SERMONS ON SLAVERY AND TJ  CIVIL WAR.
Boston, 1851-1865.
1.- Hall,N. The limits of civil obedience.
2.- Weiss,J. Reform & repeal.
-3.- Tyng,D.A. Our country's troubles.
4.- Gannett,E*S.  The state of the country.
5.- Sears,E.H. Revolution or reform.
6.- Dewey,O. On patriotism.
7.- Stone,A.L. The divineness of human govern       ment.
8.- Frothingham,O.B. The let-alone policy.
9.- Dewey,O. A sermon preached on the national
fast day, at Church Green, Boston.
10.- Hedge,F.H. The national weakness.
11.- Walker,Jas. The spirit proper to the times.
12.- Ware,F.W. Our duty under reverse.
-13.- Bartb, C.A. Our sacrifices.
14.- Ware,J.F.W. Manhood, the want of the day.
15.- Ellis,G.E-.The nation's ballot and its de        cision.
16.- Stearns,Wm.A. A sermon delivered before the
executive & legislative departments of
the Government of'Massachusetts.
- Bartol,C.A. Extravagance.
1- Dexter,H.,M. What ought to be done with the
freedmen and with the rebels?
19.- Stone,A.L. The work of New England in the
future of our country.
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I 
THE LIMITS OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE.
A
SE RI MON
PREACHED IN THE
FIRST CHURCH, DORCHESTER,
JANUARY 12, 1851.
By NATHANIEL HALL.
Vubtiseb b! Request.
BOSTON:
'WM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS,
111, WASHINGTON STREET.
MDCCC LI. 
BOSTON:
TIIURSTON, TORRY, AND EMERSON,
Printers, Devonshire Street. 
IT becomes me to state, what those who heard it will perceive,
that this Sermon has been somewhat altered from what it was as
preached, -not at all in respect to any principle or position, but
by the enlargement upon some points, which the time allotted
to a  Sunday's  Discourse  forbade  in its delivery.   Let  me
further say, that I have yielded with no little reluctance to the
request for its publication, - a reluctance which has been overcome, in part, by the known fact that its views have been greatly
misrepresented, unintentionally or otherwise; and also in the hope,
perhaps a presumptuous one, that it may do something in helping
to guide some few minds with regard to the subject it discusses.
The temerity, as it may seem to some, of publishing views opposed
to those of so many who have the respect and confidence of the
community, I do not feel. Truth is independent of persons. It
is not received of men, though they may help us to obtain it.
Whatever there may be of it in these humble pages, is not mine,
but God's.  
SER MO N.
ROMANS, XIII. 1, 2.
" LET EVERY SOUL BE SUBJECT UNTO THE HIIGHER POWERS.  FOR THERE
IS NO POWER BUT OF GOD; THE POWERS THAT BE ARE ORDAINED OF GOD.
WHOSOEVER, THEREFORE, RESISTETH THE POWER, RESISTETH THE ORDINANCE OF GOD."
CIVIL government exists by Divine appointment,
and is therefore to be respected and obeyed. Such
is the abstract proposition which this passage includes and presents. It is a proposition which reason
and common sense confirm and indorse.   Natural
religion, in this particular, has no controversy with
revealed.   In order to perceive how plainly this is
so, let us fix, for a moment, on another proposition,
lying back  of this,-  namely, civil society is  of
Divine appointment. The propositions are not identical, inasmuch as society must, at some time, have
existed  without  government.   Civil society  is of
Divine appointment- is an institution of God.  And
this is evident, in the fact of those original instincts in
man, leading him directly, we may say impelling him, 
to such result; in the fact, also, that society is essential to the development and well-being of the individual and the race. Man isolated from his fellows,
living by and to himself, with that only which his individual strength and talent might supply, if he continued to exist at all, would do so at a most wretched
rate. All the progress of the race, all its advances in
whatever makes life most desirable, for its higher as
well as its inferior ends, has been conditioned upon
the existence of society. Society, then, is of Divine
appointment. It is written, in these facts, as by the
finger of God. And if this be so, then Government
is of Divine appointment, inasmuch as society cannot fulfill its ends, cannot exist to any good purpose,
without it. The very idea of civil society supposes
the surrender, in certain directions, and to a certain
extent, of individual rights, and the suppression of
individual impulses and desires, in submission to a
general, constituted authority, and for the sake of
benefits not otherwise to be secured. And if civil
government be of Divine appointment, it follows,
that obedience to its authority and laws is a sacred
obligation. The conclusion is so very obvious, that I
cannot conceive of its being gainsayed. I do not
know that it is, as a general proposition. There is
no difficulty, I apprehend, as to the abstract rule.
The difficulty is in relation to specific cases which
come under it; for the rule, general and universal
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as is its principle, has its limitations and exceptions.
No one would say, that obedience to civil government
was a sacred obligation in all cases- whatever it
might command. Were it to command, for instance,
that parents should cruelly maim or torture their
children, or teach them any gross immorality, or that
people generally should practise theft, or utter profanity, or the like,- who would say that it was a
sacred obligation to obey it, as regards these things?
AVhere, then, if limit there be, does that limit lie.
By what principle is it defined?  WVe want a principle, - something which shall keep us from being
driven hither and thither, now towards this conclusion and now towards that, as others may urge us by
their reasoning, or their rhetoric, or their sophistries,
We want a principle, which we can see to be a true
one, and by which each may judge, in the premises,
for himself.  There are times when we are liable to be
blinded to the clearest principles, which, at other
times, and in other circumstances, we see as such;
when, by reason of the mental confusedness caused
by self-interest, or prejudice, or passion, or a wiew
to consequences, the strongest intellects fail to perceive, what, to the ingenuous mind of childhood,
knowing nothing of these distorting media, is plainly
evident. We all need to be on our guard against
influences existing on either side of the question now
before us-no longer a mere ethical abstraction - 
s
to prevent us from a true decision. In no heats of
unhallowed excitement, but in the calm of sober reflection, should we seek to know concerning it.  And
here is one, among other reasons, why on the Sabbath,
and in its public assemblies, in the hush of earthly
strife, amid devotional and holy thought, it should
have a consideration and discussion. The principle,
then, I repeat, what is it? - by which to limit and
bound the general proposition, which, as such, all
admit,- that obedience to civil government is a
sacred obligation.  It has its limitations, as we see,
when specific cases are presented, - as the wisest
and best of all times have practically maintained.
How shall we know and define them?
Does not the answer lie in this consideration? that
the relations we sustain to civil government, do not,
and cannot, overlay and interrupt those moral relations which we sustain to Him by whose appointment
it exists. Whatever society, through its government,
may do, it may not disturb those relations- it may
not come between the soul and God-it may not
come between the soul's sense of duty to -Him and
the performance of that duty. Whatever authority
God may have delegated to human governments, it
cannot be an authority- every sentiment and principle within us forbid the thought -to abrogate or
suspend any one of those moral requirements which
spring out of the essential attributes of His nature, 
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and are eternal as himself It cannot be that the
laws upon the statute books of States, are, in any
conceivable or possible circumstances, to limit or
lessen our obligation to the law, traced by the very
hand of the Almighty, ineffaceably, upon the tables
of the heart. Civil government, as a creature of
God, is bound to conform its requirements to the
laws of its Creator. As an instrumentality included
within, and forming a part of, His moral government, it is bound to conform itself to the principles
of that government.   Whenever it does otherwise,
whenever it requires of its subjects what is a palpable violation of these principles, it has, so far,
ceased to be of God's ordaining. In setting at
naught, by its enactments, an eternal moral law,
it is criminally false to the purposes of its existence.
In commanding others to set it at naught in their
practice, it has, so far, forfeited its claim to their
obedience.
Am I stating a principle inconsistent with the
teaching of the text? Nay, I claim the passage,
in its connection, as in  confirmation of the principle. The "powers" to which the Apostle counsels
subjection are, evidently, assumed to be such as
keep themselves conformed to the laws, and true
to the purposes, of their great Ordainer - such as
"are not a terror to good works, but to the evil,"such as "are ministers of God for good; to execute
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wrath upon him that doeth evil." This is his own
express description of the powers ordained of God.
And beside, that Paul did not mean, in this and
kindred passages- so often cited now-a-days, as if
they were the condensation of gospel morality- to
teach the duty of unconditional obedience to civil
government, is evident enough from his own practice.
Civil government has its constituted limits; its
God-appointed sphere.   In its requisitions within
those limits and that sphere, to its laws which violate no sense of obligation to a moral law, we are
to  be  obedient.   We  may  deem  its enactments
unwise and inexpedient, but may not, for that reason,
disobey them.  We have confided the judgment of
these points to the government, and must abide by
that judgment. We may feel its enactments to be
oppressive and injurious,- they may abridge our
comforts, they may waste our fortunes, they may
restrain us in the exercise of natural rights and
civil privileges; but we may not, for this reason,
disobey and resist them. The authority of government
is a rightful one, even in its abuse, while-it keeps
itself within its constituted limits. We are to bear
with the personal evils which the State inflicts, or
take ourselves from its jurisdiction, until, through
legitimate and constitutional methods, we may obtain
relief - excepting always those instances of general
and extreme oppression, constitutionally irremediable,
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which justify revolution. WVe have no right, in
view of our personal grievances, so far as they
relate to physical and secular interests, to put in
jeopardy, by a resistance to government, and by
our exemple of disobedience to its authority, the
good which, on  the whole, it may be the medium
of conferring. So much we may concede. But when
government, by its enactments, demands of us the
doing of an  unrighteous and  inhuman act, known
and felt as such by the enlightened judgment of
mankind; demands what seems to us a palpable
violation of the law of God; when it thus invades
the region of the moral sentiments; when it breaks
into the sacred court of Conscience; the case is
widely different.  It has, in so doing, transcended
its constituted limits.  It has gone  out from  its
appointed sphere. It has assumed a right which
was never given it-which it was never designed
it should possess. It has dared the attempt to extend
its sway where God has reserved to Himself the sole
prerogative of reigning; and disobedience is the sacred
obligation.   Government may sin against me, if it
will, and answer for it to its great Ordainer; but
it may not compel me to sin. It may inflict injury
upon me, if so, in its perversity or its ignorance, it
choose to do; - I will endure it;- but it may  not
compel me to inflict injury upon another, whom God
is telling me to befriend. It may not compel me
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to violate the immortal sentiments of justice and
mercy which God's own spirit breathed within me
when he gave me being. It has no right to do
this; and I have no right, as a moral and accountable being, to obey it, if it should. I have no right.
It is not left to my choice. The line of duty is
proclaimed to me by the voice of the Infinite within
my soul. The question of consequences, then, is an
impertinence. As I have a soul to save and an
account to give, I must, at all hazards, obey God.
Here, then, is the principle by which to limit
the general proposition, that obedience to civil government is a sacred obligation.  It is such so far
as its requirements are not in conflict with the law
of God.
It is no new principle, now, for the first time,
recognized and applied. It is not strained after for
an emergency, ingeniously evoked from the mists
of sophistry, or elaborately wrought of metaphysical
subtleties. It is simple as Nature. It is clearly to
be discerned as the lights of heaven. It is one of the
fundamental truths of religion, and tile strangeness
is, that, at this late day, there should be a necessity
for restating it. It is no new principle; it has been
asserted again and again. Calvin, in his Institutes
of Religion, says-" In the obedience which we have
shown to be due to the authority of governors, it is
always necessary to make one exception, and that 
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is entitled to our first attention-  that it do  not
seduce us from obedience to Him, to whose will
the desires of all rulers ought to be subject, to
whose decrees all their commands ought to yield,
to whose majesty all their sceptres ought to submit.
If they command any thing against Him, it ought
not to have the least attention; nor, in this case,
ought we to pay any regard to all the dignity
attached to magistrates."
Milton says: "Whatever magistrate takes upon
him to act contrary to what St. Paul makes the
duty of those that are in authority- i. e. to what
is morally lawful and good -that magistrate is not
ordained of God, and, consequently, to such a magistracy no subjection is commanded, nor is any due, nor
are the people forbidden to resist such authority."
Professor Stuart (I quote his words simply to
show that it is not a new principle), in commenting on the very passage of the text, has these
words- let him reconcile them with what he has
since written -" The extension of the principles
here enjoined, so as to make them imply inxplicit
subjection to the magistrate in cases of a moral
nature, where he enjoins what God has plainly forbidden, would be a gross violation of the true principles of Christianity, which demands of us, in all
such cases, to obey God rather than man; the ap])ostle
himself was a most eminent example of exception to 
such a sweeping general principle of civil obedience.
It is only when magistrates keep within the bounds
ofmnoral prescription, that obedience is a duty."
Blackstone, who will not be suspected of theological bias, or weak sentimentalism, has said, in
his Commentaries on English Law -" The law of
nature, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by
God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to
any  other.  It is binding  over  all the globe, in
all countries, and all times.  No human laws are of
any validity if contrary to this, and such of them
as are valid, derive all their force and all their
authority, mediately or immediately, from this original." He instances, also, offences, "which, if any
human law should enjoin us to commit, we are
bound to transgress that human law, else we offend
both the natural and the divine."
The principle has not only been recognized, but, in
all ages, has been practically maintained. Men have
gone to prison and to death in their acceptance of it.
Some of the noblest deeds that history records were
done in view of it.  It was tested, of old, in the fiery
furnace, and the lions' den. Rather than disobey God
at the instance of human law, rather than sacrifice
their convictions to their loyalty, men have endured
every suffering and wrong, committing themselves and
their cause to God. It is a principle which is calling
for its martyrs now, and shall not be without them. 
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And yet how many, in our day and community, wise
and good people too, accept it not, at least in a certain
application of it. It is looked upon with suspicion
and fear. It is denounced as impracticable and dangerous.  The doctrine of a "higher law" than that of
the Constitution, in civil matters, obtains but little
currency among us. Nay, it has been ridiculed in
our popular assemblies; it has been reviled by our
leading statesmen; it has been preached against from
our pulpits. In churches standing on pilgrim ground,
it has been said that we are to have no conscience in
these matters, or such only as comports with obedience to the State, -no individual and private conscience, but only a sort of collective and public
one, -that the laws of the land are, at all events,
to be obeyed; that the Union is every thing; and
that the sacred sentiments of justice and humanity are
to be violated for the sake of its preservation.
I confess, brethren, I stand aghast at such views
in perfect amazement that they find the adoption
which they do.  I respect, in many cases, the individuals who promulgate them, but I can have no
respect for the views. They are to me unchristian
and atheistic. A few years ago, the religious portion
of our community was alive with alarm at the promulgation of what it deemed most harmful heresy,
with regard to the external authority of the Bible.
But here, it seems to me, is a heresy to be dreaded
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with a tenfold greater dread, -a heresy which strikes,
as I view it, not at the external authority, but at the
very life of the Bible,- the supreme authority of its
eternal principles. I call in question no one's motives.
I pass no judgment upon men, but only upon views
and doctrines; and upon these I am bound to pass
judgment, taking God's Word in my hand, and interpreting it by whatever light He may vouchsafe to me;
and if I deem them false and evil, I have no option
but to declare it.
I know very well that it is easier to state a principle
than to apply it; and that, to many minds, there are
objections to the application of this now set forth,
which seem to them weighty and insuperable. It
may be replied, that if the principle be a true one, it
must, therefore, be a practicable one; and that we
have no right to suffer the apprehension of evil, as
the possible result of its application, or the certainty
of it, to lead us to question its rightness, or to flinch
from its application.   It is a principle which rests
not on the calculations of expediency, but in the fact
of God's moral attributes, and our relation to him as
moral beings. We have not proved its rightness by
showing it to be profitable, though we might assume
its profitableness in showing it to be right. Right
is always practicable, and it is always profitable,certainly in the highest sense, and in the great result.
But let us look at some of the more prominent 
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objections which lie against the application of this
principle, and the apprehended evils they assume,
as we hear them continually set forth.
The principle is, that we are bound to obey the
requisitions of human law, except where they conflict
with the law of God, as made known in our souls
and in his Word; that we are bound by an authority
higher than its own, to do, in all cases and always,
what is therein proclaimed to us as right. "But," it
is said, "if you allow each individual to judge  for
himself what is right, and obey or disobey according
to his judgment, you open the door, at once, to the
worst of social evils and disorders; one man may
deem this law iniquitous, another that, until, in the
diversities of moral judgments, there may be no law
which shall command a universal obedience, and society be reduced to a state of confusion and anarchy."
The answer is, -that this is supposing a result
which we do not know will occur,- which is not
likely to occur. The human conscience is not so
uncertain a guide as it is thus assumed to be; the
law of Right is not so indistinctly apprehended.
There may be weak consciences, there may be perverted consciences, as we know there are; but these,
in every community, will be the exceptions. With
the great majority of men, conscience, if not allowed
to be blinded and turned aside by sordid and unworthy aims, will pronounce on the great points of
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moral obligation very much the same decision. "But,
then, the liberty given would be abused; men would
plead conscientious convictions, as an excuse for
disobedience to an offensive law, when there was
no conscience about it, but only an imagined selfinterest, or a stubborn self-will." Allow that, to some
extent, it might be so,- is not every principle, and
every prescribed rule of action, however sound and
true, liable to be abused l Is not evil incident to the
practical workings of civil government, always and
every where? And what do we, when we say that
the individual is not to judge for himself, what is
morally right and obligatory in the requirements of
the State.  Is it not to dishonor and disown the very
principle which lies at the foundation of our Protestantism? Does the right of private judgment have
reference only to matters of belief, and not to those of
conduct? Yea, and it is a right which we may not
surrender. It involves a priceless privilege not only,
but a solemn duty. God has bound it upon us in the
trust of a moral nature. If, as moral beings, we are
individually accountable; if, at the great day, each
must answer for himself as to his fidelity to the law
of Right; by each for himself must be the decision
as to what that law requires of him. In giving to
each the capacity of moral judgment, God requires
of each its exercise, in relation to civil as to all
other matters; and each, - let this be felt, - each is
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responsible for the manner of its exercise.  Not rashly
or lightly or irreverently, not in prejudice or passion or excitement, not in a self-sufficient inconsiderateness of others' views and arguments; but
deliberately, soberly, humbly, seeking all helps around
us and above, in the love of truth and in the fear of
God, are we severally to form our judgment as to
what is right and obligatory. And thus judging and
thus acting, I cannot conceive that any great harm
would come to society in the application of our
principle.
"But," again it is said, "your principle strikes at the
authority of all government; and government, as you
allow, there must be. You counsel resistance, and
resistance is rebellion." The reply is, that the resisttance counselled is not the forcible resistance which
is rebellion, but that which consists in disobedience,
with a passive submission to whatever penalty may
be thereto attached. The authority is acknowledged
which enacts the law, and enforces the penalty. We
would resist that authority, not in its legitimate exercise; not in its unlawful exercise, unless it go to the
length of commanding us to do iniquity; and not
then as an authority to punish for our disobedience to
its command. The moral right to do it we deny,
in relation to God; but not the authority, in relation
to man. I will submit to government so far as to
endure wrong, but never to do it. This is the course
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which the early Christians adopted.  They suffered
wrongfully - they took the spoiling of their goods
they went to prison and to death,- and resisted not
the enforcing power. It might sway itself over the
body, but it could not bend the soul from its allegiance to its God.
"But," again it will be urged, "what if a law,
which, in the application of your principle, you
would feel justified in disobeying, be based upon,
and in strict accordance with, a compact, entered into
at the formation of the government, and to which
each individual, as a member of the State, has become
a party, and is bound to recognize and support.
Upon your own principle," it will be said, "the law
should be obeyed. You would have us adhere to the
Bight, and surely it is right to do that which we
have promised to do." Not, I answer, not if we have
promised to do that which is wrong, - according to
that acknowledged principle in human law, that "if
the condition of a bond be, to do a thing which is
intrinsically wrong, the obligation is void." Allow
that, as an individual subject of the Sfate and a
partaker of its benefits, I am a sharer of what ever obligations have been entered into in the past
in its behalf, and which still constitutionally exist; allow, again, the question to be a settled one, that
the law in view is legitimately and rightly based
upon that compact, and in strict accordance with it, 
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as it was understood and intended by those who,
originally, for civil ends, assented to it; - allow this,
there still comes up the simple question, but the
fundamental and majestic one, Is it right, morally
and intrinsically right?
"Personal security, personal liberty, and private
property," says Blackstone, "are the three great primary and inherent rights. No human legislature has
power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner
shall himself commit some act that amounts to a
forfeiture." Let the compact in question be judged
by these received principles of common law, - a
compact whose end and aim is the better securing of
millions of human beings, uncharged of crime, in a
condition in which they are deprived of all these
great, primary, and inherent rights,- and this, as the
beginning only of its dire oppression. We are not
to be driven from pressing the question for its true
reply, because of the bearing of that reply upon those
illustrious men who formed the Constitution. Honor
and praise to them for all they did for freedom and
human rights! It is not for us to reconcile their
agreement to such a compromise with their noble
acts and sacrifices, their acknowledged wisdom and
moral worth. We are to look, simply and only, as
accountable and Christian men, to the moral aspect
of this provision, as it appears to us, and as it stands
connected with the law which we are now com 
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manded to obey. For myself, I cannot acknowledge
the binding obligation of any compact, made for me
in the past, or of any law, enacted on whatever
pretence or by whatever earthly power, by which I
am compelled to do to a fellow-being, whom God
is telling me to love and help, the very worst thing
I can do to him, - send him to a fate, worse- as
he feels it, and as it is - than death.
"But," it is still further urged, "what if, by the
application of your principle, you bring about the
dissolution of the national Union, you sunder in
twain this fair brotherhood of States, and thus draw
down upon us the worst of social woes, and prejudice and put back the cause of freedom, and all the
best interests of humanity, throughout the world."
The picture is, indeed, an appalling one, on which
we have been called so often, of late, to look, of
the probable and almost certain consequences of a
dissolution of the Union. Who does not love that
Union, for the glorious achievements in which it
had its origin; for the priceless privileges of which
it is the medium; for the thrilling hopes it has everywhere enkindled? But if it can be preserved only
by a deliberate compromise with oppression and
wrong, by a smothering and denial of the sacred
sentiments of humanity, then, the time has come,
in the purposes of God, so declared in this very
fact, for its dissolution. Where has God told us, 
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that for the securing of any good whatever, we might
violate any one of his commandments?    Let Hlim
break the awful silence of His heavens and audibly
proclaim it, or marshal their silvery flames into a
legible decree, that, so far as may be deemed necessary for the maintenance of the American Union,
there is an abrogation of His law; that, for this
end, His voice within may be slighted, and His
blessed Christ forsaken; that, for this end, the soul
may scoff at the immortal majesty of Justice, and
the celestial sweetness of Compassion; - let Him do
this, and then, and not sooner, may we entertain the
thought of being authorized in such a course.
And let us not imagine that the evils consequent
upon our action, as a people, in relation to this law,
are all on the side of disobedience to it. Let views
like those which have come forth from the high
places of the land, and been echoed back from many
a pulpit of the Church, be practically adopted, become a part of the public morality; let the pleading
sentiments of humanity be put down, and the Law
of God dethroned from its supremacy, in obedience
to this most inhuman and unrighteous law - and is
there no evil worthy to be deprecated in that demoralization, public and private, which cannot but ensue?
Looking at it merely in its civil bearings, is there
nothing to fear from it? What constitutes the stability of a State, and gives security beneath its laws,
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but a reverence for moral principles,- for the great
Fountain of Law,- in the hearts of the people? Who
are the real disorganizers. they who teach the absolute morality, or they who advocate the morality
of expediency? they who announce and heed a
Higher Law, or they who scout the idea of it?
What is it that really endangers the permanency
of our Republic?  What but that monster Wrong,fostered beneath its shade, coeval with its birth and
strengthening with its strength, which is denying
to three millions of human beings the sacred rights
of humanity.  What  but  that terrible Iniquity,
whose retribution is already upon us, in a blunted
national conscience, a lessening love of freedom, a
depressed humanity, a fettered gospel; and which,
if much longer upheld and fostered, must bring down
upon us, as God is just, his more fearful judgments?
And yet, we are told that our safety lies in conciliating and strengthening it, by committing ourselves more fully to its support, and sharing more
directly in its deeds. Do we realize what a blighting
censure is passed upon our nation and ourselves, when
it is thus assumed that our civil safety is dependent
upon our holding, with tightened grasp, the chains
of the enslaved, and in aiding with our own hands
to rebind them upon those who, in the might of an
intrepid manhood, have sundered them and fled?
Humiliating, indeed, is the fact, if fact it be, that 
25
only by lending ourselves to this basest work to
which a human being can be put, is our "glorious"
Union  to  be  preserved.   Humiliating  and  most
strange the fact, that the permanency  of a free
Republic should be secured only by suppressing
the love of Freedom, and the dictates of Humanity,
and the sentiment of Justice, in the breasts of its
subjects. And are we men, and yet willing to admit
that any good, supposed to be dependent upon the
permanency of our Republic, is an equivalent for
the price thus demanded for it. Ah! what will
all our prosperity be worth, if, underneath its dazzling glare, the work of moral deterioration and
decline,- by that very prosperity fed and fostered,
shall be going forward? What is the Union worth,
if, instead of being the home of holy Freedom, and
the nursery of noble souls, it is to exist but by
being false to Freedom and the soul?  What is it
worth, if the mere honest advocacy of human rights
and a higher law,- if the mere breathings within it
of God's own Truth, -if the mere echoes, beneath
its majestic dome, of the tramp of sacred Justice, be
sufficient, as we are told they are, to topple down
the pillars of its strength?
At any rate, I see but one course for us, as
Christian men, in relation to this subject, which I have
thus again brought before you. The path of duty
and of safetv   thev are ever identical -is in an
4. 
uncompromising fidelity to whlatev(er GoD shall show
us, through the sentiments of our hearts and the
teachings of Christianity, to be right. Let no human
authority ever restrain us from this path. Let no
leanings of sordid desire tempt us from it.  Let no
view of consequences allure or affright us from it.
And let nothing- no fear of men, no alienation of
friends, no edict from whatever source - prevent us
from advocating the cause of the oppressed,- from
obeying the dictates of humanity in their behalf,
whenever Providence shall grant us the opportunity.
'26 
REFORM AND REPEAL,
A SERMON
PREACHED ON FAST-DAY, APRIL 6, 1854.
AND
ANARCHY,
A SERMON
PREACHED ON JUNE 4,1854,
AFTER THE RENDITION OF ANTHONY BURNS.
BY JOHN WEISS.
BOSTON:
CROSBY,  NICHOLS, AND COMPANY,
111 WASHINGTON STREET.
18 5 4.
LEGAL 
CAMBRID GE:
METCALF AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO TIIE UNIVERSITY. 
REFOORM AND REPEAL.
To WHAT PURPOSE IS THE MULTITUDE OF YOUR SACRIFICES TO ME? SAITH
THE LORD..... WASH YE, MAKE YOU CLEAN: PUT AWAY THE EVIL OF
YOUR DOINGS FROM BEFORE- M3INE EYES; CEASE TO DO EVIL, LEARN
TO DO WELL; SEEK JUDGMENT, RELIEVE THE OPPRESSED. - Isaiah i. 11,
16,17.
IF we consent to notice at all the day which the Executive appoints for a Public Fast, we should do it without
reservation, in a religious spirit, and moved by conscientious desires to make a full exposure and statement of our
delinquencies.   A  Fast is either a conventional support
given to an ancient usage, whose foundation in the popular sentiment has crumbled away; or it is a solemn opportunity, deliberately embraced by men who are willing to
grant their imperfection, to take counsel together in an
atmosphere that is not vitiated by party feeling and that
usually transmits the expressions of Christian faith. - Our
presence here forbids the suspicion that a day for public
confession of sin may be hypocritically proclaimed and in
the same mind observed. We are serious in our attendance here; we know that sins exist, and direct infractions
of Christian law, and that we are not entirely irresponsible.
We neither come to make confession of sin a public entertainment, or a brief moral excitement for the private con 
4
science, which shall be satisfied with empty feeling. It is
to refresh our sense of Christian justice and morality, to
contrast our methods of government and legislation with
absolute principles, and to rekindle our hatred of oppression, of compromise, of political and moral servitude, that
we are here.
In the presence of God, and in the act of worship, we
forbear to indulge in any imputation of bad motives, or in
personal indignation levelled against persons. We observe
results, we deal with principles, we contrast the effects of
associated action with the eternal sentiments of the Gospel. And if we find a principle of Divine equity, or a rule
of common morals and decency, violated, we proclaim it
because we reverence what is just, we confess it because
we know that we are implicated in all the public manifestations which create government and carry on the life of a
country. We dare not enter into the question of motives;
we can only expose a corrupt level of sentiment. Men
may live on such a level unconsciously, and may share its
immoral actions in mechanical obedience to legal requisitions, out of gregarious instincts, and from lack of the
highest enlightenment. Among other public evils, we find
this coarse and oppressive one of assumption of criminal
intent; and it is no better when combined with vindication of principles than when it is used against principle to
eke out a defence of wrong. Moreover, the amount of
character to be defamed may be great or little, but the sin
of defamation is equally great in all cases, because impartial and unerring judgment is not within the capacity of
man, even when all the lights of knowledge guide him, and
his passions sleep; least of all when hie is thinking and
speaking in the dust of a conflict, stimulated by pressing 
5
exigencies, hurt in his feelings, touched in his self-esteem,
ruled by his sect or party. This is a great evil, and we are
responsible for it, because we confine neither our tongue
nor our heart in strict obedience to principles, but let them
indulge in personalities; and when we fight, our vanity
feels as much compromised as our conscience. There are
degrees of defamation and depths of brutality; and when
we see an extreme case, we indulge our outraged sensibilities. But for that very case we are responsible; for
God has so involved us in a common life, that moderate expressions of passion countenance and nourish violent expressions of it; the imputation of a selfish motive
couched in genteel phrases stimulates an imputation that
is chopped out coarsely, with little regard to the blandness
of art. A careless retort begets a brutal answer. It is
simnply thle tendency to personal and partisan judgments
that is accountable for the worst of them; and if a man is
disposed to worship the impartiality of the Saviour, who
showed us that it is practicable to unite sternness of principles with charity for persons, he will be equally disgusted,
wherever he looks over the steaming plain of public life,
equally repelled to see passion and selfishness alive under
all banners, whether their mottoes are political or moral,
equally discouraged to see men vitiate their principles with
imputations and unbridled speech. And this is oneltnanifestation of public depravity, and one characteristic of the
national life, which we confess and mourn to-day. As we
then proceed in this self-examination, let us arraign no individuals before the bar of our imperfect judgment; but
rather take notice of results and phenomena, and proclaim
their evil.
It is high time that the people of this country should scru. 
6
tinize more closely the methods by which important acts of
legislation are discharged. If we say that the two branches
of Congress faithfully represent the people, we shall be
justified in saying that transactions, which are called by
courtesy legislation, are signs of public depravity; and that
we are responsible for them, because we do not think it of
sufficient consequence to purge and renovate the national
councils by a sterner and more religious stock of men.
These transactions occur under the ascendency of both
parties; without them it is supposed to be impossible to
carry on the government, whatever policy may reign.
Between parties there may be a difference of degree in
this respect, one being less venal and notorious than the
other; but that is all. When the representatives of the
people arrive at the head of government, and become initiated into the routine of business, they seem to tacitly
admit all the corrupt traditions of the place, and make no
combined and uncompromising effort to abolish them for
ever. Some admit them with personal complicity, others
with indifference. No honorable attempt is made by the
majority to do business without them. No league of puritans in love with justice resists and breaks the evil charm.
It is a sign of great public depravity when men are unwilling to view a measure dispassionately, as the sworn servants of the people, confining themselves to is intrinsic
merits, intent upon promoting the highest good alone,
unbiased by their secret necessities. It shows how great
a body of the people are unconcerned for a scrupulous
morality in those whom they elect, when not a bill of im portance can acquire vitality without the influence of a
supplementary congress of committees flush of money,
and agents expressly delegated to manufacture votes; 
7
when companies of men can in this way reap enormous
profits by the success of their projects; when speculation
can swell and thrive upon grants of land almost fabulous for enterprises that are never expected to be completed, or that demand estimates far more economical;
when one bill cannot pass until it is made a subject of
barter, and balanced by another bill; when, in fine, every
avenue that leads to the sacred centre where the firm and
pure lawgivers ought to sit in calm deliberation, is besieged and choked by the men who think it right to pick
up their living between the selfishness of those without
and the selfishness of those within, whose faith is that
every man has his price and that every measure is a marketable thing. Are we ready to confess that this represents the country; that the life which rests so proudly upon
the common school and the corner-stones of ten thousand
churches culminates into this display of unconscious vulgarity and corruption; that private justice, led through the
artificial channels of party, becomes public wrong by the
time it reaches its outlets; that personal honesty is at last
represented by official corruption?  And  we are told that
the conflicting interests of the national life admit no remedy.
More than this; some people deliberately acknowledge,
that, if a man would have any influence at the Capitol
beyond the details belonging to his district, he must be a
good shot, and all the better fitted to maintain his position and command attention if he understands the arts of
the pugilist and has the unconquerable brain of the toper!
If a man considers that he is put down, and politically
annihilated, unless he retorts the fierce invective which
seeks to stay his course, and is forced in turn to handle the
popular weapons of intimidation, then the public integrity, 
8
which the school and church are said to foster, is responsible to displace him by a man who fears God, a tranquil
patriot, unseduced by the blandishments and unmoved by
the violence of disappointed opponents. It ought to be
the settled purpose of religious minds to give their power
to men who remember the sincerity of the early days of
the republic, and who do not submit to the delusion that
the complicated interests of the present and the great
development of various energies demand corruption in the
ante-room, or vulgarity and unmanly deference and weak
compromises upon the floor. The place which has been
so desecrated by the presence of our coarsest traits and our
most imperfect culture, where men emerge who have
strength and tact without the refinement of religion, and
who, having been trained to regard nothing but expe.
diency, force their policy upon us in every department of
the common life, ought to be swept clean; the Cromwell
of indignant conscience ought to interrupt the low-minded
debate, and scatter the creatures of the hour, never again
to vex that sacred air with their confusion. Moral sense
and Christian faith should make a league, and purge that
place, and sweep its avenues clear of the agents of selfishness, and re-establish patriotism within, and support with
mighty constancy the mien who will test all things by justice and by principle,-support them, insist upon them,
return them again and again, urg,e them as the living protests of outraged sentiment against everything that is less
than magnanimous and righteous. Let the clear air of an
awakened North, that has memories of ancestral virtue,
and is converted by the Gospel, arise, and blow among
those pillars, and sound in earnest beneath those domes,
and blow, till every vestige of the present disorder is swept 
9
out to oblivion, with its vicious rhetoric and its paltry
stratagems; let it blow till the place becomes so sweet
that it shall seem not amiss if the sincere dignity of the
forefathers should rise there again, to utter the words which
savor of Christian traditions, and recall the profligate re public to the cleanliness of its youth.  Make it again a
spot where religious faith may direct and modify personal
ambition, and the character of the Saviour may be remem bered well enough, at least to unfold there a higher con sciousness, if not to inaugurate his holiest thoughts.
There is a theory which is beginning to obtain some
credence, that the country will suffer nothing from public
abuses and the errors of legislation. We are supposed to
possess the recuperative power of a vigorous nature, which
repels contagion and throws off disease, leaving all its vital
functions undecayed. It is said that the capacity of the
country is one thing, and the action of government another: however vicious the latter may be, the former transacts its business undisturbed, stretches its sinews in defiance
of the threads of evil policy, and goes on its way conquering and rejoicing, entirely absorbed in realizing all its fervent tendencies. Some even maintain that one advantage
secured by- a democratic form of government can be seen
in the facility with which security and happiness are preserved independently of any kind of legislation. Thegross
indulgences which the body politic absorbs and carries off
would destroy a less elastic and reliant people. What a
delusion is this, which could only be originated by conceit
and unreflecting energy! It is the argument of an indefatigable Messalina.  The vigorous youth may boast of
the number of bottles he can carry off without a headache
or the loss of a single hour on the morrow. Great is the
2 
10
ability of rugged youth to bear the wrongs which indulgence must inevitably inflict; elasticity will conceal the
ravages of vice, till its overtasked instinct can tolerate the
folly no longer, and the hour arrives when Nature claims
her just revenge.  Then the shaken frame trembles after
every pleasure, and the impotent and paralytic close impends. So is the republic presuming upon the recuperative power of its youth; with one hand it lifts the cup of
profligate enjoyment, and with the other drives its free activities and releases expanding destiny from all constraint.
And what is this engrossing ambition but itself a kind of
profligate enjoyment, which hardens and corrupts the
nation as surely as it does the man? Let us not be misled because we see that youth has also generous impulses,
and develops much that is good. Vice nevertheless disorganizes. What is to make a republic independent of
the law of God which causes misery to spring from folly?
The world's history is nothing but God's commentary
upon the text, "He  that sows the wind shall reap the
whirlwind." What undiscovered quality of nature repeals
in our favor that text, and permits us to violate holy mor als, superior to penalties? Will the vast extent of unoc cupied ground, where migrating millions can settle and
prosper, preserve health and virtue merely because it can
keep up an animal content! Can the conscience and
soul of the republic escape from justice on the broad, rolling
territories where crops will grow in spite of evil laws?
Will this popular absorption in the material interests of
the continent divorce us from the effects of our own legis lation, make the spirit of the country irresponsible, compen sate for violations of justice? If the republic itself is not
to settle with God for republican corruption, what shall 
11
settle with God, or what is the invention by which this
supple nation proposes to remove the sting from national
indulgence, and to establish a new species of Providence
in this hemisphere? Look for the root of this monstrous
illusion in the popular idea of success.  Because bad laws
do not seem to interfere with money-making, - because
the corrupt influences at the seat of government do not
stay the printing-press, nor suspend the clink in navy yards
and factories, nor prevent hospitals and colleges from being
founded, -because habits of public profligacy do not impede, but rather accelerate, private and corporate enterprises, and the railroad usurps the track of the buffalo, and
the new city springs full-grown out of barrenness, -because, in one word, youth may still continue to be youthful
and enthusiastic, and health may laugh at croaking antiquity,- therefore the republic may be badly managed, and
the national conscience set at an imperfect standard, and
the numerous channels of public life may transmit the bad
influence across the whole surface, with impunity. That
it does not do so, be convinced, even now, in the hour of
energy: see the retribution even now commenced in mental servility, in moral indifference, in obsequious political
enthusiasm, in acquiescence in the existence and the effects
of slavery. See the absolute principles of Jesus denied by
the platforms of parties, who invariably accept what has
been enacted, oblivious that they ever remonstrated and
appealed. Is this success? Is this the maturity of power
and vigor upon which we enter? It is rather the first
touch of avenging paralysis. Let us return to temperance
and chastity.
Yes, we have above all things cause for humiliation,
that the moral sentiment submits so easily to the condi 
12
tions of slavery.  On this point we can indulge in some
salutary remembrances. Step by step the power'of slavery
has enlarged its litnits, and magnified its constitutional
privileges. It has succeeded in making the policy of the
country one of deliberate compromise, till at last both the
great parties acknowledge slavery to be a national interest,
and freedom a subordinate principle, whose development
must only be consistent with the safety of its proud antagoniist. From the annexation of Texas to the passage of
the Fugitive Slave Bill, what concentration and rapidity
of triumph! It was foretold to us in clear and anxious
words, that the element of compromise was stamped upon
the national policy solely for the aggrandizement of slavery; and every step of its triumph was foretold. It was
urged upon us that a doctrine of compromise, so far from
bringing peace and settlement, was a doctrine fruitful of
strife and agitation; and that anything like a finality was
impossible so long as the theory of slavery was respected.
And all such prophecies will be rapidly fulfilled, until the
theory of no compromise, and constitutional amendment,
acquires political embodiment.   Those  who prefer the
alternative of waiting till slavery dies out, will leave the
alternative to their distant posterity. Slavery desires nothing better than to hear us continually saying that we are
content to have it stop just where it is; it will shift the
stopping-place so long as our contented temper lasts.
What keeps the country in continual agitation and alarm?
Is it the principle of freedom?  What makes all finalities
obsolete and ridiculous?  Is it the antislavery sentiment?
Can we not see the settled purpose of slavery to make its
life perpetual, and that for this chiefly it values the Union
and the Constitution and the deferential North? To pre 
13
serve and extend its political dominion, to press new sap
out of the old compromises, or, with equal singleness of
aim, to cut down compromises that have lost their sap, to
make the Union the mighty protector of its auctions and
coffles, its hunting expeditions, its daily horrors and op pressions, -for this slavery trains its political sagacity,
and consecrates the intellect and conscience of its children.
We have been foretold this; we live to see it verified.
We are convinced that, whatsoever single measure fails,
the great instinct against freedom will not succumb: with
every opportunity, and when least expected, it will send
forth its tenacious purpose, in far-reaching contempt of our
vaunted finalities; not simply desiring to be recognized
and protected, but determined to prevail. Shall we trust
it when we see its tact and resolution, -when we must
know that every selfish impulse which enslaves the heart
of man stimulates its efforts and keeps it sworn to selfdefence and conquest? Our country is not excepted from
the laws of retribution, and its wonderful vitality cannot
be for ever braced against such a spreading malady. To
say that peace and settlement will result from successive
bargainings with slavery, is to say that health results while
elements of death prey on the vital powers.
We must try to change all this, and that right speedily. Freedom is the great interest and central principle of
this republic. To establish and perpetuate the blessing of
freedom was it ordained, and furnished with these opportunities. To show that freedom is not only a universal
right, but a necessity, did the counsel of God step westward, out of the traditions and encumbrances of Europe,
to enjoy in this unpledged solitude another world. And
this new domain, which has been kept for freedom, is com 
14
mitted to slavery, and this Union, which sprang out of a
revolt against tyranny, is pledged to protect slavery; and
this Constitution, which was made to express the Divine
object in the settlement of this republic, to guarantee the
enlargement of liberty, and to formally vindicate the rights
of man, turns out to be a slave-whip in the hands of those
who live and thrive upon the wrongs of man!  And we,
who have been divinely ordained to worship freedom, are
to respect precisely that element in this free instrument
which protects slavery! There is the root of this criminal
inconsistency; and the conscience of freedom will have no
peace till every slave element in the Constitution is repealed. That is the ultimatum of a united North, pledged
with all its heart, with all its soul and strength and mind.
Till that time comes, we shall all be held to our Antichristian bargain to return the fugitive. Against that bargain let
this pulpit at least again pledge its profession of Christian
discipleship, and let this Bible still seem greater and holier
than the compromises of man.  Though  the floods of
slavery cover all parties and obliterate all the ancient landmarks, may they rage around the bases of the Northern
pulpits, and find that they are portions of the Rock of ages;
from their incorruptible security let the golden rule be pro.
claimed to confound all compromises, and to inspire the
hearts of men with horror at supporting injustice that they
never would endure.
Doubtless it seems as if nothing but compromise could
ever be the policy of this republic. At the sound of the
word Liberty, all kinds of obstructions and political contingencies occur to us. That is because the heart is not filled
with the reality of liberty, and it does not appear to us, as
it did to our fathers, something religious and imperative, 
15
which makes us pledge to it our lives, fortunes, and sacred
honor. The political shifts of the moment seem more
imposing than an immortal principle; and because we are
afraid to repeal a compromise, we content ourselves with
re-establishing it.  But when we say that Freedom is chi merical, we are withstanding God. He holds men respon sible for freedom, as he does for faith and personal salva tion. Freedom is God's project, the long-cherished inten tion of the infinite wisdom. If our hearts were burning
with a faith for freedom, then slavery would be chimerical,
and everything in the organic law of the country that sup ports it would be stricken out for ever. This shall be the
policy of the future, to make the principle of freedom an
element of personal religion, and to make its power aggressive, till it has put its enemy beneath its feet. Then slav.
cry would indeed be remanded back to its natural limits,
and kept within them, to meet the hour of its necessary
retribution. And we should be free indeed, with the word
Compromise stricken out of our papers and our hearts, and
the hunter of slaves forbidden to call us his helpers. Repeal of constitutional slavery shall be the politics of the
future, around which all questions of less moment and of
temporal regard shall stand in their due places, while liberty
prevails. If nowhere else, then in the Church of God the
true faith of the republic shall be cherished, and its ensign
shall be held aloft. Here we demand to be liberated from
slavery, for the Bible is our Constitution, and we will compromise for nothing below its golden rule. On the pulpit
steps at least the panting fugitive shall rest, and feel the
Bible over him like the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land. In churches shall independence be again proclaimed,
and their bells shall again vibrate with the sacred word. 
16
It shall be so interwoven with our creeds, that whoso accepts religion accepts freedom, and is consecrated to the
idea of a pure republic. The purity and justice of Jesus
urge us to the unalterable resolution. We will make the
halls of legislation clean and righteous; its crowd of hangers-on shall be rebuked, and the air shall again circulate
through its avenues; we will strike the fetters from our
printing-presses, and make the syllables of liberty to come
out clear and bold; we will make the Constitution one
entire and perfect instrument of freedom, and then confidently ask the millions of the earth to behold the experiment of a successful republic. Do you care at all for this?
Are we among those who are content, so long as nothing
interferes with thriving? May God for ever prevent this
country from achieving such success as that! May a
notion of such patriotism never pollute the hearts of our
children! If a man truly loves his country, he will love
her health, and his effort will overleap the present moment
to secure her future glory, founded upon consistency and
liberty. Now may all the churches of the living God lift
up their prayers for the day when our beloved country shall
have in genuine success the reward of her obedience! 
LEGAL ANARCHY.
LET EVERY SOUL BE SUBJECT UNTO THE HIGHER POWERS.- Romans xiii. 1.
WHETHER IT BE RIGHT IN THE SIGHT OF GOD TO HEARKEN UNTO YOU
MORE THAN UNTO GOD, JUDGE YE. - Acts iv. 19,
THE Christian theory itself is able to solve this apparent contradiction in Christian teaching; and we shall find
that it does this without damage to its reverence for human
authority on the one hand, or for individual conscience on
the other. Nothing can be plainer than the injunctions
which we find in the New Testament to render obedience
to an existing government, and to the powers with which
it clothes certain persons in the name of law and justice.
These injunctions are laid down without exceptions, and
we cannot avoid perceiving that they are meant to contain
a universal rule that guides human conduct through all the
various developments of human government. And. yet
nothing also can be plainer than that the Apostles themselves sometimes disobeyed human ordinances, whenever
these conflicted with an overpowering sense of individual
duty, and God seemed more clearly established in conscience than He did in law. They did not shrink from
taking the consequences of this disobedience; they were
content to suffer violence rather than to violate the religion
3 
18
which clothed them with their great commission. Their
doctrine supports the majesty and sufficiency of law, as
the representative of Divine justice and the preserver of
rights and order. Their conduct sometimes appeals from
law to the divine fountain itself, and they excite within us
a consciousness that an absolute principle of the Christian
religion is a higher law, as many times as human authority
contradicts it. The Apostles do not serve us with a table
of exceptions to law; our knowledge that they ever thought
it necessary to make exceptions is only implied in their
doctrine, though sometimes expressed in their conduct.
They proclaim the great principles of religious justice,
and assume that human law shall labor to represent
and embody them.  Holding, therefore, themselves a Christian theory of law, they unqualifiedly teach obedience to
authority.
And this is the principle which reduces the apparent
contradiction between their doctrine and their conduct;
this principle, that their idea of law was a thoroughly Christian one. It also explains, in a manner entirely consistent
with our private sense of right, all the passages which
counsel so strongly submission to the higher powers,that is, to existing modes of human authority. If you
take those passages in their connection, you will be struck
to see how they all contain the Apostles' idea that law
itself is righteous, and a terror only to the evil-doer. If it
had appeared to them that the general tendency of human
development were to make the law itself an evil-doer, we
should not find them teachers of loyalty. But as they
take for granted that the human mind is making a providential effort to embody the Divine justice in governments
and laws, notwithstanding the disturbances of human pas 
19
sion, they proclaim that men cannot enjoy the blessings
of safety and progress unless they heartily support this
system of law, which seeks to develop and protect the
natural and social rights of man.
Let us examine some of these passages, to show how
clearly they contain this principle.  "The powers that be
are ordained of God: whosoever, therefore, resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God." But how does
this appear to be the case?  It appears, "for rulers are
not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou
then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good,
and thou shalt have praise of the same. For he is the
minister of God to thee for good." What a union of
Christian authority and simplicity; how impressively it
rebukes and admonishes human law, while it seems so
innocently to confide in it! It is clear to us that Paul
paid his loyalty to his private Christian conception of
human authority as the minister of God. Do we not
already see how he teaches, implicitly, the possibility that
exceptions may arise? His very theory, to which he
summons unconditional obedience, justifies his conduct
when he refused such obedience. "Wherefore ye must
needs be subject," he says, " not only for wrath," i. e. not
merely out of fear, "but also for conscience' sake"; because authority, which is presumed to be a minister of
God, cannot be supposed to conflict with private conscience.  "For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they
are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very
thing"; —namely, to preserve peace and comfort, and to
enforce justice against the evil. Here we come upon the
local circumstance which suggested this doctrine of obedience. The new Roman converts felt that the truths
I 
20
which had been awakened in their minds made them
subjects of an invisible kingdom, and responsible only to
the Spirit which was present in their hearts. And the
same scruple which was started while the Saviour lived
arose again, -whether they ought to pay taxes to a
heathen government. The answer of the Saviour implied
that disciples were to obey every ordinance of an existing
government; but when he added the clause, "Render to
God the things that are God's," he vindicated his own
religion for having abolished Paganism by the opposition
of his disciples to the ordinances of idolatry and superstition. They did resist the power and suffer the consequences, whenever the things of God became involved.
By making a special case out of the tribute, Paul, following the doctrine of Jesus, instructs them to disobey no
laws and regulations of a heathen government that do not
involve their personal religion. Tribute may be an inconvenient and even an oppressive imposition; yet they cannot refuse to pay it, when levied by the regular authority
for the purpose of maintaining the general system of the
laws. Unless that system is maintained, Paul has no
safety as a Roman citizen, and his appeal to Cesar before Festus would have been an empty phrase. Mark the
distinction which Paul and all the early Christians make
between paying taxes, which went in part to%support a
public idolatrous worship, and refusing to recant by assisting in such worship when threatened by the terrors of
martyrdom. So can a Christian support the general powers of any government, for the sake of its average of law
and order, while he refuses homage and duty to its heathenism.  All this is involved in Paul's doctrine that Law
is the minister of God. 
21
To be convinced of the unity of the apostolic doctrine
upon this subject, let us examine some other passages
that express it in the strongest manner, being careful
not to wrench any single one from the natural connection in which they all lie imbedded. In the First Epistle
of Peter we read, " Submit yourselves to every ordinance
of man for the Lord's sake; whether it be to the king as
supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by
him for the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of
them that do well."  Here again recurs the same assumption that the law is a righteous standard, judging vicious
men and opposing their demoralizing tendencies: "for so
is the will of God that with well-doing ye may put to
silence the ignorance of foolish men," i. e. that by cheerfully obeying heathen ordinances you may refute those
who ignorantly accuse you of acknowledging, as disciples
of a new religion, no existing authority; "as free, and not
using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness."  But supposing a heathen ordinance uses its legality for a cloak of
maliciousness, - to persecute disciples and compel them to
offer sacrifice to idols and to make their oaths to Jupiter, -
then we find the early Christians refusing their obedience,
because they saw that the law was attempting something
beyond the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of
them that do well. They had all been reared in the conscience of the Saviour, who performed a Christian deed at
a time that was illegal: they refused to perform an unChristian deed that authority had rendered legal. And
they suffered the consequences; "for this is thankworthy, if
a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering
wrongfully." The conscience towards God thus exalts
itself above the secular authority, and Christianity quali 
22
fies its own doctrine of obedience, because the law itself
contradicts the Christian theory from which its authority is
derived. The disciple, for conscience' sake, will suffer, because he can neither actively nor passively countenance a
legal outrage of his moral sense. He takes no oaths before
God, much less before the statue of the heathen Jove.
And how plain the deduction is, that a disciple cannot be
accessory in imposing upon others what he is willing to
suffer from only because he is unwilling to obey.  And
finally, in the Epistle of Paul to Titus, he reiterates his
Christian theory when he says, "Put them in mind to be
subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates,
to be ready to every good work." It is so clear that he
presumes the magistrate to be cooperating with society
for every good work, that we are not surprised when Peter
and John are put in mind not to obey magistrates who
decree that they shall not disturb the public peace by
preaching Christianity. In such a crisis Peter places the
restraint of an enlightened conscience upon this doctrine
of obedience, and asks them to judge whether it be right
in the sight of God to hearken unto them more than unto
God.  And when the council summon him, saying, "Did
we not straitly command you" not to propagate these
principles, he and all the other Apostles answered and said,
"We  ought to obey  God rather than  men "!   How
doubly winged with might is this right of conscience
driven home to our hearts, when we see it wielded by the
men who had been with Jesus, and had learned from him
to thirst for righteousness and to obey the golden rule?
How doubly careful should it make our conscience also to
learn of Jesus, and to urge the rights of the individual soul,
when he has made them known to us, with the force of 
moral resistance, and, if it be necessary, with all the sufferings that power can inflict upon righteous disobedience!
Then from an examination of the Scripture doctrine,
we find it pervadingly and strongly on the side of authority, but yet implicitly justifying Apostolic resistance, and
assuming that exceptions may arise, making obedience to
temporal anthority sinful. But who, or what source of
authority, shall decide, when such an exception has arisen?
It is plain from the Apostolic example, that our answer
must be, Such a decision must be made by a conscience
containing Christian principles. But, it is urged, by those
who fear lest the authority of law become weakened, any
conscience may pretend or imagine that it is inspired by
Christian principles, and any man pronounce at pleasure
that the law is vicious, and any crotchet may become an
article of faith.  Then the door is thrown wide open for
all the disorders which breed in an agitated society, and
there may be as many crises and revolutions as there are
human idiosyncrasies.  Any system of law is better than
such a state of anarchy. Theoretically this is true: in fact
it is nothing but an axiom to say that the restraint of an
authority which is sometimes vicious is better than the
dissolution of all society by the conflicting egotism of passionate and half-enlightened men. Nobody doubts that
truism. But practically this danger is always very remote
from every form of government; for two reasons; - first,
because the law-abiding instinct is so powerful in the mass
of men, that they are very slow to suspect authority, and
the genuine call of conscience, in cases of exception, moves
them with great difficulty; and secondly because, in every
civilized government, the infliction of gross injustice is
very rare compared with its general administration of
23 
24
rights and order. Such is a practical answer to a possible
objection.  The mass of men have an inborn faith in law,
and the object of government is protection, an average
security, general rights, and justice. Here let me anticipate rebutting evidence, which a famous case in history is
always supposed to furnish. What made the French Revolution a period when all the follies that vanity could engender crowded each other in quick succession, in the
names of truth and liberty, to be alternately quenched in
the blood and tears of so many victims? Because it is a
dangerous thing to give men an opportunity to exercise
the rights of conscience? Far from it; no case in history
shows us so clearly the dreadful revenge of spiritual dissolution that follows frivolous and arbitrary power. For a
century had the throne been using its legality as a cloak
for maliciousness, and philosophy, inoculated with this
spirit of caprice, trifled with the laws of human faith, and
robbed conscience of its pure and absolute Christian mnaterial. So when corrupt authority became suddenly extinguished, the whirlwind was reaped where the wind was
sown. Sanguinary egotism triumphed, not because there
is danger in conscience, but because conscience had been
demoralized by legal crime, and priestly apathy, and philosophical frivolity. Out from the foundations of a sensual
throne, that had maintained for generations its consistency
of vice, burst these wild waves that tossed so tumultuously
before they found their rest. Such is the lesson of that
period, in favor of the rights of a genuine and healthy conscience, by showing how organized corruption can educate
a people to tread the steps of vanity and blood. Anarchy
had been sitting on the throne long before it drove its
phantoms, in derisive swiftness of succession, through the 
25
blood-stained streets. What kind of anarchy is so in wardly destructive, as that of a peaceful and triumphant
iniquity? What disorder will compare with the orderly
execution of a corrupt law? What strikes so bitterly at
the inner peace, what relaxes so fatally the sense of
moral obligation, and what shakes so rudely our reverence
for a just and interposing God? What can we believe
in, when disorder borrows all the elements and majesty of
Law successfully to organize itself; when we see the pow ers that are ordained of God using their holy ordination to
make a sin prevail? If there were danger in conscience,
a thousand times better run that danger, than suffer the
public sensibilities to be so shocked to see the Law, that
servant of God, holding its egis to shelter a corruption,
and levelling its shining blade against the breast of justice.
Can the preservation of material order atone for that?
What shall it avail though streets and cities are never
stirred from their propriety, if all the anarchy, impressing
all the law, takes advantage of the public peace to wreak its
will? The greater the tranquillity that attends the commission of a wrong, the greater is the tumult and disorder
in the very citadel of human life!
But it is not enough to conclude that practically the
right of conscience in a law-abiding community does not
lead to anarchy. For a genuine conscience, in its indtgnation, may, like Peter in the garden, borrow the instru.
ments of human passion to effect a righteous purpose. If
Apostles have modified their doctrine of obedience by the
exigency of a conscience, and if, therefore, we can find, in
the last resort, no way for our individual salvation and
no protection for truth except in the dictates of a Christian moral sense, how shall we use it in those rare cases
4 
26
where the law violates equity and perpetrates what Jesus
would condemn?  How shall we use our conscience?  In
the first place, our opposition must never borrow the element of material force. We have no right as private citizens to maim or kill another citizen because he is in opposition to our conscience. The right of self-defence does
not extend far enough to establish our personal principles
by violence; however much legal or illegal power may
outrage them, our resistance must still partake of the nature
of a principle, and either suffer or conquer as a moral power.
Because, violence introduces the whole train of personal
vices, revenge, pride, hatred, bloodthirstiness, into the service of the spiritual nature; and the alliance is an abomination to the temper in which a Saviour's truth was glorified. You never heard of violence being undertaken in a
pervading sense of religious sanctity; and men, struggling
hand to hand and foot to foot, with white lips and flashing eyes, are never filled with the venerable dignity of the
principles they may have soberly espoused. The animal
must ravenl and triumph over all the spiritual powers, and
indignation must sink down into fury, before a man can
kill another man in the service of truth. That original service to which the genuine conscience bound itself has then
been exchanged for the service of wrath; Justice drops her
scales, and with madly uplifted point, but with still blindfold eyes, rushes into the middle of a brawl: No wonder
that violence has so often destroyed the causes that hate
its agency, and have no communion with its bestial deeds.
And especially in a republican form of government, where
the voice of an enlightened people is the check to tyranny,
and the grossest wrong might drop, with a silent vote,
away to oblivion, violence defeats its purpose. It borrows 
27
the spirit of the very outrage it is opposing, and turns it into
its appropriate emblems of the club and sword. With these
it aims blows, not against those who are responsible for
originating legal outrage, but against those whom the publie peace employs. Is it strange that the popular instinct
hastens to array itself upon the side of material order, and
the powers that be triumph once again over the power that
ought to be? It is hard enough to induce a law-abiding
people to lift its conscience above its legal duty, and to
acknowledge that an exception has arisen where obedience
is unchristian.  Where the work is going on of creating a
public opinion upon conscientious grounds, the anarchy of
a mob reacts in favor of the anarchy of an oppressive law.
Violence lifts a Medusa's head, with all its dripping snakes,
before the melting conscience, and freezes it again to obdu
racy.
In the second place, we must oppose injustice by refusing to lend it personal aid and countenance. We must
not be impressed into its service; we must withdraw on
every side, resolute to suffer penalty, but not to abet iniquity, and leaving the law to perform its unholy function
as it can. It shall be demanded of us in our serious moments, during our uplifted prayers, and at the hour of
death, if our hands or voices have ever aided men to violate the law of Christ. It shall be asked if we preferred to
take our portion with the oppressed, or to strengthen by
even the favor of a look the office of the oppressor. Remember that in another world than this we meet the liberated fugitive, where the pressure of authority can no
longer serve us with a pretext; and there shall God remind
us of our Saviour's words, -" Inasmuch  as ve did it not
to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." Such 
28
moments of triumphant conscience come to us before the
day of our death, and the sorrow of Jesus seems repeated
in the person of the fugitive, from whom the curse of man
withholds the benefit of the golden rule. Can we countenance the power of law in inflicting upon him, what would
be worse to us than death? Can we feel the fount of
honor springing bravely and refreshingly within us, if our
remotest act has been a link in his fetter? Shall we use
our liberty as a cloak for such maliciousness? Let the
law rather couple us with him, and send us both to the
servitude from which he escaped with such exulting hopes.
Surely, honor would find that fate sweeter than the remembrance of having helped a man to kidnap! Can law make
us do that thing? Let the gaol hide us from the sweetness of day,- let fines confiscate all our substance, before
a whisper of our breath helps to push the slave back again
into his misery. So aid us God, to abhor the office and
duty of policemen to oppression.
In the third place, we must oppose this iniquity by
attempting to repeal it altogether. Dark and bitter is the
future to us, liable to continual disgrace, teeming with the
opportunities of agitation and disorder, full of moments
that shall goad to unexpected madness, unless we are able
to do this thing. The sense of loyalty in the heart of this
people will be shattered by the successes of this unholy
law. Remove the anarchy that lives by authority, before
the anarchy of awakened passions fills the street. Preserve
in the people their salutary sense of the sacredness of Law,
and let them worship her as the unblemished servant who
has received her ordination at the hands of God.   Pull
from her white attire, which adorns her as she sits in judgment, this bloody mantle which expedient men have thrown 
29
around her, and let her garment have a hem that we can
stoop to kiss with honor and devotion. Can we be any
longer seduced to believe that the blessings of peace and
Christian grace can reign among us, and that injustice can
be a fountain of harmony? Step by step has the power
which governs us proceeded to the accomplishment of its
deliberate policy, and every step has shown that the next
has been premeditated; it passes with equal indifference
over solemn contracts made with man, and the still holier
principles of Divine equity. It depends upon our loyalty to
be its passive servant to the end. And it is now, as ever,
the duty and office of the Christian pulpit to ask the people to judge whether it be right in the sight of God to
hearken unto men more than unto God. The health and
vigor of the public conscience stand affected, and the
efficiency of public worship to keep alive the memory of a
perfect Saviour, to preserve it from the stains of dissolute
compromises, that it may be our guide and judge, a counsellor of Christian loyalty, a comforter to the oppressed.
How far the shadow has crept over us while we have slept!
It lies across our altars, it would fain creep so high as the
voice of the preacher, and touch his prophecy with paralyzing chill. Shall we be loyal to the extent of extinguishing the source of true loyalty in an uncontaminated Gospel?  Where shall Law build her foundations, and where
shall Justice plant her pillars, except upon that cornerstone? It is a duty of religion, as well as a dictate of
morality, to remove what brings so great a scandal upon
the divine ordination of authority; that the life of the people may tranquilly rest upon assurance of justice, that
patriotism may be as large as duty, and that all our inheritance of manliness from former times may be kept devoted 
30
to the liberty which they secured, and be no longer held to
service as slavery's protector. Into this solemn purpose
the success of this or that party cannot enter: let not the
fatal name of party be so much as mentioned in connection with this sacred duty. Where the health of conscience
and the purity of law are concerned, where a clear conception of the Gospel's redeeming principles is involved, but
one hope should light us on the single path which we must
tread, that all men may come together into the power of
one opinion, to demand repeal, and with single-mindedness to demand it, till the voice grows loud enough to confirm its claim. Do not let the side-whispers of party mingle
with its clear and certain tone, for it is to proclaim a holy
mission, being no less than that of reinstating the sanctity
of law and withdrawing the countenance of a Christian
people from the ways of the oppressor. If our heart be
single, free from ambitions, and filled with the power of
truth alone, we shall see Divine justice win a perfect triumph. Then at last we shall enjoy peace united with
honor, because we shall have sealed up the source itself of
anarchy. And let this be our prayer: 0 God, who hast
brought us thus far in the path of our destiny, fill our souls
with the heavenly light of a true purpose, that we may
make our testimony in union and devotion, and cause our
future to repay with righteousness thy mercy to us in the
past. 
OUR COUNTRY'S TROUBLES.
A
SEBMON
PREACHED IN
THE CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY,
P H I L A D E L P H I A, J U N E  29, 1856
BY
REV. DUDLEY A. TYNG,
.,..
RECTOR.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF LAYMEN IN BOSTON.
B OSTON:
PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
CLEVELAND, OHIO:
JEWETT, PROCTOR AND WORTHINGTON.
NEW YORK: SHELDON, BLAKEMAN AND COMPANY.
1856. 
CAMBRIDGE:
ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS. 
iA"
S E R M 0 N.
1 CORINTHIANS  XII. 26.
WHETHER ONE MEMIBER SUFFER, ALL THE IMEIBERS SUFFER WITH IT: OR ONE
IMEMBER BE HONORED, ALL THE MEMIBERS REJOICE WITH IT.
IT is a mooted question how far the Christian pulpit
may, and ought to be enlisted in the consideration of
current events, and the discussion of questions of public interest. It is undoubtedly a great evil when the
teachers of religion forsake their appropriate themes
to mingle in all the heated controversies of the day.
Nothing could be more calculated to break down the
influence of the ministry, and to rear up insuperable
barriers of angry prejudice against the message of mercy
which it is its chief business to declare. But may there
not also be an opposite extreme? May there-not be
silence when great principles are at stake?  May not
great wrongs go unchallenged of the pulpit till there
be supposed nothing in them inconsistent with religion?  May not the dread of offence be carried so
far as to put the pulpit in bondage? And may not
the refusal to take sides in great questions of public 
4
opinion, result in the gospel's being supposed to have
nothing to do with the affairs of society, and in contempt on all hands for the ministry for its fear of
speaking out? Ministers have the same interest in
society and its institutions as other citizens; perhaps
more so: for their happiness is peculiarly bound up in
the right influence of religious and moral principles
upon the community. Society can suffer in no member without a true-hearted Christian ministry suffering
with it.
Religion itself, moreover, is often vitally affected by
events transpiring in social and political life. Evil
principles may be at work in the social system, whose
ultimate tendency is to destroy the practical influence
of Christianity over the conduct of men, and to undermine the foundations of their faith. Is the pulpit to
keep silence until the adversaries of the faith, having
completely invested it with intrenchments in public
custom and opinion, are boldly demanding its surrender? Human nature is an unit. Its many interests
are but one body. And the sufferings of any one of
its members are felt in the vital organs. Questions of
social and political economy, as well as of moral principle, may be the media of deadly wounds to the religious life. In fact, Christianity enters into every
interest of man.  And as Christians and Christian ministers we are interested in every thing that concerns
humanity. We cannot disconnect our religion from
the details of our common life. It affects or is affected
by them all.  "They are many members, yet but one
body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have 
5
no need of thee; nor again, the head to the feet, I
have no need of you."  "And whether one  member
suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member
be honored, all the members rejoice with it." Owing
to the close interchange of sympathy and influence,
the events of the day may assume a deep religious
significance. The same events which in one aspect agitate commercial interests, and in another convulse the
political circles, may in yet another be fraught with
stirring interest for the religious community.   And
while they awaken great contention on the plane of social or political life, they may also, from the higher
stand-point of the Christian patriot, be seen to affect
the dearest rights and interests of men, and to endanger great principles to the support of which the pulpit
is bound. At such times the Christian ministry may be
criminal if it does not speak out boldly in behalf of
right, carefully avoiding, indeed, the arousing of those
passions which belong to the lower aspect of events, but
fearlessly and dispassionately directing public sentiment
by the higher principles of divine revelation.
It seems to me that we have now reached such a
time. Events are transpiring which bear most momentously on all our rights as men, and duties as
Christians. All that is most dear and valuable torus as
citizens is put in jeopardy. The principles and influence of Christianity, which first founded our institutions, can alone preserve them to us in their integrity
in the present crisis. And I claim the right as a
Christian minister to declare what I believe to be important truth, and to do mny part, small as it may be,
1' 
6
towards tile settlement of the difficulties which encompass us.
I claim a patient hearing, and a candid comparison
with the principles of the Bible. If I am wrong, I am
open to conviction; if I am right, the declaration of
the truth will bring the responsibility of walking by its
light. With this prefatory statement let me call your
attention,  I. To the EVILS to be deplored.
For the first time in the history of this country, it is
the scene of civil war. Armed men, in battle array,
are marching on its soil. and carrying with them all the
horrors of a hostile invasion. Towns are sacked, houses
pillaged, property plundered and destroyed, women and
children driven in terror from their homes, and men
shot down by their own doors! Society is in confusion,
public security at an end, peaceful industry interrupted,
and a thriving Territory reduced to a state of nature,
where the only protection is that of force, and the
household cannot lie down at night without fear of the
assassin. Families are driven out from lands which
they have tilled and houses which they have built, and
warned to leave the country or be hung. Fields lie
unsown, and crops are left unploughed, because armed
marauders have stolen the farmer's horses and killed his
oxen, and obliged him to skulk in secret for fear of his
life, or join bodies of his neighbors who have armed in
defence of their homes and families. All the horrors
which existed when invading armies marched with
blood and desolation on our soil; all the suffering
which drenched our frontiers when the warwhoop of 
7
the savage aroused the sleeping household for the
tomahawk and the fagot, are now renewed in unhappy Kansas. Hardly a day passes without bringing telegraphic news of some new outrage, so dreadful
that we can scarce realize its possibility, or arouse ourselves to feel as the occasion demands. And who are
the authors of all these outrages on American citizens? Not the savage Indian nor the foreign invader,
but their own countrymen, citizens of our own free and
happy land, imbruing their hands in brothers' blood.
And what is the crime for which their brethren are
thus subjected to invasion and violence?  Merely dfference of opinion. Merely assertion of their right to think,
speak, write, and act according to their own conscience
and interests in forming the institutions of a Territory
into which the capital and population of the country
were invited by a solemn act of the Federal Government. On the 30th of May, 1854, the Territory of Kansas was thrown open to settlers by act of Congress, and
the privilege of determining the character of its institutions accorded to those who should become residents
of its soil. Attracted by this opening for industry and
enterprise, large numbers of persons from all sections of
the country emigrated to the Territory, and soon made
its prairies to smile with cultivation and dotted its surface with towns and villages. Never country opened
with brighter prospects. But how soon was this bright
morn overcast. On the 29th of November, 1854, the
infant Territory was to elect a delegate to appear and
speak in its behalf in the National Congress. On that
day more than one thousand armed men from an ad 
8
joining State invaded the Territory, drove judges and
legal voters from the polls, and by fraudulent ballots
elected a man of their own. On the 30th of March,
1855, the inhabitants of Kansas were to have elected
their Territorial Legislature. More than four thousand
armed men from the same State again invaded the
Territory, took possession of the polls and elected their
own candidates, some of them residents of their own
State. The recent investigations of the Congressional
Committee have proved that of five thousand five hundred votes cast on that day, less than one thousand
were of actual residents of the Territory. Surely it
was bad enough to see a Legislature imposed on them
by force and fraud. But what sort of laws did they
pass? Hear, and ask yourselves whether we live in
the nineteenth century, and in a free and Christian republic. They reenacted in a mass all the slave laws
of Missouri, merely adding that wherever the word
State" occurs in them it shall be construed to mean
"Territory." They made the non-admission of the right
to hold slaves in the Territory a disqualification for
sitting as juror. They enacted that to say that persons
have not a right to hold slaves in that Territory should
be punished with two years' imprisonment at hard labor.
That writing, printing, or circulating any thing against
slavery should be punished with five years' imprisonment at hard labor.  That the harboring of fugitive
slaves should be punished with five years' imprisonment at hard labor. That assisting slaves to escape
should be punished with death. That assisting slaves to
escape from any Territory, and take refuge in that Ter 
9
ritory, should be punished with death. That the print ing or circulation of publications calculated to incite
slaves to insurrection, should be punished with death.
To secure these laws perpetuity, they enacted that all
who do not swear to support the Fugitive Slave Law
should be disqualified as voters, but that any one might
vote who will pay $1.00, and swear to uphold the Fugitive Slave Law and the Nebraska bill. And, still
further to guard against all contingencies, they appointed non-residents to town and county offices for six
years ahead.
Thus, by one stroke of combined fraud and force, the
great question of social rights, whose settlement had
been pledged to the citizens themselves, were decided
by an invading army, whose agents established slavery
against the wishes of the people, disfranchise all who
oppose it, open the polls to all pro-slavery non-residents,
and shut up all who speak, write, print, or circulate any
thing against it with long imprisonment at hard labor.
What has become of the rights of American citizens?
Talk of obedience to law! Would you, would any
American, obey such laws so imposed? Where were
the spirit of our Revolutionary fathers, if such oppression could be submitted to? Where is our republican
government, if such rights can be taken away? 
But what was done in opposition? There was no
armed resistance, no collision with assumed authority.
The people of Kansas simply denied the legality of
the enactments and the obligation of obedience, and
falling back on inherent rights, went through the preliminaries of a State organization, and applied to Con 
10
gress for relief. That relief has not been yet afforded.
And what has since transpired? A third, fourth, and
fifth armed invasion has taken place, each with increased
aggravation of outrage. Pillage and plunder and murder have increased from day to day. Large bodies of
armed men from distant and adjoining States are in the
Territory, with no attempt at becoming settlers, without
means of honest support, living by the pillage of those
who differ from themselves in sentiment, and perpetrat
ing cruelties unknown even in war. Government troops
have been used to overawe all attempts at resistance,
and moved about so as to expose unprotected towns to
violence. A fourfold process of oppression has been
used to ruin and drive out those whose only crime is
the claiming of rights guaranteed them by the very law
which invited them to Kansas. First, innumerable indictments for imaginary crimes are made out by a
corrupt judiciary against all Free State men of influence, while the worst of crimes by men of opposite
politics have gone unnoticed.  Secondly, armed hordes
of ruffians, under pretence of maintaining C law and
order," patrol the country, committing all the outrages
which have been described. Thirdly, the United States
dragoons are made use of by the local authorities to
suppress any risings for self-defence, and kept out of
the way when attacks are to be made. And lastly,
"Vigilance Committees" are appointed to drive off,
with threats of " Lynch law," all those who, by the
other methods, have not been subdued. All this has
been going on for months. And recent accounts announce that the sufferers themselves are driven by des 
11
peration to armed defence, and the hostile bands are
now watching each other, and meeting in deadly con flict. Civil war is begun. And where is it to end, un less it can be suppressed at once in the place of its
birth? Let it not be said that we have no interest in
this matter. Distant and feeble as she may be, Kansas
is a member of our body politic. The same life-blood
which nourishes our own community flows through her.
And the wounds and anguish which she endures are
felt to the remotest parts of the Republic. Ties of
friendship and of blood unite her suffering children
to all sections of our country. And were these wanting, a common nationality binds them in one body to
us all, and the great heart of humanity enfolds them
in its sympathies.  "Whether one member suffer, all
the members suffer with it; or one member be honored,
all the members rejoice with it."
At the same time that these events have been transpiring, another scene has been enacted which has inflicted
a still deeper wound on the honor and peace of our country. A member of the Senate of the United States, a
man honored equally for his virtue and his attainments, has been stricken down and beaten by a member of Congress till his blood stained the floor of the
Senate, for words spoken in debate.   It matters-not
what were the words which gave offence, though it may
well be supposed that language unchallenged at the
time by a body whose majority were in opposition to
the speaker, did not transgress the ordinary limits of
parliamentary debate. It matters not what were the
words, nor who the speaker, nor who the assailant. It 
12
was a principle which was stricken down. And that
principle is one of all the pillars of our free institutions.
Without the right of freedom of speech, neither our
liberties nor our religion are secure. If the bludgeon
is to be the ruling power in our country, where will be
our boasted freedom and national Christianity? If the
flag of our country, and the symbols of her liberty cannot protect the members of her government within the
walls of her Capitol, in the discharge of their official
duty, what is to become of our republic? With the
freedom of the press overthrown in Kansas, and the
freedom of the Senate assailed in Washington, how
long before the freedom of the pulpit shall be also at
the mercy of a popular majority or of a reckless and
excitable bully? There is not a legislator, or an editor,
or a clergyman in the country, whose right to advocate
what he conscientiously believes, nor a citizen whose
right to representation of his sentiments, has not been
assailed in the blows which laid the eloquent Sumner
senseless on the Senate chamber. But the act itself is
not so ominous of evil as its indorsement. To hear it
defended and eulogized throughout the whole section
represented by the assassin, by public assemblies giving
votes of thanks for his iniquity, by the press almost
unanimously holding it up as worthy of imitation,
and by fellow-representatives who screen the offender
from punishment, may well make one feel sadly apprehensive for our country.   It indicates that we  are
becoming unworthy of our heritage, and that the sentiment of justice and right has rotted away in the
foundation of government. Alas for our country, when 
13
the makers of her laws dare not speak in defence of
what they deem human right, or must go armed with
deadly weapons for protection in the discharge of their
duty! God forbid that the ministers of religion should
refuse to speak in reprobation of the evil.
II. But let us look, secondly, at the inmpelling principle
of these outrages.   They have  all one impulse, the
aggressive spirit of slavery.  Let it be noted and
remembered that all these wrongs grow out of a determination to extend the area of human bondage. Why
are armed hordes now traversing Kansas with pillage
and murder? Simply that they may extend over it
the blight of slavery. Why are men illegally arrested,
robbed, driven from home, hunted like beasts, or shot
down dead in the fields? Simply because they desire
to save their home and family from the blight of slavery. Why are they denied the protection of a government whose pride it is to protect its citizens to the
farthest verge of the habitable globe? Merely because
they will not submit to force and fraud to be cursed
with slavery. Why was Sumner assailed and beaten in
the Senate? Merely because he spoke too pointedly
and plainly for their deliverance firom the attempted
curse of slavery. The sole impulse of all these outrages is the desire to extend slavery. The sole crime
of the sufferers is the invincible desire to be free. The
blood of a Senator has stained the floor of the Senate
chamber, the blood of her citizens has been poured out
like water on the virgin soil of Kansas, merely that it
may be made a land of bondage. The whole South is
aroused and pours forth invading armies, and the whole
2 
14
influence and power of the Federal Government are
employed to aid them, merely because the actual resi dents of Kansas, in the exercise of the rights guaranteed them by the law which opened the Territory to
settlers, are largely determined that it shall be free.
Ignoble contest! Where slavery is let it remain. Let
it be apologized for and mitigated as it can. I am not
one of those who would attack the South for the inheritance of perplexity and shame which Northern cupidity was originally a joint agent in introducing. Let
them mourn over the embarrassments and evils of their
lot, and strive to discharge their duty as Christian masters to the people they have found dependent and in
servitude. Thus out of their birthright of misfortune
they may work out a blessing to the subject race, and a
mission of mercy for themselves. To apologize for an
involuntary evil is one thing. To strive to extend and
perpetuate it is another. We may regard the former
with the truest charity. But as freemen and Christians, what must we say of the latter?
But why are Southern men so madly resolved that
Kansas shall be thrown open to slavery? Is it because
they desire themselves to be residents of the country?
Very few of them have any such idea. But it will
give them, first, and increase of political -power. It
will wheel another State into the phalanx, and give
them two more Senatorial votes for that control of the
Government which the far swifter progress of the Free
States has taken from them in the House of Representatives. Few among us have reflected on the political power given by slavery to the few. Three fifths 
15
of all the slaves are counted in with the whites as
the basis of representation, largely increasing the political importance of the white person at the South
over the white person at the North. Of the whites,
large numbers are either disfranchised by a property
qualification, or are completely under the control of
their wealthier neighbors.  Political honors and influence are confined to a few. In the whole fifteen slavehlolding States there are less than one hundred thousand
persons owning more than ten slaves each. How many
of these are desirous of deserting their plantations and
emigrating to Kansas? But these are the persons who
control the policy of fifteen States, and by their influence at home and at the North have controlled the
policy and monopolized the honors of the General Government. Is it to be wondered that they should make
such desperate efforts to extend so disproportionate an
importance? And as it grows so it will grow until this
whole land of liberty shall be made tributary to the
perpetuation of human bondage.
The establishment of slavery in Kansas will give
them, secondly, a new market for slaves. The pecuniary value of slavery arises not from the productive.
ness of slave labor. It costs much and produces little,
wastes largely and wears out the soil it cultivates.  Left
to itself, it impoverishes, in the long run, both land and
owner, and would gradually work out its own extermination. But slave-breeding compensates for the expensiveness of slave labor. To breed human beings for sale,
to rear immortal souls that they may be driven like
cattle to the market and sold to the highest bidder, is 
16
a profitable business. Families and estates are main tained by such breeding and sale, often of blood rela tions. To keep up the price the market must be ex tended. New States and Territories must have their
virgin soil thrown open to slavery, and as their lands
also become impoverished, join the slave-breeding States
in the ceaseless cry of the horse-leech and her daugh ters. Kansas is now invaded and outraged merely that
it may be made a land of bondage, and that for the
increase of a political power inimical to our free institu tions, and a stimulus to the breeding of human beings
for sale.
And what is the pretence under which these evil
deeds are covered up, and the acquiescence of the
country in them is sought? It is the equal right of
men of all sections of the country to go with their
property into the national territory. It is said that to
deny the right of slaveholders to carry their property
there, is to destroy the equality of our citizens. As
this is the grand plea, which is designed to, and to some
extent does, impose on the public mind for excuse of
all these enormities, it is essential that it should be
examined. Let it be observed then, in the first place,
that the claimed right of carrying one's idetzicalpropert
with him in removal, is an absurdity.  How much property is there in its nature so local that it cannot be
removed? Who could remove his farm, or his fishery,
or his water-power? Yet who ever thought of declaiming against the injustice of Nature and Providence, because he  could not take them  to Kansas?
The proceeds of their sale he can take. And has any 
17
body ever denied to the slaveholder the right to take to
Kansas the proceeds of the sale of his slaves as well as
the proceeds of the sale of his plantation? Secondly,
the right of property in human beings is not a natural
rig,ht, but merely the result of local laws.  Outside the
jurisdiction of those laws, the right does not exist.
There are States where lotteries are allowed by law.
A lottery interest is the property of its holder. Because lotteries aire proscribed in Kansas or elsewhere,
has the lottery holder cause to complain of the overthrow of his constitutional rights? Shall Kansas be
invaded and drenched in blood because its inhabitants
will not pass the local laws which in other States have
made lotteries property? With as much reason as
because they will not establish property in human flesh
and blood. The property which results from local laws
can be sold where those local laws have made it valuable, and its proceeds taken wherever the owner may
please. And is the Union to be convulsed, a peaceful
Territory made the scene of war, and industrious citizens
robbed and murdered, because some hotheaded individual has resolved that instead of taking his thousand dollars to Kansas in gold and silver, he will take it in the
shape of a lottery office or a brother man?  Let the
flimsy pretext be understood. If the right of holding
human beings as property results merely from local law,
it is limited by the law which created it. If it be a natural right it is as indefeasible in Pennsylvania as it is in
Kansas. And this will be the final issue.
But thirdly, it seems to be entirely forgotten that
there are rights on the other side. It is a fundamental
2* 
18
principle in law that one man must not, by his property,
injure that of his neighbors. The welfare of the one
must give way to the welfare of the many. Now if one
man has property in a fellow, there are thousands of
others who  have more undoubted property in themselves. If one claims the right of making the bodily
labor of his fellow subserve his own comfort and advantage, there are thousands of others who claim a divine
and indefeasible right to make their own good arms
available to their own support and advancement. And
these two rights conflict. For slave labor and free
labor are opposed to each other. Slavery degrades
bodily labor. It makes a man's bodily strength and
manual skill less availing for his own profit and elevation. It thus diminishes and takes away his inherent
property in himself.  It lessens his pecuniary reward,
and shuts up the door of promotion. The question is,
therefore, between the right of one man to the muscles
of his neighbor and the right of thousands to the full
benefit of their own muscles. It is whether one man
is to leave his slave behind him, or whether a thousand
white citizens are to be enslaved if they go. The rights
of all our laboring classes, ten thousand to one slaveholder, are invaded in the attempt at the violent
subjugation of Kansas.   Moreover,  there are many
methods of remunerative labor of more intellectual
character that are available only in a free community.
In fact, there is scarcely a department of ingenuity or
power, which the history and present state of our country do not show to be circumscribed and depreciated
by the presence of slavery. The intellectual, literary, 
19
and inventive, as well as the bodily powers of man
become less available for individual and social pros perity.  Every man, therefore, who  is not himself a
slave-holder, is interested for himself, his children, his
relatives and friends in the exclusion of slavery. His
property and their property in their own minds and
bodies is depreciated by the introduction of slave labor.
The inalienable rights which God himself has given to
him and them are arrayed against the merely local
and transferable, not to say disputable, right of the
slave-holder. The suffering in Kansas, the suffering
of Sumner, is not in resistance of human right, but it
is martyrdom in defence of the rights of the many
against the aggression of a few. And the question is
not whether there shall be maintained the rights of a
few thousand slave-holders, but whether shall be maintained the rights of millions of freemen.
II. But, thirdly, let us not lose sight of the divine
agency in all the troubles which have come upon us.
We are taught in Holy Scripture that the providence
of God overrules the actions of men no less than the
operations of nature. Every human agent is to the
Lord only as the saw in the hand of him that shaketh
it. No man can have any power at all against tie object of his hatred or oppression, except it be given him
from above. "Man proposes, but God disposes." And
therefore when there is evil in a city or a country, we
are to look above the human instrumentalities, and
humble ourselves uinder tile hand of God, and inquire
why He hath dealt so greivously with us. Especially
is this the case in public calamities. For as bodies 
20
politic have no existence in the world to come, their
judgment and recompense, unlike that of individuals,
can take place only in this world. The question which
we ought to ask ourselves, therefore, is, "Wherefore
hath the Lord dealt thus with His servants?" Many
are our national offences. But there is ever a correspondence between the offence and its punishment.
And we are to search out the sins and errors for which
this special visitation has been sent.
Doubtless, one sin for which we are suffering is the
base spirit of truckling and pandering to sectional
interests and prejudices, which has for so many years
characterized the prime movers of our political machinery. Politics have been a mere trade, conducted
without honesty or principle for selfish aggrandizement.
Vainly do we look for patriotism in the wire-working
of our political parties. The whole government is
administered upon the principle of the division of the
spoils. There has been no prejudice so opposed to the
spirit of our institutions, no sectional interest so degrading, that political leaders, low and high, were not willing
to sell themselves to it for votes. There has been no
combination of parties too inconsistent, unprincipled, and
corrupt to be entered into for the sake of office and
public money. In particular, the leading political parties
have for years been conducted in rivalry of subservience
to the interests of slavery. The interests of the nation
have been disregraded and sacrificed in disgraceful un derbidding for the slave-holding vote. There was no
deep so low for one party to descend into, that some
"lower deep still opening wide" was not discovered by 
21
the other. For more than a generation has this system
of self-abasement been going on. No wonder that those
who have been the objects of this solicitation should
have been educated into the idea that the whole gov  ernment of the country should be conducted for the
benefit of slavery. If our unhappy country is now
suffering from Southern violence, it has been brought
on us by that long and increasing self-abasement of
Northern politicians. Especially is this the case with
our present agitations. A new scene of commotion had
been settled by new concessions, to which for the sake
of peace, all parties had assented. The whole land was
at rest and quiet. Slavery was demanding nothing more,
and its opponents had made up their minds to acquiesce
in the settlement, when, for pure party purposes and
for personal aggrandizement, the time-honored barrier
of freedom was overthrown as a new bid in the auction
which has sacrificed the domain of the nation for the
slave-holding vote. Let the authors of the iniquity be
nameless here, as they deserve to be in the annals of
the Republic. Insane and unprincipled ambition is the
source of all the agitation and turmoil and bloodshed
which has been rending the land asunder. The whole
people have witnessed so tamely the successive betrayals
of their interests, and voted so docilely on the issues
hey presented, that hope had been conceived of their
inlimited submission. The sectional jealousies which it
Aas stirred up anew, and the attempt to secure, by violence, what slavery understood to be offered it by the
measure, is its natural consequence, and the providen 
22
tial punishment of the nation for the iniquity which it
sanctioned and encouraged.
Another political sin for which the nation is thus
suffering, is the neglect of political duty by respectable citizens. We have boasted much of our political
rights; but we have been sadly unmindful of our political duties.  Hlow large a proportion of the most
respectable and influential of our citizens have wholly
abstained from the nomination and election of our
rulers. The whole business of nominations has been
given up to caucuses, chiefly composed of the ambitious
and the vile. Assemblies in which no respectable
person could appear, have brought out candidates of
their own, for inferior offices, and conventions of interested men have long wrangled out the nomination to
higher posts of those to whose election they could pin
their own hopes of office to be acquired or retained.
All honesty and all patriotism have quite disappeared
from our political system. Politics have become a
trade so low that few respectable men dare touch it.
Not an election can be carried without money, and bargaining, and rum. And in consequence not a bill can
be carried through our national legislature without
bribes. Yet orderly and respectable citizens see those
iniquities without troubling themselves for thleir correc tion. Absorbed in their own business and comfort, they
leave the rule of the country they care not to whom.
And yet they boast of their political rights. But God
has given no right without obligation of use.   The
right of self-government involves the duty of self-gov 
23
ermment, the duty of selecting and electing the rulers
of our people.   This sacred duty, due to ourselves,
mankind, and God, has been wofully neglected, and,
therefore, God has turned our neglect into our punishment, and chastised the land with misrule and civil
war.
Kindred and consequential to these has been another
sin- the entire divorce of the whole system of politics
from the fear of God. If respectable men, when they
kept aloof from the selection of condidates for office,
also threw away their allegiance to party, the evil
would be less.  But, by a strange confusion of moral
sense, the obligation to party is made unquestionable
and supreme.  No matter what may be the character
of its agents- no matter what may be the evil princi ples or iniquitous measures incorporated in its action,
how many good men there are for whom the single
consideration, that it is the action of their own party,
is enough. They ask no questions, listen to no argu ment, recognize no higher authority. How few Chris tian men ever think of taking counsel of God in questions of public affairs, and giving religion the control of
their politics. How few citizens recognize their responsibility to God for their political influence. How few
men of principle bring their political conduct to the
same tests as their ordinary intercourse. Now, let it be
remembered, that the ultimate responsibility of every
measure rests with the people, and in this matter, as in
all others, each one must answer for himself. Caucuses
of the idle and dissolute may nominate whom they
please, leaders of political parties may venture on what 
24
iniquities they will, but to the people belongs the responsibility of their adoption. Without the sanction of
the people they sink into the obscurity which they deserve. It is on this principle that God is dealing with
us as a people. The American people have been characterized by a blind and unscrupulous adherence to party
- the political morality of our country has become a
by-word and a hissing - the whole people, by negligence or party spirit, have become partakers in the
guilt of actions which, if they had not been in politics,
would be a loathing to the moral sense of the community. And, therefore, God has punished the nation with
the legitimate results of their own misconduct.
For these national offences God has justly brought
upon us disgrace and suffering, and a discord which
threatens the direst disasters in the future.
IV. But let us inquire, fourthly, into the providential
design of these afflictions. What lesson are they sent to
teach, what practical end to secure? Why have the
truckling subserviency of Northern politicians and the
arrogant aggressions of the slave power been allowed
to proceed so far unchecked, and to bring forth such
disastrous fruits? Is it not to bring back the public
mind to the views of slavery which were entertained at
the formation of our government, and so to open anew
the way for its amelioration and ultimate removal? A
great change has come over the public sentiment in
regard to slavery within the last twenty-five or thirty
years. Previous to that time it found its apologists
neither North nor South. It was lamented and deplored
on every hand as a necessary evil. The most that 
25
could be said in regard to it was that living men were
not responsible for its introduction, and that it was not
yet safe to attempt its abrogation. All professed to
look forward to a time when it should cease to be.
With this view all1 moderate men were satisfied. They
blushed at it as an anomaly in the land of freedom, and
mourned over it before God as an evil they would not
have laid to their charge. The strengthening of liberty,
the growth of civilization, and the influence of Christianity, then held out the hope of approaching deliverance. And the feeling of many pious and excellent
people is still the same. But the public aspect and
expression of slavery is entirely altered. It is now
claimed on the one hand, and the doctrine is assented
to on the other, that it is a fundamental part of our
national policy; that our Constitution is designed for its
protection, and that it is to grow and extend itself without limit on the'national territory. All hope and idea of
its removal is discarded. It is transformed into a permament  element of American society.  The  programmes
of political leaders now allow no hope to the unfortunate slave and his no less unfortunate master. The inherited evil is transformed into the wilful sin of the
present generation. The original sin of slavery is fast
becoming, through corrupt politicians, the freewill crime
of the American people. This presents the matter in a
very different aspect before God and the civilized world.
Whatever may be said in the way of temporary extenuation, slavery and human right, slavery and the Christian law of love are in irreconcilable opposition. To
do the best we can with an inherited evil, until Provi
3 
26
dence enables us to put it away, may receive blessing
from the Lord. But because of some incidental advantages to resolve on its permanence and extension, will
surely receive his curse, and bring ruin to our country.
So gradually has the change of temper and purpose
been introduced, that, as a nation, we were hardly aware
of the sin in which we were becoming ensnared. But
the recent events have given such a shock to the spirit
of freedom as to arouse the nation to perceive the gulf
before us. May it be made the means of a recoil of
public sentiment which shall put the system of human
bondage back where it was at the formation of our
government. May this demonstration of its spirit and
tendency prevent all tampering with it in future. Thus
God will make the wrath of man to praise Him; and
then, doubtless the remainder of wrath will He restrain.
V. It now remains that we should consider the duties
of the present crisis. The time will not allow more
than a brief enumeration.
1. The first duty of the crisis is a right public sentiment. Ours is a government of opinion. To public
opinion every party and every coalition is compelled
to bow. It is mightier than bayonets. The only difficulty is in bringing the national mind to a decision.
There is freer circulation of news in this country than
in any other, and yet there is surprising ignorance and
unconcern of what is taking place in the country.
Many of our countrymen have no adequate idea of
what has occurred in Kansas. They know that there
has been trouble and fighting, but their information is 
27
most partial and incorrect. Very few of the political
journals have presented a faithful report of facts. They
have been advocates and not witnesses, catching up
events for special pleading for party effect, instead of
relating the whole truth before the tribunal of the
people. Now let every person seek to inform himself
and his neighbors of events as they are. Put the facts
before the people. Let them know the outrages which
have been committed. Let them understand the spirit
which has actuated them, and the end at which they
aim. Let them be taught to view the facts and prin ciples of the present crisis, irrespective of party affini ties. And who can doubt that the American people
will condemn this imbruing of hands in brothers' blood,
and tyrannizing over brethren in questions of right;
rebuke the aggressor, and spread the mighty shield of
public sympathy and favor over the persecuted. This
cause is to be tried, not by violence, but at the bar of
public opinion. And whenever an intelligent decision
on full and impartial testimony shall be given by the
tribunal, all the agitators will be powerless. Violent
men, on all sides, may threaten what they please. They
might as well threaten the Pacific Ocean as the resolved
judgment and conscience of the nation. Our first duty
is, therefore, to enlighten the public mind. Make the
daily journals feel that it is their interest to spread all
the facts and the testimony of all sides before their
readers.   Make  use of the  mail for distribution of
documents to your acquaintance. Organize a system
of political colportage, which shall leave tracts at every
man's door, and through the crowds at the markets 
28
send them everywhere on the wings of the wind.
This is the true system of republican government, and
the true way to correct a public evil.
2. A second duty of the crisis is the pecuniary relief
of the sufferers in Kansas. The operations of husbandry have been broken up by ruthless invaders. There
will be no crops to nourish the inhabitants. Every department of trade and labor has been so paralyzed by
fear and violence that industrious men are without the
means of livelihood. Behind all the other enemies of
Kansas stalks famine, threatening to complete the extermination.   Families are compelled to leave their
homes and farms for want of bread. Besides which, insatiable robbery has plundered hundreds of every thing
that could be carried off. Horses, wagons, oxen, cows,
sheep, provisions, clothing, money have been seized in
broad daylight by roving marauders. The suffering inhabitants must return penniless to their former homes,
or they must starve on the spot amidst their own fertile
but desolated fields. Send them the relief which they
need. Cheer their disconsolate spirits by the knowledge that there are thousands of their countrymen who
sympathize with their misfortunes and condemn their
wrongs. Give them food to eat and raiment to put on.
Provide them with bread in the wilderness, and bid
them remain and put their trust in the God of forces.
The agencies of collection and distribution are already
organized. Our brethren in other cities have already
begun to pour in their benefactions. Let the city of
the peace and liberty-loving Penn emulate their example. 
29
3. The third duty of the crisis is the reinforcement
of the pioneers in Kansas with Free State settlers. The
organic law of the Territory has guaranteed to its act ual settlers the right of determining their own insti tutions. The American people will see that that right
is not defeated by force or fraud. The soil was once
consecrated unto freedom. It is yet pledged to free dom, if free men have the enterprise to settle it, If
four to one is not a sufficient majority to secure the
pledged result, then send ten to one. If twenty thou sand will not make it free, then pour in one hundred
thousand. The law of majorities is to settle it. Let it
be so large that force and fraud will be unavailing.
Even armed marauders will have to yield to public
opinion. Let its expression in the multiplication of
liberty-loving settlers be overwhelming. Send men
who are industrious and will work; men who are intelligent and know their rights; bold, and will defend
them. Send men who are peaceable and patient, who
love law and order in its true sense, and have property
dependent on its preservation; whose hands love the
implements of labor, but who will not hesitate to take
down the implements of war to repel the invaders of
their household. Send them with their flocks and their
herds, with their wives and their little ones, with their
saw-mills and their schoolmasters and their ministers,
and let them go up into this land that floweth with
milk and honey, and the God who guided Israel will
give them an inheritance. The question must be decided not by the rifle and the bowie knife, but by the
axe and the ploughshare. Therefore, appeal to no war 
30
like feeling to send counter bands of ruffians for counter outrage, but send settlers of the soil, strong in the
conviction of right, and resolute in the determination
to maintain it.
4. The fourth duty of the crisis is the independent
and conscientious use of the ballot-box. Let the fear
of God and the love of man bring party predilections
to an honest argument at the bar of conscience. Party
will die, but the country will live. Party will die, but
we shall live to answer at a higher tribunal respecting
a freeman's privilege and a freeman's duty. We are
the sovereigns of the republic. We are to decide the
issues of opinion and the choice of rulers for ourselves.
It matters not what interested and designing men on
the one side or on the other may agree upon for selfish
ends; it is ours to review and decide the question for
ourselves, for the benefit of our country. And it is
God's to bring us and them into judgment, and to give
sentence on our actions according to truth.
5. And finally and chiefly, the crisis calls us to general humiliation and prayer before God. The Lord's
hand is to be seen in our afflictions as well as man's.
Vainly would the enemies of the public peace have
plotted mischief, if the Lord had not allowed them to
bring it to pass in punishment of our sins. And vainly
shall we endeavor to escape the punishment unless
we humble ourselves before Him who has inflicted it.
Many and great have been our sins, individual and
national. The Lord has been provoked every day by
ingratitude, irreligion, and crime. In our prosperity we
have forgotten Him who gave us our goodly heritage. 
31
We have said, "Who is the Lord, what profit is there if
we shall serve Him?" We have been ungrateful for
His favors. We have kicked at His judgments. We
have gloried in our institutions and government, as
though they were  any thing without the God who
founded them. We have almost deemed it impossible
for public and political iniquity to ruin us. And, there fore, we have seen all branches of government defiled
by corruption with an apathy or indolent acquiescence
which has made the whole people partakers in the in iquity. Never till we return unto the Lord, and
make our supplication humbly before our Judge, will
He remove His chastisements from off our country.
All means; all plans will fail without Him. But the
Lord is gracious and merciful. He listened to the intercession of Moses for his people, and of Abraham for
Sodom; and hlie will now listen to the prayers of His
people. The effectual fervent prayer of the righteous
availeth much. Let Christian men, then, humble themselves before God. Let them confess the sins of their
people and their own implication in them. Let them
plead singly and unitedly with God for His overruling
Providence in protection of our country. Let them
pray daily and earnestly for their rulers and for all in
authority. Let them pray for the defeat of iniquity,
and the suppression of violence, and the protection of
the depressed. Let them pray for the right guidance
of the popular mind in the issues before it. Let us all
remember that promotion cometh not from the North
or from the West, nor yet from the South, but that the
Lord, He putteth down one, and raiseth up another, 
32
and beseech his intervention. Let us beseech Him to
ameliorate sectional animosities, and to turn the hearts
of the people like rivers of water to the common good.
Let us thus remember God in our calamity, and the
God that maketh men to be of one mind in an house
will restore peace to our distracted country, and establish our liberties on an impregnable foundation. 
THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY:
DISCOURSE
PREACHED IN THE
FEDERAL STREET MEETINGHOUSE IN BOSTON,
SUNDAY, JUNE 8, 1856.
BY EZRA S. GANNETT.
Vublsbe't bo Request
BOSTON:
CROSBY, NICHOLS, & COMPANY,
111, WASHINGTON STREET.
1856.
k,
ON
I 
BOSTON:
PRINTErD BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,
22, SCHOOL STREET. 
DISCOURSE.
ISAIAH, LIX. 1, 2.
THE LORD'S HAND IS NOT SHORTENED, THAT IT CANNOT SAVE; NEITHER HIS
EAR HEAVY, THAT IT CANNOT HEAR: BUT YOUR INIQUITIES HAVE SEPARATED
BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR GOD.
THiERE are times when speech is a duty, and times
when silence is a virtue. There are times when, if
one gives expression to the feeling with which his
heart is burthened, he will be moved to say what his
cooler judgment might not approve; and times when
the calmest judgment forbids a suppression of the
indignant or sorrowful feeling with which the breast
labors. When we met here a fortnight ago, I was
glad that the solemnities of the approaching iveek
suggested a topic which drew our thoughts away
from the painful facts of which it might then have
been difficult to speak without transgressing the
boundaries of Christian discussion. And, on the last
Sunday, the associations to which we are accustomed
to yield ourselves kept our view fixed on the great 
4
Sufferer. Through these two weeks, the facts to
which I allude have lost none of their mournful significance, although the intense feeling which they at
first excited may have settled into a more deliberate
estimation of their character. It seems to me, that
at this moment a voice should come from the sanctuaries of religion, addressing itself to the exigencies
of the period. If only political interests were imperilled or involved, the sanctuaries of religion should
not be disturbed by the intrusion of themes foreign
from the purpose to which they are devoted. But, in
the present state of our country, every interest dear to
man,- the progress of civilization, the well-being of
society, the fundamental principles of righteousness,
the vital elements of character, the reality of moral distinctions, the meaning of life; all that the pulpit is
erected to explain or enforce; the value of the gospel as a law, and its efficacy as an influence, -all
these are brought within the scope of the inquiry now
on every one's lips, What shall be done  That
question does not simply ask, What shall patriots do?
or what shall republicans do? or what shall Americans do? using these, not as party names, but in their
better and broader sense.   It compels us to consider
what Christians should do. And to this inquiry,
drawing its proper answer from the Bible and the
gospel, I reply, Repent and pray. This is the time
to think of God; the time to humble ourselves before
Him, for we all need his forgiveness;  the time to 
5
seek from Him the wisdom and the help which He
alone can give, and without which I see in the future
only a history that it makes one sick at heart to
regard as even possible.
It ought not, perhaps, to surprise us, that, under
the exasperation of feeling which no one is ashamed
to confess, so little has been said of our dependence
on God; a dependence which, as we look backward,
must remind us of obligation that no neglect of ours
can annul, and, as we look onward, opens to us the
only trust to which we can retreat from our fears.
Yet is not our perilous condition a result which we
have induced? The present is but the maturity of
the past; and, if shame and anxiety fill our hearts,
while the cloud of the Divine displeasure hangs over
our country, it is "our iniquities that have separated
between us and our God." When the apprehension of
imminent evils drives us to consider what methods
of relief or security we can adopt, shall we rely on
human strength, and forget that "the Lord's hand is
not shortened that it cannot save, neither his ear
heavy that it cannot hear "? In all which has proceeded from the tongues or pens of the North within
this fortnight, that has come under my eye, I have seen
nothing in which I have felt a more hearty concurrence than in what was said by the minister of the
Mount Vernon church, on the last Sunday afternoon.
If one or another sentence in that discourse might be
amended, its purpose and tone claim more than com 
6
mendation,- they invite imitation; and if I can lead
you, my friends, to the same exercises of penitence and
prayer to which it was his desire to conduct his hearers, I shall speak as I ought at this time.
I anticipate the admonition, not to trespass on
party ground. The preacher should not lead his congregation through the turbid waters of political strife,
it is said: and I both accept and approve the restriction. But is it not one of the most lamentable errors
into which a people can fall, that they refuse to take
such subjects as demand our present consideration
out of the warfare of temporary interests. What!
questions that lay hold on the first principles of personal duty and social order; questions that relate to
the very existence of liberty, and the preservation of
government, - those mutually suggestive ideas and
mutually dependent facts; questions that embrace
great moral issues; - to be treated as mere portions
of party policy, and be dragged from their majestic
importance to become the materials out of which
ambition shall construct the steps by which it may
climb to eminence!  No, no!  Upon such questions,
the people should disown all ties but those which
bind them to justice and honor. There should be no
consent of a party to the commission of crime, or the
perpetration  of outrage.   Any  party  should  be
ashamed of complicity with brutal violence; every
man should hasten to disclaim sympathy with an
assault on the safeguards of freedom and the rights of 
humanity. We go behind the divisions which preference for this or that man, or this or that measure,
creates, to the truths on which the institutions that
we all value rest as their only support, when we call
upon our hearers to discountenance the substitution
of injury for argument, or of brute force for legal
restraint.
The party spirit which is so rife in this country,
and which falls like a mildew on every generous impulse, while it puts fetters on all independent action,
stands in the double relation of effect and cause to a
yet greater evil under which we suffer; far greater,
because it is the most disastrous of all evils, whether
for an individual or for a community to cherish. I
mean the banishment of moral and religious convictions from practical life. We are not practically a
Christian nation, nor even a nation of theists.
Though not guilty of an open denial of God, yet, in
the primitive sense of the word, as "without God in
the world," we are atheists. While avoiding a direct
avowal of infidelity, we treat both Christian rules
and Christian sentiments with a neglect that is equivalent to unbelief Especially does this disregards of
the considerations by which the mind should be
governed appear in our political action. Hiow few
bring their decision upon the support they shall give
or refuse to a measure of the government, or to a candidate for office, under the light which faith in any
thing above or beyond this world would throw upon it!
7 
8
Because the Church neither receives the patronage of
the State nor attempts to control the State by any
direct action, it seems to be thought that the Church
and the State have nothing in common; as if the
truths which have built up the one were not the basis
of the other. Every question that enters into the
history of civil government has a moral and religious
side. Does a war with England, or with any country, cast its gigantic shadow over our future prosperity?  The statesman or the private citizen, who, in
forming his opinion upon the propriety of such a conflict of national forces, leaves out of view the antagonism between war and the spirit of the gospel, omits
the most important element of a correct judgment.
Is the extension of Slavery beyond the bounds within
which its noxious influence is now felt, attempted?
That any one may determine upon the right course
for him to pursue in reference to this subject, he
must take into account the effects of such an institution upon the character alike of the master and of
the slave. Are the use of deadly weapons, and a
resort to dastardly violence, encouraged by the example of men holding seats in the national Legislature?
The morality of the land, surely, is not bound to keep
silence, lest it should meddle with matters that do
not lie within its province; for what amidst all the
forms of human wickedness may be exposed by
the religious teacher, if such conduct must pass without his rebuke?  Even if it were true that the ordi 
9
nary business of government has no religious
connections, whenever selfishness and passion become
dominant influences, when the sanctity of law is
contemned and the essential rights of freemen are
invaded, when rapine and murder are the methods
used to adjust political differences, the Christian who
does not speak in behalf of righteousness is disloyal
to his Master. There are some offences which, as
they do not admit of palliation, forbid silence. We
may lament the introduction into Congressional
debate of a style of personal recrimination as ill suited
to any good end, as it is inconsistent with Senatorial
dignity; but no discourtesy of the tongue can excuse
the arm lifted with a deliberate purpose of vengeance.
The want of moral and religious principle in those
who are the chosen guardians of the public interests
should humble us to the dust; for they represent
either the sentiment or the negligence of the people,
without whose active or passive consent such men
could not have the opportunity of abusing high
trusts. The political profligacy of the times falls
back upon the people, as the authors of the downward
course which we are treading. There is too little
fear of God in their hearts, and too little love of
righteousness. A nation cannot prosper which denies
to moral considerations their proper influence over
public affairs.
The tendencies which are manifesting themselves
among us cannot but be unfavorable to the conti
2 
10
nuance of our free institutions. These institutions
are not in themselves immortal, nor inaccessible to
harm. They are not made of adamant or granite;
their strength lies in the character of the people.
Nothing can endanger their stability more than the
indulgence, on the one hand, of ambitious, selfish,
and violent tempers within the present boundaries of
the republic; or, on the other hand, an enlargement
of our territory without regard to the justice of the
acquisition or to the previous condition of those
whom such enlargement may bring into the Union.
An insane passion for unlimited growth is tempting
us to place both our external and our internal relations in jeopardy. We are greedy of success, and, if
not unscrupulous, are impatient in regard to the
means. We thirst for dominion, and covet the exercise of an influence that may bring us into collision
with the Powers of the Old World; instead of enjoying
the immunity from European jealousies and conflicts
which our situation might afford us. We abound in
self-conceit, and claim an admiration to which we
show ourselves but poorly entitled. We are growing
passionate, turbulent, savage, profane. With all the
expense that is lavished on education, and all
the benevolent agencies that are established, we are
losing refinement of manners, disparaging intellectual
culture, fostering habits of extravagance, countenancing luxury and display, and precipitating ourselves upon a change in our moral condition which 
11
must materially affect our political state. Virtue and
piety are the defences of popular government. Let
them be broken down, and the best constructed sys tem of organized liberty will be precarious. It can
last but a little time without justice towards man
and faith towards God.
One effect of the example which we are now present ing is, to discredit the theory of our institutions abroad.
In the Divine providence, the experiment of intrusting a people with the task and risk and glory of
self-government was committed to us for the instruction of the world. Never was such a responsible
position held by a people before; never such an
opportunity enjoyed of benefiting mankind. Through
the years of our weakness and youth, while we fell
into some mistakes, we on the whole sustained the
burthen, which it was an honor to bear, with dignity
and success. Gradually the contempt of the old despotisms was turned into respect or fear, the hopes of
those who sighed for emancipation firom tyranny in
Europe were inflamed by admiration of our career,
the infant republic took its place among the great
Powers of the earth; and moderation and discretion
alone were needed to have made our history a light
that would have guided the Eastern continent into
the enjoyment of constitutional liberty, if not of
republican government. But with our prosperity we
became self-sufficient, immoral, and reckless   In the
spectacle which our public affairs have offered to 
12
the nations, they have beheld a retrograde civilization.
Our boasted superiority is sinking into a fierce lawlessness; our legislation has become unprincipled,
our policy grown rapacious; our prominent men
distinguish themselves by acts that would be disreputable in private life; the institution which, at the
commencement of our Union, though a palpable contradiction of the fundamental principle of our political
order, was permitted to remain because its decay was
thought to be sure and to be safer than its immediate
eradication, has increased in visible magnitude, and
still more in secret influence, till it overshadows the
whole land; violence stalks through the chambers of
the capitol, and civil war is already enkindled on the
borders of the republic;-  and what must now be
the effect of our example abroad, but to fill the hearts
of good men with disappointment, and to animate the
supporters of monarchical and aristocratical institutions with proud exultation? Why should they not
exult'  They see enough to dispel the fears that
were once inspired as they looked across the Atlantic,
and are waiting for our downfall to read a lesson on
the inefficiency of popular government, which centuries may not erase from the memories of men. 0
my country! how unwise, how unfaithful, hast thou
been!
The effect upon ourselves of our misuse of the
position in which we were placed, as a people with
whom liberty and law should have been co-ordinate 
13
terms, is seen in the loosened morality which pervades
the land. Look into our cities, and you find a luxuriance of vice such as indicates a rich soil left without
the care that might have made it productive of the
most substantial harvest. From the villages which
were once the seats of Puritanic propriety we receive
painful intelligence of crime, besides many a tale that
marks a want of religious restraint. The great West
heaves with its excess of life, suspended as it were
between a magnificent destiny and an ignoble materialism. Polygamy has planted its homes in the fertile
plains that were an unknown region a few years ago,
and Paganism has erected its altars of idolatrous worship on the shores of the Pacific. Honest and able
men prefer the retirement of private life, to an exposure of character and person amidst the vulgar passions that infest the scenes of public duty; and, worse
than all, the people are losing their faith in freedom,
in goodness, and in God. Life is becoming a scramble for outward success; politics are given over to
unworthy management; and, unless some check be
provided, the future pages of our history will describe
the decadence and fall of the noblest structure ever
raised by human hands.
In this picture of national disaster, one circumstance
is especially suited to create gloomy apprehension.
The country is divided on a question of sectional interest. In former times, the division has been kept
more or less clear of this fearful issue. Now it is 
14
brought to a direct struggle between the North and
the South. One or the other must yield. Each says
it has made all the concession it will make; each
speaks of the injustice it has received in the past, and
spreads its angry menace over the future. I am not
now considering which of these antagonists has right
or strength on its side. Each believes it has both
strength and right. What, to human view, must follow but open contention,- the arbitrament of the
battle-field?  I know that it is common at the North
to deride the threats of the South, as an attempt at
intimidation, which will be relinquished the moment
it shall fail of its purpose. But they who reason in
this manner forget that pride and passion do not take
counsel of sound judgment. The South will not
pause to calculate consequences.   When  what  it
calls its honor is assailed, and what it holds to be its
chief interest is endangered, it will prefer defeat to
submission. The history of the world has been written in vain, if it do not teach us that men will fight
rather than yield, though the chances of success be
all against them. The temper of the South is desperate, as well as arrogant.   The leaders of opinion
there may be few, but determination does not wait
to count numbers.
What, then, is before us?  Perhaps a civil war,
the first spark of which, struck in a territory but
yesterday unsettled, may wrap the whole country in its
fiery surges. Are we prepared for this? Some there 
15
are who answer, Yes, let it come; and others who
say, It never will come.  To the latter I reply, Your
confidence may be misplaced; and to the former,
Your decision betrays more of impetuosity than of
thoughtfulness. Have you remembered how much
war always causes of suffering and sin   Have you
considered that no war is so internecine, because no
hatred is so intense, as that in which former friends
are arrayed as enemies  Have you anticipated the
miseries that must ensue, for years and years, when
fraternal relations shall have been converted, by an
enforced peace, into smothered but burning desires for
revenge?  Have you brought before your imagination
the world's discouragement, when this fair heritage of
constitutional freedom shall have been drenched in
fratricidal blood? "Bombastic extravagance," may be
the only reply that some persons will give. Not so,
my friends. Not a word in the sentences I have just
spoken goes beyond the inevitable truth. I ask the
Christian to ponder well his meaning, when he talks
of bloodshed as if it were but a display of military
lines on our Common. War is the last resort of civilized man, if it should ever be the means adopted by
a Christian people for the maintenance of their rights.
I do not say, that, in the final extremity, whether for
an individual, or a nation, or the oppressed part of a
nation, self-defence, though through blood, is not
a duty; but it then derives its justification from the
irresistible instincts of our nature. The bold talk 
16
about fighting before the awful necessity comes, and
thousands of miles from the scene of peril, has a very
different sound from that voice which speaks only in
the last emergency. I read with sadness the language
of Christian men and Christian ministers, whose brave
words, if they be well considered, are bloody words.
To me, the musket and the Bible do not seem twin
implements of civilization.
With or without war, the tempers which now present their hostile fronts to each other may, and if not
in some way or other appeased must, sunder the
Union. Well, say many who a few years ago would
not even listen to a suggestion so painful, that is not
the greatest of evils. I admit it is not. I admit that
we may be driven to this as the part of the alternative, which alone we can take and keep clear consciences before God and man. But I do affirm, - and
every one who thinks soberly will agree with me,that this will be a lamentable conclusion of a history,
the first chapter of which is bright with the names of
Washington and his compeers. The dissolution
of this Union of States may not be the greatest of
evils, but is it not next to the greatest. Is it not
an evil which we should deprecate, and to prevent
which we should be ready to sacrifice every thing but
truth and right? I cannot think of such a termination of American freedom without tears that the heart
weeps, if they do not flow down the cheeks. It is
easy to flout at such emotion, and easier still, but not 
1,
more kind nor more honorable, to represent such
feeling as sympathy with the slaveholder; but no
wish to avoid misrepresentation so gratuitous and
unjust shall deter me from confessing, that I can con template the overthrow of this Union only with fear
and grief. Let the alternative involved in the rela tions of Slavery to the Union be brought before me
under circumstances which compel me, if I cling to
the one, to encourage the other, and I shall know
that God has called me to the sad duty of helping
to destroy the citadel of the world's hope. But, till I
see that duty too plain to be mistaken, I will pray
that it may not be made the test of my submission to
a solemn and dark Providence.
Shall we, then, give way to despair, or indolently
wait for the Divine will to be unfolded in events
whose purpose we cannot misapprehend? No. That
is not the counsel of a believing or a patriotic heart,
of one who loves freedom, or whose " hope is in the
Lord." Never may we despair, when the great interests of humanity are at stake; never doubt that a
way will be opened for the success of just principles
and the preservation of good institutions. Be watchful
to detect the first sign of duty, and ready to obey the
first call to action that shall come from a higher wisdom than that of man. Be patient till the hour
comes; be prompt when it comes; be firm while it
lasts.
It has come, I am told. I know not but it has. I
3
a    -1        - 
18
do believe that we are in a more critical situation
than ever before since our present form of government was inaugurated. But I think, that if the hour
of final decision had come, we should see, more clearly
than we now see, what we must do. The country is
agitated, perplexed, distressed. At such a time, our
trust must be, not in man, but in God; the light that
shall illuminate our path must be sent from Above.
This is the time for humble and penitent thought, for
deep searching of the spirit within us rather than
for passionate declamation, for earnest calmness rather
than for superficial vehemence. Never was there a
time when self-control was more important, difficult
though it be; never a time, when one should be more
studious that his speech be just as well as frank.
This is no time for fraudulent words, and no time
for rash acts. If in a single sentence now uttered I
have departed from the gravity of a most momentous
theme, I have been false to my purpose.   I have
wished, my friends, to show you the urgency of the
requisition, which, in view of the fearful possibilities
with which we are encompassed, enjoins upon us
serious and deliberate preparation for whatever a day
or a year may bring forth. Let every one be in earnest, and let every one feel the solemnity of the period.
God grant that when our injured Senator shall return
to the seat whence he was stricken down by a cowardly blow, and the country shall wait in eager solicitude for his vindication of the rights of free speech 
19
and the privileges of Congressional debate, while by
his manly eloquence he shall awaken shame and
remorse in hearts that need to feel such pangs, he
may say nothing which the severest wisdom shall not
approve! God grant that the persecuted citizens of
Kansas may not forget, that, if self-defence be a law
of nature, retaliation is a breach of the gospel! God
give us all, the discernment and the determination
which the exigency demands!
God give them to us, I say; for from Him alone
can we receive the light or the support which we
need. To Him must we look. His "arm is not
shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy,
that it cannot hear." Human counsel at a time like
this is insufficient.   It is poor and impotent.  To
God must we turn, in sorrow and in faith; to the God
of our fathers, to Him who has been our God through
all the past, to Him who will never leave us without
assistance if we ask for it. He may have permitted
us to be surrounded by these anxieties, that we might
feel our helplessness and turn to Him. This is the
time for lowly and importunate prayer.  Better than
the crowded hall is the closet of secret supplication;
wiser than the noisy assembly, the devout congregation. There need not be less of bravery because there
is more of piety, less of righteous indignation because
there is more of humble confession, nor less love of
freedom because there is more reliance on God.
Prayer should be on all our lips, and in all our 
20
hearts. There should be personal intercession and
united petition. We should pray for our rulers, for
our legislators, for our fellow-citizens, for ourselves.
We should cast our country upon the Divine care,
which will not refuse to accept the burthen.  O
my God! guide us, help us, save us, for the sake of
that loving-kindness which Thou didst show to our
fathers, and for the sake of that compassion which
Thou hast for all thy creatures. Forgive the sins
which we have committed, and grant us true repentance.   Dispel  the  darkness that  overhangs,  and
remove the fears that beset us. Allay the jealousies
and subdue the animosities that separate us from
Thee, as well as from one another. Let fireedom and
peace and union be the watchwords of the whole
land, while the people shall walk together in the
obedience of thy commandments and under the protection of thy holy name.  Hear this our prayer, for
thy great mercy's sake! Amen. 
4
A
DISCOURSE
OCCASIONED BY THE PRESENT CRISIS.
PREACHED AT WAYLAND, MASS., SUNDAY, JUNE 15, 1856.
BY EDMUND H. SEARS.
J
BOSTON:
CROSBY, NICHOLS & COMPANY,
111 WASHINGTON STREET.
EBENEZER  CLAPP,  Jun.
184 WASHrINGTO STREET. 
1 8 5 6.
ttglt-or entdform.
Vublis~th b2 gttqutst.
_0 
-ossoa'         2iHo   laujila  -.aAvy a    -iD 0 0 
DISCOURSE.
"If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy
peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes."I-LIuKE 19: 42.
THERE is a national as well as an individual retribution. But there
is this difference. Individuals live on after death. Nations as such do
not.    Consequently  individual retribution may not be  consummated
here.  National retribution always is.  National sin receives its terrible
avengement in time; and a nation, no more than an individual, can escape
the law by which it comes. It is the old lesson which history is ever
preaching to us anew -" Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is the
reproach of a people," and persevered in is inevitable ruin.
It is not very often that I think it worth while to turn aside from the
ordinary topics of this place and hour. My aim generally is to unfold
the central truths of the gospel so as to bring us individually to bow
before them and feel their power. But I do not forget that we are citi   zens, and have duties to the times and the country we live in, and that
the gospel should sometimes have a wider application to the sins of the
times, and these times in particular.   " Vice prevails, and impious men
bear sway."
The recent outrages which so shock the sensibilities of all good men,
demand something more than a temporary burst of passion. They demand
calm thought, settled purpose, and earnest effort in the broadest light of
the religion we profess. It is hardly necessary to denounce from this
place the attempted assassination at the capital, nor the crimes and rob  beries, protected by government, on our western borders.   But it does
become us to inquire, of what are these the omens? and what do they
demand of us? and, why have we come to this?  In a country like ours
every individual is not only concerned for national sin, but, in some mea  sure, is responsible therefor. Let us dwell then, with subdued emotion,
upon the state of the times, and the duties that grow out of them. They
are times of great wickedness, portending signal retributions.
What do we mean by national sin and national retribution?
What is the present crisis, and how has it come upon us? And,
What are the duties of the hour?
1. We do not mean by national sins, or public crimes, all the sins
which are committed in a commonwealth.   There  is a vast amount of
crime within every state, for which the state itself is in no wise responsi  ble. I do not know how many assaults and felonies, how much of 
4
violence and tumult, how much of more subtle and secret sin, in the shape
of lust, of fraud, and of falsehood, are committed in our own state, from
year to year.   The court calenders would show them to be very great, and
yet the court calenders do not disclose one-fourth part of the real amount.
But these do not become the crimes of the state till they are put into the
shape of state enactments, and made the state policy and state action.
Before that, they are committed against the state, and against the law.
The law is the public judgment against them, and government is exercised
to discourage and repress them, and banish them clean away, if it be
possible. The state itself may be yet righteous, and the collective man
stand before God as obedient to his law, and the minister of his will.
Man does wrong to his brother every day and every where, but gener ally against law and beneath  the inflictions of its judgments.   But
when vice has so spread its leprosy through the common mind and
heart, as to pass into public law and public policy, the state itself becomes
the criminal. When the wrong passes into legislation, and goes out into
deed through the executive, the commonwealth stands forth as a culprit
before God.   The  collective man is a pirate and a robber.   It is an
organism of wrong; and though there be ten righteous men in it, or ten
thousand, these will not save it. It has become like Sodom, and continuing such, the lake of Sodom will settle over it at last.  When wrong has
become so organized as to make the state its permanent body, controlling
its functions, and wielding its public men to do its bidding, the commonwealth is an embodied diabolism; humanity dies out of it, and demonism
becomes its life and soul.
Then comes national retribution, sometimes slow, but always sure. It
comes in the shape of those sudden and eruptive changes, which involve
terrible sufferings in private life. Change! That is the word which perplexes monarchs, and all else who cling to organized wrong. But there
are two kinds of change. One gentle, gradual, progressive, which does
not destroy the body, but renews its vigor, like the change from sickness
to health, like the changes of spring time, like the change from night to
morning, like the changes which Christ would have produced in the
Jewish state, if the priests and rulers would have yielded to his persuasions. This is when the wrong yields pliantly to the truth; and so the
state, like the individual, grows into a more perfect form of humanity.
It is otherwise when unrighteousness and wickedness have become its
fixed policy, its possessing spirit. Change then must rend and destroy
'the body, before right and truth can be set free. Men may cry peace and
union. There is no peace and no union where demonism possesses the
public body and controls its functions. "If thou hadst known in this
thy day, the things that belong to thy peace, but now they are hid
from thine eyes." "Thine enemies shall not leave in thee one stone
upon another -because thou knewest not the day of thy visitation." 
5
" Thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee
-how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen
gathers her brood under her wings, but ye would not." To a nation that
has become the fixed organism of wickedness, change comes not as reform,
but in the awful shape of revolution; when chasms yawn everywhere;
brother is set against brother; the business of life is at an end; the human
heart runs gall; and no man knows but the ground will open under his
feet the next moment.   Such is sin when it becomes national; such its
final and inevitable consummation. Men will not believe it, but keep
crying peace and safety, though the shores of time are covered with the
wrecks of nations that went down because they would not believe it.
2. We will now apply these principles to the present crisis. Every
one who was not willing to be deceived by mere shows and expedients,
may have seen for the last twenty years that a crisis was coming upon the
country, as sure as the tread of doom.
The nation is yet young - only seventy years old. It emerged from
the throes of revolution with a fair and a glorious promise; for it left old
errors and abuses behind, and embodied in its form of government the
principles of liberty and justice.  It is true that human slavery existed in
most of the states at the close of the revolution, - in Massachusetts among
the rest. But it was not recognized as a thing to be encouraged and
adopted, and taken up into the new form of government. It was recognized only as a thing to be discouraged and denationalized, and finally to
pass quietly out of existence as a relic of medieval darkness and barbarism.  It did so pass away from state after state, and the constitution of
the United States was so carefully framed as not to recognize it in terms,
so that it might die out, while the frame of government remained the
same. During the first proud years of the republic, it existed only as a
sectional institution, understood then to be on the wane, while the powers
of the national government were wielded on the side of liberty and right.
Such was the first age of the republic, when Washington, Jefferson,
Franklin, Pinckney, Henry, and Madison, avowed themselves anti-slavery
men; and they thought they had established not a slave, but a free
republic. Slavery existed only as a state institution, under municipal
and not national law.
But from this local and disfranchised position it crept up towards the
seat of power. I will not trace its encroachments step by step, which
must be familiar to your minds. It soon entered the courts, and perverted
the judgments of the bench. It grew bold, and clamored and threatened, and won from the North the Missouri  Compromise, the first open
parley with sin. It brought new slave states into the union. It made
northern men its tools, and stifled debate by the famous twenty-first rule.
It struck down the right of petition, and when John Quincy Adams 
6
defended that right, it set upon him with dirks and revolvers. It wrested
Texas from Mexico.   It was "the robbery of a realm."   It brought
the plundered territory into the union, and turned a free province into
slave soil. The more it was gorged with plunder, the more hungry it
grew.  It filled nearly all the seats of power, from the White  House to
the post office, and turned the patronage of government into a stupendous
system of bribery to northern virtue. It still looked southward with a
hungry eye. Secretly it invaded Mexico, with pillage and robbery, and
then exclaimed   " See! Mexico is making war upon us."   It made all
but fourteen men in the House of Representatives vote the brazen falsehood.  It controlled all the resources of the country to wage that unrighteous war, and despoiled Mexico of her richest provinces, in order to make
more room for slavery. It passed the fugitive slave bill, which completes
the work of making all the northern states hunting ground for slaves,
and northern men hunters, under pains and penalties,- which throws
down the old safeguards of personal liberty, and drags men into bondage
without a jury trial, or without any trial at all, except before creatures of
its own appointment.  It comes snuffing along its bloody trail across your
very fields and around your very homes, and calls upon you to join in the
chase. Having got all it wants from the Missouri Compromise, it breaks
the compromise, throws it to the winds, and opens all the new territories
to slavery. Having debauched and broken down the northern virtue by
the compromise measures, the way was clear, and the monster iniquity
comes in.
Kansas and Nebraska are the vast central region of North America, of
boundless fertility, as if the valley of the Nile had been reproduced on
the banks of our western rivers.   There northern enterprise, in advance
of the slave-power, as it always is in a fair field, had gone with the peaceful arts of industry; with its churches and schools, its saw mills and free
labor; and a free state was rapidly rising, and covering the most lovely
region of the world with the trophies of peaceful industry. Slavery
watches the experiment from afar, much as the devil watched the first
experiment in Paradise.  It invades the territory on election days.   It
marches in armed men from a neighboring state, drives the citizens from
the ballot-box with dirks and revolvers, puts in its own creatures, and
imposes upon the new state the bloody code of servitude. The slave-power
uses the President, and, through him, the military, to force slavery upon a
free people at the point of the bayonet.   The government joins hands
with robbers and ruffians; it leads them on; it disarms the citizens, and
arms the banditti; it gives up peaceful towns to be sacked, plundered and
burnt; and the peaceful citizens to be murdered, sometimes in sight of
their wives and children. You must go back to the invasion of the
Netherlands by the Spaniards, if you would get a parallel to this crimson
atrocity, this blackness relieved only by gouts of blood. 
7
The next step in this drama was not only natural  but necessary.
Deeds so black as these, or rather, so red, will not bear the siftings of
free debate. There are men in Congress who hold them up to the light,
and denounce them. One man, from Massachusetts, distinguished in both
hemispheres for eloquence and scholarship, in whom the old spirit of liberty
was yet burning bright and clear, laid open the iniquity in language
which was severe only because it was true. It becomes necessary that
such men should be silenced; and when violence and ruffianism have
been abetted by those in the highest places, its spirit goes by natural ten dency into all their creatures and underlings. When Philip II. could not
conquer the Prince of Orange in the field, he offered a reward for his
assassination. Hle found a creature to do it, who crept into the family of
the prince, and put a bullet through his heart; and the heirs of the
assassin were pensioned for the deed.   The slave despotism finds a crea ture fit for its work; and he creeps upon his victim unawares, and strikes
him down with a bludgeon, in the senate chamber. If this were all, the
deed would be less significant. Personal violence is not so rare a thing
at the capital as to overcome us with a special wonder.  But events prove
that the assassin is only the agent of the same power that wields the
President, and sacks the villages of Kansas.   It takes up his cause,
applauds and honors him, votes against investigation, fills the halls of
Congress with armed men, and the streets and public houses with bullies.
The seat of government becomes the reign of violence, and northern men
must utter northern opinions, if at all, with bated breath, and under the
fear of bludgeons and pistols.  So it is that a most malignant demonism has
crept slowly into the places of power, till it possesses the organization of the
government, its executive, most of the time its houses of legislation, its
armies, its revenues, its vast system of offices that ramifies into every town
and village. It injects its poison through all the veins of the republic, making the government pliant to its will, and diffusing barbarism and ruffianism under the forms of law, when it can, and in defiance of all law when
it cannot.   Crime has ceased to be individual; it clothes itself ig nationality.  The nation itself becomes the robber, the assassin, the kidnapper,
the incendiary, - a vast propaganda of guilt and crime, whose hands do,
reek with blood.
But we have not seen the last of this encroaching and wide-spreading
barbarism. These are only the first acts of a great tragedy. The future
which the slave despotism has outlined for itself, is as clearly discernable
as the shadow of the dial on the plate.   Kansas being subjugated, slavery
is to be forced upon those young territories, and spread its black shadow
over that vast and lovely region till it touches the Rocky Mountains.
If you will cast your eye upon the map, you can easily measure the
dimensions of the great question now pressing upon every citizen through 
8
out the country. Just take a pencil, and, beginning on the Missouri
boundary,  describe  a line that shall include the disputed territory of
Kansas.   It is so large that you could put from twelve  to fifteen states
like Massachusetts right into it.  It is threaded by  noble rivers, rolling
through vast valleys of rich virgin soil, which nothing but slave cultivation can ever impoverish.   Fremont, who passed through it in 1842,
describes it as an immense agricultural region, of undefinable resources.
The Rocky Mountains rise up on the western limit, as the condensers of
the moisture and the coolers of the atmosphere, but the middle and eastern portion enjoys a mild climate, and has golden weather a month at a
time. You have been told that it is too far north for slave cultivation. Just
run your eye along the map, and you will see that it lies in the latitude
of no less than five slave states, in which we never yet heard that planters
or negroes were in danger of freezing out. You will see, moreover, that
it lies in the heart of the continent, and that its future will exert a shaping
influence over the great valley of the Mississippi. You see that if slave
institutions are established there, so they will be in New Mexico, in
Northern Texas, probably in Utah, and that thence slavery will push out
for the Pacific coast. On the other hand, if free institutions are established there, they will cut off slavery from the Pacific, will extend probably to New Mexico and Utah, and even to Missouri. This great region
was pledged to freedom by the Missouri Compromise, and it becomes
obvious why slavery in its dark counsels saw that that bond must be
broken, and why, when freedom had gone thither and preoccupied the soil,
it must be driven out, or extinguished in its own blood. Slavery means
to fill this region, and control what is to be the great thoroughfare of the
country, and the key to the whole future of the west. Such is the act of
this momentous drama now enacting before our eyes.
What will be the next? New provinces are to be wrested from Mexico,
and carved into slave states, as fast as the freebooters can get leisure to
do it. They are working and plotting at that business now. Then Cuba
is to be brought into the union as a slave state, either by purchase or by
another predatory war.
What then?   With this overwhelming preponderance of power on the
part of the slave despotism, do you think it will be safe any longer to
question it, or debate its measures? The right of free speech will be
struck down, and the reign of terror at the capitol become permanent and
complete. Congress will become what the parliaments were to Henry
VIII. Its chief business will be to register the rescripts of tyranny. The
man who protests against it with point and energy, shall be silenced with
an office or with a club.
What next? The free states shall be opened to the ingress of slavery.
By some fit supplement to the fugitive slave bill, or by judicial decisions
already preparing, which shall render such supplement unnecessary, any 
9
one who pleases may bring slaves into the free states and keep them and
employ them there at will, and so the distinction between slave and free
states will become merely nominal. That decision once published, slave
coffles may be driven any where over free soil, and slave houses estab lished in any of your ports, under the flag of the union, and under the
protection of the whole naval and military power.   One great central
power is to over-ride state sovereignty, and swallow it up, and thus the
nation be turned into a black republic, wielding all its forces for the pro tection and spread of human bondage.
And what will be the next step?   It is already announced  and
demanded. The slave trade shall be opened again, and legalized. The new
territories will create an immense slave market, which the slave-breeding
states cannot supply.   Under the specious doctrine of free trade for all
that the constitution recognizes as property, all restrictions shall be taken
off from trade in man, and the slave-ship may come from Africa again,
with its human cargo, not under the black flag, but under the star spangled banner, which has become black enough for all purposes.
This outline has been marked out in the counsels of the slave despot ism, and unless signally arrested, we shall see it filling up stage after
stage, by a succession of strokes, at the boldness of which thie northern sen timent ceases to be shocked with wonderment. Talk of it as a question
between the north and the south! It is no such thing. It is a question
between civilization and barbarism; between Christianity and heathendom;
between light and darkness; between heaven and hell, incarnating themselves on the earth. It is whether the ages shall roll back again, and
'brute force reign in the place of moral power, and the government of a
free people be changed to an oligarchy of tyrants.   That is the question,
and that is the crisis to which we have come at last.
The moral question of slavery has been argued mainly as it affects the
rights of the negro.   I submit to you that that is not just now the paramount issue.   The most important question is not how it affects black
men, but how it affects white men. In regard to white men, there are
two types of character which it stamps indelibly on all it touches. One
is ferocity, the other servility.   To possess irresponsible power, and wield
it from generation to generation, will quicken in any race of men the love
of rule, till it becomes unscrupulous, insatiable and cruel. Like the snake
which the Fury shook into the bosom of the Latian mother, it skims
unseen over the whole man, instils its poison through the blood, and turns
all its currents into madness.   It brooks no opposition.  It perverts the
reason and demonizes the manners.   But this is not all.  It makes its
tools more despicable than itself. Woe to him who has once yielded himself to go upon its errands! All the pith of virtue is taken out of him.
He becomes like those who were supposed to have signed,their names in
the devil's book.   His individualism is lost.  His free agency is lost.
2 
10
His opinions are not his own.   His soul is not his own.  He is flexible as
a rag in the hands of another. Slavery tends inevitably to separate men
into these two classes of lords and menials.   In this way it does as much
evil north as it does south.  It touches parties with its torpedo-strokes,
and the shock runs through the whole north, and the moral sentiment is
benumbed.  It speaks, and the parties face about at its word.   It touches
the pulpit, and the priest preaches atheism, and reads the ten commandments  backward.   It touches the bench,  and the judge  becomes  its
oracle. He packs the jury-box, and overrules principles of law which
five generations had bled to establish.  Since the black centralism at the
capital has thrown its coils around the free states, it is remarkable to
observe how the whole tone of moral character at the north has been sinking downward and downward. The style of conversation in society is
apologetic and sometimes atheistical, and the utterance of a fresh moral
sentiment disturbs its dead atmosphere like a flash of lightning.
Such is the question-  barbarism or civilization.   Slavery waxing and
freedom waning, or the reverse.  Slavery, with education and a corrupted
Christianity for a few, and gross ignorance and brutality for the many;
creeping up the rivers and over the prairies, southward over the plateaus
of Mexico, and northward into the free states, and up to the Canada line;
changing the republic into an oligarchy, degrading  labor, taking virtue
out of manhood, crushing free debate with daggers, clubs and constructive
treasons, till
"Light dies before its unereating word."
Or freedom, with free schools, its system of universal education and universal toleration; labor, with the spring of freedom in its sinews and the
nobility of manhood on its brow; Christianity, full-orbed and complete,
spreading westward and dotting the wilderness  with light, spreading
southward and girdling the darkness with civilization.   These are the two
things that are now in conflict.  One must wane before  the other; and
the American government is to be turned into a stupendous agency for
extending one or the other over the western continent.   It is a question
which is quickly to be decided.   It hinges on the hour; and if you look
down the long future, you will see myriads of agonized faces looking out
to see what the decision shall be.
3. THE DUTIES OF THE HOUR.
If only we knew the things which belong unto our peace, from what
woes and calamities would the knowledge save us! But individuals and
communities alike fall into the error of believing there can be peace without
purity. The individual thinks he can retain his evils, instead of plucking
them out and casting them away, and so he carries them along with him
into his enjoyments.   But they grow and fester and spread disease, and
overpower him and destroy him in the end. So it is with the common 
11
wealth.    It  is the policy  of shallow statesmanship,  not  to reform
iniquity but to compromise with it for present convenience, not knowing
that it belongs to the very nature of evil to feed on compromises till it gets
strong enough to go without them.
What are the duties of the hour? becomes a question of overwhelming
importance to every practical and honest man. It ceases to be a question
of mere " politics," which we can put by or not, according to our taste.
It is a paramount question, in which religion, morals, education, civiliza  tion, Christianity itself, yea, personal safety, are all involved.   Its gran  deur and solemnity should absorb the interest of every man, woman and
child, for they are concerned in it beyond all matters of worldly expe  diency. It concerns the ministry of religion, for it becomes a question
whether there shall be any religion left which is worth  preaching,  and
which has not been eviscerated of its vital principles, and accommodated
to the corruptions of the day.
Out of the present crisis there are two paths that open before us,-and
only two. One is through violence and revolution. When the public
organism has become possessed with the spirit of evil, and is used chiefly
for its work, the last remedy is to break it in pieces, and let right and
justice go free.  It is a terrible remedy! but if there is no other, it comes
to that in the end. It may not come now; but if things must go on it
will come inevitably before the slave-despotism has filled up its pro gramme and finished its horrible drama. The state has no such violent
agitators as those who attempt to enforce peace and order by crushing
down the moral and religious sentiments of a people.
That the civilization of the western continent is to go down, or glimmer
feebly as the outside border of a malignant and centralized barbarism, is
not for a moment to be believed. It cannot be in the plan of Providence.
Two considerations show you it is not. Look at the elements which
make up this confederacy. The north has a very large infusion of the
Anglo-Saxon element, and this has been the element of liberty both in
the old world and the new. The present is the old conflict rwiewed
between the Cavalier and the Puritan,- one fiery and domineering, the
other patient, sometimes mercenary, but fertile in expedients, and most-to
be feared when conquered. To suppose that this expanse of free states, a
development out of Puritan labors and institutions, and in which the
Puritan spirit is not dead but only sleeps, covering a region which belts the
continent from ocean to ocean, sometimes through ten degrees of latitude,
is to be subjugated and finally absorbed into a centralized and brute despotism, would belie the whole Anglo-Saxon history, from the days of
Alfred. The Cavalier spirit here in the United States has already produced its Stuart, its Strafford, its Buckinghams, and its Jeffreys. If
they push the plan far enough of intimidating the parliaments and sending
a bloody assize over the country, they will undoubtedly raise up from the
Puritan element a Milton, a Pym, a Hampden and a Cromwell. We 
12
may deprecate the issue. It leads us to a chasm which no man can look
into without a shudder. But it will be too late then to betake ourselves
to Union-saving. That work will have passed out of the hands of the
politicians. When human nature itself rebounds after a long and a painful tension, a spirit not of man is let loose and sweeps through it, and the
individual must bend before it like reeds that shake in the whirlwind.
There is another view which leads us to believe that the remedy must
come by revolution, unless we provide a better one. It is not very likely
that God will throw away three hundred years of history. It is not likely
that a resurgent barbarism will bear us all back to the middle ages. But
it comes to that, if this encroaching and brutal oligarchy is to be fixed
finally upon our necks, and freedom, and light, and education, and thriving industry, and art, and letters, and science, and invention, and Christianity itself, must go down before it, or pale away as the mere fringe on
its border. It does not follow, however, because God will save us from
that destiny, that he will do it without judgments and calamities. Reform
is the work of man, when there is virtue enough in a people to yield to
that change, which is peaceful progress. Revolution is God's remedy,
when a people are past reformation and need punishments. It is the cup
of the Divine anger. National retribution must follow national crime
persevered in and unrepented of. And it may be as a reward for all our
servility and all our compromises with wrong; because we have joined
hands with oppression; because we have set the commands of kidnappers
above the great law of Jehovah; because we have hunted the poor man
and the unprotected woman through our streets and fields; because we
have removed landmarks and plundered our neighbor, and imbrued our
hands in his blood; because we have put wicked men into high places, to
promote selfish interests, sacrificing justice to trade and humanity to commerce;- it may be that for all this Providence is bringing us into a condition from which we shall not emerge except through terrible judgments;
that our exodus,
"Li k    e Israel' s of y ore,
Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore."
Twenty years ago -  yes, ten -  the despotism that is submerging us
might have been turned back upon itself, if northern men would have put
God-worship above man-worship, humanity above party, and the Bible
above the ledger. But every time we have dallied with the slave-power
we have sown the wind, and it becomes more certain every year that we
shall reap the whirlwind.
I do not doubt the result.  If, in the rhetoric of a distinguished statesman, "the constellation under which we have risen to so much glory and
renown" should be broken up, it would not "sink, star after star, into
obscurity and night." It would recombine with better affinities, and
shine with a sweeter omen on the traveller, but after how much of fratricide, and suffering, and hatred, and desolation, no tongue can tell. 
13
But there is another path that opens to us out of this encroaching
tyranny. It is a peaceful one, if only we have the grace to choose it and
walk in it. The right of suffrage is yet left us, and the peerage of the
bludgeon is not finally established.
But what is to be done? Let us look at the state of things among us
a little more nearly if we would learn what are the duties of the hour.
It may seem strange to some that there is so much talk at the north in
favor of public justice, that results in nothing; that every bold stroke which
slavery makes towards absolutism is followed by a cheap utterance of indig nant protests that finally die away like an empty sound. The feeling which
the late and the passing outrages excites in all honest minds, will perhaps
die away with the words and paper resolves that have given it utterance,
until a fresh and a darker outrage excites it again. But look for a moment
at the elements which compose us as a people and a nation, and we shall see
how this is so.  With the exception of the papacy, there never was a more
cunningly devised system than this American oligarchy, to bend the
human will to its measures and purposes.
There are in the United States about 350,000 slaveholders. It is this
comparatively small number that "keeps this dreadful pother o'er our
heads."   It is this comparatively small number that rules the other
twenty-five millions, and uses the national organism for all this gigantic
wickedness.   How does it manage to do this?
These 350,000 men are the owners of three millions of slaves; and
with these they have the capital, the influence and the political power in
the slave communities. Then there are four millions of white population
in the slave states, who are not slaveholders, and whose interests are
averse to the institution. But they are comparatively poor and uneducated, without rank, without influence, sometimes brutalized and depraved,
always in a state of vassalage to the slave-aristocracies. Where slavery is,
there can be no system of popular instruction, and so this mass of poverty
and ignorance is chained to the slave system as its degrading appendage,
just as the peasantries were to the feudalism of past ages.  It occupies
the back country in the slave states, spreads over the sand hills and more
barren regions, while slavery holds the rich plains and commercial cities;
so that slavery in its own territory is a minority, but holds the majority in
vassalage. Then there are fifteen millions of northern freemen, swelling the
revenues of the country by their productive industry.    You would  suppose that these should be of some account in shaping the destinies of the
republic; but the slave oligarchy makes them subservient to its interests,
and even the tools of its wickedness. This it does in two ways.
First, through the relations of trade. The commerce between the north
and the south is extensive and lucrative. Slavery is an immense consumer, and draws largely upon northern industry. But this internal
trade is conditioned on the fact that the merchant shall be pliant and
managable on the matter of slavery. The slave-despotism, too, threatens
I 
14
the union, and keeps a vague fear always hanging over the mercantile
interests, which would be brought first into peril.  The coinmnercial class
complies with the conditions, and very naturally follows the bent of its
peculiar interests.   The merchant  has wealth, and along with it he  has
social rank and influence.   He forms the society of the metropolis, and
gives it tone.  The town imitates the metropolis, and the village imitates
the town,- and hence the style of sentiment that runs down society from
top to bottom.    Capital, with its concomitants, gives tone to metropol itan respectability, and makes abject sentiments appear in the daily talk
of fops and the gentilities of either sex.  The smaller fops and the gen tilities next lower down take up the tone and imitate it, and so the style of
servility, like a French fashion, goes down through the imitative classes,
and the utterence of the fresh and wholesome truths of liberty and righteousness becomes eccentric and strange.
The commercial interest, again, does the great business of the country.
It fees the ablest counsel. It builds the most splendid churches, and pays
the salaries.  Thus the tone of the professions becomes degraded also, and
their influence, to a considerable extent, goes over to the MIoloch of slavery.  Thus it is that strangers from the limited monarchies of the old
world are amazed to find in a firee republic the same stifling atmosphere
that lies on the plains of Russia and Turkey.
The slave-despotism has another hold upon these fifteen millions through
the relations of political interest.  The north splits into parties, and the
slave-despotism comes in and holds the balance between them.  It says
which shall go up and which shall go down; but it first touches them with
bribes, and draws all the pith and nerve out of them, till they bend like
an osier in its hands. Like the daughters of Lear, it makes them vie
with each other in glozing professions and falsehoods, and the one most
thoroughly demoralized it takes into special favor, and shares with it the
emoluments of place and the patronage of power.   The  patronage is
doled out on this one condition, that the recipient shall be dumb as to
liberty, but available for all the purposes of slavery.   So it is, that fifteen
millions of white people in the north, and four millions more'at the south,
making nineteen millions in all, become subsidized to this overshadowing
oligarchy that ramifies through all the free states and makes them drink
the cup of her accursed sorceries.  So it is that the voice of freedom that
once swept the northern hills like a blast, sinks away to the dying zephyr
of a summer's eve. We see a centralized despotism shutting down over
us like a cover, and we are powerless as a man in a nightmare, and cannot lift a finger to stay it. We see our own emigrants, the kith and kin
of New Eingland, because they hold the sentiments of the pilgrims, plundered and murdered by legalized robbers, and our hands are tied that we
cannot stir. Our representatives are threatened by bullies, and our senator knocked down in his place, and enough northern presses are found to
apologize, and Massachusetts men give the assassin the hand of fellowship. 
15
Fit fellowship it is!  Ferocity and servility mess together.   One eats the
bread and the other licks up the crumbs!
The duties of the hour become obvious enough. There is an immediate
duty which we owe to those who have gone from us, and who, with infinite
peril, are bearing up the standard of freedom and civilization in Kansas.
They are not waging, their own warfare. That is the spot where the decisive
conflict is going on, and freedom and civilization, in the persons of these
outraged and injured people, should be sustained by the aid, the sympa thy, and the prayers of every friend of religion and humanity. They are
suffering for you and your children quite as much as for themselves.
Through their labors and sufferings the glorious future may be formed,
under Him who shapes that future, by the martyrs of the present hour.
Living or dying they must succeed, and their noble deeds go down to
posterity to inspire its heroic songs!
We have moral and religious duties. There is no peace for the country,
no safety for northern institutions, no safety for us and our children, no
security for the civilization of the age, until slavery is dislodged from the
national organism, and reduced to its first subordinate and local position;
until the government of the country is wielded for liberty, righteousness
and civilization, and not for oppression, unrighteousness and barbarism.
And this cannot be done until the tone of virtue and moral sentiment here
at the north be brought up to its ancient manliness and glory. The ancestral spirit ought to breathe through us again, if we would not have it shake
the bones of the fathers under the ground we tread on. The pilgrim ghosts
that throng the air, and whose bones are strewn over all our hills and valleys, ought to inspire us with ancient and heroic virtues. Let us repudiate
the doctrine, that our duty to the country we live in, and which we ought
to love, requires of us to cloak its sins and glorify its crimes.   He is
no true friend to the peace of the country who does not expose faithfully the great evil that infests her. They are the worst of agitators who
endeavor to hide the ruin that is working destruction, and is sure to break
forth every year with a new desolation.   Every day goes to demonstrate
the folly and the impotence of your merely worldly-wise statesmen, end to
show that truth and justice are the most conservative of all principles of
action. The time has come, or is fast coming, when a faithful exposure
of the nature and tendencies of the slave-power, would appeal to the very
instinct of self-preservation and self-interest to mnen of common intelligence, as it certainly does to every sentiment of brotherhood anmong the
followers of Christ- to all who desire to see Christianity go forth on her
western mission, uncrippled of her power and unshorn of her glories.  It
is moral opinion, freely uttered, that rules the world.   Let it break forth
again with its ancienlt tone in social life and in public, in the street, in the
field, in the shop, in the pulpit, in the forum, in the church, and in the
state -and the northern air would be cleared of the miasma that has
loaded it, and become keen and bracing as when it swept the Mayflower
into Plymouth bay. Servility and venality could not breathe in it and 
16
live.  Taken once more into the lungs of fifteen millions of free people,
how long could 350,000 men subsidize them to the propaganda of barbarism?  Is there a conservative man who fears damage to his business
or his investments?  Let him watch the steps of revolution, and provide
against it in time.  Is there a man of peace, who  dreads  the horrors of
civil strife? Let him not rest till the cause of strife is removed clean out
of the way. Is there a firiend of virtue, who would not see it tamed down
and blighted, and all majesty and nerve taken out of it?  Let him oppose
its most pervading and subtle tempter.   Is there a friend of education,
who would see its blessings pervade and elevate the masses? Let him
remember that where slavery goes, popular education cannot, either for
white men or black.  Is there a Christian man, who hears the admonition
" Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least of these, ye did it not to me?"
Let him see in the future the imploring millions who ask to be saved from
being driven by the whip to toil.  Is there a friend of law, who desires a
government of law, and not one of mobs, and lynch-fires, and daggers,
and bludgeons?  Let him remember that the power which possesses the
government with the spirit of ruffianism is the same that spreads ruffianism through the streets, the coffee-houses, the halls of legislation, and lets
it run loose in the territories, drunk with whiskley and blood.  Is there a
laborer, that would not see his calling degraded by a nearer contact with
servitude? Is there a woman that regards her sex, and dreads the worst
foe to wom-an's rights and woman's purity?  If so, this cause is eminently
yours.   Every motive that can appeal to us as citizens, as men, and as
Christians, urges us to give the old Puritan sentiment of liberty a new
and emphatic utterance.
Mlore than this.  It urges us to new action; to sink all inferior issues
in the one great issue of Right against organized Wrong.   It urges us to
put justice above party, and humanity above local politics.  It urges
every man to stir up in himself and in his neighbor, the old pilgrim virtues of allegiance to God and faithfulness to the country.  Pray to him
for light, and then vote as you pray.   What  are the worldly interests of
to-day compared  with  the great interests of religion and humanity,
extending over a continent, and sweeping down through all posterity?
REvOLIUTION O   R EFORM! If we will not choose the one, God will leave
us to the other.   The only hope left, short of revolution, is that there is
virtue enough, and religion enough, and conscience enough in the country
to outvote the demonism that controls its organization; that there is so
much abhorrence of wrong, and love of righteousness; so much detestation
of tyranny, and love of liberty and of man; so much fear of God, casting
out all other fear; so much true love of the country, and the whole
country;  and so much  intelligence to see the tremendous issue that
impends,- as to unite enough of the wise and good in a common cause
against iniquity, and turn its tide.  But if not -then I tremble to look
upon your children and upon mine! For I know that if we cannot meet
this crisis, if we only succeed in staving it off a little longer, it will fall
upon them with swiftly accumulating woe! 
ON PATRIOTISM.
THE CONDITION, PROSPECTS, AND DUTIES
OF THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE.
A SERMON
DELIVERED ON FAST DAY AT CHURCH GREEN, BOSTON.
BY THE
REV. ORVILLE DEWEY.
PASTOR  OF  THE  CHURCH.
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
M DCCC LIX. 
[The Congregation, at whose request this Sermon is printed, will ob
serve that a part of it was omitted in the delivery.]
RIVERSIDE,  CAMBRIDGE:
PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 
DISCOURSE.
Psalm cxxii. 2, 7, and 8 verses. Our feet shall stand within thy gates,
O Jerusalem.  Peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy
palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say,
peace be within thee.
And Matthew xxiii. 37. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the
prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I
have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
I CANNOT help noticing, as I pass, this extraordinary
language of Christ. Poor, neglected, unknown, a simple
teacher by the way-sides of Judea, with no position in
worldly eyes; yet if he had been a departing king,
mourning over his people, he could not have spoken more
loftily. Is there not some strange, unborrowed, supernal
majesty in this appeal?
But it is not this of which I am to speak now, or for
which I have drawn my text from sacred records, several
hundred years apart.  It is rather to point out the abiding naturalness and beauty of the sentiment of patriotism.
For thus it is, that from age to age are forever echoing,
words of every language, which proclaim how dear is
men's native land. From David, who sung that ancient
song, to him who wept over Jerusalem; and by all men 
4
who have felt the touches of the gentlest or of the grandest humanity, thus have been repeated the words-songs,
adjurations, or words of orators or historians, which proclaim the sacredness of country and home. Whether we
can explain the sentiment or not, all men feel it, and nobody ever thought of defending it. There are sentiments
indeed, that are more expansive.  Our minds naturally
range beyond all local boundaries. Science and philosophy are of no country. We belong to the world, it is
true; and there is a humanity that is as wide as the
world. But, that tract of earth which I call my native
soil, my native clime: that spot where my childhood
grew, where my parents have lived, and my kindred shall
live after me; that is holy ground, set apart and severed
from all the world beside; and framed, ay, its very hills
and valleys, its slopes and river-banks, moulded and
framed into some mysterious ties and sympathies with
my very life and being. And I must be able to tell,
what never yet was told-to tell what this inmost life and
being are, before I can interpret all that is written on this
tablet of home and country; before I can tell what home
and country mean.
But one thing is plain and palpable to my mind, that
when I say "my country," I say what no amplification
can add to; that I say more than any epithets can describe; that I speak of that which is a part of me, and I
of it; that whatever touches it, touches me; and whoever assails it, assails me.  It must be a dull man that
feels neither pride nor shame for his native land.  And
if, from a disbanded nationality, I were wandering and
fleeing, and the world should point the finger and say, 
5
' aha! ye had not the force nor sense nor virtue to live,
or keep your bond, or hold together;" that taunt would
darken the very shadow and sorrow of exile.
And yet, though as I firmly believe, there never was
a country which men have had more reason to love and
cherish, than we have to love and cherish this country;
yet here and among us, I think that the sentiment of
patriotism is exposed to peculiar dangers.   We  have no
uniting head, King or Queen, to whom the feeling of
patriotic loyalty can attach itself.   Our devotion is to an
abstract Constitution; and though it is a noble kind of
devotion if it can be sustained; yet if you were to cross
to the father-land, you would be struck with the difference
between our respect for the Constitution and the personal
feeling which rises from a whole people to the fair majesty
of England; to a crown which is at once the top of honor,
and set round with all the gems of private virtue.  Then
again, there is nothing here to shield the head of the
State, from every sort of violent and even scurrilous abuse.
Every newly-chosen President seems to be set up, not as
the image of the public order, but as a target to be shot
at. The attack of course provokes defence; but the
defence is apt to take the tone of partizanship rather than
of true and unbiased respect.  All this must hurt the
sentiment of patriotism.  If the head of the family, the
judge on the bench, the minister at the altar, were the
subject of this perpetual wrangling, the very institutions
they preside over-home, law, religion-smust suffer
indignity and dishonor from such treatment.   In a free
State, it may be said, can anything be done to prevent it?
That I will consider soon; at any rate I will consider 
6
whether we should not try to do something. But once
more; our freedom, with the unchecked opportunity it
offers for the acquisition of gains, luxuries, comforts, and
for the indulgence of all sorts of private opinions and
preferences, is liable to run out into an individualism, a
thinking and caring of each one only for himself, and a
neglect of our political duties, which are in direct antagoniism with the love of country. There is a class of
persons in this country, and I fear it is an increasing class,
who, disgusted with politics, or fastidiously averse from
free mingling with the people, or engrossed with business,
are shrinking from their duties as citizens; who refuse to
take office, avoid as much as they can every species of
service to the public, even that of sitting on juries, and
who neglect to deposit their ballot at the polls.  In fact,
there is a disintegration of society here, that is hostile not
only to patriotic, but even to fixed party sentiments.
I have said thus much in general, with the view to open
to you the subject on which I propose to address you this
morning: and that is, our country, the love of our
country, and the circumstances in our condition that are
liable to weaken that great patriotic bond. I shall discuss a
variety of questions; but they will have at least this unity;
every question will come to this point, the love of our
country, the right appreciation of it, the willing service
which patriotism demands to be rendered to it; nay, the
filial consideration and loyalty with which we ought to
speak of it.
And first, let me say a word, of a reckless habit which
we have, of speakin# about the country. It may be regarded as a small matter-speech, the talk of the street, 
7
the license of debate, in caucus or Congress-but I cannot
think it so. Speech is the birth of opinion; and opinion
is the womb of the unborn future. What we think and
say, the coming generation are likely enough to do. Idle
talk may resolve itself into dreadful fact. Let all men
among us, talk as some men do; and a hurricane might
pass over the land with less harm, than that idle or angry
breath.
Nay, there are those who talk, as if they did not care
how soon the worst came to pass. Disgusted with what
they call the popular tendencies; disgusted with the upheaving of the popular mass, which they have never tried
to direct or control; disgusted with the insubordination
and irreverence of the young; disgusted altogether with
our politics, they say-I have heard them say, "let the
worst come; the sooner the better; the worse the better! " Now I confess that I can never hear this kind of
talk, or anything approaching to it, without great pain.
It discourages and saddens me.   It discourages everybody. It is not good to hear. It is not good to think or
say. I know that there is often a more grave and considerate talking, about popular derelictions and public
corruption; and though I cannot altogether gainsay the
justice of it, I must say it seems to me there is too.much
of it-such as it is. Let us do something and not always
talk. Or if we must talk, let it be to inquire what we
can do. But it is too often cold, scornful, sarcastic, bitter
talk that I hear. If it were more painful, there would be
less of it. I sat by a couple of gentlemen lately, who
were speaking at length, of bribery and corruption in
Congress.   I could not help saying, "this talk always 
8
makes me sick." So said one of them, "it makes me
sick." But it went on. It always goes on. Fault finding is always eloquent;  and it is easy.  If the object
were to inquire how we can correct our own, or our people's errors, it were profitable. But if it be only to vent
our spleen, it is perilous. We may say of it, in relation
to our country, what Burns says in another connection,
it petrifies the feeling."
And is it not a very strange thing? Was the like
ever seen before; a people so recklessly criticizing itself;
smiting the government, the country, and the country's
hope, in one suicidal blow? This passes the ordinary
limits of party animosity.  Is there anything like it in
England or France?  Was there in old Rome? till its
disastrous and declining days came, and seemed to justify
the despair of Cicero, and the satire of Tacitus. But in
its prosperous days were such words ever spoken? Why,
I have heard a man standing in the high Senate of these
United States-I have heard a senator say, "The president, and his cabinet, and both houses of congress, ought
to be taken and pitched into the Potomac." If he had
said such a thing in old Rome, he would himself have
been pitched into the Tiber, and would have deserved it.
And lately, in a speech in Congress, I hear the president
called a " brigand!"
I take it upon me to rebuke such mad speaking. It
should not have been possible to say or to hear such
things in the Capitol. The man who undertook to say
them, should have been drowned in hisses if it had been
in a popular assembly, or if in the Senate, he should have
been withered by its awful frown. I do not deny that 
9
there should be a strict and solemn inquisition into the
ways of the government and of the nation; but I do deny
that such indecent and abusive language should be used.
I svill not admit that it is right ever to speak thus of our
country, or its government. This sublime nationality;
this embodied life of thirty millions of human souls; this
gathlering under the awful wings of Providence, of six
millions of families; this majestic Rule that presides over
them; this struggling welfare and sorrow and hope of a
great people, all bound up in the country's prosperity and
progress; this whole stupendous evolution of the fortunes
of 1humnanity, is it to be treated as lightly as if it were a
game of football, or as angrily, with as much passion
and despite, and rash exclamation of oaths or curses, as
if it were a pugilistic fight?   How  different was the
spirit, lhow reverent, protective, and tender, with which
Jesus looked upon his people!  And, indeed, what commandintg dignity appears in his address to it!  And how
evenly and perfectly was the balance held in him, between
indignation and love!   The  government was in  bad
hands enough; and he was disowned, and rejected, and
persecuted; the Pharisees, the rulers, the Sanhedrim
would not know himn; and yet sadly and indignantly as
he speaks of all the wrong and evil there was ii. high
places-yet no reckless satire or scorn ever fell from  his
lips; but his great and loving heart burst out in melting
expostulation, saying, "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou
that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent
unto thlee, howxv often would I have gathered thy chil(lren
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,
and ye would not!"
1) 
But the true question, I may be told, were, whether
the country and government deserve to be spoken of with
satire and  scorn.  This  question  concerns  two  very
different things-the country and the government-and
I shall treat of them separately.
Does the government deserve it?  Is it as bad as it is
often said to be?  Has it become more corrupt than it
was in former days?   Has it declined from its pristine
integrity.   It may be true; I am afraid it is true; but
it is to be remembered that our saying so does not prove
it. Just as hard things have been said all along, of all the
administrations, after the first; and even that, even Washinigton's, did not escape the most bitter reproaches.  But
just as hard, nay, harder things, were said of Jefferson
and John  Adams, and  Madison  and Monroe.   Party
animosity raged even more fiercely then, than it does now.
I have had, for my part, some salutary experience upon
this matter. 1 remember the time when I was taught by
those around me, to regard Thomas Jefferson as the basest
and most dissolute and unprincipled of men.   And I do
not doubt that there are some here, who could tell me,
that John Adams was treated with scarcely more decorum.
Well, I have lived to see these two men in their old age,
treating one another with respectful consideration, writing
amiable and friendly letters to one another; and I b(have
lived to see the time when they died on the same dayon that memorable fourth of July; and then I heard the
voice of loud lament and eulogy bursting forth from the
whole country; from all parties alike. It was a great
lesson to me; and I resolved that I would never listen to
the words of party clamor any more.   And how is it
10 
11
not,, with NWebster, and Clay, and Calhoun!  Why, it is
coming to be generally admitted, even by their opponents,
that however they may have erred, however they may
have acted under biases and prejudices, they loved their
country; and that in the circumstances in which they were
placed, they did what they thought was right. Can any
more be said of the integrity of statesmen than this?
And if there be men now standing high among us-I
say not this or that man-but if there be any who may
meet  with a similar reversal of the popular or party
award, from the calm judgment of posterity, nay, and are
likely enough, judging from the past, to do so, ought it
not to stir a sacred caution in our minds, how we treat
them?  Doubtless a government may grow more and
more corrupt.  Doubtless there are found, from time to
time, in seats of power, bad men and bad magistrates.
But it must be a sad thing, it must be a terrible thing, for
us on mere party and mistaken biases, to admit that the
whole government of the country is sinking deeper and
deeper in corruption every year.  Neither Statesmen, nor
any other men, can fairly be expected to be better than we
account them to be.  This constant depreciating and vilifying of the government, by one half of the people, tends
to bring about the very state of things we lament over,
and we may help to verify in misery and disgrace, the
very prophecy of our haste and wrath.
I admit that in some respects, there is a descent from
the dignity and perhaps virtue of former days.  It is
constantly said, that an inferior class of men is chosen to
public office; and I will not deny it. Every nation
perhaps, has its golden age; or what seems to be such. 
In the early times of the Republic, the natural anxiety of
the people, called the highest men into the public service.
We have grown easy and careless. But this is not all.
The representative principle was not at once developed
here in its full force; or rather it was not abused, as it is
now. For a long time there was a class of men, regarded
as superior persons, to whom the people naturally looked
as their leaders and legislators.  That natural aristocracy
is no10w to a certain extent disowned; and the candidate
for office is preferred perhaps, because he is cot of that
class.  It is an unfortunate reaction.  Then too, men of
culture and refinement, are more and more shrinking and
retiring from public life.  It is an unfortunate tendency.
The consequence of all this, is seen in a deterioration of
manners, in our high places. We hear of rude and
abusive personalities in debate, nay, of actual combats
and blows in the halls of Congress; of blows more
wounding to the public heart, even than to the unworthy
combatants.   That rule in Congressional speeches which
is called the "one hour rule," however necessary it may
have been, and however just and reasonable, has uindoubtedly had the effect to lower the dignity of debate.
Formerly, a few leading members discussed great questions.  Now, a much larger class are brought +pon the
floor; and the manners are worse. Then again, terrible
questions are now brought forward, questions about the
public lands, about annexation of territory, about slavery,
which try the integrity, the virtue, the composure, the
self-possession of public men, more than they were  tried
in formter days.   All this, I trust, is transitional, and will
pass away.   It does not prove to nme that the natural
12 
18
tendency of free suffrage and a free Constitution, under fair conditions, is to carry a governmlent downward.
But the more serious question is about the moral progress or deterioration of the whole country.   Government
is, to the people, a mystery.   The  eye of the popular
conscience is not fairly opened to it.  Hence it comes to
pass that things are abetted in public, which would  not
be  tolerated  in private life.  This  separation  between
political and personal morality, which is doing so much
mischief all over the world, it is to be hoped is temporary here, and will be searched into and stigmatized and
stamped with utter reprobation, by a more enlightened
public opinion.   Men, I trust, will come to look at the
persons who administer public  affairs, as keenly as they
investigate the conduct of bank or railroad directors, nay,
and will judge and act as stockholders, in the great national interest, demand(ling, irrespective of party biases,demanding, I say, probity in the one as much as in the
other, resolving to elect no man to public affairs who is
not an honest and good man.
But the question about the national character is disembarrassed from these considerations; and it cuts deeper.
It is a nmomentous question certainly, and demands the
gravest and most anxious study.   It is a question for
ourselves.  It matters little comparatively what others
say of us, though they are saying much on the other side,
at the present moment. Nor is this surprising; for the
example of universal suffrage and of popular rule, which
we have set up here, must of course be subjected to the
severest scrutiny.  Does it work well? is the question. 
Theories are nothing; does it work well? And there is
a party in England which maintains that it does not.
They say that everything is running down here.
Is it true? Are we becoming a more unprincipled,
vicious, dissolute people?  Are we less honest, less temperate, less benevolent, less reverent, less pure in manners and morals, than our predecessors were half a
century ago?  Has our freedom run out into general
license?  Or is there to be seen in the country at large,
any tendency of the kind?
This is not the place to say how humble is the estimate
which every right-minded people must form of its virtues;
or how deep is the sense, which every conscientious and
thoughtful man must entertain of the national defects;
let the nation be which it will, American or French or
English. Next to the burden which his own faults lay
upon such a man, I believe, is the sad feeling he has, in
contemplating the too commnon depravity and degradation
around him, the baseness in high places and low, the
drunkenness and debauchery, the sins, secret and open,
which cover all the world with darkness, and fill it with
tears.   This is doubtless  a wise  direction of men's
thoughts, whether in this country or any other country;
whether for a Fast Day  or any other day.  And I will
not leave it to be inferred, from anything I shall say,
that I am insensible to this humbling and painful contemplation of our moral condition. Before a righteous conscience let every people bow low; before accusers speakinig in the interest of king-ship and aristocracy, and trying
to discredit free governments, it must assume a different
attitude.
t,
141 
And the question here, let it be observed, is not how
bad we are, but whether we are regularly and constantly
growing wvorse; whether we are going down in niational
character; and I deliberately say, I do not believe it;
I do not admit any such thing. Nay, it is rather observable, that the men  who are wont to speak the most
bitterly of their country-I mean the uiltra-reformers,
the abolitionists, for instance, and comne-outers of all sorts
-do nevertheless  comfort  themselves with  the  belief,
that their labors have not been in vain;  that there is
a better tone of sentiment and a better state of morals
among us, than there was twenty years ago.
But I do not deniy that there are some bad indications, explicable, I think, however, on other grounds
than that of a general tendency and sweep downwards.
In the moral  condition of  a people, there will always
be oscillations.   There are local circumstances, affecting
moral conduct; there are great movements of society;
there are reactions; all writers on statistics know this,
and the moral critic is bound to consider it.  Thus, in
the education of the young, obedience fails to be enforced amnong us, to an extent positively alarming;  but
I believe that it is a reaction from the ol( parental rigor;
and I think I already see indications of return to.wholesome discipline.  Then again, we have heard much of
social  disorders; of the bowie-knife and  lyncl-law on
our Western border.   This state of things is evidently
owing to circumstances;  and, what  is especially to be
observed, this border line of semi-civilized life, instead
of coming this way, as it should, according to the argument of deterioration, is constantly retreating.   So in our
I5 
16
cities, we have seen violence and sad misrule, enough to
furnish a loud argument  against us on the other side
of the water, and loud admonition to ourselves.   The
truth is, we have been slowly learning, how, under our
popular system, to govern cities.  And I think we are
solving the problem.   And again I say it is observable
that the disturbance is retiring; it is passing, so to say,
along down our coast cities; and in one after another
it is controlled.   We had mobs in Boston, New Bedfor(l,
Providence, New York. We have them no more. Disorders still prevail in Philadelphia, especially amonig the
fire-engine companies-organizations which I hope will
ere long be entirely supplanted by the use of steamengines-and in Baltimore, from political causes.  The
truth is, and we are  finding it out, that  nothinglt  but
military force will hold in check the lower populace of
our cities.  With  regard  to mnisrule, to corruption  in
our city governments, the only remedy lies in agencies
far more difficult to be called forth.   For until the superior classes in our cities, the men of wealth and ed(lucation, will consent to take the part which they ought to
take, in our elections and in our municipal affairs, there
will be mnisrule and corruption, injuring the public interest, and shaming all good men.   The evil is growing
so monstrous, that I cannot help believing, it will drive
us upon the obvious remedy. Then once more, it is said
that crime is iiicreasinig  in this country faster than population.  Is it strange that it should (lo so?  Does it
fairly indicate the general character of our people, when
it is well known that so much of it is impI)orted from
foreign countries?  Of the criminals  convicted in our
I 
17
Courts,-a large proportion come from abroad.   In some
instances, we are told, that the very penitentiaries and
almshouses of the continent of Europe, have been emnptied of their miserable  tenants, to  be shipped off  to
America. More than nine tenths of the paupers and
beggars in our cities come fiom the Old World.   Everybody knows how rare it is, to meet with a native Americanl mendicant.
There is altogether a mode of reasoning about this
matter, or rather a way of representing things, that is
unfair and unjust.  The foreign journals get hold of here
and there a fact, or of a gossiping story told by some
traveller, and forthwith set it up as a placard against a
,whole people.   And they talk too, of mobs and popular
outbreaks here.  Have they none, in the cities of Europe?
There has not been, I confidently say, since we have been
a nation, such a stable and undisturbed order of society in
the world, as our own.  They say tauntingly, " here is a
iyotlIug  people, a people in the flush of its morning, a
people that ou-ht to be in a condition of pristine virtue
and innocence, and yet so full of vices and crimes, so
"full of sores and ulcers," that its friends, as they look at
it, must hang their heads in shamne.  The case is not so.
Society here is primarily an offlhoot from society in
Europe, in its average condition.  And then in later days,
what shoals of the base and abandoned, have been floated
to this country from foreign shores! And what miultitudles of ignorant and miserable paupers from abroad, have
been cast upon our hands, employing, as we well know,
all the benevolent energies of our cities! I think we deserve some better return than taunts for our care of them.
3 
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It is indeed a very extraordinary condition of things. No
people in the world, was ever before subjected to such a
trial.  Ah! it is very easy to stand with folded hands on
the opposite shore, and say, " what a bad plight you are
in!"
As to the absolute question of our growing better or
worse, there are many things to be considered(l.  The liberalizing and enlightening of a people, have their perils; we
may welcome the general result, and yet look with anxiety
at some of the processes and steps. The growth of wealth
and luxury, is still more perilous; but some extravagance
in living, and some foolish fashions-late hours and lavish
entertairnments, though economically bad, and  bad for
health. may not be so bad as the case-hardened rigor of
the old Puritan time, the stern face which it wore toward
all the gayeties and pleasures of life, the mingled hypocrisy and fear which it branded into the youthful mind.
The notion that the more miserable a man is, and feels,
and lookcs, the better man he is; and the more happy and
gay, the worse-this wrong to Providence, this base
crouching under its mighty dome of light and blessingwe may well be thankful that it is passing away.  Changes
which to the strict and conservative eye wear a bad aspect, may not be for the worse.  There is more liberality
with regard to amusements; but certainly the festal habits
of our people have improved.   There are not so many
brutal fights on public days, as there were forty years
ato; there is not so much drunkenness at feasts, or town
meetings, or nmilitary parades; there is not so much profane swearing.   In fact, it is capable of demonstration, I
believe, that fifty or eighty years ago, under the incrusta
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tions of the old Puritanism, viler streams of intemperance
and licentiousness, were stealing through our New Eng land society, than can be found now.
In short, I say that society, in its whole spirit, tone,
and character, is improved.   There is less intolerance,
whether religious, political, or social, than there was  half
a century ago. New views, whether with regard to the
rights of men, or the sphere of woman, or the improve ment of society, receive a more hospitable entertainment
than  they  did  then.   Slander, running  its gossiping
round, leaving its poisonous slaver wherever it winids; I
believe there is less of it than there was.   People have
l)ooks, reviews, newspapers, lectures, concerts to occupy
them; and the neighbor's character oftener escapes. And
in business, that system of preference-credits, that dishonorable evasion of fair and open responsibility; I ask
you, if it is not in greater discredit, than it was twenty
years ago. And in fine, I put it to any discerning and
thoughtful man, who has reached middle life, whether he
does not find society more just, tolerant, frank, and fearless, little enough as there is of all this, than it was
tweniity years ago.
Mly subject in this discourse, is the love of country.
We cannot love our country as a country should be loved,
but it must be-I hope it will not be thought a weakness
to say-with somnethiug of reverence and tenderness, with
somnething of enthusiasm and pride for it; and we cannot
hear it recklessly vilified or wrongfully accused, without
remonstrance.   It is to these l)oints therefore that I have
now been speaking.
In the same patriotic interest I am tempted to add a
word or two on another point.
I 
2O
In the all-criticizing spirit of the time, there is a sort
of incredible talk among us about national failure, about
the  sundering of the national bond, about the disuniting
of    these States; these Federal States as we  call them.
Tile possibility of using such language arises in part, I
think, from our calling them Federal States,-deriving
our  notion, or our nomenclature at least, firom the old
Colonial time.   We  are not confederated States as, till
recently, the Swiss Cantons were.   We are not a league,
but a nation.   We are one nation, as much as any other
nation is.  And what other nation in its palmy day, ever
talked  of disunion, as some  among  us  do.   "Dis?Azat? "-I could imagine a sensible man to say, who
heard the word for the first time, and fancied he did not
rightly hear-" disaffection, I can understand, distrust,
disorder, but  disunion?  You  might as well talk of a
disunion of the Alleghany mountains from  one another.
You might as well talk of the disunion of the MisSiSSippi
River from itself."  Nay, and these are not only illustrations, but facts.   Nature has made this North American
empire )zorczlly indissoluble. How are you to cut the Mississippi River in two, giving the southern half to one nation
and the northern half to another?-the southern dictating
on what terms the northern should pass through.   And
our railroads fast engirdliniig the whole empire, and our
common interest and honor, and our patriotic memories,
growing more venerable as they grow ol(ler, constantly
bind us more strongly together.   To be sure, I do not
know what  tl((c  be in the future; but for the  present
time I hold( it to be but patriotic policy and( decency, to
shut our ears against that miserable, paltry, party word,
I 
disunion-spawn of factious discontent, and reckless freedom.
But do not the Southern States, from time to time,
threaten to break off' and go out of the Union? Not
the southern Sates; only one, and that only once.   For
the rest, soy)e )eC)z at the South talk in this wild fashion;
that is all.  But I do  not deny that this is enough,
and more than enough.   I do not deny that the difficulty
to which I now  refer is serious enough.  But is it insuperable?  It is the only question that threatens the
national integrity.  Is there no solution for it but a violent and bloody one?
I cannot, and I do not believe it.  But  I confess that
no  shadow of mystery, that ever hung over  the fairest
fortunes of the human race, has seemed to me  darker
than this. Why it is, tl)hat the Almighty Providence has
permitted this root of bitterness to be planted inii the soil
of our Republic, to trouble the grandest political experiment that ever was made in human affairs, no mortal eye
can see!  It may be that since, in this fair domain and
under this large frieedom-since, I say, prosperity, wealth,
and luxury were to start forth on such a career as they
never ran before, one thing was permitted that should try
men's souls; that should humble our pride, that should
task our patience, our calmness, our forbearance, our love
of country to the utmost.
Would to God that we could see it in this light, instead of throwing upon this (debatable ground the burning
coals of strife!  Instead of doing all that we can to provoke and vilify, and estrange one another, would that we
could sit downi together as brethren, and as in the pres
g1 
ence of God, and sincerely and solemnly ask; what we can
do?iwhat we ought to do?  What is our duty?  What
is right?  What is best for all?  Here  is a people
planted upon our territory; a portion of the human
race; inferior to ourselves, if you please, but human
and placed here without any fault of our own; nay,
placed here against the remonstrances of our fathers;
nay, more, so far as we are concerned, put, by an inscrutable Providence, into our hands; and now what is our
duty to them?  What ought a just people to do for
them? What ought a paternal and Christian government to do?
What ouilht we to do, I say; for there is a question
of {lte right, which is above every other question.  I
grieve to hear any high-minded man, swayed by party
biases, speak lightly of this highest law. Without it,
we are not men, but brutes.  No men, nor nations can
truly respect themselves, unless they bow in reverence
before this sublime authority.  What  is the cainonized
virtue of ages; what do we venerate in heroes and miartyrs; what is it, without which there is left no worth nor
dignity in the world, but tile r/#/ht?  Nations mlay rise
and prosper; generations may sweep over the earth, and
eloquent histories be writteni of them; planets iight roll,
and stars wheel round their mighty centres-they are
but dust and ashes, unless the law of the everlasting
ri/yht reigns over them!
What, then, is it right for us to do with regard to this
African people?  Emancipate them at once; turn them
adrift from our care, and take off the hand of restraint;
let them be free as ourselves; free to work or to be idle
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as they please, firee to roam hither and thither as they will,
firee to vote or to bear arms like other fireemen?  I do
not say so. I may be wrong, but that is not my opinion.
Certainly there is a profound convictionI to the contrary,
among the Southern people.
What is the right then? I answer, it is to consider
and care for these people, so strangely and sadly intrusted
to uts; to consider and care for them as men.   It is to
educate, instruct, Christianize them. Why, we send missions to the farthest heathen for that.  It is to pass laws
for the gradual  amelioration of their condition.   It is
ultimately to  emalncipate  them.    With regard to  the
steps, I cannot go into detail.   The problem will be one
of immense difficulty and complication, far greater than
that which was involved in the treatment of the serfs in
the Mid(lle Ages.
But this at least we can do.   We can set up {gie'iyl{
to be the sovereign law in this whole proceeding. There
is always a conflict, more or less, between natural right
and municipal regulation. In the case of Slavery, that coiiflict is carried to the extremest point of contradiction.   It
is in vainii to deny it. The slave has a perfect right, if he
can, to run away.   I never saw a man, North or South,
who denied it.  But the nmunicipal lawv steps inand stops
him.   It is a grievous solecism; it is a sad conflict between a iiian's rights and society's rights.   But I cannot
deniy that society has a right to restrain actions, otherwise
right, naturally'right, wvhich tend to its own destruction.
I have a natural right to eat and drink, and to buy and
sell what I will-alcohol, or poison, or gunpowder-yet
society claims the right, by license-laws, to restrain me.
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But still there is a Supreme Law which says that that
contrariety shall be lessened, as fast as the general welfare and safety will permit.   And to hold that extremest
contradiction to natural right which slavery p)resents-to
hold it, I say, fast clenched; to repel the very idea that it
ought to be lessened or loosened in any way; to say that
it is right and always shall be, to buy and sell men and
their posterity after thema  forever; and to (ldemand( that
the comnioni and supreme Goverimelnt of the land shall,
by its action, avouch this local and mulnicipal boiid to be
altogether right, shall adopt, espouse, recognize it, shall
enact into its laws, legitimate in its territories, this grand
and world-condemned wrolig to humanity; this is what
we never can consent to.
Alas! the time was, when the South  mainly agreed
with us in this; when it admitted that slavery was an
evil, and in its oriogin a wrong, which must be corrected
in due time.  But it has beeni goaded by the violence of
our disputes, into an opposite position.  Is it not possible
that it should take a step backward; while we on our
part, forsake the attitude of sectional antagonism, except
in opinion, which we cannot help; and that we should all
agree, that slavery should be left just where it is; to be
dealt with by those who alone have the charge and the
responsibility; just as if the Southern people were a foreign nation; our common, our general government, doing
nothing for it, nor against it, but simply letting it alone;
simply keeping the bond of the Constitutionii; no more
disclussing it in Congress, than if it were Russian serfdotn; making no fugitive slave-laws, nor ailly other laws
about it; but simply, I repeat, letting it alone.  If the
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people of the South could consent to that, ceasing to be
propagandists of their system, it would be doubtless a con cession of municipal or pecuniary claim on their part, to
moral principle; but, would it not be a noble concession?
Why, the whole progress of justice and freedom in the
world has involved precisely that concession. Arbitrary
kingships, aristocracies, customs, laws, rights of posses sion, have always been giving way to the moral claim.
The ordinance of'87 was precisely such a concession.
Upon no other principle was slavery prohibited from going
into the Northwest Territory.    And when we  at the
North, refuse to open the New Territories to that system, it is, in my mind, mainly upon the same ground.
If the slaves were ordinary property, if they were but
horses or oxen, we should think it monstrous to say to
their owners, "You shall not take them there."  It is
because they are men, because their presence there would
iinjure the public interest-would injure the free white
laborer; because, in short, it is a thing that ought to be
repressed, not extended, that we insist upon that concession. Would it not be an honor to the Southern men to
make it? It would be returning to the ground with regard to this institution, which their fathers held.   It
would be to throw off from their shoulders, the_ responsibility for a system which they did not create, but have
inherited. Now, alas! they assume and avouch it to be
their own, and to be right and good. The moral sentiments of the world are against that stand. Can they
hold it?
I have thus far been engaged ill the discussion of some
questions concerning the treatment of our country, con
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cerning its moral condition, and the one great danger
to it.  And here, perhaps, I ought to stop; but I cannot
leave the subject, without undertaking to say something
of what a true patriotism demands of us; what of duty,
fealty, and affection.
I must detain you with one preliminary remark, which
goes through the whole subject. It is this; and I would
emphasize it:   Universal  civilized  modern  society is
entering upon  a political condition, which  devolves an
entirely new  kcharge and responsibility upon citizenship.
Under absolute rule the subject had little to do with
regard to government, but to submit to what was ordained for him.   There was no pulpit, nor press, nor
caucus, nor ballot that could fairly speak out; or that
could exert any efficient influence upon public affairs.
The popular conscience, instead of being educated to a
sense of duty to the common weal, was crushed down by
political injustice and oppression.   Indeed, the spectacle
of selfishness, seated on the throne and ruling in the court,
too often taught the people only to be selfish,-to hoard
their property or to tie it up in entails, and to pursue
their pleasures, with little sense of what they owed to
the country.   The  Grecian and Roman  republics did,
indeed, during their brief continuance, develope.a vigorous love of country, but scarcely inculcated any duty to it,
beyond that of fighting its battles.
Now, it is not to be so, it must not be so, in our
modern free States, if they are to work out any happy
condition or high destiny.   We are to make and keep
and guard the State; we, the people, are to do it, by
personal care and fidelity. The machinery of the public
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order will not roll on smoothly and safely without our
intervention; nay, we are the machinery.   The govern ment cannot go on prosperously without us, we standing
aloof and looking on; nay, we are the government!
Here it is, I conceive, that our modern free commu nities have fallen into an immense and perilous mistake.
We have inherited our ideas of citizenship from former
times and from a different order of society; and they do
not apply to our condition. Always and everywhere the
more liberty there is, the more duties there are to be
done. All along on the line of progression, from animal
instinct or from the lowest point of barbarism, up to the
highest intellectual power and freedom, it will be found
that more and more depends upon the individual; that
more and more trusts are committed to him. The whole
framework of government and society, becomes more and
more complicated. The King of Dahomey, or the Emperor of China, has but few laws; and the people have
nothing to do but to obey them. We make the laws,
multiply them, change them, execute them.   No  man
stands alone, or can rightly stand apart.  Every citizen
is brought into immediate relations with the welfare of
the State. Every citizen has duties to perform to the
country. And every instrumentality, organ, 9nd office,
that has power to influence the public welfare, should be
subject to the same patriotic obligation.
It should be recognized, first, in our schools and colleges. There should be taught in them, as a distinct
branch of education, the duties of citizenship.   InI our
technical views of what constitutes education, this practical and pressing interest has been strangely overlooked.
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I am told that the schools of semi-barbarous Japan are
ahead of us in this respect; that the children there are
instructed in the actual duties of coming life. We want,
in our schools, a Political Class-Book, more comprehensive and simple, too, than any I know of,-though an
excellent work of the kind was written by Mr. William
Sullivan, of this city,-a book that should instruct youth
in the nature of our government, in the duties of citizens,
of voters, jurors, magistrates, and legislators; in the
morals of politics and parties, in the principles upon
which the vote should be given; how much should be
conceded to party organization, and what should never
be conceded to it. And if there were a plain chapter or
two on Logic, I think it would be well,-teaching the
young something about the principles of right reasoning,
-that of which our people know less than of almost anything else; our politics, our caucuses, our newspapers,
are about as full of one-sided and fallacious reasonings as
they can hold.
Next, the pulpit owes a duty to the country.   We
are constantly complaining that political morality is at a
low ebb, and is sinking every day, lower and lower.
What duty of the pulpit is plainer, than to speak of
immorality, and especially of that which cuts most directly and deeply into the heart of the common welfare,
political immorality? This wretched and ruinous distinction between public and private virtue, between political and personal integrity; this permitting and expecting men in official stations, to act on principles that
would dishonor them in trade and at home; this giving all fealty to party and none to the country; whose
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duty is it to strike at this stupendous demoralization, if it
is not that of the preacher?   If, as a trustee of private
funds, a lman cannot cheat or embezzle without a black
mark being set upon him, without being driven out from
the society of all honest and honorable men; shall a
public trust be violated, a trust confided to a man by his
fellow-citizens, a trusteeship for the whole country and
for unborn generations; shall it be violated and nothing
be said of it, but that it is just what might be expected?
Shall this huge dereliction be visited only with a sneer;
and that, more at the miserable state of the country, than
at the men who dishonor it?
The sacredness of every political trust; the awfulness
of government-I speak advisedly; the solemn significance, the binding and religious obligation of the oath,
with which a man swears that he will "well and truly"
serve his country; what holy bond can be more properly
insisted on, in the pulpit, than this?  No  "sanctitude of
kings" ought to be more venerable than the magistracy
of a free State. No holy conclave ought to be more
sober and conscientious than a congress of men, chosen
and set and bound, to think and act for the welfare of a
great people.
And why shall not the pulpit speak of and for the
country, for the common weal? Why shall it not speak
great and solemn words for patriotic duty, for sobriety
and thoughtfulness, and moderation, and mutual love?
Why shall it not plead for the country?  I cannot help
thinking that if all the pulpits in the land, were to do
their duty in this respect, the result would be marked and
visible; and we should not have all political action dese
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30
crated as it now, too often, is, cast out under the trampliig feet of party violence and recklessness, a  game
for the adroit, a butt for satire, rather than a bond for
conscience and honor. If the clergy want texts they may
find enough of them, in David and Isaiah, and in the
books of the New Testament.
The relation of the Press, to the country is sufficiently
recognized; and the only question is, about the use it
shall make of its acknowledged and immense power. I
am glad that it is free; and no abuse of which it is capable would seem to me so odious as a government censorship; as the ignominious bondage which is now imposed
upon the Press in France. Where there is not free debate
of every kind-free talk in the streets, free speech  in
public, free printing everywhere-there is no political
freedom.
Still I could wish that the press might considerfor itself, what restrictions patriotism, justice, and honorable
fair play, should lay upon it. A man should inot feel
more at liberty to put forth rash, hasty, and inconsiderate
words, because he is an editor, cloaked in his closet, but
less, incomparably less. The private man speaks to his
neighbor; the editor of a newspaper, to thousands.
I have observed with pleasure, that two or three
Conventions of Editors have been lately held in the
country. I hope there will be more of them. Why
should not discussions be entertained in such Conventions,
on the principles upon which the Press should be conducted-on Editorial duties and rights, and inter-editorial
courtesy and forbearance? The clergy meet together to
consider their duty and work: so do teachers of youth.
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Why  might not editors?  Their position makes them
teachers and guides to the people. And why, in fact,
should there not be in our system of education, a distinct
department of preparation for the editor's chair, as well
as for the law, or medicine or theology?
It is every man's interest and duty, as far as possible,
to hold just, large, well-proportioned views of things.
Why should a man be willing to be one-sided, to be given
over to partial and party views of subjects, because he is
an editor? Are we never to see in party prints any fair
admission of what is right on the other side? And there
is another thing still more vital to the editorial conscience
and honor.   There  is a line which  should never  be
crossed without sacred caution: it is the line beyond
which lies the domain of private character.   I do not
mean of the private life only, but of a man's essential
claims  to rectitude of purpose.   Personalities seldom
serve any good end; they subserve many bad passions.
Measures may be freely and roughly handled; motives
may not.   And the contest here is too unequal for honorable assault-except in very extreme cases.   The man
who commands a battery, should beware, for his honor,
how hle opens it upon an unarmed man. For the single
man against such a force, is virtually unarmed.- He has
no fair chance.  He  cannot answer.   He does not answer; except in words, which if they become common,
will alike degrade the press, and destroy its power"Oh! it isn't worth noticing; it is only a newspaper!"
A free State, I repeat, unlike a despotism, must engage
the services of all its citizens, in their appropriate duties.
A representative system requires of every man the vote.
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Trial by jury, demands that every man should sit on the
jury, when he is summoned to that service. And to fill
a public office, when the expressed wish of the citizens
designate the man, is scarcely short of an obligation.
Our compact is, thus to serve one another, in the great
interests of the Commonwealth. Travellers in this country have made it a reproach against us, that we are all
engaged in politics. We ought to be engaged in them;
not as petty politicians, but as men observant and thoughtful, and anxious for the common weal. Mr. Wordsworth,
the great English poet, once said to an American visitor,
with whom he had talked a long time on the English and
American systems —" I am chiefly known to the world as
a poet; but I think that during my whole life, I have
given ten hours' thought to politics for one to poetry."
The visitor said in reply, "I am not surprised at that;
for the spirit of your poetry is the spirit of humanity;
and the grandest visible form of human interests,is politics."
Was he not right? And do not the most influential
men and the highest minds among us, owe an especial
duty to the country? There are not a few men among
us who seemn to me strangely insensible to this duty.
There are respectable persons that I hear say, and who
seem to pride themselves in saying, that "they care
nothing about politics." Business men in our cities avoid
as much as they can, sitting on juries; preferring to pay
a fine for neglect. There is a conservatism among the
more wealthy and cultivated classes, that looks with cold
disdain or strange timidity upon those popular elements,
that are working out the common weal or woe. Instead
of stepping forward and taking their proper place, they 
shrink into corners.   This timidity of conservatism is in
Atglo-Saxon men the strangest thing!  Let the popular
wave arise, and they flee before it, like sheep before a pack
of wolves. Let municipal questions agitate the people,
and violence be threatened; and they turn back and leave
it for those who wzill, to take the lead.  They say that
tile public interests, nay and the very rights of property,
are in peril; and they do nothing but submit.   Is there
no English hardihood left among us for emergencies like
these?   Is the fairest chance for self-government and
national freedom, ever accorded to men, to be given over
to pure faint-heartedness or scorn?
I would not, however, be thought to speak with Unreasonable severity of these doubts and fears of conservatism.   I would not make a bugbear of this distrust.  I
feel it in a degree myself; every thinking man feels it.
And it is not peculiar to us in this country.  In every
country thoughtful men feel it. In France, nay in England, do they not feel it?  Do  they not entertain the
question, whether the present order of things will hold;
whether changes, whether  revolutions  may not come?
But this is what I say.  Is this distrust to be made an
argument for deserting the post of duty, for giving up
the cause of the country?                     _
It is against this faint-heartedness that I contend; and
I hope I may be pardoned for doing so pointedly and
earnestly.   I would use no unbecoming adjuration, but I
would s-y, if it were proper for me to say, to all conservative doubters for the sake of everything momentous and
holy, Sirs, arouse you to your duties. Slavery excepted,
I know of nothing more ominous for the country than
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your own position in it. Why, I have been told that a
distinguished foreigner who has spent a year or two
amon-og us, says he has hardly met a man in the higher
society, who did not look with entire distrust to our future.
If it be so, I will tell you whom he has met.  He has
met you, the ultra-conservative men of the country.  He
could never have heard anything like this, froin the great
body of our intelligent people. But if the danger were
real, I can tell you what would do more than anything
else to avert it. Let thirty men that I could nanme in
each of our cities, and a hundred in each State, go freely
into the popular assemblies; let them speak there; let
them speak wisely, manfully, kindly, liberally, and generously-with a heart full and warin for their brother-men
and for the common country; and I believe the effect
would be incalculable.
Do you say it would be troublesome to vote and serve
on juries, and to go and speak in popular assemblies?
But what duty is itot sometimes troublesome?   To rear
a family, to provide for it, to build up an estate, is
troublesome.  The student's, the lawyer's, the physician's
life has its troubles, its disagreeable things to do.  The
soldier must stand sentinel, stand in the trenches, stand
in the imminent deadly breach; and ill should we think
of him, if he lay in his luxurious teit when hardship and
danger demanded him. And are the duties that we owe
to the whole embodied life of the Republic, to be exempted
from the obligation that presses everywhere else?,  No,
I firmly say it; we must march up to the breach wheni
duty or danger to our country calls; we, in the wh(ole
country, we, in cities.  All the respectability, influence,
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wealth, learning, culture in our cities, should be seen at
the polls, and often at the primary meetings. If in timid ity, in cowardice, in fastidiousness or scorn, they stand
backl and give place to ignorance, brutality, and violence,
whose then will the fault be, if the lower elements get
uppermost? Troublesome, indeed! Let me tell you
that something more troublesome will come; ay, trouble
that we think little of now, if we neglect to guard the
house.  Troublesome, forsooth! Where are the courage
and manliness and self-sacrifice of honest and honorable
men?  For I say, if we could truly understand it, that
amidst ease, and abundance, and luxury, there is as much
self-sacrifice required to keep all right and safe, as there
is in scenes of revolution and blood.   We  CnOW, that if
every manI in this country will do his duty, all will go
well.  And of whom may we demand that they do their
duty, if not of those who have, or conceive that they have,
the most at stake? And what if such a man were stricken
down, by popular violence-stricken down at the pollsny, murdered, martyred! It would be a glorious martyr(lom. It would do more to appall the lawless and arouse
the negligent, than a whole life could do.
But, says some learned or fastidious and delicate
gentleman, "what can I do in the primary assemblies?
They wont hear me." There it is again-that mistimed
timidity or morbid self-esteem. But I say they will hear.
They want to hear from those whom they involuntarily
respect as men of wealth, education, and influence. And
they must hear from them. Republics must be brotherhoods. Free communities, free cities cannot go on well,
if the most influential persons in them retire in disgust
85
I
4 
and disdain from all participation in their affairs. The
English aristocracy are beginning to feel this; they are
learning that "Aptfcrot-the best-must mean something
more than fashionable idlers or mere cultivators of their
estates; and they are more and more mingling with the
people, at least in their social, municipal and political
affairs and interests. They are living more for the public
and for the common weal, than they once did. Nothing
else can justify their position, in an intelligent and increasingly free community. And nothing else can make any
similar position right, in a free country. This is the price
that a guarded liberty must pay: a guarded liberty I say,
and none other can be kept, or be long worth keeping.
This is the price, I believe, and therefore I insist upon it
-this care, this common interest, this intervention in
affairs, of the highest men among us, this friendly and
fraternal mingling together of all the elements that constitute a free nationality.
A free nationality, I say; and I believe that we have
yet to come to a new idea of what it is; of what our
own is; of what every nationality is. It is God's ordinance.   Men cannot work out the ends for which they
are placed on earth, without being gathered into communities  under  the protection  of government.   This
national bond  is God's ordinance;  and  it must  have
man's respect, reverence, and cherishing affection.
We are not-and we oztugkht not-to care for England
or for Franc(e, as we do for our own country. Here the
God of Nations has set us down; and drawn about us
the bonds of the public order; and girdled us round
with  ocean barriers  and  chains of ocean lakes;  and
36 
87
spread out this realm of day-dawn and sunset, and
healthy climates, and mighty forests, and glorious prairies,
loIng kept and hid from other lands by the waves and
storms of the mighty deep-this realm richer than the
Hesperides, vaster than Imperial Rome,-to be the em pire of a great people.
We love our country. We are proud of it. We
know that no nation on earth ever set out on such a
career before.  It had its beginninys in the most advanced
civilization in the world; and other good elements have
mingled and become blended with it. We love our
country. Let us love it. Let us be proud of it. I will
listen to any high patriotic adjuration, to any solemn
admonition; but I will not listen to any cold and blighting disparagement. Not only has there been a more
rapid growth in wealth and population here, than anywhere else, but more inventions of the subtle intellect
have originated here than in any other country; more
churches and schools and colleges have been built; more
books and newspapers and journals have been printed and
read; and more enterprises have been undertaken here, for
the reform of morals, for the relief of the poor, and the
fallen, and the insane, for the spread of religion at homne
and abroad. And shall any clique of croakers or fanatics
stand before this mighty people and point the finger and
say, "Aha! go down! go to pieces! you are going
down; you are not worthy to live!"
No! wide let patriotic honor and trust and hope beat,
from North to South, from East to West; like the
mighty ocean waves that engirdle  us;  like  the fresh
breezes that sweep through our valleys.  For this reason 
38
-for the culture of patriotic sentiments, I am  glad to
witness that enterprise which is taken up by our whole
people, for setting apart and consecrating the residence of
the Father of his country, to be his perpetual memorial.
I am glad that it is to be done by individual contributions
rather than by act of Congress.   I am glad that efforts
and appeals of every kind, that journals, and speeches,
and eloquent orations have gone forth, to stir the national
heart.
To gather up, and fix, and perpetuate through all time
the great memories of our national life-what place so
fit as  Mount Vernon!   It may  be to this country, I
will not say what Versailles is to France; for the voluptuous and selfish monarch who built it, stamped upon it
quite another character, and did more, in fact, to bring
down ruin uponI the monarchy than ever was done by
any other single action; but it may be what the last
king of France desired to make of Versailles, a grand
historical monument.   Tile gardens of Versailles, about
as large as the estate of Mount Vernon, are laid out with
walks through avenues of trees, with many a turn and
winding into bowers and boskets, adorned with sheets
and falls of water, and filled with fountains. The palace
walls are hung with historical pictures of the great men
and times of France. Why may not Mount Vernon become in time the more than Versailles of America-its
tangled woods cleared up, its barren fields covered with
living verdure, and pathways opened all around and
through its ample domain, for the generations of all coming time to walk in-drawn  thither by attractions of
lanidscape-art, and historic pictures and statuary, and
I 
89
touched by historic memories surely not less grand and
inspiring than those of any people that ever lived.
Yes, and above all, let the great name of Washington
rise; of him who did more than any man to make us a
people, and whose name more than any man's binds us
together; of him whom the great poets, and orators, and
historians of all countries unite to-day, to proclaim the
most perfect model of heroic patriotism; of him who
served us without recompense, who governed without
ostentation, and whose sway was that of patience, probity, wisdom and modesty; of him whose imperturbable
dignity controlled officers and soldiers alike; whose natural vehemence was chastened by the solemnity of his
mission; and whose calmest words thrilled the hearts of
men like electric fire; of him who was a tower of strength
in the day of our weakness, and a pillar of fire in the
darkness and storm; and who, had an imperial diadem
been offered him, in the day of his victory, would not
have reluctantly declined it, as Cesar did, but would have
trampled it under foot as a painted bawble; of him,
whom, when he died, a weeping nation declared to be
"' first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen."
?
I 
A 
THE DIVINENESS
OF
HUMAN GOVERNMENT;
A DISCOURSE
DELIVEBED IN PARK STREET CHURCH,
BY REV. A. L. STONE, D. D.,
ON THE OCCASION OF
T H E NATIONAL FAST,
Thursday, September 26th, 1861.
BOSTON:
H E N R Y H O Y T,
No. 9 Cornhill.
1861.
.- 0   
THE NATIONAL FAST.
t  bines human (Obetnment.
Romans xiii. 1-4.
" LIET EVERY SOUL BE SUBJECT UNTO THE HIGHER
POWERS.  FOR THERE IS NO POWER BUT OF GOD: THE
POWERS THAT BE ARE ORDAINED OF GOD.
" WHOSOEVER, THEREFORE, RESISTETH THE POWER, RESISTETH THE ORDINANCE OF GOD: AND THEY THAT RESIST
SHALL RECEIVE TO THEMSELVES DAMNATION.
"FOR RULERS ARE NOT A TERROR TO GOOD WORKS, BUT
TO THE EVIL. WILT THOU, THEN, NOT BE AFRAID OF THE
POWER? Do THAT WHICH IS GOOD, AND THOU SHALT
HAVE PRAISE OF THE SAME.
"'FOR HE IS THE MINISTER OF GOD TOiHEE FOR GOOD.
BET IF THOU DO THAT WHICH IS EVIL, BE AFRAID: FOR HE
BEARETII NOT THE SWORD IN VAIN; \OR HE IS THE MINISTER OF GOD, A REVENGER TO EXECUTE WRATH UPON HIM
THAT DOETH EVIL."
IN the midst of our homes there walks a
silent, invisible power, seldom coming forth
-    1. of.1
N
4 
4          THE DIVINENESS OF
into expression and assertion, which in en ergy and in beneficence is, of all earthly
forces, most like to the power of God. Like
that supreme power, it is ubiquitous without dividing or weakening itself; it wields its
mastery without putting forth its strength,
and it controls its subjects with a pressure
so gentle that they are unconscious of its
administration. Between man and man,
and over all the great material interests of
the individual and the community, this
Power  keeps watch and ward  with unsleeping vigilance and incorruptible fidelity.
You build between your field and your
neighbor's a frail palisade of chestnut or
pine, not higher than your shoulder, through
which he could hew in a moment, over
which he could vault at a bound, and when
you have finished your task, this invisible
builder comes in and carries your fence up
0 
HfUMAN GOVERNMENT.             5
to a height no ladder of human climbing
can scale, and makes it thick and solid
with a strength which artillery can not
overthrow. Within these lofty walls which
you see not, but which you know to be impregnable, you plow, and till, and reap in
quiet security all the season long. You
send a lad to the bank with a thousand or
two dollars fluttering in his hand. He
passes by hundreds of tall and strong men,
to some of whom a tenth of what he holds
would be great riches, some of whom have
sought all day in vain to earn or beg a shilling for a half-famished circle at home, but
you have no fear for the safety of the boy
or the treasure.   An  invisible guardian
goes with him, holds a shield before him,
overshadows him from behind, and tickets
him on every side like choice articles at a
fair, "hands off," to the hungry looks that
1* 
6          TilE DIVINENESS OF
covet the prize. I write my name in a book
and lay it down where I will, it cannot
be appropriated; this sleepless agency
watches it, challenges all comers for the secret of that name, and preserves the volume
for the owner. I lie down at night within
wooden walls, and drop a bar indeed across
the outer door, but the panels would yield
to a blow of a rugged fist; thinner and frailer yet is the glass of my windows running
down to the ground - silent reaches of unwatched fields stretch away from my threshhold into groves of oak and thickets of cedar, fit hiding-places of mischief, but my
slumbers are undisturbed by foes within or
alarms without, while the purlieus of a great
city are haunted by the idle, the poor, the
vicious, who would gladly enough share
my comforts without compensation. But
they see painted over the door in letters that 
HUMIAN GOVERNMENT.             7
gleam out through the night and cut into
the black opaque of the window as with the
point of a diamond, and diamond lustres lingering on the tracery, a talismanic "no admittance," through which they cannot
break.
Who thinks of this unseen protection all
around us like the air we breathe, as needful, as healthful, and beneficent, and yet
coming and going, and abiding without fall
of foot or rustle of garment, and doing its
work as mightily and as silently as the
forces of heat and attraction! But what
would life and society be without it? A
continual struggle of warring atoms and
elements - a camp of Ishmaelites, every
man's hand against every other, the will of
the strongest tyrannizing- no  right  but
that of might; industry unrewarded, acquisition impossible save by violence, and the 
8          THE DIVINENESS OF
rule of exchange, the caprice of savage barbarity. But see how the harvests ripen untrampled, unmolested. See how the freighted ships go lonely over the wide waste of
waters, free to all keels, and bring their
treasures back to port. See how each laborer tills his little plot of ground, sure of
the crop for his dependent brood. See how
rich trains of merchandise roll across the
breadth of the continent, through darksome
vallies and over solitary plains, with no convoy of armed men. See how traders and
artisans crowd their show-windows with
the gayest and costliest fabrics and wares,
within half-reach of covetous fingers. See
how even in wild gorges and mountain fastnesses, the wary miner heaps his glittering
pile within his canvas citadel, and sleeps
without the quickening of a pulse. Hiow
every man goes and comes, far and near,
Al
f 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT. 
panoplied in safety like an ancient knight
in mail, without forging one link of defen sive armor, the selfishness that would way lay his steps, snatch the fruit of his toil,
flood his meadows, cut off his springs, poison the air he breathes, disturb his rest, intercept the liht of heaven from his mansion, defile his name, or profane his ear,
held back by the touch of a soft invisible
finger, that paralizes its arm in its lustiest
strength - and tell me what this mighty
protecting and avenging guardianship is
worth to men!
Strike down this arm of LAW, lifted in
defence over every human head -desolate
the homes and thoroughfares of life of this
wide diffused conserving Presence, and society, with all that it includes of progress for
the race, ceases to be, and men are turned
back from friendships and brotherhoods and
9
it 
10       THE DIVINENESS OF
all alliances, to the instincts and ferocities
of the forest brute. It is LAW that watches my cottage door and the silent meadows
around. It is LAW that builds the fences
of the field so high. It is LAW that keeps
the rich man's palace and the poor man's
garden against marauding iolence, that
flings out its protecting flag over the unarmned ocean trader, that leads the slender
bank messenger through the crowd, and
sets its inviolable seal on the curtain of the
gold-digger's tent; that surrounds every
precious human right, as though with a
solid cubic crystal, through which any eye
may look, but no earthly arm can break.
If there be one sanctity next to God that is
sacred, dear and inviolable among men, it
is the sanctity of LAW.
But this invisible power has its visible
seats and symbols. Law as a social force
O
10 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.              11
exists in connection with formal Government. It must show the eternal principles
of Justice and Equity applied. These specific ordinances must be shaped to their
special ends. They must be uttered by
some competent and accredited authorization. Law must translate itself into its
plural- be written out in Statute Books,
set up its Courts of Judicature, gather its
professional expounders, appoint executive
officers, magistrates, policemen, its higher
and lower tribunals, act with definite functions, and by  commissioned  agents.  In
this way it becomes concrete, takes hold of
human relations, gets into practical working
- supplies a solid substance against which
men who throw off its shadowy, invisible
restraints - dash themselves to their hurt
and their discomfiture, and learn the sharp
lesson that to rebel against right rule is
"to kick against the pricks."
0
4 
12         THE DIVINENESS OF
Law and Civil Government then go together. Government is the form, Law the
life - Government the body, Law the soul.
Destroy the body and you dismiss the indwelling spirit. It flies to and fro like
Noah's dove, over a vast wrathful sea -
the masterless billows of human passion. It
returns to the bosom of God, finding no
resting place on earth.  It is apresenceangel that he draws in with his breath
when the black blast of anarchy sweeps
over the dwellings of men. The sanctity of
Law then, is the sanctity of Government,
just as the sacredness of life is the sacredness of the flesh which it inhatits. And
just as Law in its solemn restraints and its
wide conserving beneficence is indispensable to human fellowship and intercourse, so
is Government. Sooner might you leave the
orbs of starry systems uncontrolled by the 
HIUMAN GOVERNMENT.            1
laws of the Creator, and hope for order and
harmony amid clashing worlds, than take
from human necks the yoke of equal Gov ernment, and expect jostling human hearts
to abide under the laws of peace and con cord. What price soever we set upon Law
as the Guardian of all sacred interests on
earth and among men, that measures the
sacredness and worth of Government.
And now we reach another point, and a
more momentous question -Whence is the
authority of law? Who builds the majestic fabric of Civil Government?  Is this
great sanctity left to the estimates and the
election of the human will?  Is government
but a human device,-and are men to say
how they will be governed, on what principles, or whether they will be governed at
all? Not for a moment do those questions
hang in doubt.  Broad, sweeping, positive
2
13 
14         THE DIVINENESS OF
is the Scripture, "THE  POWERS that be
are ordained of God." So universal is the
language that we are not allowed to fall
back upon excepted cases, "THERE IS NO
POWER BUT OF GOD." The origin, the
supremacy of civil government are of God.
Not only has he an all superintending Providence that connects itself with the assignment of each individual lot -so that it is
He who sets up and casts down - who distributes crowns and raises men to power,
but Government, apart from men and from
forms - the Government that exists -
though in its dynasties and royalties founded in wrong and usurpation and violence is
his ordinance, is accepted and established
among his decrees-  is clothed with divine
sanctions and prerogatives, and sways a
scepter borrowed from the right hand of
Jehovah. We need to come back in our 
HiUMAN GOVERNMENT.            15
day to this fundamental conception of what
Government is,- it is a vice-regency of
God  over social humanity.  In the very
freedom of our Institutions as we have
exercised it and theorised upon it, there
has lain a great Atheistic peril. We have
so blazoned and blackened the capitals of
DEMOCRACY,  that we  have overlaid
and blotted out that other and elder word
Theocracy.  We have mouthed it for these
three generations that "the people are the
source of political power," till we have
come to understand by it not that the people's Government is divine, because it is an
ordinance of God - but that there is
nothing diviner than the popular will. In
what we call our immortal "Declaration of
Independence," we have set a thing that
will have to be stricken down out of that
upper immortality, and if it live forever
0
0 
16         THE DIVINENESS OF
live in the nether eternity of hopeless
rebellion.   And  that utterance  is that
"Governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed." There may be attached
to these words a sense not reprehensible.
But as we go on repeating them — reading
them out year after year before great
popular assemblies, and teaching them to
our children as the political Gospel of our
land, they do turn our regard more and
more from God, as the source and ordainer
of civil power, to man. Government becomes thus not a divine ordinance, but a
human thought.   It is a policy of the
governed. It is a preference of individuals.
It is the aggregate concessions of those who,
for the sake of dwelling together, strip
themselves of a portion of their independence, and make over a common stock of 
HU3IAN GOVERNMENT.             17
delegated power to the community. It is
thus a fabric which man rears -and which
man may, as a natural consequence, tear
down. When it pleases any of the con    stituent personal elements of such a social
state to resume what he has conceded, his
allegiance ceases, his bands are dissolved
and his old complete independence inures
to him.  I am glad for one that the voices
of the religious press, and the voices of the
pulpit are just now rebuking this Impiety.
For the natural perversion of this doctrine
is bearing fruit-fruit bitter and poisonous as
the apples of Sodom. No! The great uni    versal principle is, that Government derives
its legitimate authority from the fact that it
Is, inasmuch as that fact proves it a divine
ordinance. While it is it is of God. Paul
was writing to the Christians of Rome.
On the throne of the Roman Empire sat
2' 
18         THE DIVINENESS OF
the Tyrant Nero- whom Tacitus calls, in
one of his intense lines, "A beast in
human shape and the very monster of mankind." There were no free Governments
then the world over - none that were
penetrated with Christian ideas.   They
were cruel, corrupt, despotic, and in the
interests of Heathenism and Idolatry. But
even they were of God, and if a Christian
asked what he should do as a citizen, when
he renounced Paganism and its abominations, should he refuse any longer his civil
obedience to such Governments! Paul
answers, "Nero and Caligula are ordained
of God.  They represent, for the time, the
supreme political authority. God has permitted them to be clothed with the sanctities
of administrative power." The maintenance
of Government is a vast inappreciable good.
Any Government is better than no Govern 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.              19
ment.   A  despotism that sits galling on
human necks and inaugurates a pagan faith
as the religion of a people, is better than the
wild horrors of anarchy. And a Pagan
religion is a great deal better than no
religion, immeasurably higher and safer
than rank infidelity and blank Atheism.
God does not sanction corruption, and
cruelty and Heathenism, but he may
delegate to a corrupt, cruel, heathen man,
the office of administering and enforcing
Law% on earth.
We must come back to this conception
of the sacredness of Government, that it is
set up in God's name- by virtue of his
right to exercise and to delegate administrative power- and as an inherent part of his
own divine supremacy over the creature.
It is to train us up as subjects- to tutor us
in subordination —to bring nearer to us 
0   ~ THE DIVINENESS OF
the scepter of power than his own distant
imperial throne - to discipline us in selfrestraint, to help us in the control of our
appetites and passions, to clear up our discernment of practical righteousness, and
attune us to the harmonies of an orderly
universe.
The necessity of Law and Government,
comes not thusjust of the social exigencies of
men thrown together in communities. It exists in a man's own heart-though all alone
He wants not more a God for his instinctive
homage, than he wants a rule to live bya statute to lean upon- an orbit of duty
in which to move. He is and must be
every where and in every condition a subject of Government, and a citizen of the
Commonwealth of Jehovah. As God's
own nature is obedient to law -and the
very law which he prescribes to all
20 
HIUMAN GOVERNMENT.              21
creatures - the Law of Love, so there
exists a necessity that the creature should
conme under the dominion of Law - not
merely that he may be able to mingle with
his fellows, and reap the common benefits
resulting from human alliance, but that he
may put on the image of the High and
Holy One and be forwarded in the nurture
of endless obedience. For these ends God
takes up the Institution of Human Government out of the hand of man, and makes it
an ordinance of his own will - a sanctity
of his own sovereign enactment.
I do not think we have lingered too long
in this part of our subject. It is a serious
question whether we have not in this country
in the very wantonress of personal freedom,
drifted away on all the political currents of
our national life from the God of our
fathers. We have left God out of our 
22         TiHE DIVINENESS OF
civil nationality. We have had no coin for
the great Republic on which we have cut
"Dei gratia."  We  have not looked up
and seen Government descending upon us
by the "jure divino" of Kings, or of any
other style of magistrate. Why, you and
I can make laws. We can construct a
Government. Government is not a divine
institution; it is framed in a town meeting.
"A power" is not ordained of God.   He
is created in a caucus. It isn't the will of
Heaven that supplies our Public Functionaries; it is the party nomination. Well,
if it is all in our hands- if it all lies with
us, what is to hinder us from stepping out
if we choose, withdrawing our investment
in the concern, and letting such others
carry it on in their own way and for themselves as choose to cohere. This is license,
not liberty- this is anarchy, not civil 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT. 
order - this is Atheistic, not Puritanic.
And herein is our first great need of return
to God.
It is in this old nearly lost idea of
Government, and in this view of its wide
temporal and spiritual beneficence, that we
see the greatness of the crime of rending
and subverting Government. It is violence
to a divine institution.  It is slipping the
neck out from beneath a yoke imposed by
the sceptered hand of the Great King.
Even as our Scripture declares, "Whoso    ever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth
the ordinance of God." There is one, and
but one limitation to this duty of civil
obedience.   As Government is divine, it
must express the divine attributes and
coincide with the divine will. And so
strong is the argument for its legitimacy
derived from its existence, that it must be
23 
24         THE DIVINENESS OF
taken to be in coincidence with the divine
will, so far as to constrain our obedience,
unless we find it set over against some explicit rescripts of God.
If God command one thing by express
statutes, and civil government command
the opposite, we may know that that is a
bastard government, and has in that requisition no right of dominion. If God say,
"hallow my Sabbaths," and civil government say, profane them, and license theatres, and bear-baitings, and bull-fights on
that day; if God say honor the Son, even
as you honor the Father, and persecuting
civil government say, blaspheme the name
of Christ, then our obligation to conform
ceases. There comes in then this other
Scripture utterance. The outraged conscience of the citizen may meet the fulminations of the civil powers, with this apos 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.             25
tolic challenge, "Whether it is right in the
sight of God to hearken unto you more
than unto God, judge ye." Here and there
in the world's reproachful history  in the
sad annals of humanity - a government
comes so obviously, odiously, and intolerably to fail of being in any proper sense a
representative of the supreme gevernment,
setting aside and contradicting every divine
attribute, employing all its force to overthrow the first principles of the divine order, that not Christianity but human nature will no longer endure it. God makes
earth and man so sick of it, that they spue
it out of their mouth. But this limit of
personal obedience, and this reserved right
of revolution, are very rare of practical
realization. It is a great and terrible evil
to overturn a government, even a bad and
wicked government. It dissolves all bonds
3
25 
26         THE DIVINENESS OF
of social duty and  communial order.   It
stirs up the sentiments of society fromn their
lowest deeps. It teaches for years, perhaps for a generation, the perilous  lesson
that all governmental restraints may lose
their binding force, and leaves men's minds
unhinged, restless, without solid anchorage
in the stability of existing relations, compacts and duties.
Even when it must be, in the last resort,
the good so purchased, however great, is
well nigh balanced by the terrible cost.
How awful then, must be the criminality of
such a procedure, when it is the offspring
of evil ambition and unholy passion; when
it is attempted not in the name of religion,
or of humanity, or of social progress or of
the personal conscience, but in the name of
a cause that shows blacker against the horizon of this day in earth's chronicle, than 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.             27
any other blot within her crystal belt I
When such a wanton assault is committed
against the divine sanctity of human  Government, we wonder not that the Scripture
waxes hot with wrath, and issues its fateful
decree -" they that resist shall receive to
themselves DAMNATION."
It is the shadow of this great criminality
which to-day darkens half the land. It is
the rending of a nationality divinely founded, it is rebellion against good government
-the ordained vicegerent of God. If this
black scheme of treason be carried by its
own force of arms, or by our weakness of
principle, it is not the revolution of Government, it is the dissolution of Government,
and of all Government. Those mad hands
strike not alone at the pillars of this stately
temple of Empire, but at the mightier pillars that bear up the throne of universal
0
0 
28         THE DIVINENESS OF
civil law. The indictment that will weigh
most heavily on these rebel heads, when
God judges and visits, will be, not in the interruption to our material prosperity, in the
deep anguish of wrestling against business
reverses, the bitterness of seeing want
darkening the cottage doors, in the pouring
out of national treasures like water, in the
sorrow of parting households, the trembling
of heart that watches for all tidings of the
absent, and starts at the fluttering of a leaf,
in the weary marches- the strange exposures-the devastating diseases-the wounds
-the deaths of war, but in the contravention and subversion of all that God stands
for min his ordinance of civil Government.
t is, as he views it, an assault upon the
.ugust banner of his supremacy. When
armed treason struck at the starry flag on
Sumter's battlements, it struck as high as
the stars on heaven's own field of blue. 
HUMAN GOVERNMEgT.             29
Were these insurrectionists at the last
extremity beneath intolerable wrong, where
endurance ceases to be a virtue and revolution becomes a dreadful reality?  Was  it
against an iron-handed, iron-heeled despotism, that had too long trodden them in
the  dust, they revolted?   Was  it not
against a representative Government, in
whose councils they sat, whose policies they
helped to frame, whose high offices they
filled- a Government allowing larger personal liberty, and more generous to diversity of opinion and interest, than any other
beneath the sun, - a government so gentle
in its pressure, so far from all violence and
harshness of coercion in its normal functions,
that it is proverbially the absence of all
governing force? Was there in the sharpness of what they had suffered, or in the inspiration of what they hoped a justification
3* 
30         THE DIVINENESS OF
for this great parricide? What had they
suffered? Not one shadow of wrong, not
the least encroachment upon one right, not
the slightest civil disability or prejudice,
nothing keener than a check upon domineering ambition- a hint that in the fluctuations of the popular will their star
might not always be in the ascendant, a
silent showing of the hands that the people
of the land preferred to have our old unchanged Constitution administered in the
interests of freedom and humanity. In all
this there was no color of departure from
either the letter or the spirit of Constitutional law. The Constitution covered them
as before, with its broad shield. The new
President inaugurated the new era with a
solemn oath to support the Constitution.
Not a line of it was, or could be erased -
not a line of it perverted to their loss. 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.             31
Neither fraud, nor force, nor philanthropy,
nor fanaticism deflected by a hair's breadth
the course of the national administration
from its law-regulated orbit. Was here a
just occasion, in what had been suffered,
for that final dread horror of bringing government to the block?
And what was there in the other direction?  What bright promise in which the
world could rejoice, and for the sake of
which, History could forgive their rashness,
lured them on?  What  hoped they for?
Something grand and great, the attainment
of which should excuse all excesses, before
the tribunal of coming ages, the enlargement of a subject race -the elevation of
some down-trodden people -lifting up from
darkness, and shame, and wrong, some neglected and oppressed portion of the human
family, - the extension of the area of light
0
10 
32         TiHE DIVINENESS OF
and freedom?  For such hope's sake they
might have strained the bonds of legal duty
-mankind would have judged them leniently. But for that fell scheme of an empire
built on the necks of groaning millions-for
the sake of the ignoble crown of plantation
lordship - for the lust of privilege rooted
in feudal darkness, alike debasing to master
and serf, which even semi-barbarous Russia has flung off into the black receding
past, so that she, too, cheers us in this
death-grapple, for the sake of burdening
all the fair central zone of this new
Hemisphere with such a curse to land and
labor and mankind-belting these broad
regions of light with a kingdom of darkness,
over which might stream through the
heavens our northern auroral splendors, but
across whose borders no apostle of truth
and liberty should ever pass,-so great a 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.              33
crime, for so foul an end - is this the
justification with which treason fronts the
present  and the future, and the muse of
History, and the violated ordinance and
stern inquest of God?
And in the face of these facts, clear as
noon, some men keep asking, "must we
push this dread duel?"  "Is it worth  it
all? "   "Can't we have peace?"
"Must we push this dread duel? Is
not this terrible scourge of war ruining all
the material interests of the country - taking half a million strong arms from the
ranks of producers, draining off a million
of wealth a day —prostrating all business
-overthrowing staunchest houses-cutting
off the earnings of the poor-reducing
multitudes to beggary, and entailing burdens upon us and our posterity, under
which many generations must go bowed
down?" 
34         THiE DIVINENESS OF
My friend, can you think of nothing else
but your "business?"  Is all well, in your
estimation, if trade go well? Would you
be quite willing to see the government
shattered, and law trampled under foot,
and our nationality blown up by the infernal machine of treason, if you could pay
your notes and collect your debts, and keep
your credit good?
What do you reckon God's ideal to be
in the life of a nation? That men shou!d
buy and sell, and have great marts, and
garner broad harvests, and grow rich and
fat, and gouty with ease and luxury?
Might not prosperous business be our ruin?
Might not gainful industry and trade uninterrupted lead us swiftly down into the
mire of corruption, sensuality and profligacy? Is not God's end in us, that we
should stand by him - serve his great ri 
'IUMAN GOVERNMENT.            35
pening purposes on the earth - build in
his name, not palaces or towers for ourselves, but the grand, august fabric of a
Christian civilization - in which the frail,
the timid, and the suffering of all peoples
may find shelter and cheer? And when
the pinch comes, shall we falter and cry
out, "Oh my business -my trade - what
shall become of that? " Well, what will
become of it, beneath the ruins of a fallen
Republic-  what enriching commerce will
remain to a people who consent that all
bands of Government shall be but as ropes
of sand? Nay, but there is no ruin, if
there be no loss of manhood, and honor,
and a good conscience. Poverty is not
ruin, nor wealth prosperity. If we give all
that fourscore years of peace and plenty
and unexampled growth have heaped together within our borders, empty every 
36         THE DIVINENESS OF
coffer in this grand crisis, we may stand up
in that noble poverty, as the fruit of such a
purchase and sacrifice, a greater, freer, and
mightier peop)le, all the world being judge,
and God on his throne sealing the verdict,
than ever were possible in bloated wealth
and sordid mammon worship.
But " is it worth it all? "  It is a hesitating voice and half under breath that puts
the question. " Is what we fight for worth
the cost?" What do we fight for? Nearest, simplest, most instinctive is the answer,
"self-preservation."  But there is a world
of meaning in that one word. All that our
fathers came for, wrought for, suffered for,
prayed for, bled for -  "building  grander
than they knew," we fight for in this war.
Their great experiment-their holy mission of founding and preserving a free
Christian State, is handed down to us. 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.               37
The foundation principles of popular Government and Free Institutions, Institutions
founded not in ideas of privilege and caste,
but in simple, natural equity and human
brotherhood are at issue, in our career as a
nation, and of course in this instant contest.
The embodiment in positive forms of law,
and social development of the world's best
progress hitherto, the ripest and richest results of all the laboring past of human story
is entrusted to our keeping, and for that we
fight. For the proper nobility of humanity as born of God and redeemed of God,for equal rights among men, for the largest
and fairest representation of the interests of
the subject in the laws and the administration of Government -for a religion free
from the defiling alliance of political policies, and yet pervading all the atmosphere
of the land, and baptizing unto a spiritual
4 
38         THE DIVINENESS OF
life, all its sons and daughters; for these
sublime trusts this nation has stood, and
for these, with a renewal of hearty consecration, we have put on armor now. The real
stake is all that our country has represented to the world's hope-all that fair vision
seen in her, with desire and with fear, as
her light rose on the nations. Not only is
this worth fighting for, it is worth falling
for as a nation, worth dying for, worth failing of. It is so great a good that if we
kInew all our outlay of blood and treasure
must be in vain to realize it, it were worth
the offering; the great martyrdom would
make our name holy through time and
through eternity.
"But must we fight for it-can we not
have peace?" We were at peace till a
day came when our hearts took on a new
hope for the security of these great prizes. 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.             39
That hope provoked the deadly strife. And
now look at those two armies, well nigh the
mightiest that Christendom ever saw in battle array-see, while our own cheeks tingle,
that flush of victory on Southern brows, hear
their boasts of Southern valor and Northern cowardice, guage the temperature in
those bosoms, of exasperated feeling, bitter
hate, and scornful pride-  see how deep
their hands are dipped already in treason's
bloody work-how their all is cast on this
die-see how the strongest and fellest passions of our nature push them on, lust,
avarice, ambition and revenge, and then
repeat your question, "can we not have
peace? "   Shall we  disband that army
whose living wall is all that keeps that fiery
flood of insurrection from rolling on over
the hill of the Capitol, over the monumental city, over the scene where the first 
40         TIlE DIVINENESS OF
chimes of Independence were struck long
ago, over our midland mines and forges,
over the stateliest homes of commerce, and
dashing its burning waves even against the
base of yonder granite shaft? Is there
anything but red-handed war that can save
the North from such a vengeful chastisement?   The  first sign of yielding, the
slightest motion toward running up the
white flag, would swell the rebel breasts
with tenfold audacity and purpose; and
every man that calls "peace!" "peace!"
while that horde lies behind its rifled cannon, costs the country a company of men,
with all its charges for the war, and its irreparable waste of life. We could not
now treat for peace, without such flouts and
taunts, terms so ignominious, conditions so
humbling, and demands so grasping and so
fatal to Government and Freedom, that no 
HUMAN GOVERNMIENT.             41
depth of blackness and darkness would be
deep enough and black enough for us to
hide in- no veil could cover the shame of
such a dishonor.
Do we understand what it is that is demanded? What does separation mean, if
it could be adjusted? Say nothing of inevitable jealousies and breaches, of raids and
reprisals, of endless and savage border warfare across the breadth of the Continent, of
irreconcilable interests arnd policies touching at ten thousand sore points; leave out
the protest of broad vallies, and great rivers, and boundless plains, and ccntinious
mountain ridges, against being thus cut in
twain, complete the separation, and what is
it f or? To SECURE  AMERICAN SLAVERY! To set up on this Continent, and in its
fairest and richest portion, a great undivided
Slave Empire, that shall do all things with         4* 
42         THE DIVINENESS OF
in its borders according to its own sweet
will, with none to molest or make it afraid;
that shall extend, if it please, by purchase
or by treaty, or by conquest over the Sunny Isles and far toward the Southern Isthmus, and consolidate itself with such forces
and securities, that the world could not for
a century of ordinary progress, throw off
such a horrible incubus; think of yielding
so much of our wealth, and more than half
our territory, owing allegiance and duty,
now by every bond to this Government of
ours, yielding all this to such a doom! No
whatever bribe, which the world could
contain, were thrown in to buy of us such a
peace-infinitely rather would I, as a citizen of this land, see the earth open beneath
us and swallow us down quick, and leave
only a black chasm where all our glory
was! It is God's commission to civil Gov 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.              43
ernment that it bear the sword, and it is not
anti-Christian to be faithful to that commis sion. Nothing is so Christian now, as that
the Government act its divinely pre scribed part as "a  Revenger to execute
wrath upon him that doeth evil." Any
false tenderness, any maudlin Christianity
about fulfilling this commission, would be
the deadliest cruelty, the most glaring impiety.
But I hear some faint heart whispering,
"We cannot conquer a re-union -we may
overrun, subjugate and hold military possession, but the Union never again can be."
How does "Faint Heart" know?  Is he a
prophet beyond all men? Has the Union
been so cordial and loving that he despairs
of seeing such harmony restored? Has he
reflected how many there are on rebel ground
that would hail with jubilant voices, the
43 
44         THIE DIVI.ENESS OF
coming of the day that should end the reign
of terror beneath which they now bow in
silence? Can he not conceive that naughty men may be made to behave well? May
there not be yet other forces that shall take
part in the strife? May there not be new
elements yet, in that social life and civilization of our Southern land?
But fail or win is not the question - it
is for us to do our best for our country, for
our Government, for our kind, for our
trust, for our God, for our duty; and win
or fail, our name, and fame, and future will
be clear, and out of the issue will be gathered some tribute for human good and God's
glory.
So go we forward. Momentarily the
crisis is becoming more eventful-the issue
grander. It is not what it was, pending
the last Presidential election-the triumph 
HIUMAN GOVERNM1ENT.            45
of a party. It is not what it was when the
plot first broke its shell, the unearthing of
treason.  It is not what it was when the
first hostile gun was fired- the restoration
of broken peace The wide front which rebellion shows, the vast efforts it has put
forth, the consolidated scheme it has founded deep and built high, the broad flag it
has unfurled, and the great armies it has
raised, the rocking of the whole nation in
this terrible convulsion for life or for death,
have put before the country and the world,
another and a more radical issue. In dread
silence that issue is coming on and rising up
before us. All minds think it- all hearts
throb it. Providence is leading straight toward it. The madness of rebellion itself
has made it. The hands that stirred up
strife are responsible for it. The necessities of this guilty war demand it. And that 
46         THE DIVINENESS OF
Institution of Slavery, which, if the peace
had been kept, would have still found shelter under our national 2Egis-which no soldier of New England could have touched,
which might have kept its life green and
vigorous on our soil till this 19th century
of the Christian years had expended itself,
THAT is cast into the scales of battle.
Many are eager that the Government
should proclaim this issue, and announce to
the country and the world that we war for
the overthrow of this great evil. Is not the
truer and the more commanding statement,
if we must have proclamation, that we fight
for the maintenance of Government? There
can be no debate upon that statement. Nobody can question the right to draw the
sword, or to stain it red for that issue. No
scruple can lisp that we transcend law in
the name of law. We shall not thus, of 
IHUMAN GOVERNMENT.             47
our own intent and purpose, make the cause
of emancipation a cause of violence and
blood. We shall not endanger the strain ing of loyal consciences, and the disaffection
of many patriot hearts.
I could wish that in all this matter of
proclamations we could have the grace of
silence.  The thing is not to proclaim but
to act. Not to announce, but to march.
Not to send out paper missives but patriot
armies. They are sure to be emancipation
armies. Shall we, therefore, dishonor our
great reform by striking with armed hand,
directly and of set purpose, for that? Rather let the event interpret the work.   "The
stern logic of events," will show emancipation actual, inevitable.    Let  that logic
frame the declaration, and not our lips.
Men may pick flaws in proclamations, and
take sides, and question the right and wis
i 
48         THE DIVINENESS OF
dom, but what the progress of the on-rolling war necessitates, that has unquestionable vindication. I am much mistaken if this
is not the whole breadth of difference between the Administration and the youthful
General  of the  West.  The latter was
moved to anticipate by proclamation - the
former would go silently forward, unfettered, uncommitted, unreproached, to do the
very same thing, as soon as the infallible
conduct of events should lead to it. Nor is
this going, blindly forward. It is following
hard after God, closing in quick and fast
upon the advance of Providence. Did the
Israelites go blindly forward when they
followed the pillar of cloud and of fire?
Would it make us any more clear-eyed to
set up a scheme of our own, project that
forward into the future, and run after it?
This anxiety to settle the hour and the 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.             49
method of deliverance, and proclaim it, is
like the eagerness of the disciples in their
last interview with their risen Master.
"Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again
the kingdom?" And he rebuked them;
what they needed was not to be told something, but to be endued with power; not to
be made prophets of the future, but to act
with courage and boldness, in the living
present.
So far as emancipation is wrought out by
violence and blood, make rebellion responsible. It is rebellion that dashes, the chains
of the slave with the battle axe. The plague
they have invoked frees their thralls. We
strike for Law and Union, for country and
God's great ordinance of Government, and
the stiffness of rebellion makes that stroke
shatter all the fetters of bondage.   Let
5
49 
THlE DIVINENESS OF
the " body"  of proclamations  " lie a
mouldering in the dust,"
THE "SOUL is marching on"
"Glory Hallelujah!"
It is best so. Let events lead us. Let
God in Providence lead us. Can there be
any want of enthusiasm in following such a
leadership? Will it stimulate us to a more
heroic ardor to fly a flag of our own?
Was it a sluggish response that came back
on the full Northern gale when the imperilled Capital called, and our country's
voice woke the echoes of our Northern
homes? Don't let us fall out in writing
proclamations and prophecies - let us move
right onward and make jubilant history.
We love to read of the world's heroic
ages- to kindle our souls with the thought
of what we might have been and done had
our lot been cast in such a time- and to
'Do 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.              51
show a noble scorn of all who faltered then.
Now the stress is upon us.  The times that
try men's souls have come round again here.
A more eventful conflict, for greater principles, and grander issues, the long, scroll
of human story has not recorded. If we
have longed to be heroes, to panoply ourselves and stand up to do battle in a just
cause, now is our time. What are we
ready to undertake in this holy war for
country and liberty and human progress?
We must have patient and considerate
sympathy  for  those  in  authority -the
Heads of State - the Heads of Armies.
We must submit with willing self-denial to
the universal derangement of industrial
pursuits, bear it - stand up under it, accept this cost of the high struggle without
fretting and grumbling. We must spare
something from our luxuries, our comforts, 
52         THE DIVINENESS OF
and from what we have called our necessaries, for the needs of the soldier and the
soldier's family. We must stifle our heart's
surging pain and give up our sons and
brothers and lovers to the march and field.
If we are wanted, we must stand ready to
go; and bind up earthly hopes, earthly
prospects, earthly affections, the care of
wife and babe, and life itself, in one not too
costly sacrifice, and lay it upon our country's
altar. Shall these times pass over us and
we be content to have no personal share in
them, save that our eyes were open upon
them, and our lungs breathed the air so
stirred and vibrant? Shall we recur to
them haply some day with grey hairs on
our brow and a group of grand-children at
our knees, and recite the thrilling events
now crowding the diary of life here, and
when those eager lips ask us, "What did 
HUMAN GOVERNMENT.             53
you do, grandfather?" stammer out a
lame apology that, "we had too much to
attend to, to get away," or that "we were
in too good a place to lose," or that "we
were afraid soldiering might have an unfavorable effect upon our business habits,"
or that "we thought perhaps we might be
taken sick!" Could we bear the wondering reproach of those youthful eyes? Would
not the ashen cheek of age blush crimson?
WTe are to nerve ourselves for the whole
struggle, longer or shorter. No half work
now. Finish it thoroughly, and finish it
forever - so that this issue while the world
stands shall never need on these shores to
be tried again.  Go through with it.  Rebellion and all its vital causes must be
plucked up by the root. For one, I will consent to no peace till I can go every where
over the soil of my country, and talk and 
54         THE DIVINENESS OF
write, and publish and preach what I will
in the interests of truth and freedom, without let or hindrance, and find the whole
land open and safe for every citizen to
traverse, or dwell in without one honest
conviction contraband of the climate and
latitude. Let us not be in a hurry to stop
fighting, but do all God has for us to do
with swords in our hands. The prophet
Elisha bade King Joash take bow and arrow and shoot through the open window;
and as the king shot, the prophet named the
bolt, "the arrow of the Lord's deliverance
from Syria." Then after this hint he bade
the king smite with the arrows upon the
ground. And he smote thrice and stayed.
"And the man of God was wroth with him,
and said thou shouldst have smitten five or
six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till
thou hadst consumed it." If it pleases 
HUMtAN GOVERNMENT.             55
God by this sacrament of battle to consecrate this land unto the glorious future
of Christian freedom, let us not cut short
the administration of this great sacrament.
Above all, with deep personal penitence
and unfeigned humility let us get near to
our God in the full conditions of prevailing
prayer, and cry mightily unto him, that he
make our time of scourging a time of great
deliverance, and through our rent and
torn body, cast out with the right hand of
his power the mighty Demon that has
baffled and defied all other spells.  
TH              PI
i THE LET-ALONE POLICY.
, itrniaii,
BY
REV. O. B. FROTHINGHAM.
JUNE 9, 1861.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED AT No. 5 BEEKMAN STREET.
4
I
0 8 0
No  
a 
SERPMON
Ehlraim is joined to idols: let him alone.-Hosea:x. 17.
I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever
shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also. —If!ttthet; v. 39.
IT is interesting sometimes to see how the same verbal
doctrine looks from two different points of view, and
how the truest doctrine may be misjudged by people
taking the wrong view of it. We have here, announced
by an old, and by the new prophet, a doctrine which
wise and noble men broached for a wise and noble purpose, but which men foolish and ignoble have perverted
to ends ignoble and foolish. It is familiarly known as
the doctrine of "laissez faire," or, as we  say in
English, the doctrine of "Let us alone "-the "Letalone Policy." Respecting this doctrine, a great deal
is to be said both for and against. A great deal is to
be said for it, as originally meant; a great deal is to be
said ogacizst it, as vulgarly understood.  The doctrine
came up in Europe at a time when human nature,
oppressed, beaten down, clogged, worn-out by excessive
government, began to grow restless, and to protest
against the tyranny of over-legislation. The world had
been regulated by its rulers past all endurance, and
was getting desperate under the fretting action of the 
leading strings. Government had its hand in everybody's business, insisted on doing everything, and did
everything badly. Government undertook to adjust
prices of food, to regulate railways, to superintend
house building, to fix cab fares, to inspect sewers, to
vaccinate children, to send out emigrants, to prescribe
hours of labor, to examine lodging-houses, provide
public libraries, read and sanction plays, overhaul
passenger-ships, test the knowledge of mercantile captains, see that small dwellings were supplied with
water, patronize different branches of trade and manufacture; in short, to regulate endless things, from a
banker's issues to the boat fares on a river. It even
undertook to say for men and women how they should
save their souls, what articles of religion they should
believe, where and in what form they should worship,
what proportion of their income they should set aside
for the maintenance of the Church, for the support of
charitable institutions, for the diffusion of Christianity.
Men and womien were scarcely permitted to do anything for their own interest or in their own way.
Human nature was forbidden to work in obedience to
its own divinely-appointed laws, but must stand still
with clogged wheels, and be pushed this way and that
by a set of state and ecclesiastical functionaries. When
affairs were in this hopeless condition, Adam Smith, in
the name of the people, raised the cry of "Let us alone,"
and he meant simply, "Hands off of human nature";
leave human nature free to supply her own wants, in
her own way; leave God's system of checks and
balances to its own operation; leave men and women
at liberty to say what they need, and how they will
meet their need; do not tie up a nation's hands and
feet with red tape, nor throw secretaries and bureaus in
the way of the people's advance. Let us at least try the
experiment of managing our own affairs. This was the
doctrine of "Let us alone " —a doctrine which resulted
2 
3
or tended to result in republicanism in politics and
freedom of conscience in religion. All that is greatest
and most glorious and most hopeful among ourselves,
all that is peculiar to our institutions, whether secular
or religious, comes from this doctrine of" Let us alone."
It is a doctrine that meant, not idleness, not indifference,
not heedlessness, not lawlessness, not the giving up of
all responsibility for the wise direction of things, not an
abandonment of moral control over unruly elements,
not loosening of the reins to every license. It is a doc trine that meant work, activity, business, self-posses sion, self-respect, self-help, taking hold of things by the
right handle, and regulating things according to rules
of economy and justice. It meant, let the hounds loose
upon their prey-the wolves and foxes that had been
terrifying and ravaging society long enough. This was
the doctrine of laissez faire; let us alone, and we will do
our work, we will educate and cultivate and develop our
own temporal and spiritual estates. But when an idler
or a trifler gets hold of the doctrine, it means something
very different from this. Then it means: Let matters
take care of themselves, and go to the mischief, if they
will, in their own fashion, or their own no-fashion; it
means what democracy means to the vulgar, "Every
man for himself, and the fiend take the hindmost."
But to come back to Ephraim.  Ephraim was one of
the ten tribes which, in a period of anarchy and misrule. had cast off its allegiance to the law of Jehovah,
and been faithless to the sacred traditions and worship
of the nation.  No matter about him, says the prophet;
no matter what becomes of him; leave him to follow his
own course; do not meddle with him in the way either
of enmity or friendship; let him alone.
What reasons the prophet might assign for letting
Ephraim alone we can hardly conjecture. There may
have been wise and good ones, which we should acquiesce in at once, if we knew all the circumstances of the 
4
case. As we do not know them, we will not waste
time in guessing at the prophet's thought, but will try
to imagine some of the reasons which a politician might
give for such a piece of advice.
1. In the first place, he would be likely to say, "Let
Ephraim alone, because his idolatry is none of our
business. The tribes are independent tribes, with independent possessions, and, to some extent, an independent government. If one of them chooses to separate
himself from the rest, to set up an independent State, to
adopt a new social system, to adore Baal and Astarte
instead of the Lord God, that is his affair, not yours or
mine.'" The very thing the English papers say to-day
about Carolina and Mississippi; the very thing the Secessionist says; the very thing the idle Conservative says
the very thing the selfish citizen and neighbor and
guardian and parent says, of the foolish, ignorant,
vicious and abandoned people, who give themselves up
to profligacy, immorality and irreligion. Let them
alone; it is none of our business. If people choose to
be ignorant and foolish and intemperate and suicidal,
whose concern is it but their own? The argument, I
repeat, of the thoughtless, the idle and the trifling. It
is none of my business that a man makes varnish; but
what if he sets up his factory in the rear of my residence? It is none of my business that a man does not
choose to send his children to school, but lets them play
about the streets; but what if his children entice mine
to play with them, beset them on their way to school
and tempt them to play truant, or waylay them as they
come home from school, and teach them vagrant habits
and vagrant vices? It is no business of mine that a man
carries on his traffic on Sunday; but what if he carries
it on in a way to insult and annoy pious people who
wish the day for meditation and rest? It is no business
of mine that a man believes and practises all the abominations of Mormonism; but what if he undertakes to 
5
undermine the moral principles of society and break
up the peace of homes and degrade human nature to
the animal? Whatever concerns humanity, more or
less immediately concerns me. We are all members of
the same body, and if one of the members suffer, all the
memnbers suffer with it; if one is wounded, all bleed
with it; if one is tainted, the poison affects them all.
MIore than once, the rag of clothing from an infected
ship has thrown a whole city into mourning. Mlore
than once, the "boiled grass " on which the people fed
has cost the king his throne.  More than once, the virus
of moral disease, infused into some little remote vein of
the finger or foot, has cost a State its life. ile who
refuses to be his brother's keeper stands in imminent
danger of being his brother~s victim. It is hardly true,
then, to say that Ephraim's idolatry is his own affair,
and that he may safely be left alone with it. Principles
have a mysterious power of reproduction; actions propagate themselves; ideas and feelings spread by divine
or infernal contagion, so that, for every falsehood and
vice and sin in the world, every one of us is the worse,
though not participating in it, nor so much as knowing
of its character or its existence.
2. Again: it may be urged that Ephraim should be
let alone because he is incorrigible, and all attempts to
interfere with him would make him no better, and
perhaps might make him worse. A very good reason
this, when given by wisdom and nobleness and earnest
interest in our brother's welfare; but how good is it
when given by indolence and self-indulgence? Are we
not all too ready to take for granted that our brother is
incorrigible? that he has committed himself to his
idolatry more completely than he has-that he has
involved himself in vice more deeply than he actually
has done-that his error is more studied, his crime
more deliberate, his guilt more conscious, his wickedness more settled and purposed and malignant than it is? 
6
For my part, I cannot believe that any man's fault is
absolutely incorrigible; if I could believe that, I should
show but little faith in the Author of human nature; for
I should think it possible there might be a fatal flaw in
the most perfect work of the all-perfect Creator; I
should disbelieve in the Infinite Power and Goodness;
I should disbelieve in the blessedness of the immortal
life. When Jesus, speaking of one's duty towards an
offending brother, says, Try on him your personal influence; if this will not do, try the influence of friends; if
that fails, try what the Church can do; and, all these
failing, reckon him as an heathen man and a publican,
I do not suppose him to authorize the abandonment of
the man to his infirmity or sin as an incorrigible person.
I understand him to direct that a new order of influences is to be brought to bear on him; he is to be taken
up at the beginning, as one who stands on the lowest
level of humanity; everything is to be done for him as
for one who is wholly uninstructed and weak; so far
from being let alon)e, he is to be put back into the primnary school of experience and tutored like a child.
Did Jesus treat the heathen man or the publican as one
with whom he had nothing to do? On the contrary, he
lavished upon him a more peculiar attention, and went
very far out of his way to find him and reclaim him.
We give our brothers up too easily. Parents give up
their children, guardians their wards, teachers their
pupils, neighbors their poor, citizens their paupers and
vagrants, States their idiots, lunatics and criminals,
nations their dangerous and perishing classes, much too
easily.  It is so much less trouble to let them alone; so
much less expense, too, at the moment, that letting
alone soon passes for the best principle and the wisest
policy, and we let our great resources of conviction
and conversion slumber till they sleep their last sleep,
while the evil they might have exterminated once,swells
and multiplies and establishes itself too firmly for any 
human agency to remove it. That an evil seems to us
incorrigible is, therefore, no good ground for letting it
alone.
3. But once more: it may be said, if Ephraim is left
to himself, he will, in time, put an end to his own
offence. The idolatry to which he is joined is so miserable and debasing a thing, it corrupts its devotees so fast,
it brings along with it so many abuses and turpitudes,
it is associated with so much that is infamous and
deadly, that it will do its own work full surely and full
soon if permitted to run out into its ultimate consequences. It is too deeply infected with every element
of corruption to live long, and, if allowed, it will stab
itself with a more fatal weapon than you can wield
against it. All this may be very true, but the objection
to it is, that while evil does contain in itself the elements
of its own defeat and decay, and will, in time, bring
down its own destruction, these elements do their office
-very slowly; they take ages and ages to accomplish
their providential mission, and they accomplish it at
length at the expense of multitudes of most precious
lives, of happiness by the heart full, the home full, the
city full, of human order and security and peace to an
incalculable extent. No doubt poor Ephraim's idol will
prove itself a foul abomination one of these days; but
by the time it does so, it will have been the death of
poor Ephraim and a good many more less siniling than
lie. Do not leave it alone, therefore, if there is any
hope that you may be able to stop it before it stops
itself in this very deadly manner. Besides, do you
wish Ephraim to be destroyed, and not saved rather?
You do not let the suicide alone; why should you let the
sinner alone?  You do not let alone the man or woman
who holds the pistol or the cup ready to put an end to
a painful mortal existence; why let alone the man or
woman who holds the vice or the folly or the guilt
which is fast destroying the immortal soul? We
7 
8
seize on the brink of the river the wretched girl whose
shameful life is too bad to be borne any longer, and
drag her back to the world she loathes; why not
seize the moral suicide who, in killing himself, kills not
only himself, not only his eternal self, but the divine
selfliood, also, of men and women who are bound up in
the same bundle of existence with him? It is hard to
see why not. And so the third argument for letting
Ephraim alone falls dead.
4. There yet remains one-this   that if well let
alone, Ephraim will see the folly of his own courses,
and like the prodigal in the parable, will return to his
old home a penitent man. If you interfere with him,
lie may be  vexed and  angry; his  vanity may be
piqued; his pride may be wounded; he will, perhaps,
persist in his evil career from sheer determination to
have his own way, and will deliberately ruin himself in
order to spite his unwise but well-meaning physicians.
Let him alone, and he will discover his error for himself, and will have no hesitation in confessing it; mieddle with him, and you put him upon a defence of his
error. There is force in the suggestion. This is a point
to be considered, no doubt; not, however, to be considered till it has been tried a little. For the simple fact isand this. also, is a fact to be considered-that the more
people sin. the less are they inclined, as a rule, to see the
folly of it. The St. Augustines, who are saved by their
sins, are exceedingly rare in history. The repentant
prodigals are not so common that we may expect a fresh
instalment of them every year, as the product of the
open dram-shops and busy gambling-houses. Everything
depends on this, whether the evil or the good in the
system, the sickness or the health, is most powerful and
the miost active.  If the first prevails, then no pains
should be spared to increase the power of the second;
if the second prevails, there can be no harm in assisting
it that its victory may be the quicker and the surer. 
9
No one denies that there has been and is a vast deal of
unwise interference with personal and social wickedness; interference that not only makes bad no better,
but makes bad a good deal worse-meddling  with
infidelity, meddling with atheism, meddling with pauperism and intemperance and licentiousness; but the
fault here lies in the Rnode of interference, not in the
j)i'cii-le of it; the inference from the failure is not
that the evil, whatever it be, shall be let alone, but that
it shall be reached in other ways. One thing is most
sure, that men are converted from evil onlyby force
of glood; that force may operate in one way or another-it may operate directly or indirectly-it may
operate by way of cure or by way of prevention; but
operate it 9I',tst, and idleness, scepticism, trifling will
never help it to operate at all, but will hinder and stop
it forever and ever.  No harm ever came from  the
general accumulation of character.   No harm ever
came from the cleansing of the moral atmosphere in
which our souls live, and this interferes with all
evils, large and small, as the sunshine interferes with
marsh fevers, and as the free air of heaven interferes
with all the diseases that flesh is heir to, without using
a drop of medicine.
The l~issez faire doctrine, rightly understood, does
not mean. let evil things take care of themselves, but
let them be taken care of by the unhampered, untrammeellecl, unrestricted powers of good. No evil thing ever,
in appreciable time, diminished or took itself off through
being let alone. Through being let alone, no evil thing
ever did anything but grow and spread and magnify
itself. and put down suckers like the banyan tree, till it
became a vast forest of evil things.  The old conflict
between light and darkness never ceases for a moment
and one might as well say that the night air would cease
to be unwholesome if the dawn would only cease to
break:. as that evil would become innoxious if good would 
10
only go to sleep. There are those who tell us now, that
all the woes that have come upon us in our civil war
are the fruit of our meddling with the peculiar
institution of the South; that if we had let slavery
alone we should now be at peace. They charge the
national trouble on the anti-slavery people of the
North. They even go so far as to say that, if slavery
had been let alone, it would have quietly disposed of
itself, and hidden itself away among the things of the
wicked past. They assure us that more than once it
was gasping in the delirium of death, when an ill-timed
friction and agitation gave new circulati'on to its blood,
and stimulated  it to new  energy.   Virginia,  they
declare, was thinking seriously of its abolition; Kentucky was tired of it, and was considering how it
might be put away, when the teazing spirit of the
Abolitionists stung it into fresh desperation, and goaded
it into a feverish and obstinate struggle for new
life. -My friends, a very superficial knowledge of history will suffice to show how mistaken such an impression as this is, by showing that slavery languished, when
it did languish, simply because it was unprofitable; and
revived, when it did revive, simply because the invention of a cotton-gin had prodigiously stimulated the cotton culture and added enormously to the value of slave
labor in the market. The institution did seem likely to
die of starvation; it recovered and flourished because
it received an abundant supply of food. This history
teaches, plainly enough, to all who care to know it. And
history, moreover, teaches this: that slavery never has
been to any considerable extent, interfered with,
never to any extent that need cause its friends serious
alarm.   The let-alone  policy has been very strictly
pursued in regard to the institution. The Constitution
has protected it from assault, the government has
thrown over it its powerful shield; special laws have
interposed between it and its assailants; the public 
11
sentiment of the country has at least apologized for it,
if it has not approved of it; the public sentiment of the
North has never risen to the point of pronouncing it a
sin. or even an evil, or so much as a mistake. No great
party has ever declared itself its exterminator. The
powerful classes in society have steadily justified and
defended it, and deplored all criticism even of its
character. The Abolitionists have been a small body
of people, obscure in position, poor in material
resources of money and influence, having no single
commanding and widely circulated organ, repudiated,
despised and spit upon by all who valued their good
name in the world. All the great powers and interests
and estates among us conspired to secure for the
Southern institution a very complete and absolute letting alone. The Church let it alone, the political parties
let it alone, the mercantile class let it alone, the capitalists let it alone. If it was approached, it was approached
only to be flattered and courted; its rights were asserted
with a vehemence that bordered on extravagance;
its great staple of cotton was exalted above every product of the earth. Now, when we consider all this, is
it not apparent that the "let-alone" policy, and not the
meddling" policy, is at the bottom of all our present
troubles?  Who is responsible for the insolence and
arrogance that have struck so high a pitch in the last
few months, for the overweening conceit of power, the
extravagant assertion of privilege, the imperious and
boastful temper, the wild expectations and visionary
hopes, which have caused great States to rise in confident
rebellion, and are luring whole communities towards
certain destruction? Who, I repeat, is answerable for
this? They who have done their little best to show the
wrong and mischief of slavery, or they who have labored
so successfully to defend it and vindicate it and shield it?
WVho encouraged these deluded and betrayed people to
believe that an overwhelming majority at the North 
12
would favor their uprising, and thus have aided the
uprising? Certainly not those who refused to let
slavery rlo?e.  For nmy own part, friends, let me say I
have one pure consolation amid all the terrors of the
time-it is, that I have done what I could with my
smnall power, in my small way, and in my small sphere
of influence, to strengthen the forces that bore against
that bad institution.  )Iany foolish words I have spoken
in other connections, many weak words, many words I
would gladly unsay, if I could, on other themes; but these
words about the guilt of slavery I would rather repeat
and multiply. Of them I am not ashamed. And when I
stand at the last great bar, and am held to judgment for
all the idle things I have spoken, I shall at least have
the satisfaction of knowing that these, like the widow's
two mites, will be accepted as a heart-offering to the
cause of humanity; a cup of cold water to the little
ones who thirsted in the hot Sahara of the world.
You see, my friends, that I do not believe in the doctrine of "Let us alone," as it is commonly understood.
I believe in it only in the best sense, as meaning "Leave
us free to attack evils and remove them; untie our
hands, loose our tongues, emancipate our thoughts and
speech, that we may bear down irresistibly upon evil
and the evil man."' It is in this sense that Jesus understands. accepts. and preaches the doctrine, when he says,
"Resist not the evil man; but whosoever smites thee
on the one cheek, turn to him the other." Surely Jesus
could not by these words intend to take all restraint
from wickedness, to remove all obstacles from its path,
and leave it free to override goodness as it might
choose. He meant, doubtless, to put surer restraint
upon it, to throw heavier obstacles in its way, to
make it incapable of overriding goodness at all. He
meant to bind it as the fairies in the fine Northern
MAythus bound the tameless wolf Fenrir with a chain
made of the noise of the cat's footfall. the beards of 
13
women, the roots of stones, the fishes' breath, and the
spittle of birds. The chain was invisible and intangible,
and the great beast knew not when it coiled about him.
But it held motionless the creature whom the violent
gods, with their iron cables, could not restrain. What
Jesus says is this: Do not return the bad man's deed in
kind.  If he wrongs you, do not you wrong higm; if he
smites you with the fist, do not you smite back with the
fist; if he steals your property, do you forbear to
retaliate by stealing his; if he practises with dagger
and poison, do not you practise with dagger and poison; if he shuts you up in prison for speaking your
honest mind, and scourges you, and covers you with
tar and feathers, do not be tempted to do likewise to
him or his; if he slanders you, and lies about you, and
calls you coward and "mud-sill," never retort on him
his foul Billingsgate, but oppose patience to his fury,
and let the gentle answer at once turn away the wrath
and rebuke it. Christ says only, Do not try to beat the
adversary at his own weapons. There are other weapons of finer edge and harder temper; try these;
learning first of me how to use them. This is the way
Paul puts it: "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if lihe
thirst, give him drink."  Why?  That he may be made
stronger to kill you? No, but because in so doing you
kill him by heaping coals of fire on his head.
Were Jesus alive to-day, and the spokesman of the
nation, would he say to Mir. Jefferson Davis, "You
have smitten me on the right cheek, called Sumter
smite me now on the left cheek, called Pickens; you
have taken from me the arsenals and mints and buildings, which were my cloak; take now, I pray you, the
government offices and archives, which are my coat
also; you have compelled me to walk out of your
territory many a weary mile; say the word, and I am
ready to walk twice the distance, even to walk out of
the country altogther; you ask me for the city of 
14
Washington; here it is at your service; you would
'borrow of me  the national treasury; behold the
keys thereof at your command." Would Jesus say this?
Not if he supposed that Mr. J. Davis would take him at
his word. Not if he supposed that Mr. J. Davis would
be so stubborn in his evil mind as to stand unrebuked
and unshamed by this demonstration of magnanimity
and divine patience. Not if he supposed that the moral
force of such an attitude would prove utterly ineffectual to stay the impending ruin. He would say it, if he
said it at all, simply with the purpose and intent of
Mesistig SIr. Davis more effectually than arms would do
it: of resisting him with the potency of awe and shame
and jpatie1ice. This was Christ's mode of resistance. A
very mighty and prevailing mode it is, when one knows
how to use it, and there are moral sentiments to use it
upon; a mode of resistance which will come more and
more into vogue as men become educated and Christianized; a mode of resistance which we all should
understand and train ourselves in, and become proficients in the use of, for it is the mode of resistance
which becomes the highest order of men and women,
and is employed always by the angels and the blessed
gods.
It is strange enough that Christ should be accused of
preaching "non-resistance " to evil and evil men.  Bring
that charge against all the world rather than against
him.  For he is the only great Teacher who has ever
preached an utter and uncompromising resistanice to
evil and evil men.  lie would never let the wicked
alone. He did not leave the Pharisee alone in his
pride, nor the Sadducee in his scorn, nor the lawyer in
his craft, nor the priest in his cruelty; he sought the
curst leper in the wilderness, the tormented sinner in
his cave. The demons who had dragged their miserable victims out into waste places and among the solitudes of the tombs saw him coming, and cried out, 
15
Let us alone; what have we to do with thee? "  But
the Great Spirit went in among the very tombs, and
cast the demons out, making them take refuge in the
swine's flesh where they belonged. What Jesus did
when alive, his religion has continued to do since his
death. It is the only religion that has put wickedness
fairly on the defensive and pushed it to the wall, and
made it cry for quarter. It is the only religion that
has made stubborn knees bend in prayer, and strong
hearts break with penitence. It is the only religion
that has made the robber baron give up his bloody
plunder, and the robber king put off his bloody crown.
It is the only reliaon that has unleashed the moral
forces of man, and set them in full cry after the monsters of iniquity. The peculiarity of it is that it will
not let wickedness alone, that it will give it no rest
even in the grave, but pursues it with a terrible retribution into the shadows of another world, and scourges
it through the long galleries of eternity. It puts a
whip into the hands of every living conscience, with
full commission to lash the rascals naked through the
world, and when the world's barrier is past, it puts the
same  ihip into the hands of the mighty angels whose
mercy means restoration to goodness.
Bad men cry out to be let alone. MIr. Jefferson Davis,
infested with evil spirits, cries out, "Let us alone; what
have we to do with thee, spirit of justice and order and
liberty and law?"  No. Mir. Jefferson Davis;  the high
gods love thee too well to let thee alone. Thou shalt
not be let alone. Though thou gain ever so many victories with thy chivalry, and drive the nation's goddess
from her holy seat, and make for thyself a solitude of
what was once a fair and fruitful land, thou shalt not
be let alone. The spirit ofjustice and order and liberty
and law will haunt thee; the convictions of the civilized world will encompass thee about on every side,
will beset thee behind and before, will lay their hands 
of iron upon thee; the laws of the universe will close
in upon thee; angels and fiends shall provoke thee and
cling to thee, until by pity or by terror thou art subdued.
Think not, because justice on an evil thing is sternly
delayed, there is therefore no justice, or but an uncertain one, in this world. Think not, because the evilminded goes free and joyous, and the pure-minded goes
fettered and sad, that God is not, in his own way, dealing with them both. It is our blessedness to believe
that the Holy Spirit of wisdom and love never leaves
human sorrow or human sin alone, but is always working to console the one and eradicate the other. And if
he does not do it all at once, it is because he works
with such fine and subtle powers, not to invade our
personality, but to refine and elevate and immortalize
our being. It is our blessedness to think that he is with
us in our sunshine and our shade, and will never let us
go from the shadow of his awe or the sunshine of his
bounty. Yea, O Lord, it is our blessedness to believe
that thou hast searched us and known us, that thou
knowest our down sitting and our uprising, and understandest our thought afar off. "Thou compassest my
path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my
ways. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither
shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold
thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall
thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
16 
A SERMON,
PREACHED ON THE
NATIONAL FAST DAY,
AT CHURCH GREEN, BOSTON.
BY REV. ORVILLE DEWEY,
PASTOR OF THE CHURCH.
BOSTON:
TICKN OR S T  NFIELD:
T I CK NOR &- F IE L DS.
1 8 6 1.
-z
- i
to
i
.i"
— A - 
Printed by Geo. C. Rand & Avery, 3 Cornhill.
0 
S E R MA 0 N.
TEXT - THE S80TH PSALM.
I SHIALL take for my text this morning, the Psalm
which I have just read to you. It is applicable to the
occasion on which we are met together. Its application
here, to-day, is even more striking than it was originally.
In this way it was that many a text of the old time was
" fulfilled," -filled fuller of meaning, when applied to
the events of a later day. And so it is now.
For here God hath planted a nation, far greater and
more prosperous than that of the Hebrews. He has " cast
out the heathen, and planted it." It is by ordinance
divine, we believe, - though we do not defend every
human action connected with it,- that poor, ignorant,
wandering tribes were to give place to a great and civilized people.   This North American continent was not
meant to be a mere hunting-ground.   Not wild native
growths were to overrun and occupy it; but the seeds of
civilized empire were to be planted here. They were 
4
planted; they grew, - let the toil and pains and sufferings of the early time, let its nurturing blood, tell how
they grew, - till they took "deep root and filled the
land; till the hills were covered with their shadow, and
the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars; till they
sent out their boughs to the sea, and their branches unto
the river; " till, in short, a land a hundred times larger
than Palestine, was filled with more than thirty millions
of people, all abiding under one grand sovereignty, in
such peace, and freedom, and prosperity, and abundance,
and rapid progress, as were never seen in the world
before.
This planting of a nation, but especially of such a
nation, is something sublime and solemn to contemplate.
Government of some kind, - without which social order
and private security cannot exist,- is certainly the ordinance of God. And, therefore, all mankind have agreed
to brand treason as a crime against heaven and earth, and
they have stricken it with pains and penalties, with
attainders and forfeitures, beyond any other crime against
society. But if ever the footsteps of a divine providence
have been seen in the growth of any nation, it appears to
me that it is in this, our American nationality. If any
government ever were, I believe that this is an ordinance
of God. And if any treason were ever more inexcusable
and monstrous than any other yet seen on earth, I believe
it is this which we witness to-day. 
5
And, therefore, without wishing to use opprobrious
terms, I cannot but regard the language of the text as
applicable to the present painful crisis of our national
affairs.' Why  hast thou broken down  her hedges, so
that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The
boar of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the
field doth devour it." It is a wild, self-willed, passion ate, mad, and reckless invasion of the public order, -
this Southern revolt; and if we have any self-respect,
any loyalty, any regard for law and lawful rule, we must
treat it accordingly. And well may we add the prayer,
" Return, we beseech thee, 0 God of Hlosts! look down
from heaven, and behold and visit this vine, and the
vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the
branch which thou madest strong for thyself."
The President of the United States has invited us to
assemble ourselves together, to offer such a prayer; and
this, not merely as we do every Sunday, but with some
special thoughtfulness, humiliation, and sorrow.
On one account, I am well disposed to do so. I do
most heartily mourn over this dreadful conflict in which
we are engaged with the revolted Departments of the
South.  I mourn over this awful spectacle of Christian
men, who were lately fellow-citizens, embruing their
hands in each other's blood. I mourn with those who
mourn for the absent, the wounded, and the dead. All 
6
war is horrible, but this to me is the most horrible of all
wars.
But, at the same time, I do most heartily respect, approve, and enter into, the feelings of those who have
sprung to the support of the government in this great
emergency.  It is loyalty to law and lawful sovereignty.
It is to defend the national integrity and stability and
honor, that our people have taken up arms. And yet, I
cannot but wonder at the buoyancy and eagerness with
which our soldiers go into the fight, - demanding it, and
singing, shouting, as they march to the battle-field. I
would rather see them on their knees, in prayer, and
solemn sel-consecration to that awful work.  That awful
work, I say; and I cannot look upon it in any other light.
It is to me the most tragic spectacle under the sun. If
our people must strike this blow, as I believe they must,
yet they should strike with reluctance and sorrow. It is
the act of Brutus, slaying his own sons for treason and
conspiracy against the state.
It is, perhaps, too much  to expect of a people, -  a
whole people, — that it will take up arms altogether in
this spirit. We must take men as they are; and few
are the men that can fight in pure sorrow for those whom
they assail. But so, if possible, should men strike for
the right. So should they wound and kill their fellows,
-in sorrow, though indignation be mingled with their
sorrow. So especially should a rebellion be put down,
.1 
where the antagonists were lately our fellow-citizens, and
may have been our friends. This is a contest, which, whatever passion or frenzy there be on the other side, requires
on ours much reflection and cool determination.
If we were resisting foreign invasion, - if we were
fighting people of another nation and name than our
own, it would be a different thing. But we are fighting
our own people. We wound those whom we would fain
comfort and heal.  We  slay those whom we love.  I say
it. and maintain it. I will not be swept away from this
ground by the passions of the hour. I have known many
of the Southern people. I have seen them in their
homes.  I have seen the system of domestic service, by
which their homes are supported. But, although I dislike their system, and think it in principle utterly wrong,
I do not hate them,; though I have brought upon myself
their displeasure by my plain speaking of slavery, yet I
held, and still hold them, in dear esteem for their many
virtues. Still, and nevertheless, I oppose them; and I
would do so, though they were the dearest friends on
earth. Though they were Christians, as holy as the
apostles, I would do so; as Paul "withstood Peter to
the face;" and for the same reason, -" because they
are to be blamed."
But, though I think them wrong, and to be blamed,
and to be resisted, yet is it right, one may say, to resist
them in this manner? Since they desired to separate
7
I 
8
from us, why should we not have yielded to them, and
have said, " Go in peace?"   I answer, that to have done
so would have been to strike at the roots of all civil government. All lawful sovereignty, all political order, any
such thing as nationality, would be impossible upon this
principle. 
But let us consider first, the question of war in general, and then, the question of this particular war. The
sadness and horror I feel at this war, drive me upon considering what place war has in the world, - what place
in the providence of God, - what place in the duties of
men.
With regard to war in general then, in the first place,
or with regard to war abstractly considered, I have been
led of late, to ask whether we have not to revise our
theories. I never went to the length of some of our
Peace Societies; but thus far I went,- I was inclined
to admit that war is never justifiable except for selfdefence. When invaded, we might fight; but in no
other case. Now, however, I doubt whether this limiitation can be defended.
In reconsidering the subject I am struck at the outset
with this potent fact,-that war seems to have been a part
of the normal condition of nations, ever since the beginning of the world;  in fact, just as defect, ignorance,
mistake, conflict of opinion, is a part of its normal condition. It has been said in one of the discourses called 
9
out by the present crisis,* that probably no man has ever
lived to the period of seventy years without encountering
this fact of war; and I am inclined to think that the
statement might be made still stronger; namely: that no
nation has existed forty years without being engaged in
some war, external or internal. And there has hardly
been a year, or perhaps a moment of time, since the
world began, when war has not been going on somewhere.
It is computed that more than six thousand millions of
the human race have perished in battle,- about seven
times the present population of the earth. Now such a
fact must be resolved into some kind of consistency with
a providential order. The fact stands; it stares us in
the face; and it seems to be inevitable. How could it
be so, if all war, or all but defensive war, is contrary to
the will of God?
YIr. Prudhon, the French writer, in a work lately published, "on War and Peace," has attempted to legitimate
this fact; to show it as incorporated into the very constitution of the world, and as a part of the lawful and
ordained condition of men and nations.  He maintains
that there is " a right of war," founded on " the right of
force;" that is to say, that any nation, deprived by
another, or conceiving itself to be deprived, of what is
lawfully its own, - a fishery or territory, a fort or arsenal,-has a perfect right to reclaim it by force, and, if
* That of Dr. Ellis, of Charlestown. 
10
necesary, by military force.  Hle maintains that war is a
divine thing,; an ordinance of heaven, for the adjustment
of national claims, not otherwise possible; that the right
to use such force lies at the bottom of all nationality, of
every political constitution; that the noblest nations are
the surest to fight for their rights, and the meanest
people to surrender them. And then he goes on to glorify war, as the tribunal of justice, the fountain of honor?
the source of progress and improvement among nations,
in a strain in which I confess, eloquent as he is, that he
is too hard for me.
For I believe that peace is a diviner tlthing,-which he
also seems to admit; I believe that patience and forgiveness are more divine than exaction and force; and that,
as the world improves, there will be less war, and, ultimately, none at all; and that nations will yet find a way,
by conventions and arbitrations, to settle their disputes
without bloodshed; as citizens of the same State now do.
Still, I cannot refuse to see that something of what MIr.
Prudhon says, is true. Force does lie at the bottom of
all political order; and there are occasions when it must
be used, and, in the imperfectness of our present civilization, must be used in war.
And if I go back to the natural and essential condition of humanity, I can come to no other conclusion.
Suppose, -I hope you will pardon the homeliness of my
illustration for its appositeness,- suppose, I say, that I 
11
and my neighbor are living side by side, in a state of
nature, with no common government to appeal to; and he
says to me, " This piece of land, this farm on which you
live, is mine;" and I reply,  "No, it is mine; it was my
father's before me; he gave it to me, and it is mine."
"' Nay,"  he says,  " It is mine;"  and he  comes  on
with the strong  hand  to take possession.   What  am
I to do?    Amn  I to  acquiesce?   May  I not resist
him'? And if, when I do so, he pulls a stake from
the fence, and I another, and they become as spears in
our hands, -nay, and if I am beaten down by him,
better that I should fall asserting my right, than tamely
to yield it to wrong. I should at least have bravely set
forth my sense of justice; and I should help, though
falling, to spread the sense of justice among my neighbors.  But if I did nothing, and all men  around me did
nothing, in such a case, to vindicate the right, all justice
would fall to the ground.   And I myself should be despoiled on every hand.  One man  has taken  my land,
another would take my house, saying, "he will not resist;" another would snatch my purse; and I should be
turned out, shelterless, to perish. No, that must not be;
that was not meant to be. On the contrary, I believe
that God has given me the right to protect my life, my
person, and my property, in giving me the power and the
instinctive will to do so.
So it is witb nations.  What sort of a nation would 
12
that be which should form its constitution in this wise?
" We think it advisable that we should be one people,
and should have a form of government; we hope that all
the citizens will respect and obey it; -we wish that no
one would steal or rob on the highway, or murder anybody, for we think it is very wrong; -and we desire
that other nations will let us alone; that they will never
attack our ships or our cities; that nobody will take
our forts or arsenals, for we should be very much displeased at it." No; that might be a constitution for a
flock of sheep, but not for a nation of men. No, a
mighty rill lies at the bottom of every nationality; a will
to use force to preserve its integrity and to execute its
laws; and its language is:  We, the king; or, we, the
nobles; or, we, the people ordain the constitution and
the laws; and we will use all necessary force to restrain
and punish all crime, and, above all, the crime of treason.,
?)ithli; and to resist and overwhelm all invaders of our
rights without.  This latter is war.
And now let it be considered, that justice is not always
palpably on one side. Nay, I believe that there is a conscience on both sides, always, at the bottom of every war;
for war is not robbery nor piracy, where the marauder
knows that he has no right, but a solemn levying of the
national force. I do not believe that nations fight but
upon the ground that they have the right upon their side.
The greatest mystery, -if I sought to find.4 one, -in the 
system of Providence, is this difference of opinion, with
all its consequences; and yet I see, that among imperfect
beings, it is inevitable; that it was, in the nature of things,
impossible to constitute a race of moral and imperfect beings, without this element of trouble. And the standards
of war are the bloody signals lifted up to proclaim and
defend opinions. Cousin has somewhere said that every
battle is the conflict of ideas; nay, more, and that the
right always gains the victory. This can be true only in
one sense, viz: that the moral verdict of the world is
always, ultimately, given in favor of the right, even
though it sinks in the visible contest. Thus the Three
Hundred at Thermopyle fell; but the ages have rung
with celebration and triumph over that mighty deed.
Fallen, sunk in death, they are crowned with immortal
victory.
I have said these things upon war in general; giving
only hints instead of descriptions, for which I have no
space at present; and I have said them to show you that
war is not always unnecessary; that all war is not unholy
and profane; that there may be such a thing as a righteous war, -and in such a war I believe we are now engaged. Let us consider it.
Let me speak of this matter in the first place, as I-etween us and the southern people, though I may have
nothing in particular to say that is new upon it.  But I
have often imagined myself, knowing many of them as I
1 3
I 
14
do, to debate this question with them in person, in coinversation.  I have thought of what they would say, and
what I should reply to them.
"You put the blame of this war upon us," they would
say; "but it is not upon us.  We are wronged; we are
oppressed; we are fighing for our liberties. We have a
right to separate from you. You have made us desire to
do so. You have contemned our social system. You
have made the relation of fellow-citizens utterly disagrceable to us.  Why do you attempt to hold us? Why
will you not let us alone? Why will you not let us depart in peace?"
" In peace?" I answer, " in peace! do  you say?
Was not your very first step to arm yourselves, and to
take your stand in armed defiance to the common  Government over us all, to which we had all alike sworn fealty?
Your leaders took that fatal initiative, and you followed.
It was not we who began the fight, but you. You were
long arming yourselves before we ever moved,- as we
have found to our cost.
" But wherein were you wronged? What right was
denied you? You held your slaves, and had power over
them, untouched. Slavery was a municipal institution,
with which the General Government did not propose to
interfere, and does not now. Is some Northern criticism;
grant it were severe at times, a sufficient reason for breaking the national bond? And do you really demand, as the 
15
price of a mere political union with you, that our mouths
and minds shall be shut in silence on this subject? It
would be greater bondage than any you complain of.
We must speak; all the world must speak of it.  The
fires of criticismi are burning all around you;  and the
South, instead of reasoning or letting others reason,
seems' like scorpion girt with fire,' more likely to destroy
itself and its favorite institution together. Yes,'the in stitution!' -this, disguise it who may, is the cause, at
bottom, of the whole difficulty. You are indignant with
our opinions about slavery. Only let us of the North say,
' We have changed our mind; you have convinced us
that we were wrong; we have come to see that slavery is
a just and admirable thing, and are sorry that we opposed
it,' and you would be good friends and good fellowcitizens. with us to-morrow.
"But, at any rate," they say, "we have a constitutional
right to separate." That is the fatal theory,- the other
feeling is the impulse,- but that is the fatal theory which
supports this whole Southern movement. Not treason,
revolt, rebellion, is it,- but secession is the word that
covers up all the mischief. John Bell, of Tennessee, is
the only man that I have heard of, connected with this
movement, that plainly said, " I am going to be a rebel."
But he said what is true. For it is rebellion. It is just
as much rebellion as it would be for Normandy or Burgundy, provinces of France, or for Scotland or Ireland, 
parts of Britain, to break off, arm themselves, and bid defiance to their respective governments.
Thus should I argue with the Southern people, or any
company of them, if I could meet them face to face.  But
sorrowful is the arguing which, carried into action, must
cost thousands, and perhaps ten thousands, of human lives.
I mourn over the necessity by which it is urged. A day
of thoughtfulness, humiliation, and grief, is a fit season
for it. It is fit that a great people, engaging in such a
contest, should bow down before God in prayer and sorrow.
And I do not wonder that the heart of a humane man
should sink within him at the prospect of this bloody encounter between the loyal people of America and the revolted States. Nor am I surprised that there are some
among ourselves who say, " Let us have peace rather than
all this sacrifice of blood and treasure;" who say, " Although the Southern people are in the wrong, yet they
think themselves in the right, and it is hard to crush them
down, even if we can do so; let us go on with a Northern and Southern republic; there are evils and perils in
the plan, but it is better than this fratricidal war." And
again, I am not surprised that people abroad, looking as
idle spectators upon what is passing in a far-distant country, regard this war as a contest between rival States, -
Mexican or South American States; or, at any rate, have
come to the conclusion that a revolt which has assumed
such immense proportions, should be considered as a sue
16 
cessful revolution, or as warranting a permanent political
division.
Yet I firmly maintain that all these ways of thinking
are wrong; here in the house of God, and amidst the so lemnities of prayer and humiliation, I firmly maintain that
neither the horror of bloodshed, nor brotherly sympathy,
nor cold, unsympathizing foreign criticism, are entitled to
be our guidance in the awful circumstances in which we
are placed.
There is a higher plane of thought, I conceive, than
that on which these considerations are placed.   Above
the mere impulses of humanity and sympathy, I believe,
we must rise, if we would rise to the height of this
great argument. And we must look farther than our
foreign critics do, if we would understand the duty of
the hour.
I see, first, a grand question of right, of lawful sovereignty, as between ourselves and the Southern people.
There is a right, there is a lawful sovereignty, somewhere in this controversy?  Whose  is it?  Somebody
must yield here.  Who?  Some principles must give way.
Which? Loyalty or rebellion? The freedom interest or
the slave interest? The right of a majority, or the right
of a minority? The conscience of a nation, or of a broken
fragment of a nation? The claim, our lawful claim to the
national property and domain,- our claim to the national
fortresses, arsenals, munitions, and mints; or the claim to
17 
18
seize and despoil them? Which, I say, shall be surrendered,- supposing that there were an equally strong conviction on both sides? When it is demanded of us that
we shall give up what we believe to be the national law
and sovereignty, or that we shall suffer the grand fabric
of the government to be broken down with impunity, can
it in justice be expected of us that we should consent to
it?  In honor, can we do it,-in  conscience, in loyalty,
in obedience to any principle of virtue or religion?
Even in a private relation, where I might have a personal right to make any sacrifice I pleased, -yet even
then, if a man were to assail me who was only half as
strong as I am, -if he were to snatch my purse, and
should lift his hand to strike me, could it be expected
that I should let him go on and work his will upon me?
Would it be thought strange if I should lay my hand upon
him, and, using only so much force as was necessary
to restrain him, should consign him to the police or to
prison? And certainly the plea for forbearance and humanity,-  the claim to be " let alone," -the exclamation
that he was very hardly and cruelly dealt with, would be
thought, by every bystander, to be a very strange one in
his mouth.
And this plea for humanity, it must be remembered, has
two sides to it. There are other human beings to be considered, besides those who are engaged in this revolt. If
the Southern rebellion could succeed, the slave-trade would 
19
be reopened; a great slave empire would be built up upon
our borders; it would extend itself over new regions; and
all the misery and injustice of African bondage would be
perpetuated, through what period none can tell. In the
interest of humanity and of the human race, in a just
participation in the recognised duty of all civilized nationas, I think we are bound to prevent that, if we can.
Not to say that if this slave government could establish
itself, and stand side by side with ours, instead of a war
of a year or two, we should open the bloody history of
endless wars.
To any man among ourselves who dissents from a whole
loyal people in this matter, I would say, -what ground
do you take?  Do you say that secession is righlt? Then,
doubtless, we are all wrong.   Do  you admit that it is
wrong, -politically, morally wrong,-a false and fatal
principle in all government, and without all just cause as
against ours; and then do you say that we are to yield
everything that this false and ruinous principle demands
of us? Where is our manhood, if we can do so? I have
heard this called a politician's war. It is utterly false to
say so. Opposition to it, rather, is a politician's opposition.  It is a nation's war.  And we should stand with
bent head,- cowed and ashamed before all nations, if we
could thus tamely submit to national dismemberment and
ruin.  We should incur the scorn of the Southern people
themselves, and should deserve the taunts which they cast
upon our courage and manhood 
20
Yet, not before our own people alone, but before all
nations and all ages, we stand in this dread controversy.
I say again that there is a higher plane of thoughlt from
which this contest is to be surveyed, than that on which we
place an ordinary civil war.   The world has far more at
stake here than it had in the struggle between the houses
of York  and Lancaster.   That was  a war of  family
interests; this is a war of principles-principles of universal
concern. In the breadth and permanence of the interests
involved, it is more like the Thirty Years' War in Germany, or that of Holland and the Netherlands with
Spain, or that of the French Revolution.
I see here a great government, with a peculiar, a
popular, and what is to us a precious title to sovereignty, which the rude hand of rebellion would pluck
down, and cover with opprobrium, and blight with
failure, before the eyes of all the world. I see a great
Republic, seated on the shores of a new world, spreading from the Atlantic to the Pacific sea; built up in
the affections of (till lately) thirty millions of people;
the pride and hope of its loyal subjects; the resort and
refuge of multitudes from the old world; with unexampled prosperity in itself, and dwelling in peace and honor
with all nations.   And now, for no justifying cause, for
an interest in slavery, for the gratification of passions that
have sprung from that bitter root, a violent hand is raised
to strike at this great image of the public authority, to 
21
break it in pieces, and to scatter it in the dust.   And the
question is - Shall we permit it? It is truly said that
" Democracy is on its trial" in this crisis.  Has it nurtured in us a faintheartedness, a recklessness, a love of
ease or of property, that is willing to let this mighty
fabric go to wreck and ruin? Has it emasculated the
noble Saxon race, and made us mere worldlings and
cowards? For one, I answer, No. Shall the aristocracies
of the old world pass by, wagging their heads in scorn
and saying, "Aha! ye could boast of your great Republic,
but ye cannot fight for it?"  Shall all noble lovers of
liberty in the world hang their heads in shame for us and
say, "Alas! for our hopes and the hopes of mankind!"
And again I answer, No.
And I say no, not in pride or passiou, not in any hatred
of the South, but under the most solemn sense of duty.
To us this is a holy war.   Religion - in the highest and
widest view of it -commands us to do what we are doing.
We have a trust committed to us, as we believe, by the
Infinite Authority, and it is in fealty to God, and fidelity
to man, that we feel bound to keep it.   We cannot yield
up lawful sovereignty, the national domain and honor, and
the peace and welfare of unborn generations, to the reckless assault that is made upon them. We believe that we
should displease the just God, if we did so.   We believe
that ours is a righteous cause, and, I repeat, a holy war.
And if the Southern people say, We, too, have a conscience; 
be it so. All men, I suppose, have a conscience of some
kind. The question is -Whose is the right conscience?
The rebel conscience, or the loyal conscience? They may
say, Why cannot you yield to us?  We  say, Why cannot you yield to us?   The question is, Who  ought to
yield? Upon this question we have no doubt. If upon
this question there must be an awful and bloody conflict,
if conscience on either side can find no other solution,
God pity us! and God defend the right!
22
I
II 
Ett National  Mrafncs
A
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED IN
THE FIRST CHURCH, BROOKLINE,
ON FAST DAY, SEPT. 26, 1861.
BY  REV.  F. H. HEDGE,  D.D.
BOSTON:
WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY,
245, WASHINGTON STREET.
1861.
,. 
' 7
z 
S E R M 0 N.
' LET NOT HII! THIAT GIRDETH ON HIIS IIARNESS BOAST HIMSELF AS IIE
THAT PUTTETH IT OFF." - 1 Kings xx. 11.
WHEN President Lincoln, five months ago, put forth his
Proclamation, announcing a combination against the
laws of the land too powerful to be suppressed by ordinary  methods, and calling for seventy-five thousand
troops to meet this exigency, there mingled, with the
grief and indignation awakened in us by the treason
which necessitated such an appeal, a thrill of patriotic
joy at this demonstration of a new energy on the part
of Government, after so many months of passive submission.   We  gloried in the prospect of a speedy
solution of our national difficulties by a vigorous assertion of the Federal authority. Our spirits, which had
settled into sullen gloom, almost despair of our country's future, were raised to a pitch of jubilant expectation, as we felt, through all our bones, the shock of
national consciousness which that manifesto communlicated to the loyal States.
The States were not slack in acknowledging the
appeal.   Massachusetts, true to her historical primacy,
with promptness worthy her illustrious pedigree, re
i
i, 
4
sponded to the call. Her Governor's word gave back
the President's like its echo; a regiment of her sons,
equipped and on the march in less than six days, was
the echo to that; and a second 19th of April, dated
with her blood, initiated and auspicated the new conflict. The seventy-five thousand were mustered and
sent; and to these were added as many more. Our hearts
were established: we were not afraid. The prevalent
expectation was, that a three-months' campaign would
suffice, if not to heal all difficulties, and reinstate the
shattered Union, at least to crush the power of the rebels, and make it impossible for them to pursue their
disorganizing course and to carry out their nefarious
design.
So we girded on our harness with some boasting.
With what result? The three-months' campaign, inaugurated with so much enthusiasm, after some less
important engagements, terminated with the battle of
Bull Run.
The three months expired, - five months have
elapsed, - and the rebel power is still unsubdued.
"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are
not saved." The rebels are not crushed, nor even so
weakened as yet to despair of final success, or to manifest the least inclination to recede from their position.
So far as they are weakened at all, it is by want of
means, by their straitened economy and financial embarrassment, and not by the triumphs of the Federal arms.
The Federal arms have not triumphed in any important
engagement, except when opposed in overwhelming
force to a weak resistance on the part of the enemy. 
5
And, although the disaster at Bull Run cannot be re     garded as a victory on the part of the rebels, it added
greatly to their confidence, and therefore to their
strength; while it terribly rebuked our own overween ing confidence in ourselves, and proved to us how little
enthusiasm and patriotic determination will avail, with    out military discipline,    without wise conduct, pru     dence, and self-control. An army of brave men, - for
such unquestionably they were, - by mere conceit of
approaching danger, not real, imminent peril, overtaken
with a panic which dissolves all bonds of military orga    nization, almost of human fellowship, and converts a
body of warriors into a herd of frightened deer, flying
at the top of their speed when none pursued, never halt ing to ascertain whether any just cause existed for their
alarm, utterly bereft of counsel and reason, and given
over to a passion of insane terror, - this, after all the
noisy demonstrations, the congratulations and harangues,
the receptions and parades, which solemnized the setting
forth of these hosts, though not an uncommon occur    rence in war, and though no worse than a hundred
panics recorded in history, is still a shame and a tragedy,
which sadly illustrates the difference there is between
promise and performance, between girding on and put    ting off.
ileanwhile, the pirates of the new Confederacy, in
defiance of the public sentiment of Christendom, are
pursuing their prey, and snatching their plunder, on all
our seas. Hundreds of vessels, with large amounts of
value, have been seized by these bold buccaneers, who
have thus far eluded all attempts to arrest their career.
1* 
6
Such, then, is our position at the present time. With
vast resources and superabundant strength at our disposal, we have not as yet, for want of headship, of
adequate organization, unity of purpose, and harmony
of counsel, succeeded in applying those resources and
that strength with decisive effect. The enemy in our
borders, whom a well-directed effort might crush into
dust, is still unsubdued, undaunted,- still mocks us
through our own indirection. The fact is humiliating,
and, like all humiliations, a salutary lesson to such as
are willing to be instructed by it, - a lesson of weakness which it much concerns us to lay to heart. As a
nation, we are proudly conscious of our strength: it
were well we understood our weakness also, our national
infirmities and faults. Of some of these, I propose now
to speak.
Onie element of weakness is our self-conceit, -the
vain-glorious persuasion that we are, on the whole,
the greatest people and the wisest that ever occupied the
earth with their labors, or tracked it with their footprints. One can pardon some degree of self-importance
to a great and prosperous nation: I suppose there never
was one without it. Let a people think well of their
ability, and cherish a high sense of their providential
mission. We accept it as a sign of national health.
But let the conceit bear some proportion to the fact, and
let it respect the national calling rather than the national
merit; else it is a sign of morbid development, great
superficial expansion, with no proportionate increase of
substance.   We  Americans not only arrogate to ouselves a great destiny, in which, if we are true to our 
7
opportunities, we may be right; but we boast of great
doings, in which we are certainly wrong. We confound
prosperity with merit; we mistake a growth which is
partly due to natural laws, partly to rare opportunities, and partly to a certain shiftiness of constitution,
for a proof of greatness; we plume ourselves on our
expansion; we give ourselves airs on the strength of a
rapid, perhaps unexampled, increase of population, and
a corresponding success in trade. When I hear such
boasts, I cannot help recalling what an English cynic
says of our pretensions: "Brag not yet of our American cousins. Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry,
and resources, I believe to be almost unspeakable. But
I can by no means worship the like of these.   What
great  human  soul, what great thought, what great
noble thing, that one could worship or loyally admire,
has yet been produced there?  None!  The American
cousins have done none of these things."
I cannot help remembering, that the little republic of
Athens, while yet in its youth, with its limited territory,
population, and means, produced, within a century after
the Persian wars, the immortal works which are still the
chief boast of letters and art; and, what is more, the
immortal men whom the world still honors as little less
than divine. The most that we can say of ourselves is,
that we have occupied a large territory with our civilization, such as it is, and invented some ingenious contrivances for the expedition of business, and the merely
mechanical intercourse of life.  Mechanical ingenuity,
directed to material ends, is, thuis far, our chief distinction as a people. And even here our merit is not 
8
supreme. The steamship is a great addition to the sum
of human means; but the ship itself, which preceded it,
was incomparably greater.  The electric telegraph is a
cunning invention; but the art of writing, about which
little noise was made at the time, was a greater advance
in civilization, and a greater blessing to mankind.
The real and most important achievement, and therefore the true test of a nation, is the national character.
Tried by this standard, the American people can claim
no pre-eminent rank among the nations.   Here  our
weakness is painfully evident.  It is true, the national
character is not yet fully developed, and lnust not be
too severely judged.  True it is also, that the national
character has many excellent and noble qualities, among
which I may mention generosity, kindliness, and daring.
But  these are offset by fatal defects.   Chief among
these is a certain looseness which pervades the intellectual and moral life of the nation, debilitating its mental
capacity, and vitiating all its action.
Intellectually, this trait appears in the superficiality,
the crudeness, the want of discipline, of thorough and
effective training, which  characterize American  life
and are due, in part, to the very constitution of our
republicanl society, in which the facilities afforded for a
certain kind of success, the chance of a prosperous
career, to niere self-assertion, with little or no culture,
and no laborious preparation of any kind, tend to lessen
the demand for thorough education, and consequently
reduce its standard and restrict its means. Where a
hasty education will suffice for social and political sccess, the greater part will seek no other. To an Ame 
9
rican, the last criterion of merit, and the supreme mark
of his calling, is to get the most votes; and, in this, it
is not the best educated that succeed best, but the most
unscrupulous and the most importunate. Accordingly,
our public men, as a general rule, are worse educated,
worse trained, and worse mannered, than those of any
other civilized nation. A thoroughly taught and cultivated American gentleman is proverbially a rare phenomenon, and nowhere more so than in public life. The
men who represent us in the courts of Europe, represent, too often and too faithfully, our ignorance and
ill-breeding. With no knowledge of the language of
the country to which they are sent, or of French (the
language of courts), with no tincture of polite or
diplomatic learning, with no one qualification for the
post they occupy but the service rendered in procuring the election of the chief who sends them, they
seem rather to have been accidentally cast ashore in
those strange lands, than delegated thither as the plenipotentiaries of a great nation.   There are splendid
exceptions, I know, extending through all our history,
instances like those of Irving, Wheaton, Everett,
Bancroft, and that of the accomplished ambassador who
now represents us at the court of Vienna; but such has
been the prevailing type.   How, indeed, can it be
otherwise? How should we be better abroad than at
home?  The representation is according to the constituency. The same want of thoroughness appears in the
home-departments of State, whose incumbents are mostly,
and grossly deficient in knowledge and tact, equal to no
exigency requiring brain and heart instead of routine. 
10
A great crisis like the present finds them incompetent
and unprepared.
Viewed in its moral aspects, the looseness of which
I speak is manifest in the want of reverence and subordination, which forms so conspicuous a trait of our
nationality, and proves, at the present juncture, so serious an  obstacle in  our military operations.   The
American is not taught by the genius of the civil polity
under which he lives, as other nations are by theirs, to
respect and obey his superiors. On the contrary, the
lesson he learns from his political experience is, that he
has no superiors,- a lesson of equality, which, unless
counteracted by domestic training or corrected by his
own good sense, he is apt to interpret as a right to
his own way in every condition and relation of life:
a principle of action utterly incompatible with military
discipline. It is difficult for him to admit the idea of a
superior, much more to submit himself with unquestioning obedience to one who is placed in authority over
him. Subordination is the first and fundamental principle, not only of military organization, but of social
order.   This lesson the American citizen has yet to
learn; and, if the war shall serve to enforce it, it will
prove a providential school of a very important civil
virtue, as well as of a moral and Christian grace.
The same looseness appears in the moral indifference,
which, not content with mitigating, has gone far to
abolish, the criminal code, or the application of it in
practice; which overlooks the gravest transgressions
in public men, if associated with popular qualities; which
tolerates bankruptcy of the most aggravated and fraud 
11
ulent kind as a mercantile mishap, not compromising the
social position of the offender; - an indifference to which
the audacious filibuster is as worthy a hero as Scott or
Kane; and which views criminality in general rather as
i[       an interesting variety of human nature, than as damnable
guilt. Suppose our national difficulties settled, the re        bellion suppressed, the Union restored: I fear that the
leader in this conspiracy, whose  crime against this
country is unsurpassed in the annals of treason, so far
from receiving his deserts on the gallows, would become
the popular hero of the day. Should he visit the loyal
States, I fear he would be received with public honors,
and would be as likely as another to be elected President
of the United States. We may certainly claim, as a
people, the merit of extraordinary freedom from vindic       tiveness; but we  must also plead guilty to a most
extraordinary degree of moral indifference.
One other element of national weakness I will men       tion; and that is our present system of political admini       stration, which has come to be a regular quadrennial
revolution, extending through all the departments of
State, and including every Federal office in the land.
No sooner has any functionary become sufficiently versed
in the duties of his station to discharge them with credit
to himself and with profit to the nation, than immedi       ately he is ejected, and his place supplied by a novice,
who, mindful of the brief and precarious tenure of his
position, is chiefly intent on making the most that can
be made, in the way of pecuniary gain, of the opportu       nities it affords. The mischief arising from this source
is incalculable. Not only are character and talent of 
12
the highest order almost necessarily excluded from the
service of the State by a system which makes office
the reward of successful demagogism, but a lottery is
opened with each Presidential term to hungry adventurers, whose only idea of office is that of a prize in the
game of politics, with opportunity of plunder. If occasionally men of the better sort, who might excel in some
honorable calling, are tempted by the hope of political
preferment to mix in this arena, they do so at the expense of their morals or their time; for this is a race in
which merit, self-respect, and scrupulous integrity, are
sure to be distanced by importunity, chicanery, and brazen-faced impudence. Can they condescend to tamper
with electors, and to foul their hands with low intrigue?
If not, let them stand aloof from the game, and renounce
all hope of success in that direction. This is a system
which throws to the surface the dregs of our American
civilization, and opens an impassable gulf between merit
and political eminence. The present century has witnessed a steady decline in the character of our public
men. Where shining ability and high-minded patriotism were once the rule, they have come to be-the
exception. To the Jeffersons, the Adamses, and Clays,
has succeeded a race of jobbers and hack politicians.
Such are the results of this deplorable system of quadrennial rotation in office. This has made us, with all
our prosperity, our rapid growth, and extended commerce, a byword and a hissing among the nations.
Since the throne of the world was sold at auction to
the highest bidder, there has been nothing in its way so
base as American politics. So demoralizing, so disor
i
*y
-f 
13
ganizing, is the tendency of this system, that even the
rupture of the Union, at the prospect of which we startle
and are now so distressed, could bring us nothing worse
than our own chosen and established methods were all
these years preparing for us. All this must be reformed,
or we slide to inevitable ruin, from which, hitherto, our
ample territory and vast material resources alone have
saved us.  The quarrel between North and South which
now agitates the land is but an anticipation of (unless it
shall prove, as I trust it may, our deliverance from)
greater evils that wvere threatening us before this outbreak, and that must have arrived, independently of the
present crisis, by the natural termination of the course we
were pursuing.  We were rushing, with a speed unexampled in the history of nations, to the civil dissolution
which precedes despotism in the natural order of history.  The war now enkindled by sectional conflicts, with
all the evil and miseries attending it, will prove, in the
end, the greatest of blessings, if it serves to arrest this
downward tendency; if it opens our eyes to our political errors and vices, and puts us in the way of reforming
them; if it raises to the supreme power a truly wise and
independent man, with an eye to discern what is needful, and strength of will, in spite of precedent and
popular clamor, to enforce it,- a man who, without respect to party, shall put the right men in the right
places; retaining the competent and faithful of former
administrations, and fearlessly ejecting the incompetent
of his own; and whose influence, backed by Congress
and the nation, shall avail to make that practice the law
of the land.   I see no salvation for this people,  no
2 
14
way of redemption from political ruin, until the principle
is established of permanence in offices whose term is frot
prescribed by the Constitution, nor necessarily affected
by the exigencies of State, - a permanence limited only
by the competence and good behavior of the incumbent.
Such a system of administration would tend to make office no longer the reward of electioneering and the prize
of demagogues, but the fit investment of intellectual and
moral worth; it would tend to take the affairs of State
out of the hands of jobbers and pettifoggers and barroom politicians, and commit them to those who are
equal to the trust; it would tend to stop the mouths of
the orators of the stump, to abate the nuisance of the
popular harangue, and to purify the national speech;
it would make the annual and quadrennial elections a
safe and peaceable process, instead of the hurly-burly it
now is, inflaming the passions, setting friend against
friend, dividing households, and imbittering all the intercourse of life; it would help to do away with this
periodical Walpurgis, this uncovering of the hells of
wrath and strife; and, finally, it would make politics
with us what they are in other lands, - a science of civil
and international relations, instead of a trade and a trick,
which none can be concerned in and not be defiled; it
would give us counsellors instead of speculators; magis trates whom we can sincerely respect, instead of available
ciphers; and make, in the good old Bible phrase, "our
rulers peace, and our exactors righteousness."
I shall not speak of slavery in connection with this
subject of the national weakness; not because I do not
feel it to be the great weakness of the land,- the
i
IN_ 
15
head and firont of our offending, but because the subject
has been so thoroughly discussed as to need no comment
of mine, and, at present, no further ventilation. Those
who do not see it to be the crowning evil of our polity
are not likely to be converted by any illustration which
I can give it.
The faults and vices I have named, if not the imme diate cause of our troubles, are yet, in so far as the
head and heart and hand of the nation have been
weakened and its action vitiated by them, the true
source of the mortifications, the disappointments, and
all the bitter experiences, of this year of sorrows. God
grant these experiences-  "his chastisements," as our
Chief Magistrate calls them -may work in us the good
work of discipline and reform,-  may open our eyes
and bring back our hearts to forsaken truth and violated
law!- that we may learn wisdom and learn obedience
by the things we suffer, and rise firom the humiliation of
this affliction, a purified people, "zealous of good works."
And now, fellow-citizens, it befits us to consider what
is needful and good for the present distress. Here we
are, committed to a war whose term no mortal can
predict, whose issues defy all human calculation; a war
which will cost us hundreds of millions of money, and,
it may be, hundreds of thousands of lives; a war which
wvill beggar our commerce, check our industry, decimate
our cities, dismember our households, ingulf our beloved,
and wring our hearts with unspeakable anguish.  What
shall we say, in view of these horrors? what policy
embrace? what course pursue? I know but one counsel
in this emergency. One thought is uppermost in my 
16
heart; one word gushes up to my lips. It is hard to
say it, in the face of all this tribulation and woe;
but I know of nothing better: that word is, Onward!onward, while a dollar remains in our treasury, and a
regiment in the field! - onward, with due caution, but
with unabated zeal and indomitable hearts!  We have
girded on our harness; and cursed be he that would
bid us put it off until one of two issues arrives to our
arms, - until we have quite conquered the enemies of
our peace, and driven rebellion into the sea, or we ourselves are so far conquered as to have no means and no
hope left; until it becomes evident, and is forced on
our reluctant minds, that we have undertaken an impossibility, and  are fighting against God,  and must
needs submit to his decree and the stronger foe, and
accept the rupture of the Union as the bitter end
and the heavenly doom!  There are times when the
cry of peace is the voice of treason, frightful and hateful as war ever is. Precious is peace; but liberty and
right are more precious still: and liberty and right
are at stake in this contest,- the liberties and rights
bequeathed to us by our fathers, and bought with their
blood. For certain it is, that if we fail to conquer the
rebels who have lifted their parricidal hands against
the common mother of us all, the National Union,
they will eventually conquer its, and exercise a deadly
dominion over us, if not by force of arms, by the surer
weapons of political intrigue,- by insidious tampering
with our commerce, by fell collusion with traitors on
this side, by sowing dissension in our counsels  and
strife in our ranks, till province after province is
i 
17
added to thle new confederacy, and, piece by piece,
what remains of the old Union is broken up. For the
hydra of Secession is a monster that will not cease to
ravage and destroy until the life is burnt out of it by
the searing application of loyal arms. There will be
no drawn game in this warfare: our only alternative is
to conquer or succumb.
The cry of peace has been raised, here and there, by
those whose political prospects or material interests are
imperilled or impaired by the war.  What would they
have? what kind and conditions of peace would they
propose?   Shall the North -  that is, the Federal
Government- lay down its arms, and say to the rebels,
"We have erred: we repent.  Go your way; do what
-yoLu will: we oppose you no longer"?  If such be their
meaning, let them declare it, and see how many they
can draw to their side. But no: they would have a
convention for mutual adjustment.  Suppose the colnvention assembled: what is there to adjust that the
Constitution has not adjusted?  Will the South accept
that arbiter? The seceding States have already disowned
it.  For the North to offer more than the compromises
of the Constitution would be  saying  to the rebels,
"We submit to your will: put your feet on our necks."
Mlay I never live to see the day when that concession
shall take effect! Better a war of extermination than
such adjustment.
The demand for peace has hitherto, so far as I know,
been confined to the North, the party aggrieved and
assailed,-  the party acting in defence of the Union
and the Constitution.  It must come from the other side 
18
of the Potomac; the cry must go up from the ranks of
Secession, and be accompanied by return to the old
allegiance,- before our warfare can be accomplished.
Great are the difficulties attending this struggle for
nationality. There never was a conflict so complicated
and embarrassing as ours.  Had  we only the known,
declared, and open enemy to encounter, our task would
be comparatively light. But we have to contend with
secret foes; our enemies are partly those of our own
household; Treason lurks in our own ranks, in league
with Rebellion outside, and furthering its cause. If we
fail at last, it will be the treachery that walketh in
darkness, not the destruction that wasteth at noonday,
to which we succumb.
But we will not admit the thought of failure, with
such an overweight of means and forces as falls to our
side, with such issues as hang on our success,- the
interests of civil society, the cause of order the world
over, the cause of liberty for all time. Let us rather
think, with such interests at stake, that Nature herself
is in league with us; that the stars, in their courses,
fight on our side; that humanity travails with the burden of our victory. Let us think that the shades of
our fathers look solemnly down on this solemn struggle to preserve what they gave. And, with these, let
our piety connect the more recent memories of those
who have fallen in this campaign,-  the proto-martyrs
of our cause.  High among these, shines the honored
name of Lyon, than whom no braver ever led the van
in the field of death.  He  sleeps well: his memory is
blest.
1-1. 
19
" There is a tear for all who die,
A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And Triumph weeps, above the brave."
And so let the day of public humiliation be to all the
people of this Union a day of new consecration and
new hope.   May He  who  weighs the nations in his
balance find this nation true to his word, and trusting
in his name, in war as in peace! May those who gird
on the harness of battle wear it without boasting, but
with cheerful courage and unfaltering trust; and, when
in due season we shall put it off, may our boasting be
not in ourselves, but in God, who giveth us the victory!
0
Ir 
A
I 
(1)e Spirit Proper to tlje iimes.
A SERMON
PREACHED IN KING'S CHIIAPEL, BOSTON,
SUNDAY, MAY 12, 1861.
BY
JAMES WALKER, D.D.
PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE WARDENS OF THE SOCIETY.
BOSTON:
PRESS OF GEO. C. RAND & AVERY,
NXo. 3 CORNHILL.
1 8 6 1. 
. I I:k~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
is
SE R]M ON.
"1 With such sacrifices God is well pleased."' -Hebrews xiii. 16.
I am to speak of public spirit, as manifested in a
willingness to make sacrifices for the public good.
The necessity for making sacrifices would seem to be
founded in this: as we cannot have every thing, we must
be willing to sacrifice some things in order to obtain or
secure others.   Wicked men recognize and act upon this
principle. Can you not recall more than one person in
your own circle of acquaintances who is sacrificing his
health, his good name, his domestic comfort, to vicious
indulgences? Worldly people recognize and act upon
this principle. Look at that miser: he is hoarding up his
thousands and his tens of thousands, but in order to do so,
is he not sacrificing every thing which makes life worth
having? It is a mistake to suppose that religion, or
morality, or the public necessities, ever call upon us to
make greater sacrifices than those which men are continually making to sin and the world, to fashion and fame,
to "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride
of life."
In times of ease, and abundance, and tranquillity, the
public takes care of itself. There are few sacrifices on
the part of individuals for the public good, because there
are few occasions for such sacrifices.  They are not made
because not called for, because not needed. Moreover,
private benevolence is apt at such times to become less
.1 
4
active, and, for the same reason, that is to say, because
less of it is required.
This state of things is seized upon by those who are
eager to put the worst possible construction on human
nature and human conduct, as evidence of extreme degeneracy. How often are we to be told that our present
troubles are sent upon us in order to lift the whole community out of the mire of money-getting propensities,
where every thing like public spirit was in danger of being
swallowed up and lost? I protest against this wholesale
abuse of what has been, - at best, a gross exaggeration.
The whole truth in this matter is told in a few words.
By constitution, by habit, by circumstances, our people
are intensely active; and this activity, for want of other
objects, has been turned into the channels of material
prosperity. If, therefore, you merely affirm their excessive
eagerness in acquisition, I grant it; but if, not content
with this, you go on to charge them with being niggards
in expending what they have acquired, I deny it, emphatically, utterly. Read the history of what has been done
in this commonwealth, in this city, during the last twentyfive years for humanity, for education, for science and the
arts, for every form of public use or human need, and then
say, if you can, that public spirit has been dying out.
Our people have never been otherwise than public spirited,
and hence the promptness and unanimity of their response
to this new call to public duty. Hence also our confidence
in it, -not as an excitement merely, which a day has
made, and a day may unmake, but as an expression of
character.
Let us, however, be just to the excitement itself, considered as the sudden and spontaneous uprising of a whole
community to sustain the government. We need demou
A 
5
strations of this kind,.from time to time, to reassure us
that all men have souls. It is worth a great deal merely
as an experiment, on a large scale, to prove that the moral
and social instincts are as much a part of human nature
as the selfish instincts.   But he must be a superficial
observer who can see nothing in this vast movement but
the play of instincts. It is a great moral force.
Not a little of what passes for loyalty or patriotism in
other countries is blind impulse, growing out of mere
attachment to the soil, or the power of custom, or a helpless feeling of dependence on things as they are. "If my
father in his grave could hear of this war," said a Spanish
peasant, "his bones would not rest." Yet what earthly
interest, what intelligible concern had Spanish peasants in
the rivalships and struggles of princes who thought of
nothing but their own or their family aggrandizement.
Of such loyalty, of such patriotism, there never has been
much in this country, and there never will be. The loyal
and patriotic States have risen up as one man to maintain the government, because the government represents
the great ideas of order and liberty.   It is not an excitement of irritation merely, or of wounded vanity, or of a
selfish and discomfited ambition. It is, as I have said, a
great moral force, a reverence for order and liberty; an
excitement, if you will have it so, but an excitement resting on solid and intelligible principle, and one, therefore,
which trial and sacrifice will be likely to convert into
earnest and solemn purpose.
I suppose some are full of concern as to the effect which
trial and sacrifice will really have on this new outbreak of
public spirit. They fear that suffering for our principles
will abate our confidence in them, or at least our interest
in them, and so the ardor will die away.   So doubtless,
1* 
6
it will in some cases, for every community has its repre.
sentatives of "the seed that was sown on stony ground;
but it will be the exception and not the rule. Human
nature, if it has fair play, will never lead a single individual to think less of a privilege or blessing, merely
because it has cost more. When has religion interested
men the most, and the most generally? Precisely at
those times when men were religious at the greatest
sacrifices. Indeed, it is on this principle that we explain
the decay of a proper love of country among us for the
last twenty or thirty years; it is because we have had so
little to do for our country. A foreign war, even a
famine or a pestilence, if it had been sufficiently severe,
would have saved us from our present trouble and humiliation. So long as the people think and feel together, they
hold each other up, and the sacrifices in which they
express their public spirit, instead of wearing it out, will
purify it and keep it alive.
And this is not all. From the language sometimes used
in speaking of sacrifices for the public good, it might almost
be supposed that the making of them is simply painful,
simply distressing. But is it so? Of course both instinct
and duty impel us to look out for ourselves; but is it not
equally true that both instinct and duty impel us to help
one another, and provide for the common weal? A
generous and noble deed, -simply painful, simply distressing! I will not deny that a long life of selfishness,
meanness, and servility may bring here and there one to
look on things in this light, but not until he is, in the
language  of  Scripture,  "without  natural  affection."
"Public spirit," so an eminent jurist has defined it, "is the
whole body of those affections which unite men's hearts to
the commonwealth." What I insist upon is, that these 
7
are real and natural affections, and that, in acting them out,
we find a real and natural satisfaction.   Who  will say
that the happiest moments of his existence have not been
those in which he was conscious of living for others, and
not for himself? There are many things in the present
aspect of our public affairs to fill us with regret and
anxiety, but a gleam of light shines through the cloud.
Every man and woman and child will be moved to act
more unselfishly, more nobly; life will cost more, but it
will also be worth more.
It is extremely difficult to do justice to this human
nature of ours,- capable at once of such mean and little
things, of such noble and great things. There is, however,
one distinction which all, I suppose, will accord to it: I
mean its tendency to rise up and meet great emergencies.
In every soul that lives there is an untold amount of
latent energy and public spirit which only waits for the
occasion to call it forth. Read the history of the Netherlands, - a people made up, for the most part, of merchants and manufacturers, of traders and artisans, growing rich and apparently thinking of little else. A blow is
struck at the free institutions which they had inherited
from their ancestors; immediately a new spirit reveals
itself, and all Europe rings with the story of their heroic
daring and suffering.
The sacrifices which the country asks for in time of
war are those of property, labor, and life; and she does
not ask in vain.
We are continually reminded that this rebellion has
taken place at a moment of great national prosperity,
to blast it all. The sacrifices of property, in a thousand
ways, must be immense; every man, however, from
his diminished  fortune, is "ready  to distribute,"  and 
8
"not grudgingly or of necessity."  His public spirit makes
him love to give. I doubt whether it is common for
rich men to think any better of themselves merely
because they are rich; but if they can make their riches,
and their financial skill, available to save the State, they
will think better of themselves, and they will have a
right to do so. There is a natural jealousy of wealth,
especially when it takes the form of a passion for accumulation, which demagogues and fanatics know how to
use for bad ends. One of the incidental benefits resulting from a great national struggle is, that all these social
misunderstandings and heart-burnings are suspended, are
healed.   The people see and feel and acknowledge that
a real title to nobility is found, not in wealth itself, but
in wealth generously and nobly bestowed.
Others are manifesting their public spirit by sacrifices of
time and labor. And here I wish I could find fit terms in
which to acknowledge  the services  and sufferings of
women. You have heard of the Spartan mother equipping her son for battle, and giving him, last of all, the
shield, with the brief and stern farewell, "With it or
on it." We expect no such stoicism now, but we expect
what is better. We expect that Christian mothers, with
hearts bleeding for their country, and bleeding for their
children, will say, "It is the will of God that they should
go," and, furthermore, that they will go, having always
been taught at home that there are many things worse than
death. And then how many fingers are busily at work
in all classes, rich and poor alike, to provide for the comfort of those who go? They even ask for the privilege
of tending the sick and wounded. How many, brought
up in ease and affluence, would follow in the steps of her
whose tender voice, the very rustle of whose dress by the 
9
bedside of the dying soldier was as a glimpse of heaven
I have heard men call this "romance."  But is it well, o
right, or tolerable, in times like these, to look round fo
side motives, when the motive avowed is reasonable and
probable? I believe, as I believe I live, that many who
never knew what it is to work before, are ready to thank
God for the chance they now have to live to some purpose
But will our men fight?  There is no denying that
this word sounds disagreeably in a Christian discourse
still, I have no misgivings in respect to it,- no extrava
gances to take back;  not the beginning of a doubt but
that there are wars which, on one side at least, are neces
sary, and just, and holy. The Bible contains no express
and unqualified prohibition of war; neither can such prohibition be said to be intimated or implied in any text o
in the general tenor of Scripture, without making it sub
versive, at the same time, of civil government. Besides, I
remember that the first person not a Jew, in whose favo
our Lord wrought a miracle, was a Roman centurion;
and that the first person not a Jew admitted into the
Christian church, was also a Roman centurion; and not
a syllable is said against their calling, neither is there a
shadow of evidence that they ever changed it. Undoubtedly it is the legitimate and certain tendency of the spirit
of the gospel, as it is more and more diffused in the
world, to introduce universal peace; but the spirit of the
gospel acts from within outwardly, and not from without
inwardly. Thus the stop to be put to war is to be expected, not so much by chaining down those irrepressible
instincts which lead men to resist wrong, as by eradicating
the disposition to do wrong. Wars will cease when all
men are Christians, and perfect Christians; but this will
not be to-day nor to-morrow. 
10
Accordingly, I am not surprised that the call to arms
has been responded to with such enthusiasm, -or that it
is sustained by the whole moral and religious sentiment
of the community. Men are ready to offer up not only
their money and their labor, but also their lives. Are you
afraid that your sons and brothers will be cowards mqrely
because they are not duelists? because theyhave never been
engaged in a street-fight? because prayers were made at
their departure? or because they have carried their bibles
with them? Did Cromwell's soldiers flee before the
cavaliers because they were sober and God-fearing
men?  Our people have no love for fighting, as a pastime;
let it, however, become a serious business, and they will
show that their veins are full of the blood that flowed so
freely in other days.
These are some of the ways in which a people may
manifest their public spirit, and in which our people are
manifesting it now.  "With such sacrifices God is well
pleased." I have given a definition of public spirit from
the jurists, but I like still better the Bible definition. In
the words of the prophet, "They helped every one his
neighbor, and every one said to his brother, Be of good
courage."
In looking back on what has been said, I find I have
not spoken against anybody, not even against our enemies.
Perhaps we have had enough of invective; at any rate
the pulpit may spare it. God is my witness, I feel no
vindictive resentment, no bitter hostility against those
who have been swept away by this terrible delusion.
Moreover, I confess to being greatly moved by the circumstance that in some respects what is true of us is true
also of them. They seem to be of one mind; their
religious men appeal with confidence to the righteous 
11
Judge; their women are working day and night to help
forward the cause. If it were a mere question of interest,
or passion, or prejudice between us and them, it might be
said that one side is as likely to be self-deceived as the
other. But it is not. By striking at the principles of all
constitutional and free government, and this too avowedly
for the purpose of founding society on the servitude of an
inferior race, on whose toil the more favored races are to
live, they have put themselves in opposition to the settled
convictions and the moral sense of good men all over the
world.
To the student of history it is no new thing that a
whole community should be given over "to believe a lie,"
- not the less mad, because all mad together. The process by which this state of things is brought about is
always substantially the same. Egotism, vanity, disappointed ambition, sectional jealousies, a real or supposed
interest or expediency induce them to wish that a wrong
course were the right one.   They try to convince themselves that it is so, and all such efforts to sophisticate the
conscience, if persisted in, are punished by entire success.
The spectacle does not inspire me with hate; it fills me
with wonder and profound melancholy. Do these men
think that by altering their opinion of right they can alter
the nature of things, or make wrong come out right in
the great and solemn issues which are before us? We
stand where their own great men stood in the best days
of the republic.   As regards the leading  rights and
interests at stake, our consciences are but the echo of the
conscience of the Christian world. The fathers of the
Revolution, one and all, are looking down with sorrow
and indignation on this attempt to break up and destroy
their work. 
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Nevertheless, it can do no good to begin by overvaluing ourselves, or undervaluing our enemies. We know
that the behests of a righteous Providence will be accomplished, but we do not know in what way. It is more
than probable that in the troubles and distractions which
have come upon the country we ourselves have something
to answer for. For this reason reverses and humiliations
may be in store for us, before we are accounted worthy to
carry out the Divine judgments. But there can be no
doubt as to the end. A struggle has been forced upon us
by a doomed people, if the laws of nature do not fail, if
there is any meaning in the moral sentiments of mankind,
or any justice in heaven. 
OUR DUTY UNDER REVERSE:
SERMON
PREACHED IN THE
CHURCH OF THE "CAMBRIDGEPORT PARISH,"
SUNDAY, 28 JU,LY, 1861.
BY JOHN F. W. WARE.
VrinteW bg Bequests
BOSTON:
PRINTED BY JOfHN WILSON AND SON,
22, SCHOOL STREET.
1861.
A 
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S EI R M 0 N.
Eccles. vii. 14. -" IN THiE DAY OF ADVERSITY, CONSIDER."
Tis is one of those morsels of genuine wisdom vlwhich we
find scattered through the Book of Ecclesiastes, which
show  the writer to have been no mean man, -greater
than his philosophy would sometimnes lead us to imagine.
He had gone beneath the surface of the various experiences
which had checkered  his life.  An  evident, struggling
faith constantly relieves the half-cynic, half-epicurean character of his essay, and leaves a healthy impression with
the reader, though in itself evidence of the unhealthiness
of the writer.
To me, there is something brave as well as wise in these
words of this half-heathen author.  I do not find the Christianity of men and women quite up to them yet. I see
them under their adverse days: they are not bravely bearing up, searching for and holding the good. Adversity is
the panic of their souls: it makes them recreant to former
conviction and conduct.   The shade upon thdeir life has
struck deep, and chilled or changed them sadly. They are
not the brave men you took them to be, but broken,
cowardly men. They complain, they whine, they fold their
hands, they give up; they lose interest in affairs, confidence in man, faith in God. One little breath of adversity
wrecks their manhood. They do not pause, look about,
consider, seek to understand the thing itself, compel it to
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give up its hidden blessing, make it the new and better
vantage-ground.   The one simple advice of our  author
is, "In the day of adversity, consider."  Do  not be in a
hurry; do not rashly condemn others  do not hunt, with
busy but useless ingenuity, after far-off causes;  do not
spend time, strength, temper, in lamentation, -in wishing
things had been otherwise, in calling yourself a fool, or
cursing circumstance; do not mope; do not despair; do not
be rash: only consider. I call that the advice of a brave as
well as a wise man; and I need not pause to tell you
why.
It is not advice, however, we are very prone to take.
Shakespeare tells us, " Sweet are the uses of adversity."
Older philosophers have spoken highly of it. Bacon says,
"Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament: adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater
benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favor."
Ourselves we know that there are the best uses ill reverse,
bitter to the taste, but afterwards sweet; so that it may
well be doubted if any true man would willingly go back
beyond the reverse, and accept the former estate, with its
weaknesses and limitations. It may be put down as one
of the truest attendant blessings of our present state, that
it has its reverses; and yet we find no one to love, no one
to welcome, no one to pray for, this great teacher and benefactor,- this sower drawing us nearer to God, and giving
us glimpses of high life so as no other.  We pass-our lives
dreading it. We say hard things of God because he permits it. When it overtakes us, it benumbs us as a palsy.
We are crushed by its weight; we are deaf to its teachings; we are aghast at its sweep. It takes self-possession
and faith from us. We settle into dead, helpless apathy;
or we run to and fro railing or raving. God is not our
friend. What have we done to deserve this at his hand?
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Now, this is weak and foolish and wicked. Reverse is a
necessity to our best growth.  Adversity comes in to give
what prosperity has failed in doing,- to compel us to just
that we will not do, except as we are compelled. When the
life runs along freely, and man gets to feel that the thing
which has been shall always be; when the apparent suc cess and triumph of the present and temporal makes him
overlook the presence and the supiemacy of the eternal,there is no deep thought; the events of life come and go
with no heed from us; the high relations of man, his vast
connection with things and God, his duties, his abilities, his
responsibility, scarcely occur to him, or break but fitfully
in, to be driven at once away before the more pleasing, if
not pressing, necessities of the moment. In prosperity, he
does not, will not, - I do not say, cannot, - consider. Adversity is the pause in which he must. It brings things
out in their proper hues, shapes, places; it dispels the
mirage success has conjured; it tells great truths; it strips
away disguise; it reveals life, duty, accountability, God;
and will not lose its hold of the soul, glorying in its littleness, until it has heard, if it will not heed, solemn things.
Adversity comes to man that he may consider; and that is
his first great duty in the day of it.
You anticipate, probably, my purpose to use these words
less in a personal application than in a national one. We
may call this a day of adversity. Never did a brighter
sabbath look down upon the earth than that last past; and
never, perhaps, were the hearts of a people more buoyant.
We thought there might be, while we were gathered within
the quiet walls of our holy places, the deadly combat elsewhere; in which those we knew and loved strove sternly,
even to the death, for those rights dearer to them and to
us than life. There was an expectation that was confidence; no premonition of disaster and defeat. Lured by a 
6
foe who had again and again taught us that his power lay
in his wiles, with music, banners, songs, as to a holiday
parade, marched the men of a great Republic; and all the
people applauded, and waited with impatient confidence to
hear of the blow which had struck to the heart of the
foul monster raging to destroy a Government at once our
pride and hope.  May we never know again what so terribly on the morrow we learned!  May never sabbath see
again such profaning and such woe!
We have met with a reverse, and it is hard to allow it.
There had been a good deal of unseasonable and unreasonable bragging; and so our pride is concerned, and we are
sore. Valuable lives are lost; loved ones have been laid
low; hearts and homes are desolate: but that is the inevitable necessity and consequence of any battle. The day
was lost after it was carried; but I think, if you will look
largely at it, that was to thank God for. It gives us, what
we greatly needed, the opportunity to consider. It is just
that thing which a wise man, in his own affairs, turns to
his good, - out of which he builds success. And, if you
ask me what I think of it, I shall answer as I have all the
week long, -that I think it the best thing that could have
been. To me it is the presage of victory. I am the more
hopeful of the Republic, because it has pleased God, in the
outset, to give her the day of adversity.   I subscribe,
heart and soul, to the noble and Christian sentiment of
Montgomery, - the so-called Border ruffian; and may God
give us more such ruffians!  He says in a letter to a
friend, on the 15th July, -speaking of his movements on
the Missouri frontier, -" It has constantly happened to
us, that our disappointments have been better than successes, and our blenders have been our best moves. We
have been constantly reminded, that the Almighty rules in
the affairs of men; that he directs alike the battle and the
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storm." There is the true ring to that; not of the clarion,
but of a well-tried faith.  It is just that we need in our
day of adversity,- to consider that man moves best sometimes when he blunders; and that there is a God who not
only rules, but overrules.
Let me place before you two or three considerations, to
which the hour urges.  We  are all talking and thinking,
criticizing and faultfinding. Let us do something worthier,
and strike deeper.
I look at this crisis in the national history as one of
the judgment-days of God. It is not we who have been
outraged by the South, - we who are to punish; but vwe
have ourselves been false to God, and are under chastisement. North, as well as South, has sinned, and come far
short of what it was her duty to do. I wish we could look
at it that way. MAen who live and believe only in to-daywho have never watched God in history- have no idea of
his sure retributions; how clearly can be traced his visitings upon national dereliction and crime. History is largely
only retribution; the generation possibly escaping, but the
iniquity visited on the third and fourth unerringly. One
who knows all that, must feel that we are under the divine
displeasure, and that because of our infidelity to our privilege and our profession is this terrible scourge upon us.
A little and loyal one, planted here in the wilderness,
became a thousand.   God nourished the vine the fathers
planted. We grew to a great people. We stood before
kings.   There was none superior.   On the  sea, on the
land, we knew no masters; and the sun, in all his course,
saw no land blessed like this. But our nation was builded
upon a principle. It had a base such as none other. Not
the mere accident of discovery, the necessity of migration, the freak of traffic, a better climate, or the lure of
gold, made it; but a broad, eternal truth, which nations
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had sighed and groped after, - which sighing and groping
nations ever since have recognized as the one great thing
needed to their healing. That is the source of our prosperity, that had made us a name to be trembled at and
revered,- that gave us the grasp we had,- was the single secret of our success. But it entailed duties upon us,
to which, it is proved, we were not equal. We struck the
parricidal blow when at the height of our prosperity. The
principle on which our fathers builded was stigmatized as
a "sounding and glittering generality."  Men who held
to the old faith of the founders were taunted about a
"higher law."  Slavery, in the early day, the small cloud
of evil, in ours had swelled to the gigantic, overmastering tyranny; ever more and more imperious, getting,
only to cry "more."   Nothing it asked for but it had.
Compromise sapped the manhood, the integrity, of the
North. Trade, manufactures, social position, expediency,
party policy, fiercely seconded the mpst exorbitant demand.   Slavery became national; and, before the slavepower, this fair, vast heritage, sacred to freedom, trenmbled,
yielded, and was all but lost.
Now, it is impossible that such desertion of principle,
such timid yielding, should  go unpunished.   We  had
basely surrendered that which came to us consecrated
by the trials, tears, prayers, blood, of our ancestors. We
had the advance post in the great cause of civilization and
Christianity, and we fled from it in base and causeless
panic.  We  talked of freedom; our boast was, that the
humblest, seeking the protection of our flag, was safe:
while we gave the lie to all, not by the existence of
slavery, which we could not help; not by its horrors,
which we could not control; but by fawning before its
power, helping it to any thing it desired. Esau sold his
birthright when he was starving; and the name of that
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poor, starving man has gone to the ages in undeserved
opprobrium. We bartered ours when we were full, and
that we might hold to our trade and our manufactures, our
comfort and our gold, - to peace, though bought at the
price of disgrace,-consented to yield our trust. It is the
blackest blot on the record of human history. If the act of
starving Esau have covered his memory with shame, what
shall the coming ages have in store for this generation?
Shall God stand by, and not avenge himself?   It is
come: "[Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin."  The great laws of
God override our human policies, and vindicate themselves
in our disasters.   Our trade, our commerce, our plenty,
our peace,-  where are they?  What has the cringing
and fawning and compromising, and denial of principle and
manhood, yielded?  To-day the cry of battle is in the
land; to-day the prestige of our old fame is gone; to-day
enterprise stands dumb, the wheels of industry are idle,
the white sails furled; all is disorganized: and, if we
look about us for the cause, it is that we have sinned.
Again: we should consider that this is not our own
work in which we are engaged, but that God is using us
as instruments in bringing about a mighty change; and it
may please him to give immediate results not desired by
us, or opposed to our desires.   Remember, the work is
his. We desire to perpetuate a Union, of which we are
now beginning to know the value, as a matter of pride,
affection, policy.   It is the Government for which we
contend. The great fundamental principle, the bulwark
of our and of all liberty, is yet in abeyance. I heard an
intelligent gentleman from England say, that would this
country show that she entered into this contest heartily,
solely as the champion of liberty, there would be no second
opinion in England: it was doubt as to the loftiness of
her motive which held the English people back. To me
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it is evident, that God means by this war the death, not
merely of the slave-power, but of "the institution." Hie
is using us as the means, as he used the Jews to plant
the great idea of the unity of God; and it may be that the
unity of this nation is no more essential to that, than
the continued unity of the twelve tribes was to the other.
The divine way of settling this great difficulty may be
by allowing a separate power, based upon the atrocious
principle set forth by the so-called Confederacy, that the
nations may see it in all its horror and iniquity, that it may
fall once and for ever. It may be, too, -for so apparently
adverse is the Great Disposer, often, to human plans,that our arms shall fail; that the cupidity of the English
Government - which I believe dreads our success as I
believe the English people pray for it- shall lead her to
interfere: we may find ourselves surrounded by foes, and
harassed by factions; brought to a distress we little dream,
and made to stoop as never nation stooped. And yet the
great cause is safe, if we shall give ourselves, heart, soul,
life, to work,- not selfishly, for our own idea; but nobly,
for the will of God. The great trouble with men, in any
grand crisis, is, that they will not look for and heed the
purposes of God: they will not take up a principle as his;
but they call it theirs, arrange their own plans, set up
their own work, and, if they fail in these, count all as lost.
Yet history, life, are perpetually showing  us that our
reverse is God's success; that our puny plan must often
fall before God's greater thought, that his glory may come
in, and a good we had not thought of be established. Said
some one to me, in the days of despondency through which
we have just passed, " Have you not lost confidence in our
commander?" - " No," I replied: "my creed is still, first
God, and then Scott." I believe myself a patriot. I believe this nation set among the peoples to work out a great 
11
problem. I believe her sun will never set, till her sounding and glittering generalities, her mere abstractions, shall
have become the solid corner in the foundation of all
realms.   Be it that I mistake; that the grand onward
march shall be all disaster, and this uprising of the people
vain: still I know that God steadily keeps in view the
triumph of the truth, and the good of man;  and, if we
perish, nations unborn shall read how their blessing came
out of our disaster and death.
There are mighty complications all about this question,
when treated as a mere matter of national policy. Let us
try to let the question of policy alone, and go into the contest for God and the truth, contentsthat it shall have God's
issue.  If we are not faithless, but believing; if we are not
recreant, but loyal,- I have no fear but we shall keep our
honor and our home. God will recommit his precious truth
to our new, our better keeping.
And I think this time of adversity presses another consideration upon us. Who shall be our leader in this strife?
As if to do all he could for us, Providence has lengthened
out the years and the skill of a single man, and by great
and varied experience proved him to be the man for a
nation's trust.  But has Gen. Scott been our leader so far?
Mlust it not rather, to our shame, to our present confusion,
be said, that he has been harassed and finally led by the
insane impatience of the people, the infernal insolence of
newspaper editors and correspondents, and we know not
what intrigues of cabinet and politics?  It is time that he
who is nominally chief should be really that; and I, for one,
unrepublican as it may seem, - human, and liable to err, as
I believe him, -would not hesitate to allow him, for the
crisis, all that Napoleon grasped, confident that it would
be better for the people so, better for the cause, than to be
subjected longer to the torrent of abuse, crude criticism,
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and strategic wisdom, of newspaper reporters, correspondents, editors, even of clergymen, which have disgraced our
press, and jeoparded every thing. The press in this country
is, no doubt, a blessing; but it is, at times, a curse. Any
arrogant, angry, factious man, that can write a paragraph,
can get it printed, or control a paper; and the mischief
that way made may be seen written indelibly all over the
history of this generation.   You may put the cause of
the disaster of last Sunday upon incompetent commanders,
upon indecently inquisitive civilians going to a battle as to
a play, upon a drunken leader of reserve; but the cause
of causes, humanly speaking, is the metropolitan press, fed
by conceited correspondents and self-magnifying editors.
May the Lord deliver us from fighting any more battles
under their generalship!
.Nor must ti-s war be led by any political faction,- be
turned to any selfish or party aggrandizement. We of the
people have sublimely said, "Let party and faction sleep."
The rulers must say the same. It is no time to think of
divisions, to push favorites, to build up cliques, to make
capital: it is the time for stern, steady, united work, -a
time to show that we can be disinterested. Let all self and
littleness, all intrigue and dispute, sleep. The country, the
cause, our God, want our undivided, untainted, unsuspected
patriotism.
For myself, I have confidence in the Executive; and, so
far as I ever do, I believed in, and still do, the party electing him. What it was possible for man to do under such circumstances, I believe he, with his advisers, has done. We
who sit here, and criticize special acts, condemn freely, and
complain, have no idea of the herculean labor undertaken
and carried out these past four months.  The world has
never seen the like; history will make the award; ourselves will yet be ashamed at our fretful conclusions. All 
13
honor -honor from the heart as well as from the headto those loyal men!  Still they are men, pressed upon by
outward circumstance such as men ever yield to.  They
have made mistakes, no doubt. Much of necessity had to
be done without due thought. And, then, men always must
mistake; and their great danger lies, their great mistake
seems to have been, in yielding to party necessities,- as, I
believe, any other party would have done, - putting men iii
places of greater or less responsibility because of accidental
political position or influence.   This must  be stopped.
The people must stop it. Arms is a profession. We have
not honored it enough.  It requires more than bravery to
make a soldier; more than knowledge of tactics, more than
precision in a drill, to make a commander. The soldier,
especially the leader, needs to know, to have measured, to
have tested, himself; to be sure, before he takes men into
battle, before he offers himself as the sacred champion of a
nation's honor, that he can act discreetly, with thorough
self-possession, under emergency. The testimony of many
brave men is to bewilderment under a first fire. Take
men out of civil ranks suddenly, and how can it well be
otherwise? At the best, we are at a disadvantage from
the necessity of depending upon untried men: but let.us
insist that men of education and experience shall not be
overslaughed by politicians; that place shall only be given
for cause. What inducement is there for men to give their
lives to preparation for just this work, if, at the moment of
demand, they are to be set aside, and see all their hardworked-for honors borne away by some untried aspirant?
Without denying the pre-eminent qualifications of some
civilians for command, it were safer, as well as juster, as
a general thing, to put a well-tried sergeant at the head of a
brigade or division, than a lawyer, a merchant, or a governor. Some men are so born to command, can so handle
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themselves and others, see so far, organize so rapidly, have
the thing so clearly in them, that there should be no question. That merit alone should entitle to place. If it be
that our rulers are succumbing any way to party dictate
or necessity, let the people rise, and bring the rulers to
their duty. There are dangers enough without this. The
name, the idea, of party must be buried now. A stone, not
to be moved even by an angel, must be put upon its grave.
The man who goes for party, - in high place, in low place,
-be he citizen, be he President, let him be accursed! Our
cause is just; our cause is God's. For it, he asks not partisans, but men.
I confess my surprise at the tone of many, not only at
first, but still. For one, I do not feel like trying to console
myself with the quotation, " All is not lost;" but rather I do
console myself in the conviction, that nothing is lost. So
far, all is well. This reverse is given, that we may consider; and given first, thank God! Not even will I own
that the hands have been put back upon the dial, because
the campaign is checked, and must be begun anew. To
the nation, for the cause, the reverse is healthy. It will
bring us to think; it will show the work that is before us,
in its terrible and solemn magnitude; it will hush the
bravado spirit, so wide-spread and so offensive; it will
show the demand for all our resource, all our wisdom, all
our faith; it will make us realize, what we have only said,
that this is our trial-day.   Let every man  put himself
down to study seriously out the teachings of the hour,
take this as a personal appeal; let him rise from his
thought a purer patriot, a better man, prepared to suffer
and to do,- and it will all go well.
There is no room in the present for doubt or fear. Every
thing encourages. It is a vast stride the cause has taken
since last Sunday's bloody field. What victory could have
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done the like?  Already God's hand is seen in the reverse.
It was needed: it is working well. Mav it work cornpletely!- purging away all low motive; cleansing our councils of all but patriotism and faith, our armies of all but
courage and honor, ourselves of all but conviction of the
holiness of our cause, and confidence in God. Let the army
and the people, the rulers and the ruled, now advance in
sympathy and mutual respect. Let there be no chicane,
no meddling, no hypercriticism. Let ours be union indeed:
and then again, speedily, the holy banner of freedomthe well-loved, well-tried "stars and stripes " —shall spring
to its place in the clear upper air; and, as its graceful
folds unbend themselves to the wooing of every wind, the
nations shall look up to see in it the assurance that every
chain is snapped, and there is on earth, not only peace, but
LIBERTY!
) 
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OUR S,4CRIFICES.
A
SERMON
PREACHED IN THE WEST CHURCH,
NOVEMBER 3, i 86I,
BEING THE SUNDAY AFTER THE FUNERAL OF
LIEUT. WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM.
BY C. A. BARTOL.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.
B 0 S TON:
TI C KNOR AND FIELDS.
1861.
v 
A
University Press, Cambridge:
Printed by Welch, Bigelow, and Company. 
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SE R M ON.
"THE BEAUTY OF ISRAEL IS SLAIN UPON THY HIGH PLACES." -
2 Samuel i. 19.
WHAT a dreadful sacrifice, I have repeatedly heard
it said, and you have repeatedly heard it said, if
you have not repeatedly said it yourselves, as tidings
of one after another fresh calamity from the theatre of the nation's struggle smite on our ears.
But no sacrifice stands alone, begins and ends in
itself, or is ever to be regarded as so much blank
loss. Let us not overlook the use of sacrifice. It
is the law of our life, that all earthly progress in
every good cause starts in sacrifice, lives on sacrifice, and without ever-new sacrifice would faint
and die.
It was a great sacrifice, and David so esteemed
it, when Saul and his son Jonathan, and two other
sons besides, lay dead on the field under the arrows
of the Philistine archers, who took great spoil of the
Israelites' wealth also and their weapons of war.
David writes a dirge on the occasion, perhaps the
earliest from his sublime pen; and, if so, then the
tender muse of his sacred poems truly was born
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in sorrow and baptized in tears, as the very child
of sacrifice. Yet, sad as the occasion was, it was
not wholly lamentable. The death of Saul from
the dart and the sword, and the fall on the field
of Jonathan, whom David loved as he probably
never loved man or woman else, with the knitting
to him of his very soul, were not sacrifices absolute. Great use was there in the seeming waste
of that royal and princely blood. The Philistines
with their savage barbarous host were not helped
on to victory by the slaughter that exacted those
precious lives. Their stroke recoiled. The blood
of Saul and Jonathan, that ran out of their veins,
apparently to stop still and clotted as a pool on
the earth, ran back somehow and was re-infused
into the people. It made the blood of the whole
kingdom tingle with unprecedented life and zeal.
The damp sprinkling at the mouth of the furnace
kindles the fire it but superficially quenches to a
hotter glow; and no vital current that still flowed
was so mighty for the triumph of the Israelites
as that which was spent and spilt like water on
the ground. David, warrior and king as well as
psalmist, was kinged indeed, as he was crowned
in form, by the martyrdom he mourned; the wild
tribes of Amalek, the freebooters and enslavers of
their day, were scattered before his sceptre and
spear; - and, had there been no other fruit from
the gore that enriched the ground of Gilboa, the
ode itself that has come down to us with immortal inspiration, a song and a picture too, were
1, 
5
worth, in its stirring influence as a grand celebration of friendship and honor, the lives of a thousand men. Though David curses the mountains
to have no rain or dew, food for all time has been
gathered from their growth out of death.
We have had ages of success in this country;
now has come our age of sacrifice. Manhood as
noble and leadership as brave as Saul's, youth as
lovely and winning as Jonathan's, have been immolated to that spirit of war which so pervades the
race of man, like the air overhangs land and sea,
and rages as fiercely now in our American borders
as once on the Hebrew shores. But is it a bad
age, undesirable to live in, because it is an age
of sacrifice? No,- every sacrifice for a worthy
object is really in the soul no sacrifice at all. We
never made or can make a bare sacrifice for truth
and justice, our country and God. The blessed
use overpays all our surrender. When, in any
affair, we get more than we give up, are we not
to be content with the dealing?  "These are our
sacrices," said one man to another on leaving this
church last Monday. " And our glories too," was the
reply. Fidelity to our convictions and living as
we believe, at whatever cost of substance or existence, are the only glories we are equal to; - and
he is but a craven who weighs comfort or fortune or peace for a moment in the scale with
honor and duty and the public weal.   What is
your or my flesh and blood in comparison with
loyalty to our principles?  Verily, it is to be ac
.4
0 
6
counted but as so much dirt and stones in the
streets, or a little dust in the vast sweeping of the
floor of mortality into the grave. If it be wanted
for any worthy service, let us say, Here it s!
Much has been said of the sacrifice of property,
which might all have been spared had we interposed no obstacle to this Southern rebellion, had
we smothered our resentment at the insult to our
flag, and let the insurgents with their institutions
have their own way. But in what a torrent to
repel them we drain our funds! Foreign writers,
especially in England, have sent over sardonic
speculations and queries how we, with our government and banks, shall solve the financial problem
looming through the clouds of battle in our lowering political sky. In the American land and
American soul Providence will find or put value
enough to solve it. Europe may dismiss both her
honest over-solicitude for our welfare, and any
premature exulting at our downfall, disbeliever
however she may be in our democracy, forgetting
her own revolutions and consuming wars. There
has been some destruction of property of which
only as a melancholy abomination we can think.
But it has been not at our own, but the anarchists' hands, that railways and bridges are wantonly destroyed and coastlights put out.  Nearly
all at least of our sacrifices of property, the fruit
of industry, have been in the legitimate furtherance
of our righteous aims. Yet an enormous sacrifice
we must own it to be. The mustering and accou
- fy
I 
7
tring of forces, the pay-roll and rations for subsisting the army, the huge negative loss in a wide
desertion of the pursuits of productive industry,
the vast expense of the naval military power in its
splendid fleets, - one of which has just sailed:
Heaven-sped be it on its righteous errand! —and
all the munitions of battle; - the treasure that is
fired away in the explosive powder, whistling ball,
bursting shell, and countless missiles, most of which
are lost in space or buried in the ground, barren
of any result; - the time, the strength, the skill, all
of which are money, consumed in the long indecisive strife, taxation aggravated and the future
pledged; - our imagination staggers in attempting
to sum up the sacrifice in the form of property
which labor and capital and trade hardly earn and
slowly accumulate, - property, yes, perhaps a thousand millions, enough to endow countless colleges
and asylums, lavished on the demon of war.
But if, with all this expenditure, a stand is
made against oppression and wrong, if a prospect
is opened for liberty and union, if the republic can
be redeemed by this sacrifice, shall it not be made
with a joyful will? Truly, all profusion for such
ends is economy,-and excellent housekeepers they
from whom it comes! To what better account can
our property be put? What should we do with
the heap of our riches, if we were allowed to go
on swelling it, in a course of endless prosperity?
Nothing but good, think you, abolishing distress
and poverty, equalizing the human lot, promoting 
8
science and art, building up at home and in heathen
parts the kingdom of God? - or much evil too,
hardening ourselves in avarice, enervating ourselves
with luxury, corrupting ourselves with vice, and
going the same down-hill track other nations have
taken, Rome and Babylon, Nineveh and Tyre, with
the fat and recalcitrating Jeshurun, whose name
personified the degenerate Israelites, amid all their
milk and honey, of old? Dubious, from human
nature as well as history, to such questioning would
be the reply.  But we are not allowed to go on
uprearing these ant-hills of our golden sand. We
are stripped of our increasing wealth. Our glittering houses of earthly gain, under the tramp of the
living ideas of the time, are broken and diminished.
Great and grievous appears the sacrifice. Simple
sacrifice, however, it is not. One advantage will
come of it. We shall at least never rot in our
riches. Those stooping from age will now no
longer more with gold than with years be cumbered
and bowed to the ground. Our youth will not, in
idleness and dissipation, run riot with the means
otherwise bestowed. Our children, with our estates,
will be devoted, in some mode of service, at home
or at the seat of conflict, to the commonwealth.
Nay, we shall, with this substance of ours, not only
serve and sacrifice to, but rescue and for our posterity perpetuate the commonwealth yet, for all
that has come and gone of our temporary reverses
and the power of treason, so poor but for its robberies, to keep still on foot; - and what price for
I' 
9
such ransom of the land shall be deemed too high?
Truly, it shall not be reckoned with silver or much
fine gold. With it, as with wisdom, not even rubies
shall be compared.   If freedom be the purchase,
the money it comes to shall be a very little thing,
though the purse of Croesus were emptied.
But we have only begun to tell the story of sacrifice when we speak of property alone. We might
be better off, reduced to Spartan simplicity, by losing
half of that. I think many of us would be. We are
making a great sacrifice, however, of happiness too.
The weeping of young and elder women, which you
and I have noticed in the doorways, as the successive regiments formed and passed along, shows but
a few drops of the flood of grief within. The heartthrob as you part from, perhaps never to see again,
that which is dear to you as the apple of your eye,
is not light, though it makes no noise, like the pulsing drum and trumpet, in the air. The anxiety of
wives and mothers, lovers and friends, respecting
the absent, however meekly borne as from the will
of God, wears on the springs of life. The report of
a fatal result to some object of affection rends the
heartstrings in which his form was enwoven. When
tidings of wounds or death have reached one dwelling, the doubt pervading the entire community
whither now the angel of death will fly, and on
what threshold next the waiting inmates may see
the crimson stain, weighs as a burden which only the
grace of Heaven can help to bear. The whole Christian feeling of the people too is troubled and torn
2
r 
10
at the horrid spectacle of war between fellow-men,
fellow-citizens, nay, offspring sometimes of the same
ancestry, begotten and born of one parentage, perhaps rocked in the cradle together and consecrated
from the womb to brotherly love, now arrayed on
opposite sides, and seeking to pierce each other's
breasts.
But the sacrifice even of happiness in all this
affectional and moral pain we must make cheerfully.
Do you say it is an excessive sacrifice? Whether
it is excessive depends on what it is made for; and
I plead, there is for it reason enough, and a fully
atoning object. It is no more than belongs to our
actual cause. Jesus Christ did not hesitate to promulgate his religion, though he foresaw it would
divide families and make a man's foes to be those of
his own household, and put a sword into numberless
hands; for, spite of all such mischief and misery, he
knew how preponderant to the world would be the
benefits of his Gospel. We must not draw back
from our dread crisis and ordeal of fire; for it is
the only mode that appears of maintaining our
fathers' enterprise of a free and Christian community on these Western  shores.   What  other
practicable method there is will you tell me? I
see none. As the bitter sacrifices multiply and
grow severe, some are tempted to ask if we have
not in all this business made some horrid mistake.
They shrink from further waging the terrible strife,
and are almost ready for any mean compromise.
But the sufferers, from whom the sacrifices have 
11
been or may be taken, do not shrink.  They have
counted the cost. They, like Jesus, have had their
agony beforehand. It has been in the garden more
than on the cross. Therefore they, like him, endure
the cross so meekly, with a serene beauty of
behavior by which some, who think only of their
affliction, are amazed. They conclude their offering
to country, to liberty and God, when they send
their sons and brothers to the war.
Besides in this matter of sacrifice, let us remember, sacrifice in some shape we cannot avoid.
It is for us, as for the Hebrews, standing among
their flocks, to determine what particular sacrifice
we will choose. Sacrifice, greater or less, we must
make. We have but an alternative. Should we
withhold our present sacrifice, what must be the
substitute?   Our whole political system  broken
up! The banner of the United States,- God bless
it! -not only fired at on one fort or lowered from
a single staff, but everywhere displaced, banished,
and  destroyed!   The seat of government taken,
and the federal authorities, by the vote of the
whole people fairly chosen, disgraced and dispersed!  An  end to that dream of liberty for
which our sires crossed the sea, and were willing
to cross the other narrower but more fearful sea
of death, as so many of them did. A worse despotismn than they fled from, a slavery they would
have shuddered to foresee, and as they look down
from heaven must deplore, spreading without check
through our territories, prescribing as a sovereign 
12
our legislative policy, winning or forcing the mnagnificent stretch of our soil to itself; or, if the
stubborn old Puritan stock should still revolt and
hold out against its insolent sway, leaving this
little corner of New England out in the cold here
to shift for itself and be subject to all the ignominious dictations of a neighboring despotic realmn.
Will you make such a sacrifice, instead of the
sacrifice you have already brought?   One or the
other you must elect. Which, brethren and sisters, shall it be? How should we like sacrifice
coming in this style, of the kicks and buffets of
one domineering empire or of a row of arrogant
rival States? Would not all this other sacrifice
be the greatest and worst? For one, I must say
it is no point of wavering with me. By no reverses is my judgment changed. The will of God,
which is equity, is not changed.   Your resolve,
which is patriotism, is not changed. No, - rather
than fail to vindicate the proper institutions of the
land, let us rise, and let us fall, to the last man!
Let us not be nice in our preference as to the
blow that shall smite us or the ditch into which we
shall be thrown. Let us pick out a big burial-place
for what may remain of us or ours; or, should we
survive our country and American liberty, let us
emigrate to some other clime, till it please God to
take us to the franchise of heaven.
But we have not come to despair of the republic. We do not expect its foes to conquer. It is
not unlikely their strength, kept up with valdr so
0 
13
fierce and grim in a bad enterprise, when it yields,
may suddenly give way, with awful and utter collapse. But only by the virtue of our unfaltering
resolve pressing hard upon it.  There is nothing
for us, then, but to stick to that side of sacrifice
we have espoused already, and turn it from the
horn of a dilemma into a horn like David's, exalted with honor. We must gain the victory. To
gain it in battle, we must gain it in our hearts; we
must gain it in our households, we must gain it at
home. But one end of our army in fact is in the
field. The other end is here. It is composed, not
of men, but women. Tender maidens and venerable matrons are in it, instead of soldierly veterans
and valiant youth.   The unsheathed needle is all
their armory, instead of cannon, musket, and sword.
But it serves as well; nay, it is, in their hands,
essentially strong to support cannon and musket
and sword. If our case is won, to them as much
as to the ranks in uniform will the credit be due;
for, without woman's siding with him, in nothing
can man succeed. Well is it recorded that woman
was formed of man  and brought to him.'The
rib, which the Lord God had taken from man,
made he a woman."   Were her encourgement
withdrawn, I should be unnerved, if I could be by
anything less than the abandonment of the Most
High. It is glorious to see woman's rights by
woman herself all absorbed now in woman's duty.
Let man and woman together yield the sacrifice
of this sad but necessary war. We thought in
r 
14
deed war for us was over. We heard it grumbling on in the distant corners of the earth; but
we fancied the monster, formerly ravaging here
too, now a phantom for us, gone from our paradise too far to come back, as in a quiet night we
see Mars and the Great Bear so cool and noiseless in the sky. Yet it revisits us in all its wrath.
Let us deal with and carry it on in such a spirit
and design as shall convert it from an enemy to
a friend. Let us make it, not the ruiner, but regenerator of our land.   Then  all the sacrifices it
exacts will be sanctified. God willing and his children faithful, they shall be sanctified.   By  the
same blast which blows away the first froth of
self-confidence from the surface, the deeper purpose is stirred. Our gloomy fear, too, as well as
vanity, the wind shall scatter. As I looked at twilight lately from my window, I saw the evening
star in splendor such as I never saw equalled before. Clouds had been on it; mists had obscured
its face. But they had passed with fugitive haste,
nor robbed it of a single beam. Why with such
especial brightness did it shine to the eye? It
shone so brightly because it had been dimmed!
So shall it be with this other planet, of light and
freedom, our country in the West. Clouds may
blot its lustre. They are over us now. But they
will break, as, at this moment of my speaking,
yonder storm breaks and lets into these windows
a clearer ray. We may sacrifice our sunny happiness for a while. But not for outward happiness 
15
were we made, but for inward blessedness, through
self-denial at first, completed in ecstasy at last. If
we can bless each other and society by coining
our comfort and heart's blood into a self-sacrificing
service, let us not hold back.
Familiar events prove that to property and happiness we must personally, like the- Jews in old
Canaan, for ourselves or those dearest to us, add
the sacrifice of life. To one, among many such
noble and widely commemorated sacrifices, I wish,
in closing, to refer, not to gratify myself or any
others peculiarly concerned, but, through the public attention, already fixed on it by circumstances
of thrilling interest, for the benefit, as great as can
be derived from any sermon, of delineating what I
must consider a model of human worth. William
Lowell Putnam, born July 9th, 1840, Lieutenant in
a Massachusetts company, fell bravely fighting for
his country, in the act probably of at once leading
on his men and making a step to the relief of a
wounded officer, in the battle of Ball's Bluff, October 21st, 1861, and he died, at the age of 21, the
next day. The State that gave him birth, and to
which he gave back honor, joined with his kindred
and friends in celebrating his obsequies- in this
church, last Monday, October the 28th. The coffin
lay on the same spot occupied, nine months ago, by
that of Dr. Charles Lowell, his maternal grandfather.
The corse of the soldier and hero, surmounted with
the sword unwielded and motionless in its scabbard,
was not unworthy to succeed here that of the
II
1 
16
preacher and saint; for spiritual weapons were no
cleaner in the hands of the first than carnal ones in
those of the last. Striking was the contrast made
by the youth's silken locks and smooth, fair cheeks,
cold in death, with the white hair on the furrowed
brow that had also reposed at the shrine so long
vocal with well-remembered tones of an eloquent
and holy mouth. But there was more union
than separation. The benignant resolution of the
elder's expression was repeated in the sweet firmness of the young man's lips. They seemed as
near together in spirit as circumstantially wide
apart. The two venerable names of Lowell and
of Putnam- the eminent jurist, as beloved as he
was distinguished * - were well united in that of
the youth; for he justified every supposable law
of hereditary descent by continuing in his temper
and very look, with the minister's loving earnestness, the singular cordiality, the wondrous and spotless loving-kindness, which in his paternal grandfather's manner was ever like a warm beam of the
sun. The delicacy due to the living allows me only
to point to a picture such as is seldom exhibited, in
* Samuel Putnam was born 1768, and died 1853. At the bar he was
particularly distinguished for his knowledge of Commercial Law, a chivalric sense of honor and duty, and uniform amenity of manners.
On the Bench of the Supreme Court, where he served for twentyeight years, the exhibition of these powers of mind and elements of
character gained for him universal affection and respect; and his opinions in that branch of the law are esteemed among the most valuable
contributions to jurisprudence to be found in the Reports of the State of
Massachusetts. 
17
his only surviving grandparent, of an intelligently
contented, industriously cheerful, Christian old age,still growing riper and fresher towards almost ninety
years. A worthy grandchild William was. Hle bore
out in action, in danger and death, every rising signal and promise of his brief but beautiful life. In
the conflict, he cared more for others' peril than for
his own. He sank, from all hiss forward motion,
under one mortal wound. But, while he suffered,
he smiled. He deprecated any assistance to himself as vain; he urged all to the work before them,
and even forbade his soldiers to succor him. "Do
not move me," he said to his friend; "it is your
duty to leave me; help others; I am going to die,
and would rather die on the field." With noble,
yet well-deserved support, however, he was borne
nearly a mile to the boat at the fatal river's brink
by Henry Howard Sturgis of this city, who left him
only to return to fight in his own place, and afterwards watched him like a mother in the hospital,
hoping for his restoration. As he lay prostrate,
knowing he could not recover, he beckoned to his
friend to come to him, that he might praise the
courage of his men in the encounter, rather than to
say anything of himself. With such patient composure he endured his anguish and weakness, probably no mortal but himself could suspect how far
he was gone. He sent home the simple message of
love. Brightly, concealing his pangs, he wore away
the weary hours. Cheerfully, on the Tuesday morning which was his last on earth, he spoke to his
3
r 
18
faithful servant, George.   He closed his eyes at
length, and did not open them again, presenting,
and perhaps knowing, no distinction between sleep
and death. Hle "is not dead, but sleepeth," might
it not have been said again? But, like the child
raised by our Lord, he slept but a little.  The
greatness of his waking who shall tell?
I looked often and earnestly on that young man's
face, in the house and by the wayside; and now
that I can see it in the flesh no longer, it still hangs
and shines conspicuous in the gallery of chosen
portraits in my mind. I would fain put into some
photograph of words what it expressed, and what
the likeness fortunately taken of him largely preserves, respecting others' testimony while I render
my tribute, and blending their views with my own;
for I find in all estimates of him a notable uniformity. The first impression which any one beholding
him would have received, was of a certain magnanimnity.  The countenance was open, and, as from
an ample doorway, the generous disposition to meet
you came out. There was a remarkable mixture of
sweetness and independence in all his aspect and
bearing. From his very gait and salutation you
would perceive that his mind was made up, and
he meant something by his glance or utterance;
as one who knew him said, there was character in
whatever he did. I am not sure a discerner of
spirits might not have gathered, before he elected
his part, from his effective carriage and fine physical
development, signs of a military taste. Yet, if the
I 
19
martial inclination were in him, it was combined
with a strong aversion to take life or inflict distress.
He proved once more, as it has been proved ten
thousand times, that the brave is also the tender
heart.  But above all mortal considerations of pleasure or pain was his regard for justice and truth.
He had a rare native rectitude.  He never deviated
from sincerity. If anything could grieve him, or,
even in his childhood, move him for a moment from
the admirable felicity of his temper, it would be
any calling in question of his word. But the sensibility in him that felt all forgave all too; and without the sensibility that measures our forgiveness,
our forgiveness is nothing worth.   Beyond  any
passion, he evinced the reason in which his passion
was held.   Coolness in him covered enthusiasm;
the gravity of deep though early experience repressed the sparkles of natural humor; a heart
wistful of affection attended self-reliance; the modest and almost diffident was the courageous soul;
by ready concession to another's correctness in any
debate, he curbed a mounting will; and he suited
the most explicit clearness of opinion to the perfect
gentleman's ways. With his seriousness went along
a keen sense of the ludicrous, by which alnost every highly moral nature is quick to observe what
is outwardly awry, as well as what is intrinsically
wrong; but he was more apt, when he laughed, to
laugh at himself than at other folks. He could contend also, but never from love of contention. He
would fight only for a great object; he went to the
I
t. 
20
war in his country's emergency, at the outset proposing to go as a private; and he intended to
return to the study and practice of the law if he
survived. If he survived: but no sanguine thought
of surviving did he entertain.  Hle had no reserves;
he was a devotee in arms. He offered himself as
though less to slay than be slain were his end. No
more of hero than martyr was in his mood, as in
his doom. He threw his life in without scruple,
with the ancient judging it sweet and decorous to
die for one's country; and the parental presentiment, that die he would, was mnatched in the entire
readiness for such an event with which the always
fearless son, under no shadow of his own apprehension, marched on to the fatal fray. In every extremity he was self-possessed. If by one word I
must mark the quality most prominent in his deportment, I should call it balance. Did this unqualified courage, in one extraordinarily conscious of
existence, and with constitutional tenacity rooted
in the present life, spring from the faith he so
vividly had in immortality? and did that faith in
turn spring from a profoundly religious trust in
God?  I believe it! I believe even the exuberant,
vivacious, frolicsome boy had in him the germ,
afterwards to open, of all this faith and trust. Imnpulsive, he did not act from impulse, but from that
contemplation on the truth of the universe which
told him on what impulse to proceed, and marked
his way over the earth into the heavens.
Precious intellectual gifts, mostly philosophic,
I 
21
though with no want of imagination, were in our
brother, so that his friend abroad, Gue6pin, expected
in him great scientific attainments,- while he
spoke French, German, and Italian, in the style of
the common people, whom he loved, as well as the
dialect of the refined circles. He was fond of reading, but only of the best works in composition of
any kind; and he left an exciting romance half
finished, at the hint of something not wholesome
or altogether lofty in the author's tone. His mind
and heart were in unison, and on his young companions, as well as elders, he made the same stamp
of a superiority permitting only one idea of him.
It were hard to tell whether the reflective or executive faculties prevailed, so exact in his very
nature was their poise.   But the moral in him
ever presided over the intellectual.  Not for distinction, but duty, he lived, as he died. I know how
the dead are eulogized, and what a eulogy I give;
but out of the sincere thoughts of my heart I give
it,- that those who knew him best, while they
admired his talents, were never able to discover
his faults.
Such is one of our sacrifices of life. A dawn
predicting individual excellence through- a long
career, as plainly as the yet beardless Raphael's
picture of the holy marriage was said to be prophetic of all his subsequent fame, has suddenly
withdrawn its lustre from the earth. Is the sacrifice too great? I ask his kindred, is it too great?
Would you have your boy back? Under the old
i 
22
-dispensation, when a sacrifice God would surely
accept was to be made, a firstling of the flock,
a lamb without spot or blemish, was singled out
for the altar. A firstling of the flock, a lamb without spot or blemish, has been selected now. God
himself, for this very purpose, as I think, of a measureless blessing to enliven the common heart, has
chosen a victim from our beloved fold. No, we
would not have him back. We would have him
where he is! In the victim may we see the victory
too. In the follower, as in the master, may the
twofold lesson of triumph with sacrifice be seen.
May the Divine wisdom, that loses life more certainly to save it, and gives up to gain all, shown
so well in a new example, have imitation everywhere and continuance without end. Be humbly
proud, be sacredly envious of the dead in the pattern displayed; for imitation and continuance it
has! The enlistment, at the public need, of educated young men is not damped, but inspirited,
from a companion's or kinsman's expiring breath.
That breath passeth far through the whole air, into
their nostrils! "'I must go," said one of them to
his father, - " I feel like a poltroon here at home."
Go with my blessing," was the father's re-ly.  As
the father himself told me this yesterday, he could
talk no farther, for tears, but turned away. May
the spectacle, so frequent among us, the most beautiful spectacle now beneath the sun, of boyhood
tearing itself from mothers' embraces and fathers'
arms, and happy homes, and loving dissuasives, to 
23
consecrate itself to country's good, prefigure another spectacle, of a country purged of its errors
and renewing its youth. May Heaven bless to
our redemption every vicarious sacrifice, of the
wounded and still exposed, as well as the dead;
- and so may all loss and self-surrender be sanctified in a perpetual resurrection, from the Most
High, on earth and in heaven, of "the beauty of
Israel," slain upon our high places, till the blood
of the martyrs, which is the seed of the Church,
shall be also the life of the state. Standing, for
us and ours, "as on life's utmost verge," at the
edge of whatever may come to mortals, so to the
Eternal we pray; - and may the Eternal to what
even on earth is immortal in us too, answer our
prayer! Then we shall not have sacrificed on his
altar in vain. All our sacrifices will redound alike
to his glory, our country's welfare, and our own
final gladness and peace.   It is no sacrifice of
truth, justice, freedom, or any human right, that we
make. Only lower and cheaper things we sacrifice
to these principles which are the attributes of God.
Fixed be our faith that something, not of tile dust
and not laid low on the field, something which the
funeral procession cannot marshal, nor the nighty
state precede, nor the whole earth, whose mouth
opens for the dead, swallow up, has escaped alive
above the bonds we yet wear, into the region where
is liberty, unity, peace, and light, with no need of
the sun, for the Lord God dth lighten it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof
I
I
k 
I
I 
MANHOOD, THE WANT OF THE DAY.
A
SERMON
PREACHED IN THE CHURCHII OF THE CAMBRIDGEPORT PARISH,
MARCH 1, 1863,
BY
REV. JOHN F. W. WARE.
REPRINTED FROM THE MONTHLY RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE.
B O STON:
LEONARD C. BOWLES,
119 WASHINGTON STREET.
1863.
I 
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY,
CAMBRIDGE. 
SERMON.
"THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES." - Matthew xvi. 3.
THERE were signs of the times in our Saviour's day which
a wise man might have easily discerned and profited by. The
future was coming with observation. The people were not
observing. The deepening shadows did not disturb them.
They had eyes, but they would not see. They did nothing
to avert their doom.
There are signs of the times to-day. Shall we let bigotry,
prejudice, party spirit, ignorance, blind us to them?  Shall
we let the shadows deepen, and the night of terror come;
shall we tamely wait for, court, our doom?
So far as I can see, it seems to be generally felt that we
are now arrived at the crisis of our crisis, the point of extreme peril. Our national trial has had just the history of
all antecedent trials of its class. Nothing' new has happened,
is happening, to us. We have had parallels given us from
all history,    from the old history of the Bible and the early
experience of the children of Israel, from the war of England with France under Bonaparte, from our own antecedent wars, - and they are very eloquent and convincing,
showing how History ever repeats herself, and that these
NW-b  
4
great national disorders, as the lesser disorders of the human
frame, have their laws of development, that they go on increasing in violence and complication up to a certain point,
which is the point of real peril, the true crisis, the crisis of the
crisis. There the great struggle commences; there the whole
thing is decided. Life or death hangs trembling in the balance. At that point nations and men die; that point safely
passed, nations as men return to greater health and strength.
The real crisis is upon us to-day. There is no mistaking
it. We have once or twice before thought ourselves at the
turning-point, because we had no just idea of the character
and magnitude of the contest; but it is here to-day, where
and as we had not looked for it. Let all that is true and
noble in us rise to the demand of the occasion, and we are
safe.
The spectacle we now present is that of a people upon
whom are the most solemn and pressing demands for unity
of action, if not of sentiment, wasting themselves by internal
doubts and jealousies, intrigues and oppositions, affording
through these aid and comfort to an implacable foe, compared with which alany foreign intervention would be trifling. The enthusiasm which for the moment bound in one
all discordant elements, and held dumb before it even the
petty meannesses of party, has subsided before the prolonged,
exacting trial, and has been replaced largely by sentiments,
desires, fears, utterly unworthy of a people with a history, a
capacity, such as ours. Never was there a nation so bound
by every solemn consideration to utter unanimity, never
did a cause so need a single heart and will. We are not
found equal to the hour.   The subsidence of enthusiasm
has not been followed by tre sterner, better sentiment of 
5
duty. The country is not filled, inspired, with a sense of its
obligation to itself, its history,   to the race and to God.  It
does not know that the hand never goes backward upon the
dial of time; that there is no retrograde to Providence more
than to fate. It sighs for that old bondage it has left. It
sees peace, plenty, security, in that old, dark Egypt behind,
and about it only desert terrors, and before it encamped hosts
of difficulties - sons of Anak - between it and its rest. The
promised land is well enough, were we only there; but being
here, and all this lying between, our faint hearts turn back,
and we sigh for the past, even demand the Moses of our
escape to lead us back.  It is the' old story,- History repeating herself; God calling a people to a great duty,
granting them a grand opportunity, setting before them a
glorious destiny; the people springing with alacrity to accept
it, but without sitting down to count the cost, becoming
dispirited, almost renegade, when reverses, delays, keep back
the fulfilment of their hope. It was somewhat pardonable
in a mob like that which had just passed the Red Sea to be
discouraged and rebellious under the presence of apparent
dangers, fenced cities and giants; but for us to hesitate, for
us to look longingly back, for us to crave a restored past, for
us to waver before a frowning future, is to put us back to
the level of the runaway slaves of Pharaoh.
It is a bad sign that which we see to-day,-  a noble people faltering in a noble duty. It comes to us from secret
conclave of crafty men, from treacherous resolves in legislative bodies, from corrupt utterings of a licentious press,
from what men say in the streets, or only hint, or convey
through sneers and flings, that after all but hurt and degrade
themselves. You feel everywhere that there is a taint to the 
atmosphere. A hearty, unconditional patriotism feels itself
ill at ease, oppressed. Said a friend, coming fresh from
two years' service: "What does all this mean?  Never in
my life did I hear such terrible things as since I came North.
What are you about?  There is nothing of this in the army.
It could n't stay there. The army is not interested in your
this and that of politics, but the army sees before it a bitter,,
implacable, resolute foe,- a foe which has no idea of yielding, a foe which must be put down, or all that is high, holy,
and hopeful in this nation will be, which must be conquered,
or it will conquer, - and that is the one fact about which
the army thinks." An officer, returning from a short furlough, writes: "You can't imagine how good it seems to be
back among a set of good, loyal, sensible-talking men. Talk
about demoralization, - why, in the whole army there is notas much as in one ward in the city of New York. All the
officers who have come back from the North come with the
idea that you are all scared to death. It pleases them to
see the strong ground government is taking, and you see,
if the necessity arises, if this army won't see the draft enforced." I have heard from more than one recently from
the battle-fields, that it would only need a leader to bring that
army northward, to stamp out this despicable treachery here,
before it marches southward to root it out there. Not long
since I heard that one of our great commanders, who is held
in highest personal regard by all loyal men, say that he saw
"nothing to apprehend except in the state of feeling at the
North." In front the army has a foe it respects, because it
is brave; but the foe behind it despises as honorable men
despise all things mean. What splendid utterances have we
had from it lately,- West and East! And there are more 
7
behind. Sometimes I have thought we were to owe our salvation from internal as from external enemies, to the brave
men who have gone from us, and going seem to have left so
little manhood behind them!
No: I will take that back. There is a deal of manhood
left. I look for a second thought from our people. There
are signs of it already. It is not so dark and desperate as it
seems. We are not sunk so low. I believe there will be reaction, in which the people will show what they are.  Misguided, deceived now, they will rise and shake off this new
bondage, and speak out clear and strong for the great right.
They have been disappointed, and now they are deceived.
I think they will cure themselves, and the cure will be
radical.  The signs of the times point to this.  We  shall
pass the point of peril.
This is the people's struggle every way,- no matter of
rulers, or of parties, or of caste, or of individual ambition.
The people have risen, - the people will carry through the
war. They may be timid; they may halt; but they will in
the end conquer.  Designing men, with their sophistries and
specious pleas and policies, may for a while deceive; some
who never triumphi over a prejudice or desert a party-lead
will follow; but the real people, the whole people, are to be
unconditionally loyal.
I hear men say that what the times want is a man. I do
not believe it. I do not so read the signs. I know History
is against me, and I respect and bow before her teachings,
for they are as the words of God.  Still I think these
times are unlike other times, and I more than doubt if the
same means in all things be required as in other days. I
know how England suffered until Cromwell came; I know 
8
how the truth was bound until Luther spoke; I know the
throbs and throes of my native land till Washington was
made our chief; and I know how all through history the
coming of the longed-for champion has been the signal for
the rally of the brave and waiting, the death-knell of tyranny,
ignorance, and wrong, - that until the man has come, all has
seemed halting and hopeless. The great epochs in philosophy, science, religion, arts, poetry, national policy, human
progress, are coeval with the lives of single men, who advanced them by their genius or their will, and have bound
themselves and them in one inseparable immortality. But
is it always to be so? When a generation or a race becomes
imbued with truths and principles once the property of, once
but dimly seen even by, a single mind, - when that which
was once exceptional in the individual becomes as the very
life and breath of the people themselves, runs way down into
and through all classes, -may we not well feel that the
need of a special, providential man is removed, and cease to
expect a Shakespeare to our literature, a Washington to our
struggle? You may find to-day in France the reins gathered
into a single hand, you may find a Confederacy born of and
shaped and ruled by a single will; but in a Federal Union, no
room, as I believe, no possibility, for such rule. I do not know
that it would really help us, were such thing possible, should
Washington himself return to lead again his country out of
her peril. With our people as they are, I doubt if that would
be a success. Individual men rule, help, save, where the
average public tone and character are low. They inspire by
their exceptional position. But lift the average of society
up, educate, civilize, Christianize the mass, let it for two
or three generations live under the influences we have, 
9
imperfectly as we have yielded to them, - and I do not think
they need, or would yield to, the guiding of any man, no
matter what their peril. For one I do not expect the crisis
to give us a man.
Some men shake their heads at this. They can't separate
themselves from their chosen idea. Crises always have de
veloped a man.  We wait for, we want a man, - we shall
have no success till he be come. Each new general in turn
has been the man, till he has been set aside, and still we
get no nearer. To-day, after two years' strife, there is no
more prospect of such an one than in the beginning. Suppose our salvation must wait till such man come, from what
quarter is to be his coming?  Only from among military
men all will say.  Then-  we, here, look to the army of
the Potomac.  It is McClellan; it is Hooker.  But to the
West McClellan and Hooker are little. The people there
have their separate war, as it were, their separate aim, their
separate army, their separate hero. Let Rosecrans open the
Mississippi, hlie is their man. But the opening the Mississippi is not our object of present moment. We want to take
Richmond. The man who should take Richmond would be
our man. But the taking Richmond is a matter of little
moment to the West. They would go into no enthusiasm
over our hero,-he would not be to them the man for the
hour.  They would not accept our man,-we would not
accept theirs. Simply, then, it is impossible in a country so
vast as this, each part having its separate, distant task, for
the one so to enter into the successes of the other as to feel
the magnetism of its victory, drop its local attachments,
confidence, prejudice, and unite upon one central man.
Hooker may be the hero of Richmond, Rosecrans or Grant
2 
10
the hero of the Mississippi, Banks or Burnside of Texas,
Hunter of Charleston,   God grant it all! - but not one
of them, and no other, can be the coming man;  and we
wait in vain, and waste ourselves in waiting.
Better than this, I believe the crisis will give us men. It
is men we want,   a broader, freer, surer, more self-relying
manhood. We are very much paralyzed, very much inltimidated, in grave doubt, because the tone of manhood has not
been kept up. Material success has enervated, and the character of party and sectional politics has belittled, and we
have grown large in some ways only to grow small in others.
We have not had an overplus of moral sentiment. We have
grown too suspicious of religious faith. These things have
long been telling against us, though we would not believe
it. We have been running down in our manhood. Trade,
social life, politics, religion, show it. But there is a big manhood underneath.   Let it have time to assert itself, let it
see clearly through this mist of trade and politics and society,
and all that lowers, let it fall back upon the grand underlying principles, which it knows very well about and owns
fealty to, and we shall have that big manhood out, visible,
supreme. And such times as these bring about this change
with great rapidity. See how prolific the time, not a man,
indeed, but men! - no one huge overgrowth, but what a
grand average, -not among shoulder-straps, I Grant you,
but in the rank and file, that band of heroes and martyrs,
marching to victory or death, with all the better courage of
the noblest warriors of antiquity, sanctified by all that is
sublime in self-sacrifice and faith, - gone from our homes,
sons of our hearts, with as pure a purpose and as godly a resolve as ever crusader, or knight, or roundhead, or provincial.
I 
11
They are to-day's men. They make a man unnecessary.
Their example is contagious.   Men are springing up all
about us. There are braves in our home-guards too, - men
who will not stand by and see the altar of our liberty and
hope polluted by any coward touch, men who are not heard
amid the brawlers in streets, at meetings, in legislatures, or
read in newspapers, - in whom faith and resolve are silent,
because deep. To-day let this disloyalty that is loud-mouthed
and vague, that is underhand and disguised, that is open
and defiant, put itself into any one tangible form, and it will
find a spirit in this people that will hurl it to the deepest
depths, - a spirit, not to kill it, but to let it live and cower
and wail forever, - that shall brand it with a name as undying and as despised as that of the Tory of our Revolutionary
history.  Yes,   and this very day, though we do not brand
or exile or imprison or shoot or hang, we mark the disloyal
man, and his name and presence become a hissing and an
offence.
All efforts of any man or any party will fail at this crisis.
I'think the times show that. A man, a party, cannot rise
and rule. Manhood shall rise and rule. I dare say a successful candidate for President may be found somewhere
among our generals, but he will be taken, as others, on the
ground of a general availability.  The war will end, and
end right, without having developed, without our being clearly indebted to, one man. There is to be no second Washington.  The rulers of this country are the people.  They
are to be its saviours. A genuine, well-balanced, thoroughly
fused popular sentiment - a thing in which you and I have
part- is to be our guide, our safety. When that is had, the
end is. In that, victory and peace. De Tocqueville says,
0 
12
that "in the United States society governs itself for itself.
All power centres in its bosom.  The people reign in the
American political world as the Deity does in the universe."
Let the people reign, then. Let us put forth our might. Let
us be true to our profession, our birthright, our opportunity,
our privilege.   Let us cast off the emasculate manhood
degrading us, and put on the braver manhood, and let that
braver manhood be the one unifying life running through
and transmuting all.
And what do we need as ingredients in this larger manhood, our stay, our staff, our hope? To what do the times
point?
1. Real principle. I say real, because there is a spurious
principle, a well-executed counterfeit, with which men sometimes deceive themselves, and oftener hope to deceive others.
Many, too many, have only the principle of their set, their
party, their creed, their parent or friend, their prejudice or
selfishness, and when any strain comes, when you really
want to know what they are and where they are, when there
is a grand chance, at some cost, to show the quality of their
principle, you find it has not the real ring. You can't get it
by a certain point. It is at best of the letter which killeth,
not of the spirit which maketh alive.  You will find it turning back and walking no longer with you, fertile in doubts
and quibbles, anxious about other people's decision or
doing, condemning its friends, excusing its foes. We do not
want any such principle to-day.  The times will not bear it.
Nothing half-way will do. The principle of to-day must be
broad, fixed, immutable. It must not quote precedent or
party.  It must come up unflinchingly to the hour's demand
and duty.  There is a great deal to be settled which can
0 
13
only be settled through principle. If there is to be bargaining, chicanery, compromise, - a yielding for peace when
there is no peace, - the work cannot stand. God is against
it, and so sure as our past infidelity to principle and to him
has brought us into this dire calamity, so surely will our
present bring us, or, what is infinitely worse, our children,
into greater.
This thing has got to be settled on principle,- not by the
Republican party, or by the Democratic party, or any go-between party. Why must we have parties now? Why cannot a man to-day utter an honest conviction of his soul,
even in the House of God, without some contemptible gibe
at his preaching for party? For myself I have never been a
party man. Since I have been old enough to judge I have
never seen the party I could go with. From the moment
the war opens I know no party, and till it ceases I will know
none. The man who will stand by his country without demur, who will do every duty of every hour, who will hold
prejudice, preference, party, at bay for the time being, and
cast himself, body, heart, soul, into the day's struggle, remembering nothing but his duty to the land which has borne and
cherished him, that man shall have my confidence, my honor,
and if it comes to so poor a thing, my vote. To-day there
are two sides, and no third,- two parties, and none other
conceivable. Either a man is for his country or against her.
He that is not with her is against her. It is no time to
split hairs, to haggle over this or that, to run back to
party lines, precedents, shibboleths. We are in the vortex
of the whirlpool. For one, I yield unconditional obedience
to any mandate of the powers that be. That I do not approve is not now the question. It would be strange if I, or 
14
any man, at such a crisis, should approve everything. Let
the question of approval or disapproval rest. It can wait.
I go for my country as those who are her constituted rulers
decree she shall go, and I heartily believe of them, mistaken as they have been and will again be, that, amid embarrassments and painful gropings such as we cannot know,
with an honesty of loyalty that any party in power, I trust,
would show, they are trying to carry out the principles of
the Constitution,- the Constitution of the Fathers, not of
party,- so far as it is possible under the contingency that
the spirit of that instrument shall be carried out. I believe
that, in the end, that Constitution, better understood than
before, enlarged in some of its bearings, is to have a heartiness of support, a loyalty of reverence and service, it has not
had. It is to be a spirit vitalizing our institutions, our laws,
our very lives, not a letter, the convenient sport of every
intriguer. But if the powers that be prove dishonest, the
time and way are clear for their removal, and opportunity to
search for better. Meanwhile my creed for the crisis is, a
ready yielding to the powers that be.  To turn against them
is to turn against the country they for the time represent.
Let us see the end of this with honor; let us put this thing
through. Let us nail the flag to the mast, sink the foe that
threatens, -then settle the difficulty on our own quarterdeck. Let us brand every disloyal man, shoot every insubordinate soldier, in high place as low place, conquer a peace,
a sure peace, a righteous peace, -then we can attend to
other things.
2. Another want is patience. One cannot but wonder now
at the mad impetuosity with which we rushed into this thing,
cried, On to Richmond! and expected to have all quiet again
( 
15
in three months. The storm had been gathering too long for
that. The impatience in which we all share is a very large
and dangerous element in to-day's despondency, and gives
hope to its treachery. I charge it upon the press of the land,
even that which boasts itself respectable and conservative,
that it has used its opportunity and its power, too often
without scruple, to foment this natural and inevitable impatience, with regard more to its sales than the truth, its
own gain than the comfort and peace of already strained and
aching hearts.   I appeal for proof'to letters of special
correspondents, perpetually provoking a hope perpetually
doomed to disappointment; to staring bulletins, before which
the crowds pause and doubt and hope; to absurdest, basest
rumors, given the benefit of newspaper sanction and circulation; to Saturday evening telegrams, making a Sabbath of
apprehension and unrest. The mischief this way done is
incalculable. Nothing will excuse it. The public mind,
uneasy, diseased, alternating between its hopes and fears,
seizes greedily anything that is offered. Deceived so many
times before, it believes this time, only to find itself deceived
again, only to be made more fiercely, irritably impatient.
It is the duty of the press to-day, as of every public man
and power, to soothe and inspire, not to pander to the
sickly craving for mere news, or lend itself to a lie.
We must have more patience,-  a patience that shall not
flinch if the war lasts for years, outlasts the generation. We
ought to have done with coaxing ourselves into the idea that
it will be short, and settle ourselves down to doing every
demanded  duty  and  bearing  every  appointed  burden;
and in God's  good time the war  will end.   We  can't
hasten it by prophecy or by fretting.  They who patiently
wait will never lose. 
16
3. We must have faith. A voice comes up from the army
to me, and it strikes me very solemnly: " As you believe in
God, do what you can to keep up'faith in him at home."
Strange words these to come up from a camp,- for the
camp to urge upon the pulpit! How much meaning they
have! how much they are needed! This is God's affair,
not man's. We are working for him, building as we do not
know, - mere hod-carriers, painfully bearing on our shoulders material for an edifice which shall be shaped as we
know not, which shall grow into a grace and beauty and
stability we dream not of; for its builder and maker is God.
How sad it is to see men so blind, - so wilfully determined
not to see God in this day's marvellous doing! Just see
how he has pushed aside and overruled, not merely our
blunders, but our best doings; and when men have so persistently striven to narrow the strife to some low issue, see
how he widens it, and then men accept as military necessity
- is that not wellnigh a blasphemy?- that which he proclaims as Divine will. I ask any candid man, Is it not evident, - would it not be to you, if you stood unconcerned,
outside the strife,- is it not evident that God means by this
war to raise the black manl so that he shall have the chance
to prove his capability? Long enough we have stood in his
way. God, who has tried one great experiment on this continent, is preparing to try anlother, and this America is to be
the seed-ground (f a larger civilization and a broader liberty
than she has yet seen; and so shall her honor and her glory
spread.
Faith in God! Let us have it, and reverently follow as
he leads.
Friends! The signs of the times are such as to make us 
17
thoughtful, earnest, resolute, not such as to discourage or to
depress. That is the worst cowardice which allows itself to
despair. The work at this crisis is not to be done by the
army alone. There is treachery at home. We have sat
here, exempt from the terrors and perils of war, enjoying
our wonted comforts and luxuries, congratulating ourselves
upon our marvellous material success, forgetful of our own
stern duties, too long. The cannon and the bayonet have
been too exclusively our agents and our hope.  Our difficulties were to be settled on the field. Thile day shows us our
mistake. While we have slept, a busy enemy has sowed his
tares. The conflict comes nearer home. Our safety, the
safety of the Republic, our honor, our hope, can no l1nger be
intrusted to a distant army, be it never so successful, never
so loyal. We must rouse to do our part. There is work
for each and all. The home tone must be changed. It is
notoriously evident that the demoralization is here,- that
what of it there is in the army does not originate there, but
springs from, is fomented by, the selfishness, the treachery,
of those at home acting upon the timidity, the fainting hope,
the real desire for peace of many. The price of liberty is
eternal vigilance. We have forgotten that, and again History
repeats herself, revealing, at the very crisis of our struggle
with the enemies of the Republic, the existence and the
industry of foes at home, who care nothing for tlhe country
and the cause, nothing for honor and humanity, if they may
hope to gain their own ends.  So, before, many times, a great
people have been conquered, not by the enemy in front, but
by the treachery within. So, many times, has the spirit of
party raged, divided, subdivided, and wasted, and the foe
has seized an easy victory.
. 3
I
t 
18
We are warned: let us be wise. The spirit that dared
lift itself against the integrity of Washington lifts itself today against principles and hopes to which he gave his manhood. The tomb by the Potomac cannot yield its dead, and
the great hero once again resume his place at the head of a
bewildered people. We do not need the miracle. The remedy lies with the people alone. They do not need a great,
central mind. The theory of our government - the very
corner-stone of the Republic - is, that the people rule. That
is the experiment we try; that is what we claim as our success.  Let us prove that it is so.  The crisis comes, and it
rests with the people- you, me, all of us- to say what its
issue shall be.  It shall be, it can be, only good, if every man
of us is at his post, true to the hour as the compass to the
pole; if, forgetting party, prejudice, any, every low hope
and aim, we remember only our country's peril, aind'yield
her our unconditional loyalty. It needs no one great master
mind at the helm. The times demand unity among the
people, - that our guide, that our salvation.
Men of thought! be up and stirring
Night and day:
Sow the seed, withdraw the curtain,
Clear the way i,
Men of action! aid and cheer them
As ye may!
There's a fount about to stream,
There's a light about to beam,
There's a warmth about to glow,
There's a flower about to blow;
There's a midnight blackness changing
Into gray.
Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way!
I 
19
Once the welcome light has broken,
Who shall say
What the unimagined glories
Of the day?
What the evil that shall perish
In its ray?
Aid the dawning, tongue and pen;
Aid it, hopes of honest men;
Aid it paper,- aid it type,Aid it, for the hour is ripe,
And our earnest must not slacken
Into play.
Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way!.
Lo! a cloud's about to vanish
From the day;
And a brazen wrong to crumble
Into clay;
Lo! the right's about to conquer:
Clear the way!
With the right shall many more
Enter, smiling, at the door:
With the giant wrong shall fall
Many others, great and small,
That for ages long have held us
For their prey.
Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way!
I
I
.1 
0
.t 
GIT,,    tit 5   attlat  anb  itf  _Pltion,:
A
DISCOURSE
DELI'ERElI) IN AUSTIN-STREET CHUIRCH, CAMBRII)GEP(O)RT,
ANI) IN HARVARD CHURCH, CHARLESTOWN,
ON SUNDAY, NOV. 13, 1864;
33ting  the  %unbaa  following  the Vrifbentfal   E[ectfon.
BY GEORGE E. ELLIS.
BOSTON:
WILLIAM  V. SPENCER,
131, WASHINGTON STREET.
1864.
A  
DISCO Ut RSE.*S
ACTS i. 24, 26: "And they prayed and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts
of all men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen.... And they gave
forth their lots."
THERE is a striking contrast between two scenes presented to
us in Gospel history, in the record of both of which we read
of the casting-of-lots. There is all possible difference between the two applications or meanings of that same phrase
in the two incidents. In the one case, an issue was staked
on what is called "blind chance;" in the other, on a deliberately solemn expression of a devoutly guided will in forming
a judgment. The Roman soldiers, the mechanical officials
at the Saviour's cross, when that tragedy was over, "cast lots"
for his garment. The eleven apostles, purposing to fill one
vacancy in their former fellowship, to preserve the national,
traditional sanctity and associations with the number" twelve,"
gave forth their lots.
In both cases, so far as was visible to the eye, the method of
decision was the same.   The word "lot" is suggestive to us
of an appeal to chance.  To cast a lot, to throw, to toss, to
stake a venture on the die, are all tokens that men commit
to the decision of hap what they will not dispose by intelligence or choice, or the decision of the higher'Will.  Any
tool or implement or test will serve for that use. But when,
instead of the word "lot," we use the word "ballot," we begin
to discern a difference; and the difference mounts and strengthens, till all thought of an appeal to chance leaves our minds,
the more we interpose of human preference, purpose, or will.
The rude soldiers on Calvary were entitled to the spoils of
* Reprinted from the " Monthly Religious Magazine,"
1 
4       THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION
their victim. Some of the lesser ones they could distribute.
The seamless robe, the most coveted, could not be divided,
They put to trial in their own way a familiar hazard in their
own game of life, when they tossed the sticks or the dice to
decide which of them should gain the prize. It would illbecome the winner, if he should wear it. All chance prizes
are apt.to suggest incongruity in their use.
We can hardly call the other scene a trial by lot. There
were no dice there.   Chance was excluded from the appeal;
and a wise, discerning, and guiding Power above was asked to
overrule the decision, not on a throw or by a count, but in the
hearts of human arbiters.  The eleven apostles selected by
name two men standing nearest their own special fellowship,
and both alike fulfilling the specific requirements of the case,
both alike qualified, both unobjectionable, for exactly the same
work and service. They bowed in prayer for God's best guidance in rebuking private partialities, and suggesting any
ground, were it but the slightest, for preference. And then,
after bowing before God, they signified their choice. For any
thing we know, the result of the ballot was perfect unanimity. Such may be the difference between the lot and the
ballot. The intervention of the human choice and will is one
element of the difference; the recognition of the divine oversight is another.
What is the significance of that trial and decision by
the ballot which has just been made by our citizens counted
by millions? Would that we could pronounce it to be a
complete and infallible decision, on the part of every individual on either side in it, between absolute right and wrong;
between full wisdom and blind folly; between sure good
and the sum of evils! It would be a convenience, if, in any
human controversy or contest, a dividing line were manifestly
drawn so straight and sharp and deep, between the conlflicting elements which are ever warring in this world with their
respective champions. But common experience, to say nothing of charity, forbids us to look in human affairs for such an
anticipation of the judgment. Honest and high-souled patriots and Christian men were found on both sides of this 
THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
party-issue. Its own complications, and the known qualities
of human nature, not only prove, but account for, the fact,
that the individual men of the gaining and the losing side
are not to be classified by the distinction of righteous or unrighteous, wise or foolish, in their characters and aims. One
who sincerely so believes, however, may modestly venture
the avowal of his belief, that the result of the great balloting
would not have been different, if some shadowy warden of
the polls had overmastered the voting so that all the wise and
good and righteous had actually voted on one side. But again:
we discard the imputation and the claim which would go with
such a pretence as a matter of fact. Let there be not only
magnanimity, but fair, right admission in the case. Let not
the driving-out of what we call one evil spirit bring in
seven others.  Let us soothe the irritations of the strife
among ourselves, and give over opprobrious names, and prevent the suppuration of wounds which may all heal with an
unimpaired vigor for the whole body. The honored Chief
Magistrate, to whom accrues so high a tribute from the decision, has set a beautiful example of graceful and kindly recognition of right purposes and honest aims in those who did
not vote for him.  So effective has been that token of a
right spirit in him, that not a few who are the subjects of it
would be glad now to give him the votes which they cast
against him.
But though a balloting among men on great political
or party issues does not sharply and completely divide
between the champions of wisdom and folly, of good and
evil, it does engage and put to trial all the mixed and conflicting measures of those warring elements which are found
in each individual  man  who  takes part in lt.   To  one
who can read human nature thoroughly and deeply, how
easy the solution of marvels and proclivities and variances
which to most of us are so baffling! Men make up their
minds, they say: they form their opinions: they mature their
judgments: and then they pronounce, and act accordingly.
There are but few citizen voters who would not resent a
denial of this claim on their part. And yet to how many
5 
6       THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
abatements and qualifications is it justly subject! The most
that it can be made to mean is, that a voter, through force of
some overbalancing influence, motive, or reason, decides on
which of two sides he will dispose himself. The character
of the reason, bias, or purpose which controls his decision,
may range over the whole scale of good and evil. You only
multiply units when you count a million. A ballot on a
party-issue, whether cast by tens or millions of men, is but
a larger testing and exhibition of all the complicated elements
of human nature in each single man. A party, however
large, however exalted its professions, must regard itself as
falling, proportionately, just so far short of absolute freedom
from bias or error, and of absolute infallibility of judgment
and principle, as would the best man composing it in his own
private capacity. Our whole race has not a vice or a virtue,
a passioni or an infirmity, a quality of wisdom or of folly, of
which each man has not in himself the germ in some stage of
its growth and fruitage. Still we understand better the mixed
elements and biasses of will and judgment, and the abatements and excesses of the good and the evil of human nature, when brought out in the crowd, than when manifested
in an individual.
Yet there is a significance, a moral of an intelligible
character, in  the result of that huge  ballot.   Whatever
there was at stake in the trial transfers all its import to
measure that meaning of the decision as on one side, rather
than the other, of the alternative at issue.  The  voice of
the nation, expressing its will and purpose, approves, and
therefore proposes to pursue resolutely and at all costs, the
military policy which it has already tried for four years.
The people must be understood as ratifying, not repenting of,
not even murmuring over, or asking to reconsider, a course
of which it has had fair experience. The majority is a decisive one; and under its expressive verdict, if the question
were tried again this week, it would doubtless be yet larger:
so re-assuring is the influence of such a decision on those who
make it, while it also has a converting power on many of
those who withstood it! 
THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
If ever we ascribe to the verdict of men, counted one by
one to millions, a significance bearing, if not on the absolute
right, yet at least on their convictions of what is right, we
can scarce deny or depreciate the weight of that decision
now.  Those who, after experience of war, resolve to continue it, must, at least, be regarded as more resolute than
those who begin a war. All means and efforts were engaged
to make the decision an intelligent one, and to bring the
elements which entered into it within the comprehension of
ordinary minds. The burden which the nation is bearing,
and that which it would need to assume, with the sure ratio
of its increase and severity, with the consequent vexations
and risks, were candidly disclosed. The resources, also, of
the nation were deliberately estimated on the basis of its
reserved energies, as in part a matter of statistics, and, for
the rest, of reasonable hypothesis.   Deference was paid to
the high standard of common intelligence among the nativeborn voters, by laying before them, in carefully prepared
documents,  the  materials  for unbiassed judgment.   The
usual artifices of a political campaign were subjected to all
the restraints and cautionary measures which are consistent
with liberty for both parties. Even the popular harangues
were, in general, of a high tone; and only a very few of the
public speakers were so far misled by their own ill temper or
their selfish aims as to leave recorded against them legitimate
reasons, if not for political, at least for social, proscription.
The opposition did good service towards insuring the same
intelligence of decision, by presenting all the cogent reasons,
all the actual obstacles, as well as all the bugbear and fictitious apprehensions, which might warrant its own measures,
or qualify the convictions, the purposes, or the zeal of the
party in power. There was less than ever before of that
inconsistency between our professed reliance upon the inltelligence of the masses, and the tricks and cajoleries, the
trumpery catch-words and silly devices which address themselves to those who help to fill the net, without being
conscious that their destined use is that of bait.  If, as is
affirmed by those who should know, some hundreds of hired
7 
8       THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
torch-bearers appeared, for the same fee, in the city processions of both parties, they will have occasion only to remember
which  party happened to have the pleasanter weather for
its night-tramp, and the more rallying creature-comforts for
protection against a cold.   Those who, in reviewing the
struggle, are curious to pursue it into its private and personal
partisanships, may employ their ingenuity, with or without
their charity, in accounting for the position of this man or
that, by a smouldering animosity, or a laid-up grudge from
former antagonisms. Nor will individual instances be lacking, to be discussed between the generous and the suspicious,
of conversions and avowed convictions and new positions
attached to the names of public men.
Such of us as are happily exempted by profession or
principle or temperament from the more exciting and passionate experiences connected with such a struggle, may find
in it rich materials for quiet thoughtfulness and for profound
speculation. On the whole, the occasion was one which we
all feel and know is burdened with momentous and near
consequences. As it will enter into history, who of us would
not be glad, if, in the calm and security of some other scene
or age, he might read the matured issues of the nation's
balloting and its decision?
From the clustering homes of our northern and western
lands, in crowded cities, snug towns, and scattered rural
dwellings, have come those whose ballots have wrought this
decision. M'any of them were cast after prayers as sincere
as those which preceded the choice of an apostle. Those
ballots were dropped by hands which have been wrung in
woe over the desolations of the war made in those thousand
homes.  The populous metropolis of the land, the tentre of
all disturbing and dangerous influences, cast a ballot in which
some forty thousand majority were counted by the opposition,
coming from foreigners by birth,- as yet unskilled in our
highest patriotism, and from exiles, and sympathizers with
sedition, resident there. But that local majority was more
than neutralized outside the capital, in the rural regions of
the State, by its native-born and educated inhabitants. The
,.I 
THE NATION'S BAIILLOT AND ITS DECISION.
voice of the people is not the voice of God; but only the
voice of God can silence it. And only his will in manifest
demonstration can thwart its purpose.   Such is the significance of this ballot.   It is not the triumph of a divine
decree, but it is the ratifying of an intelligent resolution of
man.
There was an alternative for choice, - a positive two sided issue submitted to the people for their ballot.   That
alternative on the one side was simple; on the other, vague
and complicated.   On the one side it was this: Shall we
pursue our military policy unchanged in method or design
or leadership, with the one sole purpose of crushing rebellion,
and saving and vindicating the nation? On the other side,
the alternative, as presented by a party composed of heterogeneous and discordant elements, was not simple, but
compound, confusing, not definable, except by many distinctions and qualifications.   To  some who  espoused the opposition, its aim was hardly distinguishable, except as to
leadership, from that which the Government was pursuing,
and the people have ratified. But a leading motive or purpose scarcely consists with joint or distracting motives or
even wishes not approving its own direct and sole design.
And so an opposition which professed only a desire for some
change in the conduct of the war entered into fellowship
with those who pronounced the war a crime and a failure,
hopeless, and therefore to be given over by other efforts for
peace.
So incongruous and discordant were the elements of the
party in opposition, that, in the event of its political success,
it would  have found within  its own ranks and councils,
under some modifications indeed, though essentially the same
irreconcilable aims and purposes, and the same differences
of opinion as to methods and means which constituted the
grounds of its antagonism to the party in power, -now no
longer a party.   Precisely the same strife which has been
convulsing the politics of the nation would have been transferred in a more condensed, but by no means a more tractable, or a less distracting or alarming form, into the sharper
9 
10      THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION
discords of a cabinet and an Administration dictated to by
those who might claim to have given them the power.
There was really no issue between the two parties, the substance of which was not manifest in the incorporated, but
not assimilated, elements of the party in opposition.  Of what
sort the precipitate from such a combination would have been,
even those who compounded it could not reasonably predict.
The decision of the nation has adopted the simpler alternative
of the issue.
And yet, though the resolve to pursue the war unchanged
in councils and in leadership sounds and is simple in its
statement, it is one to which many discordant elements contribute, and which is full of perplexities and anxieties in its
details. It avows what we purpose to do, and then it throws
us back on our ways and means.  Its purpose is to put the
maintenance of our American National unity foremost in
resolve, and in political and military measures and enterprises.
The whole soil of the United States of North America is
regarded as held in fee by the nation; and all who live on
its territory are held in allegiance to its laws and edicts.
Under certain just restrictions of right policy and humanity,
the question of territorial integrity and unity takes precedence
of all others. The purpose is, that the law of the nation
shall extend over the whole of it, whatever may befall the
inhabitants or the peculiar institutions of any rebellious portion of it,-town or state, individual or confederacy.   If
people abroad find it difficult to comprehend the idea which
underlies this resolution, it may be because it is an American
idea nationalized by the American people.   W7e have all
learned how dull and slow even our English kinsfolk have
been to apprehend this idea of ours. They are beginning,
however, to take it in; and their learning it now may save
themi trouble for the future.
It claims special notice, that, in this stern trial of purely
American principles on so broad a field and with such
momentous national issues, we should have had a purely
American Chief Magistrate. Our President is all indigenous
man, the product of our own soil and circumstances, in a
I 
THE NATION'S BALLTOT AND ITS DECISION.
region where the peculiarities of place, of influences, and
products  are most  distinctively characteristic.   He  is no
courtier, no scholar, no trained expert in the manners of
academies or drawing-rooms. His features would baffle the
moulding skill of classic Grecian art, and perplex the chisel
of genius, in fashioning their marble counterpart. Marble
would not be the suitable material for their presentment.
In vain would the Roman toga attempt to round into easy
grace of shape and attitude the angularities of his limbs.
The canvas which is to be animate with his portrait must be
content to be excluded from all galleries of beauty. Talleyrand would be impressed with the waste rather than with
the lack of direct self-committal in his plain-spoken words.
He is, indeed, home-born, home-bred, the product of our
own soil, and of that, too, beyond the mountain-ridge of the
primary deposit. The wits and triflers of the press, and many
silly story-tellers, have shown a poor ingenuity in fabricating
reports of him and his sayings, designed to heap ridicule on
him. His lack of the graces and of the polish of artificial
manners, his plain-spoken ways, and his shrewd aptness in
blunting impertinent or obtrusive approaches by facetious
indifference, make him an easy victim for those skilled in
the little arts of malice and slander. But he has already
made the mark of character, and won the homage rendered
to straight-forward, high-toned  integrity.   The  statesmen
and diplomatists of the old world, after taking time to place
him and to analyze him, have now discerned the specific
cast and genus of the man;  and they accord to him  an
honor which State craft and official dignity by no means
imply, even if they consist with it.  History is ransacked
in vain for a parallel to him, though, in its revolutionary
annals, it gives us, in its representative characters, many
striking contrasts to him.   Destined, we may well believe
him to be, to a wide and an exalted fame! A man of a
godly and revering frame of heart, ruling his own spirit,
unselfish and faithful towards his fellow-men, pure and
devoted in ministering the most conspicuous office of government on the whole earth, -such he seems thus far to
2
11 
12  THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
have proved himself. And his trial has been sharp and
stern. If such as he has been he still shall be, - and there
is a pledge of prolonged identity in the man, and of perseverance in the style of his virtues, - then, when he becomes
a character of history, to say nothing of the attractions of
the picturesque in personal history, or the diagnosis of a
marked individuality,-  will he not stand among the world's
very greatest and very best?   How men  aimong us with
human hearts can turn him into a jeer, call him a tyrant,
malign him as a trimmer or a demagogue, -is not indeed a
wonder; for folly in all its shapes is naturalized among us:
but it is a sad token of the lack of all manly nobleness
and generous sympathy.   What  cares and burdens, what
responsibilities and anxieties, what days and nights are his!
But the choice of a leader is not the disposal of the conflict,
nor the solution of the dread perplexities of our future.
There is a dim and difficult way before us. The thronging,
deepening anxieties of the national struggle appal the hearts
of mlany; and only those of lightest hope and weakest judgment would presume to indicate any near result, or to shape
its conditions. The future can be cheered or forecast by
us only through the positive assurances and facts which the
present gives as encouragement.
In looking on into the future, and conceiving and laboring for any prospect or plan for the solution of the mighty
result, there are two sources or grounds of our wise reliance: first, a confident hopefulness of a desirable and a
rewarding issue for the conflict; and, second, an intelligent
and bold acknowledgement of the many practical difficulties,
embarrassments, complications, and tangled conditions of the
struggle. 
WVe need first and most the strength and leading of an
unwavering, full-freighted hope, true confidence, humble,
thoughtful, chastened, as may be, held under allowances for
all divine overrulings of our ignorance or our wishes;  but
still a confident hope, a conviction, that the dread struggle
will repay its cost, and be crowned with a triumphant success.
Let that hope be seated in our hearts!  It will be to us 
THIE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
strength, cheerfulness, solace, and provision under all that
lies between us and its full fruition. - And the past and the
present will furnish warrants for that hope.  We have retraced no step, yielded no resolution, depreciated or distrusted
no motive, which has thus far guided us. The will and purpose of the people have been declared by ballot. In face of
all the known and apprehended exactions of the struggle
projected into the undefined future, under the burden of an
increasing drain of men and nmoney, of taxation and personal
sacrifice, the voice of the people is, that the strife against
rebellion should be vigorously pursued, and that the same
mind and will and lead which have thus far directed it shall
retain the power, skilled by practice, and approved in resolve
and aim. A strong and reasonable hope in any enterprise
which engages the' energies of men centres in the consciousness of ability and purpose within themselves. Ieave not
most of us thought and felt, all along the course of this awful
fraternal strife, that, if we have so great a cause to be saved,
it must have in itself some self-saving power; a vitality and
vigor which will re-enforce us while we are serving it? There
must be a virtue, an energy, in our national cause, which has
a potency in itself, using us as instruments for its success, for
its triumph.  This prompting of patriotism as a spirit lying
behind and within the inspiration of men and women, not
only of armies, but of those who fill them and feed them
and pay them, and minister to their wounded, and honor
their dead, - this spirit of patriotism is the mightiest weapon
of war.   Like the sun, it feeds its own flames; and men
do not see or know how its unwasted supplies are secretly
renewed. We are often reminded in these peaceful, thriving
regions, that we do not realize the war.   No; nor do we
know  the resources within us on which we have not yet
drawn.  Our hope has power and grace behind it.
The question of cost in money, the enormous outlay, the
heaping debt, will not impair or chill that hope.  Putting all
thought of repudiation or national bankruptcy out of view,
we can contemplate the possibility, if stern necessity should
require, that the great majority of those who hold thc pecu
13 
14      THE NATION S BALLOT ANDI) ITS DECISION.
iliary national obligations should, by voluntary proffer and
petition to the Government, propose to surrender every
money-claim for the sake of the country, for the sake of posterity. And as to men, - men for the camp and field and
for the ships, - the men stand behind the ballots which represent the people's purpose one way, to secure its fulfilmnent
in another.
The second ground of our wise reliance is found in a bold
and intelligent facing of all the practical difficulties before us.
They are many and huge ones. It requires courage to face
them in their dim, bewildering vastness and terror. But it
would not be wise to attempt to shape them, for they are
misty at best; and some of them will never become solid, and
others of them will vanish. But we must face many of them
as realities, stern and perilous; and we must say to ourselves, as one by one they take shape, this is to be mastered
and disposed of. Of one thing we may be certain, as illustrated by personal and universal experience of the relations
between foreboded and actual evils, that no more dismal
realities can be visited upon us than those which have
been made familiar to our apprehensions by the dark predictions of some among us who have opposed the national
purpose, or the conduct of the war.  Many  of us, in the
exercise of our best intelligence, settled in our minds the
irrevocable decision, that, as failure would be total and
permanent ruin to us, all inflictions and calamities short of
that were to be regarded as conditions for averting it, and
therefore to be submitted to, without halting or even protest.
The object which we have in view has steadily become more
definite, more dear, and more sacred, as effort and sacrifice
have carried us deeper into its vitalities. Our cause6 has won
an element of inexpressible potency for appeal and resolution
in the precious and endeared offerings made to it. Its
youngest victims stand as our sagest councillors, the purest
priests at the nation's altar, the most hopeful prophets of
sure triumph. The Christian conscience of the people, without the help of cunning casuistry, but with the full, calm,
earnest conviction of a heart-purpose, assures us that a grand
.r 
THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
and holy inspiration of humanity overrules all other motives
and aims of the war. The majority of our soldiers in
field and camp, with heads bared, and faces turned heavenward, may affirm that they are fighting for a cause in which
their present foes are to have a full share of good with themselves, and that the sum of blessing to each depends upon
our success.
Whether this war shall prove, on the nation's part, to have
been a crime or a righteous enterprise, depends upon what
is yet to transpire as the way and the terms of peace, and
not upon mere reference to its origin, nor upon its method
up to this stage of it. If we shall feel bound conscientiously,
not from necessity, to close it, yielding the point and the
prize of the Rebellion to those who stirred it, then it is now a
crime. Our refusal at the first, our delay, our resistance to
grant what we shall ever be induced to own was a rightful
demand,  have been and are unjustifiable.   Measured  by
the scale of loss and woe for which we shall thus be proved
culpable, our crime will be marked as of daring and awful
heinousness.
So far the conscience of the nation is not pricked by reproach or misgiving. Realizing more profoundly and intensely, as, to our own amazement, we measure the course of
the war by years, what horrors of scourge and misery it
brings with it, the moment has not been known when the
nation's second judgment has doubted whether it were wise
or right to have entered upon it.
The whole issue at stake, as it showed its balanced alternative to us, when the match burned down to the powder,
has remained unchanged. It was then, and is now, the alternative of a wrecked and ruined nationality, embracing, the
world's noblest experiment and hope, or of a country saddened, lacerated, humiliatcd, but purified and re-instated in
its lofty distinction, by a stiuggle which develops and assures
its true life. The great Teacher spoke one of his truths of
largest compass and of most profound import in the words:
"No  man can serve two masters."  No man can divide the
allegiance of his heart. Nor can a nation do that. We have
15 
16      THE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
tried to do it; and we failed. The snakes of discord were
hatched in the very cradle of the nation; and they were not
strangled there. W'hether the human or the reptile antagonist shall retain its life, is the issue which waits decision in
our civil war.
It is the greatest of wars, because for the greatest stake that
was ever at issue in war.  It is, in its conduct on this nation's
part, the most humane war that was ever waged on the
earth, engaging in us the least of ferocity, of barbarity, of
reckless and fiendish cruelty, and the most relieved and chastened by forbearing mercy and thoughtfulness as to every
needful measure of severity. Traitors and spies and deserters are leniently dealt with.  The first and the most
unpitied victims of all other convulsions and wars, they are
all but tolerated, not to say, unmolested, among us. Editors
of newspapers, and public plotters and declaimers against
Government, are allowed a license of free speech and writing;
the exceptions to which, in a very few and those not the
worst cases, are, by the same tolerance of utterance, represented as instances of the most tyrannical oppression.  The
prisoners caught from the ranks of the nation's foe are housed
and fatted, not for the slaughter, but to offset, when the time
shall come to show them, the cadaverous victims from our
own households who have been rotting and starving in
Southern pest-houses. The angels of mercy, laden with alleviating and luxurious gifts gathered from all the household
cupboards of the land, attend, with equal zeal, upon the
sufferings of friend and foe. Our people have wrought and
adorned the largest and richest frame in which the picture of
the Good Samaritan has been or ever can be set.
AIeanwhile, it is not in human nature to be satisfied under
such circumstances as are now before us and around us, without asking questions, and shaping wishes into anticipations,
about the future. What can we reasonably look for as the
solution, the method for disposing of the terrible conflict?
Our efforts and hopes, taken together, ought to fashion out
something like expectations.  We  read the edicts of the
military leaders, the editorial columns of the newspaper 
TIIE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
writers, and the official documents of the political schemers
in the region of rebellion.   They are full of resolution, of
defiance, of boastful assurance, of sworn determination never
to yield the ground on which they have planted themselves.
Of course, these utterances will be in tone and purport such
as we find them to be.  For  from whom  do  they come?
MAany superficial or dismayed readers among us peruse these
utterances of the instigators and master-spirits of the Rebellion; and, hastily inferring that they speak the mind and will
of a whole people, sadly say, "These tokens do not intimate
any repentance, any sense of failure or discouragement, any
readiness for conciliation on the part of our foe."  Such persons have merely to put the simple question, From whom
come these sturdy and defiant boasts and pledges? They can
all be traced, as can the first plottings and the dragooning
initiatives of the Rebellion, to a fellowship of men not exceeding in number a single score. Of course, they must remain
committed to a cause, whose disaster is to them  absolute
wreck of all earthly aims, with the blot of eternal infamy on
their names. So far as human retribution or vengeful penalty awaits them, the councils and courts of the nation
will, in all probability, be spared its infliction.  It will come
upon them, in all the severity of which they will be able to
bear it, from the dupes and victims of their own pitiless ambition and mnisleading falsehoods.   There are those among us
who say they are waiting for the days of peace, to read what
they feel most interest in, - the internal secret history of the
war, in the councils and privacies of the rebels. There will,
indeed, be startling and confounding disclosures from those
sources.  But beyond all the woes and tragedies vhich have
been opened to our knowledge as they transpired, will be
the harrowing  revelations of private, household  griefs, of
dark atrocities, of outrages and brutal inhumanities incident
to the iron-heeled despotism and barbarous passion by which
the plotters of the Rebellion have overawed and tyrannized
over the people whose glorious heritage and birthright they
have sought to sacrifice. It requires no help-from the imagination to draw the scenes of agony which have crushed the
ee.:* *
17 
18      TIHE NATION'S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION.
hearts, and overborne the patriotism, of hundreds of thousands
in Southern homes.
Therefore, the hope  of Northern  Christian  patriots is,
that the war will find its end in the protest and rising of the
people in the region of the Rebellion against their own
leaders. To bring about that righteous result, is the sole
purpose of the discomfiture, the sufferings, and the defeat
which we expect our army and navy to inflict on the
organized forces of the Rebellion. We have assured the
Southern people that we are their true friends. They will
believe it when they have stricken their own real enemies.
That there is, in the heart of our Chief Magistrate, a purpose
of magnanimous dealing which he evidently finds it hard to
reserve in announcement till the fit moment for it has come,
but which will meet the demands of the opportune time, and
reconcile the strife, who of us doubts? Shall we not all be
satisfied at least to have extended the time for the maturing
of the opportunity for such a peace?
i
AOW 
A
SERMON
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
~ t itibe ant  tegislati!e dpartments
OF THE
OF MASSACHUSETTS,
AT THE
ANNUALI ELIECTION,
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 6, 1864.
BY
WM. A. STEARNS, D. D. _
BOSTON:
WRIGHT & POTTER, STATE PRINTERS,
NO. 4 SPRING LANE.
1 8 64.
GOVERNMENT
I 
4
IL
)I 
(Lommou talt4f of
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, STATE HOUSE, }
BOSTON, January 12, 1864. 5
DEAR SIR,-Pursuant to an Order, unanimously adopted, the undersigned were
appointed a Committee to present to you the thanks of the House for your able and
instructive Discourse, delivered before the Government of the Commonwealth on the
6th inst., and to request a copy of the same for the press.
It gives us pleasure to communicate to you the action of the House, and we trust it
will be both agreeable and convenient for you to comply with the request at an
early day.
Most respectfully yours,
M. S. UNDERWOOD,
JOSEPH ALLEN,
CHARLES BEECHER,
Committee.
To the Rev. Pres. STEARNS, Amherst, Mass.
AMHERST COLLEGE, January 18, 1864.
GENTLEMEN,-Your note of January 12th, requesting, in behalf of "the House of
Representatives," a copy of the Sermon recently preached "before the Government
of the Commonwealth," camne duly to hand. Have the goodness to express my
acknowledgments to that honorable body, and inform them that a copy of the
Discourse is at their disposal.
Respectfully and truly, I am, gentlemen,
Your obedient servant,
W. A. STEARNS.
Messrs. M. S. UNDERWOOD, JOSEPH ALLEN and CHARLES BEECHER.
II 
-r
.A 
DfI
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 23, 1864.
The Committee on Printing, to whom was referred the Order from the Special
Committee on the Election Sermon of Rev. Prof. Stearns, of Amherst, providing for
the printing of five thousand copies thereof, have considered the same, and report
that, in their opinion, the importance of the topics so ably discussed by one who has
been called by the casualties of war to endure a most painful sacrifice, the extraordinary interest felt by the people of the Commonwealth in the principles involved,
and the desirableness of a wide dissemination of the patriotic sentiments inculcated
therein, fully justify the printing of the extra number of copies proposed.
They therefore recommend that said Order, as reported, be adopted by the House
For the Committee,
CHAS. W. PALFRAY, Chairman.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 21, 1864.
ORDERED, That five thousand copies of the Discourse delivered by the Rev. Dr.
STEARNS before the Executive and Legislative Departments of the State Governmenr.t, on the 6th inst., be printed for the use of the Legislature. 
W. S. ROBINSON, Clerk.  
S E R M O N.
2 SAMUEL, X. 12.
BE OF GOOD COURAGE, AND LET US PLAY THE MEN FOR OUR PEOPLE' AND FOR
THE CITIES OF OUR GOD: AND THE LORD DO THAT  VHICH SEEMETH HIM
GOOD.
Thank God we have still a country.  We have a
country which treason, rebellion and the opinion of
foreign nations notwithstanding, gives at this moment
brighter promise of perpetuity and ultimate nobleness, than it has given for a quarter of a century
before; a country whose prospects, compared even
with a year ago, are as the broad-breaking dawn to
the dark night of tempest which preceded it. The
steadily waning power of the rebellion; the remarkable contraction of the area which it dominates; the
great victories which electrified the country in midsummer, and those which have recently crowned our
arms; the marked progress which has been secured
in the military measures of emancipation, and the
improved sentiment and intelligence of the people 
8
in reference to that much abused race who are the
innocent occasion of this strife; the change which
has taken place in some foreign nations, from adverse
dispositions and acts towards a real neutrality, if
not co-operative sympathy; the trial and growing
strength of the Constitution, evincing its wisdom and
power in proportion to the strains which  are  put
upon it; the new confidence inspired in our republican governments by the calmness and strength
with which they have put down domestic insubordination and executed wholesome laws; the nmanifestation of suppressed patriotism in seceded States, and
of the returning loyalty of thousands, perhaps
millions, whom the rebellion had swept into its
frightful vortex; the healthful condition of our
public finances and the wonderful prosperity of the
loyal  people  generally, together with  their  evergrowing determination to maintain the integrity of
the nation, however great may be the sacrifices,
and  however  protracted  the  struggle;-All these
facts and considerations are adapted to inspire us
with courage, and call out our gratitude. On this
early day of January, 1864, at this first assembling
again of the legislature of our honored Commonwealth, it is right and becoming that we express
our united thanks to Almighty God for his goodness,
-1 - 
9
and greet one another with a courageous "Happy
new year."
But though gratitude and  courage  are  seemly,
we have no time for glorying-hardly time for
rejoicing. We must address ourselves to more
serious thoughts and undertakings. When the life
of a nation is at hazard; when political earthquake
has shaken the government and its foundations are
still trembling; when hundreds of thousands of
peaceful citizens, summoned from their occupations,
are marching everywhere in military array; when
precious blood is flowing, and aceldemas spot the
land, and homes are draped in mourning, and tears
are dropping, and all hearts are throbbing with
anxieties;-solemn thinking and earnest working
demand our attention; nor can I properly select any
subject for consideration on an occasion like the
present, not connected with the condition of the
times,  and  the  circumstances  in  which  we  are
placed.
It will be the business of the hour to reflect on
some' of the problems of social prosperity, and
especially to inquire what we can do to defend,
perpetuate, and enlarge the life of the nation.
First of all, we must prosecute this terrible war
to its righteous  results.  The  rebellion  must  be
2 
10
put down. It must be put down, if there were no
other reasons for it, because it is rebellion.  Government is a nullity so far as it is impotent against or
tolerates rebellion. Would any of the great Powers
of the earth-would England, or France, or Russia,
for any cause - tolerate rebellion within their
dominions?  And shall we for no  cause?  Never.
But what we call rebellion, the insurgents call
secession, and justify as a right. There is no such
right. Secession has no foundation to rest upon.
Its assumed basis is the idea of independent
sovereignty in the States. But no State ever had
such sovereignty; no, not for a moment. From
the beginning, and always, the States have been
clusters of population, suspended from and nourished
by some common vine. Originally they were British
dependencies.  The  I)eclaration  of  Independence
was not the declaration of  separate colonies, but
of a National Congress, which represented the colonies and expressed their unity. The " Articles of
Confederation" adopted in 1781, were not the terms
of an original league, so much as the principles of
a union already existing. They declared, however,
the unity to be perpetual, and they confirmed the
declaration by irrevocable conditions, especially by
the surrender and acceptance of territories, for
%6
-1 
11
the general good. When it came to be known,
through the tests of experience, that the written
compact intended to express and strengthen the
pre-existing union was operating rather to limit its
power and hinider its usefulness, the nation set itself
to the construction of a National  Constitution.  It
was  framed and adopted by  "the people of the
United States," and was intended not to originate
a union, but to make the existing union more
intelligible  and  more  perfect.   When adopted, it
was adopted not merely by the States as States, but
more expressly by " the people" of the States as a
people. It gave, expressed and everywhere implied,
all the powers requisite for its perpetuity, and none
whatever for its destruction.  From  that day the
nation's life has been a constitutional and inviolable
unity.  As a unity, it has not only carried on the
usual operations of government, but it has purchased
territory, and conquered territory, and annexed territory, and divided territory into new States, and
admitted States, and been a Body "joined together
and compacted by that which every joint supplieth,
making  increase  unto the edifying of itself."  Nor,
whatever may be said of disturbing elements always
wvithin it, is there a nation on the face of the earth
whose parts have so intergrowln, complicated them
w 
12
selves with each other, and compacted themselves
into one as our own.  Secession, then, is rebellion,
and rebellion must be put down.
It is not necessary to present a fiurther reason for
overthrowing it. But it is well to keep always before
ius the consequences which  would follow from its
triumph.  We should not only admit a principle of
national  disintegration  into the  body politic, and
introduce years, perhaps centuries, of anarchy, shame
and misery, but we should suffer a terrible and odious
despotism to rise and domineer at our side. This
fact has  not  yet  been  sufficiently  pondered.  A
Southern confederacy, were it possible for such a
monstrosity to exist, from the character of its population and the nature of its institutions, as well as the
disposition of its leaders, would be a great warpower on our borders. * It would consist chiefly of
three principal estates:-an oligarchy of large slaveholders; a great working class of African bondmen,
indefinitely increased by the foreign slave-trade; and
a vast standing army, constituted chiefly of what are
now called "poor whites."  Such an army would be
necessary.  It would be necessary to keep down the
slaves; to defend a mighty wrong against the adverse
sentiment and action of the civilized world; to make
aggressions upon neighboring territory, for slavery, 
13
like the " daughters of the horse-leech," will forever
" cr), give,ive, e;" and finally, as a standing menace
and power  of  violence against any free  State or
nation arou.nd it.  The material of thle army  must
be  what I have described; for it is available, and
adapted to the purpose, and there is no other position
for it in  a  slaveholding  confederacy.  The  poor
whites in such a community,  too  proud  and  too
indolent to labor, too ignorant and impotent to rule,
without schools, without the functions of high citizenship, without the means of bettering their condition
which the working classes  of  the North possess,
would become  soldiers.  They  would be the great
ftyhtin  class of the South; and the great and only
,great fighting class, as a class, on the continent.
We are addicted to the arts of peace, and, though we
cani figlt and have fought with indomitable courage
and persistency, our  employments  and  our tastes
dispose us to peace.  But should a Southern confederacy, by any possibility, be established, we'should
be compelled to fight in self-defence, and that too
from generation to generation, until it slhould  be
destroyed, or we ourselves go under.
Some  imnagine that the  rebellion needs  coaxing
and compromising, and that then it will subside.
We  coaxed it and compromised  with it before it 
14
fairly broke out. We almost gave up our manliness to appease it. But it never would down. Our
alternative is submission to its extremest demands,
the degradation of ourselves and our posterity, the
surrender of our birthrights of freedom, or its subjection by force.  What  has  any Northern  man to
expect from its success, from giving it any measure
of sympathy, from  withholding denunciation, from
keeping back the sword.    We  may  or  may  not
sympathize with a particular administration, we may
or may not approve of all its acts and policies, we
may belong to this school of politics or to that; we
may even believe that the terrible issue now upon
us, by wiser counsels might have been avoided; but
circumstances being as they are, what have any of us
to hope for in the triumph of the rebellion, or of the
principles which  sustain it?  We may crouch and
fawn before it, but it will despise us.  We  may
betray our country to it, as Iscariot sold his Master,
but when, in remorse, we throw down the price of
blood, the response will be, "What is that to us?"
and we shall have  no alternative but  the  shame
and despair of him who went away and hanged
himself. Apologies for treason, irresolution, halfway measures, soft words, are all just now out of
place.  What  we need is blows, and hard blows, 
15
and blows all the time, till rebellion submits itself.
Would you have even the respect of the enemies of
your country, you must conquer them. Nay, would
you have a country, you must conquer its enemies.
Foreign nations may cry out against us, and profess
to be shocked by the terribleness of this war, as
though their own  histories were immaculate, and
they were not at this moment drawing the sword.
But they know as well as we, that if we are not
the most degenerate and the meanest of the nations,
we shall prosecute this war to a righteous close.
Let treason and mad ambition rend us asunder, when
sacrifices and efforts might have saved us, and their
own  future historians would write of us, that in
an age when Italy, "the land of political earthquakes
and volcanoes," after desperate struggles, rose in
power and bound itself into the unity of a mighty
people, America, the freest, the happiest, the basest
of the nations, went down ingloriously, and was
buried in imbecility and shame. No, God helping
us, we shall perform our terrible duty; we shall
triumph; freedom fought out for man will triumph;
humanity will triumph; and a multitude of the
heavenly host will praise God again, and cry, "Glory
to God in the highest, for on earth there is peace
and good-will towards men." 
16
We must, in the next place, take higher views
of the value of a nation, and especially of our own
nation, than was common among us before the
war. What is a nation? It is a great community
of people, held together by common bonds, under
one government, and compacted into a living organic
whole. It is distinguished by its unity in one body
politic firom other communities of people, organized
and held together among themselves in a similar
way. The diversity of races and interests; the
number and character of populations; configuration
of the earth's surface, divided as it is by seas, and
continents, and  mountains  and  rivers,  with  that
depravity and selfishness of man which induces the
larger and stronger communities to oppress the
weaker,-make divisions into nations a necessity.
Human necessities are Divine decrees.  What natural
theology thus teaches, revealed religion confirms.
There is a King of kings, and an administration
above  administrations.   "The  Lord  is  governor
among  the  nations."  "The MIost High  divideth
to the nations their inheritance." "lie hath made
of one blood all nations, and hath determined the
bounds of their habitation." A nation is thus a
vast and divinely-quickened organism-a millionhanded and million-hearted life-everywhere sensi
I" 
tive, everywhere throbbing with  vitality.  It wraps
utip in its own being the most precious interests of
the human  race.  It inspheres and  protects  great
histories, examples, ideas, principles;  the ashes of
ancestors, mlonuments of by-goone days; the activities
of great populatioins,-in cities, in towns, in villages,
-thronging in masses, scattered in solitudes, covering
banks of rivers, spreading up the sides of mountains
and down along the shores and harbors of the ever sounding sea; the germs, too, of coming growths
and the welfare of hundreds of millions thronging
upon our imagination firom the future.  Institutions,
churches, schools, homes, souls  more than can be
numbered,  are involved  in its destiny.  It  comes
down from  the past,  and is the  offspring of the
centuries.  It  looks  towards  the  future,  and  is
fraught with good or ill to unborn generations.  It
has relations to all the other organized _)opulations
of  the earth.  It is one of  the  famlily of_ great
organic lives, which divide among them and possess
the  globe.  Its prosperity  throws  sunshine  into
countless homes;  its adversity blights  the  hopes
and  joys  of  vast  comnmtinities.  Millions  tremble
when it is agitated; millions stagger with faintness
when it is heavily struck; and  when it falls, its
dying groans  sometimes  terrify all the  habitations
17
31
3 
s18
of men.  Whoever  strikes  at a nation strikes at
an immense life, involving immense interests, and
he that lifts a parricidal arm against it, commits a
crime, the enormity of which can be measured only
by infinities.
What  greater  study, then,  for  statesmen  and
patriots than the  study  of  nations?  We  should
study them in their rise, in their greatness, in their
fall.  We  should  study  their  organizations, their
weaknesses, their powers; we should study their
convulsions  and their revolutions, their relations to
contemporaries, their position in the world's progress,
their special missions for mankind, and their conltributions to human advancement.   We should study
them  in their relations to Ilim, who, in the faith
of all Christendom, is the centre of human history,
and  towards the glory of whose kingdom all that
went before  was  preparing, and  all that  follows
will contribute.
Especially should American  citizens study their
own nation. They should study and comprehend
it.  They-  should  comprehend  the   nation  in  its
history, in its institutions, in its industries, in  its
sections and prejudices, in its spirit and tendencies,
in its resources  and capacities, in its geographical
conformations, in its dangers. They should compre 
19
hend the nation, as one among the great family
of nations, and as belonging to the present period
of the world's life.  They should comprehend  the
stars in their individualities, and in their relations to
each other, and in the unity of the constellation
which inshrines them.  They should honor the nation
as one of those great public lives which cannot be
destroyed or injured, without imperilling the welfare
of millions. They should love the nlation, not only
as philanthropists and patriots, but as members of
a vast fraternity, embarked in the same ship of State,
with their affections, and hopes, and interests all on
board. They should sacredly perform their duties to
the nation as its citizens, and, by consultations, by
the honest expression of opinions and reasons,
by  suffrage, by  administration  when  called to it,
strengthen and adorn it. They should esteem it
honorable to live for the nation-more honorable,
if necessary, to die for the nation.
We must also take higher views of civil government, especially of the importance of our own
government as adapted to us.  Government is the
principle of order. so enforced that the movements
of the many shall be harmonized, and the best
good of the individual and of the whole secured. 
20
In this respect, it resembles gravitationi, by which
Deity directs the onrushing  spheres through their
myriad orbits, prevents collisions and saves creation
from the return of chaos.
Government has its foundation in the perfections
of God-especially in those eternal laws of right by
which Hle would direct the conduct of men in their
relations to each other, and in that goodness of the
common Father, which seeks the welfare of all.
Government is made necessary to men by the circumstances in which they are placed. Necessities are
divine. Government is therefore of divine origin,
and  a  divine  ordinance.  The  old  dogma,  "the
divine  right  of kings,"  is only  a  perversion  of
the divine right, or rather, the divine duty of
government.   God   ordained  it.  Order  is  alike
the   law  of  His   being,  and   a  condition  of
human  happiness.  In the lofty language  of  Miltonl,  "He  that  hath  read  with   judgment  of
nations and commonwealths, of cities and- camps,
of  peace  and  war, sea and land, will agree  that
the flourishing and decaying of all human societies,
all the moments  and  turning of human occasions
are moved to and fro upon the axle of discipline.
Yea, the angels themselves, in whom no discord
is feared, as the apostle who saw them in his rapture 
21
describes, are distinguished and quarternioned into
their celestial princedoms and satrapies, according
as  God  himself  has  writ  his imperial  decrees
througoh the great provinces of heaven.'
Government, then, is not designed for the advan tage of one or a few over others, but for the good
of all.  It was not only ordained by him who is alike
the Father of all, but for men  who are alike Hlis
offspring, and brethren of each other.  Nor is there
any reason why, in this great family of children,
one should assume to crowd down another and exalt
himself. I would not say that if the one or the few
were pre-eminent in wisdom and goodness, and would
wvield power for the benefit of all, it nmight not be
desirable to place it in their hands.  Nor would I
say that all men  are in all respects equal;  they
are not.  But it is the right of all alike that government should be wielded for their benefit, and that
each should have equal privileges with others, modifled only by the necessity of the circumstances in
which they are placed.
What, then, is that fo)rm of government which
God has ordained for man?  Some  will expect me
to say at once-the democratic or republican form.
That is not my answer. I believe in republics, but
it follows from the principles laid down, that the 
22
normal form of government for a given people is that
which is best adapted to promote most impartially
the highest good of the individual and the whole.
It may be a patriarchate, autocracy, oligarchy, limited
monarchy, or limited democracy, or some mixed
form; if it is best adapted to the good of a people,
and been established, it is the form divinely ordained
for them.  W'hy need  we, as  Americans, contend
with England,'rance or Russia as to their modes of
government, till we have settled the question that
democracy would make them each a better, happier,
wiser nation?.W hat is best  for  one  community
might not be for another.  It is not certain that any
of the great nations of Europe are yet capable of
self-government.  Besides, existing governments  can
rarely be changed without revolutions.  Revolutions
are evils, though  in  exceptional  cases  they  may
ultimate in good. Hence that principle of international law as well as Christianity, that "the powers
that be are ordained of God;" and Thence the
apostle's exhortation " to pray for kings and for all
that are in authority, that we may lead quiet and
peaceable lives in godliness and honesty."
And yet I hesitate not to say, that for communities
which are capable of it, a republican or representative government is the divinely ordered form. The 
23
rational natures of men, their  common  paternity,
their brotherhood, make it evident.
But the logical consequence of this position,
some  will  sayv, is  democracy,  not  republicanism.
Bv no means.  If all were absolutely equal, convenience would still demand representation.  But when,
as matter of fact, there are diversities of ability and
adaptation  to govern, should  not  a  wise  people
appoint its best qualified men  to the management
of its affairs. And what is this but delegated selfgovernment? and what is delegated self-government
but republicanism?
Consider now  our government as approximating
the best standard. It is representative throughout.
It derives all its powers in all its departments, directly
or indirectly from the people, and restores those
powers, after limited periods, to the people again.
The completeness with which the representative
principle is carried out distinguishes our American
constitutions both from the ancient democracies and
the freest monarchies  of  modern  times.  Nothing
can be better in theory, if the people are equal to
it in practice.
Our republicanism, also, is the result of intelligence and virtues illumined by thousands of years
of political experiment. The course of progress
I 
24
among the historical nations has always been from
the Orient westward. The civilization of Europe
is far higher than the civilization of  Asia.   And
the advance nations of Europe,  at this  day, are
those which approach nearest in locality to America.
It was not till antiquity had perished, and mediteval
centuries had rolled away, that our western continent
was  revealed.   Meanwhile,  He  who  appoints the
bounds of human habitations, was preparing a people
to settle  it.  In the  new  world, every thing was
new.  The germ of its institutions was started under
providential necessities, in the Mayflower,  as  she
ploughed  her  perilous  way  through  the  Atlantic
towards  unpromising  landing-places  on  this  side
the deep.   Very early in New Eiingland, and to some
extent at the  South, the two great problems of our
civilization offered  themselves  for discussion;-the
proper forms  of government for the  Chlurch, and
the proper forms of governmenlt for the State.
These  questions  were  investigated  by  free   and
superior  minds, in  communities  untramnmelled  by
the past, and under circumstances most favorable to
their solution.  The  question of  the Church  was
settled first; the question of the  State, illumined
by that of the Church, hastened on to a similar conclusion. The result was civil and religious liberty. 
25
When the British yoke was broken, the spirit, habits
and necessities of the people determined the method
of their local institutions, while a Divine Providence,
signally manifested, ill a course of overruling events,
constrained the formation of a national government.
The Convention which constructed the Constitution
was  composed  of  remarkable  men.  They  were
selected from the peerage of the race. Washington,
Hamilton, Franklin, Randolph and their associates,
constituted an assemblage which for wisdom and
patriotism was never equalled. In high appreciation
of their difficulties and responsibilities, they bowed
reverently before the Father of lights, praying daily
that He  would  "illuminate  their understandings,"
confessing that " God governs in the affairs of men,
and that if a sparrow cannot fall without his notice,
an empire cannot rise without his aid." The political
fabric they erected, its approval by the people,
and the peaceful revolution which established its
supremacy, can be regarded by the Christian statesman familiar with those perilous times, only with
adoring   wonder  and  gratitude.  Taking  all  the
circumstances into consideration, it was  a stupendous, not to say miraculous success. Not that the
Constitution was perfect; perfection does not belong
to the finite. But it is difficult even now to see
4 
26
how so many and such conflicting interests could
have been harmonized on any principles or comipromises essentially different.  Nor can I doubt that on
the  whole,  it had  the  Divine  sanction.   God  is
eminently practical in His administrations.   In  Hiis
management of great communities, the best conceivable gives place to the best practicable.   As human
activities enter into His plans, He seems to consider
circumstances, opinions, customs and prejudices even,
as facts, and to deal with them accordingly. Hence
He often tolerates and regulates what, in the abstract,
He never approves.  On this principle, I believe our
Constitution the best which the whole nation could
bear, and had it been administered always in its
spirit and design, the nation, as such, would have
escaped the  judgments  of Heaven, though   sonei
of the States might have  suffered for great evils
embodied  in  thlem.  As it is, though  corruption
has bred civil pestilence, though political depravity
has outrun horsemen, though a monstrous ambition
has defied the heavens, and hands black with perjury
have grasped the pillars of the State to overthrow it,
I believe that no government on the globe is' better
fitted, not only for the happiness of its subjects
generally, but to put down rebellion and work out 
27
those terrible problems which are rocking the
nation.
Let us, then, accept our own government and
sustain it. Constructed by men who knew how to
avail themselves of the experience of all ages, formed
in the vast and free spaces of a new country where
no antiquated corruptions had grown into it, adopted
by a population which had struggled up into freedom
against hereditary prestige and oppression, and,
outgrowing the period of colonial pupilage, had
achieved  independence, it was a  government  for
the people.  If  anv of the  chief fathers of the
Revolution had the smallest leaning towards monarchy, every one of them agreed that nothing but
republicanism  was  desirable,  was  possible  for
America.  The republican  spirit has been gaining
strength for generations.  The  masses  will die for
it.  Let no man suggest a monarchy for us.  An
extreme democracy is an American possibility; so,
perhaps, is a military despotism; but not a ctnstitutional monarchy.  The materials for it arc wanting.
We have neither the great wealth of an aristocratic
clergy, nor the "immense  interests  of  a secular
nobility" to sustain it.  The British constitution for
England, the emperor for France, if you please, but
Europe should know, above all we ourselves should
'N
7 
28
know, that republican institutions are not only the
highest forms of government, but to us they are
necessities.
Let the American people, as well as statesmen,
study the government. We should study it in our
colleges and common schools, and by our firesides,
as well as in Congress and our legislatures. We
should study government in its broadest principles,
and its application to nations, but most of all the
government under which, as free citizens, we are
sheltered.
There is one lesson respecting government which
we need most of all to learn, and that is obedience.
Obedience to government because it is government.
The proper ground of obedience to law is not
ordinarily its reasonableness, or its equity, but its
imposition by rightful authority. This doctrine had
always been accepted in the army, in the navy, and
to some extent in our merchant ships; the nature
of the service in these cases made the necessity of it
obvious. But in our pulpits, our schools, our homes,
and our political teachings, the ideas of rightful
authority and unquestioning obedience were becoming obsolete.  Men were learning to reason  about
laws, as though the question of obedience should
turn, not on the fact of their being laws, but on their 
29
propriety. A doctrine of nullification, according to
private judgment, was surreptitiously creeping in.
It was  undermining  the  foundations  of our civil
government,. North as well as South,  and  the idea
of government as government was passing away.
The times demand a higher teaching. Insist on
abstract right, as eloquently as you will, but let
government be paramount in its sphere. A constitutiorial government should be absolute within the
limits of the constitution, and the extent of those
limits is not a question for private judgment, but
for the public tribunals. The quality of badness
in laws is a reason for changing, not for disobeying
them. All laws are to be obeyed while they are
laws. Governments take the moral as well as the
political responsibilities of administration upon themselves. Private responsibility is satisfied, when the
individual, by his suffrage and the full power of his
influence, has done his duty as a citizen. If there
are extreme  cases which justify rebellion,-and  I
do not deny that there may be,-they are only such
extremes as strengthen the rule, and are to be dealt
with as extremes and exceptions, and not elevated
into principles. Conscience, to be sure, must have
supremacy; but the supremacy of an enlightened
conscience requires obedience to the laws. An
T 
30
enlightened conscience will teach that it is right
to do some things in obedience to law which it
would not be right to do, if there were no law.  Let
extraordinary cases, like that of DI)aniel when idolatry
was law, like the old martyrs when blasphemy was
law. be excepted;  but any general setting  up of
private judgments against authorized tribunals would
destroy law. and introduce anarchy and destruction.
Our human instincts, if unperverted, recognize and
demand  the  supremacy of  government.  Men  fly
firom anarchy to despotism for the sake of it. WVVe
ourselves. when for a time it seemed as if we had
no government, began to estimate aright the miseries
into which we were plunging.  And when, at length,
the voice of legitimate qauthority came  thundering
forth from the Capitol, nineteen millions recognized
it as authority, and sent up a great shout of exultation. From that moment, the entire people began
to have new conceptions of government.  Obedience
was accepted as a duty, and loyalty became (1 virtue.
From  this vantage-grounid, we must re-establish the
authority of government.  W5hile -e sacredly guard
all the liberties of the people, we must show them
that liberty is not license-that in human as well
as in the D)ivine government, perfect liberty is found
only in the line of obedience to rightful authority. 
31
And the rising as well as the risen generation must
be made to understand the meaning of that almost
obsolete imperative, OBEY.
We must take higher views than heretofore of the
office and importance of military organizations in
sustaining free governments, and that not only during
the present war but in coming years.  We have made
great mistakes both in theory and practice on this
subject.  Our custom of business, our peace-loving
dispositions, our geographical position at a distance
from the warlike nations, our sentiment and habit
of protest against military ambition  and  despotic
violence, our philanthropy, our Christianity wrongly
interpreted, all helped to lead  us astray.  force,
constraint, punishment  were put  at discount.  The
idea of justice went down before that of a mistaken
benevolence. The soldier belonged to history or to
foreign tyrannies, or to some national gala-day, or
vanit-v  fair.   Love, persuasion, mioral  influences
were the motive powers to lift society.  I have no
word against peace.  L believe in peace.  I believe
in the apostolic exhortation,'-If it be possible, as
much as lieth in you live peaceably with all men."
Infinitely beautiful is the sentiment of mercy. But
the attribute of justice, if it should seem less 
32
amiable to any, is no less to be reverenced.
Justice is at the foundation of the moral order of
the universe. Practical truth is often the resultant
of extreme, conflicting theoretical principles.  It is
found, in this case, not in justice alone, nor in mercy
alone, but where  "1mercy and truth meet together,
and righteousness and peace embrace each other."
Let us applaud the disposition for peace. Persuasion is admirable, but the moral universe is not
constructed on that principle alone.  As in nature,
so it is in revelation. He who wept over Jerusalem,
denounced desolation upon it, and the gospel which
records, "Blessed are the peacemakers," commends
civil government " as the terror of evil doers."
So far had our peace principles carried us, that
when the war broke out we were almost as defenceless as children. And even now, I suppose, that
out of our great cities, there is scarcely a community
in Massachusetts which could protect itself from an
insurrection.  God forbid that any necessity should
make of us a military, much more, a war-loving
nation. But we must have a different practice and
a different teaching on the questions of self-defence.
Innocence is not sufficient for protection. Imbecility
invites aggression. Christians must be men, citizens
must be soldiers, magistrates must bear the sword,
-.f 
33
and bear it not in vain. Let the schools, let the
churches teach justice, then, as well as benevolence,
-nay, teach justice as the highest form of benevolence.  Let the young men be taught, let the government arm and train them, to uphold justice.  Law,
order must be sustained. Rebellion, anarchy, violence put down. Let the soldier look upon himself
not as his country's mercenary;  not as the mere
circumstance and ornament of authority; not, most
of all, as a great public murderer; but as an officer
of justice called by God and his country to the high
duty of  sustaining  government,  and  by his  own
strong heart and hand, protecting the welfare of the
people-his mission that of a destroying angel, who,
though destroying, is an angel still.
We must also gather up the lessons of the times,
and forward the purposes of Providence as revealed
in theii.  WTe read the lessons and learn the purposes in results already attained or foretokened, and
in the necessities brought clearly to view. What
has the war done for us? It has developed in all
our free States an intense and almost universal
patriotism. It has set forth the idea and stimulated
the sentiment of loyalty. It has brought up the
notion of government as such, and begun to
5
I i 
34
enthrone it again on the hearts of the people.  It
has put appropriate ihonor upon the eternal attribute
of justice and shovwn the importance  of penalty, both
human and di vine.  It has given a death-blow to
that  mawkislh  philanthropy  whiclh  expended  its
unhealthful sympathies, not in punishing crime and
protecting,  innocence,  but  in  sheltering  criminals
from retribution, and which was  emasculating  the
people of all manliness  and moral power.  It has
settled the question of the great strength of republican  governmenits.  It has  given  the  people  an
unbounded confidence  in free institutions.  It has
taught  self-sacrifice, and that  there  is something
to live for outside of self;  It has taught patience,
moderation, persistency in the right under discouragemenits, and  self-possession under  calumny.  It
has taught self-knowledge, anld helped  to  remove
sonlething of an immnense conceit from the l)opular
head.  It has taught humility, and impressed the
old belief that God  governs  the nations-  It has
taught  one  doctrine, partially, and  but partially,
understood before-the Divine abhorrence of slavery.
While it was practiced as a necessit)T; while it was
allowed as anl evil and a wrong, as soon as possible
to be corrected,-the Judge of all men looked on
with forbearance, and seemed to require us to do
fT 
35
the same.  But  when it came  to be accepted  as
"the  fundamental  doctrine  of  civilization," the
normal basis of firee institutions; when ministers
of the gospel had come to declare it right, and good
and desirable-a God-blessed arrangement, revealed
in the sacred Scriptures, and to be defended by
them;  when  Christian men  joined  in  the  shout,
slavery everywhere and  slavery  forever'-then the
heavens began to thunder. From that day it was
manifest, as Mr. Jefferson said, that " there is no
attribute in the character of God  which can take
sides with it;  from that day it began to be apparent
that the time  of visitation  had  come.   The war
also has taught respecting slavery, that never again
must this great republican government be wielded
for its extension and perpetuity.  Never again must
its unchristianizing and unciviliziug  influences be
allowed to predominate on this continent.  The war
is terrible. But the war has taught us-waged as
it is on one part to crush the slaveholders' conspiracy
and to put down the slaveholders' rebellion, a conspiracy and a rebellion started and carried on against
any limitation of that accursed institution which has
been the cause of all our troubles from the beginning
-never to ask, never to suffer a peace, till slavery
has received a blow which will insure its destruction, 
36
in time. That dark spirit of evil-it has breathed
moral pestilence over the land, and plotted the
destruction of all freedom in it. Not satisfied with
perverting justice, corrupting the people, making
us ashamed before the world, it struck at the government, it rent the nation, it insulted  our flag, it
slaughtered our sons, and as God is true, it shall
never be for)given.  Let it go  down,  peacefully if
it may, in blood and fire if it must.
Meanwhile, you have no call to rashness. I would
be the last man to encourage that reckless spirit
which overrides compacts and violates oaths of office.
Though regarding slavery with abhorrence, and
always praying for its overthrow, I have been
accustomed to feel that its continued existence was
not the special responsibility of the free States;
that it could not be directly assailed by our government without violation of the Constitution, and
such rivers of blood as are now flowing among us
And still I say, let the pledges of the Ccol-istitution,
whether expressed or implied, be  maintained  till
they are constitutionally amended. All that ought
to be done, can be done, is doing by the civil or the
military power which the Constitution affords. God
is in the heavens.  "He  that believeth shall not
make haste." When His time comes, we shall 
know it. Opinions, inspirations of the public heart,
circumstances which no mortal man  can bend, will
reveal  it.  Meanwhile,  events  are  disclosing  the
Divine intentions. Eighteen months ago, in a public
discourse, I had the honor to say:  "We  can see
the hands on the horologe of the centuries passing
up to the hour when the doom of slavery is to be
struck."'  Since these words were uttered, from the
great clock of human  history  has the  awffil peal
rung out, and while the sound echoes and re-echoes
over the country and reverberates among the nations,
the angels of destiny have put down the recordthe death-blow of slavery and rebellion, in the year
of time, January 1st, 1863.
I was intending to speak also of a duty which now
is, and soon  will be more strongly upon us, viz.:
the duty of our statesmen and citizens to assist in
forming the character of the nation.   We live in
an age of the world when there is opportunity for a
new kind of national eminence and power. Whichever of the great nations would distinguish itself before
the world, for magnanimity and justice in all its
foreign relations, so as deservedly to secure the
confidence of mankind, might not only obtain the
smniles of Providence, and become the noblest of
37
11 
38
nations in itself, but have a real though moral
supremacy over them all. If ally here may have
been predestined to a higher statesmanship than
that to which most of us have yet attained, I would
ask them to remember this among the observations
of the hour, and do something to lift the government
they may help to administer out of the miserable
duplicities and circumventions of diplomacy; out
of that spirit of quick resentment and imperious,
not to say insulting demand, which provokes and
predisposes to war, and bring it to conduct like an
open, honorable, fair-minded man. Why should not
an intelligent republic, conscious of greatness, stand
more on its dignity? Why should we be so easily
exasperated  by  opprobrium  from  abroad?   Let
the jealous or the ill-natured say what they will,
self-possession and repose become a people who
understand their position.  Call not these ideas chinmerical. If virtue and moderation are elements of
greatness in individuals, so they are in nations.  If it
is difficult to quarrel with a strong, magnanimous,
just and kindly man, so it would be difficult for any
hostile power to quarrel or officiously intermeddle
with a nation of such characteristics. Look at our
own condition.  There is a power in this land hardly
second to that of an immense army. It is the wis 
39
dom and honesty, and the reputation of it inspiring
confidence at home and abroad, which belong to
the character of ABRAIHAMI LINCOLN.
I hasten to one remaining topic.  It will be our
special duty as republican patriots, to educate the
people. The importance of education is confessed.
But public sentiment, on this subject, is still incommensurate with the urgencies of the case.   \Whoever
observes the ignorance, obscenity, profaneness which
the  drag-net  of a  popular  enrolment  sometimes
collects, has materials enough for political despair.
But still lower down, if possible, are those terrible
populations which in periods of insurrectionary
excitement sometimes rise to view. The remedy
is not despotism, but education. Mere utilitarianism
demands it.  Education excites to enterprise.  Enterprise furnishes bread, and bread helps contentment.
W\e boast of our culture; and many a poor man
is a nobleman. But can you not find voters in almost
every town, and sometimes by the hundred, whose
ignorance and passion fit them better for the violences
of the mob than for the responsibilities of citizens.
NTot natural disposition so much as lack of advantages
has been their bane.  Let them, at least let their
children, be educated. Compulsory education, where
-t 
40
compulsion is needed, is alike a charity and a law
of liberty. Let them be taught the rudiments in
schools, always remembering, however, that reading
and wiriting are not all.  Knowledge  is well, but
wisdom is better.  Right motives must be inculcated,
and right feelings inspired. Our youth must be
habituated to reflection, self-control, and the exercise
of judgment. The virtues of industry, frugality,
public spirit and justice; the sentiments of honor,
self-respect and kindness; the duties of loyalty to
government and obedience to the laws, and the
greatness of living and dying for country,-should
be enforced upon them. They should be taught
reverence-in which democracies are proverbially
deficient-and that true dignity which is an attribute
of good character, in the humblest as well as in
the highest.  The moral nature should be specially
cultivated, conscientiousness should be developed,
and a regard for truth and honesty made laws of
life.
I am proud for what the old Bay State has been
doing for her youth, from the beginning. I am
proud of a Commonwealth which inserted in her
Bill of Rights, almost a century ago, such a sentence
as this: " A constant adherence to the principles
of piety, justice, moderation, temperance, industry 
41
and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve
the advantages of liberty, and to maintain a free
government;" and which recognizes all these virtues
in her Constitution, and requires the elected rulers
to bestow them, through education, upon the people.
I am proud to be the citizen of a State which
expends money so liberally upon her schools,
which appreciates her university and her colleges as
fountains of liberty and fortresses of defence. I
would gladly speak with honor of those truly great
men  among  us,-benefactors  of the  race,-who,
uniting high character with property, have so liberally cultivated good learning, and established endowmenlts for the promotion of knowledge and virtue
in the present and coming generations. But we
have no time for commendations. There is work
to be done. The grandeur of Massachusetts will
never rest on the extent of her domains. If
knowledge is power, her influence will increase in
proportion as she educates her people.
This education must be given to the country. It
must be given.not only in schools and colleges, but
through every possible way of influence; through
wise and liberal legislation; by sermons, lectures,
addresses, speeches; by newspaper articles, reviews,
and the varied powers of the press; by home
6
N 
42
instruction and by Sabbath schools. Educated men
must educate others. Those who are up must lift
up those who are down.  God has placed some on
eminences, not to glorify themselves on the heights,
but to raise others to their sides. Socrates among
the ancients,  and  Dr. Arnold  in  our times, are
examples for us. There is but one brighter than
these in history, and that is the Great Teacher. He
sympathized with the masses, and associated with
them to elevate them. We must do the same. We
are all of one family, and we have our choice to
make the humbler members of it good and respectable, or live annoyed by their ignorance, and imperilled and perhaps ruined by their want of principle.
Christ chose the former alternative. He came down
to men, that Hie might lift them up by his religion
Christianity, while it saves and blesses all who
believe, especially regards and elevates the masses.
And this brings me to say emphatically, and what
is among the deepest convictions of my heart, that
you cannot educate a people for high citizenship
without religion. Look over the earth; Christian
nations tower like mountains above others, and those
are highest in which Christianity has most power.
But I will dwell here only on one point. In order
to a moderate religious influence in a community, 
43
there must be an immense religious power in portions
of it. A cool inculcation of Christian moralities
upon the mass, is not enough; there must be enthusiasm somewhere. The rivers will dry up when
the rains are stayed, unless there are fountains to
feed them. So if you would influence communities
by religious motives, you must be assisted by those
deep experiences in many persons which belong to
the highest types of godliness.  The patriot who
thinks he can educate the people in schools, without
the churches; the Christian who thinks that the
churches can be powerful without an intense
Christian life among some of its members,-have
never learned the laws of influence.  As in every
human  being there must be a  strongly pulsating
heart in order to vigor in the limbs, so there must
be vast  numbers  of  devoted Christian  people-a
strong central religious life-if you would have a
general religious life, or expect to restrain and
guide a community by a sense of religion.
Not only as a Christian minister, but as a patriot,
I would urge on all good citizens the wisdom of
encouraging an earnest Christianity, in all the
religious denominations of the State. This sentence
from the Farewell Address of the Father of his
Country should never be forgotten: "Whatever 
44
may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and
experience both forbid us to expect  that national
morality may prevail in exclusion of religious
principle."
To His Excellency the Governor, I respectfully
turn, with confident assurance that by him, and
the distinguished gentlemen immediately associated
with him, the leading sentiments of this discourse
will not be disowned. The patriotism, the patronage
of education, the energy, and most of all the
humanity which mark the administration of the
preceding  year, add strength to  our  faith  when
we pray, " God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."
Gentlemen, Legislators of the Commonwealth, I
cannot lose this opportunity of commending to your
regard the interests of our country, though it may
be sufficiently dear to you. Patriotism is a characteristic of noble minds.   The rustic Bard of Ayr
turned aside his weeding-plough and spared the
rough burr-thistle "for dear  old Scotia's sake "and one far greater than bard or statesman wept
for his country, when he foretold the evils which 
45
were coming upon it. And shall not the American
citizen love his native land?
"Land where our fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrims' pride,
Sweet land of Liberty."
Some among us have thought it pleasant and
becoming to die for it; shall not we who survive
most earnestly live for it? As you look upon your
country, " the strong staves broken and the beautiful
rods," let me say to each of you, gentlemen, in
higher words than human,  "Behold thy mother."
She asks the help of her sons. Of you, among
the chosen rulers, she asks wisdom in legislation,
integrity of intention, patriotism, devotiion. "Be
of good courage, and let us play the men for our
people and for the cities of our God," and His
providence  will smile upon us.  The  war will be
brought to a righteous close. Liberty and lahv will
be established, and we may hope for the time when
the whole nation will become what Milton said a
Commonwealth ought to be-" ONE HUGE CHRISTIAN
PERSONAGE, ONE MIGHTY GROWTH AND STATURE OF AN
HONEST MIAN,"  
A
SERMON FOR THE TIMES,
PREACHED IN THE WEST CHURCH,
ON FAST DAY, APRIL 7, 1864.
BY C. A. BARTOL.
BOSTON:
WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY,
245, WASHINGTON STREET.
1864.
-+ 
k 
S E R M 0 N.
" GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN, THAT NOTHING BE LOST."
John vi. 12.
SUITABLY summoned as we are to-day to consider all our
sins, yet, among  the sins we commit, none is more
noticeable or dangerous now than that which, in so
brief and homely a way, in a single word, we call
extravagance.  But what is extravagance   It consists
in all waste or excess of expenditure, running beyond the
need of the occasion in the way of food, dress, display,
or any mode of outgo, especially for one's self. Superfluity of whatever, in ornament, apparel, sensual delight,
must have its material or workmanship brought from
abroad, when imports exceed exports, and the balance
of trade is against us, is peculiar extravagance.  We
give the credit of economy to a man in the country if
he lives largely on what he gets off his farm: so we are
an economical people so far as we can live on what we
get from our great farm of America. Transport, carriage, is expense, and not seldom extravagance. It is
extravagance when we are poor, and the articles are dear
that we procure and convey. Great enjoyment in this
world does not always imply extravagance. Said a
young, noble-hearted artist, to whom the beauty of Na 
4
ture and of pictures, and a choice society were open, "I
have the luxuries of life, though not its comforts." Not
the pleasures of the imagination or the charm of beauty
to the soul, but the pampering of sense, and parade of
vanity, come under the head of extravagance; and this
extravagance, to a just sensibility, is always revolting,
and even unclean. Dirt has been quaintly and profoundly defined as matter in the wrong place. Have
you not remarked it thus? Have you never seen a soft
robe or beautiful necklace in the wrong place,   on one
who could not rightly afford pearl, diamond, fur, or
lace?  Perhaps, on that very person, it was thought
rare and splendid, was envied and coveted, without a
spot from the street, and breathed costly perfume all
around: but I am afraid it comes under the philosophic
definition I refer to; namely, matter in the wrong place!
There is a great deal of such matter in the wrong place,
in our day. But it is all foul extravagance. Yes, how
many a ring and sparkling gem, how many a bracelet
and band, from undue outlay, on the fingers or wrists,
or in the hair of one who owes, or should have directed
with a different disposition, the very money it was
bought with, has, to a discerning eye, less purity than
the unwashed grime of the day-laborer! There is no
impurity in that!
But, that we may fairly estimate and be moved to
avoid this sin, the objections to it should be seriously
considered, and particularly drawn out. Let me try,
then, to tell you exactly what extravagance, in its true
features, is.  It is irreligious, it is unchristian, it is
unpatriotic, and it is unjust. 
5
First, It is irreligious. What an economist is Nature,
so made by God! She economizes even the light she
so immensely possesses; catches it on the moon as a
candle after the sun has gone down, as we say, when he
is but rising on other lands; and sends it inconceivably
far to us from the stars. She economizes heat, equalizing it for the life and health of the whole world, by
currents in the air and ocean and of the electric fluid.
She economizes water to answer a thousand successive
important purposes, in a thousand different places, with
the same drop. How nicely and carefully she sifts out
its minutest portions from the briny sea to cleanse the
air and revive the plants at this season, to fill the springs,
and paint the sky, and support all human life! How,
with her mighty elemental agencies, she crumbles and
bears down the barren rock from the mountains and hills,
to fertilize, for boundless and endless crops, the valley
and the plain! How she makes the ashes even of the
dead spring into grass, and blossom into flowers!  How,
applying the same economy to crude mineral, from the
very gravel in the ground she distils a curious, delicate
wash to protect the tender stalks of the growing grain;
though you may not think what perhaps cuts your hand
to bleeding is this varnish of flint!  How she saves
every hair, particle, nail-paring, and exhalation, to turn
it to some account! How she converts ice, and the
snow that manures the poor man's ground, into harvests
of corn and wheat! How she nourishes her vegetable
offspring, so that her anignal may not die of hunger!
The roots of a shrub, thirsty for a supply that had been
drawn aside by an artificial channel, have been known, in 
6
their resolution not to be defrauded, to find their way to
the aqueduct under ground, and bore a hole through its
soft wooden plug, that every fibre might drink its fill, as
was divinely intended.
To one who looks with a careless view on Nature, it
seems as if every thing with her were in extravagant
excess.  We quote the line about "many a flower born
to blush unseen," and we talk of the floods that are
poured away to no purpose. But a closer inspection
corrects this error, and shows how frugal her utility, and
perfect her order; enough, but "no room to insert a
particle," however Art may re-arrange her forms to educate and give scope to human power. If we, then, are
wasteful of our means and resources, we do not follow
Nature, so prudently using her infinity of riches. On
our little stipend we are extravagant; and, in being
extravagant, also irreligious.
But, secondly, All extravagance is unchristian.  Our
text alone would prove this. We are not justified in
our profusion because we have sufficient to be reckless
with. The disciples had sufficient to be reckless with
after the feeding of the multitude of five thousand in
the desert. It was a miraculous plenty on which Jesus
gave the charge, "Gather up the fragments."  So when
we say, in excuse or palliation of any who line very
extravagantly, "Oh! they have enough;" or when our
domestics burn out the coal, and throw away the meat,
because, for their well-off employers, "It is no matter;
they will not mind it; nobody will know it to-morrow,
or it will be all the same a thousand years hence,"-it
is unchristian and false. Hiow that same Jesus, whom 
we confess as our pattern, economized his time!  "Are
there not twelve hours in the day? " he asked. He
spent nights in prayer that had been postponed by his
labors in the light.  He was "straitened," he declared,
till his "baptism" of toil and trial should be "accom plished." Need I mention how his apostles followed his
example, and repeated his precepts? He and they
practised no absurd follies of extravagance. They did
not get themselves up with any cost of extra clothing.
They wore no changes of garments for the discharge of
their sacred office, but walked about in Judea and Galilee in the common garb of the people. How much
sublimer so! On the ground, therefore, of their own
simplicity, they could, as they did, consistently condemn
all curious or extreme adorning of the person as much
as over-indulgence of the appetite.   Extravagance is,
then, certainly  nchristiatn.
Thirdly, All extravagance is unpatriotic. It is emphatically so now at the crisis we have reached of our
fate. In our new Canaan, with our vast territory and
our thin population, and few mouths in comparison to
feed, we have had, in past time, enough and to spare.
In a land literally flowing with more milk and honey
than ever Palestine could contain, how wondrously our
abundance has overflowed, and run away half used!
Our barns, our houses, our hotels, as every observer or
wayfarer must have noticed, have been full to bursting
with the means of living. To the traveller abroad, the
contrast has been amazing between this and foreign
lands. We have neglected and thrown by what other
nations would have stored and sold or used. Our poor
7 
8
have squandered; our beggars have left in the alleys
what the mendicants in the Austrian Tyrol would race
in their tatters beside your carriage after, and the
rag-rakers in Paris pounce upon, and the lazzaroni in
Naples break out into thanksgivings and benedictions
for. In those regions, one does not encounter pieces of
white bread on the sidewalk, half-picked bones in the
gutter, or victuals in the gateway, which those that have
been just asking for them do not value enough to carry
home. Extravagance has grown out of our abundance,
- an extravagance, however, which, let me say, we are
now not in a condition safely to continue. All the circumstances are changed.   The yield of our soil, relatively to our numbers and wants, has diminished. Our
productive have, by hundreds of thousands, been turned
into unproductive laborers; nay, destroyers of earthly
value. Our tillers and sailors, our fishermen and shepherds, have become how largely soldiers and naval fighters! What went by the name of our institution, has, in
its consequences, proved, as one called it, indeed our
destitution. Truly, slavery is a most extravagant thing.
The specie-basis of our banks is long since, for any
redemption of their bills, gone. A huge debt is swelling. Paper-property abounds. But here is the test,
which no argument or legislation can wink out of sight,
- that prices of indispensable articles enormously and
fearfully rise. Our state has come to be that of other
battle-worn and army-ridden peoples. Taxation, like a
spectre, is striding on our reduced capital. Our posterity
is overhung with a cloud of embarrassment and obligation, which many generations - before they are born 
9
beseeching us to beware of thickening it - will not
clear up.  We can only say, as is said of Great Britain,
that the common  liability may be a common  bond.
Meantime, we go on, God knows for how long, till we
succeed in putting the Rebellion down, I hope; burning
up and blowing away our wealth at the cannon's mouth,
lavishing it for the sustenance of our troops, and, on
one side or the other in the civil conflict, converting into
wreck and cinder cotton-bales and bridges, light-houses
and forests, products of Nature and works of civilization
which might further the foe, or stand in our military
way.  Ah! how utterly horrid war would be if anarchy
were not worse, and we could not believe, as we do, that
national regeneration will issue, like a soul from a lifeless corse, out of the carnage and smoke!
In such premises, what is all additional expense of
extravagant living; building, as I have heard, in New
York, marble stables and billiard-rooms and private
theatres, purchasing endless glitter of gems, and dancing our time and strength and satin-vestments away at
the ball, like sailors, who, before the wreck, clamor for
the liquors to be brought out, - I ask you, and wish I
could ask the entire country as one man, what is it but
a deadly, annihilating, and well-nigh unpardonable siln?
Surely it is ttpatriotic at least.
Lastly, It is unjust. Any thing is unjust that tends to
shrink up the real worth of nominal property, and make
a dollar, dearly and hardly earned by human toil as with
a price of blood, go only half as far as it did. Verily
this is what comes of all extravagance. It is not confined in its result to the fortunes of the extravagant 
10
man. They may not be substantially affected: nevertheless, more cunningly than' any slim-fingered Italian
handkerchief-snatcher, it stretches its grasp for unseen
theft into every bank, meagre purse, worn wallet, and
private drawer, to abstract, as by strange jugglery, part
of their valuable contents. The owners, confused, rub
their heads, and cannot exactly see how it is that the
dollar thus suffers and sweats. It matters not so much
to such as have a great many dollars; but to the working population, with their little savings, it is of serious
consequence to have their funds collapse, and the oil
and meal, the coal and the rent, come twice as high.
Do you say this happens inevitably by laws of trade and
finance, and cannot be called unjust, because by no wilful act occasioned?  I answer, I am not much of a political economist or financier; but can there be any doubt
that the consumption of imported delicacies and splendors, as Shakspeare says, "painting our outward walls
so costly gay," raises the rate of exchange and valuation
of gold, while it lowers the worth just so much of the
notes in which alone the corporation he trusted will
restore the poor man's principal, or pay his dividend?
This is to be laid mainly at the door of extravagance.
The slow adjustments of wages atone not for its extinction of value. Your extravagance, then, my friend, is
unjust.  It is sheer plunder, and you a plunderer in it.
It robs those already pinched and needy. If there is
any proverb for peculation outrageous and inexcusable,
it is stealing from the poor's purse; and this all extravagance does.
While pouring out treasure and life for what is essen 
11
tial, let us then, in all else, retrench, though we pass or
bring back no sumptuary laws. It is well to be good
customers, so far as we can, to other folks on earth, and
observe a properly international comity of bargain and
barter.   But as one, involved in his affairs, ought to
pass by a fine shop without entering; so, now that our
estate as a people is so heavily mortgaged, we should
refuse to be tempted by exorbitant European wares.
With our commerce tormented by the English policy, and
our claim disallowed in high quarters for the piratical
depredations it has furthered, it is not unkindness or
revenge, but justice, self-respect, and proper providing,
as an apostle exhorts, for our own household, to avoid
fetching and purchasing any endless amount of English
manufactures, cloths, watches, knives, all curious utensils which we can do without, and to resort, instead,
to our own products, practising a Spartan severity.
While France, too, figured as a fox in her able but distrusted ruler, takes advantage of our weakness to thrust
into our neighborhood a dependent despotism for a tool,
threatening as a burglar's jimmy to our republican doors,
whether we warn her off with any Monroe-doctrine or
not, is it not desirable to be somewhat abstemious as to
French silks and wines, and deal rather in domestic
calicoes, homespun and home-brewed, Croton and Cochituate, and our fresh springs?
Extravagance of every kind let us abjure. Theological writers discourse of the Christian economy. Let us
be sure all economy is Christian, when, beyond the
theories of the schools, it becomes a fact in our lives.
Let us remember, that, on the contrary, all extravagance 
12
at home must be paid for in blood on the field! In
being spendthrift of our money, we are spendthrift of the
drops from the veins of our brothers and sons. Let no
red stain from their ebbing life cleave to the skirts of
our garments! Let none of their dying groans disturb
the peace of our slumbers!  By sobriety, and devotion
of our being to the cause for which they fight and expire,
let us co-operate with their arms for the salvation of our
land.   Then the day of our redemption will hasten.
The chariot of God, whose wheels are in the pulses of
our hearts, will go forward more swiftly. No heedless
living will prolong the terrible strife. Victory will wait
on self-consecration to the common weal. Our triumph
will crown our temperance, and the heroes and martyrs
who have become angels, when they witness our effectual repentance of the wasteful transgression that so
insanely goes along at the very time with dwindling
resources and aggravated demands, will smile down on
the accomplishment by us of the work they so painfully
began.
Boston: Printed by John Wilson and Son.
i
I 
WVHAT OUGHT TO BE DONE WITH THE FREEDMEN
AND WITH THE REBELS?
A
SERMON
PREACHED IN THE
BERKELEY-STREET CHURCH, BOSTON,
ON SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 1865,
,_
BY
RTYN DEXTER.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY MICIIOLS & NOYES,
1865.
HENRY MA
I 
IS 
CORRESPONDENCE.
REV. H. M. DEXTER.
DEAR SIR, —At a meeting ot
after divine service, on Sunday aft
a Committee to request you to I
preached in the forenoon of that
tial service at this time, allow us to
our request.
Most cordially and fraternally yours,
B. W. WILLIAMS,
JOHN H. COMER,
WILLIAM WILLETT,
W. H. HOLLISTER,
ISRAEL P. WARREN,
JONA. A. LANE,
STILLMAN B. ALLEN,
Committee.
BOSTON, April 24, 1865.
MESSRS. B. W. WILLIAMS, JOHN I
GENTLEMEN,-I am taken by s
your kind note of yesterday, and co
refer may be of public benefit, if pri
its positions, and so earnest in the
yield to your request.
Faithfully, your friend and pastor,,
HENRY M. DEXTER.
HILLSIDE, ROXBURY, 25th April, 1865.
[On account of the great length of the discourse, some passages which here appear
were omitted in the delivery.] 
I 
SERMON.
IsA. xxxii. 17:  "And the work of righteousness  shall be peace; and the effect of
righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever."
WE are doubtless all familiar with the fact, that on newly
made land, such as we have plenty of around us, it is needful
that every pile of the thousands which are driven to stiffen
the foundations of a great building should be hammered
home until it brings up on the old solid earth underneath; or
that stone which rests upon it will gradually subside from its
horizontal level with its fellows, and rupture, disfigurement,
and insecurity above, - sometimes even to the loftiest height
of the structure, - will follow.  This fact goes a little way
toward illustrating the manner in which, in a republican form of
government, responsibility rests underneath upon every single
individual. Hence, in such a civil condition as ours, it is of
immeasurable consequence that the masses of the people; in
their views and acts for the nation, be grounded firmly upon
the eternal rock of truth and justice. And this is my reason for speaking to you, this morning, as I am about to speak.
We are approaching the end of the Rebellionr. We are so
near to it, that those questions which its settlement makes
practical are now in order, and indeed press themselves upon
every mind. Every man is bound, by the highest considerations, to meditate upon them, and to mature a well- considered
opinion in regard to them,-one which he can feel safe to act
upon now, and to abide by hereafter.
Those questions, so far as they are intricate, new, and
troublesome, are two: viz., what ought to be done with those
— NK 
people who have been slaves, and who are now, or will shortly
be, free; and what ought to be done with those rebels who are
already subdued and in our hands by choice or conquest, or
are soon to be so. All other questions are merely of expediency, as to a little more or a little less, a little longer or a little shorter: these are of principle; and their solution must so
obviously affect our whole national future, as to make it of the
utmost consequence that they be answered rightly; that the
great body of loyal men, if possible, think alike in regard to
them. It is no time now for divided counsels.
I propose to do what I can, this morning, to aid you to understand these questions, and to perceive what principles of
moral and Christian duty relate to them, and must necessarily
shape all just answer to them.
That fundamental general truth which is hinted by our text
most clearly underlies all particular reply, - settle them
rightly, and they will stay settled; never otherwise.
Before the workmen began to pile up that massive shaft on
the other side of the Charles, which meets the sun in his coming, and whose summit takes the last kiss of the departing
day, they dug down twelve feet, and they dug outward till
they touched fifty feet on every side, and laid their granite
there broad and deep, below the utmost reach of the surge
of the frost, on the solidest substance of the solid hill, because
they knew that otherwise there could be no permanence to
their towering masonry. And if we do not dig down now,
until we lay bare the substratum of absolute right, we cannot
build for the future so that the freezing and thawing of the
elemental agencies shall not heave down what we build.
That which is purely just, and thoroughly and everlastingly
right, will be sure to stand in a republic; because God is
satisfied with it, and man will be satisfied with it; for it provides equitably for all, and so places every man that it is for
his interest to have things remain as they are, whence a majority can never be brought to desire radical change, and so
there can never be such change.  If we can now do what is
right in the sight of God and man in regard to the freedmen
and the rebels, we shall have no trouble now; we shall never
have any, because it will be for nobody's interest to make
6 
7
any, and none will be made. But if we do what is wrong, for
the sake of some imagined present benefit,- as our fathers did
in the compromises of the Constitution with regard to slavery,
because they feared that otherwise they should lose the Union,
and thought that the certainty of union with slavery would
be better than the risk of no Union, -we may rest assured that
God's silent forces will lift and throw our settlement, until it
tumbles down, some dark day, into such anarchy as thlese last
four years have seen, with blood and tears.  "The work of
righteousiness shall be peace; and the effect of righlteousness,
quietness and assurance forever."
I. WHAT, THEN, IS IT RIGHT FOR OUR NATION TO DO WITH THE
FREEDMEN?
In 1860 there were nearly four millions of slaves, and for
the ten years then last past they had been increasing at the rate
of nearly twenty-four per cent.* It is then fair to infer that
they have increased twelve per cent in the nearly five years
which have elapsed since that census was taken, giving us
now a total of nearly four millions and a half. These are,
very largely, already free: when the Rebellion heaves its last
gasp, and lies still in death, they will all be their own masters,
and we may safely count on having four and a half millions
of freedmen. Add to these the nearly five hundred thousand
colored men and women who were free before, and we shall
have a total colored free population of about five millions;
probably not far from one-eighth of the entire population of
the Republic.
I take it for granted that the stubbornest mind will yield me
assent to these two positions concerning themI; viz., they
never can be enslaved again, and they never can become non    resident.   They do not wish to go anywhere else; we have
no right to drive them away; t we could not spare them, nor
could they be sent. They will stay here, as a body, some    where in our national domain; in some condition that is sub
* National Alnanac for 1863, pp. 308, 310.
t See, on this point, the clear reasoning of The African's Right to Citizenship. Phlliladelphia, 1865. 8vo. pp. 31. 
8
stantially that of free people. The question is, Where, and in
what condition?
Where?  If they are free to go where they choose, one
thing is clear: thev wil] not come North, save in rarely exceptional cases. That remarkable report made last year by the
commission appointed to inquire into the condition of the free
colored people, the ex-slaves, in Canada,* settles it, on soundest principles, that a rigid climate is intolerant of them; that
they can only live and thrive where they would prefer to live
and thrive, in those portions of the Union which, in temperature, most nearly  resemble their native land.  If left to
themselves to choose, there can be no doubt that the great
majority of them will prefer to live at the South as freemen,
where they have so long lived as slaves; where the climate
suits thenm;t where they are accustomed to the soil; and
where constitutions like theirs are well-nigh indispensable for
any successful agriculture. Those tropical cotton-fields, and
sugar-plantations, and rice-swamps, where they have for generations delved sadly under the lash, must lie waste, or freedmen must take up the shovel and the hoe with the new elasticity and enthusiasm of a personal interest in their labor,. and
beautify them with the joy of harvest. White men cannot
do that work as well as they can, if; indeed, they could do it
at all. The work needs to be done. The spindles and looms
of the world famish for the cotton, and the markets are hungry
for the rice and the sugar. There, where they can do what
needs to be done, and what they need to do, and long to do,
and what the world needs to have them do, is surely the place
for them. Let them live at home.
The Rebellion has wasted the former white residents.  The
entire State of South Carolina - viper's nest of secession and
treason and assassination- had, by the last census, but 1,284
* THE REFUGEES FROM SLAVERY IN CAxNADA WEST.  Repotot to the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, by S. G. Howe. Boston: 1864. 8vo. pp. 110.
"If slavery is utterly abolished in the United States, no more colored people will emigrate to Canada, and most of those now there will soon leave it. There can be no
doubt about this. Among hundreds who spoke about it, only one dissented from the
strong expression of desire to go' home.' In their belief, too, they agreed with Rev.
iMr. Kinnard, one of their clergy, who said to us,'If freedom is established in the United States, there will be one gy?eat black streak reaching from here to the uttermost parts
of the South.' "-,Rejort (as above), p. S28.
tis
*1 
9
more white inhabitants than the simple increase of the population of New-York City had been during the ten years then
last past; * and, though the proportion of skulks and office-bear.
ers (always careful to keep out of longest range of shot and
shell) has doubtless been very large there, there can be no
doubt, that, if left to the whites, its broad acres would scarcely
now average a man to a square mile.  Let. then the freedman dwell there and in kindred spots.
But in what condition? HERE Providence gives us our alternative, where our volition may come in to affect the result.
We seem to be shut up to the fact, that the negro people are
to be here somewhere, and to share our future, - the past settles that; and that they had better do so in the South, -the
whole fitness and necessity of things settle that. But when
we come to the question, under what auspices, and in what
condition, they shall stay there, we approach the field lying
open to our sense of what is right and expedient, and ask
questions which we are bound to answer with utmost care and
honor.
The principle which will be our clew out of all perplexity,
it seems to me, is simply this: the freedmen should be recognized as men, should be treated as mnen, and should be aided to
take care of themselves as men. This once established, all becomes clear.  We have now among us about the same number
of foreign-born citizens (I do not include, of course, the
children of foreign-born parents) as we shall have of freedmen, - say five millions; and a large proportion of these are
quite as degraded in character, and as low in all brain-culture,
as the blacks: but it has never so much as entered our heads
to treat them as if they were not men; on the contrary, we
have recognized them as men, and sought to aid them to take
care of themselves as such. There are in our land, already, near
40,000 Chinese; near 30,000 Mexicans; near 5,000 Portuguese; as many Spaniards; 500 Islanders from the Pacific,
and 150 Turks; who, as classes, would present quite as serious a question as to their suitableness for our citizenship as
is presented by the negro class. I am not sure but the low,
* The increase of New-York City had been 290,104; the total white population of
South Carolina was 291,388.
2 
10
imbruted, Papal part of the two millions now among us, who
were born in Ireland, presents a much more serious one; and
yet we scarcely have thrown even any delay in the way of
their blundering straight uip to the ballot-box with a vote.
We are confused on the negro question by the folly of our
past. After having allowed the black man for so many years
to be sold as a thing, our own consistency seems, in a manner,
pledged to deny his manhood. But what say the simple, honest facts?
Every one of those physical tests by which the comparative
physiologist draws the line between manhood, and that animal
life which is less than manhood, leaves the negro on the side of
humanity. The ablest and most elaborate of our recent writers on physiology expressly argues that the abnormal peculiarities of negro manhood are due to assignable natural causes.* Dr. Pickering t has classified eleven distinct races in the
human family, two of which are white, three brown, four
blackish-brown, and two black.  One of the white races, one of
the brown, and three of the blackish-brown,- five others of the
eleven,- have hair which is as truly crisped and woolly as that
of that black race which we call the negro.  So that, if' we turn
the negro out of the human family for his hair, we throw out
five other races as well; while, if we throw him out for his
color, we throw out another race with him, besides introducing, at least in this country, endless questions of modified
color, which we should be bound to accept as indicative of modified manhood.  And if we turn to that, in some respects, most
convincing branch of this argument of race-affinity which
language furnishes, we shall find, in the words of a recent author in this department, I that there is " nothing to prove the
* " I believe, therefore, that the coloration of the skin, whatever the particular tint
may be,- tawny-yellow, olive-red, or black, —is connected with the manner in which
the liver is discharging its functions.... Having thus traced the coloration of the skin
to existing peculiarities of hepatic action, I may repeat the remark already nmade, that
it is not improbable, that, in the most degraded negro type, the prognathous form of the
skull may be attributed to the same cause. Not that this alone is always the cause;
for a prognathous skull can by degrees arise, as we have seen, in any race, even the
white, from a variety of causes, such as misery, want, or an oppressed social state."Draper's Human Physiology, p. 589.
t The  aoces of ]fal. p. 2.
* Races of t/e Okl WIorld, by Charles L. Brace, p. 310.
I 
11
negro radically different from the other families of man, or
even mentally inferior to them."''
One of our intelligent New-Englanders,* who has labored as
a missionary for fifteen years in one of the most degraded portions of Africa, has recently made public the result of his investigations, experiences, and judgments on this subject, indorsing in the fullest manner the previously published opinion of one of our most accomplished scholars, to this effect:
"The Afirican nature possesses a latent capacity fully equal,
originally, to that of the Asiatic or the European. Shem and
Japhet sprung from the same loins with Ham.  God made of
one blood those three great races by which he repopulated the
globe after the deluge." t
Nor need this be left to be matter of inference merely.
Many names on the world's list of illustrious men are the
nam es      of Africans and negroes.  Terence, who contests with
Cicero and Caesar the palm of a pure Latinity, and whose deep
pathos, subtle wit, and rhythmic skill, will make his writings
memorable to the end of time, was an African and a slave.
Tertullian, who, clothing the most brilliant conceits of a
fertile  imagination, the most caustic satire, and the most impetuous        logic, in language often so uncouth as to be well-nigh
barbarous, has yet been almost equally eminent with those
who have acknowledged him as a master and those who have
branded  him as a heretic, was a Carthaginian. And Augustine,
acute,  comprehensive, full of life and vigor, whose heart of fire
impressed ineffaceably upon the Christian world his theology
o f    predestination and free-will, was a Numidian.   So Tonssaint L'Ouverture, the noble patriot of H'ayti, was a thorough
negr o; yet   Wordsworth immortalized his greatness in one of
his          s  weetest sonnets, and Whittier apostrophized him thus:
" Everywhere thy name shall be
Redeemed from color's infamy;
And men shall learn to speak of thee
As one of earth's great spirits, born
In servitude, and nursed in scorn;
* Rev. Lewis Grout. Zulu-land, &c., p. 185.
t Prof. W. G. T. Shedd, in Bibliotheca Sacra, xiv. 637. 
12
Casting aside the weary weight
And fetters of its low estate,
In that strong majesty of soul
Which knows no color, tongue, or clime;
Which still has spurned the base control
Of tyrants through all time."
And who, that knows any thing about the literature of the
present day, does not know that Alexandre Dumas, the most
fertile, if not the most popular, French writer of the generation,- his daily work averaging thirty-two printed octavo
pages, and his income from the pen reaching $12,000 a year,*
is of the proscribed blood, with its strongly-marked physical
characteristics?  Did you ever hear Frederic Douglass make
an argument? and, if you have, did you not feel that you would
be making a remunerative bargain if you could exchange
your head for his? To be sure, he stands far above the average of his race, or any other, in intellectual ability; but he is
a true, thorough negro still: so that. if he is a man, they are
men; if they are not men, he is not a man.
The negro not a man! After the advantages won for the
nation in this struggle by the sagacity of negro pilots, and
the intrepid fidelity~of negro guides, and the heroic bravery
of negro troops, it is an insult even more to our manliness
than to theirs to deny that they are men; humble in culture,
in most cases, to be sure, (what should we be if our grandfathers had been Bushmen in Ethiopia, and we had been through
their slave-experience?) and, it may be, with a low average
of some manly qualities; but still MEN; fit to be trusted and
trained to take care of themselves,- fit to be welcomed to
dwell by our side, and help bear our burdens and enjoy our
triumphs.  
This being settled once for all and forever, (and does anybodv think God will give us abiding peace, or ought to, until
it is settled?) other conclusions will follow readily.
1. They must be provided with a place where they can live as
mnen. All men must be somewhere; and if we expect the
freedmen to be industrious, and to support themselves and aid
us by honest labor, they must have a home. If they are to till
* New American Cyclopedia, vi. 666.
.I
11 
the soil, they must have the soil to till. If they are to inhabit
South Carolina and other portions of the South whose climate
and soil are congenial to them, they must have South Carolina and other Southern soil in possession. How shall they
get it?  Who owns it now?
There can be but one answer. By the law of the land, as
things were before the Rebellion, 350,000 slavehlolders owned
these four and a half millions of negroes,- now freedmen,and the land which they tilled.  When those planters turned
traitors to the United States, as ninety-nine in every bundred of them did, they distinctly renounced its protection of
their social rights, including that to their deeded lands, and
dared its heaviest penalties, in the expectation that they should
readily resist its power, and establish a new government of
their own, which would take up the defence of those social
rights, and more than make them good against all claimants
within and all force without.   They  deceived themselves.
They staked all, and have lost all.  The majesty of the Government which they despised has swept over them, and they
lie prostrate and helpless before it. Thousands of them have
fallen in the shock of battle. Those who remain are, or soon
will be, fugitives in strange lands, or captives in our hands.
Thley no longer own those broad plantations. The title has
passed, through their treason and subsequent death, self-banishment, or conquest, into the hands of the nation which they
sought to destroy, but which has fallen on them, and ground
them to powder.  Let the nation now divide this conquered,
confiscated territory among the freedmen, by gift, or by sale
on suitable terms, with due latitude of time of payment. Let
it break up that old feudal, unrepublican monopoly of land in
the hands of a few men of enormous wealth, and cut up the
plantations into little farms, placing each able-bodied freedmanri
in possession of a spot which, under suitable restricions, he can
make his own home, and leave to his children after him. The
nation has the legal right to do this, as who can question? * It'
* I am, of course, aware that the Constitution (art. iii. sect. 3) expressly provides
that " no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted;" so that, considering this Rebellion purely as an
act of treason, the nation would not gain the power of decreeing perpetual forfeiture of
rebel lands. But considered as a civil war, in which the rebels staked all their goods
18 
14
would be an act of beautiful justice, in the sight of God and
man, to do it; that the acres which these negroes have been
forced, in the old days of unpaid sweat, and stripes, and tears,
and blood, to earn, they should now receive. It would be an
act of wise forecast for the future; sowing the seeds of loyalty
thick along the old furrows of treason. Thtus let them find
their homes.
2. Thtey must, for a time, be paternally cared for and aided
in their new life.  It is wonderful how well they behave, how
industrious they are, and with what rapid strides they march
up toward some simple learning and some rude independence.
But as it would not be a very'prudent thing to turn loose four
and a half millions of children to their own care, without any
oversight, so these adult children will be the better for some
proper fatherly supervision, until they shall become accustomed to the new way.  This ought not to be of such a character as to interfere in any manner with the freedmian's essential freedom: no system of apprenticeship, or similar legacy
and reminder of the old slavery, is wise or wanted.  So it
would be a very poor plan to hire them out (as has been
often suggested, and sometimes attempted) to their former
masters, if you could find their masters. In the first place,
there is too much in sulch a system to remind one of the old slavegang, and overseer with his lash; and in the second place, the
genius of our institutions, as I have intimated, frowns upon
those large tracts of land in one ownership.  It is the old
feudal way, unwholesome for a republic. A farm for every
laborer, and every laborer for his own farm, is her millennial
motto.
This one fundamental will cover all the ground.  Let the
Government lay down the scriptural rule, "If any will not
work, neither shall he eat;" leaving alone the industrious neu
gro to take care of himself, and move onward and upward by
the momentum of the same social forces which carry along the
white man; only constraining the exceptional lazy to some
honest employ, and furnishing due asylum for those victims
of misfortune who are incapable of work, and have no friend
and properties, and lost them, the case is different; as the confiscation acts of Congress sufficiently declare.
-)r 
to maintain them.* If we can trust the grass to grow, and the
trees to blossom and bear fruit, under the bright urgency of
the spring and summer sunshine, we can trust the great mass
of emancipated negroes to become thrifty farmers and mechanics, and valuable members of the great industrial body, by the
natural promptings of opportunity and self-interest, in the propitious air of freedom.
3. We ought to aid in their education to become intelligent
citizens. Unintelligent citizens are a curse to a republic, and
a dead weight upon it. These poor fellows, after so many
generations of cruelty following ages of African barbarism,
must have help in their first endeavors after knowledge. That
help they have already proved that they will use well. Never
was there such a desire to read and write; never such progress in the rudiments before, as is reported, without exception,
from all our schools of contraband(s.  So that we have, at once,
the allurement of the prospect of almost incredible success,
the promptings of philanthropy, the urgency of duty, the iripulse of gratitude for what they have done for us, and the
gravest considerations of common safety, to impel us to act
promptly, wisely, and sufficiently, in aiding the suddenly fireed
negro to know how well to use his sudden freedom.
4. Thefreedman ought to be allowed and encouraged, so soon
as his education shalt be suficient, to become a full, voting citizen, without any statutory disability, with the rest of us. That
is, all embargoes upon citizenship, founded upon color merely,
should be removed by national law. This ought to be done,
because it is both right and expedient. It is right, because
color has nothing to do with natural prerogatives; as would be
palpable at once, if any government were to disfranchise all
citizens having light hair and blue eyes, for that ad  for no
other reason. And it is expedient, because the freedmen will
be made more useful members of society by being put into
the possession of all their natural rights, and by being stimulated to the best possible standard of attainment and behavior
- See a very suggestive and valuable letter from Edward S. Tobey, Esq., of this
city, to the editor of the" Baltimore Clipper," published in the * Clipper" of 23d Feb.,
subsequently printed in the "Boston Daily Advertiser," and (largely) in the "Congregationalist" of 7th April last, in which the question of the freedmen is very ably
discussed, and the view hinted at above is elaborated.
15 
16
by the possibility of advancement in proportion to demonstrated ability; because so long as we refuse them the full privileges of citizenship, they being cultured up to them, we make
our system inconsistent with itself, and therefore weak; because the experience of New England, which has long allowed
colored citizens, under circumstances in many respects unfavorable to them, to vote, has proved the safety and wisdom of
such a course; and because the nation will need the votes of
these men - sure to be for freedom, and for all that is good
for freedom - to counterlalance other votes, which must be
taken account of in the filture; and it cannot afford, with the
tremendous possibilities which coming years present of the
influx of foreign influence at our polls, to throw away the reenforcement there of these affectionate, loyal, liberty-loving,
native Americans.
5. Once more, it is our duty to conquer and abandon our
foolish and wicked prejudice against the negro on account of
his color. He is a child of God as we are; and God, who made
us white, made him black. He cannot help his color; is no
more to blame for it than we are for being ugly in features,
instead of comely, if we are so; for being short instead of
tall, or the reverse. We have a right to our preferences, of
course. It is nobody's business if I think somebody beautiful in whom you see no beauty; if I am fond of the society
of some person who has no attraction at all for another. But
to set up the single accident of color, as being the one decisive consideration in all questions of social respect; to despise a negro because he is black; to gather up the skirts of
your garments from possible contact with him, in the horsecar or in the street, however neat, well-dressed, and gentlemanly he may be; to make him continually feel that you look
down upon him, and withdraw from him, and abominate him,
for something which he cannot mend, and for which he is not
in fault,- this is not high-minded: it is not the way of the true
gentleman, of the true lady; it is not the spirit of the Christian; it is not the style of the intelligent and honest republican. It is the narrow, mean, low-bred impertinence of the
person who is afraid to concede that character does not consist in color, lest he should lose his own character in so doing.
I 
17
It is, thank God, an impertinence which is almost wholly cotifined to this country, and is one of the legacies of that accursed system of slavery whose virus has contaminated all
our affairs.  An English drawing-room or a French chateau
is unconscious of it.*
If we desire to treat our new freedmen and freedwomen
rightly before God, we shall rid ourselves of this. We need
not marry them, nor give them in marriage; we need not walk
arm in arm with them in the streets; we need not prefer them
in any respect to our own color,- those are questions regarding social, not political equality: t but we may, and we must,
learn to conquer this reasonless repugnance; to respect and
honor and love them, in their appropriate place, just as we do
our Irish and German i fellow-citizens in their place; and we
must recognize their place as being that of full, honorable,
republican manhood and womnanhood.
This, then, is my answer to the question, what we are now
bound, in Christian honor and right, to do in the case of the
freedmen: viz., we ought to divide among them the confiscated
lands of their late rebel masters; we ought  to give them
fatherly watchfulness and help in their first occupancy of their
little farms; we ought to provide for their education in the
rudiments underlying good citizenship; we ought to make
them citizens in full, so soon as they are fit for it; and we
ought to overcome and abandon that senseless and wicked
prejudice, which forever passes them by on the other side,
* " Pev. S. R. Ward attracted attention in the company as a full-blooded African,
-tall enough for a palm-tree.  I observed him in conversation with lords, dukes, and
ambassadors, sustaining himself modestly, but with self-possession.  All who converse
with him are satisfied that there is no native difference between the African and other
men.- MIrs. Stowe's Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, ii. 105..,
t "Political and social equality are two essentially different states. Political
equality exists in this country between individuals of the white race. But neither in
this country nor in any other does social equality exist. Nor can it ever exist, unless
there occur a charge in the nature of man which now and always has led him to aggregation with those only with whom he holds the same general views, feelings, likings,
and desires. Because I advocate the political equality of my white butcher, or baker,
or candlestick-maker, does it follow that I should be willing to marry his daughter, or
find it agreeable that he should marry mine? Then why should it be represented, as
the consequence of maintaining the justice of granting political equality to the blacks,
that all who agree with those views should be in favor of amalgamation? "-The African's Right to Citizenship, p. 24.
'N
3 
18
and taboos them everywhere, simply because they differ in
color from ourselves.
This brings us to our second general question: -
II. WHAT OUGHT OUR NATION TO DO WITH THE REBELS?
I am not about to discuss the subject of reconstruction as
it affects the old States that went into rebellion, and endeavor
to indicate a policy on which they should be brought back:
that seems to me rather a question of statesmanship, and the
Constitution, and of expediency, than of moral right; and so
one which I have no call, as I have no inclination, to consider
here. The question of moral right, which I would entel upon,
underlies that, and concerns the treatment of the individuals
who rebelled, and is prior to all questions about their future
relations to the nation. Should they be pardoned? Should
they be punished?  And, if so, in what manner, and to what
degree?
Exactly what are the facts which should shape our answer?
What have they (-done, and what is their present status? On
the 20th of December, 1860, it having been settled on the 6th
day of the previous month that Abraham Lincoln was to be
the next President, by a vote of 180 electors against 123 for
all others, a convention of the people of South Carolina, of
169 members, passed unanimously an ordinance repealing the
act of the 23d of May, 1788, by which the Constitution of the
United States had been ratified by the people of that State.
Mississippi followed suit, Jan. 9, 1861, by 84 yeas to 15 nays.
A convention of the people of Florida took similar action
one day later, by a vote of 62 yeas to 7 nays.  Alabama
reached a vote on her secession ordinance the next day, by 61
yeas to 39 nays. Georgia did likewise, on the 19th of the
same month, by 208 yeas to 89 nays.  On Jan. 26, Louisiana
took similar action, by 103 yeas to 17 nays; and Texas went
next, on Feb. 1, by 166 to 7. These seven States met by
delegation in convention at Montgomery, Ala., on the 4th
February following, and confederated as a new government,
electing Jefferson Davis for President, and Alexander H.
Stephens for Vice-President.   Then Sumter fell, civil war 
19
followed, and Virginia, North Carolina, and other reluctant
slave States, were dragged into the vortex of revolution, and
their sons swelled the Confederate armies. In every slave
State that seceded, except possibly South Carolina and Mississippi, there were individuals of influence and character who
were opposed to secession, -in some cases there were many
such, - most of whom afterwards succumbed to the ferocious
pressure brought to bear upon them; though here and there
one has resisted, and been faithful to the Union, to the end.
From these facts, it will be obvious that the inhabitants of
the States which have been in rebellion may be divided into
these five classes; viz.:  (a) Decided, influential, and more or less violent traitors
from the beginning.
(b) Those who were originally doubtful, or even opposed to
secession, who yielded to the pressure, and went, at last,
warmly into the war against us.
(c) Those originally doubtful or opposed to secession, who
remained so, or grew bitter against it; but who were compelled, to save their lives, to join the ranks of the traitors, and
were driven at the point of the sword and the bayonet to
fight against us, their hearts and judgment all the while protesting.
(d) The many —mostly of the uneducated poor whites
-who were deceived by false statements into a willing support of the Rebellion, and have never had the opportunity (as
some of them have scarcely the ability) to form an intelligent
opinion upon the matters in controversy.
(e) The few who have been for the Union through all, who
have evaded the conscription, and by flight or concealment,
or by some artifice, have managed  to avoid bearing arms
against us, or giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
If the present survivors of these five classes could be dis tinctly separated, so as to be dealt with each by itself; there
would be little difficulty in deciding what ought to be each
man's fate. But this, of course, is impossible. The nearest
practicable method of approach to absolute justice would
seem to be the treatment of what remains of the Southern
populations, undcler these three heads:
I 
20
(a) Prominent, influential, intelligent traitors from the beginning,   choosing treason, and driving the reluctant into it;
with all who have shared in the Rebellion, and have not repented of their guilt.
(b) All, however they may have entered upon the Rebellion,
except its leaders, who are now truly repentant.
(c) All who have kept themselves pure and loyal through
all, except as outward force may have for a time constrained
them.
The latter class should be honored with exceeding honor,
and, so far as they are fit for it, should be relied upon; almost
without exception, for all important official service to the Government in the near future. Their privations should be borne
in mind, and their losses of property compensated from the confiscated estates of the leaders of the Rebellion.
The second class should be forgiven, and, under proper restrictions,- in the case, at least, of all who have borne commissions against us, reaching to a disqualification from voting, or
bearing any office of trust and honor, for years to come,
should be permitted to resume their old places as co-workers
in the peaceful pursuits of their regenerated social system;
care being taken to scrutinize the genuineness of their repentance, and especially to insure their fair treatment of all
freedmen who may happen to settle by their side.*
The first class, who were the rich slavehlolders; the great
cotton-ocracy; the politicians; the governors and senators;
the disciples of Calhoun, who boasted when South Carolina
seceded, as did Barnwell Rhett, that "this was not a thing
produced by Mfr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of
The freed people are truly and unreservedly our friends, and they-re almost the
only ones.  They are more intelligent as a class, and more available as a trustworthy
material for citizenship, than I expected to find them.  The poor whites whom 1 saw
are decidedly inferior to the average of the slave population. If there is to be for the
future a stable basis for loyal States in the South, it must be made up largely of the
freed people. It will not do at present to trust the ballot in the hands of the white
men who have been rebels, and still are such, under the name and guise of Union men.
. O..  f the true spirit and character of many of the pretended Unionists who have
taken the oath, the negroes seem to be apparently much better informed than some of
our mnilitary officers.  Tiey lurk about the city, seeking to injure the cause they still
hate. Iincendiarv fires are frequent. - Special Charleston Correspondence " New-York
Tribune," April 22, 1865. 
the Fugitive-slave Law,- it is a thing which has been gathering head for thirty years;"  and more especially those survivors of the eighty-two Confederate generals who were educated at West Point,t and perjured themselves by turning
our own swords and our own science against us; and those
" magnanimous " Floyds and Lees, who went from the highest
places of our counsels to theirs, not forgetting to carry our
secrets with them, as they had beforehand sent our guns and
treasure; those arch-traitors, who studied treason for years in
advance, and reduced it to a science, and gloried in it, - what
ought to be done with them? Here we touch the quick of
our subject. Let us keep cool, and reason about it as if it
were a problem of mathematics.
Andy Johnson says that " robbery is a great crime, and arson is a great crime, and murder is a great crime; but treason
is the greatest crime." It is very common to say that treason
is a very great crime, worse than murder; but I do not think
it self-evident that it is so, on simple inspection. Thank God,
we have had small occasion before to form any practical opinion about treason in this country; and, however great or however small a crime it may be, it has never come home to claim
a judgment from us, as murder and arson hlave done. Let us,
then, carefully inquire what treason is, that we may form for
ourselves some intelligent estimate of the guilt of it, aLnd determine what disposition the public safety (and so the law of
right, which protects the public safety) requires should be
made of men who are traitors in the first degree.
The word came into our language through the old French
traison [trahison], from the Latin traditio, and literally signifies "the act of betrayal," of "' treacherous giving-uj); " and
technically, as it is used in our law, it has the sense of " the
act of attempting to overthrow the government to which the
offender owes allegiance." It includes, you will see at once,
the two ideas of armed hostility to the Government, and of
treacherous hostility,- from within where it is not to be expected, and not from without. It differs from other armed
hostility to the Government, as the work of the sneaking
Greeley's American Conflict, page 345.
t National Almanac, 1863, p. 690.
21 
assassin, who comes behind and puts his pistol to the back of
the head of his unsuspecting victim, differs from fair combat in
which both parties are forewarned, and have some real, if not
equal, chance.   Hence there was exact and discriminating
truth in that remark of our new President the other day,
when he spoke of treason as the assassination of Government.
It follows, of necessity, that treason must be just as much
worse than murder, as the murder of a government is worse
than the homicide of a single man.   So it follows that it
is worse than any other crime can be, for this reason: All
other crimes take place in the body politic, over which government has power, and so they are amenable to government, and
it can punish them  but treason rises a step higher, and kills the
avenger, and, in so doing, licenses all crime to run riot; for
there is no longer any power to restrain it: that power itself
is struck down, and there is none to avenge it, or enable it
any longer to avenge others. So that the crime of treason, as
it were, includes all other crimes, and makes them possible,
by taking all restraint out of the ways, and making it impossible to punish them.
Or take another view of it.  Consider what are the blessings of organized society as compared with anarchy. Consider how much it conduces to human comfort and prosperity
for men to dwell together in communities, enjoying each
other, aiding each other, and being aided by each other. Consider that such dwelling together is only made possible by
Government, which assumes the protection of each man in his
own house, and the security of each man in the enjoyment of
his owni property.  Consider that all which hinders the covetous from the violent seizing of your goods, the man who has a
spite against you from burning your house abour'your ears at
midnight, the lustful scoundrel from the abuse of your most
precious ones, that all which stands between you and yours
and murder, robbery, rape, arson, and the whole catalogue of
awful deeds which God-forsaken man, in his most diabolical
wickedness, can do to his fellow-man, is the Government; the
law, which is the voice of Government, saying," Thou shalt not
do these things;" so that, if the Government is overthrown
and that voice ceases, you are overthrown, and all these calami
22
iv 
ties are made possible to you; so that, if the Government is
murdered, you are liable to be murdered, and there will be
none to help you; and your only real safety will be to take
your little ones and your goods, and flee to some far, solitary
place, where you can reasonably hope to garrison yourself
against all miscreant invaders, and there sleep with revolvers
and loaded rifles within reach of your outstretched arm, and
walk abroad, and work, never knowing but behind the next
tree lurks your assassin. Consider that, between that wellnigh savage state and your present comfort and security, nothing stands but Government, and then remember that the traitor
lifts his arm to stab that Government, and let in all these woes
upon you; and say if it is not clear to you that treason is as
much worse than any other one crime, as all crimes condensed
into one are worse than any one.
Look at it from still another point of view. Government is
an ordinance of God.- "The powers that be are ordained of
God." The civil ruler, Paul says,'his the minister of God to
thee for good."  " He beareth not the sword in vain; for he
is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him
that doeth evil. Wherefore we must needs be subject not only
for wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For this cause pay ye
tribute also; for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing."
The reason of this divine indorsement and authorization of
human government, nay, of this almost adoption of it as a
subordinate branch of the divine government, suggests itself
in the indispensable relation of it: in the first place, to God's
taste and will, who is a God of order, and not of confusion; in
the second place, to human prosperity and happiness, which
God desires, and would promote; and in the third'place, to
the coming of the kingdom of God, which is the great end for
which the world stands. Good morals, education, social culture, piety, churches, missions, general godliness, and peace
and joy, all things good, which God loves and longs for here,
and which Christ died to procure for man,-are jewels which
require setting in the groundwork of a stable, just, civil
government, and cannot be without it. Hience it was that the
apostle thundered in the ears of the restless if not lawless
23
IN 
East, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers; for
there is no power but of God:" and Peter counselled the
strangers of Asia Minor, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance
of man, for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him
for the punishment of evil-doers."
All legitimate and reasonably just human government being
thus adopted of God, and infused by him with a sacredness
which makes an offence against it a crime against him, it follows that that highest offence against it, which violently seeks
its overthrow, nmust be the highest crime against him of
which man is capable, in that range of crimes which pertains
to this world.
In any and every aspect, then, treason asserts terrible preeminence, - the darkest, deepest, deadliest, most damnable
deed possible to human wickedness.
How ought such a crime to be punished? If the murderer,
in the first degree, of a man, deserves, as God and most men
judge, the punishment of death, does the murderer of a nation
deserve any less?  Can there be any safety to a community
with any less?  Can there be any dignity to justice with any
less?
Our American law of treason is very merciful. Lord Bacon
enumerated thirty-three varieties of treason in England in his
time;* and the old English punishment of treason, down to the
thirtieth year of George the Third,t was horrible: the convict
forfeited all his property to the crown; was drawn on a hurdle to the gallows; there hanged; then was cut down, disembowelled, and his entrails bI)urned before life was extinct; and
the body was then beheaded and quartered, and the head and
quarters stuck upon Temple Bar or Westminster Hall, or
some other conspicuous place, until the chances of time, and
weather, and the birds, disposed of them! But our fathers,
in the Constitution, carefully defined our law of treason, limitimg it to the one simple act of levying war against the nation,
proved by two witnesses, or by confession in open court;
while Congress, in the exercise of the power given it by the
* Works, xv. 320-322.
t Blackstone's commentaries, 92; Diary of John Evelyn, ii. 840.
24 
25
Constitution, enacted that the punishment of treason shall be
simply death by the ordinary means of execution.
To apply, now, these principles and facts to the case of the
rebels, there is not room for the semblance of a doubt that
every man of them who has been in arms against us, or who
has adhered to those who have been in arms, and given them
aid and comfort,* legally is guilty of treason, and, before the
tribunal of public justice, deserves death. Daniel Webster
said, on the 28th of May, 1851, in his speech to the young men
of Albany, "The act of taking away Shadrach [I take it there
is no forgetfulness here who  " Shadrach"  vwas] from the
public authorities in Boston, and sending him off, was an act
of clear treason.  I speak this," he says, "in the hearing of
men who are lawyers; I speak it out to the country; I say it
everywhere, on my professional reputation. It was treason,
and nothing less; that is to say, if men get together, and com bine, and resolve that they will oppose a law of the Government, not in any one case, but in all cases; if they resolve to
resist the law, whoever may be attempted to be made the subject of it, and carry that purpose into effect, by resisting the
application of the law, in any one case, either by force of
arms or force of numbers, that, sir, is treason."' t
If that was sound reasoning as applied to the North in that
case, it is sound reasoning now in the case of almost the entire
South.  Nobody will, I presume, deny in this case the "overt
act,"  - that war has actually been levied against the nation.
Whence it follows that every soldier, from Gen. Lee down
to his humblest camp-follower; every non-combatant who has
stood behind the soldiers and ordered and aided them on, from
Jefferson Davis and-his Cabinet and his pretended Congress
down to the humblest mule-driver who has done his little utmost to help the military power of the Rebellion to crush the
nation, is guilty of treason, and legally deserves the halter.
* "If war be actually levied, that is, if a )ody of men be actually assembled in arms
for the purpose of effecting by force a treasoniaible design, all those who perform any part
in the conspiracy, however minute, or however remote themselves firom the scene of
action, if actually leagued in the general enterprise, are considered as traitors."- Duer's
Constitutional Jurisprudence, p. 335.
t Works, ii. 577.
t Aaron Burr escaped condemnation for treason because no overt act could be proved
-Parton's Life of Aaron Burr, ii. 119-158.
4 
But all of them are not morally guilty, and it is surely
safe for us to show mercy to all who have not been intelligent
and  willing participants in the general overt acts of crime.
Those        who were deceived into this treason, or who were
driven into it, we may safely forgive and re-instate on proof
of        present loyalty.  So too, as I have already said, it will
doubtless be safe for us to restore to peaceful residencethough not immediately to full citizenship -the masses of
the uneducated and unintelligent rank and file, who, by this
time, have bitterly repented of their guilt. The great practical    difficulty in the way of all these attempts at reconstruction
lies in the fact, that slavery has so barbarized the South, that
all the sweet and saving force of truth seems to have perished
out of Southern speech, and the solemnity of ai oath to have
ceased  to be a power over the rebel mind."  Events, continunall y        occurring, demonstrate - if I may venture to amentl
Hlamlet    to suit the case
" That one may swear and swear, and be a villain;
At least, I am sure it may be so in Dixie."
Our only safety must be in keeping the power in the hands
of those of never-questioned loyalty (with the freedmen), for a
time of probation long enough both to win these barbarians
gradually to a better mind, and to test the honesty of their
professions.
We face then, again, the last great question of all: What
shall be done with the arch-traitors, who, after plotting thirty
years, sprang their mine under our feet, and came so.near to
ingulfing in its hideous chasm the temple of our liberty?
Legally and morally, they deserve the punishment of death.
* "We talk of human nature as if it belonged to all men. We must look at another
character in men; that is, slaveholding nature.  It is as malicious as a rattlesnake,  as
vindictive as a tiger, and as treacherous as the father of lies; it is cruel, it is insolent,
it is internal.  I knew what it was long ago.  I have summered with it, and wintered
with it; I have watched it in all its forms;  and I tell you there is no living with it on
this continent. It is a blessed thing that the loyal people are beginning to see what it
is.  They will see more of it.  My opinion, founded on my knowledge of the heart, is,
that, while the first chapter of the war is about to close, another is about to open.  Then
every one will get a perfect knowledge of this slaveholding nature." Cairo (Ill.) Correiponi(ent of "New York Tribune," 18th April (in a letter describing the  exultations
of the people at the news of the President's assassination).
i
26
-.r 
27
So any competent jurist on earth, so any impartial jury on
earth, would pronounce.
Is there any sufficient reason why they should not be so
punished?
(1.) It is pleaded in their behalf, that their act rose to the
dignity of a revolution, and so swings clear from the sweep of
the penalties of treason.  But a revolution is a rebellion. come
to its majority. All rebellions begin as treason, as everybody
admits; but if one grows broad enough and strong enough
successfully to resist, and then to overthrow, the government
which it opposes, and goes on to thrust itself into its place,
and tread down the old sovereignty under its feet, then it expands and solidifies into a revolution, and, as a revolution, justifies itself, and holds itself harmless from the punishment of
treason, because it has annihilated all power of punishment
over itself.  "Unless crowned by success," said Judge Woodbury in regard to the Dorr revolt in Rhode Island,-" unless
crowned by success, and thus subsequently ratified," * rebellions will be punished as treasonable.   Mr. Everett defines
a revolution as "one of those great movements by which a
people, for urgentcauses, introduces [i. e., succeeds in introducing] organic changes in the framework of its government,
and materially renovates, or wholly reconstructs, the fabric of
its political relations." t
But the rebels had no justifying cause for their revolt, and
they have utterly failed in it; so that they have neither gained
the dignity nor indemnity of a revolution.   Their struggle
will go down to the end of time as the great Rebellion of
1861-1865, never as the Revolution of that date; and this plea
cannot save their necks.
(2.) But, it is urged, there are so many of these rebels, that it
would be dreadful to hang them all.  It would be a dreadful
event. But this fact of number does not modify their desert
of hanging. If twenty men break into your house to-night,
and murder your sleeping children in cold blood, and are
arrested by a superior force in'the act, it would seem very
dreadful to punish the whole twenty; but it would be impossi
* Writings, ii. 76.
t Orations and Speeches, iii. 297.
$ 
28
ble to give a sound reason for not doing so. See how dangerous, as well as absurd, a precedent you establish for all
the future, if you take the ground that one hundred, or one
thousand, or ten thousand men, may, with impunity, commit a
a crime for which one or two or three of them would be sent
straight to the gallows I What a bounty that would be offering for gigantic atrocities and wholesale villanies! There
can be neither law nor expediency, least of all genuine
benevolence, —which must always sacredly consider and promote the greatest good of the greatest number, -in such a
procedure.
There may be considerations, on the whole, making it inexpedient to execute the extreme penalty of the law on all these
miserable men; but that their number ought to stand in the
way of their condemnation, cannot for one moment be allowed.
(3.) But, it is said, it is bloodthirsty and barbarous to take
such ground, and condemn the whole body of these arch-traitors
in the first degree.  That depends upon circumstances.  It
would have been denounced by multitudes as a barbarous and
bloodthirsty act if Andrew Jackson had arrested and  executed John C. Calhoun as a traitor in the Spring of 1833,
as, to the end of his days, he regretted hlie had not done,* - or
if President Buchanan had hung the South-Carolina commissioners t when they had the impudence to come to Washington, in December, 1860, to "negotiate " for South Carolina's
share of the assets of the "late" Union; but if eithercertainly if both -of these things had been done, in all human probability, it would have saved the lives of millions
North and South. This Rebellion needs to be so settled up,:
that there shall never be another one between now and the
day of judgment; and it would be both cheap and humane to
* "In his last sickness, he [ General Jackson] declared, that, in reflecting upon his administration, he chiefly regretted that he had not had John C. Calhoun executed fol
treason.' My country,' said the general,' would have sustained me in the act, and
his fate would have been a warnaing to traitors in' (ll t,nie to comee.'"   Parton's Life of
Andrew Jacksoni, iii. 447.
t " Messrs. R. W. Barnwell, James L. Orr, al(nd  x-Govelior Adams, commissioners
from the State of South Carolina, reached Washington on the 26th, under instructions
to negotiate with the Federal Executive a partition of all the properties and interests of
the sovereign and independent State of SoLth Carlolia, in the Union from which she
had seceded." - Greeley's Ames icon Conflict, i. 411. 
29
hang ten thousand rebels, if that were necessary, to prevent
the land from being drenched again, at some future day, with
fraternal blood. It must be established, as now, henceforth,
and forever, the fundamental principle of this Republic, that
the parricide who lifts his hand against its life and sovereignty
dies without mercy and without hope;  and then we  shall
have no more rebellions; as, in such a government of the people as ours, there never can be just cause for any, because
there can be no grievance which cannot )be redressed  in a
constitutional manner. Sufficient severity now, to bequeath
that lesson to the future, is the most humane and Christian
disposal of the question before us, which the possibilities of
the case allow.
(4.) But, it is said, it would be an unheard-of thing.  So was
the Rebellion.  The world never saw the like.  It was, perhaps, an unheard-of thing to hang thirty-seven Dacotah Indians, on the 26th December, 1862, at Mankato, in Minnesota,
for the horrible atrocities of the Sioux massacres,- atrocities
well.-nigh as savage and appalling as those of the rebels at
Fort Pillow and Andersonville.*  Doubtless it was an unheard-of thing; but, in the feeling that it was just and necessary, it was done.  Extraordinary diseases require extraordinary
remedies.
(5.) But the great _plea against the position which Itake is, that
less than the capital condemnation of all these chief traitors for
their treason will answer the purpose just as well, and even better. Well, I grant that what we ought to seek is not vengeance for the past, but that justice, with reference to the
past, which shall be our security for the future.  If it were
possible for us to know that amnesty to these rebel chiefs
would be just as safe for the nation in coming years as condemning them to be hung for their treason, that would alter
the case materially.  But we cannot pierce the future.  We
have but one-lamp to throw forward light into its dusky recesses, and that is the lamp of expelience and of consequent
probability.  And, with all proper'respect for the party usually
miscalled''Democratic," I beg to ask how long a time you
* See History of the Sioux Wai and.fassacies of 1862 and 1863, by Isaac V. D.
Heard, for the sickening details.
t 
30
think would elapse, after the resumption by these amnestied
rebels of their political place and function, before you would
have them scheming in a grand "Democratic" coalition to
perturb the State?
They are born politicians; they are bred politicians; they
are practised and unscrupulous politicians; they know all the
secrets of the wires, and can make the people think they see
what they don't see, as cunningly and successfully as Maelzel
used to hide his "Director" in his chess-playing "' automaton,"
while he was turning it round before the audience, and open
ing one door after another, and pulling out the drawer, as
much as to say, "You see it all; you see there can be no
man inside; you see the cranks and the wheels, and the
springs (wonderful!) which make it go."*
Can you trust such men back again in their old places in
Congress? I hlope, and unto God I pray, that that sky-lifted
dome of the Capitol may sink to the utmost centre of
the riven earth before the voice of one of those miscreants
again wakes its echoes!
You would put them on their most solemn oath of allegiance, would you? Yes, and what good would that do with
men withwhom perjury has been for four yearsthe habit of daily
life? There are no words of solemn swearing before the most
high God which they have not already trampled in the mire of
their infamous treachery. Drive a nail into rotten wood, and
expect it to bear the strain which a spike will bear in an oak;
but insult not God nor man with talk of more oaths from these
persons.
But you think less will answer, because slavery is practically dead, and these rebels will no longer have any temptation to new treason! That may be, and it may not be.  I
think they would have slavery again in five years, with Northerr help.  But the great question is not in regard to their future conduct so much as the relation of the method of the
adjustment of their crime to the cause of' public justice, here
and in other lands, in all coming years. Let them off easy,
and you endanger the inference by and by, these popular gov
* See Fiske's Book of the First Amneiican Chess Congress, pp. 423-484; and Wor,ks of
the lote E. A. Poe, iv. 346-370. 
31
ernments never punish treason: it is safe to rebel; for, if we
succeed, we go in, and all else go out; if we fail, we shall have
amnesty, and our risk is thus disproportioned to the possible
prize.
I have said that treason has not been practical with us in
this land. We never had an execution for it against the nation; though poor demented old John Brown was hung for
what was alleged to be treason against the State of Virginia.
But we had a trial for treason once, and a condemnation.  It
was in the presidency of old John Adams, in 1799, in a time
of fierce excitement between the Federalists and what were
then called the Republicans.*  Congress had levied a direct
tax, among other things, on houses, arranged in certain c]asses; and among other means for making that classification was
a measurement of the windows.  In a portion of Pennsylvania, a violent and insurrectionary hostility, principally among
Germans, arose against this, until the officers were compelled
to desist from measuring people's windows preparatory to its
collection. Warrants were issued from the District Court
against the insurgents, and the marshal arrested some thirty
persons; but in the village of Bethlehem he was attacked by
an armed party under the leadership of one John Fries, and
his prisoners rescued. The President immediately issued a
proclamation, the military were called out, and Fries and his
accomplices were captured. Fries was tried for treason, and
condemned, on the ground that he had constructively levied
war against the nation. A flaw was found, however, in the
proceedings, andil a new jumy summoned, which, after full hear ing, again condemned Fries, and with him two others. The
President consulted his Cabinet.  "Painfiul," was the reply
of Col. Pickering, his Secretary of State, "as is the idea of tak ing the life of a man, an opportunity is now presented, in exe cuting the just sentence of the law, to crush that spirit, which,
if not overturned and destroyed, may proceed in its career,
and overturn the Government." t John Adams, after long con sideration of the matter, issued to each of the condemned a
full pardon. He has given, in a letter written sixteen years
* Hildreth's History of the Urnited States, 2d( Series, ii. 312.
t Life and Works of John Adams, i. 573. 
32
after, his reasons for the act.  "What good, what example,
would have been exhibited to the nation by the execution of
three or four obscure, miserable Germans, as ignorant of our
language as they were of our laws and the nature and defini tion of treason? - pitiful puppets danced upon the wires of
jugglers behind the scene..... Had the mountebanks been in
the place of the puppets, mercy would have had a harder
struggle to obtain absolution for them.... My judgment was
clear that their crime did not amount to treason. They had
been guilty of a high-handed riot and rescue, attended with
circumstances hot, rash, violent, and dangerous: but all these
did not amount to treason; and I thought the officers of the
law had been injudicious in indicting them for any crime
higher than riot, aggravated by rescue." *
Here, it is too true, was the grand mistake. John Fries
was not really guilty of treason; but he had been indicted
and twice tried for it, and twice convicted of it: so that John
Adams, in pardoning him as an act of personal justice, was in
a manner compelled to establish something like an apparent
precedent for the non-punishment of treason against the Republic. It would have been hard for poor Fries, but it would
probably have been a blessing to the nation, if he had been
then hung. Doubtless his execution would have frowned down
in advance subsequent South-Carolina nullification, and the
strangling of that at its birth would have stifled this Rebellion
in embryo.
Judging the probabilities of the future, then, by the facts
of the past, it does not seem as if any thing short of the capital condemnation of the unquestionably leading traitors who
survive the Rebellion can be safe for the nation. With what
face can we ever punish any crime again, if we (d not now
punish theirs?  How can we move on, as a nation, with the
decree, as a part of our organic law, that treason shall be
punished with death, if we do not now execute that lavw?
If we do not execute, we must repeal it.  And are we prepared officially, deliberately, to take the ground before God
and man, that the worst villany -that assassination of gov
* Life and Wowks of John Adams, x. 153.
I 
33
ernment, which includes all other misdemeanors-shall no
longer be considered and treated as a crime in this nation?
I am not bloodthirsty; I am not angry; if I know my own
heart, I bear no malice even toward those who are starving
our poor prisoners to idiocy and death, to the best of their
lessening ability, even while I speak, to-day: but, as a moralist
and a Christian and a patriot, I protest that there is but just
this one answer, -tich in law or equity can be honestly and
rightly given to the question, What ought to be done with the*
educated, intelligent, influential rebels, whether combatants or
non-combatants, in the war that is drawing to its close?  It is
that which our new President prophetically announced on the
floor of the Senate, when, four years ago, he stood in his heroic
loyalty solitary and alone among his Southern brethren, and
which he has with such ringing emphasis iterated and reiterated during the past eventful week: They should be arrested
as traitors, they should be indicted as traitors, they should be
tried as traitors, and they should be condemned as traitors!
Hiere I part company with Andrew Johnson in word, in order
that, as I believe, I may abide with him in spirit.  I say they
should be condemned to be hung as traitors; I do not say they
should all be hung as traitors. I think the ends of public justice may be met with less than that.
I would try, and condemn to be hung for treason, every
rebel who was registered as colonel, or as of higher rank, in
the Confederate army, or was of corresponding prominence in
the civil service. I would hang a selection of a very few of
the guiltiest, as an offering to the violated law and our murdered brothers, and a warning to the world and all the future,
and then I would let the rest go, - under sentence, with the rope
round their necks.  I would let them go as Cain went; I would
let them go, with the clearest understanding that if they ever
touch with their accursed feet this soil of ours again, - without some act of individual amnesty, earned for some far
future day by years of penitence and reformation,- that
postponed halter shall swing them still!
This was what moral right and political justice calmly said
ten days ago. Can less be said since that dread fall, when
" I and you and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us "? 
34
Our martyred nobleman is in his coffin, passing in triumphal, though funereal, march from his place of martyrdom to
his sepulture; with such a mourning, in depth of sorrow even
more than in breadth of reach over the minds of men, as the
world never saw. Well rounded and complete in every gentle virtue and radiant quality; ready for heaven, and having
done a work on earth so large and glorious, in a time so short,
that he himself might have anticipated fat the end drew
near, - we cannot mourn for him.
"Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee, - air, earth, and skies.
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee: thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind." *
But let no loyal mind ever, for one moment, forget that treason murdered him. And now shall treason, which before merited the most appalling punishment known to humanity, merit
it less, and be amnestied and forgiven?  It is impossible.
The slave-power has ejected its deadliest venom with its expiring throes. It has admonished us that there is no safety
for any thing good and great, so long as it has one breath of
being left. The first gun fired at Sumter thundered through
the land as an initial alarum. This pistol-shot -jarring the
continent more than all columbiads - warns us to rally once
again, or all will be lost in the very hour of triumph; warns
us that there is, as Bunyan declared, "a way to hell, even
from the gates of heaven;" warns us to gain new life for
sternest justice out of the stimulus of this new eath.
" No, not in vain he died, not all in vain,
Our good, great President! This people's hands
Are linked together in one mighty chain,
Drawn tighter still in triple-woven bands
To crush the fiends in human masks, whose might
We suffer, oh too long! No league, nor truce,
Save men with men! The devils we must fight
With fire. God wills it in this deed. This use
* Wordsworth (Sonnet to Toussaint L'Ouverture), Works, p. 212.
II 
35
We draw from the most impious murder done
Since Calvary. Rise then, 0 countrymen!
Scatter these marsh-light hopes of Union won
Through pardoning clemency. Strike, strike again!
Draw closer round the foe a girdling flame:
We are stabbed whene'er we spare; strike in God's name! " *
Thus, then, I answer our two questions:  1. This is what we ought to do in the case of the freedmen: Give them homes on the confiscated lands of the rebels;
aid them in their first occupancy, as they may need; educate
them to be intelligent, virtuous, and useful copartners with us
in the nation; make them voting citizens in full (every disability of color removed), so soon as they shall have trained
themselves for the intelligent discharge of that responsibility;
and rid ourselves, at once and forever, of that unchristian and
inhuman notion, that essential humanity has any thing to do
with the color of the skin.
2. This is what we ought to do in the case of the rebels:
Welcome, honor, reward and remunerate, out of the effects of
traitors, for their sacrifices, the few who have been faithful
among the faithless through all; forgive, and, under suitable
restrictions with regard to their conduct toward the freedmen,
and with suitable probation as to their resumption of the elective franchise, restore the great mass who were deceived or
dragooned into rebellion, or who, rushing hastily into it, have
bitterly repented their error; and arrest, try, convict and sentence to be hanged for treason, all prominent surviving rebels,
who plotted against us in the old times of Union, stole their
education, their arms, much of their treasure, and our secrets,
and then perjured themselves and turned  against us, and
robbed us of our forts and our navy-yards, and have since
murdered, and worse than murdered, thousands and tens of
thousands of our noblest sons, and at last cowardly assassinated our venerated President, their own kindest friend;
hang a few - a half-dozen - of those highest in station and
lowest in infamy, in vindication of outraged justice, and in
perpetual demonstration to the future that the powers that
be in this land are ordained of God, and that the magistrate
* C. P. Cranch, in " New York Tribune," 19th April, 1865.
'A 
36
bears not the sword in vain; and then dismiss the remainder,
fugitives and vagabonds through the world, with halters round
their necks, liable to be tightened at the first sheriff's hand, if
they ever dare to pollute our free future with their foul presence!
This is what I have to say. Am I wrong? Then point out
my error; lead me as a child, by the hand, into the more excellent way: for of all things I most desire, for myself and
for you, right action, - God-fearing, God-pleasing action,
now.
Am I right? Then act on these principles I Advocate them!
Stir up your neighbors to adopt them! Tone up the public
mind! Oxygenate the moral atmosphere I Make it impossible to have it otherwise!
"The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect
of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever!"
*nX mag (00  sabt tDe wieW Ntates of gmtria t 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
A
SERMON
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
(~tetulbt and   tgi slatile    tpartmtnts
OF THE
GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS,
AT THE
ANNUAL  E LECTION,
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 4, 1865.
BY A. L. STONE, D. D.
B O STON:
WRIGHT & POTTER, STATE PRINTERS,
No. 4 SPRING LANE.
18 6 5.
0
t
I  
SENATE CHAMBER, BOSTON, January 9, 1865.
Rev. A. L. STONE:
DEAR SIR,-Pursuant to an Order, unanimously adopted, the undersigned were appointed a Committee to present to you the thanks of the
Senate for your able and instructive Discourse, delivered before the
Government of the Commonwealth on the 4th inst., and to request a copy
of the same for the press.
Trusting that it will be both agreeable and convenient for you to comply
with the request at an early day,
We remain,
Very truly yours,
HENRY BARSTOW,
A. M. IDE,
JOSEPH A. POND,
Committee.
BOSTON, January 16, 1865.
GENTLEMEN,-I herewith submit to your disposal the Discourse  for
which you ask in the name of the Senate, with my grateful acknowledgments for the courtesy of that body, and for your own in communicating
their wishes.
Very respectfully yours,
A. L. STONE.
Hon. Messrs. HENRY BARSTOW, A. M. IDE, JOSEPH A. POND,
Committee of Senate of Massachusetts.
ftmflntalttof sttst.
0  
gnmmoutaltt of              s
IN SENATE, January 16, 1865.
The Committee, to whom was committed the Order in relation to the
Election Sermon, preached before the State Government on the 4th inst.,
have attended to that duty, and have received a communication from Rev.
A. L. STONE, D. D., expressing his acknowledgments for the courtesy of
the Senate, accompanied by a copy of the Sermon, and report the accompanying Order.
Per order,
HENRY BARSTOW.
SENATE, January 17, 1865.
Concurred.
S. N. GIFFORD, Clerk.
IN SENATE, January 16, 1865.
ORDERED, That eight thousand copies of the Election Sermon preached
before the Government of the Commonwealth, on the 4th inst, be printed
for the use of the Legislature.
0
.s 
I
I 
SER M O N.
ISAIAH, lviii. 12.
AND THEY THAT SHALL BE OF THEE SHALL BUILD THE OLD WASTE PLACES:
THOU SHALT RAISE UP THE FOUNDATIONS OF MANY GENERATIONS; AND THOU
SHALT BE CALLED THE REPAIRER OF THE BREACH, THE RESTORER OF PATHS
TO DWELL IN.
We cannot to-day, be narrow, and shut our
thoughts within the limits of the Commonwealth.
TEE TIMES are educating us all into views and
sympathies broad as the land. We stand in these
hours on an eminence, and our horizon is the
borders of the Republic. We are lifted to the
dome of our nationality, and our field of vision
stretches to the water-line that marks either ocean
shore-the blue of the lakes and the blue of the
gulf.
We cannot name our State, or any State, without
thinking at once of our whole country. We are
weaned fromn the idea that a State is complete by
itself. It is one component part of a Federal
Government, held to its sisters by a deathless bond.
It is a branch of a living and fruitful vine, in which
0 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
alone it has life and fruitfulness. Except it abide
in the vine, we may reverently apply the scripture,
it " is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and
men gather them and cast them into the fire, and
they are burned."
Let the stars in the heavens break from their
constellations, but let not one on our field of blue,
part the chain of celestial gravitation and attempt
to shine alone. It shall soon become a " wandering star,"  going out in the blackness of darkness
forever."
We belong to a nation-a nation living stillfair, and strong, and whole-undivided and indivisible-wearing still on its brow, for all the jealous
kingdoms to read, the old familiar inscription,
"E pluribus unum"-and girding itself anew for
the race of the future.
And the question which I desire briefly to discuss
to-day, is this:   What is the work of Mfassachusetts
and of New E ngland in this near future of the
whole country? 
We  may say, in the firs place, that the life of
New England cannot be dissevered from the
national life. There has been in some quarters
certain idle and flippant talk in reference to such
a readjustment of the national boundaries as should
ft
8
i' 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
leave this old Puritan Commonwealth and her five
sisters outside the walls of the new confederation.
But our connection with the Republic is not a
matter of territorial contiguity and geographical
lines. Let men run border lines as they please;
let them frame ordinances of separation; let them
build a Tartar wall between us and the great
homestead; neither civil nor material barriers can
exile us from the family circle. It were just as
possible to separate from the loaf the leaven that
made it light and sweet, or from a human life the
principles and influences of its early nurture.
New England is not a certain limited portion of
the national domain-a sharp eastern angle that
can be clipt off. No map of the Union gives to the
eye her flil and proper extent.  No engineering
art can explore and project her share of our
continental heritage.
Her life is ubiquitous in the nation.  From her
fountain heart the warm arterial currents have
circulated through the whole body and flowed out
to the remotest extremities. Her sons have gone
forth into every habitable place of the broad land.
They have carried with them her enterprise, her
intelligence, her art, her ingenuity, the pure and
ordered life of her homes, the tranquil securities
2
9
i 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
of her law-abiding communities, her system of common schools, academies and colleges, her reverence
for the Sabbath, the memory and the love of her
household altars and public sanctuaries.  Their
first harvests as they have occupied and opened
up virgin soil have been not what the earth yielded
to the hand of tillage;.they sowed first of all,
Puritan ideas-the seeds of New England institutions; and that which grew earliest beneath their
husbandry has been the transplanted life of their
own native hills and valleys. Here are indestructible channels which cannot be closed, and through
which the fountained abundance of New England's
fulness has flowed out and is flowing still across
the prairies, and along the central valley and
through the wilderness and unto the far Pacific
coast. New England can no more be divorced
from the Union than the maternity of a mother
from her children. That maternity is in their
form and features; it gives the coloring to cheek
and hair; it looks from their eyes, it speaks from
their tongues, it runs in their veins, it beats in their
hearts. Not even by miracle could it be separated
from them.
Separate New England from the Union?  Give
us back our sons and daughters, more than half a
10
i
Ji 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.        11
million of them, from all the homes of the land
outside our borders! Give us back our millions of
capital that have already changed so much of the
western wilderness to a smiling garden; whitened
the length of its rivers with the foam of swift
steamers, and braided over the land the iron strands
of trade and travel; turn back upon us the deep
streams of wealth that flow out annually to those
granaries of the West for their cereal stores!
Give us back the forceful and fruitful words that
have gone forth from her press, her pulpit, her
rostrum of public oratory, from every platform and
every page on which the eloquent lips of her sons
have spoken; words that have quickened and
controlled the intellectual life of generations, and
guided popular movements in every part of the
country; this public speech of New England that
has gone forth free, and fresh, and vital, as the air
of heaven, gather it up and restore it to its authors;
separate it from the popular mind and heart, from
the principles and the practice of our homebred
millions! Give us back the messengers of a pure
Gospel that have gone forth at our sending with
large self-sacrifice, to plant the banner of the cross
in "western wilds," and bear it on in the very van
of our spreading civilization, and with them the
i
'k. 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
churches they have built, and the fair Christian order
they have reared amid the outlawry of frontier
settlements! Give us back the broad bright river
of our charities, that has branched to so many
thresholds of suffering through these four tragic
years! Give us back the brave blood that has
drenched a hundred battle-fields, and reddened the
trail of New England feet wherever the armies of
the Union have marched!
When all this can be done-when the nation will
consent to this-then may men talk about "leaving
New England out in the cold." Till then, her
place is in the warm hearts of the people-her life
mingled with the life of the nation — one and
inseparable."
We have, we may say, in the second place, to
kceep New England undegenerate.
The greatness of New England's influence is not
so much in what she does, as in what she is. The
two go together. When she works, when she
speaks, it is the back-ground of character that
lends to both their weight. Just as when an individual utters his thoughts-it is not so much what
he says as who says it.  The chief emphasis of
words and of deeds comes from the heart of the
doer and the speaker. There is no premium in the
12
f
I 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.        13
sphere of moral power, upon idleness, frivolity, and
corruption. Both for men and for communities, if
we would  have the influence pure and strong,
these attributes must first be demonstrated in the
character. It is when those who speak in the
name of New England can say —  Look at her,"
that their oratory is beyond tongues of flame and
words of fire. We have it in charge then to guard
the purity and nourish the strength of this homelife. The fountain must be full and clear if the
streams are to be pure and copious. We must
keep the New England ideal rounded and perfect
in her actual.
There are some things New England cannot be.
She cannot be the granary of the nation-a great
agricultural producer. A single prairie lot where
the horses trot at the plough in one straight furrow
of miles before they turn, and where, later, the
reapers seem struggling like wrecked mariners in.
the wide, tawny harvest sea,
"Rari nantes in gurgite vasto,"
would swallow as a little morsel all the farming
life within our borders. She cannot be a grower
of tropical fruits and flowers-breathing from red,
ripe lips the fragrance of tropical airs, a tiller of
'k 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
the vine, the orange, and the olive,-a nurse of
pale invalids hurrying from cold coast winds to
seek soft bowers and sunny vales. She cannot
show in her granite cliffs and rude ravines the
yellow, glittering scales to which the greed of all
nations should come rushing and tramplinghewing down her hills and turning her peaceful
wilds back into the bald desolations of old chaos.
But she can be the fountain-head of intelligence
for the people, kindling in every little vale and
hamlet, for the poorest and humblest, the lights of
letters and learning-building on favored heights
her tall towers of Science, to scatter their rays afar,
-calling to her classic halls the wisest teachers of
the day-shedding upon all the paths of her children, from the untiring enginery of her press, the
white leaves of daily knowledge and high research,
as orchard trees shed the blossoms of spring-as
this January sky sheds its snowflakes to-day.  She
can be the schoolmistress of the land, teaching the
alphabet of all good nurture, -leading'er pupils
up through the great volumes of wisdom, and
quarrying out the massive granite of her thoughts
for all intellectual builders.
She can be the mother of art and of invention, so
that the right hand of all labor, whether of the
4
14
0 
IN THE FUTURE OF' OUR COUNTRY.
mind, the shop, or the field, shall stretch itself out
to her for the most facile implements of its craft.
She can be the asserter and defender of all
humane and noble principles, so that every champion of truth and freedom, every lover of the right
and of his fellow-man, shall draw inspiration from
her words and strength from her steadfastness.
She can especially be the mother and nurse of
men. This is her royal staple. The sands of the
Cape are barren and rough, and bleak are the
Berkshire hills; but the barren sands and the bleak
hills grow men. To train the generations of her
sons and daughters is the most peculiar work of
New England within her borders. She does not
put her infants out to nurse.  Her generous breasts
sucklile all her babes. She is to take each new-born
child of every home, and to solve over it this
problem: Given a fresh young life, how to conduct
it to the noblest manhood, the purest womanhood!
From the cradle to the fullest prime-and onward
to the chamber of rest-she is to be to this life
in all its physical, mental, and moral culture, the
institutions that, from first to last, shall develop,
mould, and guard it-the atmosphere that shall fill
its lungs, and drape it round about, a wise and
faithful foster-parent. Beyond all the newer and
I5 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
more unfurnished portions of our country, she is to
provide within her rocky portals a nursery for the
children of the Republic.
There is one word which, more than any other,
holds before our thought the whole New England
ideal. It is not only a descriptive, but an inspiring
word. It leads us back to the presence and the
heroisms of our dead fathers. There throb in it
the stern, strong pulses of martyr life. It is keyed
to the'music of our early forest temples, in which
the Pilgr'imuns worshipped God,
"And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthems of the free."
Oh! that our New England might be, late and
forever, what she was at first-PURITAN!  Once
a word of reproach, veined with sneering irony,
History has written it as our proudest eulogy.
To keep it unblotted down the ages is our most
sacred trust.
For this there must be a real, practical, public
faith in God. WVe must believe that he is a God
nigh at hand, and not afar off. We must not exile
him to the seventh heavens-a cold, remote, hazy
spectre. There must be with us a reverent sense
of his constant presence, and a devout recognition
16
i
-, 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.         17
of the mingling of his counsel and his hand in all
our private and public affairs. How near he was
to our fathers; they walked with him, and talked
with him, and questioned his will at every step of
life!  Their eye sought his, their hand touched his
in every strait.  We  must not be afraid to name
him, and avouch him, and appeal to him, in our
proclamations, and State papers, and  legislative
acts, and judicial decisions. We ought to be afraid
to leave him out, and to withdraw our public life
from the shadow of those tutelar sanctities. If ever
we cease to be here a God-fearing people; if we
drift away from the faith of a divine, revealed
religion, and its rightful control of human affairs;
if we give up the Christian Sabbath as an effete
instittition; if we discard the Bible as God's code
of laws for individuals and for States; if we dissociate politics and religion, breaking  up the old
Puritan bridal, which wedded them, and pronounced
over them this nuptial benediction, "What  God
hath joined together, let not man put asunder;"
if we make our public days of thanksgiving and of
humiliation, mere festive  holidays, in which we
seek our own pleasure rather than to please and
propitiate God; if we divorce thus the voice of the
State, the course of law, the decrees of justice, and
3
0
*A 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
the popular life, from the word and authority of
God, we shall have emptied our old baptismal name
of all its significance,-keeping the form but not
the life, the shadow not the substance,-and in that
hour and in that act the sceptre of New England's
power will be broken, her crown lost, and her
banner that she planted in the wilderness, with
its ancient heraldry, " Christo et ecclesice," trail
dishonored in the dust.
Let all of us rather conspire to lift up again the
old Puritanic ideal. "It is certain," declares one
of the early New England voices, " that civil
dominion was but the second motive, religion the
primary one, with our ancestors in coming hither.
... It was not so much their design to establish
religion for the benefit of the State, as civil government for the benefit of religion." Another voice,
a century earlier, testified that the fathers "came
not hither for the world, or for land, or for traffic;
but for religion, and for liberty of conscience in the
worship of God, which was their only design."
This sacred interest was first everywhere.    As
near the law of God as they can be," was the
instruction of the General Court of Massachusetts,
in old time, to its committee appoipted to frame
laws for the Commonwealth.
18
f
i 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
Only in the reproduction and general diffusion
of this spirit can we hope to make the New
England of the past, the New  England of the
future, a power and a glory in the land.
Looking forward now and beyond our own
confines, we may say, in the third place, that it
belongs to us to live in and for the future of the
whole country.
This, too, is one part of our inheritance from a
Puritan ancestry. Our fathers were builders for
the future.  They lived for all the coming ages.
They laid deep foundations whereon they hoped
there might rise, after their day, the walls of a
Christian empire, to stand until earth's " cloud
capt towers" should fall. We are fond of saying,
"they builded more grandly  than they  knew."
Perhaps that is true in respect to the political
fabric of which they laid the corner-stone, and
the material results that have followed their work.
But they had a vision of a spiritual temple that
should rise from their humble  beginnings, until
its dome should span the continent and its arches
echo the psalms of meeting and mingling nations.
Foundation-work is congenial to the sons of New
England. It runs in our blood to be pioneers of
a spreading Christian civilization.
19
i
IN 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
We must look forward, for our past is brief.
It is kindling and inspiring, but it is yet fresh
and new. We have no calendar of hoary centuries, stocked with events and revolutions that
have marked off the eras of history, and rich with
the spoils of time. Compared with the life of nations
and the courses of history, we began but yesterday. Looking back a glance reaches the starting point. More naturally we turn our gaze
forward. Not records, but prophecies, hold our
eyes.  Untempted to live on the glories of a dead
ancestry, we  are inspired to do  something  for
our posterity to commemorate.
We must look forward, for our ideal is higher
than we have reached. We may have been vain
and boastful, but none of us can believe that the
summit of American greatness has been reached.
The magnificent capabilities of the continent and
the adaptation of our forms of life to all possible
p r o g r e s s on such a theatre, rebuke our complacency in the past and hold in prospect a
sublime goal for which we have yet to gird up
our loins and run.
We  must  look  forward,  because  revolution
leaves us not a finished task, but only a clear
track.  Give  us  peace  and  victory  to-morrow,
I
20 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
and it brings us only a vacation from fighting,
none from work. Revolution does not create a
civilization.  It opens the door and ushers it in, if
it be prepared. If this revolution of ours succeed
fully, it will have helped to rid us of some malign
forces in the development of American life-at
least, of some incarnations of those forces-it will
deliver into our hands a nation saved from crumbling apart; - but what this nation shall be and do,
what it shall live for and realize, is a problem
that would yet remain.
Nations must work as God works on the earth,
for something yet beyond and numatured.  When
they pause and say, this is the limit and con summation of our doing, he will say of each of
them, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the
ground?" At every stage of progress they must
renew their devotion to what is incomplete in the
divine scheme for man. Casting off all dead and
useless appendages, burning their ships behind
them as they touch new shores of discovery and
conquest, they must follow hard after the guiding
steps that are tracking man's way to the calm
heights of a perfect social state.
We may ask, then, in the fourth place, what
are the specific tasks to which we are to address
21
i 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
ourselves in working for the future of the whole
country?
The nearest duty of all is to push this war
triumphantly  through.   Persistent  rebellion  is
alone responsible for all the blood and treasure
it shall yet cost to maintain the supremacy of
the government. That supremacy can only be
maintained by showing its power to be, as well
as its right to be, when both are called in question. Let no sign.of weariness or impatience
in the protracted struggle come from us, while a
rebel banner taints the air. The length of the
war has been absolutely indispensable for the full
sense of nationality- the unity and authority of
the Federal Government, to enter and possess the
hearts of the people-for the radical revolutionizing of the old social system of the South-for
the education of the masses up to the political
and moral issues of the present hour. Let no
voice among us call for peace while treason stands
erect and defiant. Let no sigh of complaint
freight any wind that blows from the North
toward the Capitol. To every fresh call.for men
let us  give  quick,  consenting  response.  The
armies that have been marching through the
summer  and  autumn  from  victory to victory,
22 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
must needs  find their ranks  thinner;  and  the
final strokes are yet to be delivered. We have
to fill the ranks, to stimulate enlisting, to sound
the call for volunteers at all the gateways of our
hills and in the streets of our towns, to compensate the forsaken tasks of labor's thrifty hands, to
keep a light on the hearth of the absent soldier's
home for his wife and babes, and bread on the
board, and "the wolf from the door."  "Fight it
through!"   Let the press emblazon it, morning
and evening. Let the ministry of Him who
came  to  send  the  sword on earth before  his
reign of peace, give it voice. Let legislation in
town and State give it all helpful, practical
endorsement. Let the whole heart of New England give it clear and ringing echo. And here,
especially, where the word was first spoken that
broke the silent terror of the beginning, let that
sound have once more full volume and cheerful
tone:  "The sons of Massachusetts, to the rescue!"
WVe have, of course, a duty of ceaseless vigilance.   The transition periods of  a nation's life
are perilous crises. They inaugurate the dynasties
of moral forces that are to sway the sceptre for
a cycle whose diameter no man call calculate. The
fortunes of this nation  are in transition  now.
23 
24           -THE- WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
We  have reached the line, sailing on in the Ship
of State, and are crossing it into seas unploughed
before. In respect to opinions, morals, public
leaders, society and institutions, we are leaving
the old and entering upon the new. On the
other side of this great chasm that separates our
past from our future, our national story is to
begin afresh —our annals to open a new volume.
Public sentiment is to be reformed. New banners
are to float in the van of national progress. We
are to take down and rebuild many  a shattered
line of our walls of empire. We are to legislate
and to act upon novel questions, without precedents.
What shall we carry on with us? What shall
we leave behind? What new elements shall come
in to leaven the whole lump-what old elements
shall be extirpated or neutralized? What things
vital and precious, the legacy of the past, shall be
studiously garnered up?  What dead weights shall
be thrown off? Who will watch to see that no
divine gift of the old' civilization is dropped outno seed principle of our earlier liberties and
evangelisms blown away or smothered —no ancient
guaranties of public faith and honor and popular privilege weakened or forgotten? Who will
scrutinize  as carefully the  forces  that  harness
i
I
I/ 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
themselves to the onward movement, and make
sure that no wanton, profane hand lay hold of the
sacred ark of our hopes-that no seed principle
of mischief  be  sown  where  many  hands  are
scattering grain broadcast-that no insidious
attempt to twine around our swelling limbs fetters
that shall one day cripple our growth and our free
motion, shall prosper?
This is precisely the demand that invokes New
England intervention. Her weight in the wavering scales of our public destinies is not the weight
o f numbers, nor of territorial greatness  and
promise          -nor of political predominance.   The
centre of political power has forever receded from
the East. It will visit no more the Atlantic slope
of the Alleghanies. It is crossing meridian after
meridian, westward still. Let it pass. Our moral
sceptre remains. It is open to us still to sway the
nation b    y the force of ideas-to rule through the
royalty of principles that can never be discrowned.
Let the questions which we have just asked get
their clear and authoritative answers in the voice
and        the attitude of this little sisterhood of commonwealths, and we rule the  confederacy still.
But       we must look well at the foundation of the
principles which we attempt to assert and main               4
25
I 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
tain.  They must have an unquestionable right of
supremacy. They must be royal "jure divino."
They must be no temporary policies and expediencies, but  everlasting facts and  laws.  They
must take hold of what is imperishable-have
their roots in the very nature of God, and be
linked to the car of His omnipotent providence.
The divineness of government, the supremacy of
law, order imperial, human equality, the inalienable
rights of man, intelligence, freedom, law and
religion, the four immovable pillars of communal
peace and perpetuity; standing by these, holding
and teaching this faith, New England will be a
power in the Union forever.
For these principles, then, she must be jealous
with an infinite jealousy in watching the country
through this present crisis. This is the turn of
the fever.  There  must be  no  negligence nor
slumbering now. Every change must be noted.
Every pulse must be felt. The slightest aberration
is of moment.  We must be Argus-eyed,. so that
no future disaster shall impeach our vigilance in
this critical hour.
Another duty of ours concerns the deliverance
of this land from the bondage of the past. That
deliverance is not yet complete.  For one, I am
I
26
I 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
restless and anxious until that consummation
come.
We have been in covenant with a great wrong.
We admitted it into partnership with our national
life. We awarded it rights and immunities. It
proved itself a fraudulent partner from the beginning, but we were held by the bond. We kept it.
There was an inherent incompatibility, but the
covenant remained. Through all this time our
proper national civilization was not born, but only
conceived. Jacob and Esau struggled together
in this pregenital  strife-never  dissociated-the
one clasping the other's heel.
It was meant that this land should be a home
of liberty and justice, for all God's creatures to
the end of time; that the rights of man should
stand and grow here as the old forests of
the wilderness had stood and grown, their roots
striking deep downward, their tops branching
upward to the open, free heaven, their arms
intertwining, and the streams of a continent
watering their lusty life. There was to be one
land on the face of the earth in which political
and religious freedom should walk over its length
and breadth without let or threat; one where
there should be on the body and on the soul no
4
27 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
chain. So our founders builded. So our fathers
and mothers suffered, and wrought, and prayed.
And the new temple of promise rose fair and
stately, and its light streamed afar, and many
feet, weary and wounded, hastened thither to rest
within this secure asylum. But alas, what shrines
were built within!  Was there one to a pure faith?
Was there another to equal law? Was there a
third to maiden Liberty? But what other fourth
shrine is that, grim  and dark, crowding  these
three; what grisly demon sat within, usurping
place in that fair fellowship?
Alas, for the new hope, and the new nation,
and the new world! Alas, for our bright western
star, so soon turning wan and dim!
But God had not joined this compact with evil.
His hands were not tied, if ours were. He has a
way of annulling covenants with crime. He found
the means to shatter our inviolable bond. He
sent the earthquake of revolution to shake down
the demon shrined in our sacred temple. It stood
strong. It had its foundation deep, and had been
buttressed with massive masonry.  It was clamped
and riveted to the temple walls with many a bolt
of iron. But the earthquake was stronger yet.
It shook and heaved and wrenched apart till it
28
t 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
seemed as though the temple itself would fall.
Many said, it will fall. It did, indeed, tremble
and rock, and its lights were shivered. But it
stands yet, with tower and dome catching the
light of earliest and latest day;  and the dark
shrine is overturned.   It lies prostrate  and in
ruins.  Its horrid deity is fallen-like Philistia's
Dagon before the ark-maimbd and broken, with
the stump only remaining. Thus is the bond
parted.  Thus the covenant ceases.  And we have
to watch now that no hand rebuilds that demolished shrine; that no malign craft sets up Dagon's
stump again  in our  great  temple.  Surely,  we
have felt the curse of this corroding bond long
enough. Shall we ever bow our necks to it again?
Shall we suffer any man among men, or any fiend
from below, to press its poisonous links into our
flesh once more? We have the shattered materials
of that dark altar to sweep out of the consecrated
temple, the last vestige of that horrid idolatry to
banish and bury forever. This work is not yet
done.  It needs finishing.  There are those who
would knit again the ruptured strands of the old,
rent covenant. Men of New England, legislators
of Massachusetts, suffer this never to be! Here,
where the m. ost strenuous voices of the great
29
I 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
reformation have been uttered from the beginning,
let them still sound forth, full and  clear.   You
will have to watch against cunning, selfishness,
and intrigue;  against  many  a nobler sentiment
of mistaken generosity and magnanimity, and
lingering reverence for the Constitution as it was
-and against that foul monster, fouler and more
misshapen than Satan saw sitting portress at the
gate of hell-PARTY SPIRIT.  I do not feel safe
or at peace, while any legal remnant of this
accursed thing clings to us.  See to it, that this
bondage of the past be utterly and forever doomed.
Take you care that this incubus of evil never
more throne itself upon our national life.
From this last point, we may rise to a higher
and more general affirmation. We must see to it,
that the whole course of this government, both in
its constitutional law, and  in its pubic admitnistration, shall be deternmined by strict right and
divine principle.
Have we or have we not yet learned the
lesson, that evil built into the templed life of a
people is an element of weakness and corruption
in the structure?  It may seem to the builders a
necessity. The whole work may pause as though
there could be no further progress without allowing
30 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
the wrong a place. Admitting it, the walls may go
swiftly up, as though vindicating the expediency
of the measure, by a success fair and grandand not else possible. But God has taught us
that this demonstration is a delusion and a terrible
mistake. The columns so reared have to be taken
down again; that is the divine teaching. It is
not real progress to build in with evil that the
work may go swiftly forward. It goes swiftly to
decay. All that is built upon it is lost labor. It
cannot stand. While God reigns, nothing propped
with wrong shall remain firm. That crumbling
support will one day fail, and the superincumbent
pile lean to its fall.  Nothing but truth and right
will stand. There is not a trumpet tone so loud
in all history as that which proclaims it now, that
our national disaster is the fruit of national crime
the issue of mingling evil with the foundations
of the republic.  Are we not educated yet into
the conviction that we must build altogether in
righteousness, if we build for posterity anl the
golden future?  Have  we  not acquired  a  conscience yet, in the heart of this American people?
Shall we not walk at length by its light, without
swerving?
31
w 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
What is God's idea in a great nation? Merely
the better  carrying  on  of commerce  and the
elaboration of the art of comfortable living? Is
it not that it shall stand the noblest representation
of the principles of His own supreme government;
nay, the actual vice-regency of his sceptre among
men; a temple of concrete justice, in which no
right shall suffer harm, and no wrong find a
shelter? If in any of its decrees and procedures
it contradict his attributes, malign his character
and annul his statutes, will he accept it as his
ideal, and write upon its front "esto _perpetua?"
Will He not write that other sentence in the old
Hebrew-m ene, mrne    kel, upharsin?
We  are rebuilding here; we must take better
care this time. It should seem enough to say that
right is right, -but we must add that right is
safety, right is perpetuity, right is immortality.
Wrong is death and destruction, wrong is treason
and disloyalty.   We  are taking stern measures
with rebellion now.   But every seeming patriot
who consents to aniy unrighteousness in the reconstructed nation is a more insidious and a more
deadly traitor to the Union than any man with arms
in his hands in all the rebel hosts.
32 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
In this task of rebuilding, only the most resolute
steadfastness, only the most sleepless vigilance will
keep evil out. The demand will be incredibly
urgent.   " Yield  here!"   " Give  way  there! "
" Consent to this unimportant compromise and
embarrassment will be obviated, and all will go
smoothly!"   The pinch will be the sorest when
rebellion collapses. With the rebels at our feet
suing for terms, we shall remember that they were
our brothers. All our generous sensibilities will be
moved toward them. Our bowels will yearn over
them. We shall feel that we cannot be hard with
them. We shall be put upon our magnanimity.
We  shall take them by the hand and lift them
tenderly up.  We  shall be inclined to give. them
more than they would have the face to ask.  We
shall desire to show them that the hand that struck
down their parricidal weapons was never a hand of
hate,-but of grieved and reluctant justice.  That
will be  a perilous hour  for the constancy of
principle.  Then, when any voices ask us if the
name and in the spirit of fraternal conciliation to
welcome the erring and the conquered back with
their old properties and relations, including some
remnant of the ancient wrong, or some new
vicarious wrong, it will be hard to' resist. There
5
33
p 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
is, of course, a place and a sphere for compromise.
We  may  yield our interest, we  may  forego
advantage, we may waive opinion and preference
for peace and harmony; but we have it as the most
solemn charge of these years of violence and
blood, to yield nothing of righteousness and justice
to any demand for any gain so long as the world
standeth.
It is a part of our work which ought to have
distinct and formal mention, to deepen in the hearts
of the peo]ple the sentiment of the sacredness of
government. There has been in the very nature of
our institutions a chronic and growing strain upon
this sentiment. Everything in this land tends to
the elevation of the individual. We teach that
each man, standing erect in the image of his God,
is the peer of every other. We provide for the
largest training of the individual. He is a graduate
of the schools. He is master of tongue and
pen. He is a reader of books. He takes at least
a daily newspaper; perhaps he posts himself morning and evening upon all the progress of thought
and the chronicle of events. He has his opinions.
He embraces, it may be, some system of social and
political philosophy. More frequently he holds to
tenets and prejudices, which are his own and
34
f 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
unshared. He is the architect of his own fortunes.
Every track is free to him. He may aspire hopefully in any direction, and cut for himself steps to
any eminence of name, and place, and power. IHe
has his own religious training and religious creed,
with no State establishment to coerce him into
uniformity.   He looks up to  no man.   He  is
dependent upon no one. He brooks interference
from none.
The  nation  is bristling all over with  these
individualities,   as isolated and distinct, and as
sharp as the quills of the "fretful porcupine."
How can these millions of independent thinkers be
made to see alike, feel alike, and act alike in the
matter of the common supremacy of government?
The more intelligent and self-reliant they become,
the more complete each separate manhood is, the
more difficult the problem grows. How can you
make any two or more of such constituents take
the same yoke and wear it peacefully together?
What but anarchy can come of such diverse and
resolute elements?
Now if government were something that existed
here independently of these self-poised minds,
framed for them, laid upon them, with an inherent
power to be and to constrain subordination, the
35 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
conditions of the problem were instantly changed.
But with all this independence of thought and
opinion, each man is himself clothed with political
power. He is a sovereign. There is none above
him.  He is himself a maker and administrator of
laws. Of these millions of sovereigns how will you
make one harmonious, self-consistent, and authori tative sovereignty?
Government is their creature, not their monarch.
How will you teach them to revere what their
hands have made? They will the government into
being.  If it doesn't please them they can take it
down and set up another. Is it natural that they
should fall before it and do it homage? All
public officials are their servants, whom they have
invested with liveries, and to whom they pay wages.
Is it to be expected that they should kiss the feet
of their servants? They feel that it is their right
and their duty to watch, to criticize and to rebuke
these public servants; and in this duty they cheer filly abound. Is this the way to cultivate reverence
and submission?
How obvious is it that the maintenance of
government, and especially the hallowing of its
authority over such a constituency of free, intelli gent, independent, and sovereign minds, is one of
36
I 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
those problems concerning which there is always
the hazard of an ill-omened issue. Disloyalty and
treason, and sympathy with both are the logical
inference of this inflated sense of the popular
relation to the government of the land.
We need to insist upon the divineness of human
government. Our children must be taught it from
the cradle, that however constituted, "the powers
that be are ordained of God." If men. elect, God
crowns.  If we lead our rulers to the chair of state,
God puts  the  sceptre into their hands.   They
become then, not our officials, but His. They are
the servants, not of popular caprice, nor the will of
majorities, they are the servants of the Throned
Justice, the supreme Right.
The natural philosophy of government ought
to have clearer, more nimpressive, and more constant
explication in all the literature that trains the
American mind. Our school books, the press, the
rostrum, the pulpit, should discuss with more
earnestness and more simplicity, the fundamental
principles of that philosophy.
If men are to dwell together in communities,
there must, of course, be social order. The opposite
of this is anarchy, chaos.  For order there must
be law,-equal, impartial, universal law.
37
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THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
For the supremacy of law there must be administrative authority, -the right and the power to
institute and enforce law.
For the ground of this right, the charter of this
authority, we come back again to the will of God,
who accepts earthly magistracies as his vicegerents, and clothes them with his own delegated
sanctity.
There is no land under heaven that so needs the
popular demonstration and the constant iteration
of these truths as ours. And it is but the nearest
inference to add, that there is none where the
righteousness of the statute and the purity of the
magistrate are more closely connected with the
sacredness of the government in the popular heart.
Civil enactments, whose inspiration is partisan
intrigue, or mercenary favoritism-an unjust ruler,
setting up the dynasty of his own passions, prejudices and partialities-a corrupt legislator, writing
in the statute book with unclean hands-a magistrate swayed by self-interest, and purchasable with
gold,-these give public contradiction to their
divine paternity, and make contempt of government and revolt against law the instinct of all
noble natures. So far as the popular faith goes,
the legitimacy of civil government, as an ordinance
38
I 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
of Heaven, runs in the channel of purity and
equity. For public impression, the proof of divine
authorship halts when the divine likeness fails. If
we would keep men's hearts among us loyal to
civil authority, and help to make the Supremacy of
Law inviolable through the land, we have it in
solemn charge to guard the avenues to power from
all profane approach, and to exercise the functions
of office, legislative and executive, in all honesty
and good conscience.
I think it is worthy, also, of a moments separate
plea, that we utter the sentiments and beliefs of
New England in full, clear, unequivocal speech.
We must hold fast here to our birthright of free
thought and free speech. There is nothing that
concerns the honor and progress of the nation, or
the rights of humanity, in reference to which it is
not our privilege to inquire, to form our conclusions,
and to declare them in the hearing of our fellowmen. Every principle, every measure that seeks
ascendancy in this land,-every ancient, every fresh
founded institution, we have a right to discuss.
Whatever subtle leaven would insinuate itself into
the life of the nation-whatever comes to us with
the imposing front of precedent and authority, and
assumes the prerogative to control our history, we,
39 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
may use our sharpest faculties to search out, and
to show forth their nature and their claim. The
honest thoughts-the deep convictions-the intense
sympathies of our New England hearts, frankly
and boldly uttered, have been no mean power in the
nation in rectifying public sentiment, undermining
the security of wrong, and preparing the national
mind for generous and radical progress.  There
have been those who would have laid a finger of
iron on New England's lips, and silenced her faithful witness. But she keeps her birthright yet.
Let her guard it well for the future. Let her
maintain her right to question, to, investigate, to
form her opinion upon the wisdom and the morality
of all that courts the popular suffrage, not as one
ambitious to hold a barren sceptre, but earnest to
pour her own copious life into the public veins for
the health and vigor of the nation's being. This
is one imperial prerogative of New England, one
most sacred obligation, to overstep her own boundaries with -the forceful moral influence of her public
testimony against all civil and social wrong; her
strong protective plea for every imperilled right.
Our numbers are few and our territory small; we
have no Valley Stream flowing from our hills
through the length of the northern continent. But
40 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
from the pure cool fountains of these moral and
intellectual heights we may send forth a ceaseless
utterance for truth, right, and liberty,-a deep,
broad river, watering all the land.
There will come upon us soon a call to help
repeople and resettle a desolate South. There is
one symbol of prophecy upon the brow of which we
might, write as its most fitting interpretation this
word-WAR.   It  is that  " fourth beast," that
Daniel saw in his night vision, rising out of the
"great sea,"-" dreadful, and terrible, and strong,
exceedingly;  and  it had great iron teeth;  it
devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the
residue, with the feet of it." Under these horrid
hoofs, many parts of the South have become a
waste'more dreary than any untamed wilderness.
In the wilderness of savage nature there is nothing
suggestive of violence and destruction. But in
following the track of an invading army, we walk
amid the wreck of what was once fair and
blooming order.
The fences are gone from the fields once
bearing up thrifty tillage and rich harvests.
Granaries and barns have sunk into black heaps
of coal and cinder. The lone chimney tells where
the peaceful cottage  rose.  A  ranker growth of
6
6
41
6 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
tangled weeds betrays the site of the garden.
Rows of stumps recall the once fruitful orchard.
The level fields of the farm have been ridged up
with earth-works, and ditched with rifle-pits. In
the once companionable hamlet not a dweller
remains. A house or two may yet be standing
above the blackened ruins of its fellows, but without
doors or window lights, and with wind and storm
sweeping through its dismal chambers. Fragments
of household furniture lie scattered around, half
embedded in the earth. A school-house or a
church at the fork of confluent roads, show in their
pierced and shattered walls, how the meeting tides
of battle surged around that salient angle. Within,
the floor has been rudely cleared, for what purpose
many a dull stain on the boards gives testimony.
The public roads lead you to the bank of bridgeless
rivers. There are no vehicles of travel remaining,
no implements of husbandry, no tools of art.  No
flocks nor herds wander in the pastures, no beasts
of draft or burden wait for the harness. The
narrow, curving level keeps the memorial of the
railway; but the sleepers are burned, and the iron
twisted into rusty contortions. Civilization must
begin again with all her tasks repeated, and these
melancholy ghosts haunting the scenes of her old
42 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
triumphs. Immense regions at the South, are thus
blighted. The obduracy of rebellion, and rebellion
is still obdurate, has brought upon itself this
unsparing scourge.
It seems to me that this tenacity of purpose with
the southern leaders and ruling classes, is of God.
It wears the aspect of a judicial decree. It is like
the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, that the whole
southern system of life, labor and society may be
drowned together in this red sea-and not a
vestige of the old malign civilization of that
portion of our country, survive these bloody years.
Upon such a radical devastation there will come
in our new duties, to explore these wastes-to map
out the vast territories over which the ploughshare
of extermination has been driven-to open up the
promise of these fertile and masterless estates to
the keen eyes of northern thrift and the hurrying
tread of emigrant feet-to Americanize the new
busy marches that will soon press, with mightier
armies, and with more peaceful weapons- those
silent fields -and to send thither the seeds of
New England life and institutions, to be scattered
broadcast and first of all to occupy the ground.
There will be also a work, worthy our best
endeavors, to bring up, ennoble and save a degraded
43 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
remnant of southern population. Here all that is
generous and charitable, all that is magnanimous
and forgiving in the heart of New England, will
have free scope. We shall have to show our former
enemies how sincerely and truly we can be, and are
their friends. We shall have to bless them in
spite of their prejudices and all the depressing
weight of their old habits. We shall have to show
them how much better we can do for them than
they have ever done for themselves. We shall need
to parcel out for them new estates-to organize for
them home industries-to put into their hands the
implements of various work-to help them lift a
roof-tree over their heads-to inspire them with
hope, diligence, economy, and the ambition for selfimprovement-to set before them on their own soil,
the models of our own sweet and comfortable
domestic life-to build schoolhouses and churches
and send them teachers and preachers, and sift into
all their brightning consciousness the light of
letters, the issues of the daily press, and-a fresh,
healthful, evangelical literature. This grand charity
will tax our faith and our self-denial to the utmost
for years to come. How many voices will call
mournfully to us throughout this bereaved and
and desolate South!  What fragments of broken
44 
IN THE FUTURE 0O1 OUR COUNTRY.
homes will appeal to us! How many wandering
fugitives, not knowing on which side the grave
their kindred are; houseless, friendless, penniless,
with tragic memories behind them and no light of
hope before, will wait our coming to bless them
with a shelter  and renew for them some  faint
interest in life.
Of course the future of the African R?ace in this
land, is a problem that will press us as it will press
the whole country with its urgent and difficult
conditions. This land that has held them in
bondage, will have to give them a home. This
nation that has been to them a taskmaster, will have
to be a foster-parent and a protector. With their
restored manhood, they must have such a start in
respect to their material interest, and their social
prospects, as well as in all that relates to their
intellectual, moral, and religious nurture, that the
future shall, if possible, if they enter its open door,
grandly overpay their sorrowful past. For this full
redemption of the emancipated slave, New Elhgland
must by wise and unstinted charities, by generous
legislation and by all social magnanimities, do her
royal share.
This is a glance only at the tasks crowding in
upon us in the days that now are and the days that
I 
45
I 
THIE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
are to come. It covers but a small part of the
whole field of our duty to our age and our race.
But there is enough in these few specifications to
invoke our most strenuous diligence, our loftiest
consecration. It rests with us, and those who shall
succeed us, to make this New England of ours,by her pure life and steadfast principle, her just
laws, beneficent institutions and stainless morals,
her clear and commanding utterance for immortal
right, her public and private charities, her sense of
the grandeur of the ordeal through which this
nation and all it involves of hope and promise for
man is passing now, and above all her faithful
adherence to the original ideal of a Puritan Commonwealth, walking and talking with God, and
holding His will everywhere supreme,-an angel of
mercy and guidance to our whole land, for this
and for all after times.
We congratulate the State rather than his Excellency that this occasion signals no retirement from
the chair of her chief magistracy. It was not
needed for him, for any completeness of personal
or official honor, for the very summit of a just and
wide fame that the people of Massachusetts should
once more with such large consent put the reins
of her public affairs into those tried and skilful
46 
IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.
hands.   She honors herself most by so placing
this high trust. She knows, and beyond her
borders the central govenment and the nation know,
with what prescient forecast, what timely providence, what hopeful courage, what unquenchable
loyalty, what indefatigable diligence, and what
thoughtful tenderness her administration at home
and abroad has been conducted through these dark
days of revolution and conflict. Her internal order
and prosperity, her renown in the high places of
the field, both the spirit and the comfort of her
sons doing brave battle for the sacred flag, her
weight in the scale of right on the grave questions
of the hour, are the bright record which justifies
the inference that she is governed well.
If we could spare you, sir, we would give you
release from these solemn cares, and follow you
with our commemorative gratitude into the peaceful
retirement of private life. But in these stern days
of work, when our whole New England has so
much to do to inaugurate the elect and waiting
future, we pile our public burdens upon you once
more, and beseech the God of our fathers to
give you strength to bear them as worthily in
the year to come as in these historic years that
have gone.
47
of 
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND.
And may the gentlemen of the Senate, the
Council, and the House of Representatives,-called
of their fellow citizens to the discharge of duties
which would at any time have invoked their best
wisdom and highest fidelity, be quickened to discern
at what a point they stand in the history and
fortunes of the republic, and the lengthening scroll
of human progress; and forgetting their own ease
and emolument, and rising above every personal
and private interest, give to the care of the State,
and the honor and safety of the nation in these
troubled times, all their heart, and all their soul,
and all their mind, and all their strength!
And before the term of official duty which opens
for you to-day shall have run out, may we be called
to join, with all the people of the land, in keeping
such a day of public thanksgiving to Almighty
God as has never gathered our joy and praise in
the past, -over a nation saved, united, free, at
peace with itself, with all the world and with the
Throne of Infinite Justice and Goodness!
48