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THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE. 
 
 A THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA; 
 
 NOVEMBER 27. 1862, 
 
 ^ILBJURT BA.RjVES. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 WILLIAM B. EVANS, 
 
 No. 1334 Chestnut Street. 
 
 1863. 
 
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 3 ^ 
 
 
 2 
 
 Arba Biodget 
 
 as. f, -01. 
 
 Henry B. Ashmead, Printer, 
 
 Nos. 1102 and 1101 Sansom St. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 SaTCRBAT. 
 
 Rev. Albert Barnes, 
 
 Rev. and Dear Sir: — 
 
 A very general desire is entertained by those 
 •who had the pleasure of listening to your Discourse upon Thanksgiving 
 Day, that it should be printed. And many who from various causes were 
 unable to be present when the Discourse was delivered, are anxious to con- 
 sider and gain light and strength from the matured thoughts of one, for 
 whom they not only feel a love and respect, but in whose judgment they 
 repose great confidence. 
 
 We earnestly request, that you will, as early as convenient, fiynish us 
 with a copy of the Discourse, for publication, knowing that in so doing we 
 but express the wish of many, and believing that good cannot fail to result 
 therefrom. 
 
 With great respect, 
 November 29, 1862. Your obedient servants, 
 
 Ambrose White, 
 Wm. G. Crowell, 
 Samuel H. Perkins, 
 James Bayard, 
 John Sparhawk, 
 Alexander Fullerton, 
 Joseph B. Lapsley, 
 Henry Perkins, 
 Isaac C. Jones, Jr., 
 J. S. Kneedler, 
 Edw. II. Williamson, 
 Robt. Ewing, 
 Bichard C. Dale, 
 II. II. Mears, 
 Jno. B. Gest, 
 Charles Brown, 
 William Purves, 
 James S. Earle, 
 Q. Campbell, 
 John C. Clark, 
 Saml. C. Perkins, 
 Erskine Hazard, 
 Abr. R. Perkins, 
 F. L. Bodine. 
 
Philadelphia, Dec. 13, 1862. 
 Gentlemen : — 
 
 Your request for the Discourse delivered on the day of 
 Thanksgiving, is a sufficient reason, whatever might he my own judgment 
 in the case, for publishing it. As, however, from the great length of the 
 Discourse, a considerable portion was omitted in the delivery, and, as it 
 happened, that part of the Discourse concerning which there would be 
 likely to be most difference of opinion about the correctness of the views 
 presented, it would be unjust to hold any persons responsible for the 
 sentiments advanced, but myself, and in yielding to your request, I desire 
 that it may be understood that I alone am responsible for those sentiments. 
 With this understanding — grateful that the address, as far as heard, so 
 met your approval as to lead you to desire its publication, I yield it to you. 
 Some of the views advanced may surprise my friends. Possibly on more 
 mature reflection, I might see reason to change them : — possibly those to 
 whom they might appear doubtful on their first suggestion, might on more 
 reflection be led to regard them as true. 
 
 With great respect, 
 
 I am sincerely and truly yours, 
 
 ALBERT BARNES. 
 Messrs. Ambrose White, 
 Wm. G. Crowell, 
 Samuel II. Perkins, 
 James Bayard, and others. 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 There never has been a time, in our own country, or 
 in other countries, when, if a man had anything to say 
 that could comfort, animate, or encourage his fellow- 
 citizens, or had any claim derived from his age, his posi- 
 tion, or his experience to impart counsel, it could be 
 more appropriately clone than now. Involved in a war 
 such as has existed in no other nation ; with numerous 
 enemies to the government in every part of the land ; 
 with reverses that tend to humble us in our own eyes 
 and before the world ; with comparatively little progress 
 in the great objects of the war ; with a demand on the 
 resources of the loyal part of the nation that test to the 
 utmost its ability and its patriotism ; when measures are 
 adopted, most extreme in their nature, and that try to 
 the extreme of endurance the loyalty of the people — 
 measures submitted to as a temporary necessity, only 
 because it is believed that there are greater interests that 
 would be imperilled if they were not adopted ; with no 
 manifested sympathy among the nations of the earth, 
 and with little real sympathy from any of those nations ; 
 with the nations of the old world looking greedily for the 
 entire breaking up of our institutions, and the overthrow 
 of a free government, the result of so much sacrifice and 
 toil, and the last hope of free institutions on the earth ; 
 a contest in reference to which the people from whom we 
 have sprung, whose language we speak, whose religion we 
 have inherited, and whose blood flows in our veins, seem 
 
6 
 
 most of all to rejoice at the prospect of our utter dis- 
 comfiture, rupture, and downfall; exulting in our disasters, 
 taunting us for a want of military and civil power and 
 skill, and, under a pretence of neutrality, really in alliance 
 with those who have risen in arms to overthrow the 
 government, and strangely sympathizing with an organ- 
 ization based avowedly on the perpetual subjugation of 
 one part of the race to the will of another, — under circum- 
 stances such as these we meet to-day to enquire what 
 there is to be thankful for; what there is to encourage 
 hope ; what there is to cheer in the prospect of the 
 future ; what should be done — what can we do for the 
 afflicted land that we love. 
 
 Without, I trust, any improper reference of a personal 
 nature, I may be permitted to say that I have reached a 
 period of life when a man ought to be able to make some 
 suggestions of value in such a crisis as this ; when he ought 
 to be able to say something that might be well founded in 
 regard to the causes of such a state of things ; to the 
 evils which have brought so great calamities upon the 
 land ; to the remedies for those evils ; to what may reason- 
 ably be hoped for in the future. I have, at any rate, 
 reached a period of life when I have little to hope or to 
 fear from my fellow-men ; yet a period when a man, with 
 any right feeling, is conscious of a stronger love for his 
 country in proportion to the nearness of the time when he 
 is soon to be withdrawn from it. In such circumstances, 
 a man may venture on suggestions which would have been 
 less proper at an earlier period of life — suggestions, per- 
 haps, not put forward with as much boldness and confi- 
 dence as the suggestions of earlier years, yet, if he has 
 reflected at all aright, with a more comprehensive view of 
 the great issues at stake, and with deeper solemnity. He 
 
who has little to hope for personally in this world ; whose 
 aspirations must be now so almost entirely in the world 
 which he is soon to enter, may still cherish a hope for 
 his country, for the church, ami for mankind, not the 
 less intense because the great blessings of religion and 
 liberty are hereafter to be enjoyed by others, not by him- 
 self. 
 
 I shall venture, therefore, on this occasion to make 
 some suggestions which I trust may not be improper, and 
 which I am sure will be well received so far as the inten- 
 tion goes, in reference to what our country has been as 
 one of the family of nations ; to the grounds of grateful 
 feelings fcxhay ; and to what seems to me to be demanded 
 for the restoration of peace. The suggestions will be 
 loyal, but they will be free. In all my life I have 
 defended freedom of speech, and fought many a battle 
 for it. I have felt no restraint on that subject hitherto ; 
 I feel none now. I believe that when freedom of speech 
 shall be taken away, the last hope of the nation — the last 
 remnant of liberty, will be gone. 
 
 I believe that we have the best constitution, and the 
 best mode of government in the world, and that it is the 
 most wicked of all acts that man can do at home, and the 
 most wicked of all things that nations can countenance 
 abroad, to attempt to destroy that constitution, and to 
 overthrow that government. And yet I believe that 
 mistakes were made in framing that constitution, inevi- 
 table, it may have been, in the circumstances, which time 
 has developed, and which have culminated in this most 
 wicked rebellion ; that there are evils contained in the 
 constitution which it is possible still to remedy and re- 
 move, and which must be remedied and removed, if the 
 great purposes of the formation of the constitution shall 
 
8 
 
 be carried out in a restored and permanent Union. Our 
 fathers were not ignorant of the existence of those evils. 
 They could not, or they supposed they could not, remove 
 them. They hoped that time and wisdom, that the ex- 
 perience and the patriotism of the nation, would remove 
 them. Time, progress, ambition, selfishness, conflicting 
 interests, have developed the evil; rebellion has shown 
 to us its magnitude ; the desolations of war, the tens of 
 thousands slain on battle-fields, the tens of thousands 
 maimed for life, the tens of thousands of families bereaved, 
 the tens of thousands of graves newly made, where sleep 
 those who have been called forth in defence of their 
 country, show how great was the evil, and call on the 
 nation to arise and re-adjust our institutions in accord- 
 ance with the eternal principles of righteousness. It may 
 be that those evils could be removed only by the baptism 
 of fire and of blood through which our nation is now 
 passing. 
 
 The past in our history is fixed, and so fixed that, in 
 the main, coming times will not reproach us ; in such 
 a way that foreign nations, however much the} 7- may 
 now desire it, could not find occasion to, exult over us. 
 " The past," said Mr. Webster, in relation to a part 
 of our country — to Massachusetts — " The past, at least, 
 is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, 
 and Bunker Hill, and there they will remain forever. 
 The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for 
 Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every 
 State, from New England to Georgia ; and there they 
 will lie forever."* So we may say, in similar respects, 
 of our whole country ; of our whole history. There is 
 
 * Speeches, vol. i, p. -107. 
 
9 
 
 Plymouth, there are Yorktown, and Saratoga, and Trenton, 
 and Princeton, and there they will remain forever. 
 
 Thus, too, it is with the history of our fathers ; with the 
 settlement of our country ; with the perils, the sacrifices, 
 the self-denials, of those who came to this western world 
 to found a new empire ; to establish institutions that should 
 be free. Foreign nations cannot now go back and re- 
 proach us for what our fathers were, nor for what they 
 did. Reproach for those who drove them out, and who 
 compelled them to leave their own land, then a land of 
 oppression, there is enough of in history, and the judgment 
 of the world on that subject is not to be reversed. The 
 world knows by heart the history of the men that came 
 to this continent. It understands the reasons why they 
 came. It has learned the character of their principles, 
 and the extent of their sufferings. It knows what they 
 did, and that record is engraved as in eternal brass. 
 England, with all that is bitter in her feelings now, can- 
 not be suffered, and will not be suffered, to go back and 
 change the judgment of mankind in regard to the reasons 
 why the Pilgrims left her shores, or what they did in 
 penetrating the forests of the New World. No nation has 
 ever had such a commencement of its history as ours : — 
 so pure, so noble, so self-sacrificing, so comprehensive 
 and far-reaching in the principles of the men who founded 
 it. Not Egypt, nor Assyria, nor Babylon, nor Greece, 
 nor Rome ; not among the ancients, nor among the 
 moderns, has there been a beginning in respect to which 
 there will be so much which the world in its better days 
 will be glad to retain in its history ; one which it will be 
 so unwilling to " let die." 
 
 The past is fixed too as we would desire it should 
 be, in regard to the establishment of the Independence 
 
10 
 
 of our country. It was not hasty; not rash; not ill- 
 advised. It was not the result of passion ; nor did it 
 spring from any ill-feeling toward the mother-country, or 
 any desire of doing her wrong. It was a measure re- 
 sorted to after a long series of oppressions and wrongs, 
 and after appeal and remonstrance had proved to be 
 vain. To the British Sovereign ; to the British Parlia- 
 ment; to the British nation, those appeals and remon- 
 strances had been made long, and continued to be made 
 till the last hope of their being effectual, even in the 
 minds of those most reluctant to engage in war, had died 
 awa}>". 
 
 And the war of Independence itself was such that the 
 nation has no cause to look upon it with shame ; nor 
 has history anything to record in regard to it to our re- 
 proach. It was not, on our part, a war of barbarism ; it 
 was not conducted by calling in the aid of the scalping- 
 knife and the tomahawk ; it was not stained by bad faith, 
 or by dishonorable deeds ; it was not conducted on prin- 
 ciples that subject us to just reproach among the nations. 
 No great revolution was ever conducted with so little to 
 give pain or cause regret in the recollection; no war has 
 been waged at any time in which there was so little to give 
 just offence, or to shock the moral sense of mankind. 
 
 The past is fixed, and fixed, in the main, as we should 
 desire it to be, in regard to the organization of the 
 government of the country as Independent. It was 
 done in a peaceful manner ; it was done when the 
 highest wisdom of the nation was summoned to calm 
 and deliberate investigation. Not a measure was adopted 
 as the result of force or of fear ; not a provision was put 
 into the constitution at the instigation of the bayonet. 
 Never before in the history of the world was there assem- 
 
11 
 
 bled such a body of men for the purpose of framing a 
 constitution for the government of a great country, and 
 never before has there been seen in our world a spectacle 
 so sublime as pertaining to the origin of a nation, as 
 when that constitution was submitted to the calm judg- 
 ment of a people then numbering three millions. In 
 securing its adoption, not a vote was forced; no man 
 voted because he was afraid to vote otherwise ; no man 
 voted because his vote had been bought. 
 
 To the formation of that constitution, and to the con- 
 stitution itself, we now look with gratitude, with pride, 
 as the chief, the crown of the blessings which God has 
 given to this land. To say that it has no defects, is 
 what no American has ever been required to say ; to say 
 that it could not be made better, would be to deny the 
 very principles of the constitution itself, for it has made 
 provision for its own amendment. Our fathers were 
 sagacious enough to see that there were evils existing 
 which there was not then power to remove, but which it 
 was hoped time and good feeling might remove; they saw 
 that among a people destined to grow and to spread over 
 a vast extent of territory there might be provisions de- 
 sirable which had not occurred to them ; they saw that 
 in the unknown future, when a comparatively small 
 population should be multiplied to hundreds of millions ; 
 when a vast expanse of forest should be subdued, and 
 become the abode of civilized men ; when rivers and 
 lakes then unexplored even so as to give their course or 
 outline on a map, should bear on their bosoms the pro- 
 ductions of a teeming soil ; when the commerce of the 
 infant nation might whiten every sea, and new relations 
 might spring up with other nations of the earth, there 
 might be occasion for change, and it might be proper to 
 
12 
 
 appeal to the wisdom of the nation and examine the 
 new state of things which would demand the change. 
 The constitution, we may admit, w T as not perfect. But 
 it was the noblest and the best that the world had seen. 
 It has made us great. It has developed our resources. 
 It has made us respected and feared wherever it was 
 desirable that we should be respected and feared. It 
 has created for us a navy ; it has created a commerce ; 
 it has saved us from border wars ; it has made the 
 North what it is, and the South what it is ; the great 
 West what it is, and what neither could have been but 
 for the constitution. 
 
 The past is fixed in regard to our treatment of the 
 nations of the old world, and fixed in a manner which 
 we have little to regret, and little that we might wish 
 now to have changed. We have desired sincerely to be 
 with all those nations, at peace. We have been disposed 
 to make equal and just treaties with them in regard to com- 
 merce. We have sought to take no improper advantage 
 of them. We have been willing to visit with them every 
 distant sea, and every distant port, and to share with 
 them in the fair avails of commerce. We have impressed 
 none of their seamen into our service. We have made 
 no war on their peaceful pursuits. We have never 
 intermeddled with their affairs, but have aimed to stand 
 not merely professedly but really aloof from all the 
 conflicts which they have waged among themselves; to 
 maintain not a hollow and hypocritical, but a real neu- 
 trality in regard to the wars, right or wrong, in which 
 they have been engaged. We have seen them often 
 waging what we regarded as unjust wars. We have 
 seen them invading peaceful nations. We have seen 
 them attempt to suppress insurrection and rebellion in 
 
13 
 
 their own provinces by means that, as a christian and 
 civilized people, we could not but regard as barbarous 
 and cruel — in a manner, that, in the language of the 
 Earl of Chatham, when describing a measure which had 
 been deliberately proposed in the House of Lords to be 
 pursued in reference to the revolted colonies of America, 
 " shocked us as lovers of honorable war, and as detesters 
 of murderous barbarity." We have seen them binding 
 men to the cannon's mouth, and sweeping them by scores 
 into eternity. We have seen them, for the purpose of 
 compelling a foreign nation to admit as an article of com- 
 merce and of consumption, against their own just and 
 humane laws, a drug most deleterious to the bodies and 
 the souls of men — destructive to morals ; destructive to 
 religion ; destructive to domestic peace ; destructive to 
 national progress — waging a fearful, a bloody, and a 
 horrid war, until the object w T as accomplished, and the 
 ports of the greatest nation in the world were compelled 
 to be thrown open to admit that, in commerce, which 
 would spread wo, and sorrow, and wretchedness every- 
 where. We have not interfered. We have not even taken 
 part w r ith the oppressed and the wronged. We have 
 not, in a public and national manner, uttered the language 
 of remonstrance at such barbarities and atrocities. We 
 did indeed interpose when Scio was laid waste by fire 
 and sword, and her beautiful villas and gardens were 
 smoking ruins ; when the oliveyards of the Peloponnesus 
 were cut down, and the Turk had laid all waste ; when 
 Greece, once the land of beauty and the home of civili- 
 zation and art, was suffering all the ills of famine from 
 the desolation of ruthless war — then we interfered by 
 the noble resolution in Congress, and the noble speech of 
 Mr. Webster, and by contributions, not of arms and im- 
 
14 
 
 plements of death, but of food for the famishing, from 
 churches, and villages, and private citizens, to relieve 
 those sufferers. And when the scourge of famine and 
 pestilence swept over Ireland, and England failed to 
 supply the wants of the famishing, we did interfere — 
 Ave hastened to relieve them : an act which Ireland 
 has never forgotten, but which England has. Beyond 
 things like these we have not ventured to interfere in 
 the affairs of nations, remote or near ; and in regard to 
 nations, we have at least the consciousness that in our 
 treatment of them we have endeavored to carry out the 
 great principles which we have designed to lay at the 
 foundation of our own prosperity, that justice, and truth, 
 and honesty are the best foundation of a nation's pro- 
 gress, as they are of the welfare of an individual — that 
 " righteousness exalteth a nation." That we are inno- 
 cent in regard to all men — to those within our own bor- 
 ders — the Indian, the African, we cannot indeed affirm ; 
 to foreign nations our course has not been one of dis- 
 honor and shame, and we are willing that it should be 
 known and read by all men. 
 
 In all these respects we look with special pleasure and 
 approbation on our treatment of the land of our fathers. 
 England has been dear to us. There are the graves of the 
 ancestors of our Carvers, our Brewsters, our Hancocks, 
 and our Adamses — of our Henrys, and our Pinckneys 
 — of Washington. Its language is ours. Its religion is 
 ours. Its history is ours. We delight to think that 
 Milton, and Cowper, and Shakespeare, and Newton, and 
 Bacon, are no more theirs than ours. We visit that land 
 with emotions such as we can have toward no other land 
 — save Palestine, and in Westminster Abbey we sit 
 down and weep, for there we are surrounded by the 
 
15 
 
 monuments, and tread on the graves of the illustrious 
 dead whose names and works have been familiar to us 
 from our eradles. We have not been unwilling to bear 
 much from England ; and to forget all the past, when we 
 could show to her respect and affection. We welcomed 
 the Heir apparent to her throne to our shores, and gave 
 him an " ovation" in the land, not forced and formal, but 
 hearty and sincere, for the nation honored and respected 
 the pure and virtuous character of her that bare him, 
 and wished well to him and to the land where he would 
 occupy the throne. 
 
 The past is fixed, and fixed in the main as we would 
 desire it should be, in regard to the manner in which the 
 resources of this land have been developed ; to our growth 
 and our greatness. That we have been proud of this ; 
 that we have boasted of it; that we have attributed it 
 to ourselves ; that we have felt that we might defy the 
 world ; that we have supposed that nothing could now 
 retard our progress; and that, with all that there has 
 been of greatness in that which was good, there has 
 sprung up a rank and pestilential growth of evil corres- 
 ponding in some measure with the magnitude of the good, 
 we are not disposed to deny. 
 
 But still, the nation has become great; greater than 
 any other nation has ever become in the same period of 
 time ; great, in the main, in the right direction. No other 
 nation has ever advanced so rapidly, or developed such 
 resources in the same period of time. Not Egypt; not 
 Assyria ; not Babylon ; not Persia under Cyrus and his 
 successors ; not Greece ; not Borne ; not Germany, Gaul, 
 or Britain. Britain : — it was long and slow from the 
 time of the Druids, from the time of Alfred, from the 
 time of William the Red-haired, before the resources of 
 
1G 
 
 i 
 
 the little island were in any measure developed — more 
 
 than a thousand years from the time of Alfred. We 
 might have hoped that England would have looked on, 
 with gratification, at the amazing development here of 
 institutions and of power, derived in a great measure 
 from herself, and among those who spoke her own 
 language. For the development here was in the same 
 line as that which had made England, small in territory, 
 great in wealth, in influence, and in power. It was a de- 
 velopment in agricultural improvements, in schools, in 
 colleges, in the comforts of life, in intelligence, in liberty, 
 in religion, in commerce, in labor-saving inventions. We 
 had carried out in our purposes all that we had derived 
 of good from the mother country; we had endeavored to 
 avoid that which was evil in her example, and to prevent 
 the ill consequences of what she had entailed upon us. 
 All that had been good in her learning, her religion, her 
 laws, her literature, her morals, her arts, we were 
 endeavoring to make our own, and to spread them as 
 rapidly as possible over the vast domain which God 
 had put in our possession, and we have done it to an 
 extent which the world has never before seen. The evil 
 which there had been in the memory of former things, 
 and the evil in her example, and the evil which she had 
 entailed upon us, we were endeavoring to avoid and re- 
 move. We had forgotten, as a people, the history of her 
 persecutions — those persecutions which oppressed our 
 ancestors, and which drove them out on the wide and 
 stormy ocean in frail barks, to an uninhabited wilderness, 
 and we were willing that those things should pass from 
 our memory, and from the memory of mankind ; saying, 
 in kindness to the people of the mother country, as 
 Joseph did to his brethren, " As for you, ye thought 
 
17 
 
 evil against us, but God meant it unto good." Gen. 1. 20. 
 We had seen evil in some of the institutions of the mother 
 country, in her form of government, in her aristocracy, 
 in her oppression of the poor, and we endeavored to 
 avoid them, and to carry out, in free institutions, her 
 own ideas of liberty. We did not inherit, perhaps partly 
 from the necessity of the case, since God gave us, with- 
 out a war of conquest, more territory than we know what 
 to do with, her love of conquest, and we meant to live in 
 peace with all the world. There was, indeed, and there 
 is, one great evil which we had inherited, which has been 
 our bane and the cause of all our trouble, which we had 
 not, up to the war, been able to remove. Our fathers com- 
 plained that England had forced it upon us. It was an 
 original charge in the Declaration of Independence, that 
 this had been forced upon the Colonies without their 
 consent. England was more responsible for it than we 
 were. Those unhappy foreigners of a different skin had 
 been conveyed here in British ships, and under British 
 laws, and in the use of British capital, and for the pur- 
 poses of British gain. The suppression of the trade was 
 then demanded by no developed principle in the British 
 constitution, and by no prevailing feeling of the British 
 people. It was long, long after this, that thecase of Somer- 
 set occurred, in which it was determined that slavery 
 in England was contrary to the British constitution, and 
 the delivery of the opinion of Lord Mansfield in that case 
 constituted an epoch in English history. But the evil 
 was already entailed upon us, and the great principle 
 which was thus, at a late period, announced in England, 
 came too late to reach the evil which she had inaugurated 
 in the Colonies, for then we were an independent people. 
 Oh ! how happy had it been for us, for England, for 
 
18 
 
 Africa, for the world, if Mansfield had lived a century 
 earlier ; if a similar case had occurred then ; and if the 
 great sentiment of liberty which went forth when he 
 uttered that memorable opinion, had covered the colonies 
 as well as the little parent isle — that sentence which 
 proclaimed that, " The air of England has long been too 
 pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it. 
 Every man who comes into England is entitled to the 
 protection of English laws, whatever oppression he may 
 heretofore have suffered, and whatever may be the color 
 of his skin : — 
 
 Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses."* 
 
 But the evil was fastened upon us. It had struck its 
 roots deep. • It threatened to fill the land. We have not 
 been able to remove it, and when we failed from want of 
 power, or want of will, or both, God took the matter into 
 his own hands : — and on the throes, and conflicts, and 
 stripes, and blood, and sacrifice, and sorrow, incident to 
 it, England looks without sympathy, without any mani- 
 fested regard for her own principles, apparently willing 
 now that the curse which she entailed upon us shall 
 rend our Republic, break down forever our free institu- 
 tions, and bathe the land which she has herself twice 
 endeavored in vain to conquer, in oceans of blood. 
 
 We may not boast. We have not been, and are not, 
 as a nation, what we should be ; but we may say without 
 boasting, and in grateful language appropriate to this 
 day, that the sun has yet to shine upon a land where 
 there has been more public and private virtue ; where 
 there has been more domestic peace and tranquillity ; 
 where there has been a wider influence of education; 
 
 * Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices of England, vol. ii. p. 231. 
 
19 
 
 where the obligation of contracts has been more sacredly 
 regarded ; where there is more respect to law as law ; 
 where there is greater security of property or of personal 
 rights ; Avhere there is, on the whole, as much purity of 
 religion ; where there is so much happiness springing 
 from the virtues of domestic life. There has been, there 
 is, no land where an unprotected female could travel so 
 far, and meet with so much attention, and be so safe from 
 rudeness. There is no land where so large a proportion 
 of the population can read and keep accounts. There is 
 no land where the laws can be so easily executed with- 
 out the representatives and the insignia of military power. 
 There is no land where life and property are so safe. I 
 passed, as thousands of others have done, and still do, 
 the early years of my life in a quiet home, on whose 
 doors and windows there never had been a lock, or bolt, 
 or a fastening of any kind — not even a nail; and where a 
 peaceful and industrious family lived for more than half 
 a century, without fear, alarm, or peril. To what other 
 land will men go — save it may be Switzerland, where 
 scenes like these are common ? 
 
 So much for the years that have gone by, and whose 
 results have ceased to be our particular history, and have 
 passed into the general history of the world. 
 
 We meet to-day, especially, to recall the mercies of 
 another year. It too is now passed, with all that it had 
 for us of joy or sorrow, prosperity or adversity, peace or 
 war, laughing or tears, sleep, rest, toil, trouble, anxiety, 
 bereavement, gain, loss, public grief, or private sorrow. 
 It has been such a year as our country has never ex- 
 perienced before, and will make more work for the calm 
 and impartial historian of future times, than any one year 
 
20 
 
 in all our public history. For there are sad things to 
 be recorded which may not look as sad as they now do, 
 when they are fairly recorded ; things to be explained, 
 which cannot now be explained ; reverses to be set in a 
 true light, whose causes cannot now be understood ; 
 plans broken, defeated, or accomplished, not now under- 
 stood, which are to have an important bearing on our 
 future history, and whose bearings can only be seen in 
 that future. There are men, who, during this year have 
 made their first appearance on the stage of human affairs, 
 whose life, plans, and purposes may exert a most im- 
 portant influence on the future history of the world ; 
 men whose characters are not yet understood, and whose 
 acts can be explained only in future times when the 
 smoke and mist which now envelop them shall pass away, 
 and there shall be the return of a clear and unclouded 
 sky : — for the land has not only been enveloped in the 
 smoke and dust of battle, but the campaigns, the plans, 
 the victories — why any, why not move ; the characters 
 and purposes of many of the actors in these scenes, are 
 as yet enveloped in smoke and dust like the battle-field. 
 There have been reverses such as no nation with similar 
 power and resources ever knew; and there have been great 
 deeds which will make the year memorable among all 
 the years of our history. No man commends his own 
 wisdom who pretends now to understand the events of 
 this passing year. 
 
 There have been scenes, indeed, which have filled the 
 land with sorrow, for the central part of our land is 
 almost one great hospital or graveyard, and desolation 
 has marched over great tracts which were before the 
 scene of quiet homes, and green fields, and orchards ; the 
 peaceful places of churches and schools. If this were 
 
21 
 
 a day for fasting, humiliation, and prayer, it would seem 
 to be much easier to find topics appropriate for such a 
 day than for a day of thankfulness to God ; nor should 
 we forget this while we endeavor to find topics for devout 
 acknowledgment of the divine goodness. " It is a good 
 thing to give thanks unto the Lord," and man can always 
 find, if he will, that for which his heart should rise in 
 gratitude to his Maker. 
 
 Personally, life, health, food, raiment, home, friends, 
 social blessings ; the Providence which has kept us in the 
 ways of virtue, honesty, and truth ; the advances which 
 we may have made in knowledge; the tranquil hours 
 that we have spent; the support we have had in 
 trouble; the blessings of salvation and the hope of heaven ; 
 the fact that all along through the year God has been 
 merciful to our unrighteousness, and has been willing to 
 hear our prayers in all circumstances, and to save our 
 souls, — all these and kindred things should rise up to 
 remembrance as we recall the events of another year. 
 
 Our land, too, even amidst the desolating scenes of 
 war, has yielded abundance. Half a million and more 
 of men have been withdrawn from the peaceful pursuits 
 of life, and have been in tents, or without tents, away 
 from their homes ; and these too, in the main, composed 
 of that class who do the hard work of the field, the 
 ploughing, sowing, reaping, and gathering into barns ; yet 
 in our Northern States it does not appear that an acre 
 less than usual has been cultivated, and never have the 
 fields yielded a more abundant harvest ; never have the 
 orchards been borne down with more abundant fruits ; 
 never in our history has there been, strange as it may 
 seem, a greater amount of exports of those things need- 
 ful for life. 
 
22 
 
 The year has been a year remarkable for health, for 
 freedom from the ravages, even the local ravages of disease. 
 Not as in other years have we been summoned to sympa- 
 thize with portions of our country visited with pestilen- 
 tial diseases, and to send or go, that those in attendance 
 on the sick and the dying, might themselves become 
 martyrs in the cause of kindness and charity. 
 
 Our land, in schools, colleges, churches, seminaries 
 of learning, is still a prosperous and a happy land. Those 
 schools have not been broken up ; those colleges have 
 not been disbanded — not even one closed by war ; those 
 churches, though diminished in many cases in the num- 
 bers sent and drawn for the field, are not closed ; those 
 seminaries of learning, for the youths of either sex, for 
 agriculture, for preparation in the studies of the profes- 
 sions — law, medicine, divinity, are scarcely even checked 
 in the career of providing for the wants of the next 
 generation. 
 
 The nation, in all these things, in all that makes a 
 nation prosperous, is prosperous even amidst these scenes 
 of war, and there is not now on the face of the globe a 
 land in passing through which a stranger would see 
 everywhere so many evidences of domestic peace, of 
 happy homes, of successful agriculture, of life, and 
 energy, and activity, in the marts of business, or on the 
 wharves of commerce, as in this land, even amidst all 
 that is sad and desolating in war. 
 
 We have been enabled to maintain peace with the 
 world at large ; to secure the sympathy and kindness of 
 some of them ; to check the outrages and wrongs of 
 others ; to hold them at a distance when they threatened 
 us ; to calm their rage by successful acts of diplomacy 
 and by just explanations when they were ready to make 
 
2a 
 
 war upon us ; to prevent a recognition of the portion of 
 our land engaged in this great rebellion, even when the 
 attempt has been made to show that every interest of 
 foreigners, and all the concentrated hatred of our pros- 
 perity and of our institutions, and all the long-cherished 
 desire of our division and our ruin, demanded such a recog- 
 nition. In future times it will be regarded as among the 
 most memorable things in this year that the Independence 
 of the Southern Confederacy was not recognized abroad, 
 and that the affairs of our nation have been so wisely 
 conducted in this respect, that God could properly so in- 
 terpose and stay the wrath and the desires of interest, 
 and hatred, and of jealousy, as to prevent a recognition 
 which might have severed our Union forever, and which 
 tvould have involved us in conflicts with the powers of 
 the old world, and perhaps have kindled a universal 
 war. 
 
 The power of the government to sustain itself, and the 
 disposition of the nation to sustain it, have been evinced. 
 If during the year, now closing, we have not done all 
 that we hoped to do ; if there have been mistakes and 
 errors in conducting the Avar ; if there have been sad 
 and mortifying reverses, it is still true that the rebellion 
 has not been successful, and still apparent to ourselves 
 and to the world that this government — this constitution 
 — is settled on a foundation which no mere power of 
 man can overthrow. Never in the history of the world 
 has there been so formidable a rebellion as this, and 
 never has there been a year which so much tried the 
 strength of a government as this year has tried the 
 strength of ours. Extraordinary measures have indeed 
 been adopted — measures regarded by a part of the 
 people, even of the friends of the administration, as 
 
24 
 
 perilous to liberty, and not sanctioned by the constitu- 
 tion ; and endured only because they were regarded as 
 necessary for the time, and, therefore, in the willingness 
 to submit to such measures even for a time, furnishing 
 one of the strongest proofs of the true amount of patriot- 
 ism in the hearts of the people; but none of these things 
 has had power to change the settled purpose of the 
 nation to maintain the Union and the Constitution, 
 and to restore peace by any expenditure of treasure 
 and of blood that may be necessary. On this point 
 there is at present but one voice at the North ; and 
 the formation of parties is not based on the question 
 whether the war shall or shall not be prosecuted, 
 and whether the government shall or shall not be sus- 
 tained. I consider this firm purpose to sustain the govern- 
 ment ; to defend the country ; to place at the disposal of 
 the government all the money, and all the men that may 
 be necessary to sustain its operations by land and by sea, 
 as one of the most remarkable events in the history of 
 the world, and one of the best evidences of the freedom, 
 and at the same time of the vigor of the government. 
 The year which is now closing may yet be regarded as 
 among the most remarkable in the history of the world, 
 as thus testing the power of a Republic, and answering 
 the question so often asked with no friendly spirit 
 abroad, whether Republican Institutions can be perma- 
 nent; whether nations have the power of self-govern- 
 ment. If this government can go through this war 
 without being overthrown, there is no earthly power 
 that it will have reason to fear, at home or abroad. 
 Foreign nations see this ; and with anxiety, and hatred, 
 and hope, they are watching this struggle as decisive of 
 what they have to fear in the working of their own insti- 
 
25 
 
 tutions, and what they may have to fear if they provoke 
 a war hereafter with the American people. 
 
 Perhaps most of all as adapted to shape the future 
 history of our country, and to make this year remem- 
 bered with gratitude by those who love the liberty of 
 man, it may be regarded as most eventful in breaking 
 the bonds of servitude, and removing the great evil — 
 the cause of all our troubles. In the din and conflict of 
 battle ; in the anxiety which all have felt in regard to 
 the armies summoned from the people — the anxiety of 
 fathers, and mothers, and "wives, and brothers, and 
 sisters, about those dear to them exposed to the perils 
 of the cam}) ; in the wail of sorrow which has come up 
 from all parts of the land ; in the records of victories 
 and defeats, keeping the attention of the nation fixed 
 most intensely on one object, there may have been 
 scenes enacted which have scarcely attracted attention, 
 which will go more deeply into the future welfare of the 
 nation than any events which have occurred in former 
 times, and which, now occurring almost without notice, 
 could not have been secured before without the danger 
 of a revolution. Twenty years ago it required all the 
 talent, the eloquence, and the influence of John Quincy 
 Adams, to dare" to present to Congress a petition for the 
 abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and a 
 law to that effect then would have involved the nation 
 in a civil war. This year it has been done ; and so 
 quietly and calmly that the nation has been scarcely 
 aware of it : and yet it is done ; it cannot be undone. 
 The Territories — the vast Territories — of the nation, 
 hereafter to be great States larger than many of the 
 kingdoms of the old world, are free, and, as territories, 
 they are to be free forever from the tread of the slave ; 
 
26 
 
 from laws reducing men to chattels ; from laws which 
 authorize the traffic in the bodies and souls of men : yet 
 who almost is aware of it ? Who has heard a voice of 
 thanksgiving for it ? Who has reverently paused in the 
 din of arms, and the surges of war, to thank God for it? 
 A blow has been given to the slave trade this year 
 such as has never been struck before. It was indeed 
 piracy by our laws, and by the laws of other nations ; 
 but it was piracy on paper only. In our principal marts 
 of commerce, and under the influence of men most 
 prominent for station, and wealth, and enterprise, vessels 
 were freely fitted out for this traffic, and the infamous 
 men engaged in the traffic were allowed to go at large 
 with impunity. It needed an example to show that any- 
 thing was meant by our paper laws, and that we were 
 not dealing falsely with mankind in proclaiming the 
 traffic to be piracy; and it needed, and it found, one man 
 who had firmness enough to carry out the principle, and to 
 show what the nation understood by the term as applied 
 to that species of commerce, and at last one guilty man 
 for this crime has suffered the just penalty of the law. 
 A great movement, such as this nation has never before 
 seen, has been suggested and recommended on the subject 
 of emancipation. Never before has a suggestion on that 
 subject been made by a President of the United States ; 
 never before commended to Congress ; never before re- 
 ceived the sanction of the Representatives of the people : 
 and yet it was so wise, so calm, so free from any attempt 
 at compulsion ; it so left it to the States themselves ; it 
 offered such a fair compensation; it would have such 
 ultimate influences if acted on, as, in the very form in 
 which it was submitted, to constitute an epoch in the 
 history of our country. It was an epoch in the history 
 
of England when a member of Parliament ventured to 
 suggest the idea of Emancipation in the British colonies: 
 it was much more when a President of the United 
 States ventured to use the term, and to suggest the 
 idea, as a practical one. And then this year will he 
 still more remarkable for things not yet recorded; whose 
 bearings are not yet seen ; whose influence on this sub- 
 ject is to go for into future times : things which, what- 
 ever may be'the issue of the present conflict, will make 
 new adjustments necessary. Slavery is not what it was ; 
 it will never be what it was again. The Fugitive Slave 
 Law is not what it was; it can never be what it was 
 again. The slave all along the Border States is a differ- 
 ent being from what he was ; is more of a man ; is less 
 a "chattel" and a "thing;" is of less value as "property" 
 than he was, or ever will be again. The power spring- 
 ing from this source, which once, and so long, controlled 
 the nation, is broken, and, whatever may be the issue of 
 this struggle, is not to be a controlling power again. 
 Thousands, and tens of thousands, have tasted of free- 
 dom who never knew it before, and we begin to look on 
 to times when the land shall be free. Could we now 
 see what the future patriot will see ; could we see all 
 the secret influences at work this year for the good of 
 the nation; could we see all those deep and broad streams 
 of liberty and happiness which will flow out to future 
 times to fertilize and bless the land and the world : no 
 language which we can use now would be such as would 
 properly express the praise due to God for what may 
 spring out of the events of this year. Our minds are 
 indeed pensive and filled with sadness. Our eyes 
 "pour out tears unto God." But there is light beyond; 
 and those who will live in the future, may see, even in 
 
28 
 
 what gives us sorrow now, reasons for adoration and 
 praise in a land made more happy ; a land without our 
 conflicts and troubles ; a land where man shall be every- 
 where recognized and treated as a man ; a land that 
 shall be truly free. 
 
 The past is fixed ; and we should be grateful to-day. 
 The future is to us now the great source of solicitude 
 and anxiety. This dreadful war ! When will it end ? 
 How will it end ? What good will be accomplished by 
 it ? What compensation can there be for all this blood 
 and treasure — for all these woes and sorrows ? What 
 will be the condition of our country when it is ended ? 
 Shall we be one, or two, or many ; a people with one 
 government; one constitution; one purpose : or a broken 
 people with no government, and no constitution ; a 
 people destined to perpetual border wars, or a people, all 
 our liberties gone, to be collected into one, if ever one 
 again, under a military despotism ? We cannot but ask 
 these questions with anxious hearts ; we cannot answer 
 them; we cannot find anything that will calm the mind 
 but in the belief that there is a God, and that the God of 
 our Fathers, having now, as he had in their troubled 
 days, his own plans, can and will interpose as he did then. 
 At his feet we are safe ; and at his feet we may be 
 calm, and there, with humbled hearts, having learned 
 great and valuable lessons in regard to our pride, and 
 self-sufficiency, and dependence, it is his manifest purpose 
 to bring us. When we are actually brought there, with 
 right feelings, then, and not till then, may we " look up," 
 for then we may feel that " the day of our redemption 
 draweth nigh." 
 
 But can we see nothing now to inspire hope ? Can we 
 
20 
 
 see nothing that may be changed for the better by the 
 war ? Can we see no evils in the past that this fearful 
 struggle is likely to correct? Can we not see what 
 u'ould conduce to permanent peace, and what would pre- 
 vent a recurrence in future times of such fearful and 
 bloody conflicts? Valuable above what our fathers left 
 us, rich as was that inheritance, will be the legacy which 
 we of this generation shall leave to after times, if we can 
 leave a government, a constitution, where the causes of 
 collision will be removed, and those evils which have 
 been culminating for eighty years will exist no more. 
 
 There will be peace. This war, among apeople of the 
 same language, the same religion, the same interests, 
 will not last always ; will not last long. All men must 
 see that it must come to an end ; all see that it must 
 come to an end at no distant period. 
 
 There will be great results that will come out of the 
 war. It is indeed true that war not always, perhaps 
 rarely, affects the great points immediately at issue ; but 
 it is also true that there are other results invaluable to 
 mankind that spring indirectly out of war. There are 
 few great principles of liberty in our institutions, or in 
 the world, whose establishment has not been effected as 
 the result of bloody wars : principles that are worth to 
 mankind all which they have cost ; whose influence in 
 promoting the happiness of the world is more than a 
 compensation for all the treasure and blood expended — 
 as the blessings of Christianity are more than an equiva- 
 lent to mankind for all the toils of apostles, and the 
 sufferings of martyrs. 
 
 But can any one suggest now what would be the con- 
 ditions of a permanent peace ; what would remove 
 forever the causes of war and alienation ; what would be 
 
30 
 
 equal justice to all, to the North and the South; to 
 humanity ; to the world ? May we venture to suggest, 
 to what point things are tending ; can any one venture 
 to paint and describe some of the "shadows" which 
 coming events are forming, and of which the outlines may 
 begin to be apparent ? 
 
 It cannot be the recognition of the Southern Con- 
 federacy. In such a recognition, under any form, and 
 with any conceivable arrangement, there must remain the 
 occasions for war, for constantly recurring appeals to 
 arms. Apart from the principle, the asserted right of 
 Secession which this would involve, and which might be 
 as proper in any other case as the present ; apart from 
 the public recognition as right of all the treason in high 
 places, the robbery, and the wrongs done to the nation's 
 property and the nation's honor, there would be things 
 which could never be adjusted to the idea of peace and 
 concord. With fifteen hundred or two thousand miles of 
 coterminous territory, requiring vigilance at every mile 
 in collecting the revenues, and everywhere furnishing 
 occasions of collision ; with different views of trade and 
 commerce ; with great rivers flowing across any possible 
 boundaries, and whose navigation would be necessary for 
 the prosperity of either portion ; with the different insti- 
 tutions of freedom and slavery coming constantly into 
 collision; with no common regulations in regard to com- 
 merce and trade; with no united strength as presented 
 to the nations abroad ; with no national credit ; with no 
 national navy; w r ith no national name, there could not 
 be arrangements for permanent peace. 
 
 It is equally clear that there cannot be permanent 
 peace under the arrangements which have existed here- 
 tofore ; even those which have been admitted into the 
 
constitution. The same causes would again produce the 
 same effects. This war is not accidental. It is not a 
 sudden outbreak. It is not the result of individual 
 ambition. There are things in the frame of the govern- 
 ment which have tended, under existing circumstances, 
 to produce it, and which would produce it again. There 
 are evils whose growth could not be checked by any pro- 
 visions in the constitution ; evils which mere time could 
 not remedy. No man is bound by any proper principles 
 of loyalty to say that the constitution is perfect ; no man 
 exposes himself to any just charge of disloyalty to say 
 that it might be amended to advantage ; no man is now 
 in the interest of the rebellion who ventures to say that 
 the amended Constitution of the " Southern Confederacy" 
 has provisions which it would be well to introduce into 
 the General Constitution of the Union. 
 
 It is not strange that in an instrument like that 
 of the Constitution of the United States, a re-adjustment 
 might be demanded. Our fathers, as already remarked, 
 wise as they were, saw this, admitted it, made provision 
 for it. But few years passed away, as yet without any 
 painful collision, but anticipating such a possible collision, 
 when it was found necessary to apply the principle, and 
 at no period has it been regarded as showing any disre- 
 spect to that immortal instrument, to suggest that it 
 might be amended. After eighty years in which its 
 practical workings have been seen; after the wonders 
 which have been wrought under it ; after all the proofs 
 of amazing wisdom in its general structure and provisions ; 
 after all that it has done to give us a place among the 
 nations of the earth ; and after the experience of the 
 evils which have resulted from a few of its provisions, as 
 now developed in scenes of dreadful carnage and blood, 
 
32 
 
 assuredly there should be wisdom and patriotism enough 
 in the North and the South to attempt a re-adjustment ; 
 to secure the just rights of all ; to remove, forever, if 
 possible, the causes of collision and war. 
 
 What would such arrangements be ? May a man, not 
 a politician ; not a statesman ; devoted from early years 
 to other pursuits ; having no claims to be heard beyond 
 that small circle whom his official position entitles him 
 to address, or whose ear he may have gained by a life 
 spent in the honest desire to do good to mankind; yet a 
 man who, in humble imitation of the great statesman, 
 would desire that "when his eyes shall be turned to be- 
 hold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, he may not see 
 him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a 
 once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, 
 belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched 
 in fraternal blood," — may such a man, in his place, suggest 
 what would seem to him to be demanded as the condi- 
 tions and terms of abiding peace ? 
 
 The first great principle in the return of peace, must 
 be the suppression of this rebellion as rebellion. It must 
 be founded on the laying down of hostile arms by those 
 who have made war on the flag of the nation ; the restor- 
 ation of forts and arsenals, and public property, seized 
 by force or fraud ; the recognition of the laws of the 
 Union ; the abandonment of the whole principle in regard 
 to the right of Secession. In all cases of rebellion, there 
 must be a submission to just authority before there can 
 be proposals and conditions of peace. Godv treats with 
 men in rebellion only when they submit to authority and 
 law ; and a government that recognizes a conspiracy and 
 a rebellion, and which treats with it as such, is already 
 at an end. The throne of God would have long since 
 
crumbled to atoms, and the universe would have long 
 since been chaotic and anarchical, if any other principle 
 had been recognized in the divine administration than 
 that of submission to the just and equal laws of heaven. 
 The welfare of the nation; its name, its power, its credit, 
 its influence, and the happiness of innumerable millions 
 on this continent, all demand that this great principle 
 shall be settled now and forever, that there is a " Govern- 
 ment' here ; that it is a government in the highest sense 
 of the term; that under that government, and in its proper 
 operation, it has poiver to enforce its own laws, and to 
 extend its control, under constitutional limits, all over 
 the land. The immediate question now is, whether that 
 can be done; the solution of that question is to determine 
 the destiny of this nation for all coming time. The duty 
 now, the immediate duty, the sole duty, is to suppress 
 this rebellion, and to establish the authority of law ; to 
 maintain the Union. That, and that only, is the purpose 
 of the war. That, and that only, makes the war right. 
 That, and that only, will make its issues safe. Any thing 
 else; even any scheme of benevolence; any measure 
 based on the intrinsic wrong of slavery; any thing 
 that contemplates the amelioration of the condition 
 of any portion of the population ; any act of justice to the 
 oppressed and the wronged as such ; any redressing of 
 old grievances, or any rendering of tardy justice long 
 delayed ; any proposed amendments of the constitution 
 as a basis or a promised pledge, valuable as they might 
 be in themselves, and incidental as they may be in the 
 prosecution of the war, would be aside from its design ; 
 would be a violation of the constitution ; would properly 
 subject an Executive to impeachment. There is one 
 object before the nation now, and but one : those rebel- 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 lious men must be beaten on the battle-field ; those forts 
 and arsenals must be restored ; those custom-houses must 
 be put again under the control of the nation ; those 
 armies must be dispersed ; those new laws, which are not 
 laws, of the " Confederacy," must be abrogated ; the 
 honored old flag must float again over every part of the 
 land, before there can be permanent peace. " No other 
 measure than this will preserve the integrity, the dignity, 
 and the glory of this government. No other measure 
 will prove to the world that we are what we profess to 
 be — a nation. No other will settle this controversy on 
 a lasting basis." Failing here, we fail altogether, and 
 the cherished hopes of our fathers will have vanished 
 forever ; and the exultation of those, who beyond the 
 seas hate liberty, and us as the representatives of 
 liberty, will be complete. 
 
 The second thing is the preservation of the Union. 
 Men talk traitorously when they speak with complacency of 
 the breaking up of this Union. The old thirteen States, 
 under the articles of the Confederation, and before the 
 Federal Union was formed, found themselves unable to 
 carry on the operations of a government. They had no 
 government, no army, no navy, no credit, no power. 
 The Southern Confederacy would have no power now, 
 were it not for the pressure of the war which keeps them 
 together. It is the Union which has made us, and which 
 has kept us. We must be one great nation, or twenty 
 or more divided, and separate, and jarring, feeble powers. 
 We must be one in respect to war, and peace, and com- 
 merce, and trade, and credit ; we must be one in view of 
 ourselves, one in view of the world. Besides, who would 
 be authorized to propose peace on any other terms or 
 conditions than the preservation of the Union ? Who has 
 
35 
 
 been chosen by the people for any such purpose? Who, 
 under the constitution, has any such authority? Within 
 the proper limits of whose oath of office would it come 
 that he should propose or listen to a separation of this 
 Union ? What officer in the nation could' do this with- 
 out a usurpation of power never conceded to him, and 
 fatal to liberty ? 
 
 The third thing essential to permanent peace must be 
 the entire suppression of the slave-trade. Whatever 
 may be true in regard to the moral character of the 
 traffic, it is clear, that in this age of the world, and in 
 the condition of the public opinion in the great mass of 
 the people of this nation, peace and harmony could not 
 exist if this traffic were re-opened and continued in 
 any part of the nation. The intrinsic wrong of the traffic, 
 as it appears to one part of the nation, bringing the power 
 of conscience against it, and the supposed interest of the 
 other part of the nation, urging its continuance, must 
 produce a renewal of the conflict, and to secure per- 
 manent peace, it must be in fact abandoned forever. 
 This has been, is, and must be, the settled purpose of 
 the nation before the world. This was the settled pur- 
 pose of those who framed the constitution when they 
 incorporated a provision that this should not be done 
 before a certain* period — the year 1808 — implying that 
 it might be done, and should be done then ; this is the 
 avowed principle, whether sincere or otherwise, of the 
 so-called " Confederacy ;" this is now the settled pur- 
 pose of the Government of the United States, declared 
 not only in laws, but in the execution of a guilty man 
 engaged in that horrid traffic. And this must be. The 
 age demands it. Humanity demands it. The Bible 
 demands it. The best interests of the nation demand it. 
 
u 
 
 Our standing among the nations of the earth requires it. 
 The common character of the nation ; the common wel- 
 fare of the community ; justice, mere}', religion, all 
 demand that human flesh, among all nations, shall be 
 separated from all those things which pertain to lawful 
 commerce, and the traffic in it branded as the worst form 
 of piracy. As the world would be shocked, and the 
 nations would feel that they had a right to interfere, 
 should either France, or England, or Portugal, or Spain, 
 engage in piracy, or countenance or protect it by law; so, 
 with equal right, might the nations of the earth interfere 
 should any one of those engage in the slave-trade. The 
 prohibition of this traffic could not, therefore, be complained 
 of in any part of our country as a sectional, and partial, 
 and unequal arrangement, for it lies back of any sectional 
 and local bearing, as that which pertains to justice, to 
 morality, to humanity ; to every ground of a claim to a 
 name and place among the nations of the earth. There 
 are eternal principles of right, and they are becoming 
 incorporated, slowly it ma}' be, but certainly, into the 
 code of the laws which are to regulate nations ; and as 
 it would not be partial, sectional, or unjust, if a portion 
 of Northern citizens should desire to engage in acts of 
 piracy, and should regard it as for their interest to be 
 permitted to fit out piratical vessels from their ports, if 
 they were prohibited by national laws on the ground of 
 justice, humanity, the law of God, and the common 
 good, so it is not, and would not be a sectional act, or 
 a partial act, to prohibit the slave-trade to each and every 
 part of the nation. For any new adjustment of the 
 constitution this should be adopted as a settled princi- 
 ple, proclaiming now before the world, not only that 
 Congress may pass laws prohibiting the traffic in human 
 
flesh, but that the trade shall be forever abolished, and 
 that no laws favoring it shall over be enacted in the 
 United States. 
 
 A fourth thing, now shown, by the terrible war into 
 which we are plunged, to be essential to permanent peace, 
 and demanded alike by the best interests of the North 
 and the South, and by every principle of just government, 
 is the entire separation of the General Government from 
 slavery. This, I regard, as the great principle necessary 
 in the restoration of peace ; the great principle on which the 
 constitution, if ever amended, is to be amended, and on 
 which, if ever, the liberties of our country are to be 
 preserved. Except in the matter just referred to, of 
 prohibiting the slave-trade, the principle should be made 
 universal that the General Government should have no 
 relation to slavery; should in no wise protect it; 
 should in no manner interfere with it to abolish it ; 
 should derive no benefit from it; should lend it no 
 support ; should in all respects, and at all times, stand 
 wholly aloof from it. The South demands this in 
 words, at least; the North should yield it; the nation — 
 the world — humanity — justice — national honor — religion 
 — should insist on it forever. 
 
 The great evil in this nation, the source of all our 
 national woes, consisted in incorporating with the consti- 
 tution any provisions whatever, save in the matter per- 
 taining to the slave-trade, in relation to slavery. This 
 principle, in my judgment, is so important — so vital to 
 permanent peace ; so demanded by every sentiment of 
 national honor and justice, that I may be permitted to 
 dwell on it for a moment. 
 
 There are three provisions now in the constitution ex- 
 pressed or assumed, on this subject, which lie at the foun- 
 dation of all our difficulties ; which are unjust to the 
 
38 
 
 North and to the South ; which are in violation of all 
 the principles of humanity — of what is due to man as 
 man ; which are the source of endless contentions and 
 strifes ; which originated this dreadful war ; which go 
 far to explain the anomalous and strange position of 
 foreign nations towards us : — provisions which stir up all 
 that there is of interest on the one side, of con- 
 science on the other, and of hatred on both, and which 
 bring us as a nation into constant collision with the 
 law, the government, and the Providence of God. 
 
 Those provisions are: 1. That slaves, considered 
 mainly as property, shall constitute a basis of represen- 
 tation in Congress, in the proportion of three-fifths of 
 their number; 2. That the power of the General 
 Government shall be employed in restoring fugitives 
 from slavery; and, 3. That Congress has the power, and 
 the right, to prohibit slavery in the Territories of the 
 nation. This latter is an implied or assumed claim. A 
 remark or two on each of these, will explain more 
 particularly what I mean. 
 
 1 . For the first of these : That the African race, 
 held in slavery, shall be represented in Congress in the 
 proportion of three-fifths of their number. This is not, 
 indeed, a direct representation of the African race them- 
 selves, for in the constitution they are not so far regarded 
 as persons as to have the rights of citizens, and of course 
 any right to be represented in Congress. The repre- 
 sentation is based on the idea of property ; to wit ; that 
 they are property, and that as property, there may be 
 an additional representation in Congress from the 
 Slave States* This was one of the "compromises" of 
 
 * " It is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed the negroes 
 into subjects of property, that a place is assigned them in the computation of 
 numbers ; and it is admitted, that if the laivs were to restore the rights which 
 
39 
 
 the constitution, and the essential idea was, that, in 
 order to secure something like a just balance between the 
 North and the South, persons only should be the basis of 
 representation in the North ; persons and property, to 
 wit, property in slaves, should be the basis of represen- 
 tation in the South.* This, according to the ratio of 
 representation now in congress, would give to the South, 
 on the basis of property about twenty additional members 
 in Congress. If the property idea, so unjust, were laid 
 out of view ; if those of African descent at the South 
 were treated as they are at the North, and as on every 
 just principle they should be ; if the same principle were 
 adopted in the Slave States as in the Free States, that, in 
 the words of the constitution, "Representatives shall be 
 apportioned among the several States which may be in- 
 cluded in this Union, according to their respective numbers ;" 
 if all who are held in slavery were treated in this respect 
 as persons and not as property, then the South would be 
 entitled to an additional representation in Congress, in 
 proportion to the two-fifths of all who are now held 
 
 have been taken away, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal share 
 of representation with the other inhabitants." Mr. Madison, in the Federalist, 
 No. LIV. 
 
 * " In settling the ratio of representation, another difficulty arose respecting 
 the slaves, who form so large a portion of the inhabitants of some of the 
 States. To compute them among the number represented, would be giving them 
 an importance to which their character did not entitle them ; * * * * 
 to omit them altogether, in the computation, would be to reduce the influence of 
 the Southern States, in a manner to which they would never consent. As a 
 medium between these, it was agreed that five slaves should be accounted as 
 three citizens, in arranging the representation, and the apportionment computed 
 accordingly. To counterbalance, in some degree, this concession to the 
 Southern States, direct taxes are to be apportioned by the same rule as repre- 
 sentation; so that the same cause which increases their influence in the 
 national Legislature, subjects them to the necessity of making larger contribu- 
 tions to the national treasury, when that mode of taxation is resorted to." 
 Bayard on the Constitution of the United States, pp. 49, 50. 
 
40 
 
 in bondage, and in no way represented in Congress. On 
 every principle of justice and equity this should be 
 done, and this is undoubtedly a case, and so far as I can 
 see, the only case in which a palpable wrong has been 
 done to the South in the constitution. Of this, however, 
 they have not complained, and could not complain, with- 
 out renouncing what they regard as essential in their 
 Institution, the right of property in men. 
 
 2. The second of the provisions in the constitution in 
 regard to the relation of the General Government to 
 slavery, to which I have referred, is that by which 
 fugitives from slavery are to be restored to their masters. 
 The article in itself, as originally adopted, and as it 
 stands in the constitution, is merely that " No person 
 held to service or labor in one State under the laws 
 thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of 
 any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such 
 service or labor ; but shall be delivered up on claim of 
 the party to whom such service or labor is due :" — that is, 
 that their return or restoration shall not be prevented or 
 hindered by any laws in the respective States on the 
 subject; or, in other words, that the masters shall have 
 the power and the right to reclaim them, without any 
 interference on the part of another State to prevent it ; 
 of course always implying that the claim shall be fairly 
 made out. This simple provision, bad enough in itself, 
 has been perverted and abused by being made the foun- 
 dation of the most odious and iniquitous law perhaps 
 ever enacted in any christian country, by which the 
 whole power of the General Government is pledged to 
 the return of such fugitives ; by which it is made the 
 duty of every man to render aid in such a return ; by 
 which fine and imprisonment may be the penalty in any 
 
41 
 
 case of refusing to render such aid, or for assisting a 
 fellow-man to escape from bondage, and to become a 
 freeman : — that is, for refusing, in a christian country, to 
 violate what he may conscientiously believe to be an 
 explicit law of God on the subject, " Thou shalt not 
 deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped 
 from his master unto thee."* This law has been, indeed, 
 pronounced on high authority — the highest in the land — 
 to be constitutional ; that is, not in fact a violation of the 
 constitution, but still, it has never been shown that a 
 milder law embracing all that was fairly implied in the 
 constitutional provision, would not also be constitutional ; 
 in other words, that a law might not have been so framed 
 that, while it maintained all that is required by the letter of 
 the constitution, it would not have required free citizens 
 to do what would be a violation of their consciences, a law 
 which would have been less palpably a violation of the 
 law of God. More than any other one enactment — 
 more than any other one cause — this law, in the form in 
 which it exists, has been the cause of the alienation of 
 the North from the South. 
 
 3. The other form of jurisdiction of the General 
 Government on the subject of slavery, is the power 
 claimed for Congress, and exercised by Congress, of 
 excluding slavery by law from the Territories of the 
 nation. This power, not expressly granted in the con- 
 stitution, and not necessarily implied in the general pro- 
 vision that " The Congress shall have power to dispose of, 
 and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the 
 Territory or other property belonging to the United 
 States," (Art. IV. Section iii. 2,) has been claimed at the 
 
 * Deut. xxiii. 15. So, also, Isa. xvi. 4 : " Let mine outcasts dwell with thee ; 
 be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." 
 
42 
 
 North; lias been denied at the South; was exercised by 
 Congress, with scarcely a dissenting voice, in the case of 
 the Territory North-West of the Ohio ceded by Virginia; 
 was implied in the Missouri compromise ; and was 
 among the immediate causes of the trouble which led to 
 this unhappy war. And yet, notwithstanding all these 
 acts and decisions of so high authority, it may yet 
 appear that it is a power which Congress never had ; 
 which it was never contemplated that it should have 
 under the constitution ; and which is fundamentally 
 erroneous in regard to all just principles of legislation. 
 The power to prohibit slavery may impty the power to 
 ordain or establish it; and if Congress has this power in 
 one respect, it would be difficult to show why it has it not 
 in the other. Slavery is, in all cases, the mere creation 
 of the laws : the Laws of war; the laws of rapine; the laws 
 of crime ; the laws of complexion or race — or law r s 
 founded on those things. It does not exist by nature. 
 It is not founded on any natural rights. It does not 
 go anywhere by any natural right, or by any natural 
 law. It is always the creation of law — of local or 
 municipal law; and in all places where it is not ordained, 
 or made such by law, man is and should be free. Such 
 are now understood to be settled and admitted princi- 
 ples ; and as in the " Territories" Congress alone has 
 power to make laws, or to " legislate," and as Congress 
 has no power to make men slaves, or to institute slavery, 
 so it follows that all the inhabitants of the Territories 
 are free as long as they remain Territories; free, that is, 
 until the people acting for themselves shall ordain other- 
 wise. The right to prohibit slavery must go with the 
 power to enact or ordain it; and Congress has neither. 
 It is for the people alone to determine this ; but whether 
 
43 
 
 when so determined any new State shall be admitted into 
 the Union is another question. If so admitted, the 
 matter is, and should be with them alone. 
 
 These are the provisions in the constitution, expressed 
 or implied; provisions claimed, denied, perverted, abused, 
 which have been the source of all our national woes. 
 
 But what is the effect of these provisions in the con- 
 stitution? What is there that should make it desirable 
 that they should be changed? 
 
 The first of these questions now claims attention. 
 The other will be answered in the other specifications 
 which I have yet to suggest. 
 
 The effects are obvious: — the evils are palpable, at 
 home; abroad. 
 
 At home. Recognizing, as the constitution is supposed 
 to do, the right of the General Government to interfere 
 in the matter at all; the fact that slavery as property is 
 represented in the General Government; the right and 
 the duty of the General Government to employ its power, 
 civil, military, and naval, if necessary, in restoring fugi- 
 tive slaves; the right of the General Government to 
 legislate on the subject of slavery in the Territories, the 
 effects are obvious. The constitution seems to be the 
 defender of slavery. The South is clamorous for the 
 interposition of that power in its behalf. It is jealous, 
 and properly so, of an} r measures that would divide, 
 abridge, or diminish the exercise of the power of the 
 General Government in defending, extending, and per- 
 petuating the Institution. It claims, and fairly too, that 
 the power of the nation, as expressly prescribed, shall 
 be exerted to the full extent conceded in the constitu- 
 tion; it demands that all that is vague and undefined 
 shall be determined in a manner not against the 
 interests of the Slave Power. 
 
44 
 
 The North, too, feels, and justly, that under this 
 arrangement of the constitution, it has interests and 
 responsibilities of a most grave and momentous character 
 in the matter. It is not so much the interest of the 
 tariff, of commerce, and of manufactures — of cotton, to- 
 bacco, and sugar — it is the interest springing from con- 
 science and from national responsibility. Just so far as 
 the subject pertains to the National Government, and just 
 so far as the North constitutes a part of the nation, so far, 
 under the constitution, the North has an interest in it; so 
 far it has a right to discuss it; so far it has a right to pre- 
 vent any aggressions which the slave power might make; 
 so far it has a right, in common with the other portions of 
 the country, to deal with it, under the limits of the 
 constitution, as it has to deal with the army and the 
 navy — with the public lands, the Postal arrangements, 
 and the Customs. It is not a meddlesome interference 
 with "domestic" institutions; with what does not per- 
 tain to us, when, as far as it is recognized and sustained 
 by the National Government, it becomes a subject for 
 examination and discussion. We interfere with no man's 
 rights ; we invade no man's prerogatives ; we do nothing 
 in violation of any rights of States, when, as long, and 
 as far as it is a National Institution, or is sustained by 
 the National Government, we examine freely the whole 
 subject of slavery. And so long as the arrangement 
 exists ; so long as it is incorporated into the National 
 Constitution, there will be two great parties — the one 
 uniting with the South, and from pretended or real love 
 of the constitution, or of the love of power, urging the 
 demands of slavery; the other based on opposition to 
 the idea that the National Government is to be governed 
 by slavery, to submit to its control and demands, to ex- 
 tend it, or to do anything to perpetuate it — a party 
 
L5 
 
 always necessarily advancing toward the idea that the 
 National Government has the power to abolish it, and 
 should do it. To a large part of a free people also, and 
 especially a people in any degree under the dominion of 
 conscience, it is a source of constant irritation that by a 
 fair interpretation of their own acts in legislation, and 
 by arrangements which are claimed to exist in the very 
 constitution, they are compelled to approve of measures 
 which go to sustain an institution which they regard as 
 a direct violation of all the principles of humanity, and 
 of the law of God. 
 
 Abroad. It is not to be wondered at that our institu- 
 tions have never been well understood abroad. To say 
 nothing of a veiy prevailing ignorance in the older 
 nations of Europe on all subjects, these institutions are, 
 in some respects, so complicated ; they seem, in the rela- 
 tions of the General Government and the several States, 
 to come so much into collision; they are so unlike all 
 which exists in the Old World, that we are not to 
 wonder at the fact that they are not understood. Espe- 
 cially is this true in regard to slavery. That many of 
 the people of foreign lands have great pleasure in malign- 
 ing and misrepresenting us, and in hailing any indication 
 of the downfall of the Republic, is undoubtedly true; 
 and that much that is said on our position now, and 
 much of the sympathy shown for the South, by those 
 who have claimed to be pre-eminently the friends of 
 liberty and the enemies of slavery, proceeds from this 
 cause, no one will venture to deny. 
 
 But there are honest minds abroad, and there may be 
 minds there not inimical to our country, and which are in 
 fact drawn toward us by the strong ties of consanguinity 
 and religion, which are filled with deep perplexity on the 
 
4G 
 
 subject, and with the deeper perplexity because they 
 are opposed to slavery, and because they sincerely desire 
 to see the great principles of the British constitution 
 as expounded by Lord Mansfield, and as acted out in the 
 emancipation secured by Clarkson and Wilberforce, ex- 
 tended over the world. On the one hand, they see, or 
 think they see, that the constitution of this country is 
 pledged to the support of slavery ; they see that slavery 
 is recognized in the representation in Congress ; they 
 see such protection in the Fugitive Slave Law ; they 
 think they see it in the Dred Scott Decision ; they see 
 it, or think they see it, even in the President's Proclama- 
 tion ; they see it, or think they see it, in the purposes of 
 one of the great political parties of the nation now rising 
 again into power; and they think they see that the 
 triumph of the national arms — the suppression of the 
 Rebellion — the restoration of the Union as it was, will 
 carry with it all those arrangements by which the power 
 of the nation was pledged to the defence of the institu- 
 tion. On the other hand, they think they see in the 
 success of the Confederate Government, as circumstances 
 must and will exist, the prospect of the speedy destruc- 
 tion of the system. Well as they know — for t\\ey cannot 
 but know — the avowed principle on which that Confede- 
 racy is founded — slavery — avowed slavery — yet they 
 see, or think they see, that, hemmed in as it would be ; 
 surrounded on every side by free States ; with no power 
 to reclaim fugitive slaves ; with a border of some two 
 thousand miles with nothing but imaginary lines, or creeks 
 and rivers easily crossed, there could be no security for 
 slavery ; that the value of a slave on that border would 
 soon diminish to nothing; that there is no such attach- 
 ment to slavery among slaves themselves as to keep them 
 
47 
 
 from availing themselves of the facilities of freedom ; and 
 that slavery must, therefore, soon come to an end. On the 
 one hand, they see, or think they see, nothing but that 
 which aims at its perpetuity ; on the other, while they see 
 that it is the avowed purpose to sustain it, they imagine 
 that they see that which in the nature of things must at 
 no distant period lead to its abolition. * I confess that it 
 seems to me that an intelligent foreigner — a true friend of 
 human freedom — might be much perplexed on this sub- 
 ject; and that, with all that is justly to be said and la- 
 mented in regard to the bad spirit manifested abroad, it 
 is possible for a true lover of our country, in its best inte- 
 rests, to look enquiringly, if not favorably, on the efforts 
 of the Southern Confederacy, because he might suppose 
 that he saw in that the only hope of the speedy removal 
 of that great curse from our land, and from the world. 
 
 However this may be, and however the expression of 
 this thought as coming from this pulpit may be received 
 and regarded, yet there is — there can be no doubt of the 
 fact that the complicity of the National Government with 
 slavery may be, and is, one great cause among good men 
 abroad of the want of sympathy in the efforts of the 
 National Government to put down this dreadful rebellion. 
 We shall stand upright before the world; Ave shall meet 
 the demands of human nature in this age ; we shall secure 
 
 * "We would ask what has maintained, unmitigated, the horrors of slavery 
 in spite of the public opinion of the world ? The protection of the North." 
 Edinburgh Review, October, 1862, pp. 281. 282. 
 
 " We are convinced that the chances of mitigating and abolishing slavery 
 in the Southern States will, if those States succeed in establishing themselves 
 as a separate federation, be greater than such chances are if their conquest is 
 effected by the arms of the North." — Ibid. p. 284. 
 
 "We cannot desire to see the Union re-established as a mighty power for 
 maintaining slavery as one of its institutions within, and protecting it against 
 all the nations of the world without." — Ibid. p. 285. 
 
48 
 
 the entire sympathy of the lovers of freedom every 
 where ; I may say that we shall secure the perfect sym- 
 pathy towards us of Russia, France, Germany, England, 
 Scotland, Ireland, Italy too — yea, Austria it may be, only 
 when with the clear note of freedom, with a manly and dis- 
 tinct tone, with an unambiguous utterance of the national 
 conviction, and not as a mere military necessity, we shall 
 repeat again before the world our solemn declaration, that 
 "all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their 
 Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that among these 
 are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — when we 
 shall proclaim that the National Government is separated 
 from slavery ; that slavery is not represented in it as 
 property ; that the civil tribunals of the nation, its mar- 
 shals, its military and naval forces, are not to be em- 
 ployed in arresting fugitives from bondage ; that citizens, 
 free themselves, are not to be subjected to imprisonment 
 or fines for declining to aid in returning human beings, 
 guiltless of crime, to chains ; when we shall announce to 
 mankind, with no uncertain sound, our belief as a nation 
 that " God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell 
 on all the face of the earth;" that all have been redeemed 
 by the same sacrifice on the cross ; that every human 
 being who has no other crime than that of " having a skin 
 not colored like that of other men" is entitled to liberty. 
 A fifth principle demanded by justice, and necessary for 
 the permanent peace of the nation, is, that representation 
 in the National Government shall be uniformly at the 
 North and the South on the basis of population and not of 
 property. It is now wholly so at the North; it is partly so 
 at the South. At the North, all, of all colors and conditions, 
 except "Indians not taxed," constitute the basis in the 
 apportionment of members in Congress. At the South, 
 
49 
 
 as we have seen, all white persons, and three-fifths of all 
 held as slaves, are the basis. Those three-fifths, more- 
 over, are represented not as persons, but as property. 
 Two-fifths of the four millions of the inhabitants of the 
 South who are held in servitude, enter in no form into 
 the idea of representation, and contribute in no way to 
 constitute a Congress of the nation. 
 
 Ours is a Representative Government. But what is 
 that ? It is based on human beings — on persons ; not 
 on things — on chattels — on cattle. The essential idea 
 in all just notions of representation is, that where in all 
 the limits of the territory under the government there is 
 a human being, or one who has by nature the rights of a 
 man, and who in any way contributes to constitute the 
 nation as such, in its existence or greatness, there shall 
 be a suitable recognition of that fact in the representa- 
 tion in the government ; and that, in this respect, as he 
 has by nature the rights of a man, and as his life, liberty, 
 and property may be affected by the government, he 
 shall be regarded and treated as a human being, as part 
 and parcel of the great Confederation. 
 
 As matters are now, gross injustice is done to every 
 part of the nation ; gross injustice to ourselves in the 
 eyes of the world. The North proclaims the principle 
 in relation to their Southern brethren — a principle not 
 recognized among themselves — that property may be in 
 part the basis of representation, and they concede to 
 Southern slaveholders what they claim, that their slaves 
 shall be regarded as property, and this odious principle 
 the nation proclaims abroad to the whole world : the 
 North, thus, with all its zeal for freedom; with all its pro- 
 fessed abhorrence of slavery; with all its deep conviction 
 that the African is a man like other men, yet declaring its 
 
50 
 
 willingness that the only representation which there shall 
 be of a human being when a slave — the only recognition 
 of him in the halls of legislation, shall be as "property" — 
 as property and nothing else. Meantime, by a compro- 
 mise unjust in principle, and inadequate in its influence, 
 the North has been all the while deriving an undue 
 advantage from this arrangement. In order to counter- 
 balance the " concession to the Southern States" that 
 their slaves might be represented in the proportion of 
 three-fifths of their number as property, it was among 
 the unhappy " compromises" of the constitution, that 
 " direct taxes should be apportioned by the same rule as 
 representation." And as the Confederation in 1783 had 
 made it a rule in taxation that the direct taxes should be 
 apportioned on the principle that three-fifths of the 
 slave population was to be reckoned, it was deemed just 
 that the same principle should be adopted in settling the 
 number of representatives.* But since direct taxes 
 under our government occur at very distant intervals, 
 and since the representation in Congress is constant, the 
 North has been all the while reaping this advantage 
 over the South, paying little in the way of the compen- 
 sation, and yet constantly enjoying the advantage in 
 Congress derived from the imperfect and unequal repre- 
 sentation in the South. 
 
 In the mean time, the South has been suffering this 
 wrong — that, as now constituted, two-fifths of the 
 population, that is of what are now four millions of its 
 population, have been without any representation : in 
 other words, under the ratio of representation, there 
 has been a loss to them of ten, fifteen, or twenty members 
 of Congress. 
 
 * Curtis's History of the Constitution. Vol. ii. pp. 48. 160. 
 
51 
 
 The true principle of representation would be, un- 
 doubtedly, that no human beings should be represented 
 as property ; that the apportionment should be in 
 accordance to the entire population as reported by the 
 census-tables ; that whatever may be the domestic 
 relations of such persons, or whatever their condition, as 
 sick or well, old or young, ignorant or learned, male or 
 female, bond or free, white, copper-colored, black, or 
 semi-black, their existence as human beings — as a part 
 of the nation — as having rights and interests as human 
 beings to be protected — should be recognized in the 
 government under which they live. In the carrying out 
 of this principle, it is, of course, not necessary that all 
 should be eligible to office, nor that all should vote; not 
 that children, or slaves, or Indians, should be admitted 
 as law-makers of the land. At the North the people 
 regulate this in their own way: so Jet them do at the 
 South. As at the North we do not choose that all 
 persons shall be voters ; and as we make distinctions — 
 some of them arbitrary and unjust — yet all within our 
 power — so let them do at the South. If they do not 
 choose that the slaves shall vote, let it be so — let them 
 treat them as we treat the colored population of the 
 North; but in the name of humanity and of God, let them 
 not be treated as chattels and things by an odious princi- 
 ple ; in the name of justice and of equity, let not the 
 North derive an advantage from an arrangement founded 
 on a principle which the people of the North no where 
 else recognize — the right of property in man; in the 
 name of justice too and equal rights, let the South be 
 entitled to all the representation which she could claim 
 based on the Census — on the actual numbers of human 
 beings — men, women, and children within the limits of 
 the respective States. 
 
52 
 
 A sixth thing: — The ultimate entire removal of slavery 
 from our land is essential to permanent peace. Our his- 
 tory, under the Confederation, and now for eighty years 
 under the Constitution, has shown that slavery has been, 
 and is, almost the only cause of alienation between the 
 North and the South, and that but for this there never has 
 been any insuperable reason why the North and the South 
 should not live and act in harmony. Indeed, on the 
 entire surface of the globe there is no one country of 
 such an extent, or of any very considerable extent, 
 where there are so many causes for unity ; so few for 
 division. Of one language ; one religion ; one origin ; 
 one general character; — united by vast rivers, and by 
 the advantages which each derives from the peculiar 
 productions of the other ; united in their history, and by 
 all the sacred recollections of the remembered war of 
 Independence, there is every reason, in the nature of the 
 case, why we should be one. Our fathers felt this ; and 
 hence our glorious Constitution was formed, and we 
 should have been now with nothing necessarily producing 
 alienation, collision, or war, had it not been for slavery. 
 But the same causes which have now produced collision 
 on this subject will produce it again ; nor will it ever be 
 possible to adjust our free institutions to the idea that 
 slavery is to be perpetual in the land. That fact is now 
 established; it cannot be denied. The South knows it; 
 the North affirms it; the world sees it. All attempts, 
 therefore, to secure permanent peace except on the 
 assumption that slavery is somehow to cease ultimately 
 in the land, have been demonstrated by our past his- 
 tory to be vain. 
 
 Yet it is clear that in securing this result, everything 
 must depend on the mode in which it is done — if ever 
 done. It cannot be secured by a mere exertion of 
 
53 
 
 power; by an act from any quarter declaring all the 
 slaves at once free. Such a power is not given to any 
 individual, or to any body of men under the constitution, 
 and however that power maybe believed, in a state of war, 
 to be "a military necessity," yet even this could extend 
 only to those parts of the country actually in a state of 
 insurrection, and could have no applicability to the por- 
 tions of the nation that could by any fair construction 
 be regarded as loyal. As a civil act ; as an act pertain- 
 ing to the General Government, Congress has no such 
 power ; the Executive has no such power ; the third 
 branch of the government — the Supreme Court — has 
 no such power. Most foreigners, and especially those in 
 the land from which we have derived our origin, and in 
 a great measure our notions of liberty and government,* 
 ignorantly, strangely, wilfully fail to comprehend our 
 constitution on this subject ; and they persevere in a 
 determination not to be instructed. England, regarding 
 her constitution as the perfection and sum of all wisdom, 
 can never be made to understand why or how there should 
 be a Government Avithout "a King, Lords, and Commons;" 
 or how there can be a Union of States which is not 
 exactly like the union of the counties of Durham, 
 York, and Lancaster ; or like England and Wales ; or 
 on some such principle as that which unites Scotland and 
 Ireland to the crown; or how there can be possibly in 
 another land a legislative body that is not formed after 
 the exact "pattern" of the British Parliament. Hence 
 thus far in eighty years we have never been able so to 
 instruct them that they will see that an American 
 Congress has not the same power over slavery in the 
 States which the British Parliament has over a poor- 
 
 * They understand us much better in France. 
 
54 
 
 house in the counties of Cornwall or Kent, or as the 
 same Parliament had over slavery in the British West 
 Indies. They will not yet understand that no authority 
 whatever in regard to the direct emancipation of slaves 
 has been given to the General Government of our nation; 
 and it is. perhaps, now too late to hope that they ever will 
 understand this. At home this is understood; and it is, 
 therefore, understood that any attempt to emancipate 
 the slaves in this country by a mere act of the General 
 Government would be an usurpation of power never con- 
 ceded, and equally at the North and the South would 
 destroy all hope of an adjustment of our difficulties. 
 Besides, if this power were possessed hy the General 
 Government, and should be exercised by it, no pen could 
 describe the evils which would follow from the immediate 
 emancipation of four millions of people held in slavery: 
 a people unused to freedom; most of whom are unable to 
 read; a people unaccustomed to provide for themselves; 
 having none of that economy which springs from the 
 effort at self-support and the support of families ; re- 
 strained now and habitually mainly by terror and autho- 
 rity, and not by conscience ; and with all the remem- 
 bered wrongs committed against them and their fathers. 
 Such an act of immediate emancipation would, in all 
 human probability, deluge the land in blood, and wrap it 
 in flames. On the other hand, no tongue could describe 
 the blessings which might flow from a wise system of 
 gradual emancipation : where the end was distinctly con- 
 templated, at no remote period, and where a system of 
 training preparatory to it should be at once entered 
 on, fitting those millions for freedom. Such an act 
 would stand forth to the world as among the noblest of 
 human achievements — greater than the deliverance of the 
 
55 
 
 children of Israel from Egyptian bondage ; greater than 
 the achievement of the Independence of our country — 
 for the numbers are larger than in either of these cases, 
 and the wisdom and the power needful would not be less 
 than in either. 
 
 But the act of emancipation, if it occurs, should be an 
 act in which the nation, as such, should, in every part, 
 while claiming no right of direct legislation, bear its share 
 of the burden. Slavery has been, to a certain extent, 
 national. The disgrace has been national. The wrong- 
 has been national — so far as the Constitution has pro- 
 tected it ; and, so far as ships fitted out in Northern ports, 
 and merchants in Northern cities, have been enriched by 
 the traffic in human sinews, it has been national. Bristol 
 and Newport in Rhode Island, Boston, New York, 
 Philadelphia, have had their share in the profits of the 
 slave-trade. Splendid abodes now stand in Bristol and 
 Newport whose foundations were laid in blood, and whose 
 walls were reared as the result of the slave-trade. Wall 
 Street would never have been what it now is, and New 
 York might not as yet have travelled far beyond Canal 
 Street if it had not been that Whitney — a northern man — 
 gave cotton to the world, and if the South had not been 
 willing that, on certain well-understood terms, their money 
 affairs should be in the hands of the merchants and 
 brokers of New York. Whatever there has been in fact 
 as the result of slave labor, has gone, among other things, 
 directly or indirectly to promote our growth as a nation; 
 and whatever there is of power in this country now to 
 affect the manufactures, the trade, the commerce of the 
 old world has had a connection of melancholy importance 
 with slavery. At this moment, England, France, and Ger- 
 many throughout all her borders ; the manufactures and 
 
56 
 
 the trade not only in Lancashire, but through the coun- 
 tries where the Elbe, the Rhine, and the Danube flow, 
 all feel the effect of the want of that which is the result 
 of slave labor — cotton : — and all begin to learn a lesson 
 which they have been slow to learn, and which it would 
 be well for them to learn in other respects than this — how 
 greatly they are dependent on the United States ; how 
 important is the position which the United States holds 
 in the world ; how vital it may be for them to cultivate 
 friendly relations with us. 
 
 As in some measure, therefore, a national matter ; 
 as that which has contributed to the greatness of the 
 nation, and which has gone materially to enrich it, it is 
 but just that when so vital a change is contemplated as 
 the ultimate emancipation of four millions of men, every 
 part of the nation should bear its share of the burden ; 
 every part of the nation should help to undo the wrong. 
 Compensation, therefore, in accordance with some equit- 
 able rule to those States and individuals which would be 
 immediately affected by it, is demanded by every prin- 
 ciple of justice ; by everything in our nature which 
 responds to the claim of what is reciprocal and right. 
 It is not, indeed, as a matter of property; it need not 
 recognize the right of property in human beings. The 
 claim is founded rather on a principle of equity, as 
 springing from the fact that when, from any revolution 
 in a nation's opinions and policy, a material change is to 
 be produced in that which men have regarded as con- 
 tributing to their prosperity, and of which the nation has 
 been in any way a participant, every part of the nation, 
 enriched by that which is to be of value no more, should 
 bear its part of the loss and the burden. This may not 
 be a legal claim. It may not be a claim which we place 
 
57 
 
 under the head of strict justice or right. But it is a 
 claim which appeals to noble minds, and noble hearts — 
 that where there has been a common wrtmg, and when 
 there is now to be a suffering party, that party should 
 not be left to suffer alone. It is, therefore, on the strictest 
 principles of moral equity that it has been proposed by 
 the highest authority of this nation, that there shall be a 
 fair system of compensation proposed for the States 
 which are willing to inaugurate a system of gradual 
 emancipation. 
 
 Nor will it be a " compromise" with slavery, nor an 
 acknowledgment that slavery is in itself right, if the sys- 
 tem proposed should be gradual. Provided that the 
 end is contemplated ; that the thing is to be done ; that 
 arrangements are made to do it, and to do it certainly; 
 that there is no further defence of it, and no further 
 arrangements to perpetuate and extend it; that the 
 announcement goes forth to the world that it is the 
 purpose of the nation that slavery shall cease, there can 
 be no fair construction of such an act by which it can be 
 inferred that the system is regarded as right. In such 
 an act there would be no mercenary apology for slavery ; 
 nay, the purest benevolence may mingle in the act, 
 though it is delayed, for the highest interest of the 
 enslaved himself may demand that delay. New York, 
 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, uttered no voice in favor of 
 slavery, and made no compromise with it, when they 
 inaugurated a system of gradual emancipation, and the 
 deeply-rooted feeling of those States on the subject is 
 proof that there was no lingering love of the system in 
 the legislation which prompted to those acts. 
 
 Nor is it needful to any just views of emancipation 
 that the freed-men under such a system, or under any 
 
58 
 
 system, should be expatriated, or removed by power to 
 other lands. This is their native land, and they love it. 
 The four millions of slaves in our country, excepting the 
 few scores that may have been smuggled in contrary to 
 the laws, were born here, and have as good a right here 
 as any others, for the "boundaries of their habitation" 
 have been fixed here by the great God. Beyond most 
 other men, too, the African loves his native soil. He 
 has no disposition to leave the place where he has been 
 reared, and where he has toiled — even for others ; or even 
 to leave those for whom he has toiled, if he is not treated 
 with harshness and cruelty. In all that vast territory 
 where the African has been compelled to toil, he would 
 be a useful and a needed laborer : — not less useful, and 
 not less needed, if, as a freeman, trained to freedom, he 
 should be conrpensated as other men are for his labor. 
 Free labor in an African would be of more value to a 
 country than slave labor, and on the vast cotton fields 
 and rice plantations of the South it may always be true 
 that the African can perforin a work which the white 
 man could not endure. There, as freemen, let them live 
 and labor, enjoying the avails of their labor as other men 
 do ; represented in the National Government as a part of 
 the population of the land; recognized and treated as 
 made in the image of God. If they prefer, as freemen, 
 to return to the land of their fathers' sepulchres, let us 
 help them. To other lands now barbarous and savage, 
 not driven there, not compelled to go, they might bear, 
 as they would bear, juster notions of industry, and thrift, 
 and liberty, and religion than now prevail there ; and colo- 
 nies voluntarily formed, and sustained by those who have 
 oppressed them, might be the means of establishing there 
 the institutions of civilization, religion, and the arts. 
 
59 
 
 Africa, blessed by the voluntary return of her sons, may 
 yet forget the wrongs that have been done to her, and 
 slavery may yet be numbered among the evils that 
 have been overruled by divine Providence for the good 
 of mankind. 
 
 A sixth principle, founded on such views as have now 
 been presented, and claimed, it seems to me, with exact 
 justice by the South, is that slavery as to its control, and 
 as to all the laws regulating it, is to be left to the States 
 as such, in all respects, absolutely and exclusively. 
 
 It is a settled principle in all just laws, now admitted 
 everywhere, as already remarked, that slavery is only a 
 creation of law; that it is not a condition of nature ; and 
 that where there is no law to make a man a slave, he is 
 free. If it be by the laws of war, if it be by the laws 
 of debt, if it be by laws pertaining to crime; then 
 those laws, and those alone, define the existence, the 
 locality, and the extent of the bondage or servitude of 
 man. Just or unjust, then, the regulation is a muni- 
 cipal regulation, and the institution is a " domestic" in- 
 stitution, and as such it should be left to the States them- 
 selves. Like other local matters — things of domestic 
 concern, it should be limited there, and when those bounds 
 over which those domestic laws extend are passed, then 
 any human being should breathe the air which other men 
 breathe. Men at the South have claimed that we have 
 no right to interfere with their institutions. As far as 
 they and we have made them a national concern, we 
 have such a right, for so far it pertains to us as it does to 
 them. But let it be so ; let it be as they desire ; let 
 slavery be a local institution; let it be like other domestic 
 arrangements ; let it be wholly detached from all con- 
 nection with the General Government; let all laws in 
 
60 
 
 relation to it outside of the respective States where it 
 exists cease, and cease forever. Beyond that right which 
 all men have to spread abroad light and truth ; to diffuse 
 their sentiments as they may ; to publish books, to preach 
 the gospel, to persuade men to do what is right, and to 
 avoid what is wrong, let there be no asserted right 
 of interference ; let there be no interference. Let 
 it be placed on the same footing in this respect, as 
 other matters that relate to the interests of the 
 people of the land. It is rare that any of our interests, 
 of persons, property, liberty, reputation, come in direct 
 contact with the General Government. The ordinary 
 course of affairs in which all are interested, is through 
 the State considered in this respect as sovereign. " It 
 is to the State Government that a man looks to pro- 
 tect his property, and secure his personal safety. It is 
 the State Government which makes the laws that affect 
 all his daily transactions, and it is the tribunals of the 
 State Government which decide all the ordinary ques- 
 tions arising between man and man." Thus let slavery 
 be. — This is no unholy compromise of truth ; it is no 
 compromise at all, farther than when we seek to spread 
 truth and learning, liberty and religion, in Turkey, or 
 India, or Burmah, or China, or Italy, by the gospel, we 
 go under an implied pledge not to attempt a direct inter- 
 ference with the laws — the local laws of these lands. 
 
 One other principle, as following from these views, re- 
 mains to be stated. It is, that the entire subject of 
 restoring fugitive slaves should be a matter of negotia- 
 tion and arrangement between the States themselves. If 
 as States independent in such matters, as in other local 
 matters, they can enter into such negotiations and 
 arrangements, well; if not, let not the power of the 
 
61 
 
 General Government be prostituted and profaned in the 
 work of arresting men who pant for freedom ; let not its 
 judges " pollute the purity of the ermine" by remanding 
 freemen to bondage ; let not the army of the nation be em- 
 ployed to force their return at the point of the bayonet. 
 Let no conscientious and peaceful citizen be required to 
 engage under severe pains and penalties in reducing men 
 and women to slavery. Let not the Government of the 
 United States continue to place itself in this false position 
 before the world, the only free government on earth, 
 and yet the only government in all the nations that binds 
 itself to do such a deed. 
 
 As the South claim that this is an institution of their 
 own with which we have no right to intermeddle, let it 
 be so. Let us not volunteer to interfere. If they can 
 make an arrangement with Border States, equally inde- 
 pendent in such subjects, an arrangement for their recip- 
 rocal good, well ; if not, let that be an end of the matter. 
 If such States acquiesce in this; if they deem it just to 
 others, or best for themselves, let them do it in their 
 own way, and on their own responsibility, and let the 
 Fugitive Slave Law be blotted from the statute book of 
 the nation forever and ever. 
 
 I know that I have been too long in this service ; but 
 neither you nor I will ever attend a Thanksgiving service 
 in such circumstances again. I have seldom, if ever in 
 my life, spoken with so much diffidence or distrust, in 
 regard to the sentiments which I have felt it my duty to 
 advance. That these sentiments will be regarded as 
 practically wise by any considerable portion of those 
 whom I have addressed, or adopted by the country, I am 
 not sanguine in believing. That they are more just in 
 describing the evil, than wise in proposing a remedy, per- 
 
62 
 
 haps I should be as readily disposed to grant, as any 
 would to assert. But these things which I will now 
 suggest in a few words, would follow if the nation should 
 ever admit the propriety of these principles ; and the 
 prospect, however dim it may now be that they will 
 occur, should be a cause of thanksgiving, just in propor- 
 tion as the eye of faith or patriotism can see any evidence 
 that they will occur. 
 
 The nation would be one ; there would be one flag, one 
 system of laws, one religion; we should be one people. 
 
 The occasion for war, so far as it has sprung from 
 slavery, and there has been no other occasion for war 
 in this nation, would cease, and we might hope would 
 cease forever. 
 
 The conscience of the North would be relieved, as 
 having no further complicity with slavery, and as being 
 henceforward in no way responsible for it : — conscience, 
 the most troublesome thing in a nation to manage, the 
 most difficult to be subdued. 
 
 The rights of the South would be secured — secured in 
 what they regard as their rights ; secured in that of which 
 they are deprived — a just and equal representation in 
 Congress ; secured as to any invasion from the North on 
 their institutions ; secured in what they choose to regard 
 as valuable domestic arrangements ; secured in regard to 
 any direct interference with arrangements which they 
 think proper to cherish. 
 
 As a nation we should so stand before the world as 
 to command the respect and the confidence of mankind. 
 No longer could it be charged upon us that the National 
 Government is the bulwark of slavery ; that its legislation 
 is adverse to freedom ; that the power of the nation is 
 pledged to perpetuate the system ; that it is represented 
 in the National Councils ; that the Government shocks 
 
the moral sentiments of mankind by its enactments, and 
 turns away the sympathies of the friends of liberty 
 everywhere. 
 
 Slavery;, too, would come to an end. Surrounded on 
 every side by Free States, its value would diminish 
 everywhere, and the slave himself, with no disposition, 
 as he has none, to leave the land of his birth, would be- 
 come more valuable sooner or later by doing the work of 
 a freeman, and by receiving the compensation of freedom. 
 It may as well be known now as ever, it is now known, 
 that slavery cannot long exist in this country when the 
 protection of the National Government is withdrawn from 
 it, and that the hope of it ceasing is in the prospect that 
 that National protection will be withdrawn. 
 
 This will be a free land, rich, vast, prosperous, happy; 
 a land where some one shall yet declare, in the language 
 of Lord Mansfield, that the " air of America is too pure 
 for a slave to breathe ;" a land where every man that 
 treads the soil will be free. 
 
 I have one word more. The best intellect of the nation 
 is yet to be called forth to settle the great principles in- 
 volved in the present bloody strife. The highest talent of 
 the nation has not been developed as yet in this war; the 
 highest talent of a nation is never developed in war. 
 There slumber yet in this land, somewhere, great mental 
 powers yet undeveloped ; statesmanlike abilities not yet 
 unfolded ; principles of lofty patriotism yet to be mani- 
 fested aside from war; powers of far-reaching diplo- 
 macy which will grasp these great questions, and the 
 issue, in an honorable and a perpetual peace, in new 
 arrangements adapted to our country in these times, will 
 place such names ever onward by the side of those of 
 Franklin, and Madison, and Jay, and Hamilton, and 
 Washington. 
 
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