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 opy 1 
 
 THE LESSONS OP OUR NATIONAL CONFLICT. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 TO 
 
 THE ALUMNI OF YALE COLLEGE, 
 
 AT THEIR ANNUAL MEETING, 
 
 .JULY 24, 1861. 
 
 By JULIAN M/ STURTEVANT, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 
 
 PRINTED BY REQUEST OF THE ALUMNI. 
 
 *4* 
 
 NEW HAVEN: 
 PRINTED BY THOMAS J. STAFFORD. 
 
 1861. 
 
THE LESSONS OF OUR NATIONAL CONFLICT. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 TO 
 
 THE ALUMNI OF YALE COLLEGE, 
 
 AT THEIR ANNUAL MEETING, 
 
 .JULY 24, 1861. 
 
 v JULIAN M. STURTEVANT, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 
 
 x 
 
 PRINTED BY BEQUEST OP THE ALTJMNL 
 ♦♦* 
 
 6 NEW HAVEN : 
 
 PRINTED BY THOMAS J. STAFFORD. 
 
 1861. 
 

ADDRESS. 
 
 Fathers and Brethren of the Alumni : 
 
 The distinguished scholar and divine who last addressed 
 you, on an occasion like this, found his fitting theme in the 
 history of our venerable Alma Mater, as recorded in her 
 Triennial Catalogue. The public mind was then in a mood 
 to sympathise with a review of our peaceful past, and to 
 enjoy an effort so tranquil and scholarly to gather up those 
 suggestions of wisdom and hope which may be derived from 
 our former experience, to guide and encourage our future. 
 Blessed peace ! How bright is its sunshine, as in memory we 
 contrast it with the stern and solemn realities which now 
 surround us. The present hour seems to me to demand a 
 very different theme. "We are now called to learn the lessons 
 of adversity : we must now find strength for an hour of con- 
 flict ; fortitude to endure and hope to sustain and cheer us 
 in darkness and gloom. It is fit that we remember that all 
 the nations that have ever achieved anything worthy of the 
 grateful remembrance of mankind, have passed through their 
 seasons of national adversity, and that the lessons of those 
 seasons have been even more important to their development, 
 their education, and their greatness, than those derived from 
 seasons of prosperity. It is in adversity, in conflict, in the 
 times of national trial and calamity, that a nation's fallow- 
 ground is broken up, and the seeds of future greatness are sown 
 
and rooted in the soil. Its times of prosperity are only liar- 
 vest seasons, which would yield nothing worthy of the reaper's 
 sickle without previous " sowing in tears." What would 
 Greece have been without her Persian wars, her Marathon, 
 Thermopylae, and Plataea? AVljat would England have been 
 without her wars of the Roses, and the troubles and terrible 
 conflicts of her great Revolution ? "Without these the English 
 nation, English character, English freedom could never have 
 been. While they lasted, how deep the gloom in which they 
 shrouded the nation ! It was with our fathers in those strug- 
 gles as it is with us to-day. Peace and prosperity seemed to 
 them a bright and sunny dream of the past ; and as they 
 peered into the thick mists which overhung them, they could 
 no where discern any sure promise of their restoration to an 
 afflicted nation. And yet how bright, how glorious a future 
 was before them ! How full of freedom and happiness to 
 their children and their children's children, and of blessings 
 untold to the human race ! 
 
 It becomes us, then, to take courage and hope. We are not 
 the first nation that has seen an hour of darkness and gloom. 
 We have no reason to suppose or to hope that we, more than 
 other nations, can fulfill a great destiny without passing, like 
 them, through a baptism of suffering. And if a great destiny 
 is before us, as we have fondly hoped, we ought to expect to 
 be prepared to enter on that promised land, bypassing through 
 the Red Sea, the wilderness, and the Jordan. It ill becomes 
 us, then, as soon as the shadow of a great calamity begins to 
 fall upon us, to lose our courage and abandon our hope. This 
 is an hour rather in which we need all our manhood — a hand 
 to do with unfaltering energy all its duties, and an eye to 
 discern all its lessons. 
 
 It has therefore seemed to me that in no other way can we 
 so fitly improve the present hour, as in endeavoring coolly to 
 survey the passing scene, in order to glean up some of those 
 suggestions of encouragement, warning and wisdom, which 
 may give us strength for the present and manly preparation 
 for the future. 
 
 There are four vices which have been rapidly growing upon 
 
our American character, which our present adversity is obvi- 
 ously fitted, and I hope intended by a merciful Providence, to 
 correct and eradicate. They are a morbid philanthropy : an 
 ostentatious and costly self-indulgence y a great lacJc of the 
 spirit of loyal admiration and reverence for a strong and ener- 
 getic government / and a disposition in our notions of national 
 policy to substitute the will of majorities, instead of justice 
 and the will of God. Either of these vices would be a source 
 of great weakness and deformity to any nation ; and, all 
 together, if allowed to grow unchecked and uncorrected, they 
 could not fail to produce national disaster, debasement, degrada- 
 tion, and ruin. Let me then respectfully invite your attention 
 to the relation of our present national adversity to each of 
 them. 
 
 1. Much of our philanthropy is sickly, and the experiences 
 through which we are passing will render it again vigorous 
 and robust. 
 
 "We have a notion widely prevalent, and arrogating to itself 
 the claim that it is the only true development of the teachings 
 of the law of God, that even defensive war is criminal, con- 
 demned by the morality of the New Testament ; that a Christ- 
 ian people has no defense against the exactions and oppressions 
 of men of violence and blood, but argument and persuasion. 
 We have a popular text-book on moral philosophy from the 
 pen of one of the most venerated divines and distinguished 
 educators of our country, which teaches and defends this 
 doctrine. A distinguished philanthropist of our countr}', 
 known in this and foreign lands, alike for the extent and 
 varietyof his linguistic lore, and the fervor of his philanthropy, 
 has proposed to put an end to war in Christendom, by obtain- 
 ing from every man a solemn pledge never to bear arms, just 
 as it is proposed to banish the vice of drunkenness from human 
 society by obtaining from every individual a pledge never to 
 drink any thing which has an intoxicating quality. Such a 
 pledge of universal brotherhood has been signed by thousands 
 of women, and some men. Many of us have been invited to 
 sign it ; perhaps some of us have signed it. If we have not, I 
 hardly think it probable we shall do so, just at the present time. 
 
6 
 
 Many persons carry the same notion with them to the read- 
 ing of the Bible. Many a tender-hearted enthusiast is quite 
 shocked at the Psalms of David, and cannot understand how 
 a good man can have been so vindictive. There are not a few 
 of our reformers who are hurried into the conclusion, that the 
 Old Testament cannot have been inspired of God because of 
 its warlike spirit. They judge of the utterances of those 
 glorious old warriors and prophets of the Lord in the light of 
 the modern doctrines of non-resistance, and condemn them as 
 vindictive and revengeful in spirit. 
 
 This same notion is extended not only to war, but to the 
 punishment of crime. Paul, in his good old robust view of 
 things, spoke of the civil magistrate as " he that beareth the 
 sword." But these modern interpreters of the morality of 
 Paul's adored Master, would take away the sword from the 
 magistrate, and represent the taking of human life as exceed- 
 ing the powers which governments are competent to confer on 
 their agents. They do not seem to perceive that such a denial 
 undermines government itself, that it is a denial of its right to 
 be ; for no government can sustain its own existence for a 
 twelve month, when deprived of the power of life and death 
 over its subjects. This morbid sympathy for the wicked is 
 undermining the foundations of society itself; it is affecting 
 disasterously the decisions of judges and the verdicts of jurors ; 
 it is disqualifying the minds of millions to receive those 
 doctrines of retributive justice, which lie at the foundation of 
 all government, human and divine, of all social virtue, and of 
 that very Christian religion, from which men profess to derive 
 a morality from which the idea of retribution and penalty is 
 excluded. 
 
 It is not to be denied, that such green-sickness as this is be- 
 coming quite seriously prevalent among the American people. 
 It is the result of living too long and too much in the cool 
 shade o<" prosperity, and will require no other treatment than 
 exposure tor a time to the hot sunshine of national adversity. 
 From such a change of regimen we expect robust, vigorous 
 health to ensue, except in a few cases, in which the constitu- 
 tion has been already fatally impaired. 
 
It is difficult to conceive of circumstances better fitted than 
 our present to affect a cure of such a morbid condition of the 
 national mind. What will these amiable philanthropists have 
 us do in our present national trial ? What for our dear country ? 
 What for social order, for freedom, for justice, for humanity, 
 for mercy ? What can we do but defend all which is- precious 
 in the cherished free institutions of our country by force of 
 arms? In times like these it is easy to relearn a lesson, which 
 has been taught again and again in the history of our mother 
 England and her colonial offshoots, that no people can long 
 enjoy freedom, unless they are willing to defend it with their 
 blood. The whole history of liberty in the world teaches the 
 same lesson. To refuse to bear arms in defense of a free and 
 just government, to neglect to exert force for the defence of the 
 innocent, the restraint of the disorderly, and the condign pun- 
 ishment of crime, is for society to abdicate its highest function, 
 and give over this world to the rule of anarchists and despots. 
 
 I have not forgotten the blessed prophecies of the divine 
 Word. There is to be a long reign of peace on earth. But it 
 is not to be ushered in by leaving crime unpunished, and 
 unoffending virtue unprotected, and giving up this present 
 world to men of violence and blood, to tyrannize over it to 
 their heart's content ; but by effecting such changes in the 
 social, political and moral condition of the world, through the 
 dissemination of freedom, instruction, and a pure Christian 
 faith, as shall render a long reign of peace and justice possible. 
 In the present state of the world it is not possible. Nor are 
 we to expect those peaceful ages to be ushered in, till such a 
 morbid philanthropy, as we have been remarking on, has been 
 effectually exploded ; till men shall have so learned in the 
 school of hard and bloody national experience the relations of 
 retributive justice and penalty to all order, to all freedom, and 
 to all government, that they can enjoy long peace and freedom 
 without reproaching as blood-thirsty cut-throats, those ances- 
 tors by whose bravery and prowess on the field of battle these 
 blessings were purchased. God will never usher in that golden 
 age of the future, till he has prepared mankind to honor and 
 revere the men bv whose labors and sacrifices it shall have been 
 
8 
 
 achieved ; till men shall be wise and strong enough, while in 
 the full enjoyment of its holy tranquility, to read the Old 
 Testament, the narratives of its glorious old heroes, the denun- 
 ciations of its prophets, and the songs of its royal Psalmist, 
 without having their philanthropy shocked. And till the 
 world does so understand the subject of war and retributive 
 justice, we may be sure it is not yet ready to beat its swords 
 into ploughshares and its spears into pruning-hooks. 
 
 2. But I must hasten to a second lesson of the times which 
 is perhaps yet more striking and important. It will hardly 
 be denied that our national character was becoming greatly 
 weakened by the prevalence of a spirit of ostentatious and 
 costly self-indulgence. Long- continued and unusual pros- 
 perity has a terrible influence to enervate and unman a 
 people. Costliness of living will often, in such circumstances, 
 outrun the greatest prosperity. Men make more haste to 
 spend in expensive magnificence than to acquire. That 
 seemingly impossible combination of Sallust, " Luxuria atque 
 avaritia" is presented before our eyes, not only as possible 
 but as actual. In the same communities and in the same 
 persons, the greed of gain goes in even yoke with the greed 
 of costly self-indulgence. Men, and perhaps still more wo- 
 men, learn to regard all things as necessaries of life, or at 
 least of their delicate and favored lives, which the imagina- 
 tion can dream of, or which money can purchase. While one 
 such want remains ungratified, the era vino's of desire stimulate 
 avarice to still more insatiable eagerness, till the voices of 
 humanity, philanthropy, piety, and conscience, are all alike 
 silenced or unheeded, amid the ceaseless clamors of these two 
 hostile and yet twin vices. 
 
 Of this tendency of great and long-continued prosperity, 
 our country is beginning to afford a very alarming illustration. 
 I trust I am no croaker; but a man may speak the truth 
 without croaking. And it is a truth which challenges denial, 
 that habits of extravagant costliness have grown upon the 
 descendants of the selt':sacrificing frugal Pilgrims with very 
 alarming rapidity. They are to such an extent drying np the 
 fountains of our philanthropy, that we may look forward to 
 
the time as not distant, when the great centers of our wealth 
 and population shall surpass even the capitals of the old 
 world in accumulated masses of unfed, unclad, uninstructed 
 and uncared for poverty. The lady who in the midst of a 
 profusion of all the costly fabrics which can be procured from 
 the spindles and looms of the civilized world, has "nothing 
 to wear," will be sure to meet the appeals of humanity, com- 
 passion and piety, with the plea that she has nothing to spare ; 
 and the husband and the father will have nothing to spare- 
 While such imaginations are more busy in devising the ways 
 of spending money than avarice itself in procuring it, men 
 become the worse than galley slaves of Mammon, that women 
 may be no less the slaves of fashion and pleasure. 
 
 In this country of ours this evil is more wide-spread and 
 alarming than it ever has been in any other. It is not only 
 true that our prosperity has been unprecedented, both in its 
 greatness and in its continuance, that we have enjoyed a kind 
 of millennium of money-making, but the resulting habits of 
 extravagant costliness spread themselves over a wider surface 
 than in any other country. In those countries in which 
 society is largely aristocratic in its structure, custom for the 
 most part confines such habits of extravagance to the upper 
 classes. The middle and lower classes are in some degree 
 protected from their influence by the proprieties of their rank. 
 But with us the contagion is universal, and can be checked in 
 no class by any other consideration than those of conscience 
 and good taste ; and when these fail, it is without a limit. 
 The wife or daughter of a plain American fanner cannot be 
 dressed without the toilet of the Empress of the French. The 
 democratic kitchen-maid emulates the costume of Queen 
 Victoria and her daughters. 
 
 It is not only true that such modes of living are wasting 
 our substance and drying up the fountains of our charity and 
 our liberality ; but they are in other respects enervating our 
 national character. To persons and to communities long ac- 
 customed to such self-indulgent luxury the voice of conscience 
 speaks with little power; self-denial is a thing not to be 
 thought of. A farmer said to a friend of mine, in the very 
 
10 
 
 midst of the great political conflict of 1856, " I do not care 
 who is President, I can raise as much wheat and sell it for as 
 good a price under one as another." And that is the spirit 
 towards which the American people were tending. It mat- 
 tered not how our government was administered, whether the 
 nation was honored or disgraced by the conduct of its rulers, 
 whether justice or oppression were in the ascendency, provided 
 only our gains and our pleasures were not interfered with. 
 The merchant who could meet the expenses of his princely 
 mansion, and all the costly gayeties of the season, enjoy his 
 splendid summers at Saratoga and Newport, and, at the year's 
 end, add a satisfactory number of thousands to his capital, 
 thought it out of taste for him to be troubled about politics, 
 and was more indignant at the fanaticism of those who 
 troubled the public mind by talking of the wrongs done to 
 four millions of slaves, than he could be at any instance of 
 injustice which did not reach the gains of his counting-house 
 nor the luxuries of his merchant-palace. To a people thus 
 enervated by enslavement to their own imaginary wants, 
 bravery, heroism become impossible and inconceivable. In 
 these later years as I have listened to the stirring strains of 
 our national air, I have felt the blush of shame tingling my 
 cheek almost equally at the words " the home of the brave," 
 as at the words " the land of the free." Both have sounded 
 like a burlesque. We Americans of the present generation 
 have had very little reason to sing of our bravery. 
 
 There is great power in a season of national adversity, such as 
 that through which we are passing, to correct these downward 
 tendencies of our national character. Perhaps we have 
 thought that we had nothing to spare ; but we are in the way 
 of discovering how great was the delusion. At the trumpet 
 call of our country's danger, we are summoned to place our 
 entire fortunes at her disposal, and our own lives, and the 
 lives of sons, husbands, and brothers. Ah ! surely we had 
 much to spare. And the sweet voices of loved ones, of fathers 
 and mothers that have gone, whisper in our ear to withhold 
 nothing in this hour of our country's need. Our own love of 
 
11 
 
 liberty, the liberty of ourselves, and our children, and our 
 children's children, says, withhold nothing. 
 
 Ah ! in these times we may hope to learn lessons of bravery 
 and heroism, and become worthy to sing — 
 
 — •' long may it wave 
 O'er the land of the free and the home of the hrave." 
 
 And in the midst of the sacrifices which we now make so 
 freely for the land of our birth, and the guarantees of our 
 liberties, we shall think of our past self-indulgent lives, and, 
 like the penitent Peter, we shall go out and weep bitterly ; 
 and we shall construct our future lives on a nobler and better 
 principle. We shall train ourselves and train our children to 
 habits of self-denial and self-sacrifice. And it may be hoped 
 that by means of the discipline through which we are now 
 passing, we shall become a people that will know how to enjoy 
 prosperity without being corrupted and enervated by it — a 
 people wise enough to possess all the unequaled resources of 
 the good land which the Lord hath given us, and use them in 
 furtherance of all the interests of freedom, humanity and 
 universal civilization. Such a people we must become, self- 
 denying, brave, heroic in the midst of prosperity, or we can 
 never attain to the destiny which divine Providence seems to 
 have marked out for us. The history of the human race in 
 all its degradations and crimes presents nothing so revolting 
 and shocking, as the conception of this nation with all the 
 high and glorious lessons of its past, enjoying the exhaustless 
 resources of North America, and yet using them in corrupting, 
 enervating self-indulgence, and in the unbounded costliness of 
 fashionable ostentation. If we are to become great as our 
 hopes, we must find a corrective of these vicious tendencies. 
 It is devoutly to be hoped we may at least partially find it in 
 the stern discipline of the present hour. 
 
 3. A third vicious tendency in American character, which I 
 mentioned, is a lack of admiration and reverence for a strong, 
 energetic, and benignant government. 
 
 It is sad to observe how low the sentiment of reverence for 
 established and rightful authority has fallen in our national 
 
12 
 
 mind. We have begun to conclude that the glory of an 
 American is not that his is a free, rightful, and benignant 
 government, but that he is not governed at all ; that in this 
 happy country every one does what is right in his own eyes. 
 Instead of reverencing our own government for its strength, 
 we have been inclined to glory in its weakness. We have 
 been sufficiently confident of its durability, sufficiently in- 
 clined, like the old Roman, to talk of the " Capitoli immobile 
 saxum" But it has not been because we had any confidence 
 in the strength of the government, or its power to overcome 
 resistance should any ever be offered; but because we thought 
 the government so benignant and so good, and the people 
 withal so intelligent, that there was no danger that it ever 
 would be resisted. In popular impression, in general estima- 
 tion, we had no government. And when our present chief 
 magistrate was forced to make his way to the national capital 
 unattended and unknown, under the cover of the friendly 
 darkness of the night, we were mortified indeed, but it did 
 not arouse the nation, nor even the party which had elected 
 him. It was not much worse than we expected, and we soon 
 made up our minds to submit to the national indignity, and 
 "go around Baltimore ! !" 
 
 And this want of reverence for the authority of a strong 
 government was producing disastrous effects on our whole 
 national character. We were evidently in need of some 
 vigorous discipline. The clement of reverence for rightful 
 authority was slipping out of the national mind. Our young 
 men were beginning to feci that all authority is despotism, 
 all government tyranny, and all submission and obedience 
 servility. Just in proportion as such views prevail among any 
 people, they become incapable of virtue, or of anything that 
 is truly groat and noble in character. That man or that 
 woman into whose character the spirit of cheerful and rever- 
 ential obedience to rightful authority does not enter as a 
 predominating element, cannot be cither virtuous, or great, 
 or noble, or lovely. Such a character is monstrous ; a nation 
 of such characters is a nation of monsters, and would be 
 loathed of men and abhorred of God. And those traits of 
 
1o 
 O 
 
 American character which have exposed us to the severest 
 criticism from enlightened foreigners, have all sprung from 
 this very vice. Any discipline, therefore, which tends to 
 correct this vice, is evidently one which young America does 
 greatly need. 
 
 There is one peculiarity in our national history, which 
 created almost a necessity, that we should run for a time 
 into the vice of which I speak. Without an experience which 
 as a nation we have not had, it was hardly possible either 
 for the rest of the world to understand us, or for us to under- 
 stand ourselves. Our government is in J part founded on a 
 new discovery in political science, as truly original as the inven- 
 tion of steam navigation, or the telegraph. Our constitution is 
 called a confederation of States. That is nothing new under 
 the sun. Confederations have been common from the days of 
 the Grecian republics to our own times. But our confedera- 
 tion is in a most important respect unlike all that have pre- 
 ceded it. In a confederation of States properly so called, the 
 central government has States, and States only, for subjects. 
 It can command the individual only by commanding the 
 State to which the individual owes allegiance. In our con- 
 federation, if confederation it must be called, the central 
 government is restricted, indeed, to a very limited number of 
 interests ; but in respect to those interests, it is as truly 
 national as the government of England or France. It never 
 commands a State ; it has no power or right to do so ; it com- 
 mands individuals only. It is therefore unlike any other con- 
 federacy. It is unlike any other national government, be- 
 cause, though it governs all the individuals of the entire na- 
 tion, it governs them only in respect to certain limited and 
 accurately defined interests, leaving them to be governed in 
 all other respects by the several States, as though the central 
 government did not exist. This, I say, is a new discovery, or, 
 if you please to call it so, a new experiment in the science of 
 government. 
 
 De Tocqueville, in his work on American Democracy, has 
 stated this point with so much clearness and force, that I 
 cannot forbear quoting his words. He says : 
 
14 
 
 " The human understanding more easily invents new things than new words, 
 and we are thence constrained to employ a multitude of improper and inadequate 
 expressions. Where several nations form a permanent league and establish a 
 supreme authority, which although it has not the same influence over the mem- 
 bers of the community as a national government, acts upon each of the confede- 
 rate States in a body, this government which is so essentially different from all 
 others, is denominated a Federal one. Another form of Society is afterwards 
 discovered, in which several peoples are fused into one and the same nation with 
 regard to certain common interests, although they remain distinct or at least 
 only confederate with regard to all other concerns. In this case the central 
 power acts directly upon those whom it governs, whom it rules, and whom it 
 judges in the same manner as, but in a much more limited circle than a na- 
 tional government. Here the term Federal government is clearly no longer ap- 
 plicable to a state of things which must be styled an incomplete national gov- 
 ernment. A form of government has been found out which is neither exactly 
 national nor federal ; but no farther progress has been made, and the new word 
 which will one day designate this novel invention does not yet exist." p. 138. 
 
 This most important feature in our national constitution, is, 
 in the strictest sense, a new discovery, a new invention. But 
 if history proves anything, it proves that new discoveries in 
 government are never made available for the benefit of man- 
 kind, except through conflict and blood. It was appointed to 
 the English nation, for example, to demonstrate that a king 
 may reign while the people govern. She has nobly wrought 
 out this problem in the sight of Europe and the world, and a 
 noble step of progress it is in the science of government. 
 But in working it out she has taken from one king his head, 
 and from another his crown, and has sacrificed in civil con- 
 flict what thousands of her people, and what millions of her 
 treasure ! Nor is there any evidence that, as human nature 
 is, the problem could have been solved at a less cost either of 
 blood or treasure. 
 
 Let us not imagine that we are exempt from a law of na- 
 tional progress to which all the past has been subjected. Wf 
 have incorporated in our constitution a new and an exceed- 
 ingly important invention in the science of government. We 
 may not expect to render it available for the benefit of man- 
 kind till it shall have been subjected to the ordeal of bloody 
 conflict. A portion of our people are tired of the contract. 
 They Avish to escape from the Union which our fathers formed. 
 
15 
 
 This, say they, is not a national government, it is a confed- 
 eration, and will the administration attempt to "coerce" 
 a sovereign State % And the idea of a national government 
 of limited powers has no firm hold of any portion of the 
 national mind ; it has not yet been subjected to the ordeal 
 of the sword; it has not yet been written in blood. And 
 the bloody handwriting of the sword is to nations the only 
 intelligible writing. The word " coercion " had well nigh 
 frightened the nation from its propriety. It was because we 
 did not, and, according to the laws of the human mind, as a 
 nation, we could not half understand this grand peculiarity of 
 our constitution. 
 
 It is wonderful to observe that the profound De Tocqueville 
 himself, after having stated the case so clearly in the extract 
 we have made, falls, in the subsequent part of his work, into 
 the very same error. He says : 
 
 "However strong a government may be, it cannot escape from the consequences 
 of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The 
 Union was formed by the voluntary agreetnent of the states ; and in uniting 
 together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to 
 the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to with- 
 draw its name from the contract it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing 
 so ; and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims 
 directly either by force or right." p. 367. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " It appears to me unquestionable that if any portion of the Union seriously 
 desired to separate itself from the other states, they would not be able, nor in- 
 deed would they attempt to prevent it, and the present Union will only last as 
 long as the states which compose it choose to continue members of the confedera- 
 tion." p. 369. 
 
 This is South Carolina logic ; this is the logic to which the 
 partisan watch-cry of " coercion " was addressed — this, too, 
 from a profound philosopher who had previously analyzed the 
 constitution with great discrimination and accuracy, and shown 
 that within the limits of those interests which are committed 
 to it, our government is as truly and completely national as 
 that of France under Napoleon III, and has just as good, 
 exclusive, and perfect a right to collect imposts in the port of 
 Charleston, as the government of England has to collect them 
 
16 
 
 in the port of Liverpool ; and the people have just as much 
 right to cry "coercion" in the one case as in the other. This 
 writer shows that carefully as he has pointed out the inaccu- 
 racy of the words Federal and Confederation, when applied to 
 our government, these words have still overmastered him, and 
 led his thoughts far away from that great invention in the 
 science of government, for which he has elsewhere given the 
 frauiers of the constitution ample credit. Even the philoso- 
 phers are like the rest of us common mortals ; they cannot per- 
 sistently see a political truth till it has been established by con- 
 flict and written in blood. 
 
 And so it is with the philosophers and with the unlearned, 
 with foreigners and with ourselves, with the South and with 
 the North ; it will never be clearly seen and felt in the depths 
 of men's souls that a government of limited powers can exert 
 those powers in presence of and in opposition to those states 
 from which it originally received them by voluntary cession, 
 till it has been proved by fierce and bloody conflict. Till our 
 general government has asserted those powers in the face of 
 opposition, and shown its strength by overcoming resistance 
 and trampling out rebellion, it will, as human nature is, almost 
 necessarily be regarded as weak and helpless, dependent on the 
 capricious will of thirty-four sovereign states, and existing for 
 a twelve month only by their sufferance. 
 
 Awhile our general government continued to occupy such a 
 position, it could not be much respected either at home or 
 abroad. It is for this same reason that England cannot under- 
 stand us at the present moment, and displays in speaking of 
 our present crisis an ignorance, which alternately provokes our 
 contempt and our anger. It were best that we spare both, and 
 teach her by deeds that Ave are not a mere confederation but a 
 nation, and that it is as absurd for her to talk of " strict neu- 
 trality" and the "rights of belligerents" in the present con- 
 test, as for us to use similar language in a conflict between her 
 and her Irish, Canadian, or Indian subjects. I say we must 
 teacli her by deeds / for deeds are the only sort of instruction 
 which the nature of the case admits of, or which can be 
 effectual. 
 
17 
 
 And by deeds, too, we must instruct ourselves and our own 
 people. Such a national experience as that out of which we 
 have lately come, such a national nightmare, as that from which 
 the booming of Sumpter's cannon was hardly able to awaken 
 us, was only possible in such a dim twilight of some great 
 fundamental political truth, as exists before it has received the 
 sanction of trial by deadly conflict. The giant frauds on our 
 national treasury, the astounding acts of treason committed by 
 many of the highest functionaries of our government, both 
 civil and military, and the still more astounding toleration 
 with which we, the people, endured it all, would have been im- 
 possible but for this dim and inadequate perception of this 
 fundamental principle of our government. And this dimness of 
 vision was nearly universal. Few of us saw with any clear- 
 ness and vividness of perception, that we have a supreme gov- 
 ernment at Washington. And if we have not a supreme gov- 
 ernment at "Washington, then, certainly, nowhere ; for our 
 state governments do not profess to be supreme ; they are not 
 such either in theory or in practice. The only effect, then, of 
 such a state of things has been to attack and destroy the very 
 principle of loyalty itself ; to set up what claims to be a govern- 
 ment, as an object of pity and contempt — a government which 
 could not protect good men, and on which bad men could 
 trample with impunity. It has been perfectly notorious for 
 many years, that in large districts of our country the govern- 
 ment could not protect the rights of innocent and unoffending 
 citizens ; it could not enforce its own laws ; it could not main- 
 tain the inviolability of its own mails. In such a state of 
 things it need not be thought strange that the principle of 
 loyalty declined, and that reverence for the government itself 
 was fast fading out of the national mind: such a result was 
 partly a necessity of our national history. 
 
 If these things are so, our present national crisis has not 
 come a moment too soon ; and we can well afford to meet it 
 at the sacrifice, of no matter how many human lives, and how 
 many millions of treasure. Such a crisis we must meet, and 
 meet soon, or be utterly ruined by our growing disloyalty, and 
 the vices without number which inevitably spring from it. 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 And we may well hope that it will furnish the very discipline 
 we need. It is to be hoped that we and the world shall find 
 that we have a real government, that there is a power in and 
 over this nation, mild and benignant indeed, but yet a power, 
 which can demand and enforce obedience over every foot of its 
 domain; a power which can overcome resistance, which can 
 trample out even a gigantic rebellion, and make itself felt, 
 feared and honored ; a power which can in all parts of this 
 land hold a shield of resistless protection over its friends, and 
 crush its enemies in the dust as easily as one can set his foot 
 on an offensive worm. Such a discipline we certainly do 
 need, and must have, or become the vilest of nations. It will 
 unspeakably bless us : it will make us far more united, homo- 
 geneous and capable of virtue at home ; and far more loved 
 and honored abroad. The children of an ungovemed family 
 are always objects of dread and aversion to all their neighbors. 
 Just so the people of an ungoverned or an ill-governed nation 
 are always abhorred by the rest of mankind. It is to be 
 hoped we may come out of this great national trial, chastened 
 in spirit, subdued not to traitors or foes, but to authority and 
 rightful government : a people able to live together in har- 
 mony and to render ourselves beloved and honored by all 
 mankind. 
 
 4. There is yet one more vice of our national character, 
 perhaps even more deep and dangerous than those hitherto 
 spoken of, which we hope our present national crisis may tend 
 to eradicate. I have been speaking of want of loyalty to the 
 government under which we live : I now refer to want of 
 loyalty to right, to changeless eternal justice. As a people, a 
 nation, we have been unmindful of the great truth, that there 
 are principles of right, whiih limit and sustain all human, all 
 created, all existing power; principles which God himself 
 never infringes, and will never suffer to be infringed by any 
 combinations of created power. We have imagined that dem- 
 ocratic majorities may do whatever they please, and especially 
 that an ocean-girt republic, like ours, is strong enough to do all 
 its pleasure ; that the will of such a people is omnipotent. The 
 public mind has been extensively pervaded with the idea, that to 
 
19 
 
 oppose moral convictions to the legal expressions of such a na- 
 tional will is fanaticism to be discountenanced by the people's 
 contempt and scorn, if not to be punished by the judges. In 
 our own times and before our own eyes men of the purest char- 
 acter and the highest standing have been made a hissing and 
 a by-word for maintaining, that there are laws of justice and 
 laws of God, which are above all human constitutions and 
 enactments, and which as truly limit the power of popular ma- 
 jorities however numerous, as of crowned despots. 
 
 And yet there are such changeless laws of God, and neither 
 individuals nor nations can ever for one moment escape from 
 them. God has hedged about every creature he has made 
 with rights, principles of justice, which he will never permit 
 any earthly power great or small to trample on ; and the in- 
 dividual or the nation that does trample on them will meet 
 God as an avenger. And great and small are both alike to 
 him ; it is just as easy for him to punish the mightiest human 
 power that ever existed, as the feeblest insect ; he can crush 
 a nation as easily as a man or a worm. If a nation, however 
 mighty, adopts either laws or customs, by which unnecessary 
 cruelty is inflicted on a tribe of brute animals, the displeasure of 
 God is sure to follow. The cruelty of Rome to the wild beasts 
 which she tortured in her amphitheater, for the amusement of 
 her populace and her fashion, was not the least of the causes of 
 her decay and her overthow. Still more will this law hold, if 
 we perpetrate any injustice on a fellow-man, however low in 
 the scale of humanity. The victim may be the red man of the 
 wilderness, or the tawny African. He that cares for the beasts 
 of the field, and the fowls of the air, will still more care for the 
 humblest in human form. "We may rest assured that great as 
 we are, vast as is our national domain, the law's of our nation- 
 al prosperity, and of all national prosperity, are such that 
 neither we, nor any other nation,can permanently prosper 
 while s3 T stematic and legalized injustice is practiced towards 
 any creature that 1 tears the image of God. It is as much a 
 law of nature and of nature's God, that such legalized injustice 
 will result ere long in convulsion and revolution, as that a 
 heavy body unsupported will fall. 
 
20 
 
 In the earthquake which is now shaking this nation, God is 
 teaching us, and I hope a great nation will learn the lesson, 
 that the principles of eternal justice are stronger than popular 
 majorities, however vast and terrific: that the Almighty is 
 always on the side of those principles ; and that he will 
 never be at a loss fur ways of making them respected and 
 honored. "We are finding that he is stronger than popular 
 majorities, stronger than navies and armies, however numer- 
 ous and brave and well appointed, stronger than the North, 
 and stronger than the South. He is teaching us that on that 
 particular question out of which this convulsion has come, it 
 is high time that all men of all parties, and all sections, should 
 throw all questions of expediency and immediate advantage 
 into the back-ground, and that reverentially, and in the fear 
 of God's righteous judgments, we should adjust even that 
 question on principles of everlasting justice, — justice to the 
 white man, and justice to the black man, justice to the master, 
 justice to the slave, justice to all men. 
 
 It can avail little now to ask what will the South demand, 
 and what will the North concede. Any adjustment on such 
 principles will be delusive and transient, and lead in the 
 future to other and still more terrible convulsions. God made 
 the African, and gave him his rights, whatever it may appear 
 that they are, greater or less, and those rights the nation must 
 respect and defend, or there is no future for us, but one of dis- 
 ruption, convulsion, anarchy and ruin. 
 
 In this spirit must we learn to treat every question affect- 
 ing the rights either of individuals or classes. It is to a free 
 nation, and a free nation only that God has given North 
 America in possession. And a free nation is not one in which 
 the majority rules and may do what it pleases, and all it 
 pleases, but one in which justice is done to every man, and 
 if possible to every brute and every insect. If our nation is 
 ever again to be peaceful and prosperous, if it is to go on and 
 fulfil its great destiny, if every spot on which the soles of our 
 feet tread from ocean to ocean is to be ours, we must become 
 such a free nation. Our freedom must rest on the everlasting 
 foundations of justice — justice to men of all colors and con- 
 
21 
 
 ditions, justice to the rich and justice to the poor, justice to 
 the weak and justice to the strong. I seem to hear the awful 
 voice of the great Jehovah speaking out of the tempest which 
 is hanging over us and saying : " What doth the Lord thy God 
 require of thee, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk hum- 
 bly with thy God ?" Then, and then only shall we have 
 peace — peace as permanent as our mountains and as abundant 
 as our rivers. 
 
 I crave your pardon for detaining you so long. I could not 
 help it. My heart is full of this theme — too full for utterance. 
 I do most earnestly commend it to the solemn consideration of 
 this multitudinous family, the Alumni of Yale. I reverently 
 commend it to our Alma Mater herself. May the long suc- 
 cession of her sons in coming generations and ages, add to the 
 wealth of their learning, and the elegance of their culture, a 
 wise, earnest, religious patriotism. May they ever be taught 
 to love their country for its freedom, for its efficient and 
 successful protection of all the rights of all the dwellers on its 
 soil. 
 
 As I stand here to-day and cast my eye down the stream of 
 our national future, what is it which I behold. A victorious 
 and domineering North, holding in forced and unwilling sub- 
 mission a conquered and subjugated South ? Nay, down with 
 that hideous and shocking vision — a vision fitted to the past 
 ages of the world's darkness and barbarism, but not to the 
 bright millennial future. It is a vision of beauty, and glory, 
 and blessedness which rises before me, the blessed spirit of 
 loyalty enthroned, as never before, in the hearts of this great 
 continental people ; the relation of the white man, the heaven 
 appointed lord of our soil, to the African, hewer of our wood 
 and drawer of our water, adjusted on principles of equity and 
 mercy to both ; the people of States now alienated, embittered, 
 and in rebellion, beholding the flag of our American Union 
 with all its glorious associations of freedom again waving over 
 them with a joy too deep and heartfelt for any other utteranee 
 than that of tears ; and a regenerated nation moving on in 
 sublime majesty to take possession of a continent in the name 
 of freedom, of justice, and of God. 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGPESS 
 
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