 Hev. HEISTRY J. VAN DYKE. 
 
 Jifi Ileporied for the "JTew York Herald:'' 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 HENRY POLKINHORN, PRINTER, 375 D STREET. 
 
 1 860. 
 
 (^@\S^". 
 
 ^-5N9^^^ 
 
THE 
 
 CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE 
 
 ABOLITIONISM: 
 
 Sermon prcackli in i\t |irst frcsbntcrian ^I]urt^ of groohlp, g. |., 
 
 SUNDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 9, 1860, 
 
 Reverend HENRY J. VAN DYKE. 
 
 [as reported for the "new YORK HERALD."] 
 
 W ASHING TON: 
 
 PRINTED BY HENRY POLKINHORN, 
 
 1860. 
 
 ^^"^ ^' 
 

 \\a *->-! 'nil ' 
 
 "^ 11 7/ 
 
SERMON 
 
 1» Lei as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all 
 honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not biaspliemed. 
 
 2. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are 
 brethren; but rather do them service, because thry are faithful, and beloved partakers of the 
 benefit. These things teach and exhort. 
 
 3. If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of 
 our Ijord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine wliich is according to godliness, 
 
 4. He is proud, knowing nothing but doting about questions and strifes of words wheroo 
 cometh envy, strife, railinifs, evil surmisings, 
 
 5. Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing 
 that gain is godliness; from such withdraw thyself. 
 
 [ Paul's First Epislle to Timolhij—iith cliap., Isl to 5tli i-erse. 
 
 I propose to discuss the character and influence of abolitionism. 
 With this view, I have selected a text from the Bible, and purpose to 
 adhere to the letter and spirit of its teaching. We ackowledge in this 
 place but one standard of morals, but one authoritative and infallable 
 rule of faith and practice. For we are Christians here : not Papists to 
 bow down to the dictation of any man or church ; not heathen philoso- 
 phers, to grope our way by the feeble glimmerings of the light of 
 nature ; not modern infidels, to appeal from the written law of God to 
 the corrupt and fickle tribunal of reason and humanity; but Christians, 
 on whose banner is inscribed this sublime challenge : " To the law 
 and to the testimony — if they speak not according to this word it is 
 because there is no light in them." 
 
 Let me direct your special attention to the language of our text. 
 There is no dispute among commentators — there is no room for dispute 
 — as to the meaning of the expression " servants under the yoke." 
 Even Mr. Barnes, who is himself a distinguished abolitionist, and has 
 done more, perhaps, than any other man in this country to propagate 
 abolition doctrines, admits that "the addition of the phrase 'under the 
 yoke'" shows undoubtedly that it ({. e. the original word doulos) is to 
 be understood here of slavery. Let me quote another testimony on 
 this point from an eminent Scotch divine — I mean Dr. McKnight — 
 whose exposition of the epistle is a standard work in Great Britain and 
 in this country, and whose as.sociations must exemj^t him from all 
 
suspicion of pro-slavery prejudices. He introduces his exposition of 
 this chapter with the following explanation: "Because the law of 
 Moses allowed no Israelite to be made a slave for life without his own 
 consent, the Judaizing teachers, to allure slaves to their party, taught 
 that under the gospel likewise involuntary slavery is unlawful. This 
 doctrine the apostle condemned here, as in his other epistles, by enjoin- 
 ing Christian slaves to honor and obey their masters, whether they were 
 believers or unbelievers, and by assuring Timothy, that if any person 
 taught otherwise he opposed the wholesome precepts of Jesus Christ 
 and the doctrine of the gospel, which in all points is conformable to 
 godliness or sound morality, and was puffed up with pride, without 
 possessing any true knowledge either of the Jewish or Christian reve- 
 lation," Our learned Scotch friend then goes on to expound the pas- 
 sage in the following paraphrase, which we commend to the prayerful 
 attention of all whom it may concern : 
 
 "Let whatever Christian slaves are under the yoke of unbelievers 
 pay their own masters all respect and obedience, that the character of 
 God whom we worship may not be calumniated, and the doctrine of 
 the gospel may not be evil spoken of as tending to destroy the political 
 rights of mankind. And those Christian slaves who have believing 
 masters, let them not despise them, fancying that they are their equals 
 because they are their brethren in Christ; for, though all Christians 
 are equal as to religious privileges, slaves are inferior to their masters 
 in station. AVherefore, let them serve their masters more diligently, 
 because they who enjoy the benefit of their service are believers and 
 beloved of Grod. 'These things teach, and exhort the brethren to 
 practice them.' If any one teach differently by affirming that under 
 the gospel slaves are not bound to serve their masters, but ought to be 
 made free, and does not consent to the wholesome commandment-s which 
 are our Lord Jesus Christ's, and to the doctrine of the gospel which in 
 all })uints is conformable to true morality, he is puffed tip with pride, 
 and knoweth nothing either of the Jewish or the Christian revelations, 
 though he pretends to have great knowledge of both; but is distem-' 
 pered in his mind about idle questions and debate of words, which 
 afford no foundation for such a doctrine, but are the source of envy, con- 
 tention, evil speaking, unjust suspicion that the tnith is not sincerely 
 maintained, keen disputings carried on contrary to conscience by men 
 wholly corrupted in their minds and destitute of the true doctrine of 
 the gospel, who reckon whatever produc^\s most money is the best reli- 
 gion ; from all such impious teachers withdraw thyself, and do not 
 dispute with them," 
 
The text, as thus expounded by an American abolitionist and a 
 Scotch divine, (whose testimony need not be confirmed by quotations 
 from all the other commentators,) is a prophecy written for these da,js and 
 wonderfully applicable to our present circumstances. It gives us a life- 
 like picture of abolitionism in its principles, its spirit and its practice, 
 and furnishes us with plain instruction in regard to our duty in the 
 premises. Before entering upon fthe discussion of the doctrine, let us 
 define the terms employed. By abolitionism we mean the principles 
 and measures of abolitionists. And what is an abolitionist ? He is 
 one who believes that slaveholdino- is sin, and ought therefore be abol- 
 ished. This is the fundamental, the characteristic, the essential prin- 
 ciple of abolitionism : that slaveholding is sin ; that holding men in 
 involuntary servitude is an infringement upon the rights of man, a 
 heinous crime in the sight of God. A man may believe, on political 
 or commercial grounds, that slavery is an undesirable system, and that 
 slave labor is not the most profitable ; he may have various views as 
 to the rights of slaveholders under the Constitution of the country ; he 
 may think this or that law upon the statute books of Southern States 
 is wrong ; but this does not constitute him an abolitionist, unless he 
 believes slaveholding is morally wrong. The alleged sinfulness of 
 slaveholding, as it is the characteristic doctrine, so it is the strength of 
 abolitionism in all its ramified and various forms. It is by this doc- 
 trine that it lays hold upon the hearts and consciences of men, that it 
 comes as a disturbing force into our ecclesiastical and civil institutions, 
 and by exciting religious animosity (which all history proves to be the 
 strongest of human passions) imparts a peculiar intensity to every con- 
 test into which it enters. And you will perceive it is just here that 
 abolitionism presents a proper subject for discussion in the pulpit — for 
 it is one great purpose of the Bible, and therefore one great duty of 
 God's ministers in its exposition, to show what is sin and what is not. 
 Those who hold the doctrine that slaveholding is sin, and ought there- 
 fore to be abolished, differ very much in the extent to which they 
 reduce their theory to practice. In some, this faith is almost without 
 works. They content themselves with only voting in such a way as 
 in their judgment will best promote the ultimate triumph of their 
 views. Others stand off at what they suppose a safe distance, as Shimei 
 did when he stood on an opposite hill to curse King David and rebuke 
 the sin and denounce divine judgments upon the sinner. Others, more 
 practical, if not more prudent, go into the very midst of the alleged 
 wickedness, and teach " servants under the yoke " that they ought not 
 to count their own masters worthy of all honor ; that 1 iberty is their 
 
6 
 
 iiuilienable right, -wliicli they sh()nld maintain, if necessary, even by the 
 shedding of bhjod. Now, it is not for me to decide who of all these are 
 the truest to their own principles. It is not for me to decide whether 
 the man who preaches this doctrine in brave words, amid applauding 
 multitudes in the city of Brooklyn, or the one who, in the stillness of 
 night, and in the face of the law's terrors, goes to practice the preaching 
 at Harper's Ferry, is the most consistent abolitionist and the most heroic 
 man. It is not for me to decide which is the most important part of 
 the tree; and if the tree be poisonous, which is the most injurious — 
 the root, or the branches, or the fruit. But I am here to-night, in God's 
 name, and by His help, to show that this tree of abolitionism is evil, 
 and only evil, root and branch, flower and leaf, and fruit ; that it springs 
 from, and is nourished by, an utter rejection of the Scriptures; that it 
 produces no real benefit to the enslaved, and is the fruitful source of 
 division, and strife, and infidelity, in both church and State. I have 
 four distinct propositions on the subject to maintain — foui' theses to 
 nail up and defend : 
 
 I. Abolitionism has no foundation in the Scriptures. 
 
 II. Its principles have been promulgated chiefly by misrepresenta- 
 tion and abuse. 
 
 III. It leads, in multitudes of cases, and by a logical process, to utter 
 infidelity. 
 
 IV. It is the chief cause of the strife that agitates and the danger 
 that threatens our countrv. 
 
 I. — ABOLITIONISM HAS NO FOUNDATION IN SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Passing by the records of the patriarchal age, and waiving the ques- 
 tion as to those servants in Abraham's family who, in the simple, but 
 expressive language of Scriptures, " were bought with his money," let 
 us come at once to the tribunal of that law which God promulgated 
 amid the solemnities of Sinai. What said the law and the testimony 
 to that peculiar people over whom God ruled, and for whose institu- 
 tions he has assumed the responsibility ? The answer is in the 25th 
 chapter of Leviticus, in these words : 
 
 " And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be 
 sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond servant, 
 but as a hired servant; and a sojourner he shall be with thee, and shall 
 serve thee unto the year of jubilee, and then shall he depart from thee, 
 both he and his children with him." 
 
So far, you will observe, the law refers to the children of Israel who, 
 by reason of poverty, were reduced to servitude. It was their right to 
 be free at the year of jubilee, unless they chose to remain in perpetual 
 bondage, for which case provision is made in other and distinct enact- 
 ments. But not so with slaves of foreign birth. There was no year of 
 jubilee provided for them. For what says the law? Read the 44-46 
 verses of the same chapter. 
 
 " Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have shall 
 be of the heathen that are round about you. Of them shall ye buy bond- 
 men and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that 
 do sojourn among you — of them shall ye buy, and of their families that 
 are with you which they beget in your land ; and they shall be your pos- 
 session. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after 
 you to inherit them as a possession ; they shall be your bondmen forever." 
 
 There it is, plainly written in the divine law. No legislative enact- 
 ment, no statute framed by legal skill, was ever more explicit and 
 incapable of perversion. When the abolitionist tells me that slave- 
 holding is sin, in the simplicity of my faith in the Holy Scriptures, I 
 point him to this sacred record, and tell him in all candor, as my text 
 does, that his teaching blasphemes the name of God and His doctrine. 
 When he begins to dote about questions and strifes of words, appealing 
 to the Declaration of Independence, and asserting that the idea of pro- 
 perty in man is an enormity and a crime, I still hold him to the record, 
 saying, "Ye shall take him as an inheritance for your children after 
 you to inherit them for a possession." When he waxes warm — as he 
 always does if his opponent quotes Scripture, (which is the great test to 
 try the spirits whether they be of God — the very spear of Ithuriel to 
 reveal their true character,) when he gets angry, and begins to pour 
 out his evil surmisings and abuse upon slaveholders — I obey the pre- 
 cept which says, "from such withdraw thyself," comforting myself 
 with this thought : that the wisdom of God is wiser than men, and the 
 kindness of God, kinder than men. Philosophers may reason and 
 reformers may rave till doomsday, they never can convince me that 
 God, in the Levitical law, or in any other law, sanctioned sin ; and, as I 
 know from the plain passage I have quoted, and many more like it, 
 , that He did sanction slaveholding among his ancient people, I know, 
 also, by the logic of that faith which believes the Bible to be His 
 word, that slaveholding is not sin. There are men even among pro- 
 fessing Christians, and not a few ministers of the gospel, who answe 
 this argument from the Old Testament Scriptures by a simple denial 
 of their authority. They do not tell us how God could ever or any 
 
8 
 
 \rliere countenance tliat whicli is morally wrong, but ttey content 
 themselves with saying that the Levitical law is no rule of action for 
 us, and they appeal from its decisions to what they consider the higher 
 tribunal of the gospel. Let us, therefore, join issue with them before 
 the bar of the New Testament Scriptures. It is a historic truth, 
 acknowledged on all hands, that at the advent of Jesus Christ slavery 
 existed all over the civilized world, and was intimately interwoven 
 with its social and civil institutions. In Judea, in Asia Minor, in 
 Greece, in all the countries where the Saviour or his apostles preached 
 the gospel, slaveholding was just as common as it is to-day in South 
 Carolina. It is not alleged by any one, or at least by any one having 
 any pretensions to scholarship or candor, that the Eoman laws regu- 
 lating slavery were even as mild as the very worst statutes which have 
 been passed upon the subject in modern times. It will not be denied 
 by any honest and well informed man that modern civilization and 
 the restraining influences of the gospel have shed ameliorating influences 
 upon the relation between master and slave, which was utterly unknown 
 at the advent of Christianity. And how did Jesus and his apostles 
 treat this subject? Masters and slaves met them at every step in 
 their missionary work, and were even present in every audience to 
 which they preached. The Roman law which gave the full power 
 of life and death into the master's hand, was familiar to them, and 
 all .the evils connected with the system surrounded them every day 
 as obviously as the light of heaven ; and yet it is a remarkable fact 
 — which the abolitionist does not, because he cannot, deny — that the 
 New Testament is utterly silent in regard to the alleged sinfulness of 
 slaveholding. In all the instructions of the Saviour — in all the 
 reported sermons of the inspired apostles — in all the epistles they were 
 moved by the Holy Spirit to write for the instruction of coming gener- 
 ations — there is not one distinct and explicit denunciation of slave- 
 holding, nor one precept requiring the master to emancipate his slaves. 
 Every acknowledged sin is openly and repeatedly condemned, and in 
 unmeasured terms. Drunkenness and adultery, tlieft and murder — all 
 the moral wrong which ever have been known to afflict society are 
 forbidden by name ; and yet, according to the teaching of abolitionism, 
 the greatest of all sins — " this sum of all villanies" — is never spoken of, 
 except in respectful terms. How can this be accounted for? 
 
 Let Dr. Way land, whose work on moral science is taught in many 
 of our schools, answer this question, and let parents, whose children 
 are studying that book, diligently consider his answer. I quote from 
 Wayland's Moral Science, page 218 : 
 
"The Gospel was designed not for one race or for one time, but for 
 all races and for all times. It looked not to tlie abolition of slavery 
 for tliat age alone, but for its universal abolition. Hence the import- 
 ant object of its author was to gain for it a lodgment in every part of 
 the known world, so that by its universal diffusion among all classes 
 of society it might quietly and peacefully modify and subdue the evil 
 passions of men. In this manner alone could its object — a universal 
 moral revolution — have been accomplished. For if it had forbidden 
 the evil, instead of subverting the principle ; if it had proclaimed the 
 unlawfulness of slavery and taught slaves to resist the oppression 
 of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed the two parties in 
 deadly hostility throughout the civilized world; its announcement 
 would have been the signal of servile war, and the very name of the 
 Christian religion would have been forgotten amidst the agitation of 
 universal bloodshed," 
 
 We pause not now to comment upon the admitted fact that Jesus 
 Christ and his apostles pursued a course entirely different from that 
 adopted by the abolitionists, including the learned author himself, nor 
 to enquire Avhether the teaching of abolitionism is not as likely to 
 produce strife and bloodshed in these days as in the first ages of the 
 church. What we now call attention to, and protest against, is the 
 imputation here cast upon Christ and his apostles. Do you believe 
 the Saviour sought to insinuate his religion into the earth by conceal- 
 ing its real design, and preserving a profound silence in regard to one 
 of the very worst sins it came to destroy ? Do you believe that when 
 he healed the centurion's servant, (whom every honest commentator 
 admits to have been a slave,) and pronounced that precious eulogy 
 upon the master, "I have not seen so great faith in Israel" — do you 
 believe that Jesus suffered that man to live on in sin because he depre- 
 cated the consequences of preaching abolitionism ? When Paul stood 
 upon Mars' hill, surrounded by ten thousand times as many slavehoklers 
 as there were idols in the city, do you believe he kept back any part 
 of the requirements of the gospel, because he was afraid of a tumult 
 among the people ? We ask these abolition philosophers whether, as 
 a matter of fact, idolatry and the vices connected with it were not even 
 more intimately interwoven with the social and civil life of the Roman 
 empire than slavery was ? Did the apostles abstain from preach- 
 ing against idolatry ? Nay, wlio does not know that by denouncing 
 this sin they brought down upon themselves the whole power of the 
 Roman empire ? Nero covered the bodies of the Christian martyrs 
 
10 
 
 with pitch, and lighted up the city with their burning bodies, just be- 
 cause they would not withhold or compromise the truth in regard to 
 the worship of idols. In the light of that fierce persecution, it is a 
 profane trifling for Dr. Wayland, or any other man, to tell us that 
 Jesus or Paul held back their honest opinions of slavery for fear of " a 
 servile war, in which the very name of the Christian religion would 
 have been forgotten." The name of the Christian religion is not so 
 easily forgotten ; nor are Grod's great purposes of redemption capable 
 of being defeated by an honest declaration of His truth everywhere 
 and at all times. And yet this philosophy, so dishonoring to Christ 
 and his apostles, is moulding the character of our young men and 
 women. It comes into our schools and mingles with the very life-blood 
 of future generations the sentiment that Christ and his apostles held 
 back the truth, and suffered sin to go unrebuked for fear of the wrath 
 of man. And all this to maintain, at all hazards, and in the face of 
 the Saviour's example to the contrary, the unscriptural dogma that 
 slaveholding is sin. But it must be observed in this connection that 
 the apostles went much further than to abstain from preaching against 
 slaveholding. They admitted slaveholders to the communion of the 
 church. In our text, masters are acknowledged as "brethren, faithful 
 and beloved, partakers of the benefit." If the New Testament is to be 
 received as a faithful history, no man was ever rejected by the apos- 
 tolic church upon the ground that he owned slaves. If he abused his 
 power as a master, if he availed himself of the authority conferred by 
 the Roman law to commit adultery, or murder, or cruelty, he was re- 
 jected for these crimes, just as he would be rejected now for similar 
 crimes from any Christian church in our Southern States. If parents 
 abused or neglected their children, they were censured, not for having 
 children, but for not treating them properly. And so with the slave- 
 holder. It was not the owning of slaves, but the manner in which he 
 fulfilled the duties of his station that made him a subject for church 
 discipline. The mere fact that he was a slaveholder no more subjected 
 him to censure than the mere fact that lie was a father or a husband. 
 It is upon the recognized lawfulness of the relation, that all the precepts 
 regulating the reciprocal duties of that relation are based. 
 
 These precepts are scattered all through the inspired epistles. There 
 is not one command or exhortation to emancipate the slave. The 
 apostle well knew, that for the present, emanci})ation would be no real 
 blessing to him. But the master is exhorted to be kind and considerate, 
 and the slave to be obedient, that so they might preserve the unity of 
 that church in which there is no distinction between Greek or Jew, 
 
11 
 
 male or female, bond or free. Oh, if ministers of tlie gospel in this 
 land or age, had bnt followed Paul as he followed Christ, and, instead 
 of hurling anathemas and exciting wrath against slaveholders, had 
 sought only to bring both master and slave to the fountain of Eman- 
 uel's blood ; if the agencies of the blessed gospel had only been suffered 
 to work their way quietly, as the light and dew of the morning, into 
 the structure of society, both North and South, how different would 
 have been the position of our country this day before God! How 
 different would have been the privileges enjoyed by the poor black 
 man's soul, which in this bitter contest, has been too much neglected 
 and despised. Then there would have been no need to have converted 
 our churches into military barracks for collecting firearms to carry on 
 war upon a distant frontier. No need for a sovereign State to execute 
 the fearful penalty of the law upon the invader for doing no more than 
 honestly to carry out the teaching of abolition preachers, who bind 
 heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's 
 shoulders, while they touch them not with one of their fingers. No 
 need for the widow and the orphan to weep in anguish of heart over 
 those cold graves, for whose dishonor and desolation God will hold the 
 real authors responsible. No occasion or pretext for slaveholding 
 States to pass such stringent laws for the punishment of the secret 
 incendiary and the prevention of servile war. 
 
 I shall not attempt to show what will be the condition of the African 
 race in this country when the gospel shall have brought all classes 
 under its complete dominion. What civil and social relations men 
 will sustain in the times of millenial glory, I do not know. I cordiall}'- 
 embrace the current opinion of our church that slavery is permitted 
 and regulated by the divine law under both Jewish and Christian 
 dispensations, not as the final destiny of the enslaved, but as an impor- 
 tant and necessary process in their transition from heathenism to Chris- 
 tianity — a wheel in the great machinery of Providence, by which the 
 final redemption is to be accomplished. However this may be, one 
 thing I know, and every abolitionist mig^lit know if he would, that 
 there are Christian families at the South in which a patriarchal fidelity 
 and affection subsist between the bond and the free, and where slaves 
 are better fed and clothed and instructed, and have a better opportu- 
 nity for salvation, than the majority of laboring people in the city of 
 New York. If the t(Aigue of abolitionism had only kept silent these 
 twenty years past, the number of such families W(jul(l bo tenfold as 
 great. Fanaticism at the North is one chief stumbling-block in the 
 way of the gospel at the South. This is one great grievance that 
 
12 
 
 presses to-day upon the hearts of our Christian brethren at the South. 
 This, in a measure, explains why such men as Dr. Thornwell, of South 
 Carolina, and Dr. Palmer, of New Orleans — men whose genius and 
 learning and piety would adorn any State or station — are willing to 
 secede f)-oni the Union. They feel that the" influence of the Christian 
 ministry is hindered, and their power to do good to both master and 
 slave crippled, by the constant agitations of abolitionism in our national 
 councils, and the incessant turmoil excited by the unscriptural dogma, 
 that slaveholding is sin. 
 
 II. — THE PRINCIPLES OF ABOLITIONISM HAVE BEEN PROPAGATED 
 CHIEFLY BY MISREPRESENTATION AND ABUSE. 
 
 Having no foundation in Scripture, it does not carry on its warfare 
 by Scripture weapons. Its prevailing spirit is fierce and proud, and 
 its language is full of wrath and bitterness. Let me prove this, by tes- 
 timony from its own lips. I quote Dr Channing, of Boston, whose 
 name is a tower of strength to the abolition cause, and whose memory 
 is their continual boast. In a work published in 1836, I find the fol- 
 lowing words : 
 
 "The abolitionists have done wrong, I believe; nor is their wrong 
 to be winked at because done fanatically or with good intentions ; for 
 how much mischeif may be wrought with good designs ! They have 
 fallen into the common error of enthusiasts, that of exaggerating their 
 object, of feeling as if no evil existed but that which they opposed, and 
 as if no guilt could be compared with that of countenancing and uphold- 
 ing it. The tone of their newspapers, so far as I have seen them, has 
 often been fierce, bitter and abusive. They have sent forth their 
 orators, some of them transported with fiery zeal, to sound the alarm 
 against slavery through the land, to gather together young and old, 
 pupils from schools, females hardly arrived at the years of discretion, 
 the ignorant, the excitable, the impetuous, and to organize these into 
 associations for the battle against oppression. Very unhappily they 
 preached their doctrine to the colored people, and collected them into 
 societies. To this mixed and excitable multitude, minute heart-rending 
 descriptions of slavery were given in piercing tones of passion ; and 
 slaveholders were held up as monsters of cruelty and crime. The aboli- 
 tionist, indeed, proposed to convert slaveholders ; and for this end he 
 approached them with vituperation, and exhansted on them the voca- 
 bulary of abuse. And he has reaped as he sowed." 
 
13 
 
 Sucli is the testimony of Dr. Clianning, given in the year 1836'. 
 What would he have thought and said if he had lived until the year 1860, 
 and seen this little stream, over whose infant violence he lamented, 
 swelling into a torrent and flooding the land ? Abolitionism is abusive 
 in its persistent misrepresentation of the legal principles involved in 
 the relation between master and slave. They reiterate in a thousand 
 exciting forms the assertion, that the idea of property in man blots out 
 his manhood and degrades him to the level of a brute or a stone. 
 " Domestic slavery," says Dr. Wayland, in his work on moral science, 
 " supposes at best, that the relation between master and slave is not 
 that which exists between man and man, but is a modification, at least, 
 of that which exists between man and the brutes." Do not these aboli- 
 tionist philosophers know, that according to the laws of every civilized 
 country on earth, a man has property in his children, and a woman 
 has property in her husband ? The statutes of the State of New York, 
 and of every other Northern State, recognize and protect this property, 
 and our courts of justice have repeatedly assessed its value. If a man is 
 killed on a railroad, his wife may bring suit and recover damages for 
 the pecuniary loss she has suffered. If one man entice away the 
 daughter of another, and marry her while she is still under age, the 
 father may bring a civil suit for damages for the loss of that child's 
 services, and the pecuniary compensation is the only redress the law 
 provides. Thus the common law of Christendom, and the statutes of 
 our own State, recognize property in man. In what does that property 
 consist? Simply in such services as a man or child may properly be 
 required to render. This is all that the Levitical law, or any other 
 law, means when it says, " Your bondmen shall be your possession or 
 property and an inheritance for your children." The property consists 
 not in the right to treat the slave like a brute, but simply in a legal 
 claim for such services as a man in that position may properly be 
 required to render. And yet, abolitionists, in the face of the divine 
 law, persist in denouncing the very relation between master and slave, 
 " as a modification at least of that which exists between man and the 
 brutes." This, however, is not the worst or most prevalent form which 
 their abusive spirit assumes. Their mode of arguing the question of 
 slaveholding, Ijy a pretended ap})eal to facts, is a tissue of misrepresen- 
 tation from beginning to end. Let me illustrate my meaning by a 
 parallel case. Suppose I undertake to prove the wickedness of mar- 
 riage as it exists in the city of New York. In this discussion, suppose 
 the Bible is excluded, or at least that it is not recognized as having 
 
14 
 
 exclusive jurisdiction in tlie decision of tlie question. My first appeal 
 IS to the statute law of the State. 
 
 I show there enactments which nulUfy the law of God and make 
 divorce a marketable and chea}) commcjdity. I collect the advertise- 
 ments of your daily papers, in which lawyers offer to procure the legal 
 separation of man and wife for a stipulated price, to say nothing in this 
 sacred place of other advertisements wliich decency forbids me to quote. 
 Then I turn to the records of our criminal courts, and find that every 
 day some cruel husband beats his wife, or some unnatural pai'ent 
 murders his child, or some discontented wife or husband seelcs the dis- 
 solution of the marriage bond. In the next place, I turn to the orphan 
 asylums and hospitals, and show there the miserable wreaks of domestic 
 tyranny in wifes deserted, and children maimed by drunken parents. 
 In the last place, I go through our streets and into our tenement houses, 
 and count the thousands of ragged chiklren who, amid ignorance and 
 filth, are training for the prison and gallows. Summing all these facts 
 together, I put them forth as the fruits of marriage in the city of New 
 York, and a proof that the relation itself is sinful. If I were a novelist, 
 and had written a book to illustrate this same doctrine, I would call 
 this array of facts a " Key." In this key I say nothing about the sweet 
 charities and affections that flourish in ten thousand hom(5s, not a word 
 about the multitude of loving kindnesses that characterize the daily 
 life of honest people, about the instruction and discipline that are 
 training children at ten thousand firesides for usefulness here and glory 
 hereafter ; all this I ignore, and quote only the statute book, the news- 
 papers, the records of criminal courts, and the miseries of the abodes 
 of poverty. 
 
 Now, what have I done ? I have not mis-stated or exaggerated a 
 single fact. And yet, am I not a fiilsifier and slanderer of the deepest 
 die ? Is there a virtuous woman or an honest man in this city whose 
 cheeks would not burn with indignation at my one-sided and injurious 
 statements ? Now, this is just what abolitionism has done in regard 
 to slaveholding. It has undertaken to illustrate its cardinal doctrine 
 in works of fiction, and then, to sustain the creation of its fancy, has 
 attempted to underpin it with an accumulation of facts. These facts 
 are collected in precisely the wa}' I have described. The statute books of 
 slaveholding States are searched, and every wrong enactment collated, 
 newspaper reports of cruelty and crime on the part of wicked masters 
 are treasured up and classified ; all the outrages that have been perpe- 
 trated " by lewd fellows of the baser sort," ofe whom there are plenty 
 both North and South, are eagerly seized and recorded, and this mass of 
 
15 
 
 vileness and filth, collected from tlie kennels and sewers of society, is put 
 forth as a faithful exhibition of slaveholding. Senators in the forum, 
 and ministers in the pulpit, distil this raw material into the more 
 refined slander " that Southern society is essentially barbarous, and 
 that slaveholding had its origin in hell." Legislative bodies enact and 
 re-enact statutes which declare that slaveholding is such an enormous 
 crime that if a Southern man, under the broad shield of the Constitu- 
 tion, and with the decisions of the Supreme Court of the country in 
 his hand, shall come within their jurisdiction and set up a claim 
 to a fugitive slave, he shall be punished with a fine of $2,000 and 
 fifteen years imprisonment. This method of argument has continued 
 until multitudes of honest Christian people in this and other lands 
 believe that slaveholding is the sin of sins — the sum of all villanies. 
 Let me illustrate this, by an incident in my own experience. A few 
 years since, I took from the center-table of a Christian family in Scot- 
 land, by whom I had been most kindly entertained, a book entitled 
 " Life and Manners in America." On the blank leaf was an inscription, 
 stating that the book had been bestowed upon one of the children of the 
 family as a reward of diligence in an institution of learning. The 
 frontispiece was a picture of a man of fierce countenance beating a naked 
 woman. The contents of the book were professedly compiled from the 
 testimony of Americans upon the subject of slavery. I dare not quote in 
 this place the extracts which I made in my memorandum. It will be 
 suificientto say that the book asserts as undoubted facts, that the banks 
 of the Mississippi are studded with iron gallows for the punishment of 
 slaves; that in the city of Charleston, the bloody block on which masters 
 cut off" the hands of disobedient servants may be seen in the public squares ; 
 and that sins against chastity are common and unrebuked in professedly 
 Christian families. 
 
 Now, in my heart I did not feel angry at the author of that 
 book, nor at the school-teacher who bestowed it upon his scholar, for 
 in Christian charity I gave them credit for honesty in the case ; but 
 standing there a stranger among the martyr memories of that glorious 
 land to which my heart had so often made its pilgrimage, I did feel 
 that you and I, and every man in America, was wronged by the revilers 
 of their native land, who teach foreigners that hanging and cutting off' 
 hands, and beating Avomen, are the characteristics of our life and 
 
 manners. 
 
 But we need not go to foreign lands for proof that abolitionism has 
 carried on its warfare by the language of abuse. The annual meeting 
 of the American Anti-slavery Society brings the evidence to our doors. 
 
16 
 
 We have been accustomed to laugh at these venal exhibitions of fanat- 
 icism, not thinking perhaps that what was fun for us was working death 
 to our brethren whose property and reputation we are bound to protect. 
 The fact is, we have suffered a fire to be built in our midst, whose 
 sparks have been scattered far and wide ; and now, when the smoke of 
 the conflagration comes back to blind our eyes, and the heat of it begins 
 to scorch our industrial and commercial interests, it will not do for us 
 to say that the utterances of that society are the ravings of a fanatical 
 and insignificant few: for the men who compose it are honored in our 
 midst with titles and offices. 
 
 Its President is a Chief Justice of the State of New Jersey. The 
 ministers who have thrown over its doings the sanction of our holy 
 religion, are quoted and magnified all over the land as the representa- 
 tive men of the age ; and the man who stood up in its deliberations, in 
 the year 1852, and exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon the com- 
 promise measures, and the great statesmen who framed them, is now a 
 judge in our courts, and the guardian of our lives and our property. 
 
 It will doubtless be said that misrepresentations and abuse have 
 not been confined, in the progress of this unhappy contest, to the aboli- 
 tionists of the North; that demagogues and self-seeking men at the 
 South have been violent and abusive, and that newspapers professedly 
 in the interests of the South, with a spirit which can be characterized as 
 little less than diabolical, have circulated every scandal in the most 
 aggravated and irritating form. But suppose all this to be granted — 
 what tlicn ? Can Christian men justify or palliate the wrath and evil 
 speaking which are at their own doors, by pointing to the retaliation 
 which it has provoked from their neighbors? If I were preaching to- 
 day to a Southern audience it would be my duty, and I trust God 
 would give me grace to perform it, to tell them of their sins in this matter ; 
 and especially would it be my privilege as a minister of the Gospel of 
 peace — a privilege from wliich no false views of manhood should pre- 
 vent me — to exhort and beseech them as brethren. I would assure 
 them that there are multitudes here who still cherish the memory of 
 the battle-fields and council-chambers where our fathers cemented this 
 Union of States, and who still stand by the compact of the Constitution 
 to the utmost extremity, 
 
 I would tell the thousands of Christian ministers, among whom are 
 some of the brightest ornaments of the American pulpit, and the tens 
 of thousands of Christian men and women, towards whom, while the 
 love of Christ l)urns in me, my heart never can grow cold, that if they 
 will only be patient and hope to the end, all wrongs may yet be righted. 
 
17 
 
 Therefore, I would beseecli them not to put a great gulf between us, 
 and cut oft' the very opportunity for reconciliation upon an honorable 
 basis by a revolution whose end no human eye can see. But, then, 
 I am not preaching at the South. I stand here, at one of the main 
 fountain-heads of the abuse we have complained of. 
 
 I stand here to rebuke this sin, and exhort the guilty parties to 
 repent and forsake it. It is magnanimous and Christ-like for those 
 from whom the first provocation came to make the first concessions. 
 
 The legislative enactments which are in open and acknowledged 
 violation of the Constitution, and whose chief design is to put a stigma 
 upon slaveholding, must and will l)e repealed. Truth and justice will 
 ultimately prevail ; and God's blessing, and the blessings of generations 
 yet unborn, will rest upon that party, in this unhappy contest, who 
 first stand forth to utter the language of conciliation and profter the 
 olive branch of peace. The great fear is that the retraction will come 
 too late ; but sooner or later it will come. Abolitionism ought to, and 
 one day will, change the mode of its warfare, and adopt a new vocabu- 
 lary. I believe in the liberty of the press and in freedom of speech ; 
 but I do not believe that any man has a right before God, or in the eye 
 of civilized law, to speak and publish what he pleases without regard 
 to the consequences. With the conscientious convictions of our fellow- 
 citizens, neither we nor the law has any right to interfere ; but the law 
 ought to protect all men from the utterance of libellous words whose only 
 effect is to create division and strife. 
 
 I trust and pray, and call upon you to unite with me in the suppli- 
 cation, that God would give abolitionists repentance and a better mind 
 so that in time to come, they may at least propagate their principles 
 in decent and respectful language. 
 
 III. — ABOLITIONISM LEADS IN MULTITUDES OF CASES, AND BY A LOGICAL 
 PROCESS, TO UTTER INFIDELITY. 
 
 On this point I would not and will not be- misunderstood. I do not 
 say that abolitionism is infidelity. I speak only of the tend'Cncies of 
 the system as indicated in its avoAved principles, and demonstrated in 
 its practical fruits. 
 
 It does not try slavery by the Biljle, but^ as one of its leading advo- 
 cates has recently declared, it tries the Bible by the principles of free- 
 dom. It insists that the word of God must be made to support certain 
 human opinions, or forfeit all claims upon our faith. That I may not 
 be suspected of exaggeration on this point, let me (j[uote from the recent 
 
18 
 
 work of Mr. Barnes a passage whicli may well arrest the attention of 
 all thinking men : 
 
 " There are great principles in our nature, as God has made us, which 
 can never be set aside by any authority of a professed revelation. If 
 a book claiming to be a revelation from God, by any fair interpretation, 
 defended slavery, or placed it on the same basis as the relation of hus- 
 band and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, such a book would 
 not and could not be received by the mass of mankind as a Divine 
 revelation." 
 
 This assumption that men are capable of judging beforehand what 
 is to be expected in a divine revelation, is the cockatrice's egg from 
 which in all ages heresies have been hatched. This is the spider's web 
 which men have spun out of their own brains, and clinging to which 
 they have attempted to swing over the yawning abyss of infidelity. Alas» 
 how many have fallen in and been dashed to pieces I When a man sets 
 up the great principles of our nature (by which he always means his 
 own preconceived opinions) as the supreme tribunal before which even 
 the law of God must be tried— when a man says, "The, Bible must teach 
 abolitionism, or I will not receive it,"— he has already cut loose from the 
 sheet anchor of Hiith. True belief says, " Speak, Lord, thy servant waits 
 to hear." Abolitionism says, " Speak, Lord, but speak in accordance 
 with the principles of human nature, or they cannot be received by the 
 great mass of mankind as a divine revelation." The fruit of such prin- 
 ciples is just what we might expect. AVherever the seed of abolition- 
 ism has been sown broadcast, a plentiful crop of inlidclity has sprung up. 
 In the communities where anti-slavery excitement has been most pre- 
 valent, the power of the gospel has invariably declined ; and when the 
 tide of fanaticism begins to subside, the wrecks of church order and of 
 Christian character have been scattered on the shore.. I mean no dis- 
 respect to New England— to the good men who there stand by the 
 ancient landmarks and contend earnestly for the truth— nor to the illus- 
 trious dead whose praise is .in all the churches ; but who does not know 
 that the States in which abolitionism has achieved its most signal triumphs 
 are at the same time the great strongholds of intidelity in the land ? I 
 have often thought that if some of those old Pilgrim lathers could come 
 back, in the spirit and power of Elias, to attend a grand celebration at 
 Plymouth rock, they might well preach on this text : "If ye were Abra- 
 ham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham." The effect of 
 abolitionism upon individuals is no less striking and mournful than its 
 influence upon communities. It is a remarkable and instructive fact, 
 and one at which Christian men would do well to pause and consider, 
 
19 
 
 that in this country all the prominent leaders of abolitionism, outside 
 of the ministry, have become avoAved infidels ; and that all our noto- 
 rious abolition preachers have renounced the great doctrines of grace 
 as they are taught in the standards of the reformed churches — have 
 resorted to the most violent processes of interpretation to avoid the 
 obvious meaning of plain Scriptural texts, and ascribed to the apostles 
 of Christ principles from which piety and moral courage instinctively 
 revolt. They make that to be sin which the Bible does not declare to 
 be sin. They denounce, in language such as the sternest prophets of 
 the law never employed, a relation which Jesus and his apostles recog- 
 nized and regulated. Thej^ seek to institute terms and texts of Christian 
 communion utterly at variance with the organic law of the church as 
 founded by its Divine Head; and, attempting to justify this usurpation 
 of divine prerogatives by an appeal from Cod's law to the dictates of 
 fallen human nature, they would set up a spiritual tyranny more odious 
 and insufferable, becavise more arbitrary and uncertain in its decisions, 
 than Popery itself And as the tree is so have its fruits been. It is 
 not a theory, but a demonstrated fact, that abolitionism leads to infi- 
 delity. Such men as Garrisoil, and Giddings, and Gerrit Smith, have 
 yielded to the current of their own principles, and thrown the Bible 
 overboard. Thousands of humbler men who listen to abolition preach- 
 ers will go and do likewise. And whether it be the restraints of official 
 position, or the preventing grace of God, that enables such preachers 
 to row up the stream and regard the authority of Scripture in other 
 matters, their influence upon this one subject is all the more pernicious 
 because they prophesy in the name of Christ. In this sincere and plain 
 utterance of my deep convictions, I am only discharging my conscience 
 toward the flock over which I am set. When the shepherd seeth the 
 wolf coming, he is bound to give warning. 
 
 IV. — ABOLITIONISM IS THE CHIEF CAUSE OF THE STRIFE THAT AGITATES 
 AND THE DANGER THAT THREATENS OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 Here, as upon the preceeding point, I will not be misunderstood. I 
 am not here as the advocate or opponent of any political party ; and it 
 is no more than simple justice for me to say plainly, that I do not con- 
 sider Kepublican and Abolitionist as necessarily synonymous terms. 
 There are tens of thousands of Christian men who voted with the suc- 
 cessful party in the late election, who do not sympathize with the prin- 
 ciples or aims of abolitionism. Among these are some beloved mem- 
 bers of my own flock, who will not hesitate a moment to put the seal 
 of their approbation upon the doctrine of this discourse. And what is 
 
20 
 
 still more to the point, there seems to be sufficient evidence that the 
 man who has just been chosen to be the head of this nation, is among 
 the more conservative and Bible-loving men of his party. We have 
 no fears that if the new administration could be quietly inaugurated, it 
 would or could abolitionize the government. There are honest people 
 enough in. the Northern States to prevent such a result. But, then, 
 while this is admitted as a simple matter of truth and justice, it cannot 
 be denied, on the other hand, that abolitionism did enter, with all its 
 characteristic bitterness, into the recent contest ; that the result never 
 could have been accomplished without its assistance, and that it now 
 appropriates the victory in words of ridicule and scorn that sting like 
 a serpent. Let me give you, as a single specimen of the spirit in which 
 abolitionism has carried on its political warfare, an extract from a jour- 
 nal which claims to have a larger circulation than any other religious 
 paper in the land. I quote from the New York Independent, of Sep- 
 tember, 1856: 
 
 " The people will not levy war nor inaugurate a revolution, even to 
 relieve Kansas, until they have first tried what they can do by voting. 
 If this peaceful remedy should fail to be applied this year, then the 
 people will count the cost wisely, and decide for themselves boldly and 
 firmly which is the better way to rise in arms and throw oft" a government 
 worse than that of old King George, or endure it another four years, 
 and then vote again." 
 
 Such is the spirit — such the love to the Constitution and Union of 
 these States — with which this religious element has entered into and 
 seeks to control our party politics. 
 
 But we deceive ourselves if we suppose that our present dangers are 
 of a birth so recent as 1856. As the questions now before the country 
 rise in their magnitude above all party interests and ought at once to 
 blot out all party lines, so their origin is found far back of all party 
 organizations as they now exist. 
 
 An article published twenty years ago in the Princeton Revieio, con- 
 tains this remarkable language : 
 
 "The opinion that slaveholding is itself a crime must operate to pro- 
 duce the disunion of the States and the division of all ecclesiastical socie- 
 ties in this country. Just so far as this opinion operates, it will lead 
 those who entertain it to submit to any sacrifices to carry it out and 
 give it eftect. We shall become two nations in feeling, which nmst 
 soon render us two nations in fact." 
 
 These words are wonderfully pr()})hctii', and they who read the signs 
 of the times must see that the period of their fulfillment draws near. 
 
21 
 
 In regard to ecclesiastical societies, the division foretold is already in a 
 great measure accomplished. Three of our great religious denomina- 
 tions have been rent in twain by the simple question, " Is slaveholding 
 a sin ?" 
 
 It yet remains to be seen whether the American Tract Society, and 
 the American Board of Foreign Missions, will be revolutionized and 
 dismembered by a contest which, we are told, is to be annually renewed. 
 In regard to the Union of these States, there is too much reason to fear 
 that " we are already two nations in feeling," and to anticipate the 
 near approach of the calamity which shall blot out some of the stars 
 in our ensign and make us two nations in fact. 
 
 And what has brought us to the verge of this precipice ? What 
 evil spirit has put enmity between the seed of those whom God by his 
 blessing on the wisdom and sacrifices of our fathers, made one flesh ? 
 "What has created and fostered this alienation between the North and 
 South, until disunion — that used to be whispered in corners — stalks 
 forth in open daylight, and is recognized as a necessity by multitudes 
 of thinking men in all sections of the land ? I believe before God, 
 that this division of feeling, of which actual disunion will be but the 
 expression and embodiment, was begotten of abolitionism, has been 
 rocked in its cradle and fed with its poisoned milk, and instructed by 
 its ministers, until girded with a strength which comes not altogether 
 of this upper world, it is taking hold upon the pillars of the Constitu- 
 tion and shattering the noble fabric to its base. 
 
 There was a time when the Constitutional questions between the 
 North and South — the conflict of material interests growing out of 
 their differences in soil and production — were discussed in the spirit of 
 statesmanship and Christian courtesy. Then such men as Daniel Web- 
 ster on the one side, and Calhoun on the other, stood up face to face, and 
 defended the rights of tl;ieir respective constituency in words which 
 will be quoted as long as the English tongue shall endure, as a mo- 
 del of eloquence and a pattern of manly debate. But abolitionism 
 began to creep in. It came first as a purely moral question ; but very 
 soon its doctrines were embraced by a sufficient number to hold the 
 balance of power between contending parties in many districts and 
 States. Aspirants for the Presidency seized upon it as a weapon for 
 gratifying their ambition or avenging their disappointments. Under 
 the shadow of their patronage, sincere abolitionists became more bold 
 and abusive in advocating their principles. The unlawful and wicked 
 business of enticing slaves from their masters was pushed forward with 
 increasing zeal. Men who in the better days of the Kepublic could not 
 
22 
 
 have obtained the smallest office, were elected to Congress upon this 
 single issue ; and ministers of the gospel descended from the pulpit to 
 mingle religious animosity with the boiling cauldron of political strife. 
 Nor was this process confined to one side in the contest. Abuse al- 
 wsijs provokes recrimination. So long as human nature is passionate, 
 hard words will be responded to by harder blows. And now behold 
 the result! In the halls where Webster and Calhoun, Adams and 
 McDuffie rendered the very name of American statesmanship illus- 
 trious, and revived the memory of classic eloquence, we have heard the 
 outpouring of both Northern and Southern violence from men who 
 must be nameless in this sacred place; and in the land where such 
 slaveholders as Washington and Madison united with Hamilton and 
 Hancock in cementing the Union which they fondly hoped would be 
 perpetual, commerce and manufactures, and all our great industrial 
 and governmental interests, are trembling on the verge of dissolution ; 
 and as abolitionism is the great mischief-maker between North and 
 South, so it is the great stumbling-block in the way of a peaceful settle- 
 ment of our difficulties. Its voice is still for war. The spirit of con- 
 ciliation and compromise it utterly abhors, and, mingling a horrid 
 mirtli with its madness, puts into the hands of the advocates of seces- 
 sion the very fans with which to blow the embers of strife into a flame. 
 One man threw a torch into the great temple of the Ephesians, and 
 kindled a conflagration which a hundred thousand brave men could 
 not extinguish. One man fiddled and sang, and made his courtiers 
 laugh, amid the burning of Rome — and the abolition preacher " feels 
 good" and overflows with merriment, when he sees our merchants and 
 laboring men running after their chests and the bread of their families 
 " as if all creation was after them," and snuffs on the Southern breeze 
 the scent of servile and civil war. 
 
 Oh, shame — shame that it should come to this ; and the name of our 
 holy religion be so blasphemed ! Let us hope in Christian charity, that 
 such men do not comprehend the danger that stares them in the face. 
 Indeed, who of us does fully comprehend it ? In the eloquent words 
 of Daniel Webster, "While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, grati- 
 fying prospects spread out before us, for us and for our children. Be- 
 yond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, 
 at least, that curtain may not rise." A kind and wonderful Providence 
 has so tempered the body of these States together, so bound and inter- 
 laced them with commercial and social ties, to sav nothinff of legal 
 obligations, that no member can be severed, and especially no contest 
 can be waged among the members, without a quivering and anguish 
 
23 
 
 in every nerve, and a stagnation in the vital currents of all. Let one 
 star be blotted out from our ensign, and the moral gravitation which 
 holds all in their orbits will be paralyzed, if not utterly destroyed. 
 The living example of successful secession for one cause, will suggest 
 the same course for another ; and unless God gives our public men a 
 wisdom and forbearance, of which the past few years have afforded too 
 little evidence, the dissolution of this Union will be the signal for the 
 disinteo-ration of its elements. In such a chaos let us not flatter our- 
 selves that we shall be in entire peace and safety. The contest on 
 whose perilous edge we seem to stand cannot be merely a sectional 
 one — all the North on the one side, and all the South on the other. It 
 is a conflict that will run the ploughshare of division through every 
 State and neighborhood in the land. Abolition orators may talk about 
 what "we of the North" will do and will not do, as though all the peo- 
 ple had bowed down to worship the image they had set up ; but other 
 men besides them will claim the right to speak — other interests will 
 need to be conserved besides the cause upon which they arrogantly as- 
 sume that victory perches and the smile of heaven rests. " Let not 
 him who putteth on his armor boast as he that pulleth it off." When 
 the thousands of working-men whose subsistence depends upon our 
 trade with the South, many of whom have been deluded by abolition 
 demagogues, shall clamor m our streets for bread, free labor may pre- 
 sent some problems which political economy has not solved. And 
 when the commerce of this cosmopolitan city is paralyzed, and all her 
 benevolent and industrial institutions are withering in the heat of this 
 unnatural contest, it may become a question — nay, is it not already 
 whispered in your counting-houses? — whether this great metropolis can 
 be separated from the people with whom her interest and her heart is 
 bound up, and continue to be controlled by a legislative policy against 
 which she is continually protesting ? or whether, following the great 
 lights of history, she will at all hazards set up for herself, and unbolt- 
 ing the gateway of her magnificent harbor, invite the free trade of the 
 world to pour its riches into her bosom? 
 
 Such are a few of the problems which bring the question of a dissolu- 
 tion of the Union home to us. If we were sure of a peaceful solution, 
 at whatever pecuniary or social sacrifice, we would not feel so deeply 
 nor speak so earnestly. But who knows that it will be peaceful? 
 Where is the surgeon who can sever even one member from this body 
 politic without the shedding of blood ? Where is the statesman or 
 political economist who will undertake to control the parties, or direct 
 the industrial interests of any one State, amid the confusion and alarm 
 
; 
 
 24 
 
 of dissolution? Let us not deceive ourselves. The chasm before us 
 is a yawning abyss, into whose depths no eye but God's can penetrate. 
 Other men may cry "who's afraid?" and whistle to keep their courage 
 up ; but I confess my fears. Through the curtain that is about to rise, 
 I see shadows at which the horror of a great darkness settles down 
 upon my spirit, and the hair of my flesh stands up. Let us appeal to 
 the God of peace, in whose hands are the hearts of all men, to dispel 
 the fearful vision, to infuse his loving spirit into our national councils, 
 to give our public men the meekness of wisdom, and to bind the hearts 
 of all the people once more in bonds of brotherly kindness. 
 
 But, if we would have these supplications answered, let us prove our 
 faith by our works ; take the beam out of our own eye, and obey the 
 two- fold precept of the text : " These things teach and exhort, and if any 
 man teach otherwise, from such withdraw thyself." 
 
i 
 
) 
 
 LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
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