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 SERMOISr 
 
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 ON THE 
 
 CRIME AGAINST FREEDOM 
 
 IN KANSAS AND WASHINGTON. 
 
 PKEACHED AT HENNIKEK, N. H., 
 AUOIJST 31, 1856, 
 
 BY EDEN B. FOSTER, 
 
 Pastor of John St. Church, Lowell, Mass. 
 
 < ^•^ » 
 
 CONCORD : 
 
 JONES & COGSWKLL, TKINTERS. 
 185G. 
 
f1? 
 
 Henniker, N. H., Sept. 4tk, 1856. 
 
 Rev. E. B. Toster — 
 
 Dear Sir : — We, the undersigned, being of the opinion that the Discourse 
 delivered by you in this place on Sabbath afternoon, August 31st, may be pro- 
 ductive of much good, do, in behalf of the people of this place, request a copy 
 of the same for publication. 
 
 Respectfully Yours, 
 
 HORACE CHILDS, 
 ALERED WmSHIP, 
 LEANDER W. COGSWELL. 
 
 West. BeS; Biali.^m». 
 
 Lowell, Mass., Sept. 8th, 1856. 
 
 To Messes. Horace Childs, Alfred Wixship, and L. W. Cogswell — 
 Gentlemen : — I thank you for your friendly and generous communication. 
 I submit the sermon, which you ask for publication, to your disposal. 
 
 Spending a vacation amongst the quiet glens and breezy hills of your beau- 
 tiful town, (scenes remembered and dear,) called by your kindness to address 
 you on a subject, thrilling alFhearts with apprehension ; feeling that the great 
 question of civil and religious liberty is up again for settlement by the people 
 of this land, and that the vital interests of the Republic are in danger, I spoke. 
 The discussion is inadequate to the theme. Yet I leave it in your hands, for 
 each humble influence has its place, and every patriot and christian, whether 
 clergyman or layman, is called upon to clear his skirts of blood in this critical 
 hour. 
 
 I am very respectfully yours, 
 
 E. B. FOSTER. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 ISAIAH Lviii : 1. 
 Cry alottd, spare not ; lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and suew 
 
 MY people THEir. TRANSGRESSION, AND THE HOUSE OF JaCOB THEIR SINS. 
 
 I speak to-day to those who know my manner of life, my 
 habits of speech and my methods of doctrine. I speak to those 
 who know that, as a minister of the gospel, I have not been 
 guilty of midue interference with politics. I have studiously 
 and religiously abstained from the introduction of any theme in- 
 to my sermons and addresses which was not relevant to the ad- 
 vancement of Christ's kingdom and the salvation of souls. I 
 speak to-day on the outrages in Kansas and Washington, because 
 politics have now assumed a most solemn and momentous connex- 
 ion with religion. The principles are in danger on which our 
 republican system rests. The foundation is shaken which holds 
 up our freedom of speech and our freedom of worship. I be- 
 lieve that this is a more important hour for our country than any 
 other known in the history of this continent — more important 
 than any crisis in colonial or revolutionary times, — because the 
 essential doctrines which underlie a free government are now as- 
 sailed with more subtility and relentlessness than ever before. 
 I believe that the election of the coming November Avill decide 
 the destinies of this Republic. I believe that ministers of the 
 gospel have a responsibility before God, in such times as these, 
 for the use of their political influence, and that their account in 
 the judgment will be unspeakably dreadful if they are faithless 
 to Freedom. I believe that such men as the Pilgrim Fathers 
 
never would have settled these shores if Robinson, Brewster, 
 Hooker, Shepherd, John Cotton, and others like minded had not 
 drawn from the Bible a civil constitution and a political rule and 
 urged it upon their hearers. I believe that in the times of the 
 Bevolution those battles never would have been fought, and this 
 confederation never would have been built up, if the clergy had 
 been indifferent or hostile to the holy cause of Liberty. By all 
 the blessings of civilization which were brought in Avhen these 
 States were founded, by all the religious interests which are im- 
 periled if this Republic falls, I feel impelled to speak to-day. 
 The theme transcends infinitely my poor ability, yet " hear me 
 for my cause." It is a question between Freedom and Slavery 
 for the whole wide land. It is a question between education and 
 ignorance ; between virtue and moral degradation ; between 
 generosity and brutality ; betvv^een piety to God and profane in- 
 fidelity ; between free and productive industry and servile and 
 profitless toil ; between civil and religious liberty and an unmiti- 
 gated despotism. These are the combatants, and this peoj)le are 
 choosing between. It is a question whether you shall have any 
 longer freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of con- 
 science, freedom of the Territories, freedom of the Northern 
 States. The question has this wide sweep. Its decision in- 
 volves the moral welfare of millions of souls. The subject is 
 calculated to thrill upon all that is patriotic and holy in the hu- 
 man bosom. 
 
 Permit me to say the epithet " political priest" has no terrors 
 for me now. The time has been when I should shrink from it. 
 But the state of- our country is different. Reputation and even 
 life are of little value if our liberties are to be lost. It is time 
 that politics should be associated with religion more closely than 
 they have been. 
 
 While we abhor the union of church and State in the old pre- 
 latical, popish sense, and in any sense which denies the rights of 
 conscience or regulates a man's belief by law, we do desire that 
 the Bible should sway public sentiment, and that rules of divine 
 equity should govern legislatures and administrations. Politics are 
 not out of the range of God's inspection. Politics demand, as 
 
much as any department of life the blessed po-wer of piety. 
 That minister is, in my judgment, entirely deceived as to his 
 duty, who does not apply religious principles to politics, and bu- 
 siness, and all relations of society and all aSliirs of life. That 
 people are in a most fearful condition and are going rapidly down 
 to barbarism who cannot bear to have their rules of government 
 subjected to the ordeal of God's Law. 
 
 Political priest ! it is meant as a term of reproach — it is likely 
 to become a title of honor. Satan, and his myrmidons, in lift- 
 ing their mad-dog cry, and in affixing their stigmatising epithets 
 to the holy cause of God, and to the noble hearted lovers of 
 truth have overshot their mark and done their own cause irrepar- 
 able harm. Then were the disciples called " christians" first in 
 Antioch. The design was to brand them with a hated appella- 
 tion, but it has been their glory and their joy ever since, and 
 now the blessed name of christian fills the world with its melody. 
 " Puritan" was once a by- word of shame, rolling from the tongues 
 of the scurrilous and the profane, to disgrace and browbeat the 
 friends of God — it is now first on the roll-call of honor, and 
 hardly a man of New England who does not exult in Puritan 
 principles, and thank God that he belongs to a Puritan ancestry. 
 " Methodist " was once a stigma placed hj the wicked upon the 
 foreheads of the good, it is now a sweet, and holy, and cherish- 
 ed name in all lands. Let the haters of freedom call me " po- 
 litical priest " when they will and where they will. I enter no 
 demurrer. I will strive by a patriotic and christian spirit, by 
 an exalted and just discussion of political doctrine, by a holy 
 life and an inflexible adherence to candor and truth, to make the 
 title significant, beautiful, and honorable. I will strive to make 
 it quite as honorable for one class of ministers to defend Free- 
 dom as it is for another class to defend Slavery. 
 
 The clergyman who dares to speak in favor of Freedom is 
 now termed " a dabbler in the mire of politics." No, my hear- 
 ers, no, no ! We strive to take politics up out of the mire, and 
 place them upon the elevated platform of eternal equity, where 
 love to God, and love to man, and love to right shall appear, 
 clear as the sun, and with a mighty force of attraction like that 
 
6 
 
 of tlie sun. Too long have certain politicians been dabbling, by 
 their own confession, in the mire, and endeavoring to drag down 
 the holj science of government into that miasmatic and filthy 
 swamp. Too long have we seen them plmiging and wallowing 
 in that mire, like Pliable in the Slough of Despond, with their 
 face always towards the city of destruction. There is a high 
 and solid table land of justice, freedom and nationality, — abroad 
 plain of sunlight, where statesmen can build their beautiful pal- 
 aces ; and all classes and colors can enjoy their rights ; and nar 
 tions can live in loving amity; and clergymen, if true lovers of 
 freedom, can think and speak without being ostracised ; and all 
 can be nobleness, prosperity, and peace. We invite politicians 
 themselves to leave the mire, and to come up upon that Table 
 Land. But whether they will or no, we desire to take the in- 
 terests of the Republic, and the principles of government up 
 thither. 
 
 There is a science of political economy worthy of the appro- 
 bation of manly hearts. There is a scheme of government where 
 men are brothers, living together in fraternal fellowship, blessing 
 each other, and blessed themselves. There is a rule of Freedom, 
 accordant with Christ's religion ; the friend of genius ; the pat- 
 ron of domestic love ; the source of all industrial virtues ; the 
 hisfh road to the Millennium. There is an eternal law of God, 
 whose government over politics is infinitely blessed, whether men 
 scout it or not. We are heart sick of your low, noisy, earth- 
 born politics — your false expediency — ^your hollow compromises 
 — your perpetual tiger watch after sectional advantages — your 
 breaches of holy faith — your remorseless assaults upon the ne- 
 gro, and the white man — your repudiation of the self-oblivious 
 magnanimity of the Fathers of the Republic — your treachery to 
 all the early principles of statesmanship — your cool contempt of 
 God. Come out ye christian men and women from fellowship 
 with all this, and help to lift this your beloved country out of the 
 mire. 
 
 We are called to-day to consider not so much the abolition of 
 Slavery as the abolition of Freedom. We are brought, I be- 
 lieve, to the consideration of the greatest and most transcendent 
 

 question wliicli has ever occurcd in our political history. Tlie 
 nation is called to lay the foundations, and fix the institutions of 
 a new empire, the great Pacific slope and the Northern Mississip- 
 pi valley — almost a new world. An extent of territory larger 
 than twice the old thirteen States, larger than 60 States like 
 Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, awaits the action of this na- 
 tion. It will form a part of our Union or an independent Re- 
 public, and whether united with us or broken off from us, its po- 
 litical and social character will be formed according to the shape 
 it now receives. Upon us of this day, irpon 2is of tJiis Jiour, 
 rests the dread responsibility of making this a slave empire or 
 a republic of freemen. It is supposed that 80 years will not 
 elapse, that the child now living will not die, before these United 
 States, (whether then united or dissevered will make little dif- 
 ference in this respect) will number 200 millions of inhabitants. 
 The population of new States increases much more rapidly than 
 that of old States, and Ave may suppose that of this 200 millions, 
 at least 100 millions will be found on territory for which we are 
 now devising governments. Shall this 100 millions of people 
 be weighed down Avith the incubus of Slavery, or be invigorated 
 and enobled by the free and elastic spirit of liberty ? This is 
 the question which we are now necessitated to ponder and so far 
 as we have influence to decide. 
 
 The proposition to extend Slavery into free territory I regard 
 exactly as I should the proposition to plant it in our own State. 
 Or rather the moral principle is the same, and the results on the 
 same scale are the same. But I regard the proposition with as 
 much greater fear and disapprobation as the future interests of 
 that immeasurable empire transcend the interests of this little 
 State — Avith reluctance and anxious foreboding as much more in- 
 tense as the welfare of 100 millions surpasses that of 500,000. 
 
 Now, we all feel that there could be no excuse for bringing 
 Slavery into this State. It Avould be an infinite evil, an un- 
 speakable moral wrong. It would be a fearful political blunder, 
 and an unmitigated crime, destitute of all palliation, and calcu- 
 lated to sink us forever in the scale of States. I do not suppose 
 there is a man in New Hampshire who Avould dchberately con- 
 
8 
 
 sent to have Slavery as firmly planted in his own State as it is 
 in South Carolina for any earthly consideration. My hearers, 
 let the mind ponder for a moment on this one point. Would you 
 be willing to have this become a Slave State ? Would you be 
 willing to have 300,000 slaves, and a proportionate number of 
 slaveholders come in here ; and scatter their slaves all over the 
 commonwealth ; and own well nigh the entire property ; and 
 mingle slave labor with free ; and usurp the making of your 
 laws ; and control your political action ; and infuse slavery sen- 
 timents and slavery vices, into the hearts of your children ? No, 
 your soul would utterly revolt from such a catastrophe. You 
 would exclaim with one voice, " give us mildew or blight, pesti- 
 lence, or famine, or war sooner." Our fields may be devastated 
 by fire, our population may be decimated by disease, our villages 
 may be ravaged by a relentless foe, our young men may be slain 
 by the sword, yet future years could assuage the grief, and re- 
 illumine hope, and heal again the awful breach, — but let slavery, 
 with all its moral, social and political evils enter in, and who 
 coiild look forward with clear and glad assurance to their miti- 
 gation or removal ? And if slavery would be a dreadful calam- 
 ity to us, it would be a woe even more fearful to Kansas, Ne- 
 braska, Oregon, Washington, California — more fearful, because 
 with our education and religion, and stability of character we 
 could lift up some slight barrier against the incursions of the foe, 
 but in a new country, where the people are migratory and uncer- 
 tain, with no endearments of old associations, with no fixed hab- 
 its of thought, with no settled religious principle to make them 
 steadfast against wrong, where fashion and interest and policy 
 are likely to gain control, where luxury and wealth and ease are 
 sure to be unduly prized, and where slavery, if it once enters, 
 will strike deep its roots and spread broad its branches, and fas- 
 ten its pestilential influence upon the country beyond the reach 
 of remedy, then no hope can be entertained. Shall we not then 
 feel for these boundless regions of the ]Mississippi valley and the 
 Pacific clime somewhat as we would feel for our own State ? We 
 have our proportion of influence — we have our share of political \ 
 power — and shall slavery ever be extended over these territories, j 
 
 L 
 
9 
 
 by our consent, or with our silent connivance ? My own con- 
 victions are such that if I should keep silent in this crisis, so 
 long as I had the faintest hope of exerting any moral power, so 
 long as I had strength and permission to utter one religious truth, 
 I should feel on account of that silence deeply condemned and 
 miserable. I am not riding a hobby. I am not mounting a 
 war horse, urging it into the thick of the battle, and pressing 
 recklessly over political obligations in my zeal for moral princi- 
 ple. I cherish the deepest reverence for the constitution of my 
 country, and acknowledge that I cannot calculate the extent of 
 the blessing it has conferred upon us as a people. I am a loyal 
 subject of the government. I am an unwavering friend of the 
 Union. I shrink back with utter horror from civil war. I am 
 for the fraternity of the States as well as for abstract justice and 
 heavenly mercy. It is because I desire the perpetuity of our 
 republican government, and the safety and strength of our ad- 
 mirable Constitution that I am earnestly opposed to the exten- 
 sion of Slavery. 
 
 I firmly believe that if Slavery goes beyond its present bound- 
 aries our republic is doomed to fall. I believe this not simply 
 because the displeasure of Heaven will be excited against us 
 and the retributive judgments of Heaven will fall upon us, but 
 because slavery and republicanism are perfectly antagonistic to 
 each other. I know not that this position needs any elaborate 
 proof. It seems to me self-evident, from the very definition of 
 republicanism and slavery. Republicanism is the distribution of 
 power and privilege equally to all the people — slavery is the ele- 
 vation of a part of the people to the enjoyment of all power and 
 all privilege, and the total subjection of the rest under their feet, 
 so that they have no privileges and no rights. The one is de- 
 mocracy — the other is absolute monarchy, or I know not what 
 absolutism means. Now, I receive most cordially and fully the 
 opening doctrine of our Declaration of Independence, " God has 
 created all men free and equal." I believe the doctrine of the 
 Bible that he has made of one blood all men who dwell upon the 
 face of the earth. I believe that all have sprung from one hu- 
 man pair, and that God never intended that one family or race 
 
10 
 
 should lord it over another. I believe that every man, of every 
 tribe, has an immortal soul, formed with capacities for infinite 
 improvement, and measureless felicity, and that in Heaven the 
 negro will have no black sin to make him an object of pity or 
 scorn. I believe that Christ died for the African as much as for 
 you or for me. I believe that the inequahties which are found 
 among races, and among individual men are the work of sin, are 
 the crime of man, and not the work of God. I believe that God 
 distributes his gifts of intellect equally. One man has genius 
 and learning, another man has an ordinary and ignorant mind. 
 But what has education done ? What have peculiar advantages 
 and earnest application done ? What has the sin and the folly 
 of parents done ? What have the errors of a long line of an- 
 cestors done ? Take away the crime of ancestors and the folly 
 of parents, and the errors of education, and the influence of un- 
 happy circumstances, and I believe that all men are equal, equal 
 in intellect and in heart, equal before God, and before human 
 codes, equal in their claims to all the privileges which constitu- 
 tions and laws can bestow. I believe that in the ignorant fam- 
 ily of the city and in the uncultivated family of the country there 
 are gems of intellect often to be found which, with the kindly 
 care of christian love, and the polishing hand of instruction, 
 would shine as brightly as any of our most talented men. 
 
 I believe that the most brilliant intellects and most useful tal- 
 ents of the country have often come from homes of obscurity. 
 I behove that the abject slave of the South, with the rights of 
 freemen, with the religion of Christ, and with the culture of 
 ages, may stand as high upon the summits of intellect, science 
 and philosophy as any Englishman or any American that ever 
 lived. But, leaving these more abstract considerations, I pro- 
 pose to turn your attention — 
 
 I. To THE Crime against Freedom in Kansas. 
 
 The history of Slavery aggressions, as connected with this 
 territory, is briefly as follows : In 1845 a war was commenced 
 with Mexico, the result of which was the acquisition of a vast 
 amount of territory — most of it south of the line of 3G degrees 
 
11 
 
 30 minutes — and of course adapted to the purposes of sla- 
 very. In 1848-49-50, an earnest and protracted conflict was 
 carried on between the two sections of the country, with regard 
 to the application of the Wilmot Proviso, particularly to New 
 Mexico, Utah and California. The rush after gold filled Cali- 
 fornia with unprecedented rapidity, and prepared her to come 
 in as a State without a territorial organization, and as a State 
 she chose her own institutions. The conflict then had main ref- 
 erence to New Mexico. On both sides of the question it was 
 maintained by certain statesmen that as New Mexico was a 
 mountainous country, her soil and climate and geography for- 
 bade her being a slave State, and she must, in the nature of 
 things, become a free State. On this ground southern men 
 urged that the Proviso was a gratuitous and wanton insult to 
 their feelings, — -that Nature had shut out Slavery, and that any 
 further law of prohibition was purely and only a device to show 
 the preponderance and arrogant authority of northern power. 
 This view, both as to the destiny of New Mexico, and as to the 
 spirit of the North was strenuously resisted by most of the 
 friends of freedom ; but this vfas the view adopted by Mr. Web- 
 ster, and it was the one which prevailed. The Compromises of 
 1850 passed into law ; the Wilmot Proviso was utterly repu- 
 diated, for the ostensible reason that the sensibilities of slave- 
 holders would be needlessly wounded ; and the whole vast terri- 
 tory south of the Missouri line was left utterly undefended if 
 Slavery chose to enter. 
 
 North of that line, it was supposed by everybody there was 
 an impregnable defence. But Slavery stops not at any Chinese 
 wall. It was proposed to repeal the Missouri restriction, by the 
 Kansas and Nebraska Bill. Now, again, the cry was raised on 
 many sides that Kansas was only adapted to Freedom, and that 
 no restriction was necessary. But in this case it was for- 
 gotten that the insult offered by legislation was offered to Free- 
 dom and to the sensibilities of freemen. If legislation could 
 not alter the great, appointed, natural fact, why legislate at all ? 
 If Slavery could not enter Kansas why wound the hearts of the 
 free North, and throw scorn upon their opinions by any pretence 
 
12 
 
 that it wislied to enter ? Especially, w'hy break down a sacred 
 covenant of thirty-three years' standing, to secure nothing at 
 all ? Why heap indignity upon the great and holy Ordinance 
 of 1787, if Slavery did not expect to gain an advantage ther*^ 
 by ? AVhy stir up an excitement through the whole North, an»^ 
 cause the hearts of free men to throb with indignation and fear 
 if there was no covert purpose concealed under that cry of pop- 
 ular sovereignty, and that specious Nebraska Bill ? The simple 
 truth is the South never returned that high and chivalric cour- 
 tesy which Webster had shown to them, in his fear of wounding 
 Southern sensibilities. They were willing to trample on North- 
 ern feelings and Northern rights, and guarantied immunities. 
 They were determined to carry Slavery into Kansas. They 
 had no idea of any laws of geography which would shut it out ; 
 and they Avere resolved that laws of history, laws of honor, laws 
 of precedent, laws of legislative pact, should be as powerless. 
 They had no scruples of politeness, or of conscience — they 
 had no scruples of fear, — they were not Union Savers. They 
 were willing that the cry of squatter sovereignty should go 
 from John O'Groat's to Land's End, or in other words, from 
 Madawaska to the Rio Grande — but when you come to apply 
 the principle, 0, that is altogether another matter. Now when 
 the rule of squatter sovereignty is coming into practical opera- 
 tion, it is found that Freedom has got the start, and it is also 
 found necessary to bring in a new method of legislation. Squat- 
 terism having failed. Slavery devises another system of tactics, 
 which may properly be called, equestrianism. Borderers come 
 riding in, with drunken shouts and savage glee, to see to the 
 voting, while the poor, bewildered settlers have the privilege of 
 sitting quietly at home, and seeing how beautifully squatter 
 sovereignty is proved to be unconstitutional, and how nicely 
 equestrian sovereignty takes its place. If the old rotten bor- 
 ough system of England, had any thing to match this, it was 
 high time, certainly, that a reform Parliament should be chosen. 
 In Kansas now it is no longer popular sovereignty, but invader 
 sovereignty. For a long time the cry was " non-intervention," 
 but as the mind of man is proverbially like the pendulum, 
 
]3 
 
 swinging from one extreme to tlie other, the rule in Kansas 
 now is, nothing hut intervention. The rights of the settlers are 
 wholly forgotten, and the will of Atchison, Stringfellow, and 
 other borderers alone is dominant. 
 
 It is said that the men of Kansas have resisted the United 
 itates' Government. It is also said that they should have 
 iwaited the action of laws, and courts, and Congress. They 
 were without laws from the beginning. The national govern- 
 ment had forsaken them from the outset. " I looked, and on 
 the side of the oppressor there was power." The very princi- 
 ple of squatter sovereignty by which the President and Con- 
 gress had invited them to enter was utterly ignored. Compacts 
 had been broken once, it was natural they should be broken 
 again. The settlers did obey the Federal authorities. They 
 had carefully observed all the institutes of Congress. They 
 had only refused allegiance to an illegal legislature, chosen by 
 foreigners, and imposed upon them by armed power. They 
 only interposed to rescue one of their own citizens from the 
 hands of a false sheriff, when he and his men had already shot 
 down one citizen and were carrying off another. When it is 
 said that those Free State settlers have resisted the government 
 of the United States, it becomes necessary to allude to familiar 
 facts. Mark how a plain story will put the allegation down. It 
 was on the 29th day of last November that Gov. Shannon is- 
 sued his proclamation, stating that " lawless men of Douglass 
 county had, on the 26th of the same month, rescued a prisoner 
 from the custody of the sheriff of said county, and had con- 
 federated together for the purpose of opposing by force and 
 violence the execution of the laws of the territory." This was 
 the first charge of lawlessness against those men. Four times 
 had the Missourians come in upon them, suppressing the ballot, 
 dictating their officers and institutions ; yet the free settlers had 
 lifted no hand of opposition. Not far from the Missouri line 
 three free settlers, Branson, Dow and Farley, had taken claims 
 near together. Coleman, a violent, quarrelsome Missourian came 
 in and jumped Farley's claim. A controversy ensued — the 
 matter was submitted to an arbitration, and they decided that 
 
14 
 
 Coleman must leave. This enraged Coleman, and with five 
 borderers who were his accomplices, Bucklej, H^rgous, Moody, 
 Wagoner and Reynolds, he set about his revenge. He stole 
 Farley's shingles. He went in upon Farley's claim, and cut 
 timber to build his house in another part of the prairie. He 
 and his confederates cut and used a large quantity of Farley's 
 timber, in burning a lime kiln. He watched his opportunity, 
 and one day, (the 30th of March,) when Farley was gone from 
 home, he drove Mrs. Farley from her house out of doors, and 
 threw the goods out after her. He was exceedingly violent 
 with Branson, and Dow, and Farley, because they sold timber 
 to Free State men to build on the prairie where there was none. 
 On Thursday, the 22d of Nov., Dow met Coleman and remon- 
 strated with him for his conduct. He was entirely unarmed, 
 and had no thought of giving provocation. He turned to go 
 home, heard the click of a gun, faced round again towards 
 Coleman, received two balls in his breast and fell dead. Cole- 
 man and his associates then fled to Gov. Shannon. On Sunday 
 the 25th of November at nine o'clock at night, sheriff Jones and 
 fifteen men entered the house of Branson, seized him, and car- 
 ried him away prisoner. This was done because he was the 
 most important witness against the murderer. In two hours 
 after, fifteen free settlers rescued Branson, heading the other 
 party, telling Branson to get off his mule, and walk into their 
 midst, and thus, simply by the power of a calm courage, with- 
 out shedding a drop of blood, taking him back unharmed to 
 Lawrence. The same night two shanties, those of Coleman and 
 Buckley, were burned, it is supposed by themselves, for sinister 
 purposes, for it is known that no free settler touched them. 
 These were the events on which false rumors were built, spread- 
 ing like wildfire over Platte county, Missouri, and leading to 
 the gathering of an armed and remorseless force to the seige of 
 Lawrence. 
 
 At this juncture of affairs, on Tuesday, Nov. 27th, a meeting 
 of the Lawrence settlers was held, G. P. Lowrie, Esq., (secre- 
 tary to Gov. E-eeder,) chairman of the meeting. It was ad- 
 dressed by Geo. Wood, Esq., Mr. J. B. Abbott, Mr. Conway 
 
15 
 
 of Council City, and others. They all stated explicitly that 
 they would obey the United States' authorities, the organic act 
 of Congress ; the courts created under it ; the judges and 
 marshals appointed by the President. They declared that if 
 wrong was done under these authorities their only opposition 
 should be an appeal to the General Government and to the Su- 
 preme Court of the United States. At the same time they re- 
 pudiated utterly and to the end the acts of the fraudulent ]\Iis- 
 souri Legislature, and the county officers appointed by them, of 
 whom sheriflf Jones of Weston, Missouri, was one. Now, if 
 any body can discover in all these proceedings, either in deed 
 or word, resistance to the Federal Government, or to the laws 
 of Congress, they can discover a pin in a hay mow. The re- 
 sistance of the borderers to United States' laAv, and to laws of 
 equity, had been from the beginning as plain as the hay mow 
 itself, but the resistance of the Kansas settlers has not been 
 found. 
 
 That meeting of the 27th of Nov., adopted the following 
 resolution : 
 
 " In our territory, outrage and midday murder are becoming 
 the rule ; the law, the only authoritative engine to regulate ex- 
 cesses and restrain wrongs, has never yet been extended to our 
 territory. We are reduced to the necessity of organizing our- 
 selves together on first principles for common defence and secu- 
 rity." Now, where is the company of innocent men in the 
 wide world, if they were men, especially if they carried the 
 old Puritan faith and the old Saxon spirit in their bosoms, who, 
 under such wrongs, would not come to the same determination ? 
 Those men have borne and forborne to the last extremity. A 
 bloody and intolerant code, such as no civilized nation has adopt- 
 ed for the last century has been set up over them. The right 
 of trial by jury has been abolished and the Habeas Corpus de- 
 nied. Test oaths have been introduced disfranchising men for 
 political opinion. The press has been shackled and the tongue 
 has been padlocked. Penalties of hideous barbarity have been 
 enacted, requiring men for the expression of opinion, to be man- 
 acled with chains of six feet in length, with three-eighths of an inch 
 
16 
 
 links, dragging a ball of iron six inches in diameter, chained thus 
 in couples, and driven to work upon the highways in ignominy 
 and agony. Exorbitant fines, imprisonment for five years, death 
 itself were decreed simply for the expression of opinions. A 
 free State hotel, a free State press, and a free State bridge 
 have been indicted as nuisances by a grand jury, under explicit 
 instructions from the territorial court. Lawrence has been can- 
 nonaded, sacked and destroyed. A general foray of fighting 
 men from the South has been introduced, and these men have 
 been enrolled as a posse of the United States, have been paid 
 out of the Federal treasury, have been officered by the general 
 government. Gov. Robinson and other leading citizens of the 
 territory, are under arrest this day, on a charge of constructive 
 treason, when no overt act of resistance to United States' laws 
 had been offered, and only an assembly had been held, as peace- 
 ful and as innocent as this which meets in this house to-day. 
 Houses have been burned ; trunks pillaged ; horses stolen ; in- 
 nocent travelers robbed ; and women subjected to unheard of 
 outrages and abuse. Dow, and Barber, and Brown, and Col- 
 lins, and Jones, and Stewart, and Hopps, and Jenuison, and 
 Wilhams, and Phillips, and many others, have been waylaid 
 when alone, and stealthily, and remorselessly, and in cold blood 
 shot dead. The army of the United States has been drawn 
 from its barracks, to uphold these infamous laws and these per- 
 secuting men. A tyranny has been perpetrated there which 
 finds no parallel under Austrian Emperor, or Russian Czar, or 
 French Usurper, or Turkish Sultan, or Mohammedan Pasha, or 
 in the savage solitudes of Arab or Karen marauders. And yet 
 those free State settlers have borne and forborne still. They 
 have lifted no hand against any federal officer, or Congressional 
 enactment, or Presidential decree. New decrees of death are 
 going out to that fated territory from the national administra- 
 tion. New bands of Southerners are rushing in there, whose 
 only motto is, "kill, burn and destroy." New forces of the 
 State militia and standing army are gathering to support this 
 wickedness, and to reap the spoils, as vultures hasten to the 
 prey. Kansas is doomed. Free labor, and free speech, justice 
 
17 
 
 and religion, must perish in this fair land. Our kindred there 
 must be hunted like wild beasts, shot down without remorse, 
 driven away from that Mesopotamia of the land, that pleasant 
 garden of their choice, where liberty and law had both invited 
 them to enter, and treated as the oflfscouring of the earth. 
 Noble hearts, beating high with the pulses of Freedom, filled 
 with the love of Bible truth, following the pole star of Republi- 
 can equahty, seeking to bless the land with free institutions, 
 and with the examples of holiness and heroism, must there be 
 crushed. May God avert the omens of fear. May God teach 
 us our duty in this crisis. 
 
 II. Let us consider, very briefly, the Crime against Free- 
 dom IN Washington. 
 
 I pause not to give the particulars of the assault made by 
 Preston S. Brooks upon the beloved Senator of Massachusetts, 
 when he left him in his blood, insensible as the floor on which 
 his wounded body lay, beaten well nigh to death, and it may be 
 to actual death, as all presages too sadly portend. Individual 
 perils are forgotten in the magnitude of the assault then made. 
 It was a blow struck with audacity and with power at the very 
 heart of the Republic. Freedom was there wounded, and left 
 fainting. In that dark hour the nation took a long stride for- 
 ward from a government of constitutions and laws to a govern- 
 ment of clubs. The blow which leveled Sumner, prostrated 
 more glad hopes than any other blow ever struck in this coun- 
 try, 
 
 " what a fall was there, my countiymen, 
 Then you and I and all of us fell down 
 Whilst bloody treason flourished over us." 
 
 It is perfectly obvious that freedom of discussion is now put 
 in imminent peril throughout the Northern States. It has long 
 been known that no man could safely express opinions un- 
 favorable to slavery in the midst of any slaveholding popula- 
 tion. Recently, Mr. J. C. Underwood, a gentleman of intelli- 
 gence and high social position, owning his 800 acres, cultivating 
 2 
 
18 
 
 them by free labor, has been driven from Virginia for the ex- 
 pression of his political opinions. Rev. Geo. Dana Boardman, 
 of Barnwell Court House, S. C, son of the Burman missionary, 
 has been expelled from his field of labor for his political opinions. 
 He was not permitted the privilege of silence. He had not 
 preached on the subject of slavery. He had not thrust his 
 views in any man's face. A committee was sent to him to 
 catechize him. Do you believe in the outrages perpetrated in 
 Kansas ? No. Do you believe in the propriety of raining 
 murderous blows upon the head of a Senator in Congress 
 for words spoken in debate ? No. Then do you quit your 
 pulpit, and quit these provinces. Even women have been per- 
 secuted with unrelenting cruelty for expressing anti-slavery 
 views, and ladies of educated and amiable, and gentle life, like 
 Delia A. Webster, have been driven with wolfish ferocity from 
 the Southern borders. Senator Foote expressed openly in de- 
 bate, a desire that he might have John P. Hale in Mississippi, 
 where, as he declared, for the utterance of opinions, he would 
 be hung by lynch law to the first tree. For a long time the 
 South struggled fiercely in Congress to suppress freedom of de- 
 bate. They denied the right of petition. They applied what 
 was called the Atherton gag. They sought to expel John Quin- 
 cy Adams for his heroic resistance to their demands, and if his 
 courage and his talent had not been given him of God for the 
 very crisis, they would have subdued him, if they had not ex- 
 pelled him. For a time they had apparently given up the efibrt 
 to prohibit debate, but distant and not ambiguous menaces have 
 been from time to time thrown out that the floors of Congress 
 should be crimsoned with blood. Latterly they have grown 
 more bold, and their tyranny has swelled in the same propor- 
 tion. Their marvelous success in repealing the Missouri Com- 
 promise ; their unexpected power in setting up intolerant laws 
 in Kansas, and making free speech there a felony to be punish- 
 ed with incarceration and with death ; their onward steps of ag- 
 gression in securing Federal officers and the standing army of 
 the Republic to enforce their dark enactments ; their ability, by 
 judicial process, to secure the imprisonment of Williamson in 
 
19 
 
 tlie great State of Pennsylvania, simply for truthful and gentle- 
 manly words ; all these triumphs have seemingly convinced 
 them that the hour had come for ending free speech. Now let 
 the threat pass into execution, let Rust flog Greeley, let Herbert 
 kill Keating, let Brooks slaughter Sumner, and the North will 
 learn their place, and these licentious tongues and presses will 
 be somewhat more modest, or in parliamentary language, will 
 be " subdued." 
 
 Mr. Sumner, when he spoke for Freedom, on Southern soil, 
 undertook a task which was no sinecure, and no summer's play. 
 What though he stood in the Senate, the great citadel of con- 
 stitutional liberty ? It was the deadly, imminent breach, more 
 fearful to occupy than any forefront of battle, where arms are 
 raging and corpses are falling. What though his words were 
 strictly parliamentary, so that not a man once called him to 
 order during his entire speech ? The deadly bludgeon and the 
 murderous thought were not far distant. None but a stern old 
 Roman soul, like that of John Quincy Adams, is competent to 
 stand up before the haughty Southern Power, and describe its 
 injustice and blazon its Avrong. None but a man imbued with 
 the spirit of the Bible, and resting upon its eternal principles ; 
 fearing God ; putting truth before policy ; prefering human 
 rights to political honors ; lifting man above all his adjuncts, — 
 can occupy and lead that forlorn hope. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say that the main prop of our liberties is 
 struck away when free discussion ceases. This is understood 
 in every tyranny under the sun. Austria establishes a censor- 
 ship of the press. Italy, with usurped ecclesiastical power, in- 
 stitutes an espionage in every family, and words spoken in the 
 familiar talk of the fireside, are reported at the secret tribunal, 
 and expiated in the secret dungeons. France in the Reign of 
 Terror, allowed no minister to preach, no lawyer to plead, no 
 author to print, without governmental license ; and pitiable was 
 the fate of him who dared to call his brains or his soul his own. 
 No despotism was ever established and maintained where free- 
 dom of speech was tolerated ; no despotism was ever overthrown 
 where freedom of speech was denied. The Slave Power have 
 
20 
 
 already made a great advance towards the accompllsliment of 
 their designs, and if they can only bribe into silence or quell 
 into fear the free presses and free tongues of the North, their 
 schemes are fulfilled, and all the genius, virtue, manliness, and 
 religion of this country go down into one common grave. 
 
 Let us remember how dearly the Fathers prized the right of 
 free discussion. It was for this one purpose mainly that they 
 left their native land, and pitched their tents in an untrodden 
 wilderness. It was on this one point more than aU others that 
 they took issue with the despots of the old world. Authority 
 and prescription could not bind their conscience. The decrees 
 of Synods and Popes could not control their mind. The edicts 
 of aristocracies and oligarchies could not manacle their opinions. 
 They held to free speech and a free press. They demanded 
 the right and maintained the privilege of unrestricted debate. 
 When this privilege could not be granted to them in the old 
 world, they fled into the solitudes of the new, and here they 
 determined that that privilege should be enjoyed. We need to 
 cherish a higher and more unshaken regard for the sacredness 
 of free discussion. It is a most alarming omen when arguments 
 are to be answered with blows of the bludgeon, and opinions are 
 to be propagated at the pistol's mouth. Slavery may continue 
 to place its fetters upon the limbs of black men — this is an evil 
 sufficiently great and alarming — let it not bind our souls, nor 
 padlock our lips. Its demand for silence is a most preposterous 
 one, and is decisive of its own utterly untenable character. 
 Free thought and free speech are fundamental to this Republic. 
 Our whole scheme of government and religion is built upon 
 them. If these foundations are undermined the whole structure 
 falls. It is the central theory of our system that we bind no 
 manacles upon opinion, we hold in no intellect with bit and curb. 
 In this land of freedom man's ultimate accountability is to God. 
 The laws do not impose upon him a religious creed, nor pre- 
 scribe a political economy. Much less do they allow any lord 
 of the lash or of the club to stand before you, and with arrogant 
 demand to say thus and thus you must believe, and thus and 
 thus you must speak, or this leaded cane shall dash out your 
 
21 
 
 brains, or this dagger shall drink your blood. We are not 
 quite prepared to be thus subdued. 
 
 It is true that in the freedom which we claim as our birth- 
 right and prize as our chief treasure, there are strong tenden- 
 cies to anarchy in government and infidehty in religion. It is 
 true that Satan, ■who is subtle in his wiles and malignant in his 
 hate would like to change our freedom into licentiousness, and 
 our liberty into mobocracy. But after all these dangers, grow- 
 ing out of the peculiar freedom of our institutions and our 
 mind, we believe that God is stronger than all falsehoods and all 
 wicked men. We believe that stagnant thought and a fettered 
 conscience, and a shackled press, are evils infinitely worse than 
 any which have ever sprung from free discussion. Let truth 
 and error meet in the open field. A fair opportunity for each ; 
 a free encounter ; and God for the right. 
 
 It is perfectly plain that when Mr. Sumner was struck down, 
 all our privileges were leveled in the dust. Mr. Sumner had 
 offered a most conclusive plea for Kansas. By that blow our 
 brothers and sisters, in that distant territory, whom we love as 
 the apple of our eye, and whom we cherish as the heart's blood, 
 who have gone there with noblest purposes to colonize and im- 
 prove the broad stretching prairies of this vast continent, and 
 to introduce religion and civiHzation into the midst of roaming 
 savages and howling wolves, are smitten in their dearest hopes 
 and given over to Slavery's rule. Not only their liberties but 
 ours are assailed. It is vain, my hearers, for us to imagine 
 that we can sit much longer under our own vine and fig tree and 
 unmolested worship God ; vain to suppose that our schools, 
 our churches, and presses, our free assemblies, our republican in- 
 stitutions, our unrestricted speech around our own fireside, can 
 continue ; vain to think that we can educate our children to 
 noble aims ; vain to pretend that our fathers' blood has pur- 
 chased for us any valuable possession ; vain to dream that we 
 shall long enjoy exemption ourselves from the bitterest persecutions 
 of the most intolerant times, from the assassin's bludgeon, the 
 executioner's axe, and the consuming sword of war, if such out- 
 rages are any longer tolerated. Mr. Sumner argued for the 
 
22 
 
 security, the honor, and the perpetuity of free labor. By that 
 blow the Industry of the North is disgraced and enfeebled. 
 Mr. Sumner is the representative of the State, and by that 
 blow the commonwealth has been struck at and insulted. Mr. 
 Sumner is the impersonation of a principle, and in him the 
 Slave Power, when it struck that blow, endeavored to destroy 
 the life of Liberty. Truth struck to earth shall rise again, for 
 " the eternal years of God are hers" — but it may be in other 
 lands, and under more auspicious skies. I am not all sure that 
 truth will ever rise again in this unhappy Republic. I am 
 stricken with mortification and grief, well nigh despair, for my 
 beloved country. Freedom, child of God, and mother of sal- 
 vation, though maligned and opposed by those who enthrone 
 their own passions over the divine law — though followed with 
 persecuting rage by the selfish and the cruel — though hindered 
 by pride, avarice, revenge, sensuality — shall yet triumph some- 
 "svhere, and in the end — but for the present, the blow which 
 leaves Mr. Sumner weltering in his blood, inflicts a paralysis 
 upon Freedom also. 
 I proceed to consider 
 
 III. Some of the Excuses which are oflered for these 
 wrongs, and the Objections which are urged against the claims 
 of Freedom. 
 
 1. It is said in excuse for these outrages, and in opposition 
 to the claims of Freedom, that there is a fierce hatred cherished 
 by Northern against Southern men. No, my hearers, no ! I 
 believe in no such ferocity. There is no spirit of hatred what- 
 soever. 
 
 We pity them deeply — we love them strongly — ^but we desire 
 that the aggressions of Slavery may be stayed. We are bound 
 to them by ties which have held us with the strength of iron 
 bands. Reminiscences of the past and hopes of the future ally 
 us. We are knit together by those old and hallowed associa- 
 tions of colonial and revolutionary times. Our Fathers and theirs 
 stood side by side, with arms interlocked, and with hearts whose 
 palpitations met and mingled against the savage Indian, the 
 
23 
 
 treacherous French, the oppressive English. Together they con- 
 quered the wilderness, together built up this Republic. Their 
 loves, their intermarriages, their lineage of language and of 
 faith, their communion in peril and sorrow, cemented them close- 
 ly and indissolubly. When the brand of war was lighted it 
 went from Northern outpost of lake and hill top to Southern 
 boundary of morass and thicket, from Eastern ocean to Western 
 prairie, — it glanced from hand to hand, like the Scottish signal 
 when runners were sent forth to rouse the tribes, and patriots 
 were many, and traitors were few. There was but one voice in 
 halls of debate — but one rallying cry when their armies were 
 roused. It mattered not whether Patrick Henry or James Otis, 
 Joha Adams or John Rutledge lifted the eloquent warning ; 
 whether Washington or Greene, Sumpter or Prescott, Marion or 
 Warren, headed the onset, their spirit was one and their aims 
 the same. Their views were identical as they discussed their 
 danger ; their arms were linked and their feet were steady as 
 taeir serried files pressed on to battle. They rested and com- 
 muned together by bed and by board — they laid down to their 
 kst sleep together on stormy battle fields and in quiet graves. 
 B,eturn, ye happy days of amity and fraternity — but not, not, 
 by the destruction of Freedom. 
 
 There is no hatred felt by us towards our Southern brethren. 
 They are our brethren, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh — our 
 Hood courses too nearly not to claim dearest affinities. There is 
 hardly a family in New England which has not some of its mem- 
 bers at the South. I remember the son of my father's brother — 
 gentlemanly and accomplished, taught in the college, trained for 
 the ministry — though he is not now a minister. I sat at the 
 jame board with him for months, and slept in the same bed — we 
 'ead from the same books, and mingled our thoughts and sports, 
 s,nd griefs. He went to the South — engaged for years in teach- 
 hg — intermarried there — and is now by right of his wife, a 
 slaveholder. I loved him, I love him still. But am I blind to 
 tie aggressions of Slavery ? Am I indifferent to the welfare of 
 ny country ? Am I a traitor to the great principles of genuine 
 R^pubUcanism ? Am I dead, thrice dead, and plucked up by 
 
24 
 
 the roots, that I do not see the perils of Kansas ? Am I lost to 
 all pity and love to my beleaguered kindred in that territory 
 where right is on their side, and all heavenly voices summon me 
 to the rescue ? I hope I am not a traitor false to truth, nor a 
 border ruffian false to honor, to trample down the rights of free- 
 men. I love my cousin, but I love my country also. " Not 
 that I love Caesar less, but Rome more." I would plead with 
 my dear kindred in the South, with tears and kindliest importu- 
 nity would I plead with them. I would not harm the hair of 
 their head. I would not lay ruthless hand upon the smallest of 
 their rights. I would not disturb the guarantees of the consti- 
 tution by which their slave property so called, is made secure, 
 until they, moved by the truth and power of God, are ready to 
 cooperate in the holy and most blessed work of emancipation. I 
 stand by stipulations made to them — I ask for a return of honor 
 and faith — I defend the country's rights. When the South rish 
 forth into free territory to fix there their terrible oppression ; 
 when they by most ominous faithlessness break down compacts ; 
 by dark injustice overthrow Freedom ; with mad ambition plot 
 for universal Empire ; when they assume that their system oc 
 wickedness can shelter anywhere in the land under the broad 
 wing of the constitution ; when they threaten that the roll-call 
 of their slaves shall yet echo under the shadow of Bunker's 
 monument, I must beg to be excused from connivance or tolera- 
 tion of any such plan. I love my kindred at the South, and tbe 
 whole people of the South. But I love also the honor of my 
 native land — I love the approbation of my God — I love the 
 larger kindred, whose homes and interests are now and are here- 
 after to be under the protection of Feedom. I love the greaf 
 moral principles on which all national strength and human wel- 
 fare are built. And when I am false to my country and m; 
 God for any considerations of personal partiality or private ad- 
 vantage, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ani 
 this poor body be laid low in the grave. Life to me is wortl- 
 less, if I cannot be true to my conscience in the great matters )f 
 Religion and Freedom. 
 
25 
 
 2. It is said in excuse for these wrongs, and in opposition to 
 the claims of Freedom, that the Emigrant Aid Societies have 
 caused the whole disturbance. They have now been found to 
 be unconstitutional. But their purposes have been peaceable 
 and humane, their plans noble and upright. They have tres- 
 passed on no man's rights — they have neither exercised nor tol- 
 erated a predatory, unscrupulous spirit. No possible action 
 could be conceived more legitimate, more honorable, more en- 
 tirely unobjectionable. You cannot fail to remember the origin of 
 these Societies. The Nebraska bill was introduced, and at once 
 a universal cry of fear and remonstrance arose from the North, 
 it is a violation of compacts — it is contrary to the whole spirit of 
 the constitution, and the whole course of legislation from the 
 beginning — it is unprecedented, uncalled for, unjust, unkind. 
 The reply was " squatter sovereignty !" The discussion went 
 on earnest and able ; sometimes impassioned ; but always from 
 the lowest depths of their conscientious convictions and patriotic 
 emotions did the arguments of freemen come. On the other side 
 were urged various scriptural theories, and various political the- 
 ories, and various considerations that were neither scriptural nor 
 political — but of all considerations that which had the most po- 
 tent and magic force was " squatter sovereignty." The bill 
 passed. The j\Iissoui-i Compromise was broken down. The 
 pro-slavery scheme was consummated. The gates of Kansas 
 were flung wide open to all incomers. But still the cry of squat- 
 ter sovereignty was dinned into all ears — that was the balsam 
 for all wounds ; let the people of the territory form their own 
 institutions. In this crisis the migratory and enterprising, and 
 liberty loving people of New England, seeing there was but one 
 hope left, said, let us adopt this principle of the Administration. 
 We have long desired a Western home, now, in the name of the 
 Lord of Freedom, and of those sublime principles for which the 
 Fathers bled, let us go to that land and settle, and there let us 
 form the institutions of freedom which shall be the glory of our 
 posterity to the latest times. It was my right, if I chose, to go 
 to Kansas, and make it my home. It was my right to help my 
 neighbor to go. It was my right to join an organized society, 
 
26 
 
 and ask for an act of incorporation, that our associated property 
 might be secure. These were all rights of common law, and 
 statute law in all the States ; rights of undoubted principle and 
 immemorial custom through the land. These riglits infringed 
 upon no man's privileges, and denied no rule of equity or juris- 
 prudence. Those men who went to Kansas were actual settlers. 
 They adopted the principle of popular sovereignty, and they 
 adopted it in good faith — they expected that the administration 
 would stand to their own doctrine. There are some in 'New 
 England, who have supposed that that doctrine would never be 
 permitted to rule Kansas. It was foredoomed to Slavery — and 
 if the popular will in the territory should prove to be unfavor- 
 able to Slavery, there was another sovereignty, lying back of 
 that, stronger and fiercer, and to that all popular institutions and 
 republican rights must bow. But the settlers themselves from 
 New England and from the West, going out independently, or 
 with the encouragement of the Emigrant Aid Society, went with 
 holy fidelity and generous trust, expecting to adopt this princi- 
 ple and to form their own institutions. 
 
 I think it would be difficult to impeach the Emigrant Aid So- 
 ciety, or the emigrants themselves, if you look at the character, 
 designs and conduct of the men. A nobler body of men have 
 not laid the foundations of infant societies, or built up the pillars 
 of flourishing States in all our history. No exodus since the 
 departure of Israel from Egypt, or of the Puritans from Hol- 
 land, has been a more intelligent, high minded religious enter- 
 prise. They were worthy sons of Puritan sires, holding their 
 fathers' faith in their souls, as well as their fathers' blood in 
 their veins ; maintaining fully and exhibiting grandly the hered- 
 itary courage, self-denial, and patriotism of their race. They 
 went to Kansas knowing that trials stood in their path, but wish- 
 ing to bless their children with peace, and to widen the area of 
 Freedom. 
 
 " I see tliem on their winding way — 
 Around their ranks the moonbeams play." 
 
 There is sorrow in then- hearts at parting from Eastern friends 
 — there is twilight hanging over their own immediate future. 
 
27 
 
 But, if their aims are fulfilled, there is sunlight beyond — an in- 
 heritance of bliss for their children and their childrens' children 
 to latest generations. They set up their tents in the wilderness, 
 " with hymns of lofty cheer ;" with sufferings of body for a 
 time, but hopes of happiness not far away ; dedicating their new- 
 ly chosen State to Freedom and committing their interests to 
 God. They went there, to transplant to the prairie wilderness 
 another New England. They went there to carry a christian 
 civilization. Free schools, free churches, books and newspapers 
 are as necessary to their life as their daily bread. Under their 
 auspices mechanic arts, mills, inventions, improved agriculture 
 are introduced. They build towns and cities. Neat dwellings 
 and smiling villages dot the landscape where they dwell. Fenced 
 and cultivated fields, with gardens of beauty and bending har- 
 vests, lie all around them. Highways and railroads and bridges 
 facilitate brotherly intercourse, and open the path for a prosper- 
 ous commerce. Every man is a freeholder. No lazy, thriftless, 
 beggared tenants occupy their farms. No loafing, drinking, 
 swearing idlers are tolerated around them. They live for the 
 blessings of a loving home, not for ambition. Their studies are 
 literature and science, not politics. Labor is to them an honor 
 and a joy, not a disgrace. Love, and argument, and just legis- 
 lation are their rule, and not the lordly lash, nor the sway of im- 
 perious passions. Religion is their safeguard, not the dirk and 
 the pistol. They constitute in their society a free, harmonious, 
 rational democracy, not a plantation oligarchy. In the Slave 
 States there are three classes, patricians, plebeians, and slaves 
 — in Kansas there is only one, freemen. 
 
 Now, contrast with all this the character of the borderers who 
 have made lepeated invasions upon their rights. They are not 
 themselves slaveholders, most of them, but slaveholders' tools — 
 the refuse of a Slave State — the most ignoble, craven, degraded 
 of all Southern population. It is one of the worst features of 
 Slavery that it does thus degrade a class of the whites. These 
 men cannot be called free and educated citizens, and hardly with- 
 in the pale of civilization. Tobacco and whiskey are their 
 staples of food. Dogs and horses are their domestic stock. 
 
28 
 
 Guns and fish-poles are their implements of labor. Bowie-knives 
 are their chief source of amusement. A slave population is 
 their ideal of society. Delights of conversation, domestic joys, 
 elegances of a scholarlike culture, are as distant from their no- 
 tions as the sunlight from Nova Zembla. Books, and literature 
 and lyceums would be to them a complete surprise. 
 
 Now is it likely that the free settlers of Kansas would quietly 
 yield to such a government as that of the borderers ? Especialy 
 when they had no more right there, forming a legislature, than 
 the inhabitants of the moon ? Without the shadow of authority 
 they came in with their illegal assembly, and instituted at once 
 a draconian, barbarian code, whose spirit was that of the middle 
 ages, and whose support was the bowie-knife alone. They pro- 
 hibited at once, with severest penalties, freedom of speech and 
 freedom of the press. Now, those Yankee, Free State settlers 
 are somewhat accustomed to free discussion. They can debate 
 questions warmly, and tolerate a pretty wide difference of opin- 
 ion and love one another still — ^but padlocks do not sit easily upon 
 their lips. 
 
 They are not distinguished for garrulousness, and are not very 
 likely to speak till they are spoken to. But when they speak 
 they have something to say. Having been endowed by Heaven 
 with intellect, they regard it as a privilege to think. Having 
 been to school and exercised their common sense — having studied 
 the Bible and to some extent principles of jurisprudence — they 
 profess to have some understanding of laws of equity. Laws 
 against free speech, in old Enghsh History, did not agree very 
 well with the Saxon constitution — they are not likely to be easily 
 digested by New England stomachs now. Ever since the days 
 of the Boston Port Bill, and the old echoes of Faneuil Hall, 
 such measures have not been entirely successful in keeping their 
 tongues quiet or their souls at rest. Bowie-knives would be apt 
 to wake up a sleeping energy. A mob of lawless men around 
 them, dictating such laws at the sabre's point, and threatening 
 utter extermination to their infant settlements, would be apt to 
 stir their blood. 
 
 When this country asserted her independence, and went to 
 
29 
 
 war with England, the aggression was a claim of taxation with- 
 out representation. Which was the greatest injury, that, or the 
 breaking down of all representation ? and the imposition of a 
 sanguinary code, more oppressive and intolerant than any Turk- 
 ish firman, upon the free and innocent settlers ? Threepence a 
 pound on tea, demanded without right, was the basis of the Eev- 
 olution. Read the laws of the fraudulant Kansas Legislature, 
 and see which you think would bring a citizen to the point of 
 earnest resistance first, that, or threepence on tea ! Says Mr. 
 Webster in one of his most impassioned and powerful appeals, 
 when describing the stealthy advances of unjust power, " our 
 fathers went to war against a preamble. They accomplished the 
 Revolution on a strict question of principle. They fought seven 
 years against a declaration. They poured out their treasures 
 and blood like water, in a contest, in opposition to an assertion, 
 which those less sagacious and not so well schooled in the prin- 
 ciples of civil liberty, would have regarded as barren phraseolo- 
 gy, or mere parade of words. They saw in the claim of the 
 British Parliament a seminal principle of mischief, the germ of 
 unjust power ; they detected it, dragged it forth from underneath 
 its plausible disguises, struck at it, nor did it elude either their 
 steady eye or well directed blow, till they had extirpated and de- 
 stroyed it to the smallest fibre. We are not to wait till great 
 public mischiefs come, or liberty itself is put in extreme jeopardy. 
 We should not be worthy sons of our fiithers were we so to re- 
 gard great questions aSectlng the general freedom." If the en- 
 croachments in Kansas are not enough to awaken attention, Ave 
 should not be aroused though the whole frame of government 
 were dissolved, and the Free States were to be borne down by 
 oppression's insurgent and arrogant rule. 
 
 3. It is said in opposition to the claims of Freedom that we 
 are " feeding the fires of sectionalism already too hot." Sec- 
 tionalism is the word, let us mark it, and comprehend it. 
 
 It is sectionalism, is it, for a man to resist the extension of 
 Slavery over the fair fields of free territory, wasting all the 
 wealth and beauty of its agriculture as the hoofs of Attila's 
 squadrons wasted the campaguas of the South ? It is section- 
 
30 
 
 allsm, Is it, if we say that freedom of worship, freedom of speech, 
 freedom of education, freedom of labor must be preserved in 
 Kansas, and that a tyranny cannot come in there which pros- 
 trates all the hopes of man more terribly and fatally than the 
 usurpation of Yerres crushed the liberties of Sicily ! Section- 
 alism, if we plead for the holy sanctions of truth, and honor, and 
 mercy, and justice, and solemn covenant, and plighted faith, and 
 constitutional rights, and say that the soil consecrated to free- 
 dom, by all possible guarantees in 1820, should not be wrenched 
 away from freedom in 1 856 ! Sectionalism, if we ask the rulers 
 of our land to carry out their own vaunted principle of popular 
 sovereignty, and allow the actual settlers of Kansas to choose 
 their own institutions and laws ! Sectionalism, if we implore the 
 God of nations and of battles to interpose his omnipotent arm, 
 and to shield our kindred in that beleaguered Territory from the 
 slaughtering hand of ruthless oppressors ! Sectionalism, if we 
 insist that a false, illegal Legislature of Missourians shall not ab- 
 rogate the electoral franchise of Kansas, and impose the most 
 bloody and intolerant code, enacted in the 19th century, upon 
 that innocent and long suffering people ! Sectionalism, if we 
 cry out against a murderous assault upon a beloved Senator on 
 the floor of Congress, sitting peacefully at his desk, kindling into 
 communion with the nation and the world that great spirit of 
 power, writing letters of love to the friends of his bosom — if we 
 cry out, I say, against such an outrage, by which all our rights 
 are cloven down and all our liberties lie bleeding, and entreat the 
 citizens to speak by voice, and pen, and press, and to rise in the 
 dignity of their electoral suffrage, and at the ballot box teach 
 Slavery, and her murderous bullies a lesson ! If this be sec- 
 tionalism then nationality, and humanity are fled from the land, 
 to dwell with brute beasts of the Rocky Mountains, or with the 
 wildest denizens of the woods in barbaric claims. If this be 
 sectionalism, then, there is no nationalism, nor patriotism in 
 earth or in Heaven, and the mighty archangel of disorder, when 
 he gathered his rebel host, 
 
 " Trailing his vast artillery of Tvar," 
 
 might have said to Gabriel, " ground your arms, my friend, for 
 
31 
 
 you are introducing sectionalism into heaven ; submit to me> 
 with all your troops, and then there shall be a national rule." 
 Sectionalism ! sectionalism! ! may the God who rules above, and 
 who holds in his hands the spirit of freedom and of power, send 
 to our unhappy North a new installment of such sectionalism as 
 this. 
 
 4. It is said in excuse for the outrages and in opposition to 
 the claims of Freedom, that Mr. Sumner and other advocates of 
 the cause are idealists, lacking that statesmanlike, common sense 
 which is necessary. " Mr. Sumner is a gentleman and a 
 scholar " — I use the words of a leading democratic print of Bos- 
 ton — " he is a gentleman and a scholar, but he is not a practical 
 man." He may plead, like Cicero, till Catalincs shall grow pale 
 in the face— he may thunder, like Demosthenes, till tyrants and 
 slavery extensionists shall quake in their shoes — he may stir up 
 the national heart to lofty decision, like Kossuth, so that the peo- 
 ple shall be ready to exclaim, with impressible enthusiasm, " give 
 us liberty or give us death," but he is not a practical man. I 
 conclude we have all read the history of nations with a different 
 eye, and have reached somewhat different conclusions. In every 
 age, and in every free province, the great orator has sown the 
 seeds of thought, and kindled, in the popular heart, the love of 
 right, and planted Liberty's fruit bearing tree. Where would 
 have been our Republic, when the great hour of '70 had struck, 
 if we had not had men like James Otis and Josiah Quincy, Pat- 
 rick Henry and John Rutledge ? Yet they were not practical 
 men. 'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true that they were 
 scholars, gentlemen, orators, but not practical men. Edmund 
 Burke and Lord Chatham, when they faced the hostile Parlia- 
 ment of Great Britain, pleading for American rights, were de- 
 nounced as unpractical. Pity that they had not had a little more 
 common sense, like Lord North and Georo;e Grenville. Pitv 
 that they were led away by womanish sentimentalism and vain 
 theories of human rights to waste their breath in idle words, and 
 cast away their power over the destinies of many nations. Pity 
 that when Russell, and Sydney, and Vane and Elliott plead for 
 liberty in tones of loftiest eloquence, and in a spirit of entire 
 
32 
 
 self-forgetfulness, dying the martyr's death in attestation of their 
 sincerity, that they had not had a little more practical talent. 
 Pity that Joseph Warren, who sleeps sweetly -where Bunker's 
 monument soars proudly, had not been a practical man — ^he 
 might have died quietly in his bed, and seen his country wear 
 Britain's yoke 50 years longer if he had only been a practical 
 man ! No, my friends, when we decry the great parliamentary 
 and popular orator, whose life is an evidence of his devotion to 
 right, whose inspiration is the spirit of freedom, who is ready to 
 face deadly peril that he may promote his country's welfare and 
 seek to stigmatize him as a dreamy idealist, lacking practical 
 ability, we forget the whole philosophy of mind, and all the 
 lessons of history. Great enterprises of pith and moment have 
 always been born in the student's brain. The profound thinker, 
 meditating and elaborating in the seclusion of his closet, filling 
 his intellect with the great discoveries of truth, rousing his soul 
 with the sublime principles of freedom, until heart and brain are 
 on fire with the grandeur of his conceptions, has then come forth 
 into the popular assembly and kindled a flame which will eman- 
 cipate many republics and illuminate many nations. There is 
 no great scheme of benevolence which the world has ever known, 
 no splendid reform of government, or morals which has not been 
 devised by the studious thinker, and carried forward by the true 
 hearted popular orator, more than by any other classes of men. 
 And such men we are to believe, are not practical men. Mr. 
 Sumner's speech on Kansas has certainly produced a very prac- 
 tical effect. The fear, and anger, and conscious defeat, and 
 bafiied hopes, and irrepressible shame of the slavery extensionists 
 are practical results. The blows which levelled him to the earth, 
 and pounded his head till it was one mass of blood, and left him 
 with exultant rage, panting and insensible may probably be call- 
 ed a practical result. And the influence which that speech will 
 have in rousing the free citizens of this wide country, stirring 
 them like a bugle call, inspiriting them with hope, and courage, 
 and indomitable purpose, listened to it may be as the martyr's 
 last words, carrying dismay through all the hosts of oppression, 
 I think may be called very practical. Here in this house of God, 
 
33 
 
 to-day let us reverently lift up our thanks to the almighty King 
 that he has given such a champion to the cause of Freedom — 
 let us importunately beseech our Heavenly Father to preserve 
 his valuable life, and to endow him with wisdom, courage and 
 grace to fight other moral battles, and to win greater triumphs 
 than these. 
 
 5. It is said in excuse for the outrages committed, that the 
 Kansas settlers did wrong in going armed. I am greatly sur- 
 prised to meet this objection. It has been the universal custom 
 of the country, and the admitted rule by every law and every 
 sentiment for the people to have arms. It is expressly guaran- 
 tied in the constitution. The old firelock, hung upon two hooks 
 by the kitchen chimney in the dwelling of every farmer, and 
 well nigh of every citizen, has been for centuries, one of the 
 institutions of the land. We have no standing army, but we 
 have a people who carry a moral defence in their bosoms, and 
 who lay by a physical defence over the fire-place. They do not 
 make any great bravado — their courage does not locate itself 
 chiefly on the end of the tongue — ^you do not see the flash of 
 their powder very often — but if you assail their rights, and do 
 them deadly wrong, you will find there was bravery low down 
 in the heart. I suppose the men of Kansas are a good deal 
 like the men of New England, coming naturally by the resem- 
 blance. Probably no individual in this house would deny 
 the right of self-defence. You read of the Pilgrims coming to 
 this desolate wilderness, going to their little farms and setting 
 up their rifles by the side of the fence, while they planted their 
 corn and reaped their grain, and. you honor them from your 
 deepest soul, for their heroism as well as their religion. You 
 know full well that they carried their muskets to church, and 
 stacked their arms while they prayed, and shouldered their guns 
 as they took their perilous way to their homes ; and you ac- 
 knowledge, with gratitude to God, that their warlike furniture 
 helped to nourish their religion and to purchase ours. You are 
 not prepared to brand your revolutionary fathers as pirates and 
 murderers, and to say that your liberties were bought by an 
 impious assault upon the rights of man and the laws of God. 
 3 
 
34 
 
 Now it was the right of the men who went to Kansas to carry 
 arms. On all the wide frontier men have always carried arms. 
 No new territory, no north-western State has ever been settled 
 without arms. They need them for the support of life before 
 harvests are gathered, or if harvests fail, or, whatever their 
 harvests, they need them for the increase of food in that coun- 
 try of abounding game. They need them against wild Indians, 
 and wild beasts. Sad events have shown that they need them 
 for defence against white men, kindred with themselves in form, 
 but kindred with the wolves of the prairie in spirit. They did 
 not carry them for that purpose. They did not anticipate any 
 such wicked foray upon their rights. They did not stir up evil 
 passions, and provoke assault. They carried arms according to 
 common usage, and a common sense of propriety, and for an 
 obvious necessity ; they have been patient and enduring to the 
 last degree , but Heaven kindly and wisely appointed that they 
 should be prepared for self-defence. Four times have their 
 invaders, from another State, come in upon them, with fearful 
 menaces and impious blasphemies, excited by whiskey, mad with 
 rage, and drunk with lies, prepared for any extreme of rioting 
 and plunder, and blood. Three times did they trample down 
 the elective franchise, and the fourth did they come with the 
 avowed and settled purpose of sweeping Lawrence and other 
 parts of Kansas with an indiscrimmate slaughter and an utter 
 desolation. Lawrence has been desolated. War and rapine, and 
 conflagration, and massacre, and the letting loose of all passions 
 have been introduced into that territory. If they do not stand 
 upon their self-defence those free State settlers will be slaugh- 
 tered like oxen in the shambles, and their wives and children, if 
 spared from the gleaming steel, will be led into captivity, there 
 to be the sport of all lawless impulses. Thanks to a merciful 
 and covenant-keeping God, that they have arms with which to 
 repel barbarian invasions, and that they have been endowed 
 with a spirit to forbear while forbearance was possible, and to 
 stand to their arms when there has been no other defence. 
 Thanks to a kind Providence, that then and there, as so often 
 in the early history of New England, there are men to barri- 
 
35 
 
 cade their houses, to bolt and double bolt the lower doors, and 
 then from the port holes of the chamber windo\vs to stand to 
 their guns, while there, as before, there are women, patient in 
 sorrows, timid in common dangers, but nerved bj a peculiar 
 strength from God for the holy work of the critical hour, to 
 mould their bullets, and handle cartridge, and supply them 
 while they fire, with loaded guns. I am a peace man, most de- 
 voutly and thoroughly. I believe that most wars are atrocious 
 and godless to the last degree ; but I believe there is a holy 
 self-defence, else I should give up all governments, and all pen- 
 alties of all degrees. I believe that if self-defence was ever holy 
 and necessary, it is so in the case of the free State settlers who 
 are now beleaguered in Kansas. 
 
 Brethren and sisters of this commonwealth, and of this great 
 Republic, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, 
 the question comes home to us with solemn significance, what 
 shall we do in this fearful crisis ? We are looking into one 
 anothers' faces with fear, and painful anticipations of evil to 
 come, asking of one another. What is it our duty to do ? It is 
 our duty, first of all, to go to the Bible, and imbue our hearts 
 with the precepts of the Divine Word, and with the spirit of 
 Christ. It is oar duty to meditate with a holy awe, as the Cov- 
 enanters meditated in the glens of Scotland when Claverhouse 
 was upon them, and his claymores were drinking the blood of 
 their aged ones, their women and their children. It is our 
 duty to arm our hearts with courage and with trust in God, 
 such as Ridley and Latimer, and John Rogers, and John Huss 
 manifested, when the ignominious scaffold and the roaring flame 
 were more welcome to them than apostacy from the truth. It 
 is our duty to stir up one anothers' pure minds by way of re- 
 membrance ; to recur to revolutionary and ante-revolutionary 
 times ; to cherish anew the religious faith on which our liberties 
 were founded ; and to seek to bring back to the bosoms of the 
 sons the spirit of the sires. It is our duty to speak forth our 
 abhorrence of this new and most alarming assault upon Freedom ; 
 every parent before the circle of his children ; every patriot 
 before the circle of his friends ; every minister, as God may 
 
36 
 
 give hiin utterance, before his congregation ; every editor, pro- 
 claiming his convictions by that mighty engine, the press ; every 
 public speaker wherever God may open the door for the presen- 
 tation of this theme. As yet we have a New England, from 
 which the memories of the past have not all departed. As yet 
 we have an old Bay State that has done duty for freedom and 
 for religion in perilous times. As yet we have a Granite Com- 
 monwealth, which has given statesmen to the Republic, and he- 
 roes to our country's history. As yet we have a Faneuil Hall, 
 the cradle of Liberty, and many other halls open for discussion, 
 where that cradle has received many a jog, nursing the blessed 
 infant from feebleness up to strength. As yet we have an un- 
 chained pulpit and an unchained pen ; free tongues and a free 
 press ; let us cling to them yet a little longer. And if we would 
 cling to them, it behooves us to let the world know what we 
 think of the tyranny enacted in Kansas ; what we think of beat- 
 ing a Senator well nigh to death with a bludgeon, for words 
 spoken in debate. It is our duty to pray as the Pilgrim Fathers 
 prayed on Plymouth Rock, with hearts deeply penitent, with 
 holy hands lifted to God, pleading with supplications of strong 
 desire, when their feet stood on the frozen shore, and the tem- 
 pest was over their heads, and the angry ocean behind, and the 
 fierce savages on cither hand, and perils, and self-denials and 
 deaths before them in all their way. It is our duty to employ 
 the ballot, instrument of power. Its fall may be silent as the 
 snow-flake from the wintry sky, but in the hands of intelligent 
 and religious freemen it is mightier than the tread of armed 
 hosts, swifter than the lightning which rives the oak, more terri- 
 ble to tyrants than the voice of doom. 
 
 We are now at that point when civil war will ensue, blood 
 without limit will flow, and utter desolation and war will come if 
 we do not make a firm stand for liberty. If the North are 
 united, the danger will be averted. If we are divided Slavery's 
 awful schemes will be triumphant. If Northern legislatures, and 
 Northern presses, and Northern assemblies are agreed, if pro- 
 fessional and educated men, both laic and clerical do their duty, 
 if all our citizens exercise wisely their unquestionable right of 
 
37 
 
 ballot, the aggressions of borderism and of Slavery will be 
 stayed, the supremacy of popular rights and of Christ's divine 
 code will be reestablished, the storm of fratricidal strife will be 
 hushed. It is no time for cowardice, or compromises now. Si- 
 lence is, in my judgment, a fearfully unwise policy. He who 
 loves his country must speak or die. He who loves Freedom 
 and his Bible must stand or be a slave. If we are silent now, 
 Slavery aggression will never be stayed. Injustice will be em- 
 boldened, and will go on till it can be borne no longer. Then will 
 come a fierce reaction, more fierce and more terrible because it 
 did not come sooner. The battle must be fought by us or by 
 our children ; when can it be fought more successfully ? Sla- 
 very keeps no truce, obeys no law ; observes no promise. It 
 enters into a professed compromise for a time, simply that it 
 may lay upon its oars, recruit its strength, and watch its advan- 
 tage. Read the speeches of Mr. Calhoun in 1850, when he 
 declared that the Ordinance of 1787 was the first great mistake 
 made by the country, the Missouri Compromise the second, and 
 the admission of California as a free State the third, and then 
 decide as to the purposes of the South. 
 
 There are certain christian men, both at the North and the 
 South, who are perpetually urging silence, and arguing the in- 
 nocence of Slavery. We could leave the question with them, if 
 they had any control over it ; we have confidence in tlieir integ- 
 rity ; but they are simply and only playing into the hands of 
 unscrupulous politicians, whose designs are to give this universal 
 empire to Slavery ; to extend this iron rule from Northern lake 
 to Southern gulf; from the hoarse roar of the Atlantic to the 
 milder dashings of the Pacific. Their purpose is fixed and re- 
 morseless in this matter, and the hearts of freemen must be 
 fixed, or the Republic perishes. It is not a juncture for silence 
 or compromises. The aggressors upon the rights of Kansas are 
 striking at the very soul of liberty. It is the Thermopylre for 
 the whole land. Here lie the guarded straits of safety or of 
 death. If we shrink back through indolent ease ; if we faint 
 and cower in the strangeness of a deluded apathy, war will in- 
 evitably come. The history of the past fifty years shows that 
 
38 
 
 concessions from Freedom only invite aggressions from Slavery. 
 Oppression has advanced her whole artillery of death, aift raised 
 her arrogant demands as Liberty has timidly retired. A bold 
 and determined stand at any former crisis 'would have been far 
 more easily successful than now ; it will be far easier now than 
 ten years hence. Webster, the greatest intellect of our coun- 
 try, made one such stand in 1833, when he smote down the 
 Nullification theory, and Jackson, and Silas Wright, and Levi 
 Woodbury leaned on his strong arm for support, and the wheels 
 of government, chained and creaking for a time, again rolled 
 smoothly. 0, that God had given him grace to make another 
 stand on the 7th of March, 1850 ! But in that sorrowful crisis 
 he failed, and the Philistines led him away blindfold to grind 
 in their prison house, and it is to be feared, in the terrible wrest- 
 lings of his giant might, to pull down the pillars of the confed- 
 eration upon Slavery and Freedom both. When, ye North- 
 ern men, will ye stand and buffet the aggressive onset ? Every 
 passing year of inaction makes a final stand more difficult ; the 
 coUision when it does come more fearful ; and Slavery's ultimate 
 victory more probable. There must be a stand or Freedom dies. 
 The battles of the Lord of Hosts are not all ended. The mar- 
 tyr's spirit is needed now. It is hard to believe that some of us 
 may be called to stand in the serried files of war, but I believe 
 it. It was hard for the Puritans to face their foes ; it was hard 
 for our fathers to rise against England ; it is dreadful to think 
 that Slavery will force us into civil war for our home-born and 
 home-bred rights. But I believe that the event is near unless 
 the people are faithful in the coming November. Our country 
 is in danger — 
 
 " A thousand years scarce serve to form a State ; 
 
 One hour may lay it in the dust ; how then, 
 
 Can man its shattered splendors renovate, 
 
 Eecall its virtues back, and vanquish time and fate" — 
 
 I perform to-day a painful duty. It is painful to seem to en- 
 courage strife. I do not encourage strife. I believe that the 
 earnest and inflexible and religious decision which I recommend 
 are the only sure peace measures. But my remarks may be 
 
39 
 
 misinterpreted, and this it is whicli pains me. I stand for free- 
 dom, for Religion, for my country's weal — they are more to be 
 valued than reputation, or comfort, or life. 
 
 It would be for my own personal ease, and immediate satisfac- 
 tion to be still. If Slavery spreads over the land, the oppressive 
 tide may not reach New England in my day. I can preach to 
 a generous, confiding i>eople, while God gives me strength, and 
 they are willing to hear me ; or I can retire to a little nook of 
 rocky soil, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, living 
 on, in the enjoyment of freedom through my brief hour. But 
 my country, what is in reserve for thee ? If galling chains 
 must bind thine unfettered limbs — if all institutions of freedom 
 and religion must be crushed by a remorseless oligarchy — would 
 that I had never been born, or that I might now fulfil a freeman's 
 duty. 
 
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