VERED Anwmfi

_ ANNIVERSARY A on 1m: ‘ NATIONAL   
¢r‘émEpy,N1):ENGE OFAMERIOA. A " A

O R ALT I O N I  
DELIVERED BEFORE THE CITY AUTHORITIES AT BOSTON,

ON THE

EIG.-HTEEEVIENTI-I ANNIVERSARY 0E THE NATIONAL
INDEPENDENCE OE AMERICA.

1%

BY’

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

  A PHILADELPHIA: .
PRINTED FOR GRATUITOUS DISTRIBUTION.
I 1863. * I  

  ORATION.

FELLOW-Orrrznus AND Fnrmvns:

It is our first impulse, upon this returning day of our Nation’s
birth, to recall Whatever is happiest and noblest in our past
history, and to join our voices in celebrating the statesmen
and the heroes, the men of thought and the men of action, to

, whom that history owes its existence. In other years this

leasing, ioffice may have been all that was required of the
holiday speaker. But to-day, when the very life of the nation
is threatened, when clouds are thick about us, and men’s hearts
are throbbing with passion, or failing with fear, it is the living
question of the hour, and not the dead story of the past, which
forces itself into all minds, and will find unrebuked debate in
all assemblies. ~ g i

In periods of disturbance like the present, many persons
who sincerely love their pountry and mean to do their duty, to
her,‘disappoint the hopes and expectations of those who are
actively working in her cause. They seem to have lost What»
ever moral force they may have once possessed, and to go drift-
ing about from one profitless discontent to another, at a time
when every citizen is called upon for cheerful, ready service.
It is because their minds are bewildered, and they are no longer
truly themselves. ' Show them the path of duty, inspire them
with hope for the future, lead them upward from the turbid
stream of events to the bright, translucent springs of eternal
principles,--—--strengthen their trust in humanity, and their faith
in God, and you may yet restore them to their’ manhood and
their country. , l g V

‘ At all times, and especially on this anniversary of glorious
recollections and kindly enthusiasms, We should try to judge the
Weak andiwavering souls of our brothers fairly and generously.
The conditions in which our vast community of peace-loving
citizens find themselves, are new and unprovided for. Our
quiet burghers and farmers are in the position of river-‘-boats
blown from their is moorings outupon a vast ocean, wheresuch

at typhoon is raging as no mariner who sails its Waters‘ ever,

4.-

before looked upon. ‘If their beliefs change with the veering
of the blast, if their trust in their fellow-men, and in the course
of Divine Providence seems wellnigh shipwrecked, we must
remember that they were taken unawares, and without the pre-
paration which could fit themitostrupggle withthese tempestuous
elements. In times like these, the faith iséi the man; and they
to whom it is given ‘in larger measure, owe a special duty to
those who for want of it are faint at heart, uncertain in speech,
feeble in effort, and purposeless in aim;

7 Assuming without argument a few simple propositions : that
self-governmenti is the natural condition of an adult society,
as distinguished from the immature state, in whichthe tempo;

rary arrangements of monarchy and oligarchy are toleratedtasi

conveniences; that the end of all soclal compacts is or ought
to be to give every child born into the world the fairest chance

to make the most and the best of itself that laws can give it;
. that Liberty, the one of the two claimants who swears that

her babe shall not be split in halves, and divided between them,
is the true mother of this blessed Union; that the contest in
which we are engaged is one of principles overlaid by circum-
stances ; that the longer we fight, and the more we study the
movements of events and ideas, the more clear we findthe moral
nature of the cause at issue emerging in the field and in the
study; that all honest persons with average natural sensibility,
with respectable understanding, educated in the school of north-
ern teaching, will have eventually ta range themselves in the
armed or unarmed host which fights or pleads for freedom, as
against every form of tyranny; if not in the front rank now,
then in the rear ‘rank by—-and-by ; assuming these propositions,
as many, perhaps most of us, are ready to do, and believing
that the more theyare debated before the public, the more they
will gain converts, we owe it to the timid and the doubting to

keep thegreat questions of the time in unceasing and untiring 

agitation. They must be discussed in all ways consistent with
the public welfare, by different classes of thinkers; by priests
and laymen; by statesmen and simple voters; by moralists and
lawyers; by men of science and uneducated hand-laborers; by
men of facts and figures, and by men of theories and aspira-
tions ; in the abstract and inthe concrete; discussed and re-
discussed every month, every week, every day, and almost
every hour, as theatelegraph tells us of some new upheaval or
subsidence of the rocky base of our political order,

  Such discussions may not be necessary to strengthen the con-
victions of the great body of loyal citizens. They may do
nothingtoward changing the views of those, if such there be,

5

as some profess to believe, who follow politics as at trade. They
may have nb hold upon that class of persons who are defective
in moral sensibility, just as other persons are deficient in an ear
for music. But for the” honest, vacillati.ng minds, the tender
consciences supported by the tremulous knees of an infirm in-‘
telligence, the timid compromisers who are a_lvtays trying to
curve the stra.ight lines and round the sharp angles of eternal
law,” the continual debate of these living questions is the one
ofiered means of grace and hope of earthly redemption. And
thus a true, unhesitating patriot may be willing to listen with
patience to arguments which he does not need, to appeals which
have no special significance for him, in the hope that some less
clear in mind or less courageous in temper may profit by them.

i As We look at the condition in vvhicli We find ourselves on
this fourth day of July, 1868, in the 88th year of American
Independence, 'vve may well ask ourselves what right We have
to indulge in public rejoicings. If the War in which we are
engaged is _an accidental one, which might have been avoided
but for our fault ; if it is for any ambitious or unworthy pur-A
pose on our part; if it is hopeless, and we are madly persist-
ing in it; if it is our duty and in our power to make a safe
and honorable peace, and We refuse to do it; if our free insti-
tutions are in danger of becoming subverted, and giving place

to an irresponsible tyranny; if we are moving in the narrow.

circles which are to engulf us in national ruin ; then We had
better sing a dirge and leave this idle assemblage, and hush

the noisy cannon which are reverberating through the air, and

tear down the, scaffolds which are soon to blaze with fiery7sym—
bols ; for it is mourning andnot oy that should cover the land;
there should be silence, and not the echo of noisy gladness in
our streets; and the emblems with which we tell our nation’s
story and pre-_-figure its future, should be traced not in fire but

in ashes. ‘

If, on the other hand, this war is no accident, but an inevi-
table result of long incubating causes; inevitable as the cata—
clysms that swept away the monstrous births of primeval na-
ture; if it is for no mean, unworthy end, but for nations‘ ”.'..'L,
for liberty everytvhere, for humanit , for the kingdom of God
on earth; if it is” not hopeless, bu only growing to such di-
mensions that the World shall remember the final triumph of
right throughout all time; if there is no safe and honorable
peace for us but a peace proclaimed from the capital of every
revolted province in thename of the sacred, inviolable Union;
if the fear of tyranny is a phantasm conjured up by the imagi-
nation of the Weak acted on by the craft of the cunning ; if so,

6

far from circling inward to the gulf of our perdition, the move-
ment of past years is reversed, and every revolution carries us
farther and farther from the centre of the vortex, until, by
God’s blessing, We shall soon find durselves freed from the
outermost coil of the accursed spiral ;--—-—if all these things are
true; if we may hope to make them seem true, or even prob-
able, to the doubting soul in an hour’s discourse, then we may
join without madness in the day’s exultant festivities ; the bells
may ring, the cannons may roar, the incense of our harmless
saltpetre fill the air, and the children who are to inherit the
fruit of ‘these toiling, agonizing years, go about unblamed,

 making day and night vocal with their jubilant patriotism.

The struggle in which we are engaged was inevitable; it
might have come a little sooner, or a little later, but it must
have come. The disease of the nationfwas organic not func--
tional, and the rough chirurgery of war was its only remedy.

In opposition to this view, there are many languid thinkers
-who lapse into a forlorn belief that if this or that man had
never lived, or if this or that other man had not ceased to live,
the country might have gone on in peace and prosperity until
its felicity merged in the glories of the millennium. If Mr.

, Calhoun had never proclaimed his heresies; if Mr. Garrison

had never published his paper; if Mr. Phillips, the Cassahdra

r in masculine shape of our long prosperous Ilium, had never

uttered his melodious prophecies; if the silver tones of Mr.
C‘-lay had still sounded in the senate chamber to smooth the

T billovvs of contention; if the Olympian brovv of Daniel Web-

ster had, been lifted from the dust to fix its awful frown on the
darkening scowl of rebellion, we might have been spared this
dread season of convulsion. All this is but simple Martha’s
faith, without the reason she could have given: “ If Thou
hadst beenhere, my brother had not died.”

They little knew the tidal movements of national thought
and feeling, who believe that they depend for existence on a

.1" .;*.v swimmers who ride their Waves. It is not Leviathan that

leads the oocan from continentto continent, but the ocean
which bears his mighty bulk as it Wafts its own bubbles. . If
this is true of all the narrower manifestations of human pro-
gress, how much more mfist it be true of those broad move-
ments in the intellectual and spiritual domain which interest

.all_manl<ind ? But in the more limited ranges referred to, no

fact is more familiar than that there is a simultaneous impulse
acting on many individual minds at once, so that genius comes
in clusters, and shines rarely as a single star. You may trace

a common motive and force in the pyramidibuilders of the

7

earliest recorded antiquity, in the evolution of Greek architec—
ture, and in the sudden springing up of those wondrous cathe-
drals of the twelfth and the following centuries, growing out of
the soil with stem and bud and blossom, like flowers of stone whose

seeds might well have been the flaming aerolites cast over the H V

battlements of heaven. Youmay see the same law showing itself
in the brief periods of glory which make the names of Pericles
and Augustus illustrious with reflected splendors; in the paint-
ers, the sculptors, the scholars of “Leo’s golden days,” in
the authors of the Elizabethan time ; in the ‘poets of the first
part of this century following thattyperiod, suffering alike from
the silence of Cowper and the song of Hayley. You may ac»
cept the fact “as natural, that Zwingli and Luther, without
knowing eachother, preached the same reformed gospel; that
Newton, and Hooke, and Halley, and Wren, arrived indepen»
dently of each other at the great law of the diminution of

‘gravity with the square of the distance; that Leverrier and '

Adams felt their hands meeting, as it were, as they stretched them
into the outer darkness beyond the orbit of Uranus in search
of the dim, unseen planet ; that Fulton and Bell, that Wheat-
stone and Morse, that Daguerre and Niepce, were moving
almost simultaneously in parallel paths to the same end. You

see, why Patrick Henry, in Richmond, and Samuel Adams, in

Boston, were startling the crown oflicials with the same accents
of liberty, and why the Mecklenburg Resolutions had the very
ring of the protest of the Province of Massachusetts. This
law of simultaneous intellectual movement, recognized by all
thinkers; expatiated upon by Lord Macaulay and by Mr.
Herbert Spencer among recent writers; is eminently appli-
cable to that change of thought and feeling, which necessarily
led to the present conflict.

The antagonism of the two sections of the Union was not
the Work of this or that enthusiast or fanatic. It was the con»-
sequenceirof a movement in mass of two different’ forms of

civilization in different directions, and the men to whom it was

attributed were only those who represented it most completely,
or who talked longest and loudest about it. a Long before the
accents of those famous statesmen referred to ever resounded
in the halls of the Capitol; long before the “Liberator” opened
its batteries, the controversy now working itself out by trial of

battle, was foreseen and predicted. Washington warned his

countrymen of the danger of sectional divisions, well knowing
the line of cleavageithat ran through the seemingly solid fabric.

J eflerson foreshadowed the judgment to fall upon the land for ‘

itsrsin against a just God. . Andrew Jackson announced a quar-

82

terof a century beforehand that the next pretext of revolution
would be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized with that pen-
etrating insight which analyzed our institutions and conditions
so keenly, that the Union was to be endangered by slavery, not

"through its interests, but through the change of character it

was bringing about in the people of the two sections; the same
fatal change which George Mason, more than half a century
before, had declared to be the most pernicious effectof the sys-
tem, adding the solemn warning now fearfully justifying itself
in the sight of his descendants, -that ‘f by an inevitable chain
of causes and elfects, Providence punishes national sins by na-
tional calamities.” The Virginian romancer pictured the far-
off scenes of the conflict which he saw approaching, as the

prophets of Israel painted the coming woes of Jerusalem; and V

the strong iconoclast of Boston announced the very year when
the curtain should rise on the yet unopened drama. ‘

The wise men of the past, and the shrewd men of at our ;oWn~
. time who warned us of ' the calamities“ in store for our nation,

never doubted what was the cause which was to produce first
alienation and finally rupture. The descendants of the men
“daily exercised in tyranny,” the“ petty tyrants,7~’ as their
_own leading statesmen called them long ago, came at length
to love the institution which their fathers had condemnedwhile
they tolerated. It is the fearful realization of that vision of
the poet where the lost angels snuff up with eager nostrils the
sulphurous emanations of the bottomless abyss,--so have their
natures become changed by long‘ breathing the atmosphere of
the realm of darkness. . - i P ‘
At last, in the fullness of time, the’ fruits of sin ripened in
a sudden harvest of. crime. Violence stalked into the senate-
chamber, theft and perjury wound their way into the cabinet,

and finally, openly organized conspiracy, with force and arms,

made burglarious entrance into a chief stronghold of the Union.
That the principles which underlay these acts of fraud and vio-
lence should be irrevocably recorded with every needed ‘sanc-
tion, it pleased God to select a chief ruler of the false gov-
ernment to be its Messiah to tlielistening world. As with
Pharaoh, the ‘Lord hardened his heart, while He opened his
mouthas of old He opened-that of the unwise animal ridden; by
cursing Balaazn. Then spake Mr. “Vice President” Stephens

T those memorable words which fixed forever the theory of the

new socialorder. He first lifted a degraded barbarism to the
dignity. of a philosophic system. ‘ He first proclaimed the gospel

* of eternal tyranny as the new revelation which Providence had

' reserved for thewestern Palestiner. Hear, .0 heavens! and

9

give ear 0 earth ! The corner-stone of the newborn dispensation

is the recognized inequality of races; not that the strong may

protect the weak, as men protect women and children, but that
the strong may claim the authority of “Nature and of God to
buy, to sell, to scourge," to hunt, to cheat out of the reward of
his labor, to keep in perpetual ignorance, to blast with hered-
itary curses throughoutall time the bronzed foundlingof the
New World, upon whose darkness has dawned the star of the
occidental Bethlehem.

After two years of war have consolidated the opinion of the
Slave States,we read in the “Rz'c7zm0nal .E'xamz'ner:” ‘F The
establishment of the Confederacy is verily a distinct "reaction
against the whole course of the mistaken civilization of the

age. For ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ we have deliberately N

substituted Slavery, Subordination, and Government.”

A simple diagram within the reach of all, shows how idle it
is to look for any other cause than slavery as having any ma-
terial agency in dividing the country. Match the two broken
pieces of the Union and you will find the fissure that separates
them zigzagging half across the continent like an isothermal

' line, shooting its splintery. projections, and opening its re—en-

teringr angles, not merely according to the limitations of par-
ticular States, but as a county or other limited section of ground
belongs to freedom or to slavery. Add to this the ofiicial statement

made in 1862, that “there is not one regiment‘ or battalion or  

even company of men, which was organized in or derived
from the Free States or Territories, anywhere, against the
Union;” throw in gratuitously Mr. Stephens’ explicit declara-
tion in the speech referred to, and we will consider the evidence
closed for the present on this count of the indictment.

V In. the face of these predictions, these declarations, this line
of fracture, this precise statement, testimony from so many
sources, extending through several generations, as to the ne-
cessary effectof slavery a p:rz'orz',land its actual influence as
shown by the facts," few will suppose that anything we could
have done would have stayed its course or prevented it from
workingout its legitimate effects on the white subjects of its
corrupting. dominion. N Northern acquiescence or even sym-
pathy may have sometimes helped to make it sit more easily
on the consciences of its; supporters. Many profess to think
that Northern fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a mordant
in fixing the black dye of slavery in regions which would but
for thathave washed themselves free of its stain in tears of
penitence. It is a delusion and a snare to trust in any such
false and flimsy reasons where there is enough and more than

10

enough in the institution itself to account for its growth.
Slavery gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money,
and the love of ease ; itf1n_ds,a victim for anger who cannot
smite back his oppressor, and it offers to all, without measure,
the seductive privileges which the Mormon gospel reserves for
the true believers on earth, and the Bible of Mahomet only

T dares promise to the saints in heaven. .

Still it is common, common even to vulgarism, to hear the
remark that the same gallows-tree ought to bear as its fruit
the arch traitor and the leading champion of aggressive liberty.

The mob of J erusalem was not satisfied with its two crucified .

thieves, it must have a cross also for the reforming Galilean, who

. interfered so rudely with its conservative traditions! It is as-

serted that the fault was quite as much on our side as on the
other; that our agitators and abolishers kindled the flame for
which the combustibles were all ready on the other side of the
border. If these men could have been silenced, our brothers

~ had not died. a ‘

Who are the persons that usethis argument? They are

the very ones who are at the present moment most zealous in ~

maintaining the right of free discussion. At a time when
every power the nation can summon is needed to ward oif the
blows aimed at its life, and turn their force upon its foes»-—-~
When a false traitor at home may lose us a battle by a word,
and a lying newspaper may demoralize an army by its daily or
weekly sttlliciolium of r poison, they insist with loud acclaim
upon theliberty of speech and ‘of the press; liberty, nay li-
cense, to deal with government, with leaders, with every mea-
sure, however urgent, in any terms they choose, to traduce the
oflicer before his own soldiers, and assail the only men who
have any claim at all to rule over the country, as the very ones
least worthy to be obeyed. If these opposition membersof
society are to have their way now, they cannot find fault with
those persons who spoke their minds freely in the past on that
great question which, as we have agreed, underlies all our pre-
sent dissensions. T T o

It is easy to understand the bitterness which is often shown .

toward reformers. They are never general favorites. .They
are apt to interfere with vested rights and time-hal1owedin-
terests. They often wear an unlovely, and forbidding aspect.
Their ofiice corresponds to that of Nature’s T sanitary commis-
sion for the removal of material nuisances. Itis not the but-
terfiy, but the beetle which she employs for this duty. It is
not the bird of ' paradise _‘ and the nightingale, but the fowl of
dark plumage and unmelodious voice, to which is entrusted

11 v
is .
the sacred duty of eliminating the substances that infect the
air. And the force of obvious analogy teaches us not to ex-
pect all the qualities which please the general taste, in those
whose instincts lead them to attack the moral nuisances which
poison the atmosphere of society. But whether they please
us in all their aspects or not, is not the question. Like them
or not, they must and will perform their oifice, and We cannot
stop them. They may be unwise, violent, abusive, extrava-
gant, impracticable, but they are alive, at any rate, and it is

their business to remove abuses as soon as they are dead, and

oftento help them to die. To quarrel with them because
they are beetles and not butterflies, is natural, but far from
profitable. They grow none the worse for being trodden upon,
like those tough weeds that love to nestle between the stones
of court--yard pavements. If you strike at one of their heads
with the bludgeon of the law or of violence, it flies open like the
the seed capsule of asnap-weed, and fills‘ the whole region
with seminal thoughts which will spring up in a crop just like
the original martyr. They chased one of these enthusiasts
who attacked slavery, from St. Louis, and shot him at Alton
in 1837; and on the 23d of June just passed, the Governor of
Missouri, Chairman of the Committee on Emancipation, in-
troduced to the convention an Ordinance for the final extinc-
tion of slavery. They hunted another through the streets of

a great northern city in 1835, and Within a few Weeks a regi-‘

ment of colored soldiers, many of them bearing the marks of

the slave driver’s whip” on their backs, marched out before

a vast multitude tremulous with newly-stirred sympathies,
through the streets of the same city, to fight our battles in the
name of God and Liberty.

The same persons who abuse the reformers, and lay all our ,
troubles at their door, are apt to be severe also on what they

contemptuously emphasize as “sentiments” considered as

i- motives of action. It is charitable to believe that they do not

seriously contemplate or truly understand the meaning of the
Words they use, but rather play with them as certain so-called
“learned” quadrupeds play with the printed characters set be-
fore them. In all questions involving duty, We act from senti-
ments. Religion springs from them, the family order rests
upon them, and in every community each act involving a rela-

tion between any two of its members implies the recognition or
the denial of a sentiment. It is true that men often ‘forget

them or act against their bidding in the keen competition of
business and politics. But Grod has not left the hard intellect
of man to Work out its devices without the constant presence of

12

beings with gentler and purer instincts. The breast of woman
is the ever rocking cradle of the pure and holy sentiments
which will sooner or later steal their Way into the mind of her
sterner companion; which will by-and-by emerge in the thoughts
of the World’s teachers, and at last thunder forth in the edicts
of its lawgivers and masters. Woman herself borrows half her
tenderness from the sweet influences of maternity, and child-
hood, that weeps at the story of suffering, that shudders at «the
picture of wrong, brings down its inspiration “from God, who
is our home.” To quarrel, then, with the class of ‘ minds that
instinctively attack abuses, is not only profitless but senseless ;
to sneer at the sentiments which are the springs of all just and
virtuous actions, is merely a display of unthinking levity, or of

I Want of the natural sensibilities. \

With the hereditary character of the Southern people moving
in one direction, and the awakened conscience of the” North
stirring in the other, the open conflict of opinion was inevitable,
and equally inevitable its appearance in the field of national
politics. For what is meant by self-government is that a man
shall make his convictionsof Whatis right and expedient regu-
late the community so far as his fractional share of the govern-
ment ezxtends. If one has come to the conclusion, be itright
or Wrong, «that any particular institution or statute is a violation
of the sovereign law of God, it is to be expected that i he will
choose to be represented by those who share his belief, and
who will in their Wider sphere do all they legitimately can to
get rid of the Wrong in which they find themselves and their
constituents involved. To prevent opinion from organizing
itself under political forms may be very desirable, but it is not
according to the theory or practice of self-government. And
if at last organized opinions becomearrayed in hostile shape
against each other, We shall find that a just War is’ only the last

inevitable link in a chain of closely connected impulses of which -

the original source is in Him who gave to tender and humble
and uncorrrupted souls the sense of right and Wrong,whicl1‘,
after passing through various fornls, has found its final expres-
sion in the use of vmaterial force. Behind the bayonet is the

lavvgiver’s statute, behind thestatute the thinker’s argument, i

behind the argument, is the tender consciousness of vvornan,-—~
woman, the wife, the mothe1~,,--vvvho looks upon the face .of God

himself refiected in the unsullied soul of infancy. “ Out of the

mouths of babes and sucklings hast thouordained strength, be»

cause of thineenemies.” r l_ 4 i V i ' A, p
The simplest course for the malcontent is to find fault with

the order of Nature and the Being who established it. Unless

13_

the law of moral progress were changed, or the Governor of '

the Universe were dethroned, it ‘would be impossible to prevent

_a great uprising of the human conscience against a system, the

legislation relating to which, in the words of so calm an obser-
ver as De Tocqueville,_the Montesquieu of our laws, presents
“ such unparalleled atrocities as to show that the laws of humanity
have been totally perverted.” Until the infinite selfishness of
the powers that hate and fear the principles of free government
swallowed up their convenient virtues, that system was hissed

at byall the decent members of the old-world civilization.‘

While in one section of our land the attempt has been going on
to lift it out of the category of tolerated wrongs into the sphere
of the.world’s beneficent agencies, it was to be expected that
the protest of Northern manhood and womanhood would grow
louder and stronger until the conflict of principles led to the
conflict of forces. The moral uprising of the North came with
the logical precisionof destiny ; the rage of the “ petty tyrants”

 was inevitable; the plot to erect a slave empire followed with

fated certainty; and the only question left for us of the North,
was whether we shouldsufiier the cause of the nation to go by
default, or maintain its existence by the argument of cannon and
musket, of bayonet and sabre.

  The warin which we are engaged is for no meanly ambitious
or unworthy purpose. It was primarily, and is to this moment,
for the preservation of our national existence. The first direct

movement toward it was a civil request on the part it of certain.

Southern persons that the nation would commit suicide without
making any unnecessary trouble about it. It was answered
with sentiments of the highest consideration, that there were
constitutional and other objections to the nation’s laying violent
hands upon itself. It was then requested in a somewhat per-
emptory tone, that the nation would be so obligin g as to abstain

from food until the natural consequences of that proceeding

should manifest themselves. All this was done as between a
single State and an isolated fortress, but it was not South Carolina
and,Fort Sumter that were talking,~—--itwas a vast conspiracy ut-
tering its menace to a mighty nation ; the whole menagerie of
treason was pacing its cages, ready to spring as soon as the doors
were opened, and all that the tigers of rebellion wanted to kindle
their wild natures to phrensy, was the sight of flowing blood.

Asif to show how coldly and calmly all this had been calculated
beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence
of malice aforethought should degrade the grand malignity
of settled purpose into the trivial effervescence of transient
passion, the torch which was literally to launch the first missile,

14

figuratively to “fire the. Southern heart” and light the flame
of civil war, was given into the trembling hand of an old white-
headed man, the wretched incendiary whom history will hand-cuff
in eternal infamywith the temple-burner of ancient Ephesus. ,The
first gun that spat its iron insult at Fort Sumter smote every
loyal American full in the face. As when the foul witch used
to torture her miniature image, the person it represented suf-
fered all that she inflicted on his waxen counterpart, so every
bulfet that fell on the smoking fortress was felt by the sov-
ereign nation of which that was the representative. Robbery
could go no further, for every loyal man of the North was
despoiled in that single act as much as if a footpad had laid
hands upon him to take from him his father’s staff and his
mother’s Bible. Insult could go no further, for over those
battered walls waved the precious symbol of all we most value
in the past and most hope for in the future,-——~—-the banner under

which we became a nation, and which, next to the cross of the
‘Redeemer, is the dearest object of love and honor to all who

toil, or march, or sail beneath. its waving folds of glory.

. Let us pause for a moment and consider what have been the
course of events if under the influence of fear, or of what some
would name humanity, or of conscientious scruples to enter
upon what a few please themselves and their rebel friends by
calling a “wicked war;” if under any or all these influences

we had taken the insult and the violence of South Carolina a

withdut accepting it as the first blow of a mortal combat, in
which we must either die or give the last and finishing stroke.

By the same title which South Carolina asserted to Fort
Sumter, Florida would have challenged as her own the Gribral-
tar of the Gulf, and Virginia the Ehrenbreitstein of the Chesa-
peake. Half our navy would have anchored under the guns
of these suddenly alienated fortresses, with the flag of the rebel-y

lion flying at their peaks. “ Old Ironsides” herself would have i

perhaps sailed out of Annapolis harbor to have a wooden J ef-—
ferson Davis shaped. for her figure head at N orfoll<,—-—-«for An-
drew Jackson was a hater of secession, and his was no fitting
effigy for the battle-ship of the red-handed conspiracy. With
all the great fortresses, with half the ships and warlike ma-
terial, in addition to all that was already stolen, in the traitors’
hands, what chance would the loyal men in the Border States
have stood against the rush of the desperate fanatics of ‘the
now triumphant faction? Where would Maryland, Kentucky,
Missouri, 'l.‘ennessee,i——-saved, or looking to be saved even as itis,
as by fire,-ggliave been in the day of ‘ trial? Into whosehands
would the capital, the archives, the glory, the name, the very

15

life of the Nation as a nation, have fallen, endangered as all
of them were, in spite of the volcanic outburst of the startled
North which answered the roar of the first gun at Sumter?
Worse than all, are we permitted to doubt that in the very
bosom of the North itself, there was a serpent, coiled but not
sleeping, which only listened for the first word that made it safe to
strike, to bury its fangs in the heart of Freedom, and blend its
golden scales in close embrace with the deadly reptile of the
cotton-fields? Who would not wish that he were wrong in such
a suspicion? Yet who can forget the mysteriouswarnings that
the allies of the rebels were to be found far north of the fatal
boundary line; and that it was in their own streets, against

their own brothers, that the champions of liberty were to de- V

fend‘ her sacred heritage?
. Not to have fough_t,then, after the supreme indignity and
outrage we had suffered, would have been to provoke every

further wrong, and to furnish the means for its commission. It.

would have been to die as a nation of freemen, and to have
given all we had left of ourrights into the hands‘ of alien ty-

" rants in league with home-bred traitors.

, Not to have fought would have been to be false to liberty
everywhere, and to humanity. You have only to see who are
our friends and who are our enemies in this struggle, to‘ decide
for what principles we are-combating. We know too well_ that
the British aristocracy is not with us. ‘ We know what the
West End of London wishes may be the result of this contro-
versy. The two halves of this Union are the two blades of
the ‘shears, threatening as those of Atropos herself, that will
sooner or later cut into shreds the old charters of tyranny.
Howvthey would exult if they could but break the rivet which
makes of the two blades one resistless weapon! The man who
of all living Americans had the best opportunity of knowing

how the fact stood, wrote these words in March, 1862 : “That

Great Britain did, in‘, the most terrible moment of our domestic
trial in struggling with amonstrous social evil she had earnestly

W professed to abhor, coldly and at once assume our inability to

master it, and then become the only foreign nation steadily con-
tributing in every indirect way possible to verify its judgment,
will probably be the verdict made up against her by posterity,

ona calm comparison of the evidence.” So speaks the wise, ,
' tranquil statesman who represents the nation at the Court of

St. James, in the midst of embarrassments, perhaps not less
than those which vexed his illustrious grandfather, when he

occupied the same position as the Envoy of the hated, new-born
Republic. V in i w W

16

“It cannot be denied,”-—-says another observer, placed on

one of our national Watch-towers, in a foreign capital,--~“it‘

cannot beedenied that the tendency of European public opinion
as delivered from high public places, is morerand more un-
friendly to our eause;”-——-“ but th”b people,” he adds, “ every-4
where sympathize with use for they know that our cause is that
of free institutions,---that our struggle is that of the people
against an oligarchyf’ These are the Words of our Minister
to Austria, whose generous sympathies with popular liberty
no homage paid to hisgenius by the class whose admiring wel-
come is most seductive to scholarsrhas ever spoiled; our felloW-
citizen, the historian of a. great Republic Whichinfused a por-
tion of its life into our own,——John Lothrop Motley.

It is a bitter commentary on the effects of European, and
especially of British institutions, that such men should have to
speak insuch terms of the manner in which our struggle has
been regarded. We had, no doubt, very generally reckoned
on the sympathy of England, at least, in a strife Which, What»-
ever pretexts were alleged as its cause, arrayed upon one side
the supporters of an institution she was supposed tohate in

earnest, and on the other its assailants. We had forgotten A

What our own poet, one of the truest and purest of her children,
had said of his countrymen, in Words which might well have

been spoken by the British Premier to the American Ame

bassador asking for some evidence of kind feeling on the part
of his Government: 9 i i r i i
“Alas! expect it not. We found no bait

To tempt us in thy country. Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade.”

We know full Well by this time What truth there is in these
honest lines. We have found out, too, who our European,

enemies are, and why they are our enemies. Three bending
statues bear up that gilded seat, which,*in spiteof the time-
hallowed usurpations and consecrated wrongs so long asso-2
ciated with its history, is still venerated as there throne. One
of these supports is the pensioned church; the second is the
purchased army; the third is the long suiferingi people.
Whenever the third caryatid comes to lifeand “Walks from
beneath its burden, the capitals of Europe will be filled with

thebroken furniture of palaces. N 0 Wonder that our minis-l

ters find theprivileged orders Willing to see the ominous re-
public split into two antagonistic forces, each paralyzing the

  other, and standing [in their mighty impotcnceaspectacle tor

courts and kings; to be pointed at as helots who drank them-if

17
selves lblindiandgiddya out of that broken chalice which held
the poisonous draft of liberty. M _
Weknow our enemies, and they are the enemies of popular

rights. ,We know our friends, and they are the foremost
champions of political and social progress. The eloquent

A Voice and the busy pen of John Bright have both been ours,

heartily, nobly, from the first ; the man of the people has been
true to the cause of the people. That deep and generous
thinker,‘who, more than any of her philosophical writers, re-
presents the higher thought of England, John Stuart Mill, has
spoken for us in tones to which none but her sordid hucksters
and her selfish land-graspers can refuse -to listen. Count Gas-
parin and Laboulaye have sent us back the echo from liberal

France---—-France, the country of ideas, whose earlier inspira~.

tionsembodiedthemselves for us in the person of the youthful
La Fayette. ; Italy,---—wou1d you know on which side the rights
of the people and the hopes of the future are to he foundin

thisomomentous conflict, What surer test, what ampler demon-—,.

strationl can you ask than the eager sympathy of the Italian
patriot Whose name is the hope of the toiling many, and the
dread of their oppressors wherever it is spoken: the heroic
Garibaldi? ' at

. But: even when it is granted that the War Was inevitable;
When it is granted that it is for no base end, but first for the

life ,of the nation, and more and more, asthe quarrel deepens,
for the Welfare of mankind, for knowledge as against enforced

ignorance, for justice as against oppression, for that kingdom
of God on earth which neither the unrighteous man nor the ex-
tortioner can hope to inherit, it may still be that the strife is
hopeless, and must therefore be abandoned. It istoo much to
say that whether the War is hopeless or not for the North, de-

pendschiefly onthe answer of the question Whether the North

has virtue and manhood. enough to. persevere in the contest so
longias its reso,urces,.hold out? But how, much virtue and

manhood ithas can never be told until they are tried, and,

thoseivvho areafirst to doubt the prevailing existence of these
'qualities,iare not commonly themselves patterns of either.

We have a right to trust that thispeople is virtuous and brave

enough not to give up a just and necessary contest beforeits

end is «attained, orshown to be unattainable for want of ma»
terial agencies. . What was the end to be attained by accepting a
the gageof battle? It was to get the better of our assailants,

and having doneso, to take exactly those steps which We should
titan. considernecessary to our present and future safety. The
more obstinate the resistance, the more completely

2   a

must it be,

18

subdued. It may not even have been desirable,as Mr. Mill
suggested long since, that the victory over the rebellion should
have been easily and speedily won, and so have failed toads-
velop the true meaning of the conflict,to bring out the full

strength of the revolted section, and to use up the means which

would have served it for a still more desperate future effort.
We cannot complain that your task has proved too easy.‘ We
give our Southern army,-——-—for we must remember that it 15% our
army, after, all, only in a state of mutiny,-—--we give our South-
ernarmy credit for excellent spirit and perseverance in the
face of many disadvantages. But we have a few plain facts

which show the probable ‘courseof events; the gradual but

sure operation of the blockade; the steady pushing back of

the boundary of the rebellion, in spite of resistance at ‘many.
points, or even of such aggressive inroads as that which our

armies are even now meeting with their long lines of bayonets
-——--may God grant them victory I--——the progress of our arms

down the Mississippir; the relative value of gold and currency‘
at Richmond and Washington.‘ If the index hands of force

and credit continue to move in the ratio of the past two years,
where will the Confederacy be in twice or thrice that time?
Either our statements of the relative numbers, power, and
wealth of the two sections of the country signify nothing, or
the resources of our Vopponentsin men and means must be

much nearer exhaustion than our own. The running sand of ‘t
the hour-glass gives no warning,but runs as freely as ever, pt
when its last grains are about to fall. The merchant wears as

bold aface the day before he is proclaimed a bankrupt, as he
were at the height of his fortunes. If Colonel Grierson found
the Confederacy “almere shell,” so far as his equestrianex-
cursion carried him, how can we say how soon the shell will
collapse? It seems impossible that our own dissensions can
produce anything more than local disturbances, like the Mor-
ristown revolt, which Washington put down at once by the aid
of his faithful Massachusetts soldiers. But in a rebellious
state dissension is ruin, and the violence of an explosion in a
strict ratio to the pressure on every inch of the containing
surface. ,Now we know the tremendous force which has com-
pelled the “unanimity” of the Southern people. There are
men in the ranks of the Southern army, if we can trust the
evidence which reaches us, who have been literally recruited
with packs of blood-«hounds, and, figuratively, drilled lwithihal-W
ters around theirtnecks. tWe know what is the bitternessof

those _who havetescaped this bloody harvest of the remorseless‘
conspirators; and from that we can judgeof the elements of

19

destruction incorporated with many of the seemingly solid por-
tions of the fabric of the rebellion. V The facts are necessarily
few, but we can reason from the _laws of human nature as to
what must be the case. i It or is hardly to be doubted that in
every part of the South, as in New Orleans, in Charleston, in
Richmond, there are multitudes who wait for the day of de-
liverance, and for whom the comi'ng of “our good friends, the
enemies,” as Beranger has it, will be like the advent of the
angels to the prison-cells of Paul and Silas. But there is no
need of depending on the aid of our white Southern friendsfr
be they many, or be they few; there is material power enough
in the North, if there be the will to use it, to overrun a.nd by
degrees to recolonize the South, and it is far from impossible
that some such process may be a part of the mechanism of its
new birth, spreading from various centres of organization, on
the plan which nature follows when she would fill a half-finished
tissue with blood-vessels, or change a temporary cartilage into
bone.

Suppose, however, that the prospects of the war were, we
need not say absolutely hopeless,----because that is the un-
founded hypothesis of those whose wish is father to their
thought,---—but full of discouragement. Can we make a safe
and honorable peace as the quarrel now stands? As honor
comes before safety, let us look at that first. We have under-
takenvto resent atsupreme insult, and have had to bear new
insults and aggressions, even to the direct menace of our
national capital. The blood that our best and bravest have
shed will never sink into the ground until our wrongs are

righted, or the power to right them is shown to be insufiicient.

If we stop now, all the loss of life has been butcherygiif we
carry out the intention with which we first resented the out-
rage, the earth drinks up the blood of our martyrs, and the
rose of honor blooms forever where it was shed. To accept
less than indemnity for the past, so far as the wretched king-
dom of the conspirators can afford it, and security for the
future, would discredit us in our own eyes and in the eyes of
those who hate and long to be able to despise us. But to

‘reward the insults and the” robberies we have suffered, by the ,

surrender, of our fortresses along. the coast, in the national
gulf,,and on the banks of the national river,—--and this and
much more would surely be demanded of us,-——-would place the
United Fraction of America on a level with the Peruvian
guano-islands, whose ignoble but fertilizing soil is open to be
plundered by all comers! ‘ _

  If we could make a peace without dishon”$r, could we make

29

on; that would be safe and lasting? ’~We could have an armis-

tice, no doubt long enough for the flesh of our wounded men

to heal, and their brolyen bones to knittogether. But could
we expect a solid, substantial, enduring peace, in which the
grass would have time to grow in the War-paths, and the l3I'111S6d
arms»~»«to- rust, as the old  R. cannon rusted in our _State
arsenal, sleeping with their tompions. in their mouths, like so
many sucking lambs? It is not the questionwhether the
same set of soldiers would be again summoned to the field.

Tet us take it for granted that We have seen‘ enough of the

miseries of warfare to last us for a While, and keep us. con-—
tented with militia musters and sham-fights. The question is

 whether we could leave our children and our children’s chil-V
W dren with any secure trust that they Would not have to go

through the very trials We are enduring,probably on: ainore
extended scale and in a more aggravated forni. _ i i i
We may as Well look- at the prospect beforeius“, if a peace
is established on the basis of Southern independence, the only
peace possible, unless We choose to add ourselves» to the four

millions who already call the Southern Whites their maste;i‘s.i

We know vth-at the prevailing,—--we idoqnotitnean universal,-.--
spirit and temperof those people have been for generations,
and what they are like to be after a long and bitter Warfare.

We know what their tone is to the people of the North; if we

do not, De Bow and Governoriflammond are school»-masters
who will teach us to our heart’s content.» ’W e see how easily
their ‘social organization adapts itself to a state of warfare.

They breed a superior order of men for leaders, an ignorant

commonality which follow them as the vassalsof feudal times
followed their lords; andarace of bondsmen, Who, unless this
war changes them from chattels7tohu"man beings, will continue
to add ‘vastly to their military strength in raising their food, in

 building their fortifications, in allthe mechanical Work of War,
in fact, except, it may be, the handling of weapons. The in- V

stitution proclaimed as the "corner-stone of their government,
does violence not merely to the precepts of 2 religion, but to
many of the best human instincts, yet their fanaticism for it

  is as sincere as any tribe of the desert ever manifested for the

faith of the Prophet of Allah. They call themselves by the
same name as the Christians of the North, yet there is as much
<:lifi‘ei-ence betwen their Christianity andiithat of Wesley or of
Channing, as between creeds that in past time have avowed
mutual extermination. ‘ Still we must not call them barbarians,
because they cherish an institution hostile to civilization. Their
highest culture sttinds out the more brilliantly fromi the dark

 21

back ground of ignorance against which it is seen; but it would
be injustice to deny that they have always shonein political
science, or that their military capacity makes them most for-
midable‘ antagonists; and that, however inferior they may be
to their Northern fellow-countrymenin most branches of lit-
eratureand science, the social elegancies and personal graces
lend a singular charm to the best circles among their dominant
class. i " r i

iWhom have we then for our neighbors, in case of separation,
--——our neighbors along a ‘splintered line of fracture extending
for thousands of miles,-,—-—'-but the Saracens of the Nineteenth
Century; a ‘fierce, intolerant, fanatical people, the males of

Whidh will be a perpetual standing army; hating uslworse than . '

the Southern Hamilcar taught his swarthy boy to hate the
Romans; apeople whose existence, as a hostilelnation, on our
frontier, is incompatible with our peaceful development? Their
wealth, the proceeds of enforced labor, multiplied by the break-
ing up of new cotton—fields, and in due time by the re-opening
of the slave-trade, will go to purchase arms,_t‘o construct for—
tresses, to fit out navies. The old Saracens, fanatics for a re-

ligion which professed to grow by conquest, were a nation of 7

predatory and migrating warriors. The Southern people,
fanatics for a system essentially aggressive, conquering, wasting,
which cannot remain stationary, but must grow by alternate
appropriations of labor and of land, will come to resemble their

earlier prototypes. Already, even, the insolence of their lan-

guage to the people of the .North, is a close imitation of the
style which those proud and arrogant Asiatics affected toward
_all the nations of A Europe. _What the “ Christian dogs” were
to the followers of Mahomet, the “accursecl Yankees,” the
i“ Northern mudsillsi’ are to the followers of the Southern Mo-
loch". .gThe accomplishments which we find in their choicer
circles, were prefigured in the court of the chivalric Saladin,
andthe long train of Paynim knights who rode forth to con-
questunder the Crescent. In all branches of culture, their
heathenlpredecessors went far beyond them. The schoolsof
mediaeval learning were filled with Arabian teachers. The

, heavens declare theiglory of the Oriental astronomers, as Al-

igorab and Aldebaran repeat their Arabic names to the students
of the starry firmament. The sumptuousedifice erected by the

Art of the Nineteenth Century, to hold the treasuresof its

Industry, "could show nothing fairer than the court which copies
the Moorish palace that crownslthe summit of Granada. ' Yet
this was the power which Charles the Hammer, striking for

“Christianity andcivilization, had to break like a potter’s ves-- ,

22

sel ; these were the people whom Spain had to utterly extirpate
from the land where they had ruled for centuries l

Prepare, then, if you unseal the vase which holds this danger—~
ous Afreet of Southern nationality, for a power onyour borders
that will be to you what the Saracens were to Europe before
the son of Pepin“ shattered their armies, and flung the shards

and shivers of their broken strength upon the refuse heap of

extinguished barbarism. Prepare for the possible fate of Christ-
ian Spain,---—for a slave market in Philadelphia,-—--—-for the Al-
hambra of a SouthernCaliph on the grounds consecrated by
the domestic virtues of a long line of Presidents and their ex—-
emplary families. Remember the ages of border warfare, be-
tween England and Scotland, closed at last by the union of the
two kingdoms. Recollect the hunting of the deer on the Cheviot
hills, and all that it led to; then think of the game which the
dogs will follow open—mouthed across our Southern border, and
all that is like to follow which “the child that is unborn shall
rue 3” think of these possibilities, or probabilities, if you will,

 and say whether you are ready to make a peace which will give

you such a neighbor; which may betray your civilization, as
that of half the Peninsula was given up to the Moors ; which
may leave your fair border provinces to be crushed under the
heel of a tyrant, as Holland was left to be trodden down by the
Duke of Alva l i i

No! no! fellow citizens We must fight in this quarrel
until one side or the other is exhausted. Rather than suifer
all that we have poured out of ‘our blood, all thatwe have
lavished of oursubstance to have been expended in vain, and
to bequeath an unsettled question, an unfinished conflict, an
unavenged insult, an unrighted wrong, a stained escutcheon, a
tarnished shield, a dishonored flag, an unheroic memory to the
descendants of those who have always claimed that their fathers
were heroes; rather than do all this it were hardly an Ameri-
can exaggeration tosay, betterthat” the last man and the last
dollar should be followed by the last woman and the last dime,
the last child and the last copper!

There are those who profess to fear that our Government is
becoming a mereirresp onsible tyranny. If there are any who
really believe that our present Chief Magistrate means to found
a dynasty for himself and family,-——-thata coup d’etat is in pres
paration‘ by which he into become ABRAHAM the FIRST, DEI
GRATIA,——tl"1ey cannot have duly pondered his letter of June
12th, in which he unbosoms himself with the simplicity of a
rustic lover called upcn by an anxious parent to explain his
intentions. The force of his argument is not at all injured by

23

the homeliness of his illustrations. The American people are
not much afraid that their liberties will be usurped. , An army
of legislators is notvery likely to throw away its political privi-i
leges, and the idea of a despotism resting on an open ballot-
box, is like that of Bunker Hill Monument built on the Waves
of Boston Harbor. We know pretty nearly how much sincerity
there is in the fears so clamorously expressed, and how far
they are found in company with uncompromising hostility to
the armed enemies of the Nation. We have learned to put a

- true value on the services of the watchdog Who bays the moon

but doesnot bite the thief I

The men who lareso busy holy»-stoning the quarter deck,
while all hands are Wanted to keep the ship afloat, can no doubt
show spots upon it that would be very unsightly in fair Weather.
N o thoroughly loyal man, however, need, suffer from any arbi-
trary exercise of power, such as emergencies always give rise
to. If any half-loyal man forgets his code of half decencies
and half duties so faras to become obnoxious to the peremptory
justice which takes the place of slower forms in all centres of
conflagration, there is no sympathy for him among the soldiers
who are risking their lives for us; perhaps there is even more
satisfaction than when an avowed traitor is caught and punished.
For of all men who are loathed by generous natures, such as

vfill the ranks of the armies of the Union, none are so thoroughly
loathed as the men _who contrive to keep ust Within the limits W

of the law, while their whole conduct provokes others to break

it; whose patriotism consists in stopping an inch short of trea-

son, and Whose political morality has for its safeguard a just

respect for the jailer and the hangman! The simple cure for

all possible injustice a citizen is like to suffer at the hands of
a government which in its need and haste must of course com-
mit many errors, is to take care to do nothing that will directly
or indirectly help the enemy or hinder the government in carry»-
ing on the War. When the clamor against usurpation and
tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this negative merit,

it may be listened to. When it cotnes from those who have
done what they could to serve their country, it will receive the
attention it ‘deserves. Donbtless there may prove to be wrongs
which demand righting, but the pretence of any plan for changing
the essential principle of our self’-governing system is a figment
which its contrivers laugh over among themselves. Do the
citizens of Harrisburg, or of Philadelphia, quarrel to-day about
the strict legality of an executiveact meant in good faith for
their protection against the invader? We are all citizens of
Harrisburg, all citizens of Philadelphia, in this hour of their

l
a

.24.

peril, and with the enemy at work in our own ‘bordersiwe begin
to understand the difierencev betweena goodand? a bad citizen;
the man that helps and» the man that hinders grthelaimanci who,
while the pirate is in sight, complains that our anchoris pdrag-
ging in his mud, and the man who violates the proprieties like
our brave Portland brothers, when they r jumped on a board the
first steamer they could reach, cut her cable, and bore downon
the Corsair, with a habeas corp'us.~act that lodged twenty buc-
caneers in Fort Preble before sunset! ' " i . “   in

We cannot, then,-——we cannot be circling inward to be swallow-»~

E ed up in the whirlpool of national destruction. ‘ If our bordersare

i W plain of ?

invaded, it is only as the spur that is driveniinto the courser’s
flank to rouse his slumber-ing mettle. If our property is taxed,
it is only to teach’ us that liberty is worth paying for as well as

fighting for. We are pouring out the mostrgenerousvblood of t

our youth and manhood; alas! this is always the pricethat
must be paid for the redemptionof a people. What have we
to complain of, whose granaries are choking with plenty, whose
streets are gay with shining robes and glittering equipages,
whose industry is abundant enough toreap all its overflowing
harvest, yet sure of employment and of its just reward, thesoil
of whose mighty valleys is an inexhaustible mine? of fertility,
whose mo,untains* cover up such stores of heat and power, im-

prisoned in their coal measures, as wouldwarm all the inhabiiv- -

tants and work all i the machinery of our planet for unnumber~
ed ages, whose rocks -pour outgrivers of oil, whose streams
run yellow over beds of golden sand,--—-what have we to com-
. .Have we degenerated from our English fathers, so that we
cannot do and bear for ourtnational salvation what they have
done and borne, “over and over again, for their form of gov-
ernment?‘ Could England, in her wars with Napoleon,.bear
an income tax of ten per cent., and must we faintiunder the
burden of an income tax of three per cent? Was she content
to negotiate a loan at fifty-three for the hundred, and that paid
in depreciated paper, andwan we talk about financial ruin with
our national stocks ranging fromr one to eight ornine above
par, and the “five-twenty” war loan eagerly taken by our
own people tothe amount of nearly two hundredmillions-, without
any check to the flow of the current pressing inwards against
the doors of the Treasury? Except in those portions of the

country which are the immediate . seat of -war, or liable ~to”be
made so, and which, having the greatest interest nottitoibey-W,
come the border states "of. hostile nations, can best afford to
suffer now, the state; oflprosperity and»comfortfis_such am.

. 25

astonish those who ‘visit us, from other countries. _What are
war taxes to a, nation which, as we are assured on good an»-

< thority, has more “men worth a million now,gthan it had worth
ten thousand dollars at the close of the Revolution,--r-whose
iwholue propertyiise a hundred times, and whose commerce, in-
ilapndi and foreign,is five hundred times what itcwasvthen?
°But',i“we~need not studyMr. Stillé’s pamphlet and Thompson’s
rBan7ki,Note Reporter,to show us what we know well enough
i—4-——r-that so far from having occasion to tremble in fear of our
impending ruin,,lwe must rather blush for our material pros-
«perity. For the multitudes who arelunfortunate enough to
h be taxed for a million or more, of course We must feel deeply,
at the same time suggesting that the more largely they re-‘
port their incomes to the tax—gatherer, the more consolation

they will find in the feeling that they have served their coun-~
try- But,---—let us say it plainly,-———it will not hurt our people

to bestaught that there are other things to be cared for be-

sides money making and money spending; that the time has

come when manhood must assert itself by brave deeds and

noble thoughts; "when womanhood must assume its most sacred
ofiice, “ to warn, to comfort,” and, if need be, “ to command”
those whose services_their country calls for. This Northern
section of the land has become argreat variety-sshop, of which

the Atlantic cities are the long-extended counter. We l1:lVG

grown rich for what? To put gilt bands on coachmen’s hats?
To swee the foul sidewalks with the heaviest silks that the
P

Etoiling artisans of France can send us ? To look through plate-

glass windows, and pity the brown is soldiers,——-or sneer at the

black sones,?———r-to reduce the speed of trotting horses a second

or two below its old ‘minimum? to colormeerschaums? to flaunt
in laces, and sparkle in diamonds? to dredge our maidens’ hair

. with» gold-dust?-—--«to float through life, the passive shuttle-cocks
of fashion, from the avenues to the beaches, and back again

from the beaches to the avenues? Was it for this that the
broad domain ofthe rWest;ern hemisphere was kept so long

iunvisited by civilization ?-—-¢—for t is, that Time, the father of

empires, unbound theivirgin zone of this youngest of his

daughters,and ,gave,lher, beautiful in the long veil of her for- if

ests, to therude embrace of the adventurous, Colonist?  All
this is what we see around us, now,——?-+now,while we are actu-
ally fighting this great battle, and supporting this great load

~of indebtedness. Wait till the diamonds gogback to. the Jews
of Amsterdam; till the plate-glass window bears the fatalan-
rnouncement, For Sale or To Let ; till thevoicer of ourMiriam

is obeyed, as she sings: l

26

“Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms 1”

The gold-dust is combed from the golden locks, and hioarded
to buy bread; till the fast—di-iving youth smokes his clay-pipe

on the platform of the horse-car; till the music-grinders cease —

because none will ‘pay them; till there are no peaches in the
windows at twenty-four‘ dollars a dozen, and no heaps of ba-
nanas and pine-apples selling at the street-corners; till the
ten-flounced dress has but three flounces, and it is felony to
drink champagne ;———wait till these changes show themselves,
the signs of deeper wants, the preludes of exhaustion and
bankruptcy; then let us talk of the Maelstrom;-—--but till then,
let us not be cowards with our purses, while brave men are
emptying their hearts upon the earth for us; let us not whine
over our imaginary ruin, while the reversed current of circling

events is carrying us farther and farther, every hour, beyond '

the influence of the great failing which was born of our wealth,
and of the deadly sin which was our fatal inheritance I

Let us take a brief general glance at the wide field of dis-
cussion we are just leaving. .

On‘Friday, the twelfth day of the month of April, in the
year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one, at half-past
four o’clocl< in the afternoon, a cannon was aimed and fired by
the authority of South Carolina at the wall of a fortress be-
longing to the United States. Its ball carried with it the
hatreds, the rages of thirty years, shaped and cooled in the
mould of malignant deliberation. Its wad was the charter of
our national existence. Its muzzle was pointed at the stone
which bore the symbol of _ our national sovereignty. As the
echoes of its thunder died away, the telegraph clicked one
word throughievery office of the land. That word was WAR!

War is a child that devours its nurses one after another,

until it is claimed by its true parents. Thispwar has eaten its
way backward through all the technicalities of lawyers, learned
in the infinitesirnals of ordinances and statutes; through all the
casuistries of divines, experts ' in the differential calculus of
conscience and duty, untilfi stands revealedto all men as the

 natural and inevitable conflict of two incompatible forms of

civilization, one orthe other of which must dominate the cen-
tral zone of the continent, and eventually claim the hemisphere
for its development.    , r '

We have reached the region of those broad
large axioms which the wise Romans, the world’s lawgivers,
always recognized as above all special enactments. We have
come to that solid substratum acknowledged, by Grotius in his

principles and L

great Treatise: “Necessity itself, which reduces things to the
‘mere light of Nature.” The old rules which were enough for
our guidance in quiet times, have become as meaningless “ as
moonlight on the dial of the day.” pWe have followed pre-

cedents as long as they could guide us; now we must make i

precedents for theages which are to succeed us.

i If we are frightened from our object by the money we have
spent,the current prices of United States stocks show that we
value our nationality at only a small fractionl of our wealth: ‘If
we feel that we are paying toodearly for it in the blood of our

people, let us recall those grand words of Samuel Adams :

. “ I should advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though
it were revealed from heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine

were to perish, and only one of a thousand were to survive and

37

retain his liberty . ,

What we want now is a strong purpose; the purpose of
Luther, when he said in repeating his Pater Noster, fiatvoZmz-
tas MEA,-«----let my will be done; though he considerately added
gmfa Tater,-4-because my will is Thine. We want the virile
energy of determination which made the oath of Andrew Jackson
sound so like the devotion of an ardent saint that the record-
ing angel might have entered it unquestioned among the pray-
ers of the faithful. - T

War is a grim business. Two years and a half ago our

women’s fingers were busy making “ Havelocks ;” it seemed to -

us then as if the I-Iavelock made half the soldier; and now we
smile to think of those days of inexperience and illusion. We
know nowhwhat War means, and we cannot look its dull, dead
ghastliness in the face unless we feel that there is some great
and [noble principle behind it. i It makes little dilference ‘what
we thought we were fighting for at first: we knowwhat we are’
fighting for now, and what we are fighting against. ,

We arefighting for our existencet We say to those who
would take back their several contributions to that undivided
unity which we call the Nation: The bronze is cast ; the statue
is on "its pedestal ; you cannot reclaimlthe brass you flung into
the crucible! There are rights, possessions, privileges, puilclcd,
relations, duties, acquired, retained, called into existence in
virtue of the principle of absolute solidarity,——-belonging to the
United States as an organic whole,-—-—which cannot be divided,
which none of its constituent parties can claim as its own, which
perish out of its living frame when the “wild forces of rebellion
tear it limb from limb, and which it must defend, or confess
selfigovernment itself a failure. a g ,

We are fighting for that Constitution upon which our national

.W

28*

H existence reposes, now subjected by those who fired the scroll T

on which it was written from the cannon at Fort Sumter, -to

all those chances which the necessities of war entail upon every ‘

human arrangement, but still the venerable charter of our wide
Republic. . l T i ‘ ‘ ‘ _

We cannot fight for these objects without attackinglthe one
moth er. cause of all thelprogeny of lesser antagonisms. Whether

T we know it or not, whether we mean it or not, we cannot help

fightingagainst the system that has proved thesource of all
those miseries which the author of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence trembled to anticipate. And this ought to make us

willingfto do and to suffer cheerfully. There were Holy Wars

of old, in. which it was glory enough to die, wars in which the
one aim was to rescuethe sepulchre of Clirist from the hands
of infidels. The sepulchre of Christ is not in Palestine 1   He
rose from that burial-place more than eighteen hundred years
ago. He iscrucified wherever his brothers are slain without
cause ; he lies buried wherever man, made inhis Maker’s image,
is entombed in ignorance lest he should learn the rights which
his Divine Master gave him! This is our Holy War, and we
must fight it against that great General who will bring to it all
the powers with which he fought against the Almighty before
he was cast down from Heaven. He has retained many aicungw
ning. advocate to recruit for him ; he has bribed many a smooth-

. tongued preacher to be his chaplain; he has engaged the

sordid by their avarice, the timid by their fears, the profligate
by their love of adventure, and thousands of nobler natures by
motives which we can all understand; whose delusion we pity
as we ought always topity the error of those who know not
what they do. Against him or for him we are all called upon

"to declare ourselves.’ There is no neutrality for any single

true-born American. If anyseek such a position, the stony
finger of I)ante’s awful Muse points them to their place in the
antechamber of the ‘Halls of Despair: ‘ i a ‘ e

. ---—“ with that ill band

Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved,
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves
Were .only.”—-- i l - ‘ ‘ T
p. — A , ~----‘‘Fame of them the world hath none

r Nor sufiers; mercy and ustice scorn them both.

i Speak not of them ;, but look, and pass‘ them by.” ‘ a

A A We must use all the means which God has put into ourthands
to server Himagainst the enemies of civilization. .We must
make and keep the great river free, whatever it costs us; itis

H strapping up the forefootof the wilchunytameablerebellion. _We

fl

29

®

must not‘ be %too nicejinthe choice it of our agents. Non eget ,

Maura,7'wcztlis,+--nolriAfricanii bayonets wanted,-——-,—Was Well enough
While wedid notfyet know the might of that desperate ‘giant
we. had to deal With; but, Tros, Tym'eosve,~——White or black,»-—-e
isethe safer motto now; for a good soldier, like a good horse,
cannot be of as bad color. The iron-skins, as Well as the iron»
clads, have already done us noble service, and many a mother"
will clasp the returning boy, many a Wife will Welcoiner back
the vvaré-vvorn husband, vvhosesmile would never again “have
gladdened his home, but that,.cold in the shallow» trench of
the battle-field, lies the half buried form of the unchained
bondsman, whose dusky bosom sheathes the bullet Which would
else have claimed that darling as his country’s sacrifice!

We shall have success, if we truly will success--not other-
wise; It may be long in coming,——Grod only knows through
what trials and humblings We may have to pass, before the full
strength of the Nation is duly arrayed and led to victory. We
must be patient, as our fathers were patient; even in our Worst
calamities We must remember that defeat itself may be a gain
Where it costs our enemy more in relation to his strength, than
it costs ourselves. But if,‘ in the inscrutable providence of the
Almighty, this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspira—
tions for the race, if we have not virtue enough to ennoble our
Whole people, and make it a nation of sovereigns, We shall at

least hold in undying honor those who vindicated the insulted i

majesty of the Republic, and struck at her assailants so long
as a drum-beat summoned them to the field of duty.

Citizens of Boston, sons and daughters of New England,
men and women of the North, brothers and sisters in the bond
of the American Union, you have among youthe scarred and
wasted soldiers who have shed their blood for’, your‘ temporal
salvation. They bore your N atio”n’s emblems bravely through

the fire and smoke of the battle-«field; nay, their own bodies-

are scarred with bullet-Wounds and striped with sabre-cuts, as
if to mark them as belonging to their Country until their dust
becomes a portion of the soil which they defended. In every
Northern graveyard slumber the victims of this destroying
struggle. Many whom you remember playing as children
amidst the clover blossoms of our Northern fields, sleep under
nameless mounds with strange Southern Wild~fl0Wers blooming
over them. By those wounds of living heroes, by those graves
of fallen martyrs, by the hopes of your children and the claims

of your children’s children yet unborn, in the name of out-.

” raged honor, inl the interest of violated sovereignty, for the

sake of an imperiled Nation, for the sake of men everywhere and

30

of our common humanity, for the gloryof God and the ad-
vancement of His kingdom on earth, your country calls upon
you to stand by her through - good report and through evil re-
port, inyjtriumph and in‘ defeat, until she emerges from the
great War of Western‘ civilization, Queen df the broad conti-t
nent, Arbitress in the councils ofearth’s_ emancipated peoples;
until the flag that fell from the wall of Fort Sumter floats
once more, inviolate, supreme, over all her ancient inheritance,
every fortress, every capital, every ship, and this Warring land
is once more a United N ationl 7