012 026 726 7 
 
 ^ 
 
 J 
 
 Hollinger 
 
 pH8.5 
 
 Mill Run F3-1955 
 
458 
 3 
 
 P38 TEN CENTS. 
 
 ;opy 1 
 
 FORWARD OR BACKWARD! 
 
FOPtWAUD OR BACKWARD? 
 
 urv^qA/v f^AM 
 
 NEW YOKE: 
 JAMES MILLER, (Successor to C. S. Francis & Co.,) 522 Broadway. 
 
 1863. 
 
00^ 
 
 6lb05 
 •05 
 
 j^ji 
 
FORWARD OR BACKWARD? 
 
 As one of the first acts of tlie Slaveholder in this rebellion was 
 to destroy the lighthouses, so now he is endeavoring to extinguish 
 the lamp of that great beacon, tlie American democracy, which 
 sheds the light of freedom and hope to the bondsman and the 
 poor, and points out the peaceful, sheltered haven within, No 
 more will that haven exist for them, when it shall be filled with 
 the raging waves of internal strife. For what limit can be set 
 to future divisions and combinations, if we once allow the estab- 
 lishment of another nation within our old borders ? What shall 
 be the boundary line between the Southern Confederacy and 
 ourselves ? Who will loe be ? What will the yet loyal Border 
 States do when they find that the Free. States have quailed be- 
 fore the Slaveholder ? Their institutions, prejudices, family-ties, 
 will all contribute to make them gravitate toward the Southern 
 
 nation, when interest in the preservation of the Union shall no 
 longer incline them to remain in the old federation. 
 
 Can the Free States repeat the farce (or rather tragedy) of 
 putting a second veto on secession 1 The threat of compulsion 
 would be .scorned did the poor, cresji-plucked North feebly medi- 
 tate such a thing. Will distant California be content to re- 
 main in her old position, separated, as she may be, from the 
 Free States, by territories no longer under their rule ? Will 
 not her bold spirits aspire to shape a Pacific Federation ? So, 
 the process of disintegration may continue, till the name Ameri- 
 can shall have lost its disthictive force and political significance. 
 
 Moreover, as the triumph of the nation, and the destruction 
 of slavery, will work a thorough and ennobling change in the 
 social and political condition of the country, elevating its stand- 
 ard of humanity, thought, and action, thus purifying parties, 
 and making their aims grander and l>roader — so with the vie- 
 
tory of the Slaveholder, the wriggling spawn of slavery and cor- 
 ruption, from the slime of whose trail no place in the land has 
 escaped — the minion and apologist of treason, whose truckling 
 nourished rebellion — the pot-house politician, who follows in 
 his wake, at the North ; the man of broken fortunes — the adven- 
 turer — the desperado — the politician, cankered by loss of place 
 — the cabinet-minister, and the soldier, unfaithful to their oath 
 — the peculator — the repudiator — at the South ; all these will 
 leap into the high places of power on this continent, and control 
 its destinies. " Wheresoever the carcass is, there the eagles will 
 be gathered together." Disunion would have been their joint 
 work, and rule would be their prerogative. 
 
 America would make bitter atonement for her defection in 
 permitting the dissolution of the Union, in the internal jeal- 
 ousies, intrigues, strifes, of her different communities, and in the 
 opportunity given to the foreigner, which he would not fail to 
 seize, to fan those fires for his own warmth. Union pledges 
 peace at home, and its invulnerable front frowns off war from 
 without. Z' Union c'est la force, says the motto of Belgium — 
 Union is strength ; Union is peace, may America add. It is 
 our very life. It means civilization, progress — all future hope 
 for the continent. 
 
 This is that famous stone 
 That turneth all to gold. 
 
 In our homogeneity of institutions and laws, is the key of the 
 strides of that civilization which has done the work of a thousand 
 years of old empire in a century ; has built vast cities and planted 
 knowledge and refinement. in the solitudes, and with its mild 
 but potent rule, evoked order in the wilderness as by a charm.. 
 Uninterrupted by barriers of national feeling and interest, the 
 smootli-flowing current of trade, travel and emigration, bears 
 noiselessly its burdens, ever working itself new channels, till the 
 wide-sundered parts of the nation share alike in one civilization. 
 Union is the only hope for the South, of regeneration and 
 rescue from barbarism, for into barbarism it has been gradually 
 lapsing. There e?iist forms of it in the Slave States not to be 
 paralleled in any civilized country. These, instead of being 
 obliterated by the lapse of time and the spread of enlighten- 
 
ment, seem to take a more tenacious hold ; fur it is the pecu- 
 liarity of slave civilization (if such phrase be allowable) to 
 be retrogressive instead of progressive. It is not accumulative 
 as free society, but exliaustive. It is not permanent as free 
 society, but transitory. It cultivates the soil only to leave it 
 worse than it found it, and moves away to curse with barrenness 
 anew. Its system of agriculture, instead of gathering about 
 it steadily, for generation on generation, the means of civili- 
 zation, building villages, and storing up the appliances of 
 refinement and comfort, discourages such results. Add to this 
 peculiarity the blighting influence of slavery on manners and 
 thought, and it will be seen how futile it is to expect educa- 
 tion, comfort, letters, art — the thousand luxuriant growths and 
 blossoms of free society — to flourish in such soil. Moreover, the 
 moral tone of the South has steadily declined since the passing 
 away of their great anti-slavery men, and the rise of the 
 new school, who proclaim slavery a good. Much has a 
 nation's tone of thought to do with its virtue. Guizot 
 quotes a saying of Rousseau, " I like a bad action better than a 
 bad principle," with the remark : " He is right ; a bad deed may 
 remain isolated, a bad principle is always fruitful ; for, after all, 
 it is the mind which governs, and man acts after his thought 
 much oftener than he himself believes." What more simple ? 
 A man's belief must, in the long run, reveal itself in his habit 
 of life. If the national ideal be low, debasement of the national 
 condition follows in logical sequence. 
 
 The South gives the lie to the human race, proclaiming its 
 boasted wisdom to be but folly, and, rejecting the hard-won fruits 
 of experience of free society, tells it that its results go but to 
 show that it is built on delusion ; that, so far from advancing 
 toward the goal of truth, it every day recedes from it ; that, to 
 reach it, it has only to return whence it started, and find a 
 resting-place in a system of barbarous days. 
 
 When a people goes forth from the father's house, and seeks 
 an establishment of its own, who expects it to build its dwelling 
 of worm-eaten timbers, and assume, as its faith and principle of 
 life, the creed outworn of distant ancestors? Oh, old young 
 nation, rotten without having been ripe, we look to you for the 
 
6 
 
 blossoms of the spring, and find but the withered husks of 
 winter. 
 
 Is it to establish such a state, that you are trying to over- 
 throw the American Union ? Swift died too soon when he 
 wrote : 
 
 " Sure such a fool was never found 
 To pull a palace to the ground, 
 Onlj'- to have its ruins made 
 Materials for a house decayed." 
 
 Was ever like anomaly ? Sophists of old days, welcome a 
 whole nation of brothers to aid yon in your task of confusing 
 right and wrong ; a nation who would persuade us that slavery 
 is the foundation of freedom ; that society is healthy and right- 
 minded, only when in it there is one class who labor without 
 reward for the good of another ; that, to deprive a man of 
 the fruits of his toil, and to deny him the rights of family, is to 
 teach him the knowledge and practice of justice and virtue; that 
 to keep him in ignorance, and to forbid him to rise in the social 
 scale is to christianize him ; and that one class is improved by 
 the degradation of another. The South tells the l^orth that it 
 is a race of fanatics. Was ever wilder fanaticism than that 
 which has summoned the South from its homes ? but lacking 
 the only features which lend dignity to fanaticism, disinter- 
 estedness, and a wish to benefit mankind. 
 
 It would almost seem as if every evil principle, every wrong, 
 every weight which mankind has been gradually casting off in 
 its race, Avere to find their resting-place and embodiment in the 
 Slaveholder's government ; and as if we were to behold in it the 
 realization of that fancy of the Orientals, which relates how the 
 atoms of evil are hovering in the atmosphere, waiting for the 
 hour when, summoned together by a potent spell, they shall be 
 coagulated into one gigantic shape of wickedness, which will 
 descend to earth to wreak its malice on mankind. 
 
 When the nation triumphs, the present war will be worth 
 all its expenditure of blood and money, for the benefits which it 
 will confer on the South, in the complete upheaval of its society. 
 No greater curse for the slaveholding States, than to say to them, 
 " Do your will, go from us." Then on that land would close, as 
 
before the rebellion had begun to set in, a polar night of igno- 
 rance, brutality, decay of invention, decline of the democratic 
 principle, and general degeneration — made fearful and hideous 
 by the distant rumbling sounds of — negro-massacre. 
 
 Kor less sad the effect which might be looked for after the 
 rending of the Union, on the American character. From an 
 united nation, in the main peaceful,- and devoting its labor and 
 invention to the works of peace, we would become a collection of 
 turbulent peoples, each uneasy as to its neighbor's designs, with 
 minds unhingedby constant jar, and vext with warlike thoughts. 
 It would be impossible for the American character not to share in 
 all these vicissitudes. We are now a freedom-loving, sturdy, sedate, 
 peaceful nation, displaying to their extreme those qualities which 
 mark the English race, and to which they owe their foremost 
 place in the world ; and it is, doubtless, difficult for us to believe 
 that we can become divested of those attributes, since there is 
 so much hardness at the base of the national character, not easily 
 moulded by circumstance, but moulding it. But one need not 
 be a deep student of history to realize the possibility of such con- 
 summation. The Romans, the Venetians, from vigorous, well- 
 balanced nations, sank into pliant, feeble, and shifting ones. The 
 contrast in our case would not be greater, than was in theirs, be- 
 tween that which they were, and that which they became. The 
 change was as marvellous and difficult to be believed before- 
 hand, in their case as in ours, yet it ensued. The abandonment 
 of the Union will show that the great principles of life have lost 
 their hold on us, and that the bright high spirit of the nation has 
 become dulled and lowered. This loss of high spirit is the first 
 symptom of the decline of the national character, and with this 
 €nsues decay of all national grandeur. The nation no longer 
 thinks greatly, and its listlessness attacks all quarters, enterprise, 
 invention, letters, art, and every greatness, material or abstract. 
 If we basely succumb, a few generations may see us dwarfed 
 from a fiery, ingenious people, bold to conceive and execute, 
 stout-hearted, great-minded, law-loving, to a listless, shifting, un- 
 cultivated multitude — puny in thought, and petty in design ; 
 ever remorseful in their inner hearts for their shameful defection, 
 and haunted by vain longings for the great heritage which they 
 squandered in their wanton indifference. 
 
8 
 
 On the other liand, the doiiii^ of great deeds ripens a nation's 
 heart and understanding, and the vivifying force which springs 
 from it, blossoms in every sort of growth. The Eevohition and 
 the formation of the Union, were a wonderful development for 
 the American mind ; and the success of the great work which the 
 nation is endeavoring to-day, will raise it to new levels, and ad- 
 vance it to the accomplishment of all things which make a 
 nation memorable. When the baneful poison which has preyed 
 on the life of America, envenoming and shrivelling manliness 
 and thought, shall be cast out, its new, luxuriant health will 
 instil fresh energies and powers into the renovated frame. 
 
 How would democracy fare through all these changes of the 
 nation? It would probably, with more or less modification, ac- 
 cording to events and the characteristics of the respective peoples, ' 
 be the polity of the various American powers, excepting the 
 slaveholding power. The Slaveholder has ever distrusted democ- 
 racy, for he knows it is his foe. The structure of his society, 
 where labor is vile, and the laborer degraded, where there is no 
 wide-extended system of popular education, where the suffrage 
 is limited, where social and political power lodges in the hands 
 of the great land-owners, and whose polity, as Mr. Cairn es re- 
 marks, " must in essence be an oligarchy, whatever the particu- 
 lar mould be in which it is cast," — ^this structure would seem to 
 be the foundation of a governing caste in whom power should be 
 fixed. An ambitious oligarchy, it would probably be, ever con- 
 spiring to lessen the political rights of the people, and dangerous 
 to the freedom of the state, from its tenacious adherence to a 
 single object, and from having no sturdy, stout-hearted middle- 
 class, as that of England, to control and confront them. 
 
 So much for democracy at home. But whatever should be its 
 fate in America, whether it should still retain its hold in the 
 different powers ; whether it should experience such modification 
 as to become a changed thing ; whether it should be the polity 
 of some states, and be rejected by others — with the fall of the 
 Union it has lost its stronghold. In Switzerland, after the shocks 
 and strains of five hundred years, it still keeps its own, pure and 
 free ; but there its example is not backed by power, as here ; so 
 potent a reasoner is right when linked with might. Democracy, 
 its opposcrs say, nuiy answer for petty states — for the stage of a 
 
nation when it is poor, simple, and unambitious ; where it has 
 to deal with fierce contending parties, with extended dominion, 
 with turbulent passions, its lack of strong central power makes 
 itself evident — it may flourish for a time, and accomplish great 
 results in its d ay, but it is continually sowing the seeds of its 
 own downfall, producing a licentiousness which finally destroys 
 its parent. Its constructive faculty is great, its conservative 
 naught. Democrats of America, give them the lie. They point 
 to us and our troubles for a confirmation of their arguments, and 
 long impatiently for oiu' downfall, that their theories may become 
 established opinions. Meanwhile, the doubting wait to see if 
 democracy have faith and strength enough to maintain itself, for 
 if an institution lack the faculty of self-preservation, it lacks all 
 Ihings. Though the downfall of the American Union would 
 have come through the leaven of oligarchy which was hidden in 
 it, till it leavened the whole mass, yet to democracy would be 
 the shame and the blame. Men would sigh despairingly over 
 another blasted hope, a vision which in their fondness they 
 deemed a reality — an ideal condition of mankind, too delicate 
 and spiritual to stand the rude shocks of the world. So would 
 the good cause be put back for long years. 
 
 We stand toward the new world, as England has stood toward 
 Europe, the leader of civil and religious freedom. Let us not 
 vacate that proud place, by abandoning the Union. Let us 
 not, in allowing the establishment of the Southern Confederacy, 
 be responsible for the introduction of a nation able and am- 
 bitious to prey on the feeble governments of the tropic. Already 
 the South has wielded the power of the American Union to 
 gratify its hankerings, and would have done so still further, had 
 not its lawless ambition been controlled by the sturdy justice 
 of the IsTorth. The Slaveholder will be the evil monster of the 
 New World — a rapacious, aggressive, unscrupulous power, 
 whose exhaustive system of agriculture curses it with an insa- 
 tiable craving for new territory. One benefit his turbulent and 
 aggressive spirit might work, that he would unite the other na- 
 tions of the continent into one cause of putting down a com- 
 mon enemy. With the rending of the Union, we will lose our 
 weight in the ISTew World, and be looked up to by its nations, 
 neither as a protector nor as an example. 
 
 As America is democracy's stronghold, so is it the stronghold 
 
10 
 
 of slavery ; and as our first revolution was a revolution not only 
 for us but for the world, so will our second revolution be a revolu- 
 tion of negro-slavery wherever it exists. The downfall of that 
 stronghold will resound as a voice of doom in the ears of the 
 slaveholders of the AVest Indies, and of South America ; in the 
 ears of the slaver and of the negro-hunting king — but it will 
 fall on those of the black man in every land, a sweet blast of 
 the evening-horn of release. 
 
 In a beautiful scene in the Divine Comedy, Dante represents 
 Viroil and himself meeting in Purgatory a spirit, of whom they 
 enquire the way. He answers not, but asks their country and 
 condition. " My gentle leader," says Dante, " commenced : 
 Mantua — And the shade, before so reticent, sprang toward him, 
 saying, Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy land. And the one em- 
 braced the other." 
 
 Behold, Italy ! exclaims Dante, how this gentle spirit was 
 moved by the sweet sound of the name of his land, to show 
 such joy over his fellow-citizen. But now thy inhabitants are 
 filled with hate toward each other. Search, oh wTetched one ! 
 thy sea-coast, and thy bosom within, whether any part of thee 
 taste peace. Then he bids the Eoman Emperor come from his 
 German kingdom, and view how his Italian Empire is torn and 
 tost, Avithout a head and without union, the A'ictim and the 
 prey of intestine dissension and foreign intrigue. 
 
 Dante, a statesman as well as a poet, rising above party and 
 province, longed passionately for an united Italy, in which he 
 saw the only hope of peace and w-eal for his land. After five 
 hundred years of a political condition, aptly figured by the 
 words of the apostle, " clouds they are without water, carried 
 about of winds ; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, 
 twice dead, plucked up by tlie root§," Italy is restored to great- 
 n ss and health in union. 
 
 Should the Slaveholder succeed in his attempt to destroy the 
 American Union, we can imagine some American Dante, be- 
 longing to one of the states of the riven Union, bewailing in 
 strains as melancholy and passionate as those of the Floren- 
 tine, the condition of his beloved America. For no matter 
 into how many divisions the Union might be rent, nor what in- 
 ternal strifes should set state against state, nor to which part of 
 
11 
 
 the nation he might belong, to the thoughtful one of any 
 them, there would be but one country, America. So Dante was 
 Florentine by citizenship, but Italian by heart. And after long 
 years, when their insensate rage had worked itself out, and their 
 frantic folly stood apparent, the fragments would reunite as they 
 have done in Italy. 
 
 Honor to the wise Englishmen, who, soaring above local feel- 
 ing, and overlooking petty flaws and flecks, seek to lead their 
 nation to the right understanding of the import of our second 
 revolution, and to cheer us forward in our arduous task ; worthy 
 successors, and of the same stamp, of the great orator of the pen, 
 of Puritan England, John Milton. Could he descend among us, 
 he might again see the vision which offered itself to his eyes, of 
 " a noble and puissant nation, rousing itself like a strong man 
 after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks," and, " as an eagle 
 mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at 
 the full mid-day beam." He, watching our struggle, might ad- 
 dress to Its his words : " Go on ... . O, nations, never to be dis- 
 united ; be the praise and the heroic song of all posterity, 
 
 other nations will then covet to sers^e ye, for lordship 
 
 and victory are but the pages of justice and virtue .... join 
 your invincible might to do worthy and godlike deeds ; and then 
 he that seeks to break your Union, a cleaving curse be his in- 
 heritance to all generations." 
 
 Men of the Free States, choose your path. Two lie before 
 you, — one, with its illusive portico of peace, opening through 
 the portals of dishonor and shame, and stretching away to 
 anarchy and ruin ; the other, entered through toil and suffering, 
 lightened by the consciousness of a land rescued from the 
 clutches of barbarism, of the principles of freedom asserted, and 
 leading to an order, a freedom, a prosperity and greatness, com- 
 pared with which those of the past will have .been but as the 
 twilight to the noon. Kemember what hangs on your choice, 
 and that you make it not for yourselves only, but for far gene- 
 rations. Choose whether they shall look on one of the saddest 
 sights which history will have to show, and of which they shall 
 be the figures, of the American nation rent into rival peoples, 
 quarrelsome and petty ; distracted with internal unrest, and set 
 together by foreign intrigue and interference, and made its sport; 
 with the trade of the soldier established in its land — with its rivers 
 
12 
 
 and great highways of intercourse interrupted by garrisons and 
 custom-houses-^n a ^vord, bereft of all which made the Union 
 grand and peculiar. Or choose whether they shall behold 
 what seems to our imperfect ken, almost a vision of Arcadia 
 and the age of gold, the spectacle of countless multitudes 
 swarming without hindrance over this continent, building up 
 state after state; their toil and thought all devoted to the 
 works which support life, and the arts which beautify it ; and 
 united by common interest, common freedom, under one grand 
 reign of peace and progress. 
 
 If you have to do your work with toil, waste, and sujBPering, 
 yet it is no mean matter of congratulation, that Freedom has 
 given to your generation the chance to do this great deed for her, 
 and to gain a place in history on the level of that of the heroic 
 men of the eighteenth century, equally great with them to 
 maintain that which they established. 
 
 Is not the very cause of civilization involved in your war ? If 
 you succumb, will not mankind begin to doubt whether with its 
 pristine simplicity, a people did not also lose its manhood, and 
 whether all fancied progress in comfort, education, refinement, 
 was not in reality a backward path from love of freedom ? 
 Better, they would say, the log-hut in the lonely clearing, with 
 its naiTow life, which at least nurtured endurance, than the 
 painted house and mart of the city, where man's spirit droops 
 and dwarfs ; and they would point to the example of that people, 
 who when they were poor and nide, smit with the love of free- 
 dom, in the force of their passion, bearding a strong monarchy, 
 drove it from their land. Then when they had rested from 
 their toil, with the accumulation of comfort and refinement, 
 they became so enervated, that they had no longer left within 
 them the stout heart and single mind to resist the despoiling of 
 that possession, which the devotion of their uncultivated ances- 
 tors had won for them. 
 
 Eemember that your contest is no vulgar strife for e?s:tent of 
 domain, but that it is one of the world's great turning-points, and 
 that its stakes are om- very national life, the welfare of the iSTorth 
 American continent, directly, and of the whole new world, in- 
 directly, and of its countless millions of inhabitants, born and 
 unborn, tlie cause of democracy, and of the poor and oppressed 
 — the triumph of freedom over despotism, of good over evil. 
 
Mi 
 
 012 026 726 7 # 
 
iili 111 ilil I'll mm 
 012 026 726 7 
 
 ^ 
 
 J 
 
 Hollinger 
 
 pH8.5 
 
 Mill Run F3-1955 
 
\ 
 
 ^ 
 
 J 
 
 Hollinger 
 
 pH8.5 
 
 Mill Run F3-1 955