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University of California Berkeley 
 
GREAT SPEECH, 
 
 DELIVERED IN NEW YORK CITY, 
 
 B Y 
 
 HENRY WAED BEECHER, 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories 
 
 OF MAN AND SOCIETY 
 
 January 14, 1855. 
 
 ROCHESTER: 
 
 STEAM PRESS OF A. STRONG & CO., COR. OF STATE AND BUFFALO STREETS. 
 
 1855. 
 
U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
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 OF MAN AND SOCIETY. 
 
 The Eighth Lecture of the Course before the 
 Anti-Slavery Society, was delivered, January 14, 
 1655, at the Tabernacle, New York, by the Rev. 
 HENRY WAUD BEECHER. The subject, at the 
 present time, is one of peculiar interest, as touch- 
 ing the questions of Slavery and Know-Nothing" 
 ism, and, together with the popularity of the lec- 
 turer, drew together a house-full of auditors. 
 
 There were a number of gentlemen of distinc- 
 tion, occupying seats on the rostrum among 
 whom were the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, James 
 Mott, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Dudley, of Buffalo. 
 
 Mr. Beecher was introduced to the audience by 
 Mr. OLIVER JOHNSON, who said: 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : The speaker who oc- 
 cupied this platform on Tuesday evening last, in 
 the course of his remarks upon the wide degene- 
 racy of the American Clergy on the Slavery 
 Question, reminded us that there was in a Brook- 
 lyn pulpit, A MAX. We thought you would be glad 
 to see and hear such a rara avis, and therefore 
 have besought him to come hither to-night to in- 
 struct us by his wisdom and move us by his elo- 
 quence. I trust that, whatever you may think 
 of some other parts of the lecture of WENDELL 
 PHILLIPS, you will, when this evening's perfor- 
 mance is over, be ready at least to confess that in 
 what he said of the Brooklyn preacher he was not 
 more eulogistic than truthful. 
 
 MR. BEECHER, on presenting himself, was re- 
 ceived with loud and hearty applause. He spoke 
 as follows : 
 
 The questions which have provoked discussion 
 among us for fifty years past have not been ques- 
 tions of fundamental principles, but of the appli- 
 cation of principles already ascertained. Our de- 
 bates have been between one way of doing a 
 thing and another way of doing it between liv- 
 ing well and living better; and so through, it has 
 been a question between good and better. We 
 have discussed policies, not principles. In Eu- 
 rope, on the other hand, life-questions have agi- 
 
 tated men. The questions of human rights, of 
 the nature and true foundations of Government, 
 are to-day, in Europe, where they were with our 
 fathers in 1630. 
 
 In this respect, there is a moral dignity, and 
 even grandeur, in the struggles, secretly or open- 
 ly going on in Italy, Austria, Germany, and 
 France, which never can belong to the mere 
 questions of mode and manner which occupy us 
 boundary questions, banks, tariffs, internal im- 
 provements, currency, all very necessary but sec- 
 ondary topics. They touch nothing deeper than 
 the pocket. In this respect, there would be a 
 marked contrast between the subjects which oc- 
 cupy us, and the grander life-themes that dignify 
 European thought, were it not for one subject 
 Slavery. THAT is the ONLY question, in our day 
 and in our community, full of vital struggles turn- 
 ing upon fundamental principles. 
 
 If Slavery were a plantation -question, concern- 
 ing only the master and the slave, disconnected 
 from us, and isolated then, though we should re- 
 gret it, and apply moral forces for its ultimate - 
 remedy, yet, it would be, (as are questions of the 
 same kind in India or South America, ) remote, 
 constituting a single element in that globe of 
 darkness of which this world is the core, and 
 which Christianity is yet to shine through and 
 change to light. But it is not a plantation-ques- 
 tion. It is a national question. The disputes 
 implied by the violent relations between the own- 
 er and the chattel may only morally touch us. 
 But the disputes between the masters and the 
 Government, and between the Government, im- 
 pregnaced with Slavery, and the Northern citizen 
 these touch us sharply, and if not wisely met, will /,< 
 yet scourge us with thorns ! Indeed, I cannot 
 say that I believe that New England and the 
 near North will be affected locally, and immedi- 
 ately by an adverse issue of the great nationa 1 
 struggle now going on. But the North will bj 
 an utterly dead force in the American nation . 
 
Snc .-.v-i'il be rohca up in a corner, like a cocoon! 
 waiting for its transmigration. The whole North i 
 will become provincial ; it will be but a fringe to 
 a nation whose heart will beat in the South. 
 
 But New-England was not raised up by Divine 
 Providence to play a mean part in the world's af- 
 fairs. 
 
 Remember, that New-England brought to 
 America those principles which every State in 
 the Union has more or lees thoroughly adopted. 
 New-England first formed those institutions 
 which liberty requires for beneficient activity J 
 and from her, both before and since tbe Revolu- 
 tion, they have been copied throughout the Land. 
 Having given to America its ideas and its insti- 
 tutions, 1 think the North is bound to stand by 
 them. 
 
 Until 1800, the North had distinctive national 
 influence, and gave shape, in due measure, to na- 
 tional policy, as she had before to national insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 Then she began to recede before the rising of 
 another power. For the last fifty years, upon the 
 national platform Lave stood arrayed two cham- 
 pions in mortal antagonism New-England and 
 the near North representing personal freedom, 
 civil liberty, universal education, and a religious 
 spirit which always sympathises with men more 
 than with Governments. 
 
 The New-England theory of Government has 
 always been in its element first, independent 
 men; then democratic townships; next republi- 
 can States, and, in the end, a Federated Union of 
 Republican States. All her econo tries, her 
 schools, her policy, her industry, her wealth, her 
 intelligence, have been at agreement with her the- 
 ory and policy of Government. Yet, New-Eng- 
 land, strong at home, compact, educated, right- 
 minded ; has gradually lost influence, and the 
 whole North with her. 
 
 The Southern League of States, have been held 
 together by the cohesive power of Common 
 Wrong. Their iudustry, their policy, their whole 
 interior, vital economy, have been at variance with 
 the apparent principles of their own State Gov- 
 ernments, and with the National Institutions under 
 which they exist. They have stood upon a nar- 
 row basis, always shaking under them, without 
 general education, without general wealth, with- 
 out diversified industry. And yet since the year 
 1800, they have steadily prevailed against Repre- 
 sentative New-England and the North. The 
 South, the truest representation of Absolutism 
 under republican forms, is mightierin our Nation- 
 
 al Councils and Policy to-day than New-Eng- 
 land, themother and lepresentative of true re- 
 publicanism and the whole free North. 
 
 And now it has come to pass that, in the good 
 providence of God, another opportunity has been 
 presented to the whole North to reassert her 
 place and her influence, and to fill the institutions 
 of our country with their original and proper blood 
 I do not desire that she should arise and put on 
 her beautiful garments, because she is my moth- 
 er, and your mother; not because her hills wore 
 the first which my childhood saw, that has never 
 since beheld any half so dear; nor fiom any sordid 
 ambition, that she should be great in this world's 
 greatness; nor from any profane wish to abstract 
 from the rightful place and influence of any 
 State, or any section of our whole country. But I 
 think that God sent New-England to these shores 
 as his own messenger of mercy to days and ages, 
 that have yet iar to come ere they are born! She 
 has not yet told this Continent all that is in her 
 heart. She has sat down like Bunyan's Pilgrim 
 and slept in the bower by the way, and where 
 she slept she has left her roll God grant that 
 she hath not lost it there while she slumbered! 
 
 By all the love that I bear to the cause of God, 
 and the glory of his Church, by the yearnings 
 which 1 have for the welfare of the human kind, 
 by all the prophetic expectations which I have of 
 the destiny of this land, God's Almoner of Liber, 
 ty to the World, I desire to see Old Representa- 
 itve NewEngland, and the affiliated North, rouse 
 up and do their first works. 
 
 Is it my excited ear that hears an airy phan- 
 tasm whispering ? or do I hear a solemn voice 
 crying out, ."Arise? Shine? thy light is come, and 
 the glory of the Lord is arisen upon thet I " 
 
 I am quite aware that the subject of Slavery 
 has been regarded, by many, as sectional; and the 
 agitation of it in the North needless, and injuri- 
 ous to our peace and the country's welfare. 
 Whatever may have been the evils, the agitation 
 has only come through men, not from them. It 
 is of God. It is the underheaving of Providence. 
 Mariners might as well blame you for the swiug 
 and toss of their craft when tides troop in or march 
 out of your harbor, as us, for heaving to that tide 
 which God swells under us. Tides in the ocean 
 and in human affairs are from celestial bodies and 
 celestial beings. The conflict which is going on 
 springs from causes as deep as the foundations of 
 our institutions. It will goon to a crisis; its set- 
 tlement will be an era in the world's history, 
 .either of advance or of decline. 
 
I wish to call your patient attention to the real 
 nature of this contest. It is, 
 
 The conflict between Northern theories and 
 Southern theories of man and of Society. 
 
 There have been, from the earliest period of the 
 world, two different, and oppugnent, doctrines of 
 man his place, rights, duties and relations. And 
 the theory of man is always the starting point 
 of all other theories, systems, and Governments 
 which divide the world. 
 
 v Outside of a Divine and Authoritative Revlea- 
 tion, men have had but one way of estimating the 
 value of man. He was to ihera simply a creature 
 ; of time, and to be judged in the scientific method, 
 , by Ins phenomena. The Greeks and the Romans* 
 had no better way. They did v not know enough 
 of his origin, his nature, or his destiny, to bring 
 these into account, in estimating man. Accord- 
 ingly they could do no better than to study him in 
 las developments and rank him by the POWER 
 which he manifested. Now if a botanist should 
 describe a biennial plant, whose root and stem be- 
 longto one season, whose blossom and fruit belong 
 to another, as if that were the whole of it which 
 the first year produced, he would commit the 
 same mistake which the heathen idea of man com- 
 mits in measuring and estimating a being whose 
 true life comes hereafter, by the developments 
 which he makes in only this world. 
 
 From this earthly side of man springs the most 
 important practical results. For the doctrine of 
 man, simply as he is in this life, logically deduces 
 Absolutism and Aristocracy. 
 
 If the power of prodncing effects is the criterion 
 of value, the few will always be the most valuable 
 and the mass relatively, subordinate, and th e ' 
 weak and lowest will be left helplessly worthless. 
 
 And the mass of all the myriads that do live, 
 are of no more account than working animals; 
 and there is, no such a theory, no reason, a priori; 
 why they should not be controlled by superior 
 men, and made to do that for which they seem the 
 best fitted Work and Drudgery! Only long ex- 
 periment could teach a doctrine contrary to the 
 logical presumption arising from weekness. 
 There could be no doctrine of human rights. It 
 would be simply a doctrine of human forces. 
 Rigid would be a word as much out of place as 
 among birds and beasts. Authority would go 
 with productive greatness, as gravity goes with 
 mass in matter. The whole chance of Right, and 
 the whole theory of Liberty, springs from that 
 part of man that lies beyond this life. 
 
 As a material creature, man ranks among phys- 
 ical forces. Rights come from his spiritual nature 
 
 The body is of the earth, and returns to earth, 
 and is judged by earthly measures. The soul is 
 of God, and returns to God, and is judged by 
 Divine estimates. And this is the reason why a 
 free, unobstructed Bible always works toward hu- 
 man rights. It is the only basis on which the 
 poor, the ignorant, the weak, the laboring masses 
 can entrench against oppression. . 
 
 What, then, is that theory of man which 
 Christianity gives forth? 
 
 It regards man not as a perfect thing, put into 
 life to blossom and die, as a perfect flower doth. 
 Man is a seed, and birth is planting. He is in 
 life for cultivation, not exhibition ; he is here 
 chiefly to be acted on, not to be characteristically 
 an agent. For, though man is also an actor, he 
 is yet more a recipient. Though he produces ef- 
 fects, he receives a thousand fold more than he 
 produces. And he is to be estimated by his ca- 
 pacity of receiving, not of doing. He has his 
 least value in what he can DO ; it all lies in what 
 he is capable of having done TO him. The eye, the 
 ear, the tongue, the nerve of touch, are all simple 
 receivers. The understanding, the affections, the 
 moral sentiments, all, are primarily and charac- 
 teristically, recipients of influence ; and only 
 secondarily agents. Now, how different is the 
 value of ore, dead in its silent waiting-places, 
 from the wrought blade, the all but living engine, # 
 and the carved and curious utensil ! 
 
 Of how little value is a ship standing helpless 
 on the stocks but half-built, and yet building- 
 to one who has no knowledge of the ocean, or of 
 what that helpless hulk will become the moment 
 she slides into her element, and rises and falls upon 
 the flood with joyous greeting ! 
 
 The value of an acorn is not what it is, but 
 
 what it shall be when nature has brooded it, and 
 
 brought it up, and a hundred years have sung 
 
 I through its branches and left their strength 
 
 there ! 
 
 He, then, that judges man by what he can do, 
 judges him in the seed. We must see him through 
 some lenses we must prefigure his immortality. 
 While, theTi, his industrial value in life must de- 
 pend on what he can do, we have here the begin- 
 | ning of a moral value which bears no relation to 
 i his power, but to his future destiny. 
 
 This view assumes distinctness and intansity, 
 when we add to it the relationship which subsists 
 between man and his Maker. 
 
 This relationship begins in the fact that we are 
 created in the divine image; that we are con- 
 nected with God, therefore, not by Government 
 i alone, but by nature. 
 
6 
 
 This initial truth is made radiant with meaning, 
 by the teaching of Cristianity that every human 
 being is dear to God : a teaching which stands 
 upon that platform, buiit high above all human 
 deeds and histories, the advent, incarnation, pas- 
 sion, and death of Chris', as a Savior of -men. 
 
 The race is a brotherhood; God is the Father, 
 Love is the law of this great human common- 
 wealth, and Love knows no servitude. It is that 
 -which gilds with liberty whatever it touches. 
 
 One more element to human liberty is con- 
 tributed by Cristianity, in the solemn develop- 
 ment of man's accountability to God, by which 
 condition hereafter springs from pure character 
 here. 
 
 However heavy that saying is, every one of us 
 shallot;*? an account of himself before God in it 
 is the life of the race. 
 
 You cannot present man as a subject of Divine 
 government, held responsible for results, compar- 
 ed with which the most momentous earthly deeds 
 are insignificant, plied with influences accumulat- 
 ing from eternity, and by powers which though 
 they begin on earth in the cradle, gentle as a 
 mother's voice singing lullaby, go on upward, tak- 
 ing every thing as they go, till they reach the 
 whole power of God; and working out results 
 that outlast time and the sun, and revolve forever 
 in flaming circuits of disaster, or in sacred circles 
 of celestial bliss; you cannot present man as the 
 center and subject of such an august and eternal 
 drama, without giving him something of the 
 grandeur which resides in God himself, and in the 
 spheres of immortality ! 
 
 Who shall trifle with such a creature, full bound 
 upon such an errand through life, and swelling 
 forth to such a destiny? Clear the place where 
 he stands? give him room and help, but no hin- 
 derance, as he equips for eternity .'loosen the 
 bonds of man, for God girds him! take off all 
 impediments, for it is his life and death an d strug- 
 gle for immortality ! 
 
 That this effect of accountability to God was 
 felt by the inspired writers, cannoH>e doubtful 
 to any who weigh such language as this : 
 
 " So then every one of us shall give account of 
 himself to God. Let us not, therefore judge one 
 another any more, but judge this rather, Utat no 
 man put a stumbling block, or an occasion to fall 
 in his brother's way." 
 
 By making man important in the sight of God, 
 he becomes sacred to his fellow. The more 
 grand and far-reaching are the divine claims, the 
 greater is our conception of the scope and worth 
 
 of being. Human rights become respected in 
 the ratio in which human responsibility is felt. 
 Whatever objections men may hold to Puritan- 
 ism their theory since the days of St. Augustine 
 has constantly produced tendencies to liberty 
 and a prevalent belief in the natural rights of man 
 and on account of that very feature which to 
 many, has been so offensive its rigorous doc- 
 trine of hdman accountability. Here, then, is 
 the idea of man which Christianity gives in con- 
 trast with the inferior and degrading heathen no- 
 tions of man. He is a being but begun on earth 
 a seed only planted here for its first growth 
 He is connected with God, not as all matter is 
 by proceeding from creative power, but by par- 
 taking the divine nature, by the declared personal 
 affection of God, witnessed and sealed by the 
 presence and sufferings of the world's Redeemer- 
 He is a being upon whom is rolled the responsi- 
 bility of character and eternal destiny ! Of such, 
 a creature it were as foolish to take an estimate, 
 by what he is and what he can do in this life, as 
 i; would be to estimate by an eagle's egg, what 
 the old eagle is worth, with wings outspread 
 far above the very thunder, or coming down up- 
 on its quarry as the thunder comes ! It is the 
 Future that gives value to the Present. It is Im- 
 mortality only that reaches down a measure 
 wherewith to gauge a man. If a heathen mea- 
 sures, the strong are strong, and the weak arc 
 weak : the rich, the favored, must rule, and their 
 shadow must dwarf all others. If a Christian, 
 measures, he hears a voice saying : "There is 
 ' neither Jew nor Greek ; there is neither bond 
 'nor free; thercis neither male nor female; for 
 " ye are all one in Christ Jesus. \Vhosoever 
 " shall do the will of my Father, which is in 
 " heaven, the same is my mother, and sister, and 
 " brother." 
 
 These are the things that give value to man. 
 
 It is not to be said that there is no difference 
 between men; that one is not more powerful than 
 another; that one is riot richer in genius than an- 
 other; that one is not more valuable to society 
 than another; that education, refinement, skill, 
 experience, give no precedence over their nega- / 
 tives. But God takes up the least of all humau 
 creatures, and, declares, "inasmuch as ye have 
 done it unto the "hast of these, ye have done it 
 unto me." In a household, a babe is vastly less 
 than the grown-up children. But who dare 
 touch it, as if it were as worthless as it is weak ? 
 
 So God pleads his own relationship to the 
 meanest human creation, as his protection from 
 
wrong ; as the evidence of his rights, as the rea- 
 son of his dignity ! There is something of God in 
 the meanest creature. He is sacred from injury ! 
 In these truths we find the reason why Christi- 
 anity always takes hold so low down in human 
 life. Things that have got their root need little 
 from the gardener; but the seeds, and tender 
 sprours, and" difficult plants, require and get 
 nurture. 
 
 A Christianity that takes care of the rich, the 
 strong, the governing class, and neglects the poor, 
 and ignorant, and the unrefined, as the antitype 
 of Christ. 
 
 It is in this direction only, that the declaration 
 of man's equality is true. No heathen nation 
 could say that " all men are born free and equal " 
 for in more earthly re?pects it is false, But it 
 is a truth that stands only and firmly in those 
 grand relations which man sustains to God, to 
 Eternity^ and to future dignity all are equally 
 subjects of these. Man is ungrown. All his fruit 
 *a green. If he must stand by what he is, how 
 surely must he be given over to weakness, to 
 abuse, to oppressions. The weak are the natural 
 prey to the strong, and superiority is a charter for 
 tyranny. 
 
 But if he be an heir, waiting for an inheritance 
 of God, eternal in the heavens, woe be to him that 
 dare lay a finger on him because he is a minor! 
 
 I dwell the longer upon this view because it 
 carries the world's heart in it. We must deepen 
 our thinkings of man, and bore for the springs of 
 liberty far below the drainings of surface strata, 
 down deep, Artesian, till we strike something 
 that shall be beyond winter or summer, frost or 
 drouth. 
 
 I do not believe that there is a doctrine of indi- 
 vidual rights nor of civil liberty that can stand 
 outside of Cristianity. They are to be seen reveal- 
 ed in nature, but there is none to interrupt them 
 with authority. Christ is the "World's Emancipa- 
 tor, for he hath declared that men belong to Him; 
 and an oppressor thus becomes a felon, a robber, 
 and a wronger of God, in the person of every poor 
 and wretched victim! 
 
 A Christianity that tells man what his origin is 
 of God; his destiny, to God again; his errand on 
 earth, to grow toward goodness, and make the 
 most of himself this Christianity is rank rebel- 
 lion in despotisms, and insurrection on planta- 
 tions. It cannot bo preached there. 
 
 These two radical theories of man man, a 
 physical creature to be judged by effects produced 
 in Time ; or man, a spiritual creature, to be judg 
 
 ed by the development to which he is destined, 
 are at the root of all the antagonisms between the 
 pirit of northern and southern institutions: north- 
 ern policy and southern policy. In the North, 
 it is the public sentiment of the people, that all 
 men are born free and equal ; that every man lias 
 an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit 
 of happiness, forfeited only by crime. The North 
 believe that personal and political liberty are not 
 only rights of man, but their necessity, that man 
 cannot thrive nor develop, with the true propor- 
 tions of manhood, without liberty. It is the 
 northern sentiment that a man must be prepared 
 for liberty, and that the act of birth is that pre- 
 paration; that no creature lives which is the better 
 for oppression, and who will not be the better for 
 freedom, which is the natural air appointed for the 
 soul's breathing. The North disdains every pre- 
 tense that men are injured by sudden liberty. A 
 famished man may injure himself by over-feed- 
 ing; but that is an argument not against food, 
 but against famine. It is the northern sentiment, 
 and justly deduced from the Christian theory of 
 man, that society should redeem all its own chil- 
 dren from ignorance, should secure their growth, 
 equip them for citizenship, make all the influen- 
 ces of society enure to the benefit of the mass of 
 men._jThe southren sentiment is the reverse ofi, 
 this. It holds that all men are not born free andv 
 equal ; that men have not an inalienable right to j 
 life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and I 
 that men are not in their very constitution fitted 
 for liberty, and benefited by it. They hold that 
 liberty is an attribute of power ; that it is a bios- j 
 som which belongs to races, and not to mankind ; , 
 that a part were born to rule, and a part were or- I 
 dained to serve ; that liberty is dangerous to the 
 many ; that servitude, the most rigorous, is a bles- 
 sing; that it accords with the creative intent of 
 God, aud with his revealed institutions ; that a 
 nation cannot be homogeneous, and should not 
 aim at it ; that there is a law and scale of grada- 
 tion, on which the top is privilege and authority, 
 the bottom labor and obedience. These arc the 
 radical theories of the respective sections of the 
 land. Men often are profoundly ignorant of the 
 principles which control their policy, as a ship is 
 unconscious of the rudder that steers her. Many 
 are found, both North and South, whose con- 
 duct over-rules their theory, and who are better 
 or worse than their belief. There are southern 
 men who are more generous than their theory, 
 arid there are northern men who are grossly un- 
 true to the northern theory, which, with their lips, 
 
8 
 
 they profess. There are southern men with north- 
 ern consciences, and there are northern men with 
 southern consciences. But, in the main, these re- 
 spective theories reign and regulate public proce- 
 dure. There is not a man so poor in the North, 
 or so ignorant, or souseless, as not to be regarded 
 as a Man, by religion, by civil law, and by public 
 opinion. Selfishness and pride, avarice and cun- 
 ning, anger or lust, may prey upon the heedless- 
 ness or helplessness of many. Society may be j 
 full of evils. But all these things are not se- ' 
 quences of northern doctrines, but violations of j 
 them. If sharks in great cities consume the too j 
 credulous emigrant; if usurers, like moths, cut 
 the fabric of life with invisible teeth; if landlords 
 sack their tenements and pinch the tenant all 
 these results are against the spirit of our law, 
 against public feeling, and they that do such 
 things must slink and burrow. They are vermin 
 . that run in the walls, and peep from hiding-holes, 
 and we set traps for them as we do for rats or 
 weazels. But, in the South, the subordination of 
 man, to man, in his earnings, his skill, his time 
 and labor in his person, his affections, his very 
 children is a part of the theory of society, drawn 
 out into explicit statutory law, coincident with 
 public opinion, and executed without secrecy. 
 A net spread for those guilty of such wrongs 
 against man, would catch States, and Legisla- 
 tures, Citizens, Courts, and Constitutions. 
 
 In the North the most useless pauper that bur- 
 dens the Aims-House the most uncombed for- 
 eigner that delves in a ditch the most abject 
 creature that begs a morsel from door to door, t* 
 yd a man ; and there is, not in theory only, but 
 in the public sentiment, a sacredness of rights, 
 which no man, except by stealth, can violate 
 with impunity. There is no other law for the 
 Governor of New-York or of Massachusetts, than 
 for the beggar in your streets. That which pro- 
 tects the dwelling and the property of the rich 
 man, belongs just as much to the hovel of the 
 beggar. God sends but one sun, and it is the 
 same light that kindles against the roof of a man- 
 sion, that dawns upon the thatch of a hut. The 
 same air comes to each, the same showers, the 
 same seasons, summer and winter. And as is 
 Nature, so in the North, is law, and the distribu- 
 tive benefits of society. They bathe society from 
 top to bottom ! The rich, the learned, the re- 
 fined, the strong, may know how to make a bet- 
 ter use of the air, but they have no more air of 
 privilege to breath, than the poorest wretch. 
 In the South, exactly the reverse is true, not 
 
 by stealth, not by neglect of a recognized princi- 
 ple, but as the result of men's ideas, and by or- 
 ganized arrangements. Touch a hireling's wa- 
 ges, in the North, and the Law stands to defend 
 him and beat you down! Take the laborer's 
 wages in the South, and the law stands to defend 
 you, and beat him down. 
 
 Beat a man, in the North, for a private wrong 
 done, and the law will strike you. But in the 
 South, it is the right of the white, unquestioned 
 and unquestionable to beat every third person in 
 the community. 
 
 Let the proudest mill-owner break but the skin 
 of the poorest operative in Lowell or Lawrence, 
 and both law and public sentiment, alike, would 
 grasp and punish him ! 
 
 But in the South the law refuses to look at any 
 degree of cruelty in chastisements upon the uni- 
 versal laborer, short of maiming or death, and 
 public sentiment is but little better than the law. 
 
 The laborer in the North answers to a tribunal ; 
 in the South, to a master, incensed, passionate, 
 vindictive in justice executed upon all symptoms 
 of resisting manhood ! 
 
 In the North, nothing is more sacred than a 
 man's family and his children. It would not be 
 possible for a man to do public violence to a fam- 
 ily circle without vindictive penalty. Let him 
 separate a mother from her daughters, let him em- 
 ploy a hireling ruffian to carry off the boys into 
 the country and parcel them out there let him 
 scatter the flock, and leave the children mother- 
 less, and the parents childless, and what do you 
 think would become of him ? 
 
 In the South it is a part of the civil rights of 
 men to do these things whenever they please. 
 And. though public sentiment is better than law^ 
 yet as no public sentiment on earth is a match 
 for legalized lust, or avarice, or the grip of misfor- 
 tune, these things are continually done, and re- 
 morselessly. Cruelty, chastity, virtue, do not 
 mean the same things in the South as in the 
 North. A man is not blemished by deeds and in- 
 dulgencies, upon a plantation, among slaves, 
 which in the North, would strike him through 
 with infamy and house him in the penitentiary. 
 In the South, there are many roads leading 
 from the top of society to the bottom, but not 
 one, not ONE from the bottom to the top. 
 
 In the North, if the citizen choses to walk in it, 
 there is a road from every man's door up to the 
 Govenor's chair or the Presidential seat ! 
 
 It needs no words, now, to convince you, that 
 out of such different theories of men, there will 
 
9 
 
 exist in the North and in the South, extremely > 
 different ideas of Society, Government, and 
 Public Policy. 
 
 In the North, first in order of consideration i s 
 man, the individual man ; next the family, made 
 of those of common blood, and by far the strong- 
 est, as it is the most sacred of all institutions. 
 Then comes the township, which presents the 
 only spectacle of an absolute political democracy. 
 For, here only, do citizens assemble in mass and 
 vote, directly and not by representation. Next 
 comes Society at large, or the mass of citizens 
 grouped into States. And in Society, in the 
 North, there are no classes except such as rise out 
 of spontaneous forces. Wealth, experience, abil- 
 ity set men above their fellows. There they 
 stand as long as there is a real superiority. But 
 they stand there, not by legal force, nor to exer- 
 cise any legal power, or to have one single privi- 
 lege or prerogative, which does not belong just as 
 much to every citizen clear down to the bottom . 
 All that a class means in the North is, that when 
 men have shown themselves strong and wise t 
 men give them honor for it. Death levels it all 
 down agaih. Their children inherit nothing. 
 They must earn for themselves. There is no di- 
 vision of society into orders, by which some have 
 privilege and some have not, some have opportu- 
 nity and advantages which others have not. 
 
 In the South, society is divided into two great 
 and prominent classes the ruling and the obey- 
 ing the thinking and the working. The labor 
 of the South is performed by three million crea- 
 tures who represent the heathen idea of man. 
 
 All the benefits that have accrued to man from 
 Christianity, are appropriated and monopolized 
 by the white population. 
 
 Here is a seam that no sophistry can sew up. 
 Here is a society organized, not on an idea of 
 equal rights, and of inequalities only as they 
 spring from difference of worth, but on an idea 
 of permanent, political, organized inequality 
 among men. They carry it so far that the theory 
 of Slave law regards the slave not as an inferior 
 man, governed, for his own good as well as for 
 the benefit of the society at large, but it pronoun- 
 ces him, in reiterated forms, not a man at all, but 
 a chattel. 
 
 When a community of States, by the most po- 
 tential voice of Law, says to the whole bodv of 
 its laboring population, Ye are not men and shall 
 not be ; ye are chattels it is absurd to speak 
 about kind treatment about happiness. It is 
 about cattle that they are talking ! Our vast 
 
 body of laboring medo not yet feel the force of 
 such a theory of human society. Buti if that 
 political system, which has openly been making 
 such prodigious strides for the last fifty years, and 
 effecting, secretly, a yet greater change in men's 
 
 deas of society and government, shall gain com- 
 plete ascendancy, they, in their tnrn, and in due 
 time will know and see the difference between a 
 Republican Democracy and a Republican Aris- 
 tocracy ? 
 
 Out of such original and radical differences* 
 there must flow a perpetual contrast and opposi- 
 tion of policies and procedures, in the operation 
 
 f society and of business. We will select but a 
 few, of many, subjects of contrast, Work, Educa- 
 tion, Freedom of Speech and of the Press, and 
 Religion. 
 
 I. WORK. Among us, and from the begin- 
 ning, Work has been honorable. It has been 
 honorable to dig, to hew, to build, to reap, to 
 wield the hammer at the forge, and the saw at the 
 bench. It has been honorable because our peo- 
 ple have been taught that each man is set to make 
 the most of himself. The crown for every victory 
 gained in a struggle of skill or industry over mat- 
 ter is placed upou the soul ; and thus among a 
 free people industry becomes education. 
 
 It is the peculiarity of Northern labor, that it 
 thinks. It is intelligence working out through 
 the hands. There is more real thought in a Yan- 
 kee's hand than in a Southerner's head. This is 
 not true of a class, or of single individuals, or of 
 single States. It pervades the air. It is North- 
 ern public sentiment. It springs from our ideas 
 of manhood. These influences, acting through 
 generations, have been wrought into the very- 
 blood. It is hi the stock. Go where you will a 
 Yankee is a working creature. He is the honey- 
 bee of mankind. Only Work is royal among us- 
 It carries the sceptre, and changes all nations by 
 its touch, opening its treasures and disclosing its 
 secrets. 
 
 But with all this industry, you shall find no- 
 where on earth so little drudging work as in the 
 North. It is not the servitude of the hands to 
 material nature. It is the glorious exercise of 
 mind upon nature. They vex nature with inces- 
 sant importunities. They are always prying, and 
 thinking, and trying. 
 
 In California, gold is found in quartz formations. 
 But in New England, and the free inventive 
 North, in the geology of industry, gold is found 
 everywhere in rye straw and bonnets, in leather 
 and stone, in wool, felts and cloths ; in wood, in 
 
10 
 
 stone, and in very ice. It is wrapped up in the 
 beggar's raiment, which unroll in our mills into 
 paper yesterday, a beggar's feculant rags; to- 
 day, a newspaper, conveying the world's daily 
 life into twenty thousand families. And so great 
 are the achievments of labor that everybody 
 honors it. It stands among us as an invisible 
 dignity. Four spirits there are that rule in New 
 England religion, social virtue, intelligence, and 
 work ; and this last takes something from them 
 all, and is their physical exponent. So that not 
 only is work honored and honorable, but the 
 want of it is an implied discredit. The presump- 
 tion is always against a man who docs not labor 
 
 In the South, the very reverse is true, as a gen- 
 eral proposition. 
 
 It is true, because labor is the peculiar badge of 
 Slavery. It does not stand, as with us, a symbol 
 of intelligence, but a symbol of stupid servitude 
 It is the business of those whom the law puts 
 out of the pale of society and accounts chattels, 
 and who, by the opinion of society, are at the 
 bottom, and under the feet of respectable men. 
 To work is, therefore, prima facie evidence of 
 degradation. It is ranking oneself with a slave 
 by doing a slave's tasks ; as eating; a beggar's 
 crust with him would be a beggar's fellowship. 
 
 But this is not the whole reason, nor the chief- 
 est and more potent reason of the difference be" 
 tween public feeling about WORK, North and 
 South. 
 
 The ideas of men in the South do not inspire 
 any such tendency. Men are judged there not 
 by what they are and are to be, but by what they 
 can noiv do. Only such things as have an echo 
 in them, that reverberate in the ear of public 
 opinion, that produce an effect of notice, honor, 
 advancement in the OPINIONS of men, are relished. 
 In the North, men are educated to be something 
 in the South to seem something The North 
 tends to doing the South to appearing. And 
 both tendencies spring from the root of opposite 
 theories of men and notions of society. 
 
 And it is this inate, hereditary indisposition to 
 work that, after all, is the greatest obstacle to 
 emancipation. Laziness in the South and money 
 in the North, are the bulwarks of Slavery! To 
 take away a planter's slaves is to cut off his 
 hands. There is wlrere he keeps his work. 
 There is none of it in himself. And it is this, 
 too, which leads to the contempt which southern 
 people feel for northern men. They are working 
 men, and work is flavored to the Southerner 
 with ideas of ignominy, of meanness, of vulgar 
 
 lowness. Neither can they understand how a 
 man who works all his life long can be high- 
 minded and generous, intelligent and refined. 
 
 Not only is there this contrast in dignity of 
 work, but even more in rights of industry. 
 Work, in the North, has responsibilities that are 
 prodigious educators. We ordain that a man 
 shall have the fullest chance, and then he shall 
 have the results of his activity. He shall take all 
 he can make, or he shall take the whole result of 
 indolence. It is a double education. It inspires 
 labor by hope of fruition, and intensifies it by the 
 fear of non -fruition. The South have their 
 whole body of laborers at work without either re- 
 sponsibility. They cut it off at both ends. They 
 virtually say to the slave, in reality, " Be lazy, for ( 
 ''all that you earn shall do you no good; be lazy, 
 "for when you are old and helpless we are bound 
 "to take care of you." 
 
 It is this apparent care for the helplessness of 
 slaves, that has won the favor of many northern 
 men, and of some who ought to have known bet- 
 ter the effect of taking off from men the respon- 
 sibility of labor, in both ways, its fruition and its 
 penalty. Once declare in New York that Gov- 
 ernment would take care of poverty and old age, 
 so as to make it honorable, and it would be a pre- 
 mium upon improvidence. With us, it is ex- 
 pected that every man will work, will earn, will 
 lay up, will deliver his family from public charity. 
 There is, to be sure, an Alms House to catch all 
 who, by misfortune or improvidence, fall through 
 But such is the public opinion in favor of person- 
 al independence springing from industry, that a 
 native-born American citizen had rather die than 
 go to an Aims-House. Foreigners are our staple 
 paupers. Our chanty fieeds the poor wretches 
 whom foreign slavery has crippled and cast upon 
 us. Bui the whole South is a vast work-house 
 for the slave while young, and a vast alms-house 
 for him when old, and neither young or old, is he 
 permitted to feel the responsibility for labor. 
 And this, too, explains the apparent advantage 
 which the South has over the North in the mat- 
 ter of pauperism and distress. The northern 
 system intends to punish those who will not work. 
 It it not a system calculated for slaves nor for 
 lazy men. If indolence comes under it, it'will 
 take the penalty of not working. And nowhere 
 else in the world is the penalty of indolence, and 
 even of shiftlessness, so terrible as in the North, 
 as nowhere else is the remuneration of a virtuous 
 industry so ample and so widely diffused. 
 
 II. There is just as marked a contrast upon 
 
11 
 
 the subject of education, and especially of Com- 
 mon Schools. In the North we have COMMON 
 Schools. This is more than a School. It is more j 
 than a public school. It is a Common School, in 
 distinction from a select, or class school. It is a 
 public provision for bringing together, upon a 
 perfect equality, the children of the ric'i and the 
 poor, the noble and ignoble, the high and the low. 
 It is a provision of our institutions, by which ev- 
 ery generation is led to a line and made to start 
 equal and together. There will be inequality 
 enough as soon as men get into life. Some shoot 
 ahead ; some, like dull sailors in a fleet, are drop- 
 ped behind, and men are scattered all along the 
 ocean. But the Common School gathers up their 
 children and brings them all back again to take 
 a new start together. Thus our schools are not 
 mere*" whetstones to the intellect ; they are insti- 
 tutions for evening np society ; they resist the 
 tendency to separation into classes, which grows 
 with the prosperity of a community ; they bind 
 together, in cordial sympathy, all classes of citi- 
 zens. For nothing is more tenacious than school- 
 day remembrances, and the last things that we 
 forget are playmates and schoolmates. 
 
 The South may have schools. But never Com- 
 mon Schools. The South has no common peo- 
 ple. There can be States, there, but never Com- 
 monwealths. There is no common ground, where 
 the theory of society grades men upon a perpen- 
 dicular scale. It is a society of classes, and a so- 
 ciety of classes can never be a community. When 
 the whole labor of a State is performed by n de- 
 graded class, that are not included in the State 
 as citizens or social beings, it is impossible but 
 that the class next above them should feel the 
 force of those theories and ideas which have pro- 
 duced such a state of things. It is so. The poor 
 white population of the South is degraded. They 
 are ignorant they are not fertile in thought or 
 labor. They are not so low as the slaves, nor so 
 high as those who own slaves. There are three 
 classes the top, the middle, and the bottom ; 
 and two of these, the top and bottom, being fixed 
 and legal, the middle is modified by them both. 
 
 In such a Society, there cannot be a Common 
 School, in any such sense as we mean it. Indeed, 
 there cannot be general education in any State 
 where ignorance is the legal condition of one-half 
 the population, as is the case in many Southern 
 States. Ignorance is au institution in the South. 
 It is a political necessity. It is as much provided 
 for by legislation and by public sentiment, and 
 guarded by enactments, as intelligence is in the 
 
 North. It must be. The restrictions which keep 
 it from the slave will keep it from the whites, ex- 
 cepting, always, the few who live at the top. 
 There cannot be an atmosphere of intelligence- 
 Slaves would be in danger of breathing that. 
 There cannot be a" common public sentiment, a 
 common school, nor common education. Knowl- 
 edge is power, not only, but powder, putting the 
 South in the risk of being blown up, by careless 
 handling and too great abundaiuje. 
 
 III. Closely connected with this, and springing 
 from the same causes, is a contrast between the 
 North and the South, in respect to free speech 
 and open discussion by lip and by type. 
 
 ^ie theory of the North is, that every man has 
 the right, oa every subject, to the freest express- 
 ion of his opinions, and the fullest right to urge 
 them upon the convictions of others. It is not a 
 permission of law ; it is the inherent right of the 
 individual. Law is only to protect the citizen in 
 the use of that right. 
 
 It is the theory of the North that society is as 
 much a gainer by this freedom of discussion as is 
 the individual. 
 
 It is a perpetual education of the people, and a 
 safeguard to the State. There is the utmost lati- 
 tude of speech and discussion among our citizens. 
 The attempt to abridge it would be so infatuated 
 that the most dignified Court that ever sat in 
 Boston would become an object of universal mer- 
 riment and ridicule, that should presume to arrest 
 and cause to be indicted any man for free speak- 
 ing in old Faueuil Hall. Merriment, I say, for who 
 would not laugh at a philosopher who would set 
 snares for the stars, and fix his net to catch the 
 sun, and regulate their indiscreet shining. Dark- 
 ness and silence are excellent for knaves and ty- 
 rants ; but the attempt to command the one or 
 the other in the North, changes the knave to an 
 imbecile and the tyrant to a fool. 
 
 But should any power, against the precedents 
 of the past, the 'spirit of our people, the theory of 
 our civil polity and the rights of individual man 
 succeed, and make headway against free speech, 
 and put it in jeopardy, it would convulse the 
 very frame-work of society. There would be no 
 time for a revolution there would be an eruption, 
 and fragmentary Judges, Courts and their min- 
 ions would fly upward athwart the sky, like 
 stones and balls of flame drives from the vomit- 
 ing crater of a furious volcano ! No. This is a 
 right like the right of breathing. This is a liber- 
 ty that broods upon us like the atmo&phere. The 
 grand American doctrine that men may speak 
 
12 
 
 what they think, and may print what they speak 
 that all public measures shall have free public 
 discussion cannot be shaken; and any party 
 must be intensely American that can afford to de- 
 stroy the very foundation of American principle 
 that public questions shall be publicly discussed, 
 and public procedure be publicly agreed upon. 
 Right always gains in the light, and "Wrong in 
 the dark. An owl can whip an eagle in the 
 night ! 
 
 The South, holding a heathen theory of man 
 an aristocratic theory of society, is bound to 
 hold, and does hold, a radically opposite practice 
 in respect to rights of speech and freedom of the 
 press. 
 
 There is not freedom of opinion in the South 
 and there cannot be. 
 
 Men may there talk of a thousand things of 
 all religious doctrines, of literature, of art, of pub- 
 lic political measures but no man has liberty to 
 talk as he pleases about the structure of southern 
 society, and apply to the real facts of southern 
 life and southern internal questions that searching 
 investigation and public exposure which, in the 
 North, brings every possible question to the bar 
 of public opinion, and makes society boil like a 
 pot! 
 
 Yes, you may speak of Slavery, if you will de- 
 fend it ; you may preach about it, if you shingle 
 its roof with Scripture texts; but you may not 
 talk, nor preach, nor print abolition doctrines, 
 though you believe them with the intensity of 
 inspiration ! 
 
 /" The reason given is, that it will stir up insur- 
 rection. And so it will. It is said that free 
 speech is inflammatory. So it is. That it would 
 bring every man's life in the South into jeopar- 
 dy ; that, in self-defence, they most limit and 
 regulate the expression of opinion. But what is 
 that theory of Government, and what is the state 
 of society under it, in which free speech and free 
 discussion are dangerous ? It is the boast of the 
 North, not alone that speech and discussion are 
 free, but that we have a society constructed in ev- 
 ery part so rarely, wisely, and justly, that they 
 can endure free speech ; no file can part, but only 
 polish. We turn out any law, and say, Discuss 
 it! that it may be the stronger! We challenge 
 scrutiny for our industry, for our commerce> for 
 our social customs, for our municipal affairs, for 
 our State questions, for all that we believe, and 
 all that we do, and everything that we build. 
 We are not in haste to be born in respect to any 
 feature of life. We say probe it, question it, 
 
 put fire to it. We ask the experience of the past 
 to sit and try it. We ask the ripest wisdom of the 
 present to test and analyze it. We ask enemies 
 to plead all they know against it. We challenge 
 the whole world of ideas, and the great deep of 
 human interests to come up upon anything that 
 belongs, or is to belong, to public affairs. And 
 then, when a truth, a policy, or a procedure comes 
 to birth, from out of the womb of such discussion, 
 we know that it will stand. And when our whole 
 public interests are rounded out and built up, we 
 are glad to see men going around and about, 
 marking well our towers, and counting our bul- 
 warks. May it do them good to see such archi- 
 tecture and engineering ! And it is just this dif- 
 ference that distinguishes the North and the 
 South. We have institutions that will stand pub- 
 lic and private discussion they have not. % We 
 will not have a law, or custom, or economy, which 
 cannot be defended against the freest inquiry 
 Such a rule would cut them level as a mowed 
 meadow ! They live in a crater, forever dreading 
 the signs of activity. They live in a powder 
 magazine. No wonder they fear light and fire. 
 It is the plea of Wrong since the world began- 
 Discussion would unseat the Czar; a free press 
 would dethrone the ignoble Napoleon ; free 
 speech would revolutionize Rome. Freedom of 
 thought and freedom of expression ! they are 
 mighty champions, that go with unsheathed 
 swords the world over, to redress the weak, to 
 right the wronged, to pull down evil and build up 
 good. And a State that will be damaged by free 
 speech ought to be damaged. A King that can- 
 not keep his sejit before free speech ought to be 
 unseated. An order or an institution that dreads 
 freedom of the press has reason to dread it. If 
 the South would be revolutionized by free dis- 
 cussion, how intensely does that fact show her 
 dying need of revolution ! She is a dungeon, full 
 of damps and death-air. She needs light and 
 ventilation. And the only objection is, that if 
 there were light and air let in, it would no longer 
 be a dungeon. 
 
 IV. There is a noticeable contrast between 
 Northern and Southern ideas of Religion. 
 
 We believe God's revealed word to contain the 
 influence appointed for the regeneration and full 
 development of every human being, and that it 
 is to be employed as God's universal stimulant 
 to the human soul, as air and light are the uni- 
 versal stimulants of vegetation. 
 
 We preach it to arouse the whole soul ; we 
 preach it to fire the intellect, arid give it wings 
 
13 
 
 by which to com pass knowledge ; we preach it to 
 touch every feeling with refinement, to soften 
 rudeness and enrich affections ; we build the fam- 
 ily with it ; we sanctify love, and purge out lust ; 
 we polish every relation of life ; we inspire a 
 cheerful industry and whet the edge of enterprise, 
 and then limit them by the bonds of justice and 
 by the moderation of a faith which looks into the 
 future and the eternal. We teach each man that 
 he is a child of God ; that he is personally one 
 for whom the Savior died ; we teach him that he 
 is known and spoken of in heaven, his name call 
 ed; that angels are sent out upon his path to 
 guard and to educate him ; we swell within him 
 to the uttermost every aspiration, catching the 
 first flame of youth and feeding it, until the whole 
 heart glows like an altar, and the soul is a temple 
 bright within, and sweet, by the incense-smoke 
 and aspiring flame of perpetual offerings and di- 
 vine sacrifices. We have never done with him. 
 We lead him from the cradle to boyhood ; we 
 take him then into manhood, and guide him 
 through all its passes ; we console him in age 
 and then stand, as he dies, to prophesy the com 
 ing heaven, until the fading eye flashes again, and 
 the unhearing ear is full again ; for from the oth 
 er side ministers of grace are coming, and he be 
 holds them, and sounds on earth and sights are 
 not so much lost as swallowed up in the glory 
 and the melody of the heavenly joy 1 
 
 Now tell me whether there is any preaching of 
 the Gospel to the slave, or whether there can be. 
 and he yet remain a slave ? We preach the Gos- 
 pel to arouse men, they to subdue them ; we to 
 awaken, they to soothe ; we to inspire self-reli- 
 ance, they submission ; we to drive them forward 
 in growth, they to repress and prune down 
 growth ; we to convert them into men, they to 
 make them content to be beasts of burden I 
 
 Is this all that the Gospel has ? When cred 
 ulous ministers assure us that slaves have the 
 means of grace, do they mean that they have 
 euch teaching as we have ? Or that there is any 
 euch ideal in preaching ? The power of religion 
 with us is employed to set men on their feet ; to 
 make them fertile, self-sustaining, noble, virtu- 
 ous, strong, and to build up society of men, each 
 one of whom is large, strong, capacious of room 
 and filled with versatile powers. 
 
 Religion with them does no such thing. It 
 doth the reverse. 
 
 With them it is Herod casting men into pris- 
 on. With us it is the angel, appearing to lead 
 * them out of prison and set them free ! In short 
 
 religion with us is emancipation and liberty ; with 
 them it is bondage and contentment. 
 
 It is very plain that while nominally republi- 
 can institutions exist in both the North and South, 
 they are animated by a very different spirit, and 
 used for a different purpose. In the North, they 
 aim at the welfare of the whole people ; in the 
 South they are the instruments by which a few 
 control the many. In the North, they tend to- 
 ward Democracy ; in the South, toward Oligar- 
 chy. 
 
 It is equally plain that while there may be a 
 union between Northern and Southern States, it 
 is external, or commercial, and not internal and 
 vital, springing from common ideas, common 
 ends, and common sympathies. It is a union of 
 merchants and politicians and not of the people. S 
 
 Had these opposite and discordant systems 
 been left separate to work out each its own re- 
 sults, there would have been but little danger of 
 collision or contest. 
 
 But they are politically united. They come 
 together into one Congress. There these antag- 
 onistic principles, which creep with subtle influ- 
 ence through the very veins of their respective 
 States, break out into open collision upon every 
 question of national policy. And, since the world 
 began, a republican spirit is unfit to secure pow- 
 er. It degenerates it in the many. But an 
 aristocratic spirit always has aptitude and impulse 
 toward power. It seeks and grasps it as natu- 
 rally as a hungry lion prowls and graspsits prey. 
 For fifty years the imperious spirit of the South 
 has sought and gained power. It would have 
 been of but little consequence were that power 
 still republican. The seat of empire may be in- 
 differently on the Massachusetts Bay or the Ohio, 
 on the Lakes or on the Gulf; if it be the same em- 
 pire, acting in good faith for the same democrat- 
 ic ends. 
 
 But in the South the growth of power has 
 been accompanied by a marked revolution in po- 
 litical faith, until now the theory of Mr. Calhoun, 
 once scouted, is becoming the popular belief. 
 And that theory differs in nothing from outright 
 European Aristocracy, save in the forms and in- 
 struments by which it works. 
 
 The struggle, then, between the North and the 
 South is not one of sections, and of parties, but 
 of Principles of principles lying at the founda- 
 tions of governments of principles that cannot 
 coalesce, nor compromise ; that must hate each 
 other, and contend, until the one shall drive out 
 the other. 
 
 
14 
 
 Oh ! how little do men dream of tlie things that 
 are transpiring about them ! In Luther's days, 
 how little they knew the magnitude of the results 
 pending that controversy of fractious monk and 
 haughty pope! How little did the frivolous 
 courtier know the vastness of that struggle in 
 which Hampden, Milton and Cromwell acted ! 
 We are in just such another era. Dates will be- 
 gin from the period in which we live ! 
 
 Do not think that all the danger lies in that 
 bolted cloud which flashes in the Southern hori- 
 
 is as good or better for three millions of laboring 
 men as liberty. He has instituted a formal com- 
 parison between the state of society and the con- 
 dition of a laboring population in a slave systen; 
 and thosa in a free State, and left the impressio i 
 on every page that Liberty works no better re 
 suits than servitude, and that it has mischiefs and 
 inconveniences which Slavery altogether avoids. 
 Read that book in Faneuil Hall, and a thou- 
 sand aroused and indignant ghosts would come 
 flocking there, as if they heard the old roll-call of 
 
 zon. There is decay, and change, here in the | Bunker Hill. Yea, read those doctrines on Bun- 
 
 North. Old New-England, that suckled Amer- 
 ican liberty, is now suckling wolves to devour it 
 
 What shall we think when a President of old 
 Dartmouth College goes over to Slavery, and 
 publishes to the world his religious conviction of 
 the rightfulness of it, as a part of God's discipli- 
 nary government of the world wholesome to 
 man, as a punishment of bins which he never com- 
 mitted, and to liquidate the long arrearages of 
 Ham's everlasting debt! and avowing that, under 
 favorable circumstances, he would buy and own 
 slaves! A Southern volcano in New-Hampshire, 
 pouring forth the lava of despotism in that incor- 
 rupt, and noble old fortress of liberty ! What a 
 College to educate our future legislators ! 
 
 What are we to think, when old Massachusetts, 
 the mother of the Revolution, every league of 
 whose soil swells with the tomb of some heroic 
 patriot, shall make pilgrimages through the 
 South, and, after surveying the lot of slaves un- 
 der a system that turns them out of manhood, 
 pronounces them chatties, denies them marriage, 
 makes their education a penal and penitentiary 
 offence, makes no provision for their religious cul- 
 ture, leaving it to the stealth of good men, or the 
 interest of those who regard religion as a curry- 
 comb, useful in making sleek and nimble beasts 
 a system which strikes through the fundamen- 
 tal instincts of humanity, and wounds nature in 
 the core of the human heart, by taking from pa- 
 rents all right in their children, and leaving the 
 family, like a bale of goods, to be unpacked, and 
 parceled out and sold in pieces, without any oth- 
 er protection than the general good nature of easy 
 citizens : what shall be thought of the condition 
 of the public mind in Boston, when one of her 
 most revered, and personally, deservedly beloved 
 pastors, has come up so profoundly ignorant of 
 what we thought every child knew, that he comes 
 home from this pilgrimage, to teach old New- 
 England to check her repugnance to Slavery, to 
 dry up her tears of sympathy, and to take com- 
 ortin the assurance that Slavery, on the whole, 
 
 ker Hill and would it flame or quake ? No. It 
 would stand in silent majesty, pointing its graniU 
 finger up to Heaven and to God an everlasting 
 witness against all Slavery, and all its abettors or 
 defenders. 
 
 At this moment, the former parties that have 
 stood in counterpoise have fallen to pieces. And 
 we are on the eve, and in the very act, of recon- 
 structing our parties. One movement there is 
 that calls itself American. Oh, that it were or 
 or would be! Never was an opening so auspi- 
 cious for a true American party that, embracing 
 the principles of American institutions, should 
 enter our Temple of Liberty and drive out thence 
 not merely the interloping Gentiles, but the mon- 
 ey-changers, and those, also, who sell oxen, and 
 cattle and slaves therein. 
 
 It is not the question whether a Northern party 
 should be a party of philanthropy, or of propagan 
 dism, or of abolition. It is simply a question 
 whether, for fear of these things, they will ignore 
 and rub out of their creed every principle of hu- 
 man rights ! 
 
 I am not afraid of foreigners among us. Nev- 
 ertheless, our politicians have so abused us 
 through them, that I am glad that a movement is 
 on foot to regulate the conduct of new-comers 
 among us, and oblige them to pass through a lon- 
 ger probation before they become citizens. In so 
 far as I understand the practical measures propos- 
 ed and set forth in the Message of the Governor 
 of Massachusetts, 1 approve them. 
 
 But I ask you, fellow-citizens, whether the sim- 
 ple accident of birth is a basis broad enough for 
 a permanent National party? Is it a principle, 
 even? It is a mere fact. 
 
 Ought we not to look a little at what a man is 
 after he is born, as well as at the place where? 
 Especially, when we remember that Arnold was * 
 born in Connecticut and La Fayette in France. 
 
 If then, a party is American, ought it not to be 
 because it represents those principles which are 
 
15 
 
 fundamental to American Institutions and to 
 American policy? principles which stand in con- 
 trast with European Institutions and policy ! 
 
 "Which of these two theories is the American ? 
 The North has one theory, the South another ; 
 which of them is to be called the American idea ? 
 Which is American Northern ideas or Southern 
 ideas ? That which declares all men free &c. 
 or that which declares the superior races free, and 
 the inferior, Slaves ? 
 
 That which declares the right of every -man to 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or that 
 which declares the right of strength and intelli- 
 gence to subordinate weakness and ignorance ? 
 
 That which ordains popular education, freedom 
 of speech, freedom of the press, public discussion 
 or that which makes these a prerogative, yield- 
 ed to a class but denied to masses ? 
 
 That which organizes Society as a Democracy 
 and Government, and Republic or that which 
 organizes Society as an Aristocracy, and Govern- 
 ment as an Oligarchy ? 
 
 Which shall it be that of organized New Eng- 
 land townships, schools, and churches that re- 
 sisted taxation without representation that cov- 
 ered Boston harbor with tea, as if all China had 
 shook down her leaves there which spake frogo 
 Faneuil Hall, and echoed from Bunker Hill ; or 
 that policy which landed slaves on the Chesa- 
 peake that has changed Old Virginia from a land 
 of heroes into a breeding-ground of slaves that 
 has broken down boundaries, and carried war 
 over our lines, not for liberty, but for more terri- 
 tory for slaves to work, that the owners might 
 multiply, and the Aristocracy of America stand 
 on the shores of two oceans, an unbroken bound 
 all between ? 
 
 If a National American party is ever formedt 
 by leaving out the whole question of Human 
 Rights, it will be what a man would be his soul 
 left out ! 
 
 An American National party Liberty left out ! 
 
 An American party Human Rights left out ! 
 
 Gentlemen, such a party will stink with disso- 
 lution before you can get it finished. No Mason- 
 ry can make it solid no art can secure it. No 
 anchor that was ever forged in infernal sty thy can 
 go deep enough into political mud to hold it ! 
 
 If you rear up an empty name ; if you take 
 .hat revered name American, all the world over 
 adiant and revered, as the symbol of human 
 jghts and human happiness if you sequester 
 , rind stuff that name with the effete doctrines of 
 lespotism, do you believe you can supplicate from 
 
 any gods the boon of immortality for such an un- 
 baptized monster ? No. It may live to ravage 
 our heritage for a few days, but there is a spirit 
 of liberty that lives among us, and that shall live 
 And aroused by that spirit, there shall spring up 
 the yet unaroused hoists of men that have not 
 bowed the knee to Baal and we will war it to 
 the knife, and knife to the hilt. 
 
 For, IT SHALL be ; America shall be free! 
 
 We will take that for our life's enterprise. Dy- 
 ing, we will leave it a legacy to our children, and 
 they shall will it to theirs, until the work is done, 
 our fathers' prayers are answered, and this whole 
 land stands clothed and in its right mind a 
 symbol of what the earthly fruits of the Gospej 
 are ! 
 
 If a National party is now to be formed, what 
 shall it be, and what shall its office be ? 
 
 It shall be a peacemaker, say sly politicians. 
 Yes, peace by war. But an American party, 
 seeking peace with the imperious Aristocracy by 
 yielding everything down to the root one would 
 think no party need be formed to do that Ju- 
 das did as much without company. Arnold did 
 that without companions. 
 
 An American National party must either be a 
 piebald and patched-up party, earn jng in its en- 
 trails the mortal poison of two belligerent 
 schemes, former legendary disputes, and agita- 
 tion, and furious conflict ; or, to be a real national 
 party, it must first be a Northern party and be- 
 come national. We must walk again over the 
 course of history. Here in the North Liberty 
 began. Its roots are with us yet. All its associ- 
 ations and all its potent institutions are with us. 
 Having once given forth this spirit of liberty, 
 now fading out of our Southern States, the North 
 should again come forth and refill the poisoned 
 veins that have been drinkfng the hemlock of 
 Despotism with the new blood of Liberty ! Let 
 us give sap to the tree of Liberty, thai it may not 
 wither and die ! 
 
 When Hercules was born, but yet a child, the 
 jealous Junot sent two serpents to his cradle to 
 destroy him. Hercules or the serpents must die. 
 ^Both could not lie in the same bed. He seized 
 them and suffocated them by his grip, while Lis 
 poor brother, Iphiclus, filled the house with his 
 shrieks. An infernal Juno, envious of the des- 
 tined greatness of this country, hath sent this 
 serpent upon it ! What shall we do ? Shall we 
 imitate Hercules or Iphiclus ? Shall we choke 
 it ; or shall we form a timid National party and 
 shriek/ 
 
!6 
 
 Gentlemen, you will never have rest from this 
 subject until there is a victory of principles. 
 Northern ideas must become American, or South- 
 ern ideas must become American, before there 
 will be peace. If the North gives to the Nation 
 her radical principles of human rights and dem- 
 ocratic Governments, there will be the peace of 
 an immeasurable prosperity. If the South shall 
 give to the country a policy derived from her 
 heathen notions of men, there will be such a 
 peace as men have overdrugged with opium, that 
 deep lethargy just before the mortal convulsions 
 and death ! All attempts at evasion, at adjourn- 
 ing, at concealing and compromising are in vain. 
 The reason of our long agitation is, not that rest- 
 less Abolitionists are abroad, that ministers will 
 meddle with improper themes, that parties are 
 disregarded of the country's interest. These are 
 symptoms only, not the disease ; the effects, not 
 the causes. 
 
 Two great powers that will not live together 
 are in our midst, and tugging at each other's 
 
 throats. They will search each other out, though 
 you separate them a hundred times. And if by 
 an insane blindness you shall contrive to put off 
 the issue, and send this unsettled dispute down, 
 to your children, it will go down, gathering vol- 
 ume and strength at every step, to waste and 
 desolate their heritage. Let it be settled now. 
 Clear the place. Bring in the champions. Let 
 them put their lances in rest for the charge. 
 Sound the trumpet, and God save the rigid ! 
 
 The latter portion of the lecture was frequently 
 interrupted by boisterous applause. 
 
 After Mr. Beecher had taken his seat, there were 
 loud calls for Mr. GIDDIXGS, whereupon that gen- 
 tleman came forward and said that he had not 
 come to make a speech, but, like a good Metho- 
 dist brother, he would add his exhortation to the 
 excellent sermon of his clerical friend. In con- 
 clusion, Mr. Giddings besought all to enter hear- 
 tily into the contest for Freedom to trust in God 
 and keep their powder dry ! [Loud applause,] 
 
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